Nipplegate 2004.

As American boys were creating 4.5 million orphans in a foreign war fought on a pretext shown to be a lie, American mothers lost their minds when Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson's breast for half a second during the Superbowl halftime.

The FCC received 511 complaints in 2001. In 2004, nearly 1.5 million complaints triggered by Nipplegate forced the FCC to bring the all-powerful broadcasting industry to heel, handing out record fines and ensuring ongoing censorship of 'offensive material' that continues today.

The National Coalition on Television Violence estimates that an American child will witness 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence on television by the time they finish elementary school. But an exposed female nipple...

"It's just not safe for children anymore."

Also, how could anyone call anti-tank weapons one of the "worst"?

I mean those guys in the tank are there to kill people. They're not doctors. It's not an armored ambulance, or some mobile shelter for war orphans. The tank is a fearsome weapon designed to kill. HEAT rounds just give the foot soldiers a little bit of a fighting chance against them.

Yes, of course, judge an entire generation by the babblings of a C-list reality star-tard. After all, the history books are littered with similar examples:

Pretty sure it was all those uneducated, worthless orphans and factory rats that caused World War 1

And don't forget how absynthe, ganja, and the Charleston caused the Great Depression.

Then there was that greatest generation of war-hungry, shell shocked GIs that could barely even put people on the moon.

Only to be followed by hippies and disco queens that gave us Reagan and Thatcher (think my faux-nalogy is falling apart here...)

Little orphans in the snow
With nowhere to call a home
Start their singing, singing
Waiting through the summertime
To thaw your hearts in wintertime
That's why they're singing, singing

Waiting for a sign
To turn blood into wine
The sweet taste in your mouth
Turned bitter in its glass

Israel, in Israel
Israel, in Israel

Shattered fragments of the past
Meet in veins on the stained glass
Like the lifeline in your palm
Red and green reflects the scene
Of a long forgotten dream
There were princes and there were kings

Now hidden in disguise
Cheap wrappings of lies
Keep your heart alive
With a song from inside

Even though we're all alone
We are never on our own
When we're singing, singing

There's a man who's looking in
And he smiles a toothless grin
Because he's singing, singing
See some people shine with glee
But their song is jealousy
Their hate is clanging, maddening

In Israel
Will they sing Happy Noel
In Israel, in Israel
Israel, in Israel
In Israel
Will they sing Happy Noel

Reagan was just the first stooge hired by the remnants of the Nixon administration. (By Bush Snr {his head of the CIA}, Donald Rumsfeld {2nd in command of the CIA} & Dick Cheney {3rd in command of the CIA}).

Literally an actor. And a 3rd rate cowboy actor at that (only for domestic & retarded audiences).

BTW Dubya was next & a gift to these fellas, none of them dumb enough to be the man out front making excuses.

They decided that a few million dead kids was fine if it swelled the family pile by 20%. Vietnam, East Timor, Iran Chile etc etc etc etc
.....Does anyone really know how much bank Cheney made from the slaughter/'rebuilding' in Iraq? A billion? 10 billion? 100 Billion? Will any American ever ask? Guess not.

In the future analysis of this time, these men will be held up worse that than Hitler, Stalin & Genghis Khan for sure. Their crimes are comparable in every way (especially the massive piles of dead kids) but without the personal trauma to explain psychosis. The US government of the last 50 years consists of the richest, fattest, most privileged men ever to live in millions of years of humanity, and yet they've committed the worst crimes of all time. Millions dead, crippled, traumatized, orphaned.
Is it their fault or the fault of those around them who do nothing or worse; cheer?

Spying, bombing people, getting corporate whores elected, and running a short term insurance company will all make you TONS OF CASH while the going is good.
What's the plan when all the cash has been shifted into the 0.1% & everyone else is sick and hungry and under attack from a billion angry uranium poisoned orphans?

*holds up finger*

Er you mean the CRUSADE? Begun by a born again Christian? With biblical chapters etched into our gunsights? Where we 'don't do bodycounts?'

The excuses are secular (OIL THEFT) but how do you think half a million radicalized angry orphans see it? I guess our kids will find out..

