I was just listing the major reason why I am not a republican. I generally agree with conservative values, and I take conservative positions on most social issues, but I also disagree with a few things so that's why I'm not a member of that party. In regards to Mitt Romney, he seems like he does care for the poor. I think he is a pretty likeable guy, for the most part. That's isn't the reason I am not voting for him, however. The reason I am not voting for him is because he is an elder in the Mormon church. His family has been connected with it since the church started, and one of his relatives helped construct the first temple. A Romney presidency means that the elders of the Mormon church will be running this country, and that isn't something that I as a Christian can support.


In reply to this comment by deedub81:
If Romney doesn't care about the Poor, why has he spent his money AND HIS PERSONAL TIME serving and helping them?

In reply to this comment by shinyblurry:
>> ^cosmovitelli:

Shiny and QM face facts: you're both too smart to stick with these evasive, ideologically motivated destroyers for much longer.
Sadly, the actual, mediocre, boring effort to do things as well as possible is all there is for us.. No amazing plan, no secret trick to simultaneously give & keep trillions, no 'wealth creators'..
Just a big pile of flawed people, some of whom are trying to make the world more relaxed, open and productive.
And some are solipsists who want OUT in any way they can imagine it might be possible - extreme wealth, private land, preferential treatment by the supernatural, sexual conquest, fame, power over others..
..or all of the above and then still desperately hurting defenseless hungry uncared-for children to acquire ANOTHER billion.. (and then trying to flee further from the anger and the pain they have unthinkingly perpetuated..)
Ryan and Romney are taking fuck you to the next level.


I'm not on board for the Romney/Ryan ticket. I'm not a republican because they don't care about the poor and a few other reasons. I'm not a democrat because it is the party of secular humanism. I cannot in good conscience vote for either candidate this election.

If Romney doesn't care about the Poor, why has he spent his money AND HIS PERSONAL TIME serving and helping them?

In reply to this comment by shinyblurry:
>> ^cosmovitelli:

Shiny and QM face facts: you're both too smart to stick with these evasive, ideologically motivated destroyers for much longer.
Sadly, the actual, mediocre, boring effort to do things as well as possible is all there is for us.. No amazing plan, no secret trick to simultaneously give & keep trillions, no 'wealth creators'..
Just a big pile of flawed people, some of whom are trying to make the world more relaxed, open and productive.
And some are solipsists who want OUT in any way they can imagine it might be possible - extreme wealth, private land, preferential treatment by the supernatural, sexual conquest, fame, power over others..
..or all of the above and then still desperately hurting defenseless hungry uncared-for children to acquire ANOTHER billion.. (and then trying to flee further from the anger and the pain they have unthinkingly perpetuated..)
Ryan and Romney are taking fuck you to the next level.


I'm not on board for the Romney/Ryan ticket. I'm not a republican because they don't care about the poor and a few other reasons. I'm not a democrat because it is the party of secular humanism. I cannot in good conscience vote for either candidate this election.

>> ^cosmovitelli:

Shiny and QM face facts: you're both too smart to stick with these evasive, ideologically motivated destroyers for much longer.
Sadly, the actual, mediocre, boring effort to do things as well as possible is all there is for us.. No amazing plan, no secret trick to simultaneously give & keep trillions, no 'wealth creators'..
Just a big pile of flawed people, some of whom are trying to make the world more relaxed, open and productive.
And some are solipsists who want OUT in any way they can imagine it might be possible - extreme wealth, private land, preferential treatment by the supernatural, sexual conquest, fame, power over others..
..or all of the above and then still desperately hurting defenseless hungry uncared-for children to acquire ANOTHER billion.. (and then trying to flee further from the anger and the pain they have unthinkingly perpetuated..)
Ryan and Romney are taking fuck you to the next level.


I'm not on board for the Romney/Ryan ticket. I'm not a republican because they don't care about the poor and a few other reasons. I'm not a democrat because it is the party of secular humanism. I cannot in good conscience vote for either candidate this election.

Shiny and QM face facts: you're both too smart to stick with these evasive, ideologically motivated destroyers for much longer.

