The Current Events, News, and Politics Thread
Boost Pope
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What I mean is this: "Universal Basic Income" is just another word for "welfare," with the distinction that welfare problems are usually means-tested.
If a government gives people money, they have to get it from somewhere. The two most popular methods are taxation and deficit-spending.
If the money is derived from taxes, then the people who already pay taxes will pay more taxes (thus negating the benefit of the income), and the people who already pay no taxes (because their tax burden is lower than their tax credit offset) will continue to pay no taxes.
As such, it's a net wash, with the exception that another layer of layer of legislation will have been added.
My eldest uncle, who shepherded by family out of Cuba during the revolution and oversaw their settlement in Puerto Rico, gave me a piece of advice in situations such as this: "When in doubt, annex Crimea."
I never understood what he meant by this.
By the murder standard, when does a sperm and egg become a human?
Boost Pope
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By the point of view of most people opposed to abortion, God kisses the complete human being the instant the sperm penetrates the egg, before it becomes implanted in the wall of the uterus.
They apparently ignore the fact that around 50-60% of fertilized eggs fail to become implanted in the uterine wall, leading to spontaneous abortion unbeknownst to the host. By this logic, God hates roughly half of all humans.
They apparently ignore the fact that around 50-60% of fertilized eggs fail to become implanted in the uterine wall, leading to spontaneous abortion unbeknownst to the host. By this logic, God hates roughly half of all humans.
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Stop listening to spastic retards who make moronic proposals not based in reality. As Braineack said, the people who have put this in your head don't know how cases reach the Supreme Court. Maybe you should look into the process and teach the fools who have been telling you to be worried.
However, if the mother decides she doesn't want to have a child, that same fetus can be aborted without penalty. I am way oversimplifying here, but this is one of my biggest problems with the abortion argument. Either it's a life or it isn't.
Complicating issue: Viability of the fetus is getting earlier and earlier all the time. Interesting listening...
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/28...-weeks-6-days/
By the point of view of most people opposed to abortion, God kisses the complete human being the instant the sperm penetrates the egg, before it becomes implanted in the wall of the uterus.
They apparently ignore the fact that around 50-60% of fertilized eggs fail to become implanted in the uterine wall, leading to spontaneous abortion unbeknownst to the host. By this logic, God hates roughly half of all humans.
They apparently ignore the fact that around 50-60% of fertilized eggs fail to become implanted in the uterine wall, leading to spontaneous abortion unbeknownst to the host. By this logic, God hates roughly half of all humans.
I don't think it's an unreasonable conclusion that once an egg is fertilized and viable that it is a human. I get that it is not developed or guaranteed to come to term but it has life and can develop into no other entity than a human being. It's a very logical train of thought whether you agree with it or not. There is a reason that this is a long standing and massively divisive issue.
That is not to say I necessarily support banning abortions. They will happen regardless of whether they are banned or not as evidence by history. They will just be done in back alleys with questionable and unsafe methods. It's probably better that they are supervised in the open.
Boost Pope
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References:
Genesis 2:7
Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Acts 17:25
nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;
Job 27:3
For as long as life is in me, And the breath of God is in my nostrils,
Job 33:4
The Spirit of God has made me, And the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
Isaiah 42:5
Thus says God the LORD, Who created the heavens and stretched them out, Who spread out the earth and its offspring, Who gives breath to the people on it And spirit to those who walk in it,
Revelation 11:11
But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God came into them, and they stood on their feet; and great fear fell upon those who were watching them.
Daniel 5:23
and you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which do not see, hear or understand But the God in whose hand are your life-breath and all your ways, you have not glorified.
Ezekiel 37:5-6
"Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones, 'Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life.
Thus, by the standards of the Bible, even the partial-birth abortion of a fully viable nine-month old fetus is not murder.
Interestingly, the Bible also contains a recipe for a magical abortion potion which is to be administered by priests to women whose husbands claim that they have become pregnant by infidelity (Numbers 5:21-28.) Long story short, the priest mixes the potion together, the woman is forced to drink it, and if the pregnancy is the result of infidelity then all sorts of bad **** happens ("her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot", etc...), but if she is "clean," then she will bear the child.
Last edited by Joe Perez; 07-03-2018 at 06:40 AM.
Boost Pope
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Unrelated:
We now officially live in a world in which the President of the United States, purportedly the most powerful and influential human on earth, has proposed a bill entitled the Fair And Reciprocal Tariff act.
Think about it for a second. What's the acronym for that going to be?
We now officially live in a world in which the President of the United States, purportedly the most powerful and influential human on earth, has proposed a bill entitled the Fair And Reciprocal Tariff act.
Think about it for a second. What's the acronym for that going to be?