This guy delivers food and medicine to shipwrecked orphans stranded in Party Cove. This is the only way to do that.

Joris Luyendijk - They're just like people (2006)

"
In People Like Us, which became a bestseller in Holland, Joris Luyendijk tells the story of his five years as a correspondent in the Middle East. Extremely young for a correspondent but fluent in Arabic, he spoke with stone throwers and terrorists, taxi drivers and professors, victims and aggressors, and all of their families. He chronicles first-hand experiences of dictatorship, occupation, terror, and war. His stories cast light on a number of major crises, from the Iraq War to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with less-reported issues such as underage orphan trash-collectors in Cairo.

The more he witnessed, the less he understood, and he became increasingly aware of the yawning gap between what he saw on the ground and what was later reported in the media. As a correspondent, he was privy to a multitude of narratives with conflicting implications, and he saw over and over again that the media favored the stories that would be sure to confirm the popularly held, oversimplified beliefs of westerners. In People Like Us, Luyendijk deploys powerful examples, leavened with humor, to demonstrate the ways in which the media gives us a filtered, altered, and manipulated image of reality in the Middle East." -- amazon
http://www.amazon.com/People-Like-Us-Misrepresenting-Middle/dp/1593762569

I have no affiliation with the book, except to say I've read it and its amazing. Its brilliant at describing both the Palestinian and Israeli media extravaganza and what both sides do to get on the cover of time magazine. You'll be ashamed of the way our media forms us about the conflict and about the entire region and how wrong we all are.

>> ^bobknight33:

Government sets the policies that makes it desirable to ship jobs over seas, for the rich to pay less tax rate that others.
They had the chance to make change and squander their opportunity. Democrat voters hoped for change.
All voters are left with is change in their pockets.
Obama is an utter failure.


Well he hasn't attacked any more countries for no reason other than oil money, and he hasn't gone from a surplus to a $10 trillion deficit while stripping away all meaningful privacy laws..

.. & while creating an army of thousands of broken, radicalized orphans who want to destroy America..
(who are now in their late teens/early twenties BTW)

It'll take several presidents to fix Dubya's mess even with 8 year terms each.. what are the odds buffoons like you switch him out for another maniac before the job is done..?

@hpqp
I am not at all ashamed of my verbose, self-indulgent dross, so here we go!

Something has to be extra-physical, as least based on our current model. I can fully accept that a brain by itself can receive sensory input, process it against memory, and thus act in a completely human way indistinguishable from a conscious human, but on its own can literally be no more "conscious" than a river flowing down a mountain. Our current view of the physical universe does not tolerate any rational physical explanation of consciousness. Any given moment of human experience - the unified sensory experience and stream of consciousness - does not exist in a single place at a single instant. To suggest that the atoms\molecules\proteins\cells of the brain experience themselves in a unified manner based on their proximity to or electrochemical interaction with each other is magical thinking. Atoms don't do that, and that's all that's there, physically.
I disagree that consciousness is subordinate to cognition in terms of value. Cognition is what makes us who we are and behave as we do, but consciousness is what makes us different from the rest of the jiggling matter in the universe.

A couple of posts back, you challenged my statement about abstinence education as demonstrating a lack of pragmatism. I didn't really address it in my reply, but I'd prefaced it with the understanding that it's not a magical incantation. I know people are still going to have sex, but I suggested that has to be a part of education. People have to know that you can still get pregnant even if you're using the contraceptives that are available. They have to at least know the possibility exists. It's one more thing for them to consider. People are still going to drive recklessly even if you tell them they can crash and kill themselves despite their airbags, seatbelts, and crumple zones, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it to educate them about the possibility. I fail to see how that's not pragmatic.

I didn't reply to your comment about adoption vs abortion because I'm not sure there's anything else to add on either side. As I've said, my beliefs on this are such that even a grossly flawed adoption\orphan care system is preferable to the alternative, even if it means that approximately 10 times the number of children would enter the system than have traditionally been adopted each year. (1.4M abortions annually in the US, ~140K adoptions, but there are several assumptions in that math that wouldn't hold up to scrutiny.) Many right and just things have unpleasant consequences that must be managed. (The typical counter here is that Pro-Lifers tend to also be fiscal\social conservatives and won't fund social services to care for these new individuals they've "protected" into existence. That's just another issue of taking responsibility for the consequences of choices. If they get what they want, they need to be held to account, but it's a separate issue. A related issue, but a separate issue.)

