You know, for one whose creation beliefs are founded on so much internal consistency, you have an argument that runs all over the place.
But in everyday language "KNOW" does not mean "for sure",
In everyday life, the origin of the universe is irrelevant. That religion links some moral precipts with it, at some level, probably makes the religious version more -useful-.
You also do not address a difference between religion and science.
I most certainly did. But, in your religious zealotry, you chose to ignore it.
Science says, "This is what we think happened. [And details follow]"
No, you don't say what you think happened. In fact, you didn't just do that know. You say you -KNOW- in an everyday absolutist sense how the universe was made, and that's retarded. In fact, next week, there will probably be some other theory, and you'll come around say, yep, you absolutely KNOW how the universe was made, and your story is absolutely right, until you change it again! Really, its not that creation science changes its mind, its that Dawkins and company argue that its the -absolute truth-, and then it changes its mind. For all of its faults, at least the Catholic Church of the medeival ages realized that for something to be an absolute truth, it had to be -constant-. Thus, the idea that your story is the right one, is absurd, and anyone can choose to reject it at will. Why even bother teaching it? It's not even useful.
Seriously, look at what you wrote. You sound like as much a fanatic as Falwell and company, and your sort is probably more dangerous.
I stated that science makes no such guess - it's still working on the answer, but has some observations as to what's occurred.
That's the thesis that I am arguing against. I say that there are scientists or at least people that speak for it, who argue that science does KNOW, as in factually, how the universe was made and how we evolved. They cross in their minds a preponderance of evidence based largely on internal consistency with a faith that the fabric of physics has been constant and unchanged over the life of the universe. It is faith, it is unprovable, and that's the point... until you actually say you went back in time and saw the universe born, or talked to someone who was there, you haven't really proved a thing. The essence of true science is roof requires witness, get it?
In other words, what really differentiates science from mysticism is the idea that you can do something, and show it to somebody else, by doing the same thing again. You can't show someone else your little angel, but you can show someone vinegar and baking soda fizzing when you mix them. But now, some would have us believe that you don't have to witness to have science, and really, that's simply not true. Evolution, creation physics, all of that, IS NOT SCIENCE. Period. It's a good story, for sure, and to some extent, based on the evidence of what we have, is interesting, but, until you can say that you've seen the universe born or the first step of man yourself, and can show someone else, than, you don't have much more than Noah... its a cool story. Yes, evolution fits together well, and, you could probably walk into a court and slam the Creator down as guilty of it, but, there's that nagging issue of witness that must cause us to say that, we will never, ever, ever, really KNOW. No witness, no proof, and no proof, no science. It's really very simple. Anything else is faith.
Was a good thing. LBJ actually tried, for a brief time, to actually win the war in VietNam and used the air campaign to try and bring North Vietnam. Had he pressed the issue that much earlier, in the same way that Nixon would later do, he might have been successful. But ultimately LBJ succumbed to the various peace protests along the way.
That era saw more abuses of federal power than Bush ever could contemplate. LBJ's government was in the full swing of building up FBI files on all manner of subversives - like John Lennon, and while some protest Bush's pre-invasion "lies" today, Richard Nixon wouldn't even bother to even say that the USA had actually secretly invaded two entire countries of Laos and Cambodia.
That's pretty remarkable, when you think about it.
Incorrect. Science says "we don't know the complete origin of the universe, but here are some parts we do know from observation. We still need to observe and understand more before we'll know the complete origin."
How did you observe the creation of the universe? We have a lot of signs pointing in that direction, but, we can't go down the road ourselves to actually see it.
and thereby attempt to deduce by reason the state it would have occupied in the past. Or alternatively you might invoke God
What do you mean? You can't ultimately test the origin of mankind or the universe because there is no way for you to go back in time, period. All you really have is inference, and that is guided by your FAITH that internal consistency in logic and invariant laws of physics yields truth.
How many (non-greenhouse-gas-emitting) nuclear plants can you build for $2 trillion? Hint: a lot.
On that point, I agree, but name me enough votes on both sides of the aisle, regardless of party, willing to say, hey, we should have a national nuclear power grid. The Democrats won't do it because their environmentalist base would oppose it, and the Republicans won't do it because their corporate base would oppose it. All in all, if there was any one case where a centrist party needed to be form to realize the genuine national interest, nuclear power would be it.
