Secrets of the City

This thread is relevant to my interests.

All of your interests.

every time we get all in a froth over pawlenty possibly being VP material, we come accross as the guy who gets a girls number at a party and calls her later THAT NIGHT. dude, you have to wait at least a day or she’ll start to think you’re desperate.

From where I sit, I’d say 50% of the Pawlenty for VP speculation is local media-driven. If he actually does get picked, somebody is going to have to bring them a lot of towels.

Keep your eyes peeled for Ashley Dupre scuttling TP’s VP dreams via BJ. Maybe we can put MN on the map with Elephants Gone Wild-Saint Paul.

Witness Kessler’s breathless lead on the 6pm news last night. Somebody get that man a towel!

You know, on that prostitution thing, St. Paul Police publish online the photo of all prostitution arrestees. Some of the recent fine individuals can be viewed here.

Might be an interesting site to visit mid-September.

They shouldn’t do that, especially if they haven’t been convicted.

Do they do that with any other type of crime?

Virtually every crime. They always give the name of the accused.

It seems like publishing their pictures kind of defeats the purpose for two reasons:
1. They’re basically creating an online catalog for Johns.
2. Unless the “arrest” those working undercover, it’s also a “who not to go to” list.

I think it wrecks peoples’ lives in ways that other crimes do not.

It’s not like the johns are armed robbers or some other type of thug.

There’s something vindictive about this that’s unsettling.

Prostitution should be legal. Why is it illegal to sell it, but legal to give it away? Makes no sense. Liberals want to make it legal so they can tax it. I say make it legal because government doesn’t have a right to your body.

Leave it to The Rat and The Maz to defend the poor put upon Johns. Hysterical!

You two really are a couple of brothers under the skin.

I just hope you both are smart enough not to bring any creepy crawlies home to your wives!

Or better yet – why not start your own stud service? Dennis Tester, Male Prostitute Inc..

I’m not defending “johns.” I’m defending anyone who wishes to buy or sell an activity that otherwise is free and legal.

How’s the blog going, Raindog? I’ve only seen one entry in about a year: A two word expletive.

Writer’s block? Maybe by the time you’ve gnawed through the restraints and snuck back to the computer, you’ve forgotten what you wanted to say.

Your right Maz, the govt doesn’t have a right to my body. Perhaps you want to stop bitching at liberals and take a moment to yell at your conservative pals for always asserting that they do have that right.

Most conservatives I know aren’t opposed to making prostitution legal, for the same principle I describe. But I hope you’re not lumping that in with abortion, because most conservatives believe that there’s two “bodies” involved in the abortion issue and both bodies need to have their rights protected. Including the right to life. To a conservative, although prostitution should be legal philosophically, it’s not a matter of life and death.

I used to imagine The Rat as this big, thuggish, athletic dude with a shaved head and sometimes his posts would get my goat.

But seeing he is really just a nebbish white dude he just makes me giggle!

No, like the guy who was arguing with his girlfriend said, I’m a punk-ass, (thirteen letter, four syllable expletive that’s no doubt part of Raindog’s lexicon) white boy.

That’s not a conservative issue, Maz, that’s a religious issue, as the question we’re faced with is “When does a life become a life and must be protected by law?” This question is not especially answerable by science, and different religions have different answers. Jews are of the opinion that a fetus doesn’t become a life until it has been partially born.

So what you’re arguing is not that you are protecting two lives, but, instead, that you are favoriting one religious interpretation — a Catholic one — over all others, and attempting to give that religious interpretation the power of law. It may be conservative, but it ain’t liberty.

I know you won’t get this, and that’s okay. Generally, my responses to your parroting conservative viewpoints is not intended for you, but for someone else who might not have explored the issue more fully.

I once read a scenario where it turns out a guy is going to die unless he gets a kidney transplant, and it turns out you (e.g., Maz) are the only one with a matching kidney. Can the government force you (e.g., Maz) to sacrifice a kidney? And if you do have the choice, and choose not to, does it make you a murderer?

