The problem is that they're "among, not "are". More people in the US/UK get what those countries reserve for the few and well connected.
In the US, we don't need Potemkin Villages, but those countries sure do.
You mind explaining this? How is it a failure to be among the best? Magic Johnson, Bob Cousy, Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe, and John Stockton are among the best basketball players the NBA has ever known. They're each failures because they are "among", but not "are", the best?
That could be a consequence of the laws against Holocaust denial: only those committed enough to their beliefs that they are willing to face censure and jail (that is, highly motivated bigots) will give voice to denialist ideas.
Bigots have been publicly hating Jews for more than a 1000 years, and you're going to make a claim that some law passed in the last decade or so is responsible for all the expressions of bigotry throughout the previous centuries? What made bigots express their bigotry before this law was passed?
And what creates the publicly expressed bigotry against the Jews outside of Europe where the law in question doesn't exist? Have all those who have denied the Holocaust in all nations of the world for the last 30 or 40 years done so because of some European law that wasn't even in existence at the time?
Your entire line of reasoning is defeated by 4 words. Ghandi, Martin Luther King
1. Ghandi had the entire force of the British Empire against him, plus all the bigotry the English had against the Indians. He won.
2. Martin Luther King had the entire force of US government against him, plus immense amount of bigotry by individual lawmakers. He won.
That makes your opposition seem mighty weak. All you need to defeat is a couple of corrupt corporate entities.
You have completely misstated my solution. My solution is to garner public support and stop alienating both the public and the lawmakers. That way you take away the lawmakers excuses and lobbyists arguments. That's what both Ghandi and MLK did.
Also, answer this question: How are corrupt lawmakers going to stop you from garnering public support? Look at the Tea Party. They're hated by career politicians, yet have gained massive public support and are changing the face of politics. They have gained the support of 65% of the entire nation and have made a huge impact. Are you saying your task is harder than what they have undertaken? Are you really going to try to tell me that the power of the *iaa's is greater than that of the entrenched power of both of the major political parties?
It's also stemming from sheer stubbornness and lack of contact with reality sometimes. I'm reminded of the bit in Douglas Hoffstadter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach", where the Tortoise character gets into an infinite regression: "So if I accept A, B, and C, then I have accepted your premise? Not so fast - lets call that statement D - don't I have to include A, B, C, and D to really accept your premise? Now lets call that claim statement E - Don't I now have to accept A, B, C, D, and E to accept your premise? We can see where this is going - How dare you demand I accept your infinite series of claims without inspection!".
Part of the frustration many of us feel over, say, the climate change or abortion debates seems to be the same sort of thing. There's always some person on the side we don't agree with, taking an 'obviously impossible, absurd' stance, and the possibly more reasonable people on that same side don't distance themselves from their own fanatics. One of the things I saw during my own involvement in the abortion debate was that on the Pro-Choice side, there were a few women who claimed all sex with males was rape, so the 'except in cases of rape and incest' clause always applied anyway. Some of these wanted to do away with all men and use cloning to copy human females only. There's an odd feeling when somebody casually advocates the genocide of 3 billion people and the use of a technology we don't actually have as the solution to all the world's problems, and nobody else in the room is willing to call them crazy. On the Pro-Life side I saw people (mostly Roman Catholic priests), who saw banning abortion as only the first step in passing laws banning all extramarital sex, then banning masturbation and all pornography including the bra section of the Sears catalog, bringing back the laws that required showing all married couples in movies as sleeping in twin beds, the ones dictating skirt lengths, and on and on.
I suspect many organisations would actually be stronger if they tossed out some people who claim to be part of their coalitions, even if their overall numbers of members dropped. Sometimes the smart thing to do is to say "He doesn't speak for me, even if he claims to.".
The real key is, whether somebody is lying (as you suggest), or insane (as I suggest here), doesn't really matter, and nobody ought to be given a free pass to disrupt discourse because we can't tell if they are one or the other. I don't know if Glenn Beck is insane or mendacious, and the people who say he is crazy like a fox may be the rightist of all, but what he does sheds more heat than light, either way. I don't have to decide if he is nuts or faking it to realise he isn't contributing anything useful. That goes in spades for the holocaust denialists. A specific statement of theirs may seem insane, or a deliberate lie, or sometimes a reasonable statement, but examining a whole series of statements they make, sooner or later you realise they are not adding anything constructive to any of the processes of debate, discussion or education.
