Excellent proof that you simply refuse to pay attention, and again just struck out without proper knowledge to justify the attack.. I have not been a member of either the Dem or Rep parties in over 20 years now, and have either been an LP member or simply non-aligned. You accuse me of only seeing two parties, because I listed the count by party of the Senate Roll Call Vote for The FISA Amendments act of 2008, and faithfully listed the two Senators who are independents? Would you have been happier if I had just made up party affiliation, or would you have been satisfied if my response to you had been just a ditto-head's assent?
The fact is that over the last 7+ years, the Republican congressional members have with just a few exceptions, been solidly anti-liberty in their votes, and in some instances, overtly obscene with their votes. My favorite example was the vote in the Senate for McCain's anti-torture amendment to the 2006 FY DOD budget on Oct. 5, 2005. It passed 90-9. How do you feel about a U.S. Senator who would vote against an anti-torture proposal?
All nine of these shameful Senators were Republican, and all nine are still Senate members, some with very important committee positions. They are:
Sen. Wayne Allard (Colo.)
Sen. Christopher S. Bond (Mo.)
Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.)
Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.)
Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.)
Sen. James M. Inhofe (Okla.)
Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.)
Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.)
Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska)
I have no love of the Democratic Party, and feel that they squandered a great opportunity by not forcibly attacking the Republican Congressional members about their continued support for the theft of Natural Liberties. It is the same old game. Democrats are limp-wristed hand-wringers, filled with self-doubt. Republicans believe that it's A-OK to use as an interrogatory methodology, forceful sodomy with a blunt instrument. Democrats like to tax and spend, but Republicans cut taxes as they drastically increase spending. These things are not equivalent.
No, what I was attempting to convey is that for many Congressional member who claim their vote was not an all out declaration of war, the only proper evidence for which this can be judged is their statements entered into the Congressional Records during consideration of the AUMF. Using that standard, many of the politicians seem to be telling the truth.
I have a much better sense of what was actually entered into the Congressional Records during the consideration of the AUMF for a very easy to prove reason, although it makes me a bit uncomfortable using it often, because it feels like I am spamming. The following links are to my site, which I hand-coded personally:
The archive's pages have extensive inner links to expose a fairly fine specificity. If you search on the TOC page for individual Congresspersons, if they spoke anything substantial on those days, you will find a direct link to their words. (typo qualification, I just found a mispelled Kerry I was unaware of for over four years now that has three R's instead of two)
Looking back at what I posted though, clearly exposes an egregious error, that I should not have made, and that is omitting that One Republican Senator voted against the AUMF, Lincoln Chafee (R-RI). The fact that I have aggressively posted into this thread, and made what should have been an obvious mistake to many, yet was not called on it is an indication of just how woefully uninformed Americans still remain about who voted for what, and what was their stated reason for doing so regarding the AUMF.
Kerry got seriously reamed about his statement undeservedly in 2004. Well he did kind of deserve it, because he is a verbose ponderous Yankee lurch, who preached 6550 words, but if you read it completely, and honestly, it's easy to comprehend what he meant when giving his assent to the AUMF, was exactly what he said it was during the election, even though it was falsely portrayed as a flip-flop. Sen Reid, although with a level of derogation, stated clearly that he expected GW to keep his word about consensus building and not rushing to war without proper cause, just like his daddy had done in the 1st gulf war.
There are many statements like this throughout the archive. Was their yea votes a mistake? Hell yes, but not for the reasons those adamantly opposed to the war claim. Again, the inherent flaw in their yea votes, was that an assumption that GW Bush would faithfully and honorably put ulterior motives behind him, and before entering into a foreign war, would assure it had been properly justified, and that an international consensus had been built around the evidence that provided him with this assurance of propriety.
This is the flaw, and the majority of blame is proper to place directly upon the GW Bush Administration.
Under normal circumstances I would wholeheartedly agree, but these are Interesting Times in a Chinese proverbial sense, and there need be a proper individual accounting for friends/enemies of liberty and the potentially corollary irrelevant meat that pops up to block line of sights on proper targets of opportunity. I rail about Republicans, but in truth even a few of them have stood to resist the worst of this tyranny, and many of the Democrats who have resisted, have done so not from a proper motivation, but instead pure-pro-partisanship-politiking. Some notables in the Senate: Hagel(R) hung true when push came to shove; Specter had been tireless in his pursuit of restored habeas corpus; Warner(R) a senior statesman with nothing to win or lose weakly folded after being the force behind McCain's anti-torture amendment; Reid(D) gets a pass because he's stuck to his guns about core points of liberty and called Bush twice the wimp his daddy was during the AUMF; Feinstein(D) and both Nelsons(DD) can go straight to hell; and Byrd(D) has washed the slate clean of his mountain of past travesties. Look around and read some of his Senate statements. They have been inspiring when it was the darkest.
Look around on this very thread, and you'll find another post of mine listing the Congressional votes for AUMF, and it clearly shows that there was less than half the Democrats voting assent.
Additionally, try actually reading the statements made by the politicians about their votes in favor of the AUMF, before you absurdly make the claim that it was a vote "for war". Furthermore it was not just the Democrats who did not read the the prewar NIE, very few Republicans read it either, nor was this primarily a fault of Congress as BuShills love to imply. It was instead another of the many obscene acts of this executive, that restricted even Congressional members' open access to it under false predicates of classification. Republicans have never been willing to step up to the plate when it was their turn to face fast-balls hight and tight. They are weasels and cowards who have stolen the people's liberty, all because the the derelict ass of a president officially responsible for the nation's defense on September 11, 2001, was one of them.