The analog to pregnancy is obvious. But, this is not something meant to prove a point so much as something to think about and discuss if you’re given to consider an issue rather than merely argue about it.

I think science is pretty clear about when life begins: Conception. Without it, nothing that would come after is possible. So if not then, when?

I said “most conservatives I know.” They believe that life begins at conception. I don’t know any jewish conservatives. The current law that makes abortion legal until the third-trimester seems to be a compromise of sorts.

No, kurtis, I wouldn’t be guilty of murder any more than I would be if I didn’t jump into the river to save a drowning man. The law says I get to choose who I risk my life for. The government can’t force me to jump into the river and it can’t force me to give up my kidney. I may do so out of the kindness of my heart, but that’s my decision.

but that’s my decision.

And that’s pretty much how women feel when they choose to have an abortion.

I think science is pretty clear about when life begins: Conception. Without it, nothing that would come after is possible. So if not then, when?

I guess technically sperm and egg are alive before they meet. It’s more a matter of when that life has enough humanity to have rights. That’s a culturally relative idea, as Max pointed out. Some say conception, some say birth. Some cultures still practice infanticide. The term “life” is unfortunately ambiguous shorthand for this concept of personhood.

Me, I think life begins at thirty.

Coincidently, I was prepped to donate half my liver to my brother back in 2005 when he was dying of liver failure. A week before the operation a cadaver became available and the Mayo went with that option instead because a full liver from a cadaver is actually preferred to a half liver from a live donor.

The point is, he’s my brother. I made the choice willingly because we’re related by blood. The government didn’t tell to do it. It didn’t even ask me to do it. The Mayo clinic didn’t pressure me to do it (they did ask). In most family cultures, it would have been unforgiveable for me not to do it. Because it’s different when the other life is your own flesh and blood. Like an unborn child you’re carrying.

Would I make it illegal? No. But it should be similarly unforgiveable within that family in the same way refusal to donate a body part is now.

My brother’s fine now, by the way. And I got to keep my liver.

Glad to hear about your brother.

Anybody who has ever said that health care in this country sucks, has never been to the Mayo clinic.

I think science is pretty clear about when life begins: Conception. Without it, nothing that would come after is possible.

Gah. Most people do not believe this. People who do believe this also believe birth control like the IUD and Morning After Pill are abortion because they keep the fertilized egg from planting itself in the uterus. These people are also called fanatics.

In the abortion issue, painting people on the other side whether pro- or anti-as fanatics is really the pot calling the kettle black.

How many non-fertilized eggs impant themselves in the uterus? There’s nothing fanatical about it. It’s pretty cut-and-dry.

because a full liver from a cadaver is actually preferred to a half liver from a live donor.

Maybe in some cases the cadaver has more soul.

But carry on the debate about what women can and cannot do with their bodies, gentlemen.

It’s your world, afterall.

in some cases the cadaver has more soul.

Don’t give up hope then, Raindog.

Kevin, lots and lots of fertilized eggs never plant themselves in the uterus. And many that do are miscarried without the woman ever knowing. Are those suicides?

It’s called Ectpic pregnancy

That’s not what I was referring to, but that works too. Many fertilized eggs just pass right past the uterus and out the vagina. And many implant, but are not viable so just remove themselves at period time.

Yeah, I think I saw that on an episode of Bill Nye The Science Guy.

No, they’re not suicides. I think you’re smart enough to know that’s ridiculous.

And I think you’re smart enough to know that many women take their reproductive rights seriously enough to not leave them up to the pope, Kevin.

The pope has nothing to do with it. It’s science.

Ok, well, talk to women about science when you’re a 15 year old girl, knocked up by her boyfriend, then.

Well we try, science indicates the probability of getting pregnant w/out having sex is zero. But for some reason we’re forced to dilute science when talking about sex to 15-year-old girls and their boyfriends.

All I’m saying is the scientific opinions of single white men mean bupkis when you’re faced with a choice that could change the course of your life. So maybe you should save the jokes for another issue that would have more than a remote possibility of affecting you personally.

