Michael Stuart Kelly

Two trillion dollars on the line and Pelosi shoots off her mouth right before the meeting. I know she did it on purpose for show in order to control the division in her party , but she couldn't speak at the presser afterwards without stuttering all over the place. After all, two trillion is two trillion. Her money people must be overjoyed it went down the tubes for God knows how long. Michael

Sometimes I wonder about the universe. As soon as I made that post, I went to Twitter and immediately saw this: Dayaamm! Michael

Jon, Because you don't win culture wars with bans. I'm playing the long game. You seem to prefer short term gratification. I won't be doing any podcasts with any leftie authoritarians, though. They went for the short term gratification and bans (social media and elsewhere). Now they're losing the culture war big time as they sell out to crony corporations just to stay relevant and they are too hate-filled to see it. Once their idiocy stops making money and/or power for the elitist establishment, they will go the way of Avenatti. Slower than him, granted, but the path is the same. Michael

Deanna, Marijuana? I mean, that's a logical step after tobacco... Michael

Let's have some fun with the electoral college. Hillary Clinton was extremely bitter about the fact that she received more votes than President Trump, most of them in California. Setting aside voter fraud, let's look at what the country would look like without the electoral college: Now let's look at what the good people of California are doing today to see who would be electing the new President if the electoral college ever gets abolished: Medieval diseases? Wow. Now that's a remarkable achievement. California is restoring ancient history in real time. Imagine being able to do that with the whole country. Michael

Here's a video that is typical of why left can't stand OANN and is now on a kick to say it is biased, racist, misogynistic, frothing at the mouth, nuts, dangerous, etc. How dare they attack a leftie narrative with facts? (Apropos, if the left wants to win that particular issue, it should probably choose a narrative that includes the massive number of women who are pro-life rather than sanctimoniously speak in public in the name of All Women fighting against The Evil Male while pretending pro-life women don't exist or are too stupid to worry about. This is not an ideological comment, either. It's simple logic and math. Pro-life women vote and do politics. Lots of 'em. Duh... ) Michael

OMG. The Daily Beast just said OANN likes Russia because it's an all white country that hates Muslims And that OANN is fake news to boot. Someone should warn President Trump. Michael

Deanna, A farm girl are ya'? I knew there was a reason I liked the vibes coming from you. Michael

Jimmy, Welcome to OL. I normally don't allow plugging products on OL unless a member interacts in discussions. But yours is a good cause that is somewhat within the interest resonance of OL members. And I know how hard it is to get a movie going. So carry on and post more, should you wish... But, please, no ads for student loans, no appeals from widows of former Nigerian bigwigs with difficulties getting a fortune out of the country, no ads for penis enlargers... you get the idea. Good luck on your project. Michael

Re Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Theorists, as the title says: Yup: I've been thinking about writing songs again. These days, I've been thinking about the title of my first in a long time. How about this? I Wanna Be Big Brother Michael

Brant, A "Boss Babe" movement? "Power to the Preggers"? "Sovereign Spawners?" I'll have to think on it. Maybe work on it a little... Michael

Don't have time to comment right now, but this article needs to be in this thread: The media tries to change your language to manipulate you They tell their stories with specific language to ramp up story elements in the audience, especially story emotions of impending doom and outrage at not being believed. Michael

Brant, Actually, an idea like this starts in places like OL where it is discussed and hashed out. Once someone prominent gets wind of it, it grows. If it is framed in a form that hits the cultural zeitgeist correctly, it starts becoming a real thing. After that, it's just a matter of fighting it through the legal structure. Think of this. Even one year ago, would you have imagined that entire states would outlaw abortion--signed into law? The idea to do that started somewhere. That somewhere was small places like churches, forums and so on. I have no illusions my formulation will happen just because I say so. I have a big head, but not that big. But working out the idea is productive. Once it is honed, it can be shopped around to people with large audiences. In the age of the Internet, all it needs is one such person to get things rolling. Michael

Brant, And that is my suggestion. Let a woman have sovereignty over her body much like Indians have sovereignty over Indian Territory. This is the legal precedent. A seeming rub with my suggestion is the legal status of doctors who perform abortions, but that is resolved by the fact that, in my suggestion, the unborn are not subject to protection as citizens or even humans under US Law except as extensions of the mother. Since she would be sovereign over anything produced by her body and growing within it, a doctor would not be committing a US crime by engaging in work for hire by her to remove something (even an individual human life form) from her body. Also, part of my suggestion is to make it illegal for the US government to fund abortions. Ever. This way the silly concept of "right to abortion" goes away. There can be no right to kill innocent humans, nor can I conceive of one in a government that protects individual rights. That's why it's so important for abortion proponents to advocate calling the unborn "not human," even if only for a few months or weeks or whatever of their growth cycle (take your pick, the times vary all over the place). If they recognize--and get the government to recognize--that a fertilized human egg is a unique human life, such an individual human life, under the current US system of government, will automatically get its right to life protected. So, to get around that, we get the logical and observational abomination of calling human life "inhuman." It's all about power and the so-called "right" to exterminate humans. And I don't buy it as good logic or correct thinking. (Hell, I even disagree--totally--with Rand on this one.) My suggestion is to remove the domain of the government's power from inside the body of women and acknowledge their rule over that territory (their body), including their power to kill or nurture anything growing within them as they see fit, including human life that is individual, but also a biological extension of their lives. Something like the power of Indians to dispose of plants and animals that grow on Indian reservations as a biological extension of the land. (Notice that once such plants and animals go off the reservation, they automatically fall under US law.) Voila. Everything becomes nice and legal and no one's rights get infringed. Then, influencing the abortion issue becomes persuasion on a one-on-one basis, not criminality to prohibit everyone or making up weird legal constructs to permit everyone. It doesn't get more legally protective of a woman's individual choice than that. And people who are against abortion have their best shot at convincing women to not abort. After all, persuasion is free speech. Hospitals, for example, will be able to insist that women look at pictures, etc., before providing them with an abortion, depending on the policies of each hospital. If a hospital thinks it can prosper by promoting abortions on demand as something good like contraception, let it rise or fall on the free market without government money and see how far it gets. I trust this process for abortion, letting people persuade each other by free speech, a lot more than any friggin' law, especially one that is shot through and through with rationalized and unreasonable grounds to make it work. Michael

