Politics 2015

[Hixter]

I'm just wary of a situation where people are being ordered to do something against their beliefs by the government

Same here. One day it's someone declining to bake a cake, then it's a Catholic university not wanting to dispense birth control pills, then it's a Muslim who doesn't want an employee to eat a ham sandwich in the break room, then it's a parent who sues the school board because his daughter has to read a book that contains PG-13 scenes.

 

We've politically corrected ourselves into pretzels, trying not to offend anyone while making everyone happy. It's an impossible goal and I just don't see how we can achieve it through legislation, no matter how well-intentioned it might be. I don't think that people have a right -- or a reasonable expectation -- of never being offended or discriminated against. As my parents always told me, life isn't always fair.

 

Institutionalized discrimination is a different kettle of worms and I'm very confident that the Indiana law would be stricken if it resulted in rampant discrimination against any group.

[lost highway]

I always admired a long lost conservative sensibility that laws basically restrict freedom. The only law that is worthy is one that protects many freedoms by restricting few. This paradoxical sweet spot is the domain of important legislation. Everything else is unnecessary authority, bureaucratic entropy, and interference between people and their natural liberty.

 

Under these principles, I don't think the law should exist. It's not enabling a missing freedom.

[KevinG]

 

I'm just wary of a situation where people are being ordered to do something against their beliefs by the government...

 

 

Same here. One day it's someone declining to bake a cake, then it's a Catholic university not wanting to dispense birth control pills, then it's a Muslim who doesn't want an employee to eat a ham sandwich in the break room, then it's a parent who sues the school board because his daughter has to read a book that contains PG-13 scenes.

 

Ok let's get one thing straight here.  You can believe that being gay is wrong, you can believe that birth control is a sin, you can believe eating a ham sandwich is unclean and will bring down the fall of society as we know it.  That is fine, the government is not and has never told YOU what to believe.  So unless the government is forcing YOU to eat said ham sandwich, or to forcing YOU to take birth control, or forcing YOU to be gay, then the government is doing nothing against YOUR beliefs.  Yes, you may not like or agree the lifestyles/beliefs/genetics of other people, but that does not give you the right to treat them any differently.

 

As a business owner you need to offer the same services to everyone.  This does not mean the Jewish baker has to produce a swastika cake for the NeoNazi's Hitler birthday celebration.  But they could still certainly offer the NeoNazis some of their finest Hamantaschen.  

 

Your beliefs as an employer should NEVER trump the beliefs of your employees.  You need provide the basic employment standards regardless of what you believe.  If this means providing health care method you don't believe in to someone who does believe in that method, then that is the price of doing business.    

 

As a person in society you must treat everyone the same.  

 

 

 

 

[Mr. Heartbreak]

Glad this conversation is staying civil. These issues are touchy, and discussions of them even in polite society often devolve into angry arguments.

 

I agree with the standpoint that business owners should be required to treat people fairly under the law. There is a huge difference between me, a private individual who is NOT in business as a photographer, declining to photograph a gay wedding, and Joe Schmoe, Wedding Photographer, taking the same stance. By the way, it's pretty hard to prove these kinds of discrimination cases, unless the discriminator blatantly tells the people that that is what they are doing. If I go to a job interview and they don't hire me, they can give me all kinds of excuses for why they are not hiring me. I might believe it's because I'm over 50, but the burden of proof is on me if I want to sue. That is a heavy lift.

 

As for marriage, and legislating morality, I'm sorry to say that we human beings really kind of do evolve when we are somewhat forced to do so. In case anyone needs a history lesson, I can inform you that my Asian wife and I would not have been legally allowed to marry here in Florida in 1968...not exactly a million years ago. But times changed, and now people barely give us a glance. One day, the same will be true for gay couples - it's happening already, and quite a bit faster than many expected - and in those future days, all these discussions will seem silly. Most folks will say, "What were they thinking?" Hopefully, they'll be saying the same thing about our use of fossil fuels as well.

