True enough. I've never smoked, but I am overweight, and realize it is a form of suicide- if a very tasty and slow one. But I'd point out that if we had more localized solutions for food (eliminating the need to ship and store food except for famine protection) we'd eliminate much of that.
I was talking more about the Declaration of Independence with its enumeration of "self evident" rights in a specific order, and using those to interpret the Constitution. Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights is a more specific application of this; but is a federalist, central government solution to a basic problem that I believe would be FAR better handled locally.
If you get the real thing, get rock salt load. Stings like the dickens- has a usually non lethal but the stopping power of a
BTW, with any pump action shotgun (even a BB one) their only warning should be "Ker Chunk". Everybody knows that sound, and they know what comes next is pain.
That's a bit backwards, however. If the Right to Life isn't how we interpret the Constitution (sure doesn't seem to be how the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution) then all we have is specific versions of the Right to Life handed out to groups as we see fit, and the Constitution, not respect for human life, is the foundation of law.
Health care is a natural right because life is a natural right, not because the 14th Amendment should be used to grant it to [women, blacks, Jews, Catholics, the unborn, etc]
"And maybe it's time to think about getting my first firearm. (And some lessons some where, having only ever shot a BB gun before.) I live in a nice neighborhood, but maybe that makes us a target."
A pump action BB Gun makes the same Ker-Chunk as a 12 gauge; the sound alone can make a burglar who knows what it is run. 12 pumps, and you have the equivalent of rock salt load in a 12 gauge.
At which point we get the steaming pile that is Cover Oregon, in which any subsidy you might get is swallowed up by the 10x increase in expense for the insurance.
I submit that before *any* right, are the needs indelible to the Right to Life, and until those are fulfilled for every citizen, all other rights are merely privileges granted to cronies in proportion to their usefulness to the oligarchy; nothing more, nothing less. Even the right of private property is worthless without protection of the basic needs.
"How many wars have been waged or led by democracies in the past 200 years? Quite nearly all of them. "
Or none of them. The ones democracies participated in, were started by dictatorships invading their neighbors. But even if you add up all the dead in all the wars of the last 200 years- you're still at only a fraction of the 56 million that we've lost to abortion in America alone since 1973.
"How many wars have been waged by actual socialist countries - not just ones who were playing with words - in the past 200 years? Almost none of them."
By playing with words, do you mean the ones who have actually claimed to be socialist? Plus, of course, socialism and democracy does have a rather strong overlap.
"Hell just the number of people that our democracy has killed in war in the past 15 years is likely larger than the total number killed by all the military actions of all actual socialist states in the past 200 years."
Hmm, larger than the 15 million Stalin killed outright? Not in war. But abortions, yes.
Your average modern war kills a few hundred thousand tops.
"Democracy has a body count many orders of magnitude higher than socialism."
Only if you take abortion into account.
The cursing thing *might* have come from a bit of reverse semitic paranoia. In some far out fundamentalist theologies- Jews are actually revered and considered *closer* to God than Christians ( a strict literal interpretation of the events of the Pentateuch).
Oddly enough, I've noticed this in non-fundamentalist forms of Christianity as well, especially my own Catholicism. There is a reason why Pope Benedict XVI forbade the sacred name from being spoken in Mass, out of respect for our older brethren, and why a good deal of 20th and 21st century theology has been devoted to the consideration of Christianity as a sect of Judaism.
Had a girl who acted like this in my wife's daycare. One day, due to misbehaving, I put her in what we call a "Daddy time out", which is one of the more serious corrective actions we take (spanking's not allowed in our state, and you can even get your own kid taken away). Instead of sitting with me on the couch, she spent the whole four minutes (a minute per year of age) standing ramrod straight, as if I was about to do something to her.
I found out later she had been abused, and her mother had converted to fundamentalist Xianity to get her some free counseling. Due to my Daddy Time Out and her reaction to it, she was removed from the daycare soon after, presumably to one run only by women.
"First, let me say that I was talking about workplace harassment."
For a Roman Catholic Priest, the Church is his workplace, the congregation his customers, the Bishop is his management. For an extremely bad Roman Catholic Priest, it is a very bad idea for the customers to complain to the management about sex abuse. It is in fact the direct cause of the scandal, that the misconduct was reported to the Bishop and not to the police.
There is a lesson in that for any organization.
" People can always call the police (or file a lawsuit), and obviously if your organization covers for harassers then that's the next step. "
It is a safe assumption that all organizations WILL cover for the harassers, because as you point out,
"escalating to the courts is expensive, time-consuming, embarrassing" for the organization, and in the end, the organization only cares about what is profitable for the organization.
But if we fail to do it, we merely perpetuate the rape culture.
#1, as the Roman Catholic Church proved royally, is a complete and utter error forever. You do NOT want your organization's management deciding if a victim can call the police.
#2, every illegal act that is a felony, should result in the loss of a job. Once again, it's law enforcement and the courts that should make that decision, not the good ole boy network in your management.
#3. The standard should be to call the police, each and every time. It is the only way to end rape.
Apparently, if it isn't in the policy manual, women don't know how to call the police. But that's not surprising, because ever since birth control, the free love/rape culture has said that anything sexual is the woman's problem alone.
"I've seen it. It's rubbish." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
