I was gonna write about something else, but on the way to finding examples of Conservatives Trashing Liberals as openly as the KKK would attack Blacks, Jews or Gays I found this.
20 Questions Liberals Can't Answer
My original point was to show that the most aggressive and naked bigotry in this country isn't against Black people, or Women or even Gays - it's against Liberals. When it comes to Blacks people often try and deflect, for example when both Joe Scarborough and Marco Rubio used the exact same excuse to deflect claims of GOP Racism against the President, which was that they'd "Never Heard Anyone Say Anything Like that - TO THEM" - so of course it couldn't have possibly happened.
Yeah, uh huh.
When it comes to cries of GOP Misogygy in connection to things like the so-called "Men's Rights" movement, they proclaim people like Elliot Rodger aren't REAL Misogynyst, or something something False Flag something Gun Rights are Good, mkay. something.
In all these cases they have a Dodge. An excuse. Either it's not true, didn't happen or someone else was to blame for it but not the GOP - oh no - none of them are Racist, Misogynst, Anti-Semitic, Homophobic, Anti-Muslim Pricks. Nope. Not one.
But then you ask a Conservative GOPer what he thinks of "Liberals" - and the floodgates of bigoted hate and bile come spewing as if from a water cannon.
To wit, over the flip.
Did you know that Liberals can't think properly? They just can't. They're all a big tangle of emotion and invective. Like Women on permanent P.M.S. Just look here, as this Woman explains it to us.
"If it were true that conservatives were racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist, stupid, inflexible, angry, and self-righteous, shouldn’t their arguments be easy to deconstruct? Someone who is making a point out of anger, ideology, inflexibility, or resentment would presumably construct a flimsy argument. So why can’t the argument itself be dismembered rather than the speaker’s personal style or hidden motives? Why the evasions?" -- Ann Coulter
Nah nah you can't win the argument using "Facts" we choose to not acknowledge or admit exist so what's the matter with you really? Stupid Liberal.
Here's proof.
Liberalism doesn't convince with logic. It can't, because the policies liberals advocate don't work. So instead, liberals have to use emotion-based ploys and attack the motives of people they disagree with while attempting to keep conservative arguments from being heard at all. Why? Because they have no good answers to questions like these.
Yeah, you have to shout down "logic" with attacks on "emotion" and false claims of "bigotry" and "meanness" and stuff. Clearly those attacks are meant to simply
distract from the issues and not really have an open honest debate.
You Liberals can't even answer 20 Simple Questions. Bet you can't. Double Dawg Dare Ya.
Here's number one Mr-Ready-to-be-stumped-Stumperson.
1) A few days ago, we were hearing that the Boston Marathon bombers COULD BE conservative, which proved that the Right is evil. Now, when we know that the terrorists are Muslims, how can the same liberals be saying that it means nothing?
(My Answers, Cuz I'm here aren't I?)
Because it doesn't mean much. What it means is that when you leap before you look you might end up in a ditch. People make mistakes. If all it takes is a couple conservative mass killers to prove that the "Right Is Evil" (not that I believe anyone ever said that, or that's it's true) how about these examples of Conservative Murderers and Bombers?
Exhibit A) Eric Robert Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympic Park Bomber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is responsible for a series of anti-abortion and anti-gay-motivated bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed two people and injured 111 others. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considers him a terrorist.[1]
As a teenager Rudolph was taken by his mother to a Church of Israel compound in 1984; it is connected to the Christian Identity movement, a militant, racist and anti-Semitic organization that believes whites are God's chosen people. He has confirmed religious motivation, but denied racial motivation for his crimes.
Exhibit B)
James David Adkisson the Knoxville Unitarian Church Shooter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
On July 27, 2008, a politically motivated[2][3] fatal shooting took place at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Motivated by a desire to kill liberals and Democrats, gunman Jim David Adkisson fired a shotgun at members of the congregation during a youth performance of a musical, killing two people and wounding seven others.
Exhibit C)
James Van Brunn the Holocaust Museum Shooter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
James Wenneker von Brunn (July 11, 1920 – January 6, 2010) was an American man who perpetrated the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting in Washington, D.C. on June 10, 2009. Security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns was killed in the shooting, and von Brunn was wounded by two security guards who returned fire. Von Brunn was named the prime suspect in the shooting, and was charged with first-degree murder and firearms violations. While awaiting trial, von Brunn died on January 6, 2010.
