This is why you've been written off a a complete nut job by more than a few on this board. "What's not born isn't yet qualified to be defended?" You're basically saying that a baby can be aborted up the very moment it's actually born. This is the kind of sick, selfish, and outright evil thinking that and secular liberalism (including feminism) has brought us.

Sick-ular leftism my man LOL

There are left-wingers out there who believe in abortion up to TWO YEARS OLD. One is Peter Singer, an ethics professor at Princeton. There are others. The baby-killing movement is growing. After all, if one can justify partial-birth abortion/murder, then no one is safe.

Are you so blind to the plight of people in Saudi Arabia? Or the rest of the dictators US have worked with? How is that you have deals with their governments, but when it comes to Russia, you suddenly see the plight?

Putin is an elected government and like it or not, international community would have to work with him. It's up to people of each country to change what's broken.

It's funny how you tell me I don't live somewhere, but get sanctimonious when you talk about Russia. Guess what, you don't live there either.

As for other issues, I had a long list of why GOP sucks. Top of it is women's rights. As for benefits, pensions, foreign policy, and general IQ of the government, I don't see any how I could even consider GOP.

I'm a nut job? Look who is talking.

Yeah, build a straw man, defeat it, and you won the argument against abortion. Right.

Consider the GOP because they are more fiscally responsible than Obama who spends and spends and fucking spends. Now don't reference Bush, but many Republicans have good ideas regarding pension plans and benefits that many states CANNOT PAY FOR. So in this situation, I'm inclined to go with an able minded, fiscal Republican NOT someone who's racking up the debt and deficit and this goddamn health care bill will not work. We will see more problems than ever before. I like it's concept but the end result was not the solution to our problems.

Putin cannot be called elected. He fucking rigged them. The Russian people don't want him, but what can they do in the face of a tyrant who rules with an iron fist? As for the other middle eastern countries, well they have to figure it out. The middle east is in the dark ages, they need democracy, but they won't get it the first try. They also have to get rid of extreme Islam which plagues the region and makes Westerners flip the fuck out every time they see a guy in a turban.

I disagree with Ivy on more than a few things, but he's right in the sense that you're so blindingly left, you won't listen to another argument. Who the fuck are you kidding? You'd follow a Democrat off a cliff if he/she told you too. It's ridiculous. I'm just glad you're stuck in that piece of shit country Iran and not here.

Putin is a politico-gangster who runs Russia like a Mafia-state. To call him "elected" is a joke. And he couldn't care less about the United Nations or international cooperation. He's running interference for his client state, Syria, plain and simple.

As usual, afsaneh77 misses the obvious.

Yes, you built straw men and we defeated them. Have you read Peter Singer? Do you even know who he is?

Here's some sources:
http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03/01/medethics-2011-100411.full

http://www.lifenews.com/2013/05/06/writers-defend-infanticide-so-called-after-birth-abortions/

With guys like McCain who want to start another war? The guy cares so much, (yeah, right) he plays poker on his phone while campaigning for another war in the middle east. Your other boy Christie, if surviving primaries is a tough decision away from heart attack. And why should I not reference Bush? It's not just Bush, it's their pledge to Norquist not to increase taxes. While there has to be cuts, you have to increase taxes to pay for things you already took without paying for, such as "war on terror." So anyone from GOP would further sink the US in debt.

I've a Russian friend. She used to be here. I asked her about Putin. She said that she couldn't say if he really cheated, but he does have a massive support there and that "plight of Russian people" is such a strong word. I think if you are looking for an excuse to start another war, that's another story.

No wonder Putin would have a massive support there, it's the kind of patronizing way you talk about other countries (plight? really?) that make people go after the first guy with anti-american rhetoric. If you want to know why GOP sucks, you don't have to look further than a mirror. A person who "would love to see Iran get wiped off the map" exactly belongs to the kind of war mongering party that doesn't mind setting fire to the world and watch it burn. It's the kind of person in a party that say they like freedom of speech, but when hearing the opposition, thank their lucky stars she cannot vote and would call her country shithole. That's why you and your party suck.

Straw man argument here is that you find a crazy person that says you can abort what's not a pregnancy anymore, and you say since he is crazy, so other arguments for abortion is crazy as well. I can't believe I have to explain this.

Thanks DT.

Ditto!! Afs, you've got patience.


TIS


Btw Afs, is your new President, Rouhani, really for real? What's your/your country's assessment of him?

Thanks TIS!

As for Rouhani, I did vote for him, what he is saying is the reason Iranians elected him. This is the best we could do peacefully. There are still people in prison due to their demonstrations from the previous election and many paid a hefty price for questioning that election. Some were freed yesterday. He promised to reconcile with the West, clear any doubt other countries have about Iran's nuclear program which government insists it's peaceful and work with the US to eliminate sanctions against Iran. I'm hopeful he accomplishes all he promised.

