Moonlight Graham

We are that much closer to a Flux Capacitor and a Holodeck.

How do they bow to the UN, in it being a higher power to them? Did Bush bow to thew UN when he spearheaded the invasion of Iraq without UNSC authorization? As AW said, the Prez has power, he is just constrained by the other branches of gov and by the rule of law (yes even UN/international law). He is a puppet in some regards to political forces that helped put him and keep him power, among other considerations, but he isn't 100% completely controlled.

Amen! However, children do remember things as infants, their brain learns and takes in sensory info like any human. Having the tip of your pee-pee lopped off as an infant, especially without anesthesia (!!!), would be a trauma for a child I would think. Babies do remember, just like babies would are sexually abused remember and live with it, and other things like infant psychological attachment injuries, for the rest of their lives even though as adults they may not remember it.

The poster you quoted said child, not infant. According to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (Article 1), a child is defined as "every human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier". The UNCRC has been signed by Canada. I'm on the fence on this issue. It is a violation of the child's right not to have body parts sliced off without consent, but maybe parents should have a right to lop off the foreskin for medical reasons (screw religious reasons). Maybe a compromise would be to ban male circumcision for those under 18, unless medical problems arise (kinda like removing tonsils). Then at 18 the adult male can choose.

How? If Congress doesn't give him the money to transfer the detainees, and outright bans any money being used for such purposes as they have, he can't. If a city/state in mainland US doesn't want detainee facilities in their neck of the woods, how can he? Tell me specifically, under the law of the USA, how he can. Otherwise you're just flappin' lips as usual. I will consider a non-response or a "sarcastic retort" as meaning you can't.

Are you saying Obama as POTUS has the legal power to close Gitmo? From what I understand, after election Obama made several steps to begin its closure, but has been blocked by Congress, including stipulations in the "2011 [and 2012] Defense Authorization Bill which contains provisions that place restrictions on the transfer of Guantánamo prisoners to the [uS] mainland or to other foreign countries, thus impeding the closure of the detention facility". Obama signed those bills into law (did he have much of a choice?), but made statements rejecting those stipulations.

Since all people have had different experiences throughout life, all humans are inherently biased. It's inescapable.

The Bible should be taught in school because it's a very important historical and philosophical text, and has great influence in the world. More than Shakespeare or Marx obviously. But it shouldn't be in science classes, well, not equally...wouldn't hurt to do a lesson or 2 of alternative theories from religions etc.

Also very good points, Tim.

good point

I don't think it's tasteless. In the pinch of a moment you can't think of everything. Maybe if he could do it again and think about it beforehand he maybe wouldn;t do it (if he were a smart politician, just to avoid negative controversy)

You saw them do hand jobs in public??? As in, penis out for the world to see? That's definitely going to far. Did you show that to state officials? What did they do about it?

From the OP article: This is so true in my observations. The results of this study are almost self-evident, but it's interesting to have scientific evidence so back up my hypothesis. As I said myself in my old profile signature, "political partisanship is a disease of the intellect". Everyone is biased, but some are moreso than others. And being too strongly loyal to a political party and/or or candidate is extremely dangerous. People I know who are enthusiastic supporters of one party, wearing their logo'd t-shirts etc., are completely illogical. Supporting a political party isn't like supporting a sports team, but some act like it. Being a diehard partisan supporter, through good and bad times (supporting/dfending even bad deeds!) is dangerous. As the OP study shows, you start to ignore facts when they don't match with the stances of your fav party/politician. Similar to Bible literalists who ignore science when it counters their belief that the Bible is fact. It's illogical, anti-intellectual. It makes you stupid. Keep as open mind as possible & you'll be more often correct.

Thank you AW, those are very kind words. I hope you're anticipating fun times on the 4th!

In 1867, a great country was born (well, sort of, we have a complex constitutional history LOL). Celebrate safely and enthusiastically! Happy Canada Day everyone! We are damn lucky to live here!