Von Brunn was a white supremacist[1] and Holocaust denier[1][2] who had written numerous antisemitic essays, created an antisemitic website called The Holy Western Empire,[3] and is the author of a 1999 self-published book, Kill the Best Gentiles, which praises Adolf Hitler and denies the Holocaust.[4] He was also an Obama citizenship conspiracy theorist.[5][6] After the shooting, traces of his personal writings and works online were deleted from many websites, including AskArt.com, FreeRepublic and his personal user page on Wikipedia where he was indefinitely blocked,[7] the latter said to constitute "a violation of policy of hate speech".[7] He also made posts expressing his opposition to the Iraq War, and felt that the September 11 attacks were an "inside job".[8][9]
Exhibit D)
Byron Williams - Attempted Gun Assault on ACLU and Tides Foundation in Oakland
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Late on a Saturday night two weeks ago, an unemployed carpenter packed his mother's Toyota Tundra with guns and set off for San Francisco with a plan to kill progressives.
When California Highway Patrol officers stopped him on an interstate in Oakland for driving erratically, Byron Williams, wearing body armor, fired at police with a 9mm handgun, a shotgun and a .308-caliber rifle with armor-piercing bullets, Oakland police say. Shot and captured after injuring two officers, Williams, on parole for bank robbery, told investigators that he wanted "to start a revolution" by "killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU," according to a police affidavit. His mother, Janice, told the San Francisco Chronicle that her son had been watching television news [Glenn Beck's Fox Show] and was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items."
This list is no where near comprehensive [not compared to a sample list of Right-Wing Hate Speech and Attacks that inspired
Anders Breivik's murderous rampage], nor do any of these guys represent the "average conservative" but they certainly
aren't Liberals and it does put the LIE to the claim that there was no basis what-so-ever to suspect that the Boston bombing
might be yet another Conservative Domestic Attack on their fellow Americans. It wasn't in this case, but one premature theory is as good as any other - which is to say just about
worthless until the facts come in.
We haven't had any of these in a couple years, perhaps because the Tea Party taking over the House may have reset their short fuses, and we may not see them again unless Dems take the House back - but then again last weekend someone tried to stage an Operation American Spring Laugh-Inn to depose the President with several hundreds of empty chairs. All it takes is one or two people slightly more deluded, angry and armed than they were to get a body count stacking up.
2) If you believe we have a "right" to things like health care, food, shelter and a good education, then doesn't that also mean you believe we also have a right to force other people to unwillingly provide those things at gunpoint?
No. One persons Rights begin and stop at the tip of their nose and shouldn't require infringement of anyone else's "Rights". Certainly when contrasting individual rights come into conflict we have to try and reach a fair and reasonable balance and accommodation between those competing interests, not simply trample one set of rights we don't like for another that we do like without reflection. Paying taxes in order to benefit the public good is our civic responsibility for the benefit of everyone, it's not a
Robbery at Gun point to toss useless trinkets like "Healthcare" and "Food" and "Housing" to the undeserving in a mad desperate scheme to maintain political power. It follows the sentiment of Jesus' prayer, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"
Also see the 9th Amendment which states that those rights enumerated within the Constitution should not be used to "Deny or Disparage" other rights retained by the people. The Constitution isn't a laudry-list of Rights, it's a set of limits and responsibilities for Government.
3) How can you simultaneously want a big government that will make decisions that have an enormous impact on the lives of every American while also saying that the character and morals of our politicians don't matter?
Nobody says that. Nobody serious. What some may have said is that what people do in their private life
doesn't always have to indicate how they going to behave in public. What Liberals want isn't for "Big Government" to make all the decisions for people, they want some kind of
counter-balance to BIG INDUSTRY trampling over people on their way to increasing their profits at the expense of everything and everyone else.
4) What exactly is the "fair share" of someone's income that he’s earned that he should be able to keep?
There was a point in time when the top marginal tax bracket in this nation was 90%, and that was a "terrible time" when America also happened to be
the Greatest Industrial Power In the World with a vibrant and growing middle class and also the
Last Time A Republican President Had a Balanced Budget. You see, with tax rates that high those with small and large companies
spent their money on those companies to grow them as tax shelters rather than simply parking their money in the Cayman Islands and letting it sit there and hatch. When you have the richest people making 250 Times the amount that their employees make, at a certain point you have to question a) where's all that money coming from and b) how can they possibly claim to be legitimately working 250 times harder than everyone else? Wouldn't that require a humanoid octopus?