It's also stemming from sheer stubbornness and lack of contact with reality sometimes. I'm reminded of the bit in Douglas Hoffstadter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach", where the Tortoise character gets into an infinite regression: "So if I accept A, B, and C, then I have accepted your premise? Not so fast - lets call that statement D - don't I have to include A, B, C, and D to really accept your premise? Now lets call that claim statement E - Don't I now have to accept A, B, C, D, and E to accept your premise? We can see where this is going - How dare you demand I accept your infinite series of claims without inspection!".
Part of the frustration many of us feel over, say, the climate change or abortion debates seems to be the same sort of thing. There's always some person on the side we don't agree
"I also take into account whether it has another purpose."
Who decides what is important and what is not? I don't think your post was important, for instance. Not to mention it offended me! When are they going to jail you?
Some indeterminate time after you're jailed for being an offensive dirt bag.
We have laws against animal cruelty and laws against cruelty to humans. I can't see that enlarging the scope of laws against cruelty to humans as a violation of the right to free speech. Your rights stop where mine begin, and I have a right to live in peace. You have no inherent right to abuse someone else so stop with your logical fallacies. Your asshole is showing.
I'd love to see how long a douche like you would have survived in the Old West. I bet it wouldn't have been more than a couple of days. The disrespect you show for others would have gotten you killed or beaten to within an inch of your life in a very short time. Justice was swift back then.
Who are the only people you see denying the Holocaust? I'll tell you. Bigots, that's who. People who hate Jews because they're Jews. I've never seen a denial of the Holocaust by anyone outside that group.
I highly doubt many people really disbelieve the evidence left behind by the Holocaust. It's too overwhelming to deny. However, many people deny it because they want a second Holocaust. The bigotry and hatred they encourage and keep alive is their reason for the denial. It's their agenda that makes them deny it happened, not lack of evidence or doubt that it really happened. IOW's their denial is a lie as they don't actually believe their own denial.
"Some of the anti-piracy thing is due to ignorance about what is going on."
But most of it is due to lobbyists.
"On top of that many of the opponents of the piracy laws seem to think that breaking the law is a good thing."
Civil disobedience. Breaking the law isn't always a bad thing.
"That's why I have consistently said that if people want to change those laws they have to stop breaking them and start making cogent arguments to the right people."
Doesn't work if they're paid. Which, all of them either already are, or if they haven't yet been, they will after that.
Many, many people have used civil disobedience before. It is an effective way to show how idiotic a certain law is. Do you honestly believe that the majority will stop buying their favorite media so they can combat the entertainment industry? I don't, and talking it over will solve nothing since politicians are paid off anyway.
Civil disobedience is what Martin Luther King and Ghandi did. They went out and risked life and limb to protest in the light of day. They acted ethically and made sure they founded both their claims and actions in solid ethics. Thus they appealed to the sense of justice that is inside every one of us. They took the moral high ground and that is why they won in the end.
Who will garner sympathy to their cause? People seen as thieves justifying their own actions, or ethical people seen as fighting for a moral cause that benefits us all because it is just? Remember, you have to look at this through the eyes of those whose support you wish to garner, not through your own eyes.
As to your last paragraph, well, here's what I see you saying. I don't believe anything will change so I don't care if I'm seen as thief. I choose to justify my actions rather than truly work for lasting change. So what if the public won't support me, and I look bad to the people who can actually change the law, because they see me as thief. I'm going to keep on pirating and violating copyright laws.
That attitude will never gain you support from anyone. To tell the truth, I've seen this attitude so much on this site that even though I understand the issues at stake, and would like to see the laws changed because current laws are unfair, that I have lost sympathy with those of you who think that way. It's like you're all saying, well, our opponents are unethical so we are going to lower ourselves to their level. You're make it a race to the bottom of the ethical barrel even though you claim to despise the ethics of your opponents. That's a sure way for your cause to lose and for the vast majority of citizens and lawmakers to oppose you.
