Biden Lies Again: "I voted against the wars"

[_beastie]

Now hurry to get back to your wingnut blogosphere and read some think tank studies. You must continually have the correct opinions re-inculcated. After all, someone paid good money for you to have those opinions.

Bravo, bravo.

[_Kevin Graham]

Unfortunately for this desperate gambit, the fact checkers are virtually all left-wing partisans of the Messiah and his party

Droopy's only evidence for this is the fact that fact-checkers tend to show more lies coming from the Right than the Left. This is really a circular argument that ignores the likelihood that maybe, just maybe, the Right actually lies more.

Again, there is no evidence that either factcheck.org or politifact.com are in Obama's back pocket. That's just the kind of paranoid thinking we'd expect from folks like Droopy, whose "education" comes strictly from quote-mining his favorite "Think Tanks."

But on the topic at hand, I will admit it does appear Biden lied about this. I'm not sure what the hell he was thinking. Maybe he was referring to the first war, or his decision to vote against it before he voted for it? Either way it was misleading. I can only assume he decided to fight fire with fire given the way Romney's lies led to a jump in the polls. This was just a dumb thing to lie about. If he were caught lying about his policy or plans, as Romney/Ryan have been doing, then that would be far more egregious.

[_Droopy]

Why is that relevant?

Because, all else being equal, the rights (even the conveniences of) a person take precidence over the non-sentient. I take that as rather obvious.

That's not at all clear when the being, sentient or not, is a human being. I see no particular reason why a woman who simply doesn't want to break-up with her boyfriend because he doesn't want the child, or doesn't want the child because she has educational or career plans, should be allowed to kill an unborn human being, sentient or not. Sentience appears to be, at first glance, another diversion (classic within feminist theory) from the core problem of the humanness of the unborn child.

Even if I allow, for the sake of argument, the absurdity that ghosts are no more metaphysical than frank skepticism regarding ghosts,

The problem is that there's no scientific evidence of their nonexistence, and no scientific methodology to test either the claim that they exist or that they do not.

then that would just put the claims on equal footing and it is still the case that the law should not repsect one superstition over another.

This is, again, simply a bald assumption and assertion that bespeaks a settled, dogmatic prejudice, not a well reasoned philosophical position.

On the average, I'll take the morality, science, ethics and quality of life of the last 50 years over the previous 200, 100, or 2000 years any day.

I said the 20th century, not just the last 50 years (which would only bring us back to 1960) But 1960? Well, the Left was still busy then: Castro, Che, Pol Pot, Ho, and Mao (Mao had already killed some 30 million in his "better world" during the Great Leap Forward) was then several years away from the Cultural Revolution. Oh, and the Left was also busy throughout Africa.

You may pine for the good old days that never were and align yourself with Torquemada and his watered down modern reincarnations in the likes of Santorum...

Credibility: 0

if you wish. But we are not going to just let you prematurely geriatric Archie Bunker types bully us without a fight.

Intellectual seriousness: -0

Oh, by the way, here is a just a little tidbit to make you salivate and bare your witch-hunting fangs;

I love witches. Heaven knows I've put up with them in this place for around seven years.

The first doctor to prescribe the morning after pill to someone near to me was and is a Stake president. Maybe some little bean shaped transparent ghost-let had to do a U-turn and get back in line to be born into better circumstances. How shocking.

You really belong with the 'O Hair crowed, Tarski. I mean, that's really the level of intellectual discourse you bring here.

I snipped the Graham-inspired fuming (you folks are really worried at this point about this election, aren't you?).

[_Kevin Graham]

I snipped the Graham-inspired fuming (you folks are really worried at this point about this election, aren't you?)

For good reason too. Unlike some folks on the Right, we actually care about the American economy. We actually care that millions have health care, etc.

All you care about is the Mormon forcing the "free agency" crap on all of us, telling us we're all supposed to fend for ourselves in this dog eat dog world, and where you end up in society reflects on your relationship to God.

[_Tarski]

The problem is that there's no scientific evidence of their nonexistence, and no scientific methodology to test either the claim that they exist or that they do not.

No scientific evidence of nonexistence?? LOL

In the same sense, there is also no scientific evidence for the nonexistence of thetans. How should that fact affect legislation?

Look, when we use the word "human" the meaning can either emphasize biological categories on the one hand or the notion of sentient personhood on the other. The term only seems univalent because under normal conditions the referent exhibits both aspects. Our moral intuitions are understandably unlikely to feel the distinction--at least without help from some reflection.
But in a newly fertilized human ovum, we have to explore whether and to what extent it is only the biological aspect that is in play and what it means for our moral determinations.
Because the two senses can be teased apart in such unusual cases (vegetative human bodies are another case) we have to ask which aspect is really the main consideration for most of our moral intuitions. The sense in which it is possible to harm a lump of human DNA is different from the sense in which it is possible to harm a human being (the latter having concerns, plans, sense of self, language, hopes, etc.)

If one is going to weigh in untutored intuitions, then those of the pregnant woman herself should weigh much more heavily than those of popes and other old superstitious white men.

But intuition is a poor guide in my opinion. An even worse approach is one that takes a legalistic/semantic approach to the multivalent term "human" that focuses on DNA or even on potentiality---eating a pecan is not the same thing as chopping down a pecan tree and that is true even though sentience never even becomes an issue. Add in the sentience factor and it just gets worse for your side.

Personally, I have ethical problems mainly with harming people. My reasons, when unpacked, refer to considerations that only make sense for persons.
I could go on and make this much more convincing but you are already immovable.

Since you can't win by exploring these considerations, you bring in the invisible Trump card; the notion of a "ghost or spirit", which, as you say, is magically immune to science, public evidence (as Rawls would require) or rationality.
You don't even have a Bible verse behind you.