If you want a mathematical calculation why don't we index the amount of taxes to the greatness of that persons overall wealth. The top 20% own about 90% of the Nation's Income and Assets. People should be taxed in proportion to how much of everything they have compared to everyone else - because if you tax someone who has nothing, you get nothing. The more you have, the more you should Pay it Forward as your Civic and - yes, I'll say it - Patriot Duty to the next generation to help them do better than those who came before.
5) Why is it that time and time again, revenue paid to the treasury has GONE UP after we've cut taxes?
It hasn't. Each time the GOP has implemented a major Tax cut since the Reagan era Revenues have gone down and the Deficit has gone up, as
shown by this chart (which shows Revenues in Blue and Deficits in Red, Stacked).
When Reagan initially cut the top Marginal Tax Rate from 70% to 51% in 1981 - Revenues went DOWN as shown by the shrinking blue bar and deficits went up shown by the growing red bar. He later cut it again in 1982, and also 1984, then again down to 28% in 1986 while simultaneous increasing taxes on business, including capital gains and the middle class by increasing payroll taxes. The charts clearly show revenues dipping and not returning to strength until 1987, after his tax increase went into effect.
Immediately after 1993 when President Bill Clinton raised the top marginal rate to 39% you can see not only Revenues increase but also the Deficit Fall until it actually went negative for a few years.
That trend ended in 2001 with the Bush Tax Cuts which again shrank the Blue and increased the Red, until 2008 when the results of that policy led to the Housing and Market crash of 2008 sending so many businesses and people out of work that Revenues Divebombed back down the 1980 levels, while the Deficit Skyrocketed.
And finally in the last few years you can see Revenues have grown back while the Deficit has been cut more than in half.
Here's another version of the same data from 1980 to 2015 which shows that as a percentage of GDP Revenues have NEVER GONE UP in the immediate aftermath of a Tax cut.
Even if you go back to the 1960's when Kennedy originally cut the Eisenhower's top 90% tax bracket down to the 70% range,
Revenues Went Down and Deficits Went UP.
6) Are you pro-choice or pro-abortion? If it's pro-choice, do you feel people should be able to choose to have an assault weapon, what kind of light bulb they use in their house or whether they'd like to put their Social Security funds into a private retirement account?
Pro-Freedom. If you have no choice, you have no Freedom. Yes, people can choose to have an assault weapon in a
well regulated militia like the National Guard if they want to. Outside of that boundary there should be reasonable rules and limits based on what is practical and safe for everyone concerned, although where all that stands in the wake of
Heller is a bit fuzzy. All guns for all people, adult, child, competent, sane, emotionally distressed or not, is simply not safe. No one can possibly believe that it is, there have to be reasonable, responsible, practical limits. If you want rocket-launchers and a tank, join the Guard - they've got those. Regular people don't, for good reason. When President George Washington ordered every able bodied adult [white] male to purchase a musket and shot in 1792, he also required that they
join the State Militia, in order to help repel a future attack by the British, which eventually occurred in the war of 1812 after they were used to put down the
Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, he didn't just say "Everybody Git a Gun" without constraints or specific purpose in mind - but he did as President "Require Them to Go Out and Buy a Product - a Gun - with their own money".
in the wake of Cliven Bundy, maybe a History Lesson is in order.
The Whiskey Rebellion, or Whiskey Insurrection, was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791, during the presidency of George Washington. Farmers who used their leftover grain and corn in the form of whiskey as a medium of exchange were forced to pay a new tax. The tax was a part of treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton's program to increase central government power, in particular to fund his policy of assuming the war debt of those states which had failed to pay. The farmers who resisted, many war veterans, contended that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution, in particular against taxation without local representation, while the Federal government maintained the taxes were the legal expression of the taxation powers of Congress.
Throughout counties in Western Pennsylvania, protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting the tax. Resistance came to a climax in July 1794, when a U.S. marshal arrived in western Pennsylvania to serve writs to distillers who had not paid the excise. The alarm was raised, and more than 500 armed men attacked the fortified home of tax inspector General John Neville. Washington responded by sending peace commissioners to western Pennsylvania to negotiate with the rebels, while at the same time calling on governors to send a militia force to enforce the tax. With 13,000 militia provided by the governors of Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, Washington rode at the head of an army to suppress the insurgency. The rebels all went home before the arrival of the army, and there was no confrontation. About 20 men were arrested, but all were later acquitted or pardoned.
Anyhow...
People can already choose to put money in a 401K or IRA to supplement Social Security, but trying to replace the stability and consistency of that system with risky Wall Street gambling defeats the purpose of the program - which is to provide "Security".