[ih8music]

Ok let's get one thing straight here. You can believe that being gay is wrong, you can believe that birth control is a sin, you can believe eating a ham sandwich is unclean and will bring down the fall of society as we know it. That is fine, the government is not and has never told YOU what to believe. So unless the government is forcing YOU to eat said ham sandwich, or to forcing YOU to take birth control, or forcing YOU to be gay, then the government is doing nothing against YOUR beliefs. Yes, you may not like or agree the lifestyles/beliefs/genetics of other people, but that does not give you the right to treat them any differently.

 

As a business owner you need to offer the same services to everyone. This does not mean the Jewish baker has to produce a swastika cake for the NeoNazi's Hitler birthday celebration. But they could still certainly offer the NeoNazis some of their finest Hamantaschen.

 

Your beliefs as an employer should NEVER trump the beliefs of your employees. You need provide the basic employment standards regardless of what you believe. If this means providing health care method you don't believe in to someone who does believe in that method, then that is the price of doing business.

 

As a person in society you must treat everyone the same.

 

 

 

Excellent post. Very well said.

[Mowjo8185]

So if we flip the roles - does a homosexual baker or photographer have to agree to make a cake or photograph an event for the Westboro Baptist Church?

[KevinG]

So if we flip the roles - does a homosexual baker or photographer have to agree to make a cake or photograph an event for the Westboro Baptist Church?

 

Yes.

 

And I already covered this.  

 

As a business owner you need to offer the same services to everyone.  This does not mean the Jewish baker has to produce a swastika cake for the NeoNazi's Hitler birthday celebration.  But they could still certainly offer the NeoNazis some of their finest Hamantaschen.  

[Mowjo8185]

I just don't agree with you.  Unless you hold a monopoly on the service you offer, I see no reason someone should be forced to act against their conscience.

 

Again, I recognize the difficulty of passing a law like this, because it does give free reign for people to just be complete bigots in the name of religion, and it would certainly be taken advantage of.   And for that reason I'm against it, especially as it is currently written. But I can understand some of the thought process behind it. 

 

It seems to me, that as we evolve and become more accepting as a country (as someone mentioned above), and with the advent of social media and with the press certainly sympathizing with gay rights, that companies or individuals who refuse to serve gay people will likely be completely lambasted and see their business impacted.  There's a price they will have to pay for their views, and they have to decide if that price is worth it. And if their conscience dictates that it's worth it to them, I'm not sure I think they should be forced to provide that service regardless. Especially in situations where there are undoubtedly service providers within a 5 mile radius who will gladly perform that service, and probably do a better job for you.

[tinnitus photography]

Lol

 

http://gawker.com/indiana-pizzeria-takes-brave-stand-of-denying-gays-pizz-1694992744

[Mr. Heartbreak]

Lol

 

http://gawker.com/indiana-pizzeria-takes-brave-stand-of-denying-gays-pizz-1694992744

Great comments section in that one, too.

 

 

 

I went to a wedding that had a bunch of pizza delivered late into the reception when everyone was hammered. It was like manna from heaven. Also hilarious to watch how quickly it disappeared.

[KevinG]

I just don't agree with you.  Unless you hold a monopoly on the service you offer, I see no reason someone should be forced to act against their conscience.

 

How is photographing a gay wedding forcing you to act against your conscience?  How is baking a cake for the the Westboro Baptist Church causing you to act against your conscience?  

 

HIxter mentioned that we live in a world of political correctness and we try to legislate against being offended.  This is exactly what the RFRA is doing.  Trying to use religion as a basis of not interacting with people they don't like.  Life is not fair as Hixter said.  So sometime a person who owns a business has to do things they don't like.  If a business owner is not prepared to treat every person the same maybe they should reconsider their occupation.  

[Atticus]

Texas sure is giving Indiana a run for its money in consistent dipshittedness

[IRememberDBoon]

so when the lunch counters in the 60s refused to serve black folks should we have just let the "free market" decide the fate of the lunch counters or should we have passed some laws that FORCE what some might call civility to your fellow human beings IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA???

