Obama '08?

@parados,

Okay, to get this straight, are you saying that I said a tax or some taxes are illegal? If so, provide the quotes. Also, please provide proof or a link to the supposed statement you claim that I made about people burning in Hell for misquoting people. The reason I doubt I said that is because that is not the type of language that I typically use here or anywhere. I cannot say for sure I did not say it, but lets just say I doubt it until I see definitive proof of it. I think there is a possibility that you made that quote up, as part of your game here to harass me and any other conservative. So in this case, proof is required from you. You have claimed too many things already that have turned out to be untrue or mis-understood.

Parados, I think you need to establish some credibility here. You have been throwing out accusations without evidence and misquotes long enough now that in my opinion your credibility is not much higher than plainoldme's here, and that is really getting pretty low. Also, I have asked to no avail, but what do you actually do for a living? Are you a full time liberal Democrat activist, or what? I cannot figure out how else somebody could be so far out and off beam in regard to their opinions unless you are in fact some extremist liberal bent upon destroying any voice of reason on debate forums. Is that your job these days?

The reason I ask is because there are Democrat voters here that actually have some credibility in my mind. A good example would be realjohnboy, or rjb. He freely admits to voting for Obama, for reasons he has established, but he has some credibility with me because he has been in business and runs a retail store or stores. Even cicerone imposter, he was apparently an accountant for a shoe sales company for a long time, so the man has some credibility from which he approaches politics, even if I seldom agree with him and think he is getting kind of extreme and cranky in retirement. He still comes across as someone that is legitimate and expresses his opinion for what he considers good reasons. Another example, dyslexia, as off color and screwy as some of his opinions are in my view, at least he comes across as legitimately having his own opinion.

I guess what I am getting to is the point that your opinions here seem to be based upon not much of anything in regard to your own thinking or life experience, but you are so partisan and extreme in your defense of liberal causes, I do suspect you are some kind of extremist operative or something that gets your marching orders from sources other than yourself. I will apologize if I am wrong, because if I were you, I would not take that as a compliment or any kind of a flattering position to be in. Not something to be proud of anyway. On the other hand, if you were a conservative idealogue, such as working for the Heritage Foundation for example, that would be something to be proud of for sure, totally different than if one worked full time for Moveon.org, America Coming Together, American Civil Liberties Union, or some liberal group as that.

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@okie,

If I provide quotes will you apologize okie?

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@okie,

Quote:

Well, just a tiny bit of logic applied to what you just said would help you, cyclops. A freeze of regulations is not the same as eliminating them all.

Well, here's the thing. Surely you realize that part of the reason new regulations come about is that we figure out that actions are dangerous or have some potential to harm others. As an example, the recent blowout in the Gulf shows us that there are some regulations that should be in place to keep such a massive disaster from happening again.

But Conservatives don't accept that. A call for a regulations freeze or even worse the removal of regulations is an implicit endorsement of the statement that all regulations are bad, and if we learn that stuff might be dangerous, we CAN'T have new regulations to solve the problem. That's what a 'regulations freeze' means: that if we find out about a problem, the government will be unable to fix it by issuing regulations.

Do you honestly believe that this is an attitude which is serious about governance or stewardship of the country? That such an attitude is one that we want running things? I doubt you would agree, yet this is the official position of many Republicans.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@parados,

If you can provide the quote and proof of it with a link, along with a quote wherein I denied saying it, along with proof of it with a link, I would acknowledge it. Obviously, it is difficult to remember every single word that I say. All I know is what I believe and whether it matches what you are claiming I have said, and so that is why you need to provide proof.

Lets see now, you have attempted to accuse me of lying now by your methods of twisting a few things. One was you have said that I said that Obama hated America, not with a direct quote of me saying that, but by using statements I have made that he does not love America as I think he should, and that he has resentments. You have translated and twisted what I said about Obama into accusing me of saying he hated America, which I do not think I said. Another example, you have used where I said he was wrecking the economy or the country and translated it into your accusation that I said he was destroying the country or something.

I have just pointed out to you that Biden has been quoted as saying he would "strangle" the next Republican that mentioned balancing the budget, and I asked you whether that is the same as Biden saying he would "kill" or "murder" the next Republican that mentioned balancing the budget? You of course do not answer that question, because I think it exposes your dishonest form of debate and your dishonest methods of twisting what other people say. Biden did add to his comment that the words he used was a figure of speech. I accept that, and I think it is merely another whacko Biden like comment, and I do not think he would literally strangle a Republican.

