A.M. Links: Trump's Abortion Comments Enrage, Clinton Moves Goal Posts, DC Metro Nightmare

• Everyone (including pro-lifers) hated Donald Trump's comments about
  

  

  Wikipedia

  abortion yesterday.

• Meanwhile, a group of female journalists called for Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to be fired.
• DC commuters brace for nightmarish months ahead with certain rail lines expected to be closed for six months. 
• An Arizona man reportedly sobbed and begged for his life while on all fours before being shot to death by a police officer last January.
• Hillary Clinton thought she'd have the Democratic nomination wrapped up by now, so she's once again moved the goal posts for victory.

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Comments

[Bee Tagger]

so she's once again moved the goal posts for victory.

Next to the server in the basement?

[UnCivilServant]

The server's not in the basement, it's in the bathroom closet.

[Slammer]

He's talking about the second super-secret server

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Hello.

"Meanwhile, a group of female journalists called for Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to be fired."

This thing of telling people or businesses to fire people is getting tiresome. I bet you real assholes who should be fired from their own jobs take part in protests demanding the termination of someone.

[LynchPin1477]

I for one am calling for Rufus's immediate termination. Who's with me?

[Citizen X]

Unfortunately, we can't fire him because he's Canadian. Affirmative Action at work, homes.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

I'M THE BEST CANADIAN THING THAT'S EVER HAPPEN TO THIS PLACE.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Man, I mangled that. 'to ever happen'.

How many typos are we allowed again?

[Hamster of Doom]

Depends on how amusing they are. John can make as many as he likes.

[gaoxiaen]

We don't care. We just assume that you're illiterate or drunk.

[DenverJ]

WHICH IS KINDA LIKE SAYING THAT THIS IS THE BEST BEE STING I'VE EVER HAD!

[Juvenile Bluster]

No you're not. You're a terrible Canadian. You don't even translate everything you post into French! Isn't that the law up there?

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Not yet. You laugh, but I'm concerned they start going after companies like ebay and Amazon.

Linguistic nationalists are good to do stupid things like that.

Now they're going full anti-immigration against a measure to increase it by 10 000.

Then they turn around and make fun of Trump.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

D'oh!

[Raven Nation]

No Canadian teams in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Will there be a national day of prayer and mourning?

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Meh.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

"Canada may stake claim to the invention of hockey as we know it, but teams from this country clearly didn't bring their Eh-game in 2015-16."

Racist

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Stupid too. The league remains predominantly Canadian-born.

But at least we still have Mr Canoehead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9SY2tcfDDM

[KDN]

Less so every year. The Devils, for one, have been pretty light on Canadians for over a decade. Also light on wins, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

It has been dwindling ever so slowly indeed.

And Lou, in the past, always gave chance to American born players. I think they're just continuing that so to me, yes, a coincidence.

The bedrock of their dynasty were (Canadian) players like Stevens, Niedermayer, Brodeur, Daneyko and of course, Elias who is Czech.

[KDN]

Their scouting department has long shown a preference for NCAA players (who tend to be disproportionately American) over CHL and Euro prospects, which makes sense considering Lou's background. I'm not familiar enough with the Pens' draft history to guess if that will hold under Shero, but it's actually a smart strategy since you tend to get an extra 3-4 years of control without having to sign the player.

Their best players were a bunch of Canadians, but 75% of the best players in the league are Canadian. Even that's starting to shift, though; the US is actually starting to produce superstars. Kane's already there, Eichel is going to be a beast, and Matthews in this year's draft should be one as well.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Yup. NCAA/USA hockey is gaining steam.

Canada, meanwhile, is getting stronger in basketball.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Don't forget Johnny Hockey!

[KDN]

There's quite a few NHL.com writers that think they work for the NY Post. It's strikingly punny for the official site of the league.

[gaoxiaen]

+1 Slap Shot

[Restoras]

Cultural appropriation, bitches!

[Crusty Juggler]

Has Bee Tagger become our new overlord?

[UnCivilServant]

No, the vanguard position is a low-status grunt who takes the first couple of hits. We should congratulate Fist on his promotion to ordinary commenter.

[Raven Nation]

So, Fist was never in charge? It was all a fraud??!!

The Fist has no clothes!!!!

[OneOut]

Perhaps Bee Tagger IS Fist in drag ?

[Fist of Etiquette]

I'm getting too old for this shit.

[BigT]

Fiber will help, FoE.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Everyone (including pro-lifers) hated Donald Trump's comments about abortion yesterday.

Even Donald?

[LynchPin1477]

Give it a few days, he'll probably contradict himself.

[Just say Nikki]

It took about an hour.

[Hamster of Doom]

"Don't like Trump's opinion? Wait ten minutes."

[Jerryskids]

Some of the comments were pretty bad, some were pretty stupid and some, I assume, were good comments.

[Citizen X]

They're not sending their best comments.

[BigT]

These are not the comments you're looking for.

[Emmerson Biggins]

Disclaimer : I don't like Trump. I haven't, nor will I be voting for him.

But if abortion is illegal, then wouldn't there, by definition, be some punishment for women who get abortions?

If this is how they finally "get him", I'm going to be frightened and confused. Well, you know, slightly more than I already am.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Meanwhile, a group of female journalists called for Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to be fired.

BECAUSE THEY'RE VOTING HILLARY I BET.

[Sevens]

Clinton moves goalposts

The sexual image is unsettling.

[Citizen X]

Something something euphemisms something abstract.

[Lord Humungus]

Squirrel exterminators mistaken for gunmen cause lockdown at Arkansas school

SWAT officers arrived at Gardner Magnet School after the three exterminators were mistaken for gunmen wielding rifles.

The exterminators fired at and missed a squirrel and began to chase the animal when they were spotted by a teacher who called police and reported gunmen on the campus.

According to police, the exterminators said they saw police and SWAT officers in the area and left because they believed a dangerous situation was taking place at the school.

[Notorious UGCC]

Don't worry, I saw this movie - the squirrel escapes unharmed.

[Notorious UGCC]

Don't worry, I saw this movie - the squirrel escapes unharmed.

[BigT]

Groundhog, it's his day.

[Notorious UGCC]

Don't worry, I saw this movie - the squirrel escapes unharmed.

[Notorious UGCC]

Ha ha, see what I did there?

[Citizen X]

Fucked up a simple Caddyshack reference?

[Crusty Juggler]

"The last time I saw a mouth like that it had a hook in it."

[UnCivilServant]

Yes, you botched it.

[Crusty Juggler]

"I need some trash to plug up the cut."

[BigT]

Don't worry, I saw this movie - the SQWRL escapes unharmed.

[Sevens]

Great, now everything has to be gender-queer.

[OneOut]

They chased a squirrel ?

THEY CHASED A SQUIRREL ?

WTF ?

Did they actually think they could catch it ?

And these guys a professional exterminators ? Must have been their first day on the job.

[Mike Laursen]

Hey, Moe. What about this ad? It says, "Sqoi-el Ex-toi-min-a-tuhs needed."

[DenverJ]

Don't worry, I saw this movie - the squirrel escapes unharmed.

[Lord Humungus]

President Eisenhower's great-granddaughter says vegan diets could attract extraterrestrial life

Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, a spiritual healer and clairvoyant who just happens to be the great-granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, says food and drink on this planet could have a major impact on whether we ever come into contact with "sky beings."

In an interview with Vice News, Eisenhower explains that "sky beings" can be anything from extraterrestrials, to UFOs, fairies, spirit guides, elves or even angels?since people are all different, the way we perceive non-human life varies.

"We have to understand that we are multi-dimensional beings and?based on our frequency, perceptions, and our vibratory levels that we are functioning from?we are going to see different things. It is not always going to be things that other people are capable of seeing," explains Eisenhower.

[Lee G]

*nods slowly, backs away*

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Would.

That would be one strange ride.

Those eyes are just the right look of kooky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw8nXCx5qgo

[LynchPin1477]

vibratory levels that we are functioning from

I like where this is going

[Citizen X]

A euphemism, of some sort?

[DenverJ]

An abstract one, for sure.

[Citizen X]

She is just barely on the wrong side of the cute/crazy line.

[Crusty Juggler]

I'd show her what a real D-Day invasion is like.

[DenverJ]

Eeewww

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

You're doing it wrong.

Bend over. I'll show you D-Day.

[Citizen X]

I'd take charge of her European Theater of Operations.

[Crusty Juggler]

I'd let her battle my bulge.

[Citizen X]

I'd let her warn me about the military-industrial complex.

[Crusty Juggler]

I would pour money into her highway.

[Free Market Socialist $park?]

I'd battle through her trenches.

[Elspeth Flashman]

Loooks like a hippie love child, but is probably sexually prudish.

[Slammer]

"We must be on guard against the Big Food-Evidence Based Reality Complex"

[Rich]

The professional clairvoyant says she has always been interested in how people's relationship to food effects their response to the environment. Eisenhowever even ran an organic food delivery business to bring products to people who were so sensitive to chemicals they couldn't leave their homes.

Watch out, guys! She knows what you're thinking and isn't afraid to come to your house!

[SFC B]

So if she knows what Crusty is thinking and still goes to his house, that is totally consent right?

[Free Market Socialist $park?]

Absolutely. Especially since he greets everyone with his "Don't say maybe if you mean no" shirt on.

[Crusty Juggler]

You can't spell enthusiastic consent without Crusty Juggler.

[Fist of Etiquette]

An Arizona man reportedly sobbed and begged for his life while on all fours before being shot to death by a police officer last January.

An odd form of resisting is still resisting!

[colorblindkid]

What's the difference between aborting an 8-month old fetus and leaving a newborn in a dumpster? Seriously, I would like to hear an answer.

[UnCivilServant]

Well for one, the 8mo fetus would be parted out for profit instead of simply discarded.

[Crusty Juggler]

A dumpster baby could be adopted by a lovable group of Philadelphia bar owners.

[Private Chipperbot]

Have to work on the base tan first.

[Lee G]

And we're off.

[Just say Nikki]

You don't need help to leave a newborn in a dumpster.

[LynchPin1477]

You didn't build that dumpster.

[Citizen X]

They're not sending their best dumpster newborns.

[ant1sthenes]

I believe "garbage pail kids" is the preferred nomenclature.

