Let's play a game. You come up with examples of murderers who were put to death and killed again afterwards and I'll come up with examples of murderers who were paroled/escaped/served their time and killed again. You can go first.
Touchy, touchy--never understand why merely saying that one is a republican can warrant such scorn and hate--"voting illogically?" Seriously, let's not be so judgmental! Respect diversity of intellect as well as skin color and sexuality!
Because there are no reasons to be a Republican that can't be easily categorized as making them a coward a fool or a traitor. It's not a question of diversity of intellect. It's the complete lack of any intellectual basis for supporting that party except for those who seek to get rich off of war and building a police state. Those would be traitors. The rest are cowards and fools.
I defy you to attempt to provide a valid reason for voting Republican. I will easily show how it falls into one or more of the three.
1) In a jury you follow the rule of law. According to the law, he was guilty.
No, far more importantly you *judge* the law. That is the entire point of having a jury. Your responsibility as a citizen was to toss it out due to the law being blatantly and obviously insane and unconstitutional.
The fact that not only do you not know your responsibilities but argue that they are completely opposite to what they absolutely have to be in any society that is anything even approximating free, proves the OPs point that you are part of the problem.
Please learn about Jury nullification and if you ever get called for jury duty again, please at least try to live up to your responsibiliteis instead of pissing in the face of them as you did this time.
It has never happened, and it never will. A government, might, someday be FORCED into this situation, but as it stands it isn't close.
When people call you a cynic, do you laugh or just want to smack them?
Being a fellow realist, I'd like to offer my input on one thing you said:
Look at the libertarians here, they are mostly upper middle, to upper class, youngish folk, looking to protect their own well-being, at the cost of everyone else's
I'm not a "Libertarian" in any sort of ideologically pure sense, but I do typically vote Libertarian. I'm pushing 40, middle class and looking to protect a lot more (in my own head at least if you like) than merely my own well being.
I agree with quite a bit of what they stand for, but not to the degree which I find typical of the party faithful. If the entire Congress, the Supreme Court and the President were replaced en mass by ideological Libertarians through some magical special election, it would be a complete disaster.
Magic, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your favorite fantasy universes, isn't real here, so that isn't going to happen.
What I would like to see is a government that doesn't spend our money like crazy for any special interest that pays them off. I don't like spending as much as the rest of the world put together on a military that is used primarily to do anything but defend my country. I don't like to see companies which are doing quite well for themselves bribe payoffs out of my taxes. That's essentially Fascism right there.
I have no problem with taxes, basic services and all of that. I'd even go so far as to say that Socialized Medicine with funding in basic research would be at least as good and less expensive than where we are now primarily due to stupid patent games. Not all patents are dumb. The way the system is set up to be gamed leads to stupid decisions. So while "Socialized Medicine" sounds good, with the way things are it would just turn into another disaster.
So the reason I usually vote Libertarian is that I think that having quite a few more people with their particular deeply held convictions in office would provide a very much needed voice of reason. I understand that you might not see it as reasonable as a complete system of government in the modern world and if so I agree, but compared to the "Let's sell fear to religious extremists and blow shit up" versus "No No...OK we're in now, fine keep blowing shit up but let's have a big parade back home with helicopters...and planes flying overhead dropping bandaids: But get this, we'll still manage to pull it off cheaper" thing we have going on now just seems insane. So I'd like a voice of reason compared to *that*.
Maybe you think that the Democrats or the Republicans will somehow all of a sudden develop the capacity to work for something positive, but I don't believe that could possibly happen. I really mean it ain't possible in my opinion. Not when "The Democrats" or "The Republicans" are deciding who you, as a resident of whichever State you live in are allowed to vote for. It takes local ideas out of the process and makes it for the benefit of the parties regardless of their differences as long as they can keep it a two player game.
So, a lot of my argument could apply to $THIRD_PARTY, and I'd love to see the Libertarians, the Greens, the Communists and even the American Nazi Party (I hate Illinois Nazis;-) if there is one get together on one critical issue like: ditch our crap voting system for your choice of IRV, Condorcet, or any other of several which are all not perfect, but proven better than our current one.
I'm sure there are a few other single issues which could really be pivotal, but that one is for sure.
