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Comparing Presidents: Rankings of Economic Growth
Submitted by sugarfatpie on Wed, 2008/08/20 - 11:07am.
"On the whole, Republicans are either the victims of incredibly bad luck, or lousy economic policy. But either way, they are not the Party of growth. Macro-economic growth seems to be faster when Democrats are in office."
Warning! This link leads to a concise, well illustrated argument that is sure to piss off ardent right wing ideologues (Tin Cup-please count to ten before responding and when you do, I challenge you to give a response that is genuinely thoughtful and longer than fifty words).
Sorry, pie, I don't have 50 words. You've convinced me. Your analysis illustrates why the Dems have won 7 of the last 10 Presidential elections.....oh, wait a minute, it's the other way around. How can that be? Ignorant electorate? Hanging chads? Swift boats and Willie Hortons?Misery index?
Now look what you've made me do....I'm not pissed, I've exceeded 50 words and didn't even have to count. You've brightened my day!
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Fri, 2008/08/22 - 5:32am.
First, it is not the job of the American President to "fix the economy" since we don't live in such a system. No, it is the job of the American President to fulfill their Constitutional duty.
Second, anyone alive under the years of former President Carter, knows that he did a horrible job as President, and I would like to know when did 21% inflation become great?
What should be the real story is whether or not the President, along with Congress, will do their Constitutionally mandated jobs?
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Submitted by sugarfatpie on Fri, 2008/08/22 - 8:44am.
I agree that the president has a somewhat limited impact on economic growth, but the same cannot be said for deficit spending. The data pretty well confims that Republican presidents have a policy ("Starve the Beast"), of spending money we don't have. Link...
Works well as an electoral strategy too. Spend us into crippling debt while the Repub is in there, then saddle the next Dem administration with the burden of paying it off.
it is the job of the American President to fulfill their Constitutional duty
I don't recall hearing you defend the Constitution while Bush and Cheney have been wiping their asses on it. Is there some other venue where you have been demanding that Miers, Bolton and Rove honor Congressional subpoenas, and I've just missed it?
Submitted by Factchecker on Fri, 2008/08/22 - 12:17pm.
Second, anyone alive under the years of former President Carter, knows that he did a horrible job as President, and I would like to know when did 21% inflation become great?
Where the hell did you pull that phoney stat? If these numbers are correct, in only one month during Carter's term did the rate of inflation barely exceed 13% and most months it was closer to half that. The reasons are many and have almost nothing to do with Carter. He inherited high inflation and high oil prices during a time when our economy was much more sensitive to oil shocks like the one that started two presidents before under infamous GOP crook Nixon. (He also inherited a broken military after Nixon finally lost the war in Vietnam. I won't blame Ford.)
At least Carter appointed a fed chair who finally killed high inflation in just a few years, which resulted in the cure incorrectly being credited to Reagan.
Submitted by RayCapps on Fri, 2008/08/22 - 3:12pm.
the poster was confusing inflation rates with interest rates, which did briefly top 20% late in the Carter Administration.
At least Carter appointed a fed chair who finally killed high inflation in just a few years, which resulted in the cure incorrectly being credited to Reagan.
I hold to the hopelessly minority opinion that assigning either credit or blame to a president for economic conditions is incorrect in and of itself. The president has only slightly more influence over the economy than he does over who wins the world series. Of course, it is also the single most significant factor in the decision making process of many, many presidential voters. But they run on their "economic policies" and they thump their chests taking credit for every bit of economic good news they can dig up, so I guess they deserve to be judged by something over which they have practically no control. If they would take credit for the weather, let them be judged by the storms.
The one really important thing the president actually does get to do to influence the economy is nominate the chairman of the federal reserve board. Carter nominated Paul Volcker, and for that he gets major kudos. Reagan nominated Greenspan and, again, major kudos. Clinton kept him. Kudos there as well. GW nominated Bernanke and the jury's still out on that.
Submitted by RayCapps on Fri, 2008/08/22 - 3:22pm.
Double checked myself. Inflation rates hit 20% during Reagan's term as part of Volcker's strategy to mitigate the damage done by runaway inflation under Burns/Nixon. Carter's innocent there as well.
Your re-writing of history is almost comical Fact-boy. Carter was a great and decisive leader, not the bitter, America-hating partisan he appears to be today.
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Fri, 2008/08/22 - 1:45pm.
Carter was the single worst President that the United States of America has ever seen or ever will see, hands down. The ineptness of his Administration goes beyond words and America's terrorism started with his total inability to deal with the one issue, as Commander-in-Chief, he was supposed to, protecting Americans, i.e., the Embassy incident. The man showed no moral, no legal, no nothing in leadership in handling the crisis that was the real start date of the War on Terror, 4 November 1979. Carter's 100% ineptness with handling Iran, was the impetus for the former USSR to invade Afghanistan and we all know how that ended up.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Your hypothesis requires you to link the Iranian Islamic Revolution to Al Qaeda. Please demonstrate this linkage keeping in mind that Al Qaeda is a Sunni (Wahabist) movement sworn to destroy apostate Shias.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Sat, 2008/08/23 - 5:46am.
No, I suggest you learn history. Prior to 9/11, Iranian-backed Shiite militias had been responsible for more American deaths than all other terrorists organizations combined. Furthermore, what Carter did NOT do put into play the precedent that the USA would NOT respond to terrorism. Add in that bombing Libya in 1986 was the only real response to terrorism in the 1980's, then one can see how what Carter did NOT do started a policy that even Reagan followed. In fact, Reagan's failure to respond in a decisive and no-holds-barred way in 1983, after the murder of 243 US Marines, in Beirut under the flag of the UN on a peacekeeping mission, is perhaps worse than Carter's mess of 1979. However, at least Reagan was willing to attack the communist system and see it brought down whereas Carter was impotent in every way.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Give me a break. If you want to play teleological games with Iran, then the barracks bombing in 1983, which was arguably not terrorism in that the Marines were a foreign military unit engaged in nightly combat with local forces during their stay, was the fault of President Eisenhower, the CIA and their backing of the Mossadegh overthrow in 1953. As for the UN auspices of the mission in Beirut, what are you talking about? The US was part of a separate force in Lebanon called the Multinational Force, with Britain, Italy, etc. The UN mission was made up of forces from places like Fiji and operated in Southern Lebanon. The Rules of Engagement were not dictated by the UN, but by the Weinberger Doctrine (see the Ferraro Report and Eric Hammel's recentish book).
