CC wrote:

What rights were taken away?


My right to privacy with the NSA wire tapping through AT&T and any
other
provider, Be it telephone, internet, or any other way of ease dropping
they wanted.

There is no "right to privacy" specifically listed in the Constitution. The
Supreme Court HAS found a right to privacy in the "penumbras and emanations"
of the 4th Amendment. Interestingly, this right to privacy extends only to
sexual acts in the three cases the court has ruled on:

* Contraction,
* Abortion, and
* Deviant homosexual behavior.



And it was not just only all US - overseas. Next is their ability to
deny your rights to due process
if they "think" or want to label you as a terrorist, doesn't matter if
you are or not, just what they want
to say you are to be able to restrain you

Correct. "Due process" applies only to criminals or those charged with
criminal offenses ("In all criminal proceedings..."

The folks at Gitmo are not criminals. They have committed no crimes and they
are not being charged with crimes. As such, they are not entitled to the
benefits that criminals get: lawyers, trials, indictments, witnesses, etc.

In a similar example, hundreds of thousands of German and Italian POWs were
incarcerated, on US soil, during WW2, many of whom were US citizens (usually
dual citizenship)! Not one got a trial, lawyer, indictment by a grand jury,
or anything else along those lines.

Not that the folks at Gitmo are POWs - they are "unlawful enemy combatants."
And you're right: the president has the unfettered ability, under his
Article II powers and the customary rules of war, to designate anyone, even
you, as an "unlawful enemy combatant." There is nothing the Congress or the
courts can do about it. When this exact question was presented, some years
ago, to a court, the judge said the only recourse was to replace the
president at the next election.

Remember this: People who make war on the US are not criminals and should
not be treated as such.

Robatoy wrote:
On May 1, 9:40 pm, charlieb wrote:
Tim Daneliuk wrote:
The tragedy here is that the Hopeium smokers still don't get what an incredible
menace this guy is. It's what happens when the adults don't pay attention
and drunks, drug addicts, and intellectual children control the vote...
As opposed to the borderline illiterate, Born Again, ex- cocaine and
alcohol
abuser, oblivious of the world around him, borderline moron, Deer In
The
Headlights guy that the REAL Americans voted into the office last
time?

Or the Air Head that the same folks rallied behind as the vice
presidential
candidate for their party? (I've got plenty of foreing policy
experience
- because I can SEE Russia from parts of MY state).

MY reaction to Sarah Palin is the desire to slap her on the ass and
ask her "WHO's your daddy?"
I don't care what anybody says, she is totally schtuppable.

She's yummy.

--
See Nad. See Nad go. Go Nad!
To reply, eat the taco.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbqboyee/

Steve Turner wrote:
Robatoy wrote:
On May 1, 9:40 pm, charlieb wrote:
Tim Daneliuk wrote:
The tragedy here is that the Hopeium smokers still don't get what an
incredible
menace this guy is. It's what happens when the adults don't pay
attention
and drunks, drug addicts, and intellectual children control the vote...
As opposed to the borderline illiterate, Born Again, ex- cocaine and
alcohol
abuser, oblivious of the world around him, borderline moron, Deer In
The
Headlights guy that the REAL Americans voted into the office last
time?

Or the Air Head that the same folks rallied behind as the vice
presidential
candidate for their party? (I've got plenty of foreing policy
experience
- because I can SEE Russia from parts of MY state).

MY reaction to Sarah Palin is the desire to slap her on the ass and
ask her "WHO's your daddy?"
I don't care what anybody says, she is totally schtuppable.

She's yummy.


You guys are being unfair. The Dems have Nanci Pelosi and Diane Feinstein ... how
much better could it be?

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

Bill wrote:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

Like Bush really cared about the Constitution while taking away our rights
over the last 8 years
CC
Please name one right "Bush took away from us". I was no fan of W's,
but a lot of what gets blamed on him was either: a) Already set in
precedent courtesy of the insane "War On Drugs", "War On Poverty",
"War On Illiteracy", and so on (each of which gave the nosy Feds
more and more power over the individual) or b) A removal of "rights"
from foreign invaders, none of who have a legitimate claim to our
protections under civil or criminal law.


How about the suspension of Habeas Corpus or the expansion of the

Where this happened to US citizens, it was wrong (Hamdi). But this was
very much the exception situation. But foreign invaders do not have
Habeas rights. This is a fiction manufactured by the drooly left
because they refused to acknowledge terror attacks on our soil as
being military in their essence and wanted to treat them like
conventional legal/criminal problems.


Border Patrol's powers in the "Constitution-Free Zone"? I live more
than a thousand miles from Mexico, but I am subject to arbitrary stop
and search because I live in this zone. We don't need to go into the

You have always been subject to "search and seizure" when/if law
enforcement has probable cause. This is not new under W.

issue of torture, do we?

Not when people like you: a) Manufacture definitions of "torture" to suit
your political agenda, b) Ignore the many precedents in U.S. history
that have used forceful interrogations, and c) Insist on conferring
privileges to non-uniformed combatants that are not significantly
protected by any treaty to which the U.S. is party (to the point where
they are better protected than the U.S. citizenry).


I suppose that's not a violation of human
rights.

We are not obligated by any treat to extend "human rights" to people
who make war in plain clothes against our civilians. They fall in the
general category of spy or saboteur and even the Geneva Conventions
we've signed have almost no protections for such people. Again, the
legal/social contract that defines our nation is not available to
people who do not participate in it. You cannot come here wearing no
visible form of military clothing or markings, attack our citizens,
and then scream for habeas and other due process rights. Oh ... wait
.... yes you can, just ask a liberal who will do what they always do in
such situtions: apologize and make up "rights" out of thin air ...


Again I ask. What rights did YOU lose under W?
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

Morris Dovey wrote:
Mark & Juanita wrote:

That is one of the most asinine statements that the left mutters.
What exactly made things so bad from 2000 to 2008?

Hmm, I was in San Jose debugging silicon for a cable modem and working
with a bunch of H1B types from south Asia when Chairman Greenspan
announced his intention to "cool the tech sector". Over the next month I
watched more than 2500 newly incomeless families move out of my
apartment complex before I joined them.

It was a bit wrenching for the H1B folks too, they had to take their
jobs back to New Delhi and Mumbai where they worked harder and for less,
but /they/ had the jobs and we did not.

Suggested research: who voted for the legislation that allowed US
companies to replace currently employed Americans with less qualified
(but much cheaper) Asians?

Since when is any of this the business of government?


The fact you got to keep more of your money instead of paying it in
taxes? EVERYBODY got a tax cut, not just the wealthy few despite the
continued mouthings of the left to the contrary.

You may not have noticed, but those tax cuts didn't do much for the
folks whose jobs went swimming across the Pacific. Of course, neither
did we pay taxes on no income.

Then why did the real average income of the US worker grow during these
years (as they did on Clinton, Bush 41, and Reagan before)?
Peering through a microscope tends to obscure the larger picture here.

It seems likely that this trend of rising real income will stop with
our current President.


