The Democrat Thread

[StrangeSox]

A couple days late, but zero Republicans accepted the invitation to speak at the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Equality.

 

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/319239-b...ton-anniversary

[Jenksismyhero]

Republicans hate black people and freedom! Rabble, rabble!

[Reddy]

Republicans hate black people and freedom! Rabble, rabble!

but mostly just black people

[Balta1701]

Justice Ginsberg will officiate at a gay wedding this weekend.

 

One of the participants is named...John Roberts.

[farmteam]

Justice Ginsberg will officiate at a gay wedding this weekend.

 

One of the participants is named...John Roberts.

Tee hee, that's funny.

[pettie4sox]

A couple days late, but zero Republicans accepted the invitation to speak at the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Equality.

 

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/319239-b...ton-anniversary

 

That would have been a good opportunity for republicans to get in a better light.

[Balta1701]

(Alert citing a blog post): a couple reads about what a clusterf*** the Libyan war was and what a mess the country is today.

[Cknolls]

A couple days late, but zero Republicans accepted the invitation to speak at the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Equality.

 

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/319239-b...ton-anniversary

 

 

Does that include Sen Scott?

[GoSox05]

Does that include Sen Scott?

 

He was invited and turned it down.

[DukeNukeEm]

A couple days late, but zero Republicans accepted the invitation to speak at the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Equality.

 

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/319239-b...ton-anniversary

"I'd like to know why well-educated idiots keep apologizing for lazy and complaining people who think the word owes them something. "

[Reddy]

"I'd like to know why well-educated idiots keep apologizing for lazy and complaining people who think the word owes them something. "

 

is this even legal? hate speech? lol

[DukeNukeEm]

is this even legal? hate speech? lol

Yes its legal.

 

At this point I'm familiar enough with liberal horses*** to know "jobs" means "excuses why I don't have one" and equality means "more free s*** please." So I wouldn't expected anyone with any dignity to show up for the Rally for Handouts and Laziness.

[Balta1701]

Largest peer-reviewed study to date, surveying over 30 years of data nationwide, controlling for well over a dozen different variables, finds that gun use is a significant predicting variable for higher homicide rates, for every additional percent of the population that owns guns, the homicide rate increases by 0.9%. Fewer guns = fewer homicides.

 

And since I always get asked, that is "Criminal homicides", so the additional deaths are not due to heroic self defense.

[DukeNukeEm]

Balta, for your sake I'm going to quickly update you on where the gun debate is now.

 

There's little serious doubt that banning guns would put a massive dent in homicides. The issue is whether we can even successfully legislate away all of our problems by banning stuff, and that even if we could would we really want to live in such a sterilized, controlled society. Or we could just accept that because we are allowed to do or own certain things we have to assume the risks of bad things happening because those rights.

 

So no amount of university studies or statistics really affects the argument at all.

 

 

[Jake]

I can't recommend the book I've been reading enough - What Money Can't Buy by Michael Sandel.

 

Talks about the rise in economic, free-market thinking and the effects that our whole-hearted embrace of that type of thought has done and could do. Not so much a polemic "this is always bad under all circumstances" type of read but rather a call for more complete consideration.

 

Basically, in the interest of personal liberty and free markets, we have allowed the market to become part of activities that we wouldn't normally think of as economic - standing in line, hunting endangered species, free tickets to Shakespeare in NYC, for example. We can trace this to a expansion of economic theory, the idea that we do cost-benefit analyses in all aspects of our lives rather than just when buying and selling goods. Now, rather than these implicit costs and benefits (is it worth standing in this line?), we have taken to making these actual costs and benefits (I can pay a homeless person 10 bucks an hour to stay in line).

 

Economists, who do think about these things and see them as efficient allocations of these things, claim to operate in a non-moral sphere. You'll hardly find a leading economist that says their studies involve morality. This book says that if we are to bring this free-market thinking into spheres that have previously been non-economic, then we need to also keep the moral considerations that previously governed them.

 

Another example is one that we debate more often in the mainstream - cap and trade. Economists love this but there is a part of it that economists don't like to debate: the moral implications of buying and selling the right to pollute. Does creating a market for pollution harm the sense of shared sacrifice and collective action that may be necessary to make environmental policies possible?

 

EDIT: another interesting (to me) implication of this argument is that it is fairly non-partisan. On one hand, we can thank progressives for this kind of thinking; we wanted religion out of government and this was the primary source of moral deliberation. We progressives like things that are measurable, like science and economics. Then, of course, conservatives have generally been full-throated backers of free markets.

 

If progressives like myself want to bring moral thinking into governance, we should be less eager to put down our religious friends across the aisle. While the separation of church and state is a good thing, the state can't get away from making decisions that reflect a common sense of morality. We have to accept that religion shapes moral thinking and work with that in our policy. If we ask the religious right not to bring their religion with them to Washington while we use moral appeals against the other thing they like (completely free markets), I think we ask too much. Drop your religion and drop your free markets!

Edited September 15, 2013 by Jake

[Reddy]

Yes its legal.