Another point, you continue to avoid my question about your line of work. You could at least tell me that it is not something you wish to divulge, but anything you could offer in that regard would help me and possibly others understand better your posts and opinions, where you are coming from, parados. We all have experiences in life, which shape and form our opinions and political leanings. Your opinions seem so partisan and unreasonably liberal based that I am really wondering where you got those opinions and leanings. I have freely offered on many of these threads, where I have gotten mine.

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Well, here's the thing. Surely you realize that part of the reason new regulations come about is that we figure out that actions are dangerous or have some potential to harm others. As an example, the recent blowout in the Gulf shows us that there are some regulations that should be in place to keep such a massive disaster from happening again.

The gulf is perhaps a good example. I do not think that the federal bureaucracy did its job properly in the first place, under the existing regulations and responsibilities that they had. For example, I have had enough experience with exploration and leases to know that the lessor usually does or should write into the leases some guidelines and stipulations about who is responsible for accidents, and that the proper equipment must be used to prevent the accidents to occur. I am not sure that was done and overseen properly by the Department of Energy or by the people in the Department of Energy, cyclops. I am not sure that we need more regulations, I am not yet convinced of that at all. In fact, I suspect that it might be a case of CYA for the administration to suggest it was a lack of regulations and that we need more of them. Perhaps we just need better management of the existing ones that we have? I admit to the fact that I have not followed that issue closely and am not sure about it, but I know enough about past mismanagement of government bureaucracies to know that we should first review what has happened and that the proper safeguards probably should have been in place under existing regulations.

Quote:

But Conservatives don't accept that. A call for a regulations freeze or even worse the removal of regulations is an implicit endorsement of the statement that all regulations are bad, and if we learn that stuff might be dangerous, we CAN'T have new regulations to solve the problem. That's what a 'regulations freeze' means: that if we find out about a problem, the government will be unable to fix it by issuing regulations.

Do you honestly believe that this is an attitude which is serious about governance or stewardship of the country? That such an attitude is one that we want running things? I doubt you would agree, yet this is the official position of many Republicans.

Cycloptichorn

I come to this issue of regulations from the knowledge that I believe we are already over-regulated. Look cyclops, I used to work in the energy industry, and I once recalled talking to a BLM guy that said he argued with an energy company for months over what color they had to paint a building out in the hills that housed something like a compressor or something. So my opinions are already influenced by my experience with bureaucrats that we had to deal with on a regular basis, dealings that I often found to be what I would consider to be wasteful haggling over minor details which ultimately cost everyone more to get anything done, both for the energy companies and the federal bureaucracy.

Example, I have frequented BLM and Forest Service offices, and what I see is much sitting on their behinds and pushing paper that doesn't mean much. Look, I am not condemning all people that work in those bureaucracies, in fact when I was a kid I thought it would be fun to be a forest ranger, and most of those people are nice people, but I just happen to think those and many bureaucracies are poorly and wastefully managed. People working for bureaucracies are human, and it is human nature to want to justify one's job and also to spend whatever is given you, even if the money cannot be spent wisely or efficiently.

In regard to freezing current regulations, I don't think it would be a huge problem that you think that it would be. The gulf oil spill is an example, as I would have a hard time believing that the situation down there could not have been managed and even avoided under the current regulations that exist. I think some people simply dropped the ball and did not do their jobs under the current regulations, that is my opinion. If proven wrong, I could change my mind.

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@okie,

Quote:

I believe we are already over-regulated. Look cyclops, I used to work in the energy industry

Thanks to you we have the BP disaster!

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@okie,

Quote:

In fact, I suspect that it might be a case of CYA for the administration to suggest it was a lack of regulations and that we need more of them.

Industry experts and every other country in the world disagree with you. Deep-water drilling in other countries typically has regulations which absolutely prevent these sorts of accidents from happening - even in cases of neglect or operator error.

Quote:

I come to this issue of regulations from the knowledge that I believe we are already over-regulated.