The fact that the US actually took the fight to terrorists and
terrorist supporting countries after 40 years of letting crap happen
and then issuing strongly worded condemnations?

A masterful stroke that. An invasion plan without a success contingency.

Ever see a war that went according to plan? (Read Von Clausewitz.)

We succeeded in cutting the European petroleum supply by something like
20%, which trashed European economies and resulted in making the

The European economies were well on their way to being trashed
courtesy of they addiction to socialism ... much like the current
idiot in office here.

Europeans dependent on Gazprom (but it did produce a windfall in wealth
and clout for the Russian Federation) which persists to this day.

Are you arguing this was intentional?


On the grounds that it was a US theater of action, we closed the door to
European (and other) countries who wanted to help with the much-needed
reconstruction, and handed out non-competitive construction contracts to
US firms with close ties to top administration officials.

Here we agree. Then again, this has almost always been the case
in post-war reconstruction, it's merely a matter of degree.
Hardly uniquely a W problem. But just wait till you see what
the current swine in congress have in store. They're setting up
to do much the same thing with their phony environmental and energy
programs which will made fools like Gore very wealthy. It's the
same old cronyism, just from the other party.


AIUI, Baghdad /still/ doesn't have electricity and a working water
supply 24/7, and the US has managed to kill many times more innocents
than Al Qaida. Which reminds me to ask: "Where /is/ Osama Bin Laden
days? Will he be vacationing in the Swat Valley area?"

So the only justification for going to war would have been to kill
Bin Laden? We fail or succeed on the basis of single person being
taken out? Breathtaking.


I wish you could tell me (and I could believe) that what we did has put
an end to "letting crap happen". AFAICT, we just stirred it around and,
in the process, got a lot on ourselves.

No, we did something that the Islamists had never seen befo We took
the fight to them, on their turf, on our terms. It scared a good
many of them into acting better. Witness the phone call from
Quadaffi to Berluscone shortly after the Iraq invasion and Libya's
subsequent rehabilitation. I'd say you have a very simple understanding
of the region, dynamics, and consequences of this war. Then again,
so do most Americans given the journalistic malpractice that has
been performed for eight years.


The fact that the US had the lowest unemployment rates in history
during that time, dipping below the 5% that was considered to be full
employment?

Super-size that, sir?

A stupid public gets stupid results. At no time during W's time
in office did I, or anyone I know (from teenage to retirement
age) work in a job like this ... and I travel a bunch and meet
plenty of people. But you're going to see *lots* of this in
the upcoming years as the ObamaMessiah and his drooling acolytes
systematically destroy the capitalist engine that creates real
wealth.


The fact that the US economy recovered spectacularly following 9/11
despite the shock upon our financial system?

Did you notice how many Yuan that took? Spectacular, indeed!

I think you vastly misunderstand global economies.


Or was it simply the fact that France hated the US during that time?
Hint: they still ain't happy with us despite the fact that The One
was elected.

If the French came to hate us, it was /after/ October 2001. I suspect
that if they caused /our/ petroleum supply to drop by as much as we
caused theirs to drop, we wouldn't be very happy with them (or with
paying a /lot/ more than $4/gallon for gas).

Awfully unreasonable of them, don't you think?



--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

Steve Turner wrote:
Robatoy wrote:
On May 1, 9:40 pm, charlieb wrote:
Tim Daneliuk wrote:
The tragedy here is that the Hopeium smokers still don't get what an
incredible
menace this guy is. It's what happens when the adults don't pay
attention
and drunks, drug addicts, and intellectual children control the
vote...
As opposed to the borderline illiterate, Born Again, ex- cocaine
and
alcohol
abuser, oblivious of the world around him, borderline moron, Deer
In
The
Headlights guy that the REAL Americans voted into the office last
time?

Or the Air Head that the same folks rallied behind as the vice
presidential
candidate for their party? (I've got plenty of foreing policy
experience
- because I can SEE Russia from parts of MY state).

MY reaction to Sarah Palin is the desire to slap her on the ass and
ask her "WHO's your daddy?"
I don't care what anybody says, she is totally schtuppable.

She's yummy.


You guys are being unfair. The Dems have Nanci Pelosi and Diane Feinstein
... how much better could it be?

Oh God with that I'm off to the Woodworkers Show in Ontario CA
--
"You can lead them to LINUX
but you can't make them THINK"
Running Mandriva release 2008.0 free-i586 using KDE on i586
Website Address http://rentmyhusband.biz/

HeyBub wrote:

So what? To the victor belongs the spoils.

....was as far as I needed to read to realize that you have nothing
credible to say to me - nor to anyone who believes in "Liberty and
Justice for all".

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

Bill wrote:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/


Like Bush really cared about the Constitution while taking away our
rights over the last 8 years
CC

Please name one right "Bush took away from us". I was no fan of W's,
but a lot of what gets blamed on him was either: a) Already set in
precedent courtesy of the insane "War On Drugs", "War On Poverty",
"War On Illiteracy", and so on (each of which gave the nosy Feds
more and more power over the individual) or b) A removal of "rights"
from foreign invaders, none of who have a legitimate claim to our
protections under civil or criminal law.


How about the suspension of Habeas Corpus

What suspension would that be, the one that the Supreme Court slapped down?

Note--Lincoln tried that one too, with the same result.

or the expansion of the
Border Patrol's powers in the "Constitution-Free Zone"? I live more
than a thousand miles from Mexico, but I am subject to arbitrary stop
and search because I live in this zone.

So how many times have you or anybody else you know actually been stopped
and searched?

We don't need to go into the
issue of torture, do we?

Go for it.

I suppose that's not a violation of human
rights.

Flying planes into buildings is a violation of human rights too you know.

HeyBub wrote:
CC wrote:

What rights were taken away?


My right to privacy with the NSA wire tapping through AT&T and any
other
provider, Be it telephone, internet, or any other way of ease
dropping they wanted.

There is no "right to privacy" specifically listed in the
Constitution. The Supreme Court HAS found a right to privacy in the
"penumbras and emanations" of the 4th Amendment. Interestingly, this
right to privacy extends only to sexual acts in the three cases the
court has ruled on:
* Contraction,
* Abortion, and
* Deviant homosexual behavior.

And yet they seem to have this crazy notion that wiretapping needs a court
order. I guess it's not because of a "right to privacy". Maybe it's in the
part about being "secure in their persons and papers"?

And it was not just only all US - overseas. Next is their ability to
deny your rights to due process
if they "think" or want to label you as a terrorist, doesn't matter
if you are or not, just what they want
to say you are to be able to restrain you

Correct. "Due process" applies only to criminals or those charged with
criminal offenses ("In all criminal proceedings..."

The folks at Gitmo are not criminals. They have committed no crimes
and they are not being charged with crimes. As such, they are not
entitled to the benefits that criminals get: lawyers, trials,
indictments, witnesses, etc.
In a similar example, hundreds of thousands of German and Italian
POWs were incarcerated, on US soil, during WW2, many of whom were US
citizens (usually dual citizenship)! Not one got a trial, lawyer,
indictment by a grand jury, or anything else along those lines.

