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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Politics in basically any country is rarely about actual competence or platforms and more on the ability of a politician to sell themselves through personal charisma and making their opponent look bad. Like I said, people do things mainly based on emotional reactions.
edited 6th Feb '17 1:57:09 PM by Draghinazzo
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Honestly, by all reasonable standards, she won by a pretty decent margin.
But she had a lot of help. It wasn't until the DNC and all these charismatic cool people vouching for her that I actually got over my initial bad impression of her as a hawkish, Cuba and Iran-hating SOS.
Come to think of it, neither of those historic deals happened under her watch, did they?
edited 6th Feb '17 2:23:00 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.{{172756}}: In the case specific of abortion... well, if i am remembering well, earlier in this thread, shortly after the confirmation of Trump, someone mentioned that Obama thought of changing his mind in this issue. This change of side was too criticized in this thread but... i am Brazilian and i am not an erudite in american politics, but, based in this very thread, the Democrats generally are against dehumanization. And something essential to pro-abortion be a considered a moral position is the position that the fetus is not human.
Something like "even assuming that the fetus is a full-fleged human, I should not be obligated to donate my blood or the use of my body to any human or risk my life for them, even if they are kin and even if it's the only way they'll stay alive"?
Of course, if "the fetus is not a person to begin with", that saves a lot of emotional energy for the same result.
edited 6th Feb '17 2:41:16 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.It depends on what being "human" is. From a strictly biological sense, yes, the fetus is undeniably human.
The real question is, does it deserve to have all the same rights and/or do the fetus' rights override the mother's?
It's a complicated question and to be honest, out of all the positions most commonly associated with reactionaries, this is the one where I can at least somewhat understand.
But ultimately, I think that, if you want to have a compassionate and fair society, you must at least make exceptions for situations where the mother's life is at risk, and rape cases. Because I think that forcing a woman to carry a fetus to term in either of those is cruel.
And going even further than that, I just don't feel like it's my call to tell a woman whether she should do something like that or not. Contrary to what a lot of people (not anyone here, mind you) seem to assume, most people are pro-choice and not pro-abortion because nobody wants to get an abortion. It's not something you do without any consideration or second thoughts for a lot of people.
edited 6th Feb '17 2:36:47 PM by Draghinazzo
The kicker is that banning abortion does very little to curb abortion rates. Because in the end, if someone really wants an abortion, they will get it. Only it won't be done legally or safely. Proper sex education, women's education, social safety nets, and actually supporting mothers do a hell of a lot more to decrease the number of abortions that happen in a society.
If pro-lifers actually gave a damn beyond their very narrow reading of religious texts and a false sense of moral superiority, this is what they would focus on.
Exactly. No one just wakes up one day and goes "hey, I'd like to get a potentially risky medical procedure done today because I like killing children."
edited 6th Feb '17 2:38:32 PM by Pseudopartition
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Presumably, people opting to abort do so with a heavy heart. But, see above. You wake up with a person plugged into you without your permission, who will die if you unplug them. It's an uncomfortable decision, but surely you wouldn't want to be forced to keep that person plugged, would you?
edited 6th Feb '17 2:43:40 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.I think we have a thread specifically for the abortion debate.
Personally I'd say babies should be kept, but no-one should be forced to, and if they can't care for them, there had better damn well be a well-funded and well-executed orphanage program.
Actually my view on that last point is even more extreme than that, but my views on family and legacy are weird and off-topic.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Trump Executive Action hampers FAA issuing safety
Remember that executive action that requires 2 regulations being removed for each new one?
Well, here we are. The FAA is having trouble issuing safety warnings about aircraft.
edited 6th Feb '17 4:05:14 PM by TacticalFox88
New Survey coming this weekend!See, in a bizzaro world where I was somehow put in charge of the government, cleaing out cruft from laws and regulations is something I would want to do, but bonehead ordering arbitrary mandates is not the way to go about it. Form teams which include experts in the relevant field to comb through the books, find the stuff which is outdated, unenforced, unconstitutional or otherwise makes no sense and which could be cleaned up by legislative overhauls. Then start striking things from the books.
Being born here, having lived here for at least 14 years, be at least 35 years old. Those are the only hard requirements. Unwritten: Don't have done anything that could get you removed from office, or if you have, don't get caught.
In practice, they also need to be a member of a major party, have enough money to at least be in upper tax brackets, have been active enough in politics to be recognized.
edited 6th Feb '17 4:31:27 PM by Elle
Doubtful, unfortunately-too close to atheist, and no one who actually cares about the religious beliefs of our leaders would bother trying to understand. Viewers Are Morons, and what is our government these days if not reality tv.
Also this, minus the Joking Mode: millions of people in this country believe exactly that.
edited 6th Feb '17 5:06:02 PM by ViperMagnum357
edited 6th Feb '17 5:02:31 PM by kkhohoho

But she's good at actually running the country.
And she's not that bad at campaigning. She was effectively the second place finisher twice.