Friday, August 21, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
On Kooks and Libertarians...
Just in time for my previous post, we have more gun-toting dumbasses showing up to Obama events.
One particular cowboy receives special notice. Partly because he is Black, and partly because he chose to brandish two loaded firearms: a Glock 17 at his hip and an AR-15 strapped to his back. Now, admittedly, when I first saw this on the news, I couldn't hear the accompanying audio and didn't know whether he was just another nut case anti-Obama kook, or a somewhat overzealous Obama supporter attempting to make a point.
Turns out he's a Libertarian. And, oh, how I love me some Libertarians.
In a Youtube video they show him "reasoning" with other event attendees. In one of his early rants, he's accusing the government of thievery, making brilliant analogies through hypothetical sarcasm such as "Oh, I want education and I'm just going to take it from you", apparently unaware that public education already exists through taxation. Should I presume he has something against education? Or those paved roads he's walking around on? Or those publicly-funded police officers who are present protecting his right to open-carry, which was granted him by government officials who are also paid with tax money? Or the military industrial complex which provided the R&D that lead to the design of his beloved guns? Or the government-ran regulating bodies that ensured that the garments he's wearing were safe for consumption and presented him no eminent danger of bursting into flames, or that his motorcycle was safe for transportation, or that the money he used to pay for either held any value? He ends this particular tirade with "Taxation is theft...all taxation".
Now, while we're discussing theft, perhaps he's unaware that the capitalistic system that he depends on to earn the money he used to purchase those firearms is based upon theft in the form of profiting off of other's labor. Or that the very land he standing on was stolen, or that it's highly likely that the fact he's even standing there is due to the theft of his ancestors. I'll assume he's oblivious to the fact that he'd probably find it quite difficult to gather enough resources to pay for those weapons or that spiffy shirt and tie if, instead of living in a cooperative society of 312+ million people, he was a loner scrapping out an existence in the wilderness all by himself. Perhaps he would barter off some livestock or other fruits of his labor to the local gunsmith in return for a sleek semi-automatic military-style assault rifle, but, OOPS!, if it wasn't for a division of labor and the manual drudgery of other people in society, there would be no food surpluses to enable the idle time utilized to developing and manufacturing such material possessions.
He then parrots the insane and willfully deluded thought process that the world would be a safer place if everyone carried firearms. I'm sure he doesn't really mean "everybody"; that he has definite restrictions in mind. Now, I won't bother to attempt a debate about firearms, pro or con, but if anyone seriously thinks you can take a crowd full of people who honestly believe public option health care is socialism, government death panels will euthanize grandma, and Obama is comparable to Hitler, mix in some guns, and the end result will be an increase in safety...well, they have quite frankly lost their fucking mind.
He also thinks it would be "insane" NOT to constantly be armed, citing the "dangerous world" we live in as rationalization. Here's where I could—and probably should—cite a multitude of sources showing how ridiculous the "dangerous world" fairy tale is in our particular society, with a dash of stats showing that the one thing that actually is dangerous about our society versus comparable others is the prevalence of, what else, guns. But again, I won't. I'll just ask him when was the last time he had to fend off roves of raping and pillaging lunatic thugs.
At one point (3:13 into this video) he utters a rational thought and illuminates that merely having melanized skin tends to make people nervous. Although his tense ("at one time" and "made") is way off, I'm sure there's a reason he chose to dress in the manner he did. I'm somehow sure that, deep down, he realizes that people like our government officials—who are paid by taxes—and fellow tax-paying citizens—whom he doesn't feel any allegiance to in the form of assistance—made it possible for him to even be considered a full five-fifths human guaranteed the rights by our Constitution that he is speaking so in favor of. All while he hints at the better times of wise men when that Constitution was written: times when he would have most definitely had a very, very different perspective on things.
One particular cowboy receives special notice. Partly because he is Black, and partly because he chose to brandish two loaded firearms: a Glock 17 at his hip and an AR-15 strapped to his back. Now, admittedly, when I first saw this on the news, I couldn't hear the accompanying audio and didn't know whether he was just another nut case anti-Obama kook, or a somewhat overzealous Obama supporter attempting to make a point.