Uh, POWs are covered by international law, that does not permit them to be
tortured or otherwise mistreated.

Not that the folks at Gitmo are POWs - they are "unlawful enemy
combatants." And you're right: the president has the unfettered
ability, under his Article II powers and the customary rules of war,
to designate anyone, even you, as an "unlawful enemy combatant."

No, he doesn't. He tried that one and the Supreme Court slapped him down.
The statute got rewritten to specifically exclude any US citizen from the
authoriity of the "military commissions" that decide who is and is not an
"unlawful enemy combatant".

There is nothing the Congress or the courts can do about it.

And yet they did do something about it.

When
this exact question was presented, some years ago, to a court, the
judge said the only recourse was to replace the president at the next
election.

Probably the same idiot in DC who upheld the handgun ban on the basis that
the Constitution did not apply to DC because it was not a state.

Remember this: People who make war on the US are not criminals and
should not be treated as such.

When someone declares war let us know.

On Fri, 01 May 2009 21:50:49 -0700, Mark & Juanita wrote:

Welcome to Soviet America...



Yep, exactly the reason that the founders established the limits on
government that were set in the Constitution. Now this bunch wants to
circumvent those limits and too many of the American people are willing
to go along with that.

One can always depend on you and Tim for a bit of unintended hilarity.
Bush used the Bill of Rights for toilet paper for 8 years and you
defended him. Now that a Democrat is in office ...



--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Morris Dovey wrote:
Mark & Juanita wrote:

That is one of the most asinine statements that the left mutters.
What exactly made things so bad from 2000 to 2008?
Hmm, I was in San Jose debugging silicon for a cable modem and working
with a bunch of H1B types from south Asia when Chairman Greenspan
announced his intention to "cool the tech sector". Over the next month I
watched more than 2500 newly incomeless families move out of my
apartment complex before I joined them.

It was a bit wrenching for the H1B folks too, they had to take their
jobs back to New Delhi and Mumbai where they worked harder and for less,
but /they/ had the jobs and we did not.

Suggested research: who voted for the legislation that allowed US
companies to replace currently employed Americans with less qualified
(but much cheaper) Asians?

Since when is any of this the business of government?

An excellent question - worth looking into and worthy of thoughtful
consideration.

The fact you got to keep more of your money instead of paying it in
taxes? EVERYBODY got a tax cut, not just the wealthy few despite the
continued mouthings of the left to the contrary.
You may not have noticed, but those tax cuts didn't do much for the
folks whose jobs went swimming across the Pacific. Of course, neither
did we pay taxes on no income.

Then why did the real average income of the US worker grow during these
years (as they did on Clinton, Bush 41, and Reagan before)?
Peering through a microscope tends to obscure the larger picture here.

You may have seen that in Illinois - but I didn't see it next door here
in Iowa.

At this point I have to wonder if a mortgage broker is a "worker"...

It seems likely that this trend of rising real income will stop with
our current President.

I'll stick my neck out and opine that a great many trends were impacted
by a financial system based on false premise and empty promise.

I'll resist the impulse to quibble over "real".

The fact that the US actually took the fight to terrorists and
terrorist supporting countries after 40 years of letting crap happen
and then issuing strongly worded condemnations?
A masterful stroke that. An invasion plan without a success contingency.

Ever see a war that went according to plan? (Read Von Clausewitz.)

Would you care to project what /any/ of the great strategists would say
about any plan that made no provision for victory?

We succeeded in cutting the European petroleum supply by something like
20%, which trashed European economies and resulted in making the

The European economies were well on their way to being trashed
courtesy of they addiction to socialism ... much like the current
idiot in office here.

A non-sequitur. They may have been, but that removes neither the
causality nor the effect of US actions.

Europeans dependent on Gazprom (but it did produce a windfall in wealth
and clout for the Russian Federation) which persists to this day.

Are you arguing this was intentional?

I wasn't but, since you make intention a part of the picture, I'm now
inclined to wonder just how palsy-walsy George and Vlad really were...

On the grounds that it was a US theater of action, we closed the door to
European (and other) countries who wanted to help with the much-needed
reconstruction, and handed out non-competitive construction contracts to
US firms with close ties to top administration officials.

Here we agree. Then again, this has almost always been the case
in post-war reconstruction, it's merely a matter of degree.
Hardly uniquely a W problem. But just wait till you see what
the current swine in congress have in store. They're setting up
to do much the same thing with their phony environmental and energy
programs which will made fools like Gore very wealthy. It's the
same old cronyism, just from the other party.

I may agree with you - but not until I've seen the results and
considered the full context (which hasn't yet played out).

It may, indeed, be the same old cronyism - but I'll encourage you to
remember that /you/ bear the cost, regardless of who practices it.

AIUI, Baghdad /still/ doesn't have electricity and a working water
supply 24/7, and the US has managed to kill many times more innocents
than Al Qaida. Which reminds me to ask: "Where /is/ Osama Bin Laden
days? Will he be vacationing in the Swat Valley area?"

So the only justification for going to war would have been to kill
Bin Laden? We fail or succeed on the basis of single person being
taken out? Breathtaking.

That's what I thought. It makes about as much sense as going to war to
kill Saddam Hussein. Actually, I think it may make /more/ sense.

I wish you could tell me (and I could believe) that what we did has put
an end to "letting crap happen". AFAICT, we just stirred it around and,
in the process, got a lot on ourselves.

No, we did something that the Islamists had never seen befo We took
the fight to them, on their turf, on our terms. It scared a good
many of them into acting better. Witness the phone call from
Quadaffi to Berluscone shortly after the Iraq invasion and Libya's
subsequent rehabilitation. I'd say you have a very simple understanding
of the region, dynamics, and consequences of this war. Then again,
so do most Americans given the journalistic malpractice that has
been performed for eight years.

My very simple understanding is probably a consequence of having lived
in the mideast for only ten years. Perhaps if I'd been there longer I
might have developed different understandings more like yours - but I
seriously doubt it.

The fact that the US had the lowest unemployment rates in history
during that time, dipping below the 5% that was considered to be full
employment?

Super-size that, sir?

A stupid public gets stupid results. At no time during W's time
in office did I, or anyone I know (from teenage to retirement
age) work in a job like this ... and I travel a bunch and meet
plenty of people. But you're going to see *lots* of this in
the upcoming years as the ObamaMessiah and his drooling acolytes
systematically destroy the capitalist engine that creates real
wealth.

I have seen what you say you have not. I'm inclined to believe that you
either weren't paying adequate attention or exercised selective vision.

The fact that the US economy recovered spectacularly following 9/11
despite the shock upon our financial system?

Did you notice how many Yuan that took? Spectacular, indeed!

I think you vastly misunderstand global economies.

That's certainly a possibility - but I do make a point of informing
myself as best I can and drawing my conclusions from that information.
When the available information is BS, I adjust the conclusions.

