The American Constitution is a heck of a thing. The power it guards for the power is great. Like this:
“the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”
Regular people get to have guns! What’s more:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The state doesn’t get to mess with the church(es)! Journalists are protected by name, as are lobbyists! Amazing!
When it comes to military power and the use of it, an especially large amount of power is vested in the executive branch. The President is also the commander of the military. This means that when President Bush decides to deploy US forces, he can do so with little conversation with Congress.
When folks cast votes in 2004, I don’t think a great many folks who were concerned by the “homos” getting married in San Francisco were thinking about the lengths Bush would go to extend our involvement in Iraq. With Saddam executed and no WMDs found, even those who never identified with the “anti-war Left” now see the mission as “accomplished.” There is a heavy majority of people in nearly every state who are now against the war and favor bringing home troops with the end of the year.
Do so-called “NASCAR dads” of the ex-urbs now see their votes against gay marriage, stem cell research, and other phantoms as votes that support President Bush’s goals in Iraq? What about Naderites? Is John Kerry still as “pro-war” as they said he was in 2004?
The truth is, elections matter. Congress has a limited role in changing the facts on the ground in Iraq. Presidents get to send more troops; Congress can fund them or not. There is limited appetite by folk like Rep. Adam Smith and others to deny troops the ammo and armor they need should they be deployed. President Bush, being so out of touch with reality, is unlikely to blink should Congress throw down the gauntlet. He’s so far down the rabbit hole, so divorced from what’s happening, I don’t see any rational argument penetrating the White House. Perhaps our best chance to make a big change will come in 2008, when the GOP will hopefully be crushed in the House and Senate. Any GOP nominee for president will be forced to answer for the Bush agenda.
Presidents have power, that’s clear. Elections matter and their consequences are clear.
2008 is plenty of time for the Bush handlers to spin blame for the almost inevitable failure in Iraq back on to the Democratic led Congress. They’re better at spin because it helps to be good at lying.
You’re probably right Dave, and that is truly sad. The only way this nation will start to heal is when BushCo is removed from power, preferably as soon as possible. Anyone want to place odds on the likelihood that Congress will eventually begin the process of Impeachment? I say it’s ‘when,’ instead of ‘if.’ So that makes it 100% for me.
1&2: Call John Dingell. Call Henry Waxman. Call Richard Durbin. I’m sure they’ll give you time.
So I wonder how the Moonbat!s at Google will explain this away?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....ogle13.xml
Yes elections do matter. These stooges would be alive in a Gore Administration. Good riddance to Froggy Garbage!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01.....38;emc=rss
Hey Loocy: Is this one of your relatives? I think so.
Roland Freisler. You espoused the same crap he did.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrar.....lesct.html
will, you say, “When it comes to military power and the use of it, an especially large amount of power is vested in the executive branch. The President is also the commander of the military. This means that when President Bush decides to deploy US forces, he can do so with little conversation with Congress.”
Perhaps you might want to take a quick read over Here and let me know what your understanding of these articles and clauses is. And you know, try as I might, I could not find any definition of “Commander in Chief” that might suggest that position overrules the checks and balances of the Constitution.
Peace,
Chad (The Left) Shue
Yes elections do matter. In Toadys’ World (Pelletizer, Froggy and Clueless for example) anyone who disagrees with them must be capped. Well isn’t it grand the NYTimes article left out pertinent information like a good libtard MSM always does?
http://newsbusters.org/node/10165
Nuff Said
Yes elections do matter. We don’t need to listen to bankrupt Air America and Randi Rhodes is being held accountable for her broadcase lies against CACI. If libtard radio had an opportunity to work over these lasat six years it was now. It failed miserably. See ya!
Funny how that works!
Yes elections do matter. When you hold yourself in high esteem you must deliver!:
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday said Democrats will close a loophole in the House-passed minimum wage increase that exempts American Samoa — an action taken after it was revealed that one of the U.S. territory’s main employers is based in her congressional district.
“I have asked the Education and Labor Committee as they go forward with the legislation to make sure that all of the territories have to comply with U.S. law on the minimum wage,” Mrs. Pelosi said.”
I can see clearly now……..