The Government has the power and responsibility to raise taxes and regulate commerce, there's even a clause about it. That means they can regulate lightbulbs to be safer and more efficient, and they can regulate catfood and they can regulate fuel efficiency, and emissions standards in our vehicles. That issue has been settled.
Is it me or are each of these 20 question a double or triple question? Just couldn't fit them all in to "20" couldja?
7) If corporations are so awful, greedy and bad for the country, then shouldn't we be celebrating when they decide to close their plants here and move overseas?
They don't
have to be "awful, greedy and bad" - that's a business choice and risk/reward assessment they make just like an individual who makes a decision to
rob, cheat and steal for their own myopic short-term gain. They're only "worse" than an individual who does that because of
how much they can rob, cheat, steel and abuse people without being noticed or suffering consequence. Also why should we send our worst behaving companies overseas where they can act up even more severely (like say by profiting from working factory conditions that require
Suicide Nets or that periodically
collapse and kill their employees?) Why shouldn't we require that these companies - whether here or overseas - be good responsible public citizens to their employees and their customers just as we would of anyone else as an individual? If they can't function without robbing, cheating, stealing [and of course LYING ABOUT IT] then we don't really need them to remain in business, other companies with actual integrity should take their place.
Assuming that all businesses are "awful and evil" is just as biased and bigoted as saying that all government is inherently bad, or all Liberals, or all Conservatives. People and circumstances vary.
Still, it's so weird that the party proclaiming to be all about "morality and God" who generally believe creationism instead of the science of evolution also seem to really worship an economic theory of completely amoral dog-eat-dog darwinism. Caveat Suktor: Let the Sucker Beware?
8) How can liberal economists like Paul Krugman be right when they claim that our economy isn't doing well because we aren't spending enough money when we're already running massive, unsustainable deficits and spending is going up every year?
Because if you don't plant the seeds, you won't get any corn. As shown above the deficits - which are becoming more and more inline with our GDP - aren't only the result of spending - which is actually been
decreasing not increasing - they're the result of tax cuts that haven't gained us any benefit. If we want our economy to grow we have to plant the seeds that will allow it to do so. Some of that my be in direct investment, some of that may be in reasonable tax breaks that make companies do their own investment into growing their businesses and thus the economy, rather than parking their money overseas and/or pillaging their own companies and outsourcing them for short-term profits.
9) If Republicans don’t care about the poor, why do studies consistently show that they give more to charity than Democrats do?
Because IMO they don't care about
all of the poor, just the parts of the poor that they like. The nice poor who they think
deserve a helping hand, not the "moochers" who don't. They like the power to
Discriminate, to pick and choose which of the poor are "Worthy" of their charity. Government shouldn't be discriminating based on who they think should get help based on anything other than their
level of need. Also - if I were to assume your premise was true - it may be that some Republicans, because of their generational wealth, start out with more expendable funds to give, and may be more able to benefit from the
tax breaks that charitable giving provides.
But then again, just like the previous tax cut and revenues issue, there's no good reason to assume that "Studies" that come from RightWingNews.com and the American Enterprise Institute aren't entirely accurate on their claim that "Conservatives Give More".
Or instead we could try Forbes, who have far less of a political axe to grind on the subject.
Republicans’ moral foundations are embedded in respect for authority and traditions, loyalty and purity – so says Rice University Professor Vikas Mittal, co-author of the research paper, which will be published next month in the International Journal of Research in Marketing.
On the other side, Democrats’ moral foundations are rooted in equality and protection from harm, says Mittal.
...
The team devised a unique test to plumb political bias in philanthropic action. They crafted slightly different descriptions of a single charity, Rebuilding Together, which creates affordable homes for low income families. They found that Republicans were three times more likely to part with their money when Rebuilding Together was described as “supporting working American families following traditions and supporting their communities.” On the flip side, Democrats were twice as likely to kick in when the organization was described as “ensuring the protection of a home to every individual.”
Now this tracks very closely to my original thought, but how does track with the amounts given? Warren Buffet alone has given
More Than $1 Billion - and even as much as
$3 Billion all at once. Unless we're grading on a curve, that just has to skew the results, because nobody else does that. Do they? Is it possible he's the only one? Let's see.
