Taro T

Ah, so if a couple that wasn't planning on having a child end up finding one on the way and decide to keep it, they are disallowed from entering into the discussion on the legal status of abortion because they haven't adopted an additional child. And the implication of your 2nd bolded sentence is that it is better to be dead than to be living in an orphanage. Look, you said flat out to begin this discussion that the only people that should be allowed to express an opinion that differs from yours on this matter are those that have adopted a child. The relative merits of the morning after pill have very little to do with the 1st amendment rights of pro-lifers.

Truly they would. 100% of the time. Because no one is ever living close to paycheck to paycheck nor might they ever fear losing their job for a rather spurious reason. The fact that someone cares about babies doesn't necessarily translate into their having the resources to care for them. How would you propose that someone who has fallen on hard times and can't support their current family (regardless of structure) go out and adopt a child simply because they believe that abortion is morally reprehensible?

What do I mean by an "additional child"? I mean one more than they had prior to adopting a child. Is that really that hard to understand? We are in a discussion about unplanned / unwanted children and you are honestly asking how somebody that has a child would have one of their own rather than someone elses? Again, your view is painfully clear that the only people allowed into the discussion if they don't agree with you are the people that have enough money to afford to adopt a child. [Edit] And, to make it explicitly clear for you, even for those people that don't have any children at all because they can't afford to raise a child, an adopted child would be an "additional child".

No, you were clear the 1st time as well. Anyone that can't afford to raise an additional child obtained through adoption does not deserve to have a say in the discussion unless they are pro-abortion. That may not have been your intent, but that is what it amounts to: if you have not adopted a child (for whatever reason) you don't have the right to state that abortion should be illegal. That is crystal clear.

Absolutely.

Nope. One would have to be pretty friggin' pathetic to lie about something this trivial. (Of course, posting here does tend to indicate that there is a higher likelihood of being pretty friggin' pathetic than that of the general population. So I see the source of your distrust, Mr. 88. )

I'd say that those groups are interested in the prevention of unwanted pregnancies, they simply choose a rather naive (and extremely ineffective) method to prevent unwanted pregnancies. There's far too much distrust (and hatred) in the vocal groups of their antithesis for them to actively work together. Heck, there's distrust (probably not the right word, but contempt seems too severe) between those situated towards the middle as well. As an example, while I don't believe that you are at the extreme end of the pro-choice spectrum, though you are on that side of the fence, you explicitly refer to those that oppose abortion as "anti-choice" rather than either "anti-abortion" or "pro-life". Simply opposing abortion isn't opposing "choice" per se, it's opposing one particular choice. And for whatever it's worth, the vocal pro-choice crowd does a very poor job of publicising that they support adoption (if in fact the hardliners do support it). Also, I agree with you that education and contraception are very important tools to reduce unwanted pregnancies. I think we'd also agree that adoption is a much better result of an unwanted pregnancy than is abortion.

You answered 33 out of 33 correctly — 100.00 % Average score for this quiz during December: 74.8% Average score: 74.8%

Ah, yes. You have nothing against those who oppose abortion, you simply don't believe those people should be allowed to express their 1st amendment rights unless they have adopted a child. How very reconstruction South Carolina of you.

Dean, why does being opposed to abortion necessarily imply an opposition to contraception? While I will admit that there are people that oppose both, there are MANY people that are fine w/ contraception but opposed to abortion. I'd actually be extremely surprised if the number of pro-contraception but anti-abortion advocates weren't in the millions in this country alone.

Congrats on the new baby. It's probably the lack of sleep that's making you think this way, but if you're going to be only watching games you know the outcome of, there's a good chance you aren't going to have much interest in watching even the fast forwarded version. Not knowing how it turns out is what makes it entertaining. Even if all you know is that the Bills win, it still ends up a "what's the point of even bothering" excercise. (And this coming from someone who has over 90% of the Bills games since 1990 on tape / dvr (even more if you don't count Greggggggg's 1st season w/ no tapes). It's kind of cool watching them beat the Raiders in '90 (either game), it's not quite the same watching them beat this year's Raiders 20 minutes after the game ends.)

D*mn, you can come up w/ something intentionally funny once in a while.