I guess it's worth pointing out that there is little evidence that this is true, and in fact, I would like to see a great deal more regulations in place than currently exist, regarding environmental impact of the production of goods and other subjects. As things currently stand, I am forced to deal with a lot of environmental pollution that I have nothing to do with and shouldn't be allowed to affect my life, in the name of profits for someone else on products that I'm not buying. Hardly an ideal situation.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

Do you mean that pollution generated by the products you use is okay and that generated by products you don't use is not?

It certainly is not an ideal situation I agree.

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Do you mean that pollution generated by the products you use is okay and that generated by products you don't use is not?

It certainly is not an ideal situation I agree.

Pollution generated by the creation of products which I don't use. I am forced to bear some of the financial burden (dealing with the pollution in my environment, negative health effects, government cleanup costs etc) of the creation of these products, which I didn't choose to use. It is an inherently unfair situation.

If a company has to pay more money to run a factory which doesn't let out a lot of pollutions, it increase the price of their products. I can then pay a higher price in order to bear the burden of the pollution, as a user of the product. But why should I bear the burden of pollution, and pay to clean it up, for products that have nothing to do with me?

Imagine as if you had a neighbor who made a fine living recycling computer parts. He makes a good profit off of it. But in order to do so, his chimney belches out toxic smoke which makes the air smell terrible, and he dumps his waste into the public river and the public lands of your town, some of it right on your lawn. He is allowed to do this in large part because he funnels a big percentage of his profits into the pockets of corrupt legislators in your region.

This is the situation that we face here in America re: pollution from industrial manufacturing. Without regulations, you wouldn't be able to stop these people from ruining everything, and when we find a new problem, it is appropriate to have new regulations to solve it.

Cycloptichorn

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Tax revenues used by government to transfer wealth from those who earned it to those who did not earn it are illegal

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@ican711nm,

If you feed your children since they didn't earn the money they should starve for providing food to your children according to your logic is illegal.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I guess it's worth pointing out that there is little evidence that this is true, and in fact, I would like to see a great deal more regulations in place than currently exist, regarding environmental impact of the production of goods and other subjects. As things currently stand, I am forced to deal with a lot of environmental pollution that I have nothing to do with and shouldn't be allowed to affect my life, in the name of profits for someone else on products that I'm not buying. Hardly an ideal situation.

Cycloptichorn

So, do you think it was logical to haul thousands of tons of garbage from the Wichita area to a landfill in Oklahoma, simply because the folks in Kansas had this NIMBY attitude for a few years. I think the one way distance was about 100 miles or more, and it involved hauling virtually all the garbage generated in the city and area of Wichita, which is not small potatos, cyclops. The result of that policy was literally thousands, perhaps millions of gallons of fuel that were wastefully used and spewed more pollution into the atmosphere, also significant wear on roads and highways that required more energy burned and taxpayer dollars burned. Not only that, I know of at least one driver that was killed while doing some of the transporting. I know all of this happened because I have a relative that worked as a driver for a few years doing it.

Does such a scenario make sense to you cyclops? It is your political philosophy and level of regulation that has caused this type of crap to happen, I hope you realize that?

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@okie,

Funniest. Post. Ever.

One enthusiastic thumbs up!

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@parados,

Provide all the quotes you can find . . . and they will be there . . . okie will deny them.

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@okie,

Well, it looks like even you are saying the lessor should exercise personal responsibility. THe lessor must me a right-winger. No responsibility.

BTW, NPR did a piece several months ago and why the system failed and what could be done to remedy it.

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@ican711nm,

Raping and robbing are both illegal but the top quintile does it daily without punishment.

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I feel as I am wading in unfamiliar waters full of murky currents, however, I looked up (admittedly briefly) a little about the spending power of congress on google a short while ago. From various sources, from what I can gather all the controversy stems from the phrase "provide for the general welfare" and what that actually entails. Most of the following link is beyond my ability to easily comprehend, however, from what I gather since around the 30's the courts have adapted the Hamilton view that "provide for the general welfare" means congress has the power to tax and fund programs if it helps the general welfare of the US.

