chucK

You rail about people who want to make someone else pay for it. And that person is you! Sheesh. You don't want to pay money into social security. Look, if you do think it's OK to let the less fortunate die on the streets, you could say so. That would at least make your sentences consistent.

You say it is our moral responsibility to care for our elderly, yet you call for removal of the system that does exactly this thing? How do you reconcile this? I'm not sure why you want to abolish social security, but I suspect it has to do with you not wishing to subsidize others. If this is the case, then where is the moral responibility there? Any statements of "local charities" or "let families care for their own" are just dodges of not wanting to care for what you consider someone else's burden. Where is the moral responsibility there?

You can rationalize all you want about what would be nice to have, but you know there are going to be people who will die from lack of a safety net. This is why I think the SS privatization idea that Bush wants to do is a bad idea. By letting people invest their SS in the stock market there will be losers. Some winners, some no diff, some losers. That's guaranteed. Those who lose are SOL if they don't have some other safety net. SS should be a safety net guaranteed so our society doesn't have to bail out those who gambled with their retirement and lost.

Did she light him up like a christmas tree?

Well, it makes sense to me. Some rules can be situational, or have a situational purpose. The Republicans probably enacted this rule in order to attempt to gain some political high ground at a time when their party was mired in a scandal (AND losing). Now that they are heady with victory, and perhaps becoming a bit overconfident, they are removing a voluntary restriction on their liberties that they no longer feel is necessary. The fact that the rule change was catalyzed by DeLay's troubles is no biggie either. They had no reason to remove their selling point until it got in their way. I'm glad that the press is making it known that the GOP no longer holds itself to this ethical level, but it's not like it's a scandal. The only people that really should be pissed are the GOP at DeLay, for making it necessary for them to remove something that helped sell the GOP to voters.

Since you object to us using the word "execution" how about you rephrase your sentence to, "I would have shot a wounded guy lying on the ground too." (BTW, I probably would have too.)

Kas, The market works because it weeds out slackers by letting them die. If you want to let market forces work for social security, for example, you are going to have to accept watching a good percentage of our elderly population to die early due to starvation and exposure. Many people will not save enough for retirement. No amounts of threats or advertising are going to change that. Plus, many people who are carefully saving for retirement will lose their shirts in the stock market (think former Enron employees) and be out on the street. Are you willing to condemn a good percentage of our elderly population to an early death? I hope you're not saying that they can go on welfare instead!

Hey Norman Clyde, You're a doctor. How do you feel about socialized medicine? I think this is one area where a government takeover would help. There is currently huge waste in terms of how the providers, consumers, insurers and the government interact. Not that the govt. doing all this stuff on it's own would do it perfectly, but I think they couldn't screw it up more and would end up providing much better care to the poor and the middle class. One downside I see is that once the state is paying for healthcare, there is an incentive to legislate risk-taking behaviors.

I've never seen moveon.org use something as base as a soldier killing another unarmed soldier as humour either.

This quote from the NY Times article should get a chuckle from both sides of the aisle. "It could also prompt the Bush administration to make good on its threats to haul Iran before the Security Council."

Wow! Comparing an execution with spitting on the sidewalk. You guys are intense.

They hate freedom, that's all the justification we need.

Speaking of changing rules that put limits on politicians

Big Night in Bithlo

I think you guys have a good point about intent. I'm in agreement that the terrorists kidnapping civilians are evil. I have never attempted to justify their acts. I think those of you who may think I am justifying the kidnapping and killing of innocents by alleging wrongs by the US side are reading something into my words that I have not stated nor intended to imply. Now, while we're speaking of intent, what do you call ingniting a conflagration (on false pretenses [debatable]) where you know with certainty that many innocents will die. Some of you may still be calling this self defense. I'm thinking it's more analogous to depraved indifference. If you're willing to concede that the igniters went ahead with a very small safety margin and this caused the fire to be much worse, then you get at least negligent manslaughter right? So in this Iraq War we got a number of instances of murder one by the terrorists (10 - 100, 500 maybe?), death seems a fitting punishment. Then you got probably 10,000 counts of death through depraved indifference, 40,0000 counts of negligent manslaughter. What should be the punishment for that? Taking away the matches maybe? At least?

I guess this is what this thread has evolved\boiled down to. I agree completely with Kasky's statement here. Human life has become very cheap in Iraq. It's a great tragedy.

They are certainly 'less innocent' if they had guns and were firing at our troops. There is no moral equivalency here. I was talking here about civilians rounded up and sent to Abu Ghraib, not the guy who got executed in Fallujah on Saturday. There are tens of thousands of Iraqis, woman and children, dead by our weaponry, who never raised a gun and fired at our troops. I think it's these people that we're comparing to the CARE-woman victim.

Both events are horrible. I'm a little taken back by your implication that the people the US has put in prison are somehow less innocent than the British/Iraqi woman. Didn't you read the reports that 70% of the imprisoned were believed to be innocent by the US? Their side is doing horrible things. Our side is doing horrible things. That's what happens in a war. The main war criminal here is Bush who pushed us into this war. He started it, and he compounded the damage by being stupid about it.

Regardless of what really went down, when it becomes known to the insurgents that surrendering may just get them tortured and/or killed, fighting to the death is going to be a much more likely option. That has a good chance of making it much harder for the average coalition soldier involved in a firefight. It seems quite possible that what the US soldier did was justified. But if it wasn't, then worrying about whether the dead Iraqi guy deserved it or not, is not the only problem caused by that act. In the end it will likely end up producing more US casualties. Those kids are going through hell over there right now, and I'll be the last to place blame on any of them. It's merely another unavoidable horror of war. I'm just trying to make the point that that act did not help our side, no matter how much you hate terrorists and think they deserve to die.

I thought it was called "Wing Lake".

You left out the best part. The survey also asked some (other?) people what was their #1 issue in an open ended way (that is, didn't give them choices to choose from) and moral issues did worse than Iraq and terrorism.

I got Jesus Lizard, Boss Hog and Helmet, Surgery, and Tar Peels Sessions. Those Peels Sessions are almost always good

So how does p1 of Sunblessed (the current version) compare to Merci Me?

with the addition of having some portion of any surplus go to paying off national debt.

That's lovely how this is no longer Bush's or Saddam's fault, but now it's those damn Brit's. Similarities: 4) war kicked off via false pretenses Differences: 1) no forced conscription of US victims yet. 2) domestic opposition to current quagmire seems fully focused on US administration, rather than the troops; i.e., no protesters crying "baby killers!" yet. 3) have not yet launched invasions into neighboring nations harboring insurgents (unless you count Iraq as the neighboring nation harboring the insurgents fleeing from Afghanistan).