Purely out of curiosity, primarily because you would have far more access to the studies than I (if they exist), have you seen any where that relationship is analyzed and how the leads and lags of tuition and loan availability relate to each other? PS - I really will read that paper you sent me, unfortunately I probably won't get a chance to read it until I'm on an airplane heading for my mother-in-law's house at Christmas. (3 planes and 14 hours should get me through most of it.)

Fraud, under the current set up, IS inevitable - on all sides. Widespread fraud isn't inevitable. And it ISN'T any less fraudulent or more fraudulent to win by stealing a single state's votes rather than the entire nation's votes. But it is FAR easier to turn the election when you have a particular city or cities in your pocket and you just have to beat the other guy in sum total. There is currently little to no reason for the Republicans to inflate Dallas' totals or for the Democrats to inflate Chicago's. In a national total vote election each side has a HUGE incentive to push it's advantage in those spots. You also have the issue of people with residences in multiple states voting multiple times, which you already have to an extent, but the incentive to do it isn't as great when you live in say NY and Fla when you can only influence those 2 states. There is no reason to waste your time voting a 2nd time in NY when NY is going to go by more than 2MM votes for the Democrat. There is a point to voting twice when casting that NY vote isn't strictly an exercise in poor citizenship. And the sort of fraud that Acorn and others are accused of becomes that much more important when someone voting 40+ times doesn't only effect the results of one state. The rewards of committing fraud are increased under a nationwide popular election. And your argument that a 3rd party candidate could do better by carrying rural voters in a nationwide popular election doesn't make sense. As it currently stands, that 3rd party candidate that is so appealing to voters to somehow compete w/ a candidate that has mass appeal to urban centers would have less chance of winning in that system. If that 3rd party candidate is that popular under the current system, he only needs to appeal to 50+% of the voters in the rural states to take their electoral votes. He'd need to take almost all their votes and a lot in rural areas of other states to offset the urban candidate's advantage in a popular vote election.

How would moving away from the EC possibly give a 3rd party Presidential candidate "a realistic chance to compete" that they don't currently have? The game would still be rigged against them in a straight vote total race.

Not necessarily. I'd expect that it would actually have the opposite effect as fraud in a relatively few high population areas could now turn the overall election rather than turn just the particular state in which the fraud occurs. It also could very likely have the effect described by SiC, where candidates would concentrate their efforts on winning high population density areas and more or less completely ignoring WY, SD, ND, ID, MT, etc., etc..

Please tell me you meant to state that federal income taxes didn't exist when the country was founded.

But if you cap out the potential gains, that isn't fair. It's their God given right as Americans to abuse the system. Other people got out with their profits intact, everyone should be able to do the same. And whether or not the people had any equity invested in the house should be immaterial, it is a HOME for gosh sakes. The good people at Fannie Mae and Countrywide were helping, altruistically of course, people own a portion of the American dream. None who fell victim to this tragic, completely unforeseeable event should ever be prevented from gaming the system again.

Someone in Nunda has (had) $17k? That in itself should be front page headline news. The ironic thing behind all this unequal financing is that McCain is reaping the benefits of McCain-Feingold.

Yeah, what he said.

Why doesn't anybody seem to acknoledge that every $ that government spends today needs to be paid for eventually (aka taxed)? It doesn't really matter whether we pay today or if the rich pay tomorrow (as our friendly neighborhood Fannie May Rep aka Barney Frank proposes), it still is a tax. Of course, Barney seems to have picked up some of the Reagan and Clinton teflon as I am more or less shocked that he faces no repercussions for his role in the current economic upheavals we are going through.

If the Dems have a fillibuster proof majority in the Senate, I hope it's only 2 years. The current SC Justices could stick around that long to get a Conservative-leaning Senate back in place. And if Pelosi and her 9% approval rating have their way, we may actually see true conservatives coming back in 2 years in both houses. I'm still not certain why people don't seem to understand that every dollar that gets spent is a tax. Whether we pay for it today or in the future, it still needs to be paid for via taxes.

Paulene Kael - New Yorker film critic. The veracity of what exactly she stated it is in doubt, but she is the one that appears to get credited for it when others talk about the quote.

I think claiming natural gas is NOT a fossil fuel and opposing drilling but supporting increased natural gas production is, while not technically "nuts"; painfully ignorant. MTP August 24, 2009: And for the record, I am not defending Palin, I am criticizing Pelosi.