[bacon-magic]

Statist dumpster.

[Suell]

Who really needs 28 kinds of dumpsters anyway?

[Zeb]

There are probably people willing to take the newborn off your hands. With the fetus there is no other way to get rid of it. Think of that what you will, but that is a difference.
In any case, few people favor on-demand abortion right up until birth.

[Notorious UGCC]

So...the abortion laws should reflect what people favor?

Because that would make a *lot* more abortions illegal.

[Zeb]

I'm not saying anything about what should be.

[Free Market Socialist $park?]

You're right! I see exactly where Zeb said anything about laws too!

[Free Market Socialist $park?]

Doesn't it seem like there should be a way to adopt an unborn child?

[SugarFree]

There is. Most private adoptions are started before the child is born.

[Free Market Socialist $park?]

Private adoptions? Surely such a thing cannot be allowed to exist?

[Florida Hipster]

It's run by Catholics. I have a friend who got her baby that way... *looks around* even though she is Jewish.

[Citizen X]

WHAAAAT

[Free Market Socialist $park?]

Run by a religious order?! This is untenable!

[Crusty Juggler]

I'm against mixing Jewish and Catholics, because that is how we ended up with Bill Maher.

[Florida Hipster]

You've got a long up hill battle friend.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

I think that's why aborting 8-month old fetuses isn't something that's generally available.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

"What's the difference between aborting an 8-month old fetus and leaving a newborn in a dumpster?"

It's my understanding that aborting an 8-month old fetus is illegal.

[colorblindkid]

So if a woman self-aborts her 8 month fetus it is a crime and a woman should be punished, then.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Yes, because mens rea is just a river in Egypt, you mendacious shit.

[commodious spittoon]

In fairness, I have no doubt that some mendacious piece-of-shit prosecutor would be happy to try that case.

[The Last American Hero]

I'm sure whatever opinion you have, you are right and everyone else is wrong. If they would only think about it, they would realize they are wrong.

[BigT]

"What's the difference between aborting an 8-month old fetus and leaving a newborn in a dumpster? Seriously, I would like to hear an answer."

$10,000 of medical bills?

[gaoxiaen]

Ask Ron Paul.

[LynchPin1477]

I have nothing constructive to add other than to deeply wish it was Friday.

[Private Chipperbot]

Did you say deep dish?

[Swiss Servator]

I would love a deep dish on Friday!

[Citizen X]

These masturbation euphemisms are getting pretty abstract.

[bacon-magic]

St. Louis style thin crust for the win. You probably never heard of Provel cheese...

[Lord Humungus]

This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they're free.

The 27-year-old graduate student from Kazakhstan is operating a searchable online database of nearly 50 million stolen scholarly journal articles, shattering the $10 billion-per-year paywall of academic publishers.

Elbakyan has kept herself beyond the reach of a federal judge who late last year issued an injunction against her site, noting that damages could total $150,000 per article ? a sum that Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis, a journal in her database, could help calculate. But she is not hiding from responsibility.

"There are many ways to argue that copyright infringement is not theft, but even if it is, it is justified in this case," she said in an instant-message interview via Google. "All content should be copied without restriction. But for education and research, copyright laws are especially damaging."

[LynchPin1477]

Almost everything in my field goes up on arxiv, anyway.

[Jerryskids]

50 million journal articles, with an estimated street value of about $12 I'm guessing. That's the real fear, that some people are going to be looking at that steaming heap of garbage and realizing the vast majority of scholarly research is nonsense.

[Meow-shawn!]

Aaron Swartz died for this stuff.

She's perfect. I want to give her babies. What do I do?

[Free Market Socialist $park?]

Uh, Aaron Schwartz killed himself. I don't think that makes him some kind of martyr.

[Crusty Juggler]

First, you light a candle. Then, you put on some smooth, romantic music, such as something sung by the great the Fred Durst. That is as far along as I've gotten...

[This Machine]

... such as something sung by the great the Fred Durst.

Never change, Crusty.

[Citizen X]

He does it all for the nookie.

[Suthenboy]

50 million articles...how many of those studies are reproducible?

[commodious spittoon]

All of them. That's why she pirated them, so they could be distributed. DUH.

[Lord Humungus]

This Guatemalan rapper thinks hip-hop can unite all women

She's passionate about environmental issues and people's relationship with planet Earth, as well. Among her inspirations are the late Honduran activist Berta C?ceres, and a movement of women protesting mining in Guatemala.

She stays connected to indigenous activism and feminist issues across ethnic groups.

"They make me think of things that I had never thought before, like what it means to be a woman of color," she says. "What it means to be a mestiza, what it means to be a Latina, for example, in a place where white dominance in the culture is like [in] the United States."

Through her music, Lane wants to fight problems like femicide and domestic violence, and unify women in general.

"I think it's very important for women to let go of the idea that other women are our enemies, which is what we learn in this heteropatriarchy," Lane says. "I think it's very brave for women to stop thinking that and trying to understand that we are all sisters and that we've all been through the same things and we have to help each other."

[Notorious UGCC]

What is her position on multi-dimensional sky beings?

Or maybe I'm confusing her with the other crazy lady from an earlier link.

[Swiss Servator]

femicide?

[ant1sthenes]

Yes, like when ISIS goes and rounds up all the men and women of a minority group, and kills all the men while sparing the women that they think would bring in a fair bit on the rape-slave market, that's femicide.

It's a concept that makes perfect sense if you literally have no empathy for and attach no value to the life of men. You know, like if you were a political candidate that says that women are the primary victims of war because they lose husbands and sons.

[RBS]

Well, I just learned that my work blocks Buzzfeed because: Indonesia.

[Tom Bombadil]

Where in Indo are you? I spend some time there.

[RBS]

I'm not, I'm in SC.

[Florida Hipster]

Same difference

[Swiss Servator]

-1 rijsttafel

[Rich]

Donald Trump blew up the news cycle on Wednesday by telling Chris Matthews at a town hall that "there has to be some form of punishment" for women who have abortions if the procedure is outlawed.

Just as "there has to be some form of punishment" for women who commit infanticide if the procedure is outlawed.

Rule of law.

[Jerryskids]

So anybody wondering why Trump was talking to Chris Matthews on MSNBC? There's no Republicans is that audience - so is Trump shifting his focus knowing he's gotten all the GOP voters he's going to get and turning to the Dems to support him? Or was this just a one-off designed to distract from the Lewandowski thing, get the dogs chasing a new bouncing ball, and then he can just hand-wave the whole thing away with a "well, it's MSNBC so obviously I was set up for a smear campaign and, by the way, why aren't we talking about the fact that we're building a new naval air station in New Zealand that New Zealand expects us to pay for?"

[Just say Nikki]

Everyone (including pro-lifers) hated Donald Trump's comments about abortion yesterday.

Oh, I'm pretty sure pro-choicers loved his comments.

[Tonio]

^This. And the Clinton camp.

[LynchPin1477]

"there has to be some form of punishment" for women who have abortions if the procedure is outlawed

If you start with the pro-life premise, why would that be in any way controversial?

[Just say Nikki]

Depends on the pro-lifer, but mostly because it's really unpopular. Also because they might think the woman is harmed, not fully responsible, etc. Also they think it would be an ineffective way to discourage abortion.

[LynchPin1477]

I don't even understand why it would be unpopular among pro-lifers. I put myself in that camp and I see nothing objectionable about it.

[Just say Nikki]

You're not entirely alone. Eddie agrees, and Kevin D Williamson is well known for being in favor of hanging for women who terminate pregnancies. It's just absolutely not the mainstream position among pro-life groups or activists, and Trump basically...didn't know that. Or realize how damaging this would be.

[SugarFree]

It's about optics. Just like how a lot of anti-abortion people are squeamish about forcing a woman who's been raped to bear her rapist's child, a lot of them shy away from advocating or even exploring the punishments for a woman that gets the abortion. Part of it is magical thinking, that banning something makes it just go away and part is the War on Drugs fallacy that supply drives demand.

[Hamster of Doom]

It's about legitimate authority in a catch-22. Both individuals have a sanctified life which is prioritised, if you will. Only one requires intrusion onto another to maintain that sanctified life. Now, what authority possesses the legitimacy to decide which sanctified life takes precedence at this time and under these (value = x) individual circumstances?

God? Might as well tell me "Let the Easter Bunny decide."

The government? Please. They have no dog in this fight, and their judgment is self-centered and questionable at best.

And there you have it. No easy answer to complex problems. Personally, I believe we will cut this Gordian knot in the only manner possible: scientific advancement. Then we'll be forced to find some other means of emotionally pissing and moaning about what others do.

[Hamster of Doom]

Answering for myself, to clarify. No idea what all the other pro-lifers feel about it.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

I was gonna say rock, paper, scissors.

Good old rock. Never loses.

[DenverJ]

Would you like to play a game? For money?

[DenverJ]

I think that artificial wombs are not that far away. Factor in the demand for babies to adopt, and I think technology may well put this matter to rest.
And, I think that is something both sides can look forward to, and be happy about.

[Just say Nikki]

There aren't just two sides.

[KDN]

It's unfortunate that "scientific advancement" is the only way to cut that knot. This is exactly the type of issue best resolved through federalism, but that option is no longer on the table.

[commodious spittoon]

Personally, I believe we will cut this Gordian knot in the only manner possible: scientific advancement.

Or as Williamson is fond of putting it, quoting some French novelist discussing Buddha: "The Enlightened One, if he had meditated on it, would not necessarily have rejected a technical solution."

[Notorious UGCC]

If I could press a magic button to punish women who kill their unborn children, I would.

But I actually recognize that there are other prolifers, who have sacrificed more than I have for the cause and fought longer, who *don't* want to punish the women, and there's no way I'm going to be concern-trolled into saying these people aren't *real* prolifers.

[Suthenboy]

Are you under the impression that women who kill their unborn children are not punished? Do you know any of them?

[Notorious UGCC]

Yes, I do, actually.

I thought I was being concern-trolled about the lack of *criminal* punishment, sorry about that.

