Politics

kbd512 · 2018-03-19 18:42:58

Rob / Void / Terraformer,

I draw the line whereupon someone else wants the rest of society to pay for their actions. If someone creates real medical issues for themselves because of their psychological issues that make them believe they need to mutilate their body to transform it into something it's not, as they would if they start taking hormones or have plastic surgery to make them appear to be someone of the opposite gender, then I think that's a problem.

I feel the same way about irresponsible procreation, sexual habits, drug use habits, and failing to get vaccines to prevent diseases. If you don't want to have children, then don't have sex with someone you don't intend to have children with. Failing that, be prepared to accept the natural consequences of having sex. Pregnancy is not a medical condition. It's a natural part of human life. The rest of society does not need to pay to kill the unwanted children of women who irresponsibly have sex with people they have no intention of having children with.

So feel free to smoke dope until you're stoned out of your mind and have an orgy with a hundred other people, some of whom will inevitably have STD's, without protection or vaccines after your sex change operation, but don't expect the rest of us to pay for your personal behavior. It is not society's responsibility to pay for your behavioral choices. That's the message we should be communicating to our children.

Better choices typically result in better outcomes so often that it's almost like there's some sort of lesson to be learned there.

SpaceNut · 2018-03-19 19:25:04

The only problem with sexual reassignment is that there is no half way its all or nothing to fix what is a correctable if we can call the change that but that fix for the psychological problem must be proven, and that there is no other possibility which can be reached to solve the problem.

Like kbd512 said the rest of it is preventable as that is all choice and only the prescribed smoking of dope or perscription drugs for a real medical conditions is the only exception.

Void · 2018-03-19 22:12:45

I rather respected your comments kbd512, I tolerated you SpaceNut. I regreted the absence of terraformer.

Not that what I think matters to those who disagree.

As planed by me I think I will take a recess. My ability to tolerate is regressing.

Reality is not what you think but think what you like. Enjoy it. Pretty sure you don't get it. Not you kbd. You are darn close I think, and who is to say that I know what I am talking about anyway.

But recess. Goody Goody!

Void · 2018-03-20 13:20:53

I pretty much agree, but a warning here and there that is verbal, suggesting that the individual reconsider their actions, might be friendly to the unwise.

SpaceNut · 2018-03-20 17:31:18

Devrsity allows us to be able to talk about this tough stuff and the going ditto, and saying the same thing means there is no discusion. As far as the paying for it as kbd512 has said we are in agreement nobody is going to demand that I pay for it to be done either and I would go 1 further in that medical care and all of its baggage needs to change as the hospitals are still inflated billing for the uninsured while the insurance companies are still make the insured pay for them in the out of this world premieums. Serfice to say that if you can not pay you need to seek healthcare elsewhere try canada or mexico....AS for doctors that are not curing the problems that ail and are only passing out bandaids we need you to start solving the problems of pain by not passing out pain killers and do what science shows you should be doing and that is fixing the person not hiding the pain.

SpaceNut · 2018-03-20 20:37:21

On a safety note as a result of continued bombs in the Austin area of Texas. I do hope all will be aware of there surrounding and be careful.

kbd512 · 2018-03-20 22:00:03

SpaceNut,

Health care needs to be affordable, but that starts with knowing what things cost and purchasing health insurance. In any other business, I can see the price tag attached to a product. A product shouldn't cost one dollar figure if you pay for it yourself and another dollar figure if a third party pays for it, either. That's a bunch of bull. Our pharmaceutical companies need to focus research on curing diseases, rather than sex pills for old men and women. All those free meds we deliver to other countries should go to American patients first. There's no reason the Canadians should pay half or less for what we developed here in the US that we have given unto the rest of the world whilst American patients can obtain the same drugs for similar prices.

clark · 2018-03-21 08:12:14

Funny. A board predicated on having everyone else pay for the daydream fancy of a few with comments deriding the idea of having to pay for someone else's daydream fancy.

kbd512 I salute you with your preference of finger.

If i get censored, i regret nothing.

kbd512 · 2018-03-21 11:37:34

Clark,

Humanity needs to explore to expand our knowledge and mature as a species. A mother may love her child more than life itself, but even she will pull her breast from her child's mouth to force her child to eat solid food so that the child may grow. There's only so much we can learn from living on one planet. As bittersweet a moment as it may be, all children must eventually leave their mother's warm embrace to learn and grow.

