Same goes for any other Republican that said the same and now wants a blitzkrieg to install a non judge (before her recent appointment by Trump and a woman who intends to legislate based on the bible) at an accelerated speed not seen in history not the constitution, right? Of course that's right.
So you support immediately impeaching everyone who's followed suit. Cool.

It's going to be a 6-3 supreme court with 3 being sycophants not professionals.

Yes, it's his decision, which patriots make based on national best interest but the right flip flops their thinking based on what's politically expedient, what's best for them, and precedent or their solemn word means nothing if it doesn't help them today, they're willing dishonest, disingenuous hypocrites but you love that.

The court today is heavily conservative now, 5-3, and will stay 5-4 conservative without him filling the slot during an election. Can't you count to 8?

At least when they get the power, democrats are poised to add as many seats as necessary to balance it.

Tell me when it's been a 6-3 liberal court.
Tell me when a lame duck president has confirmed a court pick during an election.
Tell me when the last time you sucked off a 13 year old boy was.
Tell me!

What is this new lie you're repeating over and over??
What evidence is there on Clinton that was missed in the never ending litany of investigations of her?
What evidence do you have Obama "pulled strings" for either? None that you could produce when I asked before....I seriously doubt you ever will address the question, because you prefer to spout nasty lies and hide when challenged.

I'll go out on a limb and say Obama didn't intervene. Prove me wrong with evidence and fact.....try with innuendo and more baseless Trumpism, be prepared for a serious lambasting.

On the other hand, Trump's "friend like Obama" did unethically if not illegally intervene repeatedly and continuously in every way possible including some extremely unethical ways ....that friend being Trump himself.

Since this is word for word what you wrote to me in private including the silly capitalization, I'm guessing it's cut and paste from a right wing blogger and has zero basis in fact. You are serious about these accusations in private, not sure why you hit sarcasm here except out of embarrassment.

As you know, we MADE money (>$12 million?) proving his cabinet was a criminal organization filled with dozens of felons....a GREAT deal by any measure. Gotta spend money to make money, and we MADE major money on the Trump investigation.

We spent well over $30 million to actually prove Clinton's innocence in just one of many instances Republicans created ridiculous politically motivated investigations, and you support spending tens-hundreds of millions more to get her for....well, you don't even know what. Republicans spent $1.5 trillion per year permanently giving Trump a tax break, you have no fiscal conservatives left in your party and only whine about spending when it's politically expedient.

Only a total proud moron could get "proven innocent" from "this report does not exonerate Mr Trump"....are you a proud moron?

He's fucked up his whole life.

Cheated contractors, investors, the IRS. Sexually assaulted women, then bragged about it. He runs a false charity that only works to benefit Trump himself. He openly espouses Putin's policies on topics of Russian interest, even when it conflicts with American interest. He condones and encourages violence. Threatens to use the power of the office to imprison his perceived enemies. Threatens to jail journalists and comedians who disagree with him. Can't even UNDERSTAND why nuclear weapons are not to be used except in cases of existential threat.

He IS a fuckup.

Republicans nominated him.

Republican politicians backed him (some less enthusiastically than others, but it's hard to tell what was political expediency and what was genuine angst).

If they're going to impeach him, there's plenty of material already. He could see jail before he sees the Oval Office.

Two problems.

1) Republicans would be embarrassed to admit they'd backed a candidate that spent more of his first four years in jail than in the office. It would blow up the party and they're too self-centred to do that.

2) Even if they DID impeach him, Mike Pence is only slightly better. Republicans will still have a 100% lock on the Supreme Court in 4 years, they can shut down more polling stations, kick everyone they don't like off the voting rolls for flimsy excuses (it happened in North Carolina this election in spite of a court order).

It would take an overwhelming majority of Americans voting against Republicans in four years to tip the scales. If they have another four years, they're only going to push things further. Watch California get reduced to fewer electoral votes than Arkansas.

The US is bordering on failed state/despotism. The Republicans in congress and the senate are the only ones who could stand in the way, but if they stand in the way, they give up their own power.

Do you really think they're going to do that? Really?

Let's see, insane, fourth-grade intellect, pussy-grabbing, vengeful, ego-maniacal, tax-cheating, swindling, false-charity operating, pathological lying demagogue vs a woman who plays fast and loose with the rules to her own benefit, has been caught out in the past too often doing the politically expedient thing rather than the right thing, but knows her shit pretty well.