The entire point of civil disobedience to garner support from the public. It's to highlight the justice of your cause in the heart of the common man. It's to put pressure on the legislators through outrage from the public at large. They way you guys are going about this defeats the very purpose of civil disobedience, so don't tell me you're trying to get the laws changed because you care about whether the current laws are just or unjust. Ethics and justice have nothing to do with your fight.
You seem to forget that Obama has said the Constitution is a flawed document and needs to be changed. He thinks it's a "living document" so he doesn't care if he follows it or not because he wants to change it to suit himself. Add to that the number of Democrats and Republicans that pay no attention to the Constitution when making laws and you have a climate in which the Constitution is bypassed quite often.
The number of Congress critters I saw saying that they pay no attention to the Constitution in the past year has shocked and deeply angered me. This is one of the main reasons we need to throw out all the incumbents, and one of the prime motivators in my becoming active politically for the first time in my life.
Obama has already bypassed the Constitution several times, two of which are that he can now hold a US citizen without bail or due process on nothing more than an accusation from the White House, and that he can order the assassination of US citizens on the strength of nothing more than accusations. These are serious breaches of the Constitution and yet he's done it and there's basically no outrage at all. This ought to have/.ers screaming with rage about this destruction of their freedoms, but I'm normally modded troll for bringing these things up.
And you think he's going to shy away from violating the Constitution over ACTA, and that people are going to fight this when they didn't fight the complete destruction of due process for US citizens?
Some of the anti-piracy thing is due to ignorance about what is going on. I'd bet 90% of politicians haven't studied the situation in detail and are relying on their staff to a great degree. That doesn't make it right, but time constraints come into play. They have to set priorities and I'd bet most of them don't set a high priority on understanding this issue. (See below to understand why.)
Add to that the fact that many politicians aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer--remember the senator that thought an island would sink if there was too much weight on one side of it--and the reality of politicians being influenced by slick talking lobbyists becomes very likely, even without any graft or dishonesty.
On top of that many of the opponents of the piracy laws seem to think that breaking the law is a good thing. That automatically puts them in a bad light in the eyes of a lawmaker, and gives the lobbyists much greater influence. That's why I have consistently said that if people want to change those laws they have to stop breaking them and start making cogent arguments to the right people. If you want to change those laws you can't appear to doing it for no other reason than to justify what appears to be theft to many people. You must emphasize the principles involved, and leave all appearance of dishonesty behind....
"Honest people still exist, so honest politicians can exist too."
True, but the amount of people that will discard their honesty in exchange for power and/or money is likely tremendous.
Someone who sells out for power or money was never honest to begin with. They had always placed a price on the extent of their integrity. They just hadn't been offered enough to sell out up to that point.
An honest person, by definition, is someone who isn't going to sell out, period. An honest person doesn't have a price point at which they will consider money or power as adequate compensation for their integrity and peace of mind.
"The sum of everything he's done since he's been in office is: more power to government, less freedom for the individual."
Like every politician in existence? Oh, and money, too.
I won't say all politicians are corrupt, although I do believe most of them are. Honest people still exist, so honest politicians can exist too.
As to Obama's grab for power, comparing his power grabs to previous presidents is like saying a rain shower and a tornado are both just rainstorms.
1 . He is attempting to force people to buy a product just to live in the US with Obamacare. That's far beyond anything any other presidents have attempted to do other than FDR and Wilson, and they were, coincidentally, progressives just like Obama.
2, The same goes for his bill to supposedly put an end to bailouts. In fact it gives the government the right to take over any business at any time for any reason. At the same time it legally muzzles the business from talking about what has happened and why, and then stops all FOIA requests about the situation.
3. His consumer protection bill allows the government to track all your financial transactions without giving any legal reason to do so. No warrant needed. No need to show cause.
4. What's more he has granted himself the power to hold American citizens without bail or any due process. He's also granted himself the legal right to assassinate American citizens. Both denying bail and assassination can be done on nothing more than an accusation by the White House. No evidence is needed.
I'd say that puts him far beyond the pale with respect to power grabs..