Lastly, might want to poke around about here, after noting the listed URL for home listed in the header of this note, before you go round making puffed up claims about my lack of knowledge in a ditto-headed fashion. Lies, Damn Lies, and the Terminally Republican fools who promulgate them. Continue on with your flatworlder revisionary distortions of reality, based upon a non-validating linear model of politics, never once understanding your predicament, nor coming close to comprehending the who what where when and how of it all. Are you really so stupid that you actually believe I was ever some limp-wristed hand-wringer from the left-side of the bipolar polity? Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Comparisons such as this will not result in valid data. There is a strong force to condense all politics down to a boolean in America. Western Europe is arguably better, but their model has stopped evolving with the advent of a two axis data mapping. There is also a great difference between parliamentary systems which expose methods for providing a closer representation based upon popular vote. In America, it's winner take all, and this seriously impairs progressive ideas. In the American political environment, a party that does not have a cacophony arising from their politicians is engaged in extreme censorship antithetical to the will of a significant number of their membership.
Do not get high and mighty though. In the Netherlands, an inept clown of a movie producer named Geert is a party of one. German indecision in a state of electoral unrest conjured Merkel. The UK's PM exchange went from Poodle to Slug. Le Président de la République is a poseur crème pâtissière puffed up with pride with trophy wife a bigger bite than he can chew, who now is compelled to wear elevator shoes standing at her flat-soled feet's side.
Which posits a steadfast foundation, that is not tossed about in storms of change. It used to be that Conservatives performed a valuable service to The Nation in that they were a deep rudder keeping the ship of state from capsizing during course changes that brought the bow across the face of the shifting winds. Even in disagreement, conservatives were worthy of honor and respect, because they held their ground, planted firmly on what they posited was immutable truth, and even in the face of inevitable electoral loss, would not waver, or weasel.
This has not been the case for far too long now. It is men like DeLay, Abramahof, Vigeurie and Keene, colluding with preachermen of Christian apostasy, and former Trotskyists, who define contemporary conservatism. They have transformed it into a den of thieves, all willing to service a corporate member for pocket change. Not an ounce of honor within the whole lot of them. They loudly proclaimed Mr. Bush's true conservatism, until the outcome of the 2006 midterms became inescapable. Then they turned into renunciates claiming that the evil manifest from this present administration is not the spawn from their loins of mutated conservatism.
In a model of a linear polity, which has an everalways dynamic point 0, there can be no conservatism, it is all activism.
This newright from beyond the gates of hell is the cause for an American Governmental imprimitur upon acts of human torture. These are the thieves of habeas corpus. They are the molesters of The Dreamtime America, and they must be stopped dead in their tracks here and now, or The American Dream will cease to be.
You're right that Democrats tax and spend, but Republicans spend without end, and foist the costs off onto the backs of future citizens. When is the worst of two paths to traverse?
You are no longer able to return to you former fantasy world within your distorted model of a bipolar polity. The GOP Gone Wild in D.C., when they possessed a 3 - 0 branch majority is well-documented as fact, that proves Republicans are nothing but scum-sucking lying thieves of liberty.
The Democrats are The Lamer of Two Evils. Democrats are lowlifes, but Republicans are creatures who emerged from the Sugarland Swamp used as the city's sump pond. Have I made myself clear?
All Politicians are by this simple definition, evil. They are humans who actively seek possession of power beyond what is a Natural Right for them to possess. A motivation of what they believe to be an altruistic higher good, should not be viewed as a mitigating factor. Instead it should be an sentence enhancement.
Do not be deceived; a state is essential for the protection of liberty, but it is also a hideous monster which should never be released from its muzzle and chain, or it will turn and devour its masters. Never trust a politician farther than you can swing a rope from the Oak Tree that grows in front of city hall.
"Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny."
Barry Goldwater - Acceptance Speech for The Presidential Nomination at the Republican National Convention, 1964
Sadly it seems that in our modern world, the only good Republicans, are the dead ones.
You are closer to the mark, but the figures should be clearly stated. Republicans have historically been slippery eels when it comes to properly assessing causality from their actions. Accepting Personal Responsibility is not actually a tenet of contemporary conservatives. It is instead a strategy that provides them with multiple opportunities to insult poor folk.
This simplistic analysis does not show a very important consideration, and this is another instance of Republican weaseling from personal responsibility. It does not show clear statements made by Congressional members who stated that their vote was not al all out assent to war, but was instead a vote for giving the President power he could use as leverage on the Interational stage, to force Saddam into compliance, and in the event that all else had failed, war as a last resort. To assert that these persons diod no mean what they said is a very big leap out over the chasm of fatuity. Their error was having faith that a man elected as U.S. President, would possess the personal honor and integrity to not waste human blood waging an immoral foreign war, based upon falsehoods. They were very wrong, but that makes them dupes and rubes. Again, the Lamer of Two Evils.
GOP Bastards: the Natural Liberties you have stolen were in part mine. Give it back with public apologies for your crimes, and you'll no longer be counted as domestic enemy.
It is absurd that a person who refused to accept the democratic vote of his own party in the primaries, and then reentered the election as an independent who accepted major contribution from the other main party, and pulled all party support out from under their own candidate, would be referred to as being democratic.
Liegberman subverted the democratic process of his own chosen party, The Democrats. He aligned with the Dem. side, because the Senate rules force third party and independent members to pick one or the other, and all committee assignments come from affiliation. Lieberman would have aligned with the Republicans if they would have offered him a good enough deal on committees, but the didn't care about the weasel to toss him a decent bone. They know he's a solid pro-Iraq vote, and is a firm believer in giving extra-power to the government. He has at least been consistent in this, contrary to the Republicans who believe in empowering and supporting Republican President's overreaches, while castrating Democratic Presidents before he even has been inaugurated.