I don't think it's an unreasonable conclusion that once an egg is fertilized and viable that it is a human. I get that it is not developed or guaranteed to come to term but it has life and can develop into no other entity than a human being. It's a very logical train of thought whether you agree with it or not. There is a reason that this is a long standing and massively divisive issue.
A View of Abortion with Something to Offend Everybody
I feel like saying something about this abortion issue. My credentials as an expert on the subject: none. I am an M.D. and a novelist. I will speak only as a novelist. If I give an opinion as an M.D., it wouldn't interest anybody since, for one thing, any number of doctors have given opinions and who cares about another.
The only obvious credential of a novelist has to do with his trade. He trafficks in words and meanings. So the chronic misuse of words, especially the fobbing off of rhetoric for information, gets on his nerves. Another possible credential of a novelist peculiar to these times is that he is perhaps more sensitive to the atrocities of the age than most. People get desensitized. Who wants to go about his business being reminded of the six million dead in the holocaust, the 15 million in the Ukraine? Atrocities become banal. But a 20th century novelist should be a nag, an advertiser, a collector, a proclaimer of banal atrocities.
True legalized abortion--a million and a half fetuses flushed down the Disposall every year in this country--is yet another banal atrocity in a century where atrocities have become commonplace. This statement will probably offend one side in this already superheated debate, so I hasten in the interests of fairness and truth to offend the other side. What else can you do when some of your allies give you as big a pain as your opponents? I notice this about many so-called pro-lifers. They seem pro-life only on this one perfervid and politicized issue. The Reagan Administration, for example, professes to be anti-abortion but has just recently decided in the interests of business that it is proper for infant-formula manufacturers to continue their hard sell in the third world despite thousands of deaths from bottle feeding. And Senator Jesse Helms and the Moral Majority, who profess a reverence for unborn life, don't seen to care much about born life: poor women who don't get abortions, have their babies, and can't feed them.
Nothing new here of course. What I am writing this for is to call attention to a particularly egregious example of doublespeak that the abortionists--"pro-choicers," that is--seem to have hit on in the current rhetorical war.
Now I don't know whether the human-life bill is good legislation or not. But as a novelist I can recognize meretricious use of language, disingenuousness, and a con job when I hear it.
The current con, perpetrated by some jurists, some editorial writers, and some doctors is that since there is no agreement about the beginning of human life, it is therefore a private religious or philosophical decision and therefore the state and the courts can do nothing about it. This is a con. I will not presume to speculate who is conning whom and for what purpose. But I do submit that religion, philosophy, and private opinion have nothing to do with this issue. I further submit that it is a commonplace of modern biology, known to every high school student and no doubt to you the reader as well, that the life of every individual organism, human or not, begins when the chromosomes of the sperm fuse with the chromosomes of the ovum to form a new DNA complex that thenceforth directs the ontogenesis of the organism.
Such vexed subjects as the soul, God, and the nature of man are not at issue. What we are talking about and what nobody I know would deny is the clear continuum that exists in the life of every individual from the moment of fertilization of a single cell.
There is a wonderful irony here. It is this: The onset of individual life is not a dogma of the church but a fact of science. How much more convenient if we lived in the 13th century, when no one knew anything about microbiology and arguments about the onset of life were legitimate. Compared to a modern textbook of embryology, Thomas Aquinas sounds like an American Civil Liberties Union member. Nowadays it is not some misguided ecclesiastics who are trying to suppress an embarrassing scientific fact. It is the secular juridical-journalistic establishment.
Please indulge the novelist if he thinks in novelistic terms. Picture the scene. A Galileo trial in reverse. The Supreme Court is cross-examining a high school biology teacher and admonishing him that of course it is only his personal opinion that the fertilized human ovum is an individual human life. He is enjoined not to teach his private beliefs at a public school. Like Galileo he caves in, submits, but in turning away is heard to murmur, "But it's still alive!"
To pro-abortionists: According to the opinion polls, it looks as if you may get your way. But you're not going to have it both ways. You're going to be told what you're doing.
The only obvious credential of a novelist has to do with his trade. He trafficks in words and meanings. So the chronic misuse of words, especially the fobbing off of rhetoric for information, gets on his nerves. Another possible credential of a novelist peculiar to these times is that he is perhaps more sensitive to the atrocities of the age than most. People get desensitized. Who wants to go about his business being reminded of the six million dead in the holocaust, the 15 million in the Ukraine? Atrocities become banal. But a 20th century novelist should be a nag, an advertiser, a collector, a proclaimer of banal atrocities.