[Tonio]

NPR had the head of the Susan B Anthony list (they call themselves pro-life feminists) on Morning Edition this morning. Anti-abortion lady was all like: no, we only want to criminally charge the abortionist, not the woman. And while I don't doubt that's what they want, the law just doesn't work that way. If abortion is a crime, then all willing participants are culpable. But it was so cute to hear her try to explain that as a rational position.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Just make it illegal to perform an abortion, not to have one. Then having an abortion isn't a crime and there's no reason to charge the woman.

[Tonio]

So, a crime against the state. Sorry, but the anti-abortion forces have consistently argued that fetuses (and zygotes and blastocysts) are human beings. That would make abortion murder. You can't just handwave that away, no matter how much you want to.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

A crime against the state? You're familiar with the concept that criminal trials are "The State of..." or "The People of..." because they are being treated as crimes against the state, right? It's not like this would be breaking new ground or anything.

I don't have to handwave it away, because I don't call it murder unless I think it's murder.

There's nothing inherently inconsistent about making only one side of a transaction illegal. Hell, the 18th Amendment made it illegal to sell alcohol, not to buy it.

[gaoxiaen]

Contract law, how does it work?

[Billy Boogers]

So... If I get what she is saying is right, then I can hire all the hit men I want to conduct "some business" for me. Interesting.....

[creech]

I can't figure it out either. Does that mean most people think drug users shouldn't be punished? That if I pay a Best Buy employee to set a 60" tv out in the dumpster for me, only the employee should be punished? If a Banker hires Rocco and Vinnie to break a few legs to collect delinquent loans, then only Rocco and Vinnie go to jail?
Abortion should be legal but if it wasn't then why should the woman seeking out and having one be free to go?

[Tonio]

It's just like Drug War 2.0: Involuntary "treatment" for dirty druggies, draconian sentences for sellers.

[Just say Nikki]

This. Which I always find so funny because it makes it so obvious that they realize drugs and abortions are extremely attractive products.

[Lord Humungus]

Japan's first-ever hate speech probe finds rallies are fewer but still a problem

Most of these rallies, ministry official Atsushi Maeda said, ostensibly seek to protest certain diplomatic issues, such as North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens, a territorial dispute with South Korea over islets in the Sea of Japan and the wartime "comfort woman" issue of Asian women forced into sexual servitude by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II.

But despite their purported political nature, a "significant" number of the demonstrations in reality featured a string of derogatory invective against ethnic minorities, Maeda said.

Prominent examples of vitriolic language favored by the protesters include violent slogans such as "You should all be massacred," phrases such as "Get the hell out of Japan," and insults calling Koreans "cockroaches," according to video analysis of 72 such rallies conducted by the ministry.

[Rich]

hate speech probe

Nice album name.

[straffinrun]

The family and I are at a small resort hotel at the foot of Fujisan. All the other guests are from a Chinese tour group. They have broken almost every rule of etiquette Japanese society has in place. If this place hadn't cost me so much, I'd leave.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Wait. Leave the hotel because of the Chinese or leave Japan because of the etiquette rules?

[straffinrun]

Dude, it's 10:30pm and I can hear them down the hall shouting at each other. I don't care about them cutting in line at the reception desk or sitting with their bare feet on the chairs in the lobby, but it's time for them to STFU. They aren't kids either. Sorry to bitch, but I've seen this too often.

[Tonio]

So, do you thing this is just because Japan (ie, vengence for WW2) or would they act that way in say Australia or Argentina?

[Florida Hipster]

Chinese are notoriously bad tourist. Their own government put out a pamphlet telling them not to be dicks when traveling.

[straffinrun]

I don't think they give a shit about the social norms here. Americans, for example, will make a faux pas and then realize it an apologize. Oafish, but I respect it. You tell me, do Chinese tourists in the states act rudely?

[Florida Hipster]

http://www.theatlantic.com/chi.....st/280332/

[SRVolunteer]

The scope of tourist activities covered is impressive..., scuba diving ("anywhere in the world that you go diving, you shouldn't grab or take away any marine life")

I was in Fiji last fall. The resort didn't cater to Australian families so much as Chinese couples on 3-day vacations and North American couples on week-long honeymoons. They had a dive shop and would take folks snorkeling or SCUBA diving. The divemasters said the Chinese couples always wanted to go SCUBA diving. Typical conversations went like this:

We want to go SCUBA Diving.

Are you certified?

No.

We can take you on an exploration dive, where a dive master will always be with you. Have you been snorkeling before?

No.

Have you been in the ocean before?

No.

Can you swim?

No.

I didn't dive at the resort, but every time my wife and I went out snorkeling, the North American couples swam free and the Chinese couples wore life vests and stayed near the guide.

Weird that anyone would even dare to try SCUBA without being able to swim.

[Rhywun]

You tell me, do Chinese tourists in the states act rudely?

Not that I have seen. We get a lot of them in NYC and they behave just fine.

But I have also been to China and can attest to the behavior described above.

[Lee G]

Having been in China multiple times, it's normal behavior.

[Free Market Socialist $park?]

Bust out a mini gun and cut them down in a hail of bullets. The Japanese will thank you for it and the Chinese won't think it's anything unusual.

[straffinrun]

Sorry to waste your time here when we got abortion going on down thread.

[Florida Hipster]

Have fun climbing Fuji. I climbed it in 2008. Beautiful.

[Swiss Servator]

Climb Mount Niitaka?!

[Florida Hipster]

No sir.

[Florida Hipster]

Ah. Just googled it. I wasn't familiar with that phrase.

[Citizen X]

These masturbation euphemisms are getting pretty abstract.

[Cdr Lytton]

"Pearl Harbor" isn't that abstract of an euphemism.

[straffinrun]

I've never actually made it to the top. We'll drive up as high as we can, but kid too young. Maybe we'll tour the suicide forest.

[Florida Hipster]

I started at the bottom, when through the Forrest, sleep at one of last stations and made the summit for sunrise. Thankfully I was 27 when I did it. It's not an easy hike.

[straffinrun]

Nice. It's mostly snow covered at this time. Summer when you did it?

[Florida Hipster]

It was summer. July I think.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Since we're China bashing. At the private school I attended we had Chinese students who would cut up garlic to eat raw and stink up the class badly. One day the math teacher caught them in the act and gave them a look of 'dudes, wtf?' and then instructed them to quit it and open the windows.

It was walking into the mouth of someone's bad breath.

[RBS]

hate speech probe

How many tentacles does it have?

[Lord Humungus]

Who's the good boy?

Dog comes home with surprise for family: Bag of marijuana

Officials say a family dog in Mississippi recently came home with more than a bone or toy to play fetch the pup had a big bag of marijuana.

The Jones County Sheriff's Office says in a statement that narcotics deputies were sent to the home Saturday to investigate the unusual incident.

According to the statement, the homeowner told deputies that when his dog came home with the bag, he initially thought it was garbage. But he inspected it and found that it contained a leafy substance that smelled like marijuana.

Authorities say they recovered about a pound of the drug. How or where the dog got the bag is not known.

[Slammer]

"Play dead, Fido! The cops are here!"

[Citizen X]

Damn, i need to get a dog.

[Citizen X]

"Yeah, officer, my dog brought home this bag with a pound... uh, with half an ounce of weed in it."

[Notorious UGCC]

"But he inspected it and found that it contained a leafy substance that smelled like marijuana."

"Oops, did I say it smelled like marijuana? I meant to say it had a funny small I didn't recognize."

[Juvenile Bluster]

The only present my (now deceased) dog ever brought me was a dead, frozen squirrel.

[gaoxiaen]

+1 dumbass

[Slammer]

Trump + Abortion + ? = the Unholy Trifecta that finally causes a Singularity that destroys the commenting?

[Crusty Juggler]

Kirk or Picard?

Ava or Winona?

Cap or Iron Man?

[UnCivilServant]

Which one(s)?

Who?

I'm a DC reader (when they're not being stupid)

[Notorious UGCC]

So am I, and I'm not a DC reader.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

I ask again:

Betty or Wilma?

[Citizen X]

Oh, they finally syndicated the Flintstones in Canada? That's cool.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Yeh. In 2014.

[Swiss Servator]

Betty, duh!

[Crusty Juggler]

Ew.

[Roger the Shrubber]

Why can't it be both?

[BiMonSciFiCon]

Picard

Winona, easily.

Tough to say. Ask me on May 7.

[bacon-magic]

Deep dish.

[Princess Trigger]

DC commuters brace for nightmarish months ahead with certain rail lines expected to be closed for six months.
Mid-level bureaucrats and political journalists have to take the bus with the filthy working men and women of DC.
They're going to be nastier and less efficient.
Good.

[Tonio]

Six months is huge. Now, why aren't the usual whiners calling for the government officials in charge of this to be impeached. LOL, we know the answer.

Also, this is going to fuck with DC's tourist economy big time. It could effectively kill the entire 2016 tourist season.

[Rhywun]

Really? I was under the impression that it's mostly used by commuters. I mean, all the stuff you want to see in DC is all in one place anyway.

[Tonio]

Commuters during the week, tourists on weekends. And a lot of the tourists stay outside the city where the lodging is cheaper, and take metro in to the city. Driving in DC can be confusing because of the quadrant system, downtown parking is scarce even on weekends, and moreso with Metrorail down. And DC traffic enforcement is arbitrary and predatory.

[Idle Hands]

seriously, but it has the potential to make the commute a lot better all those federal employees are just going to telework all summer. One question, I already know the answer to this, why aren't people being charged with fraud? they've been siphoning off billions of dollars not doing the repairs they were supposed(and by supposed I mean claiming) to be doing, I really don't understand why we haven't had more of this angle explored. It's all "this has just been incredibly mismanaged", well everyone already knew that how bout we look at the all the money that just disappeared down a rat hole maybe. I mean a person fucking died do to their criminal negligence.

[Rhywun]

why aren't people being charged with fraud?

LOL

[Idle Hands]

is even a firing to much to ask?

[Idle Hands]

is even a firing to much to ask?

[Rhywun]

Yes, no matter how many times you ask.

[John]

Donald Trump blew up the news cycle on Wednesday by telling Chris Matthews at a town hall that "there has to be some form of punishment" for women who have abortions if the procedure is outlawed.

That is true. It only outraged both sides of the abortion debate because neither side is honest. What the hell does "outlaw" mean if not punish people who do something? Anyone who claims to want to outlaw abortion but then also deny that doing so would not involve punishing women who get them is either lying or delusional.

