Anyone want to speculate on the powers of the Gygax? Will it be able to kick Tiamat's ass? Will it be more of a Tom Bombadil character or a benevolent Loki?
I learned to program by modifying hack source in vi on a Tandy Model 16 running MS-XENIX. The K&R C manual and the AT&T Unix manuals were a little above my elementary reading level, but building dungeons was a big enough reward to overcome that. As to the other folks who mentioned the skill set that D&D taught them, I'd like to add my agreement. Learning how to logically model and implement rule systems with teams was an amazing challenge that has served me well.
Gary Gygax's flight of fantasy has probably done more for the world than we will ever know. I will be spending my night with good friends, strong ale and old songs.
With my eternal thanks and appreciation, Godspeed Gary Gygax.
Are you actually ignorant of the "years and years of deliberation and negotiation" between the North and the South?
Which one of these changed the nature of the union how? Which one offered a legal way for a state to unilaterally secede? Are you ignorant about what these negotiations actually produced?
You think they just decided to up and secede one day? Slavery had been one of the most significant issues debated in congress for FORTY YEARS leading up to the Civil War. What do you think Henry Clay is famous for? Irreconcilable differences built up in the decades leading up to the Civil War, and when Lincoln got elected, they saw which way the wind was blowing and seceded.
What a swell legal justification! Since we've been debating abortion for over 40 years and had numerous negotiations, any state that doesn't like the current Federal regime regarding this issue is now legally and morally justified to secede. Brilliant! The Constitution did not make the institution of slavery a right like Freedom of Speech, it was an open legal question. The South signed onto the Constitution with full knowledge of this situation. The abolitionist strategy was to contain the expansion of slavery and let it die a natural death as an institution. The South committed to preserving this institution's demise even in the face of a changing economic and political landscape. All compromises offered by the South required the North permanently accept the institution of slavery. The Crittenden Compromise would have taken the entire question off the table and been irrevocable by future amendment. That's a privilege not even enjoyed by the Bill of Rights.
You ought to do your research. Various compromises were attempted by the South at the last minute to avoid the Civil War, and rejected by Lincoln.
None of which included a legal path to secession. None of which change the fact that the South chose the institution of slavery over the institutions created by the Constitution, which they swore an oath to uphold.
Setting aside the immorality of slavery for the second, the South perceived it as an attempt by the North to take away their "property" and ruin their ability to make income. Even for slaveowners which recognized the gross inhumanity of slavery, they rarely freed their own slaves, even after their death.
My arguments would be the same if this had been over the immoral institution of sunflower spitting. The Southern perceptions over the question do not change the fact that there was no legal mechanism for secession and that rather than attempting to create one, they rebelled.
Even Patrick Henry didn't free any of his own slaves, and he was quite aware of his own hypocrisy: "Would anyone believe I am the master of slaves of my own purchase! I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them. I will not, I cannot justify it. However culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my devoir to virtue as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want of conformity to them."
Irrelevant.
The causes of the Civil War have many parallels in the Revolutionary War. See for example the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, the Tea Act, etc. Americans of that age were ready to go to war over laws that negatively affected their economics. From the South's point of view, it was immoral of the North to dispossess them of their "property", and so were justified in going to war.
They tried to dress the Civil War up like it had parallels with the Revolution. That was propaganda that you seem to be buying. Americans did not just go to war for economic reasons. Americans had a very serious respect for legitimate authority and going to war with legitimate authority was rebellion. They went to war over economics with the French, the Spanish and various Native Americans, but they didn't go overthrowing their own governments for what they considered crass and immoral reasons.
I simply said the causes were complex, because they were, and because I don't feel like writing a hundred pages on a complex subject just to answer you.
I see, you are right because you were right. And don't worry, I wouldn't want to you to tax yourself writing hundreds of pages, a single statement that is logically meaningful to your assertions would be sufficient. Besides, it might be helpful if you read hundreds of pages on the subject first, at this point I have no reason to believe you could write hundreds of pages.
The short answer is, if you're interested in the "moral rightness" of the secession, then it breaks down like this:
Yes, quite interested.
1) Rebellion is not moral or immoral in itself. You're confusing this with legal or illegal, and even then, the secession was legal, to a certain degree.
And, you've already confused secession with rebellion. The act of secession can be judged on it's legality, the act of rebellion on it's morality. The morality of a rebellion is the only way to compare acts of rebellion as all rebellion is illegal. Name one instance of "legal rebellion", name one institution that has allowed for "legal rebellion". There was no legal mechanism in the Constitution for unilateral secession by a state, therefore secession was illegal, so enforcement through arms was rebellion and rebellion is always illegal. Are you going to try to claim the Revolution was "legal rebellion"? None of the Revolutionaries did. The difference between the Revolution and the Civil War is the morality of the rebellion given the official reasons of the rebellion within the context of the culture that started the rebellion. The Revolutionary claims for rebellion were consistent with the existing cultural claims of legitimate authority, the SC Articles of Secession were not. Neither case was "legal rebellion".
2) The South was morally in the wrong for defending an institution that could not be defended. Slavery was a way of making money, and it is hard for people to willingly give up their source of money.
Your comparison doesn't make sense. Slavery was legal and protected by the Constitution. The South had signed onto the Constitution and refused to continue to recognize their obligations in that agreement if slavery was not protected in that agreement. That the abolition of slavery would be achieved through the framework that they had taken a oath to uphold did not matter, they held slavery more important than their previously contracted obligations. Such contractual obligations were considered a cornerstone of the society that produced this entire drama. Breaking such obligations was considered immoral and lacking in integrity. By their own measure, the Civil War was immoral rebellion.
3) The North should have enacted a policy of Compensatory Emancipation, as did other nations before America, and as the Union did in Washington DC.
Everyone knows that the Civil War cost the North more than buying the slaves freedom outright, what makes you think that the South would have accepted that? The South chose the "institution of slavery" over the Constitution, not the cash value of their property over the Constitution. They saw an abolishment of the practice as a encroachment upon their rights. It was a mistaken belief, a morally and legally indefensible position, but it was the position that they explicitly stated in the Articles of Secession. Besides, when was this supposed to take place, Secession was declared in response to the abolitionists gaining the political power to pass just such an initiative. Your what if scenario completely ignores the historical record.
Ignorance is no excuse for ignorance.
Again with the statements that you may think have meaning, but in fact, do not.
This sound familiar to you?
"...that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes d
And your response was just as lacking. The Constitution was an agreement between states, and so could be broken by the states.
Oh gosh, my argument is completely decimated by your assertion. This new thinking which defeats logical arguments by saying "Nuh, uh! They can too!" is absolutely amazing. I am so ashamed that I've wasted all this time reconciling the legal scholarship of the era with the statements of intent made by those who took the actions. I could have just said "Not gonna do it!". Wow, you have so opened my eyes.
There were a number of causes for the Revolution, as there were for the Civil War. What I'm taking exception with is that you're claiming the Revolution was moral, and the Civil War was immoral. Don't Tread On Me and many other "moral" factors as you'd call them are shared between the two conflicts.
Look, you've clearly not read anything written here, I'm really not sure why you bothered to reply or thought this was some sort of argument against the assertions I've made. This doesn't even pass the laugh test. You offer nothing in support of your statements. Pinkney's Flag was a product of the culture and ideology that provided the rationale for the war. They didn't make a flag and then start a war. The secessionists tried to claim the same ideological basis, but their arguments do not stand under scrutiny. Rather than seeking a political solution or even a peaceful secession process, they rebelled. The idea that a state can unilaterally declare independence from the Union would render the Constitution utterly impotent. These people conscientiously chose the institution of slavery over the Constitution, thus their rebellion was immoral.
To say otherwise ignores the place that contracts and integrity of agreements had in the culture that took these actions. You cannot ignore what these people thought when they took the actions they did. The Southern cause was based on a radical departure from the tradition it used to claim the authority for it's actions. Their position lacked integrity and you simply walking up and saying, "No, it didn't!" doesn't change that.
Well, first I want to say that I think the GP post and your post seem to be on the same page....perhaps the sarcasm didn't come quite through in the GP
Very likely.
Second, while I do agree with all the federal laws that you present in your post, I think that federal laws should be implemented much more carefully than some of them are. I agree with the GP when he says that sometimes we are fifty states, and sometimes we are one country. The federal government needs to understand this, and understand that letting the states have rights and come up with different solutions to a problem can be a good testing ground for a future federal law. It's when the feds hastily pass laws or are allowed to change laws rapidly (like the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 which pretty much lets a few people change the laws on substances at will) that the states rightfully start crying out for states rights if they have a better solution to a broken law.
I don't disagree and I have never said that Federalism was bad, but the "States rights" issues as used by people who advocate the views the GP posted (regardless of whether or not the GP meant them), have the very erroneous view of "States rights" that I was attacking. Do the states have rights that are reserved to them and not the Federal government? Yes. Is local control preferable to centralized control? Yes. That being said, on the issues listed by the GP, "States rights" have been used as an excuse for state sanctioned terrorism against a specific group of people. That's really what got me going. I've had to live with people that believe whole heartedly the things that the GP posted all my life. That being the case, and the fact that it hits close to home, I'm a little quick on the draw about insuring errors are not propagated.
In the case you're bringing up, yes, policy experimentation at the state level as the Founding Fathers intended would probably allow for the development of a policy that could be applied nationally, fairly. What I'm guarding against is the many of the States' long history of not exactly acting in good faith towards the civil rights of all of their citizens during these "experiments". Case in point, Southern chain gangs during the 20th century.
Couldn't tell you about the EU, the EU Constitution is pretty lengthy and it isn't something I've gone looking for. There could be legal provisions for separating a state from the EU, but I've never heard of one. Interesting question though.
Let's say I won a match in a game of dodgeball against you (most liberals hate competition, but humor me), there is nothing wrong with bragging about my victory.
It's not bragging if you won, unless you claim to always be able to win and cannot maintain the integrity of your claim. Perhaps you mean rubbing your success in other's faces. You can do this, but it's really crass and quite uncivilized. Such behavior is frowned upon in the culture that founded this nation and it shows a lack of virtue.
Sportsmanship defines who we are as Human beings. This applies to both losing and winning. No one likes a loser, but everyone loves a winner (again, except for most liberals)! Bragging is a form of self-rewardment at the others expense. This does not fit the definition of being arrogant as you've so defined. The reason being that sportsmanship is all about integrity!
We choose to define who we are as humans. It's an individual decision, I don't see how your idea of sportsmanship fulfills Kant's categorical imperative. Self-indulgence at other's expense is so counter to every aspect of WASP culture as to render your statement laughable. There is no description of a Gentleman that reflects the behavior you describe, it is only ever described as vulgar and obscene, the behavior of ignorant commoners. If this what you are holding up as an ideal? You've changed the definitions of sportsmanship and integrity in such a way as to render them meaningless. There is no integrity in your description.
I gave you one before. They want defeat.
Yeah, we're all just sitting around here trying to figure out how to destroy our own country. It's not a matter of conscientious or rational disagreement, we just want to fuck over the country by deviously subverting the national interest in foreign policy. This is more efficient than simply directly sabotaging the domestic war effort. No wait, we won't do that because we're all a bunch of unsportsmanlike nancies that are too afraid of direct confrontation with all you manly conservatives. Are you really this fucking stupid?
I have no clue and don't care if Bush is a complete fucking idiot or just evil. It doesn't matter because the results are the same. You've chosen to just ignore the actual results of your proposal and keep wishing for ponies. There has been no demonstration of capability to accomplish the goals given. I don't care about motive, this is politics and not a criminal trial. Motive is irrelevant proposals and results are what matters here.
Defeat is in our national interest? Your logic is twisted.
If we have not lost yet, then explain the plan for victory. What objectives will I have to measure "not defeat"? Do you seriously equate not being able to reach unobtainable goals with a conscious decision to give up on an obtainable one? Or are you simply redefining defeat to mean whatever the Democrats are saying? Are you not aware of the logical inconsistencies in your reasoning here?
Republicans do invest in infrastructure and they give people hope through faith. Republicans have the highest work ethic in America. Period.
This has to be the biggest crock of shit I've seen yet, blind faith is all you have to offer, you haven't actually delivered on anything else. We've got a saying down South, "Don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining", that's this fucking faith game the GOP has been cynically playing. The evangelical community, especially in the South has been played for suckers by a bunch of opportunist false prophets. Bush's own Faith based office director blew the whistle on this with a book last year. This is precisely why the religiously motivated Founding Fathers declared the separation of church and state, they understood the corruption that government brought to religion and that religion brought to government. Church and state are oil and water, not peanut butter and chocolate.
This is the same jackass theology that those hucksters went around preaching in support o
The Constitution and federal laws can have power without removing the right to secede if constructed so that there is a net benefit for all states, even if states suffer from individual provosions.In fact, I would argue that this should be the case, and was intended to be the case. Otherwise, states which suffer a net loss are effectively subjugated nations who would benefit from independance, and rebellion could only be prevented through military might.
I see your point, but have to disagree. Alaska and Texas would both have qualified for secession after oil was found. The amount of oil revenues from either of those states easily outweighs the natural resources from say, Delaware or Rhode Island. Same with California and the discovery of gold. It could be said that any one of these states would have been better off as independent after the discovery of resources. I think the main problem with your argument is the fact that the this state of subjugation is so subjective. How would the remaining citizens of a nation decide that California taking their gold was an ok rebellion while their they chose deferment to the Federal system from which California benefited during it's existence in the Union? How would you calculate how much investment Federal tax revenues from other states had come into the seceding state? Would you demand repayment of those investments since the state in question was taking it's resources and going home?