True legalized abortion--a million and a half fetuses flushed down the Disposall every year in this country--is yet another banal atrocity in a century where atrocities have become commonplace. This statement will probably offend one side in this already superheated debate, so I hasten in the interests of fairness and truth to offend the other side. What else can you do when some of your allies give you as big a pain as your opponents? I notice this about many so-called pro-lifers. They seem pro-life only on this one perfervid and politicized issue. The Reagan Administration, for example, professes to be anti-abortion but has just recently decided in the interests of business that it is proper for infant-formula manufacturers to continue their hard sell in the third world despite thousands of deaths from bottle feeding. And Senator Jesse Helms and the Moral Majority, who profess a reverence for unborn life, don't seen to care much about born life: poor women who don't get abortions, have their babies, and can't feed them.
Nothing new here of course. What I am writing this for is to call attention to a particularly egregious example of doublespeak that the abortionists--"pro-choicers," that is--seem to have hit on in the current rhetorical war.
Now I don't know whether the human-life bill is good legislation or not. But as a novelist I can recognize meretricious use of language, disingenuousness, and a con job when I hear it.
The current con, perpetrated by some jurists, some editorial writers, and some doctors is that since there is no agreement about the beginning of human life, it is therefore a private religious or philosophical decision and therefore the state and the courts can do nothing about it. This is a con. I will not presume to speculate who is conning whom and for what purpose. But I do submit that religion, philosophy, and private opinion have nothing to do with this issue. I further submit that it is a commonplace of modern biology, known to every high school student and no doubt to you the reader as well, that the life of every individual organism, human or not, begins when the chromosomes of the sperm fuse with the chromosomes of the ovum to form a new DNA complex that thenceforth directs the ontogenesis of the organism.
Such vexed subjects as the soul, God, and the nature of man are not at issue. What we are talking about and what nobody I know would deny is the clear continuum that exists in the life of every individual from the moment of fertilization of a single cell.
There is a wonderful irony here. It is this: The onset of individual life is not a dogma of the church but a fact of science. How much more convenient if we lived in the 13th century, when no one knew anything about microbiology and arguments about the onset of life were legitimate. Compared to a modern textbook of embryology, Thomas Aquinas sounds like an American Civil Liberties Union member. Nowadays it is not some misguided ecclesiastics who are trying to suppress an embarrassing scientific fact. It is the secular juridical-journalistic establishment.
Please indulge the novelist if he thinks in novelistic terms. Picture the scene. A Galileo trial in reverse. The Supreme Court is cross-examining a high school biology teacher and admonishing him that of course it is only his personal opinion that the fertilized human ovum is an individual human life. He is enjoined not to teach his private beliefs at a public school. Like Galileo he caves in, submits, but in turning away is heard to murmur, "But it's still alive!"
To pro-abortionists: According to the opinion polls, it looks as if you may get your way. But you're not going to have it both ways. You're going to be told what you're doing.
I appreciate how Walker Percy summarized this argument (and I find it compelling as well).
A View of Abortion with Something to Offend Everybody
A View of Abortion with Something to Offend Everybody
Boost Pope
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Scientific answer: An organism becomes a human life when neurological activity consistent with sapience begins.
Biblical answer: when you start to breathe.
That was easy.
Random political picture: a cartoon which is part of a current Chinese effort to educate their citizens about the danger of falling in love with foreign spies.
Seriously, why don't we have these? American cannot afford a foreign-spy-love-warning-cartoon gap!
(She is so busted... I mean, who gives state secrets to a ginger?)
Biblical answer: when you start to breathe.
That was easy.
Random political picture: a cartoon which is part of a current Chinese effort to educate their citizens about the danger of falling in love with foreign spies.
Seriously, why don't we have these? American cannot afford a foreign-spy-love-warning-cartoon gap!
(She is so busted... I mean, who gives state secrets to a ginger?)
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cortina de humo
Nothing is changing.
The issue is a tool for manipulators of people to frighten them into showing up and voting. Serves no other purpose. Nothing is changing. That's not how the f****** court works.
Nothing is changing.
The issue is a tool for manipulators of people to frighten them into showing up and voting. Serves no other purpose. Nothing is changing. That's not how the f****** court works.
I don't have any good memes, but I do wan't to see what people think of Universal Basic Income. I listened to a podcast interview with Andrew Yang who is running for president in order to promote the implementation of a universal basic income.
Generally I am opposed to it, but at the same time I can see how if it might actually be necessary someday due to automation etc. Anyone else interested in the idea, even if it's so they can fight against it?
Generally I am opposed to it, but at the same time I can see how if it might actually be necessary someday due to automation etc. Anyone else interested in the idea, even if it's so they can fight against it?
The idea being to somehow identify the profits (and outlier salaries) which are generated by a company due to its non-labor "workforce", tax those profits fairly heavily, and use the generated tax revenues to subsidize some defined number of hours of work per week at a fixed rate.