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
So, you would also accept the thesis that Ronald Regan had shit little to do with "winning" the Cold War?
I don't know who wrote this thesis, Met, but it's bullshit. On the contrary, Reagan had a vision and choked the Soviet Union to death. Of course, the left mocked him, what with his "evil empire" talk and visions of "star wars." He brought them to their knees. Old cold warriors like JFK and Nixon would have been proud. (In fact, Nixon was before he died in 93.)
P.S. Reagan's dead, man. He can't hurt you anymore. No need to bash him.
Actually, research over the last 20 years has shown that no policy that Reagan enacted had any meaningful effect on the Soviet economy. I can give you a reading list a mile long if you'd like. The revisionist history of the American Right (AKA The Reagan Cultists) would love to squint and see the Soviet Union collapsing in the face of our mighty Capitalist Super Powers, but it didn't. The wheels started coming off in the late 1940s. It was a slow burn. One of the myths is that Reagan's military production scheme kneecapped the Soviet economy. Actually, in the late 1980s, it was on an uptick because of devolution of production decisions to middle managers who were allowed to set their own quotas (who did those managers become or work for after 1991? Hrm....). It's export volume and reserves of hard currency actually expanded. Selling MIGs to India is good business. There's a reason a lot of old pensioners pine for the Soviet Union days: They didn't shiver in their flats, waiting for death.
It was a terrible authoritarian regime, but Ronald Reagan did nothing to change that. The Russian people did (though Putin started to stink of it a long time ago).
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
A good read on this is The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere by Emmanuel Todd. Pretty much describes how the whole thing fell apart. The English translation came out in 1979. Reagan showed up just in time to take credit for the inevitable.
Submitted by RayCapps on Mon, 2008/08/25 - 2:04pm.
The Soviet Union fell on George HW Bush's watch. Some conservatives try to credit Reagan for causing the fall, but his terms were over before he could "take credit for it."
One of the weirder aspects of the effort to give credit to Reagaon is the argument that increased defense spending pushed the Soviet economy over the edge. Contemporaneously, liberal Democrats (word choice made to exclude such folks as Sam Nunn) bashed Reagan for busting the budget with increased defense spending. However, pulling the federal appropriations figures (1978 - 1985) shows that the defense spending curve actually took its first serious upswing during the Carter Administration and the growth slope actually reduced fairly steadily under Reagan.
The reasons are fairly clear when viewed from a military perspective. Immediately following our withdrawal from Vietnam, the military had a surplus of period weapons. The draft was discontinued and military size was briefly reduced as a result. This combination of events temporarily depressed the need for increased defense spending. However, the military also engaged in a complete reevaluation of its practices, weapons, requirements, and capabilities following Vietnam. The result was the push for our current "modern" military with the heavy reliance on airpower, instantaneous communications, high battlefield situational awareness, and inter-service coordination. Most of the "first generation" practices and the hardware to support them were initiated during the Carter Administration. The one "major" conventional weapons platform begun under Reagan was the restart of the troubled B1 Bomber project that Carter had cancelled. It should also be noted that the ATB program was initiated under Carter with Northrop beating out Lockheed for the B2 Spirit early in Reagan's 1st term.
Yet Reagan gets credit/blame for increased defense spending on the one end and credit for the fall of the Soviet Union on the back end. Go figure
Submitted by Factchecker on Sat, 2008/08/23 - 7:00am.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
You desecrate the Constitution every time you intentionally "gloss over" truth (lie) to protect your phony politics. Let's start, shall we?
The ineptness of his Administration goes beyond words and America's terrorism started with his total inability to deal with the one issue, as Commander-in-Chief, he was supposed to, protecting Americans, i.e., the Embassy incident. The man showed no moral, no legal, no nothing in leadership in handling the crisis that was the real start date of the War on Terror, 4 November 1979. Carter's 100% ineptness with handling Iran, was the impetus for the former USSR to invade Afghanistan and we all know how that ended up.
If it goes beyond words, then obviously you're thinking with your ignorant, biased gut instead of a brain. The problems with Iran go back many decades and he was just the guy it finally fell on. How would you have dealt with the hostage crisis? Needless to say, at your hands all of them would have been killed. IIRC (without googling), NONE were killed.
You have (EDIT: almost) no grasp of knowledge. EDIT: Wow, you DID ding Reagan, if only slightly. You're still badly confused with cause and effect.
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Sat, 2008/08/23 - 11:21pm.
Fact checking the 1980 election returns shows that 49 out of 50 States thought that Carter had done a horrible job too. Wow! Imagine that. Carter was a terrible President and the quicker you accept what history has already shown the better off you will be instead of this childish and ignorant rants of no knowledge of history or the Constitution.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Submitted by Factchecker on Sat, 2008/08/23 - 7:10am.
at least Reagan was willing to attack the communist system and see it brought down whereas Carter was impotent in every way.
How much of Carter's impotence, such that it was in your view, was due to:
1) Inheriting a broken military from Republicans?
2) Inheriting a military that had no equipment or training to fight in deserts?
3) Presiding over a country that after the Vietnam fiasco had no stomach for military rebuilding?
The military was rebuilding under Carter, though. A lot more than Duhbya was doing to fight al Qaeda before 9/11.
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Sat, 2008/08/23 - 11:18pm.
Who was in charge of Congress during those years? The same Congress that is responsible for funding the military.
Bush was in office for just a few months when 9/11 happened, and Clinton has signed an order in 1998, authorizing the hunting down of bin Laden-why was he not caught? Why after what he did in January, 1999, did Clinton not assign all due diligence to find the man?
Those are questions that could be asked but like with the immature rants about Bush, they miss the point entirely. Hunting down terrorists is what Americans, NOT Republicans or Democrats do. Also, it is not an easy task when a government, like America's, tried to work within some legal framework and the terrorist-criminals do not do that.
