Idaho issues Cease and Desist order... against Congress

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Itterind
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Re: Idaho issues Cease and Desist order... against Congress

Post by Itterind »

Boss Out of Town wrote:
I appreciate that you went to all this work, Sareth, and it makes for interesting reading, but it doesn't affect my argument at all. I didn't say these bills and resolution didn't exist, only that they were not a serious threat to the soveriegn powers of the congress. Most of them won't pass, and if they are passed, they will be ignored, as they have no basis in constitutional law as it has been understood for the last 150 years.

I am definitely in favor of people getting angry with the elites running the Federal government, both the official aristocracy of officials and lobbyists and the unofficial aristocracy that runs the media and dominates our economic discourse. They are, as a group, corrupt, narrow-minded, dishonest, anti-intellectual, and disconnected with the real world the rest of us live in. If they were not so, George W. Bush would never have been elected president, we would not be entangled in a useless war in Iraq, we would not be infamous around the world for our torture policies and mutilation of international law and custom, and we would never have allowed a dozen or so badly run banking and investment firms the power and opportunity to wreck our economy.

Plenty of anger out there, certainly. The big dispute is who to aim it at.
And I suppose you might mention the Democrats who tried to undermine the constitution?

You are no longer entangled in Iraq, you'll be out of it another 2 and a half years with several hundred more casualties.
Current casualty rates have fallen to less than 10% of Vietnam, suck it up.
The war is not useless, check on what it was like economically, demographically and politically ten-twenty years ago compared to now.
You're not mutilating international law and custom, you're following your own ideas. The US has hardlly signed away sovereignity.
Do you even have any idea what kind of people are tortured?

But I suppose you're just going to keep on making vague, nebulous comments about 'the evil elite' rather than Americans themselves who vote them in, and be inclusive of the ones Sareth just mentioned but yet brand the ones opposing them and only idenitify those you dislike.

Being an American, I would presume from the outside, is accepting your whole nation. I'm sure you do, but you dislike them so bad you seem blinded.

I'm not going to go more into those gunlaws and torture, and wiretapping... except to say the tapping wasn't intruding on privacy... it was shot down on principle, like the gun protesters are doing now. Torture is a common part of war, sign it away if u want, but it's a useful tool and u will suffer for the lack of it and these people really deserve it. Weapons are an integral part of the United States.

What I will go into is the Iraqi war - you have no idea about this subject at all, you just don't like war.

The political gains for the US can be argued to be anywhere between marginal to substantial, but it was, with incompetence in early middle to late middle, a SUCCESS. I study wars A LOT. I say this with absolutely certainty.
The Iraqi state is stronger, healthier and has a vastly superior and quickly improving Human Development Index.

I could listen a thousand strong arguments to every hundred feint ones you could make about the morals of the war, but what does it matter... my point isn't the war. My point is that you're WRONG about Iraq and it makes me hard to trust any of the 'elite-hating spew' you come with, despite succint and well-analyzed thoughts and arguments about certain topics, when your basic view of reality is distorted.

Realpolitik, pragmatism. How things really are. You're right about a lot of it, but provably directly wrong other times. It confuses me mildly, but I guess that's the way with right and left.

Above all, as a foreigner who loves America... much is to blame on your leadership and rich, but ABOVE ALL... you're a strong democracy, and even not in democracies people tend to be rules by what they deserve...

THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AMERICA

Everyone in the US seems intent on blaming the leaders. Like they could do any or much better themselves. Hah!
Sure... you have predatorial lenders.

But then again... you could not lend from them!

I guesstimate out of thin air that only 100 million Americans are innocent. At most.
All these derivatives... tax cuts for taking loans, refusal to go for flat taxes or high flat taxes, incredibly complicated tax system... you're a success of a nation, but you seem to have a stronger entitlement of innocence than the rest of the world.

In Norway if you do stupid things like invest in property you can't afford or stocks that are risky and it plummets than you're to blame.


Well, enough ranting, I'm sure you get the general drift of things.
Just because your system of government was revolutionary 300 years ago doesn't mean it has to wow you off your socks now. In fact you might be slightly behind other developed and some developing nations or ahead.
For a people that expects so much of its government America needs to expect more of itself.
If you expect paternalism you get fathers who think they know what's best for the people.

This goes for the anti-gun control crowd too... vote in people who'll do what they say. Get to your roots or don't vote for them.
Maybe what Congress wants to do is sane... I dunno, I don't think so. Obama is doing the opposite of what he said he would do though, in regards to foreign policy. Maybe your paternalistic leaders just don't agree with or trust your judgment.

An armed population is a wise investment, but I guess the politicians want to break the fundamental inherited laws to protect you.