The liberal agenda fits with their anti-Bush stance to oppose victory in Iraq….. Iraq falls to the insurgents and into a TRUE civil war. The entire region becomes embroiled in violence and unrest. Oil prices jump to 100-120 dollars a barrel, gasoline prices reach 6.50 a gallon, everyone abandons their cars, trucks and evil SUV’s and we all vote for light rail and save the planet!
#8 –
Hey Puddybud, I read your unbiased (rolls eyes) link at newsbusters (what an awful name by the way).
His comments were despicable even in full context. Unlike claims of Al Gore stating he invented the internet, those claims by da liberal media are factual.
Dickwad.
The fact that Pelosi is going to inflict misery on American Samoa shouldn’t be a reason to celebrate. I expect our congressional leaders to enact legislation that helps people – not hurts them.
The claim that Pelosi helped Starkist because their home base is in her district is false. This fiasco started with Rep Miller who inserted the Northern Mariana’s into the bill to get revenge for Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff. Abramoff was a lobbyist for the Mariana’s, who do NOT have a congressmen representing them.
None of the economies in any of the American terroritorial islands can support our minimum wage. It is arrogance that we try to inflict it on them. 75% of the workers in Samoa work in canneries who are competing against canneries in Thailand and several other countries paying their workers less than 1 dollar an hour.
The majority of the economy in the Mariana’s is centered around the textile industry. Over 12 plants closed last year and thousands are already out of work. The textile industry is under severe pressure from factories in Vietnam and China who pay their workers next to nothing. Over 80% of the prostitutes in the Mariana’s are EX-textile workers.
It is disgusting that our Congress will put tens of thousands out of work while they stand at podiums claiming that they are helping the poor people. American standards don’t work well when they are inflicted on third world societies……………..
Puddybud is too busy helping his virgin sons maintain their chastity (it’s not sex if it’s among family he says, though it’s hard to talk with your mouth full).
Puddybud is a whack job.
“President Bush… is … so far down the rabbit hole …
Oh please, Will, neither I nor any other self-respecting rabbit would EVER let this drunken carnivore in our holes …
@2 I doubt very much that Bush will be able to restrain himself from provoking impeachment. He’ll go, “Bring it on!!” and then wonder what hit him when they carry him out of the Oval Office after a slug of GOP senators vote to convict him — for their own self-preservation.
@8 “Puddybud says: In Toadys’ World (Pelletizer, Froggy and Clueless for example) anyone who disagrees with them must be capped. 01/15/2007 at 7:16 am”
Why not? You sleazers want to do it to us. What goes around, comes around. Why should you nazis have a monopoly on capping people for disagreeing with you? Why shouldn’t you get capped by people you disagree with? Explain that.
@10 Thanks for bringing Seakist’s Samoan sweatshops to our attention, puttybutt! We’re on the case. Seakist’s workers are about to get a big raise. Now they won’t have to live in dumpsters anymore.
@11 Bwa-ha-ha-har! I thought you wingnuts were opposed to victory in Iraq! After all, you guys have done everything humanly possible to make sure we lose …
No occupation plan
Not enough troops
No body or vehicle armor
Torture and murder Iraqi civilians
No electricity or drinking water for civilians
Leave the borders open
Install U.S.-lackey puppet government
Disarm Iraqi army and police so only militias are armed
Etc. ad nauseum
… Yep, the wingnut-sponsored Iraq Military Misadventure is a textbook example of how to lose a war! You guys are showing everyone how it’s done.
@13 “sgmmac says: The fact that Pelosi is going to inflict misery on American Samoa shouldn’t be a reason to celebrate. I expect our congressional leaders to enact legislation that helps people – not hurts them.”
Waa-hoo-whoop-har-de-haw-ha-ha-hee-ho-ho!!!
Nobody can ever again take you seriously after this screed, Mac! So you’re in favor of paying America’s Samoan subjects $3.15 an hour so you can buy cheap tuna at Safeway … figures. I suspected all along that you were just another CHEAP LABOR CONSERVATIVE.
@ 7
Chad, you blogwhore!
@21, Well it is a good post over there :)
@ 21
will, sorry to offend. I didn’t name the blog and thought it would be in poor taste to re-load the entire post here. I am seriously looking for your input. I think too many people (including many electeds) are giving this “Commander in Chief” thing too much sway.
Peace,
Chad (The Left) Shue
Voting is a waste of time.
