>> ^Quill42:

PALIN/FIRE HYDRANT 2012?
Clearly the fire hydrant would be carrying that ticket. And hey, unlike Palin, maybe it'd make it through the full term without quitting.
>> ^quantumushroom:
Unfortunately my assessment of His Earness can't be proven wrong by his successes.
People make mistakes. Sucks being human doesn't it?
Tell it to the leftmedia jackals terrified of Palin.
Minus the fibs, I couldn't care less if Barack steps on his Telepromptongue now and again. It's the whole inexperienced-total-failure-as-President part that bothers me.
PALIN/FIRE HYDRANT 2012



Oh dude, zing.

PALIN/FIRE HYDRANT 2012?

Clearly the fire hydrant would be carrying that ticket. And hey, unlike Palin, maybe it'd make it through the full term without quitting.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Unfortunately my assessment of His Earness can't be proven wrong by his successes.
People make mistakes. Sucks being human doesn't it?
Tell it to the leftmedia jackals terrified of Palin.
Minus the fibs, I couldn't care less if Barack steps on his Telepromptongue now and again. It's the whole inexperienced-total-failure-as-President part that bothers me.
PALIN/FIRE HYDRANT 2012

>> ^bobknight33:

His days are numbered.
However the Republicans messing up so bad that its looking like he might get another 4 years.
Scary thought.


Dammit, if Obama stays president, who will get us embroiled in another multi-front, decade long "police action" that spends our entire budget surplus three times over? I don't even want to think about all the soldiers that won't die.

EDIT: Holy shit! I just remembered after watching that a second time how Bush took more time off in his first year in office than any other president has in their full term ever, including Obama (so far). And continued to take off a record amount of time all while people were getting ready to fly planes into buildings.

Precisely.

Besides, Palin didn't fulfill her Oath of Office pledge, which states:

"I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion"

Purpose of evasion. Meaning, you can't just suddenly decide you don't want the job anymore and quit. Citizens don't want to elect people who aren't going to stick around for their full term. If Palin had said "yeah, I want this job but I may leave for something better" she wouldn't have even been on the ballot.

Palin left for the exact reasons that curiousity stated.


>> ^curiousity:

>> ^lantern53:
Sarah trying to be polite, conciliatory and accommodating to this one person who i doubt has any idea where Mrs. Palin actually stands compared to other Alaskan governors. She sounds a bit naive in that anyone who runs for an office like Pres. or VP automatically becomes a celebrity.

Umm, what? Seriously?
Her point was that Palin left the governor's office before her term was up. Initially Palin said that it was to get her family out of the spotlight. And to accomplish this, she had some books written (and promoted them), started touring the country to promote things (like the Constitution and stuff), and took a job as a Fox News consultant. Yep, those actions seem consistent with her initial statement of wanting to be out of the limelight, right? Bullshit. She failed to finish her term as Alaska Governor because she wanted to leave and earn more money. She saw a chance to cash in and jumped on it. Is that wrong? In my mind, yes - because leaving a public office before fulfilling your full term is not the same as just getting a new job. There is some honor and duty when you accept a public office position.
In conclusion, I think that your opinion lacks facts or logic and you should work on that.
Edit: I apologize for my peevish tone, but I don't take anything back. lol - I guess that's not much of an apology, eh?

>> ^lantern53:

Sarah trying to be polite, conciliatory and accommodating to this one person who i doubt has any idea where Mrs. Palin actually stands compared to other Alaskan governors. She sounds a bit naive in that anyone who runs for an office like Pres. or VP automatically becomes a celebrity.


Umm, what? Seriously?

Her point was that Palin left the governor's office before her term was up. Initially Palin said that it was to get her family out of the spotlight. And to accomplish this, she had some books written (and promoted them), started touring the country to promote things (like the Constitution and stuff), and took a job as a Fox News consultant. Yep, those actions seem consistent with her initial statement of wanting to be out of the limelight, right? Bullshit. She failed to finish her term as Alaska Governor because she wanted to leave and earn more money. She saw a chance to cash in and jumped on it. Is that wrong? In my mind, yes - because leaving a public office before fulfilling your full term is not the same as just getting a new job. There is some honor and duty when you accept a public office position.

In conclusion, I think that your opinion lacks facts or logic and you should work on that.

Edit: I apologize for my peevish tone, but I don't take anything back. lol - I guess that's not much of an apology, eh?

>> ^volumptuous:
>> ^thepinky: this is not the child's fault.

So now you're calling a 50-cell blastocyst a "child"? Whaaaaat?
>> ^thepinky:
Abortion only adds to an already heinous situation.
Says someone who's never been raped and then carried the fetus through full term.
And to think that we can just "counsel" people and everything will be awesome, is fucking hysterical.
Do you know how many orphans there are in this country? Do you know how many orphans never get adopted, grow up with zero parents and go on to lead utterly shit lives?.


