tvashtarkatena

Lust happens. so does anger...but murder is illegal And anger is not. If anger = murder, then my wife would have killed me a long time ago.

You should really speak to your parents about that. I wouldn't want to presume.

Lust happens.

Fuck if I know. I didn't design the species, I'm just one of them. The Supreme Court came up with a first trimester compromise. This seems to have worked well to consider the rights of all involved. There is only a religious answer to your question. There is no scientific one. Semantically, a fetus is a fetus until it's born. Then it's a baby.

You're right. We do agree. I doan read so good.

I believe in sensual sex without a con.

What is 'sacred' is a matter of religiosity, not public policy. First of all, aborting a fetus is not killing a baby. A fetus is an embyonic, or potential human, at the early stages not much different from the sperm and egg that produce it. We kill those all the time and no one says boo about it. For some reason, for some people (probably due to religion, in most cases) the moment the sperm successfully pierces the egg everything changes. Four dividing cells and the mother can't say 'hey, that was an accident, I don't to be a parent'? I don't buy it. Aborting a fetus is not the same as killing a baby, which has a life independent of the mother. Not allowing the termination of a pregnancy, however, is essentially forced parenthood. That is a human rights issue if there ever was one, particularly in an overpopulated world.

I should have known that the minute I mentioned the 'u' word that fucking buick plesiosaur thing would appear.

This is an oversimplification; there are not only two outcomes because there are 1) paradoxes and 2) more than one criteria to consider on complex issues. A person's opinion on 2 issues can be conflicted when measured in a certain narrow way, but consistent in other ways. In our example of abortion verses designer children: I support a women's right to choose, but would be against a parent choosing sexual orientation for their child. Previous arguments would claim that this is inconsistent...using one measure. But, in my view, the right of the mother (to have or not have children) outweighs the rights of the fetus (to be born or not). I hold this view for many reasons. Society does not benefit from encouraging or forcing people who do not want to be parents to be parents. So too, the environment, which is already under serious population pressure. Once the mother DOES want the child, however, then the rights of that child (to be gay, in this case) outweigh the rights of the mother to 'design' her baby. I believe this in large part because there is absolutely nothing wrong with being gay, so in this case I'd say let the mother adjust to the child, not the other way around. As for capital punishment, I'm against, because that is in society's best interest, particularly for the wrongly convicted. I also consider it barbaric. Both far Right and far Left love to cook issues down to single criteria for propoganda purposes, but in reality, life is not so simple.

That unicorn is definitely gay.

All problems in nature are self correcting by definition. The problem is that, at our current population, without any growth, we will transform the earth into a climatic wasteland unless we depopulate, radically change our energy usage, or both.

Those of us who speak unicorn can hear what the rainbow is telling us.

Oh, I think they've got their hands full with a few other things right now.

The UN did a recent study on world population growth rates. Try googling that.

As if on schedule: New Jersey commission to recommend ending the death penalty

US population growth rate is .9%, so we are definitely getting more crowded. About a third of that is immigration. The worlds population growth rate is 1.14%. At that rate, we increase population by a billion people every decade. Given unlimited resources, the world's population will level off naturally at a stable 10 or so billion people. Given our current climate issues, it's pretty clear that the earth is overpopulated right now, and that a goal of real population decline would be a really good idea.

Now if only they could discover a way for children to choose their parents...

Perhaps this team will discover the 'evangelical' gene, as well.

I don't think the current war in Iraq is just for oil, either, although that certainly plays a part (no surprise, we've had the same militarized Middle Eastern policy in various forms since Nixon and the Shah). I think some of the Bush crowd, particularly the 'thought leaders' like Wolfie, actually believed the whole wave of democracy thing would stabilize the region. Guys like Wolfie, the primary architect of both Gulf war I and II, are academic idealists. Classical activist liberals, really. They couldn't give a rip about oil; they don't have their fingers in the pie like Cheney et al. They provide the foresight (not exactly 20/20), ideas, and long term planning and leave the actual execution to asset stripping politcos like Bush and Cheney, who continually have their industrial pals' cocks in their mouths. Never underestimate the power of the Big Idea. Going after somebody else's oil isn't sexy. Countering threats, particularly in the form of a big, bad, blowhard dictator like Saddam, is sexy. Bringing democracy to the oppressed Middle East and ending the cycle of violence there is very sexy. Who wouldn't want their name in the history books for pulling that off? And sure enough, that's the progression of justifications, delivered in that order (minus the 'let's get some oil' part) to the American public by this administration. Big Ideas always cost a lot of other people's money, which is usually spent rapidly in an environment of total chaos, because Big Ideas are more often than not Big Stupid Fucking Ideas that create a mess. It's the Enron strategy. Once the money starts flying around, and boy does it fly when there's a war on, the Enronites of the world are well practiced at holding up their great big catchers mits to grab all they can. In summary, I don't think it's as simple as 'we're going for the oil', or 'war makes money for your pals'. That shorts the power of the Big Idea driving these kinds of fiascos, which, in my opinion, is always present and earnestly believed by much of the country and some of its leaders.

I'm arguing for non-violence in another thread, but I'd gladly make an exception if it meant successfully killing this one.

The 'threat of violence' so often used to describe America, particularly 21st century America, is largely manufactured hooey. Sure, some bad guys want to blow a few things up here. That justifies a 500 billion dollar a year military? Come fucking on. The US is under no threat of invasion or strategic missile attack right now. No, we spend 500 billion a year because we believe the hype, and that includes 'projecting power' (which, in recent conflicts, has nearly always resulted in fucking up a region for decades). If we were really interested in countering threats, we'd be diverting most of that military budget towards resolving our little climate change problem.

Had Saddam invaded the US and won, you can bet that it would be Bush hanging from that rope right now. He's guilty of inflicting more than enough human misery to justify serious punishment. Bush hasn't paid for his crimes because he is still secure in his position, not because he's innocent.

Please list all the countries and their leaders, since 1900, that were not involved in genocide, purges, or warfare. My next door neighbor cut down a beautiful doug fir that I really loved, so I hacked her up with an axe. No choice. After all, we're a violent species. Oh, and BTW, from a practical standpoint, executions in the USA work out to be three times more expensive to carry out than a life sentence. The European aforementioned experience, which was completely relevant (Archenemy must have gotten her threads mixed up there), proves that the death penalty is not any more of a deterrent than other punishments. DNA testing has shown that about 5% of the folks on death row are innocent. The death penalty has got to go. It offers society no advantages, and offers wrongly convicted death row inmates great disadvantage.

I thought David Duke had pulled a Strom Thurmond.

I couldn't disagree more. With this shoe, movement of the world's dipshits could be tracked by satellite 24/7.