Criminalizing\prohibiting almost any activity results in some degree of risky\dangerous\destructive behavior. Acts must be criminalized because there are individuals who would desire to perform those acts which have been determined to be an unnecessary imposition on the rights of another. Criminalization does not eliminate the desire, but it adds a new factor to consideration. Some will decide the criminalization\prohibition of the act is not sufficient deterrent, but in proceeding, are likely to do so in a different manner than otherwise. The broad consideration is whether the benefits of criminalization\prohibition outweigh the risks posed to\by the percentage who will proceed anyway. Prohibition of alcohol failed the test, I expect the prohibition of certain drugs will be shown to have failed the test..eventually. Incest is illegal, and the "unintended" consequence is freaks locking their families in sheds and basements in horrific conditions, but I think most of us would agree the benefits outweigh the detriment there.

Is putting all would-have-been-aborteds up for adoption abhorrent or absurd? The hump we'll never get over is asking "is it more abhorrent than aborting all of them", because we have different viewpoints on the relative values in play. But is it even a valid question? They won't all be put up for adoption. Some percentage (possibly 5-10 percent) will spontaneously miscarry\abort anyway and some percentage would be raised by a birth parent or by the extended family after all. An initially unwanted pregnancy does not necessarily equate to an unwanted child, for a number of reasons. I do not have statistics on what proportion could be expected to be put up for adoption. Would you happen to? It seems like that would be difficult to extrapolate.

The "'potential' shtick" carries weight in my view because of the uniqueness of the situation. There is no consensus on the "best" way to define when elective abortion is "acceptable". Sagan puts weight on cognition as indicative of personhood. As he states, the Supreme Court set its date based on independent "viability". (More specifically, I feel it should be noted, "potential" viability.) These milestones coincide only by coincidence.
Why is it so easy for us, as you say, to retroproject? And why is this any different from assigning personhood to each of a million individual sperm? For me, it's because of those statistics on miscarriage linked above. The retroprojected "potential" is represented by "percentages". At 3-6 weeks, without deliberate intervention 90% of those masses of cells will go on to become a human being. At 6-12 it's 95%. This is more than strictly "potential", it's nearly guaranteed.

I expect your response will be uncomfortable for both of us, but I wish you would expound on why my "It Gets Better" comparison struck you as inappropriate. Crude, certainly - I'll admit to phrasing it indelicately, even insensitively. I do not think it poorly considered, however. The point of "It Gets Better" is to let LGBT youth know that life does not remain oppressive, negative, and confusing, and that happiness and fulfillment lie ahead if they will only persevere.
It's necessary because as humans, we aren't very good at imagining we'll ever be happy again when surrounded by uncertainty and despair, or especially recognizing the good already around us. We can only see torment, and may not see the point in perpetuating a seemingly-unending chain of suffering when release is so close at hand, though violence against self (or others).
This directly parallels the "quality of life" arguments posed from the pro-choice perspective. They take an isolated slice of life from a theoretical unplanned child and their mother and suggest that this is their lot and that we've increased suffering in the universe, as if no abused child will ever know a greater love, or no poor child will ever laugh and play, and that no mother of an unwanted pregnancy will ever enjoy life again, burdened and poverty-stricken as she is.
As you said, we're expecting a woman to reflect "on what would her and the eventual child’s quality of life be like", but we're so bad at that.
And all that quality-of-life discussion is assuming we've even nailed the demographic on who is seeking abortions in the U.S.
Getting statistics from the Guttmacher Institute, we find that 77% were at or above the federal poverty level and 60% already had at least one child.