Sadly, the actual, mediocre, boring effort to do things as well as possible is all there is for us.. No amazing plan, no secret trick to simultaneously give & keep trillions, no 'wealth creators'..

Just a big pile of flawed people, some of whom are trying to make the world more relaxed, open and productive.

And some are solipsists who want OUT in any way they can imagine it might be possible - extreme wealth, private land, preferential treatment by the supernatural, sexual conquest, fame, power over others..
..or all of the above and then still desperately hurting defenseless hungry uncared-for children to acquire ANOTHER billion.. (and then trying to flee further from the anger and the pain they have unthinkingly perpetuated..)

Ryan and Romney are taking fuck you to the next level.

@ReverendTed

Sorry for the late reply. I was having email issues and didn't know this conversation was still going on. Also, I really don't have the time or energy to read all the posts right now, so apologies if I'm saying something that's already covered. Perhaps tomorrow after work I'll give it all a better look.

I agree that "at birth" is almost certainly not the best place to draw the line for omniscient lawmakers. Unfortunately, we're fresh out of those. We have to draw the line somewhere based on what we actually know. This is why I said before that we need to identify some particular quality (henceforth known as "qX") that we can agree makes a fetus a human. That way, we can say, "No, this fetus has developed qX and is no longer eligible for termination." Of course, once we define qX, then we may also need to be able to test for it, depending on what qX turns out to be, otherwise this is all pointless.

Now, I suppose we could say "qX is normally developed in week 25" and draw the line there but then we'll have those who develop sooner and those who develop later and we will inevitably terminate those that should technically not have been. I concede that this could still be a decent law even if we had to define it this way, but we've got a long way to go before we can even consider it. We haven't even defined qX, let alone identified approximately when it develops.

Defining qX alone is a nearly impossible task because most people who are trying to define it are using feelings (It's a defenseless little baby!), mysticism (The soul enters the zygote at conception!) and abstract concepts (Once the fetus has developed consciousness, it's human.) to do so.

Back to your reply, you seem to be dancing around what "illegal" means. Someone once pointed out to me that "It's not a law if it's not enforced". There has to be a penalty for having an abortion or it's pointless to make it illegal. What should be done to people who have (or perform) the procedure even after you've "[limited] their access" to it?

If we want to reduce abortions, we should be focusing efforts on reducing unwanted pregnancies; tell people what they can do rather than what they can't.

Live Action public relations:
"AUSTIN, May 29 -- Today, Live Action released a new undercover video showing a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Austin, TX encouraging a woman to obtain a late-term abortion because she was purportedly carrying a girl and wanted to have a boy. The video is first in a new series titled "Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America," exposing the practice of sex-selective abortion in the United States and how Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry facilitate the selective elimination of baby girls in the womb.

"I see that you're saying that you want to terminate if it's a girl, so are you just wanting to continue the pregnancy in the meantime?" a counselor named "Rebecca" offers the woman, who is purportedly still in her first trimester and cannot be certain about the gender. "The abortion covers you up until 23 weeks," explains Rebecca, "and usually at 5 months is usually (sic) when they detect, you know, whether or not it's a boy or a girl." Doctors agree that the later in term a doctor performs an abortion, the greater the risk of complications.

The Planned Parenthood staffer suggests that the woman get on Medicaid in order to pay for an ultrasound to determine the gender of her baby, even though she plans to use the knowledge for an elective abortion. She also tells the woman to "just continue and try again" for the desired gender after aborting a girl, and adds, "Good luck, and I hope that you do get your boy."

"The search-and-destroy targeting of baby girls through prenatal testing and abortion is a pandemic that is spreading across the globe," notes Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action. "Research proves that sex-selective abortion has now come to America. The abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, is a willing participant."

Six studies in the past four years indicate that there are thousands of "missing girls" in the U.S., many from sex-selective abortion. The U.K., India, Australia, and other countries ban sex-selective abortion, but the U.S., save for three states, does not. On Wednesday, Congress will debate the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act (PRENDA), which would ban sex-selective abortions nationally.

"Planned Parenthood and their ruthless abortion-first mentality is the real 'war on women'," says Rose. "Sex-selective abortion is gender discrimination with lethal consequences for little girls."

