Ticomaya wrote:Pop quiz ... which of the following is Magginkat: a, b, c, or d?
I won't make a comment here because I would have to violate TOS to do it. But i will say that my engineer son would say that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
Magginkat wrote:"Bush.... has the temperament of Barry Goldwater, the integrity of Richard Nixon, and the brains of Dan Quayle"
Heh, that's a good one, Maggin. Insightful.
McTag wrote:Magginkat wrote:"Bush.... has the temperament of Barry Goldwater, the integrity of Richard Nixon, and the brains of Dan Quayle"
Heh, that's a good one, Maggin. Insightful.
It is good, McTag 'ceptin Cenk has been much much much too generous in his praise.
Magginkat wrote:slkshock7 wrote:Magginkat wrote:Quote:
But like all politicians, conservatives, once in office, find themselves under constant pressure from constituents to use government to improve their lives. This puts conservatives in the awkward position of managing government agencies whose missions--indeed, whose very existence--they believe to be illegitimate.
Here's where the author and the rest of you lefties go off track...Conservative constituents are not relying on the government to improve their lives. We fully believe and accept that we must rely on ourselves to improve our lives. The best thing the government can do is get out of our way...
Yeah, right! You are living in your dream world that you are all going to realize that American dream and be as rich as king george and then you won't have to pay taxes but will have tax breaks and money handed to you hand over fist. That's the conservative for you! How the hell do you plan to do that with jobs leaving this country by the thousands every week.
Face it loser.......... you will more than likely be struck by an asteriod than you will ever get any of those breaks and the stolen money. You will be paying these bastards the rest of your miserable lives thinking that you are going to be one of them. HA! Hell will freeze over first!
This is great! Magginkat's already given up on the American dream...leaves more of it for me
slkshock7 wrote:Magginkat wrote:slkshock7 wrote:Magginkat wrote:Quote:
But like all politicians, conservatives, once in office, find themselves under constant pressure from constituents to use government to improve their lives. This puts conservatives in the awkward position of managing government agencies whose missions--indeed, whose very existence--they believe to be illegitimate.
Here's where the author and the rest of you lefties go off track...Conservative constituents are not relying on the government to improve their lives. We fully believe and accept that we must rely on ourselves to improve our lives. The best thing the government can do is get out of our way...
Yeah, right! You are living in your dream world that you are all going to realize that American dream and be as rich as king george and then you won't have to pay taxes but will have tax breaks and money handed to you hand over fist. That's the conservative for you! How the hell do you plan to do that with jobs leaving this country by the thousands every week.
Face it loser.......... you will more than likely be struck by an asteriod than you will ever get any of those breaks and the stolen money. You will be paying these bastards the rest of your miserable lives thinking that you are going to be one of them. HA! Hell will freeze over first!
This is great! Magginkat's already given up on the American dream...leaves more of it for me
Can you please explain to me what the American dream is? Thanks.
pachelbel writes
Quote:Can you please explain to me what the American dream is? Thanks.
I'll field this one slkshock.
The American dream is a reality that one has the power to intentionally rise above and beyond their immediate circumstances through virtue, hard work, perserverance, and ingenuity. It is born of a society that does not guarantee equality of outcome or the same starting point, but provides everybody a chance at the prize. Both the privileged and the poor can attain it.
The American dream requires neither government largesse nor intervention. It expects government to protect unalienable, Constitutional, and legal rights, and otherwise needs government to get out of the way and allow people to aspire to reach whatever goals they set for themselves. It offers no guarantees but virtually unlimited opportunities.
The American dream is unattainable at the government nipple and is elusive if not impossible for those who depend on the government nipple for backup or who demand access to it. It is realized by those who leave the nest and get after it knowing the possibilities available to a people truly free to pursue them.
Quote:Throughout the world people dare to dream of freedom, of opportunity, of a beautiful country in which to grow, to raise their family, to worship God in their own way without fear. The embodiment of that dream is America. And within America, people dare to dream of achieving, of becoming somebody better, served and protected by, not encumbered by, government, constantly nourished by faith and family, thriving in a free market, and helping others through charity of giving and serving. The embodiment of the Conservative Dream in America is Texas.
Preamble of the recent Texas
2006 STATE REPUBLICAN PARTY PLATFORM :wink:
The Bush administration has established an authoritarian regime not subject to the checks and balances existing in our system. Moreover, critics are impugned as unpatriotic. Hopefully, the public is wising up to this miserable slime.
