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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/13/09
11/13/09
10/13/09
10/13/09
10/13/09
09/03/09
Your huddled masses
Yearning to breathe free
And I will hold them to my bosom
And explain to them my plea.
I will end the corporation
And the greedy business too
You will come to rely on government
For everything you do.
I am President of the United States
Monarch, Ruler, King
I will protect you from yourselves
And you won't have to do a thing.
We will make the cars, control your health care and we'll run the banks.
But as to the question of abortion, it's above my pay rank.
We're tough because we care for you and your freedom stands in our way.
How can we embrace you if you're able to turn away?
And in a time of trouble
Do not fear and do not fret.
For I your lord and savior,
Bring you Obamanet.
It doesn't really matter what the Constitution has to say,
Because nobody in government has read it anyway.
09/02/09
""The Internet is a "fearsome awesome problem" and it would have been better if it had never been invented.""
Oh and then there is this little gem from him :
"…it would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years." -David Rockefeller, Bilderberg Meeting, Germany 1991.
[uncensored.co.nz]
09/02/09
There are legitimate complaints, honest arguments, reasoned critiques, and valid fears. And then there is imaginary paranoid crack-pottery. I'm afraid this was a part of that last group.
09/02/09
"When people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." -Thomas Jefferson
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/02/09
Then in the middle this forum devolved into a health care debate where anecdotal evidence was thrown around like a fact and then we were suddenly invaded by face huggers and Aliens.
Rather than throwing around my own opinions, I have a couple of questions to ask:
1) Before you decide if this bill, or any bill that grants extensions on governmental powers, is a good thing, ask if you would want a GOP president and GOP congress to have these powers (Or vice versa if you lean more conservative).
2) Is peace and security more important than liberty and Freedom?
3) Would a business without government regulation be better or worse for the population and environment?
4) Neglecting the fact that most countries in the world have price caps on medical procedures, why is the US Health Care system the most expensive?
Just some thoughts.
09/02/09
1) Yes. Because I read it as a matter of the power to coordinate not the power to do. And I believe that the executive could have (and would have) claimed the power to do with or without this bill (regardless of political party.)
2) No. But I get the counter-arguments.
3) Worse. And I don't get the counter-arguments.
4) You got a few days?
09/02/09
I still don't know that the President or any government official needs access to private networks. If its a dire threat you call the company and they pull the plug.
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/02/09
More importantly? I would have said "No shit the executive branch should be able to coordinate public and private efforts in the case of an emergency. It's their job."
Hell, I wish post-Katrina the Bush Admin had taken control and coordinated anything other than delivering trailers to the wrong place at the wrong time.
09/03/09
If you choose to live in tornado alley and a tornado hits your house why should someone in a different state be forced to pay for it?
If you choose to live on a fault line and an earthquake destroys your house why should someone in a different state be forced to pay for it?
If you choose to live below sea level and water destroys your house why should someone in another state be forced to pay for it?
People know the risks and yet they still choose to live there. It should be up to the state and local levels along with charities and donations to fix the mess. Why should someone who chooses to live in a state that's above sea level be forced to pay for it?
A lot of people don't even want to move back to New Orleans, so why should I (who lives in a different state) be forced to pay for a place people don't even want to live?
Also, if "Bush is stealing oil in Iraq" is true, and he's no longer in office, but we're still in Iraq, is Obama now stealing oil from Iraq?
09/03/09
And why? Because it is consistent with my ideals of Justice, Ethics, Patriotism, Democracy, Federalism, Christianity, personal morals, humanism, decency, and what it means to be an American. We look out for each other. It's the social contract. We could abandon each other like we are Burma or China or the Sudan. Or we can take seriously that we are One Nation,Under God Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for All. One Nation. One People. It's what my founding fathers taught me. It was why they abandoned the Articles of Confederation for the Constitution. It is what my ancestors and my family fought and died for.
If you don't believe in the Social Contract, that is fine. We simply disagree about what it means to be a Citizen of a Nation.