The one and only responsible party for 9/11 are the 19 terrorists who did it and NO ONE ELSE. Neither Bush is at fault or Clinton but the killers that perpetrated their crime as well as any government or nation on this planet that gave them help.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Submitted by Andy Axel on Sun, 2008/08/24 - 10:26am.
Also, it is not an easy task when a government, like America's, tried to work within some legal framework and the terrorist-criminals do not do that.
This is the apologists' justification for torture*.
The one and only responsible party for 9/11 are the 19 terrorists who did it and NO ONE ELSE. Neither Bush is at fault or Clinton but the killers that perpetrated their crime as well as any government or nation on this planet that gave them help.
Which is why we're at war with Saudi Arabia... um... whoops.
* Article VI: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land
Treat it with care.
____________________________
"It's gettin' so a businessman can't expect no return from a fixed fight. Now, if you can't trust a fix, what can you trust?"
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Sun, 2008/08/24 - 3:48pm.
Please stop doing what Liberals and their total inability to argue a single position of any kind do. I was NOT referring to torture. Instead, I was discussing how that a terrorist/terrorist network is not restrained by anything in their pursuit of death, destruction, and violence.
If several black men engage in criminal acts, are all blacks a bunch of thugs? If several Hispanics sell drugs, are all of them drug dealers? Keep that in mind when you rip Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
The one and only responsible party for 9/11 are the 19 terrorists who did it and NO ONE ELSE. Neither Bush is at fault or Clinton but the killers that perpetrated their crime as well as any government or nation on this planet that gave them help.
So it's was a crime? Since when do we use the combined force of US military arms to combat a crime?
Also, I notice you don't answer questions put to you. I'd still like to know at what point is it OK to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights and rise against the US government? What conditions would have to be in place?
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Sun, 2008/08/24 - 3:53pm.
It was both a crime and an act of war, they are usually one and the same. Pearl Harbor is a great example of it too.
The use of the Second Amendment is necessary to keep this nation free, not some pretty little saying from a Liberal. It has been and always will be the ability of having weapons that keep any nation free. When the US government would suspend the US Constitution, declare martial law, so forth, that is when the citizenry would need their weapons. The problem with Liberals is that they are so utterly clueless to what Liberty is and how to defend it that they live with blinders on. Liberals rant about government abuse of rights but fail, completely, to see that the Right to Bear Arms is how and why those rights even exist.
Listen to the screams of desecration from Liberals about what the current President is doing to our rights. Well, how in the world do you think you guard those rights?
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Listen to the screams of desecration from Liberals about what the current President is doing to our rights. Well, how in the world do you think you guard those rights?
So instead of calling for impeachment, Liberals should assassinate Cheney?
"When the US government would suspend the US Constitution, declare martial law, so forth, that is when the citizenry would need their weapons."
So the Newark riots in 1968 were justified. Cool. And I guess we should rise up tomorrow and begin a civil insurrection in the face of the Patriot Act and FISA. When they kick down your front door, how you gonna come? Who's with me?
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Submitted by RayCapps on Mon, 2008/08/25 - 9:01am.
and I recognize this Liberal vs. Conservative soundbyte festival is just a spectator sport for me, but this was a darned good question:
I'd still like to know at what point is it OK to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights and rise against the US government?
The answer to that question was delivered far more eloquently than my humble powers could address by Thomas Jefferson:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Outside of the unnecessary aside to a "Creator," I think that about says it the way I believe it. Some basic rights of humans are inherent and may not be abridged or unduly constrained by any Power. It's the notion that some rights belong to humans by virtue of being human and are not merely gifts permitted us by a ruling authority. But some would say the nature of rights is about how many imaginary beings can dance on the blunt end of a sewing instrument.
Submitted by redmondkr on Sat, 2008/08/23 - 4:46pm.
You don't have to look back as far as Harding. Look no farther than the present tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Buchanan probably ranks as number two.
Visit us at
The Home
On the National Register of Hysterical Places
Submitted by Factchecker on Sun, 2008/08/24 - 12:14pm.
Why after what he did in January, 1999, did Clinton not assign all due diligence to find the man?
Because he was hamstrung by a Congress out to impeach him. Every move he made was criticized with accusations that he was trying to invent a national security crisis to get off the hook from the GOP's endless witch hunt. Remember the cruise missile bombings that were ridiculed by the GOP and Congress's steadfast refusal to allow any combat troops to be placed into harm's way of any kind.
Clinton kept bin Laden on the run and under microscope with daily security briefings. Then Clinton's transition team and Richard Clarke tried to warn Duhbya the importance of pursuing al Qaeda and following up the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole with strong action. But Bush was eager to show his contempt for Clinton by turning Clinton's priority list upside down and ignoring everything. It was time to kick back, talk about an "ownership society" while slashing taxes for the rich, and clear a little brush for the press. As the warnings were loud enough in the summer of 2001 for Ashcroft to change his flying pattern, Bush stayed on vacation while the infamous August 6 daily briefing was ignored and Ashcroft even turned down a security funding increase on 9/10/01. The rest is history too.
Submitted by Factchecker on Sun, 2008/08/24 - 12:28pm.
Fact checking the 1980 election returns shows that 49 out of 50 States thought that Carter had done a horrible job too. Wow! Imagine that. Carter was a terrible President and the quicker you accept what history has already shown the better off you will be instead of this childish and ignorant rants of no knowledge of history or the Constitution.
Wow! Imagine that. Carter was terrible because historical legacies are determined by a voter poll from the same era! If you really want to judge performance by static approval ratings, which is really stupid, why stop at election results? I guess Reagan was crappier than Clinton, and Duhbya's low ratings confirm what we all know about him. Historians may even agree, but what do they know? We should just go by popularity from the time under study.
Submitted by redmondkr on Sun, 2008/08/24 - 1:24pm.
Thank God we had a level headed Commander in Chief piloting the Ship of State on that awful day.
His first decision was to . . . . no wait.
The first decision was to spend another seven minutes or so on the pet goat. Some books just can't be put down no matter what's going on about you.
His second decision was . . . .
To get the heck out of Dodge and hide out at a military base. Poop had it these nuts were also out to deprive the country of their Commander in Chief by flying into the White House where they expected him to be.
