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White House: No Kerry Supporters at IATC Meeting
An anonymous reader writes "Time Magazine is reporting that the Bush Administration is removing U.S. delegates from the Inter-American Telephone Commission because they gave money to John Kerry in last year's election. A Bush spokesman admits it's true: 'We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively, and--call us nutty--it seemed like those who wanted to kick this Administration out of town last November would have some difficulty doing that,' says White House spokesman Trent Duffy. Employees of Qualcomm and Nokia are among those who have been removed from the commission."
Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism
Neither Reagan nor Bush '41 would have, either.
Hell, I don't think Nixon would have done this.
Here
Read it. Its more informative that the short writeup above.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
We aren't talking about diplomatic work, we are talking about standards work.
Here, you don't even have to read the whole article, just read this paragraph:
try OpenSecrets.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Bush is a Methodist and Cheney is an Episcopalian. While both denominations, like orthodox Christianity in general, hope for the imminent return of Jesus Christ, neither denomination is known for "the end is neigh!" certainty. In fact, mainstream Christianity looks down on such rigidity on Jesus; return, since it is un-Biblical. I hate the Bush administration myself, but they can't be called nut-job fundamentalists when they belong to mainline Protestant denominations.
And Nixon was a Quaker... your point is? Just because somebody attends a fairly moderate church doesn't prevent them from having extreme beleifs. Bush honestly beleives that he was chosen by God to lead the country, and probably beleives that God told him to invade Iraq. I personally find that rather frightening.
It's sort of like with the Senate Republicans considering the "Nuclear Option" of barring filibusters; it doesn't seem to occur to any of them that this move will come back to bite them in the ass just as soon as there is a non-Republican majority...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Public contributions over a certain amount made directly to a Presidential Candidates, to the DNC & RNC are public record. Contributions made other groups (Like Move On & Swift Boat Vets for Truth) are usually not public.
In addition to OpenSecrets (Suggested by the other poster in this thread), check out Fundrace.
Talk about anonymity-- Plug in an address, and see who made a $250+ contributution to a candidate, with house number & everything. There's even a button to map the location of the house, which is a little frightening.
http://www.fundrace.org/neighbors.php
The databases are not totally accurate-- my own contributions are not anywhere on the list, perhaps because I made a bunch of smaller contributions to multiple groups as I could afford them, instead of one big contribution.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Link please?
I think he was refering to Michael Badnarik (Libertarian) and David Cobb (Green) being arrested at the presidential debate.
Yes, that is EXACTLY what they did. Having just fought an oppressive and tyrannical government themselves, they wanted to make it as easy as possible for the citizens to overthrow future tyrannical governments. Their letters on the subject make this absolutely clear.
They knew (as you apparently do not) that as every government grows and ages it gets corrupt and tyrannical and eventually must be overthrown if the people are to retain their rights.
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government." (Thomas Jefferson Papers p. 334, 1950)
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Letter to William S. Smith 13 Nov 1787 (Jefferson, On Democracy p. 20, 1939; Padover, editor)
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive" -- Thomas Jefferson
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go around repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in their struggle for independence." - Charles A. Beard
"The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers." --Thomas Jefferson, 1825
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
I won't address why your precepts are wrong here, as other posters in this thread have done an excellent job already. It's the last bit of that sentence I'd like to correct. "There aren't any [citizen militias]", you say? Well, if you are a male between the ages of 17 and 45 (I assume you are a U.S. citizen from the wording of your post), you are a member of the citizen militia of the United States. Don't believe me? Look here: USC Title 10, Chapter 13, Section 311.
In any case, there are many smaller, slightly-more-organized groups of armed citizens. They have been for a long time and still are occasionally called upon by local law enforcement to assist in emergencies (natural disasters, for example). It's true that a lot of these so-called "militia" groups are crackpot vigilantes (and sometimes white supremacists as well), but they are fortunately a minority. If any of these groups on their own decided to try to overthrow the government, they would be quickly dealt with. That's the whole point; the founding fathers did not envision the citizen militia as a bunch of small groups of paranoid vigilantes. Rather, the citizen militia is simply the entire body of the armed citizenry, who can in dire need, as a last resort, when every other system put in place has failed to secure the rights and fair representation of the people, exercise their will upon the government by force.
Actually, it was Alexandar Hamilton in the Federalist Papers who argued against "factions".
"Given the nature of man, factions are inevitable. As long as men hold different opinions, have different amounts of wealth, and own different amount of property, they will continue to fraternize with people who are most similar to them. Both serious and trivial reasons account for the formation of factions but the most important source of faction is the unequal distribution of property. Men of greater ability and talent tend to possess more property than those of lesser ability, and since the first object of government is to protect and encourage ability, it follows that the rights of property owners must be protected. Property is divided unequally, and, in addition, there are many different kinds of property; men have different interests depending upon the kind of property they own. For example, the interests of landowners differ from those who own businesses. Government must not only protect the conflicting interests of property owners, it must, at the same time, successfully regulate the conflicts that result from those who own, and those who do not own, property."
Federalist papers 10
In other Papers he argues that factions are a dangerous thing when used to oppress the minority. So while it wasn't George to begin with it was Hamilton (one of the creators of the US Constitution).
Next!
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
You are exaggerating a little here. The latest numbers I can find have the the real US GDP at about $10.5 trillion with the national debt at about $7 trillion. That is nowhere near "many, many times our debt". And the economy looks like it is growing at an average annual rate of 4%; decent, but not spectacular. And recent news I have been getting from my broker suggests that the economy may be slowing down. I don't think your optimism is warranted from everything that I have been reading.
As for the rest of your post, I could nitpick some of your other points, but I'll just say that I agree that debt is not a bad thing if you can pay it back. The problem is that GWB seems to be trying to increase our debt as fast as he possibly can. Every time I turn on the television it seems like he is pushing through some new bill that saddles the federal government with more expenditures, many of them not related to the war or military spending. There is no way that your little supply side utopia will ever work if government spending continues to grow faster than tax revenues.
Look at the drop of the dollar against all other currencies to see what the world market thinks about whether the USA's debt is a good thing.
Look at the sudden move all over the world to diversify out of all T-bill holdings.
Look at the level of savings by individuals in the USA.
It's a known fact that the US consumes far more than it produces with the difference underwritten by private and public debt. Much of this money is going into financing personal consumption.
Any American who thinks this is a good thing... needs professional therapy.
Tech Public Policy stuff