Turns out he's a Libertarian. And, oh, how I love me some Libertarians.
In a Youtube video they show him "reasoning" with other event attendees. In one of his early rants, he's accusing the government of thievery, making brilliant analogies through hypothetical sarcasm such as "Oh, I want education and I'm just going to take it from you", apparently unaware that public education already exists through taxation. Should I presume he has something against education? Or those paved roads he's walking around on? Or those publicly-funded police officers who are present protecting his right to open-carry, which was granted him by government officials who are also paid with tax money? Or the military industrial complex which provided the R&D that lead to the design of his beloved guns? Or the government-ran regulating bodies that ensured that the garments he's wearing were safe for consumption and presented him no eminent danger of bursting into flames, or that his motorcycle was safe for transportation, or that the money he used to pay for either held any value? He ends this particular tirade with "Taxation is theft...all taxation".
Now, while we're discussing theft, perhaps he's unaware that the capitalistic system that he depends on to earn the money he used to purchase those firearms is based upon theft in the form of profiting off of other's labor. Or that the very land he standing on was stolen, or that it's highly likely that the fact he's even standing there is due to the theft of his ancestors. I'll assume he's oblivious to the fact that he'd probably find it quite difficult to gather enough resources to pay for those weapons or that spiffy shirt and tie if, instead of living in a cooperative society of 312+ million people, he was a loner scrapping out an existence in the wilderness all by himself. Perhaps he would barter off some livestock or other fruits of his labor to the local gunsmith in return for a sleek semi-automatic military-style assault rifle, but, OOPS!, if it wasn't for a division of labor and the manual drudgery of other people in society, there would be no food surpluses to enable the idle time utilized to developing and manufacturing such material possessions.
He then parrots the insane and willfully deluded thought process that the world would be a safer place if everyone carried firearms. I'm sure he doesn't really mean "everybody"; that he has definite restrictions in mind. Now, I won't bother to attempt a debate about firearms, pro or con, but if anyone seriously thinks you can take a crowd full of people who honestly believe public option health care is socialism, government death panels will euthanize grandma, and Obama is comparable to Hitler, mix in some guns, and the end result will be an increase in safety...well, they have quite frankly lost their fucking mind.
He also thinks it would be "insane" NOT to constantly be armed, citing the "dangerous world" we live in as rationalization. Here's where I could—and probably should—cite a multitude of sources showing how ridiculous the "dangerous world" fairy tale is in our particular society, with a dash of stats showing that the one thing that actually is dangerous about our society versus comparable others is the prevalence of, what else, guns. But again, I won't. I'll just ask him when was the last time he had to fend off roves of raping and pillaging lunatic thugs.
At one point (3:13 into this video) he utters a rational thought and illuminates that merely having melanized skin tends to make people nervous. Although his tense ("at one time" and "made") is way off, I'm sure there's a reason he chose to dress in the manner he did. I'm somehow sure that, deep down, he realizes that people like our government officials—who are paid by taxes—and fellow tax-paying citizens—whom he doesn't feel any allegiance to in the form of assistance—made it possible for him to even be considered a full five-fifths human guaranteed the rights by our Constitution that he is speaking so in favor of. All while he hints at the better times of wise men when that Constitution was written: times when he would have most definitely had a very, very different perspective on things.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Welcome to Bizarro World...
Quick hypothetical situation:
It's 2007. A Muslim (or Black or Latino man) comes to an event at which President Bush is speaking and stands along the route the President is expected to travel. He holds a sign which endorses violence against political leaders. On his thigh is a holstered firearm. What happens?
If you think for one second that the end result mimics what happened to William Kostric, the white man who did this Tuesday, you're simply delusional.
Now the reality. 2008: Mr. Kostric attended a New Hampshire event at which President Obama was speaking, openly displaying his loaded firearm whilst holding a sign that read "It's time to water the Tree of Liberty" (a reference to the Jefferson quote "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants"...and I sincerely doubt Mr. Kostric considers President Obama the patriot in this equation).
Was he arrested, charged, prosecuted, imprisoned? None of the above. From footage and reports it's unclear whether or not he was even questioned or observed/followed.
He states that a firearm is a defensive tool (an odd belief in a country with nearly 10,000 homicides by firearm per year). He states that he feels the event would have been safer if everybody attending had a gun. This poppycock is too irrational to event attempt rebuttal.
Now, just in case one think me a tad hyperbolic, peaceful anti-Bush protesters were arrested in Tampa Bay, NYC, Crawford,TX, Charleston, WV, and Kennebunkport, ME (just from a quick Google search). Protestors were also arrested at the 2008 RNC.
And just in case I'm accused of playing the dreaded race card, I'll provide a reminder that although the avowed white supremacists who were captured with rifles in a plot to assassinate then Senator Obama at the 2008 DNC were arrested, no charges were brought against them. Although the very same prosecutor charged an inmate—who just happened to be black—who had mailed a threatening letter containing baby powder to John McCain, stating "we won't stand for threats of this kind in Colorado". Because we all know how much more threatening a black man who is locked down at a penitentiary is than a car full of Neo-Nazi tweakers with rifles roaming about free in public.
There are rather blatant double standards at play here. It sorta reminds me how a Black Harvard professor can be (falsely) arrested for "disturbing the peace" in his own home, while angry white mobs can violently attack a man at a townhall meeting in Florida with no fear of recourse from law enforcement officials. But it's probably just me and my crazy biases overreacting again.
"I Am A Conservative American Shitheel"
A profound Whole Foods forum post by MB shopper, originally attributed to a Something Awful forum poster called randomnoise (who claims no previous knowledge of "Joe Average Conservative").
Replying to:
"You're an ignoramus. Look at the facts. Anything the government has involved itself in haS becomes less efficient and more expensive. That's not partisan it's reality. The CBO has twice now substantiated that this trend will only continue if the government gets involved. We need to address the cost of health care but the gov. is not the solution."—Posted by Stump...
"Sigh.
Once again, for the benefit of the government-can't-get-anything-right flock:
I AM AN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SHITHEEL
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.
At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.
After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it's valuables thanks to the local police department.
I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.
----
And apparently, the Global Positioning Satellite system is POS, right?
The only reason government doesn't work is because conservative Republican administrations defunded and/or patronage staffed them with people with ties to special business interests: to wit the last FDA, Dept of Interior and Agriculture under Bush. No one seems to have a problem with pumping over $500Bil to the Defense Department which last I hear is a socialized entity."
Saturday, August 15, 2009
The Racial Undercurrent in the Health Care Reform Brouhaha...
It's so painfully obvious. Birthers. Teabaggers. The sudden flip in the Republican Party's key talking points, from same-sex marriage and abortion to Affirmative Action and gun control (a not so subliminal play to age-old race panic about black crime perpetrated against white chastity). Swelling membership of white-supremacist ranks, cries of "reverse-discrimination and Obama's alleged racism and comparisons to Hitler. They try to play it off as if it's not racism. Nowhere remotely near racism—after all, how can we be racist if we have a Black President? Indeed, they try to convince us that it's Socialism they're against (though the American tradition of anti-Socialism is itself spurned on by xenophobia). Never mind those signs comparing Obama to a monkey, or outright calling him "nigger". Forget that Beck is claiming Obama's attempt at reform is all about reparations. Nope, nothing at all to do with race here, move along, please.
I voice it to my immediate associates every time I see it dripping from the foaming mouths of the protesters in their worked up panics. But I don't see it addressed. Well, at least not with any degree of mainstream exposure, which I'm admittedly not too shocked over. Thus I was quite pleased to see NPR cover it recently.
Professor Harris-Lacewell hits the nail squarely on the head. "I want my America back" is coded language with racist undertones. Which America is it, exactly, that they want back? One with legislated segregation? One with rampant, overt institutionalized racism and sexism? What precisely do we need to repeal to get back to these beautiful glory days? Welfare? Social Security? Medicare? A national highway system? Child labor laws? Unions? Women's suffrage? Manumission? Whose America is it we so desperately need to return to? Exactly which freedoms have been so rampantly eroded, other than the freedom to openly discriminate and oppress entire chunks of the population with no regard to repercussion? The attrition of disparate privilege is not a loss of rights. Equality for all is not implicit with oppression of others.
"Individual responsibility" is classic political white supremacist lingo that is almost exclusively applied to those very same individuals they refuse to actually view as individuals, instead of representative embodiments of an entire population group and supposed "cultural pathology". When is this phrase injected into public discourse other than conversations on welfare, criminal punishment, or any other social issue which is immediately identified with black people in the eyes of the majority?
Who are they talking about when they say "real Americans"? Natives?
Race is most definitely an underlying factor, and anyone who thinks the protest against reform would be equally as rowdy if proposed by a white President is simply disingenuous.
But enough with vain attempts at reason or logic. At times we can just apply simple measures and see what conclusions can be drawn. So, I propose a quick test: Simply ask yourself, how many minorities are so up in arms about Health Care reform? I pretty much see only white faces protesting. Not too many black or brown faces in the affray (unless they're having their Rosa Parks posters ripped out of their hands). Isn't that odd? Yes, quite peculiar indeed.
Update: Tim Wise elucidates the issue in his article Racism, Right-Wing Rage and the Politics of White Nostalgia, which he penned after his CNN appearance discussing this matter:
I voice it to my immediate associates every time I see it dripping from the foaming mouths of the protesters in their worked up panics. But I don't see it addressed. Well, at least not with any degree of mainstream exposure, which I'm admittedly not too shocked over. Thus I was quite pleased to see NPR cover it recently.
Professor Harris-Lacewell hits the nail squarely on the head. "I want my America back" is coded language with racist undertones. Which America is it, exactly, that they want back? One with legislated segregation? One with rampant, overt institutionalized racism and sexism? What precisely do we need to repeal to get back to these beautiful glory days? Welfare? Social Security? Medicare? A national highway system? Child labor laws? Unions? Women's suffrage? Manumission? Whose America is it we so desperately need to return to? Exactly which freedoms have been so rampantly eroded, other than the freedom to openly discriminate and oppress entire chunks of the population with no regard to repercussion? The attrition of disparate privilege is not a loss of rights. Equality for all is not implicit with oppression of others.
"Individual responsibility" is classic political white supremacist lingo that is almost exclusively applied to those very same individuals they refuse to actually view as individuals, instead of representative embodiments of an entire population group and supposed "cultural pathology". When is this phrase injected into public discourse other than conversations on welfare, criminal punishment, or any other social issue which is immediately identified with black people in the eyes of the majority?
Who are they talking about when they say "real Americans"? Natives?
Race is most definitely an underlying factor, and anyone who thinks the protest against reform would be equally as rowdy if proposed by a white President is simply disingenuous.
But enough with vain attempts at reason or logic. At times we can just apply simple measures and see what conclusions can be drawn. So, I propose a quick test: Simply ask yourself, how many minorities are so up in arms about Health Care reform? I pretty much see only white faces protesting. Not too many black or brown faces in the affray (unless they're having their Rosa Parks posters ripped out of their hands). Isn't that odd? Yes, quite peculiar indeed.
Update: Tim Wise elucidates the issue in his article Racism, Right-Wing Rage and the Politics of White Nostalgia, which he penned after his CNN appearance discussing this matter:
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Damn Liberals...
A favorite of mine, which I feel needs reiterated:
======================
Update:
The following annotations provided:
"A Day in the Life of Joe Average Conservative
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards (*1).
With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised (*2).
All but $10 of his medications is paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too (*3).
He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry (*4).
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained (*5).
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air (*6).
He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his workday. He has a good job (*7) with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.
If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression(*8).
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage (*9!) and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads (*10).
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.
He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension(*11) because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: 'We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.'"
======================
Update:
The following annotations provided:
Sadly, the most striking thing about rereading this is the fact that it is now outdated. The ascendancy of the Selfish Right has undermined or made mockery of so many of the institutions described it is heartbreaking.
The asterisks indicate where these protections have been either seriously eroded or outright destroyed by RW governance, through lax enforcement or repeal:
1. "Healthy Forests", mountaintop removal
2. FDA medicine/ food contamination scandals
3. Employers dropping health care en masse
4. See #2
5. See #2
6. Pollution controls on all fronts weakened over last decade
7. Jobs lost = about 6-7 million over last 18 months
8. Current system no longer protects from banksters
9. Fannie Mae mortgage. LOL
10. That car better be safe, the roads and bridges sure aren't!
11. Union pensions vs polar bears. Who faces quicker extinction?".
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Throwing the Baby Out With the Bathwater...
Most of us on Facebook have probably seen the little poll about Universal Healthcare, which asks "Are you in favor of a Government run healthcare system?"
Aside from finding it blatantly misleading (using an image of Obama, who doesn't promote anything near a universal healthcare system), I rather enjoy this poll. Not solely because I'm a HUGE advocate of such a plan, but because it gives me a glimpse into other people's perspectives, and I'm a student of human behavior.
Case in point, someone on my friends list voted "No" and left the following comment:
Now, I obviously respect her (one of the kindest people I've ever met), or she wouldn't be on my friends list...but I'm going to use this as a case point to make a couple of observations.
She has every right to be concerned about what her tax money pays for. I don't want my tax dollars paying for religious schools, supporting faith-based initiatives and the batshit insane bigots that run them, buying bombs to kill brown people for oil in a religious crusade, paying the salaries of racist officials, creating an oppressively brutal police force, or any other myriad elements of our reality. But I'm only one 320 millionth—0.000000003125%— of the population, and I realize how democracy works (or is supposed to).
But the main problem here seems to be the typical overzealousness and narrow-mindedness mixed with ignorance of the facts in the face of intentional misrepresentation. And I honestly mean nothing negative in that statement.
First, some of the facts as reported here:
OK. Pretty cut and dry.
Second, let's forget almost the entirety of my personal belief system, and attempt to deal with this just on the basis of these and a few other established facts (namely 1) there are a shitload of uninsured Americans, and 2) some pretty serious problems come along with being uninsured or not sufficiently insured in a society that has ridiculous healthcare costs).
So, she's saying that 46 MILLION uninsured Americans essentially should continue to suffer because the government MIGHT use tax dollars to fund abortions, most likely only in the event that it saves the mother's life (again, not even a definite option, but, if it is an option, a rarely used one)?
But in the meanwhile, the current private system covers almost all abortions, AND screws over 46 million American men, women (and their fetuses), and children. Not to mention, the dollars YOU pay into YOUR premiums are what the insurance companies use to pay for those abortions (!). So, in the current, private system you already ARE paying for abortions. For less debatable reasons. And there are still 46 MILLION people going without any health care or all, or substandard health care.
So, in a nutshell, the reasoning is "I don't want to help my fellow humans because it might lead to significantly lower levels of something that is already happening". I must say that doesn't make much sense at all.
It is worsened by the fact that the assumed reasoning is based on a religious affiliation with a faith that is supposedly defined by merciful dedication, sacrifice, and non-judgmental service to one's fellow humans according to the example set by a God/prophet that never once mentioned abortion but did prop up the poor, condemn the rich, and stress egalitarianism and beneficence.
Aside from finding it blatantly misleading (using an image of Obama, who doesn't promote anything near a universal healthcare system), I rather enjoy this poll. Not solely because I'm a HUGE advocate of such a plan, but because it gives me a glimpse into other people's perspectives, and I'm a student of human behavior.
Case in point, someone on my friends list voted "No" and left the following comment:
"I don't think my tax $ should pay for someones 'choice' to kill a baby!!"
Now, I obviously respect her (one of the kindest people I've ever met), or she wouldn't be on my friends list...but I'm going to use this as a case point to make a couple of observations.
She has every right to be concerned about what her tax money pays for. I don't want my tax dollars paying for religious schools, supporting faith-based initiatives and the batshit insane bigots that run them, buying bombs to kill brown people for oil in a religious crusade, paying the salaries of racist officials, creating an oppressively brutal police force, or any other myriad elements of our reality. But I'm only one 320 millionth—0.000000003125%— of the population, and I realize how democracy works (or is supposed to).
But the main problem here seems to be the typical overzealousness and narrow-mindedness mixed with ignorance of the facts in the face of intentional misrepresentation. And I honestly mean nothing negative in that statement.
First, some of the facts as reported here:
"Abortion is not mentioned in the 1,018-page bill..."
"The Supreme Court has established a woman's right to abortion, but federal law prohibits government funds from being used to pay for the procedure in most cases. However, nearly 90 percent of employer-based private insurance plans routinely cover abortion."
OK. Pretty cut and dry.
Second, let's forget almost the entirety of my personal belief system, and attempt to deal with this just on the basis of these and a few other established facts (namely 1) there are a shitload of uninsured Americans, and 2) some pretty serious problems come along with being uninsured or not sufficiently insured in a society that has ridiculous healthcare costs).
So, she's saying that 46 MILLION uninsured Americans essentially should continue to suffer because the government MIGHT use tax dollars to fund abortions, most likely only in the event that it saves the mother's life (again, not even a definite option, but, if it is an option, a rarely used one)?
But in the meanwhile, the current private system covers almost all abortions, AND screws over 46 million American men, women (and their fetuses), and children. Not to mention, the dollars YOU pay into YOUR premiums are what the insurance companies use to pay for those abortions (!). So, in the current, private system you already ARE paying for abortions. For less debatable reasons. And there are still 46 MILLION people going without any health care or all, or substandard health care.
So, in a nutshell, the reasoning is "I don't want to help my fellow humans because it might lead to significantly lower levels of something that is already happening". I must say that doesn't make much sense at all.
It is worsened by the fact that the assumed reasoning is based on a religious affiliation with a faith that is supposedly defined by merciful dedication, sacrifice, and non-judgmental service to one's fellow humans according to the example set by a God/prophet that never once mentioned abortion but did prop up the poor, condemn the rich, and stress egalitarianism and beneficence.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Correction, we didn't evolve from monkeys...
We are monkeys.
Well, we're still of the taxonomic parvorder Catarrhini. I suppose it's still more "accurate" to say we're apes, being of the superfamily Hominoidea, but the point remains.
This isn't about opinion or feelings. We're primates, plain and simple. This proves to be a very difficult FACT for some people to accept, and this is mainly due to a certain arrogance: people find it "dehumanizing" and somehow degrading to think of themselves as animals. This, of course, is ridiculous. These are technical terms. If you're a living, locomotive organism that digests other living organisms to survive, well, guess what? You're an animal. Lose the self-righteous indignation.
Okay, perhaps I simplified things with motile and heterotrophic. As AronRa puts it in his excellent video on cladistic phylogenetics, you ARE a primate as long as you are a:
If for any reason you feel the above passage doesn't describe you...
...well, I don't know what to say to that. Just watch out for those government agents, and good luck phoning home.
Well, we're still of the taxonomic parvorder Catarrhini. I suppose it's still more "accurate" to say we're apes, being of the superfamily Hominoidea, but the point remains.
This isn't about opinion or feelings. We're primates, plain and simple. This proves to be a very difficult FACT for some people to accept, and this is mainly due to a certain arrogance: people find it "dehumanizing" and somehow degrading to think of themselves as animals. This, of course, is ridiculous. These are technical terms. If you're a living, locomotive organism that digests other living organisms to survive, well, guess what? You're an animal. Lose the self-righteous indignation.
Okay, perhaps I simplified things with motile and heterotrophic. As AronRa puts it in his excellent video on cladistic phylogenetics, you ARE a primate as long as you are a:
"gill-less, organic RNA/DNA protein-based, metabolic, metazoic, nucleic, diploid, bilaterally-symmetrical, endothermic, digestive, tryploblast, opisthokont, deuterostome coelemate with a spinal chord and 12 cranial nerves connecting to a limbic system in an enlarged cerebrial cortex with a reduced olfactory region inside a jawed-skull with specialized teeth including canines and premolars, forward-oriented fully-enclosed optical orbits, and a single temporal fenestra, -attached to a vertebrate hind-leg dominant tetrapoidal skeleton with a sacral pelvis, clavical, and wrist & ankle bones; and having lungs, tear ducts, body-wide hair follicles, lactal mammaries, opposable thumbs, and keratinized dermis with chitinous nails on all five digits on all four extremities, in addition to an embryonic development in amniotic fluid, leading to a placental birth and highly social lifestyle."
If for any reason you feel the above passage doesn't describe you...
...well, I don't know what to say to that. Just watch out for those government agents, and good luck phoning home.
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