Abortion

[Guest]

So let me spell it out step by step, very slowly.

1. America is the richest country in the world.
2. America has a very high wealth gap.
3. Due to factors 1. and 2., there are a lot of very, very rich people in America.
4. The very, very rich people in America, by and large, want to keep it that way.
5. Rich people generally spend almost all of their time working or thinking about money and that's one reason why they are rich.
6. When a person spends all of his time working or thinking about money, that experience influences his view of the world.
7. For such a person, when any given topic comes up, how to make some money automatically enters front and center into the thought process.
8. For any given topic, some of the ways money can be made are buying political influence and influencing public opinion.
9. To influence public opinion, you can, for example, play to the media or buy a newspaper (The Washington Post, for example).
10. If you are going to buy media influence it helps to get it cheap because it buys more influence.
11. Very rich people understand that the average person is not as interested in money as they are.
12. The rich use things that the average person does care about to influence their opinions.
13. There are many ways the rich influence opinions to make money on any given issue and they will figure out how to do that before others do.
14. The average person may not understand how and why the rich influence their opinions because the average person doesn't think that way.
15. Added in anticipation - no, this is not a conspiracy theory.

loss of comfort and lifestyle will lead to an explosion. The Russian Czars that it would never end, until it did.

[Bob Butler]

I am not accusing you of having any obsession with money. I believe the opposite - that you have lived your life in such a way that you are relatively unconcerned and unaware of money. That unawareness would probably make you not able to clearly recognize the corrupting influence of money on the question of abortion.

So let me spell it out step by step, very slowly...

I see the Republican Party as acting to a great extent as an alliance of the rich, bigots, and religious fanatics. For example in industry, the Republicans generally side with the corporations, the Democrats with the labor unions. To a great extent, if you have the money to make sizable political contributions, you have more influence in political power. Bribery, by any other name, is still bribery. Ads in the media are little different.

In this case though, the people favor feminine health care. The rich are people too. They are apt to be women or married to one. They are apt to be obsessed in monetary concerns and thus want to control time available more. The somewhat greater influence of the rich in politics is going with the Democrats for a change. Thus, I am somewhat sympathetic with your last post, but think it real and proper on this issue.

I associate styles of government with Ages of Civilization. In the Agricultural Age we had hereditary nobility. In the Industrial Age we had representative democracy, which was an improvement, but the representatives became members of the ruling class. The rich had too much influence on government. I suspect in the Information Age we will eventually switch to computer networked democracy. That way much of the undue influence of the rich will be reduced. The security problems have to be worked out. There has been no push for it in this crisis, so this isn’t likely the time around. It still seems to me likely to happen.

Yes, the undue influence of the rich is a problem. I see it being addressed in the next crisis or two. In the meanwhile, complaint about it does little but make the timing come a little sooner.

[Guest]

I see the Republican Party as acting to a great extent as an alliance of the rich, bigots, and religious fanatics. For example in industry, the Republicans generally side with the corporations, the Democrats with the labor unions. To a great extent, if you have the money to make sizable political contributions, you have more influence in political power. Bribery, by any other name, is still bribery. Ads in the media are little different.

Gee, Bob, that's how I view the Democratic party. That's how many view it. Now many Democrats view it as the Israel party. How will that help the Dems win the next election. Oh, wait...

Yes, the undue influence of the rich is a problem. I see it being addressed in the next crisis or two. In the meanwhile, complaint about it does little but make the timing come a little sooner.

Hopefully sooner, before it's too late to do anything to save America at all.

[Higgenbotham]

Below I have combined several recent posts about abortion, then added a news article that came to the top of google search results, the google search being for "how women who have had an abortion feel about it".

I have underlined and highlighted the various parts of the posts that connect and will discuss my take on this in a separate post.

I would never suggest that a woman get an abortion. But, similarly, when a woman has an abortion, it is a life changing experience, no pun intended. My first real education about abortion was to read what women who had abortions had to say about their decision to have one many decades after doing so. The accounts were truly heart rending. Rather than have technical discussions about abortion, I would suggest, similar to my suggestion about experiencing what race and culture truly are, for young people particularly to start there.

This is a very good point. And I would like to expound on it, as I have read/heard similar things.

We are all born with a conscience. This is one of the God given gifts we all get, and one that differentiates humans from animals.

