Looks like the AFL-CIO is coming out big time for Obama:
“We’re like the angel on the other shoulder, saying, ‘Remember, you’ve got to get your other kid through college,'” says Mike Podhorzer, deputy political director for the AFL-CIO.
We’re like an angel on your shoulder to tell you that your rights don’t matter. Come to us, we’ll feed you, take care of you, make sure that kid can go off to college. Don’t pay any attention that Obama wants to redact 1/10th of the Bill of Rights. Don’t worry about that. Don’t worry that he’ll have to raise your taxes to pay for everything he’s promised. We got your back! How’s this for condescending?
Those voters “need to connect to their need for economic change so that it’s stronger than their fear of cultural change,” says Karen Nussbaum, Working America’s executive director. “I think it’s a challenge for a lot of white people to vote for a black candidate. They’ve never been asked to do it before.”
Dammit! If only we could get these racist white working class Pennsylvanians to vote for a black man, we’d have this election in the bag! Don’t forget honey, it was the conservative parts of Pennsylvania that voted for Lynn Swann. Last I checked, he was a black man. Don’t say they have never been asked to vote for a black man before, they have, and they did. It was Philadelphia and its suburbs that put Rendell into office.
Given the antics of his lawyers I’d say he’s looking to redact 1/5th.
At my Local’s Union meeting this past weekend, the BA was trying to rally the troops to volunteer for a weekend doing footwork for Obama in the battleground states.
I thought I was gonna be sick.
BA? It’s been years since I worked in a union shop.
Krahling, You beat me to the punch. I was also going to say he would like to redact the First Amendment as well. Of course, I would also argue that his strong support of abortion is a redaction of the 5th Amendment as applied to the states by the 14th Amendment, i.e. denial of life without due process.
The abortion issue really comes down to where you think life begins. As such, if you don’t accept the notion that human life begins at conception, arguing the legal consequences of the line being drawn there is kind of moot.
Life actually begins before conception. The egg and sperm are alive. That is a scientific fact. Individual identity begins at conception. That is when the embryo has a unique genetic identity. That again is a scientific fact. Also the genetic identity is that of a human, another scientific fact. Therefore at conception it is alive and it is a human. How can you deny that it is human life unless you deny facts not on the basis of whether they exist or not but on the basis of whether you like them or not?
Moreover, if you believe, as the Declaration of Independence states, that we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights and you believe the Creator to be the God of the Bible, the legal consequences are not moot:
Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
Life actually begins before conception. The egg and sperm are alive. That is a scientific fact. Individual identity begins at conception.
So are the millions of skin cells you kill every morning when you take a shower. Pumpkin seeds also have a unique genetic identity. I don’t think those facts help us determine where life begins, from a spiritual point of view. That’s really more a matter of personal belief. Where the line should be when a person is legally considered a human being is really the crux of the abortion debate. I think as a country we spend an awful lot of energy arguing about it, but I couldn’t tell you that I have a good solid answer for where it ought to be. That’s one reason I don’t like arguing about abortion.
Are you arguing that an embryo is the moral equivalent of a skin cell? Also, if you are advocating that morality and legality be dictated only by personal belief, you are advocating anarchy. If I believe human life begins at puberty, is that OK by you?
1/10?
You’re an optimist.
;-) ;-) ;-)
hahaha… true Oldsmoblogger.
Melvin:
No, I’m not arguing that. But scientifically there’s no difference between a human embryo and the embryos of millions of non-human species. The genetic code is different, but that’s all that’s different. From a scientific point of view, humans are not special. We are primates with opposable thumbs and unusually large brains, that’s about it.
When you argue morals, you’re arguing something outside of the realm of biology. I am not arguing that morality and legality be dictated only by personal belief — that’s why we form government — and that’s why I don’t really think judges have any special moral insight that allow them to decide where life begins. I am sympathetic to the argument that abortion should be decided by the states, through the democratic process.
Obviously I would not be OK with puberty. I am not even really comfortable with late term abortions. But my belief, which is shared by a large number of Americans, have a tough time believing an embryo deserves the same legal protections as a fully corporal human being. I don’t argue that the law needs to draw a line, I’m arguing that no one person has any particular moral insight to decide where that line is. I think the Democratic process is about the only reasonable way to draw that line.