Who ever claimed that there was such a thing as "enlightened self interest" was a buffoon, they are mutually exclusive.
I think that the reasoning I presented is an example of something that could be described that way. I th
And no, most problems are not because of the illegality itself.
Actually, yes, they are.
Feel free to try and name some that you feel go the other way.
Be very careful not to forget to assume that all the money we piss away on the drug war was spent on treatment programs. Note that I'm not arguing we should spend that much money on anything, but if you're going to try and argue the patently ridiculous point you asserted, then it's a necessary requirement.
Also, even if you pull that off, there are plenty of other obvious things you'll ignore if you think that argument has any merit whatsoever, which I'll be happy to point out.
So I'll just ask you to put your ass where your propaganda is. Put a "Gun Free Zone" sign in your yard. Better, get all yer loony neighbors to make your whole neighborhood a Gun Free Zone.
They have those all over Garfield Park and other shitty areas in Chicago. Of course guns are already illegal and people in those areas get killed all the fucking time. *That's why* they have the signs up.
I'm not much for obeying stupid laws, and I'm not arguing the whole gun control issue with you. Just saying you might think about coming up with a different example.
Hmm, at certain times of the month that's what I call my wife too!
Dude, tell her to skip the green pills and just start on a new pack. Problem solved. Or at least reduced to a couple of times a year instead of every month.
So here I am, not only taking my shoes off, but also being escorted to the back room for the "enhanced" security check every time I fly on an airliner.
Do we have good or bad relations with Saudi Arabia? We have good relations. Why?
Because we provide them with the weapons they use to keep their own people down so they can maintain their brutal thuggish monarchy.
I assume that was rhetorical.
I mean the fact that they're the source of Wahabiism, they're the ones whose schoolbooks actually are full of "Death to America the Great Satan", points out how stupid we are to maintain good relations with them, but that's not what you asked.
. This is another example of emotions (we hate Iran because of 1979) undermining the brain.
Which was our own fault in the first place for murdering their democratically elected leader and installing a brutal, but American business friendly thug as per our standard MO for the past century or so.
If it weren't so devastating to so many I'd laugh at what fucking delusional morons we must seem to any halfway intelligent person looking on.
And again, you have nothing but ad hominems to support your "argument".
Whether you know I'm right or if you just don't have a clue, you could just show some integrity and admit your mistake.
That's way too much to expect, given your paranoid screeching about conspiracies when I'm merely talking about simple basic facts. Maybe you should consider paying attention once in a while, maybe reading some history, you know, maybe even try thinking?
You guys can't have a reasonable discussion. Everything is "murder batshit insane criminal" and you see normal, rational policy decisions in terms of conspiracy theories and black helicopters.
I can have a perfectly reasonable discussion. I will not pretend that the ignorant nonsense I was responding to was reasonable. Especially when you directly contradict yourself as I pointed out. I see that you've failed to actually present anything resembling either normal or rational policy decisions though.
No conspiracy theories are necessary to notice who benefits from US actions. There's no need to even claim that any of it was intentionally done with the purpose of achieving the results we're looking at. But if all you can do is ignore the results of our policies and pretend that even though they're obviously leading us farther and farther away from any sort of "liberty", that magically they are because you want them to, then you're really not making any sense at all.
There's no way that kind of raving is going to appeal to a large number of voters.
No, they prefer to be told sweet lies while being raped.
I see that you have still proven unable to actually refute anything I said. All you've done is throw ad hominems. Typical, and certainly the sort of thing that appeals to large numbers of voters. Maybe you should run. You'd fit right in with the scum in Washington.
; even to the dirty tricks that won them the election (back-channel deal w/iran pre-election)
Even to the doctored intelligence to pump up the real threat of the Soviet Union to ridiculous proportions to keep pumping up spending of borrowed money.
There really are no meaningful differences between Reagan and Bush except their relative skills at lying.
I think you've invented an entirely new level of dumb.
Fascism and Communism are diametrically opposed viewpoints. Communism is an extreme left viewpoint, Fascism is extreme right wing. They both suck, but communism is more or less dead and Fascism is alive and well in America today.
