I think Randblade is taking a rather narrow view on the term natural here. Human birth control dates bate to ancient civilizations. Its very much a natural "switch" built into the human mind at this point. Science and tech has simply made us better at it.
To say its unnatural would be in line with saying that being gay is unnatural.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
I think people are born gay. Not sure that's true with Birth Control.
I like Ron Paul, do not necessarily agree with his opinions, but I like that he actualy has some and is willing to express them. The rest of the shmucks have one opinion "I want to be president" and then they are trying to voice shit that would appeal to most voters. They are fake like most things in US.
I take it you use the same logic for Russian elections? You like Limonov?
Hope is the denial of reality
I don't see what this has to do with the Russian election. No I do not like Limonov, or any other candidate on he Ballot, will probably vote for putin because I can be sure it wont be another Yeltsin.
So in America, you like candidates that are honest and ideologically-motivated, but in Russia, you like the candidate who lacks an ideology and doesn't have an honest bone in his body? Why not support the Russian candidates that "actually has some [opinions] and is willing to express them"?
Hope is the denial of reality
I do not think it is true, I believe that in Russia there is not even one politician that has an honest opinion. Liminovs retoric of a greater european state dominated by Russia is actualy very appealing to me, I just dont believe him.
Perhaps I should modify my initial statement by saying has honest opinions that he put some effort in to formulating. I did say that I do not necessarily agree with his opinions but he is the only candidate that strikes me as actualy meaning what he says and able to justify his opinions without embarassing himself. This is probably why he is dismissed out of hand rather then debated with.
Does anyone here think Santorum is talking about the rhythm method when he talks about states banning unnatural birth control? No. I'm in agreement with Rand about GGT misusing words and you supporting her with it for whatever reasons you might have but even if Rand and I are wrong and you're right about the English, GGT and you would still be offbase.Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Honestly, I don't read GGT's posts. I simply didn't like the umbrella nature of Rand's view. Especially with the new push lately of poorly worded laws that threaten to punish women who miscarry.
Birth control is a natural part of the human psyche, even if we use "unnatural" means to achieve it. Not to say that all methods are unnatural. We've got everything from sheep intestines to certain herbal teas on that end.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Decide for yourself what Santorum means.
He's said states do have the right to ban birth control but he wouldn't necessarily vote for it....that was the basis of the debate question Stephanopoulos asked regarding Griswold v Conn.
no direct offense intended, but your posts in D&D ramble on, its easy and faster to read the replies to see what Cain/Loki/Rand start ragging on. Your unique positions and debate style usually has them reach a little to far in their rebuttals, as is the case in this thread.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16549624
Is that the best Gingrich can do?
Hope is the denial of reality
Hey, I thought my rambling had improved lately!Rand is the one going into lengthy tangents these days....filthy hobos and luck vs determination streaming into pets, beggars and bankers.
It must appeal to a certain audience, like Freeedom Fries did. Looks to me like the same tactic used against Obama (being a secret Kenyan or European SSSocialist). ie---not like us, not American enough
Is that the best Gingrich can do?
The same audience that gave Gingrich 9% of the vote in New Hampshire? He should keep on doing whatever he's doing. It's certainly working well...for Romney.
Hope is the denial of reality
It's all he's been doing. The Gingrich campaign is just a bunch of angry flailing.
I noticed. The guy's response to getting attacked is to say "your mom". He's incapable of sticking to his talking points. How anyone thinks he's a good debator is beyond me.
I do have to say that even cynical me is surprised by the degree of anti-eliteness emanating from the Republican base. Beyond BS on trade, democratic candidates for the top offices are rarely batshit insane. You might disagree with them, but at least they usually make sane arguments. The GOP base seems to be rewarding candidates for being total psychos. Romney and Huntsman are running on the "left" of the party even though each of their issue positions is identical to the generic Republican platform. The only reason they're considered moderate is because they're not insane.
I'd hate to be a GOP apparatchik nowadays, a vast majority of whom either support Romney or Perry. How do you convince yourself to use your time and energy for a party whose base is borderline insane?
Last edited by Loki; 01-14-2012 at 02:14 AM.
Hope is the denial of reality
You totally misunderstood that comment. What the comment means is the GOP has special interest groups and investors that prop it up as a poltical party, if you want to call it a political party. The fact they're using their time and money to discredit or attack Ron Paul (asking him question like "why are you even here?" "are you even a republican?" shows me he's not just following them, he's actually espousing stuff HE beleives. This is what makes me like him. he actually beleives the stuff he says. I don't think most candidates do. That was the intention of the comment.
