Palin Denounces Violence, But Gun Imagery Will Stay

[cynthialee]

I am thinking next you will advocate throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

[Dana Lane]

" has been a disastrous deregulation program that backfired and created a statewide energy crisis."
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Your problem has been the environmental refusal to build power plants and power lines. Which left you no choose but to buy power from middle men.

"that there seems to be no good way out of the mess."
============
There is a simple way out of it  Get rid of the prop system and then reduce entitlement programs like education, health care, welfare and other's. Then start population control by getting rid of illegal workers. then get rid of the three strike law. Make the prisoners support their own needs such as growing their own food and making their own cloths etc.

"It exists to prevent suffering, not to feed the greed of individuals."

-------
Suffering is necessary when people do irrational things. Let them suffer. It is the best teacher.


"Is the solution to people running red lights really to remove the red lights?"

Better yet remove insurance. So when they break their car they will have to walk. Insurance makes people not be responsible. Just as the health care will allow people to do thing sthat cause health problems knowing they can get help. It takes away personal responsibility.
Post Merge: April 12, 2010, 04:24:53 PM
The simple fact is that people are not equal. Everyone is different and has different attributes some are valued by society and some are not.

The world can not have progress. The resources are being used faster than they can be renewed. We are headed for a lower standard of living especially if we do not reduce population.  You do not have to worry about the majority social repression because many will die of the over population by natural events as in the past such as war, disease, starvation, lack of water etc.

You gotta be kidding me. good grief
Post Merge: April 12, 2010, 06:19:55 PM
Socialist-Free Purity Pledge

I, ________________________________, do solemnly swear to uphold the
principles of a socialism-free society and heretofore pledge my word
that I shall strictly adhere to the following: I pledge to eliminate
all government intervention in my life. I will abstain from the use of
and participation in any socialist goods and services including but
not limited to the following:

Police, Fire, and Emergency Services
US Postal Service
Roads and Highways
Air Travel (regulated by the socialist FAA)
The US Railway System
Rest Areas on Highways
Bridges
Sidewalks
Public Water/Sewer Services (goodbye socialist toilet, shower,
dishwasher, kitchen sink, outdoor hose!)
FDA Approved Food and Drugs
Publicly Funded Anti-Drug Use Education for Children
Treatment at Any Hospital/Clinic That Ever Received Funding From
Local/State/Federal Government
Medical Services and Medications That Were Created/Derived From Any
Government Grant/Research Funding
Socialist Byproducts of Government Investment Such as Duct Tape and
Velcro (NASA Inventions)
Use of the Internets, email, as the DoD's ARPANET was the basis for
computer networking
Foodstuffs/Meats/Produce/Crops That Were Grown With/Fed With/Raised
With/That Contain Inputs From Crops Grown With Government Subsidies
Public Education
Government grants/loans for higher education
Attending publicly funded or state colleges/universities

SWORN ON A BIBLE AND SIGNED THIS DAY OF ____IN THE YEAR ____.

_________________ _________________
Name/Town/State

Just print, disconnect your computer from the socialist internets,
sign and hand deliver to the appropriate agencies. Don't forget to
pass it along to all your anti-socialist friends so that they, too,
can free themselves of the tyranny!

[Julie Marie]

To reduce the population, we should eliminate all the inferior people, people who have little or no value to society, people who are lazy, people who are handicapped, people who are a blight on society and, especially, them gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans-whatever folks!

That should clean up a lot of the mess.  We can feed them to to the sharks, lions, tigers and whatever other carnivore will eat them.  That should help the animal/fish population for a while and reduce the clean up costs.

Then, after the cleansed population settles into the new world, we should re-evaluate our standards and identify the next class of inferiors and get rid of them.  Continue the process until purification is complete.

But first we need to elect people to the new "Purification of Odd and Ordinary People" (POOP) board.  I nominate Sarah Palin, Fred Phelps, Pastor Thomas Robb , August Kreis III, Don McLeroy, William Donahue, Peter LaBarbera, Maggie Gallagher and Kenneth Zucker - to start.  That should put the cleansing process into hyper-drive.

[PanoramaIsland]

Lisagurl, you are portraying yourself as something of a sociopath; there is no other way to put it. I can only hope that you are not what you portray yourself to be.