It must have been the third important decision and maybe Cheney made it. A no-fly zone was declared for everyone in the whole country. All air travel would immediately cease with the exception, of course, of the President, the Vice President and the bin Laden family.
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Sun, 2008/08/24 - 4:03pm.
Your post is a great example of why Liberals will never be the main force in America. The criticisms you offer show a 100% ignorance of anything that a President must do (regardless of who it is) or what structures are in place should there be an attack. Where you to educate yourself in any at all you would learn that, irrespective of who the actual person of President is, that when there is an attack that the US Secret Service has the authority to do whatever the heck it wants to protect the President and no one, and I mean no one, can second guess them. What happened that day was the implementation of a plan that would have been executed if Clinton had been President and you damn well better hope that there always is such a plan.
I think the President showed a calm manner in light of being told disturbing news, it is what a leader does instead of acting stupid.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Submitted by redmondkr on Sun, 2008/08/24 - 7:36pm.
What happened that day was the implementation of a plan that would have been executed if Clinton had been President and you damn well better hope that there always is such a plan.
Somehow I doubt that part about flying the bin Ladens around would have been a part of the Secret Service's great plan.
I doubt too that they instigated the continuance of the pet goat visit.
And how fortuitous that Mr. Bush had installed an EPA head who would assure all those Ground Zero cleanup workers that they had nothing to fear from airborne dust at the site. This at a time when the DOE facility where I worked had already begun treating fiberglass insulation as though it were just as hazardous to human health as asbestos and required a full-face respirator to clean up a broken fluorescent lamp.
Submitted by Factchecker on Sun, 2008/08/24 - 10:04pm.
I think the President showed a calm manner in light of being told disturbing news,...
The only thing that makes this even funnier is to imagine what you'd say if we were talking about the same response by a president who happened to be a Democrat.
...it is what a leader does instead of acting stupid.
With Duhbya, how can there possibly be a difference?!
If you up=down Republicans now want to invert the definitions of "stupid" and "smart" along with peace, victory, and all the other bullshit bromides the GOP uses to do its lying, then I guess I'm really, really ready for a "stupid" president for a change.
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Mon, 2008/08/25 - 7:30am.
Who said I was a Republican? That is your faulty assumption as I am an Independent, who happens to see beyond these tired and nonsensical party political lines. The single best thing that could ever happen to the USA would be to ban all political parties, as Jefferson originally wanted. You are absolutely no different than someone like Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. None of you know the first thing of what it means to be an American.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
"None of you know the first thing of what it means to be an American."
Please tell us the first thing, daddy. Don't spank us for not agreeing with you, daddy.
Anyhow, I'd still like to know at what point I am supposed to take up arms against the government. What's the trigger? What's the limit? When do we start killing people? I've got to know.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Submitted by Factchecker on Mon, 2008/08/25 - 7:42am.
None of you know the first thing of what it means to be an American.
You are quickly becoming a self-parody. You actually sound like my nutty, hate radio fueled uncle, who also claims to hate the GOP but really loves them compared to liberals. You haven't learned how to use a computer, have you, Ted?
Submitted by Andy Axel on Mon, 2008/08/25 - 8:18am.
I am an Independent, who happens to see beyond these tired and nonsensical party political lines.
An independent who hates those goddamnedliberals!!!1!!one!!!!!! and blames them for everything gone wrong.
Such independent thought on display.
____________________________
Tom Eagleton was exactly the kind of VP candidate that Muskie or Humphrey would have chosen: a harmless, Catholic, neo-liberal Rotarian nebbish from one of the border states who presumably wouldn't make any waves.
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Mon, 2008/08/25 - 5:12pm.
No, you are the one stating that you hate them and using profanity to do it, I only stated that I do not care for political parties.
I assign blame for where it is due and unlike you and your Liberal friends as well as Limbaugh and a great many on the Right, am not concerned with blame assignment but solutions. Politics is about compromise, the art of the possible, and arriving at an acceptable solution to a given political problem. However, Americans are not seeing that out of their leaders, out of Liberals and Conservatives because everyone is more concerned with blame assignment instead of solution fixing.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
That curly thing at the end of that sentence is called a "question mark." Joseph Bailey juxtaposed Liberals complaining about the current administration's desecration of our rights with the suggestion that those rights are secured by bearing arms. I asked for clarification with the question you quoted. He ignored me. Elsewhere, I suggested that separation of powers is the first line of defense against government abusing our rights, but he ignored that too.
Like him, you tend to ignore questions that challenge your prejudices. It seems to be a consistent trait of conservatives, ignoring facts, perspectives and questions that do not fit in their fantasyland.
To wit: Why have the private contractors who trained our soldiers to torture people never been investigated?
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Mon, 2008/08/25 - 5:07pm.
Those separation of powers are guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The ability of the Citizenry to keep the federal government from becoming a dictatorship is how we stay free, not quaint speeches.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Those separation of powers are guaranteed by the Second Amendment
Can you provide a few examples of times in American history when a President kept Congress in line by exercising his Second Amendment rights? When a court kept the President in line by bearing arms against him? Has anyone ever been shot during such a guarantee?
I really have no idea how you think our government works, and asking you to clarify in no way qualifies as hate speech. You seem to think the answer to any power struggle or civil rights affront is a gun.
Submitted by JosephBaileyOne on Mon, 2008/08/25 - 5:14pm.
There is as much "hate speech" on The Daily Kos, Huffington Post, and others as Talk Radio. Both sides and mediums are full of speech that serves no purpose except to foment hate and ill-will. Ridding America of both of them would do wonders for this country.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Submitted by Andy Axel on Mon, 2008/08/25 - 11:10pm.
Hm. I suppose that's his idea of a "solution."
____________________________
Tom Eagleton was exactly the kind of VP candidate that Muskie or Humphrey would have chosen: a harmless, Catholic, neo-liberal Rotarian nebbish from one of the border states who presumably wouldn't make any waves.
Why have the private contractors who trained our soldiers to torture people never been investigated?
Maybe because it never happened? Maybe because it's just more lib crap spewed by the likes of John Murtha? He's a good one to bash our military. I'd march him out again and get him to push for your investigation, Rikki.