I view the GOP as just a conglomeration of special interest group, I don't view them as a politcal party anymore.
When every candidate says I don't believe in gay marriage, and when every candidate says Global Warming is fake... Your a joke of a party, your in it for money. That's not to say historically republicans were always bad, just currently. Maybe times will change, and i'll hate democrats more, who knows.
Anyway that was the reason for the comment. It wasn't a "oh if the republicans want it then I don't" kind of comment.
I don't really believe in being partisan, at least i didn't at first. At first I thought "hey lets vote for the best candidate based on their views." That seemed logical to me. Then I realized this view was naive. My first assumption was wrong, namely that there are candidates to choose from. That assumption was false. Hence choosing the best candidate no longer makes sense. Since candidates need/are vying for GOP funds.. I'm really voting for the GOP party. I'm not voting for romney or perry, they'll do much of the exact same things. I think the thrust of what they'll do will be the same.. we're really voting for "a finess/a style if you will" this person will come off better to our rival countries. This person has better social skills. This person may come up with better ideas. But largely 9.5/10 things they do is party line. You look at how these people are voting it just doesn't make any sense. People who think for themselves even if they share some core idealogies should have DIFFERING votes, and stances. There should be way more PRO gay marriage republicans. But noo they're going for the fundies funds. Who am I electing a president or Christian fundamentalists? That's just one string, and you can get by with one.. but when you have a million strings. Then you're no longer a unique candidate, instead they're all just puppets. Puppets with faces.You seem to be something of a bipolar partisan, Lebbie.
Ron Paul though, I'm sure he has his strings but he's not a puppet. This is what makes him so attractive. Also yes Cain was a bit crazy, but he also had that quality... of speaking his politically incorrect mind. A beautiful quality, an important one.
Can you stop it with your hyper-partisanship just for a day? Are you really going to claim the Democratic Party isn't a conglomeration of special interest groups?
As for Ron Paul, he wants to totally dismantle the welfare state, which is something that can't be said for any of the other Republican candidates. Is that what you want to see happen?
Hope is the denial of reality
I guess it's a similar process that went on with the Tories after they lost the election to Blair in '97 - they lose to a party running on a left wing platform and they get it into their heads it happened because they weren't right wing enough so they have to spend a couple of election cycles obsessively pandering to their base. Of course, the difference is that the Tories would have had a hard time ousting Blair while he was popular in the early part of the Labour years even if they hadn't been endlessly prattling on about Europe and the Euro, whereas if the Republicans put forward someone half-decent Obama would likely be out in his ass. Ironically, out of the current crop I think Huntsman would very probably beat Obama. I think a lot of Democrats would actually vote for him or abstain because they're so disgusted with Obama.I noticed. The guy's response to getting attacked is to say "your mom". He's incapable of sticking to his talking points. How anyone thinks he's a good debator is beyond me.
I do have to say that even cynical me is surprised by the degree of anti-eliteness emanating from the Republican base. Beyond BS on trade, democratic candidates for the top offices are rarely batshit insane. You might disagree with them, but at least they usually make sane arguments. The GOP base seems to be rewarding candidates for being total psychos. Romney and Huntsman are running on the "left" of the party even though each of their issue positions is identical to the generic Republican platform. The only reason they're considered moderate is because they're not insane.
I'd hate to be a GOP apparatchik nowadays, a vast majority of whom either support Romney or Perry. How do you convince yourself to use your time and energy for a party whose base is borderline insane?
Still, the Republicans have been appealing to people's worst instincts for ages to cement their own power, so I guess that is now coming back to bite them in the ass.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
The problem is that the base is insane, and not just the fringe of it. If they don't appeal to the base, they have no shot of winning. Just look at Huntsman's campaign, or the fact that not one candidate is running on a real moderate platform.
Hope is the denial of reality
A bit of study into contemporary US political history will show that this not unusual the first election or two after losing power. I had much the same impression of the Dems in 2002 and even 2004. Is Gingrich really that different in campaign behavior *leaving aside his penchant for tantrums* from Dean?I noticed. The guy's response to getting attacked is to say "your mom". He's incapable of sticking to his talking points. How anyone thinks he's a good debator is beyond me.