Hey, atheists would have us believe in a bunch of secular stupidity as well. This mystical belief is at the heart of the environmental movement, and its utterly ridiculous. First and foremost is this notion that if we are nice to the earth, the earth will be mean to us. The earth is a fricking rock. It has no brain. You can't make deals with it.
Then, of course, there is faith in science itself. It is an act of faith... there's no proof that knowledge makes us happier, only that, knowledge lets us have more stuff, at least until recently.
The moral of the story is, any man can get up on his high horse and laugh at the faith of another, but, usually, when he does, he's all but proven he's the biggest fool out there. Everyone has something they believe in that they can't prove, and he's only saying that he lacks the self reflection and maturity to see it in himself.
I don't mind giving money to the government as long as I get something for it, but -- if Uncle Sam is going to waste it -- can I have it back?
No, you can't have it back. Your tax dollars go to support the nation as a whole. The government is a not a personal service. It is an organization to foster economic growth by making investments that will benefit the entire country. Sometimes those investments are good, and sometimes they go awry. Sure, Iraq looks bad, but in case you haven't noticed, the US Army is sitting on top of about half of the proved oil assetts on the planet earth, and that's not exactly a bad place to put it.
The premise is that the there is a maximum number of engineers and scientists dictated by the marketplace. However, we really live in a technological society and everyone should know some degree of engineering.
Cause God forbid we place some standards on our industries' environmental impact
Were that true, I would agree with you, but you don't understand the people up there. If New York wanted clean power, they could build plenty of it. The state is mountainous and windy, there's ample tidal and offshore power, and plenty of rivers and oceans to build nukes on. The Northeastern USA has plenty of places to site solar, water, wind, and nuclear, all of which have no carbon impact.
But, no one there wants any power plant of any kind built near them, so, rather than retire older, inefficient infrastructure, they just raise taxes (either legislative, or via lawsuit) to make it look like they are doing something, but nothing changes, except that the taxpayer gets screwed.
The classic example is off the coast of Massachussetts. None other than the likes of Ted Kennedy and Walter Conkrite and the braintrust of the Democratic Party are fighting tooth and nail to keep a windmill project being built in the water a few miles away from them. Mind you, this could power the whole area they are living in. But, they don't want it near them.
Seriously. Just look at the power grid. The northeastern USA is a bunch of old coal plants, a bunch of gas turbines, a smattering of nukes and a couple of hydro facilities, and very little of it is newer than 1970. All the coal plants were built in the 1950s and OLDER. The hydro stuff dates back to the 1920s, although, they did drop in more efficient blades into one to make it better - but only after using the existing set for almost 80 years!
As soon as you try and build something in the northeastern USA, you get a bunch of people suing you, saying, not in my back yard. Then, they bitch about not have electricity. It has to come from somewhere, and they just want to -steal it-, and make somebody else do the dirty work of having the solar fields and windmills and what not. It's imperialism, pure and simple.
Here's a really simple way to cut greenhouse emissions in the great state of New York. If the lawyers up there want 1/3 emissions, just turn off the electricity for two days a week. While you are at it, raise up the rates to ensure you will have the same profitability for less service, and pass it off as a carbon research tax.
Screw all these stupid people trying to legislate (read, enslave), their way out of a problem.
The biggest joke is that the whole northeastern USA imports an increasingly large share of its power from massive coal and natural gas plants in Texas. So, all this lawsuit will really do is force power companies in the northeast to close, and everything will happen in Texas, and once again, liberals will have ruined the economy.
Free CO2 in the air is gonna cost somebody a lot of money someday. Collecting a fixed amount for it at the time of origination is a way of containing the risk, since climate change is liable to be more expensive and less predictable.
a) For all we know, CO2 in the air might benefit us. For example, let's say the sea levels rise, the ice caps melt, whatever. Sure, we might lose Europe, New York City and California, but they are all a bunch of liberals anyway. So it could be a -good thing-.
b) The climate is changed. Whatever state we are in, there is no way to go back to whatever state we were in. I could bore you with a bunch of mumbo jumbo about how non-linear, chaotic systems work, or just invite you to read Gleick. From a purely what will the weather do perspective, it is just as likely that our transition to a higher level of CO2 will cause as many problems as a transaction down to a lower level of CO2. We have no idea what the hell we are doing. Climate models are pure crap. Computers can't even predict the weather 8 days in advance, and even that we can't manipulate. One would think, rhetorically, that, if we alter the global climate by adjusting the CO2, we would have come up with a way to do the far simpler task of making it rain on demand... and, um, judging by what's going on in California, we haven't.