Since outlawing activities doesn't involve punishing people who engage in those activities, I guess we should all stop worrying about the drug war now.

[Zeb]

I heard a woman (from the Susan B Anthony foundation, I think) on NPR this morning, trying to justify the pro-life position that the woman shouldn't be punished. Sounded like SJW feminism with a anti-abortion twist. Apparently women wouldn't seek abortions if they were outlawed, because it's all society's and the evil abortionists fault somehow. She didn't seem to think much of women as independent moral agents.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

Our entire abortion debate is retarded because everyone is dishonest. Pro-choicers freaking out if you refer to a fetus that is developed enough to survive outside the womb as a 'baby' and pro-lifers denying that punishing women would be necessary if you outlaw abortion are just two of my favorite examples of this dishonesty.

[Tonio]

And you perpetuate the dishonesty by using the terms pro-choice and pro-life.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

How so? It's a pretty accurate representation of how each side sees itself.

[SugarFree]

So we only describe Democrats as "Shining Defenders of The People" from now on?

[Tonio]

Sugar's answer is better than I could ever do.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

No, but pro-life and pro-choice are both positive terms so it's fairly objective to call them that.

I guess I could call them pro-women hating and pro-murder, if you want.

This is the only place I've commented where calling something by its common name that everyone uses makes people get super pedantic.

[SugarFree]

I don't really care if they call themselves pro-life, but at the same time I also don't care when people point out that "pro-life" is a fundamentally dishonest thing for them to call themselves.

Unless they are ultra-orthodox fruitarians they all kill something in order to eat, so calling themselves pro-life is stealing a base, maybe even two. Whereas you have to go beyond the abortion debate itself to make the "pro-choice" label illegitimate.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Unless they are ultra-orthodox fruitarians they all kill something in order to eat, so calling themselves pro-life is stealing a base, maybe even two. Whereas you have to go beyond the abortion debate itself to make the "pro-choice" label illegitimate.

Because extending "pro-life" to examine their diets isn't going beyond the abortion debate itself.

[Hyperbolical]

So, pro-abortion and anti-abortion? Or, pro-birth and anti-birth? How about pro-child and anti-child? Pro-responsibility and anti-responsibility? Maybe pro-death and anti-death?

It seems like a trade-off to me. If the pro-abortion folks want to euphemize fetus killing as pro-choice, then it seems perfectly fair for the anti-abortion folks to use a euphemism as well.

[Just say Nikki]

The idea that there could be a "neutral" term is retarded. For one thing, my interpretation of "pro-child" or "pro-responsibility" are the opposite of what most people would say.

[ant1sthenes]

I don't really care if they call themselves pro-life, but at the same time I also don't care when people point out that "pro-life" is a fundamentally dishonest thing for them to call themselves.

"Pro-choice" is also a pretty dishonest term for most of the people on that side, but (as with "pro-life") only if you make the unreasonable assumption that the person is using the label as a universally applicable statement of philosophy, and not defining their position on the abortion debate.

[Hamster of Doom]

.... makes people get super pedantic.

Never! Really? That doesn't sound like us at all.

[KDN]

This is the only place I've commented where calling something by its common name that everyone uses makes people get super pedantic.

Don't ever call interchange clip and magazine like some ignorant, gun hating rapper.

[Emmerson Biggins]

What is the correct terminology here in libertopia?

[Zeb]

I try to use "pro-abortion" (or "pro-legal-abortion") or "anti-abortion" when that's what I'm talking about. But I'm not going to hold it against anyone who uses the common terms that people use to describe themselves.

It is a point worth making, though, that most pro-choice people only favor letting people make some kinds of choices and pro-life people mostly only care about preserving certain life.

[John]

A lot of the shit the media gets outraged over Trump saying, is just him voicing what any reasonable person would say and then the media and political culture going nuts because it interferes with their lying.

I bet if you walked down the street and asked 10 random people if outlawing abortion would necessarily mean punishing women for getting then, every one of them would say "well sure it would". Yet, our national media and political class on both sides think saying that is outrageous.

We live in insane times.

[BigT]

Basically, they are intentionally misquoting Trump by leaving off the "if abortion were illegal" part of his statement. Or at least misconstruing his meaning.

[Just say Nikki]

That's definitely not accurate. Everyone knows what he meant, and pro-life activists have spent decades trying to convince people that's not what they want.

[Just say Nikki]

Apparently women wouldn't seek abortions if they were outlawed, because it's all society's and the evil abortionists fault somehow. She didn't seem to think much of women as independent moral agents.

Pretty common view among pro-lifers, at least rhetorically.

[Tonio]

Yep, that's what anti-abortion lady on NPR this morning was like. Definitely the "victims of societal failure" narrative. They only have those abortions because the virtuous fetus fanciers haven't been able to talk to them or offer them "help."

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

Yep. And everyone knows he's full of shit since he's previously supported partial birth abortions, which are currently illegal. So he actually supports expanding abortions...until he ran for president and started courting social conservatives.

[John]

So what? That doesn't make this statement any less valid and the reaction to it any less dishonest.

[Just say Nikki]

What's dishonest about the reaction? Pro-life activists have spent decades trying to convince people they wouldn't throw women in jail for murder if they had abortions.

[John]

What is dishonest is that the pro life activists are either lying or kidding themselves when they say that. I don't believe them.

[Notorious UGCC]

Yes, that's right, large numbers of prolifers run crisis pregnancy centers, adopt children, etc., because they're lying and delusional, unlike the sane Internet commenters.

[Notorious UGCC]

I'm speaking as someone who *would* punish women who kill their children, if it were politically viable to do so, which of course it isn't, which is why the abortionists use this argument to shield themselves from punishment.

[Zeb]

Well, you are one of the rare honest ones about the issue, apparently.

[Notorious UGCC]

No, the prolifers who don't want to prosecute women are honest, too.

They're also politically realistic.

The abortionists who kill babies for a living are going about unpunished, and prolifers want to put them in prison. So the abortionists are running scared, and they're running this "punish the women, too!" argument up the flagpole.

And some people are dumb enough to get duped by the abortionists' concern-trolling - "we can't punish people who kill babies for a living until we figure out some way to punish those abortion-having women!"

[Tonio]

That's because nobody actually believes the anti-abortion folks when they say they don't want to punish women. They're either lying, or delusional.

[Zeb]

So you favor letting people off for contract killings? If they are honest, and they believe that abortion is murder, then they are morally inconsistent. Or they don't believe murder is that big of a deal. Pick one.

"we can't punish people who kill babies for a living until we figure out some way to punish those abortion-having women!"

Yeah, no "abortionist" has ever said anything remotely like that except to point out the inconsistency on the anti-abortion side.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

"Anyone who claims to want to outlaw abortion but then also deny that doing so would not involve punishing women who get them is either lying or delusional."

If you run crisis pregnancy centers and also think you can outlaw abortion without punishing people who get abortions, then yes, you are lying or delusional.

That would be like saying 'let's outlaw drugs, but somehow do so without actually punishing any drug users or dealers!'

[John]

What does that have to do with anything? Lots of people run programs to get women out of prostitution. That doesn't mean that outlawing prostitution doesn't involve throwing women who do it in jail.

If your solution to abortion is to just talk people out of getting them, good for you. I think that is a great idea. But don't then claim that you want it outlawed. If you want abortion outlawed be honest with yourself and admit that it will involve punishing women for getting abortions.

[Notorious UGCC]

"If you want abortion outlawed be honest with yourself and admit that it will involve punishing women for getting abortions."

I'd love to have those laws, but it's not my minority viewpoint which is making the abortionists running scared.

They're worried that *they* will be prosecuted, so they're using pregnant women as a human shield, saying, "if you put us in prison you'll have to take the mothers, too!"

No, actually, I think it's possible to make a dent in the abortion rate by locking up abortionists.

Yeah, I know, and Lincoln was a hypocrite for denouncing slavery while having a draft. Wouldn't you agree, John?

[John]

No, actually, I think it's possible to make a dent in the abortion rate by locking up abortionists.

Probably. But if you think that is going to be any easier or less messy you are mistaken. Not every abortionist is some horror movie villain. If the procedure were banned, you would end up going after a lot of doctors and nurses who have a well meaning if different view than you on the morality of abortion and who did one to help a woman they knew. If you think that is going to be pleasant or morally easy, you are sadly mistaken.

[Notorious UGCC]

"But if you think that is going to be any easier or less messy you are mistaken."

Again, like I said above, it's the *choicers* who claim their "solutions" are neat and uncomplicated. Not us.

"well meaning"

OK, if you're going to go on about how people subjectively mean well, then stop pretending you're all about logical rigor.

Jefferson Davis meant well, too. He thought he was saving black people from starvation because he didn't think they could survive outside of slavery.

[John]

You can be wrong and still well meaning. I am anti-abortion, but I am not going to kid myself and pretend the other side is irrational. Maybe with late term abortions but certainly not with early term ones. I think they are wrong and very wrong. But I do not think they are irrational or are not trying to do the right thing. If you do, you need to reconsider some of your moral smugness.

And people's intentions do matter. They may not matter very much when considering the ultimate morality of their actions but they sure as hell matter when it comes to punishing them under the law. It is a lot more difficult decision to punish someone who is well meaning but wrong than it is someone who means actual harm.

[Notorious UGCC]

"But I do not think they are irrational or are not trying to do the right thing. If you do, you need to reconsider some of your moral smugness."

I'm sorry, John, but straw-manning is one of your weaknesses.

I said you can't invoke "but intentions!" after dismissing the work of countless prolifers who save babies every day, because they fail your test of logical rigor.

Jefferson Davis impressed many people with his stern convictions and his honest character. He held certain ideas because he believed them to be true, and he believed slavery was best for both races. He elaborated at length on why he believed this - he wasn't being irrational.

To this day his integrity still impresses people.

He was simply wrong about slavery. And he couldn't be argued out of it, he had to be fought.

Fortunately, of course, my analogy breaks down in the sense that we don't have to have an actual civil war over abortion. Let the choicers make their case, let them lose and get voted down.

