2012 Elections

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 5:34 pm

Ah, the PUMAs return.

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:11 pm

Kraken wrote:Is Obama the modern Neville Chamberlain? This columnist believes so.

Chamberlain did one bold thing. He finally realized he was not the right man to lead Britain in dangerous times. He resigned so that Churchill could take over. There is one bold thing Obama could and should do. He should bow out of the race for reelection and throw his support behind Hillary Clinton—the leader we should have chosen in the first place

While Obama the Appeaser might resemble Chamberlain, I do not think Hillary is Churchill material.

Put her on a high calorie diet and she could be by election time.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sat Aug 20, 2011 1:42 am

Rip wrote:
Kraken wrote:Is Obama the modern Neville Chamberlain? This columnist believes so.

Chamberlain did one bold thing. He finally realized he was not the right man to lead Britain in dangerous times. He resigned so that Churchill could take over. There is one bold thing Obama could and should do. He should bow out of the race for reelection and throw his support behind Hillary Clinton—the leader we should have chosen in the first place

While Obama the Appeaser might resemble Chamberlain, I do not think Hillary is Churchill material.
Put her on a high calorie diet and she could be by election time.

That's probably going to work out better than cigars for her.

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Sat Aug 20, 2011 2:00 pm

Gary Johnson, you're just trying to get into my pants.

“When they look at the field of candidates for President, what do voters really see? They see: We need to balance the budget, but not too fast. We need to deal with entitlements, but not enough that anybody really feels a difference. And yes, we need to cut spending by trillions, but don’t touch defense. And worst of all, the voters see a party that says it wants government out of our daily lives, except when it comes to gay rights, a woman’s right to choose, what we do on the internet, or what our families look like.”

Multimedia from the National Press Club luncheon has not yet been made available, although a live feed was available during Johnson’s remarks.

“Historically and philosophically, the Republican Party is the party which should be offering a notion of tolerance, truly small government and freedom — and that is why I’m a Republican. But watching the presidential race today, that is not what voters are hearing. Rather, in too many cases, they are seeing unadulterated pandering to so-called social conservatives,” he said. “Some candidates who used to be pretty receptive to the notion of gay rights are now signing pledges against gay marriage and otherwise equivocating. Family values have become a mandatory code phrase in every Iowa speech.”

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Sat Aug 20, 2011 2:14 pm

Mr. Fed wrote:Gary Johnson, you're just trying to get into my pants.

“Historically and philosophically, the Republican Party is the party which should be offering a notion of tolerance, truly small government and freedom — and that is why I’m a Republican.

Tolerance? Hmmm. More wishful thinking than anything, imho... at least in Johnson's lifetime. But I do like the tenor.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 9:53 am

I am currently negotiating with Hetz on terms of an agreement that will bring him back to this forum to post a guarantee that Obama will win reelection. Stay tuned.

Exodor · Post by **Exodor** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 12:13 pm

Huntsman seems to be running for the Democratic nomination. Or maybe the Green party.

I think there's a serious problem. The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party - the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012. When we take a position that isn't willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science - Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man's contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position....I can't remember a time in our history where we actually were willing to shun science and become a - a party that - that was antithetical to science. I'm not sure that's good for our future and it's not a winning formula.

Well, I wouldn't necessarily trust any of my opponents right now, who were on a recent debate stage with me, when every single one of them would have allowed this country to default. You can imagine, even given the uncertainty of the marketplace the last several days and even the last couple of weeks, if we had defaulted the first time in the history of the greatest country that ever was, being 25 percent of the world's GDP and having the largest financial services sector in this world by a long shot, if we had defaulted, Jake, this marketplace would be in absolute turmoil. And people who are already losing enough as it is on their 401(k)s and retirement programs and home valuations, it would have been catastrophic.

EDIT:

TAPPER: Governor Perry also caused some controversy this week when he said this about Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

HUNTSMAN: Well, I don't know if that's pre-secession Texas or post-secession Texas

DAMN.

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 12:48 pm

Yeah, Huntsman seems to be enjoying himself. I'm enjoying the moans of anti-Huntsman outrage from the partisans.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 2:25 pm

Do Voters Even Care If a Presidential Candidate Doesn’t Believe in Evolution?

gbasden · Post by **gbasden** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 2:54 pm

Defiant wrote:Do Voters Even Care If a Presidential Candidate Doesn’t Believe in Evolution?

