Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

I don't really see how there's a rights-before-or-after-birth problem here.

If I cut your brake lines, I only touched an item, yet I can perfectly well be held responsible for your death.
In this case, the guy cut the body of the unborn baby - at that time an item, I guess, by a legal definition. After birth, the child, at that time a person, dies because of the damage the assailant did to an item, to whit, the soon-to-be-inhabited body.
 
I don't really see how there's a rights-before-or-after-birth problem here.

If I cut your brake lines, I only touched an item, yet I can perfectly well be held responsible for your death.
In this case, the guy cut the body of the unborn baby - at that time an item, I guess, by a legal definition. After birth, the child, at that time a person, dies because of the damage the assailant did to an item, to whit, the soon-to-be-inhabited body.
Rights can't be applied retroactively. In 2015-2016 nearly 2,000 babies were born with addictions to various hard drugs. Their birth mothers are not prosecuted for any damage done to the baby because babies do not have any rights until born, even under your trap or delayed murder analogy.

Look up cases about fetal alcohol syndrome children trying to sue their parents. They are dismissed as no crime took place, even though significant brain damage occurred and will impede their life, they eventually gained rights after birth, but did not have the right to life, nevermind an alcohol free womb, prior to birth.
 
Rights can't be applied retroactively. In 2015-2016 nearly 2,000 babies were born with addictions to various hard drugs. Their birth mothers are not prosecuted for any damage done to the baby because babies do not have any rights until born, even under your trap or delayed murder analogy.

Look up cases about fetal alcohol syndrome children trying to sue their parents. They are dismissed as no crime took place, even though significant brain damage occurred and will impede their life, they eventually gained rights after birth, but did not have the right to life, nevermind an alcohol free womb, prior to birth.
Aye. This is quite relevant and will most certainly be used by this guy's defense if he's charged with the baby's death.

But I think this goes back to my reference to the law being sophisticated enough to differentiate. I believe the law can see the difference between not making a women liable for how her actions affect her child in order to maintain her rights and freedoms; and a guy whose attack on a pregnant woman directly leads to the death of the child after it is born
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I stopped in at the grocery store over lunch and saw that Time Magazine's cover is lionizing Andrew Jackson.

Of course, I thought to myself, hmm, subtly trying to sway public opinion to love and support populist tyrants?
 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapo...rgery-due-to-budget-constraints/#623b79993b99

New guidelines from the NHS (UK healthcare system) disallow certain operations for smokers and those with a BMI of over 30. It's projected to save millions of dollars a year by cutting off many surgical options to well over 25% of the population. (26% obese, 17% smokers)

The article also lists a number of other NHS policies that result in cost savings to the detriment of their patient's health..
 
I'll really start worrying once I see them start funding studies about ideal minimum population size to maintain genetic diversity.

--Patrick
 
I'll really start worrying once I see them start funding studies about ideal minimum population size to maintain genetic diversity.

--Patrick
I'm absolutely not meaning to be kidding or downplaying this when I say my next statement: already being done with regards to what's the minimum genetic diversity necessary for a self-sustaining Mars colony. Any research of that type could easily be masked under such a title, then applied to anywhere you wish it to be.
 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapo...rgery-due-to-budget-constraints/#623b79993b99

New guidelines from the NHS (UK healthcare system) disallow certain operations for smokers and those with a BMI of over 30. It's projected to save millions of dollars a year by cutting off many surgical options to well over 25% of the population. (26% obese, 17% smokers)

The article also lists a number of other NHS policies that result in cost savings to the detriment of their patient's health..
For the record smoking related treatments are estimated to cost the NHS between £3-6 billion every year. Direct tax revenue from the tobacco industry is £12 billion annually. So if anything smokers should get priority for their health-care (and I say this as a non-smoking UK resident).

However since we're criticizing the NHS I'd like to give some good news about it - a US think tank ranked it number 1 out of 11 countries for health-care. The UK was top or near the top in 4 out of the 5 different themes being looked at (Care Process, Access, Administrative Efficiency & Equity). The only theme it didn't score well in was err...Health Care Outcomes. But I'm sure that's not important, right?
 

GasBandit

Staff member
For the record smoking related treatments are estimated to cost the NHS between £3-6 billion every year. Direct tax revenue from the tobacco industry is £12 billion annually. So if anything smokers should get priority for their health-care (and I say this as a non-smoking UK resident).

