Haha, touché. I did get what TuT was saying, although "the free market of democracy" is a little more metaphorical than the actual economic free market.

On the other hand, there's no such thing as a truly free market, so I have no problem with the will of the people rising up to democratically regulate the downsides and inequities of the market.

You too can lie to people if you carefully select polls and ignore ubiquitous data that proves you wrong!

Doesn't matter when it comes to how they vote though. I could be wrong but I just don't see it.

KC,

1st Amendment has struggled with a WOAT administration when it comes to what does and does not fly for the media covering the White House. Obama has been really bad in this regard. More importantly, PATRIOT and the NSA and essentially unlimited powers with no accountability or oversight is essentially the final step before totally burning the first amendment and in-and-of-itself is huge erosion. Hillary's comments via Thayer are unsurprising and standard. But other than Rand or maaaybe Bernie no candidate will do anything different. It's game over.

Regarding Trudeau, he is doing everything any great leader I have personally seen does. He is being inclusive. He is being transparent. He is following up on his word. All stuff that Obama failed to do after some pretty GOATish stumping and speaking. He can't fail if he keeps it up. He is unifying and building trust where most leaders today divide. He has appointed people from both parties, set up honest-to-goodness nonpartisan committees, invited opposition to various meetings including the climate summit, he is doing what he said he would do in his campaign (agree with him or not this is a good thing in general). He's building trust. That will win.

Cliffs: he is being a leader.

NSA spying on people doesn't violate any first amendment rights.

If you don't think that monitoring every single communication of every single citizen without any probable cause isn't by far the most important step towards shredding the first amendment then I honestly don't know what to say. Already people have issues for what they say on social media and who knows what has happened in secret as a result of private communication. I do know that I trust the government not at all and they now have unchecked ultimate power in this area, and last I checked continue to do it despite court orders to cease.

CDL earlier brought up good points re: redistribution of wealth. I used to hate the idea but now I think that some form of taxation on assets above something like $25M is maybe reasonable.

Concur with whoever wrote that education for all doesn't solve certain problems within the economy, though for a smart person who can excel obviously it's a big help. There are only so jobs be it skilled or unskilled. I think we will likely get so efficient that redistribution becomes more and more necessary to maintain a peaceful society. How to align incentives properly is tricky and I haven't spent time to talk it through.

Cliffs: Education, taxation and welfare are all a little messed up, overlap some and are tricky issues to address.

Clark,

Nsa just shut down their universal collection of phone data like 3 weeks ago. It was struck down in court.

Obama is extremely non-transparent, and he has trampled on all sorts of rights (current no-fly list shenanigans, assassinating us citizens overseas), but none of that really impacts 1st amendment.

It is under attack, and probably always has been. But it has ALWAYS won. By and large, the courts are doing well here, and it's maybe the only non-partisan issue from a judicial standpoint.

It's not clear to me what you're getting at here. But cut me some slack, I'm in a bit of a haze.

That's largely correct. But still, the policies aren't too radical for voters. Voters are just dimwits.

Goalpost shift.

The discussion wasn't electability. You said he stood alone on his views and they were unpopular. I'm saying that's not true.

I'm saying he's unelectable only because people keep saying he's unelectable.

That's the fourth amendment bra.

Question for pro-lifers: how is killing abortionists NOT justifiable?

If abortion is murder, killing abortionists is in the defense of those he/she murders? If this is crazy, then abortion isn't murder, right?

That site claims that America leans left! Let's check the date of the post:

Jan 28th 2014.

Ok almost two years old, but not crazy, because you're not going to be redoing this post all the time.

Poll dates:
Sept 2011
July 2011
April 2011
Jan 2011
Feb 2009
June 2010
Jan 2011 (this is my ****ing favorite btw. It's a poll on mother ****ing iraq. If I go back to 2003 does that mean we're conservative nation??!?!?)


I literally made a super long post, but this politifact article does what I wanted to do much better:

There's a lot more polls. A lot of the other issues are going to follow a similar pattern. You found one poll and ignored a mountain of other data. There are a few exceptions, like for gay marriage.

Lock the thread. Good lord.

Yeah, that site is certainly pushing an agenda and I didn't do my best to find objective information. However, I do believe data on issue polling in general still indicates that many Bernian policies aren't too radical for the vast majority like Clark thinks they are.

IF drone striking hundreds of innocent civilians in the Middle East is murder, how is k1l.li.ng 0b.ama NOT justifiable?

It's a much better argument and still absurd.

Enjoy your visit from the Man.

Some really strong work going on in here.

The abortion argument bothers the **** out of me because very few people actually have a ton of disagreement. Most are OK with abortion before viability. Most think that aborting something in week 37 is abhorrent. Yet we're left with huge fights due to some religious ****s.

Wish you were right, but doesn't polling show this is about 50/50?

Maybe like 60/40 that are OK with it.

you're conflating terms like 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice' with what i said.

No, I understand what you said.

Are "most" really OK with abortion as long as it is 1st trimester?

Not sure on that. I thought the latest polls I've seen had it around 50/50.

The idea that very few have disagreement sounds nice and I wish it were true, but I don't really think it is. A lot of people are staunchly pro-life regardless of what tri-mester it is.