Politics: Onward from New Hampshire

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Just so we are clear, if I made a statement like that you would chide me for so easily believing.

Que? There's a full account of this at the beginning of the Suskind book. If it wasn't true, one would expect that someone at Treasury would have said so.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I don't know anything about the Massachusetts constitution, but I can think of a whole bunch of arguments that would pass the (flacid) rational-basis test. E.g., polygamy is expensive because multiple wives tend not to work, and instead collect unemployment benefits.

That isn't a rational basis argument that would work. If that argument would work, then the argument that you should be able to ban severely disabled people from marrying because they tend not to work and instead collect unemployment benefits would work. But it doesn't.

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Why do you keep ducking my question about polygamous civil unions, gay or otherwise?

I wasn't ducking it. I can only type so fast and answer so many questions at a time. Others were higher priority than yours.

What is it you want to know? Should we allow those? No. I don't think we should have gay civil unions, either. But we weren't talking about that. We were talking about gay marriage. And I said - why do you need gay marriage if you already can have a civil union? The only difference that I can see between a gay civil union and a gay marriage is government and employer based benefits. However, that doesn't mean that I am for gay civil unions.

Why do gay people need the state to authorize civil unions? They can do by contract anything that they get from a civil union. Medical power of attorney, wills, property rights, etc. What is the purpose of having the state sanction it? What do they get from a civil union that they cannot get by private contract with each other. Answer me that.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
[Q]ZAPOPAN, Mexico - The Mexican crowd hooted "The Star-Spangled Banner." It booed U.S. goals. It chanted "Osama! Osama! Osama!" as U.S. players left the field with a 2-0 victory.

And that was in a game against Canada on Thursday before just 1,500 people.[/Q]


http://www.azcentral.com/sports/azet...ussoccer.html#

Maybe it's what we get for leaning on Mexico to support the Iraq war. According to this AP story, Mexico was "one of the most outspoken supporters [on the Security Council] of continued weapons inspections instead of war." It then changed its position under heavy pressure from us.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Watchtower
Please feel free to read the remainder of my post.

I did, but you see, you started with this faulty premise that the benefits flowed from a union of two people. Rewrite what you have to say without the faulty premise that merely defining the union as between two people is good enough to exclude the polygamists and I will discuss it with you.

Otherwise, get back to praying for my soul.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Just so we are clear, if I made a statement like that you would chide me for so easily believing.

Which is the more plausible scenario --- that (1) O'Neill got the documents in a bureaucratic snafu by simply asking for them, because nobody at Treasury really cared about these docs until after the Bush Administration got (ever so slightly) embarrassed by them; or (2) a former cabinet official snuck off with thousands of pages of Top Secret documents, then published their contents in a book and showed them on national TV, hoping that he would never get prosecuted for violating Top Secret confidentiality because the Administration, um, doesn't read tell-all books by disgraced cabinet officials or watch TV?*

When you hear the thunder of hooves, think "horses," not "zebras."

*Help me out here. You're a Republican; you tell me what you think he was thinking. Mebbe that Bush would choke on a pretzel with shock, and the whole thing would blow over?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
That isn't a rational basis argument that would work. If that argument would work, then the argument that you should be able to ban severely disabled people from marrying because they tend not to work and instead collect unemployment benefits would work. But it doesn't.

You may disagree with it, but it's the sort of crap that courts accept under the rubric of rational-basis review. And it's unclear to me that severely-disabled people are less likely to work when they're married. But whatever.

I wasn't ducking it. I can only type so fast and answer so many questions at a time. Others were higher priority than yours.

What is it you want to know? Should we allow those? No. I don't think we should have gay civil unions, either.

I take it that you think that states that permit gay civil unions must also permit polygamous civil unions. Odd that the polygamists are not pressing their advantage in those states.

Why do gay people need the state to authorize civil unions? They can do by contract anything that they get from a civil union. Medical power of attorney, wills, property rights, etc. What is the purpose of having the state sanction it? What do they get from a civil union that they cannot get by private contract with each other. Answer me that.