Going through Forbes Top 20 Philanthropic Givers for 2012:
1. Bill and Melinda Gates - $1.9 Billion
2. Warren Buffet - $1.87 Billion
3. George Soros - $763 Million
4. Mark Zuckerberg - $519 Million
5. Walton Family - $432 Million
6. Ely and Edyth Broad [Investor] - $376 Million
7. Michael Bloomberg - $370 Million
8. Paul Allen [Microsoft Exec, Owner Seattle Seahawks] - $327 Million
9. Chuck Feeney [Co-founder Duty Free Shops] - $313 Million
10. Gordan & Betty Moore [Intel Co-founder] - $250 Million
11. James and Marilyn Simons [Hedge Fund Billionaire] - $213 Million
12. John and Laura Arnold [Hedge Fund Founder] - $204 Million
13. Carl Ichan [Capital Management] - $200 Million
14. David Koch - $169 Milion
15. Julien Roberston [Hedge Funder] - $148 Million
16. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson [Casino Billionare] - $144 Million
17. Stephen Bechtel Jr. [Construction] - $102 Million
18. Michael and Susan Dell - $100 Millon
19. Hansjoerg Wyss [Medical Devices] - $98 Million
20. J. Wayne & Delores Barr Weaver [Owner Jacksonville Jaguars] - $91 Million
This may be a cursory look at just one year, but it seems to me that the obvious Liberals on the list, Gates, Buffet, Soros, Zuckerberg are punching for the MOON. I mean the Gates' and Buffet's philanthropic giving are each more than ten times that of David Koch or Shelden Adelson. Both Koch and Adelson have the money to be in the top 5 or top 10 but they just aren't [possibly IMO because they're too busy spending their money trying to rig elections with deception and Voter suppression tactics], so if you were to look at this a how much of their net worth their giving - it's like 3.6% for Buffet and 0.5% for Koch. The Top 4 of them are at over $5 Billion Combined, which pretty much wipes out the entire rest of the list - so if there is an overall Liberal giving deficit once all the players are tallied, it's not from lack of will or interest, it's probably - as i initially surmised - from a lack of expendable funds. Clearly those top 4 Libs got the will.
But then there's another aspect of giving that conservatives don't usually consider, or think is valid, and that's donations through government. If you were to look at the states that are more likely to be the recipients of Federal Funds vs. those that are the Donors of those funds you would see a map that looks like this.
So it seems that most Red States- with the exceptions of Florida and Texas - are literally
in the Red when it comes to donating versus
receiving Federal Tax Benefits. Also since we're talking about
a lot more money - $Trillions instead of $Billions - than all charities combined so here the question of whose really "giving" more money to whom, isn't really all that close. Conservatives may not want to count this as "giving" since it's based on tax and expenditure policies that were very likely largely crafted - by Liberals - but it tends to be based on where the
need is, not based on who your
favorites are.
Now if Conservatives truly want to argue that all those Red States really don't need that Federal money - fine, sure - we Blue states will gladly take it all back, but I'm not really holding my breath on that happening.
10) Give us a ballpark estimate: If something doesn't change dramatically, how long do you think it will be until we have an economic crash in this country similar to the one we're seeing in Greece or Cyprus?
That's not going to happen to the U.S., first of all we have the credit - particularly with the fact that all oil is traded in U.S. dollars - to support us in pulling out of times of deep crisis, most of our debt is actually
held by us, not China, plus what took down Greece was a Wall Street
Run at their Economy to devalue the Euro not just proliferate spending. Secondly with the winding down of our Wars which were paid for during of the Bush Era
In Off Budget Dollars, the repayment of nearly all of
the Stimulus,
Wall Street Bailout and
U.S. Auto Support funds with interest our Deficit has been reduced by about $700 Billion over the last 4 years as the economy surges back, our GDP grows and unemployment continues to drop - no thanks to Republicans who've done everything they can to cut tax revenues,
downgrade our international credit rating with artificial debt dramas, increase deficits and toss 200,000 government workers out on the street - who besides being consumers, were
taxpayers - where now they increase the need for government assistance to survive, then take that assistance away from the long-term unemployed ultimately
increasing the unemployment rate by at least 1%, and decreasing economic growth by 2% points. It would be better and faster if we put in more specific investments to continue to spur the economy, like passing the
American Jobs Act and the
Infrastructure Bank - methods used by Germany
who has fully recovered - raise more revenues by cutting wasteful corporate loopholes and slowing down the growth of $Millionaire and $Billionaire
Idle Money Mountains that do nothing to help the economy, all in the same way we did in the 90's to
Balanced the Budget, but for now we're not headed the way of Greece - not even close - so picking a number on what isn't going to happen is pointless. If pressed I'd say
infinity Plus 5 minutes 20 seconds.
11) Since we "all agree" with the idea that our level of deficit spending is "unsustainable," what would be wrong with permanently freezing federal spending at the current level until we balance the budget by increasing revenue, cutting spending or some combination thereof?