In between them is Liberalism (in the classical sense of the word) which is for personal liberty, small government, and the like.
Conservatives are the ones that follow the constitution and do little to hamper our freedoms. Check out Reagan - the greatest president of the 20th century and compare him to FDR, our most facist dictator of a president - and the biggest failure.
LOL. Reagan was probably the worst president we ever had. Primarily because he's the one who brought Fascism to the US in full force.
Yes, compare Reagan to FDR. Apart from selling crack to school kids in America to buy guns for terrorists in direct violation of Congress, which was one of his major defining actions, Reagan destroyed FDR's record for *growth* in government spending.
But the Libertarian Party spend their time talking about legalizing drugs. And they talk about surrendering the US military influence around the world. How is that supposed to advance liberty in the US again?
How could anything else, is actually the only reasonable question.
How is having millions of people in prison for the benefit of only drug and liquor companies in any way possible in anything even close to a free society? It's not.
How is murdering people all over the world to promote the profit of oil and weapons manufacturers in any way possible in anything even close to a free society? It's not.
So, you obviously like to spout meaningless soundbites as opposed to actually presenting an actual thought. That's all you managed to make clear with that though.
So again, I ask in all seriousness, how is it possible to advance liberty without dealing with the very serious problem that the primary driving forces behind both our foreign and domestic policies are absolutely incompatible with Liberty.
Bury your head in the sand and ignore the actual issues all you like, but please don't pretend that you're doing anything apart from that.
I mean, this really takes the cake: "They'll be more secure in their lives without having to defend against an omnipotent government overseer. "
Yet the omnipotent government overseer exists because of drug laws and the need to repress the reactions of the decent citizens to our criminal foreign policy. There are no other major factors driving the loss of liberty that are anywhere close to those two things.
If you think we can have an honest debate on single-payer health care and get it through the United States Congress then raise your hand, I'll be the first one to support you.
If you think we can have an honest debate in the United States Congress *at all*, raise your hand and I'll be the first to point and laugh.
I know that there are a lot of problems with distributed government plans, but the reason we have elected representatives as we do is because 200 years ago it was the only feasible way for everyone to have a semblance of a voice. With tech growing as it has (wikis, dBs), the possibility of getting everyone who cares to chime in is no longer an impossibility.
No, they rejected straight Democracy as the completely failed idea which it has been known to be for thousands of years. Similarly with a vanilla Republic. They chose a Constitutional Republic as the best system they could come up with, not because they couldn't figure out how to implement Democracy, but because they wanted to avoid the obvious and well known flaws inherent in such a system.
The majority of the problems we're seeing with our current government is that we've eliminated (for the most part) any remainder of the "Constitutional" part of Constitutional Republic.
In a Democracy, 51% of the population can vote to kill the other 49%. Stupid system. In a Republic, if 51% of the elected representatives choose to fuck everyone, then they legally can. Stupid system. In a Constitutional Republic (specifically one backed by the United States Constitution) 100% of the people can vote for Representatives and demand that they enact any of a whole variety of idiotic, sleazy, legislation, and the only legal, moral, or ethical choice available to the legislators is to tell them all to go get bent (or tell them to go pass an amendment).
That is where we're having a problem now. So that there would be that roadblock is the entire point of *not* making this country a Democracy. It had nothing at all to do with lack of ability to implement it and everything to do with the fact that they actually had some idea what the hell they were talking about.
You were actually being sarcastic. There's a difference.
He wasn't trying to be mean about it, although he did do everything that defines sarcasm apart from that. Oh wait. There's a word for that which you apparently don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's play a game. You come up with examples of murderers who were put to death and killed again afterwards and I'll come up with examples of murderers who were paroled/escaped/served their time and killed again. You can go first.
Freddy Krueger.
Touchy, touchy--never understand why merely saying that one is a republican can warrant such scorn and hate--"voting illogically?" Seriously, let's not be so judgmental! Respect diversity of intellect as well as skin color and sexuality!
Because there are no reasons to be a Republican that can't be easily categorized as making them a coward a fool or a traitor.
It's not a question of diversity of intellect. It's the complete lack of any intellectual basis for supporting that party except for those who seek to get rich off of war and building a police state. Those would be traitors. The rest are cowards and fools.