Our conscience will guide us to do the right thing, and will warn us when we are about to do wrong. It also plagues us with guilt when we do wrong, as it tries to help us prevent a repetition of a bad mistake (sin).

We can of course disable our conscience by repeatedly ignoring it. It will then go away, do to our own actions. Truly bad people no longer have much if any conscience.

In every case of a first time abortion I have heard or read about, the woman has serious philosophical difficulty with going through with it. Even those who avow themselves as leftists or believe this is their right. It is because her conscience is trying to stop her from doing it. Because its not only murder, its murdering your own child.

If she goes through with it, the feelings of guilt and remorse are almost overwhelming. Again, because of the above.

Anyone thinking of having an abortion should do what Higgenbotham suggests, talk to somebody that had one. It will haunt you for the rest of your life (plus, I believe, carry severe eternal consequences for you). Just like murders haunt most murderers.

Basically, the high priests of materialism (an example would be Warren Buffett, the so-called "Oracle of Omaha" who heads up the so-called "Pilgrimage to Omaha" for those who attend his annual meeting having to do with how to make more more more money) lead the herd. The media reports in detail to the herd about every move and every word that the high priests of materialism make or say. That is usually accompanied by the word "billionaire". You and I are part of the herd. To some extent, we all are, as we all live in this stew that the high priests of materialism have had an outsized hand in creating. You are a true believer in what the high priests of materialism are doling out to the herd about the topic of abortion. I am not.

Buffett bequests billions for abortion

JACK FOWLER
July 8, 2022


Warren Buffet’s mega estate—$90 billion and counting—is poised to flood the abortion movement.

Warren Buffett, the aging and revered Nebraska investor, long ago shook the philanthropy world with his promise in 2006 (when he was worth only $44 billion) to distribute the overwhelming majority of his massive Berkshire Hathaway wealth to nonprofits during his lifetime. He’s had the time to make partial good on his word. On the cusp of his 92nd birthday (August 30th), the amount of Berkshire Hathaway stock the “Oracle of Omaha” has donated (to several family charities, and primarily to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) has reached at least a cumulative $40 billion.

Much of this largesse, especially those donated funds that have found their way into the coffers of the Buffett family’s private foundation, have been redistributed to organizations advocating, fighting, and training for—as well as providing and even bankrolling—abortion.

There’s been decades of generosity here. But in terms of raw dollars donated to the NARALs of the world, this may have been just an opening act.

Well before he made widely reported philanthropic proclamations—such as his charity partnership with Bill Gates, and the development of The Giving Pledge—Buffett’s original foundation made regular and large grants (they have totaled well over a billion dollars) to standbys like Planned Parenthood, the Guttmacher Institute, National Abortion Federation, to entities engaged in abortion-related research (Buffett was a major supporter of the “RU-486” abortion pill), and to a phalanx of other groups, small and large, swimming in the same bloody waters of “reproductive choice.”

These charity recipients include many not-so-obvious institutions that have proven central to abortion practices. And they weren’t getting chump change. An example of such, from a Mother Jones 2016 article cataloguing Buffett’s broad abortion philanthropy, finds that college-giving—a thing unsuspicious at first glance—could indeed be hard-core abortion-giving:

Buffett’s main academic partner (receiving at least $88 million from 2001 to 2014) has been the University of California-San Francisco, a medical research institution with a strong reproductive health infrastructure. (Abortion opponents’ perspective is a bit different: “America’s abortion training academy,” one National Right to Life official recently called it).

That was then. As for now, and for what’s over the horizon, a fair question is, How much more is there to give? From the perspective of pro-life organizations, the question may be more appropriately stated, How much more are our opponents to receive?

The answer to either question is “plenty,” and wondering about this and more has become a topic of increasing public interest. Buffett-watchers predict that much of his estate is likely to find its way into abortion-rights causes and advocacy, as well as the actual bloody performance of that life-ending act.

https://philanthropydaily.com/buffett-b ... -abortion/

No surprise.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+wom ... l+about+it

The majority of women feel relief, not regret, after an abortion, study says

By Jen Christensen, CNN
Updated 2:12 AM EST, Wed January 15, 2020


One of the largest studies about women’s emotions after an abortion finds most feel relieved and don’t regret their choice, even if they struggled beforehand or worried about stigma.

The study, one of the largest to date on the topic, was published Sunday in the journal Social Science & Medicine.