At least with Hillary it's a given that there will be another election in four years (unless Trump supporters manage to overthrow the government). Trump is already saying the US should suspend the normal election procedures and just appoint him president. What would he be like in four years if he actually got elected?

it is interesting to see how this is playing out.this poor kid is getting used to promote narratives for people who really do not care about this kid,and it appears..he may not even have invented anything.
https://youtu.be/CEmSwJTqpgY

he probably just did this to impress his teacher and..wow..did things get out of hand fast.

on the one hand you have an authoritarian state who is petrified of brown people pissing themselves,and on the other you have people using this for political expediency to further a narrative.

and all ahmed wanted to do was impress his engineering teacher.(my assumption)

@lantern53

ah my friend.
you seem to have fallen into the propaganda trap.
allow enoch to chat with you for a bit.

are you comfy? need a drink? coffee? a beer?

ok,then let us begin

this is not a political ideology.
this is not right nor left.(seriously limiting terms anyways).

this is about the full picture.

so let us discuss WHAT propaganda actual is,rather than what we are TOLD it is.
propaganda is simply manipulated information presented in a way to appeal to our irrational and emotional response rather than our rational and reasonable.

when i use the term "manipulated" i am not inferring or implying an outright conspiracy (though often-times it may possibly be a conspiracy) but rather a set goal to illicit the desired response.

and there is always an element of truth in propaganda but the truth being presented is controlled and manipulated.which is apparent in your commentary.

corporations use this tactic and we call it mass marketing but the first usage was that of the state to control its own citizenry.america being the major and first to pioneer this tactic.see:edward bernaise and the council of propaganda (later changed to the council of public relations).

so let us break down your examples which i assume are an attempt by you to discredit the assertions in dr wasfi's speech in this video.

1.to point out the crimes against humanity is a straw man argument.
it is irrelevant.
it is a last ditch effort by the american government to excuse and/or validate an illegal war of aggression:
a.no weapons of mass destruction
b.no connection to al qaeda
c.almost 1 trillion lost (literally,they cant account for that money)

so the american government points to the atrocities of saddam hussein and says "look! look at what a bad person he is"!

SQUIRREL!

which brings us to your next point.

2.the atrocities you are referring to were well know when saddam was a paid participant by multiple government agencies.
let me say that again for you:
saddams atrocities were WELL known and was on the american government payroll.
did saddam gas the kurds?------yes
who sold him the gas components?---we did.

so when my government,in a last ditch effort to absolve its complicity in the wreckage that is iraq by pointing to the awful and horrific acts saddam perpetrated on his own people as somehow making the invasion of iraq a righteous act is utter..and complete..hypocrisy.

they KNEW what he was doing and did nothing because it was politically expedient for them to do so.they wished to corral iran and the ends justified the means.see:Zbigniew Brzezinski-the grand chessboard

there are many MANY accounts where the american government turned a blind eye to the suffering of other nation-states citizens because it did not align with our interests.

i find the whole situation morally repugnant and it angers me even further when i see the propaganda twisting my fellow countrymen into believing this is somehow a morally just way to deal with despots,tyrants,zealots.

when it was MY country who put them in power in the first place!

the rationalizations are so deeply cynical and hypocritical that it creates an almost vacuum of cognitive dissonance.

and this is my main point in regards to your commentary.
it is a rationalization given to you by those who wish to continue to oppress,dominate and control those who are powerless.

it gives a semblance of morality where there is none.

because if we took your commentary to its logical conclusion:that sometimes war is necessary to rid the world of "evil" (an arbitrary term based on perspective),then why are we not in those countries that ALSO oppress,kill,maim,torture and immiserate their citizens?

answer:because it does not serve the interests of this government.

so the only usage of emotional heart string pulling is to give americans a sense of moral superiority,while not dealing with the actual reality.

you are being manipulated my friend.
and they have given you a convenient myth to hold onto.

by my commentary i am not dismissing the great works of my country nor am i saying that my country is inherently evil.
i served my country and did my duty.

but i also will not turn a blind eye to the reality on the ground just because i find that information..uncomfortable.

many times the truth is uncomfortable and it takes courage to look at it with clear eyes and a critical mind.

i always stick to the axiom:governments lie

as for your nazi reference,
i invoke godwins law.
the death camps were not even a known reality till the war was almost over and were not the reasons for the war in the first place.
so the context is irrelevant.

as always,
eyes open...
and stay sharp.

@lantern53 keepin it frosty since 1982.stay awesome my man

prescription drug abuse has quietly become the number one killer in regards to illicit drugs,and this mans answer is that legalizing weed is sending the wrong message?

that is just plain stupid.
i hate public officials who sacrifice the health of actual people to promote a politically expedient message.

what a total douche-nozzle.

So, signature strikes are those that identify 'targets' by watching for things like people who leave militant camps with guns to go cross over into Afghanistan and then come back again...