Brant, The underlying context of that context is what is an individual human being? Rand basically said individual human beings in the beginning of their individual lives are nothing but protoplasm that have no human life. Look at her quote. That's exactly the meaning of what she said. Then at some arbitrary moment (which has kept changing in O-Land ever since her formulation), that nonhuman protoplasm somehow magically transforms into a human. Tony agrees with her. So long as people are willing to call humans not human, they will continue to sanction the mass extermination of their targets. It's heady stuff to have that kind of power. Once acquired, even Rand didn't want to give it up. (I believe in her case, it was guilt at root for her own abortion. I speculate, but the signs are there. I was present at a Q&A when she was asked if she ever wanted to have children. The nastiness of her tone and demeanor when she let fly, "It's none of your damn business," was not warranted by the question, which was asked in an adoring fan kind of way.) But look at the context you mentioned (individual rights) in light of the underlying context I mentioned (what is an individual human being), and that in light of sanctioned mass extermination of human individuals in their embryonic ("nonhuman protoplasmic" according to the exterminators) stage of existence. What individual rights does an exterminated human being have? Or exterminated protoplasm, for that matter? None. That's what. With extermination, killing and death are what replace rights. The exterminators know this, too. The only way to make them feel better about themselves for harboring such a contradiction and sanctioning the killing of innocent individuals is to say the humans they want exterminated are not really human. And when this is shown to them is such clear terms they can't slip out of it with rhetoric, they get pissed, say you are acting in bad faith and so on. The one thing they will not do is question their premise without filtering it through a mantra taken as an axiom, mostly Rand quotes these days. Such quotes replace their eyes, so questioning their premise to make sure it's right is impossible to them. There's too much at stake. Imagine waking up one day and realizing you have been preaching the very thing you have been preaching against, the killing of innocents--and there are piles of dead humans out in reality as the logical result of people who think like you do. I know what that's like because I had that realization. It's painful. That's what led me to my formulation. If some women are going to kill the human life inside them regardless of anything, why not lay the entire moral burden of such act at their feet along with that power and get the government out of the business of ruling over personal morality and the inside of people's bodies? I want no part of sanctioning abortion. And I want no part of sanctioning the government to enslave innocent women, even if only during the last months of pregnancy. In other words, I want neither the power to kill innocent individual humans by right, nor the power to enslave innocent women by right, not even through the proxy of the government I live under. Let each woman govern her own body and what it bears within. And let her--and no one else--bear the moral responsibility of her choices and actions in so governing. But for God's sake, if we want to identify correctly, we have to stop saying the thing she bears in her womb, the thing that makes her pregnant, is nonhuman life. That just doesn't make any sense. Humans procreate humans. Humans procreate nothing else. Michael

Tony, And I have only made arguments against abortion. I loathe it. (At best, it's a tragedy.) Yet I want freedom and individual sovereignty for the mothers regarding their unborn and you want them obedient to the government at some point on pain of force and punishment. So who is really advocating for sacrifice? Michael

Tony, It achieved that at conception. Who pray tell is supposed to grant such status? A human? Yup. Those humans who want to rule over pregnant women, obviously. I prefer to stay with my formulation, take the government out of it, and go with biology. Pregnancy as a social construct so the government can sanction killing does not align with my understanding of life or freedom. Abortion is not a right the government owns so it can grant it to others. Michael

Tony, Or what if she goes beyond those several months? The government will step in and make her obey what it wants her to do? And if she refuses, force her to or punish her? How do you reconcile this? Why does she not have 9 months to make up her mind? Why does she not own her body? Because you want the government to rule over her while she is pregnant. Obviously. And why do you want this? Because you determine there is some magic point when the human she is carrying becomes alive. And don't forget Rand's qualifier: "at least in the human sense of the term." Noticing this is not bad faith. It's being precise based on what you say, not what I say. Michael

Tony, It always comes back to Rand right/Rand wrong with you, doesn't it? But I see you sneaking it in and I'm not going to let this one grow without a fight. Michael

