Once you accept that she too is a human being, has a family, etc, and isn't there just as some accessory to your wellbeing

I do accept all that, but my train is still late, so I have to ask her to not leave my kid unattended for another 10 minutes...

If she (or her union) claim, she has to leave anyway, or even simply charge me "overtime" (150%, one hour minimum), I'll start looking for a new nanny immediately. And so will you.

Point is, we are all employers...

Fourth, if you'd actually switch a shop because that barber has cancer

Why I actually switch a shop is irrelevant! But, if there anything about my old barber, that's "protected", a reasonably zealous anti-discrimination officer may (nay, must!) get interested anyway — and I'd hate to live in a country, where I'd have to explain all of my, supposedly, free decisions.

"Hello. We've noticed, that over the past 12 months you've ordered pizza 5 times more often than General Tsao's chicken. We suspect, you are a White bigot discriminating against Asians. Please, hand over all of your purchase-records for a closer audit."

This is, what the sufficiently large employers already have to do. Some of them may be bigots, and some may not be — in either case, if I don't want it applied to me, I don't want it applied to anybody.

We may not send the anti-discrimination authorities after you, but don't expect much support or respect there.

You can shove your "support and respect" where the Sun does not shine, but your promise, that you may not send the authorities after me is insufficient. Because tomorrow you "may" change your mind...

I'm sure you could have thought of some form of government control that actually happens.

It does happen everyday. It is just that you are excluded from the rules. And not because you are good (or non-bigoted), but because there are too many of your kind and forcing all of you to comply is politically suicidal...

For a closer-to-home example, consider New York City's laws against landlords discriminating tenants... Discrimination on a large number of parameters is banned. But the owners of two-family houses are exempt... Is it any more acceptable (and less divisive) to be a bigot, if you are a small-scale landlord?

It is not. But such small-scale landlords represent a far larger proportion of voters, and would get really upset, if, suddenly, they are no longer able to reject a tenant on their own whim. But, as long as the illiberal rule, that prevents people from using their property the way they want, applies to somebody else, most people don't care and allow themselves to be swayed by the discrimination poster-boys and -girls...

Hence my point — when considering laws regulating inter-human relationships, imagine yourself in both positions...

At least, if it is Walgreens — or nearly any other company, that does not actively fight unionization of workforce — we can have a (semi-)intelligent discussion...

But if it were Walmart doing this...

Closing Guantanamo?.. Ending no-bids government contracts?

I can see this kind of thing used by companies when they're supposedly testing for drugs, and it'll just so happen that down the line there'll be some "restructuring" in which everyone who is slightly more probable to need sick days down the line is silently let go.

When suggesting — explicitly or otherwise — a law regulating the employer-employee relationship, one must always apply it to themselves both ways (for most people that means, consider yourself an employer too).

Do you want to have to explain, why you switched your pizza-shop — if the dumped establishment was owned by someone with cancer, you may be in trouble... Would you be willing to have to justify going to a new barber-shop? The anti-discrimination authorities may get interested, if your old barber was Black, but the new one is White...

Union-lovers, would you accept your nanny's refusal to stay an extra 10 minutes, when your train is late, because union's rules forbid her from "overworking"?

Back to the matter at hand, it is, of course, horrible, that the health insurance is tied to employment for so many people... The solution is to make it just as private, once again, as most other things — including other kinds of insurance — still are...

If you guessed I was thinking you're a troll you're right

Is this all you can say, after I've demonstrated you 100% wrong on the topic? Not the "oh, wow, I missed that one"? Not the "hey, thanks for the pointer, didn't know..." All you did, was pick on an insignificant figure of speech?

In this case, perhaps, it would've been better for you to say nothing at all...

If it ends up like Vladez oil spill BP won't have to pay anything.

The compensatory damages, that Exxon is on the hook for, exceed half a billion dollars. That's in addition to their spending on the actual clean-up...

The Supreme Court (in a 5-to-3 vote, with your beloved David Souter writing for the majority) did remove the punitive $2.5 billion as "excessive"... But the compensatory $507 million were left standing... Yes, it took much too long. Maybe, if the plaintiffs weren't greedy (greed is only good, when you are making something, that other people want), they would've gotten their compensation 20 years earlier...

while the people pay.

"The people" (including The Children[TM]) also use the oil. Every day... We can't do anything without it.

The government spending billions on roads and bridges would be great.

Why is the government in a better position to do this spending, than a private concern? All our roads now are government-owned, are you seriously claiming, they are a stunning success? Are the Congressmen better prepared to oversee the roads, than the CEO and the board of a road-management company — which has to compete with others for riders — would be? (Don't even start with "natural monopolies" — there are, at least, 3 different roads to drive between New York and Boston right now; there is no reason, why they can't all be sold-off to three different highest bidders.)