The worst part of this story is that the sheep in the unions will most certainly blindly follow their leaders’ instructions.
“Oh . . . bam . . . a. Oh . . . bam . . . a . . . “
By your logic the majority of Germans in the late 1930s and 1940s should have had the right to decide whether it was legal to murder 6 million Jews. If legality and morality are not grounded in personal preference, where are they grounded? Our nation’s founders knew:
“…the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God…”
“…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”
I don’t think the majority of Germans decided that. A minority of Germans used military force to do that. But that aside, I am not a person of faith, but I do believe there is a natural law. That might seem odd, and my views on the matter are a bit more than can be explained in a comment — but the summary would be that I do think there is an enduring natural law, rooted in human nature. We give up some of these natural laws when we form governments, and retain others from government.
What I don’t believe is that right and wrong is necessary handed down from God — but that’s not to say I don’t believe right and wrong exist. The problem of moral relativism is that it doesn’t accept the exceptionalism of the civilization we’ve created; that all arrangements are equal, even civilizations that do nothing but spread misery and servitude, and seek to darken our minds. I don’t believe our civilization is moral because the man in the sky handed us a moral code, I believe it’s moral because it has created the most productive, happy, and peaceful civilization man has ever been able to create. It’s winning formula.
In terms of how that relates to the abortion debate, I don’t think our civilization has any longstanding tradition on the matter that makes a clear distinction as to where life begins. Safe abortions are a product of modern medicine, and weren’t performed often before the 19th century. That’s why I don’t think our society has any particular moral intuition on where life begins, largely because it’s not an issue we’ve had to contend with until modern times. Abortion goes back to Ancient Greece, at least, but were as liable to kill the mother as to abort the fetus. There has been no legal code in our tradition that’s allowed for the killing of a corporal human beings. I have no issues keeping that out of the Democratic process, because I don’t think it’s likely you can have a functional, prosperous, and happy society that doesn’t respect the basic human rights of its members.
I believe abortion should be subject to the legislative process precisely because there’s no long standing moral agreement in our legal traditions on the matter, and because the public is largely divided on the issue. That people of faith are convinced their position is the correct one doesn’t change the fact that a majority of Americans support some form of legal abortion. That said, I do think Roe was incorrectly decided, because I don’t believe judges have any better moral intuition about abortion than anyone else. Judges should not be deciding matters based on subjective morality, they should be deciding what the law is, and I don’t believe the constitution has a damned thing to say about where life begins, and whether abortion ought to be illegal. It’s a contentious issue that I believe is best decided in state legislatures rather than in court rooms.
A nation is not peaceful when it murders a million babies in the womb every year. By the way the pre-born are corporal human beings. They have bodies. They are more than spirits. If the size of the body is the criterion, perhaps we should agree with Randy Newman that short people have no reason to live.
If killing 6 million Jews had made Germany happy, productive, and peaceful, would that have made it right?
The abortion issue had already been decided by state legislatures when Roe v. Wade was decided, I believe abortion was illegal in every state of the union but New York.
The original Hippocratic oath prevented abortion. That goes back 2300 years.
Sebastian…don’t feed the trolls, they are scientifically fed! LOL.
That is cool that Lynn Swann ran for Gov. I would have voted for him. For the wrong reason of course, I’m an old Steeler fan from the 70s.
How did a CA native end up a Steeler fan? The first game I watched (I was junior high age I think) was a Steeler – Patriots game. I liked their black and gold uniforms and their name plus they won. They instantly became my team and that was the year Dallas played Denver in the Superbowl. The next two years were awesome as the Steelers won 2 in a row (for the second time).
Those were the days…
I don’t think he’s a troll. He has a heartfelt belief that abortion is wrong. A lot of Americans do.
If killing 6 million Jews had made Germany happy, productive, and peaceful, would that have made it right?
Except that it wouldn’t have. Especially if you were one of those six million. I should note that the original Hippocratic Oath prohibited abortion because it had a very high likelihood of killing the patient. The greeks tended to use abortifactants.