It would be illogical for a state to remain in a union where they were being exploited; or equally it would be (coldly) illogical for other states to not exploit a state which could not secede and did not have enough support to protect itself in legislative votes. Consider two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch. Arguably this kind of exploitation happens with pork barrel projects - but presumably membership in the union is worth the price of subsidising industry in other states.
The entire process of admission to the Union is designed to require consent of the territory's population. Also, SC was a sovereign state that joined the Union rather than a territory that achieved statehood. SC actually had a stronger case, since it had a political history wherein, it like the other 12 colonies was recognized by the Crown as an independent political state. Either way, the consent of the governed is required for admission. No state has been coerced into statehood in the US. You might be able to quibble with that over Hawaii, but from a legal perspective it's true.
The entire point of the Union is that individual states benefit more from the Union than they would as independent entities. The structure of the Union enshrined in the Constitution is designed to meet this goal. The entire political process in the Federal system and it's courts are designed to mitigate and resolve the inherent conflicts you point out. It would be entirely possible to secede legally through an Act of Congress or an amendment to the Constitution. Either could theoretically provide the legal means for secession or even execute such a secession. I believe you could have such a scenario and still not allow a situation where a state was removed from the Union by the others.
The goal of the Constitution was to provide a system by which all of these disparate parties with different goals could peaceably coexist, and the history of this nation has been to increase the disparateness of the groups our system could accommodate. My point is that the Constitution explicitly provides remedies to the problems you are trying to address without the need to allow for rebellion. Rebellion, on the other hand, would require that the Union allowed for it's own demise.
Clinton was impeached for perjury, among other things. A crime. He was subsequently disbarred for the same crime by a federal court. Of course there was a better case.
It wasn't a Federal court, it was the Arkansas bar and the Arkansas Supreme Court, neither of which were criminal proceedings. He was also fined $25K. The case in impeachment rests on the impact of the President's actions on the ability of the Federal government to execute it's duties. That is what is laid out in the Federalist Papers and in the historical record. Clinton lying about Monica did not affect the any of the operations of the Federal government. Was it wrong, yes. Was it illegal, yes. Did it affect the ability of the Executive to execute the laws of Congress, no.
The problem the the Clinton impeachment is not that the impeachment was unjustified, it was that the INVESTIGATION was unjustified. For that you have Ken Starr to blame, but he was not ultimately the decision maker there- Janet Reno, Clinton's own appointee, made the decision to allow the Lewinsky line of investigation.
Not going to disagree, Sidney Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars" studies this series of steps in detail.
The whole special prosecutor system is just a way to instigate witch hunts.
This I do disagree with. It can be used for such purposes, but so can impeachment. I don't really think this is an issue as the intent seems to be that if anyone should be worried about witch hunts, it's our elected officials and not the citizenry. The citizenry have the power of elections to keep people that will instigate witch hunts and otherwise waste the taxpayers money in the legislature out. I don't see how special investigators screw up the balance of power.
Mr. Johnson you are about as partisan and biased as they come.
My positions are based on Liberal principles. The same principles which this nation's legal system is founded and intended to further. Partisanship requires allegiance to a Party for the sake of the Party, I simply happen to believe that supporting the Democratic Party is currently the best way to achieve the Liberal vision laid out by the Founding Fathers. Should some other political party make this more expedient, I will switch political allegiances as I have in the past.
As for bias, I'll argue circles around you on this point. Conservatives love to pull this bias fallacy out of their ass every time they want to hide from criticism, it's pathetic and cowardly. I am honest about my goals, if you disagree with those goals you are more than willing to say so but it has no bearing on the ability to criticize any proposal. If having goals is bias, then we are all equally guilty as logically no action can be taken without goals and no goals can have a justification based solely upon rational argument. What most people mean with this claim is a willingness to ignore inconvenient facts or otherwise hide parts of their arguments from criticism. I dare you to claim I have done such a thing as it would be a violation of my own principles and a complete lack of integrity on my part. I am open with my goals and my proposals of how to achieve them because that is the only way I can expose them to as much criticism as possible, thus maximizing the benefit of falsification and correcting errors in my proposals. My proposals can be objectively criticized as to how well they will achieve the goals I've stated. You don't even have to agree with my goals to evaluate them, likewise I have no need to agree with your goals to show the lack of integrity and logical errors in your proposals. Either attack my goals as at odds with my claim to identity as an American, a rationalist or a Liberal or attack my proposals as in conflict with achieving those goals, but do not mistake my passion or confidence for the crassness of unobjective bias.
That you really, really like your goals is not an issue for me, I can still treat your arguments with all of the respect I would treat them if I had shared your particu
What, are you just trolling now? If not, why not argue the objective aspects instead of these extremely silly platitudes?
Bragging is a good thing. I do it from time to time. It's healthy. As for the Democrats, they're pussies bordering on treason. I mean, if setting a time-table for withdrawal isn't calling for defeat, I don't know what is!
Arrogance is confidence which lacks integrity. Being arrogant just makes you a jerk and a bully. Explain to me the master plan for getting the fuck out of Iraq. Explain to me how we go from where we are today to a situation that is worth the blood and money that has gone into this endeavor. What, do we bomb Iran first? Start committing collective punishment against entire neighborhoods in Baghdad? A time-table isn't anymore defeat than what you are facing now. We have been defeated, our occupation is not legitimate and taints the legitimacy of any government we associate with. Our very influence with any government in Iraq and undermines their ability to obtain the consent of the governed. It is time to go. We must let the Iraqi's solve this problem, one can only hope that regional and international interests can help better than we have.
I'd love to see your rationale for this treason charge. The Democrats have advocated policies which are consistent with this nation's interests, the GOP has implemented policies which are against that interest. You're treading on pretty thin ice to go hurling assertions like that around.
??? Umm ok, whatever. If you say so...
It's been the official GOP position since Newt won in 94. What kind of party loyalist are you that you don't know the history of your own heroes?
You dunderhead! Al Qeada are and have been in Iraq (as they are all over the Middle East and parts of Europe and Asia) before the invasion.
Which Al Qeada operatives were in Iraq before the invasion? Name a single one or an actual intelligence report citing that there were any in Iraq. Secondly, we invaded Iraq. We didn't invade Europe or Asia, outside of Afghanistan, which actually did have something to do with 9/11. Wow, wonder how that would be going if we hadn't invaded Iraq and diverted forces. Who knows, maybe we could have defeated a bunch of goat farmers like the Taliban in less time than it took to beat the Italians, the Nazis and the Japanese combined. Seriously? Pussies? Treason? You've got to be kidding me!
I can't wait till they piss off the Chinese! That WILL be FUN to watch!
In what bizarro world does this happen? Does Osama suddenly get an interest Muslim separatists in the Gobi desert? China is already dealing with insurgents with ties to it's neighbor Pakistan and haven't done shit yet. On what planet does Osama suddenly get a plane to fly into Taipei 101? Why would Osama do this when his primary concern is the Sunni Arab lands? He is first both a Sunni and an Arab and his primary concern is Sunni Arab conflicts. There are way more popular conflicts for him to fight in than China, Al Qeada doesn't have much to gain by attacking Beijing.
Unfortunatly, many inocent will die after they lay down sheets of glass. However, it would make a salient point...but I digress. My point being is that you cannot prevent or win a war being a pacifist. This holds true for all of human civilization!
The dirty little secret is this. That the world is governed by the aggressive use of force.
and
You cannot have peace until you achive victory. Compromise only delays the inevitable between nations that have outstanding irreconcilable differences.
OMFG! You are so making me laugh! Please tell me I'm not arguing against some little kid. I really shouldn't be this harsh with a little kid.
Oh, where to begin?
Why do the dead innocents bother you? You're obviously one of those brass ball conservatives that treats the world like a prison where you have to beat someone up or be someone's bitch. That's the salient point of turning some part of the world
Thanks, but I think the difference between extra legal and illegal is semantic.
The established government against which such a rebellion would oppose would always oppose a rebellion as it is a rebellion against the authority of said government. What governmental system can tolerate rebellion and maintain integrity of its authority?
If you get away with rebellion, you get away with rebellion. The Founding Fathers got away with rebellion. The rationale they used maintained the integrity of their claim to moral rebellion as their culture defined it, but that wouldn't have mattered if they hadn't gotten away with it. They still would have been executed or exiled as traitors had they not succeeded; "We must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately".
States can secede if they want, they just had better be capable of winning a civil war because the US has authority to stop such a secession with violence if necessary. Government legitimacy can only be measured by the consent of the governed. That is why integrity of claims are so important, the government loses legitimacy in the eyes of the governed if it loses integrity to it's claims and all it has left are its guns. The governed may see a rebellion as more legitimate then the established government, such as in Vietnam, Iraq, the American Revolution and Southerners during the Civil War. Since I'm familiar with the culture and surrounding nature of the claims to legitimacy in the case of the American Revolution and the US Civil War, I can determine which positions were consistent with the views of the culture, thus discerning moral vs. immoral rebellion. Whether or not the Communists in Vietnam or any group of insurgents in Iraq participated in moral or immoral rebellion is a much tougher question that requires understanding the rationale for rebellion within the context of the culture.
The point I'm trying to make is that there are no legitimate reasons for rebellion in the eyes of an existing government. I don't see there as being some overreaching natural law or some ultimate legitimacy, I think to make such a claim is to search in vain for Kant's categorical imperative. You will never find universal agreement on what legitimate reasons for rebellion constitute. If I were a citizen of the Roman Republic, I might find the South's rebellion as completely moral, prohibitions against slavery may have been a legitimate reason to rebel for someone in Rome's culture. However, in the South's self-proclaimed cultural standards, it is immoral rebellion, their allegiance should have been to the Constitution before the institution of slavery. The test is the integrity of their actions against their claims and the rooting out of logical inconsistencies between the two. How else are we to discern objective criticism of something as subjective as what "legitimate rebellion" constitutes?
Maybe cheaper, but with less bloodshed and chaos??? Your kidding right? Secretarian tension was high even before the invasion. Ironically, it took a brutal dictator to keep them all in line. Once you get rid of this "key stone", the rest of the supporting populous starts caving in on each other.
Why do you assume removing Saddam from power required an invasion? Also, had the de-Baathification or the disbanding of the army not happened, the insurgency could have been small enough to manage. This administration completely bungled the post-invasion. The sectarian violence was not unavoidable. There is no evidence to say that it was.
Frankly, I'm surprised Iraq hasn't descended into total anarchy now.
I'm not sure what you are currently calling the situation in Iraq. The government has no authority outside the Green Zone, it seems that there is anarchy unless there's a military convey nearby.
Our military presence is keeping that from happening but not for much longer. One thing's for damn sure! If we pull out of that region now, shit will really hit the fan!
This shit hitting the fan is different that what's happening now how? What, 300 a day dead instead of 200? Iran is backing the Shia, the Saudi's and other Sunni's will continue to back the Sunnis and the Kurds are trying to establish an independent Kurdistan with control of Mosul's and Kirkuk's oil fields. Turkey isn't going to like that, the Sunni Iraqi's want their oil money and the Shia are kind of ticked about the last 30 years.
Honestly, I blame nations opposed to this war. Europe could really have made a big difference with their support.
What would that have done? Bush would have listened to the French on the post-invasion strategy? He didn't listen to the Pentagon or the British, why would he have listened to any other European ally? It was the complete incompetence by which this Administration under Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield's leadership screwed the pooch and setup a fertile ground for the insurgency and Al Qeada. Do you have any idea how many new Democrats Bush created at CENTCOM when he threw out all of the Pentagon's post-invasion plans and handing it all over to political ideologues? We've been watching the military registrations go up for the past 4 years.
But no, they're looking after their own political ass...just like the democrats.
How the hell does that make any sense whatsoever? How exactly was any of these European politicians "saving their own political ass" vs. acting in their nation's best interest? How has this war acted in the interest of the United States? What has this blood and treasure purchased? After all this time, how were the Democrats criticisms of the Administration's plans saving their own ass and not acting in the interests of this nation? What has Britain gained from this war?
What ever happened to just doing "the right thing" for the sake of humanity? I suppose hope, optimism, and virtue are a thing of the past. How folly of me to think otherwise!
wow... oh wow... Are you completely blind? Have you been living under a cave for the last 15 years? Hope? Optimism? Virtue? Doing the right thing? The GOP hasn't fielded a candidate that doesn't brag about devouring and destroying these things before breakfast. They have laughed and marginalized the Democrats for years for such wussy ideas. Can't invest in infrastructure, give people hope, might encourage them to be lazy.
I have a hard time even dignifying this last comment. It's completely absurd, you really have to be delusional to think that Bush has done the "right thing for humanity", been interested in effectively spreading hope or optimism. Holy crap, I'm slack-jawed, it's like watching Bush officials lie on camera about connections between Iraq and Al Qeada. It's such an astoundingly blatantly false "the sky is green" statement. Seriously, invading Iraq had something to do with the "right thing"? Holy crap.... the road to hell is paved with good intentio
This is the problem that I have with these debates. People on both sides seem to be under the false impression that anyone who disagrees with them has no intelligence or is less intelligent than they are or is completely dishonest. What exactly do you mean by intelligence credentials? As measured by what? Level of formal education? Discipline of choice? Publications? Success? Your own assessment?
Fair enough. Mid-level analysts at the CIA, career military intelligence officers, career diplomats and state department officials.