[SugarFree]

"I just want those aborting sluts to go to slut jail for aborting their abortions," Donald muttered. The hot lights of the Townhall set caused hair glue to soften and flow down Donald's back. It made him feel lonely and small and vulnerable. His hair shifted when Donald looked up to squint at the lights.

"Oh, Jesus," his hair whispered. He knew that if he flopped to the floor Donald would blame him. The hat chuckled darkly from where he was stuffed into Donald's jacket pocket.

"Soft pedal that shit, Donald," the hat said. "You don't want to get the gashes all riled up. You know how they love their abortions."

"We've got to put them in jail or what's the point?" Donald muttered into his lapel.

"You can't just say that," the hair insisted. "You have to act all contrite, like the woman didn't want to get an abortion, but like, hey, there was the clinic, so she just wandered in and it happened."

"Fucking sluts," Donald said.

"Hot mic, dammit. Hot mic!" the hat said. It began to hum loudly, hoping to drown Donald out.

"If that bitch Ivanka had gone through with it, I wouldn't have Ivanka," Donald whispered. "My dear Ivanka. She sent me pictures of her post-baby pussy. It's a mess. A fucking mess."

"We know, Donald. You showed us it over and over again," the hair said.

[SugarFree]

"He's coming back," the hat said.

Tim walked back on set, still stuffing his shirt back into his pants. He wiped his hands dry on his suit jacket as he sat down.

"You OK?" Tim asked Donald. "You need anything?"

"No, I'm fine," Donald said petulantly.

"You want me to go back to the abortion stuff? I was looking at Twitter while I was trying to take a piss and everybody is pissed about."

"I said what I think. I'm not going to change my mind so there's no point."

"You sure you don't want to do it now? Your team is just going to put out a press release tomorrow saying you didn't really mean it."

"Fuck off, Russert. That's never going to happen. I said what I meant and I mean what I say and I never retract or explain."

The hair snorted loudly, despite its lack of a nose.

Tim squirmed in his seat. "Damn prostate. Not only can I not take a simple piss, it feels like I'm sitting on a goddamn apple."

"Can we just get this over with?" Donald asked.

[SugarFree]

Well, fuck. I guess I mixed up Russert and Matthews. My bad. All those fat white guys look alike.

[Citizen X]

Racist.

[BigT]

Matthews makes as much as Russert does these days.

[Swiss Servator]

"Damn prostate. Not only can I not take a simple piss, it feels like I'm sitting on a goddamn apple."

*uncomfortable applause*

[bacon-magic]

Maybe that's the cause of his tingly leg...

[Tonio]

Well-done, Sug.

[gaoxiaen]

+1 baby arm

[Slammer]

post-baby pussy

Grindcore song title

[Aloysious]

I was going to suggest garage-punk. Grindcore works as well.

[Lord Humungus]

Obama's economists are worried about automation ? and think the poor have the most to lose

The CEA estimates also suggest that the "job polarization" hypothesis won't hold going forward. A number of economists, notably MIT's David Autor, have floated the idea that technology has gutted medium-paying jobs, leaving only poorly compensated service jobs (like food prep or janitorial work) and highly compensated, high-skilled jobs (like computer programmers and creative professionals). There's a lot of debate over whether and how much this has occurred, and if it happened in the 2000s, but if the CEA estimates are right, then automation won't cause polarization going forward. The middle class won't suffer the most; the working poor will.

[John]

The solution is clearly a national $20 an hour minimum wage. And remember, it is Trump who is the crazy not the top men who are running the country.

[Lee G]

The obvious solution is to raise the minimum wage.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Obama hasn't watched 'Demolition Man' looks like.

[Juvenile Bluster]

And I, for one, welcome our new Roomba overlords.

[ant1sthenes]

There's no solution other than putting capital (not just nominal capital like stocks, but physical, commercially productive technology) directly in the hands of the masses. Unskilled labor is going to have less and less to offer as time goes on. Teaching a man to fish is good, but loaning him the funds to purchase a fisherbot works too.

Needless to say, government is not going to be offering this solution, because welfare is the opiate of the masses, and government is the nation's dealer. It will have to come from outside the state, and survive opposition from the state.

[Lord Humungus]

Mexico City temporarily restricts all cars after smog alert

Metropolitan authorities on Wednesday temporarily ordered all cars to remain idle one day a week in response to this notoriously smoggy capital's worst air-quality crisis in over a decade.

Until now vehicles have been exempt from Mexico City's "no circulation" rules if owners obtain a holographic sticker from a smog-check center certifying them as lower-emission.

But the Environmental Commission of the Megalopolis, a cross-government agency comprising the capital and surrounding suburbs that together are home to more than 20 million people, said in a statement that all cars must now comply, even if they have the exemption sticker. Vehicles will also be forced from the roads one Saturday a month.

[Juvenile Bluster]

Something something not sending their best cars?

[Swiss Servator]

Some of them, I assume are good cars.

[gaoxiaen]

Snug bugs.

[Zeb]

It has always struck me as an odd inconsistency that so many pro-lifers explicitly say that they don't want the mother punished. If you consider it to be murder, she is at least guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. And the arguments I hear to justify that position all try to remove agency from the woman and blame the whole thing on "society" or the doctors involved.

[John]

It is a total inconsistency and the pro lifers are lying when they say that. The facts are what they are. If you think abortion should be illegal, then you are going to have to punish women who get them. That is of course a nasty prospect. But tough shit. If you don't like that nasty prospect, don't argue to make something illegal.

That of course doesn't mean abortion shouldn't be outlawed. It just means if you think it should, you shouldn't lie to yourself and the world by pretending that is some neat and benign solution to the problem. It is not. Solving problems by banning things never is.

[LynchPin1477]

yep

[Notorious UGCC]

No, if the abortionists alone are targeted for prosecution (which is actually politically doable), then more babies would be saved.

Maybe that won't win points among Internet commenters concern-trolling for logical consistency, but it is in fact the objective of the movement.

[Notorious UGCC]

And who said anything about "neat and benign?" I'm sure you can find choicers claiming that *abortion* is neat and benign, but can you find pro-lifers arguing that prosecuting abortionists is neat and benign?

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

So you think abortion is murder, but wouldn't punish the women committing these murders?

[The Last American Hero]

How many women self abort?

Most require a medical professional to do the killing for them. If they didn't, it wouldn't matter so much if it were legal or not.

[Just say Nikki]

Fewer would need a doctor's help if you could get the drugs OTC of course.

[John]

If you have OTC and available morning after pills and birch control, very few of them should. If you really object to abortion, you should support those things. And if you do have that and think abortion should be outlawed, I don't see how you can think women who then get abortions have no moral or legal responsibility for doing so.

I am anti-abortion and understand that. I have little patience for anyone who doesn't.

[John]

That is a very good point. There is a long history of various herbal treatments and such that will induce abortion. I don't see how you could ban abortion and not then punish women who did that.

[BigT]

"It is a total inconsistency" to not punish the women.

Many pro-lifers also believe in forgiveness. So a woman need not be punished, but the abortionist who repeatedly kills, must be.

[John]

You can't forgive an abortionist? I am pretty sure you are supposed to forgive anyone who repents. The issue is whether the person repents and asks for forgiveness. If the woman doesn't do that, she is no more worthy of forgiveness than the abortionist who doesn't.

[Tonio]

Again, if the fetus is considered a human being, a position consistently articulated by anti-abortion activists, then abortion is murder (where have we heard that before?) and you can't handwave the woman being at least an accomplice in that. Unless you strip agency from women, which is a whole other, and equally untenable, situation.

[John]

I suppose you could do that. But how is that in any way moral or rational. It would be like me hiring a hit man to kill my wife and the law absolving me of responsibility. Moreover, if it were the case that we banned abortion by only going after the providers and doing nothing to reduce the demand, it will be the first time in history such a ban played out that way.

Beyond that, I don't really see how just going after the abortionist is any more benign than going after the women. Are you really going to throw a doctor in prison for helping a woman in distress? You think that is going to be any easier than throwing the woman in jail? I think you are kidding yourself on that.

[Zeb]

But even so, the honest thing to say would be that just punishing doctors is a political compromise and not the principled pro-life position.

[Just say Nikki]

Not if they really believe that women aren't fully responsible. And many do seem to believe that.

[Notorious UGCC]

Zeb, I'll tell you a secret which may have been omitted from your women's studies courses. Lots of the founding generation of prolifers (from the 1970s) were *feminists* whose views on female exploitation are, in my view, exaggerated. So they were wrong *as feminists.*

But they're feminists who wanted to protect unborn babies, make sacrifices for them, and put people who kill babies for a living in prison where they belong.

Why should I even hesitate - of course I'll support the people who want to put abortionists in prison while at the same time offering positive alternatives to pregnant women.

Nor am I going to sit around and let these noble, courageous women, who one day will be honored like the abolitionists, get smeared just to shield people who kill babies for a living from prosecution.

[Free Society]

I think any rational human being can agree that aborting a pregnancy at 8 months is wrong. I think any rational human being can agree that aborting a pregnancy a week after conception could hardly be described as "murder". The real controversy is somewhere in the middle, while the abortion debate rages on almost exclusively at the poles, which is why debates about abortion are usually such a waste of time, each side attacking strawmen over and over.

[Notorious UGCC]

In practice, the position of "any rational human being" that abortion at 8 months is wrong, is struggling to be enacted into law, and the people trying to enact it into law are the prolifers. The middle-of-the-roaders aren't out in front of this debate, they're dragged into it kicking and screaming, wishing they could be discussing something else, and then, *maybe,* agreeing that perhaps abortions at 8 months should be illegal. Then the courts will create a "health exception" broad enough to drive a Mack Truck through, and that's pretty much where we are today.

If the "moderates" want "moderate" laws on abortion, they should get out in front and take the initiative, not simply react to legislative initiatives by the prolifers.

[John]

You are exactly right Free Society. And the reason for that is both sides are extremists and know that the public doesn't agree with their actual position. So they avoid that by talking about the other side.

If you took the activists out of it, most of the country could agree that abortion out to be legal up to about 20 or so weeks and let the issue die. But since the activists are extremists, that would be completely unacceptable to them and they sabotage any attempt at that compromise.

[Notorious UGCC]

"If you took the activists out of it, most of the country could agree that abortion out to be legal up to about 20 or so weeks and let the issue die."