You want no healthcare, no education, no stoplights, no insurance, no this, no that, we should get out of your life - but you want to control the lives of immigrants who are suffering so much they will risk their lives to cross the border illegally. You want them to suffer more. This all leads to the grand reveal, which is of course that you have no real problem with suffering.

I'm willing to make a bet, though, and that bet is this: you do have a problem with suffering. You have a problem with your own suffering; you would weep and lament and suffer over the loss of a leg, or a loved one, like anyone else. You simply fail to extend that common human decency to anyone who is not close enough to you to hug. You seem to believe that people are always responsible for their own suffering; this is obviously not the case.

You are correct in one and only one thing: we need to get rid of the proposition system in California.

[Tammy Hope]

General, not political, observation:

it seems to me that often a political philosophy is built on a foundation of wonderful intentions, and laudable goals, but has the unfortunate flaw of being wholly impractical to actually apply to real human nature.

Specifically, if one were to say, for instance "we can't afford to give free health care to everyone" those who make "compassion for the suffering" their foundational principle will be outraged and say "you monster! you don't care about suffering!"

But it need not be the case that the skeptic doesn't care, they might care a great deal - but caring alone can make an impossible thing possible.

(Please note that I'm not arguing covering everyone is impossible, it was just an example)

The actual discussion should be "what can practically be done?" since there are, in point of fact, no monsters who want to see people suffer.

But so often that question doesn't get asked because both sides are too busy attacking each other's (presumed) motives.

[lisagurl]

You want no healthcare, no education, no stoplights, no insurance, no this, no that, we should get out of your life -

An orderly society requires responsibility and rational thinking. You can not get something for nothing. Everything requires work, effort and a willingness to give of your time to the culture. If you are displeased with the culture you will not give. Force only promotes resistance. Many people bring on their own problems yet some others are in the wrong place at the wrong time. 50  percent of doing the right thing is not going to the wrong place. The other 50% is timing knowing what and when to do it. People who do not plan, research, and take action to improve their lives should not expect others to do it for them.  It does not take laws and government to plan everyone's lives. Families, and community groups have much power to improve lives of everyone. If individuals do not want to give time to those groups then they can expect  no one is going to give to them.  It is difficult to watch people destroy themselves but they have that right. It is better for everyone to leave a self destructive person to their own resources if they reject community help. Help does not last for ever. It is only a temporary band-aid to get people to help themselves. Let those die who have no redeeming attributes to offer society after the community sees the reality. Too many people are having children irresponsibly and dumping them on society. Limited resources would require rationing or just plan denial to people who abuse the system.

[Luna!]

Alright, so I've been reading this thread for some time now; I'm actually starting to enjoy the back-and-forth conversation, even if neither side can agree with very much that the other is saying. I like to try to stay neutral; what seems to be an obvious hatred to a political opponent usually turns out to be just a misinformed opinion or a quote taken out of context (and the context is trickier than it first appears, as many groups on both sides appear to occupy worlds of their own). The opinions of the masses (not the protestors; those are usually people with exceptional interest...) generally fall into the same general line on many things.

I was even taking Lisagurl's comments with several grains of salt, thinking "Maybe that's just the way she speaks". When I read Laura's comments about how political philosophies don't translate well to nature, I agreed. In trying to fit Lisa's philosophy to the real world, we ran up against some problems, which may not be quite as unacceptable if we understand where she's coming from. The first half of the previous post makes some sense; few people want to help those who refuse to help themselves. A reasonable argument so far.

Then, of course, there was this.

Let those die who have no redeeming attributes to offer society after the community sees the reality. [...] Limited resources would require rationing or just plan denial to people who abuse the system.

I'm trying to see this in a way that doesn't paint Lisagurl as misanthropic, but it's kinda not happening.

I'm sure that many of those who will post after me will ask the same question, but what kind of system is this? It seems open to all kinds of problems. Who gets to decide what 'redeeming attributes' will be? Do we allow for extenuating circumstances (say, a previously self-sufficient business owner becomes homeless when his business fails during a recession)? How will a democratic nation (which ostensibly serves the people to some extent) justify this course of action?

It's also only a small jump from "these people are useless, we should let them die" to "these people are useless, we should actively kill them". People will make this leap eventually. So it ends up as "anyone without 'redeeming attributes' deserves death", which has been tried multiple times already in the form of various wars. That's basically the underlying principle for most of the prejudice and violence in the world, which the masses tend to decry.