1) Lawyers file class action lawsuit that says P2P traffic is being blocked. 2) Comcast rebuttal says that all the traffic is illegal. 3) RIAA, the Business Software Alliance, say, "oh ho, you can figure out that this traffic is illegal.. why are you allowing it at all?" 4) Comcast agrees to halt all "illegal" traffic, winning the 1st lawsuit, after being joined by RIAA and co, and they agree to drop their lawsuits against Comcast. 5) P2P is dead, killed by ISPs that follow comcast's lead.
...Any more than Larry Craig is concerned about gays. The so-called environmental movement is a religious institution, a profit center designed to exploit people's legitimate concerns in order to enrich itself. It's just a racket, that's all it is.
Just do this exercize. Watch some Sunday TV and look at what the preachers are doing... yamming up about some horrific topic and threatening the wrath of God, if you don't give them money. Then, turn on the likes of PBS or the Discovery or Science channel, and, if you happen to find a good environmental documentary, you'll find some jackass yamming up about some horrific topic and threatening the wrath of mother nature, if you don't give them money. While I doubt it it would be politically possible, but I bet if you could have switched Jerry Falwell and the head of Greenpeace and made them do each other's jobs for a year, they wouldn't have missed a beat, because they are all doing the same thing.
Please don't get all hot and bothered about some nonsense that says: "yeah, but they do such good work." These people are con artists, 99% of the time, and what they sell is entertainment. It's entertainment, that's all it is. Just like in Christianity, if you want to save someone, so it is in the environment. If you want to save the world, start with your own life first.
If you had stopped at the second paragraph, you'd have been fine; but. you just had to turn it into an anti-democrat rant.
Well, no. I meant to say really, -both- parties have failed. That's the point. I agree with your post completely. MY anti-Democratic part was really kind of a warning.
I thought with Bush + a Republican congress, we'd have a massive federal shutdown...instead we got even more federal spending. Dems are going to do the same thing - get all three branches, and then, more of the same! All of these things they rail about will suddenly be ok, because they are the ones doing it. Or its for mother earth, or some other cause.
And, in the Dems defense, if Bill Clinton had pulled what Bush has pulled, the right would be up in arms.... but there's nothing... like, I never thought in my life that I would be at a party with a bunch of right wingers explaining why its ok for the government to not have warrants for searches. I don't get it.
Of course the tools were there, as all tools always are (a hammer does not make a murder-machine). While there are plenty of people in law enforcement who just love to kick ass but are restricted by laws, are you disputing that Cheney (and Bush by extension) has removed the leash?
You are such a shill! You make my argument exactly.. Your argument: "we would have such a nice police state if just the D guys ran it." What a crock. If that is what its going to come down to, then there is no reason to deconstruct government, as much as there is, just grab, which is what Bush did. That's the failing. Instead of doing the Republican thing of trying to shut all the programs down, Bush did the D thing and tried to take over government completely, and putting in permanent Republican people into every slot.
Was it wrong? Yeah, it was. But, the other side has been doing it for 50 years, and so, if not morally correct, it certainly was a logical move to make.
The best thing to do, remains, to pass tax cuts so strong that government is -unfunded- and so massive cuts -have to be made-. You can't have a police state, if there are no police! Anything else is crap.
You can go ahead and have your police state to make you feel warm and safe at night. I'm done with it.
Ok, i'm not quite well informed in US politics, but when was the last time (before Bush), that the president pardoned someone already convicted in a government conspiracy. (the Plame story).
Oh, here we go. Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, and a few terrorists already convicted for plotting to blow up police.
The machine is not broken, the Constitution remains to this day a framework that is viable, and valid. It is the men in government that torture its meanings, and pervert the rule of law.
Yes, it is broke. The Constitution is great, but nobody listens to it. It's supposed to be a grant of powers to the government, not an enumeration of rights of the people, so, from the get go, we've lost all of our natural rights without even firing a shot. A number of federal agencies and rules are, essentially, unconstitutional.
We are on a wartime footing, and have been since World War II. We have either armies, spies or federal agents all working in parts of the world we shouldn't even care to about to fight some enemy that I don't even care about. It seems like, any more, all we do is go around the world, looking to pick fights.