The Apollo program was the genesis of computers as we know them today. The design of the circuitry in subsequent computational tools that made life as we know it today possible was an absolutely unmistakable implementation of that technology. Presumably, you're using that technology to respond to me. You've clearly benefited from its existence since we no longer have to write letters to each other to correspond with one another. Our space program forced that technology into existence, out of necessity to fulfill a design requirement for landing on the moon, and all of humanity has benefited from it ever since.

I accept your single digit salute with pride. If I'm not offending someone by forcing them to think about what they say they want, then I'm doing it wrong. Even so, take the point and not the arrow. When someone decides to jump off a bridge after they've had a six pack, it's not society's fault they did that. Why is the rest of society punished for that person's action? At what point are people forced to accept the consequences of their own actions?

clark · 2018-03-21 12:18:55

Hey kbd512,

I merely took the time to point out the hypocrisy inherent in your views. You're either comfortable with it, or choose to ignore it through some complicated rationalization of pseudo-intellectual enlightened elitism.

In regards to the origin of computers as we know them, check out our friend Mr. Henry Babbage, he may disagree with your assertion. In regards to our means to connect with one another in this medium, send your thank you to our friends at DARPA. In regards to the rockets themselves, I'm certain Wernher von Braun family would appreciate a shout-out given he and the other liberated german scientists were pivotal in the development of the american space program.

But I digress, because Apollo, without, we surely would be bereft of our beloved Tang.

I appreciated your walk down memory lane.

Anyway, I for one agree with most of your libertarian foundations: live and let live, just don't bother me with it, right? Fear the tyranny of the many and the power of the one?

My way of thinking though is that in the long run, we are all better off creating an environment where the expectation is that we all do our most to support and enable people to live the life they want that does the least to interfere with the life that someone else chooses. Seems to me that our own self-interest is more generally served.

So support the gender bending cross dressing atheist gun hater, and you can demand that they support your wise and forward thinking worldview of humanity reaching out to cross the chasm of space to land and live on a barren rock of rust, in glorified metal coffins surrounded by the harsh vacuum of nothing- because we just can't learn things like that on Earth. See, your self interest is better served by simply taking a broader view.

kbd512 · 2018-03-21 14:27:22

Clark,

I do support other peoples' decisions to do what they want with their own lives, within reason. I'm pretty comfortable with other people doing whatever they want to do with their bodies. Some people like tattoos, for example, but I don't have any because that's not my thing. If I did decide to get a tattoo and then wanted it removed, is it anyone else's job to pay for the medical procedure to remove it? The answer seems pretty obvious to me. The fact of the matter is that one person is directly benefiting from that activity. Everyone in our country has benefited from space exploration, including the people who want to change their bodies to appear to be someone of the opposite sex. Computers don't care about what you look like or believe, they compute things in seconds, or less, that you'd never live long enough to complete by hand.

As far as computers are concerned, Henry Babbage never lived to see an integrated circuit. The IBM engineers who designed the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer for the Saturn V gave us the technology we later came to benefit from in ordinary desktop computers.

This is stuff I learned about as a child because I was interested in the subject matter, but here's a video from YouTube on it:

The Apollo Saturn V Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC) Circuit Board

Fran Blanche's channel is a neat little window into the past, one of several, for those less familiar with where some of our computer technology came from. It's not overly technical in nature, or at least it isn't to me.

Sometimes I get odd looks when people see my IBM Selectric or Royal Mercury sitting in my office. Laugh all you want, but when the machines take over, we all know who will be the last employed typist in town.

clark · 2018-03-21 15:15:57

finally, meat.

The supposition that space exploration benefits "everyone" is weak. It doesn't because "everyone" is too broad and provides too many opportunities to disprove the main hypothesis. This is one of the common failures of space enthusiasts when advocating their cause. Space exploration does not benefit everyone. Homeless? Orphans? Those drinking poisoned water in Flint Michigan? People in hospice waiting their final days? Rhetorical questions not meant to be answered but to highlight the absurdity of the initial claim.

Space exploration does not benefit everyone and it is short sighted to try and even make that kind of claim. You show your hand when you make a flippant comment like that.

Whatever percent it does benefit, *Human* space exploration benefits even fewer people. It is debatable what benefit colonizing benefits anyone on earth, at least compared with utilizing the same resources and science to tackle non-space related challenges. Do we see benefits from investments in science and technology? Yes. Are the benefits we have realized from investments in space exploration only obtainable via direct investments in space exploration? Doubtful.