The complete, unedited video and transcript can be viewed at www.ProtectOurGirls.com, a hub of research and information on sex-selective abortions.

Live Action is a youth led movement dedicated to building a culture of life and ending the human rights abuse of abortion. They use new media to educate the public about the humanity of the unborn and investigative journalism to expose threats against the vulnerable and defenseless.

For further information, please contact Dan Wilson or Jameson Cunningham with Shirley & Banister Public Affairs at (703) 739-5920 or (800) 536-5920 and email at media@liveaction.org"

Wow, you're smart. You must be a master debater. But you clearly have no sense of humor.>> ^my15minutes:

on the chance that your concern for my well-being was genuine,
let me first assure you i'm not the least bit angry, in general or at opus.
in the (more likely, imho) event that you were attempting to somehow
defend opus, my advice would be, don't. it presupposes that he is defenseless
or disadvantaged, when he is neither. he has just as much of a brain as i or anyone
else, and is just as capable of using it, before typing something regretfully absurd.
a little training in debate would do him great service, however.
this is equally true of you, if you were attempting to come to his aid,
as you managed to commit the same mistake - ad hominem.
you compounded the problem by begging the question.
the question in this case being, "is he angry?"
i see nothing in my text you replied to, that could be misunderstood
as an indicator that i was angry. my little smiley face there was authentic,
because his ad hom indicated that he realized he couldn't back up his previous assertion.
again, if your reply was genuine, then thanks for your unwarranted concern,
and i apologize for believing it unlikely.
in either case, i would humbly ask that any further replies on this matter,
from yourself or opus or anyone else, be directed to my homepage instead of this page,
as what we're discussing has absolutely nothing to do with a funny clip about gay rights.
thanks. - owen
>> ^sickio:
Wow, I'd find someone to talk out your anger issues with if I were you.
>> ^my15minutes:
oh, excellent! an ad hominem attack. thank you. blahblahblah.

on the chance that your concern for my well-being was genuine,
let me first assure you i'm not the least bit angry, in general or at opus.

in the (more likely, imho) event that you were attempting to somehow
defend opus, my advice would be, don't. it presupposes that he is defenseless
or disadvantaged, when he is neither. he has just as much of a brain as i or anyone
else, and is just as capable of using it, before typing something regretfully absurd.

a little training in debate would do him great service, however.
this is equally true of you, if you were attempting to come to his aid,
as you managed to commit the same mistake - ad hominem.

you compounded the problem by begging the question.
the question in this case being, "is he angry?"
i see nothing in my text you replied to, that could be misunderstood
as an indicator that i was angry. my little smiley face there was authentic,
because his ad hom indicated that he realized he couldn't back up his previous assertion.

again, if your reply was genuine, then thanks for your unwarranted concern,
and i apologize for believing it unlikely.

in either case, i would humbly ask that any further replies on this matter,
from yourself or opus or anyone else, be directed to my homepage instead of this page,
as what we're discussing has absolutely nothing to do with a funny clip about gay rights.
thanks. - owen
>> ^sickio:

Wow, I'd find someone to talk out your anger issues with if I were you.
>> ^my15minutes:
oh, excellent! an ad hominem attack. thank you. blahblahblah.

This show is identical in every country. It scares me that all cultures are equally defenseless to the power of extreme sap.

Actually, the discussion is more that police killing defenseless people, or that type of snuff, can be posted, while police getting shot is not allowed.

>> ^luxury_pie:
>> ^Lawdeedaw:
And the funny part? If this was an police brutality video, it would already be in the top 10...

You think? Please show me a police brutality vid out of the Top10 where the citizen got shot in the head several times, you hear his (last) screams and then the cop drives off without caring, after shouting insane-sounding things.
I think/ hope this video isn't in the top ten because it is snuff. And I hope it stays where it is.


I would disagree that it's snuff. You can disagree with whatever it is, but you cannot change the reason I used and the logic I used. In my heart, it is a documentary of our society. Just because it doesn't state "Documentary" doesn't mean anything. Just because it doesn't use a documentary format doesn't mean anything.

What does it objectively present without inserting fictonal crap? Americans love our guns, no matter the cost. We don't care what happens because others signed up for it (This is referring to a different discussion on another sift dicussion, by someone who apparently doesn't care when human beings die.) We don't value life as much as controversy. We do a lot of messed up things.

