So how did they get to you, Mr. Kucinich?

Did your opposition to Obama’s gift to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries start to waver when Rahm Emanuel went to the House Progressive Caucus a month ago and called you and your colleagues “a bunch of fucking retards” for not seeing the benefits (more campaign money) of voting for the bill the health care lobby drafted?

Maybe it was Mr. Obama’s letting you ride on Air Force One. Is that plane really cool?

Maybe Mr. Obama offered to create your ‘Department of Peace’, making you its first Secretary. If that’s the case, be sure to ask for an office with a window. Doing nothing all day gets pretty boring if you don’t at least have a window to look out.

In the press conference in which you announced your switching your vote you admitted that the bill is still a bad bill — as you have been telling everyone for months. You rationalized your new support for the bill on the grounds that a defeat for Obama’s health care bill would “delegitimize” Obama’s presidency. In other words, you think Obama’s presidency is legitimate and worthy of protection. That is an odd defense, coming from someone who sought to impeach Obama’s predecessor, Bush, because he started a couple of illegal wars, violated the Geneva Convention, and pushed through the civil liberties disaster called the PATRIOT Act. In case you haven’t noticed, Mr. Kucinich, the current president, the man whose ‘legitimacy’ you hope to preserve, is expanding Bush’s illegal wars into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and even Colombia. There has been no congressional authorization for these illegal acts, either. Obama has also pledged to give the military and intelligence services free- reign when it comes to their treatment of ‘detainees’ (the Obama administration, consistent with the preceding administration, refuses to call prisoners taken in this war ‘prisoners of war’, because prisoners of war have rights under the Geneva Convention). AND (last but not least) Obama just pushed through a reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act (in addition to defending warrantless wiretapping of American citizens). In other words, Obama is doing all the same things that you thought warranted impeachment proceedings for Bush. But, when it comes to Obama, you throw away your integrity to defend him.

“Another key clause has caused rather more argument – at least outside parliament, says our correspondent.
This is the creation of a new crime of psychological violence inside the home.
The bills’ supporters say it is important to recognise that actual violence against women is always preceded by psychological bullying, and that this too needs to be outlawed.
But many lawyers and professionals in the field are nervous, our corre
They say it will impossible to say at what point verbal abuse – for instance in an argument – suddenly becomes a criminal offence.
Critics argue the psychological violence clause is unlikely to make any practical improvement to the lives of women who suffer domestic violence.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8537591.stm

Pragmatism saves us from lethal boredom and granulated assumptions.

Though this I noticed is a pertinent question:

“If a philosophy doesn’t have a real world payoff, what’s the use of it?”

You surely didn’t find Fish a bore, did you?

I feel it polite to respond to you. I don’t mind doing so while I’m online watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUP4gC_N6ww

Rather than get into yet another faux debate, I’d rather just say that pragmatism has been criticised as being relativistic in moral terms, and I very much agree. I’m sure there’s more to be said, but I don’t have the time to get into it.

So what’s left to ask you is, what do you want from me? It seems to me you’re playing a game called WIN and I’m playing a game called LEARN. So if you’re asking me to continue this exchange until such time as you’ve received your WIN, I kinda don’t want to unless you’re offering me some learn along the way. I’ll respond, but I’m really not engaged.

Have *I* made you angry? Are you looking for revenge?? I can’t imagine what I can do to satisfy you if that’s the case.

I feel like you’re forcing me into a role of your ‘enemy’ and that anything I say towards your argument (such that it is) you take as an attack on your person whether you explicitly say so or not.

I just want to move along until the next exchange hoping that it can be more productive.

Peace? Or at least a temporary halt in hostilities?

On to part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lH3qPxeC9s

“Pragmatism’s basic move is to declare that the answers to these questions will not be found by identifying some transcendental universal and then conforming ourselves to its normative demands (like “Be ye perfect”). Rather, we must, and can, make do with the “ordinary aptitudes of human beings (ourselves) viewed within a generously Darwinized ecology, without transcendental, revelatory, or privileged presumptions of any kind.” Pragmatism “completely undermines any assurances, empirical or transcendental, that exceed the provisionality of what we may consensually construct (in our own time) as a workable conjecture about the way the world is.”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/pragmatisms-gift/#more-42151

Apologies for not sticking around to read or properly respond to your comments.

“The evidence came from brain scans of volunteers ranked according to their psychopathic traits through psychological testing.”

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jeSBZZ_cVO3ZbvCAoffAZXHxIzNQ

The science of correlation based upon arbitrary “traits” deemed unsavory?

The arbiter is the person holding the clippad and checking the ‘traits’.

You don’t have the link.