Um, you are saying that military contractors don't train American troops how to use torture techniques? I suggest you check out last month's Vanity Fair, where Christopher Hitchens, ardent war supporter, gets waterboarded by the company in North Carolina who actually does this work as part of their contract to provide SERE and interrogation training.
You would shit yourself and beg God for death if someone waterboarded you. That's the point. It's torturous.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Submitted by sugarfatpie on Mon, 2008/08/25 - 3:22pm.
Instead of trying to dismiss an argument- offering no real counter-argument- why don't you look it up. Come back with some data and try to refute what Rikki is saying? If you can't do that, you don't deserve your highschool diploma, assuming you have one.
Dismissing my question is pretty much the same as ignoring it, but not exactly, so thanks for trying. You are wrong. There is, in fact, a discrete and correct answer to my question.
You probably lack the guts to read the Hitchens article or to dig deeper into how torture became a common and widespread practice in our military prisons, so here is a quote from the Vanity Fair article or, more precisely, from the contract he had to sign before being subjected to waterboarding:
"“Water boarding” is a potentially dangerous activity in which the participant can receive serious and permanent (physical, emotional and psychological) injuries and even death, including injuries and death due to the respiratory and neurological systems of the body"
That explicitly contradicts what you said about the practice. You said it causes no known mental or physical harm. You are wrong.
Submitted by redmondkr on Mon, 2008/08/25 - 5:09pm.
In the absence of cafkia, I think I can declare without fear of (serious) objection that William Gibbs McAdoo was very probably aquainted with a cup ancestor.
But I suppose one could just say that Carter was the worst we could ever possibly have in office and say it's indisputable because he lost an election. Sounds like the Fair and Balanced conclusion of an "independent." After flip-flopping, McSame loves tax cuts for the rich too.
Sorry, pie, I don't have 50 words. You've convinced me. Your analysis illustrates why the Dems have won 7 of the last 10 Presidential elections.....oh, wait a minute, it's the other way around. How can that be? Ignorant electorate? Hanging chads? Swift boats and Willie Hortons?Misery index?
Now look what you've made me do....I'm not pissed, I've exceeded 50 words and didn't even have to count. You've brightened my day!
Somewhat thoughtful, though you still don't have the cojones to take an argument on head on. Pretty wimpy on the whole.
-Sugarfatpie (AKA Alex Pulsipher)
"X-Rays are a hoax."-Lord Kelvin
First, it is not the job of the American President to "fix the economy" since we don't live in such a system. No, it is the job of the American President to fulfill their Constitutional duty.
Second, anyone alive under the years of former President Carter, knows that he did a horrible job as President, and I would like to know when did 21% inflation become great?
What should be the real story is whether or not the President, along with Congress, will do their Constitutionally mandated jobs?
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
I agree that the president has a somewhat limited impact on economic growth, but the same cannot be said for deficit spending. The data pretty well confims that Republican presidents have a policy ("Starve the Beast"), of spending money we don't have.
Link...
Works well as an electoral strategy too. Spend us into crippling debt while the Repub is in there, then saddle the next Dem administration with the burden of paying it off.
-Sugarfatpie (AKA Alex Pulsipher)
"X-Rays are a hoax."-Lord Kelvin
goofy posts here. The idea that the President controls the economy is beyond simplistic. What was the point of this?
it is the job of the American President to fulfill their Constitutional duty
I don't recall hearing you defend the Constitution while Bush and Cheney have been wiping their asses on it. Is there some other venue where you have been demanding that Miers, Bolton and Rove honor Congressional subpoenas, and I've just missed it?
Where the hell did you pull that phoney stat? If these numbers are correct, in only one month during Carter's term did the rate of inflation barely exceed 13% and most months it was closer to half that. The reasons are many and have almost nothing to do with Carter. He inherited high inflation and high oil prices during a time when our economy was much more sensitive to oil shocks like the one that started two presidents before under infamous GOP crook Nixon. (He also inherited a broken military after Nixon finally lost the war in Vietnam. I won't blame Ford.)
At least Carter appointed a fed chair who finally killed high inflation in just a few years, which resulted in the cure incorrectly being credited to Reagan.
the poster was confusing inflation rates with interest rates, which did briefly top 20% late in the Carter Administration.
I hold to the hopelessly minority opinion that assigning either credit or blame to a president for economic conditions is incorrect in and of itself. The president has only slightly more influence over the economy than he does over who wins the world series. Of course, it is also the single most significant factor in the decision making process of many, many presidential voters. But they run on their "economic policies" and they thump their chests taking credit for every bit of economic good news they can dig up, so I guess they deserve to be judged by something over which they have practically no control. If they would take credit for the weather, let them be judged by the storms.
The one really important thing the president actually does get to do to influence the economy is nominate the chairman of the federal reserve board. Carter nominated Paul Volcker, and for that he gets major kudos. Reagan nominated Greenspan and, again, major kudos. Clinton kept him. Kudos there as well. GW nominated Bernanke and the jury's still out on that.
Double checked myself. Inflation rates hit 20% during Reagan's term as part of Volcker's strategy to mitigate the damage done by runaway inflation under Burns/Nixon. Carter's innocent there as well.
Your re-writing of history is almost comical Fact-boy. Carter was a great and decisive leader, not the bitter, America-hating partisan he appears to be today.