I didn't say he was crazy. I say he's evil. Big difference. The morally unjustifiably taking of all innocent human life is evil. Just because one is in a certain location or below a certain age doesn't make it alright to be murdered.

As for McCain and his warmongering, I agree with you (and for the record, McCain is not very popular with most GOP). We don't need to go to Syria, especially since the side he and Obama want to support are probably Al Qaeda. Moreover, anyone who says they want to blow up Iran is spewing crazy rhetoric. Not all Iranians support Ali Khamenei or the other ayatollahs. There was a time when the USA and Iran were friendly and it is possible that may happen again in the future. But the hateful rhetoric of Khamenei and the various presidents and diplomats toward the USA and Israel don't help. Iran once was friendly to Christians and Jews, with not only greater freedom of religion but freedom of expression too. Early in his presidency Obama had the chance to support those who supported greater Iranian freedom but he dropped the ball.

republicans are responsible for is the current state of the US which ain't good

bottom line....the country went broke on bush's watch......thee end

bush and the republicans did damage to this country that it wont recover from

Bullcrap. Cite evidence instead of left-wing Democratic talking points.

Oh look we've heard from the peanut gallery once more. Do us a favor don't talk about things you know little to nothing about.

As for abortion, I don't think I want to get in the debate of good and evil, or moral of the matter. Of course there are circumstances that I consider abortion to be immoral. (Anything other than rape or the life of the mother being in danger) However, I don't think when an egg and sperm meet, anything special per se has happened that you call that life. There's another important ingredient that's the will of the woman to further contribute to the process and keep it till it becomes a human being. Without it, this might've just happened outside the womb and you don't get anything. That will is important to me. It should be there, the choice has to be there.

As for the US and Iran relations, it's long overdue. Supporters of Ali Khamenei are in the minority. There were about 4 million votes for the candidate he wanted to get elected. About 50 million people were eligible to vote, 36 million voted and Rouhani got 18.5 million votes. I suppose those 14 million who didn't vote, don't want this regime at all. So you wouldn't find a nation in the middle east friendlier to the American people than that of Iran. We're hoping that this new president would bring about relationship with the US. As for Obama dropping the ball during the previous elections, I think he did the right thing staying out of it. I don't see a revolution like movement here in Iran. Reforms have to happen over the time to further isolate the hardliners.

Re the abortion issue, as a medical matter the beginning of human life is usually considered to be at the zygote stage, the rest of the process follows from there, but at that point there is a separate and new human being. As for a woman's will in the process, it's really irrelevant once the new life was created and nothing traumatic happens to the developing embryo/fetus/child. When the baby is ready to come, it's going to come. Even a comatose woman can give birth.

Most pro-lifers have no issue when it's to save the life of the mother, because the goal is preserving life. In the case of rape there is some flexibility also, not because it is right or good (after all, the baby is the victim of the rape too and has a rapist for a father), but because if we were to limit abortion to those two things it would cut down on the abortion rate. In many countries women face ostracism and persecution for keeping the children of rapes; in the USA we are more accepting. All that needs to be considered too. Many children of rapes have turned out to be successful, beautiful people.

On Iran, I think it should be understood that Ali Khamenei narrowed the field of presidential candidates so all those who had a chance had to bow to him. Rouhani is going to do whatever Khamenei tells him to do. And it wasn't too long ago that Iran did have a revolution, and I think there were things that could have been done to keep it alive. I respect that you are from there, but I know plenty of others from there who would disagree with you who believe that Obama should have given the people against the Ayatollah more support. It seems to me that for Iran to be friendlier to the USA there will have to be an Ayatollah friendlier to the USA, and I just don't see that happening.

@joeschmo & faithful


the country was in surplus when bush took over

the country was in deficit when bush left office

The country was in surplus? Here is the national debt from 2000-2012 from the Treasury:

09/30/2012 16,066,241,407,385.89
09/30/2011 14,790,340,328,557.15
09/30/2010 13,561,623,030,891.79
09/30/2009 11,909,829,003,511.75
09/30/2008 10,024,724,896,912.49
09/30/2007 9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2003 6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002 6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001 5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86

At the end of Clinton's term the debt was $5,662,216,013,697.
At the end of Bush's term it was $10,699,804,864,612. So in two terms the debt under Bush went up about $5 trillion. At the end of 2012 under Obama the debt was $16,432,730,050,569. So under Obama the debt went up by close to $6 trillion. That's twice the debt for one of Obama's terms than both of Bush's terms combined. Also, for the first time in American history, the debt is 103% of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product). The highest it went under Bush was 74.1%, and that was while the Democratic Congress was fighting everything he did tooth and nail. Before the Democrats took over Congress under Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the debt was 64.8% of the GDP.