Example: Company "A" earns a net profit (minus today's taxes) of $500,000 in the year just ended. Total labor costs for the year were $1,000,000, and some accountability organization has determined that 20% of labor costs (or $200,000 in this case) can be defined as profits earned from labor, leaving the company with $300,000 of remaining "capitol profits" - or profits generated from capitol investment. Capitol profits are taxed at a rate of 25%, which leaves Company "A" with a final "Capitol Profits Tax Liability" of $75,000. That $75,000 is used to subsidize each laborer's first 25 hours of labor per week at a rate of $3.25/hr (or $8/hr, or whatever the final math allows it to be).
The end results are:
Creates an additional incentive for workers to work at least 25 hours per week.
Creates a relative incentive for employers to pay employees higher wages. (Each additional $1 of labor expense only costs $0.95)
Incentivizes employers to hire labor instead of purchasing capitol when lifetime perceived costs are within 25%. (25% of profits earned from capitol is lost to taxes, 0% of profits earned from labor is lost to taxes)
Creates a relative disincentive for employees to exceed a 25-hour work week.
Does not create an economy-killing UBI. (a.k.a. "free handouts")
I also think that at the same time, we need to phase out significant portions of current "free handout" programs, and I have politically unfeasible preferences for how to deal with those and many other issues.
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love news from liberal states:
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/SF-s-appalling-street-life-repels-residents-13038748.php?t=0c15a3045e&f?
'20 pounds of human waste' dropped on San Francisco street corner
Poop. Needles. Rats. Homeless camp pushes SF neighborhood to the edge
i hate that IB doesnt grab the page titles anymore with links. something about my clearance. rawr.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/SF-s-appalling-street-life-repels-residents-13038748.php?t=0c15a3045e&f?
In a move that is alarming San Francisco’s biggest industry, a major medical association is pulling its annual convention out of the city — saying its members no longer feel safe.
“It’s the first time that we have had an out-and-out cancellation over the issue, and this is a group that has been coming here every three or four years since the 1980s,” said Joe D’Alessandro, president and CEO of S.F. Travel, the city’s convention bureau.
D’Alessandro declined to name the medical association, saying the bureau still hopes to bring the group back in the future.
As a rule, major conventions book their visits at least five years in advance. So when D’Alessandro and members of the hospitality industry hadn’t heard from the doctors about re-upping, they flew to the organization’s Chicago headquarters for a face-to-face meeting with its executive board.
...
“It’s the first time that we have had an out-and-out cancellation over the issue, and this is a group that has been coming here every three or four years since the 1980s,” said Joe D’Alessandro, president and CEO of S.F. Travel, the city’s convention bureau.
D’Alessandro declined to name the medical association, saying the bureau still hopes to bring the group back in the future.
As a rule, major conventions book their visits at least five years in advance. So when D’Alessandro and members of the hospitality industry hadn’t heard from the doctors about re-upping, they flew to the organization’s Chicago headquarters for a face-to-face meeting with its executive board.
...
Poop. Needles. Rats. Homeless camp pushes SF neighborhood to the edge
i hate that IB doesnt grab the page titles anymore with links. something about my clearance. rawr.
Last edited by Joe Perez; 07-03-2018 at 11:30 AM. Reason: Fixed your link titles.
Boost Czar
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“This destructive criminal activity is disappointing, but unsurprising, given the increasingly radical rhetoric of national Democrat leaders and candidates like Jane Raybould, Kara Eastman, and Jane Kleeb. Violence is the natural result of the Left’s statements urging Democrats to literally ‘push back’ on Republicans and ‘resist’ at any cost,” Zoeller said. “Voters face a stark choice between sanity and the rabid, hateful words that sparked this vandalism.”
Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters recently urged liberals to harass and “push back” against Trump staffers who show their faces in public.
Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters recently urged liberals to harass and “push back” against Trump staffers who show their faces in public.
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Finally some news about the most import news story of 2018: Flynn !
ABC News’ Brian Ross — who was suspended last year as chief investigative correspondent for a faulty report on Michael Flynn — is leaving the network, Page Six has exclusively learned.
ABC suspended Ross last December for a month without pay for a botched report on ousted White House national security adviser Flynn that reported President Trump directed Flynn to make contact with Russian officials. The mistake even sent stocks tumbling, and ABC issued an apology saying: “We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error.”
We hear that Ross on Monday announced he’s leaving the network. His longtime executive producer Rhonda Schwartz is also exiting. “The time has come to say good-bye,” said the duo in a letter to staff with an announcement by ABC News president James Goldston.
ABC suspended Ross last December for a month without pay for a botched report on ousted White House national security adviser Flynn that reported President Trump directed Flynn to make contact with Russian officials. The mistake even sent stocks tumbling, and ABC issued an apology saying: “We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error.”
We hear that Ross on Monday announced he’s leaving the network. His longtime executive producer Rhonda Schwartz is also exiting. “The time has come to say good-bye,” said the duo in a letter to staff with an announcement by ABC News president James Goldston.