Essentially, anyone who gets paid to do this and got their job through meritocracy vs. political appointment or personal connections.
Frankly, there is no way to accurately measure ones intelligence so such a claim is simply an attempt to intimidate the other side.
I meant intelligence as part of the intelligence community, meaning that they get paid to be an intelligence source on foreign activities or policy. I wasn't trying to make a point about IQ levels or something and if I'm intimidating in anyway it's to intimidate you into response, not a conclusion. Doing so would violate my own claims to identity and destroy any integrity to my arguments.
Time will tell whether invading Iraq was a good idea. Right now, it doesn't look good and it looks worse every day. However, depending on what happens to Iraq in the next several years, it might very well turn out for the better. It is really hard to judge these things while you are living through them.
After several years of hearing this line and given all the mid-level meritoriously appointed analysts who have said that every action taken has been a mistake, I'm going to take the liberty to go ahead and pass judgment. Whatever success will be achieved by the fall of Saddam could have been done cheaper and with less bloodshed and chaos The problem is not that people are living through this, it's that people are most decidedly not living through this. I'm sorry, but theirs a higher bar to reach than let's wait a few years and hope it all works out when it comes to war. We owe our members of the military and their families more than that. They offered to die for us, are you really willing to treat that offer so cheaply?
Actually, having a Hierarchical government structure is superior to a flat federal government in many areas. If you think that the same educational policies would work just as well as in Hawaii and Alaska as in South Carolina (and I've worked with a lot of districts in South Carolina), you're grossly mistaken.
I'm not arguing for a flat structure, nor would I ever make a claim that educational policies for SC would work in AL or HI. I went through several Charleston County public schools and I don't think there is anyone who would call them representative of the rest of the nation. Hell, you couldn't even get a 40% African-American population required by some Charleston County schools in most of the country.
I'm in no uncertain terms for Federalism and local control, but not at the expense of individual rights. If local control means tyranny, then I fully expect the state and Federal governments to intervene to protect the rights of all citizens.
Actually, they could secede. There was nothing in the Constitution that said they couldn't, so they could, by Amendment X. So it was legal, though Lincoln wouldn't admit it. "Immoral Rebellion" is meaningless claptrap, as is the rest of your post.
I just answered this Xth Amendment fallacy in another post on this thread. There is no logical way you can use the 10th Amendment to justify secession. Just to recap, there is no such thing as legal rebellion. That would dictate a legal entity that had no interest in it's own survival, thats an unworkable basis for a nation and has never been suggested in the historical record. Moral rebellion was the logical framework for the Protestant Reformation, the American Revolution and the Civil Rights movement, to talk about immoral rebellion vs. moral rebellion as claptrap is to ignore the writings of every dead white guy our country and it's founding culture held in esteem. You cannot claim that you're upholding the civilization or principles this nation was founded upon and ignore the tension between moral and immoral rebellion. What, did you think all these guys just woke up one day and decided the tax on tea was a tad too high and grabbed their muskets? There was an entire ideology surrounding the basis for the revolution, the debate and language was steeped in the concept of moral rebellion and just authority. Your assertion is falsified by the historical record.
This Xth Amendment crap is just like the old "War of Northern Aggression" bs I've been hearing my whole life. It makes no logical sense, it's just a stupid folktale to make white Southerners who are ignorant of their history and hold onto racist notions feel better about themselves. I find no need to base my Southern identity to mistakes of the past, nor do I feel any need to defend them. Being Southern is it's own virtue, which I have no need to explain.
Read it again. You'll see I'm consistent. To summarize though, US Congress can in theory impeach and convict for any reason, but the US Constitution states it should be done only in certain cases (treason, bribery, etc). There's no appeals process for a Congressional conviction. The subject is removed (assuming they follow the Constitution here) from their position of power and is banned from assuming a similar federal position (eg, can't be president, a congressman, supreme court judge, etc) of power ever again. Period. Ie, there's no theoretical obstacle to Congress using this power in violation of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" clause, but in practice it is difficult to ignore the Constitution here.
I don't think you're grasping the concept of a political trial. If the politicians in Congress decide that the actions of some officer fall under high crimes and misdemeanors, then they can impeach and convict. Doing so for the Pres brewing a bad pot of coffee is not likely to sit well with the electorate, unless Starbucks is running the country. It is the political pressure of Congressional elections that is designed to be the balance against Congress, not the Constitution. You are being extremely literal about a phrase that had a very different literal meaning at the time it was written. High crimes and misdemeanors would be redundant if misdemeanor just meant less than a felony. The usage of the term misdemeanor explicitly means things like incompetence and lying to the people and all the other things that appear in the Federalist Papers. It doesn't matter why your incompetent, the people have a right to remove you before your term is up if you are incompetent. Secondly, there is nothing to violate and it does not limit Congresses ability to impeach. The Constitution spells out the balance of power, Executive It's still perjury and Congress has different considerations than the courts do.
Not disagreeing, I just think the GOP should be punished politically for wasting the nation's time and money. Especially given their record after obtaining power.
My take is that it far better fits the "high crimes and misdemeanors" clause (it is at least a crime though not one I'd impeach a president over) than incompetence which is not a crime and which is a highly subjective decision and frankly gives too much power to Congress.
You're basing your argument on a technicality that does not exist. It does not matter whether one is criminal and the other isn't as impeachment does not have such a standard. Congress was explicitly given this power by the Founding Fathers, impeachment is meant to be highly subjective. It is an escape clause in case someone really bad gets in so we don't have to suffer through 4 years without getting rid of them. The design is that we always have a way to get rid of them, even if they don't technically violate any laws. Seriously, if you have a problem with Congress being able to impeach over incompetence or any other reason listed in the Federalist Papers or under the sun, you'll need to change the Constitution.
Overall though, I think this argument is moot. The point in Federalist 10 is that you should impeach a President for removing competent officers and replacing them with incompetent ones in the Federal bureaucracy. This would indicate incompetence on the part of the President to me, but ultimately that wasn't the requirement I was talking about. So, according to the Father of the Constitution, you can be impeached for firing US Attorneys and replacing them with idiots that bring frivolous prosecutions against innocent people that are overturned by appeals courts with extreme prejudice, or for replacing competent FEMA directors with incompetent ones, or for cooking the books on intelligence and then leading the nation into war.
I understand how you are trying to be logically consistent, but I think you are too stuck on this non-existent crimes requirement. Since the requirement does not exist, there is no inconsistency to be reconciled. If y
There is no such thing as legal rebellion, rebellion is always illegal. There is moral rebellion vs. immoral rebellion within the Protestant culture that formed the rationalization for the Revolution and the continuance of which South Carolina claimed when declaring it's right to secede. Within a logically consistent view of that framework, South Carolina did not meet the requirements necessary for moral rebellion. It had not exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, nor had it obtained the moral high ground.
I'd really have to dig to find the reference, but Bill Clinton had an interview once where he stated that he believed that the Constitution required logical consistency. That belief in logical consistency is found throughout our nations legal framework and the rationalization for the Revolution, which was moral rebellion. This is why your Xth Amendment argument falls flat. The Constitution would have no power if states had a right to secede. If the Constitution contained a provision designed for the survival of the nation that disproportionately affected a single state and that state could secede from the Union for such an provision, then how many states would be left today?
Why wouldn't Texas or Alaska just have taken their oil and told the rest of us to piss off? Don't Federal revenues for oil extraction unfairly benefit the citizens of other states for resources found in that state? It is logically impossible to have a Union with centralized authority and then allow people to leave that union because they don't like the way it's going. To put it in perspective, the Founding Fathers viewed the Constitution as a compact with the significance and weight of the compact God made with Abraham. Just as there was no force on earth capable of breaking that compact, the Founding Fathers did not believe there was any justification, outside of the framework that justified the Revolution, to break this compact.
Furthermore, I firmly believe that this country's founders, the people who wrote the Constitution, built the new government with the hopes that it would succeed, but also with the hope that a corrupt government would be overthrown by the people.
Again, such an overthrow would require the same efforts put forth by the Founding Fathers to reconcile with George III before declaring Independence. South Carolina did not meet such requirements, the Civil War was not a failed Revolution pt II. The rationale for secession was inconsistent with the logic of the Constitution. The SC Articles of Secession lays out this legal history, from the Declaration of Independence through the Constitution. It's claim is that the other states are violating it's rights by not returning escaped slaves and agitating through entirely legal and Constitutional means to make slavery illegal. It's like Texas seceding because California passed a clean air law that disallowed cars that Texans liked in California and then tried to pass such legislation nationally through normal legal means.
Go read the Articles for yourself, those that supported and designed the secession from the Union made it clear that they believed in the institution of slavery over the Constitution. That the North had legitimately gained the political power within the legal framework of the Constitution to dismantle slavery was not justification for rebellion within the belief system that the South claimed it was upholding. There is no integrity to the argument for secession.
If South Carolina wasn't following both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, I've yet to see a state that has come any closer!
Uh, the ones that didn't secede. There is no spirit of rebellion within the Constitution, don't you think a bunch of rebels would have put it in if they had believed such a thing? I mean really, why would people who had just finished rebelling not think to put in a clause regarding rebellion if they thought it was a right? I really think this line of thought comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose behind the 2nd Amendment combined with a bad case of "Red Dawn/Rambo" syndrome. The 2nd Amendment is not a license for armed rebellion, and neither is the 10th.
Look Congress can in theory impeach and convict the President just because the coffee was off that day. However, the Constitution does provide guidance as to what is considered impeachment, "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Incompetence is not sufficient and the Federalist Papers are not the US Constitution.
How can you admit that Congress can impeach and convict in once sentence and then claim they can't in the next? Impeachment still does not require such legal barriers, it is the Federalist Papers that explicitly inform us of what the authors of the Constitution had in mind when they designed it. It is a political trial to try standing officers for political crimes. It's just like a vote of no confidence in Parliamentary systems. It doesn't matter that the Prime Minister hasn't committed a crime if the Parliament has no confidence in them. The Federalist Papers are considered a trusted source to inform us when we should and shouldn't have confidence. The language in the Constitution just provides the legal means for taking action.
They got him on lying under oath in federal court. Last I checked, perjury is a felony. Sure, I think the womanizing falls ludicrously outside the scope of the independent counsel's purview, but Clinton did get caught commiting a felony.
Yeah, I would have loved to have seen that perjury trap survive an appeal. Judges take a real dim view to the gotcha legal maneuvering that Ken Starr used to get as far as he got. The perjury was the result of forbidden fruit, no legal system, outside of a Federal special prosecutor would have gotten away with the grand inquisition Ken Starr perpetrated. The entire purpose of perjury charges is to maintain the rule of law. The Clinton impeachment was a full frontal assault on the rule of law.
I'm not cracking on Kucinich too hard nor did I mean to imply that his entire career is a set of stunts, and I respect his constituents choice as representative of local politics. I honestly think he means well and he does provide cover for other approaches in the larger effort to pursue a progressive agenda. That being said, I also think he does some stuff that is not representative of most of the rest of the country and tends to appear out of step with the rest of the Democratic Party. As I said, sometimes this is good, sometimes this is bad. While I admire his tenacity and agree on principle with him going after Cheney, I think that the House and Senate investigations are a more practical path to reach the same goals.
As a native Charlestonian, the city that invented the State's rights argument, and a descendant of slave-owning Confederate cavalry veterans, I'm so glad the Federal government won the four points you've made. Extremely glad, otherwise I would not be anywhere near as secure in my liberties as I am now.
You see, State's rights is a load of crap. It's really about fiefdom, controlling interests in a particular state don't like the Feds coming in and telling them that they can't violate Federal law. The legal establishment of second class citizenry is a threat to the Constitution and to the peace, the last three points you make were solutions to this threat. You're outdated republican view of the state is unworkable, especially in a modern society with the infrastructure required to compete for the wealth necessary to defend any of our rights.
We legally and rightfully changed our form of government from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution. The Federalist Papers in support of the Constitution are considered to be the "finest treatise on government in existence", not the anti-Federalist Papers in support of the Articles.
At that point, we, as a free people, specifically abandoned the republican view of states that you refer too. It was not working and we needed something better, a "more perfect union".
The Civil War (and again, I was raised 2 miles from where the damn thing started) was an act of immoral rebellion against a legitimate authority. Advocacy of violent secession was not a defense of some inherent rights, it was a betrayal of the underpinnings of Anglo-Saxon Protestant beliefs and culture that formed this nation's laws and the rationale for the Revolution. The Civil War was a fraud perpetuated by the wealthy of the South upon the poor and middle class. The only honor that came out of the Civil War for the South was the same honor that every soldier who believes he is fighting for his family and home. There is no honor in claiming that states have rights that supersedes the Federal government or that they have sovereign status, because there is no integrity to the argument. If states had the right to secession, the Federal Constitution would have no power. It would be a suicidal clause that would make the institutional structure unworkable, that is why the Constitution concentrates more power centrally than the Articles did. South Carolina agreed and ratified the Constitution, there was no justification for secession or the violence that followed, they committed immoral rebellion.
LBJ's Presidency, when the Great Society expanded the social safety net to include such frivolities as "Medicare" and we enacted "The Civil Rights Act of 1964" and "The Voting Rights Act of 1965."
