chaos wrote:Rep Todd Akin is a member of the United States House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Another scary tidbit: He has been re-elected to the House five times. Who are these voters? I hope these people do not vote him into the Senate.
Scary. I imagine if you look into the backgrounds of all congressmen and women there would be some flat out terrifying things.
I feel like this has been a very bad year for women's health and rights in politics. It seems nearly every day there is another terrible comment made.
It's an election year. The problem is that young people, incl. young women, don't vote as much as angry (esp. religious) old men do (they vote for their wives, too, and often there's a conservative streak to these older women who are post-menopausal and don't worry about reproductive rights anyway).
Obama really ought to be pushing a little harder to get the women's vote, after all.. they're more than 50% of the population (and more of them are educated now than men).
"What I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn't have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women," Obama said.
"What I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn't have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women," Obama said.
That could be read as saying that the government shouldn't change laws to be more permissible with respect to these things... tricky Barry.
Adurentibus Spina wrote:I do have a strong view about this... It's just empirically false that "just about everything the government gets involved with gets fucked up"...
Were I being more careful, I'd say: the burden of proof is on the libertarians/anarchists to convince the rest of us with reasons we can all accept that the government flat-out shouldn't be doing the things it does do (or the things we want it to do). Because of that, I don't have to argue for anything, since I can just show that each argument presented from the other side doesn't work, so there's no reason to accept it. If I were trying to convince people that it's empirically false that everything the government gets involved with gets fucked up, I'd first have to establish an agreed-upon sense for 'government' and 'gets involved with' and 'gets fucked up', otherwise it's not even clear what's being said.
I never said that the government shouldn't do things. I would imagine it would be hard to get everyone to agree on one thing, but ok. So here are just a few quick links to stories about why I feel the government fucks things up. This goes for the entire government, both parties. The bigger the government the more waste and the more red tape.
It doesn't follow from any of that that government programs themselves are fucking things up, nor that any alternative is better.
There's nothing wrong with demanding of civil servants that they take funds seriously, but the fact that there is a certain amount of difficult-to-prevent bureaucratic waste doesn't mean that programs themselves should be cut.
IN FACT, the opposite is true. What usually ends up happening is that conservatives get elected on a mandate of ending government waste, but instead of trying to find ways to fix some of the waste, they simply cut programs and then claim they're doing so to "balance the budget", but this cutting creates massive problems for public services (especially for the poor, homeless, sick, unemployed, etc.) and creates a swing back effect that bolsters liberals who then spend 4+ years trying to put the programs back in place.
No wonder there's waste... one side is trying to destroy government and the other side is trying to rebuild it... every 4 or 8 years... you can't manage waste so easily when you're swinging back and forth like that.
Adurentibus Spina wrote:It doesn't follow from any of that that government programs themselves are fucking things up, nor that any alternative is better.
There's nothing wrong with demanding of civil servants that they take funds seriously, but the fact that there is a certain amount of difficult-to-prevent bureaucratic waste doesn't mean that programs themselves should be cut.
IN FACT, the opposite is true. What usually ends up happening is that conservatives get elected on a mandate of ending government waste, but instead of trying to find ways to fix some of the waste, they simply cut programs and then claim they're doing so to "balance the budget", but this cutting creates massive problems for public services (especially for the poor, homeless, sick, unemployed, etc.) and creates a swing back effect that bolsters liberals who then spend 4+ years trying to put the programs back in place.
No wonder there's waste... one side is trying to destroy government and the other side is trying to rebuild it... every 4 or 8 years... you can't manage waste so easily when you're swinging back and forth like that.
Why trust a government that wastes and is inefficient with more things? What makes you think that a bigger government would be better? If in it's current state it is a mess, how does making it bigger help that?
Adurentibus Spina wrote:It doesn't follow from any of that that government programs themselves are fucking things up, nor that any alternative is better.
There's nothing wrong with demanding of civil servants that they take funds seriously, but the fact that there is a certain amount of difficult-to-prevent bureaucratic waste doesn't mean that programs themselves should be cut.
IN FACT, the opposite is true. What usually ends up happening is that conservatives get elected on a mandate of ending government waste, but instead of trying to find ways to fix some of the waste, they simply cut programs and then claim they're doing so to "balance the budget", but this cutting creates massive problems for public services (especially for the poor, homeless, sick, unemployed, etc.) and creates a swing back effect that bolsters liberals who then spend 4+ years trying to put the programs back in place.
No wonder there's waste... one side is trying to destroy government and the other side is trying to rebuild it... every 4 or 8 years... you can't manage waste so easily when you're swinging back and forth like that.
Why trust a government that wastes and is inefficient with more things? What makes you think that a bigger government would be better? If in it's current state it is a mess, how does making it bigger help that?
I don't have to answer that. The burden of proof is on you to say why making it smaller would help.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan say they disagree with Missouri Representative Todd Akin’s opposition to abortions for rape victims, but Akin’s reference Sunday to “legitimate rape” recalled the “forcible rape” language contained in a bill Ryan co-sponsored last year.
. . .
Last year, Ryan joined Akin as one of 227 co-sponsors of a bill that narrowed an exemption to the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortions. The Hyde Amendment allows federal dollars to be used for abortions in cases of rape and incest, but the proposed bill -- authored by New Jersey Representative Christopher H. Smith -- would have limited the incest exemption to minors and covered only victims of “forcible rape.”
