Callie

I should be available Friday afternoon and all of Saturday and Monday.

Also they decided to enforce federal laws that conflict with the state initiative even though Arizona is against federal laws being over stare laws for other matters including immigration.

Well, what are all the Arizonans staring at so much that it requires a law?

Eh, custom titles seem to be a lot more common than I remember. Granted, when I first joined only the admins could grant custom titles.

I am interested, even though I probably suck at it.

I look so dashing in that photo.

The concept of Alorael throwing a temper-tantrum is pretty humorous. And even if he did it would be eloquent temper-tantrum, which almost sounds oxymoronic.

In other news Puerto Rico has voted 54-46 that it does not wish to maintain its current status. Puerto Rico's nonvoting commissioner will introduce legislation in Congress to admit the territory as a state. Obama has said he will support statehood, and I would be surprised if any significant opposition occurs in the House of Representatives. There's some problems with the way the referendum works, so who knows what will happen?

Wish I could find the results for the referendum that was on my ballot...

You should be able to find the results from your secretary of state's website, along with all other results in your state.

Ah, good to know. Politico.com should update their reporting software then so that the 'winner' check mark is not on the yes once it passes 50% for that type of amendment.

As of right now Politico does not have a check because the official result hasn't been called. Is it different for the mobile version?

In regards to marijuana in Colorado and Washington: the bigger problem is the conflict with state and federal law. Marijuana is a Schedule I drug at the federal level and the DEA has raided quite a few medical marijuana dispensaries. It will be interesting to see how the justice department responds.

Your link doesn't seem to be working, Excalibur...

 

Here is my desktop: Tada! The wallpaper is something I picked up a long while ago from /wg. It's messier than I care for, so I've just spent a moment tidying it up.

As it turns out, I never actually uploaded it.

Flickr has defeated me.

Wow, I musn't be paying much attention today. First Melbourne Cup (which I don't care about anyways) and this. I completely forgot or something about both until after it happened.

Oh, the election in the US hasn't happened yet; I just posted the poll a bit prematurely.

All votes are anonymous. Unfortunately, this poll isn't of the incredibly comprehensive variety, but I wanted to keep it simple. I thought about having different answers for those that did and did not vote, but I doubted the benefit of any added complexity. I could have added other meaningful questions, but I felt that any of the questions I thought of had been adequately covered in other threads.

And of course, feel free to discuss the results of the election.

you're missing my point: what do you do when people don't define their own contracts? there has to be some kind of default presumption as to what they would have wanted. based on current social norms, a reasonable presumption is that if you have a spouse and no will, you want them to inherit your property in the event of your death.

 

(before you ask, over here a couple that's been living together for more than 6 months is treated the same as a married couple for most legal purposes, so the presumption doesn't just apply to people who have gone through a formal marriage ceremony and registered their partnership. but being married does make it easier to prove that you were a couple)

<3

As long as the government allows people to define contracts different than its default presumption.

you have 1,384 posts on ppp, could you be more specific

Oh wow, I forget I've been around that long.

Well, this thread has plenty of Leviticus in it.

this is one of those positions that works better in theoryland than in reality. for example without some formal definition of what kinds of relationship are considered important, who should inherit in cases where someone dies without a will? and if someone is incapacitated by illness, who should have the right to make medical decisions on their behalf by default? it's not very practical to drag every situation like that through the courts in the name of judging them on their individual merits, so it's useful to have rules of thumb like "if you're married to this person you get their stuff when they die"

How is it determined that certain relationships are important and others are not? Marriage, whatever that means, seems like a rather arbitrary distinction and its definition in democratic societies is subject to the whims of the majority. Is it more advantageous than allowing people to define their own similar contracts?

 

bible said:

 

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination. (Leviticus 18:22)

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. (Leviticus 20:13)

a lot of religiously affiliated people have thrown gems like those to the wayside, unfortunately others cling to them tightly. for the latter i like to ask them how i should handle the killing of my neighbors for working on the sabbath.

you should read some of my old posts on ppp

What these people don't seem to realize is that separation of church and state means just that. If your church doesn't believe two men should marry, fine; your church won't perform the ceremony. You cannot use those religious reasons as a justification for preventing those two men from marrying in another church or in a nonreligious ceremony.

I agree with this entirely, and yet, I'm not convinced that it automatically amounts to bigotry. I would reserve accusations of bigotry toward those who attribute non-heterosexual behavior to evil or any comparable accusation of immorality.

I don't think people with conflicting religious beliefs are inherently bigoted, maybe misguided, but I don't think that being misguided automatically amounts to bigotry.

I've tried to leave parts of the ballot blank before, but the electronic booths I've voted at don't allow it.

What's the point of this option then?

It functions as a protest vote. Instead of voting for candidates you really don't like, you can say "I dislike all of these candidates" instead.

The reason for opposing LGBT rights is often attributed to hatred and/or ignorance by those who support it, but that's an unfair generalization. Although homophobia certainly exists and is prevalent in everyday society, most of the people who show up at the polls in opposition to gay marriage don't think of themselves as opposing civil rights and are legitimately concerned about altering an institution they consider sacred. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that people with opposing political beliefs are like the pundits and politicians we see on TV, but the vast majority of people are far more agreeable than political pundits. They're everyday people who might very well be picking their children up from soccer after they vote. There's a debate because there's disagreement about the issue, and usually people are more receptive to other people's opinions than you might think. We just tend to remember the disagreeable or vocal people we've had conversations with, but there's plenty of others who are courteous about debating or might not even wish to express their opinion at all. The internet provides a place for those loud, disagreeable people to be anonymous, and that really doesn't help our perceptions of others.

(Full disclosure: I support gay marriage rights, but I think limiting marriage to two people is still too restrictive and that the government shouldn't be in the business of defining marriage at all)

I hope that's sarcasm there, but even if it is, it's pretty alarming. Insisting that your political opponents "[desire] to push [the country] back 50 years into the past" is old, tired rhetoric and is really just divisive.

so what happens if that option wins

That actually happened in a 1976 party primary for a congressional race (None of These Candidates won 47% of the vote). The law states that the actual candidate with a plurality of votes wins regardless.

The Republican National Committee felt that the option would draw votes away from Romney in Nevada, so they filed a constitutional challenge to the law. The district judge sided with the RNC, but we still get the option in this election. The ruling is being appealed, though.

My roommate (Who is voting in Washington) has been getting tons of calls from everyone. I, being in an uncontested state of bigots, haven't gotten anything except a thing from the state that says what's on the ballot.

I was under the impression that the Senate race in Montana is at least somewhat competitive.

Excalibur, did some digging and found a post by Mr. Vogel confirming that this is a software problem he can't do anything about. That said, apparently, if you play the game in a window rather than in full screen mode, you should be able to switch windows with Command+Tab.

Interesting, I will keep that in mind. Thank you.

Agreed. As an added bonus it also expanded my vocabulary, lol. Jeff used a lot of words I was unfamiliar with as a child.

I only know the meaning of the word "portcullis" because of the exile series.

I also learned about Burma Shave from Exile III.

I can almost see the Romans running away in terror.

Congratulations!