Computers would have developed without space exploration; they were already developed prior to Apollo. The advancements of computing technology is in large part due to the commercialization of the technology, not due to space exploration. Integrated circuits predate the Saturn V, so your point, while sounding pretty, misses the mark. The intertubes and UseTubes all came into existence outside of the need for supporting space exploration.

The honest answer is that space exploration is helpful the same way chasing a cure for cancer is helpful. Or mapping the human genome. Or increasing agricultural yield. Or improving gas mileage. Or solar power conversion rates. Or funding the arts. Some people benefit, some people don't, maybe something good and long lasting results.

Bravo on the choice of paper weights. You should leave a piece of paper in them with the words "Hello world!" as the only text. A fitting greeting for our future robot overlords when they show.

kbd512 · 2018-03-21 16:22:31

Clark,

Actually, I think the arguments you proffered better highlighted the absurdity of the claims of those people who say we should not explore space. After your house burns down, there's no need for a fire department, either, except to prevent the rest of the entire neighborhood from going up in flames with it. I think the number of neurons firing in a person's head has to reach a "critical mass", so to speak, to comprehend the benefits of having a fire department when it's likely that their house will burn to the ground before the local FD can put out the fire. Poisoning the water we drink or failing to care for the homeless or orphans within society are all examples of human failures that have little to do with our capacity to provide for our people or the technology to do it with. The claim that technological development could help everyone, everywhere, at all times is facially absurd and not something I ever claimed.

Whether advanced computational technology could have developed some other way ignores the fact that those technologies were developed directly for military and aerospace development programs requiring such technologies. The end result is that those programs have directly and swiftly benefited the rest of society, whether that was the original intent or not. If the internet would've existed without DARPA, then why didn't some other country that was an advanced industrialized society ever create something like an internet? Why was there no internet over here until a military program created it, despite the fact that businesses were routinely exchanging electronic data with each other long before the internet existed? The circumstances of the creation of new technologies are not divorced from a requirement for those technologies.

All such arguments fall flat in the face of how our more advanced technologies actually came into existence. They were the result of military and aerospace programs, plain and simple. Any woulda / coulda / shoulda argument ignores objective reality and proposes that something that never happened may have happened if something else hadn't happened. You'd need a time machine to gather any evidence to support such an assertion.

clark · 2018-03-22 07:47:27

Thanks kbd, looks like we are starting to agree now. You appear to have dropped "space exploration" in lieu of "military and aerospace". As mentioned earlier, computers, the internet, rockets- were developed without the impetus of space exploration. The sad fact is that "space exploration" is and has largely been used as cover pr further military technology development or has benefited from spin-offs from technology development expressly developed for military purposes.

SpaceNut · 2018-04-01 20:20:04

A correction of a wrong 'I'm going home': Deported veteran Hector Barajas-Varela to become a U.S. citizen "Hector will be able to return home as an American citizen," said an ACLU director and attorney.

Remember Trump has said that tariff wars are good and one tariff leads to another in reverse...Trump's 25 percent tariff charge on imported steel and 15 percent hike on aluminum with China's is increasing the tariff rate on eight imported U.S. products, including pork, by 25 percent. It's also imposing a new 15 percent tariff on 120 imported U.S. commodities, including fruits.

China imposing new tariffs on U.S. products in retaliation of Trump tariffs

So how is that win going....as it is just hurting the american people in the end run....

Palomar7 · 2018-04-02 14:46:22

There are an alleged 1.1 BILLION people from 3rd-world regions who are allegedly intent on migrating to Europe and USA within 5 years' time.

If that is true and comes to pass, I think it's a safe bet to say we'll be kissing our space exploration plans goodbye. The tremendous strain on the taxpayer + intercultural difficulties for starters.

Last edited by Palomar7 (2018-04-02 15:00:53)

Terraformer · 2018-04-02 15:17:28

Oh, those won't be a problem. There won't be a government left to levy taxes...

How did it work out for the Romans?

Palomar7 · 2018-04-02 15:38:54

Terraformer wrote:

Oh, those won't be a problem. There won't be a government left to levy taxes...
How did it work out for the Romans?

Yeah.

But I thought I'd break the alleged news gently.

Last edited by Palomar7 (2018-04-02 15:40:10)

RobertDyck · 2018-04-02 16:49:54

How many refugees does the US accept each year? Last November the Canadian government announced they would accept 300,000 immigrants in 2017, 310,000 in 2018, 330,000 in 2019, and 340,000 in 2020. Not including last year, that's 980,000 people, almost a million, over the next 3 years. But that's immigrants; Canada admitted 46,700 refugees in 2016. Refugees get 6 months of assistance, but it's at welfare rate. After that, they don't get assistance. Refugees must find a job. Doesn't the US have a similar system? Canada is getting a lot of refugees from the US, since Donald Trump was elected. Refugees aren't supposed to come here from the US, but they do. So why would the US have a problem? Why would I believe 1.1 billion people are coming.