Researchers found that at five years after having an abortion, only 6% expressed primarily negative emotions. The overwhelming majority of women surveyed – 84% – had positive emotions or no emotions whatsoever about their abortion decision, even if they hadn’t felt that way when they were making the decision to have an abortion.

Just over half the women in this survey said the decision to terminate the pregnancy was very difficult and 27% characterized it as “somewhat difficult.” About 46% said it wasn’t a difficult decision at all. Nearly 70% said they felt they would be stigmatized if people knew they had an abortion.

The women who said they struggled with the decision or felt stigmatized by it were more likely to report feeling guilt, anger or sadness immediately after the abortion, but over time, these feelings declined dramatically, sometimes even one year after the abortion.

The top emotion all the groups of women in the study said they felt at the end of the survey was relief. Relief was an emotion used to describe how they felt each time they were asked about it.

Researchers came to this conclusion after surveying nearly 1,000 women, and following up with them 11 times over a period of five years. They surveyed women who lived in 21 states a week after they had an abortion and then again every six months thereafter.

“All the claims that negative emotions will emerge over time, a myth that has persisted for decades without any evidence to substantiate these claims, it’s clear, it’s just not true,” said study author Corinne Rocca, an epidemiologist and assistant professor in the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/12/health/w ... index.html

[Higgenbotham]

The high priests of materialism clearly understand that a major sticking point in their desire to continue neo-pagan human sacrifice to the gods of materialism is that normal people experience regret over doing so. As Navigator stated, normally their conscience will tell them that this is wrong, and they will hesitate. One way to get people to overcome this hesitancy would be to fund a "scientific study" and plaster the results all over mainstream media, saying, essentially, "You might hesitate to have an abortion, but 5 years later you will have no regrets!" After all, 5 years is a long time, you know.

Starting with the underlined and highlighted parts of the above post, it says, "...read what women who had abortions had to say about their decision to have one many decades after doing so." The "many decades after doing so" is important because once people pass middle age they normally (there's that word again) start to look back and evaluate the significance of different actions they took in their life. At age 73, they will see this very differently than they did at age 23, and that's why those words were inserted. When I wrote that, I had not seen the University of California - San Francisco study that is being discussed.

Next, we see that one of the high priests of materialism has an "academic partner" that received "at least $88 million" from this high priest of materialism. And, lo and behold, can you imagine that this "academic partner" is the very same one, the University of California - San Francisco, that funded the "scientific study" that said you will not regret your abortion? They could not have possibly known how their "scientific research" was supposed to turn out so they could get at least another $88 million from Mr. Moneybags, could they?

[Cool Breeze]

Basically, the high priests of materialism (an example would be Warren Buffett, the so-called "Oracle of Omaha" who heads up the so-called "Pilgrimage to Omaha"...

Well, I did visit Omaha. I went to Offutt Air Force Base a long time ago (1980?) to install one of my communications projects. That had little to do with any desire for materialistic things. I thought at the time you had to ‘pay your dues”. Do your schoolwork. Be productive at work. The monetary reward just came with it.

As an oddity, my tenant’s grandparents were jewelers, and were more than a little rich. (Understatement, Big understatement.) I have been helping my tenant out, and may be very rich too someday as an oversized thank you. (It is really bad form to declare your mother dead to steal her inheritance, when you know she isn’t dead. We call the ramifications The Saga.. Big mess. (Understatement.)) Anyway, I would just have no idea what to do with all that money.

My daydreams include setting up scholarships for my four great nieces/nephew. My niece is the curator of Cape Cod’s shark museum. (It is possible to be all about great white sharks and afraid of turtles. It is possible to care much more about sea life than financial security.) I might do something for the sharks. She is the only member of the family involved in something resembling a charity.

My supposed obsession with money is limited to using mutual accounts set up when I was working. You have to do something with your money.

I did edit your post, but it was in an effort to keep the entry short. John doesn’t seem to like my putting long posts in the main thread. Glad for the move.

In short, you seem very confused about what I value and believe. Imposing medieval superstitions on others is not the government’s place. I care more about the Constitution than abortion or finance.

I am not accusing you of having any obsession with money. I believe the opposite - that you have lived your life in such a way that you are relatively unconcerned and unaware of money. That unawareness would probably make you not able to clearly recognize the corrupting influence of money on the question of abortion.

So let me spell it out step by step, very slowly.

