Do you have any evidence to support those statements aside from a television show and your own speculation?
Yes I completely agree with you that the best program would be affirmative action based upon socioeconomic status. But let's be honest, how many more minorities would be helped by racial affirmative action who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds than minorities who come from high socioeconomic backgrounds. The best case would be if it were done purely by socioeconomic status, but I think we can agree that by race isn't the horrible thing everyone makes it out be because the kind of situations that you mentioned are much more rare than their counterparts.
Oh well then I take back what I said Jake. I'm glad you're starting to believe more strongly in personal liberties. Good work showing him the light Pyg :)
Isn't it only someone's body at a certain point? Do you honestly believe that a fertilized egg is human body? That just one single cell is equally as important as a being sentient being capable of thoughts and emotions?
And for the record, you're not a libertarian unless you have radically changed your beliefs. Libertarians are socially liberal and are fervently in favor of person freedoms. You are not socially liberal by any means and in addition to the abortion issue that you mentioned you also disagree with the following positions that the Libertarian Party officially endorses the legalization of all drugs for both recreational and medicinal purposes, the legalization of gay marriage, and the elimination of all laws that enforce actions which have no victims. Ex: Prostitution. Libertarians are also strongly against governments endorsing any form of religion, so putting the ten commandments on public space and teaching creationism in school would be a big no no. Things I believe you expressed support or at least indifference toward, correct me if I am wrong.
While I don't agree with Libertarians on everything, especially economic issues, I strongly respect their beliefs that we should not be governed by a nanny state that involves itself in our personal lives, so I therefore take issue with you proclaiming to be a Libertarian. To allude to Lloyd Bentsen- I know Libertarians, and you sir are no Libertarian.
You really have trouble with identifying causation don't you. First of all 99% of blacks didn't vote for Obama. 96% of blacks did. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/
Blacks voted exactly the same way they always do -solidly Democrat. The only reason that people are even bringing this up now is that Obama is black. Obama being black did not help him at all. In fact it most likely hurt him as many white voters did not vote for Obama simply because he is black.
Affirmative action has nothing to do with being racist. Please stop ascribing racism to every racial issue with which you disagree.
There are social conditions that make is it less likely for ethnic minorities to succeed. This is clearly not fair. Blacks especially, while still struggling to achieve social equality, would have never made it this far without affirmative action. The problem lies in the fact you can't be in the middle class if you didn't go to college, and it is incredibly difficult to go to college if your parents do not belong to the middle class. So through no fault of your own if your parents are not moderately wealthy, you are significantly less likely to go to college. Due to this vicious cycle, after slavery was abolished the only schools blacks were able to get into were all black schools. They unfortunately, however, were of significantly less quality than white schools because the schools themselves had very little money. If affirmative action had not been used blacks would be in the same terrible position they were during the Reconstruction Period, and it needs to continue to be used until true equality is achieved for everyone.
No it isn't. Just as only finding the opposite sex attractive doesn't make you homophobic.
First of all congratulations on taking a high school statistics class, but using basic statistics terms completely out of place is not only an attempt at being pedantic, but it is not impressive.
I don't know why you are even discussing blame. Neither I nor any of the feminist movement is trying to place blame upon anyone. It is completely and totally irrelevant what percentage of the fault lies with whom.
This is the reality of the situation. Minorities are underrepresented in Congress. If you don't think is a problem that needs to be change then we have nothing to debate that's your opinion. If you do think that having upper-class Protestant old white men make decisions for an entire diverse country is a problem then we need to figure out a way to change that. Before you make strawmen let me say I am not suggesting effecting this change through legislation, let me state what I think we should do. I think as a society, we need to take responsibility for the way we portray people especially in the media so that everyone is encouraged equally and given the same opportunities to succeed in their goals.
"It'll never steer you wrong" except when it steers you and the plane you are flying into the Twin Towers.
First of all you didn't respond to my question, but to respond to yours, no that is not what I am saying. If an individual doesn't do something that isn't enough of a sample size to draw any conclusions. But let's just think about this logically. For example, gays are a huge underrepresented minority. They make up approximately 10% of the population, but there have only been 6 LGBT members of congress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
You can't just call something a null argument and use that alone in a debate. If you go through the steps to prove that an argument is invalid then fine, but then you don't really need to explicitly state that it is invalid if you just proved it. So that was basically just a glorified way of saying "You are wrong because."