By doing just what's being discussed here, by claiming the ACTA isn't a treaty and attempting to use an Executive Agreement to give it the force of law. If he gets away with that he's bypassed the Senate.
And look at how that worked out for you, Aristotle. Today's students in their fancy classrooms still have a hard time grasping your genius. Just goes to show desire to learn is a far more important aspect of learning than is the amount of money thrown at the school buildings and furniture. Abe Lincoln studied under the same conditions you did. He turned out pretty well too....
Moldy cardboard? Wow, you were pampered! We had to use each other as furniture, even though we weren't allowed to eat on weekdays and had to walk naked through five feet of snow for three miles, uphill in both directions. And we used each other as paper too... scratching our notes onto each others' backs with out dirty, cracked fingernails.
Mods are really having a hard time recognizing humor today. This post is nothing but a humorous attempt to out-hyperbole the parent post. Parent hyperbole modded funny, more extreme hyperbole modded insightful..... **shakes head in disbelief**
Yeah, right. Obama will tell them this is an emergency so they must vote yes immediately, after which they will be able to read the treaty to find out what they approved. That's how he's gotten all his legislation passed.
That can't be, he ran on a platform of openness and transparency.
And this has been ongoing for over 3 years, which means Mr Obama didn't even originate it.
What's that got to do with it? He's going to implement it, and bypass Congress to do it if he can get away with it. He is not required to complete something this stupid. He's going to implement it because increasing government power, with the necessarily required reduction in personal freedom that a more powerful government is predicated upon, is his goal. The sum of everything he's done since he's been in office is: more power to government, less freedom for the individual.
You're deliberately not using your reasoning facilities.
Obama is one of the least mendacious presidents ever. Foreign money manipulating domestic democracy is always a bad idea. And anyone with reasoning facility would not wait for empirical evidence that a foreseeable disaster is occurring, because they would understand that it is much cheaper and less dangerous (i.e., less likely to require a war to repair) to actually protect the democracy before it becomes illegal to do so.
If you really believe the words you're spouting, then you should also be after Obama and the unions to disclose all foreign money that they have access to. You know, unions in which International is a part of their name and have leadership tied so closely to Obama that it has made daily visits to the White House, and which have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the Democrat's, campaigns, and for which they give no accounting other than to say, here's how much we're donating, and here's how much we spent on ads.
Also, you should be screaming about how the Democrats have taken far more money from Wall Street than the Republicans have in the last few years. Get your own house in order before complaining about others actions. It's a legal principle called "dirty hands".
Myself, I don't like corruption or any kind of dishonesty in either party. It's terrible for our country. It is destroying our freedoms and our economy. As far as I'm concerned, any politician who lies to the public in any way ought to face significant jail time.
Of course China doesn't have to fire a shot to kill us either. They can simply cancel all the loans. The loans that george bush used for stimulus, to pay for foreign wars, etc.
Get over it already. Enough Bush hating. Obama has added $3 trillion in debt since he became president. That's more than 3 times the debt than Bush created, and is, in fact, more than the first 34 Presidents combined. And don't accuse me of supporting Bush's spending. I was against his spending habits too.
Let's look at Obama's spending habits. Even if his budget projections are absolutely correct, and that's very doubtful as Obamacare is much, much more expensive than he promised it would be, he's planning on at least $1 trillion deficits for the next decade. That means he plans on doubling the $10 trillion dollar deficit he inherited in only 10 years, and the previous US Presidents took more 200 years to create the first $10 trillion.
Just think what our economy will be like then. It will be so debt-ridden that we will all be living like 3rd world countries.. But then that's no surprise as distribution of wealth is his entire point of being, and he's using his massive spending sprees to guarantee that as a huge chunk of our gdp will go paying the interest on our debt thus guaranteeing that we will be exporting our wealth faster than we can create it..
I do not know what state you live in but you can defiantly register a home made vehicle in CT and I would suspect many other states.
Why does everything have to do done with so much attitude these days? I look back with nostalgia to the days when I could peacefully register a kit car. Now you're saying you have to be defiant to get it done. Oh, for the good old days.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that they're "among, not "are". More people in the US/UK get what those countries reserve for the few and well connected.