On a moral level, absolutely, eugenics is very different debate.
On a practical level, the eugenics angle is relevant because it's indistinguishable from any other elective abortion. Someone who is terminating a pregnancy because their child would be a girl, or gay, or developmentally disabled can very easily say "I'm just not ready for motherhood." And who's to say that's not the mother's prerogative as much as any other elective abortion, if she's considering the future quality of life for herself and the child? "It sucks for girls\gays\downs in today's society and I don't think I can personally handle putting them through that," or more likely "My family and I could never love a child like that, so they would be unloved and I would be miserable for it. This is better for both of us."
Can we write that off as hopefully being yet another edge case? (Keep in mind possibly 65% of individuals seeking abortion declare as Protestant or Catholic, though other statistics show how unreliable "reported religious affiliation" is with regard to actual belief and practice.)

_{"Argumentation"? I have learned a new word today, thanks to hpqp. High five!}

@ReverendTed

Abortion is not murder, but that's not really the point. America, and by extension, the world, doesn't really have a problem with killing as a whole. We war with ourselves and kill fellow beings in the name of religion, politics, land and other resources. We kill criminals if they commit heinous enough crimes. We kill vast amounts of wildlife for fun and sport. We kill flies and other insects merely because they bother us. We step on insects without even knowing it.

We humans kill.
We are killers.
There is no escaping this fact.
Create the right conditions and anyone will kill...anyone.

The only thing you can do is: 1. Hopefully create a world in the future where we don't have to kill as much and 2. Hope that we are killing for the right reasons. Sometimes this will be true, sometimes it won't be. But that's life. That's the human condition. A law will change nothing other than whether or not abortions are performed safely or not. I choose to live in a world where if someone I know decides to have an abortion, that they do it safely with a doctor and not in some back alley. Abortions will happen REGARDLESS of what the law says. If we're going to end an unborn child's life, let's at least make sure the mother remains safe. Outlawing abortions just increases the chance that we'll have two ended lives instead of just one.

Abortion, by definition is the LAWFUL termination of an unborn child...LAWFUL. Murder is the UNLAWFUL termination of a life. Key distinction there.

This false morality that some people are somehow above and beyond the rest of us mere mortals and hold life to be irrevocably sacred just does not understand history or the human condition. These sorts of people seem to be the same people who would casually send us to war for religious or ideological reasons and thus condone the termination of more lives. The hypocrisy is glaring.

In regards to this notion that a person would go have an abortion just because a baby would be inconvenient is sad certainly, but when it comes right down to it....tough. Cost of living in a free society. people are going to things you don't approve of. deal with it. Your rights end where mine begin and vice versa. People who go have abortions out of convenience are in the minority. Quit worrying about what the minority does..especially with their own body. You and I don't get to decide what is right for someone else.

We don't live in a post-scarcity world yet. If every viable pregnancy ever was brought to term, we would have an even bigger resource shortage problem on our hands.

We live in a world where your quality of life (and your offspring) is directly related to your job. Until the quality of life of humanity becomes more equalized, We are going to continue to have situations where if someone gets pregnant it will directly affect their quality of life (and their child's) for the worse. So I really don't have a problem with someone terminating the pregnancy so that they go on to improve their quality of life so that they can have a kid later who will benefit from that better quality of life.

I too would ideally prefer adoption to abortion. But that's not exactly saying much. Adoption agencies have tons of kids and not enough parents to go around. As fertility science continues to improve, fewer and fewer parents are going to want adoption when they can just undergo a procedure and still have their own. This recently happened to a friend of mine who was having difficulty conceiving. She and her husband initially decided to adopt, but at some point, they changed their mind and pursued some massively costly fertility treatments so that they eventually did conceive. I was immensely happy for her, but at the same time, I personally felt they should have stuck with the adoption as those orphans are already here and need help now. But here's the thing. It's not my choice, it's hers and her husbands. So we can deal with the realities of the situation or continue to play hypotheticals. If everyone gave their kid up for adoption instead of abortion, we'd just have a different kind of problem and the quality of life of a vast amount of kids would be affected for the worse.

As for your big questions, They are best left to people far more educated on this subject than you and I. Of course there is some point in a pregnancy where abortion should no longer be an option. I don't think anyone is arguing this. As you say, the question is when. I simply don't know and am unqualified to make that judgement. No matter what is decided upon, it obviously won't satisfy everyone, but a decision has to be made and you can't please everyone.