Were talking about our country here. Not the entire globe. If you don't like laws that discourage what those of us on the left (or wherever) think is discrimination then move your azz to Russie ya commie!

[Hixter]

President Obama is touting his deal with Iran, but even the Washington Post sees that it's anything but a deal:

 

The "key parameters” for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program released Thursday fall well short of the goals originally set by the Obama administration. None of Iran’s nuclear facilities — including the Fordow center buried under a mountain — will be closed. Not one of the country’s 19,000 centrifuges will be dismantled. Tehran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium will be “reduced” but not necessarily shipped out of the country. In effect, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will remain intact, though some of it will be mothballed for 10 years. When the accord lapses, the Islamic republic will instantly become a threshold nuclear state.

 

That’s a long way from the standard set by President Obama in 2012 when he declared that “the deal we’ll accept” with Iran “is that they end their nuclear program” and “abide by the U.N. resolutions that have been in place.” Those resolutions call for Iran to suspend the enrichment of uranium. Instead, under the agreement announced Thursday, enrichment will continue with 5,000 centrifuges for a decade, and all restraints on it will end in 15 years.

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of the Saudi nuclear weapons program spinning up. It may not take them long, because for years there have been whispers that the bankrolled the Pakistani nuclear weapons program, with the understanding that they would be provided with warheads and delivery systems upon demand.

 

Another quote from the Post:

 

The proposed accord will provide Iran a huge economic boost that will allow it to wage more aggressively the wars it is already fighting or sponsoring across the region.

If you think the Middle East is a shit show now, wait until you see the next 5 or 10 years. (Maybe the next 12 months, if Israel gets panicky.)

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-iran-deal-falls-well-short-of-his-own-goals/2015/04/02/7974413c-d95c-11e4-b3f2-607bd612aeac_story.html

[tinnitus photography]

we read what we want to read. both sides.

 

 

 

Centrifuges can be used to produce highly enriched uranium for bombs. The deal will reduce the number of centrifuges that Iran has, from close to twenty thousand now to just over six thousand—keeping only its oldest models, rather than the newest and best ones—and for the next ten years it will only be able to operate five thousand of them. Stockpiles of enriched uranium that Iran already has will be reduced—with the excess sent abroad—and kept at the lower level for fifteen years.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/on-iran-obama-gets-his-breakthrough

 

 

“Iran is not going to simply dismantle its program because we demand it to do so,” the President said. “That’s not how the world works. And that’s not what history shows us.” 

[lost highway]

Once again the GOP's criticism of the shortcomings of this deal offer no realistic alternative.  We've been doing the sanction thing hard, for a while.  It has done nothing.  Typically (as in Russia), U.S. sanctions do more to harm innocent poor citizens forced to live under shitty regimes populated by people unaffected by sanctions.  They do build some abstract form of economic pressure, but it hasn't worked.

 

Iran will have nuclear power, which is ultimately better for the climate.  They won't be able to build nuclear weapons any time soon, the main difference is that time is more clearly defined now.  There is a small chance that Iran and U.S.'s shared interests in regional stability could build into a more productive alliance over the next decade, but I won't hold my breath.

 

Now if we could only get nuclear weapons out of the hands of another violent theocracy, Israel.

[KevinG]

 

 

If you think the Middle East is a shit show now, wait until you see the next 5 or 10 years. (Maybe the next 12 months, if Israel gets panicky.)

 

 

 

Yep we are all gonna die because of this.  Gonna add it to the litany of things that the Obama Administration has done or is doing that is going to end life on this planet or at very the very least end the American Way.  See we have Obamacare, immigrants invading our country, the government taking over the internet, the Muslims, the government taking away our guns, the government telling us we have to serve people we don't like (thus turning us gay), Common Core, so on and so forth.  It must be hard to live in a world where you see everything that is done by the President as ultimately destroying your life.

