Republicans: continued

[pErvinalia]

Let's all go troll him.

[Joe]

[Forty Two]

The Man For All Seasons scene does not imply that a law mandating vaccinations would be improper in any way.

You're right. The Man For All Seasons scene does not imply that a law mandating vaccinations would be improper in any way. However, the fight against compulsory vaccination can be seen as a fight against the thin edge of incipient tyranny. If governments are permitted to force immunisation for the good of society, they will finish up with the right to perform summary executions of libertarians, billionaires and billionaire aspirants in the same grounds. It's the slippery slope/thin end of the wedge argument I expect avid The Blaze/Daily Caller/Breitbart/etc readers and Jordan Peterson acolytes to make. First they came for those who refused to vaccinate their children, then they came for those who refused to use prescribed personal pronouns...

I think the fight against compulsory vaccinations can be seen as the tip of a spear, sure (by some). But, it's also understandable that some people think that the State compelling people to undergo medical procedures or to have substances injected into them against their will goes against personal privacy rights, "my body my right" type stuff. Some argue that it goes against the right to be secure in one's person. I mean, what we're talking about involves to some extent a person sitting in her home, minding her own business, and being legally compelled to have an elongated object inserted into her body, spewing forth a liquid deep inside her, without her consent.

Now, I am pro-vaccine. I am pro-vaccine because I have the facts on the vaccines I've taken and my kids have taken, and I approve of them. However, if a day came where with respect to a given new vaccine a problem arose, and there was a significant health issue related to them (not out of the question with medical substances...) then I think I ought to be able to: (a) not take it, or (b) talk about it openly.

Surely, if there were to arise evidence that Big Pharma was selling a dangerous substance for profit, wouldn't you want to be able to say something about it?

Surely, also, there are times when two or more people can have differing opinions or understandings regarding the efficacy of such substances?

The Man for All Seasons quote does not suggest the law should not be able to mandate X, Y or Z. It suggests that just because SOME people think a given person is a bad man or evil for holding a different viewpoint, that doesn't mean that person should be silenced or arrested. I find it hard to believe you can't understand the difference between protesting the propriety of a law and violation of that law. Aren't there things now that are illegal which you would claim the right to march down the street carrying signs declaring that they should be legal and the law prohibiting them should be repealed? Aren't there things the government does in the name of "the good of the people" which you oppose, and about which you believe you have every right to protest and speak freely against? Do you find yourself always in the majority?

[Brian Peacock]

You can't put your dog in kennels if it hasn't had it's jabs. You cant move or sell livestock if the beasts vaccinations are not up-to-date. The reasons for this are sound and practical, and apply equally to humans.

[JimC]

42 wrote:

I mean, what we're talking about involves to some extent a person sitting in her home, minding her own business, and being legally compelled to have an elongated object inserted into her body, spewing forth a liquid deep inside her, without her consent.

42 wrote:

The Man for All Seasons quote does not suggest the law should not be able to mandate X, Y or Z. It suggests that just because SOME people think a given person is a bad man or evil for holding a different viewpoint, that doesn't mean that person should be silenced or arrested. I find it hard to believe you can't understand the difference between protesting the propriety of a law and violation of that law. Aren't there things now that are illegal which you would claim the right to march down the street carrying signs declaring that they should be legal and the law prohibiting them should be repealed? Aren't there things the government does in the name of "the good of the people" which you oppose, and about which you believe you have every right to protest and speak freely against? Do you find yourself always in the majority?

The anti-vax movement can have dangerous consequences. If it persuades a certain number of people not to have their kids vaccinated, then those children are at risk, and the herd immunity of the whole population is decreased...

[Brian Peacock]

But it says in the constitution, or the Bible, I can't remember which, "The government shall not abridge any man's Liberty for the sake of herd immunity. For that is to worship before the false Gods of Science and Reason."

Baa!

[Seabass]

Republicans are evil, stupid psychos.