I would think that *anyone* who believes a fetus acquires human rights at some time before birth would be *passionately* advocating for prolife laws protecting the fetus as from the moment it acquires rights. Maybe they would be equally passionate about legalizing early-term abortions, so be it.

But despite the "both sides" rhetoric, the fact is that abortion remains legal under circumstances which the professed "moderates" agree involves the killing of a person with human rights.

Why don't the "moderates" take the ball away from the "extremists" put forward their "personhood begins at 20 weeks bills," and aggressively appoint Supreme Court justices who will uphold these bills?

Then the prolifers would no longer be able to make political hay about late-term abortions!

[John]

But despite the "both sides" rhetoric, the fact is that abortion remains legal under circumstances which the professed "moderates" agree involves the killing of a person with human rights.

Sure it does. And I think most people would agree to end that. But that doesn't happen because the courts won't let it and time again abortion activists poison pill any measure that would do this.

The pro abortion people are more guilty than the anti. But the anti abortion people are not without sin. One of the reasons compromise is so hard is the rightful belief on the part of the pro abortion side that any restriction isn't really a compromise that would end the issue but just a new starting point to negotiate a new restriction. So no one ever agrees to any restrictions.

[Notorious UGCC]

Well, what if a faction of moderates arose to actively promote their personhood-at-20-weeks laws?

Right now, it's pro-lifers who introduce even the "moderate" abortion laws, in the interests of saving at least a few babies.

The "moderates" aren't out in front on the issue, as you'd think they would be given their self-image as courageous pragmatic problem-solvers.

No, the "moderates" are the ones who say "oh, no, another abortion bill, is there some way I can hide under my desk and not get noticed?"

Who knows how the abortion debate would turn out of the moderates inspired more confidence and were actually working hard to reach the sort of middle ground they claim to be seeking?

[gaoxiaen]

Yep.

[Mickey Rat]

If 8 months is a cut-off point then Obama is not a rational human being.

[Zeb]

Go fuck yourself, Eddie. I am familiar with that bit of history (and I resent the suggestion that I have ever taken a Women's studies course). Are you saying that the prolife movement today is mostly made up of feminists who don't consider women to be free moral agents? Otherwise, you have no point.

And if the pro-life movement really thinks that women who get abortions are all pathetic victims not responsible for their own actions, then they are fucked.

[Notorious UGCC]

Basically, feel free to mock prolifers who in your view (and in mine) take too narrow a view of women's agency.

But of course the feminist establishment, the guardians of Roe, have no standing to raise that issue because their whole schtick is denying women's agency. Their only quarrel with the prolifers is that they want people to legally kill babies for a living - while getting paid out of taxpayer coffers, no less - and prolifers don't.

And the fact that so many prolifers adopt these feminist talking points has origins in perfectly sincere, though wrong, positions by these prolifers, so up yours if you think they're making it up. Not everyone who claims to disagree with you is lying.

[Social Contractor]

I think men don't want to put women in jail. Probably some sort of inherent protection wiring. They justify it as women being manipulated. Lots of stupid laws in the name of protecting women. Cops primarily go after John's in prostitution as well. It may be internally inconsistent but it's definitely possible. Politics are not constrained by logic.

[Mickey Rat]

That would be inconsistent if the object of outlawing an action was punishment rather than trying to stop the action from happening.

[Notorious UGCC]

That, too.

[ant1sthenes]

Don't look at me. I'm prolife and think women who get abortions past the humanity cutoff deserve to receive the same punishment as a woman who hired a hitman to kill a toddler.

Then again, I'm also a libertarian that tends to vote team orange, so my preference for philosophical purity over political expediency is probably not reflective of normal prolifers.

[Domestic Dissident]

Meanwhile, a group of female journalists called for Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to be fired.

Hey ladies of Journolism, if you want the same respect as men, you can't act like little pussy babies every single time someone lays a finger on you.

[Citizen X]

Journolism

That's your worst nickname yet.

[Domestic Dissident]

Ezra Klein came up with that one, stupid.

[Citizen X]

You couldn't resist using it either, could you.

[Swiss Servator]

Jur-urinal-lists?

[Citizen X]

Dumb-Mexic Piss On Men should hire you as a retarded nickname consultant, Spit Perv Elevator.

[Mazakon]

Not to mention, having a group that comprises entirely of females doesn't exactly help the case they make that they don't want Lewandowski to grab reporters, but rather just female reporters.

[You Sound Like a Prog (MJG)]

Why? If Trump and Lewandowski are anything to go by, men act like little pussy babies 24/7.

[Lord Humungus]

Migrant arrivals to Greece rise sharply despite EU-Turkey deal

Migrant and refugee arrivals to Greece from Turkey rose sharply on Wednesday, just over a week after the European Union and Turkey struck an agreement intended to cut off the flow and as hundreds marched through central Athens to protest that deal.

The demonstrators included human rights activists, students and migrants from among the thousands stranded in Greece by recent border closures across the Balkans.

Greek authorities recorded 766 new arrivals between Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning, up from 192 the previous day. Most entered the country via the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Lesbos.

/giggles.

[Rich]

"If you can get a boner with porn and you can't get a boner without porn, that's about as hard as evidence gets in my opinion," says Deem of Reboot Nation.

Phrasing!

[Lee G]

Paywall dude

[Rich]

Sorry! It was available at the time once.

[Rich]

Village of 100-YEAR-OLDS: Rosemary holds secret

Eat Rosemary and live forever!

[Swiss Servator]

Your lifespan will have lots of extra Thyme?

[Rasilio]

That is some Sage advice

[spqr2008]

But what about the Parsley?

[cgr2727]

Who's Rosemary, and is she even good looking?

[Slammer]

3 first-grade girls suspended in plot to kill classmate

An Alaska charter school suspended three first-grade girls who had plotted to kill their classmate, according to their principal.

The three girls planned to use silica gel packets, which are commonly found in pre-packaged food products to keep moisture away, to poison another student, KTUU reported.

"Three students in the class were planning on using the silica gel packets (These are not actually poison, but the students believed they were) from their lunchtime seaweed to poison and kill another student,"

[Rich]

"We're grateful that that student was able to speak up and obviously at such a young age," Castro said.

Well said, Castro.

[Crusty Juggler]

All children are evil, but little girls are somehow even more evil.

My solution: round them up and put them in camps.

[John]

Don't people ever read Lord of the Flies anymore?

[Crusty Juggler]

Half-nude children running around on an island without adult supervision? Are you some kind of pervert monster ?

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

As a father of a girl, yes, they can be nasty.

[Free Society]

As a father of a girl

YOU MONSTER /Nikki

[Juvenile Bluster]

My daughter is in first grade.

First grade girls are evil.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

It's like they would engage in cannibalism if they had to.

[gaoxiaen]

+1 stick pointed on both ends

[Tonio]

See, this is the sort of sociopathy that charter schools breed. If this were a proper, state-run school staffed by virtuous public employees this would have never happened.

[cgr2727]

Lunchtime seaweed? Shouldn't they have arrested the lunchlady for child abuse?

[R C Dean]

their lunchtime seaweed

W. T. F?

[Notorious UGCC]

It better be the name of a band, not a literal item on the menu.

[Notorious UGCC]

It better be the name of a band, not a literal item on the menu.

[Glide]

It's really funny how a dude like, say, Scott Walker, walks back one or two dumb statements and he's a flip-flopping ninny who loses all his support overnight, but Trump contradicts himself several times a week and occasionally within the same sentence and his fans still think he's the most honest human to ever live.

[John]

Trump has figured out that Fuck You That is Why works. The media and political class has been telling the country don't believe your lying eyes because fuck you that is why for decades. Trump is now telling them the same thing. And the more shocked and outraged they act, the more Trump's supporters like him.

That is really all that is going on here.

[ant1sthenes]

I'm sure that's true of some portion of his base, but I can't help but think that a lot of his "supporters" see him as the minstrel show version of a GOP politician and are supporting his antics on that basis.

[You Sound Like a Prog (MJG)]

Conventional political wisdom doesn't apply to Trump. Nor does it really apply to Hillary at this point.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

Vagina Monologues cancelled because it was written by a white woman.

Apparently the lesbian rape scene where the victim says 'if it was rape it was good rape' wasn't enough to set the SJWs off though.

[Notorious UGCC]

And *these* are the people who lecture prolifers about their lack of logical rigor and consistency!

[Tonio]

Well, not just those people. It's fun for everyone!

[Rhywun]

At this rate, the Left will have completely cannibalized itself within the next couple years.

[Rhywun]

Somehow I managed to avoid Abortiongate yesterday, but catching up this morning the takeaway I got was that Trump got punk'd.

[Tonio]

He got caught in a transparent and poorly-thought-through act of pandering.

[Rhywun]

Yes, he should have known to pander in the other direction.

[Tonio]

If he pandered to the pro-abortion side he'd lose his existing base, and most of the people on the other side probably wouldn't be convinced. The surprise here is how blatant and transparent this was. Also, not having thought through the implications. Hell, even anti-abortion woman on NPR this morning admitted he hadn't thought this through, before she began her own contortion act about not punishing women.

[Just say Nikki]

You could see in his face that he had no idea what the right answer was and thought he could just deduce it from what he though correct GOP positions were. It's pretty hilarious.

[Rhywun]

By "other direction" I meant the logically inconsistent belief that women should *not* be punished for choosing to have a hypothetically illegal abortion.

[Swiss Servator]

For the 3,975th time?

[John]

You are only punked if you admit it. And Trump never admits it. I think all of this kind of thing just helps him. His supporters hate the media. And everyone knows the media applies an absurd double standard whereby virtually anything a Republican says is a "gaffe" and nothing no matter how stupid or offensive a Democrat says is ever a problem. So the more the media tries to attack Trump for this stuff and the more Trump tells them to fuck off, the more Trump's supporters see him as sticking it to the media and the more they like him.

[SugarFree]

If you retract a statement an hour after making it, you are admitting it was a gaffe.

[John]

I didn't realize he retracted it. Even still, I don't think this kind of stuff matters and likely helps him because it makes it Trump versus the media. And everyone hates the media.

