Elections

[_bcspace]

The problem with that is Catholics don't take agency into account. The LDS Church does seem to believe that a mother's agency is above the agency of a child's right to live in some cases. For example, does a woman choose to be raped?

You're avoiding the hypocrisy in your own Church and didn't answer the question.

I answered it directly. You're just so flumoxed by it that you dare not address it. See below.

The LDS Church does a better job I think, of taking all doctrine into account. Therefore, we are far more perfectly just and merciful because we actually understand what those mean.

This agency nonsense is a Mormon smokescreen that makes Right Wingers like you think it has something to do with Constitutional freedoms. It doesn't help you out on this issue in the least. Do you have the agency to kill? Yes. That doesn't mean you have the freedom to do so according to laws of man or God.

Apparently we do. But likely your socialism won't allow you to comprehend the notion of agency. for example, you seem to think that I'm saying agency necessarily gets one off the hook. It might, but the larger question which you fail to address is the choice of say, a woman who has been raped. Is not her life just as important? You also don't understand the concept of physical death in terms of eternity. Are you an atheist? If you can't come to grips with these things, your arguments will always go virtually unnoticed because they are nonsequitur.

[_bcspace]

One of the most left-wing senators is done with. Amen.

He until recently had a reputation of being a moderate's moderate. And his views haven't changed. That's telling. He was viewed as a moderate because he was relatively fiscally conservative, had a long history of bipartisanship, and until the Bush era Republicans still had a sizeable contingent who believed in civil liberties as Feingold defended them (it's supposedly what made us better than the communists.) Now he's Ultra-liberal McGee. Oh well. As an actual libertarian and not someone who pretends to be one because it's the pierced eyebrow of the Republican party, I actually lament when one of the last defenders of robust civil liberties goes down.

The difference between a moderate and and liberal is analogous to the difference between a social democracy and a socialist government. Or a slow death or a quick death.

You don't believe in small government despite the mantras to the contrary.

I do indeed believe in small government. This would have been well illustrated if someone had taken me up on my offer to show how to balance the budget after providing me with a reasonable number for the amount of poor people in this country.

The bottom line is that government employees provide a guarenteed constituency for bloated and ineffecive programs and that needs to be eliminated.

You just reject liberal welfare statism.

I do indeed. But not only just.

You don't want poor people collecting checks from Uncle Sam. You believe in a massive, massively powerful government, though. You just want powerful authoritarian police state armed to the teeth. Lots of money is getting spent; it's just on different things.

Wrong again. Wouldn't it be nicer to find out what I actually do believe before you make assumptions based on left-wing paranoid stereotypes?

[_EAllusion]

Wrong again. Wouldn't it be nicer to find out what I actually do believe before you make assumptions based on left-wing paranoid stereotypes?

What if I base it on BCSpace posts? 'Cause that's what I'm doing.

[_EAllusion]

The argument for making a rape exception for abortion goes something like this:

Pregnancy is risky. A fetus puts a substantial medical risk on a woman carrying it in addition to generally making a woman's life more difficult. Therefore, a woman should be allowed to decide if they will carry a fetus since it is ultimately their body being used and put harm's way. However, choosing to have sex is making a choice to accept the consequences of that choice, which includes the risk of pregnancy. So consider willful sex a permission slip to a fetus to use your body.

If you're raped, then you haven't made that choice, ergo you still have a right to kick the fetus out of your body. As it happens, doing that is fatal, therefore abortion is OK in those instances.

I don't buy this argument, but it is coherent.

[_Kevin Graham]

The argument for making a rape exception for abortion goes something like this:

Pregnancy is risky. A fetus puts a substantial medical risk on a woman carrying it in addition to generally making a woman's life more difficult. Therefore, a woman should be allowed to decide if they will carry a fetus since it is ultimately their body being used and put harm's way. However, choosing to have sex is making a choice to accept the consequences of that choice, which includes the risk of pregnancy. So consider willful sex a permission slip to a fetus to use your body.

