Liberal Forum

So, since the woman has the uterus, the ultimate decision should be hers. that's my point. the abortion agenda renders the woman 100% responsible for the pregnancy. by this logic, everything about it is her fault, including any defects the child might be born with.

that's my point. the abortion agenda renders the woman 100% responsible for the pregnancy. by this logic, everything about it is her fault, including any defects the child might be born with.I don't follow your logic at all.Even if couples undergo genetic testing before pregnancy, there is no guarantee that they will have a healthy child.You can't blame that on the woman.Like I said, in an ideal world, these decisions would be made by a couple who hopefully had a discussion about the chances of a pregnancy occurring, before they even begin a sexual relationship.Would that we lived in an ideal world.

5 Ways Republicans Can Stop Being “The Stupid Party”#5. Buy A Time Machine What’s very clear from the last four years is that the Republican Party is in dire need of a fresh coat of paint. Well, they’re in dire need of a lot of things, and most of them stem from the fact that they are trying to uphold ideals that have either been debunked (raising taxes kills the economy) or are simply relics of a bygone era that should be relegated to the refuse heap of past incorrect beliefs about humanity. Being anti-marriage equality in this day and age is proof of willful ignorance, for instance. It’s widely known and accepted for instance that gay people aren’t all child molesting miscreants who are just choosing to be attracted to members of the same sex. But that’s the belief held steadfast by the right-wing in this country. So they need to buy a time machine and either go back two hundred years so they can live in a landscape free of the reforms and equality we’ve extended to those who were missing from action when the Constitution was written, or they need to strap their ideologies into the time machine and advance them a couple hundred years. Same sex marriage is legal in a handful of states as of right now, and none of those states have spontaneously burst in a fiery hell-scape. Some things just are bad word, no matter how you slice them, and most of the Republican social policies look and smell like they’ve passed through the colon of several steers.#4. Stop Pretending To Like Women & Minorities Here’s a novel concept for the GOP — instead of trotting out Kelly Ayotte, Bobby Jindal, or one of their other “nods” to equality that they love to project as being the tolerant face of their party, perhaps they should actually examine their policies for clues as to why minorities and women generally hate their guts. Maybe if they introduced a few hundred fewer bills aimed at reducing the amount of say that a woman has over her reproductive health, or if they stopped pretending as if millions upon millions of immigrants are streaming over our borders, or God forbid supported a path to citizenship regardless, maybe they could repair their image. But the fact remains that once you scrape away the pleasantries and lip service, there has not been one substantive policy change that the Republicans have made in terms of their social or economic visions for the country. They’ve posited absolutely nothing that would give anyone paying attention even a modicum of reassurance that the GOP isn’t truly focused solely on protecting the rich in the country. Basically, until they’re willing to walk the walk, they’re just talking the talk, and the words are coming out of a very small, dark and putrid place on their bodies…their brains.#3. Embrace Their Actual Ideology You know, growing up I was always told that there is just one thing that Republicans value more than anything else in the world: Freedom. And yet, as I look at my former party, I can see a complete and total abandonment of freedom in so many of the laws they’ve proposed or passed. Nothing says freedom more than being given choices. Choices imply that there is no forced outcome, that the government is not telling you one way or the other how to behave. Of course we can’t have freedom of choice in every aspect of life, otherwise we’d live in a world devoid of actual negative consequences for negative actions or behaviors. But in terms of something as simple as who we’re allowed to marry, or what we’re allowed to do with our own bodies, Republicans run about as far away from “freedom” as you can possibly get. In both the case of marriage equality and abortion, conservative Republicans would tell you that the government’s duty is to protect the so-called “traditional” family, which is one daddy and one mommy who cannot do anything with her vagina unless the Federal government tells her she can. The bottom line? Maybe we’d think the GOP wasn’t so stupid if they didn’t blatantly contradict nearly everything they claim to stand for every goddamned chance they get.#2. Embrace That Which Makes Us Less Stupid This one’s really easy. Stop demagogueing universities and colleges. It’s not hard to understand why so many Republicans don’t “believe” in evolution, despite it not being something that you can ascribe “belief” to being scientific fact and all, when you consider that over and over again the loudmouths on the right treat education like [excrement]. Teachers are overpaid union thugs who are only trying to indoctrinate more kids as liberal zombies. Colleges are just breeding grounds for Marxists and Communists. These things sound ridiculous to smart and educated people…and that pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?#1. Leave the Republican Party Honestly, it’s hard to think of a faster way for a Republican to become smarter than to just leave the party altogether. I’m not suggesting that the GOP will never smarten-up. I’m just suggesting that for the foreseeable future, all the party does right now is serve very local red state issues while managing to alienate just about every moderate or liberal-minded person in the country. There are no signs of actually getting with the times, so why bother? My suggestion to anyone in the GOP who feels like their party really has become the stupid party and they just can’t take it anymore? Leave. Leave now, and bring all your smart friends with you. You don’t have to join the Democrats. You don’t have to join anyone else. But if you’re really wanting the GOP to change its tune, you need to make it as powerless as possible. But let’s face it, when learning in general is demagogued to oblivion, what gives us any right to believe Republicans are capable of learning anything, much less a lesson?