So you say it's snuff, I say it's not. Go figure.

*Edit later
And to answer your question, cops lined up and stormed a house. The man inside had a gulf club, and they shot him dead. There was a big stink about it, but I would not say that it was snuff.

Also, this one http://videosift.com/video/Seattle-cop-kills-nonthreatining-pedestrian

But you'll say these don't count because the actual videos don't have screaming and insanity. Whatever floats your boat. But I would say a cop murdering a defenseless woodcutter in broad daylight, in front of others who will probably never get over the psychological mind fuck probably balances things out.

>> ^Mazex:

Basically if another country isn't threatening your country, you shouldn't be invading or helping civil wars unless you have significant investments there. China and Russia aren't taking the easy way out, they are taking the correct way, it's none of their business and they have enough problems themselves. America are way too far into international conflicts, it's going to be a devastating bite back soon enough.


Um, I don't know if you're American or not, but if you are, you might want to rethink your viewpoint. You do realize that without the direct and indirect support of the French, Spanish, and Prussians, Americans would still be speaking the Queen's English, don't you? Have a read about how the international community basically ensured the birth of America at this site.

I'm certainly against invading another country (i.e. with the intent to control it after hostilities cease) but I'm also completely against condemning a relatively defenseless population to death simply because an intervention wouldn't be economically profitable. I think maybe you should read more about what happened in both Rwanda and Darfur to fully appreciate what happens when the world collectively shrugs at genocide.

>> ^kulpims:

er, what happened here?


Fur Rondy World Championship
Statement from Blayne Streeper on events in the 2nd heat of the race.

Yesterday evening following the second heat of the Fur Rondy, I was informed by the Race Marshall that I was being disqualified from the race for unsportsman like conduct.

This incident happened on Cordova Hill as I caught Luke Sampson. I hollered, "Luke Trail Luke," several times. He did not hear me and as my leaders reached him and attempted to pass he jumped off his sled and started running along side, interfering with my leaders.

As my team caught and passed Luke at the top of the hill I slapped his arm to get his attention and hollered, "Luke, Pay Fu---ng attention!" The way it was perceived by some in the crowd was that I was assaulting Luke. I felt that as an experienced driver that I had an obligation to advise this driver of his failure to pay attention and that he caused a safety risk to my team and that of others. At the finish of the race the Race Marshall came to me at the truck asking what had happened and that a trail official had phoned her and stated that I had punched Luke and yelled profanities. The Race Marshall also contacted Luke Sampson, who refused to file a protest.

I feal that the Race Marshall has over reacted on this incident and the penalty of disqualification from the race is too severe. I know the safety of our dogs is of the first concern for all of us. The dogs are defenseless and count on us to care for and protect them.

I regret using profanity during the race and apologize to all of the fans that I may have offended and to my friend Luke Sampson.

>> ^blankfist:
That scenario is needlessly specific and extreme. Every argument a statist makes against a voluntary society seems to be some extreme work of fiction involving a rogue and crazy Bill Gates doing terrible things to a defenseless group of people.
The answer to your question, I don't know what I'd do. Who could plan for that? You want a system that guarantees something that's unlikely, and that's looking at it the wrong way. There's also no known protections against an alien invasion.


How about this. I'm pretty sure my neighbor stole my bong. He denies it and refuses to let anyone on his property to check. How do I, as a reformed former-statist, rectify the situation without violating the rights of my neighbor?

That was such a great bong too. I've been hauling away some friends' old tires and trash for a small fee so I had a little extra money to spend. I don't have a place to store that stuff, but it's fairly easy to burn it on the far corner of my property. Sure the fumes are toxic, but that only affects the people downwind of me. Some of those people have complained, but do they really have any other options that don't involve shooting me?


These are, of course, not about the specific situations. People are often assholes that care more about what benefits them than what affects others, and I doubt removing government will change that. These kinds of situations come up fairly often, so how does your ideal citizen and/or government (or lack thereof) handle situations similar to these?

Note: I'm not trying to disprove your stance, I'm just trying to figure out what it is.