I defy you to attempt to provide a valid reason for voting Republican. I will easily show how it falls into one or more of the three.
Wow....people like you are why I vote Republican.
So you're a coward and a fool.
All Republicans fall into one or more of "coward" "fool" or "traitor".
You're 2 out of 3 on one stupid bit of "reasoning".
1) In a jury you follow the rule of law. According to the law, he was guilty.
No, far more importantly you *judge* the law. That is the entire point of having a jury. Your responsibility as a citizen was to toss it out due to the law being blatantly and obviously insane and unconstitutional.
The fact that not only do you not know your responsibilities but argue that they are completely opposite to what they absolutely have to be in any society that is anything even approximating free, proves the OPs point that you are part of the problem.
Please learn about Jury nullification and if you ever get called for jury duty again, please at least try to live up to your responsibiliteis instead of pissing in the face of them as you did this time.
of course they are evil - corporations are per definition sociopaths.
Then they are "amoral" by definition, not "evil".
We aren't stealing oil. We are taking back what is ours.
Ahhh, the true psychopath comes out. How quaint.
It has never happened, and it never will. A government, might, someday be FORCED into this situation, but as it stands it isn't close.
When people call you a cynic, do you laugh or just want to smack them?
Being a fellow realist, I'd like to offer my input on one thing you said:
Look at the libertarians here, they are mostly upper middle, to upper class, youngish folk, looking to protect their own well-being, at the cost of everyone else's
I'm not a "Libertarian" in any sort of ideologically pure sense, but I do typically vote Libertarian. I'm pushing 40, middle class and looking to protect a lot more (in my own head at least if you like) than merely my own well being.
I agree with quite a bit of what they stand for, but not to the degree which I find typical of the party faithful. If the entire Congress, the Supreme Court and the President were replaced en mass by ideological Libertarians through some magical special election, it would be a complete disaster.
Magic, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your favorite fantasy universes, isn't real here, so that isn't going to happen.
What I would like to see is a government that doesn't spend our money like crazy for any special interest that pays them off. I don't like spending as much as the rest of the world put together on a military that is used primarily to do anything but defend my country.
I don't like to see companies which are doing quite well for themselves bribe payoffs out of my taxes. That's essentially Fascism right there.
I have no problem with taxes, basic services and all of that. I'd even go so far as to say that Socialized Medicine with funding in basic research would be at least as good and less expensive than where we are now primarily due to stupid patent games. Not all patents are dumb. The way the system is set up to be gamed leads to stupid decisions. So while "Socialized Medicine" sounds good, with the way things are it would just turn into another disaster.
So the reason I usually vote Libertarian is that I think that having quite a few more people with their particular deeply held convictions in office would provide a very much needed voice of reason. I understand that you might not see it as reasonable as a complete system of government in the modern world and if so I agree, but compared to the "Let's sell fear to religious extremists and blow shit up" versus "No No...OK we're in now, fine keep blowing shit up but let's have a big parade back home with helicopters...and planes flying overhead dropping bandaids: But get this, we'll still manage to pull it off cheaper" thing we have going on now just seems insane. So I'd like a voice of reason compared to *that*.
Maybe you think that the Democrats or the Republicans will somehow all of a sudden develop the capacity to work for something positive, but I don't believe that could possibly happen. I really mean it ain't possible in my opinion. Not when "The Democrats" or "The Republicans" are deciding who you, as a resident of whichever State you live in are allowed to vote for. It takes local ideas out of the process and makes it for the benefit of the parties regardless of their differences as long as they can keep it a two player game.
So, a lot of my argument could apply to $THIRD_PARTY, and I'd love to see the Libertarians, the Greens, the Communists and even the American Nazi Party (I hate Illinois Nazis
I'm sure there are a few other single issues which could really be pivotal, but that one is for sure.
Who ever claimed that there was such a thing as "enlightened self interest" was a buffoon, they are mutually exclusive.
I think that the reasoning I presented is an example of something that could be described that way. I th
And no, most problems are not because of the illegality itself.
Actually, yes, they are.
Feel free to try and name some that you feel go the other way.