You are in support of this erosion of "states rights to terrorize its citizens" aren't you? Otherwise I'd have to say that you have a delusional and unobjective view of freedom. This is obviously cribbing from ol'Milty Friedman with the horror and shock that brought you the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. I hope you don't think Brown v Board was judicial activism too. The stupidity of the argument that racism is some personal moral issue vs an issue that affects the interests of the state is the acceptance of different classes of citizens. This is not a viable situation. We cannot have inequality before the law for any human, regardless of their circumstances. If a person legally falls under the jurisdiction of the United States, they must be given the same legal protections as any other citizen of the United States. If you do not live up to this, then you invite tyranny (this is why torture advocates must be purged from our government). After all, if you can legally separate someone who has not violated the rights of another for an accident of birth or a matter of conscience then no one is safe. These are two factors upon which the state must seek equality. We can never be free people if we can be denied wealth accumulation, access to markets or equality in civil rights
The requirements for impeachment are not criminal. Impeachment was designed as a way to prosecute political crimes, incompetence and unethical leaders. Criminality is most certainly grounds for impeachment, but it is not required. The Federalist Papers list a number of reasons to impeach a President, included (#10) is the replacement of skilled civil servants with incompetent or corrupt ones (Ahem, "Heckuva job Brownie!" or Al "I don't recall" Gonzales). Violating the oath of office is exactly why you impeach someone. Impeachment is a political trial, not a criminal one, you're arguments have no weight.
The idea that there was a better case against Clinton is ludicrous. The Clinton impeachment was a setup funded and run entirely by dedicated professional political operatives. After 10 years of hounding the Clinton's, the best they could get was a married man lying about cheating on his wife? Whitewater, nothing, Sock's the cat's Christmas list, nothing, Travelgate, nothing, sexual harassment, nothing. The GOP congress issued over 1100 subpoenas during the Clinton administration and Clinton respected Congress' role, even allowing for a Special Prosecutor. The Bush administrations comical claims of executive privilege and the fact that Karl Rove is a walking Hatch Act violation who had a hand in leaking classified intelligence information for political purposes are grounds enough.
You are right that Kucinich won't get the job done though. This is par for the course for Kucinich, that's why I've got my bets on Waxman and Conyers in the House and Leahy in the Senate. Their investigations should provide all the proof needed for both political and criminal prosecution.
Your attempt at false equivocation is completely dishonest. The Democrats have used a strategy of containment since Clinton was elected in 1992. It worked, there were no WMD to be found. Attempting to equivocate the fraudulent rush to war with a reasoned effort to contain a known danger is bs. Are you seriously going to argue that the interests of the United States have been served by the actions of this administration? And what freedoms or other traditions are Conservatives conserving if it is ok for the government to use my tax dollars to lie to me? How are the claims of the Bush administration not fraudulent? They were the ones advocating for war, they were the ones making the claims that a change in the course of action must be taken. Ineffective defense against fraud might lose you an election, but it is not grounds for impeachment, commission of said fraud is. The Democrats gave up their responsibility to criticize unsound evidence, but in the light of the fact that they were the minority party and could not win in either the House or the Senate their political expediency and deferment to a extremely popular president during an election season is reasonable. However, the Democrats sin was accepting the evidence as presented by the administration. Since then, they have repeatedly (except for Hillary) stated that they should not have trusted the Administration's claims and that doing so was a mistake. Again, all of the quotes you have about Iraq possessing WMD from 02/03 are based on information promoted by the White House that had no integrity. Quotes before then are based on a strategy of containment, not invasion.
Show me the evidence from an actual intelligence agency that says Saddam had weapons in 2002 or 2003, hell anytime after 1998. Other than the rockets that exceeded the allowed range (which were destroyed before the war by inspectors and had no WMD warheads), Iraq possessed no capabilities to threaten the US or it's neighbors. The Democratic strategy of containment was working until Bush decided it wasn't good enough for his delusions. It's the same thing in N Korea, the !Clinton policy of the Bush Administration has managed in 2007 to get the same agreement Clinton got in 1995, but now Pyongyang has a couple more warheads it can sell to real terrorists. How did Bush's actions advance the interest of the United States? Why did we invade Iraq? To what purpose are our soldiers and treasure being spent?
I'd really like someone to show me a person with actual intelligence credentials that believes invading Iraq was a good idea. Defectors provided by "heroes in error" over at the INC don't count, they have been exposed as frauds. Plagiarized thesis don't count either. Show me the CIA approved intelligence, show me the mid-level analysts who actually believed Saddam was capable of building nukes, would in a million years team up with Al Qaeda or provide them with WMD or would be stupid enough to attack the US with the amount of US military power already pointed at him.
I want something that didn't come out of the the White House Iraq Group, the INC, the Office of Special Plans @ the Pentagon and that wasn't a delusion with no evidence (Atta in Prague). I seriously challenge you to come up with something.
What Bush and Cheney said:
DICK CHENEY: (Speech to the VFW 8/26/02) Many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.
DICK CHENEY: (Speech to the VFW 8/26/02) But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
DICK CHENEY (MEET THE PRESS NBC 9/8/02): It's now public that in fact he has been seeking to acquire and we have been able to intercept to prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge and the centrifuge is required to take low grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb."
It's an interesting play because the Dems do have enough votes to impeach Cheney -- but the Senate would never find him guilty by a 2/3rd majority.
Maybe that's why Kucinich can't find any co-sponsors. Not one.
This is of course the same brilliant strategy that the dems have been using for the last 12 years in elections -- fighting and winning the meaningless battles, and losing the important ones -- which is why I despair for the 2008 election.
No, this is Kucinich's brilliant strategy, not the Dems. It's been working for Kucinich though, he keeps getting re-elected. Not that the Dems don't have a record of dropping the ball, and not that the media doesn't play Steno Sue for the GOP enough, but why the hell would the actions of Representative Kucinich make you despair? He's been doing this crap for years, sometimes people agree with him, sometimes they roll their eyes. When he can't get any co-sponsors, they're rolling their eyes.
In addition, once this road is crossed -- impeaching for , and every time the president/vp is in office, and a different party has a majority in the senate and house, you'll see an impeachment. It's the same thing that happened once the line was crossed with judicial appointments.
Personally, I think Cheney and Bush have done more than enough to be impeached. Between the Abramoff corruption, fraudulently pursuing a war, the aftermath of Katrina, the US Attorney scandal and outing a CIA agent, the Federalist Papers make it clear that these two meet the criteria. Politically, I don't believe it's feasible right now, nor would it be well timed, given the number of investigations that are currently underway. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if during the course or after some of these investigations finish up that it became more politically feasible. There's a year till the primaries are done, there may be a lot of incumbents that need to distance themselves from this administration even more.
Partisian politics has made almost every parties' political victory a Pyrrhic one for the American people.
The American people wouldn't know objectivity if it slapped them in the face. BTW, what is this supposed to mean? The Dems political victory in October finally started to clamp down on the obscene amount of fraud and corruption after 6 years of a Rubber Stamp Congress.
We get the shaft, while the politicians get rich fighting each other. We need a 3rd party...
Dude, lay off the bong and get out of your dorm room. We get the shaft, because we don't fucking organize. Everybody loves to sit and whine about what's fucking wrong with politics, but the vast majority of you don't meaningfully participate. When is the last time you actually went to a Dem or GOP party meeting? You know, the one's where they plan and talk about who they're going to support and what they're going to do to get people elected. Every political meeting I attend, it's the same group of people, every rally, every candidate meeting, every fund raiser. Political power is simply laying there for you to grab, but very few people actually are willing to put in the work it takes to make the changes you want. This is not some new uncharted territory we're in, people have been successfully changing things around this place for the past 200 years. Really it would be hard to make this any easier, especially for WASPs.
If you don't like that the Democrats keep screwing up, then go take over your local Democratic Party. If you think you know better and you weren't around to mention that when it mattered, what use is your knowledge?
Finally, does Kucinich this this will help him get elected President? No. But it will raise him money for his re-election campaign and maybe he naively believes it will get the ball rolling or something. Whatever, I have to go roll my eyes now.
Thus, he is no longer in the realm of scientific rules of theory, he is in political/socialogic rules of theory.
What? There is no such thing. There is objective knowledge and subjective knowledge. The entire question is around a should statement. Should something be done about global warming? There are objective criticisms that can be made about this goal, the same way objective knowledge is distilled from science's subjective goal of understanding the natural world. A substantial portion of the scientific community and the information that has so far survived falsification points to the should statements that Gore is advocating. Namely that carbon reduction is the most effective and urgent task ahead.
To claim that Gore is suggesting that all scientific questioning should cease is simply dishonest. There is nowhere that he suggests this, only that we should start taking certain actions now, that we have reached a point of diminishing returns when it comes to waiting for the results of further research before taking action. This is an entirely rational argument to make, it maintains its integrity. By making your claim that he is claiming that questioning should stop you are asserting that only one of two actions can be taken, that the decision is a zero sum game. This assertion is absurd on it's face.
It is equally dishonest to quibble over semantics like this. Gore is plainly talking about the decision to act on carbon reduction, not the decision to continue researching the science supporting that action. To claim he means something that he clearly doesn't is not honest, especially when there are substantive arguments that you have chosen not to answer.
Nothing. But then I never said we should do nothing, I just said reducing CO2 might not be effect. Why? Simple, if 3 other planets with no humans, and as you point out we cant survive there, are warming then the cause cannot be solely humans. QED. Even if we remove all human causes, it will still get warmer due to whatever is making the other planets get warmer... like maybe more solar output?
However, none of those explanations fit the observed and yet to be falsified data. That is why there is consensus in the scientific community. The human carbon output theory fits the data better than the other theories. Either way, we better figure how to regulate the temperature on the planet. It will be much easier to maintain our existing environment than to attempt to adapt. We don't have the requisite knowledge to survive in a radically different environment long term, to have to do that will cause much more devastation than attempts to maintain our current environment. We will still have to adapt, but the adaptations won't be so harsh.
Yes, and if we only try to reduce CO2, how are we going to build dikes or transplant people? We have no replacement for oil as yet, and nothing on the horizon to replace it at the scale needed to protect or move people. I suppose your next response will be something on the order of YHBT, YHL, HAND.
Again, there is no rational basis for you to make the claim of a zero sum game. Adaptation and prevention are possible simultaneously. You are being an irrational skeptic. We do not need a singular or total replacement for oil. What we need is progress and movement towards carbon reduction. If we only replace half the oil needs with carbon neutral tech and increase efficiency, we can maintain the growth required and invest in carbon sequestration. There does not need to be some messianic solution, nor is Gore or anyone else who advocates for action, claiming that there is one or should be one. What is needed is simple actions that prevent the market from externalizing the objective cost of carbon, making carbon neutral and carbon negative technology more profitable. Once that happens, the market will assist in reducing carbon. New technologies will be at least as, if not more desirable in a free market that does not externalize carbon costs. It will be no different from when
No you have it right. I am saying that if anyone, lest of all Gore, says the "debate is over" about human caused global warming they are trying to falsely use scientific evedence to end debate about what to do.
But nobody is saying it in that fashion. What basis do you have to say that someone is trying to end scientific debate?
I do think that there is plenty of strong evidence that the earth is warming due to natural causes. Similar losses of polar ice caps on Mars, (Mars ice cap ovservation records go back farther than our own earth's, and the closest thing we have to a control for earth) rise of surface temps on Jupiter and Pluto being a good examples that there is a solar system wide event going on. Not of THAT was in the movie, because it is not a scientific treatment of the subject, it is a political one.
Uhm.... I don't think humanity would survive on Mars, Jupiter or Pluto. WTF does any of this have to do with whether or not we should attempt to manage the climate on Earth?
So addressing global warming by preparing for ice melts regardless of the source makes sense. Trying to stop or reverse it strictly by stopping human production of CO2, as Gore suggests, might yeild less than satifactory results if it turns out that the theory is wrong and man's impact is far less than he thinks.
So we shouldn't do anything until we can predict the future? How exactly would reducing CO2 output cause more harm than good? Which model supports these ideas? You do realize that we will lose most coastal cities if the ice on Greenland melts? What could be more costly than losing the majority of population centers in the world?
That is the suicidal error: taking action to reverse the effects of a theory, rather than taking steps based on the results of the theory.
OK. Not sure what you're trying to say here. That human produced CO2 is the theory about why the planet is warming up that has best survived falsification. Theories don't have results, experiments do, they are attempts to falsify theories. No one is trying to "reverse a theory" or whatever you mean, this is a question of probabilities produced by an objective model.
Again, some of these same scientists thought we were entering an ice age back in the 70's and made recommendations of dusting the icecaps with coal dust. So I am a little reluctent to have them do things that change the overall environment instead of planning for the changes independent of cause.
We have already changed the environment, and those climate scientists are so less trustworthy than oil executives and their lobbyists. Also, if the worst case scenarios happen due to the changes, there is no preparing, there is just massive suffering. Your example is a horrid attempt at equivocation. Did every peer reviewed scientific journal assert that we should dust the ice caps? The testing of the theories in the 70's led to the better models we have today, which is why you have much more consensus over the issue today than you had in the 70's. You can wait for certainty, but you'll be dead before you ever achieve it. Besides, it's not as if planning for change and attempting to prevent changes are mutually exclusive actions. No one has suggested that we should not do both, however, the less drastic the changes, the easier it is to prepare.
You might as well get used to the idea of terraforming planets and engineering on this level. It is a challenge that humanity must overcome for it's longterm survival. There is a very narrow range of environments that humanity can survive in, nature doesn't necessarily prefer those states.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone want to speculate on the powers of the Gygax? Will it be able to kick Tiamat's ass? Will it be more of a Tom Bombadil character or a benevolent Loki?
I learned to program by modifying hack source in vi on a Tandy Model 16 running MS-XENIX. The K&R C manual and the AT&T Unix manuals were a little above my elementary reading level, but building dungeons was a big enough reward to overcome that. As to the other folks who mentioned the skill set that D&D taught them, I'd like to add my agreement. Learning how to logically model and implement rule systems with teams was an amazing challenge that has served me well.
Gary Gygax's flight of fantasy has probably done more for the world than we will ever know. I will be spending my night with good friends, strong ale and old songs.
With my eternal thanks and appreciation, Godspeed Gary Gygax.
Are you actually ignorant of the "years and years of deliberation and negotiation" between the North and the South?
Which one of these changed the nature of the union how? Which one offered a legal way for a state to unilaterally secede? Are you ignorant about what these negotiations actually produced?
You think they just decided to up and secede one day? Slavery had been one of the most significant issues debated in congress for FORTY YEARS leading up to the Civil War. What do you think Henry Clay is famous for? Irreconcilable differences built up in the decades leading up to the Civil War, and when Lincoln got elected, they saw which way the wind was blowing and seceded.
What a swell legal justification! Since we've been debating abortion for over 40 years and had numerous negotiations, any state that doesn't like the current Federal regime regarding this issue is now legally and morally justified to secede. Brilliant! The Constitution did not make the institution of slavery a right like Freedom of Speech, it was an open legal question. The South signed onto the Constitution with full knowledge of this situation. The abolitionist strategy was to contain the expansion of slavery and let it die a natural death as an institution. The South committed to preserving this institution's demise even in the face of a changing economic and political landscape. All compromises offered by the South required the North permanently accept the institution of slavery. The Crittenden Compromise would have taken the entire question off the table and been irrevocable by future amendment. That's a privilege not even enjoyed by the Bill of Rights.
You ought to do your research. Various compromises were attempted by the South at the last minute to avoid the Civil War, and rejected by Lincoln.
None of which included a legal path to secession. None of which change the fact that the South chose the institution of slavery over the institutions created by the Constitution, which they swore an oath to uphold.
Setting aside the immorality of slavery for the second, the South perceived it as an attempt by the North to take away their "property" and ruin their ability to make income. Even for slaveowners which recognized the gross inhumanity of slavery, they rarely freed their own slaves, even after their death.
My arguments would be the same if this had been over the immoral institution of sunflower spitting. The Southern perceptions over the question do not change the fact that there was no legal mechanism for secession and that rather than attempting to create one, they rebelled.
Even Patrick Henry didn't free any of his own slaves, and he was quite aware of his own hypocrisy:
"Would anyone believe I am the master of slaves of my own purchase! I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them. I will not, I cannot justify it. However culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my devoir to virtue as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want of conformity to them."
Irrelevant.
The causes of the Civil War have many parallels in the Revolutionary War. See for example the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, the Tea Act, etc. Americans of that age were ready to go to war over laws that negatively affected their economics. From the South's point of view, it was immoral of the North to dispossess them of their "property", and so were justified in going to war.
They tried to dress the Civil War up like it had parallels with the Revolution. That was propaganda that you seem to be buying. Americans did not just go to war for economic reasons. Americans had a very serious respect for legitimate authority and going to war with legitimate authority was rebellion. They went to war over economics with the French, the Spanish and various Native Americans, but they didn't go overthrowing their own governments for what they considered crass and immoral reasons.
You are taking a much too simplistic
I simply said the causes were complex, because they were, and because I don't feel like writing a hundred pages on a complex subject just to answer you.
I see, you are right because you were right. And don't worry, I wouldn't want to you to tax yourself writing hundreds of pages, a single statement that is logically meaningful to your assertions would be sufficient. Besides, it might be helpful if you read hundreds of pages on the subject first, at this point I have no reason to believe you could write hundreds of pages.
The short answer is, if you're interested in the "moral rightness" of the secession, then it breaks down like this:
Yes, quite interested.
1) Rebellion is not moral or immoral in itself. You're confusing this with legal or illegal, and even then, the secession was legal, to a certain degree.
And, you've already confused secession with rebellion. The act of secession can be judged on it's legality, the act of rebellion on it's morality. The morality of a rebellion is the only way to compare acts of rebellion as all rebellion is illegal. Name one instance of "legal rebellion", name one institution that has allowed for "legal rebellion". There was no legal mechanism in the Constitution for unilateral secession by a state, therefore secession was illegal, so enforcement through arms was rebellion and rebellion is always illegal. Are you going to try to claim the Revolution was "legal rebellion"? None of the Revolutionaries did. The difference between the Revolution and the Civil War is the morality of the rebellion given the official reasons of the rebellion within the context of the culture that started the rebellion. The Revolutionary claims for rebellion were consistent with the existing cultural claims of legitimate authority, the SC Articles of Secession were not. Neither case was "legal rebellion".
2) The South was morally in the wrong for defending an institution that could not be defended. Slavery was a way of making money, and it is hard for people to willingly give up their source of money.
Your comparison doesn't make sense. Slavery was legal and protected by the Constitution. The South had signed onto the Constitution and refused to continue to recognize their obligations in that agreement if slavery was not protected in that agreement. That the abolition of slavery would be achieved through the framework that they had taken a oath to uphold did not matter, they held slavery more important than their previously contracted obligations. Such contractual obligations were considered a cornerstone of the society that produced this entire drama. Breaking such obligations was considered immoral and lacking in integrity. By their own measure, the Civil War was immoral rebellion.
3) The North should have enacted a policy of Compensatory Emancipation, as did other nations before America, and as the Union did in Washington DC.
Everyone knows that the Civil War cost the North more than buying the slaves freedom outright, what makes you think that the South would have accepted that? The South chose the "institution of slavery" over the Constitution, not the cash value of their property over the Constitution. They saw an abolishment of the practice as a encroachment upon their rights. It was a mistaken belief, a morally and legally indefensible position, but it was the position that they explicitly stated in the Articles of Secession. Besides, when was this supposed to take place, Secession was declared in response to the abolitionists gaining the political power to pass just such an initiative. Your what if scenario completely ignores the historical record.
Ignorance is no excuse for ignorance.
Again with the statements that you may think have meaning, but in fact, do not.
This sound familiar to you?
"...that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes d
And your response was just as lacking. The Constitution was an agreement between states, and so could be broken by the states.
Oh gosh, my argument is completely decimated by your assertion. This new thinking which defeats logical arguments by saying "Nuh, uh! They can too!" is absolutely amazing. I am so ashamed that I've wasted all this time reconciling the legal scholarship of the era with the statements of intent made by those who took the actions. I could have just said "Not gonna do it!". Wow, you have so opened my eyes.
There were a number of causes for the Revolution, as there were for the Civil War. What I'm taking exception with is that you're claiming the Revolution was moral, and the Civil War was immoral. Don't Tread On Me and many other "moral" factors as you'd call them are shared between the two conflicts.
Look, you've clearly not read anything written here, I'm really not sure why you bothered to reply or thought this was some sort of argument against the assertions I've made. This doesn't even pass the laugh test. You offer nothing in support of your statements. Pinkney's Flag was a product of the culture and ideology that provided the rationale for the war. They didn't make a flag and then start a war. The secessionists tried to claim the same ideological basis, but their arguments do not stand under scrutiny. Rather than seeking a political solution or even a peaceful secession process, they rebelled. The idea that a state can unilaterally declare independence from the Union would render the Constitution utterly impotent. These people conscientiously chose the institution of slavery over the Constitution, thus their rebellion was immoral.
To say otherwise ignores the place that contracts and integrity of agreements had in the culture that took these actions. You cannot ignore what these people thought when they took the actions they did. The Southern cause was based on a radical departure from the tradition it used to claim the authority for it's actions. Their position lacked integrity and you simply walking up and saying, "No, it didn't!" doesn't change that.
Well, first I want to say that I think the GP post and your post seem to be on the same page....perhaps the sarcasm didn't come quite through in the GP
Very likely.
Second, while I do agree with all the federal laws that you present in your post, I think that federal laws should be implemented much more carefully than some of them are. I agree with the GP when he says that sometimes we are fifty states, and sometimes we are one country. The federal government needs to understand this, and understand that letting the states have rights and come up with different solutions to a problem can be a good testing ground for a future federal law. It's when the feds hastily pass laws or are allowed to change laws rapidly (like the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 which pretty much lets a few people change the laws on substances at will) that the states rightfully start crying out for states rights if they have a better solution to a broken law.
I don't disagree and I have never said that Federalism was bad, but the "States rights" issues as used by people who advocate the views the GP posted (regardless of whether or not the GP meant them), have the very erroneous view of "States rights" that I was attacking. Do the states have rights that are reserved to them and not the Federal government? Yes. Is local control preferable to centralized control? Yes. That being said, on the issues listed by the GP, "States rights" have been used as an excuse for state sanctioned terrorism against a specific group of people. That's really what got me going. I've had to live with people that believe whole heartedly the things that the GP posted all my life. That being the case, and the fact that it hits close to home, I'm a little quick on the draw about insuring errors are not propagated.
In the case you're bringing up, yes, policy experimentation at the state level as the Founding Fathers intended would probably allow for the development of a policy that could be applied nationally, fairly. What I'm guarding against is the many of the States' long history of not exactly acting in good faith towards the civil rights of all of their citizens during these "experiments". Case in point, Southern chain gangs during the 20th century.
Thanks, years of reading has paid off.
Couldn't tell you about the EU, the EU Constitution is pretty lengthy and it isn't something I've gone looking for. There could be legal provisions for separating a state from the EU, but I've never heard of one. Interesting question though.
Let's say I won a match in a game of dodgeball against you (most liberals hate competition, but humor me), there is nothing wrong with bragging about my victory.
It's not bragging if you won, unless you claim to always be able to win and cannot maintain the integrity of your claim. Perhaps you mean rubbing your success in other's faces. You can do this, but it's really crass and quite uncivilized. Such behavior is frowned upon in the culture that founded this nation and it shows a lack of virtue.
Sportsmanship defines who we are as Human beings. This applies to both losing and winning. No one likes a loser, but everyone loves a winner (again, except for most liberals)! Bragging is a form of self-rewardment at the others expense. This does not fit the definition of being arrogant as you've so defined. The reason being that sportsmanship is all about integrity!
We choose to define who we are as humans. It's an individual decision, I don't see how your idea of sportsmanship fulfills Kant's categorical imperative. Self-indulgence at other's expense is so counter to every aspect of WASP culture as to render your statement laughable. There is no description of a Gentleman that reflects the behavior you describe, it is only ever described as vulgar and obscene, the behavior of ignorant commoners. If this what you are holding up as an ideal? You've changed the definitions of sportsmanship and integrity in such a way as to render them meaningless. There is no integrity in your description.
I gave you one before. They want defeat.
Yeah, we're all just sitting around here trying to figure out how to destroy our own country. It's not a matter of conscientious or rational disagreement, we just want to fuck over the country by deviously subverting the national interest in foreign policy. This is more efficient than simply directly sabotaging the domestic war effort. No wait, we won't do that because we're all a bunch of unsportsmanlike nancies that are too afraid of direct confrontation with all you manly conservatives. Are you really this fucking stupid?
I have no clue and don't care if Bush is a complete fucking idiot or just evil. It doesn't matter because the results are the same. You've chosen to just ignore the actual results of your proposal and keep wishing for ponies. There has been no demonstration of capability to accomplish the goals given. I don't care about motive, this is politics and not a criminal trial. Motive is irrelevant proposals and results are what matters here.
Defeat is in our national interest? Your logic is twisted.
If we have not lost yet, then explain the plan for victory. What objectives will I have to measure "not defeat"? Do you seriously equate not being able to reach unobtainable goals with a conscious decision to give up on an obtainable one? Or are you simply redefining defeat to mean whatever the Democrats are saying? Are you not aware of the logical inconsistencies in your reasoning here?
Republicans do invest in infrastructure and they give people hope through faith. Republicans have the highest work ethic in America. Period.
This has to be the biggest crock of shit I've seen yet, blind faith is all you have to offer, you haven't actually delivered on anything else. We've got a saying down South, "Don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining", that's this fucking faith game the GOP has been cynically playing. The evangelical community, especially in the South has been played for suckers by a bunch of opportunist false prophets. Bush's own Faith based office director blew the whistle on this with a book last year. This is precisely why the religiously motivated Founding Fathers declared the separation of church and state, they understood the corruption that government brought to religion and that religion brought to government. Church and state are oil and water, not peanut butter and chocolate.
This is the same jackass theology that those hucksters went around preaching in support o
The Constitution and federal laws can have power without removing the right to secede if constructed so that there is a net benefit for all states, even if states suffer from individual provosions.In fact, I would argue that this should be the case, and was intended to be the case. Otherwise, states which suffer a net loss are effectively subjugated nations who would benefit from independance, and rebellion could only be prevented through military might.
I see your point, but have to disagree. Alaska and Texas would both have qualified for secession after oil was found. The amount of oil revenues from either of those states easily outweighs the natural resources from say, Delaware or Rhode Island. Same with California and the discovery of gold. It could be said that any one of these states would have been better off as independent after the discovery of resources. I think the main problem with your argument is the fact that the this state of subjugation is so subjective. How would the remaining citizens of a nation decide that California taking their gold was an ok rebellion while their they chose deferment to the Federal system from which California benefited during it's existence in the Union? How would you calculate how much investment Federal tax revenues from other states had come into the seceding state? Would you demand repayment of those investments since the state in question was taking it's resources and going home?
It would be illogical for a state to remain in a union where they were being exploited; or equally it would be (coldly) illogical for other states to not exploit a state which could not secede and did not have enough support to protect itself in legislative votes. Consider two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch. Arguably this kind of exploitation happens with pork barrel projects - but presumably membership in the union is worth the price of subsidising industry in other states.
The entire process of admission to the Union is designed to require consent of the territory's population. Also, SC was a sovereign state that joined the Union rather than a territory that achieved statehood. SC actually had a stronger case, since it had a political history wherein, it like the other 12 colonies was recognized by the Crown as an independent political state. Either way, the consent of the governed is required for admission. No state has been coerced into statehood in the US. You might be able to quibble with that over Hawaii, but from a legal perspective it's true.
The entire point of the Union is that individual states benefit more from the Union than they would as independent entities. The structure of the Union enshrined in the Constitution is designed to meet this goal. The entire political process in the Federal system and it's courts are designed to mitigate and resolve the inherent conflicts you point out. It would be entirely possible to secede legally through an Act of Congress or an amendment to the Constitution. Either could theoretically provide the legal means for secession or even execute such a secession. I believe you could have such a scenario and still not allow a situation where a state was removed from the Union by the others.
The goal of the Constitution was to provide a system by which all of these disparate parties with different goals could peaceably coexist, and the history of this nation has been to increase the disparateness of the groups our system could accommodate. My point is that the Constitution explicitly provides remedies to the problems you are trying to address without the need to allow for rebellion. Rebellion, on the other hand, would require that the Union allowed for it's own demise.
Clinton was impeached for perjury, among other things. A crime. He was subsequently disbarred for the same crime by a federal court. Of course there was a better case.
It wasn't a Federal court, it was the Arkansas bar and the Arkansas Supreme Court, neither of which were criminal proceedings. He was also fined $25K. The case in impeachment rests on the impact of the President's actions on the ability of the Federal government to execute it's duties. That is what is laid out in the Federalist Papers and in the historical record. Clinton lying about Monica did not affect the any of the operations of the Federal government. Was it wrong, yes. Was it illegal, yes. Did it affect the ability of the Executive to execute the laws of Congress, no.
The problem the the Clinton impeachment is not that the impeachment was unjustified, it was that the INVESTIGATION was unjustified. For that you have Ken Starr to blame, but he was not ultimately the decision maker there- Janet Reno, Clinton's own appointee, made the decision to allow the Lewinsky line of investigation.
Not going to disagree, Sidney Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars" studies this series of steps in detail.
The whole special prosecutor system is just a way to instigate witch hunts.
This I do disagree with. It can be used for such purposes, but so can impeachment. I don't really think this is an issue as the intent seems to be that if anyone should be worried about witch hunts, it's our elected officials and not the citizenry. The citizenry have the power of elections to keep people that will instigate witch hunts and otherwise waste the taxpayers money in the legislature out. I don't see how special investigators screw up the balance of power.
Mr. Johnson you are about as partisan and biased as they come.
My positions are based on Liberal principles. The same principles which this nation's legal system is founded and intended to further. Partisanship requires allegiance to a Party for the sake of the Party, I simply happen to believe that supporting the Democratic Party is currently the best way to achieve the Liberal vision laid out by the Founding Fathers. Should some other political party make this more expedient, I will switch political allegiances as I have in the past.
As for bias, I'll argue circles around you on this point. Conservatives love to pull this bias fallacy out of their ass every time they want to hide from criticism, it's pathetic and cowardly. I am honest about my goals, if you disagree with those goals you are more than willing to say so but it has no bearing on the ability to criticize any proposal. If having goals is bias, then we are all equally guilty as logically no action can be taken without goals and no goals can have a justification based solely upon rational argument. What most people mean with this claim is a willingness to ignore inconvenient facts or otherwise hide parts of their arguments from criticism. I dare you to claim I have done such a thing as it would be a violation of my own principles and a complete lack of integrity on my part. I am open with my goals and my proposals of how to achieve them because that is the only way I can expose them to as much criticism as possible, thus maximizing the benefit of falsification and correcting errors in my proposals. My proposals can be objectively criticized as to how well they will achieve the goals I've stated. You don't even have to agree with my goals to evaluate them, likewise I have no need to agree with your goals to show the lack of integrity and logical errors in your proposals. Either attack my goals as at odds with my claim to identity as an American, a rationalist or a Liberal or attack my proposals as in conflict with achieving those goals, but do not mistake my passion or confidence for the crassness of unobjective bias.
That you really, really like your goals is not an issue for me, I can still treat your arguments with all of the respect I would treat them if I had shared your particu
What, are you just trolling now? If not, why not argue the objective aspects instead of these extremely silly platitudes?
Bragging is a good thing. I do it from time to time. It's healthy. As for the Democrats, they're pussies bordering on treason. I mean, if setting a time-table for withdrawal isn't calling for defeat, I don't know what is!
Arrogance is confidence which lacks integrity. Being arrogant just makes you a jerk and a bully. Explain to me the master plan for getting the fuck out of Iraq. Explain to me how we go from where we are today to a situation that is worth the blood and money that has gone into this endeavor. What, do we bomb Iran first? Start committing collective punishment against entire neighborhoods in Baghdad? A time-table isn't anymore defeat than what you are facing now. We have been defeated, our occupation is not legitimate and taints the legitimacy of any government we associate with. Our very influence with any government in Iraq and undermines their ability to obtain the consent of the governed. It is time to go. We must let the Iraqi's solve this problem, one can only hope that regional and international interests can help better than we have.
I'd love to see your rationale for this treason charge. The Democrats have advocated policies which are consistent with this nation's interests, the GOP has implemented policies which are against that interest. You're treading on pretty thin ice to go hurling assertions like that around.
??? Umm ok, whatever. If you say so...
It's been the official GOP position since Newt won in 94. What kind of party loyalist are you that you don't know the history of your own heroes?
You dunderhead! Al Qeada are and have been in Iraq (as they are all over the Middle East and parts of Europe and Asia) before the invasion.
Which Al Qeada operatives were in Iraq before the invasion? Name a single one or an actual intelligence report citing that there were any in Iraq. Secondly, we invaded Iraq. We didn't invade Europe or Asia, outside of Afghanistan, which actually did have something to do with 9/11. Wow, wonder how that would be going if we hadn't invaded Iraq and diverted forces. Who knows, maybe we could have defeated a bunch of goat farmers like the Taliban in less time than it took to beat the Italians, the Nazis and the Japanese combined. Seriously? Pussies? Treason? You've got to be kidding me!
I can't wait till they piss off the Chinese! That WILL be FUN to watch!
In what bizarro world does this happen? Does Osama suddenly get an interest Muslim separatists in the Gobi desert? China is already dealing with insurgents with ties to it's neighbor Pakistan and haven't done shit yet. On what planet does Osama suddenly get a plane to fly into Taipei 101? Why would Osama do this when his primary concern is the Sunni Arab lands? He is first both a Sunni and an Arab and his primary concern is Sunni Arab conflicts. There are way more popular conflicts for him to fight in than China, Al Qeada doesn't have much to gain by attacking Beijing.
Unfortunatly, many inocent will die after they lay down sheets of glass. However, it would make a salient point...but I digress. My point being is that you cannot prevent or win a war being a pacifist. This holds true for all of human civilization!
The dirty little secret is this. That the world is governed by the aggressive use of force.
and
You cannot have peace until you achive victory. Compromise only delays the inevitable between nations that have outstanding irreconcilable differences.
OMFG! You are so making me laugh! Please tell me I'm not arguing against some little kid. I really shouldn't be this harsh with a little kid.
Oh, where to begin?
Why do the dead innocents bother you? You're obviously one of those brass ball conservatives that treats the world like a prison where you have to beat someone up or be someone's bitch. That's the salient point of turning some part of the world
Thanks, but I think the difference between extra legal and illegal is semantic.
The established government against which such a rebellion would oppose would always oppose a rebellion as it is a rebellion against the authority of said government. What governmental system can tolerate rebellion and maintain integrity of its authority?
If you get away with rebellion, you get away with rebellion. The Founding Fathers got away with rebellion. The rationale they used maintained the integrity of their claim to moral rebellion as their culture defined it, but that wouldn't have mattered if they hadn't gotten away with it. They still would have been executed or exiled as traitors had they not succeeded; "We must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately".
States can secede if they want, they just had better be capable of winning a civil war because the US has authority to stop such a secession with violence if necessary. Government legitimacy can only be measured by the consent of the governed. That is why integrity of claims are so important, the government loses legitimacy in the eyes of the governed if it loses integrity to it's claims and all it has left are its guns. The governed may see a rebellion as more legitimate then the established government, such as in Vietnam, Iraq, the American Revolution and Southerners during the Civil War. Since I'm familiar with the culture and surrounding nature of the claims to legitimacy in the case of the American Revolution and the US Civil War, I can determine which positions were consistent with the views of the culture, thus discerning moral vs. immoral rebellion. Whether or not the Communists in Vietnam or any group of insurgents in Iraq participated in moral or immoral rebellion is a much tougher question that requires understanding the rationale for rebellion within the context of the culture.
The point I'm trying to make is that there are no legitimate reasons for rebellion in the eyes of an existing government. I don't see there as being some overreaching natural law or some ultimate legitimacy, I think to make such a claim is to search in vain for Kant's categorical imperative. You will never find universal agreement on what legitimate reasons for rebellion constitute. If I were a citizen of the Roman Republic, I might find the South's rebellion as completely moral, prohibitions against slavery may have been a legitimate reason to rebel for someone in Rome's culture. However, in the South's self-proclaimed cultural standards, it is immoral rebellion, their allegiance should have been to the Constitution before the institution of slavery. The test is the integrity of their actions against their claims and the rooting out of logical inconsistencies between the two. How else are we to discern objective criticism of something as subjective as what "legitimate rebellion" constitutes?
Maybe cheaper, but with less bloodshed and chaos??? Your kidding right? Secretarian tension was high even before the invasion. Ironically, it took a brutal dictator to keep them all in line. Once you get rid of this "key stone", the rest of the supporting populous starts caving in on each other.
Why do you assume removing Saddam from power required an invasion? Also, had the de-Baathification or the disbanding of the army not happened, the insurgency could have been small enough to manage. This administration completely bungled the post-invasion. The sectarian violence was not unavoidable. There is no evidence to say that it was.
Frankly, I'm surprised Iraq hasn't descended into total anarchy now.
I'm not sure what you are currently calling the situation in Iraq. The government has no authority outside the Green Zone, it seems that there is anarchy unless there's a military convey nearby.
Our military presence is keeping that from happening but not for much longer. One thing's for damn sure! If we pull out of that region now, shit will really hit the fan!
This shit hitting the fan is different that what's happening now how? What, 300 a day dead instead of 200? Iran is backing the Shia, the Saudi's and other Sunni's will continue to back the Sunnis and the Kurds are trying to establish an independent Kurdistan with control of Mosul's and Kirkuk's oil fields. Turkey isn't going to like that, the Sunni Iraqi's want their oil money and the Shia are kind of ticked about the last 30 years.
Honestly, I blame nations opposed to this war. Europe could really have made a big difference with their support.
What would that have done? Bush would have listened to the French on the post-invasion strategy? He didn't listen to the Pentagon or the British, why would he have listened to any other European ally? It was the complete incompetence by which this Administration under Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield's leadership screwed the pooch and setup a fertile ground for the insurgency and Al Qeada. Do you have any idea how many new Democrats Bush created at CENTCOM when he threw out all of the Pentagon's post-invasion plans and handing it all over to political ideologues? We've been watching the military registrations go up for the past 4 years.
But no, they're looking after their own political ass...just like the democrats.
How the hell does that make any sense whatsoever? How exactly was any of these European politicians "saving their own political ass" vs. acting in their nation's best interest? How has this war acted in the interest of the United States? What has this blood and treasure purchased? After all this time, how were the Democrats criticisms of the Administration's plans saving their own ass and not acting in the interests of this nation? What has Britain gained from this war?
What ever happened to just doing "the right thing" for the sake of humanity? I suppose hope, optimism, and virtue are a thing of the past. How folly of me to think otherwise!
wow... oh wow... Are you completely blind? Have you been living under a cave for the last 15 years? Hope? Optimism? Virtue? Doing the right thing? The GOP hasn't fielded a candidate that doesn't brag about devouring and destroying these things before breakfast. They have laughed and marginalized the Democrats for years for such wussy ideas. Can't invest in infrastructure, give people hope, might encourage them to be lazy.
I have a hard time even dignifying this last comment. It's completely absurd, you really have to be delusional to think that Bush has done the "right thing for humanity", been interested in effectively spreading hope or optimism. Holy crap, I'm slack-jawed, it's like watching Bush officials lie on camera about connections between Iraq and Al Qeada. It's such an astoundingly blatantly false "the sky is green" statement. Seriously, invading Iraq had something to do with the "right thing"? Holy crap.... the road to hell is paved with good intentio
This is the problem that I have with these debates. People on both sides seem to be under the false impression that anyone who disagrees with them has no intelligence or is less intelligent than they are or is completely dishonest. What exactly do you mean by intelligence credentials? As measured by what? Level of formal education? Discipline of choice? Publications? Success? Your own assessment?
Fair enough. Mid-level analysts at the CIA, career military intelligence officers, career diplomats and state department officials.
Essentially, anyone who gets paid to do this and got their job through meritocracy vs. political appointment or personal connections.
Frankly, there is no way to accurately measure ones intelligence so such a claim is simply an attempt to intimidate the other side.
I meant intelligence as part of the intelligence community, meaning that they get paid to be an intelligence source on foreign activities or policy. I wasn't trying to make a point about IQ levels or something and if I'm intimidating in anyway it's to intimidate you into response, not a conclusion. Doing so would violate my own claims to identity and destroy any integrity to my arguments.
Time will tell whether invading Iraq was a good idea. Right now, it doesn't look good and it looks worse every day. However, depending on what happens to Iraq in the next several years, it might very well turn out for the better. It is really hard to judge these things while you are living through them.
After several years of hearing this line and given all the mid-level meritoriously appointed analysts who have said that every action taken has been a mistake, I'm going to take the liberty to go ahead and pass judgment. Whatever success will be achieved by the fall of Saddam could have been done cheaper and with less bloodshed and chaos The problem is not that people are living through this, it's that people are most decidedly not living through this. I'm sorry, but theirs a higher bar to reach than let's wait a few years and hope it all works out when it comes to war. We owe our members of the military and their families more than that. They offered to die for us, are you really willing to treat that offer so cheaply?
Awesome, your mom rocks. Just remember, subversion can be rewarding ;-)
Actually, having a Hierarchical government structure is superior to a flat federal government in many areas. If you think that the same educational policies would work just as well as in Hawaii and Alaska as in South Carolina (and I've worked with a lot of districts in South Carolina), you're grossly mistaken.
I'm not arguing for a flat structure, nor would I ever make a claim that educational policies for SC would work in AL or HI. I went through several Charleston County public schools and I don't think there is anyone who would call them representative of the rest of the nation. Hell, you couldn't even get a 40% African-American population required by some Charleston County schools in most of the country.
I'm in no uncertain terms for Federalism and local control, but not at the expense of individual rights. If local control means tyranny, then I fully expect the state and Federal governments to intervene to protect the rights of all citizens.
Actually, they could secede. There was nothing in the Constitution that said they couldn't, so they could, by Amendment X. So it was legal, though Lincoln wouldn't admit it. "Immoral Rebellion" is meaningless claptrap, as is the rest of your post.
I just answered this Xth Amendment fallacy in another post on this thread. There is no logical way you can use the 10th Amendment to justify secession. Just to recap, there is no such thing as legal rebellion. That would dictate a legal entity that had no interest in it's own survival, thats an unworkable basis for a nation and has never been suggested in the historical record. Moral rebellion was the logical framework for the Protestant Reformation, the American Revolution and the Civil Rights movement, to talk about immoral rebellion vs. moral rebellion as claptrap is to ignore the writings of every dead white guy our country and it's founding culture held in esteem. You cannot claim that you're upholding the civilization or principles this nation was founded upon and ignore the tension between moral and immoral rebellion. What, did you think all these guys just woke up one day and decided the tax on tea was a tad too high and grabbed their muskets? There was an entire ideology surrounding the basis for the revolution, the debate and language was steeped in the concept of moral rebellion and just authority. Your assertion is falsified by the historical record.
This Xth Amendment crap is just like the old "War of Northern Aggression" bs I've been hearing my whole life. It makes no logical sense, it's just a stupid folktale to make white Southerners who are ignorant of their history and hold onto racist notions feel better about themselves. I find no need to base my Southern identity to mistakes of the past, nor do I feel any need to defend them. Being Southern is it's own virtue, which I have no need to explain.
Read it again. You'll see I'm consistent. To summarize though, US Congress can in theory impeach and convict for any reason, but the US Constitution states it should be done only in certain cases (treason, bribery, etc). There's no appeals process for a Congressional conviction. The subject is removed (assuming they follow the Constitution here) from their position of power and is banned from assuming a similar federal position (eg, can't be president, a congressman, supreme court judge, etc) of power ever again. Period. Ie, there's no theoretical obstacle to Congress using this power in violation of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" clause, but in practice it is difficult to ignore the Constitution here.
I don't think you're grasping the concept of a political trial. If the politicians in Congress decide that the actions of some officer fall under high crimes and misdemeanors, then they can impeach and convict. Doing so for the Pres brewing a bad pot of coffee is not likely to sit well with the electorate, unless Starbucks is running the country. It is the political pressure of Congressional elections that is designed to be the balance against Congress, not the Constitution. You are being extremely literal about a phrase that had a very different literal meaning at the time it was written. High crimes and misdemeanors would be redundant if misdemeanor just meant less than a felony. The usage of the term misdemeanor explicitly means things like incompetence and lying to the people and all the other things that appear in the Federalist Papers. It doesn't matter why your incompetent, the people have a right to remove you before your term is up if you are incompetent. Secondly, there is nothing to violate and it does not limit Congresses ability to impeach. The Constitution spells out the balance of power, Executive It's still perjury and Congress has different considerations than the courts do.
Not disagreeing, I just think the GOP should be punished politically for wasting the nation's time and money. Especially given their record after obtaining power.
My take is that it far better fits the "high crimes and misdemeanors" clause (it is at least a crime though not one I'd impeach a president over) than incompetence which is not a crime and which is a highly subjective decision and frankly gives too much power to Congress.
You're basing your argument on a technicality that does not exist. It does not matter whether one is criminal and the other isn't as impeachment does not have such a standard. Congress was explicitly given this power by the Founding Fathers, impeachment is meant to be highly subjective. It is an escape clause in case someone really bad gets in so we don't have to suffer through 4 years without getting rid of them. The design is that we always have a way to get rid of them, even if they don't technically violate any laws. Seriously, if you have a problem with Congress being able to impeach over incompetence or any other reason listed in the Federalist Papers or under the sun, you'll need to change the Constitution.
Overall though, I think this argument is moot. The point in Federalist 10 is that you should impeach a President for removing competent officers and replacing them with incompetent ones in the Federal bureaucracy. This would indicate incompetence on the part of the President to me, but ultimately that wasn't the requirement I was talking about. So, according to the Father of the Constitution, you can be impeached for firing US Attorneys and replacing them with idiots that bring frivolous prosecutions against innocent people that are overturned by appeals courts with extreme prejudice, or for replacing competent FEMA directors with incompetent ones, or for cooking the books on intelligence and then leading the nation into war.
I understand how you are trying to be logically consistent, but I think you are too stuck on this non-existent crimes requirement. Since the requirement does not exist, there is no inconsistency to be reconciled. If y
There is no such thing as legal rebellion, rebellion is always illegal. There is moral rebellion vs. immoral rebellion within the Protestant culture that formed the rationalization for the Revolution and the continuance of which South Carolina claimed when declaring it's right to secede. Within a logically consistent view of that framework, South Carolina did not meet the requirements necessary for moral rebellion. It had not exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, nor had it obtained the moral high ground.
I'd really have to dig to find the reference, but Bill Clinton had an interview once where he stated that he believed that the Constitution required logical consistency. That belief in logical consistency is found throughout our nations legal framework and the rationalization for the Revolution, which was moral rebellion. This is why your Xth Amendment argument falls flat. The Constitution would have no power if states had a right to secede. If the Constitution contained a provision designed for the survival of the nation that disproportionately affected a single state and that state could secede from the Union for such an provision, then how many states would be left today?
Why wouldn't Texas or Alaska just have taken their oil and told the rest of us to piss off? Don't Federal revenues for oil extraction unfairly benefit the citizens of other states for resources found in that state? It is logically impossible to have a Union with centralized authority and then allow people to leave that union because they don't like the way it's going. To put it in perspective, the Founding Fathers viewed the Constitution as a compact with the significance and weight of the compact God made with Abraham. Just as there was no force on earth capable of breaking that compact, the Founding Fathers did not believe there was any justification, outside of the framework that justified the Revolution, to break this compact.
Furthermore, I firmly believe that this country's founders, the people who wrote the Constitution, built the new government with the hopes that it would succeed, but also with the hope that a corrupt government would be overthrown by the people.
Again, such an overthrow would require the same efforts put forth by the Founding Fathers to reconcile with George III before declaring Independence. South Carolina did not meet such requirements, the Civil War was not a failed Revolution pt II. The rationale for secession was inconsistent with the logic of the Constitution. The SC Articles of Secession lays out this legal history, from the Declaration of Independence through the Constitution. It's claim is that the other states are violating it's rights by not returning escaped slaves and agitating through entirely legal and Constitutional means to make slavery illegal. It's like Texas seceding because California passed a clean air law that disallowed cars that Texans liked in California and then tried to pass such legislation nationally through normal legal means.
Go read the Articles for yourself, those that supported and designed the secession from the Union made it clear that they believed in the institution of slavery over the Constitution. That the North had legitimately gained the political power within the legal framework of the Constitution to dismantle slavery was not justification for rebellion within the belief system that the South claimed it was upholding. There is no integrity to the argument for secession.
If South Carolina wasn't following both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, I've yet to see a state that has come any closer!
Uh, the ones that didn't secede. There is no spirit of rebellion within the Constitution, don't you think a bunch of rebels would have put it in if they had believed such a thing? I mean really, why would people who had just finished rebelling not think to put in a clause regarding rebellion if they thought it was a right? I really think this line of thought comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose behind the 2nd Amendment combined with a bad case of "Red Dawn/Rambo" syndrome. The 2nd Amendment is not a license for armed rebellion, and neither is the 10th.
Look Congress can in theory impeach and convict the President just because the coffee was off that day. However, the Constitution does provide guidance as to what is considered impeachment, "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Incompetence is not sufficient and the Federalist Papers are not the US Constitution.
How can you admit that Congress can impeach and convict in once sentence and then claim they can't in the next? Impeachment still does not require such legal barriers, it is the Federalist Papers that explicitly inform us of what the authors of the Constitution had in mind when they designed it. It is a political trial to try standing officers for political crimes. It's just like a vote of no confidence in Parliamentary systems. It doesn't matter that the Prime Minister hasn't committed a crime if the Parliament has no confidence in them. The Federalist Papers are considered a trusted source to inform us when we should and shouldn't have confidence. The language in the Constitution just provides the legal means for taking action.
They got him on lying under oath in federal court. Last I checked, perjury is a felony. Sure, I think the womanizing falls ludicrously outside the scope of the independent counsel's purview, but Clinton did get caught commiting a felony.
Yeah, I would have loved to have seen that perjury trap survive an appeal. Judges take a real dim view to the gotcha legal maneuvering that Ken Starr used to get as far as he got. The perjury was the result of forbidden fruit, no legal system, outside of a Federal special prosecutor would have gotten away with the grand inquisition Ken Starr perpetrated. The entire purpose of perjury charges is to maintain the rule of law. The Clinton impeachment was a full frontal assault on the rule of law.
I'm not cracking on Kucinich too hard nor did I mean to imply that his entire career is a set of stunts, and I respect his constituents choice as representative of local politics. I honestly think he means well and he does provide cover for other approaches in the larger effort to pursue a progressive agenda. That being said, I also think he does some stuff that is not representative of most of the rest of the country and tends to appear out of step with the rest of the Democratic Party. As I said, sometimes this is good, sometimes this is bad. While I admire his tenacity and agree on principle with him going after Cheney, I think that the House and Senate investigations are a more practical path to reach the same goals.
As a native Charlestonian, the city that invented the State's rights argument, and a descendant of slave-owning Confederate cavalry veterans, I'm so glad the Federal government won the four points you've made. Extremely glad, otherwise I would not be anywhere near as secure in my liberties as I am now.
You see, State's rights is a load of crap. It's really about fiefdom, controlling interests in a particular state don't like the Feds coming in and telling them that they can't violate Federal law. The legal establishment of second class citizenry is a threat to the Constitution and to the peace, the last three points you make were solutions to this threat. You're outdated republican view of the state is unworkable, especially in a modern society with the infrastructure required to compete for the wealth necessary to defend any of our rights.
We legally and rightfully changed our form of government from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution. The Federalist Papers in support of the Constitution are considered to be the "finest treatise on government in existence", not the anti-Federalist Papers in support of the Articles.
At that point, we, as a free people, specifically abandoned the republican view of states that you refer too. It was not working and we needed something better, a "more perfect union".
The Civil War (and again, I was raised 2 miles from where the damn thing started) was an act of immoral rebellion against a legitimate authority. Advocacy of violent secession was not a defense of some inherent rights, it was a betrayal of the underpinnings of Anglo-Saxon Protestant beliefs and culture that formed this nation's laws and the rationale for the Revolution. The Civil War was a fraud perpetuated by the wealthy of the South upon the poor and middle class. The only honor that came out of the Civil War for the South was the same honor that every soldier who believes he is fighting for his family and home. There is no honor in claiming that states have rights that supersedes the Federal government or that they have sovereign status, because there is no integrity to the argument. If states had the right to secession, the Federal Constitution would have no power. It would be a suicidal clause that would make the institutional structure unworkable, that is why the Constitution concentrates more power centrally than the Articles did. South Carolina agreed and ratified the Constitution, there was no justification for secession or the violence that followed, they committed immoral rebellion.
LBJ's Presidency, when the Great Society expanded the social safety net to include such frivolities as "Medicare" and we enacted "The Civil Rights Act of 1964" and "The Voting Rights Act of 1965."