Overall, I would think that even the original method would be difficult to apply; this goes against most peoples' idea of 'morality', and the people who are so treated tend to resist.

[PanoramaIsland]

Agreed, and thank you for such a substantial post. Lisagurl is illustrating quite beautifully for me the point I made earlier about the "diaper-changing" comment: all this talk about unhampered liberty too often goes hand-in-hand with the desire to conduct invasive, often theocratic moral arbitrage on society, deciding who gets to be pure and good and who is not. Lisagurl is displaying the "class purity" variety of right-wing "diaper-changing" tendencies: if people are impoverished, it's their own fault, and their being poor makes them less worthy in the eyes of society.

I'm tired of this, as she is as well, I'm sure.

[lisagurl]

if people are impoverished, it's their own fault, and their being poor makes them less worthy in the eyes of society.

If you read " A Theory of Justice " By Rawls you will see he paints justice by the individual not knowing anything about their selves or their status. If you have no personal benefit and could be rich or poor how would you define a system? If you put humanity first before individual lives the first priority is survival of the people. If you have limited resources such as we have how do you insure survival and prevent over use and over population? Would suffering be a priority? What about how long people live? What about those vegetables that only consume and do not contribute? Reality many sound harsh but these are real problems which in the name of emotions people do not want to face because no choice is completely moral or empathic.  The Greeks thought about these problems read Plato and Aristotle. It is not a matter of what you would like to do but what can be done with a high probability.

[PanoramaIsland]

There are political philosophers and economists to support practically every bad idea under the sun, Lisagurl - from the extremely minimal government you seem to favor (J.S. Mill, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman) right up to completely government-managed command economies (Marx, Lenin, Trotsky), or no authority or state at all (Kropotkin, Bakunin, Chomsky). None of these arguments are new, and citing philosophers isn't particularly impressive to anyone but the most naive and uneducated. You might as well, by the way, have cited a philosopher a good deal stronger in your positions than Rawls. How about Murray Rothbard, the Anarcho-Capitalist? You know, "government is the problem - get rid of government, and the free market can function properly." Idiocy loves company, I guess.

Did you think, perhaps, that I had never read any political philosophy? I actually like several libertarian/classical liberal philosophers, John Stuart Mill especially, although I think they're wrong on their economic positions. J.S. Mill was one of the first out the gate with a philosophical defense of the equality of women with men. How can I not love that?
If you're going to argue from such difficult to validate positions, perhaps you should learn to argue your points better. You don't come off as a libertarian so much as you come off as a sociopath.

[tekla]

Gosh I go away for a week and you're still at it.


it seems to me that often a political philosophy is built on a foundation of wonderful intentions, and laudable goals, but has the unfortunate flaw of being wholly impractical to actually apply to real human nature.
That's pretty much why people who actually work in government, or in policy tend to discuss policy (what can be done and how is it to be done and who is it going to be done for/to) and not political philosophy. 

Politics, and I'm pretty sure that this is the reason so many people don't like it is really the art of the possible.  There is no perfect world, and even if there was the first thing that would happen is you'd no longer have people walking around thinking 'if it were a perfect world.'  Good enough is often way better then nothing.  Holding out for perfection - and that's what political philosophy in its quest for purity involves - ain't ever got nobody anywhere.

[RebeccaFog]

Walk into a christian church and right there, front and center, is a crucifix, and that crucifix may also have an emaciated man hanging on it with nails pounded through his hands and feet, a stab wound in his side and a thorny crown pushed into his skull.  Some will even have this in living color, complete with blood pouring from the wounds.

Just image what the symbol would look like if they had Jesus torn apart by dogs.

BTW, Palin is appealing to them also because she conveys this image she's a good christian woman.  Then dresses like a bad girl.  (note the leather jacket)  I think that dual image on an attractive woman appeals to a lot conservatives who are too uptight to let loose.

If you listen to Palin, she appeals entirely to emotion. There is little, if anything, of constructive ideas in her speeches. People need to turn of their emotions when listening to these empty speeches.


As usual, I agree with Tekla on about everything.

For those looking for a civil war, it ain't gonna be yer great grand pappy's war. It's going to be Bosnia. Not that it will ever happen. And besides, the militias will be put down by the states national guards and reserves who happen to have bigger weapons.