Be very careful not to forget to assume that all the money we piss away on the drug war was spent on treatment programs. Note that I'm not arguing we should spend that much money on anything, but if you're going to try and argue the patently ridiculous point you asserted, then it's a necessary requirement.
Also, even if you pull that off, there are plenty of other obvious things you'll ignore if you think that argument has any merit whatsoever, which I'll be happy to point out.
1) Havent killed myself with my own gun yet.
Look, I can take you at your word on your other points , but I'm going to need some proof for this one.
Well, if "Aunt Betty" breaks into my house, the bitch is getting shot.
Socks and underwear for Christmas my ass.
So I'll just ask you to put your ass where your propaganda is. Put a "Gun Free Zone" sign in your yard. Better, get all yer loony neighbors to make your whole neighborhood a Gun Free Zone.
They have those all over Garfield Park and other shitty areas in Chicago. Of course guns are already illegal and people in those areas get killed all the fucking time. *That's why* they have the signs up.
I'm not much for obeying stupid laws, and I'm not arguing the whole gun control issue with you.
Just saying you might think about coming up with a different example.
Hmm, at certain times of the month that's what I call my wife too!
Dude, tell her to skip the green pills and just start on a new pack.
Problem solved. Or at least reduced to a couple of times a year instead of every month.
So here I am, not only taking my shoes off, but also being escorted to the back room for the "enhanced" security check every time I fly on an airliner.
You should stop changing your socks
Do we have good or bad relations with Saudi Arabia? We have good relations. Why?
Because we provide them with the weapons they use to keep their own people down so they can maintain their brutal thuggish monarchy.
I assume that was rhetorical.
I mean the fact that they're the source of Wahabiism, they're the ones whose schoolbooks actually are full of "Death to
America the Great Satan", points out how stupid we are to maintain good relations with them, but that's not what you asked.
. This is another example of emotions (we hate Iran because of 1979) undermining the brain.
Which was our own fault in the first place for murdering their democratically elected leader and installing a brutal, but
American business friendly thug as per our standard MO for the past century or so.
If it weren't so devastating to so many I'd laugh at what fucking delusional morons we must seem to any halfway intelligent person looking on.
Thanks professor.
Wow, keeping one eye open in 7th grade history makes one a professor in your world?
Can you provide literature on any 1000+ year old failed "straight democracies"?
You might start googling "Athens" and skip over any results from more recent times.
And again, you have nothing but ad hominems to support your "argument".
Whether you know I'm right or if you just don't have a clue, you could just show some integrity and admit your mistake.
That's way too much to expect, given your paranoid screeching about conspiracies when I'm merely talking about simple basic facts.
Maybe you should consider paying attention once in a while, maybe reading some history, you know, maybe even try thinking?
Yeah, I figured that wasn't your style.
That's the other problem with Libertarians.
I'm not a Libertarian.
You guys can't have a reasonable discussion. Everything is "murder batshit insane criminal" and you see normal, rational policy decisions in terms of conspiracy theories and black helicopters.
I can have a perfectly reasonable discussion. I will not pretend that the ignorant nonsense I was responding to was reasonable. Especially when you directly contradict yourself as I pointed out.
I see that you've failed to actually present anything resembling either normal or rational policy decisions though.
No conspiracy theories are necessary to notice who benefits from US actions. There's no need to even claim that any of it was intentionally done with the purpose of achieving the results we're looking at. But if all you can do is ignore the results of our policies and pretend that even though they're obviously leading us farther and farther away from any sort of "liberty", that magically they are because you want them to, then you're really not making any sense at all.
There's no way that kind of raving is going to appeal to a large number of voters.
No, they prefer to be told sweet lies while being raped.
I see that you have still proven unable to actually refute anything I said. All you've done is throw ad hominems. Typical, and certainly the sort of thing that appeals to large numbers of voters. Maybe you should run. You'd fit right in with the scum in Washington.
; even to the
dirty tricks that won them the election (back-channel deal w/iran pre-election)
Even to the doctored intelligence to pump up the real threat of the Soviet Union to ridiculous proportions to keep pumping up spending of borrowed money.