The neocons are hawkish in foreign policy like many traditional conservatives. I think the main ingredient that informs neocon ideology of the last 20 years, as I've said, is that they are primarily concerned with maintaining and strengthening US power hegemony. This is done through aggressive foreign policy. I'm surprised more Americans aren't very concerned with other countries catching up to them. If concerned with power-relations (this isn't my personal stance), the US should do everything to undermine China economically instead of growing them.

Totally awesome journalist beatdown. My respect for Mulcair just went up a few notches.

So does this mean that some neocons even in the Bush admin/PNAC who appear to be pro-democracy & pro-liberalism actually aren't (they know the "hidden truth"), and are preaching the spread of democracy as a Socratic "noble lie" in a sense? That they can "handle the truth", but much of the public can't, so the public must be fed the myth? And may you also be saying in a sense that some other neocons can't handle the truth, or just buy into the popularly believed neocon notions of "pro-democracy" etc., or hold neocon beliefs at the "surface level" rather than "hidden level". If so my mind's just been f'ed! I gotta go write a Tom Clancy-meets-Dan Brown novel!!

Strauss seems like a man who read Plato's The Republic a few too many times for his own good, or more accurately just took some of Socrates' horrid ideas in the "just city" he & Bloom believed to be ironic and thought they actually could be good ideas. Things like the "noble lie" being good for the polity. Heck maybe some of the reason why Wolfowitz and crew were such damned liars is because they thought they were spreading the "noble lie" for the good of polity. Or maybe they were just jerks.

But you're talking about Strauss. He died in 1973, and taught this stuff to his students etc. in the 50's. There are other varying strands of neoconservative thought, other thinkers, and other movements. Like those who were against socialist policies in the US & globally because it was "anti-liberalism" and "anti-democratic". The current movement, as I would define as starting with the fall of the USSR and the 1st Gulf War, is as I described in my other post and what most people now view neoconservativism as. The neocons like Robert Kagan and Paul Wolfowitz who were a part of the PNAC think tank in the 90's, and who dominated the ranks of the George W. Bush admin. You can't tell me Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfie et al. are anti-democratic. If they were it would get out fast and would have affected the elections. from wikipedia:

New Catholic rule proposal: Before the Confirmation ceremony, people should be required to take some courses on the history of the Bible so they aren't living in la-la land. Also, Confirmation should be done at age 30 at a minimum, instead of being done at age 12 (when people I knew from a Catholic school board had theirs & their classmates done). 12 years old, how convenient...get them in just before the ages people start to think for themselves!

Do you think a child, or the child's parents more accurately, should have a right not to be exposed to unnecessary profanity? If you become a teacher, do you think you should have the right to use profanity in the classroom in front of you kids and not be fired?

Neocons didn't replace governments in Afghanistan and Iraq with Communist regimes, did they? The post-Cold War neocons are foremost interested in retaining American global hegemony. Part of this involves replacing ideologically threatening regimes with friendly democracies. Having an interest in war isn't exclusive to neocons, interest in war is the 200+ y/o American past-time. Where did you get this from? Neoconservatism has virtually always been grounded in liberalism (in the Lockean sense of the term).

No. Sanctions may work in certain situations, but with geopolitics I believe in the saying "keep your friends close and enemies closer. Strong economic trade with ie: Saudi Arabia and China has helped keep their relations with the West stable (more or less), and avoided military friction along the lines of N.Korea & Iran. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't be preaching the value of liberty & human rights on one hand, and then turning a blind eye to friendly regimes that brutalize their people & propping them up for our benefit to the detriment of their citizens...while at the same time chastising & forcing regime change on other brutal regimes simply because they don't kiss our feet. It's plain hypocrisy. We can have trade & diplomatic relations with brutal regimes, but we should use our stable relations with them to advocate for better treatment of their people. And we certainly shouldn't be selling arms to them or helping them build institutional capacities (ie: torture, surveillance) that's used to solidify repression over their people (again, to secure our selfish benefit). Our govs are accessories/accomplices to murder, rape, torture & other wonderful things by definition. This is fact. Neocons want to spread democracy (or eliminate security threats) by gun-point. Preventive wars, forced regime changes using military action. I never even gave a hint I'd support this.