FreedomWorks Feud: War Inside Tea Party Group Gets NastierA legal probe is launched, and FreedomWorks' president accuses ex-chairman Dick Armey of trying to subvert the group.When the news broke in early December that former GOP Rep. Dick Armey had abruptly resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, a powerhouse of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the tea party, Armey maintained that the nasty split was due to differences he had with the top management of FreedomWorks about the group's operations and future. Immediately, media reports disclosed that Armey had been concerned that Matt Kibbe, the group's president, had used FreedomWorks resources to promote a book he had written (which was released in June) and that Armey himself had received an $8 million payout from a FreedomWorks board member to ease his departure. But internal documents obtained by Mother Jones show that the bitter war inside FreedomWorks has also resulted in allegations of staff wrongdoing (prompting an investigation by lawyers) and counter-allegations that Armey and his allies tried to turn FreedomWorks into a partisan outfit backing establishment Republicans over tea party insurgents.On December 12, James Burnley IV and C. Boyden Gray, two FreedomWorks board members (and allies of Armey), sent Kibbe a letter informing him that they had received "allegations of wrongdoing by the organization or its employees." They notified Kibbe that the group's board of trustees had retained two attorneys, Alfred Regnery and David Martin, to conduct an independent investigation of the allegations. Burnley and Gray ordered Kibbe to cooperate with the lawyers, to make sure no records were "destroyed, deleted, modified or otherwise tampered with," and to send Regnery a check for $25,000 to cover his initial fees. (Regnery, a prominent conservative, is the past president of Regnery Publishing, a right-wing firm that has put out books by Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Pat Buchanan, and other notable conservatives.) The letter did not specify the allegations being investigated. In an interview with Mother Jones, Burnley declined to discuss the alleged wrongdoing at FreedomWorks. "The letter speaks for itself," he says. Gray, Kibbe, and a spokeswoman for FreedomWorks did not respond to requests for comment.Read More At Link In TitlePart of what prompted this internal investigation was the existence of a promotional video produced under the supervision of Adam Brandon, executive vice president of FreedomWorks, and a Kibbe loyalist.The video included a scene in which a female intern wearing a panda suit simulates performing oral sex on Hillary Clinton.FreedomWorks Made Video of Fake Giant Panda Having Sex With Fake Hillary Clinton

VIDEO: How The GOP Constantly Pretends Spending Cuts Haven’t HappenedBarring a miracle of bipartisan cooperation over the next 12 hours, the sequester — a series of across-the-board spending cuts — will kick in tonight.Part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, the sequester will likely shave 700,000 jobs and 0.6 percent worth of growth off the economy. Its cuts were designed to be so crude and damaging they would incentivize all sides to replace it with more well-thought out deficit reduction.But thanks to the GOP’s single-minded fixation on spending cuts over tax increases, that effort failed. Republicans spent the last two years treating every debate over the deficit as if it were occurring in a historical vacuum, accusing Obama of failing his own commitment to balance, repeatedly scoffing at new tax revenue, and insisting that “it’s finally time” to “get serious” about cutting spending, even as trillions of dollars in cuts mounted.In short, the GOP has repeatedly thrown the spending cuts from each previous deal down the memory hole, demanding more and more while claiming that Obama and Democrats have unreasonably wanted to balance those cuts with new revenue.Between the spring 2011 budget fight, the debt ceiling debacle, and the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the United States has cut almost $1.5 trillion in spending over the next decade, plus saving roughly $200 billion more in lower interest payments.In fact, at the Wall Street Journal breakfast featured in the video, reporter Lori Montgomery brought up all these previous cuts point blank with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Ryan’s rejoinder encapsulated the entire bizarre kabuki dance: “That was last session. We’re going forward now.” Montgomery and the other reporters literally busted out laughing in response. (Ryan’s logic doesn’t even work on its on terms. The new tax revenues in the fiscal cliff deal were part of the last congressional session as well, but he wants to count those.)Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the budget ledger, the country will raise only $630 billion in new tax revenue over the next decade. That’s the context in which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) insists “the tax issue is finished,” even as both he and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) claim to be seeking a “balanced” agreement. As a result, everything from Medicare, to the military, food safety, air traffic control, nutritional support for women and infants, disaster relief, law enforcement, and health research looks likely to get the axe.Watch the video at the link in the title.$1.5 trillion in spending cuts? That was soooo last session.ROFLFunny how Boehner mentioned the two bills the House passed LAST session, which are no longer valid, in his comments about how the House had done it's work and it was now time for the Senate to 'get off their ***' and do something.Unlike those bills, the already agreed upon spending cuts did not expire at the start of this new Congress.