A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master. — George Washington
From the age of 18 I never missed a public vote. I believed that every voter had the responsibility to know for whom you were voting. I studied and made logical decisions regarding the candidates. I was never a ‘bullet’ voter – going down party lines – because that is simply ignorant. In this two-party system, I have no ‘party.’ But third party candidates in our system have a helluva time being elected to state legislatures, let alone Congress.
My choice: snuggle up to one of the major parties. This is wholly unsatisfactory because I disagree with the Big Two at least 50% of the time. Besides, as this blog makes abundantly clear, if I express support for a Republican (gasp!) I’m stereotyped as a pro-life, gun-shooting, homophobic, Christian Fascist. On the other hand, expressing support for a Democrat (horrors!) immediately marks me as a tax-loving, envionazi communist who rips infants out of the wombs of near-term mothers. Further, no matter how much you study, how much you research, today you will be voting for a politician obligated to special interests. A politician, who, in the name of representative democracy, will steal certain goods and redistribute them as he/she sees fit. This is why I no longer vote.
Many will get all medieval on me, push the patriotism button, claiming some subjective fulfillment of my duty as a good citizen, etc, etc. Etc. Can’t argue that. But it doesn’t effect the bottom-line that your vote is meaningless and won’t effect the outcome.
Two-party loyalty will destroy this Republic because our choices and problems we face do not all have binary solutions.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. — HL Mencken
I see DarrellSucksButtPutty has been littering up this thread with his madness. Time to take your meds, Darrell, Theresa won’t like it if she finds you ravening and howling at the moon like this. . . . .
Former Voter- I ask you this, would we be in Iraq right now if a few hundred votes in Florida changed in 2000?
It does matter.
Former Voter:
So what does your choice make you?
A self-paralyzed sheep, locked in a cynical shell of bitter apathy?
Or one of those looniest of loonies, the ‘Direct Action’ crowd who thinks that vandalizing a Starbucks will teach the Corporate World a lesson they’ll never forget?
(BTW, that would make you a terrorist, not all that much different than al-Qaeda or Chrstian Identity, or PETA for that matter)
Even the dumbest of the trolls in here (you know who you are) know that the only way to change things in this country is to VOTE. Participate, be involved, DO SOMETHING. But you don’t care, it seems.
I pity you.
@20
The workers in the Northern Mariana’s and America Samoa are NOT going to get minimum wage, they will lose their fucking jobs, because the economies there can’t support paying that amount of money for labor when they are competing against companies and workers in other countries NOT paying those extreme wages……..
I want the minimum wage raised in the US where the economy will support it……. try some Google searches and read the articles about those poor people.
That would be ‘Chrisitian Identity.’ My typing sucks more than Marilyn Chambers, Seka and Lisa DeLeeuw all at once. Read up about them, and be afraid.
No, Christian Identity, not the porn stars!
ARGH. I think my typing is gonna get me in trouble one of these days……….
Strange that American Samoa and the Mariana’s is on sggmac’s radar now that DeLay and Abramoff are gone from center stage.
For completeness sake, and to un-troll your comments, give us several complete paragraph’s detailing your horror and revulsion for the conditions fostered on those island by the 109th Congress. . .the forced labor, the forced sexual slavery, and the forced abortions. In addition to granting them minimum wages, shouldn’t you also be advocating the revocation of much of the larded legislation men like Frist,Delay, and Abramoff used to create these intolerable conditions. Perhaps you should also raise your voice with mine to advocates these men’s prosecution, in addition to repealing these laws as an attempt at amends.
Chad-
Good stuff. Then again, it’s all about how the Supreme Court interprets this stuff, and they’ve seen that the President has more power than perhaps the Constitution is explicit about.
Sayeth the Rabbit…
Nobody can ever again take you seriously after this screed, Mac! So you’re in favor of paying America’s Samoan subjects $3.15 an hour so you can buy cheap tuna at Safeway … figures. I suspected all along that you were just another CHEAP LABOR CONSERVATIVE.
Just like Maria Cantwell who voted against minimum wage increases before she voted for them, and who supported all of the free trade agreements that are a sign of being a free trade conservative…according to Roger anyway.
#27 –
Your vote is meaningless and won’t affect the outcome. Period.
Voting is sometimes immoral: voting in support of aggression against innocent people shouldn’t need any explanation as to why it is wrong.
Voting for a tax increase that affects others besides yourself is immoral on the same principle.