Oh, yes, I hear, I hear. The evil capitalists will put profits over people. Right... We can't stand other getting rich, can we? But the current situation is even worse — our highways suck, because the interests of the (unionized) workers are put in front of those of the riding public... And when the union bosses help the politicians get elected, well, that what it takes to keep the country "progressive", does not it?

The government spending billions to lay out a high speed

I grew up in a country, where telecommunications (and everything else) was the government's responsibility. A wait time for a regular land-line telephone (in the 1980ies) was over 10 years... I kid you not...

But, hey, let's ignore the 80 years of central-planning's failure and try again, right? A monopoly controlling everyone's Internet access sounds awful even to you, I'm sure, but, because it is a Government monopoly, it would be staffed by the selfless, benevolent people, who will put their interests last... Sure... Under the wise guidelines set by Congress, they would never attempt to ban any kind traffic, will allow all kinds of information through, never spy on the users, and, if we don't like any aspect of the service, we can just wait 2 years to vote them out. Picking up the phone and calling a competitor is so bourgeois...

The government giving a bunch of tax breaks to people who already have a lot of money

People, who don't have a lot of money, do not pay taxes at all. 47% of Americans don't pay Federal income tax, for example, while the top 1% pays over 40% of the total. If you are going to cut taxes at all, you are bound to benefit "the wealthy"...

Hell, I'd rather we pay down the debt before we give people making over a quarter of a million dollars more tax breaks, they've got money to burn.

The truth comes out... You want to use my taxes to pay for the debts you incurred (or are about to) by spending on all of the above-listed "feel-good" projects for the "poor masses" — the rich pay for themselves, don't they?.. Fairness be damned — whoever has "money to burn" (and you will be deciding, how much money is "enough"), will be forced at gun-point (via the IRS, that is) to pay up. No longer are you content with humbly asking for money to help "the unfortunate" — you are now demanding it, or else...

You aren't, per chance, posting from Athens, are you? Don't you still have a few offices to burn?

He's discovered how to use the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle to perpetuate his delusions.

Oh, look, it has discovered, how to use fancy terms to survive in an argument.

Hint... The fallacy of excluded middle (a.k.a. "False Dilemma") has nothing to do with the matter at hand or my argument.

We are on the slippery slope — the government is ever increasing its role in all aspects of life. The other metaphor is "the slowly-boiling pot"...

"The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology."

Ayn Rand

When people like me were warning, that Roosevelt's "New Deal" is the path towards government's (federal, state, and local combined) controlling about 50% of the nation's spending, people like you were ridiculing the dire predictions... A government-controlled (and mandated) healthcare remained just as much "an uncontested absurdity" back then, as the government's control of our food, shelter, and higher education seems a scare-mongering absurd to you today...

Reading the article, it's pretty clear that who we have to thank is a conservative columnist reporting a bunch of imaginary conversations

Well, you have imaginary conversations, does not mean everybody else's are...

More importantly, his was just one of the first links popping up, when searching for the phrase "support the troops but not their mission".

Or will you deny this ever being said by a (very) prominent Democrat, for example?

There is nothing more cowardly than people who feign offence [sic] just to stifle debate.

Yes, it really irks me too, when people feign offense (at my "racism"), when I criticize Barack Obama. This is why I've come up with the statement being discussed :-)

I support the right to bear arms, even to the point of people carrying fully automatic weapons, but I do not support homicide. By your logic I'm a weasel too.

And by your logic, there is nothing wrong with my (current) signature: "I support Barack Obama, but not his mission."

So by your own words, a straighforward reading of 'support our troops' implies supporting the mission. And you're confused why someone would want to say 'support the troops without supporting the mission'?

Yes. But the Democratic Party has come up with this wonderful backhanded way, that I'm now using to express disagreement with Obama, while avoiding (I Hope) charges of racism: "I support Barack Obama, but not his mission".

(Funny, how the Illiberal moderators slam my responses down as "off-topic", while keeping their fellow Illiberal, who lead the sub-thread off-topic by picking on my sig, at 5...)

Has that happened? I thought in order to do that, the student has to demonstrate that they took active measures to ensure they understood the material.

Yeah, a complaining student would need all that evidence in court, but not on an online forum or in front of a sympathetic interviewer. Without the attendance records, it is the professor's word against the student's.

Plus, as others pointed out, the attendance records can genuinely help the instructors...

How, precisely, do you 'support the troops'? Do you support them in that you hope they will come back alive? Do you support them in re-integrating into civilian life after discharge? Do you support them by hoping they win their battles? Do you support them in hoping they succeed in their mission?

Although different people would stress different items from your list, a straightforward person would list all of the above. An obama or a pelosi would keep trying to weasel out.

Make no mistake, 'support our troops' means everything and nothing.

Weaselese...