Yeah, kevin. Do you actually expect today’s yutes to have both self-respect and self-control?

What I’m saying is that a fertilized egg does not equal a human. Therefore life does not begin at conception. The egg, at a minimum needs to implant into the uterine wall. But even if that happens, there is a chance that it will still not become a human and will end up miscarried. When egg and sperm become a human is not cut and dry like Kevin would like to think it is.

And I find it repulsive that the party that wants to make abortion illegal is the same on that refuses to expand the safety net for poor families and single mothers and doesn’t want to fund birth control or sex ed.

Maz, since teens are afforded the right to sexual privacy, I don’t see why you would have a dog in this fight.

Do you actually expect today’s yutes to have both self-respect and self-control?

Furthermore, my uncles on both sides are evidence of the yutes of the greatest generation didn’t have anymore self control then the yutes of today. People seem to forget that no single generation invented sex.

There were huge numbers of big 7 month babies in both the 1800 and early 1900s.

2. Unless the “arrest” those working undercover, it’s also a “who not to go to” list

I think that one of the points of doing this.

I think science is pretty clear about when life begins: Conception. Without it, nothing that would come after is possible. So if not then, when?

This is utter hogwash. Unless you are talking about the most simple definition of “life,” which basically means a cell capable of respiration. A blastocyst is no more human than the cells that kurtis mentioned, or the chunks of skin left on the pavement when the cyclist in front of us wiped out this morning.

What you are trying to get at is probably “when does that embryo become a conscience, or sentient being.”

On that, science is definitely NOT clear, except that it doesn’t occur at conception. At a minimum, the parts of the brain that create awareness of self should have to be functioning, and the brain itself hasn’t even begun to form at that point.

Hmm…

[...] laws specifying that ensoulment came with quickening made the pregnant women herself the arbiter of when a fetus was ensouled. Thus, it seems likely that the dogma that ensoulment occurs at conception was turned into law in order to take from women the authority to declare a child ensouled, which had made them the arbiters of whether or not they’d had a “criminal” abortion.

I find it repulsive that the party that wants to make abortion illegal is the same on that refuses to expand the safety net for poor families and single mothers and doesn’t want to fund birth control or sex ed.

Huh? One has to do with personal responsibility, the other has to do with big government. I guess for some people, they’re the same thing?

They both have to do with responsibility and they both have to do with big government.

I wasn’t aware that government was performing abortions.

It’s not the pro-choice side that’s big government. It’s the other side.

The issue has nothing to do with personal responsibility, it’s only the woman’s right to chose and reproductive rights.

It’s not the pro-choice side that’s big government. It’s the other side.

What do you mean? Abortion is legal in all 57 states, right? From what I understand, those who want to overturn Roe v. Wade simply want it returned to the states where it would probably still be legal, only under state control, not federal. That’s a “small government” construct. It’s the pro-choice people who want federal (read, “big”) government jurisdiction.

That might be what you think is the best option though God help the Republic if the whole issue would ever get thrown back to the states. Instead of one big, nasty debate, there would be 50 nasty debates of lesser size.

But Huckabee brought up the idea of Constitutional amendment banning abortion during the primaries. I think there are lots of people who think that’s the way to go.

Ok Maz, so having each state deciding locally about abortion rights is better than deciding at the federal level? Let’s go even further, make it a super-local decision? We could have each woman decide…

The fact is that whether it’s state, local, federal, or global policeman barging into the doctor’s office, that’s government intrusion, and “big government” the way people mean it when they use the expression. Nobody means “federal government,” they mean instrusive government.

By Maz’s reckoning the Bill of Rights are “big government” since they take power away from the states to strip people of their rights.

But we’re all still in agreement that prostitution should be legal ’cause the government shouldn’t be interferring in one’s personal life, right? Right?

But we’re all still in agreement that prostitution should be legal ’cause the government shouldn’t be interferring in one’s personal life, right? Right?