There is nothing to fear. the world is better than you think. If you feel panicked, scared, or anxious, go see a good counselor.

What if Jesus were strangled? Would we have to look at sculptures of some Roman garroting him?  Just wondering.


your old foe,

Rebis

[lisagurl]

You don't come off as a libertarian so much as you come off as a sociopath

I am neither. I prefer independent. The Government has a poor track record. The president has more international power than domestic. World problems are much more involved than most care to investigate and Obama is doing just what Bush did. National problems are mostly due to the nature of our country. We are not one peoples but United States of different beliefs. The Nation has watched the California political philosophy blow up in their face. We do not want to ruin the country with policy that is not feasible. Sure a utopia is just in people's heads like Rawls admits. In the physical reality there is going to be discrimination, poverty, crime, corruption and inequities. Face those facts and you will see that an individual has more power to change things when self motivation is permitted than being forced by threat of Government punishment. 

[PanoramaIsland]

Lisagurl, what part of "California is not a left-wing paradise" do you not understand? Many of the defining budgetary policies in this state were created by Republicans. Our governor is a Republican, as have been some of the most significant governors in the state's history. FFS, we passed Prop. 8, the anti-gay marriage proposition! That doesn't strike me as particularly lefty. The urban populations here in the San Francisco Bay Area may lean to the left, but state's large suburban populations don't, and the rural voters of the Central Valley are staunchly right-wing and impossible to sway by any measure.

The bottom line is that you don't know a damned thing about my state, and you ought to, to quote Wm. F. Buckley (a sociopath you'd get along with!), "shut up a little" about California politics and policy until such time as you actually know what you're talking about. This state is not a leftist utopia, never has been and probably never will be.

[lisagurl]

But the system is not doing all it can be, it isn't doing what should be done, and there are tons of bureaucratic excuses why things cannot be done better. If you have any will to save your country left, rise up!

And I know that schools have taken on the welfare of their students because families have fallen down on the job. The sexual revolution of the 60's and 70's, the "ME" generation of the 80's - these didn't exactly contribute to family stability. Divorce is the norm. Step parents are the norm, and not all of them found peace and joy with their new blended families. Go back a bit, and remember when the government had to convince minorities to take welfare. Forcing welfare on minorities was a brilliant move in all of this, too. This broke down the family structure in huge segments of our society, leading to all sorts of problems with an ongoing cycle of poverty, with the subsequent ongoing cycles of crime, incarceration, absent fathers, multiple "partners" going through the lives of single mothers, physical and sexual abuse - which led in turn to high needs for schools and governments to intervene between family and children. Brilliant move. A tragedy of holocaust proportions was visited on our poor, so that today the government can justify its intrusion into private lives, and further alienation between children and parents by the sheer magnitude of TIME they claim that it takes to properly educate our children....they play on our fears that our children will not be able to make in in this economy that they've broken with overspending.

I think, if for no other reason, the reason we need to resist federal mandates is because they destroy us at the local level. By offering us/forcing on us new federal guidelines and mandates, rules and regulations, it puts us in a similar situation as a single, welfare mother. Dependent, and at risk for losing something we think we need if we make waves.

[PanoramaIsland]

Many of my ancestors were killed in the Holocaust. My great-grandmother Chinka fled on foot across Europe, from Southern Ukraine to Amsterdam, carrying four small children in order to escape the pogroms. Two of those children died on the way. She was lucky; while she and my grandfather were struggling to make ends meet in New York, most of the family members who remained in Europe ended up in concentration camps.

You can take your false analogy between the imagined negative effects of government intervention on the poor and the worst genocide in human history and stuff it.
It is valid to argue the merits of public policy, but making analogies between government social programs and the Holocaust is not and will never be valid argument. Ever. Got it?

You've just ended this discussion. Come back to me when you've learned to use civil debating tactics.

[lisagurl]

Ever. Got it?

Then you have a place in this world it is called a  kibbutz.

Come back to me when you've learned to use civil debating tactics.

LOL read "Freakonomics" (A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side of Everything) The statistics are there. I do not care to live in a socialist nation any more than your relatives wanted a fascist one. Limited resources that go unchecked by Government spending  will lead to genocide. It happened in many places such as Rwanda.

[PanoramaIsland]

Have a nice life.