Read up on the situation in Pakistan's tribal regions before setting your position on drone strikes in stone. America is at war with the powers controlling the tribal regions of Pakistan. It's not declaring it a war because that would enrage Pakistan even further, but it is the reality. Pakistan doesn't want to admit that the tribal regions have been essentially seized from them by the Taliban and have been in all but name an independent state that is actively waging war on Pakistan by launching endless attacks on it's civilians.

The deeper truth not spoken about is that the Afghan war was never about Afghanistan, though it was about the 9/11 organizers. After 9/11, America deemed it no longer acceptable for nuclear armed Pakistan to be allied with the groups that just attacked it. The war in Afghanistan was double edged. It gave a launching ground for a land war against Pakistan if needed, and it was a direct warning to Pakistan's leadership that America fully intended to wage war and remove power any government allying itself with the jihadists behind international terrorist attacks. It's just not politically expedient to say that, so president's say more veiled things like: "Your either with us or against us".

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^SDGundamX:
I know it is being nitpicky, but the reason Padilla could challenge was because he was an American citizen who had been designated by the president as an enemy combatant. You're right, they don't have to try every enemy combatant. I'm trying to find the actual court decision, but I could have sworn that it wasn't just a one-off thing for Padilla--the courts decided that any American has the right to challenge being put on the list in court.
As a fellow nitpicker, I don't mind when someone picks a nit. I don't contest any of what you say here. I actually thought that it went without saying that it hinged on Padilla's citizenship, and wasn't some sort of one-off decision.
>> ^SDGundamX:
As the video notes, al-Awlaki's family was indeed in the process of challenging it when the killing took place. I think that places the President in an awkward position from a legal standpoint. It'll be interesting to see where this goes if the family pursues this (sues for wrongful death or something), though I agree with you it seems like the odds are stacked in favor of the courts supporting the Presidential powers.
I don't see how they thought they might win such a challenge. All Al-Alwaki had to do was provide aid and comfort to the enemy, and it's over. And, well, his big thing was putting Al Qaeda recruitment videos on YouTube, so I'm thinking the government just plays one of those, and the case is over.
But in any case, his status when he was killed was still that of an enemy combatant. Now that he's dead, I suspect his legal status is no longer that of an enemy combatant, so there's nothing to challenge. And I suspect there's some Latin name for this, but I don't think courts are allowed to render something a crime by retroactively changing the legal status of things.
For example, say two people are getting a divorce, and the husband takes some jointly owned property with him when he moves out. Now suppose that when the divorce gets finalized, the court awards that property to the wife. The courts can't say "and it always was hers to begin with, so now we're charging you with larceny for taking it when you moved out".
You'd need to do something like that in order to make this killing a criminal act.
A wrongful death suit might fly though. But that's a civil suit, not a criminal charge.
But seriously, all this stuff is wrong. The President shouldn't have unilateral authority to declare people combatants and non-combatants. It should be uniformed members of the military of the nation we've declared war on. Everything else should be law enforcement, including chasing after terrorists.
The courts aren't going to make all that happen by fiat. That has to be a legislative effort, or it's just going to keep on going like this.


The trouble is it doesn't quite work to lump things as either law enforcement or uniformed soldiers at war. That works only in as far as it makes sense to pursue criminals through domestic and foreign law enforcement, or to make war on foreign nations refusing to enforce the rule of law. Due to myriad political bramble bushes, there are many nations like Pakistan and Yemen who claim much broader borders than those in which their actual loyal police officers can safely operate. When criminals hide in the tribal regions of Yemen and Pakistan, even willing and co-operative governments in Pakistan and Yemen are unable to enforce the law on the criminals we want prosecuted. Do we just leave those criminals be then? Do we declare uniformed soldier on soldier war against the governments in Pakistan and Yemen? Do we demand they restart the aborted civil wars that have left their tribal regions effectively autonomous independent nations?

In my opinion the tribal regions in places like Yemen and Pakistan are effectively not sovereign parts of those nations. It's not politically expedient to declare that, but it is the way Pakistani and Yemeni governments have been handling and treating the regions all along. They are for all intents and purposes independent nations, which merely pay lip service to being a part of Pakistan or Yemen while jockeying internally for a stronger position for themselves. I see American policy as effectively stepping in and treating those tribal regions as independent nations, rather than as Yemeni or Pakistani territory. Thus America is at open war with these tribal regions for their support of Al-Qaida jihadists.

In California, all they did was trade one flawed system for another. They tweeked the dials and ended up with a system that was designed to give advantage to some groups (people of high income households of east asian descent and white descent) and disadvantage others (people of lower income household of african and chicano descent).

At a high level, it was just like the last system, just giving advantages to different groups. If the changes were truly about fairness (for individuals and for the state of cali) and not about stoking racial resentment for political expediency, they would have put in place some real reforms, like eliminating the SAT as a factor in admissions.