So, you would also accept the thesis that Ronald Regan had shit little to do with "winning" the Cold War? Good.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Carter was the single worst President that the United States of America has ever seen or ever will see, hands down. The ineptness of his Administration goes beyond words and America's terrorism started with his total inability to deal with the one issue, as Commander-in-Chief, he was supposed to, protecting Americans, i.e., the Embassy incident. The man showed no moral, no legal, no nothing in leadership in handling the crisis that was the real start date of the War on Terror, 4 November 1979. Carter's 100% ineptness with handling Iran, was the impetus for the former USSR to invade Afghanistan and we all know how that ended up.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Your hypothesis requires you to link the Iranian Islamic Revolution to Al Qaeda. Please demonstrate this linkage keeping in mind that Al Qaeda is a Sunni (Wahabist) movement sworn to destroy apostate Shias.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
No, I suggest you learn history. Prior to 9/11, Iranian-backed Shiite militias had been responsible for more American deaths than all other terrorists organizations combined. Furthermore, what Carter did NOT do put into play the precedent that the USA would NOT respond to terrorism. Add in that bombing Libya in 1986 was the only real response to terrorism in the 1980's, then one can see how what Carter did NOT do started a policy that even Reagan followed. In fact, Reagan's failure to respond in a decisive and no-holds-barred way in 1983, after the murder of 243 US Marines, in Beirut under the flag of the UN on a peacekeeping mission, is perhaps worse than Carter's mess of 1979. However, at least Reagan was willing to attack the communist system and see it brought down whereas Carter was impotent in every way.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Give me a break. If you want to play teleological games with Iran, then the barracks bombing in 1983, which was arguably not terrorism in that the Marines were a foreign military unit engaged in nightly combat with local forces during their stay, was the fault of President Eisenhower, the CIA and their backing of the Mossadegh overthrow in 1953. As for the UN auspices of the mission in Beirut, what are you talking about? The US was part of a separate force in Lebanon called the Multinational Force, with Britain, Italy, etc. The UN mission was made up of forces from places like Fiji and operated in Southern Lebanon. The Rules of Engagement were not dictated by the UN, but by the Weinberger Doctrine (see the Ferraro Report and Eric Hammel's recentish book).
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Carter was the single worst President that the United States of America has ever seen or ever will see, hands down.
Warren Harding will be happy to hear that.
I don't know who wrote this thesis, Met, but it's bullshit. On the contrary, Reagan had a vision and choked the Soviet Union to death. Of course, the left mocked him, what with his "evil empire" talk and visions of "star wars." He brought them to their knees. Old cold warriors like JFK and Nixon would have been proud. (In fact, Nixon was before he died in 93.)
P.S. Reagan's dead, man. He can't hurt you anymore. No need to bash him.
Actually, research over the last 20 years has shown that no policy that Reagan enacted had any meaningful effect on the Soviet economy. I can give you a reading list a mile long if you'd like. The revisionist history of the American Right (AKA The Reagan Cultists) would love to squint and see the Soviet Union collapsing in the face of our mighty Capitalist Super Powers, but it didn't. The wheels started coming off in the late 1940s. It was a slow burn. One of the myths is that Reagan's military production scheme kneecapped the Soviet economy. Actually, in the late 1980s, it was on an uptick because of devolution of production decisions to middle managers who were allowed to set their own quotas (who did those managers become or work for after 1991? Hrm....). It's export volume and reserves of hard currency actually expanded. Selling MIGs to India is good business. There's a reason a lot of old pensioners pine for the Soviet Union days: They didn't shiver in their flats, waiting for death.
It was a terrible authoritarian regime, but Ronald Reagan did nothing to change that. The Russian people did (though Putin started to stink of it a long time ago).
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
A good read on this is The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere by Emmanuel Todd. Pretty much describes how the whole thing fell apart. The English translation came out in 1979. Reagan showed up just in time to take credit for the inevitable.
The Soviet Union fell on George HW Bush's watch. Some conservatives try to credit Reagan for causing the fall, but his terms were over before he could "take credit for it."
One of the weirder aspects of the effort to give credit to Reagaon is the argument that increased defense spending pushed the Soviet economy over the edge. Contemporaneously, liberal Democrats (word choice made to exclude such folks as Sam Nunn) bashed Reagan for busting the budget with increased defense spending. However, pulling the federal appropriations figures (1978 - 1985) shows that the defense spending curve actually took its first serious upswing during the Carter Administration and the growth slope actually reduced fairly steadily under Reagan.
The reasons are fairly clear when viewed from a military perspective. Immediately following our withdrawal from Vietnam, the military had a surplus of period weapons. The draft was discontinued and military size was briefly reduced as a result. This combination of events temporarily depressed the need for increased defense spending. However, the military also engaged in a complete reevaluation of its practices, weapons, requirements, and capabilities following Vietnam. The result was the push for our current "modern" military with the heavy reliance on airpower, instantaneous communications, high battlefield situational awareness, and inter-service coordination. Most of the "first generation" practices and the hardware to support them were initiated during the Carter Administration. The one "major" conventional weapons platform begun under Reagan was the restart of the troubled B1 Bomber project that Carter had cancelled. It should also be noted that the ATB program was initiated under Carter with Northrop beating out Lockheed for the B2 Spirit early in Reagan's 1st term.
Yet Reagan gets credit/blame for increased defense spending on the one end and credit for the fall of the Soviet Union on the back end. Go figure
And yeah, I'm just picking a nit.
You desecrate the Constitution every time you intentionally "gloss over" truth (lie) to protect your phony politics. Let's start, shall we?
If it goes beyond words, then obviously you're thinking with your ignorant, biased gut instead of a brain. The problems with Iran go back many decades and he was just the guy it finally fell on. How would you have dealt with the hostage crisis? Needless to say, at your hands all of them would have been killed. IIRC (without googling), NONE were killed.
You have (EDIT: almost) no grasp of knowledge. EDIT: Wow, you DID ding Reagan, if only slightly. You're still badly confused with cause and effect.
Fact checking the 1980 election returns shows that 49 out of 50 States thought that Carter had done a horrible job too. Wow! Imagine that. Carter was a terrible President and the quicker you accept what history has already shown the better off you will be instead of this childish and ignorant rants of no knowledge of history or the Constitution.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
How much of Carter's impotence, such that it was in your view, was due to:
1) Inheriting a broken military from Republicans?
2) Inheriting a military that had no equipment or training to fight in deserts?
3) Presiding over a country that after the Vietnam fiasco had no stomach for military rebuilding?
The military was rebuilding under Carter, though. A lot more than Duhbya was doing to fight al Qaeda before 9/11.
Who was in charge of Congress during those years? The same Congress that is responsible for funding the military.
Bush was in office for just a few months when 9/11 happened, and Clinton has signed an order in 1998, authorizing the hunting down of bin Laden-why was he not caught? Why after what he did in January, 1999, did Clinton not assign all due diligence to find the man?
