padren

Wow that's an article full of holes. Then you have some pretty extreme games of "connect the dots" that really makes you wonder like this passage: First, the conclusion in the evidence is "receiving welfare may make recipients less charitable" but he already equates "less giving = more liberal" so he draws the conclusion right in there - cyclically mind you. On top of that, he ignores the very real rationale of when you are receiving money just to get by to forward that money on to third party charities would have to feel rather disingenuous. When someone is poor and not on welfare they may not make much but at least they are "making it" whereas when you are on welfare you're basically on life support. That's like saying "Interestingly people in the hospital on an IV receiving blood transfusions are the least likely to give blood and makes them more Jehovah Witnessy."

First, he said "I don't think that's a fair depiction of the entirety of the Republican Party." Notice he was asserting the depiction presented was inaccurate. One or two going to a blood drive does not invalidate the identification of a trend in a group. I can have an opinion but when I make a point of invalidating an assertion I would have to provide something to back that up. In this case, he backed it up with the "there are a few..." portion of his comment, and he was then asked to substantiate that material - to name any one of that "few" he failed to do so. It's fair to ask this question because if he asserts that "a few who actually do care about serving the people and doing what is right, and making good decisions" it is worth asking so we can analyze whether his opinion of what denotes caring, doing what's right, and making good decisions is agreeable. If I was to say "at least Obama is making good decisions" someone is free to ask me "what is a good decision he has made?" so I can qualify my statement. Otherwise my idea of one of his best "good decisions" could be in picking his pet dog... people should be allowed to ask me to clarify to understand the basis of my comment.

Interestingly, I do believe that Democrats are mostly righteous incompetents and Republicans are mostly Evil evil-doers.

Surely you don't believe that "if you don't run, you can't complain" since, being a voting citizen is an exceptionally important component of our government? You'll also notice that you see a lot of criticism of all the scoundrels as it comes up - this topic just happens to be about some Republican activities worth criticizing. Many Democrats get criticized over in the healthcare thread, especially the "blue dog" ones. No one is being spared scrutiny. It's simply a fact when people take actions as a group that you feel need to be examined (say "The Democrats" or "The Republicans" or "The Wallstreet Bankers") you talk about that group. It's not an implied statement of everyone else not covered in that topic getting a free pass.

And what's really twisted in this little "perfect storm" of how anything resembling progress (in any direction) grinds to a halt - when they go to the press, the response from the press (assuming there's a celebrity* to hitch it to) is entirely proportional to the sensationalism of the claim, not the veracity of the claim. *Politicians with appear to be celebrities these days

That has failed a simple test: What relevant secular reason is there for calling it something other than marriage? Marriage is already a secular term defined by the state that allows a couple to share wealth, debt, heathcare decisions and everything else. The petition is to extend that term to include same sex couples. Your argument does not explain why that should not occur and be bypassed in favor of a different term granting similar recognition of legal status. Your argument could just have easily been used to deny interracial marriage by granting a "separate but equal" union for interracial couples. If you feel your argument is sound in it's application to same sex couples, do you also feel it is a worth while argument denying interracial couples "marriage" by definition, if they had access to a differently named union of same benefits?

I won't say all reasons are religious - some are bigoted or irrational... but that's the reason for the word "relevant" in the topic title: bigoted/irrational/emotional arguments aren't really relevant to state law. At least we make the effort to keep it that way and consider it a failing (regardless of topic) when they do weasel their way in. The thing is someone can pose a non-religious argument, which is challenged for faulty logic on all manner of grounds, and after peeling it like an onion for some time it boils down to: religious, irrational or bigoted. At least so far. The claim isn't that no such argument exists, but that no such argument has been presented that survived any degree of debate. There is an ancillary view (largely unspoken) that in order to deny a petition to the state for the recognition of a people's rights that some rational argument must be made. If there was some ancient law on the books that anyone of Australian descent within the last 3 generations could no own blue clothing - any US Citizen of aussie heritage could petition for that equal right, and their petition could only be denied of cause was shown. The state would have to demonstrate the law was not capricious. All that is secondary though, and gets into consititutional law and "rule by majority" vs. "rule by law" and whatnot. This thread is just to try and uncover if any relevant secular reasons exist to oppose gay marriage and so far none have stood up to debate.