You don't know anything about my life, and we're all being hypothetical/philosophical here, so leave my life out of it unless you really want to know why I am probably about 3572.84 times more qualified to talk about sexual crime and foster care and adoption and pregnancy and abortion than you are. M'kay, pumpkin?

You are taking a pragmatic view of a moral issue, which is just crazy weird to me. Legalized murder would totally reduce the population and most murder would probably occur among the poorer classes, greatly reducing poverty. But it's still murder.

Just how many orphans grow up to lead "utterly [poop] lives?" Do you know? How many of them lead good lives? How many kids with two parents lead bad lives? This argument has nothing to do with whether or not those children will have good lives or not. You cannot deal out judgment upon the value of anyone's life. Life is life is life and it should be protected whether it's crappy or not.

>> ^thepinky: this is not the child's fault.

So now you're calling a 50-cell blastocyst a "child"? Whaaaaat?


>> ^thepinky:
Abortion only adds to an already heinous situation.

Says someone who's never been raped and then carried the fetus through full term.


And to think that we can just "counsel" people and everything will be awesome, is fucking hysterical.

Do you know how many orphans there are in this country? Do you know how many orphans never get adopted, grow up with zero parents and go on to lead utterly shit lives?

Do you understand that people like Palin and McCain are against gays adopting children? (find me one anti-choice politician or religious leader who also believes in gay adoption)

Noone likes having an abortion. Most people will never even tell their best friends. There are very good reasons why most western European countries have very few abortions, but remain free to do so. And to leave this to the pro-life crew is exactly the opposite way of bringing down the number of abortions we have here in USA.

To leave this up to hard-core evangelicals, and those who are wholly influenced by the far-right, and the Fallwell's and Dobson's who believe even basic sex-education and contraception is immoral and against GOD, is basically begging for "back-room" and "coat-hanger" abortions.

Europe didn't decrease abortion rates by leaving the issue in the hands of the most religious. They did it with full-blown sex-education, and saturated their schools and public squares with free contraception. Which is another reason why HIV and STD's are rampant here, and sparse over there.

I'm with Biden on this one:
"As close to a consensus that can exist in a society that is as heterogeneous as ours."


And notice Palin keeps using the "choose" word. She would "counsel" someone to make the right "choice". OK, so then after that awesome counseling, then they choose to abort, then what?


This debate is nonsense. It's a wedge-issue that the Repubs will never part with. They "gay marriage" thing is almost a non-issue anymore, they've obviously been found to not be so fiscally conservative as people thought. They've completely screwed their awesome "WAR ON TERROR" issue, immigration for now is DOA. So this is all they've got, and they're not letting it go.

>> ^spoco2:
For you pro lifers (SDGundamX in particular), do you support Palin's other stance on abortion in that it's ok if the mother's life is at stake?
If so... well, then you've made some odd moral judgment there. You've decided at that point that because the mother is possibly going to come to great physical harm or die, then abortion is ok. You have given the mother's life more weight than the fetus's.
So, question is, why do you do that for physical pain and wellbeing, but give no thought to the mental pain and trauma caused to a woman who has to carry to term a baby she never wanted, or that causes her day in day out reminder of the rape that caused it? In this case you haven't given the mother's wellbeing any weighting at all, and are putting the not yet developed fetus's future above all else.
Odd.
Me? I'm pro a woman having the choice... BUT there is a point in a pregnancy where you have to go 'Hang on, I think at this point we could say this is a real person'. Myself, I would ascribe that to the point that we could remove the fetus and have it live and grow outside the woman. These days that is conceivably possible at 24-26 weeks or so... very dangerous that young, but has been done. I would say, if it can't yet be made to survive outside of the mother's womb, then it's the mother's choice.
After that, well it has a shot on it's own (albeit with a great deal of care and machinery to keep it alive up to 'full term')


This is the first good argument I've seen, but of course I entirely disagree with you, Spoco. I don't think it is an odd moral judgment and I agree with SDGundamX that abortion in the case of self-defense is a completely different matter. At that point, what else is there but to determine whose life is more valuable? That ought to be the woman's decision.

The mental pain and trauma of carrying and delivering an unwanted or forced baby can be very severe, indeed, but our emotional well-being is never more important than a human life.

I'm annoyed by people who pretend to know something about the choice to have an abortion. I know three women who believed that an abortion would make them happy when they had it done. All three of them still regret their choice. One is my mom's friend who was pregnant as a result of rape and she had an abortion because she believed that the pregnancy was contributing to her emotional anguish, but once the baby was gone she felt just as unhappy as before. When she had her first child she says that she realized for the first time that what she had done was wrong, and now she suffers because of the guilt. This is a unique situation, of course, but I make this point because some people want to pretend that abortion is the perfect bandaid when it really has consequences of its own sometimes.

