"A black sheriff?!": The Official Topic of Obama and New Era American Politics

[Barry Egan]

I misread it as you explaining what a postmodernist approach was; "a post-modernist approach in favor of author's intent".

[Barry Egan]

yes.

[brawndolicious]

And then there's the fucktards that try to screw with the meaning of "well-regulated militia..."

well how the fuck do you interpret something as a "militia"?
besides thousands of people die every year from guns that are technologically beyond the scope of anything those wig-heads could imagine.  we have to seriously weigh the pragmatic value of the 2nd amendment and as I see it, that amendment hasn't really been used since the civil war.

Pragmatic?  It's always "pragmatic" to limit personal liberty.  Liberty is dangerous and disruptive.

Yes exactly, you can have too much liberty.

If in a hundred years they invent an invisible undetectable automatic handgun, I don't think the general public should have the LIBERTY to go out and fill their trunk with those and then go around and sell them at a gun show in a ghetto city.  I can forgive the constitution's authors for putting in a law that technically might allow that though.  They could not forsee the advances that come in 2 hundred years.  Hell, they would have probably been terrified by rifling.

[brawndolicious]

I'm giving an extreme example.  The 2nd amendment allows you to have so much "liberty" that you can easily steal from or even rape or kill the average person without any problem because hey, you have a gun and they most likely do not.

Unless you think the average person should be  in some sort of Big 5 arms race or something.

[Kestastrophe]

I can't tell if you are being serious or not  . Wouldn't that umbrella definition include "arms" such as nuclear and biological weapons as well?

[Dickie Dee]

I can't tell if you are being serious or not  . Wouldn't that umbrella definition include "arms" such as nuclear and biological weapons as well?

IIRC, the NRA successfully lobbied against a law that would have required trace chemicals be placed in high-grade explosives after the OKC bombing as they felt it violated the 2nd ammendment. So yes, they are that crazy.

[brawndolicious]

I'm giving an extreme example.  The 2nd amendment allows you to have so much "liberty" that you can easily steal from or even rape or kill the average person without any problem because hey, you have a gun and they most likely do not.

You can do that with a knife.  Or a moderately pointy stick.  Or by just being strong and / or knowing a martial art.  I'm not sure why you feel this is valid.  Liberty can be abused, yes - that does not make a police state preferable.

If you walk down the street with a knife or a moderately pointy stick you will be arrested, you can actually get a concealed carry permit for handguns but that's the best thing about it to criminals, that it's so easily concealed..I'm personally fine with people owning small arms as long as it's not a handgun or automatic.

[Mandark]

I've argued repeatedly that historical context matters quite a bit in terms of reading a ratified governmental document, entirely eschewing a post-modernist approach in favor of author's intent."

If the dude writing "cruel and unusual" and the dudes signing the thing think hanging is a-okay, it certainly ain't unusual, and it wasn't regarded as cruel.

Ergo the second amendment only provides for the possession of muskets and flintlock pistols.

[Mandark]

Look, if we're going to be originalists, let's not half-ass this.

Also, state and municipal governments get to pass as many onerous restrictions on speech and weaponry as they want, since incorporation wasn't an original feature of the document.

Wheeeeeeeeeee blasphemy laws!

[Mandark]

You seem to be missing the point, so I'll spell it out.

You have said repeatedly that the document should be strictly interpreted according to the intent of the founders.

But we know that there were blasphemy laws on the books in those days.  Apparently the founders didn't think the first amendment provided either free speech or religious protections that would make these unconstitutional.

So this is the point at which you explain to us why either:

1) blasphemy laws are actually okay

or

2) they violate our God-given rights, but even so we still need to stick with the original interpretation and prevent judges from changing it


You don't have to explain this if you don't want to, but I'd highly recommend it if you want to be taken seriously.

[recursivelyenumerable]

http://www.robmacdougall.org/index.php/2008/11/american-for-a-day/

And that sounds really familiar. Being a Canadian living in America, Bercovitch said, was like being Sancho Panza in a nation of Don Quixotes. There was a secret everybody knew but him, a music everybody else but him could hear. Remember, Sancho Panza is Quixote’s pragmatic sidekick. Sancho knows that Quixote is delusional and deranged–where Quixote sees giants, Sancho sees only windmills–but he comes to envy his master’s world of enchantment.