We don't "All Agree" because that would be stupid. Functionally with the Sequester that kind of default "freeze" has already happened, and as a result we can't make smart decisions about where our financial priorities should be - hence the attempt by Democrats to increase funding for the VA to alleviate their long standing backlog -
got Axed by Senate Republicans because they believe "all cuts are good cuts" when they aren't. The best way for us to continue cutting the deficit is to
get more people working, with better jobs to generate revenue and cover our necessary expenses which is again, what we did in the 90s. It worked then, under a Democratic President, it would work now if the GOP would get out of the way.
12) If we change God's definition of marriage to make gay marriage legal, then what's the logical argument against polygamy or even adult siblings supposed to be?
a) God's Law doesn't run the United States, We the People do and also b) God never said that - it's not one of the Ten Commandments which is the only part of the Bible that's supposed to be His
Unvarnished, Uninterpreted Words, c) When Jesus spoke of Marriage in Matthew 19 he was using that an example to describe what would constitute a
valid Divorce in the eyes of God, ["whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery."] which was a huge departure from Moses Law which
did allow for voluntary Divorce, not that ONLY one Man and one Woman may marry, he didn't even
broach that subject and lastly d) Some parts of the Bible discuss the greek word "
Arsenokoitai" which some have interpreted that as "homosexual" but there were others words for that such as "Paiderasste" and
for some reason Paul made up this new word, which could mean "Rapist, Adulterer, Child-molester, Prostitute" or some combination of all the above. Let's just say the Biblical Consensus on that subject isn't really
settled yet. Abuse is
Abuse and should be condemned, if not prosecuted, however Love is
Love and should be respected and protected. Gender is secondary completely to that. God at his essence, is
Love, yes?
None of that IMO has anything to do with polygamy, incest or bestiality because the one thing that's required in any marriage - is Mutual Consent. If three or more people want to have a go at it, and the situation isn't coercive or abusive (although I don't really think you can have some forms of polygamy, incest or bestiality without coercion and abuse, plus children and animals are never consenting), but if somehow everyone involved is happy with it all then I personally don't care, and as it turns out several religions including factions of both Christianity (Mormons) and Islam have argued for centuries that polygamy is perfectly fine. I figure if everyone is a consenting human adult, without abuse, coercion or dysfunctional jealousy, they can decide for themselves. Whatevs. Not my business or problem.
13) In a world where people can easily change states and can, with a bit more difficulty, permanently move to other roughly comparable parts of the globe, do you really think it's feasible over the long haul to have a tax system where 86% of the income taxes are paid by the top 25% of the income earners?
Yes, since
they have over 89% of all of the nation's net wealth and 95% of it's financial wealth - I think that's about right. In fact, it's probably a little bit low in comparison to how much of this country's assets they own. They're getting taxed based on the proportion of wealth they
have.
If you ask me the "Financial Worth" chart on the right is a good starting point, but also you have to note that many in the bottom 80% are actually at a
Net Negative on their financial wealth, so some minor adjustments would have to be made to keep it all "Fair".
14) If you win a lawsuit that's filed against you, why should you have to pay huge legal bills when you did nothing wrong while the person who filed the suit pays no penalty for wrongly accusing you?
That depends on whether you were
wrongly accused or simply were able to drown the court with more evidence than the other party. If the suit is truly frivolous and/or abusive it should be dismissed and damages assessed for that abuse as they were against
Orly Taitz for her crazed, fact-less suits against President Obama over his Birthplace.
15) How can you oppose putting murderers to death and be fine with killing innocent children via abortion?
a) They're not "children" yet - not if they aren't independently viable. b) A fertilized egg is a "potential" life, but it won't become an actual life until it goes through a Pregnancy and comes to term, which requires a mother and
she has RIGHTS TOO c) During pregnancy that mother, who is an entirely different person, whose body and health may be at risk during this process
has to be a consideration and should not be threatened, coerced, or deceived into making a decision she doesn't want when
her own body is involved e) if you'd like to really protect a potential child, you'd think conservatives would support better access to contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancies and make many abortions unnecessary, you'd think they support comprehensive and
accurate sex education so people can make informed and correct decisions to prevent accidental pregnancy, or support free access to prenatal care, or far better options for the adoption of unwanted or unexpected children once they are born so again the need for the option of abortion would be reduced -
but they don't d) the justice system is not infallible, it is extremely imperfect as
hundreds of innocent people have been freed from death row who were wrongly put there due to incorrect eye witness identification, mishandling of evidence, police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Neither of thees situations should be taken lightly, and when in doubt we should err on the side of protecting life rather than harming it. ALL Life including the innocent potential mother and the judicially condemned who may also be in fact innocent, not just the unborn, unwanted baby, deserves protection.