The BS factor has been excessively high for too many years, and whether
the Obama administration has a good recovery strategy or not, we'll all
be experiencing the consequences of that failure of integrity for quite
a while.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

On May 2, 10:19*am, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Steve Turner wrote:
Robatoy wrote:
On May 1, 9:40 pm, charlieb wrote:
Tim Daneliuk wrote:
The tragedy here is that the Hopeium smokers still don't get what an
incredible
menace this guy is. *It's what happens when the adults don't pay
attention
and drunks, drug addicts, and intellectual children control the vote....
* * As opposed to the borderline illiterate, Born Again, ex- cocaine and
alcohol
* * abuser, oblivious of the world around him, borderline moron, Deer In
The
* * Headlights guy that the REAL Americans voted into the office last
time?

* * Or the Air Head that the same folks rallied behind as the vice
presidential
* * candidate for their party? *(I've got plenty of foreing policy
experience
* * - because I can SEE Russia from parts of MY state).

MY reaction to Sarah Palin is the desire to slap her on the ass and
ask her "WHO's your daddy?"
I don't care what anybody says, she is totally schtuppable.

She's yummy.

You guys are being unfair. *The Dems have Nanci Pelosi and Diane Feinstein ... how
much better could it be?

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -
Tim Daneliuk * *
PGP Key: * * * *http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

It does not surprise me that you would find Pelosi and Feinstein at
par with Yummy Palin.
Palin is way yummier than those two. In fact, Palin is the
yummiest..'cept, of course, for Ruth Bader-Ginsberg and Janet "Waco
Whacko" Reno... and that perpetual wet dream of mine Anne "Spindle-
limbs" Coulter... although I do wish she'd have that adams apple taken
out.

But Sarah Palin..as she reaches for the top shelf of her colouring
book library...in her jammies....showing just a wee bit of plumbers'
crack...hair all in a mess... NO talking...*deep sigh*

"HeyBub" wrote:

So what? To the victor belongs the spoils. The Euro-weenies didn't help with
the war (Britan excepted).

And Spain, Italy, Slovakia, Lithuania, Romania, Estonia, Czech Republic,
Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Latvia, Norway, Hungary, Netherlands, Portugal,
Poland, Ukraine. Then there's Iceland (two whole troops, and I'm not sure you
would include them in "Euro-weenies". -- Doug

Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Fri, 01 May 2009 21:50:49 -0700, Mark & Juanita wrote:

Welcome to Soviet America...



Yep, exactly the reason that the founders established the limits on
government that were set in the Constitution. Now this bunch wants to
circumvent those limits and too many of the American people are willing
to go along with that.

One can always depend on you and Tim for a bit of unintended hilarity.
Bush used the Bill of Rights for toilet paper for 8 years and you
defended him. Now that a Democrat is in office ...



A Democrat that simply wants to dispense with all limits on power
imposed by the Constitution ...

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

Mark & Juanita wrote:

The rights of contract law in which a judge can set aside a contract and
force a lender to alter the *principal* amount of a loan. Any idea how
hard it would be to get a mortgage in the future if this happens? (Good
news is that even the Senate wasn't stupid enough to go along with this and
defeated it today 51-45 -- but that 45 is scary).

You do know this exists in current bankruptcy law? That mortgages on personal
residences are an exception? And that the defeated bill in the Senate merely
removed that exception? -- Doug

Morris Dovey wrote:
Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Morris Dovey wrote:
Mark & Juanita wrote:

That is one of the most asinine statements that the left mutters.
What exactly made things so bad from 2000 to 2008?
Hmm, I was in San Jose debugging silicon for a cable modem and working
with a bunch of H1B types from south Asia when Chairman Greenspan
announced his intention to "cool the tech sector". Over the next month I
watched more than 2500 newly incomeless families move out of my
apartment complex before I joined them.

It was a bit wrenching for the H1B folks too, they had to take their
jobs back to New Delhi and Mumbai where they worked harder and for less,
but /they/ had the jobs and we did not.

Suggested research: who voted for the legislation that allowed US
companies to replace currently employed Americans with less qualified
(but much cheaper) Asians?

Since when is any of this the business of government?

An excellent question - worth looking into and worthy of thoughtful
consideration.

The fact you got to keep more of your money instead of paying it in
taxes? EVERYBODY got a tax cut, not just the wealthy few despite the
continued mouthings of the left to the contrary.
You may not have noticed, but those tax cuts didn't do much for the
folks whose jobs went swimming across the Pacific. Of course, neither
did we pay taxes on no income.

Then why did the real average income of the US worker grow during these
years (as they did on Clinton, Bush 41, and Reagan before)?
Peering through a microscope tends to obscure the larger picture here.

You may have seen that in Illinois - but I didn't see it next door here
in Iowa.


I travel *all* over the country. Some places are better off, some
worse, but the *average* nation wide rose under W as had under previous
administrations back to Reagan (but not Carter, another piece of
political pus).

At this point I have to wonder if a mortgage broker is a "worker"...

I wonder if they ever were.


It seems likely that this trend of rising real income will stop with
our current President.

I'll stick my neck out and opine that a great many trends were impacted
by a financial system based on false premise and empty promise.

I'll resist the impulse to quibble over "real".

I just meant in terms of actual buying power as opposed to phony-baloney
money being printed by the Hopeium smokers.


The fact that the US actually took the fight to terrorists and
terrorist supporting countries after 40 years of letting crap happen
and then issuing strongly worded condemnations?
A masterful stroke that. An invasion plan without a success contingency.

Ever see a war that went according to plan? (Read Von Clausewitz.)

Would you care to project what /any/ of the great strategists would say
about any plan that made no provision for victory?

You are missing a very important bit of context here. Historically,
"victory" meant the annihilation or at least the decimation of the
enemy to utterly neuter not just their military, but their infrastructure,
social underpinnings, economy, and borders. Witness any of the major
wars of the past century for many trenchant examples. It is iron that
W tried to fight a very narrow and limited engagement - almost no a war
but a surgical removal - and in so doing now gets criticized by the
armchair quarterbacks because he didn't plan neatly enough for the
needs of the people he was trying to leave alone. There is simply no
way to do this. Either you blast the enemy into non-existence or you're
faced with a messy cleanup after the fact. Go read the history of Germany
and Japan in the immediate post-war period. Many of the issues (and worse)
you grouse about were there in spades. Would you similarly condemn Truman/FDR
they way you have W on the same grounds?


We succeeded in cutting the European petroleum supply by something like
20%, which trashed European economies and resulted in making the

The European economies were well on their way to being trashed
courtesy of they addiction to socialism ... much like the current
idiot in office here.

A non-sequitur. They may have been, but that removes neither the
causality nor the effect of US actions.

There is no question the US actions had European consequences. Maybe
next time they'll be a bit more anxious to help and minimize the duration
of the whole business.


Europeans dependent on Gazprom (but it did produce a windfall in wealth
and clout for the Russian Federation) which persists to this day.

Are you arguing this was intentional?

I wasn't but, since you make intention a part of the picture, I'm now
inclined to wonder just how palsy-walsy George and Vlad really were...

I see no evidence for it. That means it will be "news" on ABC, NBC, and
CBS tonight. See what you've done.


