IntenseDebate

13 years ago @ Big Government - From JournoList to Shi... · 0 replies · -4 points

“Constitution, bill of rights, natural and unalienable rights with a free market system and we're good to go!”
Down the tubes, you mean. I don't care how boring you are, but I object to your being naive and ineffectual. By adopting a simplistic, eighteenth century worldview, you play into the hands of the corporatists and plutocrats, who most assuredly have availed themselves of every possible means of acquiring our wealth and circumscribing our freedoms. Since Ronald Reagan launched his war on the middle class, America has regressed on every front, the middle class collapsing and inequalities in wealth and power more pronounced than ever before in our history. It's sad for a once great nation to decline like this, sadder still for those responsible to be so proud of what they've done.

14 years ago @ Glenn Beck - The 912 P... - 7/19 The CIA, Cheney... · 0 replies · +1 points

Fine. Go sulk. Debates aren't only for the participants & you demonstrate little reason to care what you think. Discounting the infantile ad hominems, your diatribe consists only of special pleading that you, as an "insider", have unique knowledge. That's BS. I honor your service as a matter of principle, but unless you demonstrated more understanding as a policeman than you do here, I say the force is better off without you! The strength of our system is that no one is above the law & no one can do whatever he or she thinks is "necessary" in some kind of warped self justification. That's how the Nazis operated & that's why you're dead wrong, when you claim that WWII Germany was totally different. It was precisely the same: people who thought they knew better asserting that they could do whatever they wished (i.e.: whatever was "necessary.") But you don't have that privilege here. We "bleeding heart" liberals control the vote & Neanderthals like you are fortunately a dwindling minority.

14 years ago @ Glenn Beck - The 912 P... - 7/19 The CIA, Cheney... · 2 replies · +1 points

That's great! You know, I'll bet a majority of Germans felt that way about the Nazis and their methods.
I guess, if you're ever arrested, you'll have no problem, when the police apply some "enhanced" methods to elicit your confession. The problem with your "us" vs."them" approach is that inevitably you will become somebody's "them".

14 years ago @ Glenn Beck - The 912 P... - 7/19 The CIA, Cheney... · 0 replies · +1 points

The Constitution's a general recipe for self-governance, which may explain its durability. Specific applications require legal infrastructure.

I put no faith in "oaths", which are as cheap as air. I trust "leaders" only as far as I can watch what they do. I want accountable people who care what I think, i.e.: campaign finance reform, so fat cats can't drown out my voice with a checkbook. I want oversight with public hearings, testimony under oath, and strict penalties for perjury or withholding information. I want cameras in the courtrooms, so citizens can see and hear how life-time appointees fulfill the public trust!

Obama? No way to tell yet about him. He said his administration woud honor FOIA requests. Has it? I don't know. Most of the criticisms I hear are pure partisan BS and stupid to boot.

The CIA? Did they break the law? Is Pelosi lying? Let's have hearings & send the liars to prison! Anyone who doesn't want to find out the facts, openly and in public, is hiding something criminal until proven otherwise.

14 years ago @ Glenn Beck - The 912 P... - 7/19 The CIA, Cheney... · 4 replies · +1 points

My God, you're right! Bush/Cheney can only claim to have kept us safe for 7 and 1/3 years.
I'll have to beware the razor sharp minds on this site.

Whatever decapitation may be, it sure isn't torture, so it's not clear why you mention that. How about hanging prisoners from the ceiling and beating them to death the way they did at Bagram?

As for waterboarding, can you identify anyone - anyone at all - who was actually waterboarded and states that it isn't torture? One name will do.

Since you're the expert.

14 years ago @ Glenn Beck - The 912 P... - 7/19 The CIA, Cheney... · 0 replies · +1 points

What are you talking about? Congress already has super health care. Our goal should be to force them to give the same standard of health care to everybody else.

14 years ago @ Glenn Beck - The 912 P... - 7/19 The CIA, Cheney... · 0 replies · +1 points

Absent the threat to turn elected officials out of office, what sort of pressure would you suggest to enforce the popular will? A strict one term limit might encourage unscrupulous politicians to cash in while they have the chance.
Limiting the corrupting effect of money on politicians would do more than anything else to keep them honest. Campaign finance reform should be at the top of the list. Right now the desires of individual citizens are completely subordinated to pressures by lobbyists and corporate campaign contributors. Who do you think pushed through the initial, no-strings-attached $750 billion bailout that vanished without a trace? Sure as h*ll wasn't I? Was it you? Wall street lobbyists pushed that one through and there wasn't a damned thing any of us could do about it. Turning the lobbyists out, cutting off the flow of corporate money will do more than anything other single step to empower individuals.

14 years ago @ Glenn Beck - The 912 P... - 7/19 The CIA, Cheney... · 2 replies · +1 points

You're right about the intrusions made by the Bush Administration on our constitutional freedoms; but remember that the Patriot Act and its successor, Patriot II, were acts of a craven and irresponsible Congress, not executive orders. How many Americans understand, I wonder, the extent of the power that Bush arrogated to himself in his hundreds of executive orders? Bush's obsessive, anti-democratic secrecy was itself one of greatest dangers our nation has ever faced. One of his first acts was to instruct members of his administration to resist or ignore FOIA requests.

Currently Congress is considering a number of laws designed to prevent or reverse these transgressions. These include the Federal Employee Protection of Disclosures Act, the State Secrets Protection Act, and the Free Flow of Information Act. Do you know what these are? If you're interested in protecting individual liberty and resisting the incroachment of unrestrained government power, then you owe it to yourself to find out about them and instruct your representatives to support them.

14 years ago @ Glenn Beck - The 912 P... - 7/19 The CIA, Cheney... · 6 replies · +1 points

"Approximately" eight years? What an interesting - that is to say, inaccurate - way of putting it!

In fact, Bush/Cheney can only claim to have kept us safe for 7 and 1/4 years after their incompetence and inattention allowed the most catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil in our nation's history!

As for our freedoms, Bush/Cheney and the Republicans used the 9/11 attack as a pretext for some of the most disgracefully intrusive violations of individual liberties our country has ever seen. The Patriotic Act? Illegal domestic wire tapping? Kidnapping, indefinite detention, torture ... ? Just what kind of "liberty" are you talking about?

14 years ago @ Glenn Beck - The 912 P... - The 9/12 · 14 replies · -6 points

Did you notice, tim - I did! - that "intelligence" is gabsent from the "values" as well as from the principles?
That's no accident! Intelligence leads to critical thinking. (Which is also missing from the values, isn't it?)
Instead the list includes all the Orwellian buzzwords of mind control, designed to make you hate "others" - the government, immigrants, minorities, foreigners, liberals ... Government isn't "us". government is "them." And THEY are going to take our money, confiscate our guns, steal our children away ... Richard Hofstadter had these clowns pegged four decades ago - probably before your time - but the methods and the message that he identified haven't changed, just the suckers who buy into them. Don't expect God to be dropped from the list. Religion teaches people to believe on faith, teaches them not to question, disparages intelligence and science. You're on the right track. Keep asking questions and thinking for yourself and you just might find your way out of the fog!

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