 

At this point I'm familiar enough with liberal horses*** to know "jobs" means "excuses why I don't have one" and equality means "more free s*** please." So I wouldn't expected anyone with any dignity to show up for the Rally for Handouts and Laziness.

 

you do realize, of course, that most liberals are not, themselves, poor?

[cabiness42]

Largest peer-reviewed study to date, surveying over 30 years of data nationwide, controlling for well over a dozen different variables, finds that gun use is a significant predicting variable for higher homicide rates, for every additional percent of the population that owns guns, the homicide rate increases by 0.9%. Fewer guns = fewer homicides.

 

And since I always get asked, that is "Criminal homicides", so the additional deaths are not due to heroic self defense.

 

OK, fewer guns = fewer homicides, but does more gun laws = fewer guns?

[Balta1701]

OK, fewer guns = fewer homicides, but does more gun laws = fewer guns?

Well, over the past 15 years we've seen fewer gun laws and more guns.

[southsider2k5]

OK, fewer guns = fewer homicides, but does more gun laws = fewer guns?

 

Fewer speech freedoms = fewer terror attacks

 

 

[Balta1701]

Fewer speech freedoms = fewer terror attacks

Shouting fire in a crowded room = putting everyone around at risk = carrying a gun in a crowded room.

[DukeNukeEm]

Shouting fire in a crowded room = putting everyone around at risk = carrying a gun in a crowded room.

I don't think he was referring to that particular limitation of the first amendment, it was more along the lines of if you lock people up for saying hateful things about the government then you're going to have less people who hate the government out in society and fewer terror attacks.

 

Lives saved? Sure. But at what cost? At what point do we realize that in the process of stupid-proofing our country by banning everything risky we've essentially sentenced all those lives saved (and those would were going to live anyways) to meaningless existence where deviating from a politically correct liberal norm is bound to break some kind of law.

 

Don't even start to call this paranoia or me alluding to some grand conspiracy, because I'm not. There are too many laws in this country and entirely too many people who somehow think we need more. We've long since made all the necessary laws to protect the right to property, liberty and life; now were in this habit of confusing causation and correlation where we ban things that in and of themselves are harmless but when abused can lead to someone committing an act we already have a law against. We're basically on this legislative hunt to eradicate every trace of suffering in this country, something we'll never be successful at, and have willingly signed away freedom after freedom in that pursuit.

 

[Y2HH]

I don't think he was referring to that particular limitation of the first amendment, it was more along the lines of if you lock people up for saying hateful things about the government then you're going to have less people who hate the government out in society and fewer terror attacks.

 

Lives saved? Sure. But at what cost? At what point do we realize that in the process of stupid-proofing our country by banning everything risky we've essentially sentenced all those lives saved (and those would were going to live anyways) to meaningless existence where deviating from a politically correct liberal norm is bound to break some kind of law.

 

Don't even start to call this paranoia or me alluding to some grand conspiracy, because I'm not. There are too many laws in this country and entirely too many people who somehow think we need more. We've long since made all the necessary laws to protect the right to property, liberty and life; now were in this habit of confusing causation and correlation where we ban things that in and of themselves are harmless but when abused can lead to someone committing an act we already have a law against. We're basically on this legislative hunt to eradicate every trace of suffering in this country, something we'll never be successful at, and have willingly signed away freedom after freedom in that pursuit.

 

He knew exactly what he meant without you needing to explain it to him.

[Balta1701]

I don't think he was referring to that particular limitation of the first amendment, it was more along the lines of if you lock people up for saying hateful things about the government then you're going to have less people who hate the government out in society and fewer terror attacks.

 

Lives saved? Sure. But at what cost? At what point do we realize that in the process of stupid-proofing our country by banning everything risky we've essentially sentenced all those lives saved (and those would were going to live anyways) to meaningless existence where deviating from a politically correct liberal norm is bound to break some kind of law.

 

Don't even start to call this paranoia or me alluding to some grand conspiracy, because I'm not. There are too many laws in this country and entirely too many people who somehow think we need more. We've long since made all the necessary laws to protect the right to property, liberty and life; now were in this habit of confusing causation and correlation where we ban things that in and of themselves are harmless but when abused can lead to someone committing an act we already have a law against. We're basically on this legislative hunt to eradicate every trace of suffering in this country, something we'll never be successful at, and have willingly signed away freedom after freedom in that pursuit.

Because quite simply, not every law leads to a slippery slope towards pure evil.

 

Society as a whole has the right to make the decision on where to draw that line. Places with far fewer guns than us seem to still have quite meaningful existences as far as any reasonable standard.

 

And frankly, yes, I think we do the "freedom of speech" thing better than just about any place in the world and I'll give us props on that. But we do the "idiots stocking up on assault rifles" worse than countries in the middle of civil wars.

[Balta1701]

Here's a headline I never thought I'd read. Bill Daley drops bid for Illinois Governor.

[southsider2k5]

Here's a headline I never thought I'd read. Bill Daley drops bid for Illinois Governor.

 

No Madigan, no Daley. Color me shocked as well.