Palomar7 · 2018-04-02 17:17:52

RobertDyck wrote:

Why would I believe 1.1 billion people are coming.

I'm just the reluctant messenger of alleged news.

It's "according to a [recent] study by the Pew Research Centre."

On 5th (not-as-shocked read), it's actually 2/3 of a 1.1 billion population.

Which is still a lot of people.

How many refugees does the US accept each year?

Well, there's legal acceptance. Then there's being foisted upon. I don't know.

Considering my husband's health isn't good and I'm not getting any younger, have no sons to protect me...

I'm sorry for their situation, but I'd also be sorry for a simple trip to the grocery store becoming an ordeal. I've been keeping tabs on what European women are enduring. <_<

I've been rather rattled the past 2 years; 2016 blew my mind. At this point I think just about anything is possible. :-\

Last edited by Palomar7 (2018-04-02 17:19:47)

Terraformer · 2018-04-03 04:17:32

The folks turning up in Italy and Greece haven't waited for an invitation, they just showed up and demanded entrance...

RobertDyck · 2018-04-03 05:10:03

You haven't seen the video of RCMP (Canadian federal police) politely but firmly take down a refugee, with a knee on her back as she's flat on the ground, and put her in handcuffs.
Canada’s failing refugee system is leaving thousands in limbo
Many Canadians feel too many refugees have been allowed in. However, they don't just walk in. They try, and are arrested. But 300,000 legal immigrants, and 46,700 refugees. The refugees are a relatively small number. And Canada's population is 35 million. They have to learn one of Canada's official languages: English or French. Most refugees are sponsored by a private organization: eg a church. Their sponsor helps them assimilate, to learn Canadian ways and Canadian values. If they don't learn an official language, don't get a job, and don't have a sponsor, they're out. Yup, some refugees do get deported.

In the summer of 2016, when border towns in Manitoba complained about the burden of all the refugees walking across the border from North Dakota, a federal minister showed up with a cheque. After all, compared to immigrants, they're actually a small number. Those who walked across during winter... effectively punished themselves. Some had fingers and toes amputated due to frost bite. Do you realize how cold a Manitoba winter is?

SpaceNut · 2018-04-03 20:49:07

How is that tariff win going....China vows 'same strength' measure against US tariffs

Federal law prohibits the use of active-duty service members for law enforcement inside the U.S., unless specifically authorized by Congress. This while it might sound like the right thing is far from it as Impatient for wall, Trump wants US military to secure border only the gov of the state can send the guard to the border. If the president does this the men must take command from civilian border patrol in support.

The caravan stopped to camp at a sports field in Oaxaca over the weekend. Mexican immigration officers have been signing them up for temporary transit visas, which would allow them to travel to the U.S. border, possibly to seek asylum, or to seek asylum status in Mexico.

Can we say loop hole....

Palomar7 · 2018-04-04 06:27:11

RobertDyck wrote:

In the summer of 2016, when border towns in Manitoba complained about the burden of all the refugees walking across the border from North Dakota, a federal minister showed up with a cheque. After all, compared to immigrants, they're actually a small number. Those who walked across during winter... effectively punished themselves. Some had fingers and toes amputated due to frost bite. Do you realize how cold a Manitoba winter is?

No. Growing up in northern USA was bad enough, lol.

I noticed that Justin Trudeau (or whomever) put a SWIFT kabosh on El Salvadorans wanting to go to Canada after their US Visas were about to expire. In sharp contrast to the prior "All Are Welcome" (Merkel's notion).

Yes, despite the constant Leftist drivel of "all Whites are evil racists," it turns out lots of non-White folk want to live among us. I guess that Leftist notion didn't jibe with reality.

Last edited by Palomar7 (2018-04-04 06:30:21)

SpaceNut · 2018-04-04 19:41:28

Governors of the four U.S. states bordering Mexico were largely supportive of the move.

Trump signs order sending National Guard to US-Mexico border

The other article as well does talk to past presidents that have sent guard units in the past.

2006 operation in which President George W. Bush deployed troops to help U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel with non-law enforcement duties while additional border agents were hired and trained.
President Barack Obama also sent about 1,200 troops in 2010 to beef up efforts against drug smuggling and illegal immigration.

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