You are in support of this erosion of "states rights to terrorize its citizens" aren't you? Otherwise I'd have to say that you have a delusional and unobjective view of freedom. This is obviously cribbing from ol'Milty Friedman with the horror and shock that brought you the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. I hope you don't think Brown v Board was judicial activism too. The stupidity of the argument that racism is some personal moral issue vs an issue that affects the interests of the state is the acceptance of different classes of citizens. This is not a viable situation. We cannot have inequality before the law for any human, regardless of their circumstances. If a person legally falls under the jurisdiction of the United States, they must be given the same legal protections as any other citizen of the United States. If you do not live up to this, then you invite tyranny (this is why torture advocates must be purged from our government). After all, if you can legally separate someone who has not violated the rights of another for an accident of birth or a matter of conscience then no one is safe. These are two factors upon which the state must seek equality. We can never be free people if we can be denied wealth accumulation, access to markets or equality in civil rights
The requirements for impeachment are not criminal. Impeachment was designed as a way to prosecute political crimes, incompetence and unethical leaders. Criminality is most certainly grounds for impeachment, but it is not required. The Federalist Papers list a number of reasons to impeach a President, included (#10) is the replacement of skilled civil servants with incompetent or corrupt ones (Ahem, "Heckuva job Brownie!" or Al "I don't recall" Gonzales). Violating the oath of office is exactly why you impeach someone. Impeachment is a political trial, not a criminal one, you're arguments have no weight.
The idea that there was a better case against Clinton is ludicrous. The Clinton impeachment was a setup funded and run entirely by dedicated professional political operatives. After 10 years of hounding the Clinton's, the best they could get was a married man lying about cheating on his wife? Whitewater, nothing, Sock's the cat's Christmas list, nothing, Travelgate, nothing, sexual harassment, nothing. The GOP congress issued over 1100 subpoenas during the Clinton administration and Clinton respected Congress' role, even allowing for a Special Prosecutor. The Bush administrations comical claims of executive privilege and the fact that Karl Rove is a walking Hatch Act violation who had a hand in leaking classified intelligence information for political purposes are grounds enough.
You are right that Kucinich won't get the job done though. This is par for the course for Kucinich, that's why I've got my bets on Waxman and Conyers in the House and Leahy in the Senate. Their investigations should provide all the proof needed for both political and criminal prosecution.
Your attempt at false equivocation is completely dishonest. The Democrats have used a strategy of containment since Clinton was elected in 1992. It worked, there were no WMD to be found. Attempting to equivocate the fraudulent rush to war with a reasoned effort to contain a known danger is bs. Are you seriously going to argue that the interests of the United States have been served by the actions of this administration? And what freedoms or other traditions are Conservatives conserving if it is ok for the government to use my tax dollars to lie to me? How are the claims of the Bush administration not fraudulent? They were the ones advocating for war, they were the ones making the claims that a change in the course of action must be taken. Ineffective defense against fraud might lose you an election, but it is not grounds for impeachment, commission of said fraud is. The Democrats gave up their responsibility to criticize unsound evidence, but in the light of the fact that they were the minority party and could not win in either the House or the Senate their political expediency and deferment to a extremely popular president during an election season is reasonable. However, the Democrats sin was accepting the evidence as presented by the administration. Since then, they have repeatedly (except for Hillary) stated that they should not have trusted the Administration's claims and that doing so was a mistake. Again, all of the quotes you have about Iraq possessing WMD from 02/03 are based on information promoted by the White House that had no integrity. Quotes before then are based on a strategy of containment, not invasion.
Show me the evidence from an actual intelligence agency that says Saddam had weapons in 2002 or 2003, hell anytime after 1998. Other than the rockets that exceeded the allowed range (which were destroyed before the war by inspectors and had no WMD warheads), Iraq possessed no capabilities to threaten the US or it's neighbors. The Democratic strategy of containment was working until Bush decided it wasn't good enough for his delusions. It's the same thing in N Korea, the !Clinton policy of the Bush Administration has managed in 2007 to get the same agreement Clinton got in 1995, but now Pyongyang has a couple more warheads it can sell to real terrorists. How did Bush's actions advance the interest of the United States? Why did we invade Iraq? To what purpose are our soldiers and treasure being spent?
I'd really like someone to show me a person with actual intelligence credentials that believes invading Iraq was a good idea. Defectors provided by "heroes in error" over at the INC don't count, they have been exposed as frauds. Plagiarized thesis don't count either. Show me the CIA approved intelligence, show me the mid-level analysts who actually believed Saddam was capable of building nukes, would in a million years team up with Al Qaeda or provide them with WMD or would be stupid enough to attack the US with the amount of US military power already pointed at him.
I want something that didn't come out of the the White House Iraq Group, the INC, the Office of Special Plans @ the Pentagon and that wasn't a delusion with no evidence (Atta in Prague). I seriously challenge you to come up with something.
What Bush and Cheney said:
DICK CHENEY: (Speech to the VFW 8/26/02) Many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.
DICK CHENEY: (Speech to the VFW 8/26/02) But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
DICK CHENEY (MEET THE PRESS NBC 9/8/02): It's now public that in fact he has been seeking to acquire and we have been able to intercept to prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge and the centrifuge is required to take low grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb."
PRESIDENT BUSH (Discussion with Congressional Lea
It's an interesting play because the Dems do have enough votes to impeach Cheney -- but the Senate would never find him guilty by a 2/3rd majority.
Maybe that's why Kucinich can't find any co-sponsors. Not one.
This is of course the same brilliant strategy that the dems have been using for the last 12 years in elections -- fighting and winning the meaningless battles, and losing the important ones -- which is why I despair for the 2008 election.
No, this is Kucinich's brilliant strategy, not the Dems. It's been working for Kucinich though, he keeps getting re-elected. Not that the Dems don't have a record of dropping the ball, and not that the media doesn't play Steno Sue for the GOP enough, but why the hell would the actions of Representative Kucinich make you despair? He's been doing this crap for years, sometimes people agree with him, sometimes they roll their eyes. When he can't get any co-sponsors, they're rolling their eyes.
In addition, once this road is crossed -- impeaching for , and every time the president/vp is in office, and a different party has a majority in the senate and house, you'll see an impeachment. It's the same thing that happened once the line was crossed with judicial appointments.
Personally, I think Cheney and Bush have done more than enough to be impeached. Between the Abramoff corruption, fraudulently pursuing a war, the aftermath of Katrina, the US Attorney scandal and outing a CIA agent, the Federalist Papers make it clear that these two meet the criteria. Politically, I don't believe it's feasible right now, nor would it be well timed, given the number of investigations that are currently underway. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if during the course or after some of these investigations finish up that it became more politically feasible. There's a year till the primaries are done, there may be a lot of incumbents that need to distance themselves from this administration even more.
Partisian politics has made almost every parties' political victory a Pyrrhic one for the American people.
The American people wouldn't know objectivity if it slapped them in the face. BTW, what is this supposed to mean? The Dems political victory in October finally started to clamp down on the obscene amount of fraud and corruption after 6 years of a Rubber Stamp Congress.
We get the shaft, while the politicians get rich fighting each other. We need a 3rd party...
Dude, lay off the bong and get out of your dorm room. We get the shaft, because we don't fucking organize. Everybody loves to sit and whine about what's fucking wrong with politics, but the vast majority of you don't meaningfully participate. When is the last time you actually went to a Dem or GOP party meeting? You know, the one's where they plan and talk about who they're going to support and what they're going to do to get people elected. Every political meeting I attend, it's the same group of people, every rally, every candidate meeting, every fund raiser. Political power is simply laying there for you to grab, but very few people actually are willing to put in the work it takes to make the changes you want. This is not some new uncharted territory we're in, people have been successfully changing things around this place for the past 200 years. Really it would be hard to make this any easier, especially for WASPs.
If you don't like that the Democrats keep screwing up, then go take over your local Democratic Party. If you think you know better and you weren't around to mention that when it mattered, what use is your knowledge?
Finally, does Kucinich this this will help him get elected President?
No. But it will raise him money for his re-election campaign and maybe he naively believes it will get the ball rolling or something. Whatever, I have to go roll my eyes now.
Thus, he is no longer in the realm of scientific rules of theory, he is in political/socialogic rules of theory.
What? There is no such thing. There is objective knowledge and subjective knowledge. The entire question is around a should statement. Should something be done about global warming? There are objective criticisms that can be made about this goal, the same way objective knowledge is distilled from science's subjective goal of understanding the natural world. A substantial portion of the scientific community and the information that has so far survived falsification points to the should statements that Gore is advocating. Namely that carbon reduction is the most effective and urgent task ahead.
To claim that Gore is suggesting that all scientific questioning should cease is simply dishonest. There is nowhere that he suggests this, only that we should start taking certain actions now, that we have reached a point of diminishing returns when it comes to waiting for the results of further research before taking action. This is an entirely rational argument to make, it maintains its integrity. By making your claim that he is claiming that questioning should stop you are asserting that only one of two actions can be taken, that the decision is a zero sum game. This assertion is absurd on it's face.
It is equally dishonest to quibble over semantics like this. Gore is plainly talking about the decision to act on carbon reduction, not the decision to continue researching the science supporting that action. To claim he means something that he clearly doesn't is not honest, especially when there are substantive arguments that you have chosen not to answer.
Nothing. But then I never said we should do nothing, I just said reducing CO2 might not be effect. Why?
Simple, if 3 other planets with no humans, and as you point out we cant survive there, are warming then the cause cannot be solely humans. QED. Even if we remove all human causes, it will still get warmer due to whatever is making the other planets get warmer... like maybe more solar output?
However, none of those explanations fit the observed and yet to be falsified data. That is why there is consensus in the scientific community. The human carbon output theory fits the data better than the other theories. Either way, we better figure how to regulate the temperature on the planet. It will be much easier to maintain our existing environment than to attempt to adapt. We don't have the requisite knowledge to survive in a radically different environment long term, to have to do that will cause much more devastation than attempts to maintain our current environment. We will still have to adapt, but the adaptations won't be so harsh.
Yes, and if we only try to reduce CO2, how are we going to build dikes or transplant people? We have no replacement for oil as yet, and nothing on the horizon to replace it at the scale needed to protect or move people.
I suppose your next response will be something on the order of YHBT, YHL, HAND.
Again, there is no rational basis for you to make the claim of a zero sum game. Adaptation and prevention are possible simultaneously. You are being an irrational skeptic. We do not need a singular or total replacement for oil. What we need is progress and movement towards carbon reduction. If we only replace half the oil needs with carbon neutral tech and increase efficiency, we can maintain the growth required and invest in carbon sequestration. There does not need to be some messianic solution, nor is Gore or anyone else who advocates for action, claiming that there is one or should be one. What is needed is simple actions that prevent the market from externalizing the objective cost of carbon, making carbon neutral and carbon negative technology more profitable. Once that happens, the market will assist in reducing carbon. New technologies will be at least as, if not more desirable in a free market that does not externalize carbon costs. It will be no different from when
No you have it right. I am saying that if anyone, lest of all Gore, says the "debate is over" about human caused global warming they are trying to falsely use scientific evedence to end debate about what to do.
But nobody is saying it in that fashion. What basis do you have to say that someone is trying to end scientific debate?
I do think that there is plenty of strong evidence that the earth is warming due to natural causes. Similar losses of polar ice caps on Mars, (Mars ice cap ovservation records go back farther than our own earth's, and the closest thing we have to a control for earth) rise of surface temps on Jupiter and Pluto being a good examples that there is a solar system wide event going on. Not of THAT was in the movie, because it is not a scientific treatment of the subject, it is a political one.
Uhm.... I don't think humanity would survive on Mars, Jupiter or Pluto. WTF does any of this have to do with whether or not we should attempt to manage the climate on Earth?
So addressing global warming by preparing for ice melts regardless of the source makes sense. Trying to stop or reverse it strictly by stopping human production of CO2, as Gore suggests, might yeild less than satifactory results if it turns out that the theory is wrong and man's impact is far less than he thinks.
So we shouldn't do anything until we can predict the future? How exactly would reducing CO2 output cause more harm than good? Which model supports these ideas? You do realize that we will lose most coastal cities if the ice on Greenland melts? What could be more costly than losing the majority of population centers in the world?
That is the suicidal error: taking action to reverse the effects of a theory, rather than taking steps based on the results of the theory.
OK. Not sure what you're trying to say here. That human produced CO2 is the theory about why the planet is warming up that has best survived falsification. Theories don't have results, experiments do, they are attempts to falsify theories. No one is trying to "reverse a theory" or whatever you mean, this is a question of probabilities produced by an objective model.
Again, some of these same scientists thought we were entering an ice age back in the 70's and made recommendations of dusting the icecaps with coal dust. So I am a little reluctent to have them do things that change the overall environment instead of planning for the changes independent of cause.
We have already changed the environment, and those climate scientists are so less trustworthy than oil executives and their lobbyists. Also, if the worst case scenarios happen due to the changes, there is no preparing, there is just massive suffering. Your example is a horrid attempt at equivocation. Did every peer reviewed scientific journal assert that we should dust the ice caps? The testing of the theories in the 70's led to the better models we have today, which is why you have much more consensus over the issue today than you had in the 70's. You can wait for certainty, but you'll be dead before you ever achieve it. Besides, it's not as if planning for change and attempting to prevent changes are mutually exclusive actions. No one has suggested that we should not do both, however, the less drastic the changes, the easier it is to prepare.
You might as well get used to the idea of terraforming planets and engineering on this level. It is a challenge that humanity must overcome for it's longterm survival. There is a very narrow range of environments that humanity can survive in, nature doesn't necessarily prefer those states.