On the grounds that it was a US theater of action, we closed the door to
European (and other) countries who wanted to help with the much-needed
reconstruction, and handed out non-competitive construction contracts to
US firms with close ties to top administration officials.

Here we agree. Then again, this has almost always been the case
in post-war reconstruction, it's merely a matter of degree.
Hardly uniquely a W problem. But just wait till you see what
the current swine in congress have in store. They're setting up
to do much the same thing with their phony environmental and energy
programs which will made fools like Gore very wealthy. It's the
same old cronyism, just from the other party.

I may agree with you - but not until I've seen the results and
considered the full context (which hasn't yet played out).

Gore has already parlayed a net worth of $2M into $200M. This
is a guy who got worse grades in college than W, who hasn't the
slightest understanding of the science and complexities underlying
his pet hobby horse, but has a wealth of connections in D.C. Watch
and see what happens when crap-in-trade gets passed.


It may, indeed, be the same old cronyism - but I'll encourage you to
remember that /you/ bear the cost, regardless of who practices it.

I don't like it in any case.


AIUI, Baghdad /still/ doesn't have electricity and a working water
supply 24/7, and the US has managed to kill many times more innocents
than Al Qaida. Which reminds me to ask: "Where /is/ Osama Bin Laden
days? Will he be vacationing in the Swat Valley area?"

So the only justification for going to war would have been to kill
Bin Laden? We fail or succeed on the basis of single person being
taken out? Breathtaking.

That's what I thought. It makes about as much sense as going to war to
kill Saddam Hussein. Actually, I think it may make /more/ sense.

I wish you could tell me (and I could believe) that what we did has put
an end to "letting crap happen". AFAICT, we just stirred it around and,
in the process, got a lot on ourselves.

No, we did something that the Islamists had never seen befo We took
the fight to them, on their turf, on our terms. It scared a good
many of them into acting better. Witness the phone call from
Quadaffi to Berluscone shortly after the Iraq invasion and Libya's
subsequent rehabilitation. I'd say you have a very simple understanding
of the region, dynamics, and consequences of this war. Then again,
so do most Americans given the journalistic malpractice that has
been performed for eight years.

My very simple understanding is probably a consequence of having lived
in the mideast for only ten years. Perhaps if I'd been there longer I
might have developed different understandings more like yours - but I
seriously doubt it.

OK, then I'll defer to your understanding of the area. Explain to me
what the US could or should have done in the face of:

- Material support for terrorists (people who make war on civilian
non combatants to make a point) by Yemen, Syria, Saudi, Libya, Iran,
Iraq, ... (I'm sure I'm missing some).

- Over 25 years of U.S. citizens being targeted by the aforementionined
on planes, in hotels/bars, and most recently, in our own country.

You cannot fight all the above at once. So you start to take them out
one at a time. IMHO (and that's all it is), Iraq was chosen primarily
because it is such a strategic lever in putting military pressure on
Iran. Taking out the 5th largest standing army in the world and the
dictator that ran it was just icing on the cake.


The fact that the US had the lowest unemployment rates in history
during that time, dipping below the 5% that was considered to be full
employment?

Super-size that, sir?

A stupid public gets stupid results. At no time during W's time
in office did I, or anyone I know (from teenage to retirement
age) work in a job like this ... and I travel a bunch and meet
plenty of people. But you're going to see *lots* of this in
the upcoming years as the ObamaMessiah and his drooling acolytes
systematically destroy the capitalist engine that creates real
wealth.

I have seen what you say you have not. I'm inclined to believe that you
either weren't paying adequate attention or exercised selective vision.

The people I see working at the bottom of the economic food chain are
one of 1) Very young, just starting to work, 2) Very old,
supplementing their retirement income, 3) Very new (immigrants) for
who such jobs are an onramp to better things down the road, or ...
gasp ... 4) Very lazy/stupid who wish not to take much or any
responsibility for themselves.


The fact that the US economy recovered spectacularly following 9/11
despite the shock upon our financial system?

Did you notice how many Yuan that took? Spectacular, indeed!

I think you vastly misunderstand global economies.

That's certainly a possibility - but I do make a point of informing
myself as best I can and drawing my conclusions from that information.
When the available information is BS, I adjust the conclusions.

The BS factor has been excessively high for too many years, and whether
the Obama administration has a good recovery strategy or not, we'll all
be experiencing the consequences of that failure of integrity for quite
a while.


Fair enough, so long as you stipulate the primary "failure of integrity"
was that of the Congress and the regulators who respectively created
the environment that caused the problem in the first place and failed to
provide anything resembling adequate oversight. The simplest things were
overlooked: Connie The Crackwhore cannot afford a $150K house on her welfare
"income". Harry The Hedgefund Manager is breaking the law when he trades
naked short options. But, reliably, the same weasels that are calling for
all of us to make "sacrifices" are the once who a pumping up the size and scope
of government like never before. Reid, Pelosi, Schumer, Conyers, Durbin,
Frank, and all of the rest of the political rectal parasites must never, ever
be expected to trim back *their* ambition. It is for the rest of us to do.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

On May 2, 1:22*pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Fri, 01 May 2009 21:50:49 -0700, Mark & Juanita wrote:

Welcome to Soviet America...

* Yep, exactly the reason that the founders established the limits on
government that were set in the Constitution. *Now this bunch wants to
circumvent those limits and too many of the American people are willing
to go along with that.

One can always depend on you and Tim for a bit of unintended hilarity. *
Bush used the Bill of Rights for toilet paper for 8 years and you
defended him. *Now that a Democrat is in office ...

A Democrat that simply wants to dispense with all limits on power
imposed by the Constitution ...


And your buddy Bush did nothing to expand his powers? Your other dear
friend Cheney didn't either?
You often makes some sort of convoluted sense in your arguments,
sometimes you sound like a blithering idiot.
This is one of those times that you can't possibly believe what you
are saying.... me thinks you're merely stirring the pot.

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

Gore has already parlayed a net worth of $2M into $200M. This

That should read "$2M into $100M" ...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

Robatoy wrote:
On May 2, 1:22 pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Fri, 01 May 2009 21:50:49 -0700, Mark & Juanita wrote:
Welcome to Soviet America...
Yep, exactly the reason that the founders established the limits on
government that were set in the Constitution. Now this bunch wants to
circumvent those limits and too many of the American people are willing
to go along with that.
One can always depend on you and Tim for a bit of unintended hilarity.
Bush used the Bill of Rights for toilet paper for 8 years and you
defended him. Now that a Democrat is in office ...
A Democrat that simply wants to dispense with all limits on power
imposed by the Constitution ...


And your buddy Bush did nothing to expand his powers? Your other dear
friend Cheney didn't either?
You often makes some sort of convoluted sense in your arguments,
sometimes you sound like a blithering idiot.
This is one of those times that you can't possibly believe what you
are saying.... me thinks you're merely stirring the pot.


So your argument goes like this: "Since W made at least questionable,
and in some cases flatly wrong calls on the power of government,
the ObamaMessiah should be given a pass when he wants to do 10x that."

