I'm not prepared at this point to go to war with a billion Muslims.

I am. Better now than when there are 4 billion Muslims.

If "everyone" is "rich" you still have the upper 5% and the bottom 10%, and everything in between. Still "unfair" according to our Communist friends.

By the standards of most of the rest of the world, our poorest are very rich. They have potable running water, indoor plumbing, access to food, (if only the most unhealthy and cheapest, it still keeps them fat, not starving), big screen TV and cell phones. Except for the homeless, they've roofs over their heads. It's all relative, it doesn't matter how much you lift those at the bottom, they will still be seen as disadvantaged victims because others are higher.  It is completely against nature to try to equalize everyone's conditions. Our species is not an egalitarian one. People will act according to their DNA, not according to an ideal forced upon them by a political ideology. Leftist theory always requires that people suddenly and against their nature, lose their tendency to self sort into a pecking order and when they don't, force and threat of punishment is used. The irony is - this is exactly that - the self sorting into a pecking order with the leftist on top. There can be no such thing as an anarchist socialist utopia. It's a fantasy. Leftism will always be about those in power keeping a lock on the rest of us while preaching their utopian ideal out of a dishonest mouth.

Sounds like great weather. We're averaging upper 80s - low 90s in the day and upper 50s - low 60s in the evenings. It's only going to get hotter.

That sounds like here, south Texas. The scorpions are coming around now. 

Define good. 

Did you ever stop to understand that your good is not everyone's good?  In fact your good very well may be someone else's evil. Rather than accomplishing the greater good, you may be accomplisging the greater evil and promoting misery at the same time.

This absolutely nails it.  The truth is that good and evil are hardly absolute (bear with me Christian conservatives) but rather everyone has his own opinion.  The real truth is that there are many layers of truth underlying - well just about anything. Whether a thing is good or evil depends on your perspective. Dropping atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 can be seen as very evil, if you are on the ground witnessing the aftermath.  But they may have been very good, when you calculate the lives saved by terminating the war before ground invasion was necessary.

Likewise, from the perspective of a fetus, or anyone who believes all human life sacred, abortion is evil.  This looks like a no brainer - an innocent babe, how could anyone think this is good?  Well some people argue that legalized abortion indeed promotes the general good (reduction in crime):

http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/

So here we see even abortion can be seen as good or evil depending on the observer and the perspective.

This can be applied to just about anything in life. This is why my personal philosophy is that attempts to control the behavior of others by force (government) should be minimized, because no one has the ultimate handle on what is good and what is evil, but the greatest prosperity and happiness is achieved when individuals have maximum freedom to live their lives as they see fit. No, I do not mean anarchy. Part of living your life as you see fit means the right to join groups that have severe constraints on behavior, such as a religion, or a city with ordinances controlling your neighbor's behavior. This is the genius of our Republic; we are free to move about and live with groups of like minded individuals.

And this is why RvW needs to be overturned. The centralized government has no business ordering states to legalize abortion, but neither should they order it to be illegal. The feds should stay completely out of all matters except those specifically mentioned in the Constitution. Almost all matters are better dealt with on local levels because conditions vary widely among different groups of people.

This is where I find fault with progressivism. You are so caught up in yourself that you cannot comprehend that your ideas are not universal.

Conservatives can suffer from the same. But the difference is that conservatives, generally, understand the rule of law. When people disagree what is right and wrong, you go to the law of the land to settle things, and in this country, the law limits the federal government from interfering in most matters. Progressives on the other hand, tend to wish away the rule of law, and undertake machinations to impose their beliefs on everyone else, through a strong central government.

Progressives do seem to have a blind spot when it comes to imagining that they could be wrong. Take climate change for another example. Progressives are so convinced that their opinions are right, despite not comprehending facts about geological periods, planetary motions, etc. (which make clear that global warming - if true - is very unlikely to be caused by man but rather is a natural phenomenon), that they believe it is their divine mission to implement drastic policy controlling everyone's behavior despite dire consequences.  They always attempt to impose maximum controls on the maximum number of people through the most broad government forces. The U.S. government is no longer sufficient; they are attempting global control over things like how much carbon we cough out, whether or not we may own guns, whether we may maintain a border on our own country, etc.

To be fair, conservatives too attempt to use the Federal government to control everyone in the country, for example, proposals to declare marriage between a man and a woman.  Here again, it is not the role of the feds to promote or deny gay marriage; they should stay completely out of it.  Who may use what bathroom?  The founders are spinning in their graves that our highest government is even wasting time on this when it needs to be defending our borders and going after terrorists. The biggest and most important role of the Federal government is edged out and downplayed by all this other nonsense that should be squarely decided at State level.

