A Bigger Stronger Strawman

Dawg Said:

Nor do I think it's the role of the government to decide when my worth as a human is through and I should be put to sleep.

So no death penalty in your moral universe? (Hard to resist a big softball like that)

Even More

Since were in obvious diagreement what would you say about this?

"if we really believed in an unmitigated, uncurbed in any way culture of life, we would be having universal health care."

Sure it's from Kaus, but it's better than Kos right?

Bah

Dawg Says:

In fact, I would say the same sense of frustration and hopelessness is shared by Cubs/Sox fans and Braves fans.

Dude, try telling that to Sox and Cubs fans, as I have. You’ll get the same look you’d give somebody bitching that their Mercedes just isn't nice enough and they want a Bently. Sure, Chicago fans give me crap about always loosing in the playoffs etc, but I then mention that the Braves won a WS in 1995 and have been to more playoffs in the past 13 years than either of the Chicago teams in the last 100. Believe me you have no leg to stand on with this issue. I also have a friend at work that’s a Royals fan. The guy would be perfectly happy with a .500 season, and has only infrequent delusions that the Royals will somehow make the playoffs (in the crappiest division in baseball, mind you). This guy would cream his pants to get Schuerholz back.

IMHO the one thing the Braves have been missing in their quests for WS rings is a fireballer in the rotation. We won when Smoltz was winning for the Braves in the playoffs. We have Smoltz back this year. We finally have a legitimate playoff pitcher who can overpower batters instead of always trying to fool them. The Braves have never been willing to invest in a power pitcher, FA or trade. True they are very expensive, but also invaluable and the Braves management hasn’t ever shown any inclination to be big spenders in FA. If Smoltz can stay healthy I have good feelings about the Braves. Try not to worry about the corner outfielders, I am pretty sure the Braves will make a trade for a good one when they figure out who isn’t working.

With all this said, try imagine being a Cubs, White Sox, Royals, Rangers, Mariners, or Expos fan (well never mind about the Expos, I’m kinda glad our French-Canadian neighbors were saddled with them).

Trust me you are Spoiled

You've been complaining about the Braves since I met you. It’s ingrained in your soul. IIRC you were complaining about Lonnie Smith 5 seconds after the Braves lost in 91. We both hated David Justice and then he goes and hits the game winner against the Tribe. I am still torn between my hate and gratitude (leaning toward hate though).

After living in Chicago for 13 years you don't know the meaning of pain. Cubs and Sox fans are constantly tortured by the travails of their teams. The White Sox haven’t won a post-season series since the teens! Everyone knows the Cubs story.

You cannot tell me you were happier about the Braves during the 80’s with Dale Murphy (I hated him more than you hate Chipper and Andrew combined), Rick Mahler, Ron Gant, Brett Butler, Zane Smith and Bob Horner. Those were the “good” players.

Face it, it’s nice to have a shot every year. Sure, I wish the Braves would spend like the Yankees and win 5 WS in the next 5 years, but it isn’t going to happen until you get rid of the corporate ownership, and probably not even then.

Besides, I thought you gave up on the Braves, why do you care?

What do you Call a Carbonated Beverage?

This is an awesome map!

Coke here.

Who Knows?

Dude I have no idea what is running through this guys head.

I am sick of this whole story. Science is being ignored. The vast majority of the medical establishment has stated that Terri Schiavo is no more. Having more than a passing knowledge of how the brain works I agree. She has no higher brain function and it doesn’t restart. Your brain is like RAM, turn off the power and you loose all the information.

We can keep bodies alive for a very long time, does that mean we should? You argue that who cares if she is kept alive, well I do. Eventually she will run out of money and Medicaid will take over payments for her care. What if this gives other families the idea to keep someone alive indefinitely hoping for a miracle? You’re talking tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to keep her alive. Just 1,000 families decide this and you’re talking millions and millions of dollars in wasted medical care.

Is there a price on human life? There sure is, it gets decided by lawyers and judges in civil court every day. I would ponder a guess at somewhere around 1-2 million bucks.

