Thread: Another Constitutional Crisis

Originally Posted by Johnus

Every day I am more and more convinced that the main difference between smart people and stupid people is that stupid people have all the answers.

That's great, Johnus. I'm gonna steal this.

I also apologize if anyone thought I was getting too personal. I do get passionate, but I don't get mad.

I recently lost a very old friend. I hadn't talked to her in 30 years. She found me somehow and started calling me repeatedly to cry on my shoulder about how tough her life had become. Even calling me at work in tears. She confessed horrible things to me, like her step-father had molested her for many years and her mother refused to help. How the rest of her family blamed her even now.

One day politics came up out of the blue. She told me she was a liberal, I told her I was conservative. We didn't discuss it. Not much more was said at all. She said she had to go.

Suddenly she ignored my emails. She stopped calling. She won't answer the phone when I try to call her. It would be funny if it wasn't so stupid.

Originally Posted by alb1981

....am I a hate filled conservative nut job? or am I a fan of the founding fathers...

or both? oooo ponder that! A country founded on nuts resulting in a giant peanut gallery, whoda thunk it?

Originally Posted by Mike Blue

I disagree, that was Shrodinger...

Not to be picky, but - well, actually yes to be picky - it was Einstein who disagreed with what Schroedinger said about the cat(s)

And I agree with your other point. The design seems to be working if we get what we ask for

@alb1981- That depends on how you act towards people who don't believe in your god or a god, who believe that government has an obligation to protect and promote the welfare of all its citizens to the highest degree possible, who believe the Constitution is a living document designed to adapt to changing social and economic realities, or who realize that the financial realities of a sovereign nation are far different from financing a family or business.

Conservatives, at least from my perspective, are infamous for launching attacks against their ideological opponents, then when their opponents respond, claiming they've been victimized by having their behavior called out. Look at this thread again, and look at the one that was recently closed. Who starts with name-calling? Who starts with grotesque exaggerations? I don't really care what you believe in. If you wanna believe Adam rode around on Triceratops in the Garden of Eden, or that federal deficits necessarily lead to inflation and insolvency, go right ahead. Just don't call the people who disagree with you names or act like a jackass, even, and perhaps especially when they present evidence and arguments against what you believe.

The saddest thing of all is when you look at places in the world where folks have no tolerance for each other and you're either one of them or the enemy to be eliminated. Places like Lebanon and the old Yugoslavia for instance.

Once folks can't see eye to eye enough to get along it's then a slippery slope to those other places.

Don't think it can happen here?

Funny thing about perspective, Kant. I have exactly the same feelings about Liberals that you do about Conservatives and our discussion but the other direction.

What drives me crazy is Obama is breaking the law on everything he does and even the Conservatives won't call him on it.

All the Czars. Ignoring Bankruptcy laws when he bailed out and stole GM and Chrysler. Saying that if Congress won't pass a spending bill he will do it on his own. Deciding on his own to appoint people while Congress is NOT in recess. Out of control crony Capitalism.

He is the most dangerous President we have ever had because he just ignores the law.

I'm a conservative and I don't agree with everything Obama has done during his presidency. I didn't agree with everything Bush did either, though he was one of the most entertaining presidents we have ever had. The thing that gets to me is everyone on every side of the political fence bashes everyone on the other side. It's honestly as bad as racism. Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean we can't be friends.

I don't agree with a lot that Bush did either. There's no such thing as a perfect representative or candidate.

I started a very in depth argument with a friend of a friend on Facebook, much like the discussions on here. We are as polarized as Kant and I. Funny thing was, even though Fred and I sharply disagree, we wound up friends and chat regularly.

Interesting that if you look at the history of our last hundred years you may not see things repeating word for word but you do see similarities. I lot of the thing that they are now saying about our current president and his administration, they also said about FDR. Let's just hope that their last years in office don't leave us lead down the same path.

If it were true that Obama were really breaking laws left right and center, then the Republicans who control Congress would be crowing about it left, right and center. If there were any real, substantive evidence of the kinds of pervasive lawlessness and unconstitutional behavior you write about, the Republican majority would already have charges of impeachment written and under active debate in their Judiciary committee at the least, if not under full consideration by the House or passed on to the Senate by now. We know that Republicans are not shy about using their power to impeach for even the most inconsequential violations of the law, and they've been using the full power of their various oversight committees to look for anything they might use for that at least since they've gained the majority, and many Republicans have been using the resources of their own offices to look since before even then. If there is one thing Republicans are united about right now, it's that they want to beat Obama, any way they can. If they had even a shred of some credible evidence they could do that with, they'd be doing it right now.

