Pangloss

No, you're elevating the other side's straw men by responding with straw men of your own, and ditto with moving the goalposts. Not one person here ever stated that, for example, two men can have a baby. For you to ask for that question to be clearly answered is, in fact, a straw man. And you repeated that list two times. Two wrongs don't make a right. He has stated what constitutes harm in his opinion, and you don't like what he considered to be harm. That's your opinion, not objective fact. What would be more objective and congenial would be to say that what harm has been stated is not sufficient to warrant not having these changes in law. line[/hr] I'll give you guys one more chance to find some common ground and closure on this issue.

No, I think all you've succeeded in doing is parsing to a very high level of detail that, incidentally, transitions opposing straw man arguments into valid opposing positions. The state could certainly view homosexual marriages differently, just as it could view heterosexual marriages differently -- and old man and an 18-year-old girl, for example -- maybe there should be a law prohibiting that. How about 2nd cousins? There's no law in any state (even West Virginia) prohibiting anything farther away than 1st cousins. Whether or not the law currently makes a distinction doesn't add validity to either "pro" or "anti" arguments.

Just got a wonderful view of the 31st night-time launch from my front drive (about 150 miles south as the crow flies). Perfect weather tonight, and a spectacular launch, as all the night launches have been. Got a perfect view all the way to booster separation. Magnificent.

When you all have demonstrated here that you can explore this subject in a reasonable and insightful manner then you can have this thread back.

I'm not going to tolerate half a dozen threads about the same subject, either. When you all have demonstrated here that you can explore this subject in a reasonable and insightful manner then you can have this thread back.

You really have a talent for cutting to the heart of things sometimes. To be more blunt about it than you were, I don't think Mr Skeptic's questions there deserve a response, because they were in fact examples of the very kinds of straw men he was complaining about (this is what I meant when I said that his post should have embarassed him). I don't believe those points are relevant to a discussion about gay marriage, and I was going to cut them off completely for that reason, but since you've responded to them I'll wait for his reply. (I do like the fact that you're trying to encourage a better response and I'm happy to play bad cop to your good cop.) But in the end that's a strawman or it's moving the goalposts from Mr Skeptic there, and either way I think it's just inviting more of the same BS from the other side. Like I said, when I get in the middle of this, neither side is going to like it. I was talking to YOU, Mr Skeptic, every bit as much as your opponents.

Believe me, it's not unilateral individuals that scare me, but unilateral politicians. Ron Paul doesn't scare me at all, though, it's the establishment Democrats and Republicans that do. If you want to follow what seems to me to be an irrelevant and ineffectual philosophical belief all the way to the grave, that's not only your right, it's the American way. More power to you. (Doesn't mean I think anything less of you either, btw. Most of my friends think I'm misguided about some thing or another.) Right, right, and socialism was supposed to end all wars. There's a reason we stopped believing in that idea too. You're just repeating familiar arguments here that have received logical counterpoints many times on this forum. See I think that's what's actually driving a lot of the resurgence of these old unilateral beliefs like Austrianism. I don't mean you, I think you do a great job of thinking things through, but I can't say I see very many folks like you out there.

Okay, I'm either going to close this thread or I'm going to stand in the middle of it and post an impartial analysis of every post from this point forward. And I promise you if I do the latter then neither side is going to like it. Mr. Skeptic, the inherent hypocrisy of that post should embarrass the hell out of you, and yet you repeated it. And iNow, do you actually want to win hearts and minds, or just paint scarlet letters on people's foreheads? You guys rock when you're on point and looking deep into arguments. That's not the case at the moment -- you're way down in the gutters. Clean up the arguments, look for common ground, and see if you can make some real sense of of this. I insist. line[/hr] PANGLOSS'S LINE OF DOOM CROSS AT YOUR OWN PERIL line[/hr] (BTW, there are also some really good and interesting posts up there, like waitforufo's thoughtful post above, and I applaud those efforts.) (broop!)

The Mormon story with Prop 8 is interesting. There's the hypocrisy angle, which of course they deny, claiming it's something they haven't done since the 19th century (which flies right in the face of recent examples, but perhaps you could make a fair case that it's not something they officially condone, I suppose). And there's also the angle of how they organized their opposition at a national level. The latter point is of more interest to me at the moment, because while they certainly have the right to do that, it's interesting that they're suddenly being made to discover that other people have exactly the same right -- by protesting outside Mormon churches all over the country. Hey, makes sense to me. Turnabout is always fair play when it comes to politics.

I think we've kinda exhausted the arguments here and I'm kinda sensing that we should wrap this up before it gets too heated. Consider the thread on 24-hour suicide watch unless I hear a lot of objecting.

The thing I think you guys aren't getting is that Americans are convinced that something is wrong, but they're not even remotely convinced that our system itself is broken. They know we're in a mess, but they blame that on politicians and money-grubbers, not the basic concept of having a compromise between "capitalism" and "caring". And frankly they're not wrong to think that, because the points in favor of non-intervention have logical and sensible responses. We know what happens when you carelessly deregulate an industry that inherently puts people at some form of risk. What we don't know is the exact point of compromise at which we have a successful industry and happy and safe consumers. We're still figuring that one out. So while I may not agree with bascule that the majority of Ron Paul supporters are like Alex Jones supporters, I do think the fundamental basis of that comment is accurate. Non-interventionism is as dead as communism. Putting it forward in this day and age makes about as much sense as assigning everyone a job on a communal farm and writing up a Five Year Plan. Sorry gents, but that's just the way it is. It's time to find a new philosophy to pin your hopes on. We DO need to recognize the importance of right-sizing regulation and reducing it when it becomes an unnecessary and counterproductive burden. Austrians and libertarians and such can still make an important contribution in that regard. Why not grab that baton and run with it instead?

