Politics: A new beginning

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Dr. Whoopie
My current favorites for those who may be interested in joining the militia of true freedom loving patriots of the Red States of Bush Country are:

Smith & Wesson 357 Revolver
Rugerr-SP #101 357 Revolver
Glocke-19 9MM Pistol
Mossburg-500 Twelve gauge shotgun

Also a couple of assault rifles and some sawed off shotguns for when the shite really hits the fan. Let's see what bin Laden and his boys say to that.

Good to be back, Merry Christmas and May the Good Lord and his only legitimate son bless y'all.

Locked and loaded,

Dr. W

Good to see you again Doc! How's the bunker?

Hey -- isn't the Glock 19 subject to accidental fires due to a problem with the pull weight on the trigger -- or is that an earlier model? You sure don't want to blow little Doc right off while you're practicing your combat re-loads.

What do you think of the Smith & Wesson .40 caliber? A good compromise between the stopping power of the .45 and the lighter .38 -- or just a mediocre attempt to make everyone happy that satisfies no one?

S_A_M

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Query: Isn't the far more likely scenario that, in a world where 10% of the populace might or might not be carrying a gun with them while on errands, and convenience store clerks have a 95% likelihood, Snake simply shoots Apu, Moleman, and Shary Bobbins before cleaning out the cash register? Every friggin' time? Won't all street crime simply be reduced to the armed equivalent of cold-cocking the victim and all bystanders? Even if there are a lot of guns out there, crack money doesn't grow on trees, you know.

Not if part two of our plan (mandatory death penalty for murder, rape, or abortion) gets enacted.

Raises the opportunity cost. Statistically, it's a winner.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Hey -- isn't the Glock 19 subject to accidental fires due to a problem with the pull weight on the trigger -- or is that an earlier model?

Geeze. Take a little flat mill file and sharpen the sear indent. Amateur.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by bilmore
Geeze. Take a little flat mill file and sharpen the sear indent. Amateur.

i now withdraw my earlier claim to google king, and present to you, the current and future king of google. long live the king/

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
But your first two posts (As I read them) consisted entirely of you raging at him for raging at the other side, and criticizing him for not including disclaimers acknowledging that the other side fundamentally disagrees with him.

Here's my first post: http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/sho...3825#post53825

Here's my second post: http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/sho...3991#post53991

Edited to add - well, the damn post link doesn't work on this one, so you have to scroll down. Shit.)

I dissent. Raging? In response to the pure vituperative shit he was banging out? Not even close.

(Adding): The evil of which he complained involved a woman having to listen while some med-pro reads a script about the evils of abortion. Quelle horror! I was pointing out that "the other side" is trying to prevent what is, to them the murder of thousands of defenseless humans. My point was, crying about his evil of choice is going to have very little impact on people who truly believe that abortion is murder. If he's trying to convince someone to change their minds, he's very bad at it.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
i now withdraw my earlier claim to google king, and present to you, the current and future king of google. long live the king/

Sorry, son. That ain't a google. I live in a red state, and shoot people for fun, remember?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I posted that story a couple of days ago. Did your various blogs not tell you until now that you should criticize it?

I don't remember you posting it, but I may have been binging on crank.

OTOH, I don't have much to say about it, and was mostly posting it to engender conversation. Other than that it costs us money, if you assume that the additional competition would drive prices down.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I guess Yahoo is not a major wire.
The comment was not meant to be snotty, just poking fun, so unbunch your panties.

Gattigap tends to wear his panties on his head, where they do not get bunched.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
By that statement, I take it that you are neither a religious person nor a believer in the "natural law" philosophy. It is entirely possible (though not meaningful on a practical level) to have rights that one can not enforce.