Yup, kind of sounds like revolution time.
I know it's just grumbles though, mostly...

chances are things will continue apace and the US will evolve.
But it'd go faster if everyone pitched in rather than play the blame game.

... sabotaging your own wars... we could've avoided the Khmer Rogue. Oh well, my China was directly responsible for supporting the NV as well.
And now we have Republicans sabotaging Obama's efforts? Possibly, I'm not too aware. If they're breaking the law or making things less efficcienct, even if they disagree with them, then that's bad.
But defending the Constitution HAS to happen. That's the very essence of a nation, the agreements of you and your forefathers.

OK, more than time to quit rambling :) soz maybe :(

^^ glad to talk

Nothing personal meant (maybe I did but I didn't mean to consciously, but I did get rather intense there and 2'nd person) BossOutofTown, I just really hate a lot of the values of the left, even if economically I agree with a lot of it as well as issues pro of control and freedom, alternatingly one then the other (and not the other).
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Re: Idaho issues Cease and Desist order... against Congress

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Sareth wrote:Well, I'm doubting it will come to that. But one thing many people tend to forget is just how individualistic Americans tend to be. Especially in the more rural parts of the country, such as out West or down South.
Yes, but about the terms mentioned earlier, this isn't just a symbolic protest or grandstanding even if lacks attention - it doesn't need individualism it has law on its side. It's a protest, a legitimate one that should (doesn't it?) carry the force of law against the illegal act of Congress.
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Re: Idaho issues Cease and Desist order... against Congress

Post by Boss Out of Town »

Itterind wrote:
Sareth wrote:I realize most of you will probably find this to be a horrificly dumb idea, but as symbolic gestures I have got to admire the sheer nerve of this one.

. . .

That's right, Idaho just issued Congress a Cease and Desist order.

Does this actually accomplish anything realistically speaking? No. I expect most of Congress won't even notice, and most of the rest won't care. Is it enforcable? Not at all. But does it do anything? YES! It puts Congress on notice that Idaho is sick and tired of Congress jackassery, and that if Congress keeps it up, Idaho WILL tell them where they can stuff it. Should the bill pass (and I expect it will) expect Idaho to immediately contest it in court, and Congress will have no chance to say they didn't expect it.

Shoot, I wonder if anyone in the Idaho Legislature is familiar with the concept of Nullification?
That's a bit... dictatorial for your nation. It's normal outside and works better (though cracks are starting to appear), but I don't think it's remotely possible to truly eradicate guns from the US so it's a much better strategy to weaponize law-abiding citizens.
This is another of those "tempests in a teapot" that blow in and out of the state legislatures and the congress on a regular basis. We seem to have had a lot more of them this last six months, most probably as a result of the general rot in political manners that has been troubling American culture over the last thirty years.

Since we started this discussion, the word "secession" has been popping up regularly on political blogs and talk shows, mainly because its a great way for blowhard politicians to whip up a little excitement among their followers and get some TV time.

The worst offender, among many, has been Rick Perry, the governour of Texas. He made a couple of demogoging speeches on the topic, then was slapped down by his own legislature: they passed, with overwhelming bipartisan support, two resolutions eliminating his office budget. I've not heard much form either party lately, so I assume they patched things up. Just a couple of days ago, Perry was back on track, begging the federal government for assistance in dealing with the Swine Flu epidemic.

To date, no governour who has attacked Federal tyranny has backed up his blowhard by turning down any substantial Federal handouts, although a couple have been trying to dump federal assistance in keeping underfunded grade schools open and extending unemployment benefits for people stricken by the national recession. Such courage!
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Idaho issues Cease and Desist order... against Congress

Post by Boss Out of Town »

Itterind wrote:
Boss Out of Town wrote:The last time hard-core, right wing extremist movements tried to break up the country, in the 1850s, it did not end well. The moderates, liberals, and sane conservatives (examples of each: Lincoln, Frank Blair, and Ulysses S. Grant) got together and stomped them down, dirty, and hard. They can do it again if they have to.
The crazy conservatives were only a few big victories away from giving the cowardly northern Democrats and their Southern counterparts enough steam to break down morale. I'd hardly call the Civil War a stomp until late game.
Firstly, if you're going to call an entire country "cowardly," you should put a smiley in the sentence so everyone knows you're being jocular.

That said, it was true that the South could have won the Civil War with a couple more early victories. It was also true that the North could have won the war with a couple more early victories. Wars are like that. The people who say that Northern victory was "inevitable" because of its advantage in resources don't know as much about war as they think they do. I've even heard that comment from a couple of professional military men, which only suggests to me that West Point is still handing out too many MBAs and not enough history degrees.

