Jump to content
TSM Forums

SuperJerk

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    9706

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by SuperJerk

  2. Posted · Report reply

    As it should be. With all of this country's problems considered, you really want our extended focus to be on a joke the rights are too sensitive to absorb?

     

    Eh... In one sense, I agree, on the other hand, the double standard bugs me. If the media can spend countless weeks using a private citizen, Rush, as a straw-man boogyman at the behest of the White House and some old Clinton flunkies, they can hold Obama's feet to the fire for more than a day over a remark about the handicap.

     

    Besides, Obama is the one who thought it'd be a good idea to go on Leno. Its not anyone but his fault if his comedy is disrespectful.

     

    One person, the president, made a joke that effects NOTHING. He wasn't trying to make any comments about policy or future funding of government programs by making the statement, he was making a joke. That is TRIVIA. The media has a right to report it, because of who said it, but it is ultimately meaningless.

     

    The other person, a radio commentator who makes lots of jokes and comments that effect nothing (such as calling the president a "Halfrican-America" and a "little black man-child" or comparing the backlash against AIG to the rise of the German Nazi Party), but also uses his show as a platform to try and influence public policy and encourages his audience to pressure elected officials, gets multiple public officials to apologize to him over a number of weeks for publicly disagreeing with him because they know he influences a segment of public opinion. That is NEWS.

     

    Rush is exercising his rights as an American to try to influence public policy, and there's nothing wrong with trying to inspire his listeners to action. But if he has the right to use his enourmous platform to the ends he sees fit, the news media has a right and a responsibility to report on the influence he wields over the people in our government.

  3. Posted · Report reply

    For me the biggest mystery (and biggest clue, I suppose) was always why Colonial civilization resembled Earth civilization so much.

     

    Well, obviously, the colonials shared their gods and God with the different tribes of humans they encountered, as well as elements of language and mathematical concepts. Hell, one civilization was even named after one of our characters (Galen = Gaelic). I suspect Apollo eventually settled in the Greek islands with other colonial survivors, and his ideals of democracy were eventually passed down to them. The monotheists similarly inspired the Hebrew culture.

  8. Posted · Report reply

    Even if he's using a middle-way definition for what the embryos are, that doesn't answer the question WHY it is wrong (or even why it is the equivalent to making a human life).

     

    His answer is right in the quote you gave from him (though selectively highlighted): "[it is] a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end."

     

    It is not giving proper dignity to human life to cultivate human cells for harvest. I don't really see how that's a gray area. (Unless you're okay with other undignified human treatment like slavery, the caste system, etc. Then I think the conversation has warped beyond Mr. Krauthammer's basic argument.)

     

    But since it is NOT the same thing as making a human life, then why is it wrong?

     

    He's trying to say that the rule to not make a human life covers potential life...but does it really?

     

    How is "cultivating human cells for harvest" any different than donating blood or other things that involving people donating cells?

     

    I think these questions need to be answered before anyone can prove extracting embryotic stem cells is the moral equivalent of slave---wait...whut?

     

    So you'd be fine with creating embryos simply to utilize them in stem cell research, rather than what they're biologically meant for, which is to grow into a human being? It's treating (potential) human beings like they're no different from chicken eggs. We should simply use these things regardless of how we've gotten them and their legitimate functions in growing into human life. Mr. Krauthammer correctly said that this is treating human beings as a means, rather than an end.

    They are not human beings. They are human beings' cells.

     

    I mean, I can see where you are coming from, but I also realize that embryotic cells are only alive in the strictest scientific sense of the word.

  9. Posted · Report reply

    Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. "There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."

    Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.

    "It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified."

    Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to determine "who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."

    Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on Wilkerson's specific allegations but noted that the military has consistently said that dealing with foreign fighters from a wide variety of countries in a wartime setting was a complex process. The military has insisted that those held at Guantanamo were enemy combatants and posed a threat to the United States.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090320/ap_on_...mo_wrongly_held

     

     

    Dear George W. Bush,

     

    This is why we have a Bill of Rights. Asshole.

     

    Love,

     

    SuperJerk

     

    P.S. You still suck.

  12. Posted · Report reply

    Wait, someone explain something to me.

     

    K, medical marijuana clubs that operate within the laws won't be prosecuted. Okay. I'm assuming that such a club is a place where someone who has a medical marijuana card can go, buy some weed, and smoke it. Okay.

     

    So, how does not prosecuting these places (if they follow all laws) mean weed is essentially legal? Is it just easy enough to get medical marijuana certification that anyone who wants to, will? Like, if I didn't have a card, I couldn't go in and buy weed, could I? Wouldn't that still be illegal? Or could I just go and GET a card, thus making it perfectly legal?