I do have to say that even cynical me is surprised by the degree of anti-eliteness emanating from the Republican base. Beyond BS on trade, democratic candidates for the top offices are rarely batshit insane. You might disagree with them, but at least they usually make sane arguments. The GOP base seems to be rewarding candidates for being total psychos. Romney and Huntsman are running on the "left" of the party even though each of their issue positions is identical to the generic Republican platform. The only reason they're considered moderate is because they're not insane.
I'd hate to be a GOP apparatchik nowadays, a vast majority of whom either support Romney or Perry. How do you convince yourself to use your time and energy for a party whose base is borderline insane?
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
They both have a tendency of saying stupid things, but Dean had more of a track record as an executive and had no record of trying to run the country into the ground. Even if we treat the two as the same, what about the rest? The two crazies in the Democratic primary in 2004 were Kucinich and Sharpton, who polled at 5% combined. If you add Dean, that goes up to about 30%. Meanwhile, the crazies in the GOP (Trump, Bachmann, Cain, Paul, Gingrich, and to a lesser extent Santorum) have consistently polled at over 50%. While Democratic field in 2004 was fairly left wing, most of the candidates were actually capable of running a country without running it into the ground. I don't think I could say that about anyone other than Romney, Huntsman, and perhaps Perry from the current GOP field.
Hope is the denial of reality
Did Gingrich not have a track record (with Clinton) of balancing the US budget? Just the sort of track record you'd think the US needs right now - shame he's batshit insane crazy.
The UK Tory party elected Hague and then IDS. When a party loses power, it can also lose touch with reality thinking the problem was they weren't authentic enough and one more push more extreme will win back power.
Rather than saying that their base is 'insane' it's probably more helpful to say that they subscribe to narratives which are... somewhat divorced from reality ("insane"). The source of these narratives has pretty much been the GOP itself. For example, they used the "elitist" stick on Gore, Kerry and Obama. They pushed hard the idea that anyone who is too smart, to educated, who knows too much is somehow "not one of us" and should therefore be instinctively distrusted by Proper Americans... because it was useful to them. Well, their base has brought the idea and now won't let them put anyone forward as a candidate who can tie their own shoelaces. Likewise with the culture wars crowd. So, really, they've no one but themselves to blame.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Hilariously, Hague and IDS seem to be two of the Tory ministers that people have the most time for at the moment, a far cry for the joke the were when party leader. Either they've grown since they were party leader or they're just much better their current roles than in the spotlight. Though I guess foreign sectary is an easy job in that respect since you don't need to take decisions that will directly affect people's lives.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
IDS should never have been leader but I do think he's grown dramatically. He was famous for being a reactionary anti-European, then after being leader founded a charity and did a lot of charity work which has since fed into being a minister. I think he opened his eyes as leader but it was too late.
Hague was quite young when leader and wasn't actually so bad. He led an appalling election campaign was against an incredibly popular PM and couldn't out-moderate Blair so I think he got desperate. Hague could have made a good PM in other circumstances.
Of course one big difference between the US and UK is that the US doesn't have opposition Presidents like we have our opposition leaders between elections.
A rapidly growing economy was mostly responsible for balancing the budget. I won't deny that Gingrich had a major role, but he also went about getting results in an overly confrontational manner that ended up in a government shutdown. Gingrich is the guy your team puts out to convince the other team that you're insane and therefore to give in. He's not the guy you'd want running things.
Hope is the denial of reality
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/us...lp-him.html?hp
Predictably, these attacks are backfiring on Gingrich and Perry. Hint: when you're running a campaign as a pure conservative, don't attack people for running a business.
Hope is the denial of reality
Honestly, I came to these views on my own. It wasn't taught to me this way, I've never had a passion for republicans or democrats growing up. Currently, I'm favoring the Democratic party, and Obama. My second choice at the moment would be Ron Paul, because while i disagree with some of his goals. You have to understand he WON'T accomplish any of his extreme goals, all he can do is push the country toward those goals, and I think that's the right direction. Reduce spending, reduce wasteful agencies, reduce military spending. I agree with all of these things.Can you stop it with your hyper-partisanship just for a day? Are you really going to claim the Democratic Party isn't a conglomeration of special interest groups?
The results worked so I'm not going to complain about the method. So what if there was a government shutdown, better than the alternative and it didn't stay shut down for long.
Far better than the facade of the last year.
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