The papers are mocking flat earthers? I actually haven't heard of them getting enough traction to be mocked - it was a hypothetical. And I agree with your second statement and think it's a worth-whole position editorially.

1) Health risks: People are free to choose all manner of risky lifestyles. People can have premarital sex at their own discretion despite the health risks of STDs. People are free to have open relationships while married and expose themselves to many risks. Heterosexual couples can engage in anal sex as well - all of this is legal. While not all of society engages in it, society generally accepts that if others choose to they can at their own risk. Do you really want to tell someone else how they must live, when "the mob" could easily decide to turn on risks you take in your life? Maybe you smoke cigarettes or like to go mountain climbing. 2) Benefit to society: We don't require a proven benefit to allow someone freedom to pursue their interests in life. We require proof of severe determent to withhold freedoms from people. Drive through Vegas weddings probably don't provide a huge benefit to society, but unless they are proven to be harmful, they'll stay. Besides this - people in stable relationships tend to be more stable and productive, and thus a greater benefit to society. While there is no burden to prove the societal benefits of gay marriage, they exist and aren't hard to see. Lastly these benefits can be achieved without detracting from anyone else's lifestyles. I may not understand "the church" and the whole deal with women not being allowed to be priests and all that, but I see no reason why I should meddle in their affairs. Likewise, I see no reason they should meddle in the affairs of people who aren't meddling in theirs.

You can't expect every newspaper that runs a political editorial cartoon to share the sentiment of the cartoon. A lot of newspapers would be rather bipolar if that was the case. The cartoon also has a very different topic - the editorial is about the need to act now, whereas that cartoon mocks the "climate conspiracy" deniers by pointing out how they wouldn't be taken seriously if they were talking about the moon landing. Secondly, when you say they "share the same sentiment" what is meant exactly? That the editors hold a stance that makes their paper an unfairly biased? I ask because it really cuts to a deeper issue - what if all the facts are only on one side? If they run an editorial cartoon that mocks Flat Earthers, are they being unfair to the Flat Earth position? If a newspaper only shows conclusions drawn in one direction, or mostly does stories that support one side when equally strong stories exist to support the other I think bias is worth calling. If they report that idiots act like idiots, I don't think it's unfair to call a spade a spade.

If gravity became repulsive, the apple would accelerate away from the Earth. However, it's fastest velocity is as it leaves the ground due to "shock waves convergence" as Sisyphus put it, and has the lowest velocity by the time it reaches the tree. This is because the impulse is being slowed by the attraction of gravity - even in reverse.

Firstly: She is on trial and even if she hasn't been convicted yet, she is "being held to account" for her irrational actions. Her children have been getting fed since authorities determined their condition (thank god ) and she is on track to account for her unacceptable behavior. Being charged with a crime and standing trial is not the same as "getting away with" as her freedom is being inhibited. Secondly, she had gotten away with it right up until the time she was charged. I think this was iNow's main point. However, if I read things right the main issue is she got away with it for so long because it's taboo to interfere with someone's religious convictions unless the situation gets very well out of hand, and the concern is in her case it was allowed to get out of hand for this reason. If that is so, I am not certain of this. I think if it was known she made no effort to feed her kids even after one or two days she would have been reported regardless of her reasons. The cabin that is described sounds rather isolated and I have no idea to what degree the church officials that were helping her stay there discussed their food situation. It's been stated that she did not try to obtain food from them and I seriously doubt they were aware her kids were starving. I don't think anyone was aware until authorities interviewed the children at the cabin. From what I can tell in the story, it was dealt with immediately. All I see that is relevant is that (1) she is a complete loon who (2) used religion to justify her loony and harmful actions to herself. I don't see any evidence any of her abusive behavior was tolerated by anyone at anytime for any reason. I will say though, she probably exhibited signs of being a complete nutter, that were indistinguishable from signs of being "a very religious person" that if caught early, would have helped her children avoid all that hardship. I have to agree that mental illness is much harder to identify when the sufferer obsesses on religion, because is not subject to reason. When someone is scared of aliens living in the trees it's easy to red flag. When they are scared of an immortal entity living under the dirt it's not paranoia, it's religion. In a world with no religion, she would probably have failed a mental health evaluation (become irrational about something else) and her kids would not have been in harms way. However, I doubt her actions were tolerated by anyone with any clue about the manner of her children's suffering.