As for "stealing" GM and Chrysler, they bought their shares at better than fair market value, I believe, and extended several loans. If they hadn't, those companies would have gone bankrupt, their assets broken up and sold off, and there would be no new Chevys on the road today. They did, and as a result, GM and Chrysler were able to pay off the loans, buy back the stock and posted profits for the first time in years, and have plans to increase employment. Several tens of thousands of jobs were saved directly, and at least a million more indirectly. Would it have been better to let them go bankrupt, to let all those people lose their jobs, no matter how temporarily?

I don't care about your ideology. I don't care whether you believe that central planning is the most effective way to distribute resources or free market allocation is the most effective way. What I care about are results. GM and Chrysler being saved from bankruptcy, and all those jobs being saved, is a good thing. It's also a good thing that the investment groups and banks that manage American's IRAs and retirement investment accounts didn't have to swallow the 75-90% losses they were projecting as a result of no intervention in the crash and instead only managed to lose 30-50%. That's still a hell of a hit, but when the house of cards of speculative economic gambling finally crashes, American's private retirement accounts shouldn't bear the brunt of the losses, and without those interventions, that's what would have happened. And you can't really blame Obama for it anyway, because he wasn't even in office when the bank bailout passed. Bush signed off on that Law.

In terms of results, Presidents could do a lot worse than the real, tangible good done by FDR. People given jobs that had been out of work for years, parks, roads and buildings built, rural areas electrified. The elderly no longer dying in squallid poor-houses or camps on the outskirts of towns and cities or alleys inside those towns and cities. Kids vaccinated. Plus, he led the nation in beating the Nazis, so that's always good.

Originally Posted by Kantian Pragmatist

If it were true that Obama were really breaking laws left right and center, then the Republicans who control Congress would be crowing about it left, right and center. If there were any real, substantive evidence of the kinds of pervasive lawlessness and unconstitutional behavior you write about, the Republican majority would already have charges of impeachment written and under active debate in their Judiciary committee at the least, if not under full consideration by the House or passed on to the Senate by now. We know that Republicans are not shy about using their power to impeach for even the most inconsequential violations of the law, and they've been using the full power of their various oversight committees to look for anything they might use for that at least since they've gained the majority, and many Republicans have been using the resources of their own offices to look since before even then. If there is one thing Republicans are united about right now, it's that they want to beat Obama, any way they can. If they had even a shred of some credible evidence they could do that with, they'd be doing it right now.

As for "stealing" GM and Chrysler, they bought their shares at better than fair market value, I believe, and extended several loans. If they hadn't, those companies would have gone bankrupt, their assets broken up and sold off, and there would be no new Chevys on the road today. They did, and as a result, GM and Chrysler were able to pay off the loans, buy back the stock and posted profits for the first time in years, and have plans to increase employment. Several tens of thousands of jobs were saved directly, and at least a million more indirectly. Would it have been better to let them go bankrupt, to let all those people lose their jobs, no matter how temporarily?

I don't care about your ideology. I don't care whether you believe that central planning is the most effective way to distribute resources or free market allocation is the most effective way. What I care about are results. GM and Chrysler being saved from bankruptcy, and all those jobs being saved, is a good thing. It's also a good thing that the investment groups and banks that manage American's IRAs and retirement investment accounts didn't have to swallow the 75-90% losses they were projecting as a result of no intervention in the crash and instead only managed to lose 30-50%. That's still a hell of a hit, but when the house of cards of speculative economic gambling finally crashes, American's private retirement accounts shouldn't bear the brunt of the losses, and without those interventions, that's what would have happened. And you can't really blame Obama for it anyway, because he wasn't even in office when the bank bailout passed. Bush signed off on that Law.

In terms of results, Presidents could do a lot worse than the real, tangible good done by FDR. People given jobs that had been out of work for years, parks, roads and buildings built, rural areas electrified. The elderly no longer dying in squallid poor-houses or camps on the outskirts of towns and cities or alleys inside those towns and cities. Kids vaccinated. Plus, he led the nation in beating the Nazis, so that's always good.

They did complain about the appointments, and then did nothing. They did complain about the Czars, and then did nothing.

GM was owned by investors. GM had creditors. They were forced to take 10%. They had a right to liquidate or down size GM. They were blocked. Large blocks of shares were given to the UNIONS. You say you only care about results. That's the problem. Nobody cares about the LAW. Those creditors were cheated and the money was used to prop a company that should have been restructured. That's the way the market works.

Instead we have Government Motors making Electric Cars that no one wants and you and I are subsidizing those cars to the tune of $40,000 to $250,000 per car depending on who you believe. A crash causes them to catch on fire.

Yeah, the results are great.