Enough already. We can be brave enough to choose peace. Note, that I'm not saying -disarm-. But I do think its time to bring our little empire to a close, as, its mere existence is corroding our national soul.
Besides, I don't think a nation of 300 million gun owners needs to have that much of a government to really protect it. We Americans know how to shoot well enough on our own. Let's get the heck out of NATO and all of these other military alliances, have American troops only on American soil, and start acting like a normal country for a change.
For all of the bashing the left does about Bush, what is more telling is that Bush didn't really create the modern government that is capable of doing this. Everyone has had a hand in this. A police state machine is a police state machine, all the time, not just when a "good guy" is driving it. Stop attacking Bush, and start looking at the machine!
Had there been no secretive FBI, no secretive CIA, no emphasis on the Federal power from the get go, none of this could have happened. Everyone looks at Bush / Cheney as if he were the mastermind of some vast conspiracy, when the practical matter is that we have had almost 75 years of a massive federal government on a wartime footing, just waiting for the next enemy to arrive. These agents don't need orders to torture people or to kill perceived enemies. They have been waiting to do this their whole lives. They need orders NOT TO, and they really need to be not employed at all.
Instead, what the left wing is arguing for is a banana republic type of government - rule by personality, when instead, the best lesson to learn is that the government is the problem, and the solution to ensure our freedom is to deconstruct the government from the get go. If we could only put the "good guy" in charge of the police state, everything will be ok. Except that, we will still have a police state.
Look at the facts. What Democrats opposed passage of the full 9/11 commission recommendations - essentially turn the USA into a police state. What Democrat has offered to repeal USA PATRIOT? What Democrat has volunteered to narrow the scope of CIA and FBI? There will be more Federal terror, not less, before this unfortunate behavior winds its course. We have to learn to discipline ourselves as voters - that, every time we panic and ask our government to protect us - we are really just empowering a bunch of thugs to enslave us.
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You know, for one whose creation beliefs are founded on so much internal consistency, you have an argument that runs all over the place.
But in everyday language "KNOW" does not mean "for sure",
In everyday life, the origin of the universe is irrelevant. That religion links some moral precipts with it, at some level, probably makes the religious version more -useful-.
You also do not address a difference between religion and science.
I most certainly did. But, in your religious zealotry, you chose to ignore it.
Science says, "This is what we think happened. [And details follow]"
No, you don't say what you think happened. In fact, you didn't just do that know. You say you -KNOW- in an everyday absolutist sense how the universe was made, and that's retarded. In fact, next week, there will probably be some other theory, and you'll come around say, yep, you absolutely KNOW how the universe was made, and your story is absolutely right, until you change it again! Really, its not that creation science changes its mind, its that Dawkins and company argue that its the -absolute truth-, and then it changes its mind. For all of its faults, at least the Catholic Church of the medeival ages realized that for something to be an absolute truth, it had to be -constant-. Thus, the idea that your story is the right one, is absurd, and anyone can choose to reject it at will. Why even bother teaching it? It's not even useful.
Seriously, look at what you wrote. You sound like as much a fanatic as Falwell and company, and your sort is probably more dangerous.
By the way, do not assume that this is an endorsement of so-called Creation science by any stretch of the imagination. Those guys are frauds.
I stated that science makes no such guess - it's still working on the answer, but has some observations as to what's occurred.
That's the thesis that I am arguing against. I say that there are scientists or at least people that speak for it, who argue that science does KNOW, as in factually, how the universe was made and how we evolved. They cross in their minds a preponderance of evidence based largely on internal consistency with a faith that the fabric of physics has been constant and unchanged over the life of the universe. It is faith, it is unprovable, and that's the point... until you actually say you went back in time and saw the universe born, or talked to someone who was there, you haven't really proved a thing. The essence of true science is roof requires witness, get it?
In other words, what really differentiates science from mysticism is the idea that you can do something, and show it to somebody else, by doing the same thing again. You can't show someone else your little angel, but you can show someone vinegar and baking soda fizzing when you mix them. But now, some would have us believe that you don't have to witness to have science, and really, that's simply not true. Evolution, creation physics, all of that, IS NOT SCIENCE. Period. It's a good story, for sure, and to some extent, based on the evidence of what we have, is interesting, but, until you can say that you've seen the universe born or the first step of man yourself, and can show someone else, than, you don't have much more than Noah... its a cool story. Yes, evolution fits together well, and, you could probably walk into a court and slam the Creator down as guilty of it, but, there's that nagging issue of witness that must cause us to say that, we will never, ever, ever, really KNOW. No witness, no proof, and no proof, no science. It's really very simple. Anything else is faith.