How do you answer to the fact that every single minority group in the United States in underrepresented in Congress. Just so you don't get confused because apparently math or logic is not your strong suit, that means that the percentage of people in the group is less than the percentage of that group in Congress. Atheists, gays, women, blacks, hispanics etc. etc. Does this mean that straight Christian upper-class males are the only people who care about politics and EVERYONE else just doesn't, or might it possibly mean that there is something about the socio-political climate in this country that prevents or discourages others from even trying. You tell me which is more likely.
I can't follow what you initially said and you cited no sources so I am going to ignore it. Referring to the second half, the "human shield" excuse holds no weight. First of all you really think someone would willingly be used as a human shield? Don't be absurd. Secondly so what if Hamas is even doing that. That does not give Israel any excuse. If the police are in a shootout with someone and they take a hostage to protect themselves, the police don't say "Oh darn they are using the old human shield trick, nothing we can do. Just mow them both down with a machine gun and let's call it a day."
I don't think the primary motivation for the Revolutionary War was to decrease the scope of government. I am fairly certain it was to stop England from imposing unfair laws upon the colonists because they had no representation in parliament.
If you can provide evidence that upon achieving independence America decreased the scope of government then fine. Note: decreasing the power of the government is not the same as creating a democracy. They are not even similar.
First of all if you are talking about the woman from Oregon, she did not have insurance she was using Oregon's medicaid. And they declined to pay for her chemotherapy because she had less than 5% chance of survival over 5 years which is the minimum rate for treatment. The manufacturer of the drug gave it to her for free and she died 6 months later.
But anyway that's largely irrelevant. I can completely understand why people who have terminal illness that would be very painful would want to end their lives with dignity in the manner they choose. It's hard to say unless you are in that situation, but I think I would want to fight to live as long as I possibly could. But by no means do I judge people who would rather not live.
1) Capitalist economies need approximately a 3% unemployment rate to function. So we will always have a decent amount of unemployed people even in the best economic conditions.
2) People who are unemployed for health reasons.
3) The main reason for the recent increase is as you know recession
I think you misheard Oregon as Obama. The program in question is Oregon's medicaid program, not "Obama's" program which does not exist yet. The health care bill does not insist on assisted suicide I really hope you realize that. And it does not offer free health insurance to illegal immigrants: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/
Now referring to the video, the reason that Oregon's medicaid program would not pay for her was that she had a less than 5% survival rate over 5 years. The program has a policy that they will not pay for treatment if there less than 5% survival rate. It seems harsh, but medicaid programs do not have excess cash floating around, and if they always paid for expensive treatments for people who really had no chance of living they could run out of money to pay for treatments which would very likely or almost certainly help people a lot. It's really a choice of the lesser of two evils, but if it's either the program goes bankrupt or people with no chance are not treated, then you can see how they would choose the latter. By the way the manufacturer of the drug gave it to her for free and she died 6 months after being denied by medicaid. I'm not saying I think rationing is a good thing to do. I think everyone in the country deserves access to the best treatment available and if there isn't enough money in the program allocate more and just cut from the military budget. But I want to you see that A) This woman's situation was more complicated than the shallow coverage led you to believe and B) The US health care does not contain any rationing provisions so its a moot point.
I don't understand how you can be against health care reform. As you may have heard we spend a greater percentage of our GDP than any other country 16%. Yet the WHO ranks our quality of health care at 37th in the world among the worst of the developed world. This isn't an issue of left vs. right. This is an issue of the insurance companies vs. citizens. Premiums continue to increase as do insurance companies profits, yet our care gets no people. They make money by denying coverage. They are screwing us all over and laughing all the way to bank. The health care bill will not eliminate private coverage. If you are happy with your care awesome. Adding a public option will simply prevent insurance companies from reaming us quite as hard. If you don't like the conditions of the public option, which are highly exaggerated, then stick with your private insurance. All of this crap misinformation that is being spread about health care reform originates from, big surprise, insurance companies. I read a leaked document that planned out in exquisite detail how to propagandize the public with lies and destroy the debate. You can follow the trail of money with this stuff and see right where it leads to. Please as Americans we need to stop falling into the stupid political theater that works so well for these people profiting of us and open up our eyes. It will benefit everyone except private health insurance companies to have this bill passed. You can get the public option if you don't have insurance and if you have private insurance your premiums will go down through competitive forces.