16) A minimum wage raises salaries for some workers at the cost of putting other workers out of jobs entirely. What's the acceptable ratio for that? For every 10 people who get a higher salary, how many are you willing to see lose their jobs?
No, increasing the minimum wage has never led to that kind simplistic 10:1 scenario. What it has shown is that increased cash in the pockets of workers means they have greater consumer confidence, in return they
shop more ultimately increasing the volume of most stores who then in turn have to increase their staff - many of whom also happen to be minimum wage, or slightly above minimum wage workers, who also usually get an increase as well when this happens. There is a risk to raising it too much or too fast which may lead to
price inflation, but what CBO has shown is that - to some extent - where you lose workers is where those people
no longer have to work two or three jobs anymore since they're now making enough to pay their bills.
Many more low-wage workers would see an increase in their earnings. Of those workers who will earn up to $10.10 under current law, most—about 16.5 million, according to CBO’s estimates—would have higher earnings during an average week in the second half of 2016 if the $10.10 option was implemented. Some of the people earning slightly more than $10.10 would also have higher earnings under that option, for reasons discussed below. Further, a few higher-wage workers would owe their jobs and increased earnings to the heightened demand for goods and services that would result from the minimum-wage increase.
CBO estimated that 16.5 Million would see their incomes rise, bringing about 900,000 of them out of poverty - without Government entitlement programs - while about 500,000 might lose their current jobs. But some of those workers already hold more than one job - as described in the
full PDF.
Footnote on Page 13: In this report, phrases referring to changes in the number of jobs are used interchangeably with phrases referring to changes in employment. Technically, however, if a low-wage worker holds multiple jobs and loses one of them, that would represent a reduction of one job but no change in employment (because the worker would remain employed). About 5 percent of low-wage workers will hold more than one job under current law, CBO projects. Therefore, for any given reduction in employment, the reduction in the number of jobs will be slightly larger.12.
So it's not exactly a 1:1 relationship between those who would benefit and those who may lose their jobs, in fact it's more like a 33:1 Benefit to Cost Ratio in the short term and in the long term it's a net positive because when those 500,000 find new jobs, they'll be
better paying jobs. More than worth it IMO.
Once the Minimum Wage is raised it should be pegged to the rate of inflation and automatically re-adjusted every 5 years to keep people from falling back into the 30 Year Wage Trough, we're current in.
17) The earth has been warming and cooling for thousands of years with temperature drops and increases that are much larger than the ones we've seen over the last century. Since we can't adequately explain or model those changes, what makes us think we can say with any sort of confidence that global warming is being caused by man?
Actually it's been
Billions of Years, not just thousands, we know what caused those previous heating and cooling cycles, we
can explain and model those changes and we do know that our current increase in CO
2 are man-made and are warming the globe with full confidence. In addition to previous IFCC reports, we now have this new one from the Congressionally Mandated
National Climate Assessment, which is pretty clear.
Global climate is changing. Most of the warming of the past half-century is due to human activities. Some types of extreme weather are increasing, ice is melting on land and sea, and sea level is rising.
The report list several primary reasons that Climate Change is man-made, from which I will quote at length.
The majority of the warming at the global scale over the past 50 years can only be explained by the effects of human influences,,, especially the emissions from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) and from deforestation. The emissions from human influences that are affecting climate include heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide, and particles such as black carbon (soot), which has a warming influence, and sulfates, which have an overall cooling influence (see Appendix 3: Climate Science Supplement for further discussion)., In addition to human-induced global climate change, local climate can also be affected by other human factors (such as crop irrigation) and natural variability (for example, Ashley et al. 2012; DeAngelis et al. 2010; Degu et al. 2011; Lo and Famiglietti 2013,,,).
The conclusion that human influences are the primary driver of recent climate change is based on multiple lines of independent evidence. The first line of evidence is our fundamental understanding of how certain gases trap heat, how the climate system responds to increases in these gases, and how other human and natural factors influence climate. The second line of evidence is from reconstructions of past climates using evidence such as tree rings, ice cores, and corals. These show that global surface temperatures over the last several decades are clearly unusual, with the last decade (2000-2009) warmer than any time in at least the last 1300 years and perhaps much longer.,
The third line of evidence comes from using climate models to simulate the climate of the past century, separating the human and natural factors that influence climate. When the human factors are removed, these models show that solar and volcanic activity would have tended to slightly cool the earth, and other natural variations are too small to explain the amount of warming. Only when the human influences are included do the models reproduce the warming observed over the past 50 years (see Figure 2.3).