Those are questions that could be asked but like with the immature rants about Bush, they miss the point entirely. Hunting down terrorists is what Americans, NOT Republicans or Democrats do. Also, it is not an easy task when a government, like America's, tried to work within some legal framework and the terrorist-criminals do not do that.
The one and only responsible party for 9/11 are the 19 terrorists who did it and NO ONE ELSE. Neither Bush is at fault or Clinton but the killers that perpetrated their crime as well as any government or nation on this planet that gave them help.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
This is the apologists' justification for torture*.
Which is why we're at war with Saudi Arabia... um... whoops.
* Article VI: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land
Treat it with care.
____________________________
"It's gettin' so a businessman can't expect no return from a fixed fight. Now, if you can't trust a fix, what can you trust?"
Please stop doing what Liberals and their total inability to argue a single position of any kind do. I was NOT referring to torture. Instead, I was discussing how that a terrorist/terrorist network is not restrained by anything in their pursuit of death, destruction, and violence.
If several black men engage in criminal acts, are all blacks a bunch of thugs? If several Hispanics sell drugs, are all of them drug dealers? Keep that in mind when you rip Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
So it's was a crime? Since when do we use the combined force of US military arms to combat a crime?
Also, I notice you don't answer questions put to you. I'd still like to know at what point is it OK to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights and rise against the US government? What conditions would have to be in place?
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
It was both a crime and an act of war, they are usually one and the same. Pearl Harbor is a great example of it too.
The use of the Second Amendment is necessary to keep this nation free, not some pretty little saying from a Liberal. It has been and always will be the ability of having weapons that keep any nation free. When the US government would suspend the US Constitution, declare martial law, so forth, that is when the citizenry would need their weapons. The problem with Liberals is that they are so utterly clueless to what Liberty is and how to defend it that they live with blinders on. Liberals rant about government abuse of rights but fail, completely, to see that the Right to Bear Arms is how and why those rights even exist.
Listen to the screams of desecration from Liberals about what the current President is doing to our rights. Well, how in the world do you think you guard those rights?
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Listen to the screams of desecration from Liberals about what the current President is doing to our rights. Well, how in the world do you think you guard those rights?
So instead of calling for impeachment, Liberals should assassinate Cheney?
"When the US government would suspend the US Constitution, declare martial law, so forth, that is when the citizenry would need their weapons."
So the Newark riots in 1968 were justified. Cool. And I guess we should rise up tomorrow and begin a civil insurrection in the face of the Patriot Act and FISA. When they kick down your front door, how you gonna come? Who's with me?
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
and I recognize this Liberal vs. Conservative soundbyte festival is just a spectator sport for me, but this was a darned good question:
The answer to that question was delivered far more eloquently than my humble powers could address by Thomas Jefferson:
Outside of the unnecessary aside to a "Creator," I think that about says it the way I believe it. Some basic rights of humans are inherent and may not be abridged or unduly constrained by any Power. It's the notion that some rights belong to humans by virtue of being human and are not merely gifts permitted us by a ruling authority. But some would say the nature of rights is about how many imaginary beings can dance on the blunt end of a sewing instrument.
Good one. Next you'll be saying global warming is not happening because Gore has a big house.
You don't have to look back as far as Harding. Look no farther than the present tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Buchanan probably ranks as number two.
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On the National Register of Hysterical Places
Because he was hamstrung by a Congress out to impeach him. Every move he made was criticized with accusations that he was trying to invent a national security crisis to get off the hook from the GOP's endless witch hunt. Remember the cruise missile bombings that were ridiculed by the GOP and Congress's steadfast refusal to allow any combat troops to be placed into harm's way of any kind.
Clinton kept bin Laden on the run and under microscope with daily security briefings. Then Clinton's transition team and Richard Clarke tried to warn Duhbya the importance of pursuing al Qaeda and following up the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole with strong action. But Bush was eager to show his contempt for Clinton by turning Clinton's priority list upside down and ignoring everything. It was time to kick back, talk about an "ownership society" while slashing taxes for the rich, and clear a little brush for the press. As the warnings were loud enough in the summer of 2001 for Ashcroft to change his flying pattern, Bush stayed on vacation while the infamous August 6 daily briefing was ignored and Ashcroft even turned down a security funding increase on 9/10/01. The rest is history too.
Wow! Imagine that. Carter was terrible because historical legacies are determined by a voter poll from the same era! If you really want to judge performance by static approval ratings, which is really stupid, why stop at election results? I guess Reagan was crappier than Clinton, and Duhbya's low ratings confirm what we all know about him. Historians may even agree, but what do they know? We should just go by popularity from the time under study.
Thank God we had a level headed Commander in Chief piloting the Ship of State on that awful day.
His first decision was to . . . . no wait.
The first decision was to spend another seven minutes or so on the pet goat. Some books just can't be put down no matter what's going on about you.
His second decision was . . . .
To get the heck out of Dodge and hide out at a military base. Poop had it these nuts were also out to deprive the country of their Commander in Chief by flying into the White House where they expected him to be.
It must have been the third important decision and maybe Cheney made it. A no-fly zone was declared for everyone in the whole country. All air travel would immediately cease with the exception, of course, of the President, the Vice President and the bin Laden family.
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Your post is a great example of why Liberals will never be the main force in America. The criticisms you offer show a 100% ignorance of anything that a President must do (regardless of who it is) or what structures are in place should there be an attack. Where you to educate yourself in any at all you would learn that, irrespective of who the actual person of President is, that when there is an attack that the US Secret Service has the authority to do whatever the heck it wants to protect the President and no one, and I mean no one, can second guess them. What happened that day was the implementation of a plan that would have been executed if Clinton had been President and you damn well better hope that there always is such a plan.
I think the President showed a calm manner in light of being told disturbing news, it is what a leader does instead of acting stupid.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Somehow I doubt that part about flying the bin Ladens around would have been a part of the Secret Service's great plan.
I doubt too that they instigated the continuance of the pet goat visit.