If you're raped, then you haven't made that choice, ergo you still have a right to kick the fetus out of your body. As it happens, doing that is fatal, therefore abortion is OK in those instances.

I don't buy this argument, but it is coherent.

Then they need to stop mentioning murder, and stop claiming to be "pro-life." They're really just "pro-agency," which is just a stupid way of trying to get around the hypocrisy.

[_EAllusion]

I know what you are saying Kevin. If abortion is murdering a person, it doesn't matter if that person was the product of a rape, unplanned pregnancy, or planned. The origins of the person does not matter. Either the fetus has rights or it doesn't. Right.

What this argument says is that while a fetus has rights, the mother has rights to whether another person is going to use her body in such a profound way. She has to consent to that. This is a standard pro-choice argument, but with a twist. This argument holds that choosing to have sex is giving permission to a fetus to use your body (at least with normal risks of pregnancy). Therefore, consensual sex strips one's claim to a justified abortion. It's like inviting someone into your house, then shooting them for trespassing. That's murder.

[_Droopy]

That, adding a state constitional amendment to be an anti-Health Care state in the name of choice,

"Anti-health care? Is that a position?

repealing affirmative action,

Repealing institutionalized, government enforced discrimination based on status? This would be one of the most positive steps our society could possibly take at this juncture, and would be some indication that it was, collectively speaking, growing up, intellectually and morally, since the sixties.

[Guest]

He spoke about how this represented a win for the American people rather than a win for any party, and that it represented the will of the people wanting a number of conservative political agenda items enacted. The buzz words that really stood out to me were, "No Compromise on Healthcare! No Compromise on Spending! No Compromise on tax cuts!"

No compromise.

Exactly correct. There can be no compromise on the continued destruction of the constitution and the dismantling of America as a representative constitutional republic.

None.

I want to state somewhere publicly that I am tired of "No Compromise". I supported the overturn of the republican congress in 2006 and democratic expansion in 2008 because I was sick then of "No Compromise".

You've got to be kidding me. The Republicans, at that time, had become little more than a puppy dog following the Democrats down almost every legislative road as alter boys for the Priests of statism. George Bush and the Republican establishment had delegitimized the Republican party as in any substantive sense, a loyal opposition and alternative to the Left. They absorbed two catastrophic defeats for their sycophantism and self serving careerism.

They had gone so far down the road of compromise that at that point that they had, for all intents, ceased to be an alternative to Democratic party governance, having become statists and interventionists minus the leftist ideology of the Democrats.

They were the "Democratic party light", as it was said at the time.

I sick to f-ing death of "No Compromise" politics. TONIGHT IS NOT A MANDATE TO RUN HOG WILD WITH ANY PARTY"S AGENDA!

I don't think I am alone. I want to see an end to "No Compromise." Now.

In other words, you want the Democratic party to essentially rule unopposed - a de facto one party government - with the Republicans slightly watering down and manicuring Democratic policies.

The real problem with this whole outlook is that the base of the two parties, and the leadership and institutional rank and file of the Democratic party hold polar world views as to the proper scope and function of the state, and severely oppositional views of economics, social issues, and other questions.

This makes compromise very difficult, as politics has now infected so many aspects of human life that to compromise on core issues means, at the end of the day, compromise on fundamental questions of world view and principle.

[_Kevin Graham]

The old white male bigots like droopy are the folks driving this latest flavor of Right Wing fanaticism, claiming to have been given instant expertise on the constitution and such because they are loyal to Hannity and Beck. The country won't be able to progress until their ignorant, racist generation dies off. But it is inevitable to happen, so I can at least take comfort in that fact.

I love how so many of my Facebook friends claim to be "Constitutional Conservatives," as if they've ever read the Constitution and as if they knew what it meant to be conservative. I asked a few of them what the 189th amendment said, and they said they'd get back with me after they found out. They are morons programmed by FOX News, period.

[_asbestosman]

I asked a few of them what the 189th amendment said, and they said they'd get back with me after they found out.

I promise to have my name removed from the church when they find out--unless I die first.