Was a good thing. LBJ actually tried, for a brief time, to actually win the war in VietNam and used the air campaign to try and bring North Vietnam. Had he pressed the issue that much earlier, in the same way that Nixon would later do, he might have been successful. But ultimately LBJ succumbed to the various peace protests along the way.
That era saw more abuses of federal power than Bush ever could contemplate. LBJ's government was in the full swing of building up FBI files on all manner of subversives - like John Lennon, and while some protest Bush's pre-invasion "lies" today, Richard Nixon wouldn't even bother to even say that the USA had actually secretly invaded two entire countries of Laos and Cambodia.
That's pretty remarkable, when you think about it.
Incorrect. Science says "we don't know the complete origin of the universe, but here are some parts we do know from observation. We still need to observe and understand more before we'll know the complete origin."
How did you observe the creation of the universe? We have a lot of signs pointing in that direction, but, we can't go down the road ourselves to actually see it.
"be nice!"
"Shut up, stupid robot"
POW.
and thereby attempt to deduce by reason the state it would have occupied in the past. Or alternatively you might invoke God
What do you mean? You can't ultimately test the origin of mankind or the universe because there is no way for you to go back in time, period. All you really have is inference, and that is guided by your FAITH that internal consistency in logic and invariant laws of physics yields truth.
How many (non-greenhouse-gas-emitting) nuclear plants can you build for $2 trillion? Hint: a lot.
On that point, I agree, but name me enough votes on both sides of the aisle, regardless of party, willing to say, hey, we should have a national nuclear power grid. The Democrats won't do it because their environmentalist base would oppose it, and the Republicans won't do it because their corporate base would oppose it. All in all, if there was any one case where a centrist party needed to be form to realize the genuine national interest, nuclear power would be it.
Hey, atheists would have us believe in a bunch of secular stupidity as well. This mystical belief is at the heart of the environmental movement, and its utterly ridiculous. First and foremost is this notion that if we are nice to the earth, the earth will be mean to us. The earth is a fricking rock. It has no brain. You can't make deals with it.
Then, of course, there is faith in science itself. It is an act of faith... there's no proof that knowledge makes us happier, only that, knowledge lets us have more stuff, at least until recently.
The moral of the story is, any man can get up on his high horse and laugh at the faith of another, but, usually, when he does, he's all but proven he's the biggest fool out there. Everyone has something they believe in that they can't prove, and he's only saying that he lacks the self reflection and maturity to see it in himself.
I don't mind giving money to the government as long as I get something for it, but -- if Uncle Sam is going to waste it -- can I have it back?
No, you can't have it back. Your tax dollars go to support the nation as a whole. The government is a not a personal service. It is an organization to foster economic growth by making investments that will benefit the entire country. Sometimes those investments are good, and sometimes they go awry. Sure, Iraq looks bad, but in case you haven't noticed, the US Army is sitting on top of about half of the proved oil assetts on the planet earth, and that's not exactly a bad place to put it.
Why? That's like saying everyone should know some degree of auto mechanics, but I'd rather hire a mechanic than to do a halfassed job
And, um, just precisely would you know if that mechanic you hired did not do a half-assed job himself, if you had no idea what he or she did?
The premise is that the there is a maximum number of engineers and scientists dictated by the marketplace. However, we really live in a technological society and everyone should know some degree of engineering.
When did segment registers and page tables quit working? I guess I must have missed that errata!
Cause God forbid we place some standards on our industries' environmental impact
Were that true, I would agree with you, but you don't understand the people up there. If New York wanted clean power, they could build plenty of it. The state is mountainous and windy, there's ample tidal and offshore power, and plenty of rivers and oceans to build nukes on. The Northeastern USA has plenty of places to site solar, water, wind, and nuclear, all of which have no carbon impact.
But, no one there wants any power plant of any kind built near them, so, rather than retire older, inefficient infrastructure, they just raise taxes (either legislative, or via lawsuit) to make it look like they are doing something, but nothing changes, except that the taxpayer gets screwed.
The classic example is off the coast of Massachussetts. None other than the likes of Ted Kennedy and Walter Conkrite and the braintrust of the Democratic Party are fighting tooth and nail to keep a windmill project being built in the water a few miles away from them. Mind you, this could power the whole area they are living in. But, they don't want it near them.