I think iNow's point is that while any manner of poor rationalization could be used, because she invoked the "sacred cow" of religion, her beliefs were respected long enough for her kids to get this bad, whereas other irrational defenses would have been quickly picked apart and she would have probably ended up getting a psych eval. What if she believed the government was putting bad things in the food to poison her children, and aliens would provide for her family? All in all though, I think it's beside the point: the fact that many people use alcohol in a responsible manner also masks and makes it harder to identify people who are genuinely destroying their health and livelihoods with the stuff, and I am willing to bet more people malnourish/neglect* their children due to alcoholism than religion. If there was no socially accepted consumption of alcohol it would be easier to protect those children, but it doesn't warrant such heavy handed policies. *it is arguable that indoctrinating your kids to believe the world is 6000 years old and to ignore their science education etc/etc is a form of abuse/neglect, but a whole other topic

I believe it has to do with an ambiguous horizon line. If she is spinning clockwise her out-reached hand dips down in front. If she is spinning counter-clockwise her hand dips down behind. Both perspectives are accurate enough for the brain to decide it's correctly seeing a spinning woman, but since it can't be both it focus on the first one it matches. Break that focus, it may match on the other.

The sad truth is they are ill equipped to evaluate scientific arguments. Apparently, they have a tradition spanning multiple generations evaluating macro-scale arguments based on a combination of authority and appeal... and only applying critical logic to micro-scale arguments where data can be easily verified for oneself, or at least direct experience with the messenger bringing forth the data. I am not singling out and making generalized comments about conservatives or "the religious right" but commenting on how people get by that have no real experience with the scientific method. There are a lot of "granola head hippies" that have "progressive" views on AGW not due to their rational faculties but due to it's appeal to them - and it's subsequent justification for "taking care of the earth" element of their philosophy. Without a true understanding of the scientific method these people only have their "gut feeling" to go on and they have no personal relationship with the messengers, and the message is pretty dire. You show someone a new cell phone and they don't care how it works - they talk to someone that shows them what it can do and they find it appealing, and applaud our culture's scientific ingenuity. Show them an x-ray with a dark spot on their lung, and they want to go talk to their family. They don't want to investigate radiology, medical biology and review medical journals - they want to talk to people they trust who have had experiences with cancer before. They ask them if the treatments helped, if they have confidence in the medicine. Without exploring the science and no idea where to start, they can't hope to make sense of the huge field of medicine and thus try to find a way to make it personal by talking to someone they know who has experienced it. Thankfully a lot of people do trust their family doctor, and the specialists their doctor refers them to by proxy, and the field of medicine their doctor has so much confidence in but that is simply how they made it personal in scale to them - not how they evaluated the science. When it comes to climate science, they don't have that personal connection.

Based on the twitter messages, it seems they spotted a halo, to quote the article you linked:

First the question is constitutionality, which is only one subset of the law. We had laws against deficit spending that Clinton introduced that expired under Bush. We easily could have those again. That said - it's not a constitutional law issue. Secondly, the government could (albeit in very bad judgment) declare war tomorrow on half a dozen of the world's most powerful nations - perfectly legal, but very likely to "legally destroy this country" all the same. It's also legal to eat an entire bag of sugar every day, but it is dumb and will hurt you. Likewise, we don't entirely "outlaw dumb" even in politics, we have laws (campaign finance, etc) to prevent egregious abuses and elections to deal with the rest. The check and balance there is with the people who elect the representatives, and that most aren't the sort to say "I wasn't gunna destroy the country, but they just plum made it legal and I gotta scratch that itch."