40% of people are young earth creationists? Holy. Shit.

We are even more willfully dumb in this country than I thought.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 6:19 pm

gbasden wrote:
Defiant wrote:Do Voters Even Care If a Presidential Candidate Doesn’t Believe in Evolution?
40% of people are young earth creationists? Holy. Shit.

We are even more willfully dumb in this country than I thought.

78% believe in God in one way or another.

gbasden · Post by **gbasden** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 12:52 am

msduncan wrote:
gbasden wrote:
Defiant wrote:Do Voters Even Care If a Presidential Candidate Doesn’t Believe in Evolution?
40% of people are young earth creationists? Holy. Shit.

We are even more willfully dumb in this country than I thought.
78% believe in God in one way or another.

Believing in God and wholly rejecting science are two completely different things.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:59 am

Hadn't heard that Pataki was considering running. Any other possible candidates that might jump in?

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 9:08 am

gbasden wrote:
Defiant wrote:Do Voters Even Care If a Presidential Candidate Doesn’t Believe in Evolution?
40% of people are young earth creationists? Holy. Shit.

We are even more willfully dumb in this country than I thought.

I'm not sure I like that poll. The three options were:

A) evolution with a god
B) evolution without a god
C) young earth

That set of options forces the anti-evolutionists to choose the young earth nonsense. Given how many uneducated Christians have a knee-jerk reaction to the word 'evolution' itself, it isn't surprising that many of them went with the only choice that didn't include it.

I'd like to see the poll with an option 'D) created in the present form at some time in the past'. It might not make me feel much better about the collective intelligence of the country, but it would be more accurate.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 9:27 am

gbasden wrote:
msduncan wrote:
gbasden wrote:
Defiant wrote:Do Voters Even Care If a Presidential Candidate Doesn’t Believe in Evolution?
40% of people are young earth creationists? Holy. Shit.

We are even more willfully dumb in this country than I thought.
78% believe in God in one way or another.
Believing in God and wholly rejecting science are two completely different things.

True, because I believe evolution happens. In fact my vision of existence is that evolution from single celled organisms *is* creation from the supreme being. We are seeing it around us.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 9:37 am

Yeah, let's not help deepen the divide by mis-representing and generalizing evolutionists as Atheists nor those who believe in God as anti-science. That has never been true and only extremists on both sides try to paint the other side that way.

If we could just chuck those who obviously want a war on this topic, we could probably all get along quite nicely, and politicians could go about being dishonest on other topics, rather than this one.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 9:53 am

I watched the Curiosity special on Discovery about Stephen Hawking's views on how the universe didn't need a divine creator to explain its existence and though it was very fascinating.

However, I found it particularly interesting that even the current scientific theory is that the universe spontaneously appeared from nothing.

One plot hole that wasn't explained to my satisfaction is that Hawking describes the ability of universes to appear spontaneously as obeying our natural laws, because the universe was once subatomically small and subatomic particles can appear and disappear spontaneously. However, he also says that the laws of this universe did not appear until this universe appeared - i.e. different universes have different laws.

So the creation of this universe obeyed a law for a universe that didn't exist yet. Which means there must be a higher set of meta-laws governing universe creation.

Which begs the question where those meta-laws come from, expecially in a void where time and space do not exist...

Hawking's ultimate explanation for disproving God was that because time did not exist before the universe was created, there was no time for a creator to exist. Which didn't make sense to me since a true God would be outside the realm of time and space. Hawking wants God to obey the same laws as everything else, which is an unlikely notion.

I just gave up and resigned myself to the fact that we still don't know jack shit about anything.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 10:59 am

From that standpoint, though, if God is outside in time and space, how do you reconcile that the way he treats humanity seems to change over time? Would not a being outside time and space not be immune to change, being the same at all points in a timeline which does not affect him? So how does one reconcile the changes between your Old Testament, earth-flooding, city-destroying, bear/whale sending God to the kindlier, gentler New Testament God?

One of those extant laws of physics in this universe is measuring change by the distance moved over the time it took.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:17 am

Isgrimnur wrote:From that standpoint, though, if God is outside in time and space, how do you reconcile that the way he treats humanity seems to change over time? Would not a being outside time and space not be immune to change, being the same at all points in a timeline which does not affect him? So how does one reconcile the changes between your Old Testament, earth-flooding, city-destroying, bear/whale sending God to the kindlier, gentler New Testament God?

