Gambit on 20/10/2008 at 18:52
Linking all muslims to terrorists is like linking all italians to the Mafia. It simply doesn´t make sense.
BEAR on 20/10/2008 at 19:06
Said like a true italian mafia terrorist :mad:
fett on 21/10/2008 at 00:41
Quote Posted by DDL
Out of curiosity (and hopefully not to derail stuff too much, coz this makes great reading), how does the argument hold up if you replace "war in iraq" with "death penalty"?
Coz while the bible may have comprehensive justifications for killing in war (god knows, there's a ton of killing in that book), deliberately choosing to end someones life and all that is..well, about as premeditated as it gets. Sure, you could argue that they're a 'bad person', but it's still state-sanctioned premeditated murder, really.
Or at least, that's the way I view it.
There are caveats for that as well, though the idea was to emphasize exactly how bad/sinful/destructive a particular action was by calling for the death penalty as punishment. You'll find however that *most* of the time, the Jewish community didn't actually kill the individual even when they were sentenced--the person would live with the shame of having incurring the death penalty and usually have to leave the community and start a whole new life. Depending on the time period, either the Judges, the King, or the Sandedrin dictated how severe the 'death penalty' would be, until the Romans took that power away from them around 3-4 A.D.
Ko0K on 21/10/2008 at 02:12
Quote Posted by Gambit
Linking all muslims to terrorists is like linking all italians to the Mafia. It simply doesn´t make sense.
Same can be said about Republicans, too. The moderates and old-school conservatives are on the defensive because they feel as though they are being lumped along with the racist far right and bible-toting fundamentalists, i.e., angry white men. I'm mad at the conservatives for letting those white trash idiots drown their voices out and misrepresent them as a whole, but deep down I know that we must not be enemies. As convenient as it may be for some of us to paint each other in broad strokes, we need to be able to make some important distinctions if we are to work together through difficult times ahead.
I sent my absentee ballot in already, so my part's done. I think I'll find positive things to focus on, although it seems that I can't go a minute without running into *something* that's related to this stupid drama. Ugh!
BEAR on 21/10/2008 at 02:56
Well said. Also, I did my early voting friday last week so my part is done as well (unless I assist the local campaign which I probably won't because I'm too lazy).
Gambit on 21/10/2008 at 10:44
CNN just reported that the difference between Obama and McCain just dropped to 5%.
What I don´t understand is...
After 8 years of a very impopular goverment that is now in a huge deficit, economical crisis, with civil and constitucional errors, bad foreign policy...
After all that why the neocon extreme right is still so strong ? (Not directly represented by McCain who is moderated, but certainly present with Palin).
Against 8 years of neocon impopularity I thought Obama could win with at least a 60% - 40% gap.
BEAR on 21/10/2008 at 11:32
I think racism played a part in taking up some of the slack that wouldn't be there with a white candidate.
Also, that's just a poll, its margin of error is several percentage point. McCain didn't gain 5 points since yesterday or the last poll, it just depends on who's being polled.
Starrfall on 21/10/2008 at 14:34
Quote Posted by Gambit
Against 8 years of neocon impopularity I thought Obama could win with at least a 60% - 40% gap.
Even Reagan, at the height of his popularity and spanking the hell out of Mondale, didn't get 60%. And he only got 50.7% in 1980.
In the last eight presidential elections, only two winners got more than 53% of the popular vote. Three of the winners got less than 50% of the popular vote. No non-incumbant, non-VP in that time got more than 51% in their first wins. (If you go back two more elections, Nixon got past 60% in 1972, after winning with only 43.4% in 1968.)
So what I'm saying is that it will be fairly extraordinary for the winner this time around to even get past 52%.