Mark Begich took the lead off Ted Stevens in Alaska this afternoon, and now leads by three (yes three) votes. They're still counting absentee ballots and may not be finished until some time next week. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a4tLU.mMRFGk&refer=home

I don't see how anybody can form an opinion on this when half the money hasn't even been allocated yet and even the initial effects may not be measurable for many more months, if not a year or more. That having been said my feelings on the bailout haven't changed. I hate it, but I think it may be necessary. We have a managed economy, a compromise between capitalism and socialism, and we're still figuring out exactly where to draw the line. This is something we're going to have to ride out and see what happens, and learn from it in retrospect.

I was surprised to see that XPlay on G4 gave Mirror's Edge only 4 stars out of 5 in its review last night. They liked the game quite a lot, but complained about its short duration and "too much fighting" towards the end. That duration thing is rapidly becoming a big deal in console games. Almost gone are the days of games that lasted 30+ hours and had tons of replayability. Only one I played this year that was anything like that long was GTA4. Now most games seem to be clocking in around the 8-hour mark. (That's an odd and subjective way to measure game length, of course, given that people play at different speeds -- the more you die the longer the game lasts, for example. But that seems to be the way people look at it these days.)

Well maybe but the real "entitlement" money each year goes to stuff we've deemed important and relevant to our future, and therefore worth the cost. It's more like an investment than altruism, especially since it's taken away at the point of a gun to begin with (at least figuratively speaking). Anyway, for better or worse (and there are good arguments both ways), Paulson declared a 180-degree about-face today and said that none of the $700 billion bailout package would go to homeowners in trouble.

Last I looked there were something like half a million children in foster care around the country. Apparently there aren't enough straight couples to go around. In fact it's probably safe to say there aren't enough straight and gay couples to adopt them all.

Well if you buy the concept that entitlement = philanthropy then he's a pretty poor comparison. He's given away, what, a billion dollars? We give away a couple trillion a year. But of course there's another side to that argument.

Oh wow, you're right, the verbiage did change. LOL! I know why -- Obama's been lurking here at SFN. That must be it. Good job, guys!

Interesting op-ed piece by Ron Paul on CNN's web site today: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/11/paul.republican/index.html I don't agree with some of his point but it's pretty insightful and worth a read. Some things that stood out to me: I think these points are right on target. What do you all think?

Yah I kinda struggled a bit with how to express the first point. It certainly wasn't instantaneous, the point there was just that it took politicians by surprise. Whether it should have done so is another matter, but I think it's fair to say that there have been some surprises in this mess for everyone -- even those who warned about the problems. But that's the main point there, that it's a game-changer in similar fashion to 9/11. It does seem that the first part of the Obama administration will be all but consumed by dealing with this issue. Just to give an example of that, it came out yesterday that the federal ban on embryonic stem cell research may be reversed right off the bat, and it just struck me as odd that I hadn't thought about that yet. Doing that won't take any significant time or attention away from the economic issue, but the surprise I felt just underscored for me how much focus the economy is getting right now.

I've got a goodly chunk of these suckers myself, including certs from Microsoft (MCSE, MCT), CompTIA (CTT+, A+), Cisco, Novell, etc. It was all the rage in the late 1990s, adding so much money to your income it was amazing. I also did the corporate training thing for a while, back when you could rake in $750-$1000 a DAY telling people how to reset passwords in Windows Server. Crazy times. Today I think it's more of a base expectation in certain fields. A minimum job requirement. There are a lot of study guides -- those can be helpful. I also remember using testing software a few times, that would put questions on the screen and give you a certain amount of time to answer. There are also cheat guides that give actual exam questions, but those are pretty dubious and inconsistent from what I hear.

It strikes me that the current economic crisis is, from a political perspective, similar in its effect to the political aftermath of 9/11. 1 - it's a huge surprise 2 - it's ruinously expensive 3 - it's a "game-changer" Now again, I'm talking about the political perspective here. How this affects political actions and opinions. With regard to #1, the surprise value is reflected in the way Democrats and Republicans seemed to stumble about on the way to respond to the issue, not having a basic ideological platform plank to fall back on. With regard to #2, when it comes to major political happenings, cost is one of the way they determine how important a thing is. With regard to #3, this has created a paradigm shift in the perception of what politicians talk about in terms of budget matters. In short we've added a couple of orders of magnitude to our basic concept of what constitutes "expensive" when it comes to the budget. So I think the question becomes whether this event will essentially become Obama's defining catalyst, just as 9/11 was the defining catalyst of the Bush administration. It's early, of course, and in terms of history and politics it may seem rash -- it FEELS rash. But in general these sorts of things are actually pretty rare, and I think it's possible that Obama's defining catalyst just happened to come a bit early. What do you all think?

Right now I'm playing "Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway", a stunningly realistic and immersive first-person shooter set during Operation Market Garden in WW2.

It's an interesting article, I agree. That goes to show you that statistics can always be analyzed in numerous ways. This election seems to have produced some really interesting numbers all over the place. Just to be clear, it was not actually the proposition of this thread that the large African American turnout caused the success of Proposition 8, just that they contributed to it and that their new presence in politics is significant and will put unexpected pressures on Democrats.

Well that would certainly cost a lot more, if it was. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. I wonder if that debate will even enter public awareness, given some of the massive issues on the agenda at the moment. I mean, we're only talking about a hundred billion dollars or so. Not even "real money."