[Just say Nikki]

How do you turn Trump vs. pro-life activists into Trump vs. the media? LOLZ

[John]

Yes. Who is making a big deal about this? The media. Most people are not hard core pro lifers and thus really don't give a shit about the actual issue involved. What they see is the media shitting their pants over another "gaffe" and various professional activists strutting around trying to score political points.

So it is Trump versus the media.

[OneOut]

And no one is talking about his campaign manager being arrested the day after it happened.

So there's that.

[Just say Nikki]

But Sug, he retracted it while saying his position hadn't changed!

[Heroic Mulatto]

You are only punked if you admit it.

No, dude. It doesn't work for Cytotoxic and it doesn't work for Trump either. Are his true believers going to eat the man's shit with a smile? Of course, but that's only going to work until he wins the nomination. Once he needs to convince people outside the cult to drink the Kool-Aid, he's fucked.

[John]

I seriously doubt that. He seems to float above this kind of bullshit. I don't say that as an endorsement of Trump. It is just the way it seems to be. How many times have people been convinced that this or that statement means "Trump is fucked"? About a hundred in the last six months. And how has that worked out?

Maybe I am drinking the Koolaide. But maybe you guys are engaging in wishful thinking. Time will tell. But given the past year, even you have to admit thinking Trump is immune to harm from these types of things is hardly unreasonable.

[Free Society]

He seems to float above this kind of bullshit

He's a floater.

[John]

He is. I believe this kind of stuff hurts when I see it actually happen.

[SFC B]

Honestly, I figured he was toast when he insulted a guy who was crippled in the Hanoi Hilton. When that helped him I accepted that the rules as I understood them were out the window. At this point I won't believe Trump has been stopped until after the credits roll, the theater lights come up, and I've left.

[BigT]

Chris Matthews is a very aggressive interviewer, with those he dislikes. He constantly interrupts and tosses out new questions. The interviewee can easily get tangled up and confused as to which question he is answering.

But Trump should know better, and he has enough experience. His actual quote is not so bad, but when the phrase "if it were illegal" is chopped off it sounds terrible.

[Just say Nikki]

His actual quote is not so bad, but when the phrase "if it were illegal" is chopped off it sounds terrible.

Pro-life activists think it's terrible and they understand it perfectly. I don't know why you think he should know better or has experience; he clearly has no idea what his positions on many things are supposed to be.

[Rasilio]

People might not like Trumps comment but he is absolutely right.

If you accept the proposition that a fetus has all human rights (which is the only reason to oppose abortion) then you must also accept that anyone who seeks to terminate the fetus is guilty of murder and that includes the woman carrying it. Further you must accept that just as you must notify the police when you find a dead body and they investigate all deaths by unknown circumstances that fetuses human rights require that the police be notified when you have a miscarriage and that her body be treated as a potential crime scene until it can be determined that the miscarriage was caused by natural events and not induced either intentionally or accidentally by something someone else did.

That is not a slippery slope, that is the obvious result of consistently holding the belief that the fetus possesses full human rights

[Night Elf Mohawk]

That is not a slippery slope, that is the obvious result of consistently holding the belief that the fetus possesses full human rights

Maybe so, if you hold the belief that the fetus possesses full human rights from conception (even leaving aside that "full human rights" isn't really the argument, since very few people make that argument even for kids, even up to 18 or even 21).

If you don't believe that the fetus possesses rights until some point later in gestation, then termination before that time isn't murder.

[John]

I agree. And I think most of the country thinks the same thing. If you ever notice, a pretty sizable majority of the country thinks abortion is wrong. Yet, there is much less appetite to make abortion illegal. I think that is because most normal people, as oppose to the class of freaks who work in politics and the media, understand that outlawing abortion means punishing women who get them and are not comfortable with doing that even thought they object to abortion.

I honestly can't see how Trump's statement is going to mean shit to the general public.

[Notorious UGCC]

"If you accept the proposition that a fetus has all human rights (which is the only reason to oppose abortion)"

No, as proven by every H&R abortion thread, there are a lot of moderate-minded people who think of abortion on a continuum, where it should be legal at the very earliest stages and illegal at the latest stages. These "moderates" say that a fetus doesn't have rights from conception, but acquires those rights at some time prior to birth, after which killing the fetus should be illegal.

Since this middle-of-the-road position is actually more protective of life than the pro-abortion status quo, then why shouldn't the "moderates" focus on getting their moderate policies enacted into law? Why do they wait for prolifers to bring up the subject of, say, late-term abortions?

[Rasilio]

And I am one of those moderates. However your point is irrelevant.

Regardless of the stage of gestation where you believe that abortion should be outlawed, if your objection to abortion past that point is based on a belief on the fetus having acquired a "right to life", everything I said stands. A woman who seeks to abort a pregnancy past that point is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, if she receives one she is guilty of murder and if she has a miscarriage the cause of death of the fetus must be investigated just as any other death from unknown circumstances to determine if the woman who miscarried or anyone else did anything to cause that Fetus' death.

[Notorious UGCC]

So, if you think the fetus acquires human rights sometime before birth, and given that many fetuses past that cut-off point are being currently deprived of the right to life, do you think that politicians who believe as you do should get together and figure out a way to broaden legislative protection for these fetuses?

[Rasilio]

I do not think the Fetus actuires human rights before birth.

Furthermore you are lying, there are not very many fetuses being aborted past the point that I think abortion should be restricted. I am find with abortion up through roughly 28 weeks as that is the point where it becomes reasonable that you could simply induce labor and deliver the baby rather than aborting (yes I know it is possible for babies born as early as 22 or 23 weeks to survive however the odds are so small it isn't worth it wasting time on it) . There are only about 15,000 abortions performed past 20 weeks in the US a year, the majority of those are performed by 24 weeks and of the rest the majority are performed for medical rather than other reasons (outside of the small handful of women who do not learn they are pregnant till that late in the pregnancy the majority of abortions performed past 24 weeks are done because testing shows the fetus to have severe deformities or other health issues).

All totaled there might be a couple of hundred abortions a year that I would object to out of a country of over 300 million that is hardly a problem worth worrying about.

[Free Society]

An Arizona man reportedly sobbed and begged for his life while on all fours before being shot to death by a police officer last January.

The comments section are what you'd expect them to be. Foreigners saying "What's the deal with American cops?" They go on to answer their own question by saying "You Americans and your gun ownership, that's why cops act this way."

You hear that? Cops wantonly kill innocent people, almost always without any repercussions and the reason of course is because the cops have to worry about all the gun owners out there. Never mind that I, and every single gun owner I know don't feel it's necessary to shoot someone every time they make a furtive movement or even if "I feared for my life". Meanwhile, the Englishmen sit, disarmed, in their Ivory Tower not coming downstairs for fear of getting mugged.

[DEG]

Did this story pop up here? I've been a little busy and haven't kept an eye on H & R.

Woman at center of discredited Rolling Stone rape story resists deposition

Warning: auto-play video

The lawyers of alleged University of Virginia rape victim "Jackie" have asked a court to cancel a scheduled deposition in a lawsuit being brought against Rolling Stone for its discredited article about a gang rape at a fraternity on campus.

Jackie's lawyers claim she would be re-victimized if forced to recount the incident under oath and would be at risk of "extreme psychological" and "irreparable harm."

[Hamster of Doom]

"Listen, guys, it's not fun now that I'm not getting my way. The best solution for me would be to just drop it and forget the whole thing."

[Crusty Juggler]

How can she be victim-blamed and victim-shamed if she was never a victim?

[Just say Nikki]

Well, she's still saying she was. It's not like she recanted.

[John]

She just won't talk under oath where there are consequences to lying. Sorry but that is effectively recanting.

[Free Society]

Because pathological liars often have the ability, or rather disability, where they internalize their lies to such an extent that they can't differentiate between actual memories and the bullshit they tell people.

[Citizen X]

they internalize their lies to such an extent that they can't differentiate between actual memories and the bullshit they tell people

Take my mother-in-law. Please, take her.

[Free Society]

I'll send a van.

[R C Dean]

The lawyers of alleged University of Virginia rape victim "Jackie" have asked a court to cancel a scheduled deposition in a lawsuit being brought against Rolling Stone for its discredited article about a gang rape at a fraternity on campus.

Pet peeve alert:

Why are journalists still pretending she is a victim by giving her this bogus anonymity?

Her name is all over the internets. Even if she was a victim, her anonymity is gone, baby, gone. And rightly so.

[DEG]

Bad loans pile up at Chinese banks

Warning: auto-play video

Bad loans are rising quickly at China's top banks.

The slowdown in the world's second largest economy is taking its toll on large commercial banks as more and more businesses and people struggle to repay their debts.

Three of China's giant state-controlled banks reported their 2015 earnings late Wednesday. And all three posted big jumps in non-performing loans, the financial term for loans that have gone sour.

Surprise, surprise

[John]

Their asset bubble is biblical. The whole thing is going to collapse in a giant heap of bad debt and empty office buildings and apartments at some point, probably sooner rather than later.

[Notorious UGCC]

So, now that we've analyzed the consistency and logical rigor of the life-begins-at-conception position, why not take a look at the "human rights begins sometime between conception and birth" position.

Those of you who hold that position - are you aware that this makes you more prolife than current law which doesn't recognize preborn human beings as persons with full constitutional rights? And that the current law allows late-term abortions in situations which would not be tolerated if the personhood of the child were acknowledged?

Knowing this, would you vote* for a politician who supports the abortion status quo, or who would appoint Supreme Court justices who support that status quo? Knowing that this would result in the legalized killing of what you acknowledge to be human beings with human rights?

*Those of you who actually vote, that is.

[John]

Logically you are correct. If you say that life begins after conception, then you are tied to a view of life that is based on a arbitrary set of capabilities. That of course is a very slippery slope.

The question is what is the essence of being a human? I think brain function is a reasonable though imperfect answer. I would be okay with no abortion after brain function. We cut people off life support when they have no brain function, right? Of course, a fetus will have brain function eventually. But we don't grant rights to potential life. We grant rights to actual life.

[Notorious UGCC]

"I would be okay with no abortion after brain function."

OK, so my question is, would you vote for a politician who would *allow* abortion after brain function? Would you take enough a look at his/her stance to see what they'd do?

[John]

Maybe There are other issues besides abortion. I am not a single issue abortion voter. And to the extent that I object to abortion, i would be willing accept less than perfect solutions that were an improvement over the appalling situation we have today.