When even Bob Barr can no longer stomach being a Republican, you know the GOP has sunk far below the horizon on the field of honor. Moral Relativism is The Rectaltude of Republican Intent manifest obscenely in reality. What else can be expected from The Party of Public Potty-Peepers, who claim after their performances of soft-shoe routines at TeaTyme has become public knowledge, that they are not gay.
at least presently. Admittedly it is nuanced and difficult to perceive. I would have preferred a more secluded place for this pointer, but if you poke around the relevant part of the namespace presently given as mine in this note's header (it will be obvious is you visit), you'd probably begin to perceive them.
Attitudes like yours are a significant cause for the flight of Americans from the Democratic party. How many times are you going to play your asinine circular firing squad game before you realise nobody wins?
Please offer valid citations for your defamatory statements about Reid, or admit that you are not in fact motivated by a will to defend liberty, but instead by the same lame-brained liberealities that got the party sodomised by the new right in the first place.
Christ Almighty! - Evil to the right of me, and imbeciles on my left!
I am one who has for many years believed that the two party system was the ultimate root cause for the Nation's ills, and have also loudly asserted that if your vote was based on a "lesser of two evils" decision, without question, you have voted for evil.
The Bush Administration, and concomitant GOP Congressional dereliction, has taught me a bitter lesson though. I must now choke back the bile that rises in my throat, whenever I long nostalgically for the time in America's past, when a President's lies were only about acts of consensual sex, a cum-stained blue dress, and tobacco products with odd exotic aromatics; instead of a President's lies about Natural Liberties, Immoral War, and the Blood-stained Iraqi Sands.
This is the cause for a correction in my analysis. While it is wrong to vote for a lesser of two evils; a very good argument can be made to support a vote for the lamer of two evils. The GOP has not yet begun to experience the pain that is necessary to purge the excessive resident evil within. There need be a return to a state of polar equilibrium in quantities of evil, or there need be the end to the Republican Party, as a clear and present danger to the people's liberty. There is no third way.
The oath was: against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic, or to condense it down to a Bushified black and white: are you with the Friends of Liberty or Against Us. Choose wisely...
There are indeed valid, substantial questions regarding Jay Rockefeller's campaign contributors and the FISA Bill's telecom immunity clause. My questions about him go back farther to when he was minority committee leader, and was being pussy-whipped by Sen. Roberts (Can's-Ass) about Robert's promise to have the Intelligence Committee investigate the administration's use of pre-Iraq War intelligence, and even get around to issuing subpoenas, so Feith and Wolfowitz would get their asses hauled down to assert their 5th Amendment rights under oath while being televised nationwide. There are several Democratic Senators whose defense of civil liberties is very questionable.
However, your intimated assertion of a partisan parity is absurd, and a wild flight of fantasy from reality.
Let's investigate reality without the rosy-tint of you blurry lens:
Reid is the majority leader by virtue of Lieberman's two-timing hide. Care to guess which side of the isle he votes on FISA and telecom immunity?
You also need to consider that cloture votes (an agreement to end debate and go to a vote on a bill or specific debated issue in a bill, requires a super-majority of 60%. Back when the Democrats used this to block a handful of Bush's most activist of right-wing judge appointees, they were criticised as being undemocratic. Now that Republicans have have used the tactic to effectively shut down any attempts by Democrats to right wrongs from the last 7 years, the Democrats are called inept or in collusion.
A fine example of this tactic is
: Roll Call Vote #340 on September 19, 2007. It was a cloture to vote on Senator Specter's Amendment #2022 to The Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 - the purpose of which was to restore habeas corpus for those detained by the United States. The voted count was 56-Yea -- 43 Nay -- 12 NoVote. The Party affiliation of the vote was: Yea - 49 D - 6R - 1 I (Sanders) Nay - 42 R - 0D - 1 I (Lieberman)
Habeas corpus is a Natural Right, which the Constitution states can only be suspended in times of domestic invasion or public insurrection. To assert that a sneak attack by 20 detemine F**ks, which to this Nation's great misfortune, coincided with an administration so arrogant, ignorant and derelict, it failed at its primary duty to defend America constitutes an "invasion", is to chase after a well dressed bunny down into a dark hole in the ground. This should not be a partisan issue, and REAL conservatives understand this clearly. Read Kenneth Starr's written opinion to The Senate.
My question to you is: did you actually look last time or did you just accept what you were told?
Suspension of Habeas Corpus is clearly identified in the Constitution as being a power of the Legislative Branch, not the Executive Branch. It was an unconstitutional overreach of Executive power from the git.
Jefferson felt that one of his failures was his not being able to get the wealthy to understand the merits of bearing the financial burden for the education of the poor. In 1776 he laid out a plan in the Virginia legislature which would have divided the state up into school districts. He also proposed two higher educational groups. One for a general University education and the other for advanced Science and Mathematical studies. He believed that these too should be available to all without concern for their families' financial status. It was opposed by the wealthy landholders who comprised the majority of the State's legislature. Throughout his life Jefferson was a proponent of a strong and able public school system which was paid for out of the general treasury.
Jefferson foresaw more than you give him credit for. The failure you so willfully point out is caused by persons who equate personal liberty to being the same as their own personal greed, who believe they have a right, both divine and civil to not aid their fellow citizens whom the vicissitudes of life have unfairly placed without the reach of The Dreamtime America.
This is repugnant to the advancement of liberty. It is the elevation of personal possessions to a higher place the the Natural Rights of Humanity, and it is contemporary conservatism's continued embrace of this obscene concept which is a part of the body of evidence proving that it has not yet experienced enough pain to purge the evil that has infected its soul.
I wasn't aware that I had supported tax and spend policies. I only stated that when compared to the Republican policy of Cut Taxes and Spend, it is the lamer of two evils. It is assuredly a more defensible position.
which again provides anecdotal evidence that two wrongs do indeed make a righty.
