U.S. Presidential race - Democrat Discussion

[Grizzly Willy]

It doesn't, unless you take points off for sheer dogdamned crazy. I'm doing so. Then again, my downgrade from a solid F to a more solid F probably isn't likely to hurt him much...

Suppose it's just a matter of opinion then. He's already hit bedrock, and no pick or TNT is going to get him any deeper. Would have to glitch out and fall into the void of full on deranged madman for that to happen.

[semaphore]

The thing that strikes me about that Romney video is that he says his Church is opposed to abortion, but believes in letting others have the choice to have abortions. And he thinks that's wrong.

[Spectral]

So, when the argument was used that we can't take Obama's word at face value it still stands? If we're not going to take Romney's - and I see no reason not to - then I don't think we should be taking any politicians, but that could just be my Mark Twainian attitude towards politicians in general. Well, mostly congresspersons.

I'm taking Romney at his word, and I think his word is positively batshit crazy.

[Grizzly Willy]

I'm taking Romney at his word, and I think his word is positively batshit crazy.

Fair enough.

@Semaphore

Ah, then I was missing something.

[Spectral]

If I understand his positions clearly, he was advocating a strong approach to education because he felt that democracy required it, and without that education, voters would be misinformed. Basically, he was trying to avoid the situation you're in(not everyone allowed to vote conundrum) by being pro-active about keeping people educated. We didn't get there.

Yeah, in an optimal situation, I'd love to see everyone sufficiently informed that this isn't something that requires serious thought. As it stands, it's pretty hard to rationally justify people that have essentially no idea of what they're voting for being able to vote, but equally difficult to justify cherrypicking a voting populace. Sigh...

[Spectral]

My secular argument for pro-life relies on the notion that those I'm trying to convince aren't evil people that want to kill babies. Sadly, most pro-life advocates see it exactly that way, even for a pro-life/pro-choice guy like myself. Apparently because I don't think it's any of my business if some random lady decides to get an abortion, it means that whenever I see a pregnant lady, I want to say "you should abort that!"

Yeah, I don't really get that sort of position. My best friend is pregnant. I'll be the sort of defacto "godfather"; I'm pretty sure I have no ill wishes for her or her baby. My other best friend expects to have a kid with his fiance in either 2014 or 2015. I don't personally like kids, but my friends sure seem to like them, and I have no trouble with that. I'm for people that don't want kids getting out of them, not KILL ALL THE BABIES ALL THE TIME.

[semaphore]

I think that's the politician talking. The "oh shit I better not piss off my base" move.

In other words, his religious convictions fail him whenever politically convenient. Not exactly news that Romney flipflops all over the place, but still.

[Spectral]

If I could resurrect Jefferson and get him to see the light on slavery and racism, I would love to just sit and listen to him philosophize.

I really enjoy this sentence. We all have our blind spots... like slavery. Wait, what the what? Yeah, I think maybe this is a good lesson for any of us that get too cocky (not that I'd ever do that...) about our ideas. I'm pretty confident that Jefferson was sharper than me, and he got something pretty badly wrong.

[Spectral]

I don't think the bolded exists, as much as the extreme pro-lifers want us to believe that they do.

I guess there's a few people that are radically against humans existing. These people are complete morons though, and represent literally something like 0.001% of the population. They make an excellent strawman though.

[Grizzly Willy]

I really enjoy this sentence. We all have our blind spots... like slavery. Wait, what the what? Yeah, I think maybe this is a good lesson for any of us that get too cocky (not that I'd ever do that...) about our ideas. I'm pretty confident that Jefferson was sharper than me, and he got something pretty badly wrong.

Eh, I think that's an issue of different social norms that are the cause of error in this case.

[Spectral]

Eh, I think that's an issue of different social norms that are the cause of error in this case.

I'd bet we have some social norms that will seem wrong. Not singling anyone out (other than maybe myself, because I want to see my own blind spots), but someone here's going to be saying something that's very, very wrong that we're missing for whatever reason.

[Grizzly Willy]

I'd bet we have some social norms that will seem wrong. Not singling anyone out (other than maybe myself, because I want to see my own blind spots), but someone here's going to be saying something that's very, very wrong that we're missing for whatever reason.

The argument could be made for the age of sexual consent (certain African tribal rituals [I believe it's an African tribe, can't remember which one] and ancient Roman social norms), but I think my reading of Lolita has left me far too angered by the thought of pedophilia that I'm not in any mood to start seriously considering it.

[Spectral]

The one that most immediately pops to my head as something I think might be seen very differently in the future is animal rights. I don't personally worry about it too much, but I think the arguments for treating fairly sentient beings the way we do are pretty thin, so I could see that shifting going forward. Right now, it's almost purely a philosophical argument, but I could see it resonating viscerally 50 years from now.

edit - To be clear, not saying it will, just tossing something out as an example of what I think could change.

[semaphore]

The argument could be made for the age of sexual consent (certain African tribal rituals [I believe it's an African tribe] and ancient Roman social norms)

Isn't 16 the social norm for classical antiquity? There's only a few cultures that really stray that close into pedophilia on the whole.

[Grizzly Willy]

Isn't 16 the social norm for classical antiquity? There's only a few cultures that really stray that close into pedophilia on the whole.

In the tribal rituals it was younger I believe. Around the start of puberty. I won't get into details here.

[Spectral]

*shrug*

I don't really see the big problem with 16, from a legal standpoint. I think it can be morally sketchy, but I dislike how much we treat teenagers like children. While they're not fully mature, I think they deserve more personal autonomy than they're given.

[semaphore]

Eh, the primary purpose of having an age of consent is to make prosecuting actual child rapists easier (presumption of innocence is quite inconvenient sometimes), not to control teenage sexuality. A point that seemed to have gotten lost somewhere along the lines.

[Spectral]

If it makes you feel any better, the idea of anyone I'm sleeping with popping out babies freaks me out. Wait, that doesn't make anyone feel better about anything at all, it just makes me seem lecherous. Oh well...

[semaphore]

I think it's also a sign of the times. 300 or 400 years ago(or even longer), a 16 year old would have gone through much more life situations than a 16 year old today.

Hmm, in a sense. One could also say life was simpler back then. Either view seems arguable.

Though it's worth noting that ~500 years ago, the average age of marriage in Europe ranges from late teens (Mediterranean) to mid twenties (Germany, Northern Europe), so it's not like modern ages of consent are particularly high.

[Smitzelplix]

Yeah I just don't get the hate. Well, with some people, I do. I live in Alabama, after all.

What really pisses me off right now is how this Libya thing is being approached. Hundreds of articles about how Obama screwed up, is covering things up, let those 4 American die, etc etc etc.

How many articles about who the terrorists are, what we're doing to find them? I haven't found a single one. A bit surprising considering that none of this would've happened if they didn't attack our consulate.

Just think of the outrage in this country if John Kerry came out the day of 9/11/01 and say this was a huge foreign diplomatic failure by Bush that got Americans killed. I guess we were all Americans back then. This country, for weeks and months, was focused on one thing. WHO DID THIS? Yes, they did come back to figure out what we did wrong, but that was months and months later, not the same damn day. It's despicable.

There's actually a couple of articles I've came across regarding this. It might have been linked before, too many pages to look through.

This:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-b...b_2065136.html

and this:
http://www.thenation.com/article/170...nghazi-attack#

But yeah basically the amount of politicizing being done about this is quite unprecedented. The second article points out several other attacks that were far more deadlier that what happened in Libya and they weren't used as political ammunition nearly to the degree that is happening now.