Seriously. Just look at the power grid. The northeastern USA is a bunch of old coal plants, a bunch of gas turbines, a smattering of nukes and a couple of hydro facilities, and very little of it is newer than 1970. All the coal plants were built in the 1950s and OLDER. The hydro stuff dates back to the 1920s, although, they did drop in more efficient blades into one to make it better - but only after using the existing set for almost 80 years!
As soon as you try and build something in the northeastern USA, you get a bunch of people suing you, saying, not in my back yard. Then, they bitch about not have electricity. It has to come from somewhere, and they just want to -steal it-, and make somebody else do the dirty work of having the solar fields and windmills and what not. It's imperialism, pure and simple.
Here's a really simple way to cut greenhouse emissions in the great state of New York. If the lawyers up there want 1/3 emissions, just turn off the electricity for two days a week. While you are at it, raise up the rates to ensure you will have the same profitability for less service, and pass it off as a carbon research tax.
Screw all these stupid people trying to legislate (read, enslave), their way out of a problem.
The biggest joke is that the whole northeastern USA imports an increasingly large share of its power from massive coal and natural gas plants in Texas. So, all this lawsuit will really do is force power companies in the northeast to close, and everything will happen in Texas, and once again, liberals will have ruined the economy.
Free CO2 in the air is gonna cost somebody a lot of money someday. Collecting a fixed amount for it at the time of origination is a way of containing the risk, since climate change is liable to be more expensive and less predictable.
a) For all we know, CO2 in the air might benefit us. For example, let's say the sea levels rise, the ice caps melt, whatever. Sure, we might lose Europe, New York City and California, but they are all a bunch of liberals anyway. So it could be a -good thing-.
b) The climate is changed. Whatever state we are in, there is no way to go back to whatever state we were in. I could bore you with a bunch of mumbo jumbo about how non-linear, chaotic systems work, or just invite you to read Gleick. From a purely what will the weather do perspective, it is just as likely that our transition to a higher level of CO2 will cause as many problems as a transaction down to a lower level of CO2. We have no idea what the hell we are doing. Climate models are pure crap. Computers can't even predict the weather 8 days in advance, and even that we can't manipulate. One would think, rhetorically, that, if we alter the global climate by adjusting the CO2, we would have come up with a way to do the far simpler task of making it rain on demand... and, um, judging by what's going on in California, we haven't.
1) Lawyers file class action lawsuit that says P2P traffic is being blocked.
2) Comcast rebuttal says that all the traffic is illegal.
3) RIAA, the Business Software Alliance, say, "oh ho, you can figure out that this traffic is illegal.. why are you allowing it at all?"
4) Comcast agrees to halt all "illegal" traffic, winning the 1st lawsuit, after being joined by RIAA and co, and they agree to drop their lawsuits against Comcast.
5) P2P is dead, killed by ISPs that follow comcast's lead.
...Any more than Larry Craig is concerned about gays. The so-called environmental movement is a religious institution, a profit center designed to exploit people's legitimate concerns in order to enrich itself. It's just a racket, that's all it is.
Just do this exercize. Watch some Sunday TV and look at what the preachers are doing... yamming up about some horrific topic and threatening the wrath of God, if you don't give them money. Then, turn on the likes of PBS or the Discovery or Science channel, and, if you happen to find a good environmental documentary, you'll find some jackass yamming up about some horrific topic and threatening the wrath of mother nature, if you don't give them money. While I doubt it it would be politically possible, but I bet if you could have switched Jerry Falwell and the head of Greenpeace and made them do each other's jobs for a year, they wouldn't have missed a beat, because they are all doing the same thing.
Please don't get all hot and bothered about some nonsense that says: "yeah, but they do such good work." These people are con artists, 99% of the time, and what they sell is entertainment. It's entertainment, that's all it is. Just like in Christianity, if you want to save someone, so it is in the environment. If you want to save the world, start with your own life first.
If you had stopped at the second paragraph, you'd have been fine; but. you just had to turn it into an anti-democrat rant.
Well, no. I meant to say really, -both- parties have failed. That's the point. I agree with your post completely. MY anti-Democratic part was really kind of a warning.
I thought with Bush + a Republican congress, we'd have a massive federal shutdown...instead we got even more federal spending. Dems are going to do the same thing - get all three branches, and then, more of the same! All of these things they rail about will suddenly be ok, because they are the ones doing it. Or its for mother earth, or some other cause.