Exclusive: US warns it will reject measure over language on sexual health in latest example of hardline abortion stance
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... f-war-veto

Even after the formal monitoring mechanism was stripped from the resolution, the US was still threatening to veto the watered-down version, because it includes language on victims’ support from family planning clinics. In recent months, the Trump administration has taken a hard line, refusing to agree to any UN documents that refer to sexual or reproductive health, on grounds that such language implies support for abortions. It has also opposed the use of the word “gender”, seeing it as a cover for liberal promotion of transgender rights.

[Forty Two]

What possible national security risk could a wind farm provide?

I couldn't figure that out from the "think progress" lol article either.

I still am not quite sure why there is a national security risk, but there is something more than "wind causes cancer" going on.

This article talks about the ban in North Carolina involving certain counties that were considered high risk locations.
The wind farms proximity to certain bases were apparently - allegedly - interfering with military base operations. I'm not clear on how that happens, but I'm willing to have someone explain it in more detail. https://www.wfae.org/post/senate-bill-w ... s#stream/0



According to the article, this is the map referred to in the proposed law (bill) which means that the wind farms would be prohibited in the red areas, mainly due to military base activities in the area and military training activities. The rest of North Carolina, including the yellow areas, would still be open to wind farms. From reading about it, I glean that the issue involves "tall structures" in the proximity of military bases, and the training of pilots - I guess they want plenty of room for pilots to fly around in the vicinity of where tall wind turbines are being constructed. Also, I gather that the concern is that they want room for the military bases to grow, as North Carolina likes the economic benefits it gets from having them there in the state and they don't want to risk the federal government looking for places that aren't at risk of being hemmed in. I don't vouch for the strength of these arguments - those are what's being posed.

Apparently, the map showing the high risk areas was prepared by the Democratic Governor Roy Cooper's administration (North Carolina Department of Commerce). After it was released, though, apparently, they pulled it from public display or view. Although copies were already out. it was pulled from Department of Commerce website. https://wwwcache.wral.com/asset/opinion ... km2e6m.pdf

“Constructing obstacles that degrade the military's ability to conduct training exercises puts our military bases at risk of closure during the next [Base Realignment And Closure] proceeding,” he adds.

The press release also includes a joint statement from retired Maj. Gen. Robert Dickerson and Lt. Gen. Gary McKissock, who said the state's “comprehensive mapping effort” should provide a template for growth that's compatible with military installations.

http://www.dailyadvance.com/News/2019/0 ... rn-NC.html

The Department of Commerce has posted its map online. Clicking on specific parts of the map lists facilities that could be impacted by wind farms; clicking on Elizabeth City, for instance, lists the risk of impacts to Air Force and Naval operations, including the Navy's long-range radar facility in Chesapeake.

But, the Department of Commerce (run by the Democratic Governor's administration) took it down, so we can't click on that map anymore.

She also cited low-level bombing runs at the Dare County bombing range as one example of activities that would be threatened by vertical structures.

http://www.dailyadvance.com/News/2019/0 ... rn-NC.html

So, the pro-wind folks are arguing it's overreach and unnecessary. The sponsors of the bill are saying it's necessary due to the proximity of naval and air force military installations, flight paths, training, base expansion, and the need to be ready to defend the propriety of the base locations in the next military base realignment process.

While I take no position either way on the issue - it's a bit more than the "Think Progress" lol article set forth, and not advanced for some nutty reason.

[Forty Two]

42 wrote:

I mean, what we're talking about involves to some extent a person sitting in her home, minding her own business, and being legally compelled to have an elongated object inserted into her body, spewing forth a liquid deep inside her, without her consent.

42 wrote:

The Man for All Seasons quote does not suggest the law should not be able to mandate X, Y or Z. It suggests that just because SOME people think a given person is a bad man or evil for holding a different viewpoint, that doesn't mean that person should be silenced or arrested. I find it hard to believe you can't understand the difference between protesting the propriety of a law and violation of that law. Aren't there things now that are illegal which you would claim the right to march down the street carrying signs declaring that they should be legal and the law prohibiting them should be repealed? Aren't there things the government does in the name of "the good of the people" which you oppose, and about which you believe you have every right to protest and speak freely against? Do you find yourself always in the majority?

The anti-vax movement can have dangerous consequences. If it persuades a certain number of people not to have their kids vaccinated, then those children are at risk, and the herd immunity of the whole population is decreased...