When Obama was asked why he voted against the live-birth abortion ban, he said that it was because he believed that it was just another hoop for mothers and doctors to jump through. The doctor would have to come back and check to see if the baby was alive and the mother would have to second-guess the decision that had already been made. Oh my goodness we can't have that! So what if their is a chance that the baby is viable? We can't have hoops that potentially protect life. We can't have those mothers second-guessing a monumental decision that could affect them for the rest of their lives, now can we?

Edit: Forgot to mention, Spoco, that I don't understand how a child "with a great deal of care and machinery to keep it alive" is more "on its own" than a child in the uterus. In fact, the latter is FAR more independent. All the mother has to do is live her life.

For you pro lifers (SDGundamX in particular), do you support Palin's other stance on abortion in that it's ok if the mother's life is at stake?

If so... well, then you've made some odd moral judgment there. You've decided at that point that because the mother is possibly going to come to great physical harm or die, then abortion is ok. You have given the mother's life more weight than the fetus's.

So, question is, why do you do that for physical pain and wellbeing, but give no thought to the mental pain and trauma caused to a woman who has to carry to term a baby she never wanted, or that causes her day in day out reminder of the rape that caused it? In this case you haven't given the mother's wellbeing any weighting at all, and are putting the not yet developed fetus's future above all else.

Odd.

Me? I'm pro a woman having the choice... BUT there is a point in a pregnancy where you have to go 'Hang on, I think at this point we could say this is a real person'. Myself, I would ascribe that to the point that we could remove the fetus and have it live and grow outside the woman. These days that is conceivably possible at 24-26 weeks or so... very dangerous that young, but has been done. I would say, if it can't yet be made to survive outside of the mother's womb, then it's the mother's choice.

After that, well it has a shot on it's own (albeit with a great deal of care and machinery to keep it alive up to 'full term')

Barack's promises to solve the energy crisis, turn back a century of global warming, end the war, provide exceptional affordable health care to every American while personally tracking Bin Laden down and balancing the budget in the first three days of his presidency make me a little skeptical about his ability to deliver.

Nobody expects Obama to undo 8 years of continual fuckups the first three days, I dont know what maniac Obama supporter told you that. The difference is that the people who support Obama IS actually mostly honest and straight forward. They may not even think he'll succeed during a full term, but we can still AGREE with Obama on those issues. I support Obama mostly, but I can easily think of a downside, like his pandering to the religious, which I see as somewhat of a mixed bag, since its a pill we have to swallow to get him into office. but its either deceitful or delusional (if he is honestly a Jesus guy)

But these conservative nutjobs, I mean, I've really tried to avoid saying it, I really have, I dont want to paint an us-vs-them black and white image of the world, but seriously, these people are lying, manipulative, cynical, delusional, evil fucking scumbags, and quite honestly I find no redeeming factors in their behavior. I - perhaps naively - go around thinking the best about people, I try thinking "Ok, I disagree with everything that person says, but I'm sure that deep down, they only mean well." but these evil greedy fucks ... I cant sympathize, sorry, they are fucked and their fucking us all. please, whatever you fucking do, Americans, dont vote another fool into the White house, the world at large deserves better, they really do.

Oh, and at this video: YES!!

^ Joedirt pretty much sums up what I was trying to say. Until two years ago, I hadn't ever heard her name. Now she's served two years as governor of the (sometimes second-) smallest state in the nation. The school I currently attend has more students than the entire Mat-Su Valley, even at Deathcow's estimate of 60,000 people. She hasn't even finished up one term as governor. At least most if not all of the other people on the ticket had a full term under their belt.

Hell, the town she served as mayor still hasn't gotten over the fact that she won their beauty pageant 24 years ago. Check out their Wiki page. A picture of the mountains, a picture of the start of the Iditarod Trail, and a 24-year-old picture of their former mayor. Caption reads "Photo of Miss Wasilla 1984, Sarah Palin, Gov. Alaska, Republican VP candidate 2008."

If that's not small-town, I don't know what is.

>> ^Dadeeo:
This is what happens when "scientists" accept theory AS fact. Too bad the theory's are constantly changing, yet every new one gets embraced as the truth without ever acknowledging the error of accepting the now former "defunct" theory.
How could you ever trust anyone that refuses to admit their errors?
The Bible speaks of them is "ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth".


Science is the constant, incrementally and iteratively tested "frontlines of human knowledge". Wiki "scientific method". Evolution happens to be an area that has been studied for over a hundred years, and there is, as would be expected, a coalescing of consensus. This is especially true for many (not all) of the basic tenants Darwin put forward. Mountains of evidence compel those who choose to look at it with an unbiased eye.

Religion is exactly what you have described, without the change part.