“We’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check,” said Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was a prosaic beginning to the most beloved speech of the twentieth century, reducing American history’s greatest crime and moral dilemma to a matter of bookkeeping: “a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’” King went on:

    When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,  they were signing a promissory note … a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And here Sancho or Sacvan whispers to the guy standing next to him, “Were they? Really? If we went back in time and asked the architects of the republic–Jefferson and Madison and Washington and the rest–did you mean for this to apply to your slaves too, would they agree? And what about women? And the Sioux and Apache, and Chinese railroad laborers, and Jews from eastern Europe, and Mexican migrant laborers, and detainees at Guantanamo, and gay couples in California that want to get married, if we asked the founding fathers, they’d agree that they want all these inalienable rights to apply to them too, right? Because it would have saved a lot of trouble if they’d spelled all this out in 1789.”

The black belt rhetorical jiu jitsu of the “I Have A Dream” speech is that King pulls it off. He convinced the better part of a nation that dismantling segregation was not so scary, not so radical, but really what they’d all meant to do all along. They just hadn’t gotten around to it, like the laundry I need to sort, or those slaves Jefferson never quite got to freeing. You can fault King for making it sound too easy, for not holding anyone’s feet to the fire, but that was a tactic, and (for a time) it worked.

And this is an old and hallowed American trick. On July 4th, 1852, Frederick Douglass blistered the ears of his white audience with prophesy–and the nineteenth century knew that prophesy is not fortune telling, but judgment:

    Your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery … mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy … a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

Strong stuff for a Fourth of July picnic! But by the end of the very same speech, Douglass reveals that, “interpreted as it ought to be interpreted,” the Constitution is in fact “a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” He embraces and celebrates the Constitution as a bulwark against slavery. Without it, Douglass concludes, “the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman.” (Zing.) Abolishing slavery, Douglass asserts, is simply a matter of living up to the ideals Americans have already always embraced. (Again: Really? In 1852?)

At Seneca Falls in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton cribbed Jefferson’s words for her Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, the intimation being that “of course” the patriarchs of 1776 must have intended equal rights for women. In Omaha in 1892, the magnificent crank Ignatius Donnelly insisted that Populism was nothing more than strict adherence to the Constitution, restoring the Republic to the “plain people” with whom it had supposedly began. And so on and so on down through history, with every kind of American reformer looking backward to move forward, couching their goals as nothing more radical than America’s alleged founding ideals.

He couches it as an American thing, but you could swap out the Constitution for, say, the Bible, or Marx, or the Emperor, and you'd have a template for the rhetoric of all kinds of reform movements throughout history.

[FlameOfCallandor]

b-b-b-b-but slavery jaybubya. That alone makes the constitution less than toilet paper.

amiright?

[brawndolicious]

you have limits on freedom of speech so that you can't (even indirectly) hurt other people.  why should there not be much more strict limitations on a concealable killing tool?

[Ganhyun]

I'm not going to keep letting you shoehorn me into passing some sort of purity test every time we talk; whether you take things seriously or not is up to you.

That's just how they work JayDubya. For the most part, if your view isn't the same as what their opinion is then you are an idiot and your opinion is not worth shit to them.  You are instantly relegated to:

If said person posts on said subject:
1. laugh and call Lolbertarian/Replubitard/etc
2. ignore their views and points
3. laugh off any source that isn't Huffington Post or MSNBC
4. repeat over and over until person gives up


But this thread has taken a turn. Like Obama's poll numbers.

[ShogunOfFear]

But this thread has taken a turn. Like Obama's poll numbers.

Hahahaha

[Brehvolution]

If said person posts on said subject:
1. laugh and call liberal/lefty loser/etc
2. ignore their views and points
3. laugh off any source that isn't fox news or some right wing nutbag
4. repeat over and over until person gives up

It works both ways but what you just did was a typical republican tactic, act a certain way and then criticize your opponent for doing the exact same thing.

[Ganhyun]

If said person posts on said subject:
1. laugh and call liberal/lefty loser/etc
2. ignore their views and points
3. laugh off any source that isn't fox news or some right wing nutbag
4. repeat over and over until person gives up

It works both ways but what you just did was a typical republican tactic, act a certain way and then criticize your opponent for doing the exact same thing.

When have I ever laughed off your news sources? (I seriously don't recall doing so) Seriously dude, you been eating too many blue pills again?

[Brehvolution]

Democratic blue pills

I just stated that it works both ways, I wasn't singling you out that you do those things.

[Kestastrophe]

there is no other pill to take, so swallow the one that made you ill

[FlameOfCallandor]

[youtube=560,345]uGQF8LAmiaE[/youtube]

Keep believing whatever you want to believe. 

[Phoenix Dark]

http://www.dailykostv.com/w/001982/

what the hell 

[TakingBackSunday]

dear christ, if ganhyun posts that fucking blue pill one more goddamned time I'm going to defecate a puppy

[BlackMage]

dear christ, if ganhyun posts that fucking blue pill one more goddamned time I'm going to defecate a puppy

mmmm post away baby

[Ganhyun]

Democratic blue pills

I just stated that it works both ways, I wasn't singling you out that you do those things.

Ahh. ok. I thought you were implying that I personally had done that (which I still don't recall doing. But I will agree that yes, it works both ways. I've seen it happen on many sites.

dear christ, if ganhyun posts that fucking blue pill one more goddamned time I'm going to defecate a puppy

Be sure to let us know how shitting out that puppy goes for you.

[Brehvolution]

[youtube=560,345]sTPsFIsxM3w[/youtube]

[Ganhyun]

So has anyone posted anything about this idea Rahm Emanuel has yet?

It goes right along with Obama's idea to require high schoolers to perform 50 hours of government approved services.

http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2008m11d6-Obamas-chief-of-staff-choice-favors-compulsory-universal-service

http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=254076&kaid=127&subid=171

 "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a  civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." Barack Obama

So, according to the DLC, the plan Emanuel is proposing is not a draft or military service. Yet Obama says it must be as powerful as our Military. To be as strong as our military, they'd have to go through military training, so why not admit what it is? A law that would require all 18-25 year old people to serve in the equivalent of the U.S. military. 

[Phoenix Dark]

And? Where has Obama stated this is in his agenda? Seems like a shitty excuse for nutjob conservative parents to keep their kids out of the community service

[ShogunOfFear]

"Be prepared for unforeseen consequences" 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[M3wThr33]

And? Where has Obama stated this is in his agenda? Seems like a shitty excuse for nutjob conservative parents to keep their kids out of the community service

That's never stopped them.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I'm in favor of mandatory community service for high school students.

The entitled cuntery that a lot of high school students exhibit is more than enough justification to put the service in place.  50 hours is barely anything; hell a lot of them spend that much time a week on Facebook, MySpace, or fiddling around with their Twitter.  Learning that one has to contribute to society to make it functional is a skill that most teenagers have no fucking clue about.  I don't even give a shit if that involves working with the church as long as it is an altruistic job (feeding poor, volunteer work, no protesting about homos on sidewalks).

I'd rather see them work retail or factory work to really bring them back to earth but community service will be just fine.

[Barry Egan]

awwww, poor baby  :'( there there

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I'm in favor of mandatory community service...

I'm sure there were other words after this, but FUCK YOU.

For you...

[brawndolicious]

The 50 hour requirement was really just a tacked on, superficial, image boosting goal for Obama back when he was campaigning.  In my high school, we were all required to do like 20 or 30 hours of community service a year.  My friends in other districts said that they also had mandatory community service and I'm guessing most high schools in the country have a community service requirement.

I'd care more about his mustard preference tbh.

[Brehvolution]

Don't most colleges require an amount of community service time before graduation? I know our local college(Elmira College) does and it's more like 60 hours.

[bachikarn]

My high school required 40 community service hours to graduate, and you needed 75 to be eligible for a really good state scholarship (yay state lotteries). The problem is that most of them are pretty much BS. Teachers would regularly offer to give you like 5 hours for 1 hour of service if you did a certain service project they were in charge of.

[Van Cruncheon]

i'm in favor of mandatory community service AND mandatory abortions for all teenagers

[Phoenix Dark]

especially when you have a black and a white

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

My schools didn't have shit like that but it also had a huge problem with very high drop out rates so I'm guessing their priorities lay elsewhere.

I still have yet to hear about why mandatory community service is a bad idea.  I'll grant the fact that there will be teachers/principals/etc. that will allow students to bullshit their way through their service but no system is perfect and the end result will still be a net positive.

If spending less than an hour a week picking up shit off the highway or handing some filthy poor a cup of mush bothers you, despite 167 remaining hours left in the week, it's time to do society a favor (oh no!), grab the nearest rope, chair, and just end yourself.

[brawndolicious]

I still have yet to hear about why mandatory community service is a bad idea. 

Because it's forced labor?

community service does not necessarily equal real labor.

Even if they were picking up trash or cooking food, the amount of "labor" that will be accomplished by these kids is negligible at best.  The point is to get these kids, who have no real clue how to be a functional adult, to interact with people without so many privileges.  Just to give them a more productive outlook on life or something.

[brawndolicious]

So, it's as as I said, but likely to not even be effective.  Thanks for your input.

No, it is not as you said.  The only point you made (on this page) about this was that it's "forced labor", which to me sounds like you're comparing it to harvesting wheat for the motherland.

[Flannel Boy]

Or cotton for tha massuh.

really?

you went there?

[brawndolicious]

I didn't want to say anything but it's actually spelled "Massah".

I 've found volunteering to be personally satisfying.
Taking part in community service is a good thing that should be encouraged, and it certainly doesn't hurt to have for a resume / application as is.  That's general enough that what I just said could apply to military service as well.
The act of mandating either, however, is absolutely repugnant.

I'm guessing that it is meant to encourage more community service though..............yeah.

Yeah sure, they get forced to do it the first times but then they MOST LIKELY will feel some sense of reward for directly helping needy people and getting to know the people at the organization/shelter.  It's logical that they'll most likely want to do more community service on their own free time afterwards.

At the moment, most people only bother to volunteer when it's the time of the year that they have to justify their judeo-pagan capitalism.

[Ganhyun]

And? Where has Obama stated this is in his agenda? Seems like a shitty excuse for nutjob conservative parents to keep their kids out of the community service

This was something he mentioned in his campaigning.

For you people who apparently didn't even read the link.

It's time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.

So its not just community service folks. It's also not 50 hours. Its 3 months.

But yes, community service is a good thing. I do a good bit of it myself. But hey, don't force it on people by law.

[Kestastrophe]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203609204574316403627684602.html#printMode

With the health-care bill faltering in Congress, the ritual weeping has begun over the death, once again, of “bipartisanship.”

The belief that the answer to any problem lies with “the center” may be the greatest superstition in the ever-magical world of American politics.

Mostly it is journalists and pundits who propagate the notion that crazies on the left and right have neutered the problem-solving center, the moderates, the pragmatists.

In fact, the bipartisan center has been dying every year since Congress passed the Medicare and Medicaid bill of 1965. The people who back then were staffers to the politicians and agencies of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society graduated into the offices they now hold in Congress, the Beltway, many state capitals and academia, taking a second generation into their belief system. That included Barack Obama.

With President Obama’s health-care bill, the forces that across 40 years grew into unbridgeable opposition to each other could not be more plain to see. American politics has arrived at a crossroads.

This struggle over health-care legislation isn’t just another battle between the Democratic and Republican parties. It’s about which force is going to take the United States forward for the next generation: the public sector or the private sector. If by now you haven’t figured out which sector you are in, then you’re a Blue Dog Democrat.

The Blue Dogs and other moderates have been sliding to this final dilemma for years. The issue is not whether one is for or against “government.” The issue is: Do they work for us, or do we work for them?

Mr. Obama has defined the stakes succinctly. The centerpiece of his health-care proposal is the Public Option, a program of federally supplied and administered health insurance. As he has repeatedly stated, anyone is free to remain inside the private health-insurance system. He said yesterday, “Nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care” and to disagree is “scaring everybody.” He is underselling the power of his own idea. That public option is potent competition, a winner-sweep-the-table proposition between the public sector and the private sector.

The clarifying moment in the health-care debate arrived when the Congressional Budget Office said that the legislation lacked adequate financing. After this, the bill’s backers began a search for tax revenue that borders on parody—taxes on soda pop, surtaxes unto eternity on “millionaires,” as if this might actually command the tides to recede of another permanent Medicare/Medicaid-sized entitlement and its flotsam of advisers, measurers and lobbyists.

Washington and the states are now fighting each other to drain revenue out of the same private sector. Back in March, New York’s legislature, amid a deep recession, enacted its own income tax surcharge. These governments are becoming like people from dying planets in “Star Trek,” foraging the galaxy for new sources of whatever life force keeps them alive. A surtax is the ultimate act of public-sector panic.

I don’t think the White House or the Democratic leadership understands the level of despondency in the country now among people who add new wealth—business owners, entrepreneurs or those who invest in new ideas that don’t depend wholly on subsidized choices made by the public sector.

This is all many people in the most dynamic corners of the private sector talk about now. Their beef is not with recession but the feeling that this presidency and Congress have no interest in them. If we get another jobless recovery, we’ll need the job-creating impulses of these people. The do-good but not-for-profit mentality of the current government looks either hostile to or oblivious of these private-sector fast runners.

The Obama approval rating is falling toward 50% and below that for his handling of the economy and even lower on health care. He will be told, probably this weekend by pundits from planet public sector, that this is due to “lies” from the right. But I think this president needs to find a concrete way fast to show he has a real sense of the private sector’s importance. That promise of “green jobs” isn’t it. His line about “sacrifice” is a euphemism for high tax levels to the horizon. Where’s the upside for new, private entrants?

The problem is that in Washington and many states the public sector’s revenue needs have arrived at a point where space for the private economy is more or less beside the point. That is the clear message of the California and New York budget crises and the difficulties of financing the Obama health-care plan.

For centrists in both parties the moment has come to decide which side of the public-private divide they want the U.S. and its future workers to be on. Trying to live in both has brought us, inevitably, to that decision.

[FlameOfCallandor]

Drudge is reporting tht Obama will be on the cover of Time next week. The 12th time in the last 12 months. 

[Ganhyun]

Drudge is reporting tht Obama will be on the cover of Time next week. The 12th time in the last 12 months. 

Well, everything he says or does is big news ya know.  That and American libruls love them some Obama.  Then again, so do alot of conservative pundits.

[Phoenix Dark]

Drudge is reporting tht Obama will be on the cover of Time next week. The 12th time in the last 12 months. 

Popular dude sells magazines. News at 11

[Bloodwake]

My opinion on health care: if my mom or girlfriend or numerous other people I know with no insurance dies because this country continues to fuck them out of affordable health care when it should be FUCKING FREE TO EVERYONE then I will be really fucking pissed off at a lot of fucking people.

This is my unbiased, politically incorrect opinion: the reason that there isn't affordable, or, god forbid, UNIVERSAL health care in this country is because a certain group of people like making money and fucking people out of it. Money is power, so of course, I'm not seeing any hope for my loved ones or myself right now.

God forbid that everyone actually is healthy in this country.

[Kestastrophe]

I don't see how a government option is going to make the market "un-competetive". Yes, the government option will be going up against private options, so in that sense there is additional competition in the market. Now this is where it gets funny: Assuming that markets are correct and rational, and given the fact that everything the government touches turns to shit, why would anyone pick the public option?

Also, I can't wait to hear someone argue that "free" is over-valued by people (which is true, based on research) and so the government should not offer a free option (whilst ignoring the other numerous applications of behaviorist price research).

[Phoenix Dark]

President Obama and his Democratic allies, scrambling to broker a health care deal Monday, finally got an upbeat assessment from Congress' official scorekeeper when it said the plan for government-run coverage would not force out private insurers.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/28/cbo-gives-boost-to-obamas-health-plan/?source=newsletter_must-read-stories-today_headlines

[Brehvolution]

After 8 years of Bush, I can understand why people think the government can't run shit right.

[Dickie Dee]

Drudge is reporting tht Obama will be on the cover of Time next week. The 12th time in the last 12 months. 

They put him on because his face will sell magazines. I thought you fucks worshipped the free-market?

[FlameOfCallandor]

After 8 years of Bush, I can understand why people think the government can't run shit right.

Exactly!

[Phoenix Dark]

FoC just curious, who do you think was the best US president and why. Also, who was the worst

[FlameOfCallandor]

FoC just curious, who do you think was the best US president and why. Also, who was the worst

For obvious reasons I'll just keep it to the last 100 years.

Eisenhower was probably the best.
The worst? Probably Johnson or FDR.

[TakingBackSunday]

smh

[M3wThr33]

After 8 years of Bush, I can understand why people think the government can't run shit right.

"The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it." -- P.J. O'rourke

[FlameOfCallandor]

After 8 years of Bush, I can understand why people think the government can't run shit right.

"The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it." -- P.J. O'rourke

Bush is a good enough reason that everyone should be leery of the power of government.

[TakingBackSunday]

After 8 years of Bush, I can understand why people think the government can't run shit right.

"The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it." -- P.J. O'rourke

Bush is a good enough reason that everyone should be leery of the power of government.

"Government" isn't some solid, never-evolving entity. In fact, Bush and his Congress' definition of "government" gives government a bad name.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

Public health care is not free.  Everyone pays their share.  I'm in favor of nationalized health care but saying "health care is free" irks me ever so slightly.

After 8 years of Bush, I can understand why people think the government can't run shit right.

"The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it." -- P.J. O'rourke

Bush is a good enough reason that everyone should be leery of the power of government.

"Government" isn't some solid, never-evolving entity. In fact, Bush and his Congress' definition of "government" gives government a bad name.

No shit?  I think you're onto something there.