Offering constructive criticism to the social cripples in our midst since early 2005.

[SlaveNoMore]

sebastian_dangerfield
Fuck. Thats some profound ass shit there. You're all minimalist and "word of God" with that shit.

I originally wrote it in the collective "So are we" - but I figured that was too arrogant for a Wednesday.

[SlaveNoMore]

sebastian_dangerfield
Dude, how can you call yourself a Republican and not want to fund free abortions? The people who would use the service are exactly the people who you all claim suck down your tax dollars. The cost of abortions for them is never going to be anywhere near the cost of maintaining them in the New Deal Safety Net for life.

Theoretically, I'd be in favor of mass sterilizations for those same reasons - but the idea is trumped by my concerns with the whole Big Federal Government concept.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
So all those Iraqis should have just moved?

Have you not smelled the fart? It's wonderful in Iraq. Like Xanadu. Except tens of thousands of people didn't die at the liberation of Xanadu. But you gotta kill people to save people, right? Those people died for the greater good.

[SlaveNoMore]

Shape Shifter
So all those Iraqis should have just moved?

The ones in Texas? Sure, they can move to Massachussetts.

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
We did liberate them. But I don't have any faith in Iraq ever coming together into anything useful. Getting those people together has historically been like organizing cats.... The British created Iraq's borders, and those dumb bastards have brought us Pakistan and Israel also. The only thing the British do worse than borders is cars.

I'll have you know my cats, all 116 of them, are quite organized. And we all drive comfortably in my Jag.

Okay so as to Hussein -- why in the world do you think he was uniquely "holding it all together" for the people of his country? One of my cats could have done just as good a job and would have made sure the sanctions that hurt the Iraqi people so much stopped.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I originally wrote it in the collective "So are we" - but I figured that was too arrogant for a Wednesday.

Oddly, I agree with you. Rove didn't violate the law, and he'll never be prosecuted.

But the WSJ is nuts if they think this thing isn't going to be serious problem for Bush, or shouldn't be a serious problem for him. What Rove did was despicable, underhanded and sleazy. He could have attacked Wilson on the merits. But he didn't. He took a Nixon cheap shot.

Thats the trouble with this admininistration. They never fight on the merits. They play procedure (energy tastk force records, classification of all WH docs as top secret, classifying large swath of 9/11 report). People don't like/respect people who won't stand and fight. It smacks of weakness and sneakiness.

[SlaveNoMore]

Did you just call me Coltrane?
Have you not smelled the fart? It's wonderful in Iraq. Like Xanadu. Except tens of thousands of people didn't die at the liberation of Xanadu. But you gotta kill people to save people, right? Those people died for the greater good.

Have I mentioned lately that the Stifler avatar really suits you?

[SlaveNoMore]

sebastian_dangerfield
Oddly, I agree with you.

You agree with me 95% of the time, but both of us are a bunch of blowhards who would never admit it.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Gattigap
I hope that you're right, Bilmore, but recently their casualness has been highlighted by bombing the shit out of each other.

Not really "each other", which is what gives me hope. You've got the select Baathist ex-Saddam henchshits who still can't get used to the idea that they've lost the country they owned for so long. They'll eventually be killed off, or give up and join the more common non-shithead Baathists annd try to be a part of society. Then you've got the foreigners who simply see Iraq as the flashpoint for the anti-U.S jihad. More and more Iraqis are telling them to stay away, or leave, and more and more of them are getting blown away by common Iraqis, and so I think the flashpoint thingie will end gradually over the next year.

I know several people working in the country right now on infrastructure, and everything they tell me points to huge improvements everywhere, structurally and societal, and they talk with disbelief (and a lot of anger) about the level of vitriol and misinformation that seems to pervade the MSM reporting of Iraq right now. I get a lot of my optimism about Iraq from them, and I think I'll believe them more than ten coastie reporters who have already expressed hatred for all things Bush.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by sgtclub
If by neutral you mean not having an correlative connection, I agree, but I think that bolsters my point?

Yes, that's what I mean, but I wasn't looking to your point in general, really, just your statement that middle class and more educated women had more comparatively more abortions than poor, uneducated women. Neither is apparently true, and in one case actually the reverse is true.

But the education discussion doesn't seem to control for things like (i) the "no HS degree" abortion rates may be skewed lower because they include people still attending HS but not yet graduated, a higher percentage of whom (presumably) don't have sex at all, (ii) similarly the "some college" group is undoubtedly weird because a large number of them are students who just haven't finished yet (so, in terms of judging the correlation with "educational attainment" a bunch might arguably better be included with the "degree" group, which would probably significantly change that group's numbers), and (iii) related to (ii), college students (presumably) have a lot of sex and are generally not married, which might mean that the numbers there are due more to age & marital status than educational attainment (same for "some HS" vs. everything else).

To put it another way, the "educational attainment" element, as measured for that study (snapshot at the time of the abortion) seems automatically skewed (a) to include many more young & stupid and non-sexually active people in the lower attainment brackets and (b) to include many more older & wiser, married and sexually active people in the higher brackets.

What does that mean? I dunno, but it isn't really dealt with.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Have I mentioned lately that the Stifler avatar really suits you?

I'm actually coming around to your side. The lives that ceased to exist via terrorist attacks are worth more than those non-insurgent lives extinguished from US attacks on Iraq soil.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by bilmore


I know several people working in the country right now on infrastructure, and everything they tell me points to huge improvements everywhere, structurally and societal, and they talk with disbelief (and a lot of anger) about the level of vitriol and misinformation that seems to pervade the MSM reporting of Iraq right now. I get a lot of my optimism about Iraq from them, and I think I'll believe them more than ten coastie reporters who have already expressed hatred for all things Bush.

I will (seriously) ask my cousin in Baghdad how things are going and report back.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
The ones in Texas? Sure, they can move to Massachussetts.

And how about the blacks in the South who couldn't vote or were being lynched? They should have just moved? Your understanding of how federalism works in the context of consitutional rights is completely fucked. Get a new argument. The "if you don't like it, move" one doesn't work.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?
I will (seriously) ask my cousin in Baghdad how things are going and report back.

Given your last few posts, I need to ask - you mean the Baghdad that's overseas, in Iraq, right? It's a small mideastern country close to Iran?

(I mean, jeez, coltrane, sometimes your bullshit/fact ratio is breathtaking.)

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
And how about the blacks in the South who couldn't vote or were being lynched? They should have just moved? Your understanding of how federalism works in the context of consitutional rights is completely fucked. Get a new argument. The "if you don't like it, move" one doesn't work.

Sort of depends on whether you think there's a constitutional right involved, or merely a regulatory issue. If I want to drink (legally) at 18, I can't live in some places. If I want to be in a civil union with my partner, I have to pick the right state. If I want my spouse to be able to make decisions for me when I'm comatose (last Friday, for instance), I should check my state laws.