And the rest of your little ditty (now at the top of the page) is nonsense, and you know it. The folks in government may disagree on how to interpret the Constitution, but most of them take it very, very seriously. On both sides of the aisle.
I apologize for the unusually blatant sincerity and sentimentality. It's late, and my guard is down.
09/03/09
*passes out on desk*
09/03/09
I guess I believe that it's more Christian, more moral, more humane, more decent, and more American, for an individual to willingly donate his time or money to a cause rather than having the Government force him too. We do look out for each other, and we do so without the need for legislated theft.
We are citizens of one nation, but there is also a reason why we are still broken up into states with separate state and local governments. If one state says you can carry concealed weapons, and another state says you can't and that's important to you, you can move. But whenever the Federal government imposes something you have just lost that freedom to move... everyone is equally screwed.
The federal government should not be running our health care, or the auto industry, or most of the things it runs. That is not the job of the federal government. Shouldn't this stuff be left up to the states and the people within those states?
09/03/09
And I didn't say none of those things are important to me. I just said the federal government should stay out of most of it, and leave it to the states, local governments, and the people. I don't think the federal government should be involved in education. But should the federal government be involved in making interstate highways? Yes.
09/03/09
09/02/09
If George W. Bush had tried any of this bozo crap, people here would be whipped up into a frenzy over it. Well, it's time people grew up and realized that government power grabs are to be fought, regardless of whether or not 'your guy' or 'your party' wants them.
09/02/09
09/02/09
and how is the above saying he cannot seize control?...what it doesn't say is as important as what it does.
09/02/09
However, if you are going to base your opinion on what is not said, and therefore on what does not exist, well, there's not really any way for me to counter that, is there? So, kudos. By citing directly to your own imagination, you do, in fact, win.
09/02/09
So, apparently, you blindly trust the government to have good intentions with regard to enforcing a vague law that gives blanket power. If you had any knowledge of world history or even US history, you'd be quite leery of such things.
As a citizen, you should question the government no matter what 'party' controls it. Otherwise, you're nothing but a slave-in-waiting.
09/02/09
A couple of notes, however. (1) I am making the idiotic assumption that this edited paragraph is not the entire bill. (2) Actually, powers not explicitly granted are not granted by default. Statutory interpretation is not, in fact, governed by the "OMG! Mom didn't say we couldn't principle."
Does that mean that an executive couldn't choose to "interpret" the law to do whatever the hell they want to do? Of course not, but they don't need this bill, which contains limiting language, to do that. They could just yell "National Security! National Security!" and do it anyway.
They do that with Wars all the time, even when they don't have authority to do so.
But thank you for calling me a slave-in-waiting. It was the first time I'd ever been called that, and I live for new experiences.
09/02/09
@92BuickLeSabre: I consider myself a quite conservative (please don't ban me), and I have to say, you nailed that shit right on the head, my friend.
09/02/09
09/02/09
You are being both too cynical and not cynical enough.
@gaiking: See above. And while your concerns about the 2nd Amendment may be valid on their own terms, they are not actually at all analogous to this case from a Constitutional Law perspective. Unless your point is merely that lawyers will always argue that the law means what they are paid to argue that it means, in which case - see above.
09/02/09
09/02/09
"Well, I apologize for my obvious lack of knowledge about anything."
I didn't say that. In fact, I hear that your knowledge of outer Mongolian limericks is unrivaled on any gadget blog.
It is your blind trust of the government that is what I am questioning. That blind trust indicates a severe lack of understanding of both civics and history.
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/02/09
(I would've thought that much was obvious.)
(Actually, technically, I was trying to promote the person I was responding to by promoting the thread - like the way this response approved your comment - but the same logic applies.)
09/02/09
and btw, Sean Fallon - really taking credit for that photochop up there? Looks like it took about 2 minutes to slap together. Adding the signature probably took the most time.
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/02/09
09/02/09