One of those extant laws of physics in this universe is measuring change by the distance moved over the time it took.

Just because one is not vonfined by the limits of space and time doesn't mean one need ignore them. Just because you have a book and can read any page you like doesn't mean you're just as likely to start reading from the last page as from the first.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:20 am

You're assuming the Christian God of the Bible is THE Creator. What if there is an independent Creator and our religions are merely interpretations? I'm not arguing for or against God, I'm just pointing out that I believe Hawking's argument does have some fallacies from a theological standpoint.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:20 am

To me, that makes God sound even more capricious. I'm the same no matter what, but I'm going to be a vengeful, jealous God at page 200, then skip over to page 1300 and be all forgiveness and kittens.

Exodor · Post by **Exodor** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:21 am

I'm pretty sure God would win the 2012 Election.

(this is a weird derail)

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:22 am

To me, that makes God sound even more capricious. I'm the same no matter what, but I'm going to be a vengeful, jealous God at page 200, then skip over to page 1300 and be all forgiveness and kittens.

Well, you can't ignore Jesus in all this. The Christian belief is that Jesus died for our sins so that we could be forgiven.

Combustible Lemur · Post by **Combustible Lemur** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:23 am

Isgrimnur wrote:To me, that makes God sound even more capricious. I'm the same no matter what, but I'm going to be a vengeful, jealous God at page 200, then skip over to page 1300 and be all forgiveness and kittens.

The literal biblical god is. That's why Christians have to interpret it and interpret wildly.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:25 am

I get that aspect of it, but that doesn't resolve my issue with the capricious nature of it for a God outside of time. Again, why that particular time? He can see the whole book the whole time, but decides that the people 3,000 years before just don't deserve it?

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:28 am

Isgrimnur wrote:To me, that makes God sound even more capricious. I'm the same no matter what, but I'm going to be a vengeful, jealous God at page 200, then skip over to page 1300 and be all forgiveness and kittens.

I don't know whether or not God lives in his own "time" or not (To further the painful analogy, every time I read, I give time to the characters of the book. When I stop reading, time stops. All the while, however, time is proceeding for me).

However, I can be the same person and be vengeful to one person and forgiveness to another at the same time.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:30 am

I really don't want my God playing favorites or having mood swings.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:37 am

Isgrimnur wrote:I really don't want my God playing favorites or having mood swings.

It's not about what you want, really.

But that's not really the point I'm driving at. If the first person had killed my family while the second person broke my computer, but worked hard to make amends, there need be no mood swings or favoritism involved. One can treat different people differently under different conditions.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 11:46 am

Defiant wrote:
Isgrimnur wrote:I really don't want my God playing favorites or having mood swings.
It's not about what you want, really.

Given the large number of holy wars, schisms, denominations, heretical persecution, etc, in our world history, what people want seems to be very important on earth, at least.

To me, belief is a very personal thing. Which is why I'm so aghast at all the believers that want to force that on every one else.

msduncan wrote:True, because I believe evolution happens. In fact my vision of existence is that evolution from single celled organisms *is* creation from the supreme being. We are seeing it around us.

I want to call this out, as I appreciate this statement. While I may not agree on all levels, this shows to me that duncan has at least devoted some thought to his position and reasoned out his own rationale to get some agreement between his religious beliefs and the evidence presented in the world around him.

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 12:08 pm

Isgrimnur wrote:From that standpoint, though, if God is outside in time and space, how do you reconcile that the way he treats humanity seems to change over time? Would not a being outside time and space not be immune to change, being the same at all points in a timeline which does not affect him? So how does one reconcile the changes between your Old Testament, earth-flooding, city-destroying, bear/whale sending God to the kindlier, gentler New Testament God?

One of those extant laws of physics in this universe is measuring change by the distance moved over the time it took.

That doesn't mean he changes, he changes his actions based on us. Being outside time-space himself would not preclude him from being aware and reacting to those of us within the time-space universe. In the end I am sure no one really knows. The best we can hope for is the wisdom to know the difference between what we can change and what we can't as the famous saying asks.

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 12:14 pm

Isgrimnur wrote: Given the large number of holy wars, schisms, denominations, heretical persecution, etc, in our world history, what people want seems to be very important on earth, at least.