Another lesson that has been finally ground into America's consciousness by the last seven years of governmental overreach is one that has been preached to us for over twenty since, since the Reagancomedy:
Republicans do it better the Democrats
This has now been demonstrably proven to be true in the instances of
putrescent pure pro partisan politiking
boot-stomping Natural Liberty
using sodomy as an interrogatory methodology
peeping in the public pottys
defaming the rectitude of honourable humans who possessed the temerity to rise in dissent
promulgation of revisionist ideations to the extent of the exectuive power, which seems to acquire an ability to exist without the strictures of the U.S Constitution whenever a Republican has ascended to the Presidency
deficit spending; as it is well known that Democrats Tax and spend; yet that is a far far better practise than to just spend without end, while heavily dampening down the flow of funding coming into the government.
elevating a personal version (Per.Version) of the Creative Force to a position of dominance over the civil government
These are but a few of the many examples of what happens with Conservatism Gone Wild. Yet you seem to be admitting an instance where the Republicans are no better than the Democrats here, and that is when it comes to defending liberty.
So what is the purpose of you ravening spew? Are you claiming that The Democrats Are The Lamer of Two Evils? Given my near seven year experience with the tyranny of GW Bush, I've grown nostalgic for a lamer of evils.
"You seem...to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is 'boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem,' and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots...I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Charles Jarvis, September 28, 1820
"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
Thomas Paine, "Dissertations on First Principles of Government", 1795
"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. "
James Madison, letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798
The whole purpose of my pointing out the Terror Prevention Buill of 1996 was that the Republicans took out any effective terrorism prevention methods that were proposed. I am aware that it was useless for the stated purpose, but it was the Republicans that castrated it.
Also of not in the 90's Senate was Phil Graham's killing of banking transparency regulations promulgated for offshore transactions, from his position of chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Not only did this hurt terrorist prevention attempt, but it directly aided ENRON, who was a major contributor into his campaign finances. Graham's wife, Wendy, was a board member of ENRON. For financial gain, Phil Graham blocked terrorism preventative legislation.
Again: The Democrats are The lamer of Two Evils.
The claim that we didn't aid bin Laden in Afghanistan is completely erroneous too. The aid was funnelled into the Pakistani Army's intelligence wing, ISI, which in the 80's was headed by current Bush Totalitarian bud, and Pakistan dictator who overthrew an democratically elected government, Pervez Musharraf. The CIA chose this hands-off method, because they were still feeling the pain of the Church Investigations, and did not want to feel the effects from blowback on it.
This is hardly my position. Before 911, it was considered to be a given. Here's a link to a US News and World Report 1998 editorial, hardly a member of the "liberal media":
The veracity of "The Path to 9/11" has been ably questioned in many places. Here's the list from Media Matters for America, and even though they are completely partisan in their choice of topics, they are meticulous in their sourcing.
Most importantly, you fail to comprhened what is the basis of concern regarding the suspension of habeas corpus. It is a preeminent right to the state, and that means it is not just something the the Government must allow for its citizens. To not understand this, is to place liberty at threat. There are human rights which transcend the power of a legitimate state. You defend tyranny.
Your assertions regarding the humans detained at Abu Ghraib in 2004 are wrong and reprehensible. Most of the detainees then had been picked-up in sweeps during the insurgency's infancy:
"Coalition military intelligence officials estimated that 70% to 90% of prisoners detained in Iraq since the war began last year "had been arrested by mistake," according to a confidential Red Cross report given to the Bush administration earlier this year.
Yet the report described a wide range of prisoner mistreatment - including many new details of abusive techniques - that it said U.S. officials had failed to halt, despite repeated complaints from the International Committee of the Red Cross."
These persons had been detained under the Colour of Authority Imparted by The United States Flag; my god-damned flag; and for that reason alone, should never had been tortured, irrespective of any criminal act they had engaged with. There was once a time when America actually stood for freedom and liberty, and its citizenry was not rife with cowards and weasels who equivocated upon the Rights of All Humans.
A citizenry that believes its rights are a gift from a beneficent government will never be free.
A criminal system that has multiple standards of applicability, based solely upon citizenship is foundationally unjust.
An American future in which the people did not once again chain and muzzle their leviatian, which in the fire of retribution's desire after 911, was set loose upon the earth as rabid wolf among the sheep, will never again know peace.
If this makes me a lefty or a liberal, then what refuse now comprises the right-side of the political bipolarity in America?
It took two years to get passed, and the phrase "Effective Death Penalty" was added to the legislation's title between 1995 and 1996, because it turned out to be a gutted terror prevention bill that primarily rescinded habeas corpus rights of convicted Federal prisoners. Hatch's dream since becoming a US Senator has been to gut Habeas Corpus. Of especially note is the GOP's refusal to allow multi-point wiretaps, approved only after judicial oversight, to be allowed in cases of terror investigations.. This had been already allowed for RICO investigations. When debating the Bill after it had been sent over from The Senate, the Majority GOP members, led by Bob Barr, claimed this was unconstitutional and excised it from the legislation. Orin Hatch defended this. (1, 2 and 3)
The GOP used this Bill as a launching pad for their attacks on the government over Waco and Ruby Ridge, and their soapbox was comprised of the victims bodies from the Oklahoma City Bombing. None of these arguments were used by the GOP politicians when considering the Patriot Bill, and that legislation went far beyond any proposals offered in the 1996 Bill.