 

I suppose the alternative is to have no deal, to allow Iran to continue, but that sanctions they are gonna work, cause they have in the past.  Maybe we should just go ahead and invade, kick out the dictatorship.  That worked in Iraq, didn't it?  We now have a peaceful stabilized country and further ally in the region.  Also it didn't cost us anything because of all the oil revenues.  Let's follow that model with Iran.  

 

At this point responses from the right have become so predictable.  So anti-Administration it is laughable.  

[Hixter]

Iran will not destroy any centrifuges. They'll be temporarily mothballed. Iran will still be able to develop new centrifuges and centrifuge technology. None of their facilities will be shut down. At best, the deal kicks the can down the road a few years. At worst, the Iranians ignore the deal at the time of their choosing.

 

And, yes, the sanctions are working. That's the main reason that the Iranians even sat down at the table. 

 

My response to Iran or any other wannabe nuclear state would be this: waste all the money on nuclear weapons that you'd like; defensive weapons don't scare us. But the first time one is transferred out of the country or used offensively -- or you even threaten to use them offensively, we will send you a hundred much more advanced warheads free of charge. By airmail.

[Hixter]

Yep we are all gonna die because of this.  Gonna add it to the litany of things that the Obama Administration has done or is doing that is going to end life on this planet or at very the very least end the American Way.  See we have Obamacare, immigrants invading our country, the government taking over the internet, the Muslims, the government taking away our guns, the government telling us we have to serve people we don't like (thus turning us gay), Common Core, so on and so forth.  It must be hard to live in a world where you see everything that is done by the President as ultimately destroying your life.

 

I suppose the alternative is to have no deal, to allow Iran to continue, but that sanctions they are gonna work, cause they have in the past.  Maybe we should just go ahead and invade, kick out the dictatorship.  That worked in Iraq, didn't it?  We now have a peaceful stabilized country and further ally in the region.  Also it didn't cost us anything because of all the oil revenues.  Let's follow that model with Iran.  

 

At this point responses from the right have become so predictable.  So anti-Administration it is laughable.  

That's a rather cartoonish post. Trust me, if a Republican president had forged the same deal I would be just as sceptical. And there's also skepticism from his own party: 

 

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/237809-top-dems-voice-great-skepticism-over-iran-deal

[lost highway]

Well, you may have been convinced by Netanyahu, but Obama sure wasn't.  The fact that the Saudi's want nothing short of Iranian annihilation is not reason for us to step away from assurances for a more peaceful situation.  If there's anything the Israelis and Saudis are really worried about it's economic growth in Iran.  They have no bomb, and now we know they're not getting one any time soon.

[Hixter]

Netanyahu had no influence on me. My views are based upon 35 years of watching the Iranian regime in action. I've watched them take Americans hostage (a friend of a friend is still being held there), kill American Marines in Beirut (including a friend of mine), kill Jews all over the planet, kill Americans in Iraq, build secret nuclear facilities deep under a mountain and lie, lie, lie. I've seen enough government-organized "Death to America" demonstrations to realize that they are not capable of being trusted.

 

 

“We are still not in a position to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is [for a] peaceful purpose,” Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington on Monday. “Progress has been very limited in clarifying issues with possible military dimensions.”

 

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/03/23/iaeas-yukiya-amano-says-organization-cant-verify-irans-past-nuclear-activity

[Sir Stewart]

How could this possibly be a bad deal - look how creamed HuffPo is!

[Hixter]

Wow. That may be the most epic ass kissing of modern times.

 

If I were Drudge, I'd copy the whole design and replace it with a photo of Chamberlain.

[Sir Stewart]

It's pretty amazing.

[Hixter]

Someone posted this video on Facebook:

http://youtu.be/6TcbU5jAavw

 

A decade later, North Korea tested their first nuclear weapon. Promises aren't worth the paper they are printed on and inspections only take place when/where/if a country decides to allow them.