Shouldn’t people have to accept certain situations, or do we have to pander to everyone?

Should emotions replace reason?

Terri Schiavo the person is dead. Her body is still alive but it is not Terri Schiavo and never will be again.

Move on.

Bastard it is Then

You obviously think that Michael is a Bastard. I just don't see it. From everything I read he took great pains trying to rehabilitate her. For 7-8 years he tried everything he could to save her, but finally he gave up.

Like I said he could have divorced her way back and I seriously doubt a court would have awarded her any alimony. I'm not sure about Florida, but in many states you don't pay alimony unless you are at fault or it is no-fault, but it’s not automatic. Any sane judge wouldn't have faulted him for adultery, she's completely vegetative, she isn't keeping her side of the bargain. The courts of Florida agreed that he had done everything medically possible to try to rehabilitate her. Why would a divorce court challenge that ruling and say he was a bad husband?

You would have to convince me that she is reasonably entitled to alimony before I will believe it.

Damn

I didn't even get to see the cheap shot, I was in meetings all afternoon.

You still haven't given a good reason why he is continuing this fight. I am pretty sure there is no money left, it has been quite a while since he collected. Is he just a sick bastard who wants to murder his wife? For what? If he'd wanted to he could have collected the malpractice money, divorced her and moved on. If he was really a bastard he would have done that, not spend a bunch of money on lawyers and waste all his free time.

Do you really think he is a murderous bastard?

Why is he doing this?

I'll Raise you Neal Boortz

Because he succeeds in saying what I have wanted to say but didn't.

I like Taranto, but I occasionally disagree with him.

I just think her parents are either being manipulated by or in cahoots with these groups pushing their message by shamelessly using Terri Schaivo.

Maybe I'm being brainwashed by the MSM. I don't think so, but then again if they're good you wouldn't even know...right

I don't think Boortz is though.

Bush as Hitler

Victor Davis Hanson annihilates the Hitler-Bush analogy.

The money bit:

At first glance, all this wild rhetoric is preposterous. Hitler hijacked an elected government and turned it into a fascist tyranny. He destroyed European democracy. His minions persecuted Christians, gassed over six million Jews, and created an entire fascistic creed predicated on anti-Semitism and the myth of a superior Aryan race.

Whatever one thinks of Bush’s Iraqi campaign, the president obtained congressional approval to invade and pledged $87 billion to rebuild the country. He freely weathered mass street demonstrations and a hostile global media, successfully defended his Afghan and Iraq reconstructions through a grueling campaign and three presidential debates, and won a national plebiscite on his tenure.

In a world that is almost uniformly opposed to the democratic Jewish state, Israel has no better friend than Bush, who in turn is a believer in, not a tormentor of, Christianity. Afghanistan and Iraq, with 50 million freed, have elected governments, not American proconsuls, and there is a movement in the Middle East toward greater democratization — with no guarantee that such elected governments will not be anti-American. No president has been more adamantly against cloning, euthanasia, abortion, or anything that smacks of the use of science to predetermine super-genes or to do away with the elderly, feeble, or unborn.

VDH for the win!

It's Not Wide-Eyed Optimism…

…if it has basis in fact.
The Fact: The United States has an unmatched ability to integrate and enrich immigrants to our country. We have absorbed wave after wave of immigrant groups without shaking our country’s underlying culture of freedom and equality. Each successive wave of integration has boosted our enforcement of equality under the law. The waves of Irish, Italians and Poles rid this country of mainstream anti-Catholic bias. Hispanics are being integrated and we are moving right along into mainstreaming and Americanizing the Hispanic culture (think Taco bell, Chipotle and J.Lo). At the same time as the Hispanics wave there is an Asian wave and they are successfully being integrated into our country (sushi anyone).

I realize this just glossing over the issue of integration (now there’s a weird autotext insert from Word, it offered up Intel Corp when typing integration), but I haven’t seen any bad things to come from immigration to this country unless you don’t want any change at all.

Here is an interesting column on conservatism by John Derbyshire. Read it and tell me if you think he is joking or serious.