Of course a baby's eye develops as it grows from egg to full term, but does that prove the theory of evolution? No! Do creatures with varying degrees of eye function prove evolution? No!
Slow down. This tidbit counters a specific creationist "arguement" that is incorrectly touted to disprove evolution. The example they present is one small part of evolutions supporting evidence. Evidence that is holistically cohesive, verifiable and thus worth mentioning.

Does a blind cave fish prove there is no God? No!

Who is trying to disprove god? The video did not ever state such a claim. People have better things to do with their time.

It is true that God does become collateral damage if you intelligently interpret the observations presented in the video. Which you have seem to have done of your own accord.

(Disclaimer: if this is a joke post, I did suspect as much)

>> ^Kraz:
Not to sound cheeky, but can you kindly point out where the bible states that the Earth revolves around the Sun? I've heard this before and it piques my interest because I know of no such passage.

It doesn't say anything about it, which is why the first popes took the most recent and celebrated work on geography and cosmology at the time, that of Ptolemy, as the base of their temporal doctrine. Later some Aristotle was thrown in retroactively by Thomas Aquinas, on the epistemological level. To make an analogy, this means that if the Christ would have been born in the 17th century, the first popes would have used Newton's Laws of motion and gravitation. They would have then condemned Einstein as a Heretic for his special and general Relativity.

>> ^Dadeeo:
This is what happens when "scientists" accept theory AS fact.

Theories explain known facts and predict (as yet) unknown facts. Theories are not facts, but their predictions can be taken as such until proven otherwise by experiments.

Too bad the theory's are constantly changing, yet every new one gets embraced as the truth without ever acknowledging the error of accepting the now former "defunct" theory.

Accepted scientific theories are never "defunct": they are expanded, generalized, etc. For example, euclidean geometry still has good predictive value under certain circumstances, as when the surface you examine is sufficiently flat. So are Newton's Laws of motion a good appromixation when speeds are not near the speed of light. Pythagoras' theorem still holds and his divisions of the octave still divide the octave.

How could you ever trust anyone that refuses to admit their errors?

Scientists admit their errors all the time. Einstein admitted that the cosmological constant was the biggest mistake of his life. When they're stubborn, death makes their outdated views irrelevant, as with Einstein vs. Quantum mechanics. In religions, being dead makes you a Saint, and your opinions that of God himself (or close enough).

The Bible speaks of them is "ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth".

Wow, postmodernism at its 1st century's best! It's true that ultimate, absolute knowledge by observation is now thought to be impossible, but careful observation over many centuries has shown that those who don't learn can't know and are doomed to repeat their mistakes.

Of course a baby's eye develops as it grows from egg to full term, but does that prove the theory of evolution? No! Do creatures with varying degrees of eye function prove evolution? No! Does a blind cave fish prove there is no God? No!

Maybe they don't prove anything, but they don't need to, since empirical science doesn't need and can't have "proofs" in the same sense as logic and mathematics. There are facts and theories that explain the particular facts. The theory that explains all of the particular facts and that is consistent with the greatest number of other accepted theories in other fields of knowledge, is said to be the most adequate. It is not impossible that new facts should reveal a hitherto less adequate theory to now be the most adequate &mdash it happens &mdash and sometimes two or more theories will seem equally adequate. But not all theories can fit the facts and be globally consistent. Of course, if you reject all of science or all of empirical science, then you may as well go live with the Amish, 'cause it's not God that gave anyone the knowledge required to build the computers we both used to transmit these electronic messages.

>> ^Dadeeo:
This is what happens when "scientists" accept theory AS fact. Too bad the theory's are constantly changing, yet every new one gets embraced as the truth without ever acknowledging the error of accepting the now former "defunct" theory.
How could you ever trust anyone that refuses to admit their errors?
The Bible speaks of them is "ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth".
Of course a baby's eye develops as it grows from egg to full term, but does that prove the theory of evolution? No! Do creatures with varying degrees of eye function prove evolution? No! Does a blind cave fish prove there is no God? No!

I can only hope that this is a poor attempt at irony, because I am fed up with undereducated morons saying that evolution is only a theory. If theory's are constantly changing maybe you could name a few? How about Copernican theory (Earth goes round sun etc.) which has been accepted for century's, even the church does not bother to contest anymore it despite contradicting the Bible.

Does this video prove evolution? No, but no one is claiming so. It is one of thousands of pieces of evidence supporting evolution via natural selection. The point of the video is that it disproves the IDist claims that the eye is irreducibly complex.

This is what happens when "scientists" accept theory AS fact. Too bad the theory's are constantly changing, yet every new one gets embraced as the truth without ever acknowledging the error of accepting the now former "defunct" theory.
How could you ever trust anyone that refuses to admit their errors?
The Bible speaks of them is "ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth".

Of course a baby's eye develops as it grows from egg to full term, but does that prove the theory of evolution? No! Do creatures with varying degrees of eye function prove evolution? No! Does a blind cave fish prove there is no God? No!