S_A_M

I am religious, but like to keep my politics separate. And even if you think that people have rights as a normative matter, for "natural" or religious reasons, they don't as a positive matter without government.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
If it were a matter of turning back the clock, you'd have a point. I really don't think we live in the same world, though. Since 1973, women have gotten a lot more uppity about these things. They're also having a lot more premarital sex. (YMMV.) Hippies aside, I think you're going to find that a lot of people who've lived their entire lives with this as a "right" are going to behave differently from women in the 1950s and 1960s.

We also live in a world in which both sides of the debate have mobilized their respective forces to care A LOT about what happens to women/babies they've never met.

OK, so its 2003. 1000 times more divisive though? 20 times? 2 times? 1 times? Sounds like a big guess. I note that part of your argument is based on how much people already care, i.e., how divisive it is already. How again do we disagree more once the federal question is settled (and yeah, its settled per the Sup. Ct.). My guess is that your guess is wrong and people will accept the judgement of their neighbors or, if its important enough, move somewhere where the neighbors are more to their liking.

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
You're mistaking your beliefs for your average conservative voter's. (This is the "I'm not a wingnut, but 80% of my voting base is" problem for GOP spokespeople.) I have yet to see a bumper sticker that says "Abortion is a matter best left to the individual states, who could go either way on it as a matter of federalism."

And yet, with your powers of persuasion, I'd bet that you could get 99% of "pro-lifers" to say that the bible and the 10 commandments and every other book to not quote God as saying no to abortion. The problem for most is that He didn't say yes to it either. In that regard, I'm pretty sure my "beliefs" are consistent with those of 99% of the people on either side of the debate including il Papa. You think I'm misrepresenting my people? Ask them. If they try making up a biblical quote, my guess is its not one that says "don't do abortions".

Too easy.

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
You seriously think that voters in Missouri and Virginia who've been whipped into a frenzy about baby-killing --- so much so that the GOP administration has banned abortions in overseas federal hospitals, far away from Missouri and Virginia --- will think that it's okay that American babies are being slaughtered in California, Massachusetts, and New York? Once you define a fetus as a baby, you're really not going to stop at closing the clinics within arm's reach.

Uhm, assuming that some states define fetuses as babies (human life for the purpose of murder), I'm not sure that Missouri and Virginia will carry the day. I mean, its one thing for me (and absofrigginlutely ME) to say don't spend one dollar in my name on all/99%/most of this stuff. Its another for Missouri to tell California not to spend one dollar in California's name on this stuff. Thus, the analogy is stretched.

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
And yes, I see constant debates in Congress over conditioning everything from public health money to military bases around whether some states allow abortion or not. Everyone will carry around a little list so they can know who's good and who's evil. Ashcroft has not proven himself a very good federalist when it comes to states that run afoul of Biblical prophecy policy.

If its saying federal money can't be spent on abortions, than yes, I'm all in favor. 100%.

You see debates over where to spend money on "whether some states allow abortion or not". Uhm, are there states that don't allow abortion? Woo hoo, I got what I wanted, no need for things to change then. What are you talking about?

And yes, Ashcroft is an asshole.

But horsetrading? What does California get in return for giving up abortion, a waiver on its taxes or something?

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch

The other areas of regulation of the medical profession tend to involve things that huge swaths of people agree are wrong, not areas where people legitimately disagree, but 51% can agree on legislation.

Let's look at a state where it's 65% pro-life and 35% pro-choice. Pick a jury in the murder trial of a doctor and a patient. Either you disqualify all prospective jurors who don't believe it's a crime, or you never get a conviction. Get the conviction in front of the right federal judge, and the prosecutor's wasted everybody's time. Even if you eliminate all jury nullification, aren't there some state court judges out there that won't sentence a woman to five, ten, or life over an abortion? Will judges have to run on a hard-abortion/soft-abortion ticket, depending on their jurisdiction (think Research Triangle, N.C.)?

Well, that's okay. Just pull the doctor's ticket, right? But do you pull it for making a referral to an out-of-state clinic? Or advising women this is an available option?

In short, a post-Roe world is a bit messier than abortion opponents are willing to let on.

Regulating doctors is an interesting question, but not the topic I was really asking about. I would like a specific scenario for your doomsday thoughts.

FWIW, I think other parts of the constitution would cover the doctor's ability to advise women of opportunities etc.... I don't have a problem with state court judges exercising their discretion, at least not as long as they face the electorate directly or indirectly.

As for your murder trial example, I think you still have the problem we started with. How is there any solid basis for declaring it a murder? I'd bet you (yes YOU Atticus) could beat 99% of the pro-lifers in that biblical argument. Leaving the prosecutor with .65%, i.e., (.01 x 65), of the population as prospective jurors.

But again, the real question is, what is the doomsday scenario? Is there a specific horse-trading scenario that has Missourians telling Californians what they can't do with their own money?

If so, how, and how do we see this as even a credible possibility?

Hello

[notcasesensitive]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
If it were a matter of turning back the clock, you'd have a point. I really don't think we live in the same world, though. Since 1973, women have gotten a lot more uppity about these things. They're also having a lot more premarital sex. (YMMV.) Hippies aside, I think you're going to find that a lot of people who've lived their entire lives with this as a "right" are going to behave differently from women in the 1950s and 1960s.

As an illustration of Atticus' point, I am both more uppity and more likely to have premaritial (or postdivorcal) sex than I was in 1973.

[Insert Uppity Slogan Here.]

[bilmore]

Originally posted by notcasesensitive
As an illustration of Atticus' point, I am both more uppity and more likely to have premaritial (or postdivorcal) sex than I was in 1973.

[Insert Uppity Slogan Here.]

I'm sorry, but "postdivorcal" sounds like something you would do with a killer whale that you couldn't ever tell your mother about.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I am religious, but like to keep my politics separate. And even if you think that people have rights as a normative matter, for "natural" or religious reasons, they don't as a positive matter without government.

TY is a member of the religious left. However, they don't like that label so they claim that they keep their religious beliefs out of their political positions. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by notcasesensitive
As an illustration of Atticus' point, I am both more uppity and more likely to have premaritial (or postdivorcal) sex than I was in 1973.

[Insert Uppity Slogan Here.]

I am more uppity, but much, much less likely than I was to have premarital sex than I was in 1973. NTTAWWT. Oh, and I'm a guy.

Turning back to the subject that sgtclub first raised in these here parts, Josh Marshall has an amusing post:

Read this lede from an article in the Times and tell me with a straight face that these guys have any idea what they're doing ...

I mean, it defies ridicule (what will I do?). The tone? How were they supposed ot sugar-coat it?

Please ...

Clearly, we need to come up with a new executive branch foreign policy appointee, someone whose job it would be to coordinate all this stuff, who could make sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing, someone who could ride herd over interagency disputes.

Ideally, that person would work out of the White House.

We could call the new post the National Security Coordinator or maybe the National Security Advisor. Something like that.

Just a thought.

And you wonder why they're bringing Jim Baker into the mix? Forget about Rove's phone records. I want the last month's phone records between Dubya and pops ...

edited to add:

Kevin Drum, on the same subject:

Which theory does this support?

(a) The White House is completely clueless
(b) You reap what you sew
(c) James Baker is going to have a tough time straightening out this crew
(d) All of the above

I think I'll go with (d).

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
The other areas of regulation of the medical profession tend to involve things that huge swaths of people agree are wrong, not areas where people legitimately disagree, but 51% can agree on legislation.

Most abortions aren't done for medical reasons. Most abortions are done for convenience. That makes abortion very different from most medical procedures.

The other obvious difference between abortion and most medical procedures is that another human life is at issue. Abortion for non-medical reasons just isn't like the rest of medicine.

A simple solution to the problem in MN is to change the law to apply only to non-medical abortions (i.e., abortions not done to save the mother's life or birth defects or serious health problems of the mother).