^7/7/06: The Treason Card
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The nature of the right-wing attack on The New York Times -- an attack
not on the newspaper's judgment, but on its motives -- seems to have
startled many people in the news media. After an editorial in The Wall
Street Journal declared that The Times has what amount to treasonous
intentions -- that it "has as a major goal not winning the war on terror
but obstructing it" -- The Journal's own political editor pronounced
himself "shocked," saying that "I don't know anybody on the news staff
of The Wall Street Journal that believes that."
But anyone who was genuinely shocked by The Journal's willingness to
play the treason card must not have been paying attention these past
five years.
Over the last few months a series of revelations have confirmed what
should have been obvious a long time ago: the Bush administration and
the movement it leads have been engaged in an authoritarian project, an
effort to remove all the checks and balances that have heretofore
constrained the executive branch.
Much of this project involves the assertion of unprecedented executive
authority -- the right to imprison people indefinitely without charges
(and torture them if the administration feels like it), the right to
wiretap American citizens without court authorization, the right to
declare, when signing laws passed by Congress, that the laws don't
really mean what they say.
But an almost equally important aspect of the project has been the
attempt to create a political environment in which nobody dares to
criticize the administration or reveal inconvenient facts about its
actions. And that attempt has relied, from the beginning, on ascribing
treasonous motives to those who refuse to toe the line. As far back as
2002, Rush Limbaugh, in words very close to those used by The Wall
Street Journal last week, accused Tom Daschle, then the Senate majority
leader, of a partisan "attempt to sabotage the war on terrorism."
Those of us who tried to call attention to this authoritarian project
years ago have long marveled over the reluctance of many of our
colleagues to acknowledge what was going on. For example, for a long
time many people in the mainstream media applied a peculiar double
standard to political speech, denouncing perfectly normal if forceful
political rhetoric from the left as poisonous "Bush hatred," while
chuckling indulgently over venom from the right. (That Ann Coulter,
she's such a kidder.)
But now the chuckling has stopped: somehow, nobody seems to find calls
to send Bill Keller to the gas chamber funny. And while the White House
clearly believes that attacking The Times is a winning political move,
it doesn't have to turn out that way -- not if enough people realize
what's at stake.
For I think that most Americans still believe in the principle that the
president isn't a king, that he isn't entitled to operate without checks
and balances. And President Bush is especially unworthy of our trust,
because on every front -- from his refusal to protect chemical plants to
his officials' exposure of Valerie Plame, from his toleration of war
profiteering to his decision to place the C.I.A. in the hands of an
incompetent crony -- he has consistently played politics with national
security.
And he has done so with the approval and encouragement of the same
people now attacking The New York Times for its alleged lack of patriotism.
Does anyone remember the editorial that The Wall Street Journal
published on Sept. 19, 2001? "So much for Florida," the editorial began,
celebrating the way the terrorist attack had pushed aside concerns over
the legitimacy of the Supreme Court decision that installed Mr. Bush in
the White House. The Journal then warned Mr. Bush not to give in to the
"temptation" to "subjugate everything else to the priority of getting
bipartisan support for the war on terrorism." Instead, it urged him to
use the "political capital" generated by the atrocity to push through
tax cuts and right-wing judicial appointments.
Things have changed since then: Mr. Bush's ability to wrap his power
grab in the flag has diminished now that most Americans no longer
consider him either competent or honest. But the administration and its
supporters still believe that they can win political battles by
impugning the patriotism of those who won't go along.
For the sake of our country, let's hope that they're wrong.
I hope I'm dead and gone long before I develop the poisonous, hostile, doom and gloom view of our country and/or its leadership and/or the American values I hold dear that Paul Krugman spews out regularly. I have little patience with or confidence in those who can only whine, complain, finger point, accuse, and condemn, but demonstrate little interest in being part of solutions to the issues that we face. I can't imagine being that negative and being happy. And I can't imagine being that miserable.
Advocate wrote:The Bush administration has established an authoritarian regime not subject to the checks and balances existing in our system.
Feel free to expand on this hyperbolic paranoia, Advocate. How has Bush "established" this "regime"?
How many of our other elected presidents "
established an authoritarian regime not subject to the checks and balances existing in our system," in your opinion? Jackson? Lincoln? Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt? Truman? Nixon?
Quote:Moreover, critics are impugned as unpatriotic.
No, just the unpatriotic ones. And what do you care anyway? Do you view patriotism as a good thing? Aren't you like so many other leftists who think patriotism is overrated?
Delusional doesn't begin to cover it.
JTT wrote:Delusional doesn't begin to cover it.
Hysterical, mindnumbing paranoia starts to cover it.
One good example of Bush's rejection of checks and balances is his signing statements. Past presidents used them infrequently and to a minor extent, and they were used for interpretive purposes. Bush, however, has issued 750 statements, and they say he will ignore or reject parts of the signed laws. I think that the courts are going to reject such statements.