I made the point similar to yours, about a possible Confederate victory just this last week. There was a discussion about a particularly silly comment Condi Rice that Al Queda was a greater threat to the US than Nazi Germany because it killed people on American soil. She was obviously just trying to flip off a pesky student, but when the forum starting rambling about "greatest threat" I tossed in this alternative . . .
Greatest threat to America?

In 1861, a victorious enemy army was within a days march of taking Washington and splitting the country into a swarm of permanently hostile petty states . . .

The same threat rose again, from a larger, better led army in 1862, after a series of battles in which 72,000 Americans were killed or wounded . . .

In 1863, an enemy army considered by many the "finest ever to march to drum" marched across Pennsylvania, one victory away from capturing or besieging Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York.

In 1864, Washington was defenseless as another enemy army threatened to attack and capture the city, shattering the nation after three years of fighting in which a half-million men died trying to save it.

This is comparable to a single, ghastly terrorist attack that killed three thousand people and destroyed a couple of buildings? You decide.
The American Civil War dragged on for four years. About 5,000,000 men served--most of them volunteers, especially in the North--and a million men and women died. Virtually every city and county seat in America from St. Paul to St. Augustine, if it existed in 1865, built a memorial to the local farmers and townspeople who died fighting in that war. There was no lack of courage or conviction on either side.
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Idaho issues Cease and Desist order... against Congress

Post by mindstalk »

ENFORCE THE CONSTITUTION.
ABOLISH THE AIR FORCE.
PRIVATIZE NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

After all, the Constitution only authorizes an army and navy, and if we take the Second Amendment seriously, arms are arms.

Of course then there's the War on Some Drugs, which given the precedent of Prohibition, I have no idea how *that's* constitutional.
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Re: Idaho issues Cease and Desist order... against Congress

Post by Boss Out of Town »

Itterind wrote:
Boss Out of Town wrote:The last time hard-core, right wing extremist movements tried to break up the country, in the 1850s, it did not end well. The moderates, liberals, and sane conservatives (examples of each: Lincoln, Frank Blair, and Ulysses S. Grant) got together and stomped them down, dirty, and hard. They can do it again if they have to.
And btw., you're awfully harsh on the people trying to ABIDE by the constitution. I'd say the insane liberal freaks who want to go against your most treasured laws are the crazies. Or perhaps you think they should just be ignored and frowned upon quietly according to the constitution and will of the people when you agree with it and vice verca.
Actually, I'm speaking on behalf of the people who are trying to abide by the constitution as it was originally written and has been maintained the past 200 years. When the hardcase right gets together, as on that "teabag" holiday a few weeks ago, it gets a bit hard to separate their real enemies from the figments of various imaginations. Speaking from the mainstream, I would posit that . . .

There is no credible movement to outlaw guns in the United States, just a few earnest advocates that everyone but the gun lobby ignores.

Likewise, there is no secret plan for an international currency (one of Michelle Bachman's fantasies, brought up in a recent presidential news conference.)

There is no war on religion, although there are people and organizations trying to defend the separation of church and state (and the Air Force!) from bullying Christianist activists.

There is no secret federal program to indoctrinate high school students: there is some threat of that, from both left and right, but it is from local school boards. The federal government has very little say in those matters unless constitutional rights are directly threatened.

There are no communists or fascists currenty running any part of the government or threatening to do so. Nor have there ever been any, left-wing historians notwithstandings. The Cheney-Addington-Yoo faction in the last adminstration is the closest we've come in the last 150 years to a truly anti-democratic element being in charge of the government. They've been thoroughly discredited, but it would still be nice to see some Libertarians hound them into oblivion. You don't get more anti-libertarian than the "Unitary Executive" prinicple. They had a more elegant name for back in the days when the constitution was being written: "the Divine Right of Kings."

And so on. A few good issues buried in all the noise.
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Idaho issues Cease and Desist order... against Congress

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I wonder how many people afraid of an international currency also advocate a gold standard. *cough*

There is, or has been, some anti-democratic sentiment among the right. Krugman quotes William F. Buckley's National Review, in 1957, talking about how the civilized White race had to defend itself, and if democracy got in the way of that so much the worse for democracy. Also extolling Franco's defense of the Spanish soul from the threat of the left -- Franco used murder and camps, but hey. These days it's a lot less apparent, just a common trend to make voting harder and occasional muttering about how it all went downhill when women got the vote. Reagan attacked the Voting Rights Acts as a humiliation for the South but no one likes to remember that.