SPENDING FOR THE GENERAL WELFARE

Quote:

Hamilton, on the other hand, maintained the clause confers a power separate and distinct from those later enumerated, is not restricted in meaning by the grant of them, and Congress consequently has a substantive power to tax and to appropriate, limited only by the requirement that it shall be exercised to provide for the general welfare of the United States. Each contention has had the support of those whose views are entitled to weight. This court had noticed the question, but has never found it necessary to decide which is the true construction. Justice Story, in his Commentaries, espouses the Hamiltonian position. We shall not review the writings of public men and commentators or discuss the legislative practice. Study of all these leads us to conclude that the reading advocated by Justice Story is the correct one. While, therefore, the power to tax is not unlimited, its confines are set in the clause which confers it, and not in those of Sec. 8 which bestow and define the legislative powers of the Congress. It results that the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution.''

I think I'll find a life boat...

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As usual, it looks like okie got only part of the story, and twisted that. Wichita has no municipal garbage service. They hired a PRIVATE contractor (got that, okie? free enterprise at work here) to haul away their garbage. Wichita also had two local landfills. Landfills only have so much capacity. Those two filled up around 2001 and were closed. Which left no option but to find someplace else. As it turned out, that was in Oklahoma. Wichita has since acquired the use of a landfill area in an adjacent county, near Harper, Kansas (and Harperians are pissed that the county officials sold the new area). Doesn't seem to have had to do with the environment or governmental regulation as it does to do with simple economics.

our colonial forebears didn't have trucks. they dumped their garbage where they lived, in the yard, or in the old well that went dry, or down the privy (those remains, incidentally, are treasure troves for archaeologists, since they give a whole lot of insight into daily life of the period). Things like broken china they dumped in the yard--built it up so it wasn't muddy when it rained. Organic stuff went into a kitchen midden, and made, eventually, compost. For modern cities, with far larger, denser populations, that's just not an option. Try dumping your trash in your backyard, okie, and see what your neighbors do to you. So it's got to go somewhere, and somehow local government has to deal with it (and there are a bunch of ways that they do that). Landfills have got progressively farther away from cities, as more local sites are developed or filled up, and as the amount of trash and garbage we produce has doubled since the 1960s. Wichita found an interim solution with an already open landfill, until it could develop a closer one, which it has done. Economics, okie, not over-regulation. As you do so often, you're railing against a straw man.

This is at least the second time you've posted the Wichita stuff, okie. It really doesn't prove your point when you find out why they were actually doing it. Your anecdotal "evidence", as it always seems to do, falls short

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Good post, revelette. The actual Founding Fathers, the first generation of the US government, after the Constitution was adopted, embraced by and large the expansive Hamiltonian view of what the government could do. They're the ones who wrote the document, and they did NOT view it in the cramped, two-centuries-later-this-is-what-I-think-they-were-thinking view of 21st century conservatives. By their deeds we shall know them.

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@okie,

okie wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I guess it's worth pointing out that there is little evidence that this is true, and in fact, I would like to see a great deal more regulations in place than currently exist, regarding environmental impact of the production of goods and other subjects. As things currently stand, I am forced to deal with a lot of environmental pollution that I have nothing to do with and shouldn't be allowed to affect my life, in the name of profits for someone else on products that I'm not buying. Hardly an ideal situation.

Cycloptichorn

So, do you think it was logical to haul thousands of tons of garbage from the Wichita area to a landfill in Oklahoma, simply because the folks in Kansas had this NIMBY attitude for a few years. I think the one way distance was about 100 miles or more, and it involved hauling virtually all the garbage generated in the city and area of Wichita, which is not small potatos, cyclops. The result of that policy was literally thousands, perhaps millions of gallons of fuel that were wastefully used and spewed more pollution into the atmosphere, also significant wear on roads and highways that required more energy burned and taxpayer dollars burned. Not only that, I know of at least one driver that was killed while doing some of the transporting. I know all of this happened because I have a relative that worked as a driver for a few years doing it.

Does such a scenario make sense to you cyclops? It is your political philosophy and level of regulation that has caused this type of crap to happen, I hope you realize that?

Oh, you blame regulations on the fact that a private contractor found a good rate and made a business decision to move the trash elsewhere?

Not every decision is a great decision, and not every regulation is a valid or useful one. We don't live in a black and white world, Okie. But that doesn't mean that regulations are bad, or that we shouldn't have them. Currently, we have a long way to go when it comes to regulating our industry effectively, because there is still a hell of a lot of pollution and dumping going on, harmful to everyone, in the name of saving monies for producers - and to hell with anyone who doesn't like chemicals and toxins in their water and land.

Not an ideal situation.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

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