I must also note that there was/is no strong move to remove perceived racial advantages in other venues in California; like the enforcement of drug laws.

^No, GW didn't really 'squash' them, but he sure as hell was prepared to do it if necessary. He raised a militia of over 10,000 men (too lazy to google the exact number), ready to put it down if necessary. It was a politically expedient move to pardon them all. I think it was a good thing too.

I'm really just sick of all these twats invoking the Founding Fathers left and right, like they wouldn't have done one SINGLE thing differently if they were alive now. You know Jefferson would SO hook up with Beyoncé (and who could blame him? Rowr.)

And it won't end anytime soon, either. One of the biggest talking points the conservatives are using, and reasons for doing what they've been doing even if they have to flipflop on their own positions, is that Obama has failed as a president because he can't get anything passed. As though the self-same people purposely obstructing him has nothing to do with that. As Maddow had stated on one of her last shows, nearly any pretense of doing what was good for America has gone out the window in favor of political expedience, all in favor of giving them their best chance in 2012 by replacing a "Do-nothing president", as the conservative talk shows have taken to labeling him.

^ The debate you want to be having the actual Congress to be having is dismantling Social Security and Medicare. That's not happening. Why? Because they'd get slaughtered the next time they went up for election.

The problem with "stay the course" wasn't that he was doing the politically expedient thing, it was that he felt it was the "right and just" thing, and was going to stick to it no matter how clearly unpopular it got.

Libertarians seem to act as though the Constitution was carved into stone tablets, and furthermore that they're the only ones who have the "correct" interpretation of it.

The honest truth is that nobody knows what the framers would think if they had watched history unfold as it has, and had access to all the knowledge we've accumulated since. They should be respected for having forged concepts that have withstood the test of time, but they were not omniscient supermen whose words and thoughts should be held sacred and immutable.

You guys are the ones who have the conceit of thinking you are the sole arbiters of what is right and wrong, and that you do not need the consent of the governed to shape government to your ideal vision.

But I guess I need to quote a framer to you to lend my argument credence, so here you go:

"The first principle of republicanism is that the lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal rights; to consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism." --Thomas Jefferson

>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
Ya, and congress passed and repealed the prohibition act, and passed and repealed the separate but equal mess. Trusting the courts or even congress to "interpret" the constitution leads to oppression and tyranny. It is a straight forward and easy to read document, the interpretations from those cases and the ones you mentioned only lead to the perversion of the document. To say something so Carte Blanche as this is absurd. It is the reason we are having this dialogue in the first place.

My point is that you're many Overton window steps away from having the kind of conversation you want to have in your heart of hearts, and really it's shifting in the other direction.
Getting rid of Medicare and Social Security are unthinkable. Universal healthcare is popular and well on its way to becoming law.
The short answer is that yes, it falls under the category of general welfare, just like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, scholarship programs, public schools, etc. etc.
But hey, it's nice to see that libertarians are dropping their pretense of constructionism and going for the idea of fresh reinterpretation of the Constitution as a living document, and judicial activism...


Heart of hearts? I have no idea what you are talking about. I speak from both my heart and my head, your insinuation is rather ambiguous so I can't address what you are even speaking of.

And getting rid of those things are not unthinkable, it is exactly that closed mindedness that has made them the crazy things they are today. Just because universal health care is popular has no bearing on weather or not it should be a law. This is just as much a bush "stay the course" liberal fallacy as I could think. "Keep going with the illegal and unjust thing...because to do the opposite wouldn't be politically expedient". Like I said previous, there have been MANY bad laws in history..ask Socrates how the hemlock tasted. ("Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy." --Thomas Jefferson)

Madison talked so extensively on the General welfare being a phrase that embodied the enumerated powers listed by the judge.

"I will end with a quote from my favorite American framer:

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
James Madison

I want to support the guy, but then I remember that he thinks I'm just a stupid pot head so I figure why bother.

Yes, it's better that he's in office rather than Grampa and Jiggles.

Yes, he's trying to fix the clusterfuck economy that QM's heroes managed to thrust upon us just as they were leaving office.

Yes, most of that fixing involves money being spent making sure that rich people stay rich and that the assholes who got us into this mess are not going to suffer very much for their troubles. In fact, most of the assholes who got us into this mess are right where they were when they made the mess to begin with.

Yes, nobody will be happier to see him fail than those good old All American conservative Republicans who think we all need another terrorist attack or another great depression with food lines and homeless people living in their cars.

Do I like the guy? Yes, sort of.

Do I think he's doing a good job? Yes, mostly.

Do I think that he turned his back on me and millions of others like me for political expedience?

Yes, I do. And I'm not going to fucking forget it.