US Politics

[deanb]

Supplied by the FBI? *goes back a few pages*

 

Our luck in Cleveland, thanks to the FBI, is holding.

 

 

The FBI infiltrated and sold them the gear. Why would you thank that?

[Yantelope V2]

Well, more or less, thanks to due process and whatnot you have to actually get these guys to commit the crime before you can put them on trial for it. Rather than let them walk and find a real terrorist who can sell them real bombs the FBI poses as terrorists, sells them fake bombs and when they actually attempt to bomb a bridge they can be placed on trial and convicted and locked up. The same thing happened in Dallas a year or two ago where a guy tried to bomb a skyscraper with a fake car bomb the FBI gave him.

 

Edit: Here's the Dallas one. http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/FBI-Arrests-Man-Accused-in-Skyscraper-Bomb-Plot--61272512.html

Edited May 3, 2012 by Yantelope V2

[Battra92]

Tyranny is 51 telling the 49 what to do. Quite frankly I think the country would be a lot better off if we required a super majority to pass most things.

 

And 41 people telling 59 what to do is better?

 

Having a filibuster isn't 41% telling the 59 what to do. It's 41% stopping legislation going through without debate. The first two years of the Obama presidency (prior to Scott Brown) were essentially a Rubber Stamp congress with bills getting slammed through with calls of "we have to pass this legislation to know what's in it." This is not how government is supposed to function.

 

The Senate by definition is supposed to stall legislation from being too hastily thrown through at the whim of the public. Senators are only elected every 6 years and at one time only a third of the senate is up for reelection. Also, there is an equal number of senators per state to avoid larger states like California, New York and Texas ignoring the interests of smaller states like Vermont and Idaho. Prior to the Fourteenth Amendment Senators were not directly elected by the people but instead were selected by the state legislators.

 

True Democracy is always tyranny. The founders of the United States knew this and put many safeguards into the system (checks and balances) to balance things out. If you read the United States Constitution the only limits in it (outside of the abolished Eighteenth Amendment and parts of the Fourteenth that specifically refer to members of the Confederate States of America) are those placed upon the government itself.

[Battra92]

Even if it's ninety nine people telling one person what to do it's still a form of tyranny by that definition. It would be great if we could all do whatever the hell we wanted and that magically happened to mean that everything got done but until we all operate as some sort of hive mind we'll have to stick to being told what to do by some people and telling other people what to do.

 

It would be nice if men were angels as Madison famously put it. I always err on the side of Liberty and let people more or less make their own decisions for their own lives as long as they aren't hurting other people.

[Yantelope V2]

I don't think the filibuster is helpful though. You already have elected representatives in the House which are based on population. The senate has 2 people from each state regardless of population on purpose to protect the interest of each individual state and by removing the simple majority vote from the senate you've removed some of the power of the smaller states. That's the point of the bicameral legislature. If they didn't care about protecting the smaller states there wouldn't be a senate to begin with.

[TheMightyEthan]

It's kind of amazing really how the media smeared the Tea Party despite having very little evidence of any wrongdoing and accusations of racism and yet Occupy is supposedly a grassroots movement of the highest pedigree despite being filled with criminals and lowlifes.

 

http://www.cleveland...to_smither.html

 

I like how you say the media smeared the Tea Party with little evidence and then link to an article that makes sweeping generalizations about Occupy with little evidence.

 

Yes, obviously what those people tried to do is terrible, but that article just says that it's representative of the group as a whole without giving anything to support that.

[Yantelope V2]

Oh, there's been plenty of criminals arrested with the occupy movement. How many people with the Tea Party got arrested? How many were suspected of Terrorism?

[TheMightyEthan]

I'm not going to defend the Occupy people, I really don't have any idea whether on balance they're upstanding people or not, I'm just pointing out that the article you linked did the exact thing you were complaining about.

Edited May 3, 2012 by TheMightyEthan

[Yantelope V2]

Well, that article may be unfairly representing the Occupy movement but I've been reading a lot of stories of general mischief and criminal behavior about Occupy memebers in addition to all the arrests so I don't think it's unfair to make a claim about the group at large. The point is there is evidence that the Occupy group has a good number of delinquents associated with it while the Tea Party did not.

[Yantelope V2]

http://online.wsj.co...IDDLETopOpinion

 

"In a Washington Post op-ed, Jose Rodriguez, a CIA veteran and author of the new book "Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives," concedes that Obama "deserves credit for making the right choice." But he notes that like the moon landing, the killing of bin Laden was merely the culmination of an effort that predated the incumbent's arrival in the White House by years: "[Obama's] administration never would have had the opportunity to do the right thing had it not been for some extraordinary work during the George W. Bush administration." Rodriguez notes further that "much of that work has been denigrated by Obama as unproductive and contrary to American principles."

 

actually, this quote is better:

 

"I don't mind the president taking a victory lap but this was, well, unpresidential. With the Dems' recent history of being defense pushovers, the folks in the White House are acting like a geek everyone thought would never lose his virginity but unexpectedly did. And, with the hottest chick in school. "That's right, I nailed Osama." "Here's the room where it happened." "That was the chair I was sitting in.""

Edited May 3, 2012 by Yantelope V2

[TheMightyEthan]

"I don't mind the president taking a victory lap but this was, well, unpresidential. With the Dems' recent history of being defense pushovers, the folks in the White House are acting like a geek everyone thought would never lose his virginity but unexpectedly did. And, with the hottest chick in school. "That's right, I nailed Osama." "Here's the room where it happened." "That was the chair I was sitting in.""