House Republicans never defined what constituted “forcible rape” and what did not, but critics of the bill suggested the term could exclude women who are drugged and raped, mentally handicapped women who are coerced, and victims of statutory rape.
Last edited by chaos on Mon Aug 20, 2012 5:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Adurentibus Spina wrote:It doesn't follow from any of that that government programs themselves are fucking things up, nor that any alternative is better.
There's nothing wrong with demanding of civil servants that they take funds seriously, but the fact that there is a certain amount of difficult-to-prevent bureaucratic waste doesn't mean that programs themselves should be cut.
IN FACT, the opposite is true. What usually ends up happening is that conservatives get elected on a mandate of ending government waste, but instead of trying to find ways to fix some of the waste, they simply cut programs and then claim they're doing so to "balance the budget", but this cutting creates massive problems for public services (especially for the poor, homeless, sick, unemployed, etc.) and creates a swing back effect that bolsters liberals who then spend 4+ years trying to put the programs back in place.
No wonder there's waste... one side is trying to destroy government and the other side is trying to rebuild it... every 4 or 8 years... you can't manage waste so easily when you're swinging back and forth like that.
Why trust a government that wastes and is inefficient with more things? What makes you think that a bigger government would be better? If in it's current state it is a mess, how does making it bigger help that?
I don't have to answer that. The burden of proof is on you to say why making it smaller would help.
Why is the burden of proof on me? How to you prove that having bigger government with more government run programs is a good thing and something that can be done in financial sound manner?
It helps by having less programs for them to waste money on. A smaller government is easier to see where the waste is in theory that is. Less programs less waste.
Adurentibus Spina wrote:It doesn't follow from any of that that government programs themselves are fucking things up, nor that any alternative is better.
There's nothing wrong with demanding of civil servants that they take funds seriously, but the fact that there is a certain amount of difficult-to-prevent bureaucratic waste doesn't mean that programs themselves should be cut.
IN FACT, the opposite is true. What usually ends up happening is that conservatives get elected on a mandate of ending government waste, but instead of trying to find ways to fix some of the waste, they simply cut programs and then claim they're doing so to "balance the budget", but this cutting creates massive problems for public services (especially for the poor, homeless, sick, unemployed, etc.) and creates a swing back effect that bolsters liberals who then spend 4+ years trying to put the programs back in place.
No wonder there's waste... one side is trying to destroy government and the other side is trying to rebuild it... every 4 or 8 years... you can't manage waste so easily when you're swinging back and forth like that.
Why trust a government that wastes and is inefficient with more things? What makes you think that a bigger government would be better? If in it's current state it is a mess, how does making it bigger help that?
I don't have to answer that. The burden of proof is on you to say why making it smaller would help.
Why is the burden of proof on me? How to you prove that having bigger government with more government run programs is a good thing and something that can be done in financial sound manner?
It helps by having less programs for them to waste money on. A smaller government is easier to see where the waste is in theory that is. Less programs less waste.
The burden of proof is on the positive claim, always. It was implicit in what you said that you think a smaller government (than now) would be better. All I have to say is: convince me. It may be that I hold an alternative view, but I don't need to defend that view to be skeptical of your view.
I don't think your last three sentences help justify your view at all. First of all, you beg the question (a logical fallacy) by assuming that it's THE PROGRAMS writ-large that money is wasted on. This is not the starting point, but rather, the conclusion you want to reach. The starting point is that there are smaller or larger sizes of governments in SOME sense (and it's not clear what sense this is... it could mean more programs or it could mean fewer programs with higher expenditures, or it could mean lots of programs but less civil servants, or any iteration of that...) It is invalid to start with the idea that 'program x = wasted money on x'. This is idiotic.
Second, it isn't necessarily true that a smaller government entails easier visibility of wasted money. It's just as plausible that there be intense and systemic highly effective corruption in a VERY small government that finds a way to hide government waste despite few government programs. This equation of # of programs with amount of waste is simply fallacious.
*** How the GOP is losing any advantage it had on abortion:
Over the past several years, Republicans -- due to advances in technology (like sonograms) -- have largely (but not always) been winning the political fight over abortion. But what the controversy over Todd Akin’s controversial comments on rape and abortion has exposed is that some Republicans are finding ways to surrender any advantage on the topic. The latest example: Tom Smith, the Republican running against Sen. Bob Casey (D) in Pennsylvania, compared conceiving a child out of rape to conceiving out of wedlock. “‘I lived something similar to that with my own family, and [my daughter] chose the life, and I commend her for that,’ Smith said, per the AP. ‘She knew my views, but fortunately for me ... she chose the way I thought.’ Asked how that was similar to rape, Smith said: ‘Having a baby out of wedlock.’ After another follow-up question, about whether the out-of-wedlock pregnancy was similar to a case of rape, he said: ‘No, no, no, but, well, put yourself in a father’s position. Yes, I mean, it is similar, this isn’t, but I’m back to the original, I’m pro-life — period.’”
So, I guess we should release all rapists, or at least the ones who impregnated their victims, since they were doing God's work...
A friend on facebook posted dsomething related to this story and commented: "Oh yeah, there is no war on women. It's a GREAT time to be a woman" (obviously sarcastic). what do you guys think of that?
Another scary tidbit: He has been re-elected to the House five times. Who are these voters? I hope these people do not vote him into the Senate.