I haven't heard of Addington and Yoo (or forget?) but the Bush admin certainly had a lot of authoritarian arrogance, with "executive privilege" and defense of torture and signing statements to ignore laws and such. Sadly, Obama isn't racing to repudiate all that.
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Re: Idaho issues Cease and Desist order... against Congress

Post by Boss Out of Town »

mindstalk wrote:I wonder how many people afraid of an international currency also advocate a gold standard. *cough*.
Watch that one! While I'm not greatly familiar with the topic of the gold standard, for some reason it is like nitroglycerin in any political discussion. There's an entire faction seemingly convinced that the gold standard is "real" money and any else is fake money, somehow.

We are off the gold standard currently, and since we just saw a sizable portion of our national wealth disappear in a financial panic, the Gold Bugs will claim that this is because we aren't using "real" money. Problem is, we managed a lot of similar panicks while back we were still on the gold standard. Which should lead one to deduct that our real wealth is in the economic machinery itself, not some metallic, paper, or electronic exchange medium.
mindstalk wrote:There is, or has been, some anti-democratic sentiment among the right. Krugman quotes William F. Buckley's National Review, in 1957, talking about how the civilized White race had to defend itself, and if democracy got in the way of that so much the worse for democracy. Also extolling Franco's defense of the Spanish soul from the threat of the left -- Franco used murder and camps, but hey.
One of Buckley's creepier moments, but from a long tradition. Right-wingers have a blind spot for right-wing dictators, and lefties have a blind spot for socialist dictators. Somehow, the fact that they are in furrin' countries makes it easy to excuse their being brutal and anti-democratic. One of the dirty little secrets of the 'tween years, the 1920s and 1930s, was that a whole faction of important Americans, scholars, businessmen, celebrities, etc., admired Mussolini and Hitler, while another faction admired Stalin. When World War II hit all the fascist fan-boys dropped their ardor like a hot potato and most people forgot about it. However, since Stalin was our ally during the war, a lot of his fans got stuck still writing mash notes just as the Cold War started, without any distractions to save their reputation. Hence, they are still remembered and pilloried by the modern Right.
mindstalk wrote:These days it's a lot less apparent, just a common trend to make voting harder and occasional muttering about how it all went downhill when women got the vote..
There was a big-time columnist fuming about that in the National Review last week. Like most old-fashioned conservatives, he has no clue as why anyone would be offended by his declaring that an entire gender is incapable of making rational decisions when given a say in government.
mindstalk wrote:Reagan attacked the Voting Rights Acts as a humiliation for the South but no one likes to remember that.
Jeff Sessions, who just became senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, agrees with that notion. A real interesting character, is Jeff.
mindstalk wrote:I haven't heard of Addington and Yoo (or forget?) but the Bush admin certainly had a lot of authoritarian arrogance, with "executive privilege" and defense of torture and signing statements to ignore laws and such. Sadly, Obama isn't racing to repudiate all that.
Addington and Yoo are the legal brains behind all the Bush administration's authoritarian activity. Yoo wrote legal opinions that basically grant a president the powers of the Tsar of all the Russians whenever he saw the need. Addington was Cheney's chief enforcer, a brilliant lawyer and a bureaucratic thug. From my traditional view, both men are really lucky we have such a strict definition of treason in the constitution.

Obama's repudiating the Unitary Executive personally, but is bobbing and weaving about what to do legally. He has some notion that he might completely cripple future presidents if he isn't carefully about legal restrictions. However, a real civil libertarian, like Madison and Jefferson, would see crippling presidential ability to abuse his power as a good thing.
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Idaho issues Cease and Desist order... against Congress

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Oh, and I forgot to mention Gonzales' defense of torture, of course. Whatever happened with the attorneys and Ashcroft. And the blatant violation of constitutional rights of "enemy combatant" US citizens. All of two of them, admittedly, but that's not the point.

Yeah, I just learned about Sessions.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009 ... minees.php

Itterind: "it's a useful tool and u will suffer for the lack of it and these people really deserve it"
Whether torture is a useful tool is strongly disputed. There's also a little thing called "morality" that some people worry about it. As for "these people", the group might include people who "deserve" to have physical pain and terror inflicted on them, but our group of people snatched off the battlefield include people sold out by their neighbors. "He's Taliban, sure, ayep. No, i have no ulterior motive like stealing his sheep while he's gone."
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Re: Idaho issues Cease and Desist order... against Congress

Post by Imp-Chan »

History teaches us that torture of the citizenry as a result of no more than neighbor testimony is a method that ONLY helps maintain order in the short term, if at all. Every government I can think of that indulged in that tactic was overturned shortly thereafter. Granted, most of the examples I can think of are Chinese, and the rise and fall of Chinese government follows very clear and predictable patterns over the last 3000 years or so (basically ever since there was a Chinese government and even a little before Qin), but there are western examples as well.

-_-'
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