Obama has divided the nation all by himself, has he?

Let's never mind the do-nothing House. Never mind the Republican nominee with positions like "the solution is to do the opposite of whatever Obama is for." Wow, nuanced! Never mind the Republican pow wow where they decided they were going to put politics ahead of progress, and then all that time they put politics ahead of progress.

Obama asked them to pass legislation _they_ invented! They _still_ said no. Sounds to me like he was trying to work with them, but all they wanted to do was program people to talk about how divided the President has made the country. Mission success! If you want to see politicians that are dividing the country, look no further than the House. Take a gander at the Senate filibuster statistics. A huge spike coincides with '08 that hasn't abated. Take a look at Wisconsin, where unions are being destroyed. Take a look at half a dozen or more states where the Republican state houses are trying to stop poor non-Republicans from voting. NOPE! NOT A PROBLEM!

Obama is literally hitler! If this President went into a burning orphanage and rescued every single orphan in there, people who think he's the problem would find a way to have a problem with that.

The real culprit of divisiveness is all cable news. Turn off the Fox and MSNBC and get real news.

as an agnostic I think one of the key things that atheists AND religious people alike need to get past is the possibility that maybe there is a god, but religion as we know it is just flat out wrong.

Most religion as we know it is wrong. This is the religion approved by God:

James 1:27

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world

Maybe there is a god, but there is no religion. Maybe god doesn't care if you pray or don't pray. Maybe a god created us, but has since moved on and isn't watching us and otherwise doesn't give a damn about us anymore

What if god isn't really god, maybe we were created, but by some hyper-advanced aliens.

Maybe God became a man, Jesus Christ, and died for the sins of the world?

What if god doesn't dictate morality...maybe we create morality. God used to be ok with slavery...then we decided differently. Why aren't we getting flooded again if God was down with slavery?

http://www.comereason.org/soc_culture/soc060.asp

What if god is a tyrant? You know what the US does with tyrannical governments right?

I'm not really sure how to reply to this comment.

Whenever I used to think about that stuff as a kid . I put myself in god's shoes. Ok, I just created humanity. What's that? you're worshiping me and giving me thanks? ok that's sweet and all, but I want you to go out and do stuff. What's that? a whole day devoted to me? no...just no. I get it that you're thankful..but it's time to move on. What's that? you're killing other humans in my name? Just...no..just stop it!

Why would you think, as a flawed, subjective, morally imperfect being (that's all of us), that you could understand the mind of God? Perhaps God ordained worship for a reason that you don't understand?

Seriously, I think that's what every religious person needs to ask themselves. If you created a species. Would you want it constantly fighting and bickering and killing each other in your name? Nah, you'd want people to get along no matter how different they were?

If people followed what Jesus taught, none of that would be happening.

Religious people who are parents, would you really like it if your kids CONSTANTLY prayed to you and gave you thanks? We currently only spend Father's Day and Mother's Day devoted to our parents. Do you really think kids should be that devoted to their parents? Or do you want them to grow up and go out into the world and do big things?

Our parents don't uphold the atoms in our bodies. God is who makes all things possible.

James 1:17

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

I'm sure there are many times in your life that you've wanted to give thanks for the good things God has done for you, but you have no one to thank. I think that's is a sad moment for an unbeliever.

Bottom line is that what we know is completely and utterly dominated by what we don't know. Column A is just a TAD bit bigger than Column B if you know what I mean. So it's utter absurdity to make claims that you know that there is no god..just the same as it is to claim that there is a god and you know exactly what it wants. Even people in the same religion can't seem to agree what god wants and get into extremely petty and hurtful fights over this shit.

so this supposed "battle" between theists and atheists is just ego getting completely out of hand IMO

We're all on the same fucking team...start acting like it.

The only way you could know the truth is if you are omnipotent, or an omnipotent being told you. Christians are claiming the latter. I have a route to truth, and you don't, so how are you telling me I don't know what it is? How would you know that?

>> ^VoodooV