Hatch was still defending the Reagan era policy of arming the Arab "Freedom Fighters" in Afghanistan, even after the Khobar Towers, and Africa Embassy Bombings:
Though he has come to represent all that went wrong with the CIA's reckless strategy there, by the end of the Afghan war in 1989, bin Laden was still viewed by the agency as something of a dilettante - a rich Saudi boy gone to war and welcomed home by the Saudi monarchy he so hated as something of a hero.
In fact, while he returned to his family's construction business, bin Laden had split from the relatively conventional MAK in 1988 and established a new group, al-Qaida, that included many of the more extreme MAK members he had met in Afghanistan.
Most of these Afghan vets, or Afghanis, as the Arabs who fought there became known, turned up later behind violent Islamic movements around the world. Among them: the GIA in Algeria, thought responsible for the massacres of tens of thousands of civilians; Egypt's Gamat Ismalia, which has massacred western tourists repeatedly in recent years; Saudi Arabia Shiite militants, responsible for the Khobar Towers and Riyadh bombings of 1996.
Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intellige
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Excellent proof that you simply refuse to pay attention, and again just struck out without proper knowledge to justify the attack.. I have not been a member of either the Dem or Rep parties in over 20 years now, and have either been an LP member or simply non-aligned. You accuse me of only seeing two parties, because I listed the count by party of the Senate Roll Call Vote for The FISA Amendments act of 2008, and faithfully listed the two Senators who are independents? Would you have been happier if I had just made up party affiliation, or would you have been satisfied if my response to you had been just a ditto-head's assent?
The fact is that over the last 7+ years, the Republican congressional members have with just a few exceptions, been solidly anti-liberty in their votes, and in some instances, overtly obscene with their votes. My favorite example was the vote in the Senate for McCain's anti-torture amendment to the 2006 FY DOD budget on Oct. 5, 2005. It passed 90-9. How do you feel about a U.S. Senator who would vote against an anti-torture proposal?
All nine of these shameful Senators were Republican, and all nine are still Senate members, some with very important committee positions. They are:
I have no love of the Democratic Party, and feel that they squandered a great opportunity by not forcibly attacking the Republican Congressional members about their continued support for the theft of Natural Liberties. It is the same old game. Democrats are limp-wristed hand-wringers, filled with self-doubt. Republicans believe that it's A-OK to use as an interrogatory methodology, forceful sodomy with a blunt instrument. Democrats like to tax and spend, but Republicans cut taxes as they drastically increase spending. These things are not equivalent.
The Democrats Are The Lamer of Two Evils.
No, what I was attempting to convey is that for many Congressional member who claim their vote was not an all out declaration of war, the only proper evidence for which this can be judged is their statements entered into the Congressional Records during consideration of the AUMF. Using that standard, many of the politicians seem to be telling the truth.
I have a much better sense of what was actually entered into the Congressional Records during the consideration of the AUMF for a very easy to prove reason, although it makes me a bit uncomfortable using it often, because it feels like I am spamming. The following links are to my site, which I hand-coded personally:
The archive's pages have extensive inner links to expose a fairly fine specificity. If you search on the TOC page for individual Congresspersons, if they spoke anything substantial on those days, you will find a direct link to their words. (typo qualification, I just found a mispelled Kerry I was unaware of for over four years now that has three R's instead of two)
Looking back at what I posted though, clearly exposes an egregious error, that I should not have made, and that is omitting that One Republican Senator voted against the AUMF, Lincoln Chafee (R-RI). The fact that I have aggressively posted into this thread, and made what should have been an obvious mistake to many, yet was not called on it is an indication of just how woefully uninformed Americans still remain about who voted for what, and what was their stated reason for doing so regarding the AUMF.Kerry got seriously reamed about his statement undeservedly in 2004. Well he did kind of deserve it, because he is a verbose ponderous Yankee lurch, who preached 6550 words, but if you read it completely, and honestly, it's easy to comprehend what he meant when giving his assent to the AUMF, was exactly what he said it was during the election, even though it was falsely portrayed as a flip-flop. Sen Reid, although with a level of derogation, stated clearly that he expected GW to keep his word about consensus building and not rushing to war without proper cause, just like his daddy had done in the 1st gulf war.
There are many statements like this throughout the archive. Was their yea votes a mistake? Hell yes, but not for the reasons those adamantly opposed to the war claim. Again, the inherent flaw in their yea votes, was that an assumption that GW Bush would faithfully and honorably put ulterior motives behind him, and before entering into a foreign war, would assure it had been properly justified, and that an international consensus had been built around the evidence that provided him with this assurance of propriety.
This is the flaw, and the majority of blame is proper to place directly upon the GW Bush Administration.
Under normal circumstances I would wholeheartedly agree, but these are Interesting Times in a Chinese proverbial sense, and there need be a proper individual accounting for friends/enemies of liberty and the potentially corollary irrelevant meat that pops up to block line of sights on proper targets of opportunity. I rail about Republicans, but in truth even a few of them have stood to resist the worst of this tyranny, and many of the Democrats who have resisted, have done so not from a proper motivation, but instead pure-pro-partisanship-politiking. Some notables in the Senate: Hagel(R) hung true when push came to shove; Specter had been tireless in his pursuit of restored habeas corpus; Warner(R) a senior statesman with nothing to win or lose weakly folded after being the force behind McCain's anti-torture amendment; Reid(D) gets a pass because he's stuck to his guns about core points of liberty and called Bush twice the wimp his daddy was during the AUMF; Feinstein(D) and both Nelsons(DD) can go straight to hell; and Byrd(D) has washed the slate clean of his mountain of past travesties. Look around and read some of his Senate statements. They have been inspiring when it was the darkest.
Look around on this very thread, and you'll find another post of mine listing the Congressional votes for AUMF, and it clearly shows that there was less than half the Democrats voting assent.