And how fortuitous that Mr. Bush had installed an EPA head who would assure all those Ground Zero cleanup workers that they had nothing to fear from airborne dust at the site. This at a time when the DOE facility where I worked had already begun treating fiberglass insulation as though it were just as hazardous to human health as asbestos and required a full-face respirator to clean up a broken fluorescent lamp.
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The only thing that makes this even funnier is to imagine what you'd say if we were talking about the same response by a president who happened to be a Democrat.
With Duhbya, how can there possibly be a difference?!
If you up=down Republicans now want to invert the definitions of "stupid" and "smart" along with peace, victory, and all the other bullshit bromides the GOP uses to do its lying, then I guess I'm really, really ready for a "stupid" president for a change.
Who said I was a Republican? That is your faulty assumption as I am an Independent, who happens to see beyond these tired and nonsensical party political lines. The single best thing that could ever happen to the USA would be to ban all political parties, as Jefferson originally wanted. You are absolutely no different than someone like Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. None of you know the first thing of what it means to be an American.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
"None of you know the first thing of what it means to be an American."
Please tell us the first thing, daddy. Don't spank us for not agreeing with you, daddy.
Anyhow, I'd still like to know at what point I am supposed to take up arms against the government. What's the trigger? What's the limit? When do we start killing people? I've got to know.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
You are quickly becoming a self-parody. You actually sound like my nutty, hate radio fueled uncle, who also claims to hate the GOP but really loves them compared to liberals. You haven't learned how to use a computer, have you, Ted?
An independent who hates those goddamned liberals!!!1!!one!!!!!! and blames them for everything gone wrong.
Such independent thought on display.
____________________________
Tom Eagleton was exactly the kind of VP candidate that Muskie or Humphrey would have chosen: a harmless, Catholic, neo-liberal Rotarian nebbish from one of the border states who presumably wouldn't make any waves.
No, you are the one stating that you hate them and using profanity to do it, I only stated that I do not care for political parties.
I assign blame for where it is due and unlike you and your Liberal friends as well as Limbaugh and a great many on the Right, am not concerned with blame assignment but solutions. Politics is about compromise, the art of the possible, and arriving at an acceptable solution to a given political problem. However, Americans are not seeing that out of their leaders, out of Liberals and Conservatives because everyone is more concerned with blame assignment instead of solution fixing.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Now where were we? Oh yea, we were talking about right wing hate speech on talk radio and Fox News and WNOX......................................
That curly thing at the end of that sentence is called a "question mark." Joseph Bailey juxtaposed Liberals complaining about the current administration's desecration of our rights with the suggestion that those rights are secured by bearing arms. I asked for clarification with the question you quoted. He ignored me. Elsewhere, I suggested that separation of powers is the first line of defense against government abusing our rights, but he ignored that too.
Like him, you tend to ignore questions that challenge your prejudices. It seems to be a consistent trait of conservatives, ignoring facts, perspectives and questions that do not fit in their fantasyland.
To wit: Why have the private contractors who trained our soldiers to torture people never been investigated?
A fascinating development is those same contractors training gun advocates.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Those separation of powers are guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The ability of the Citizenry to keep the federal government from becoming a dictatorship is how we stay free, not quaint speeches.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
Those separation of powers are guaranteed by the Second Amendment
Can you provide a few examples of times in American history when a President kept Congress in line by exercising his Second Amendment rights? When a court kept the President in line by bearing arms against him? Has anyone ever been shot during such a guarantee?
I really have no idea how you think our government works, and asking you to clarify in no way qualifies as hate speech. You seem to think the answer to any power struggle or civil rights affront is a gun.
There is as much "hate speech" on The Daily Kos, Huffington Post, and others as Talk Radio. Both sides and mediums are full of speech that serves no purpose except to foment hate and ill-will. Ridding America of both of them would do wonders for this country.
The U.S. Constitution, it is what makes us free and makes us American. Let's treat it as such and with care.
"Ridding America of both of them would do wonders for this country."
So much for your care for free speech and the Constitution. You are wait too easy. Go away.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Hm. I suppose that's his idea of a "solution."
____________________________
Tom Eagleton was exactly the kind of VP candidate that Muskie or Humphrey would have chosen: a harmless, Catholic, neo-liberal Rotarian nebbish from one of the border states who presumably wouldn't make any waves.
Maybe because it never happened? Maybe because it's just more lib crap spewed by the likes of John Murtha? He's a good one to bash our military. I'd march him out again and get him to push for your investigation, Rikki.
Um, you are saying that military contractors don't train American troops how to use torture techniques? I suggest you check out last month's Vanity Fair, where Christopher Hitchens, ardent war supporter, gets waterboarded by the company in North Carolina who actually does this work as part of their contract to provide SERE and interrogation training.
You would shit yourself and beg God for death if someone waterboarded you. That's the point. It's torturous.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Here is the Vanity Fair link...
Link...
Instead of trying to dismiss an argument- offering no real counter-argument- why don't you look it up. Come back with some data and try to refute what Rikki is saying? If you can't do that, you don't deserve your highschool diploma, assuming you have one.
-Sugarfatpie (AKA Alex Pulsipher)
"X-Rays are a hoax."-Lord Kelvin
Maybe because it never happened?
Dismissing my question is pretty much the same as ignoring it, but not exactly, so thanks for trying. You are wrong. There is, in fact, a discrete and correct answer to my question.
You probably lack the guts to read the Hitchens article or to dig deeper into how torture became a common and widespread practice in our military prisons, so here is a quote from the Vanity Fair article or, more precisely, from the contract he had to sign before being subjected to waterboarding:
"“Water boarding” is a potentially dangerous activity in which the participant can receive serious and permanent (physical, emotional and psychological) injuries and even death, including injuries and death due to the respiratory and neurological systems of the body"
That explicitly contradicts what you said about the practice. You said it causes no known mental or physical harm. You are wrong.
In the absence of cafkia, I think I can declare without fear of (serious) objection that William Gibbs McAdoo was very probably aquainted with a cup ancestor.
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A couple more observations on the Death of Trickle Down economics:
But I suppose one could just say that Carter was the worst we could ever possibly have in office and say it's indisputable because he lost an election. Sounds like the Fair and Balanced conclusion of an "independent." After flip-flopping, McSame loves tax cuts for the rich too.
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