Bush was wrong about some things. Obama has been an order of magnitude
worse in 100 days than Bush was in 8 years. Here's just one scorecard
(there are many others):

Bush - $28B Bear-Stearns
The Hopeium Dealer - $4 *Trillion* and counting in just a bit under 4 months.





--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

Tim Daneliuk wrote in news:f7duc6-c301.ln1
@ozzie.tundraware.com:

Go read the history of Germany
and Japan in the immediate post-war period.

Yes. Indeed. The police were kept intact. Civilian and political order
were restored. Industrial capacity etc were brought back. Something
like the Marshall plan.

In Iraq? The political and civilian authorities disappeared. There was
no control over the people anymore whatsoever. Ammunition dumps were
unguarded. People were thrown out of jobs with their former employers.
On top of the inability of the B administration to get the very, VERY
diverse political streams cooperating. No wonder with religious, as well
as ethnic rivalries like shiites and sunnis and kurds, ottomans, arabs
all vying for maximum power they ever had as individual (and probably
murderous) groups.

Until the fictitious entity Iraq organizes itself as something where each
groups has enough say to its own satisfaction, there won't be peace
unless imposed upon by some organization (either the US or NATO or the
baathists (spelling?)).

Next time, please remember that in order to be victor, you either need to
utterly destroy everything and all, or you have to have both a
governmental structure and a rebuilding effort to appease the locals.

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

Douglas Johnson wrote:
Mark & Juanita wrote:

The rights of contract law in which a judge can set aside a
contract and force a lender to alter the *principal* amount of a
loan. Any idea how hard it would be to get a mortgage in the future
if this happens? (Good news is that even the Senate wasn't stupid
enough to go along with this and defeated it today 51-45 -- but that
45 is scary).

You do know this exists in current bankruptcy law? That mortgages on
personal residences are an exception? And that the defeated bill in
the Senate merely removed that exception?

I remember discovering that some provisions of the "Patriot Act" that had
people up in arms had been signed into law by Nixon.

Both parties are ****ing us equally. They just operate under different
agendas.

cm


"LRod" wrote in message
...

My nomination for Obama to place on the Supreme Court?

Hillary Clinton.

Just think of the permanent apoplexy that would throw Rush,
Sean, Bill O'R, Ann, and any of your conservative
acquaintances into.

Any old body can be SecState. Heck, get Madeline Albright
back. This is too good an opportunity to miss.

You heard it here first.


Let the sniping begin.



--
LRod

Master Woodbutcher and seasoned termite

Shamelessly whoring my website since 1999

http://www.woodbutcher.net
http://www.normstools.com

Proud participant of rec.woodworking since February, 1997

email addy de-spam-ified due to 1,000 spams per month.
If you can't figure out how to use it, I probably wouldn't
care to correspond with you anyway.

"J. Clarke" wrote:

I remember discovering that some provisions of the "Patriot Act"
that had people up in arms had been signed into law by Nixon.

Nuf said.

Lew

"HeyBub" wrote:


The Left and the Right talk past each other: The Left sees all the issues as
crimes and constitution. The Right sees the issues as war problems. The 4th,
5th, and 6th Amendments deal with "crimes" as in "In all criminal
proceedings..." The Left asserts that detainees and everybody else are
entitled to constitutional protections.

The 5th amendment starts "No person shall..." so you'd think it applies to more
than just criminals. One of the independent clauses continues " nor be deprived
of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..." No crime
required.

For example, we incarcerate people all the time who are
not "criminals:" Civil contempt, juveniles, illegal aliens, contagious
disease carriers, and more.

All subject to habius and judicial review, no?


* The people at Gitmo are "unlawful enemy combatants" in the same category
as spies, guerrillas, saboteurs, fifth-columnists, etc. Under the customary
rules of war, they can be summarily executed.

Who says they are "unlawful enemy combatants"? Regardless, they are entitled
to judicial process under the Geneva Convention, which covers all persons in an
occupied country or combat zone, just solely combatants. You're right, it does
not have to be the same process as US citizens. Except for a few, we have
failed to provide them any judicial process.

No, they no longer can be summarily executed. They need at least a drumhead
court martial.

-- Doug

SNIP

Who says they are "unlawful enemy combatants"? Regardless, they are entitled

The U.S. government asserts this because they: a) Engaged in combat upon
our civilians and our military troops, and b) Did so with meeting any of
the GC qualifications to be considered a protected class of military POW:
They didn't wear identifiable uniforms being the most obvious breach.

to judicial process under the Geneva Convention, which covers all persons in an
occupied country or combat zone, just solely combatants. You're right, it does


Wrong, wrong, wrong, and more wrong. The only element of the GC that
applies to them is that there has to be a formal finding of their
status. Once they have been identified as not being a member of any of
the classes protected by the GCs that we've signed (civilian refugees,
uniformed military, POWs, etc.) we have NO legal obligation to them
under the GCs nor do they have any right or claims upon us under the
GCs. You might actually try reading the GCs to see how this works. As
a point of interest, Reagan properly refused to sign additional later
GCs that *would* have protected non-uniformed, non-identifiable
combatants.

This is a prime example of why its impossible to have a reasoned discussion
with the Bush-haters. They invent rights that never existed, fabricate
spurious legal obligations, and generally make it up as they go along - much
like they do when interpreting the US Constitution. In actual fact, there
are a number of good arguments to be made for extending some level of civil
rights to unlawful combatants, but legality is one of them.


not have to be the same process as US citizens. Except for a few, we have
failed to provide them any judicial process.


Wrong, wrong, wrong, and more wrong. There have been formal military tribunals
in GTMO with counsel present to act exclusively in defense of the accused.
This is not something your arch-nemesis W invented. Military tribunals in
such circumstances have a long and studied history in the United States.
Again, a history book might be in order. Note that I'm not saying I love this
as a way to handle the problem, merely that it is lawful and has precedent.


No, they no longer can be summarily executed. They need at least a drumhead
court martial.

-- Doug


--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

Robatoy wrote:
But Sarah Palin..as she reaches for the top shelf of her colouring
book library...in her jammies....showing just a wee bit of plumbers'
crack...hair all in a mess... NO talking...*deep sigh*

wide-eyed silence

Wow...

Tell us another story uncle Robatoy! Please? PLEASE?

:-)

--
See Nad. See Nad go. Go Nad!
To reply, eat the taco.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbqboyee/

On May 2, 4:43*pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:

[snipped yet more of TRimbodrivel]

This is a prime example of why its impossible to have a reasoned discussion
with the Bush-haters. *

Because they are right. He is hated. He is a criminal. He did sell his
soul. He is a drunk and a coke fiend.
There is NO redemption for that piece of dirt. Anything remotely
positive that came out of that asshole is totally overshadowed by all
the evil that scumbag possesses.
That man should be held accountable and hounded for the rest of his
days for all the lives he took under the guise of a ****ing lie.
The man, dear Tim, is a murderer. Period.

On May 2, 4:51*pm, Steve Turner wrote:
Robatoy wrote:
But Sarah Palin..as she reaches for the top shelf of her colouring
book library...in her jammies....showing just a wee bit of plumbers'
crack...hair all in a mess... NO talking...*deep sigh*

wide-eyed silence

Wow...

