Politics

[CeeBee]

As far as abortion, look I get it, some instances abortion should be a right that is protected, after all a 42 year old ruling has been upheld ever since. But conservative numbers estimate approximately 52 million aborts have been performed in the US alone. That's more dead then all the war's we've ever been in...and NOT A ONE of those souls had a chance or a say in the matter. Where is their protection under the law? As far as Hillary is concerned you don't have rights until the day you take your first breath. That's just barbaric plain and simple.

So where do you draw the line? Is the morning after pill OK? What about 3 weeks in when you realize that birth control failed? What about the right of a woman not to be transformed into an incubator against her will?
My personal take is that it's fine as it is now. Below 21 weeks the fetus has a 0 (ZERO, NONE, not even 1 in 1 million) chances to survive by itself, I don't see any woman going to that length and wanting to terminate without a very good reason.
On the other side they can blame God as being the biggest abortion provider of all, 25%+ of all pregnancies end up in miscarriage.
And what is the alternative? Go back to illegal abortions, put the life of women at risk? Create an industry of quick trips to Mexico or Canada?

[northbayteky]

...abortion should be a right that is protected, after all a 42 year old ruling has been upheld ever since. ....

How ever long it has been constitutionally protected is a drop in the bucket for how long they have been happening.

As for your argument that people's religious rights are being trampled, that's a phony argument. They are not being asked to participate in anything that is against their beliefs. They are not being asked to set aside their beliefs. If they own a store or provide a service, it doesn't give them a right to ask personal questions of the people that want to give them money for that product or service. They just want to be nasty.

How would you feel if went to a store and they found out you were an ex-Marine and they refused you service because of Iraq?

[JaxSon]

It struck me as unusual that we haven't had any rousing political conversations in this election cycle. Why is that, do you think?

Hillary & a sack of potatoes.jpg

[slgrieb]

Cruz is a standup guy, he says he's there to shake things up, that's what he's done. I don't see it as he is the one that shut down anything, rather he rattled a cage and the birdsh!t went everywhere.

Cruz is as far from a standup guy as it is possible to get. In fact, if you take a couple of minutes with the search engine of your choice, you soon find that the people who know Cruz best despise him the most. Fellow Senators, guys he went to school with all describe him as contemptible. Following his fiasco of shutting down the government, some Texas newspapers such as the Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning news actually withdrew their endorsement of his Senate campaign retro actively. How do you tell if Cruz is lying on an issue? Words are coming out of his mouth.

And I have to agree with CeeBee on Cruz's flat tax proposal. He says that it would "only" add something like 3.6 TRILLION to the deficit, but the real figure is more like 8.6 trillion. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/searc...=cruz+flat+tax

[slgrieb]

Cruz is as far from a standup guy as it is possible to get. In fact, if you take a couple of minutes with the search engine of your choice, you soon find that the people who know Cruz best despise him the most. Fellow Senators, guys he went to school with all describe him as contemptible. Following his fiasco of shutting down the government, some Texas newspapers such as the Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning news actually withdrew their endorsement of his Senate campaign retro actively. How do you tell if Cruz is lying on an issue? Words are coming out of his mouth.

And I have to agree with CeeBee on Cruz's flat tax proposal. He says that it would "only" add something like 3.6 TRILLION to the deficit, but the real figure is more like 8.6 trillion. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/searc...=cruz+flat+tax

I'd wanted to say more about Cruz and taxes, but I was told that I really wanted to take a break and go to the grocery store.

Anyway, Cruz claims that his flat tax plan would pay for itself because of all the new jobs it would create. Of course his numbers are strictly PFA figures that have no basis in reality. Golly, look how well all the tax cuts for the wealthy have done such a wonderful job of creating jobs and lowering the deficit.

Then, of course, Cruz has to take a swing at corporate taxes, and the estate tax. The estate tax, he says, is evil because it hurts family farms and family businesses. Bullshit. The estate tax only effected something like 5000 Americans, and if CONgress had ever been concerned about "Family" enterprises, the could have passed an exemption. Instead, repealing the estate tax is just another tax cut for the super rich that the rest of us get to pay for.

Of course Cruz wants to eliminate corporate taxes, because they are also evil. Look! The U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. The catch is that virtually no corporations are paying it, and nobody is really certain what the effective tax rate really is because it varies so much by industry.

Here's an article that's a little dated, but still worth reading: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/real_tax_rates_plummet/

Here's a more current one from Forbes that really highlights the real problems with figuring effective tax rates: http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanaly.../#7bc020d820a5

[slgrieb]

How ever long it has been constitutionally protected is a drop in the bucket for how long they have been happening.

As for your argument that people's religious rights are being trampled, that's a phony argument. They are not being asked to participate in anything that is against their beliefs. They are not being asked to set aside their beliefs. If they own a store or provide a service, it doesn't give them a right to ask personal questions of the people that want to give them money for that product or service. They just want to be nasty.

How would you feel if went to a store and they found out you were an ex-Marine and they refused you service because of Iraq?

There's a reason why the Constitution provides for the separation of Church and State, and that's to ensure that the religious views of any group don't impinge on the rights of any other group. So, all these Evangelicals who piss and moan about their "religious rights" being undermined are actually only whining because they aren't permitted to discriminate against the legal rights of groups they don't like.

If you have any doubts about the arrogance and subversiveness of Evangelicals feel they they have divine authority to pass laws that contradict the Constitution, take a look at this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...mepage%2Fstory

It's about how the Oklahoma legislature has actually passed a bill which would revoke the medical licenses of doctors performing abortions.

[slgrieb]

We're getting old?

True enough, but I think it's maybe more accurate to say we are old enough to realize that most of our elected officials (regardless of party) have been screwing most Americans while serving Big Money and Big Banking interests for a long time now. And as Larommi points out, in this election most of our likely presidential choices are less than inspirational for most of us.

While us Lefty Pinko Liberals have some pretty sharp divisions with Conservatives, I think there's more potential common ground now than in recent years. Unfortunately, whoever sits in the Whitehouse is probably less important than what happens at the state level, and most voters seem to committed to more of the same.

Also wanted to apologize for the high number of typos in my recent post, but the Edit function doesn't seem to be working well for me right now.

[slgrieb]

We're getting old?

True enough, but I think it's maybe more accurate to say we are old enough to realize that most of our elected officials (regardless of party) have been screwing most Americans while serving Big Money and Big Banking interests for a long time now. And as Larommi points out, in this election most of our likely presidential choices are less than inspirational for most of us.

While us Lefty Pinko Liberals have some pretty sharp divisions with Conservatives, I think there's more potential common ground now than in recent years. Unfortunately, whoever sits in the Whitehouse is probably less important than what happens at the state level, and most voters seem to committed to more of the same.

Also wanted to apologize for the high number of typos in my recent posts, but the Edit function doesn't seem to be working well for me right now.

[slgrieb]

True enough, but I think it's maybe more accurate to say we are old enough to realize that most of our elected officials (regardless of party) have been screwing most Americans while serving Big Money and Big Banking interests for a long time now. And as Larommi points out, in this election most of our likely presidential choices are less than inspirational for most of us.

While us Lefty Pinko Liberals have some pretty sharp divisions with Conservatives, I think there's more potential common ground now than in recent years. Unfortunately, whoever sits in the Whitehouse is probably less important than what happens at the state level, and most voters seem to committed to more of the same.

Also wanted to apologize for the high number of typos in my recent posts, but the Edit function doesn't seem to be working well for me right now.

see previous remark

[CeeBee]

Just an FYI for edit... when editing click on "Go Advanced", then save.