Additionally, try actually reading the statements made by the politicians about their votes in favor of the AUMF, before you absurdly make the claim that it was a vote "for war". Furthermore it was not just the Democrats who did not read the the prewar NIE, very few Republicans read it either, nor was this primarily a fault of Congress as BuShills love to imply. It was instead another of the many obscene acts of this executive, that restricted even Congressional members' open access to it under false predicates of classification. Republicans have never been willing to step up to the plate when it was their turn to face fast-balls hight and tight. They are weasels and cowards who have stolen the people's liberty, all because the the derelict ass of a president officially responsible for the nation's defense on September 11, 2001, was one of them.
Lastly, might want to poke around about here, after noting the listed URL for home listed in the header of this note, before you go round making puffed up claims about my lack of knowledge in a ditto-headed fashion. Lies, Damn Lies, and the Terminally Republican fools who promulgate them. Continue on with your flatworlder revisionary distortions of reality, based upon a non-validating linear model of politics, never once understanding your predicament, nor coming close to comprehending the who what where when and how of it all. Are you really so stupid that you actually believe I was ever some limp-wristed hand-wringer from the left-side of the bipolar polity? Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Comparisons such as this will not result in valid data. There is a strong force to condense all politics down to a boolean in America. Western Europe is arguably better, but their model has stopped evolving with the advent of a two axis data mapping. There is also a great difference between parliamentary systems which expose methods for providing a closer representation based upon popular vote. In America, it's winner take all, and this seriously impairs progressive ideas. In the American political environment, a party that does not have a cacophony arising from their politicians is engaged in extreme censorship antithetical to the will of a significant number of their membership.
Do not get high and mighty though. In the Netherlands, an inept clown of a movie producer named Geert is a party of one. German indecision in a state of electoral unrest conjured Merkel. The UK's PM exchange went from Poodle to Slug. Le Président de la République is a poseur crème pâtissière puffed up with pride with trophy wife a bigger bite than he can chew, who now is compelled to wear elevator shoes standing at her flat-soled feet's side.
Which posits a steadfast foundation, that is not tossed about in storms of change. It used to be that Conservatives performed a valuable service to The Nation in that they were a deep rudder keeping the ship of state from capsizing during course changes that brought the bow across the face of the shifting winds. Even in disagreement, conservatives were worthy of honor and respect, because they held their ground, planted firmly on what they posited was immutable truth, and even in the face of inevitable electoral loss, would not waver, or weasel.
This has not been the case for far too long now. It is men like DeLay, Abramahof, Vigeurie and Keene, colluding with preachermen of Christian apostasy, and former Trotskyists, who define contemporary conservatism. They have transformed it into a den of thieves, all willing to service a corporate member for pocket change. Not an ounce of honor within the whole lot of them. They loudly proclaimed Mr. Bush's true conservatism, until the outcome of the 2006 midterms became inescapable. Then they turned into renunciates claiming that the evil manifest from this present administration is not the spawn from their loins of mutated conservatism.
In a model of a linear polity, which has an everalways dynamic point 0, there can be no conservatism, it is all activism.
This newright from beyond the gates of hell is the cause for an American Governmental imprimitur upon acts of human torture. These are the thieves of habeas corpus. They are the molesters of The Dreamtime America, and they must be stopped dead in their tracks here and now, or The American Dream will cease to be.
You're right that Democrats tax and spend, but Republicans spend without end, and foist the costs off onto the backs of future citizens. When is the worst of two paths to traverse?
You are no longer able to return to you former fantasy world within your distorted model of a bipolar polity. The GOP Gone Wild in D.C., when they possessed a 3 - 0 branch majority is well-documented as fact, that proves Republicans are nothing but scum-sucking lying thieves of liberty.
The Democrats are The Lamer of Two Evils.
Democrats are lowlifes,
but Republicans are creatures who emerged from the Sugarland Swamp used as the city's sump pond.
Have I made myself clear?
All Politicians are by this simple definition, evil. They are humans who actively seek possession of power beyond what is a Natural Right for them to possess. A motivation of what they believe to be an altruistic higher good, should not be viewed as a mitigating factor. Instead it should be an sentence enhancement.
Do not be deceived; a state is essential for the protection of liberty, but it is also a hideous monster which should never be released from its muzzle and chain, or it will turn and devour its masters. Never trust a politician farther than you can swing a rope from the Oak Tree that grows in front of city hall.
Sadly it seems that in our modern world, the only good Republicans, are the dead ones.
You are closer to the mark, but the figures should be clearly stated. Republicans have historically been slippery eels when it comes to properly assessing causality from their actions. Accepting Personal Responsibility is not actually a tenet of contemporary conservatives. It is instead a strategy that provides them with multiple opportunities to insult poor folk.
In The Senate, It was Roll Call 237 on October 11, 2002. The toal vote count was:
Yeas - 77 --- Nays - 23
The party affiliation breakdown was:
In the House it was Roll Call Vote 4455 on October 10, 2008. The total vote count was:
Yeas - 296 --- Nays - 133 --- NoVotes - 3
The party affiliation breakdown was:
This simplistic analysis does not show a very important consideration, and this is another instance of Republican weaseling from personal responsibility. It does not show clear statements made by Congressional members who stated that their vote was not al all out assent to war, but was instead a vote for giving the President power he could use as leverage on the Interational stage, to force Saddam into compliance, and in the event that all else had failed, war as a last resort. To assert that these persons diod no mean what they said is a very big leap out over the chasm of fatuity. Their error was having faith that a man elected as U.S. President, would possess the personal honor and integrity to not waste human blood waging an immoral foreign war, based upon falsehoods. They were very wrong, but that makes them dupes and rubes. Again, the Lamer of Two Evils.
GOP Bastards: the Natural Liberties you have stolen were in part mine. Give it back with public apologies for your crimes, and you'll no longer be counted as domestic enemy.