The Parents

I have several possibilities for why the parents want to keep her alive:

1) They don't believe in any sort of euthanasia for anyone whether they want it or not.
2) They are delusional and believe that there daughter is not “brain dead” and can get better. You can see this in their reading of her “smiles”, “laughs” and blinking that she does reflexively.
3) They are lonely old people and like all the media attention and support they are getting for their cause.
4) They believe their religion is the right one and everyone should adhere to it.
5) They never liked the fact that their daughter left them and now want to keep their baby for the rest of her life.

There are five believable reasons right off the top of my head.

You and the right wing are trying to make her husband out to be Scott Peterson or O.J Simpson. This happened 15 years ago, maybe it is torturous for him and his children to see his wife this way. There are plenty of non-capricious reasons for him to want to move on.

Terri Schiavo

I just can't get worked up about this situation. She is in a specific medical state that one cannot recover from.

I don’t know why he won’t sign over custody to her parents, but maybe it is because she really did tell him that she didn’t want to merely persist. It is all he said she said and her parents don’t seem like the most rational.

Dawg, would you have issue with this if she had a living will saying she wanted to die in this situation?

Immigration

We have thousands of miles of unprotected boarders. Barring a massive militarization of our borders we are not going to stop illegals from getting in.

It is mostly small businesses and agriculture that employee illegals in the US, and it is politically stupid to start arresting farmer John for hiring some help to get the crop in.

Current forms of ID are too easy to forge and you cannot easily hold companies responsible for hiring illegals if they have forged ID.

As I’ve said before the only rational response to illegal immigration is a national ID card. Backed up by hefty fines, you have to have an ID to get a job, rent an apartment, get a drivers license, etc. it will be impossible to live an illegal life. This does cause me some concern about maybe giving the government a little too much power, but I believe our country can strike a livable balance.

We agree on the illegal issues, I don’t want them, but we are going to have them unless we have a national ID.

What needs to be addressed is the underlying nativist arguments threaded throughout your posts, your concern that the current large wave of immigrants is regrettably altering the fabric of the United States.

I concede that this wave of immigrants is altering the fabric of the U.S., but I don’t hold regrets about it. Our culture needs to change to succeed.

It all comes down to the fact that I am not really a cultural conservative. I believe the strength of the United States is that we have the ability to change and adapt rapidly to new situations. We are an evolutionary country, a grand experiment, radically changing ourselves to fit with the times. We beat the Soviets by shedding the prominent isolationist tendencies preceding WW2 and fully engaging the world. We beat the Axis by jump starting the sleeping industrial might of the US, taking full advantage of the revolution in transportation, communications and cryptography. We radically changed the economy during the 80’s from an aging industrial economy to an information economy. We beat the Japanese through superior management and wiser investment strategies.

We change a lot. America is on the go and doesn’t have time for past transgressions. Don’t believe me? Look at Britain, Canada, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Japan and Germany. Too long ago? What about Russia? Hardly a peep from the US regarding Chechnya, the media crackdown or the outright theft of a rather large energy concern. During the cold war the US was constantly criticizing the Russians. Hell, even Jimmy Carter did it.

I am not afraid of new influences. We will absorb those that are beneficial and get rid of those that aren’t. We didn’t turn into a new Italy or Germany or Ireland from the massive immigration of the early 20th century. We will not turn into a new Mexico or Guatemala or India. Our culture is too tempting. By the second generation American cultural influences outweigh the native. The third generation is virtually indistinguishable culturally from any other American.

Our economy obviously needs this labor to compete in the world, and native Americans aren’t having enough kids to grow the population so we can keep the SS/Medicare Ponzi scheme teetering on the brink of disaster. I don’t see us fixing SS AND Medicare any time soon so keep em coming. I would prefer legally but whatever the free market will bear. The odds of a terrorist killing me or a loved one by sneaking across the border (vs. getting a student visa and living the high life before smashing a plane into a building) is smaller than the inevitable economically ruinous tax increases needed to cash-out of the whole scheme if there aren’t a whole lot more taxpayers.