Tony, When do you believe an organism starts living if not at conception? Is it dead until some later point that you determine? After all, the opposite of living is dead. I didn't invent life cycles. I only observe how they work. btw - Congratulations on correctly identifying a difference in fundamentals between us. Now we can agree and disagree, evaluate, etc. without talking past each other. At least on that fundament. We can now talk about something that exists (our respective fundaments) rather than a unicorn with a potato stuck on its horn. Michael

Tony, Of course we can't since you keep getting what I say wrong. And you keep claiming humans are not human. But they are human. You're the one who wants to kill the unborn by right, not me. I said I loathe that. To be clear, I said the mother has sovereignty, where she has the power to abort (or not). I didn't say I like it, but then again, there are entire countries that exercise powers I don't like and despise. But more importantly, I did not say "anyone" has the right to abort. Men, for example, do not have a right to abort. Grandparents do not have a right to abort their grandchildren. The government does not have a right to abort anything. In fact, in my version, nobody has a right to abort. The government does not grant rights. It protects them. Anything else is the government exercising power over people. In that light, the mother has the power to kill the human being inside her and the government by others cannot interfere with that power. Why? Because it does not have sovereignty inside her (in my perfect government). Just like the American government does not have the power to prohibit Saudi Arabia from executing any of its citizens and vice-versa. My version of the ideal government is much smaller and less intrusive on the individual than yours. You seem to like governments that force its citizens to comply with your idea of their lives, not their idea of their lives. What happened to NIOF? Oh... I forgot... It's an absolute rule until it isn't. btw - I believe in a strong anti-abortion education campaign (free speech and all) and would probably contribute to it if anything near what I propose ever come to pass. I trust mothers to have some innate love for their offspring and I know such a campaign would appeal to that in most cases, far more than pro-abortion campaigns do. Especially if government funding of abortions is cut. So I believe the number of abortions would be very small in the end--much smaller than now. I happen to believe abortion is immoral, too. Like I said, I loathe it. But I loathe something more. I don't believe in a government that decrees such-and-such stage is human and a different stage is not, that such-and-such class is human and a different class is not. In fact, I consider that kind of thinking dangerous and murderous. Every time that formulation has been accepted as proper to a government, massive killing happened. Hell, just look at the massive number of abortions today. Guess what kind of dehumanizing propaganda and assignment of that propaganda to the government led to all those dead babies? So you may want to play God with a mother's unborn. I don't. That's her business between her and her God (or conscience). You may want to rule over pregnant mothers and force them to do as you will. I don't. In my thinking, the government of others should only enter after the mother is no longer the physical environment and domain of her unborn. Until such time, I believe she should hold absolute sovereignty over that domain, regardless of who likes what she does or not. It's her body, not theirs. Michael

Jonathan, There is a process that I think would be good for Tony to learn (if he is willing). When commenting on an idea: 1. First summarize what the person said to make sure there is no misunderstanding about what he means. 2. Say what you agree with (in basic terms). 3. Then get to the part you disagree with. It might even be a good idea to make Item 1 a single post and await a response before going on to Items 2 and 3. I learned this a long time age somewhere (Feynman? I don't remember...), used it strictly for a while, then I didn't need to. As I was developing this skill, I was surprised at how much I would get wrong, thus I would end up criticizing stuff that didn't exist. Maybe he will be interested. Maybe not. Michael

Tony, btw - Here is why I worry about you in South Africa. Michael

Tony, You still haven't tracked my words correctly. I said I loathed abortion, not that I wanted the government to prohibit it. I don't want the government involved at all until the living human being inside the mother leaves the mother's domain (her body) and comes into being in the domain the government rules over--the geographical country. Here's an example of my thinking that sort of deals with something you said. See if you can understand what I am saying. If a fetus is inside a woman's body, the woman has sovereignty over it, including the power to kill it. That's what sovereignty means. If the fetus--at the same stage of development--is removed from her womb and put on life support in a hospital, nobody has a right to kill it. Killing it would be murder under the government. Why? Because of sovereignty of domain. The government does not rule over the inside of the woman's body. She does. But the government does rule over the territory where the hospital is and is the authority that protects individual rights within that domain. Think of a woman's body in my formulation like an Indian territory in the US. I also said that people who pretend humans are not human are only fooling themselves and will never convince someone who sees reality for what it is. And I include Ayn Rand in this particular case. She got it wrong. Humans are human. A is A. Life cycles start with conception and end with death. Birth is an individual life form changing domains (from inside a host to the outside world) as it grows. Birth is not a transmutation from one species to another, neither is it a transmutation from dead to alive. It is the same individual all the way through, starting all the way back to conception. That's biology 101. Michael

Tony, Bingo. I've only been saying this since the start. Of course life starts at conception. It doesn't start when some people wish it did. It starts when the individual DNA is created and the new organism with that DNA starts growing. That's the way biology works. In fact, it works that way for all species. What part of a woman having absolute sovereignty over her body, including the human life within it, did you not grok? Are you even tracking what I have been saying? To make a post like your last, it seems like you haven't been. Michael