Tell us another story uncle Robatoy! *Please? *PLEASE?

:-)



ROTFLMAO

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Morris Dovey wrote:
Tim Daneliuk wrote:

It seems likely that this trend of rising real income will stop
with our current President.

I'll stick my neck out and opine that a great many trends were
impacted by a financial system based on false premise and empty
promise.

I'll resist the impulse to quibble over "real".

I just meant in terms of actual buying power as opposed to
phony-baloney money being printed by the Hopeium smokers.

Well, I've been giving a lot of thought to the impact of those false
premises and empty promises on this household's retirements - and
it would appear that our carefully made plans and efforts to provide for
retirement were ruined well before January.

Ever see a war that went according to plan? (Read Von
Clausewitz.)

Would you care to project what /any/ of the great strategists would
say about any plan that made no provision for victory?

You are missing a very important bit of context here. Historically,
"victory" meant the annihilation or at least the decimation of the
enemy to utterly neuter not just their military, but their
infrastructure, social underpinnings, economy, and borders.

Essentially true through WWI. It was the realization that this did not
produce long-term solutions that led to the radical changes implemented
at the end of WWII.

It was interesting to me that the Soviet Union attempted to use the old
approach after WWII while the remaining Allied countries simultaneously
adopted the reconstruction approach. IMO, the results speak for themselves.

Witness any of the major wars of the past century for many trenchant
examples. It is iron that W tried to fight a very narrow and
limited engagement - almost no a war but a surgical removal - and in
so doing now gets criticized by the armchair quarterbacks because he
didn't plan neatly enough for the needs of the people he was trying
to leave alone.

I'm not a quarterback. I played right guard. I don't criticize
Bush/Rumsfeld for failing to plan "neatly enough" - I criticize them for
having neither a clue as to what they were getting us into, and for
failing to plan beyond "hit 'em hard".

There is simply no way to do this. Either you blast the enemy into
non-existence or you're faced with a messy cleanup after the fact.

It is the nature of war to produce messes, and the cleanup seems to
always be messy. We do have a range of choices in the exercise of force
and in the type and extent of the messes created. We also have a range
of choices in how the cleanup is handled.

Go read the history of Germany and Japan in the immediate post-war
period.

Not only have I read about it, I remember the actuality.

Many of the issues (and worse) you grouse about were there in spades.
Would you similarly condemn Truman/FDR they way you have W on the
same grounds?

I reserve the right to severely criticize /anyone/ in a position of
command who causes unnecessary loss of life as a result of failing to
exercise due diligence.

There is no question the US actions had European consequences. Maybe
next time they'll be a bit more anxious to help and minimize the
duration of the whole business.

Maybe next time they'll tell us to go it alone.

Gore has already parlayed a net worth of $2M into $200M. This is a
guy who got worse grades in college than W, who hasn't the slightest
understanding of the science and complexities underlying his pet
hobby horse, but has a wealth of connections in D.C. Watch and see
what happens when crap-in-trade gets passed.

I suppose you're trying to make a rational argument here, but it comes
across more as "sour grapes".

OK, then I'll defer to your understanding of the area. Explain to me
what the US could or should have done in the face of:

- Material support for terrorists (people who make war on civilian
non combatants to make a point) by Yemen, Syria, Saudi, Libya, Iran,
Iraq, ... (I'm sure I'm missing some).

(You are.)

- Over 25 years of U.S. citizens being targeted by the
aforementionined on planes, in hotels/bars, and most recently, in our
own country.

My apologies, but I'm not even going to try to answer your question in a
usenet post. If we were next door neighbors with reasonable schedules, I
think we might both enjoy working our way through this, but I doubt we'd
get very far is less than six months.

I /can/ say with a high degree of confidence that there is no quick fix
- no instant gratification - and no fix of any kind without
understanding the culture(s) of the players.

You cannot fight all the above at once. So you start to take them
out one at a time. IMHO (and that's all it is), Iraq was chosen
primarily because it is such a strategic lever in putting military
pressure on Iran. Taking out the 5th largest standing army in the
world and the dictator that ran it was just icing on the cake.

I'll agree that Saddam was a bad actor, but beyond that I have no way of
knowing the motivations behind choosing any country. To me it seems
equally likely that the motivation was "he tried to whack my daddy so
I'm gonna whack him."

The BS factor has been excessively high for too many years, and
whether the Obama administration has a good recovery strategy or
not, we'll all be experiencing the consequences of that failure of
integrity for quite a while.

Fair enough, so long as you stipulate the primary "failure of
integrity" was that of the Congress and the regulators who
respectively created the environment that caused the problem in the
first place and failed to provide anything resembling adequate
oversight.

I don't so stipulate, but agree that the legislature and the regulators
seem to have not fulfilled their responsibilities.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

Robatoy wrote:
On May 2, 4:43 pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:

[snipped yet more of TRimbodrivel]
This is a prime example of why its impossible to have a reasoned discussion
with the Bush-haters.

Because they are right. He is hated. He is a criminal. He did sell his
soul. He is a drunk and a coke fiend.
There is NO redemption for that piece of dirt. Anything remotely
positive that came out of that asshole is totally overshadowed by all
the evil that scumbag possesses.
That man should be held accountable and hounded for the rest of his
days for all the lives he took under the guise of a ****ing lie.
The man, dear Tim, is a murderer. Period.

No play there Robot - Bush was wrong on many front, but nowhere near
as wrong in 8 years as the Hopeium dealer has been in 3 lousy months.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

On May 2, 5:36*pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Robatoy wrote:
On May 2, 4:43 pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:

*[snipped yet more of TRimbodrivel]
This is a prime example of why its impossible to have a reasoned discussion
with the Bush-haters. *

Because they are right. He is hated. He is a criminal. He did sell his
soul. He is a drunk and a coke fiend.
There is NO redemption for that piece of dirt. Anything remotely
positive that came out of that asshole is totally overshadowed by all
the evil that scumbag possesses.
That man should be held accountable and hounded for the rest of his
days for all the lives he took under the guise of a ****ing lie.
The man, dear Tim, is a murderer. Period.

No play there Robot - Bush was wrong on many front, but nowhere near
as wrong in 8 years as the Hopeium dealer has been in 3 lousy months.


So.. people did not lose their lives because of Bush's lies? A simple
yes or no will suffice.....but unlikely.

On May 2, 5:31*pm, Morris Dovey wrote:


I'll agree that Saddam was a bad actor, but beyond that I have no way of
knowing the motivations behind choosing any country. To me it seems
equally likely that the motivation was "he tried to whack my daddy so
I'm gonna whack him."


ANYthing to gain favour from the man who saw the evil in his son and
his son being the mirror of that pearl-wearing pitbull of a mother.

Yup 100,000 people died because of a family gripe? Naaa.. he killed
because he could.

evodawg wrote:

But wait now we have a Community Organizer as the Commander and
Chief.