     

    But yeah, I'm for it, I'm just confused.

     

    I think it is a state law vs. federal law thing. States would legalize medical marijuana, but the U.S. Department of Justice would go after pot users for violating federal laws.

  16. Posted · Report reply

    Oh, and that whole Ronald Regan bit at the end, I figured that was one last swipe at the Bush Era, what with the whole "No-one will ever believe a cowboy in the Whitehouse"

     

    It should have stayed Redford though, loved that little reversal with the assumption that is was going to be the Democratic RR getting in rather than the Republican. If they really wanted the Cowboy line in they should have made it Clint Eastwood or something

     

    Redford, Eastwood, and Reagan all played cowboys in various movies.

     

    To my knowledge, Redford never starred in a movie with a monkey, though.

  18. Posted · Report reply

    Even if he's using a middle-way definition for what the embryos are, that doesn't answer the question WHY it is wrong (or even why it is the equivalent to making a human life).

     

    His answer is right in the quote you gave from him (though selectively highlighted): "[it is] a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end."

     

    It is not giving proper dignity to human life to cultivate human cells for harvest. I don't really see how that's a gray area. (Unless you're okay with other undignified human treatment like slavery, the caste system, etc. Then I think the conversation has warped beyond Mr. Krauthammer's basic argument.)

     

    But since it is NOT the same thing as making a human life, then why is it wrong?

     

    He's trying to say that the rule to not make a human life covers potential life...but does it really?

     

    How is "cultivating human cells for harvest" any different than donating blood or other things that involving people donating cells?

     

    I think these questions need to be answered before anyone can prove extracting embryotic stem cells is the moral equivalent of slave---wait...whut?

  19. Posted · Report reply

    I frankly don't understand his point of view. His argument is self-contradictory.

     

    I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science, and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research -- a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

     

    If there's some logical, middle-ground nuance he explained there, I missed it. It really sounds like he is trying to have it both ways.

     

    I believe he's objecting to the use of humanity, not necessarily the state that these humans (or potential humans) are in within that same arena of scientific use. He's arguing that developing a human embryo to harvest it for genetic research or whatever other purpose is morally reprehensible, regardless of whether you believe them to be persons or not.

     

    Even if he's using a middle-way definition for what the embryos are, that doesn't answer the question WHY it is wrong (or even why it is the equivalent to making a human life).

  20. Posted · Report reply

    It can effect consumer confidence, but a lack of consumer confidence isn't what got us into this mess.

     

     

     

    Speaking of messes:

     

    Senate Banking committee Chairman Christopher Dodd told CNN Wednesday that he was responsible for language added to the federal stimulus bill to make sure that already-existing contracts for bonuses at companies receiving federal bailout money were honored.

     

    Dodd acknowledged his role in the change after a Treasury Department official told CNN the administration pushed for the language.

     

    Both Dodd and the official, who asked not to be named, said it was because administration officials were afraid the government would face numerous lawsuits without the new language....

     

    ...On Tuesday, Dodd denied to CNN that he had anything to do with adding the language, which has been used by officials at bailed-out insurance giant AIG to justify paying millions of dollars in bonuses to executives after receiving federal money.

    http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/18/aig...ress/index.html

     

     

  21. Posted · Report reply

    You bring up a good point here, and I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread. Before the housing bubble burst, housing prices were out of fucking control. Three bedroom houses going for $400,000. Housing prices like that, especially in areas that do not have wages to support it, lead in to people taking out ridiculous loans they cannot afford and the cycle continues.

     

    I think one of the problems is that people are looking at houses as a way to make money in the future, rather then simply a place to live. Now, in essence there is nothing wrong with property value going up, as inflation goes up, but the house marking of the early 2000's way out of control, and I don't think enough people are showing enough concern for that situation that is bound to repeat itself.

     

    This is something I just noticed, but people in NYC would kill someone to get a 3 BR house for $400,000. I just saw something on the news last week which was trying to show what you could get for a "mere" $500,000 these days and it could get you a 2 or 3 BR in Hoboken, NJ (I forget), a smallish 2 BR in Jackson Heights, Queens or a 1 BR condo in Manhattan and all that's AFTER the bubble burst. Just thought I'd provide a little perspective on how absurd the market still is here at least.

    Isn't there also a large difference the average income in places with high costs of living and the rest of the country?

  24. Posted · Report reply

    3. Y2Jerk

    6. Lord of the Curry

     

    Y2Jerk isn't the same as SuperJerk, right? I don't know how I manage to not notice all of these crappy posters, but I seriously don't know who the vast majority of these people are.

     

    I was Y2Jerk, but have not gone by the name in like 3 years. People here have a hard time letting go of shit.

     

    (Pot, kettle, yeah...I know.)

×