Deficit spending predates the Constitution in this country. The first thing John Adams did (well, achieved) in Holland was to gain recognition of the US as an independent government at The Hague, the second was to borrow five million guilders on it's behalf. If deficit spending was abhorrent to the founders and against the Constitution, I think they'd have had ample reason to be aware of the issue and debate the topic in their time. I am not an expert on the Constitution or the debates of the founders, but I am sure a constitutional scholar would be able to turn up records of such discussions. I am certain though the end result would have been pronounced if it was to be in opposition to deficits on Constitutional grounds. As a point of interest, I wonder what the US debt looked like at the time the Constitution was drafted, relative to the early GNP of those days.

But the The Korea Consumer Protection Board actually issued an alert - and "Fan Death" is cited as a cause of death by detectives during investigations. I understand culturally people often ascribe to various urban legends, no less here than anywhere else, but for publicly funded agencies to support an urban legend that is based on something that is so logically flawed is what I find baffling. This is a country with a space program, I wonder if they've carefully considered the use of fans to break the laws of conservation of energy - it may lead to some innovative future designs.

It boils down to the subjectivity inherent in promoting general welfare. Many people (perhaps the majority even) would probably believe the general welfare of the nation would be improved if every citizen was given a Bible, and had state funded Sunday school for all children. Thankfully, there's a separation of church and state so that can't even be attempted but in short it's the idea of forcing people to pay for enhancing their "general welfare" by means they may feel do not help their general welfare. Granted the caveat is in using the term "their" general welfare versus "the" general welfare, but by forcing everyone to have health insurance, you remove their freedom to choose not having any health care provider. Should it be mandatory by law that every household have a fire extinguisher, federally subsidized if need be? Should the government really spend that much time and energy trying to fine tune people's general welfare? Where is the fine line between helping people, and doing their job of securing themselves in the world for them? The "Libertarian purist" in me doesn't like national healthcare for that reason - but the realist in me thinks it's the best possible solution to the problem. I may be very careful not to set my house on fire, but I still have to support the fire department all the same. When people don't have health care by choice, they end up needing it later and have never caught up to what they'd have paid in, and it's a large enough issue to justify the mandate. In addition to that, it's the only way to really guarantee universal coverage for those who do desire it and many can't get it through no fault of their own - as such the choice of whether to have health care or not is a freedom I'm willing to sacrifice. I may be in favor of it, but I can understand why some people are apprehensive. I don't think the "improving the general welfare" argument alone suffices for it's justification - it's the sheer amount of damage done to people's welfare when they fall through the insurance cracks that warrants it. In general, I find arguments like "improving the general welfare" for government intervention very unsettling, and hints at the kind of social engineering I find reprehensible. I can accept my efforts going towards the benefit of society in general as much as is warranted to avoid calamities, but stop short of funding some social architect's wet dream for a perfect society. That's not to say I think welfare programs are over-funded or anything - I think they are woefully underfunded in general and that government programs could do a lot more to help people in crisis.

If you are unsure about whether these acts are Constitutional, why not start threads about them and open a discussion? Where did you find them to be unconstitutional? We've had Czars and Wallstreet bailouts since Reagan. I really don't understand why you'd consider any of these items to be unconstitutional, but if you do feel they are, feel free to start threads on them. How exactly is that trolling? It does really matter where the information comes from as long as it's discussed and debated on it's merits? I personally like these threads. I like most threads in the politics section regardless of whether they highlight a left or right focus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death " Fan death... is this a joke or a serious article?

There's a Daily Show app?

I am suspicious because he's trying to create a consensus regarding the above assertion - if he fails, the assertion is irrelevant, and if he succeeds, the assertion is self defeating.

When we get to blur the lines between what we should, and what we can, eat.