Harvard Law specializing in international relations, professor of
constitutional law, state and federal Senator and so on. IMO he had less
experience than I would have liked, but the "community organizer" crap is,
well, crap. It's like the left claiming Bush was unqualified to be
President because he was just a former baseball team owner.

Us radical centrists are having a hell of a time. We got to enjoy the
left-wingnuts ranting about Bush for eight years (although truth be told at
least he provided good reason to rant) and now the right-wingnuts (while
still ignoring their party's abuses) foaming at the mouth over Obama being a
raving socialist who intends to destroy America and sign over the deed to
the UN blah blah blah. Whatever happened to common sense, is it really the
endangered species it appears to be?

"DGDevin" wrote in
m:

Whatever happened to common sense, is it really the
endangered species it appears to be?


Unfortunately, yes. It has been so for at least 4 years. I was told so by
our very nice environmental management worker (who unfortunately has
departed):

"Han, common sense is a misnomer, it is not very common."

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

Robatoy wrote:
On May 2, 5:36 pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Robatoy wrote:
On May 2, 4:43 pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
[snipped yet more of TRimbodrivel]
This is a prime example of why its impossible to have a reasoned discussion
with the Bush-haters.
Because they are right. He is hated. He is a criminal. He did sell his
soul. He is a drunk and a coke fiend.
There is NO redemption for that piece of dirt. Anything remotely
positive that came out of that asshole is totally overshadowed by all
the evil that scumbag possesses.
That man should be held accountable and hounded for the rest of his
days for all the lives he took under the guise of a ****ing lie.
The man, dear Tim, is a murderer. Period.
No play there Robot - Bush was wrong on many front, but nowhere near
as wrong in 8 years as the Hopeium dealer has been in 3 lousy months.


So.. people did not lose their lives because of Bush's lies? A simple
yes or no will suffice.....but unlikely.


More people -far more - will lose their *unnecessarily* under the Hopeium
dealer.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

"GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last
couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?

PALIN: They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see
Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

THAT was her take on foreign affairs.

THAT was the take her handlers permitted.

Did the words come out of her mouth, or not? Why would you cut her slack
you'd deny to someone from the other party, aside from the obvious reason?
Picking Palin was a brilliant tactical move as it reversed McCain's
declining fortunes for a time. But strategically it became painfully
obvious why they kept her away from the press as much as they could, she was
as qualified to be VP as she is to be an NFL linebacker. Eventually I think
enough people (those not hopelessly partisan) realized that, and it cost
McCain votes in the endgame. It sure persuaded me, I was undecided until it
became clear how screamingly unsuitable she was, and with McCain's age and
health concerns there was no way I wanted her the proverbial heartbeat away
from the Oval Office.

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

Bush was wrong about some things.

Yeah, some things, those Iraqi WMDs for example, four and half thousands
Americans have paid for that little mistake with their lives, not to mention
three billion bucks a week for six years.

Obama has been an order of
magnitude
worse in 100 days than Bush was in 8 years. Here's just one scorecard
(there are many others):

Bush - $28B Bear-Stearns

What interesting math, it seems to overlook that dear old George got behind
spending more like three-quarters of a trillion on top of the then record
deficit he'd already overseen. By why bother with details like what he
signed off on before his time ran out.

The Hopeium Dealer - $4 *Trillion* and counting in just a bit under
4 months.

I hear he's even including the costs of two wars in the actual budget
instead of making them a side-bet, outrageous!

Douglas Johnson wrote:
"HeyBub" wrote:


The Left and the Right talk past each other: The Left sees all the
issues as crimes and constitution. The Right sees the issues as war
problems. The 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments deal with "crimes" as in
"In all criminal proceedings..." The Left asserts that detainees and
everybody else are entitled to constitutional protections.

The 5th amendment starts "No person shall..." so you'd think it
applies to more than just criminals. One of the independent clauses
continues " nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law..." No crime required.

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous
crime..."

Sound like it applies to criminals to me.



For example, we incarcerate people all the time who are
not "criminals:" Civil contempt, juveniles, illegal aliens,
contagious disease carriers, and more.

All subject to habius and judicial review, no?

Habeas corpus is a judicial determination of whether the original sanction
was proper. In virtually all cases, the finding is that the original
incarceration (be it for civil contempt, contagion, juveniles, etc.) WAS
proper. A habeas hearing is extremely rare because all of the instances I
named, that take place many times a day, are proper.



* The people at Gitmo are "unlawful enemy combatants" in the same
category as spies, guerrillas, saboteurs, fifth-columnists, etc.
Under the customary rules of war, they can be summarily executed.

Who says they are "unlawful enemy combatants"?

The president, or his designee, determines whether an individual is an
unlawful enemy combatant.

Regardless, they
are entitled to judicial process under the Geneva Convention, which
covers all persons in an occupied country or combat zone, just solely
combatants.

The Geneva and Hauge conventions are completely silent on the subject of
"unlawful enemy combatants." The 4th Geneva Convention defines "lawful enemy
combatant" as one who:

* Bears arms openly,
* Bears a uniform or distinctive insignia visible at a distance,
* Subjects himself to a chain of authority and command, and
* Abides by the customary rules of war.

Anyone NOT following all four of the above can be classed as an "unlawful
enemy combatant." Note that Granny Goodbar, sitting in her rocker, knitting
a cosy for her lap dog, is not following all four of the above requirements
and can, should the president so choose, be classed as an "unlawfull enemy
combatant."

In addition, the 4th covers incidental combatants such as a citizens militia
hastily organized for purposes of defense, non-combatants assisting in the
war effort such as construction workers or medical personnel, and other
participants.

You're right, it does not have to be the same process as
US citizens. Except for a few, we have failed to provide them any
judicial process.

No, they no longer can be summarily executed. They need at least a
drumhead court martial.


We have always provided some sort of hearing, as we did with our first spy,
Major John Andre.

But there is no treaty, convention, or paragraph in the customary rules of
war that demands such. As much as we deplore the conduct, German officers
summarily executing resistance fighters was well within the rules.

Robatoy wrote:

No play there Robot - Bush was wrong on many front, but nowhere near
as wrong in 8 years as the Hopeium dealer has been in 3 lousy months.


So.. people did not lose their lives because of Bush's lies? A simple
yes or no will suffice.....but unlikely.

No, they did not.

"DGDevin" wrote in
m:

evodawg wrote:

But wait now we have a Community Organizer as the
Commander and Chief.

Harvard Law specializing in international relations,
professor of constitutional law, state and federal Senator
and so on. IMO he had less experience than I would have
liked, but the "community organizer" crap is, well, crap.
It's like the left claiming Bush was unqualified to be
President because he was just a former baseball team owner.

Us radical centrists are having a hell of a time. We got
to enjoy the left-wingnuts ranting about Bush for eight
years (although truth be told at least he provided good
reason to rant) and now the right-wingnuts (while still
ignoring their party's abuses) foaming at the mouth over
Obama being a raving socialist who intends to destroy
America and sign over the deed to the UN blah blah blah.
Whatever happened to common sense, is it really the
endangered species it appears to be?




In Washington it is. As far as I can tell it's extinct...