Sure, if you assume that vaccines are safe and effective, as they are. But, what we are talking about is the concept of saying one can never suggest them to be otherwise - the idea that even if a vaccine came out (like many Pharmaceuticals have) and turned out to be a serious health risk -- what will you do then, when you've cut down every law in England.... now you want to challenge the efficacy of a vaccine... and the Devil turns round to face you (a government entity or private pharma company trying to save face and avoid liability) and declares that now you are the denier, you are the deceiver, you bear the false witness against the pharmaceutical at issue.....

If a medicine or vaccine poses a danger, then surely you would be in favor of the right of all of us to protect the children and the herd from that danger? Do you? Or, do you not?

[JimC]

As you well know (based on your earlier statements), current vaccines have been proven safe and effective, and they are the ones being rejected by the anti-vaxers. There is very little point in discussing future hypothetical protests about future hypothetical problematic vaccines...

[Seabass]

There is very little point in discussing future hypothetical protests about future hypothetical problematic vaccines...

WRONG! We should get rid of all laws!!

[Brian Peacock]

There no discussing this with people who think that imagining any one of a number of terrible future possibilities is a sound justification for putting themselves, their children, and the community at risk in the present. You can't defeat that "But how can we tell that things aren't going to be terrible?" argument, because whatever you bring to the table to support the efficacy of modern mass immunisation programs they'll just go ahead and imagine some other future terror: But what if the aliens arrive and decide that all the immunised children taste best? Do you really want your children to be served up to the captains of the Beta Centuri hulk cruisers? Do you? Do you?

[pErvinalia]

Everything is always a slippery slope with liberals. That's the problem with being ideological.

[JimC]

Slippery slopes are possible, but with rational foresight, they can be effectively managed. That management, of course, requires government regulation, anathema to those who worry about slippery slopes...

[Seabass]

Well this is just fucking priceless, isn't it. Machine learning says Republicans might have a bit of a racism problem...

Why Won’t Twitter Treat White Supremacy Like ISIS? Because It Would Mean Banning Some Republican Politicians Too.
A Twitter employee who works on machine learning believes that a proactive, algorithmic solution to white supremacy would also catch Republican politicians.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... icians-too

...

With every sort of content filter, there is a tradeoff, he explained. When a platform aggressively enforces against ISIS content, for instance, it can also flag innocent accounts as well, such as Arabic language broadcasters. Society, in general, accepts the benefit of banning ISIS for inconveniencing some others, he said.

In separate discussions verified by Motherboard, that employee said Twitter hasn’t taken the same aggressive approach to white supremacist content because the collateral accounts that are impacted can, in some instances, be Republican politicians.

The employee argued that, on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn’t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda, he argued.

...

That same eradicate-everything approach, applied to white supremacy, is much more controversial.

“Most people can agree a beheading video or some kind of ISIS content should be proactively removed, but when we try to talk about the alt-right or white nationalism, we get into dangerous territory, where we’re talking about [Iowa Rep.] Steve King or maybe even some of Trump’s tweets, so it becomes hard for social media companies to say all of this ‘this content should be removed,’” Amarasingam said.

...

Any move that could be perceived as being anti-Republican is likely to stir backlash against the company, which has been criticized by President Trump and other prominent Republicans for having an “anti-conservative bias.” Tuesday, on the same day Trump met with Twitter’s Dorsey, the President tweeted that Twitter “[doesn’t] treat me well as a Republican. Very discriminatory,” Trump tweeted. “No wonder Congress wants to get involved—and they should.”

JM Berger, author of Extremism and a number of reports on ISIS and far-right extremists on Twitter, told Motherboard that in his own research, he has found that “a very large number of white nationalists identify themselves as avid Trump supporters.”

“Cracking down on white nationalists will therefore involve removing a lot of people who identify to a greater or lesser extent as Trump supporters, and some people in Trump circles and pro-Trump media will certainly seize on this to complain they are being persecuted,” Berger said. “There's going to be controversy here that we didn't see with ISIS, because there are more white nationalists than there are ISIS supporters, and white nationalists are closer to the levers of political power in the US and Europe than ISIS ever was.”

full article: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... icians-too