If you have any questions you want to ask me about stuff you are concerned about that you have been hearing about the health care bill or health care reform in general please do so. I want you and all conservatives on our side where you belong. It pains me to see people, on either side, being used as puppets by people looking out for their own selfish interests.
Like I said there is no way you could afford to pay for all of it, even just the services you want.
It is called a non-profit organization. But I was just explaining why companies use foreign workers.
But some people are also paying for some services that you are using that they are not using. If you drive a car then everyone who doesn't drive a car is paying to make sure your car is safe. We all take care of each other. It's called living in a society. And if you are incapable of accepting that as a justification(sociopathy) then just realize that even if you only paid for services you do want, you would be paying a hell of a lot more than you are paying in taxes right now each year.
One of the reason that government programs exist, if you are only capable of being selfish, is because what is known as an externality. So let's say for example everyone pays for their own private fire departments. Now hypothetically you're rich and you spend a lot of money on the best company there is. But your neighbors don't want to pay all that money. So their houses catch fire which then spreads to yours and it doesn't matter how much you spent. Another example is environmental regulation. We need someone to test air quality and make sure that it is safe. This benefits us all, regardless of whether or not each specific person pays. So everyone decides they won't pay because they want a free ride, so it doesn't get done. Like I said earlier this is not a zero-sum scenario just like iterated prisoners' dilemma so quit trying to beat the other player.
Yeah then Olivia could buy the ice cream in bulk and I pay less for my share than I would have by myself and not only that, but like xaeon said I could also help people get ice cream who didn't have any. Win/win situation.
I love conservatives who assume they would be able to pay for their share of all the services they receive from the government by themselves. Why don't you calculate how much it would cost to have a company inspect all of your food, your cars, your water, keep a standing personal army, fire department, police station, buy your own roads, build your own airports and maintain security and traffic control, regulate and maintain quality of airplanes, send your kids to private school from kindergarten through college, monitor the spread of infectious diseases and respond with vaccinations and treatment so as to protect yourself et cetera. I'm sure I missed a ton of things, but this was what I could think of off the top of my head. The point is I don't think anyone could afford all of the things the government does themselves. The fact is things become cheaper when you purchase them collectively. Taxation and government spending are not a zero-sum situation. That is a participants gain or loss is not equally balanced by the respective loss and gain of another participant.
Please stop making oversimplified immature arguments; they are childish.
The difference between smoking marijuana and driving over the speed limit is that one is terribly dangerous for you and for other people and the other isn't at all.
Because in a capitalist economy companies will always try to maximize their profits. And overseas labor is often much cheaper than domestic labor, so naturally companies will go with what costs them less. Business don't care about people who are unemployed as long as they are happy with their bottom line. The very nature of the system is such that if whoever was running the company started being compassionate at the expense of the company, the shareholders would replace him. And if the shareholders were okay with it the company could quite possibly be at such a disadvantage it would eventually go bankrupt.
Okay so there are these things called recreational activities. Basically people like to do them because they find them enjoyable. There are lots of them, although some people only like certain ones. Here are some examples: smoking pot, playing music, playing sports, shopping, watching television. The benefit is that they make you happier. So as long as they aren't damaging another aspect of your life, they are great. Marijuana falls under this category because it does not harm you. And I'm not sure how it could lead to you harming someone else. In terms of "impairment of judgment" it is significantly less than alcohol and ask a police officer how many times they have had a violent suspect who was drunk, and how many times they have had a violent suspect who was high. My guess is they will tell you a lot and never. Regarding driving while intoxicated the same thing can occur with alcohol except it is significantly less dangerous to drive while high. According to a study by the US Department of Transportation "THC's adverse effects on driving performance appear relatively small."
http://www.iowatelecom.net/~sharkhaus/
People intoxicated on alcohol overestimate their abilities and are more aggressive hence very dangerous drivers. People who are high are completely aware of their impairment and are able to compensate for it by driving more cautiously.