 

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

 

Even I have to admit, that shit's funny.

 

As for the first part, just because you disagree with something doesn't mean you have to completely disregard anything useful that came of it after the fact. I would say that we shouldn't torture people, period, but say someone went rogue and tortured captives anyway, and learned of a plot to blow up New York or something, it would be a complete dereliction of duty for the authorities to just completely disregard that information because it's tainted by the method used to obtain it. Using the results of a bad thing to accomplish a good thing is not itself bad, and it's not condoning the bad thing .

[Yantelope V2]

While I agree with you that he needed to act on the intelligence it's the manner in which he's taking credit for it. I mean, you can debate how they got the intelligence. Obama only made a decision to kill Obama and is for some reason trying to make it seem like a really hard decision and even going so far as to say Romney would not have made the same decision. It's all quite poppycock.

[Battra92]

While I agree with you that he needed to act on the intelligence it's the manner in which he's taking credit for it. I mean, you can debate how they got the intelligence. Obama only made a decision to kill Obama and is for some reason trying to make it seem like a really hard decision and even going so far as to say Romney would not have made the same decision. It's all quite poppycock.

 

I like the Romney response that even Jimmy Carter would've ordered the strike.

 

In the 60s a sniper had Yasser Arafat in his sights and all he needed was the go-ahead to pull the trigger. Arial Sharon decided against it and is said to have regretted it for the rest of his conscious life. Whether it would've worked out better in the end is anyone's guess but no leader wants to live with that regret forever.

[TheMightyEthan]

No leader wants to live with the regret of not ordering an assassination...

 

Wow. Just wow.

[CorgiShinobi]

We are talking about the assassination of an infamous terrorist who had eluded U.S. Forces for over a decade. If Obama decided against it, then we wouldn't have heard about a "failed" attempt because it wouldn't have been ventured. It would have become a "you'll never know" situation, something that I do think would cause the POTUS regret if it became a passed opportunity to put down Osama.

 

Where I'm getting at is that no one is arguing whether it was right or wrong, because obviously Osama was indeed there and put down. Even Dick Cheney praised Obama for his decision. The problem now is that this decision is being toted in a reelection campaign. I'm not exactly thrilled about that, even though I sincerely doubt Obama believes "Would Romney make the call?" as a valid question. Still, campaigning is all about putting down your opponent through such means.

 

As The New Yorker put it, it was a trap set for Romney. If he was going to refute the claim, then it shows him as going against the decision that put down Osama. If he remained quiet, then the campaign ad would have come off as a correct accusation. Now I would assume it isn't hard to simply go about how ridiculous the question is without address your opponent, but then again, it's campaigning.

 

So yeah, one year ago, "Lets not make this into a big deal." Now, it's like politics is a dog chasing its own tail.

[Battra92]

No leader wants to live with the regret of not ordering an assassination...

 

Wow. Just wow.

 

More like regretting not taking a terrorist enemy when you have the chance. Yasser Arafat was no angel.

 

Related ...

[TheMightyEthan]

I'm not defending Yasser Arafat, or saying that it would have been wrong to kill him, I'm just saying it seems completely ass backward to say that you should kill an enemy because you might regret not doing it. It just seems like a really cavalier attitude to take toward the decision about whether to assassinate someone (it's assassination even if they're a terrorist).

 

 

lol

[Thursday Next]

Agree with Ethan. You can always kill someone later on if you're so inclined. It's much harder to un-kill someone. I'm not going to shed a tear for Osama, but he would have made been much more use as a prisoner than as a head on a spike adorning the White House.

 

Also, I don't think Americans should criticise Obama in isolation. The whole country was acting in a pretty undignified fashion just after Osama was assassinated.

[Johnny]

*nods* I woke up and logged in to see half the Americans I know screaming about how they finally got him.

[TheMightyEthan]

I'm not even arguing that it would have been better to capture bin Laden, I'm just saying "you might regret not doing it" isn't a good reason to kill someone.

[Battra92]

I think after the kangaroo court that ensued, the US regretted not killing Saddam Hussein instead of capturing him.

[Thursday Next]

I'm not even arguing that it would have been better to capture bin Laden, I'm just saying "you might regret not doing it" isn't a good reason to kill someone.

 

I got that. Sorry, the second sentence was my own thoughts on the matter. Like I say, if you do find that you regret not doing it, you can always kill them later.

[Yantelope V2]

Unemployment numbers are not good. More people quit looking for work and the total unemployment if you factor in those not looking for work is now around 14.5%. Yikes.

 

http://www.foxnews.c...oice-for-obama/

 

"In April, about 522,000 Americans left the labor force, making the addition of 115,000 jobs look all the more alarming. In 2011, about 2.7 million Americans left the work force while only 945,000 came in."

Edited May 4, 2012 by Yantelope V2

[Battra92]

I heard someone say once (I forget what talking head said this) but you can convince people in a good economy that it's bad but it's very hard to convince people in a bad economy that times are good.

 

The major difference is that It's easy to point to isolated or anecdotal poverty as even in the best of times, there are poor people. The average man on the street will think he has it good because he's lucky but poor Joe down the street lost his job at Buggy Whip Inc so the economy must be in the shitter. In a bad economy most people know people who are either unemployed, underemployed or are constantly changing jobs.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I think the best you can do in a bad economy is convince people that it's slowly getting better, cause they can just constantly think "okay, so even though it's bad here now, it will be better in a couple months" regardless of whether that ever actually pans out.