So you are wrong on both counts. We had national debt before Bush took office and he made it worse. That's the honest truth, but he did want to do things to reduce the debt that the Dems refused to cooperate on. The Dems had no plan to lower the debt. Don't forget that we had a national disaster (9/11) and a war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under Obama the fighting in Iraq ended yet spending still went up at MORE than twice the rate it did under Bush. Obama is the bigger spender and the first president in American history to have the debt exceed the GDP, and the first time in history to have our credit rating downgraded. Let's see if you own up to those facts, Cook County.

(This is another source I used: http://www.skymachines.com/US-National-Debt-Per-Capita-Percent-of-GDP-and-by-Presidental-Term.htm)

Yes, he did. It's not like I could run for presidency. Rouhani was certainly the lesser of the evils available to us. I know many Iranians would disagree with me when it comes to Obama's approach to Iran, but coincidentally most of them live outside Iran. They are looking for a complete change of government through revolution and wouldn't settle for less. But then I don't see them coming here to fight it and putting themselves in danger. They want us to do it, and you have to understand, even traffic police here doesn't have a gun. This is not a militant country. The last revolution only was won because Shah didn't want to rule where most of the middle class didn't want him. He saw the peaceful demonstrations and realized that's the end of his era and just left the country. These Ayatollahs aren't Shah to do such graceful things. they answered people's demonstrations with bullets and arrests. My posts from four years ago is here, you could refer to them. Back then I didn't think Obama should have supported the green movement, because first of all the leaders of that movement were the same as someone like Rouhani, part of this regime anyway, so he had to be cautious and second of all, even if he were to say he is supporting them, the regime could kill them based on being agents loyal to the West. He did the right thing. If that movement could go on and win the next election, it was because regime couldn't eliminate all of them with labeling them American sympathizers.

I live here and I see how things are, people aren't after another chaotic revolution with no clear outcome that follows a power vacuum. We're not ready to die for another power hungry dictator that could be the outcome of another chaos. This is a republic already. We have elections. We've a constitution that would support freedom of speech and assemblies. Sure it needs a couple of amendments to take the absolute power of Supreme leader out of it, but the base is there. The only thing we need to accomplish is to get the filtering of the Guardian Council for the candidates of each election out of it, and that would take a long and steady reform. Rouhani is a step in the right direction.

What a load of liberal crap. The will of the woman? Your whole argument - which is the argument of the left - is that the will (or feelings) of the mother is more important than the life of the child inside her. That's why you and your kind call yourselves "Pro-Choice." You've made it all about the woman and what she wants or needs. Meanwhile, doing everything you can to make people forget about the child within her, or minimizing it to the point of not even being worthy of protection. You don't have the guts to come out and say it but it's obvious that you think abortion is fine up until the baby is actually born. You're the perfect example of the sick, Godless, liberal.

Please don't confuse cookcounty with the facts.

All cookcounty sees is that there's a black president in the office. Obama can do no wrong as far as he's concerned. And, like many blacks, he thinks it's always the Republican's fault.

Well, if you call what's inside a child, then perhaps it could already be in care of someone else. As I said, you could mix egg and sperm anywhere outside the womb and not get a child, so it takes more than that to have a child.

If the woman who has a mind of her own is not willing, there wont be a child, period.

The one thing I can never understand is how anyone can support third trimester abortion. It's a disgrace to us that we allow that procedure take place.

Isn't the Roe v. Wade putting viability at 24 weeks? Meaning 6 months, meaning not in the 3rd trimester? For the record, I don't support abortions after that.

Well, wait a minute. What if it's the woman's "will" to have an abortion during the third trimester? After all, isn't the woman's "will" important?

And who really came up with this first two trimester nonsense and what exactly gave them the medical and moral authority to do so? So, the baby can be aborted the 24th week but not the 25th week? What magically happens during that time that suddenly gives the baby a right to be protected? Pro-abortionists (and that's what they are) don't want to recognize how arbitrary and absurd it is.

The magic of life happens. As the law says it becomes "viable." If the life of the mother is in danger, they can do a c-section. Depending on how early the childbirth is, it may need medical assistance, but it can live outside the womb on its own. Believe me, I don't have it in for babies. Jeez.

I think aside from the health of the mother that can be in danger at any time, for instance in case of rape, the decision is usually made very early anyway. I don't see the logic of getting an abortion in the 2nd trimester either when the body is well on the way of giving birth.