But though conservatives too do this, I find it to be on matters not dangerous to the survival of the nation, an irritant, whereas progressives do it on matters most critical to our survival.  The economy, energy, military, national security, individual financial security - these are all destroyed by progressive meddling at the federal level, because progressives have the belief that they alone grasp how the world works - and cannot see how they might be wrong, despite history's evidence. This makes progressives far more dangerous than conservatives.

But nobody has answered the questions of how do we pay for it or why it's acceptable to take money from me to pay for you (not you, specifically)? Steingar brushes this off as if it's not a big deal because he is likely willing to accept those costs. I, however, am not.

Again, if this is a state run program, then I support the idea that it's being run by a state, not necessarily the program itself (without knowing the details, anyway). At the federal level, you'll never convince me.

It is not morally acceptable to take money from you to pay for it, nor is it legal, on a federal level. The Constitution spells this very clearly, the fact that our federal government has trashed the Constitution and overstepped it's bounds notwithstanding.

State level is completely different: we are all free to move from state to state. States retain the power to do what they want and if we don't like it we are free to leave.  However we are not free to leave the country.  Those of us born here cannot leave unless we are accepted into another country. We must get a visa or application for permanent residence or citizenship if we wish to move to another country. No such permission is required to move within the states. The founders understood this and it is one reason the Constitution is written to ensure maximum freedom of individual citizens.

So it can be legal for states to rob Peter to pay Paul, but the question remains, is it moral?  This is where people have different opinions. I still hold that it usually is not. The reason is because individuals know best how to manage their own resources. Most of the time - in fact, the overwhelming majority of the time - these social programs are implemented without any real scientific proof of their effectiveness. They are usually based on an emotional reaction to a problem (we don't like to see kids thrown out on the street to starve) and someone agitates to get some "solution" in place that requires spending money, and then gets the taxing authority to get the money from everyone else.

There is virtually never an analysis of possible unintended consequences, and there is never consideration of the opportunity lost cost to the "contributor" (taxpayer) to these programs. And once in place, they are virtually impossible to dismantle. The only certainty is that a portion of the funds will be skimmed to pay salaries and retirement benefits to the administrative government employees involved and also, very often, a private company will profit from sales to this "free" program for the poor.

So who benefits?  The government employees, the private industry making the product, and sometimes the disadvantaged recipients of the benefit.  (I say sometimes because in many cases they don't, in fact, their situation is actually made worse), and supposedly "society in general".  This last is the run-to argument of the left when questioned about these programs. But the tangible benefits to we the taxpayer are dubious and hard to document, because very often they don't exist. But it can be documented who suffers from these programs. The taxpayer funding them. I cannot buy myself a new pair of hearing aids because I had to fork over a couple thousand extra in taxes this year.

The great majority of taxpayers are not the filthy rich, but are middle class like myself, and taxes actually physically impact and hurt my life.  The amount I have given in taxes over my lifetime would have been enough to fund my nursing home, but because I did not have it to invest, I now must rely on long term care insurance or government benefits, the very governments that removed my ability to self insure in the first place.

So all these many programs being funded to redistribute money from the average middle class to the poor, they have NOT lifted the poor out of poverty, indeed things are worse than ever, and they HAVE severely reduced the middle class prosperity and quality of life.

Taken in total this is fact. So forgive me if I am not enthusiastic about any more leftist schemes to improve society in general.

In other words, the military commanders are free to make the decisions they feel necessary to win.  I say hooray for that too.

I have been wanting to see this for more than a decade. Cut them loose. Nothing more satisfying than seeing good guys killing bad guys.

But I too am also hoping it will end up being the right thing.  We've seen how our actions can go bad especially if not followed up properly.  Whatever Trump does, it can be undone or worse by a subsequent President.

Why do you have to pay?  Because we don't like throwing kids out on the street to starve.  Makes us feel bad about ourselves.

Classic liberal logic. "YOU have to pay to make US feel better about ourselves."

Here is you defining what is bad (throwing kids out on the street to starve), declaring it makes you feel bad, and then telling me I have to fork over the money.  Or are you making the assumption that I too feel bad about throwing kids on the street to starve?  And even if I did that I would think your solution is the best one? Maybe I don't. Maybe I don't care.  Or MAYBE I care but I give my money to private charities, or even walk around the downtown streets handing out cash to homeless teens.  It's really none of your business what my moral compass is; the reality here is you are justifying forcibly taking my money from me - the hours of my labor to earn it - and spending it as YOU see fit. 

You'll pay either way.  It just that the contraceptive costs you way less than the kid.

As I stated in this thread already. I'd be forced to agree with the program if it did prove effective, in lieu of supporting the welfare generations downstream.  That doesn't make it right.