However since we're criticizing the NHS I'd like to give some good news about it - a US think tank ranked it number 1 out of 11 countries for health-care. The UK was top or near the top in 4 out of the 5 different themes being looked at (Care Process, Access, Administrative Efficiency & Equity). The only theme it didn't score well in was err...Health Care Outcomes. But I'm sure that's not important, right?
The Commonwealth Fund, the "think tank" that did that ranking, has a history of massaging data, cherry picking, and including useless categories to bump socialist medical systems up their "rankings" and shit as much as possible on the US's health care system. Basically, they've got the world's biggest socialist axe to grind and plenty of willing dupes to signal boost their spurious pseudoresearch.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
The US system is terrible and should be shit on.
And yet, they felt they had to lie about it to do so.

I mean, you're entitled to your opinion etc, but bullshit in favor of a cause you support is counterproductive.

And as a libertarian, I smell enough of that around home base, thanks.
 
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Air Transat decided to be fuckheads this time! 'You can't do this to us': Fuming passengers stuck on planes for hours call 911

Passenger Rights indeed. 6 hours on the ground after an 8 hour flight. At least when they called 911 the police DID show up and started handing out water after the power failed with no A/C. It's all in the article. Yes international and thus customs, but still.

I think I'd have opened up the emergency exit and gotten out on the wing. My defense would be "I'm still on the plane, technically, and this is against my security of the person to keep me in there." The "security of the person" thing is the language in our Constitution, so those would be the "special words" that would say "fuck, they'll win in court" if they tried to prosecute me.
 
Toronto man builds park stairs for $550, irking city after $65,000 estimate
Thoughts? It's not perfect, but not crap either, and literally better than nothing.
Follow-up time: Why city projects cost too much

City builds them, concrete, code compliant, etc. Total cost according to city councilor: around $10,000 As the previous article title says in my OP, previous estimate was $65,000.

I'm actually impressed that it got done so fast "officially," let alone the cost savings.
 
I hope evil things towards these little monsters: Jersey girl, 12, commits suicide amid relentless bullying

I really mean that. Maybe I need to talk to someone, but hey, that's how I feel about Bullying. And every teacher who was ever informed and didn't suspend and/or expel the little monsters should lose their jobs and teaching licenses too. Or other "bad things" that again, I won't enumerate here.

And I don't know what to do about the parents of the little monsters. They deserve as much or more scorn than everybody else involved.
 
For what it's worth, there will most likely be a point sooner rather than later, where those kids feel awful about it and will deal with that guilt for the rest of their lives. I'm not saying they don't deserve punishment for what they've done, but as 12 year olds they were almost definitely not aware of the real ramifications of what they did.
 
For what it's worth, there will most likely be a point sooner rather than later, where those kids feel awful about it and will deal with that guilt for the rest of their lives. I'm not saying they don't deserve punishment for what they've done, but as 12 year olds they were almost definitely not aware of the real ramifications of what they did.
Not as bad as this, but personal experience: no they won't.

And I'll leave that right there.
 
The one time I knew about bullying in my classroom I rained hellfire down on the bully and spent some time trying to teach the victim ways to handle it/respond. It seemed to end but I never really knew. I hope what I did was enough, but as teachers I always feel like our hands are tied. So much bullying happens when we can't see it, and we don't always have a victim who will talk.
 
One of the big problems with bullying is that bullies don't always see it as such. A lot of it is "teasing" and the like that "gets out of hand" - or not even that, but affects the victim far worse than the bullies realize.
Another is that, often, bullies get reinforced in ideas about people "deserving" a certain treatment. Often even because of teacher/parent/etc intervention. As in, they feel unjustly "put upon" when they get punished for bullying, and take that out on the original victim (who probably "caused" the punishment by "ratting them out" or "snitching" or what-have-you).
Schoolyard rules about tattling, snitching, etc exist all over, and....Well, they sometimes have a reason? Because you sort of have to be able to "let kids be kids" sometimes and do a little bit outside of the rules? And nobody likes the goody-two-shoes who runs off to the teacher at every turn? But they're horribly abused all too often, leading to many victims not daring to speak up and/or facing even worse bullying/abuse/shunning/etc for opening their mouths.

(High) school continues to be a horrible place full of soci(et)al pressure and pressure to conform, with a lot of made up rules that not everyone is equally fast to learn or understand. Itr's forever evolving and in many ways, getting worse.
 
In my experience, 12 year olds are really fucking dumb. They're also really shitty. Lord knows I feel awful about some of the things I've said and done when I was 12 and it wasn't anything close to this.
 
It's like whenever I'm around teenagers and middle schoolers now and I wonder if I was that dumb at that age, because holy fucking christ.
 
It's like whenever I'm around teenagers and middle schoolers now and I wonder if I was that dumb at that age, because holy fucking christ.
Of course you were. We all were. But real, true bullies are a special breed of asshole that is not common or run-of-the-mill.
 
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