Afterthought

Continuous brain activity begins early in the third trimester and continues until death.

That's the only consistent way of defining life. If the only criteria for life were having living cells, we'd be "alive" long after they pulled the plug, which we all know is not the case.

There are some state laws that reflect this, banning third trimester abortions. But most people seem to believe that life begins either at conception or at birth, making me think the motivation was compromise rather than logic.

If so, then I propose the Everyone Should Be Responsible Act of 2014, mandating that all eligible citizens should be responsible.

For me it's avoidance. When I merely dislike someone I want to avoid them. When I truly hate someone there's a large part of me that wants to seek them out and hurt them.

Given that this is a forum people seek out daily to give angry, venomous rants to the same group of people, it's hard for me to see people who do that as anything but hateful.

Of course they won't admit to it; after all, hatred has negative connotation. They merely "dislike" whatever group they go out of their way to say mean things to every day. Clearly there's no emotion involved for them.

They both have zero brain activity, but still have living cells and some body function.

Considering our definition of death, I fail to see how a functionally dead body that can be brought to life by another person is already experiencing life.

I'm typing this on my empty circuit board, drinking a coffee bean, relaxing on my feather, and I honestly don't see how any of these things are different than the real thing. After all, they all only require outside ingredients and another being to reach completion.

Democrats and Republicans make it a point to disagree on nearly every major issue at any given time, so if one side flip flops, then the other one pretty much always flip flops also. So you end up with completely useless exchanges like this ...

Q: Why are libs suddenly OK with the Patriot Act now that Obama's doing it?

A: Oh yeah? Why are cons suddenly against the Patriot Act just to oppose Obama?

... with both sides apparently feeling like they triumphantly caught the other side in a single instance of hypocrisy.

And honestly, hypocrisy isn't really the main issue here. I get that things change and sometimes people "flip flop" based on new information. My question is how did hypocrisy become such a damning offense in a political system that demands it?

I mean, they were wearing the cloaks so you can't tell for sure right?

In a tyrannical Second-Amendment situation where we need to rebel, there's going to be a transition period where things are still mostly functional and some arrests are legitimate while others are not.

Is there realistically a scenario where conservatives say that in some cases, the cop-killer is in the right? (Maybe if the cop is, say, trying to take your guns).

If that scenario exists, then who coordinates the transition from "it's wrong to defy the police" to "legitimate open war against the police"? Who decides when it's okay to resist arrest?

Call me crazy, but I think if black people started getting slaps on the wrist rather than automatic maximum jail time, they might start showing more of the trademark white compliance with the law that made this country great.

Is it an active solution and not just an ideal? Is it realistic? Will it work for everyone? If not, you may want to revise your answer to the first question.

Can you believe that liberals are allowed to cremate brain-dead bodies that still have fingernails? Fingernails!

I mean, if black people are twice as likely to get caught committing a crime, and twice as likely to go to jail for it, then you can't really turn around and say they commit twice as many crimes, right? They're just the ones getting caught for it.

Not saying there isn't a discrepancy. Just saying that discrepancy is probably being compounded -- a lot -- by selective enforcement.

It doesn't have to be logical. If employers are emotionally butthurt about a regulation that has negligible or short-term effect on profit, they still have every right to do harmful things to their own company out of spite.

There's no law of nature that dictates that every regulation must be met with an equal and opposite price hike. So when those price hikes do happen, it might be worth giving a tiny shred of scrutiny to the people who, I don't know, actually hike the prices.

That date is different for everyone, but it's at roughly 25 weeks, or not too far before the third trimester. Why is this belief not more common?

As we all know, pretty much every polling agency is part of a liberal conspiracy. And it's the job of conservatives to, in every situation, always seek truth above all else.

So when they first saw the data that pointed to them winning, the first thing they did was to make absolutely sure the data was factual.

"Remember in 2012 when all these same agencies were in liberal pockets?" they surely said. "Now that these same agencies are projecting our victory. What are they playing at? We can't trust it. We need to investigate."

I can only imagine the amount of skepticism with which they greeted any attempt at prediction, which, as we all know, is completely irrelevant to the election.

All it is is being born with wealth and connections. It has nothing to do with being white. We call it white privilege because the overwhelming majority of people who get it are white, but people are apparently getting the impression that it's a racial thing.

I'll preface this by saying that I don't believe it's a human life until there's at least a little bit of brain activity, which is late second/early third trimester stuff.

But if it is a human life, then it goes without saying that a woman doesn't have the right to end it, right? There are two lives to consider at that point.

So even thought I'm pro-choice for 99% of abortions, I still don't think the whole "it's my body" shtick is relevant to the issue of whether abortion is legal. If there were debate over which parent had the final decision on abortion, that's when "it's my body" would come into play.

Who do you think you're fooling? This is a first-world country in 2014. We aren't afraid of things that kill a bunch of people in Africa, and we don't have genuine fear over an isolated death by disease.

This is just the latest flavor-of-the-month disease scare being inflated by the media and people are feigning concern because it gives them an excuse to be be outraged at someone they decided to not like in 2008.

Honestly, just read about it in something other than the "Ebola: Will it End the Human Race?" segment on CNN. If you have a doctor and access to fresh water, you'll be fine.