In the US, we don't need Potemkin Villages, but those countries sure do.
You mind explaining this? How is it a failure to be among the best? Magic Johnson, Bob Cousy, Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe, and John Stockton are among the best basketball players the NBA has ever known. They're each failures because they are "among", but not "are", the best?
That could be a consequence of the laws against Holocaust denial: only those committed enough to their beliefs that they are willing to face censure and jail (that is, highly motivated bigots) will give voice to denialist ideas.
Bigots have been publicly hating Jews for more than a 1000 years, and you're going to make a claim that some law passed in the last decade or so is responsible for all the expressions of bigotry throughout the previous centuries? What made bigots express their bigotry before this law was passed?
And what creates the publicly expressed bigotry against the Jews outside of Europe where the law in question doesn't exist? Have all those who have denied the Holocaust in all nations of the world for the last 30 or 40 years done so because of some European law that wasn't even in existence at the time?
Your entire line of reasoning is defeated by 4 words. Ghandi, Martin Luther King
1. Ghandi had the entire force of the British Empire against him, plus all the bigotry the English had against the Indians. He won.
2. Martin Luther King had the entire force of US government against him, plus immense amount of bigotry by individual lawmakers. He won.
That makes your opposition seem mighty weak. All you need to defeat is a couple of corrupt corporate entities.
You have completely misstated my solution. My solution is to garner public support and stop alienating both the public and the lawmakers. That way you take away the lawmakers excuses and lobbyists arguments. That's what both Ghandi and MLK did.
Also, answer this question: How are corrupt lawmakers going to stop you from garnering public support? Look at the Tea Party. They're hated by career politicians, yet have gained massive public support and are changing the face of politics. They have gained the support of 65% of the entire nation and have made a huge impact. Are you saying your task is harder than what they have undertaken? Are you really going to try to tell me that the power of the *iaa's is greater than that of the entrenched power of both of the major political parties?
It's also stemming from sheer stubbornness and lack of contact with reality sometimes. I'm reminded of the bit in Douglas Hoffstadter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach", where the Tortoise character gets into an infinite regression: "So if I accept A, B, and C, then I have accepted your premise? Not so fast - lets call that statement D - don't I have to include A, B, C, and D to really accept your premise? Now lets call that claim statement E - Don't I now have to accept A, B, C, D, and E to accept your premise? We can see where this is going - How dare you demand I accept your infinite series of claims without inspection!".
Part of the frustration many of us feel over, say, the climate change or abortion debates seems to be the same sort of thing. There's always some person on the side we don't agree with, taking an 'obviously impossible, absurd' stance, and the possibly more reasonable people on that same side don't distance themselves from their own fanatics. One of the things I saw during my own involvement in the abortion debate was that on the Pro-Choice side, there were a few women who claimed all sex with males was rape, so the 'except in cases of rape and incest' clause always applied anyway. Some of these wanted to do away with all men and use cloning to copy human females only. There's an odd feeling when somebody casually advocates the genocide of 3 billion people and the use of a technology we don't actually have as the solution to all the world's problems, and nobody else in the room is willing to call them crazy. On the Pro-Life side I saw people (mostly Roman Catholic priests), who saw banning abortion as only the first step in passing laws banning all extramarital sex, then banning masturbation and all pornography including the bra section of the Sears catalog, bringing back the laws that required showing all married couples in movies as sleeping in twin beds, the ones dictating skirt lengths, and on and on.
I suspect many organisations would actually be stronger if they tossed out some people who claim to be part of their coalitions, even if their overall numbers of members dropped. Sometimes the smart thing to do is to say "He doesn't speak for me, even if he claims to.".
The real key is, whether somebody is lying (as you suggest), or insane (as I suggest here), doesn't really matter, and nobody ought to be given a free pass to disrupt discourse because we can't tell if they are one or the other. I don't know if Glenn Beck is insane or mendacious, and the people who say he is crazy like a fox may be the rightist of all, but what he does sheds more heat than light, either way. I don't have to decide if he is nuts or faking it to realise he isn't contributing anything useful. That goes in spades for the holocaust denialists. A specific statement of theirs may seem insane, or a deliberate lie, or sometimes a reasonable statement, but examining a whole series of statements they make, sooner or later you realise they are not adding anything constructive to any of the processes of debate, discussion or education.
It's also stemming from sheer stubbornness and lack of contact with reality sometimes. I'm reminded of the bit in Douglas Hoffstadter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach", where the Tortoise character gets into an infinite regression: "So if I accept A, B, and C, then I have accepted your premise? Not so fast - lets call that statement D - don't I have to include A, B, C, and D to really accept your premise? Now lets call that claim statement E - Don't I now have to accept A, B, C, D, and E to accept your premise? We can see where this is going - How dare you demand I accept your infinite series of claims without inspection!".
Part of the frustration many of us feel over, say, the climate change or abortion debates seems to be the same sort of thing. There's always some person on the side we don't agree
Great argument.
"I also take into account whether it has another purpose."
Who decides what is important and what is not? I don't think your post was important, for instance. Not to mention it offended me! When are they going to jail you?
Some indeterminate time after you're jailed for being an offensive dirt bag.
We have laws against animal cruelty and laws against cruelty to humans. I can't see that enlarging the scope of laws against cruelty to humans as a violation of the right to free speech. Your rights stop where mine begin, and I have a right to live in peace. You have no inherent right to abuse someone else so stop with your logical fallacies. Your asshole is showing.
I'd love to see how long a douche like you would have survived in the Old West. I bet it wouldn't have been more than a couple of days. The disrespect you show for others would have gotten you killed or beaten to within an inch of your life in a very short time. Justice was swift back then.
Who are the only people you see denying the Holocaust? I'll tell you. Bigots, that's who. People who hate Jews because they're Jews. I've never seen a denial of the Holocaust by anyone outside that group.
I highly doubt many people really disbelieve the evidence left behind by the Holocaust. It's too overwhelming to deny. However, many people deny it because they want a second Holocaust. The bigotry and hatred they encourage and keep alive is their reason for the denial. It's their agenda that makes them deny it happened, not lack of evidence or doubt that it really happened. IOW's their denial is a lie as they don't actually believe their own denial.
"Some of the anti-piracy thing is due to ignorance about what is going on."
But most of it is due to lobbyists.
"On top of that many of the opponents of the piracy laws seem to think that breaking the law is a good thing."
Civil disobedience. Breaking the law isn't always a bad thing.
"That's why I have consistently said that if people want to change those laws they have to stop breaking them and start making cogent arguments to the right people."
Doesn't work if they're paid. Which, all of them either already are, or if they haven't yet been, they will after that.
Many, many people have used civil disobedience before. It is an effective way to show how idiotic a certain law is. Do you honestly believe that the majority will stop buying their favorite media so they can combat the entertainment industry? I don't, and talking it over will solve nothing since politicians are paid off anyway.
Civil disobedience is what Martin Luther King and Ghandi did. They went out and risked life and limb to protest in the light of day. They acted ethically and made sure they founded both their claims and actions in solid ethics. Thus they appealed to the sense of justice that is inside every one of us. They took the moral high ground and that is why they won in the end.
Who will garner sympathy to their cause? People seen as thieves justifying their own actions, or ethical people seen as fighting for a moral cause that benefits us all because it is just? Remember, you have to look at this through the eyes of those whose support you wish to garner, not through your own eyes.
As to your last paragraph, well, here's what I see you saying. I don't believe anything will change so I don't care if I'm seen as thief. I choose to justify my actions rather than truly work for lasting change. So what if the public won't support me, and I look bad to the people who can actually change the law, because they see me as thief. I'm going to keep on pirating and violating copyright laws.
That attitude will never gain you support from anyone. To tell the truth, I've seen this attitude so much on this site that even though I understand the issues at stake, and would like to see the laws changed because current laws are unfair, that I have lost sympathy with those of you who think that way. It's like you're all saying, well, our opponents are unethical so we are going to lower ourselves to their level. You're make it a race to the bottom of the ethical barrel even though you claim to despise the ethics of your opponents. That's a sure way for your cause to lose and for the vast majority of citizens and lawmakers to oppose you.
The entire point of civil disobedience to garner support from the public. It's to highlight the justice of your cause in the heart of the common man. It's to put pressure on the legislators through outrage from the public at large. They way you guys are going about this defeats the very purpose of civil disobedience, so don't tell me you're trying to get the laws changed because you care about whether the current laws are just or unjust. Ethics and justice have nothing to do with your fight.
You seem to forget that Obama has said the Constitution is a flawed document and needs to be changed. He thinks it's a "living document" so he doesn't care if he follows it or not because he wants to change it to suit himself. Add to that the number of Democrats and Republicans that pay no attention to the Constitution when making laws and you have a climate in which the Constitution is bypassed quite often.
The number of Congress critters I saw saying that they pay no attention to the Constitution in the past year has shocked and deeply angered me. This is one of the main reasons we need to throw out all the incumbents, and one of the prime motivators in my becoming active politically for the first time in my life.
Obama has already bypassed the Constitution several times, two of which are that he can now hold a US citizen without bail or due process on nothing more than an accusation from the White House, and that he can order the assassination of US citizens on the strength of nothing more than accusations. These are serious breaches of the Constitution and yet he's done it and there's basically no outrage at all. This ought to have /.ers screaming with rage about this destruction of their freedoms, but I'm normally modded troll for bringing these things up.
And you think he's going to shy away from violating the Constitution over ACTA, and that people are going to fight this when they didn't fight the complete destruction of due process for US citizens?
Some of the anti-piracy thing is due to ignorance about what is going on. I'd bet 90% of politicians haven't studied the situation in detail and are relying on their staff to a great degree. That doesn't make it right, but time constraints come into play. They have to set priorities and I'd bet most of them don't set a high priority on understanding this issue. (See below to understand why.)
Add to that the fact that many politicians aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer--remember the senator that thought an island would sink if there was too much weight on one side of it--and the reality of politicians being influenced by slick talking lobbyists becomes very likely, even without any graft or dishonesty.
On top of that many of the opponents of the piracy laws seem to think that breaking the law is a good thing. That automatically puts them in a bad light in the eyes of a lawmaker, and gives the lobbyists much greater influence. That's why I have consistently said that if people want to change those laws they have to stop breaking them and start making cogent arguments to the right people. If you want to change those laws you can't appear to doing it for no other reason than to justify what appears to be theft to many people. You must emphasize the principles involved, and leave all appearance of dishonesty behind....
That should be: you run around with the wrong people.
Oh, so you're speaking of that almost nonexistent group of people. I see.
Nope. You just run around with the people.
"Honest people still exist, so honest politicians can exist too."
True, but the amount of people that will discard their honesty in exchange for power and/or money is likely tremendous.
Someone who sells out for power or money was never honest to begin with. They had always placed a price on the extent of their integrity. They just hadn't been offered enough to sell out up to that point.
An honest person, by definition, is someone who isn't going to sell out, period. An honest person doesn't have a price point at which they will consider money or power as adequate compensation for their integrity and peace of mind.
"The sum of everything he's done since he's been in office is: more power to government, less freedom for the individual."
Like every politician in existence? Oh, and money, too.
I won't say all politicians are corrupt, although I do believe most of them are. Honest people still exist, so honest politicians can exist too.
As to Obama's grab for power, comparing his power grabs to previous presidents is like saying a rain shower and a tornado are both just rainstorms.
1 . He is attempting to force people to buy a product just to live in the US with Obamacare. That's far beyond anything any other presidents have attempted to do other than FDR and Wilson, and they were, coincidentally, progressives just like Obama.
2, The same goes for his bill to supposedly put an end to bailouts. In fact it gives the government the right to take over any business at any time for any reason. At the same time it legally muzzles the business from talking about what has happened and why, and then stops all FOIA requests about the situation.
3. His consumer protection bill allows the government to track all your financial transactions without giving any legal reason to do so. No warrant needed. No need to show cause.
4. What's more he has granted himself the power to hold American citizens without bail or any due process. He's also granted himself the legal right to assassinate American citizens. Both denying bail and assassination can be done on nothing more than an accusation by the White House. No evidence is needed.
I'd say that puts him far beyond the pale with respect to power grabs..
By doing just what's being discussed here, by claiming the ACTA isn't a treaty and attempting to use an Executive Agreement to give it the force of law. If he gets away with that he's bypassed the Senate.
And look at how that worked out for you, Aristotle. Today's students in their fancy classrooms still have a hard time grasping your genius. Just goes to show desire to learn is a far more important aspect of learning than is the amount of money thrown at the school buildings and furniture. Abe Lincoln studied under the same conditions you did. He turned out pretty well too....
Moldy cardboard? Wow, you were pampered! We had to use each other as furniture, even though we weren't allowed to eat on weekdays and had to walk naked through five feet of snow for three miles, uphill in both directions. And we used each other as paper too... scratching our notes onto each others' backs with out dirty, cracked fingernails.
Mods are really having a hard time recognizing humor today. This post is nothing but a humorous attempt to out-hyperbole the parent post. Parent hyperbole modded funny, more extreme hyperbole modded insightful..... **shakes head in disbelief**
Yeah, right. Obama will tell them this is an emergency so they must vote yes immediately, after which they will be able to read the treaty to find out what they approved. That's how he's gotten all his legislation passed.
That can't be, he ran on a platform of openness and transparency.
And this has been ongoing for over 3 years, which means Mr Obama didn't even originate it.
What's that got to do with it? He's going to implement it, and bypass Congress to do it if he can get away with it. He is not required to complete something this stupid. He's going to implement it because increasing government power, with the necessarily required reduction in personal freedom that a more powerful government is predicated upon, is his goal. The sum of everything he's done since he's been in office is: more power to government, less freedom for the individual.
You're deliberately not using your reasoning facilities.
Obama is one of the least mendacious presidents ever. Foreign money manipulating domestic democracy is always a bad idea. And anyone with reasoning facility would not wait for empirical evidence that a foreseeable disaster is occurring, because they would understand that it is much cheaper and less dangerous (i.e., less likely to require a war to repair) to actually protect the democracy before it becomes illegal to do so.
If you really believe the words you're spouting, then you should also be after Obama and the unions to disclose all foreign money that they have access to. You know, unions in which International is a part of their name and have leadership tied so closely to Obama that it has made daily visits to the White House, and which have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the Democrat's, campaigns, and for which they give no accounting other than to say, here's how much we're donating, and here's how much we spent on ads.
Also, you should be screaming about how the Democrats have taken far more money from Wall Street than the Republicans have in the last few years. Get your own house in order before complaining about others actions. It's a legal principle called "dirty hands".
Myself, I don't like corruption or any kind of dishonesty in either party. It's terrible for our country. It is destroying our freedoms and our economy. As far as I'm concerned, any politician who lies to the public in any way ought to face significant jail time.
Get over it already. Enough Bush hating. Obama has added $3 trillion in debt since he became president. That's more than 3 times the debt than Bush created, and is, in fact, more than the first 34 Presidents combined. And don't accuse me of supporting Bush's spending. I was against his spending habits too.
Let's look at Obama's spending habits. Even if his budget projections are absolutely correct, and that's very doubtful as Obamacare is much, much more expensive than he promised it would be, he's planning on at least $1 trillion deficits for the next decade. That means he plans on doubling the $10 trillion dollar deficit he inherited in only 10 years, and the previous US Presidents took more 200 years to create the first $10 trillion.
Just think what our economy will be like then. It will be so debt-ridden that we will all be living like 3rd world countries.. But then that's no surprise as distribution of wealth is his entire point of being, and he's using his massive spending sprees to guarantee that as a huge chunk of our gdp will go paying the interest on our debt thus guaranteeing that we will be exporting our wealth faster than we can create it..
Well, in this case my butt would also be my face, so yes, at face value....
Why does everything have to do done with so much attitude these days? I look back with nostalgia to the days when I could peacefully register a kit car. Now you're saying you have to be defiant to get it done. Oh, for the good old days.
I simultaneously surf with both hands while at home ....
You don't expect anyone to actually believe that, do you?
Are you kidding me?
What???? You can't read with your butt? Of course I expect to be taken a face value.