An example is a recent law banning torture. Bush signed it, but, in his statement, said that he can ignore the law at his judgement. Wow!
Okay, in light of today's discourse, I think it is appropriate to present another laugh and booster shot for the Ann Coulter fans. This from her website. (I highlighted the lines I particularly enjoyed.)
TOP SECRET INTERVIEW EXPOSED!How crappy a newspaper is the Post? Let me put it this way: It's New York's second-crappiest paper.
NY POST: In "Godless," you lump many views you disagree with under the banner of a liberal religion. But many Democrats (as with Republicans) disagree amongst themselves on many of these issues.
Do you consider all Americans who vote Democrat to be liberals?
A: Or fools.
NY POST: How many liberals do you think there actually are in this country?
A: Way too many, but that's just a rough estimate. You know, somewhere in the ballpark of "way too many."SOURCE
Advocate wrote:One good example of Bush's rejection of checks and balances is his signing statements. Past presidents used them infrequently and to a minor extent, and they were used for interpretive purposes. Bush, however, has issued 750 statements, and they say he will ignore or reject parts of the signed laws. I think that the courts are going to reject such statements.
Do you really think that by using the signing statements as he has, Bush has removed any control Congress has over him? After all, if all it takes to remove said control is to proclaim that the control no longer exists, then it never really existed in the first place, don't you agree?
And if you think the courts are going to "reject" the signing statements, explain how that squares with your stated assertion that Bush has "
established an authoritarian regime not subject to the checks and balances existing in our system"? Don't the courts qualify as part of the "check and balances" on the Administrative branch, in your view?
Darn it Tico, you posted before I could take out the last half of Coulter's column. Oh well. It's all good. I intended to just post the first half and link the rest though.
But you're right. The President has precious little real power. He doesn't have nearly the power to wreck the country as the Left wishes to assign to him.
Bush has done a great job at wrecking the country. Haven't you noticed?
It is pretty serious when a president says that he will follow the law of the land only to the extent he wishes to. I guess that puts on par with the leader of N. Korea.
Advocate wrote:Bush has done a great job at wrecking the country. Haven't you noticed?
More unsubstantiated hyperbole from you.
Advocate wrote:It is pretty serious when a president says that he will follow the law of the land only to the extent he wishes to. I guess that puts on par with the leader of N. Korea.
I noticed you completely ignored my prior questions:
Tico wrote:Do you really think that by using the signing statements as he has, Bush has removed any control Congress has over him? After all, if all it takes to remove said control is to proclaim that the control no longer exists, then it never really existed in the first place, don't you agree?
And if you think the courts are going to "reject" the signing statements, explain how that squares with your stated assertion that Bush has "established an authoritarian regime not subject to the checks and balances existing in our system"? Don't the courts qualify as part of the "check and balances" on the Administrative branch, in your view?
In fact, I've noticed this before in the short time you've been participating on this site. It seems that you often tend to bail when pressed to answer questions you don't want to answer. On another thread -- one discussing a legal principal -- you bailed because you expressed that you didn't want to be the "
victim of [my]
endless nit-picking and quibbling."
It seems to me that you just want to make broad, wild, hyperbolic accusations/statements/claims, and not be called to substantiate them. (E.g., "
[Bush is] on par with the leader of N. Korea.")
You just expressed that Bush "
has established an authoritarian regime not subject to the checks and balances existing in our system." I've called you on that statement, and asked you to substantiate that remark, and it appears you are unable to. Are you ready to admit your prior statement was nothing more than purely partisan hyperbole? Or are you going to come back and claim you just don't want to be a
victim of my endless nit-picking and quibbling?
That is correct. I don't have endless time available to deal with your silly nit-picking and quibbling.
I usually back up my statements. But, often, my statements are so clearly true that further support is redundant. For example, saying that Bush damaged this country requires no itemization. We know he lied us into a war, is responsible for turning large surpluses into huge deficits, brought us unfair tax law and a stupid drug plan for seniors, etc. Everyone knows this.
Advocate wrote:That is correct. I don't have endless time available to deal with your silly nit-picking and quibbling.
I usually back up my statements. But, often, my statements are so clearly true that further support is redundant. For example, saying that Bush damaged this country requires no itemization. We know he lied us into a war, is responsible for turning large surpluses into huge deficits, brought us unfair tax law and a stupid drug plan for seniors, etc. Everyone knows this.
Everyone knows this? Really? Could you list everyone please? But leave me off the list. And when you do, then you really have stated a pretty big fallacy don't you think?