There really are no meaningful differences between Reagan and Bush except their relative skills at lying.
he's a communist (which is facist)
I think you've invented an entirely new level of dumb.
Fascism and Communism are diametrically opposed viewpoints.
Communism is an extreme left viewpoint, Fascism is extreme right wing. They both suck, but communism is more or less dead and Fascism is alive and well in America today.
In between them is Liberalism (in the classical sense of the word) which is for personal liberty, small government, and the like.
Conservatives are the ones that follow the constitution and do little to hamper our freedoms. Check out Reagan - the greatest president of the 20th century and compare him to FDR, our most facist dictator of a president - and the biggest failure.
LOL. Reagan was probably the worst president we ever had. Primarily because he's the one who brought Fascism to the US in full force.
Yes, compare Reagan to FDR. Apart from selling crack to school kids in America to buy guns for terrorists in direct violation of Congress, which was one of his major defining actions, Reagan destroyed FDR's record for *growth* in government spending.
Now please go die you Reagan death cult idiot.
But the Libertarian Party spend their time talking about legalizing drugs. And they talk about surrendering the US military influence around the world. How is that supposed to advance liberty in the US again?
How could anything else, is actually the only reasonable question.
How is having millions of people in prison for the benefit of only drug and liquor companies in any way possible in anything even close to a free society? It's not.
How is murdering people all over the world to promote the profit of oil and weapons manufacturers in any way possible in anything even close to a free society? It's not.
So, you obviously like to spout meaningless soundbites as opposed to actually presenting an actual thought. That's all you managed to make clear with that though.
So again, I ask in all seriousness, how is it possible to advance liberty without dealing with the very serious problem that the primary driving forces behind both our foreign and domestic policies are absolutely incompatible with Liberty.
Bury your head in the sand and ignore the actual issues all you like, but please don't pretend that you're doing anything apart from that.
I mean, this really takes the cake:
"They'll be more secure in their lives without having to defend against an omnipotent government overseer. "
Yet the omnipotent government overseer exists because of drug laws and the need to repress the reactions of the decent citizens to our criminal foreign policy. There are no other major factors driving the loss of liberty that are anywhere close to those two things.
That's why your comment is batshit insane.
If you think we can have an honest debate on single-payer health care and get it through the United States Congress then raise your hand, I'll be the first one to support you.
If you think we can have an honest debate in the United States Congress *at all*, raise your hand and I'll be the first to point and laugh.
I know that there are a lot of problems with distributed government plans, but the reason we have elected representatives as we do is because 200 years ago it was the only feasible way for everyone to have a semblance of a voice. With tech growing as it has (wikis, dBs), the possibility of getting everyone who cares to chime in is no longer an impossibility.
No, they rejected straight Democracy as the completely failed idea which it has been known to be for thousands of years. Similarly with a vanilla Republic. They chose a Constitutional Republic as the best system they could come up with, not because they couldn't figure out how to implement Democracy, but because they wanted to avoid the obvious and well known flaws inherent in such a system.
The majority of the problems we're seeing with our current government is that we've eliminated (for the most part) any remainder of the "Constitutional" part of Constitutional Republic.
In a Democracy, 51% of the population can vote to kill the other 49%. Stupid system.
In a Republic, if 51% of the elected representatives choose to fuck everyone, then they legally can. Stupid system.
In a Constitutional Republic (specifically one backed by the United States Constitution) 100% of the people can vote for Representatives and demand that they enact any of a whole variety of idiotic, sleazy, legislation, and the only legal, moral, or ethical choice available to the legislators is to tell them all to go get bent (or tell them to go pass an amendment).
That is where we're having a problem now. So that there would be that roadblock is the entire point of *not* making this country a
Democracy. It had nothing at all to do with lack of ability to implement it and everything to do with the fact that they actually had some idea what the hell they were talking about.
I'd have put it a bit more nicely.
;-)
Ahh, but then you'd end up at +5 insightful rather than 0 Flamebait with many responses, mostly positive. I just find the latter more amusing
You were actually being sarcastic. There's a difference.
He wasn't trying to be mean about it, although he did do everything that defines sarcasm apart from that. Oh wait. There's a word for that which you apparently don't know.
That's where the difference is.