It is absurd that a person who refused to accept the democratic vote of his own party in the primaries, and then reentered the election as an independent who accepted major contribution from the other main party, and pulled all party support out from under their own candidate, would be referred to as being democratic.
Liegberman subverted the democratic process of his own chosen party, The Democrats. He aligned with the Dem. side, because the Senate rules force third party and independent members to pick one or the other, and all committee assignments come from affiliation. Lieberman would have aligned with the Republicans if they would have offered him a good enough deal on committees, but the didn't care about the weasel to toss him a decent bone. They know he's a solid pro-Iraq vote, and is a firm believer in giving extra-power to the government. He has at least been consistent in this, contrary to the Republicans who believe in empowering and supporting Republican President's overreaches, while castrating Democratic Presidents before he even has been inaugurated.
When even Bob Barr can no longer stomach being a Republican, you know the GOP has sunk far below the horizon on the field of honor. Moral Relativism is The Rectaltude of Republican Intent manifest obscenely in reality. What else can be expected from The Party of Public Potty-Peepers, who claim after their performances of soft-shoe routines at TeaTyme has become public knowledge, that they are not gay.
at least presently. Admittedly it is nuanced and difficult to perceive. I would have preferred a more secluded place for this pointer, but if you poke around the relevant part of the namespace presently given as mine in this note's header (it will be obvious is you visit), you'd probably begin to perceive them.
Attitudes like yours are a significant cause for the flight of Americans from the Democratic party. How many times are you going to play your asinine circular firing squad game before you realise nobody wins?
Please offer valid citations for your defamatory statements about Reid, or admit that you are not in fact motivated by a will to defend liberty, but instead by the same lame-brained liberealities that got the party sodomised by the new right in the first place.
Christ Almighty! - Evil to the right of me, and imbeciles on my left!
I am one who has for many years believed that the two party system was the ultimate root cause for the Nation's ills, and have also loudly asserted that if your vote was based on a "lesser of two evils" decision, without question, you have voted for evil.
The Bush Administration, and concomitant GOP Congressional dereliction, has taught me a bitter lesson though. I must now choke back the bile that rises in my throat, whenever I long nostalgically for the time in America's past, when a President's lies were only about acts of consensual sex, a cum-stained blue dress, and tobacco products with odd exotic aromatics; instead of a President's lies about Natural Liberties, Immoral War, and the Blood-stained Iraqi Sands.
This is the cause for a correction in my analysis. While it is wrong to vote for a lesser of two evils; a very good argument can be made to support a vote for the lamer of two evils. The GOP has not yet begun to experience the pain that is necessary to purge the excessive resident evil within. There need be a return to a state of polar equilibrium in quantities of evil, or there need be the end to the Republican Party, as a clear and present danger to the people's liberty. There is no third way.
The oath was: against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic, or to condense it down to a Bushified black and white: are you with the Friends of Liberty or Against Us. Choose wisely...
There are indeed valid, substantial questions regarding Jay Rockefeller's campaign contributors and the FISA Bill's telecom immunity clause. My questions about him go back farther to when he was minority committee leader, and was being pussy-whipped by Sen. Roberts (Can's-Ass) about Robert's promise to have the Intelligence Committee investigate the administration's use of pre-Iraq War intelligence, and even get around to issuing subpoenas, so Feith and Wolfowitz would get their asses hauled down to assert their 5th Amendment rights under oath while being televised nationwide. There are several Democratic Senators whose defense of civil liberties is very questionable.
However, your intimated assertion of a partisan parity is absurd, and a wild flight of fantasy from reality.
Let's investigate reality without the rosy-tint of you blurry lens:
Senate Roll Call Vote #20 on February 12, 2008, The FISA Amendments Act
Clearly, The Democrats are The Lamer of Two Evils.
49 D - 49 R - 2 I
Reid is the majority leader by virtue of Lieberman's two-timing hide. Care to guess which side of the isle he votes on FISA and telecom immunity?
You also need to consider that cloture votes (an agreement to end debate and go to a vote on a bill or specific debated issue in a bill, requires a super-majority of 60%. Back when the Democrats used this to block a handful of Bush's most activist of right-wing judge appointees, they were criticised as being undemocratic. Now that Republicans have have used the tactic to effectively shut down any attempts by Democrats to right wrongs from the last 7 years, the Democrats are called inept or in collusion.
A fine example of this tactic is : Roll Call Vote #340 on September 19, 2007. It was a cloture to vote on Senator Specter's Amendment #2022 to The Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 - the purpose of which was to restore habeas corpus for those detained by the United States. The voted count was 56-Yea -- 43 Nay -- 12 NoVote. The Party affiliation of the vote was:
Yea - 49 D - 6R - 1 I (Sanders)
Nay - 42 R - 0D - 1 I (Lieberman)
Habeas corpus is a Natural Right, which the Constitution states can only be suspended in times of domestic invasion or public insurrection. To assert that a sneak attack by 20 detemine F**ks, which to this Nation's great misfortune, coincided with an administration so arrogant, ignorant and derelict, it failed at its primary duty to defend America constitutes an "invasion", is to chase after a well dressed bunny down into a dark hole in the ground. This should not be a partisan issue, and REAL conservatives understand this clearly. Read Kenneth Starr's written opinion to The Senate.
My question to you is: did you actually look last time or did you just accept what you were told?
Suspension of Habeas Corpus is clearly identified in the Constitution as being a power of the Legislative Branch, not the Executive Branch. It was an unconstitutional overreach of Executive power from the git.
The modern Republican male role model in America
Love the 2008 RNCC Convention logo, BTW...