There are a whole bunch of societally-conferred benefits that have nothing to do with the couple's rights inter se. If your partner is in the hospital, unconscious, and you want to see her, they will let you in if you are a spouse, but not otherwise.

So that's concrete. But then the bigger idea here is that the only reason to prevent gays from marrying is to keep them in a second-class status. It's not like the marriage hurts anyone else. Not permitting marriage carries a stigma, like what blacks experienced after Plessy.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Que? There's a full account of this at the beginning of the Suskind book. If it wasn't true, one would expect that someone at Treasury would have said so.

I don't doubt that or that it's true. I'm just pointing out that you are very quick to rely on the Suskin book for many matters. If others were doing the same you would chide them.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I don't doubt that or that it's true. I'm just pointing out that you are very quick to rely on the Suskin book for many matters. If others were doing the same you would chide them.

You seem to think that if A says X, and you believe it, then if B says Y, you must also believe it. If so, that's too stupid for words. So perhaps you are making a more nuanced point that is eluding me.

Meanwhile, you have suggested in the last day that the New York Times was lying when it attributed a position to the Administration in a front-page story, and that Suskind was lying when he explained that the Treasury Department sent O'Neill documents after he left office. Both of these are fairly factual statements in contexts where it is implausible that the author would lie because it would be too easy for someone else to bust them on it. If the New York Times gets caught making shit up and putting it on the front page as the Administration's position, it's in trouble. See, e.g., Jason Whateverhisnameis. It's too easy for the White House to say, we never said that. If Suskind makes that shit up, the Treasury Dept. is all over him like ugly on an ape. In both situations, it is simply implausible to me that the authors are lying, without some other reason to believe otherwise. I'm willing to listen, but you're not saying anything.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
So do most states. And yet that is a legislative choice, not a feature of the natural world.

I think it is derived from the natural world in that the institution of marriage was created by society to promote breeding. For some reason, the USSC seems to think that this is fundamental to our survival as a species. The way I know this is because the USSC said it in Loving vs. VA:

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. (Skinner v. Oklahoma) ...

I don't think that two men marrying each other is fundamental to our very existence and survival. The reason that marriage is thought to be fundamental to our very existence and survival is because of the breeding that usually, but not always, ensues.

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
The doctrine of "natural rights" seems to me to be a high-falluting way of saying, this is the way we've always done it and we're not willing to listen to the idea that we should do it any differently at any point in the future, so we're going to put the whole question of limits by saying it's a fact of nature. In many law schools, basing an argument on natural rights will win you smirks and derision.

As another once said, John Locke was considered the ideological progenitor of the American Revolution and who, by far, was the most often non-biblical writer quoted by the Founding Fathers.

Idiots at law schools may smirk or deride his theories, but the founding fathers didn't.

Where do you think they got the concept of inalienable rights? If you had read Locke, you would know.

The substantive due process fundamental rights are based on our inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This all is derivative from John Locke's natural rights philosophies.

Am I the only person who studied political and legal philosophers and understands which ones influenced our founding fathers? I sure do feel like it around here.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
In both situations, it is simply implausible to me that the authors are lying, without some other reason to believe otherwise. I'm willing to listen, but you're not saying anything.

1. Point out partiality of opponent's source.
2. ???
3. Victory!

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
You seem to think that if A says X, and you believe it, then if B says Y, you must also believe it. If so, that's too stupid for words. So perhaps you are making a more nuanced point that is eluding me.

Meanwhile, you have suggested in the last day that the New York Times was lying when it attributed a position to the Administration in a front-page story, and that Suskind was lying when he explained that the Treasury Department sent O'Neill documents after he left office. Both of these are fairly factual statements in contexts where it is implausible that the author would lie because it would be too easy for someone else to bust them on it. If the New York Times gets caught making shit up and putting it on the front page as the Administration's position, it's in trouble. See, e.g., Jason Whateverhisnameis. It's too easy for the White House to say, we never said that. If Suskind makes that shit up, the Treasury Dept. is all over him like ugly on an ape. In both situations, it is simply implausible to me that the authors are lying, without some other reason to believe otherwise. I'm willing to listen, but you're not saying anything.