Most people vote for these things, and by such action are voting to increase coercion against others. Perhaps we can settle our differences with a mob vote and then use force against the minority. That’s immoral, if not insanity.
Apathy? The choice between a bad candidate and a less bad candidate is an unconstructive, self-defeating option. You always end up choosing a negative; plus, there’s the rather apathetic attitude: acceptance of one’s powerlessness. A fundamentally pessimistic view of life, deeply conservative and latently reactionary since it foster the status quo and disregards any potential for creative alternatives.
#26 –
Your one vote in Florida in 2000 would have amounted to a tear shed in the rain – meaningless, un-noticed; an irrelevancy. And, your time wasted.
Tree Frog Farmer says: I see DarrellSucksButtPutty has been littering up this thread with his madness. Time to take your meds, Darrell, Theresa won’t like it if she finds you ravening and howling at the moon like this. . . . . 01/15/2007 at 1:26 pm
Froggy are you one of the ones wrapped in saran wrap on ShowTime’s Dexter?
Did they shut you out of the kiddy table last night?
Teresa is Carl the LeftNut’s wife! Tereza is John Effin Kerry’s wife!
Do you ever get your facts straight? And you want me to get meds? HAR HAR HAR! Just wondering?
Broadway Joe says: Or one of those looniest of loonies, the ‘Direct Action’ crowd who thinks that vandalizing a Starbucks will teach the Corporate World a lesson they’ll never forget?
Joe, you perfectly described the Loony Loocy, Froggy, Clueless crowd!
Well, this about right: six posts out of 36 worth of reading.
BTW, you’re right Roger and Tree Frog Farmer and Smeg has been told that constantly but never ever learns . . . it is all about keeping people in poverty for her. But, that’s a conservative thing.
“Over 80% of the prostitutes in the Mariana’s are EX-textile workers.”
Hmmm….sounds like Seattle back in the days of the Alaska gold rush. At least as portrayed (and admittedly no doubt embellished) by the Underground Tour folks, back then there were lots and lots of women here supposedly employed as “seamstresses”.
Congress has power too:
“The Congress shall have Power To…
declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;”
Congress has the power of war and peace.
FV, you are such a fucking idiot. Now I’ve figured you out.
You’re a Eugene Anarchist!
Only a Eugene Anarchist fucktard like you would have such a ridiculously stupid opinion, and then dress it up with big words like that. You want a society that requires no effort on your behalf to maintain, which means realistically, no society at all. This is called anarchy. But an easier descriptive term would be ‘lazy.’
You don’t like the candidates you see? Go to the caucus and offer your own candidate, if not yourself. Be persuasive, be intelligent. If you want to change the system, change it from the inside out, like what Howard Dean is doing for the Democrats. Vandalizing a Starbucks or McDonald’s only hurts the employees of the stores you damage or destroy, who want to earn a living just like anyone else.
All your worldview offers is the end of modern civilization itself. And that may be the most pitiful thing of all. You don’t even count as an anarchist. You’re a nihilist.
ni·hil·ism [nahy-uh-liz-uhm, nee-]
–noun 1. total rejection of established laws and institutions.
2. anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.
3. total and absolute destructiveness, esp. toward the world at large and including oneself: the power-mad nihilism that marked Hitler’s last years.
4. Philosophy. a. an extreme form of skepticism: the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.
b. nothingness or nonexistence.
5. (sometimes initial capital letter) the principles of a Russian revolutionary group, active in the latter half of the 19th century, holding that existing social and political institutions must be destroyed in order to clear the way for a new state of society and employing extreme measures, including terrorism and assassination.
6. annihilation of the self, or the individual consciousness, esp. as an aspect of mystical experience.
No PuddyButtSuckwad. . .the Theresa in Union. . . . .
Now go take your meds, Darrell. You’re gonna need them.
So the democrats plan is just go ? I assume we all agree that what was going on before the last election was not seen as a good thing … So why did the democrats just run on leaving Iraq ? Instead they ran on this sucks what is going on …
Now they say they have a mandate .. ? No , the last election for President, the Commander in Chief was the election in 2004 ..
In 2008 hopefully we have a democrat who will say what he wants to do .. man we sure need leadership that is for sure . Bush is the only one that is showing any if you ask me . Folks like Murtha too , but his leadership only unites the fringe behind him ..