Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

Said it then; stand by it now.

If it's truly about saving lives, the "crusaders" should be more than happy to raise all those precious children. Anything else is pure hypocricy.

What the ****! No woman I've known who ever thought about maybe having to abort a child ever thought of the fetus as just a bunch of cells the equivalent of cancer. We all know the life inside us could be a human child and if the conditions were right we would love to have it and raise. The problem is for the one person I know who did have one, is that she was 16, and her family was in no condition to help her raise a child at the time. Her mom was ill and could barely take care of her and her sister at the time as they were on welfare.

When I consider aborting a pregnancy, I decided the risk of postpartum depression was worth it, as I had a husband and family who were supportive and would help me through the postpartum period. Even though the whole pregnancy turn out to be high risk, with 13 weeks of bed rest (Thrust me, you don't want to be stuck in bed for 13 weeks.) and 5 hospital stays before she was 36 weeks I am still thankful I had her. After she was born we avoided postpartum depression by my ex putting me to bed for 24 hours and taking care of all 3 of our girls until I was well rested and able to take care of them again.

I took care of the risk of getting pregnant again 6 weeks after she was born by having my tubes tied.

The conservative view on everything is either "it's not my problem so I'm not paying for it and I'm going to force everyone to change their behavior by making everything related to the issue as difficult as possible" or "because god I'm going to force everyone to change their behavior by making everything related to the issue as difficult as possible"

And yet, I can quote counter arguments to the "fetus is alive" argument that specifically make the claim that cancer cells are "alive" too. Heck. I believe that Joph himself once used teratomas in his counter argument.



And yet, despite this, a very common argument in the abortion debate often includes some form of "it's not really a human life, or a life at all, or there's other things that are alive that we don't worry about killing or removing from our bodies". Within this context, it's pretty clear that these types of arguments exist as a means to make the abortion choice easier for women to make, right? Else, why make these arguments in the first place? The use of those types of arguments assumes that they will have some effect, thus we can safely assume that they *are* having some effect (or we should reject and stop using them). To what degree a woman's choice may be influenced by a barrage of this sort of argument within the abortion debate is unclear. But it's somewhat silly to insist that there's no effect at all.



Uh huh. So why not give the child up for adoption? At some point, we kinda do have to accept that the degree to which one morally believes that an abortion is "wrong" is going to heavily influence that persons choice. So anything which diminishes the perceived "wrongness" of the choice will affect that choice. Has to IMO.



You were the one who linked to the articles as support that "even conservatives don't think we should punish women who have abortions". I was the one pointing out that their reasons for not wanting to punish women for having an abortion are different than those liberals might have. So... I'm not sure what your point is here.

Are we both in agreement that conservative's reasons for not wanting to punish women who have an abortion isn't because they think that abortion is fine and peachy (or a right even!)? Cause that's the point I was making, and I think you've just agreed with me.



I think there's a huge range between being "incapable" of making rational decisions at all, and being "influenced" in your decision making. I would argue that the government creating a $5k tax credit for buying an electric car will influence the decision to buy an electric car. But that doesn't mean that person is incapable of making a rational decision. That's a pretty massive leap, isn't it?

Now, if it turned out that the person later regretted buying that electric car, we might even point to them being victimized by false advertising about said car, and the government's role in subsidizing it's purchase, so maybe we shouldn't be harsh on them for that choice. That doesn't means we're infantilizing them. It just means that we recognize that people do tend to be influenced by the world around them, and we need to take that influence into account when judging their actions. Again, I'm not sure why you insist on creating these all or nothing extreme arguments. Most things in the world exist in the middle. This is definitely one of them.

Edited, Apr 14th 2016 6:11pm by gbaji

The concept, just not the practice.

I see this recent argument about abortion and I begin to realize why things are the way they are. It doesn't matter if people have lives, as long as they're alive.

Don't abort that fetus because it's alive! It could spend the rest of its life in a cage getting repeatedly burned with cigarette butts and ruin the lives of countless other people thereafter as a consequence of being born for all we care but just don't murder it!

It just seems like a bit of a reoccurring theme. I mean, as long as we all have access to water and enough food to survive on who cares what else is happening, right? --as long as we're all technically alive. If people don't behave the way we want them to after pigeon-holing them into a shitty life without choices, we'll take it to the extreme and lock them away or, you know, kill them. Hell, as long as they didn't get aborted.

Clearly the answer is to eliminate sex! Who needs sex ammiright? Just don't do it. If we could somehow stop poor people from breeding, why there'd be no more abortions! Give everyone a ******* Bible and teach abstinence education in schools! Censor all the boobs on TV and make sure our children grow up knowing how disgusting and unlovable they are if they ever think about them. If we're to pretend we care that isn't working there's always mandatory chastity belts for the ladies and castration for the guys. Ladies, make sure you get married though. If you don't that'd mean you were a *****-- and by getting married I make find an affluent man to offer your wifely services to. Failing that, you can follow the non-affluent men into path B:

Path B: Get a "job"-- Why? So they can continue to live! Why, you need money for that water and food to survive on so work for it! Your "job" will be assigned to you by whoever happens to call you with an offer (if anyone.) That's freedom, baby! Your job is likely something that has no impact at all on anyone else and serves no purpose whatsoever other than to generate more profit for the company that hired you while you earn a fixed amount of pay hourly that is in no way effected by the success of said company, OR the quality of your work. Because your job is not important, you are easily replaced by some other warm body the moment you begin to realize what you're doing isn't worthwhile-- whereas at this point you are now a loathsome parasite in the eyes of society because you'd rather not devout your life to some menial task that helps no one and achieves nothing in order to earn your right to exist-- but BY GOD, it sure is a damned good thing you weren't aborted. Hooray for family values! Hooray for conservatism!

No, conservatives are on the side of preservation of power. They like things that allow them to control and protect their own wealth and the means of generating that wealth. They like the idea that a man can build his own way and doesn't need the help or permission of others to do so. This creates an atmosphere of control, the need to control the things around them. End result is a decision making process that benefits powerful individuals but is bad for society in general.

Liberals are on the side of preservation of society. Preservation of society requires control over the pooling of power because power increases the ability to create power. This means creating safety nets to catch those at the bottom and limits to the ability of powerful entities to control others through direct or indirect means. This creates an atmosphere of compassion, the knowledge that helping those in need helps the greater society and indirectly the self. End result is a decision making process that benefits society and ensures the individuals are cared for regardless of power.


Edited, Apr 15th 2016 10:16am by Yodabunny

He's considering a general who happens to be a Democrat. Interesting...

Seems like more of a net negative than a positive. Democratic & Independent voters aren't turned off by Trump because he's "too Republican", they're turned off by his tone, racism, character flaws and inane policy positions. On the other hand, a good number of Republican voters are wary of Trump not being conservative enough. Selecting a registered Democrat as a VP seems like it'd drive more people away than bring them in.

Plus, this guy is very critical of Obama who is enjoying quite a bit of popularity right now. If the draw to conservative-leaning voters is Flynn railing about how terrible Obama is, that'll negate the "Oh, but he's a Democrat" aspect to others.

That said, VP picks are inflated in how important people think they are when made when they typically don't move the needle much so we're probably talking small numbers of people, plus or minus, regardless.

Edited, Jul 9th 2016 2:40pm by Jophiel

Korea nothing, he's starting with Mexico.

Could change to New Constantinople.

Sanders and Rubio have momentum so we can't know until the very end.

Flynn fall out of favor after his "abortion is a woman's choice" comments?