I must not have been clear. I do not doubt that O'neill is clean in this particular case. I am just pointing out that when I and other have taken a position and relied on a particular article or statement that supports it, you essential call us gullible idiots for taking everything at face value. Yet you have consistently cited Suskin's book to support a number of propositions (e.g., they were planning to invade Iraq from the start).*

As to the NYT, I think you have to be entirely gullible not to question its "facts" based on what has come out recently, and not just with Blair.

*This too, by the way, is a factual proposition.

[Skeks in the city]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield

[L]etting [Bush blame his inaccuracies regarding WMD on the CIA] without grilling his lying ass is negligent on the part of the Dems.

Given how badly the Dems failed at questioning Bush regarding his claims of WMD pre-war, it won't be surprising if they are equally incompetent "post-war".

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
You may disagree with it, but it's the sort of crap that courts accept under the rubric of rational-basis review. And it's unclear to me that severely-disabled people are less likely to work when they're married. But whatever.

But yet it is clear to you that polygamists are less likely to work when they are married. But whatever.

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I take it that you think that states that permit gay civil unions must also permit polygamous civil unions. Odd that the polygamists are not pressing their advantage in those states.

No. I said I am against civil unions of all types.

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
There are a whole bunch of societally-conferred benefits that have nothing to do with the couple's rights inter se. If your partner is in the hospital, unconscious, and you want to see her, they will let you in if you are a spouse, but not otherwise.

Wrong. Gays can give each other medical power of attorney. Then you get to visit the person if they are unconscious since you are the one legally authorized to make the medical decisions for the person. They can do everything by private contract that a civil union gives them.

Got any other examples?

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
But then the bigger idea here is that the only reason to prevent gays from marrying is to keep them in a second-class status.

No. It is to not morph a social institution that since the beginning of human civiliation was a union between one woman and one man created to promote breeding to further the survival of the species into something else so that gays can get government and employer benefits for their partners.

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
It's not like the marriage hurts anyone else.

How is that different from consensual polygamy between adults?

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Not permitting marriage carries a stigma, like what blacks experienced after Plessy.

The 2nd and 3rd wives of the polygamists think that is true of their status, too. They are stigmatized as not being seen by society as a true wife to the man they feel is their husband. Moreover, the polygamists say you are infringing their rights to practice their religion by prohibiting them from engaging in polygamy.

As Brigham Young taught, polygamy is required to attain godhood. Those fundamentalist mormons who don't share the mainstream LDS beliefs feel that god has commanded them to engage in polygamy in this life* and that if they are prevented from doing so, they cannot engage in eternal progression and achieve godhood (which is the equivalent of being reincarnated as a cow if you are a hindu, but I digress).

In their minds, preventing them from engaging in plural marriage is far worse then stigmatizing them; you are preventing them from achieving the penultimate in spiritual salvation.

* BTW - the official LDS church only amended their teachings that plural marriage is prohibited in this life to get statehood for Utah. Plural marriage is not erased from mainstream LDS theology; it is just reserved for the after life.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Courts do not want to say, you are bad. Or, you were mean. They want to say, you did what you did in good faith. You meant well, but you may not do that because the law says so. The old, old law, not the law you just wrote. There are some times when they will say, you are bad, or, you are mean, but those times are rare. The courts do not want to climb in the head of the folks who write the laws, as it is a mess in there.

confidential to Ty: I'm not a stupid, I just play act as one sometimes

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I don't know anything about the Massachusetts constitution, but I can think of a whole bunch of arguments that would pass the (flacid) rational-basis test. E.g., polygamy is expensive because multiple wives tend not to work, and instead collect unemployment benefits.

Why do you keep ducking my question about polygamous civil unions, gay or otherwise?

ducking questions? if Kerry is a Mass. senator, why has he never drowned a woman or been accused of rape? i submit he is HOMO.