Jefferson felt that one of his failures was his not being able to get the wealthy to understand the merits of bearing the financial burden for the education of the poor. In 1776 he laid out a plan in the Virginia legislature which would have divided the state up into school districts. He also proposed two higher educational groups. One for a general University education and the other for advanced Science and Mathematical studies. He believed that these too should be available to all without concern for their families' financial status. It was opposed by the wealthy landholders who comprised the majority of the State's legislature. Throughout his life Jefferson was a proponent of a strong and able public school system which was paid for out of the general treasury.
Jefferson foresaw more than you give him credit for. The failure you so willfully point out is caused by persons who equate personal liberty to being the same as their own personal greed, who believe they have a right, both divine and civil to not aid their fellow citizens whom the vicissitudes of life have unfairly placed without the reach of The Dreamtime America.
This is repugnant to the advancement of liberty. It is the elevation of personal possessions to a higher place the the Natural Rights of Humanity, and it is contemporary conservatism's continued embrace of this obscene concept which is a part of the body of evidence proving that it has not yet experienced enough pain to purge the evil that has infected its soul.
I wasn't aware that I had supported tax and spend policies. I only stated that when compared to the Republican policy of Cut Taxes and Spend, it is the lamer of two evils. It is assuredly a more defensible position.
A rather vehement strain of the meme:
"But BillJeff did it first"
which again provides anecdotal evidence that two wrongs do indeed make a righty.
Another lesson that has been finally ground into America's consciousness by the last seven years of governmental overreach is one that has been preached to us for over twenty since, since the Reagancomedy:
Republicans do it better the Democrats
This has now been demonstrably proven to be true in the instances of
These are but a few of the many examples of what happens with Conservatism Gone Wild. Yet you seem to be admitting an instance where the Republicans are no better than the Democrats here, and that is when it comes to defending liberty.
So what is the purpose of you ravening spew? Are you claiming that The Democrats Are The Lamer of Two Evils? Given my near seven year experience with the tyranny of GW Bush, I've grown nostalgic for a lamer of evils.
The whole purpose of my pointing out the Terror Prevention Buill of 1996 was that the Republicans took out any effective terrorism prevention methods that were proposed. I am aware that it was useless for the stated purpose, but it was the Republicans that castrated it.
Also of not in the 90's Senate was Phil Graham's killing of banking transparency regulations promulgated for offshore transactions, from his position of chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Not only did this hurt terrorist prevention attempt, but it directly aided ENRON, who was a major contributor into his campaign finances. Graham's wife, Wendy, was a board member of ENRON. For financial gain, Phil Graham blocked terrorism preventative legislation.
Again: The Democrats are The lamer of Two Evils.
The claim that we didn't aid bin Laden in Afghanistan is completely erroneous too. The aid was funnelled into the Pakistani Army's intelligence wing, ISI, which in the 80's was headed by current Bush Totalitarian bud, and Pakistan dictator who overthrew an democratically elected government, Pervez Musharraf. The CIA chose this hands-off method, because they were still feeling the pain of the Church Investigations, and did not want to feel the effects from blowback on it.
This is hardly my position. Before 911, it was considered to be a given. Here's a link to a US News and World Report 1998 editorial, hardly a member of the "liberal media":
Fouad Ajami, "Mr. bin Laden's neighborhood: Scorn for Washington, and fissures among fanatics who embrace fire", US News and World Report, September 7, 1998
Don't pitch those Crawford cowchips around me.
The veracity of "The Path to 9/11" has been ably questioned in many places. Here's the list from Media Matters for America, and even though they are completely partisan in their choice of topics, they are meticulous in their sourcing.
Where exactly in the 911 Report?
Most importantly, you fail to comprhened what is the basis of concern regarding the suspension of habeas corpus. It is a preeminent right to the state, and that means it is not just something the the Government must allow for its citizens. To not understand this, is to place liberty at threat. There are human rights which transcend the power of a legitimate state. You defend tyranny.
Your assertions regarding the humans detained at Abu Ghraib in 2004 are wrong and reprehensible. Most of the detainees then had been picked-up in sweeps during the insurgency's infancy:
These persons had been detained under the Colour of Authority Imparted by The United States Flag; my god-damned flag; and for that reason alone, should never had been tortured, irrespective of any criminal act they had engaged with. There was once a time when America actually stood for freedom and liberty, and its citizenry was not rife with cowards and weasels who equivocated upon the Rights of All Humans.
If this makes me a lefty or a liberal, then what refuse now comprises the right-side of the political bipolarity in America?
You are far from reality on this. A primary anti-terror bill from congress during the Clinton administration was the:
It took two years to get passed, and the phrase "Effective Death Penalty" was added to the legislation's title between 1995 and 1996, because it turned out to be a gutted terror prevention bill that primarily rescinded habeas corpus rights of convicted Federal prisoners. Hatch's dream since becoming a US Senator has been to gut Habeas Corpus. Of especially note is the GOP's refusal to allow multi-point wiretaps, approved only after judicial oversight, to be allowed in cases of terror investigations.. This had been already allowed for RICO investigations. When debating the Bill after it had been sent over from The Senate, the Majority GOP members, led by Bob Barr, claimed this was unconstitutional and excised it from the legislation. Orin Hatch defended this. (1, 2 and 3)
The GOP also opposed:
The GOP used this Bill as a launching pad for their attacks on the government over Waco and Ruby Ridge, and their soapbox was comprised of the victims bodies from the Oklahoma City Bombing. None of these arguments were used by the GOP politicians when considering the Patriot Bill, and that legislation went far beyond any proposals offered in the 1996 Bill.
Hatch was still defending the Reagan era policy of arming the Arab "Freedom Fighters" in Afghanistan, even after the Khobar Towers, and Africa Embassy Bombings: