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

[Van Cruncheon]

Even Naomi Wolf, a noted liberal wrote in the opening chapter of "The End of America" that the constitution was more relevant than ever.

noted CRAZY, perhaps

how do you feel about that noted libertarian, glenn beck

[Akala]

It's not a stupid question, just one you probably already knew my answer to.

People advancing the notion that the death penalty is "cruel" or "unusual," and thus, unconstitutional, are categorically wrong.  The death penalty was applied quite routinely when the Constitutional Convention was held, and afterwards, and for far more crimes.  Neither the man that wrote the text nor any significant portion of those ratifying it were death penalty abolitionists.


I'll reassert that I do not support the use of the death penalty.  I would not falsely claim that it's a constitutional matter, however.

yeah, but saying something is either constitutional or unconstitutional in that sense is never really the point of any argument. you're right. the death penalty would be constitutional in that sense. that doesn't begin to address the question of wether the death penalty is right or wrong.

same thing with many other parts of it.

[FlameOfCallandor]

Even Naomi Wolf, a noted liberal wrote in the opening chapter of "The End of America" that the constitution was more relevant than ever.

noted CRAZY, perhaps

how do you feel about that noted libertarian, glenn beck

libertarian my ass

[Human Snorenado]

Even Naomi Wolf, a noted liberal wrote in the opening chapter of "The End of America" that the constitution was more relevant than ever.

noted CRAZY, perhaps

how do you feel about that noted libertarian, glenn beck

libertarian my ass

You're right, Glenn Beck is popular with more than 3% of the country.

[FlameOfCallandor]

Not to burst your bubble but he's also more popular than Maddow and Olbermann...

[Human Snorenado]

But not as popular as President Obama. 

And anyway, Rachel and Keith are more popular than RON PAUL.

[FlameOfCallandor]

Yeah but Ron Paul had a blimp.
 

I win.

[FlameOfCallandor]

I take that back. The fact that Ron Paul had a blimp means that we are all winners.

[Human Snorenado]

Well, some of us are winners more than the rest.

[Brehvolution]

The ghost of John Galt?

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

Even Naomi Wolf, a noted liberal wrote in the opening chapter of "The End of America" that the constitution was more relevant than ever.

noted CRAZY, perhaps

how do you feel about that noted libertarian, glenn beck

libertarian my ass

You're right, Glenn Beck is popular with more than 3% of the country.

To be fair, the Libertarian Party only received 0.4% of the popular vote last year*.  3% is being way too generous here.

* - despite Libertarians supposedly representing 23% of the voting base

[Human Snorenado]

I generally refer to libertarians as "Republicans who like weed"

[Boogie]

I generally refer to libertarians as "Republicans who like weed"

  nice.

[Tristam]

I'm in a hospital bed in Korea right now because I had appendicitis and had to get my appendix surgically removed. The trip to the ER was $20 and each night in the hospital is $30. Given those figures, it would be far less expensive for an American with a solid domestic health insurance policy to book a two-way flight to Korea to have this surgery performed rather than get it done in the U.S. And the medical technology and quality of staff in this hospital--which is average by Korean standards--rocks the fucking socks off of the average hospital in the U.S. Oh, I also pay less for health insurance than any of you in the U.S. who do have health insurance.

If you don't support government oversight of American health insurance companies and hospitals, who together are the world's most successful extortionists, then I would tell you to go and fuck yourself but you already are by supporting a grossly inferior system for grossly inflated prices. Enjoy!

[Mandark]

A bunch more here (pdf).

[FlameOfCallandor]

I generally refer to libertarians as "Republicans who like weed"

Other than republicans supporting foreign intervention, torture, high defense spending, medicare, supporting Israel, religion in government, expansion of the executive branch, and domestic spying; other than all that, they are exactly alike.

[Phoenix Dark]

Don't forget boy lovers

[FlameOfCallandor]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/After-a-flurry-of-stimulus-spending_-questionable-projects-pile-up-8474249-68709732.html

After a flurry of stimulus spending, questionable projects pile up


The $787 billion stimulus bill was passed in February and was promised as a job saver and economy booster. Here is where some of the money went:
- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.
- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway.
- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.
- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway.
- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.
- $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid.
- $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla.
- $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla.
- $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades.
- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.
- $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn.
- $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill.
- $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota.
- $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita, Kan.
- $300 apiece for thousands of signs at road construction sites across the country announcing that the projects are funded by stimulus money.
- $1.5 million for a fence to block would-be jumpers from leaping off the All-American Bridge in Akron, Ohio.
- $1 million to study the health effects of environmentally friendly public housing on 300 people in Chicago.
- $356,000 for Indiana University to study childhood comprehension of foreign accents compared with native speech.
- $983,952 for street beautification in Ann Arbor, Mich., including decorative lighting, trees, benches and bike paths.
- $148,438 for Washington State University to analyze the use of marijuana in conjunction with medications like morphine.
- $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for use in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri
- $3.1 million to transform a canal barge into a floating museum that will travel the Erie Canal in New York state.
- $1.3 million on government arts jobs in Maine, including $30,000 for basket makers, $20,000 for storytelling and $12,500 for a music festival.
- $71,000 for a hybrid car to be used by student drivers in Colchester, Vt., as well as a plug-in hybrid for town workers decked out with a sign touting the vehicle's energy efficiency.
- $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles.

[Crushed]

Most of those projects seem perfectly fine to me.

[Crushed]

Studying human sexuality can lead to results which allow scientists to better understand STD transmission rates and demographics, pregnancy rates and behavior, etc., which can lead to better preventative measures, better marketing and more focused efforts for birth control, contraceptives, and STD treatment, etc., which keeps many younger Americans out of the work force, lowers productivity and employment, and raises the cost of living. Besides, $219k for a university study which will presumably last months or years doesn't sound wasteful at all. That's a drop in the bucket.

[Crushed]

Your "bucket drops" end up fillling several dozen water towers.

So it's financing public utilities, allowing smaller suburban communities with less access to fresh water to lower local tax rates otherwise needed for importing water from larger cities? Great!

[FlameOfCallandor]

Your "bucket drops" end up fillling several dozen water towers.

So it's financing public utilities, allowing smaller suburban communities with less access to fresh water to lower local tax rates otherwise needed for importing water from larger cities? Great!

- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.
- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.
- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.

[close]

[Crushed]

Your "bucket drops" end up fillling several dozen water towers.

I'm not even sure how to address the level of contortion in the rest of your justification.

What level of contortion? This reminds me of when McCain went on about taxpayer money going to DNA TESTING BEARS LOL WHAT IS IT A PATERNITY TEST (it was actually an important system used by Wildlife Services to determine the size of wild populations, which informs things like the endangered species list, protected land, and whether or not they're encroaching on human territories), or Palin mocking money going to "studying fruit flies who cares about dumb flies!!" (Drosophilia are one of the most ideal and widely used animals for genetic testing due to their high rate of reproduction, genetic variety, and high expression of traits)

Your "bucket drops" end up fillling several dozen water towers.

So it's financing public utilities, allowing smaller suburban communities with less access to fresh water to lower local tax rates otherwise needed for importing water from larger cities? Great!

- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.
- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.
- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.

[close]

I said "most" not "all," dunderhead.

[The Fake Shemp]

science lol am i rite

[FlameOfCallandor]

Science would never exist without government spending. Oh wait....

[FlameOfCallandor]

science lol am i rite

also,

$30,000 for basket makers

Science lol indeed.

[The Fake Shemp]

the arts lol am i rite

[FlameOfCallandor]

Liberals would think that basket making is an art worthy of subsidizing. 

[FlameOfCallandor]

Think about it this way. $30,000 is probably what an average middle class family paid in taxes last year. So basically you are telling some family that they don't deserve their hard earned cash, but instead this basket maker does. There isn't a big enough

[The Fake Shemp]

the arts

[Crushed]

science lol am i rite

I remember McCain actually tweeting "im gonna tweet the top 10 porkiest 'stimulus' projects" and pretty much everything in there was absolutely reasonable. He criticized removing gang tattoos from former gang members trying to re-enter society, a 2-story parking garage in Provo, Utah, studying grape genetics (to help prevent fungal infections and improve vineyard production), a trade center in Montana, a honey bee factory that would provide jobs in Texas, beaver management in an area where beavers routinely caused damage by flooding streams and blocking roads (he also made a double-entendre about "managing beavers" that he edited out), a new sidewalk for a school, promoting careers in astronomy in Hawaii, pest control for the Mormon cricket which he mocked (a kind of locust that nearly killed off the Mormon settlers in Utah by devouring their entire crop supply), and finally odor control for pig farms, which is actually a serious problem since it makes large areas around many pig-raising facilities nigh-uninhabitable.



And seriously? $30,000 dollars for basket making? It's going to be one or two people who teach people to make traditional baskets at a folk arts museum, or making them for a gift shop, or something like that.

[FlameOfCallandor]

And seriously? $30,000 dollars for basket making? It's going to be one or two people who teach people to make traditional baskets at a folk arts museum, or making them for a gift shop, or something like that.

I forgot that liberals think that money comes out of thin air.

[The Fake Shemp]

It doesn't come out of thin air, it comes right out of your trust fund.

[Brehvolution]

- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.

How many were cashed?

Kind of like voter registration fraud doesn't mean voter fraud.

[Crushed]

"Providing jobs and supporting initiatives and research for improving American productivity!? But... how can this possibly pay off in the future!?"

[The Fake Shemp]

"But if they were important to America's future, the free market would have already created those jobs."

[FlameOfCallandor]

"Providing jobs and supporting initiatives and research for improving American productivity!? But... how can this possibly pay off in the future!?"

So taking away money from people who earned and giving it to basket makers = Making America more productive.


Crushed's logic leap

[The Fake Shemp]

"Yeah, how many basket makers did your work salary provide for this week, Crushed?"

[Crushed]

Artists = not American citizens.

Will the basket maker conspiracy ever cease? Is the White House under the control of the BIG BASKET LOBBY!?

[The Fake Shemp]

Damn those nefarious "arts", JayDubya! Damn them to hell!

[FlameOfCallandor]

Artists = not American citizens.

Will the basket maker conspiracy ever cease? Is the White House under the control of the BIG BASKET LOBBY!?

I'm gonna make a basket. Please send my 30% of what you make. You will have a fine basket I promise.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dirty hypocrite

[close]

[The Fake Shemp]

Yeah, those "arts" and their stupid public funding.

[The Fake Shemp]

... or going to a museum.

Damn public funding for the arts.  It should not happen.

UH OH.

[FlameOfCallandor]

Willco, you want in on this basket making investment that crushed is doing?

[Crushed]

"A MILLION DOLLARS FOR LAB RATS!? What kind of porky waste is this!? If they need rats so much, just leave out some cheese and a trap overnight."

"Now then, I hope to God that Congress hasn't cut a cent of that $2 billion super jet that breaks if it gets wet, or that $100mil invisible robot  boat, or the $10mil freeze ray program."

Artists = not American citizens.

Will the basket maker conspiracy ever cease? Is the White House under the control of the BIG BASKET LOBBY!?

I'm gonna make a basket. Please send my 30% of what you make. You will have a fine basket I promise.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dirty hypocrite

[close]

Holy shit, 30% of every American's money is going towards basket making!?  

[The Fake Shemp]

Holy shit, 30% of every American's salary is going towards taxes?!

[Crushed]

GIVE ME BACK MY $0.000001, BASKET MAKERS! DAMN YOU!

If it hadn't been for those randdamned baskets...

[Crushed]

Every bit of wasteful spending that you attempt to justify with what you consider to be a relatively low cost adds up.  And even then, you miss the point entirely.

It's not just that it's a low cost, it's also that it provides jobs.

[FlameOfCallandor]

[FlameOfCallandor]

Every bit of wasteful spending that you attempt to justify with what you consider to be a relatively low cost adds up.  And even then, you miss the point entirely.

It's not just that it's a low cost, it's also that it provides jobs.

You know what also provides jobs? Spending your own money. And those jobs actually, you know, people want.

[Crushed]

Every bit of wasteful spending that you attempt to justify with what you consider to be a relatively low cost adds up.  And even then, you miss the point entirely.

It's not just that it's a low cost, it's also that it provides jobs.

You know what also provides jobs? Spending your own money. And those jobs actually, you know, people want.

By God, you're right. If people had just spent their money, the economy would be fine right now!

[Crushed]

  WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS NOT FOR THE WEAK OF HEART! 

 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[FlameOfCallandor]

 

I can't believe someone is actually debating for basket making stimulus.   

[FlameOfCallandor]

I can haz underwater basket weaving stimulus too?

[Crushed]

"Hello, I'm an independent laborer who uses their own talents to earn money, by manufacturing products that people will pay money to use or own!"

Unfortunately, this poor entrepreneur does not exploit the poor or blow up foreigners, so they have no right getting money.  :'(

[AdmiralViscen]

Damn those nefarious "arts", JayDubya! Damn them to hell!

I enjoy "the arts," and I fund "the arts."  It's called buying a movie ticket, or a game, or a CD, or going to a museum.

Damn public funding for the arts.  It should not happen.

You only go to museums that you've independently confirmed to receive 0% public funding, right?

[The Fake Shemp]

I already caught him on that, but he ignored my "gotcha" journalism tactic.

[FlameOfCallandor]

"Hello, I'm an independent laborer who uses their own talents to earn money, by manufacturing products that people will pay money to use or own!"

Unfortunately, this poor entrepreneur does not exploit the poor or blow up foreigners, so they have no right getting money.  :'(

Again I'm going to point out that life is not a Captain Planet episode.

[Crushed]

"Hello, I'm an independent laborer who uses their own talents to earn money, by manufacturing products that people will pay money to use or own!"

Unfortunately, this poor entrepreneur does not exploit the poor or blow up foreigners, so they have no right getting money.  :'(

Again I'm going to point out that life is not a Captain Planet episode.

That has absolutely nothing to do with what I just said. At all.

[Human Snorenado]

Not to take away from this fascinating discussion, but it looks like the Republican might actually win in the NJ Governor's race; that was the one race I was kind of hoping that the Dem would win, even though Corzine is a Goldman Sachs tainted dickweed that I wouldn't pee on to stop him from burning to death, but STILL.  Anyway, CNN's exit polls have 58% of independents voting for Christie, which is bad.  The VA Gov race will probably be called very quickly, with crazy Bob McDonnell winning handily. 

I know that the Republican propaganda machine has gotten America's panties in a twist over OMG SPENDING and OMG BLACK PRESIDENT but I really don't think people are thinking straight about voting for these assclowns again when the only lesson they've learned is LET'S GO FURTHER RIGHT AND BANISH ANYONE TO THE LEFT OF RUSH LIMBAUGH.  Oh well, in NJ's case it will be for one term only.