And, in the Dems defense, if Bill Clinton had pulled what Bush has pulled, the right would be up in arms.... but there's nothing... like, I never thought in my life that I would be at a party with a bunch of right wingers explaining why its ok for the government to not have warrants for searches. I don't get it.
The ends do not justify the means.
Made my day.!!! You should be modded up!
If the left ever gained absolute power in this country, we'd all be in concentration camps,
Only if you could get environmental permits for the camps. And, oh lord, do the ovens have proper CO2 sequestration or offsetting carbon credits?
Of course the tools were there, as all tools always are (a hammer does not make a murder-machine). While there are plenty of people in law enforcement who just love to kick ass but are restricted by laws, are you disputing that Cheney (and Bush by extension) has removed the leash?
You are such a shill! You make my argument exactly.. Your argument: "we would have such a nice police state if just the D guys ran it." What a crock. If that is what its going to come down to, then there is no reason to deconstruct government, as much as there is, just grab, which is what Bush did. That's the failing. Instead of doing the Republican thing of trying to shut all the programs down, Bush did the D thing and tried to take over government completely, and putting in permanent Republican people into every slot.
Was it wrong? Yeah, it was. But, the other side has been doing it for 50 years, and so, if not morally correct, it certainly was a logical move to make.
The best thing to do, remains, to pass tax cuts so strong that government is -unfunded- and so massive cuts -have to be made-. You can't have a police state, if there are no police! Anything else is crap.
You can go ahead and have your police state to make you feel warm and safe at night. I'm done with it.
Ok, i'm not quite well informed in US politics, but when was the last time (before Bush), that the president pardoned someone already convicted in a government conspiracy. (the Plame story).
Oh, here we go. Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, and a few terrorists already convicted for plotting to blow up police.
The machine is not broken, the Constitution remains to this day a framework that is viable, and valid. It is the men in government that torture its meanings, and pervert the rule of law.
Yes, it is broke. The Constitution is great, but nobody listens to it. It's supposed to be a grant of powers to the government, not an enumeration of rights of the people, so, from the get go, we've lost all of our natural rights without even firing a shot. A number of federal agencies and rules are, essentially, unconstitutional.
We are on a wartime footing, and have been since World War II. We have either armies, spies or federal agents all working in parts of the world we shouldn't even care to about to fight some enemy that I don't even care about. It seems like, any more, all we do is go around the world, looking to pick fights.
Enough already. We can be brave enough to choose peace. Note, that I'm not saying -disarm-. But I do think its time to bring our little empire to a close, as, its mere existence is corroding our national soul.
Besides, I don't think a nation of 300 million gun owners needs to have that much of a government to really protect it. We Americans know how to shoot well enough on our own. Let's get the heck out of NATO and all of these other military alliances, have American troops only on American soil, and start acting like a normal country for a change.
For all of the bashing the left does about Bush, what is more telling is that Bush didn't really create the modern government that is capable of doing this. Everyone has had a hand in this. A police state machine is a police state machine, all the time, not just when a "good guy" is driving it. Stop attacking Bush, and start looking at the machine!
Had there been no secretive FBI, no secretive CIA, no emphasis on the Federal power from the get go, none of this could have happened. Everyone looks at Bush / Cheney as if he were the mastermind of some vast conspiracy, when the practical matter is that we have had almost 75 years of a massive federal government on a wartime footing, just waiting for the next enemy to arrive. These agents don't need orders to torture people or to kill perceived enemies. They have been waiting to do this their whole lives. They need orders NOT TO, and they really need to be not employed at all.
Instead, what the left wing is arguing for is a banana republic type of government - rule by personality, when instead, the best lesson to learn is that the government is the problem, and the solution to ensure our freedom is to deconstruct the government from the get go. If we could only put the "good guy" in charge of the police state, everything will be ok. Except that, we will still have a police state.
Look at the facts. What Democrats opposed passage of the full 9/11 commission recommendations - essentially turn the USA into a police state. What Democrat has offered to repeal USA PATRIOT? What Democrat has volunteered to narrow the scope of CIA and FBI? There will be more Federal terror, not less, before this unfortunate behavior winds its course. We have to learn to discipline ourselves as voters - that, every time we panic and ask our government to protect us - we are really just empowering a bunch of thugs to enslave us.