Yes, the actions of humans are often based on the wants of humans. God, if he exists, would not be the action of humans.

By the same token, the laws of physics are not about what you want, either.

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 12:16 pm

Isgrimnur wrote:I get that aspect of it, but that doesn't resolve my issue with the capricious nature of it for a God outside of time. Again, why that particular time? He can see the whole book the whole time, but decides that the people 3,000 years before just don't deserve it?

Ahh, but he can't. He gave us free will meaning that the book is in a constant flux if you disregard time. Thus in my opinion this is where the theory of multiple timelines gets legs. I would expect to him there are an infinite number of "copies" of our universe each one a little different based on the different decisions humans could have made (did make) and the effects they had (will have). If there is in fact some "god" entity.

Rip

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 12:29 pm

YellowKing wrote: So the creation of this universe obeyed a law for a universe that didn't exist yet. Which means there must be a higher set of meta-laws governing universe creation.

Which begs the question where those meta-laws come from, expecially in a void where time and space do not exist...

Science can't say much about the properties of the hypothetical multiverse because we are confined to the observable universe. It doesn't stop them from speculating, of course. Some of the hypotheses (especially brane theory) do predict effects that would be manifest in our universe, so the concept of a multiverse is at least indirectly testable.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:02 pm

YellowKing wrote:You're assuming the Christian God of the Bible is THE Creator.

I had an interesting conversation with a Rabbi once in which it was mentioned that the word for 'god' originally used in the early part of Genesis is actually a plural.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:06 pm

Yeah, one odd thing to me was the fact that the first Commandment is that you shall have no other gods before me. It kind of presupposes that there are actually other gods around.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:20 pm

Isgrimnur wrote:Yeah, one odd thing to me was the fact that the first Commandment is that you shall have no other gods before me. It kind of presupposes that there are actually other gods around.

I think that's because the ten commandments originate in Judaism, and Judaism is not a universalist religion. I.e. it does not posit that Judaism is the one true faith that all mankind should adhere to, as Christianity and Islam do to significant degrees. Quite the contrary - Judaism is essentially about the *special* covenant between God and the Jewish people. That presupposes that there are non-Jews in the world, or else the Jews would cease to be the 'chosen' people. So there have to be non-Jews worshipping their idols and heathen gods and whatnot in order for Judaism to make sense.

The first Commandment then is essentially telling Jews to remain Jews, and not to go off worshipping the gods of neighboring tribes. I assume that there's a Christian (and Islamic) interpretatation of the first commandment as well that squares the circle for them in terms of the "one god for all mankind" idea that those religions adopt.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:29 pm

So...uhh...yeah. Michelle Bachmann has revealed her plans for lowering gas to under $2 a gallon:

“We have the supply. That’s the good news. We have the resouces. The problem has been that we have not been willing to access those resources. So if we increase supply obviously we’ll be able to be a provider. We can be our own best customer and we can be a supplier to the world if we just choose to be,” she said.

Isn't that just "Drill, baby, drill" redux?

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:43 pm

Smoove_B wrote:So...uhh...yeah. Michelle Bachmann has revealed her plans for lowering gas to under $2 a gallon:

“We have the supply. That’s the good news. We have the resouces. The problem has been that we have not been willing to access those resources. So if we increase supply obviously we’ll be able to be a provider. We can be our own best customer and we can be a supplier to the world if we just choose to be,” she said.
Isn't that just "Drill, baby, drill" redux?

Wow, now we know she doesn't understand shit about the energy industry.

If we did nothing but drill every place we could find oil we couldn't cover ourselves, let alone be a supplier to the world.

Rip

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:44 pm

And that's saying nothing about refinery capacity.

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 3:02 pm

Rip wrote:
Smoove_B wrote:So...uhh...yeah. Michelle Bachmann has revealed her plans for lowering gas to under $2 a gallon:

“We have the supply. That’s the good news. We have the resouces. The problem has been that we have not been willing to access those resources. So if we increase supply obviously we’ll be able to be a provider. We can be our own best customer and we can be a supplier to the world if we just choose to be,” she said.
Isn't that just "Drill, baby, drill" redux?
Wow, now we know she doesn't understand shit about the energy industry.

If we did nothing but drill every place we could find oil we couldn't cover ourselves, let alone be a supplier to the world.

Rip

Actually we could... for about a week.