1. America is the richest country in the world.
2. America has a very high wealth gap.
3. Due to factors 1. and 2., there are a lot of very, very rich people in America.
4. The very, very rich people in America, by and large, want to keep it that way.
5. Rich people generally spend almost all of their time working or thinking about money and that's one reason why they are rich.
6. When a person spends all of his time working or thinking about money, that experience influences his view of the world.
7. For such a person, when any given topic comes up, how to make some money automatically enters front and center into the thought process.
8. For any given topic, some of the ways money can be made are buying political influence and influencing public opinion.
9. To influence public opinion, you can, for example, play to the media or buy a newspaper (The Washington Post, for example).
10. If you are going to buy media influence it helps to get it cheap because it buys more influence.
11. Very rich people understand that the average person is not as interested in money as they are.
12. The rich use things that the average person does care about to influence their opinions.
13. There are many ways the rich influence opinions to make money on any given issue and they will figure out how to do that before others do.
14. The average person may not understand how and why the rich influence their opinions because the average person doesn't think that way.
15. Added in anticipation - no, this is not a conspiracy theory.

Come on Higgie, you know better. Forget this clown. What you say of course is accurate, so why bother?

A lot of people around here don't like me but it's for completely opposite reasons of the bish - a communist who gets nothing right. I'm the oppo

By the way, I hope that post doesn't get censored for being "anti-semitic".

The last few years have proven that what we've said about all of these things aren't theories, they are facts.

[Bob Butler]

Gee, Bob, that's how I view the Democratic party.

In many cases we just have a difference of opinion, but in this you are just wrong. Look at how Biden and Trump interacted in the recent automotive strike. Biden visited the picket lines, while Trump visited the management. Many groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were anti minority protesters before they became insurrectionists. The Democrats are clearly for feminine health care and choice, with the majority of the people. The Republicans favor medieval superstition.

Hopefully sooner, before it's too late to do anything to save America at all.

Agreed for once?

[Bob Butler]

The high priests of materialism clearly understand that a major sticking point in their desire to continue neo-pagan human sacrifice to the gods of materialism is that normal people experience regret over doing so.

I don’t care for the phrase “high priests of materialism”. Those into financial profit don’t tend to think in terms of medieval superstitions. I prefer ‘robber barons’. I am sure there are other less than complementary terms for them that imply ways of thought much more accurate.

Ads highlighting women having regrets years after an abortion seems a valid approach. Go for it if you like. I don’t think it will change how most people feel about the issue.

[Higgenbotham]

The high priests of materialism clearly understand that a major sticking point in their desire to continue neo-pagan human sacrifice to the gods of materialism is that normal people experience regret over doing so.

I don’t care for the phrase “high priests of materialism”. Those into financial profit don’t tend to think in terms of medieval superstitions. I prefer ‘robber barons’. I am sure there are other less than complementary terms for them that imply ways of thought much more accurate.

Medieval superstition dealt with concepts like gods, souls, sin and sacrifice.

I can understand why you don't care for the phrase I've coined - "high priests of materialism". The reason I'm using it is that I can imagine a future world ala the Dark Age Hovel (where I spend most of my time discussing the things I find most interesting - abortion and religion not being one of them) in which that phrase, considered by people in a future dark age looking back at what is happening in the present world, is considered to be quite valid. The future world that you imagine is not in accord with that so, understandably, you do not consider that phrase valid.

Before going back to the Dark Age Hovel, though, I want to elaborate on my objection to your use of the phrase you have coined to describe how Christians think about abortion - "medieval superstitions", which was my real reason for starting this back and forth we have been having these past few days. I can now do so because you have sort of defined what you mean by that. When you use the word "medieval" a reasonable assumption would be that it refers to things that were primarily of the medieval world and are not of the present world. So let's look at the 4 items you listed - gods, souls, sin and sacrifice. If the plurality of Americans still believe in gods, souls, and sin, and those concepts it would stand to reason that this plurality would believe that there is a hell. Astonishingly, to me at least, they do as a majority, and they do across race, age, and every other affiliation besides religious or lack thereof. So to call beliefs in gods, souls, and sin medieval superstitions when these beliefs are very much present in this world I don't think is accurate.



There are some aspects of sacrifice such as animal sacrifice to appease or gain favor from the gods that could be considered medieval superstitions since they are no longer practiced in the present world. I discussed that in a previous post.

[Guest]

Without God, Jesus, and an afterlife in Heaven, this life would be pointless.