Ultimately, I don't view the problem as being a legal one. It is a moral one. Our problem is not that abortion is legal but that a million or whatever women think it is okay to get one every year. Making it illegal won't solve that problem. I wish it were that easy.

[Notorious UGCC]

Certainly, which is why many in the prolife movement talk about welcoming the unborn child "in love and in law," realizing that laws are not enough.

Necessary, but not sufficient. Like laws against burglary. So long as you have people with problems, you'll have burglaries, so you want to work with wayward youth in an educational way, not just a legal way.

[Rasilio]

Are you willing to treat the body of every woman who has a miscarriage past whatever point you believe the right to life begins as a potential crime scene, to require that all women who have a miscarriage report said miscarriage to the proper authorities and submit to a battery of medical examinations to determine the cause of death which could result in criminal charges if it is found that she did anything that reasonably could have caused the miscarriage?

Are you willing to charge any woman to seeks an abortion past that date with conspiracy to commit murder? Will you charge any woman to succeeds in having the abortion with murder?

If your answer to any of the above is no then you are a hypocrite at best or more likely a liar who really would do those things if he had the ability but just doesn't want to admit it because you recognize the optics of the situation and how unpopular it would make your views.

Finally, as with most anti abortion activists you are a flat out liar. The current state of the Supreme Court absolutely allows for reasonable restrictions on abortions, and especially late term ones as many states have such restrictions which have not been overturned by the Supreme Court. In fact the majority of states ban most or all abortions past 24 weeks of gestation so yes I would actually be perfectly happy with a Supreme Court Justice would would leave abortion law pretty much were it is today.

[John]

Rasillio,

The problem with the restrictions are that the courts require them to have an exception for the health of the mother. That sounds reasonable but it in effect is an exception that swallows the rule. Any woman who wants a late term abortion just has their abortionist say it is necessary for her health and gets one. Those restrictions are effectively dead letters. There is no oversight or due process of an abortionists decision that an abortion, no matter how late or how elective it actually is, is necessary for the health of the mother.

And the pro abortion people will never agree to any sort of restriction on that. So, really there are no legal restrictions on abortions.

[Just say Nikki]

If there were no legal restrictions on abortions, they actually would be available immediately, on demand. I'm sure you think waiting periods to buy guns among to "no legal restrictions."

[John]

Yeah Niki. So i guess there are legal restrictions on Ferrari as well. I mean they are not available on demand and not everyone can afford one.

[Rasilio]

And I would be fine with a law that required the Dr who certified that the procedure was medically necessary have his decision be reviewed by a medical review board every time he certifies a late term abortion as being medically necessary and that board have the power to revoke his license to practice medicine should he be found to be lying or too lax in his definition of "medically necessary".

That said I would include the discovery that the fetus possessed severe deformities or other health problems to bu more than sufficient to allow the abortion.

The problem here though is you are being lied to. Late term abortions are incredibly rare and the overwhelming majority of them really are for medical reasons. As a general rule women who want an abortion get it as soon as they can, it is pretty rare for someone who knows they are pregnant to wait 4 or 5 months before deciding they are going to abort and when that happens it is almost always because they couldn't afford the abortion procedure prior to that.

Anti abortion activists have the same problems with actually facts and the truth that AGW alarmists have. They scare you with the specter of late term abortions to trick you into voting strict regulations on all abortions when the reality is over 90% of all abortions occur within the first 12 weeks and 98.5% of them happen prior to 20 weeks

[Notorious UGCC]

Yawn, go take your lies and put them where the sun doesn't shine.

[Notorious UGCC]

"to require that all women who have a miscarriage report said miscarriage to the proper authorities and submit to a battery of medical examinations to determine the cause of death"

Now who's lying.

Liar.

[John]

You wouldn't have to do that. But if you didn't, how would you ever enforce a ban on abortions? Lets say a woman is four months pregnant and then leaves work for a couple of weeks and shows up at her doctors no longer pregnant. Do you think the doctor would have the duty to call the police? If not why not? If she showed up without her four year old child, he would. So why not here?

What about coworkers? What if they don't believe her story she had a miscarriage? Should they call the police? And if they do, what then? i would think the police would have to investigate. So, isn't that pretty close to what Rasillio is talking about? Any woman who has a miscarriage better be ready to explain how it happened to the police.

[Notorious UGCC]

Rasilio said "require that all women who have a miscarriage report said miscarriage to the proper authorities and submit to a battery of medical examinations to determine the cause of death" - if he can find a non-Communist-Romanian example of this from history, I'll take him seriously.

[John]

That is an exaggeration but only a small one. I don't see how a situation where any woman who has a miscarriage has to be ready to explain it to the police is really that much different than one where any woman who has one has to report herself. In both cases the woman faces the real possibility of submitting to a medical exam and questioning regarding the miscarriage. Whether you require her to report it or do it after someone else reports it seems like a distinction without much difference.

[Notorious UGCC]

The point is, that's not what he said.

[John]

Sure. But the fact remains that you need to be more honest with yourself about how hard it would actually be to outlaw all abortions. Such a law would be very hard to enforce and require some pretty harsh measures on the part of the police. And it would definitely infringe on the privacy of pregnant woman. Look how much child welfare laws infringe on the privacy of the family? Every time your kid falls and gets a black eye you end up having to explain to the police that you didn't beat him. Outlawing abortion would do the same thing to pregnancy.

I agree with you that abortion is wrong. I would love to see it end. But i am under no illusions about the difficulty of actually banning it. You should not be either.

[Rasilio]

How is asking a question a lie?

You claim that the fetus acquires a human right to life at some point.

The human right to life is backed up by criminal sanctions for anyone who deprives us of that right which entails a police investigation into the circumstances of our death and charges ranging from murder to neglegent homicide if anyone is found to have taken an action which contributed to our deaths.

Postulate all of the below happens after the point at which the fetus acquires the right to life...

If the woman miscarries and the cause of death is not investigated are you not denying that fetus the same rights to have our lives protected that the rest of us have?

How is a woman seeking an abortion any different from someone seeking to hire a hitman? A person who seeks the services of a hitman will be charged with a conspiracy to commit murder to protect the life of the target. Does the Fetus not have the same right?

How is an abortion different from a murder for hire? When someone hires a hitman the person doing the hiring is seen as being more criminally culpable than the hitman himself. Does the Fetus' right to life not guarantee it the same retribution from the state for it's murder as anyone else's murder would?

No one is saying you or anyone else is actually arguing for this, the point is those are the logical conclusions we must draw from opposing abortion based on a hypothetical right to life possessed by the fetus

[John]

This is why it is really only practical to ban late term abortions. You can get rid of public funding for it. Actually put some oversight over abortion clinics so you don't have cases like Gossnel. But you really couldn't criminalize abortions before 20 or 25 weeks, without resorting to the measures you are talking about. And those measures are neither practical or worth the harm they would cause.

[Notorious UGCC]

You [Ras] talked about "requir[ing] that all women who have a miscarriage report said miscarriage to the proper authorities and submit to a battery of medical examinations to determine the cause of death" - yes, repealing the right against self-incrimination is certainly near the top of the prolife action items, good analysis there.

[Rasilio]

Again, no one said anyone was advocating for that, I said it was a necessary and logical conclusion of a fetus having human rights.

Already it is illegal to hide a dead body from authorities and you have a duty to report it should you encounter one. Therefore if a fetus has human rights it holds that it would be just as illegal to conceal evidence of the dead fetus body and to fail to report it's presence from the police

[John]

Beyond that, even if you don't have a duty to report, people no doubt will report cases where they suspect a woman has had an abortion. And when they do, the police most certainly have a duty to investigate. And to do that, they will have to call the woman in and get her to explain her miscarriage.

This is another example of how simple minded it is to think outlawing abortion can be done without punishing women who have abortions. Even if you don't punish the woman for getting the abortion, she is still going to have to justify her miscarriage to the police and she is still going to be subject to contempt of court charges if she doesn't tell the police who gave her the abortion. If you can't claim the 5th if you are not subject to criminal prosecution. So every woman who gets an abortion will be expected to tell the authorities who gave it to her if they ask.

Yeah, that won't lead to tons of civil disobedience and courts throwing women who had abortions in jail or anything.

[Pay up, Palin's Buttplug!]

According to "Inside the FBI Investigation of Hillary Clinton's E-Mail", Clinton's gotten away with illegal acts before:

Comey's first brush with them came when Bill Clinton was president. Looking to get back into government after a stint in private practice, Comey signed on as deputy special counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee. In 1996, after months of work, Comey came to some damning conclusions: Hillary Clinton was personally involved in mishandling documents and had ordered others to block investigators as they pursued their case. Worse, her behavior fit into a pattern of concealment: she and her husband had tried to hide their roles in two other matters under investigation by law enforcement. Taken together, the interference by White House officials, which included destruction of documents, amounted to "far more than just aggressive lawyering or political naivet?," Comey and his fellow investigators concluded. It constituted "a highly improper pattern of deliberate misconduct."

[John]

Clinton's gotten away with illegal acts before:

What next? That Lindsey Lohan has used drugs? That Paris Hilton has cheated on her boyfriends?

Is it possible to believe in anything anymore?

[SFC B]

Wait, has Paris Hilton actually cheated on anyone? I'm sure she's slept with a bunch of people, but enjoying sex doesn't make one a cheater.

[buybuydandavis]

Meanwhile, a group of female journalists called for Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to be fired.

#bruisiewoosiesongirlsmatter

They give away the game. This would be such a complete nothing of a story if the reporter had been a man. But Pretty Girl Privilege. And Vagina.

[annytaylor00025]

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[ayaaat]

Climate campaigner Bill McKibben is against fracking shale to produce natural gas. In a new article, "Global Warming's Terrifying New Chemistry," over at The Nation, McKibben claims that recent research suggests that leaking methane is offsetting the reductions in carbon dioxide emissions that come from switching from coal to gas to generate electricity. Burning methane produces about half the carbon dioxide that burning coal does. However, methane in the short run is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and so much is supposedly escaping into the atmosphere from fracking that shale gas could be worse than coal for the climate. As a consequence, McKibben wants to ban fracking.
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