Could you cut 3% out of your household budget without feeling it?

Could you cut 3% out of your household budget without feeling it? Yes. But my family and I Shun credit and Banks and live within our means. Edited by Hannibal, 01 March 2013 - 04:47 PM.

Yes. But my family and I Shun credit and Banks and live within our means. Thank you, that philosophy should apply at whatever level of expenditure, but somehow the left thinks it is responsible to borrow a high percentage of what they spend. The more amazing thing is that they think it will never have any consequence.

Could you cut 3% out of your household budget without feeling it?For one thing, my household budget is no where near the federal budget. LOLI assume that I would be able to decide how and where to make those cuts?That's not what sequester does.

Size doesn't matter, in this conversation.,

...the left thinks it is responsible to borrow a high percentage of what they spend. The left? Really? Do you have amnesia? Have you blocked out the years from 2001 to 2008? The more amazing thing is that they think it will never have any consequence. I don't know any idiot who would say something like that. That's why, like Hannibal, I shun credit and live within my means. The only outstanding debt I have is my mortgage. Size doesn't matter, in this conversation., Size always matters Sweetie. I would not be happy if someone mandated automatic across the board budget cuts for my home budget. I would like to be the one to decide what gets cut.

The left? Really? Do you have amnesia? Have you blocked out the years from 2001 to 2008? He is here to be partisan, not expand his mind or evolve his world view. That's why they call them "Conservatives".

mandated automatic across the board budget cuts for my home budget. I would like to be the one to decide what gets cut. your boys idea.

your boys idea. My BOY? ROFL I guess he had faith that since no one wanted this sequester, Congress would come to some kind of an agreement before it kicked in. That was very naive of him. He didn't do it allby himself. He couldn't have signed it, if Congress hadn't passed it. I'm not running from you, but we're having steak and crab cakes for dinner, and I'm really hungry, so I'm going to get started on that. Later.

So why did sequester originate from the WH?

crab cakes for dinner Ewwwwww

So why did sequester originate from the WH?Like I said, Obama was naive enough to think that such a ridiculous law would force the two sides to work together.He was wrong.Let us not forget that in reference to the sequester deal, Boehner said, "I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I'm pretty happy."So to now try and pin the whole thing on Obama, is kind of dishonest.I don't quite get your logic anyway.You seem to be saying that the sequester cuts are not a bad thing, but you also seem to want to blame them on Obama.That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.Now, I'm going to make dinner.MarloMisty, on 01 Mar 2013 - 17:03, said:crab cakes for dinnerEwwwwwwEwwwwww?I'm very excited. I rarely get to have shellfish since my hubby is allergic.He was nice enough to buy me some crab cakes today while he was out picking up some very nice rib steaks.

Ewwwwww? I'm very excited. I rarely get to have shellfish since my hubby is allergic. He was nice enough to buy me some crab cakes today while he was out picking up some very nice rib steaks. I do not eatinvertebrates. Nice of him though. Edited by Hannibal, 01 March 2013 - 05:21 PM.

I do not eatinvertebrates. Nice of him though.He's a nice guy.

The Congress That's Never ThereCongress has been in session just 23 of the 60 days so far in 2013. As the calendar below shows, Congress takes most of the year off: the days shaded orange indicate when the House has been out of session over the past year.Don't worry, the impending series of fiscal crises has not been much of an inconvenience to their schedule: the House began a three-day weekend today, enjoys a four-day weekend next week, and then goes on a two-week vacation starting on March 22, even though government funding runs out March 27.http://www.theatlant...er-there/62676/Not to mention they just got back from two weeks off for Presidents Day.Why are we not outraged by this?And why don't the mandated cuts in the sequester include salary cuts for them?Why are they getting full time salaries for part time work?