Another line of evidence involves so-called “fingerprint” studies that are able to attribute observed climate changes to particular causes. For example, the fact that the stratosphere (the layer above the troposphere) is cooling while the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere is warming is a fingerprint that the warming is due to increases in heat-trapping gases. In contrast, if the observed warming had been due to increases in solar output, Earth’s atmosphere would have warmed throughout its entire extent, including the stratosphere.
Oil used for transportation and coal used for electricity generation are the largest contributors to the rise in carbon dioxide that is the primary driver of observed changes in climate over recent decades.
©Tom Mihalek/Reuters/Corbis; Phillip J. Redman, U.S. Geological Survey
In addition to such temperature analyses, scientific attribution of observed changes to human influence extends to many other aspects of climate, such as changing patterns in precipitation,, increasing humidity,, changes in pressure, and increasing ocean heat content.
So in summary, the climate is changing because of an overall increase in heat-trapping gases which are being produced by human activity. If you were to remove that activity, and those gases and their effect on the climate, natural effects - such as volcano eruptions or solar activity - would actually have the planet slightly
cooling, not warming. If the cause were solar effects, the
stratosphere would be warming along with gasses trapped below the troposphere, instead the stratosphere is cooling.
18) We live in a world where people have more choices than ever before in music, entertainment, careers, news sources and what to do with their time. Shouldn't government mirror that trend by moving towards federalism and states’ rights instead of centralizing more and more power in Washington, DC?
Yes, and no. Some things like our basic Human, Civic and Civil Rights should not be subject to a popularity contest or a show of hands. There are advantages to centralization, as well as decentralization depending on the core issue. If this is a sideways swipe at "ObamaCare" being some type of "centralization" the simple fact that every State had the option to create their own exchange in their own way
or even their own alternate solution as has Vermont shows that competition and decentralization had both it's ups and it's down in regards to how that has rolled out and continued to be administered. If you truly do not believe in "One size fits all" then you shouldn't mandate either centralized or decentralized solutions without having a specific rationale for either, other than some kind of knee-jerk doctrinaire orthodoxy. Either can work, depending on the specific circumstances and needs of the situation.
19) If people in the middle class aren't willing to pay enough in taxes to cover the government services that they use because they don't think it's worth the money, shouldn't we prune back government to a level people do feel comfortable paying for in taxes?
No, because it's not a matter of being "unwilling",
they can't afford either the tax increase or the service reduction. Either one could very well
take them out of the middle class. That's tearing them - and the heart of the country - down, not lifting them up. Those people who have the ability to do
the heavy lift with ease rather than those who can barely make it as they are now, should be the ones shouldering the burden because only they can do what's necessary for the good of the nation in a manner that
no one else can. Just trying to make people without money pay more isn't going to help, it's only going to push them further into debt. Heaping more burdens and taxes on the middle class - as Reagan did - makes no sense and won't do much to cut the deficit anymore now than it did in the 1980's.
20) If firms can get by with paying women 72 cents on the dollar for the same quality of work as men, then why don't we see any firms with all female labor forces using those lower costs to dominate the marketplace?
Because they LIE about what they really pay since it's patently
illegal under the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. If someone were to do that, at least they'd be paying everyone the same, but I doubt any corporation would have the
guts and chutzpah to openly admit they won't hire any Men because they
would pay that Man more than everyone else. It's much easier to just keep lying about it - particularly to the women receiving the lower wages - than to open yourself up to that kind of negative scrutiny and also legal jeopardy. It might work to boost stock value in the short term, but once the lie is exposed, they'd be burnt Donald Sterling shaped toast - who'd want to own
that stock?
Wow, look, all done and hardly any emotion or accusation of bias needed at all. Just the facts. And they said it couldn't be done. It was easy. They really do underestimate we "Emotional, Clueless" Liberals don't they?
Feel free to add or critique or correct my answers below in the comments since in honestly, I can only speak for myself and not "All Liberals". But being a "typical" Liberal I wouldn't even dare to presume everyone agrees with me on everything, or that I know every damn thing in the world. I don't. IMO if there's one consistent difference between Libs and Cons - it's their level of internal Confirmation Bias. Cons - as shown by the article I'm responding too - think they know the answer before they bother to even ask the question. Libs - take the question and then go find the answer, even if it's not one they would necessarily like.
Vyan