As long as those personal lives belong to men, then, yes.

From what I understand, those who want to overturn Roe v. Wade simply want it returned to the states where it would probably still be legal, only under state control, not federal.

Wrong. At least 13 states never repealed their pre roe statutes, and several others have since passed laws that would expressly ban abortion the moment Roe is overturned.

What would the states likely do if the ban were lifted? The Guttmacher Institute, an organization whose research is cited by both sides of the debate, says that 20 states currently have laws on the books “that could be used to restrict the legal status of abortion in the absence of Roe v. Wade. The 20 fall into four overlapping categories:
4 states have passed laws that would immediately outlaw abortion if Roe were overturned (Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota).

13 states retain their pre-Roe abortion bans, which are currently unenforceable (Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin).

Never ceases to amaze me that maz is willing to put fundamental right up to a majority vote. (Of course, it’s always SOMEONE ELSE’S rights he’s willing to risk.)

I had a professor who made a pretty good case for Rove v. Wade one day rendering itself irrelevant. That’s all I remember.

Maz argues upthread that if anyone depended on his own organs to live, it would be his personal decision and not the government’s, though he indicates that he would do it for family (which is honorable). It’s not clear to me that he doesn’t extend the same courtesy to women, because while he seems to oppose abortion, I don’t think he’s taken a clear stand that it ought the be illegal. Perhaps he merely thinks it is “unforgivable,” and is content to go on not forgiving women who seek out abortions rather than take away their rights to do so.

As with the discussion a few weeks ago about whether websites ought to moderate comments, he’s made it clear what perfect people would do in a perfect world, but not what policies should be employed until that perfect world comes to pass.

Is “upthread” really a word?

It’s more of a word than upblog.

Anyone who uses “upblog” and means it should have been aborted.

you’ve got some some updog on your chin.

Anyone who uses “upblog” and means it should have been aborted.

I’ve got a wire hanger and shop vac with your name all over it Kevs…

As others have pointed out, whether “life” begins at conception or sometime thereafter is irrelevant. We obviously deem different life forms to have different rights based on whether that being is sentient and to what extent it is so. Abortion laws use this same criteria, which is why 3rd trimester abortions are (by and large) illegal. Maz is right that this is a bit of a compromise. I fully support a law against late term/partial birth abortions (except where it is absolutely necessary to save the life of the mother) because there is good evidence that the nervous system of the fetus is sufficiently developed to allow it to feel pain at this point.

However, I do understand that if your religion tells you that life/soul begins at conception, you might think it is your duty to defend the lives of the fetus that you believe to have a soul. What I don’t understand is what these people propose that we do with all of these unwanted babies? I have never received an adequate answer on this one.

While I think it is the right of religious people to petition to make abortion illegal, I hope there are enough secular and religious people who take a more scientific and logical approach to the issue, and so far, that has turned out to be the case.

Also, I don’t think many of the Republican bigwigs actually want to overturn Roe vs. Wade because they could no longer use it as a tool to stir up the Religious Right every 4 years at election time.

I’ve got a wire hanger and shop vac with your name all over it Kevs…

You would not believe the dirty looks I’ve gotten when I’ve broke out the “I’m totally pro-abortion. I collect all the wire hangers I get from my dry cleaning!” line.

Is “upthread” really a word?

Upwind, upstream, upload, upriver, why not upthread?

And just because that POS MS dictionary doesn’t recognize doesn’t mean shit.

While the abortion debate might be considered religious (and there are Christian denominations that do believe it’s a woman choice), the Supreme Court ultimately rendered their 1972 decision based on the question of personal property rights.

So, if maz is insistent that he — not a government; Federal, State or otherwise — has the right how to harvest his own organs then he should also support the right of a woman to decide how she decides what to keep or eliminate. (Yeah, that sounds kind of creepy but that is the gist of the argument.)

To argue otherwise, maz, is to be a hypocrite.

If you’ll note upblog, noodleman, I say that I wouldn’t make abortion illegal.