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References
France.
Also, the US, but not as insanely awfully.
Seriously, the answer to that question is always the same -- "colonialism." The most evil word in the world, right now.
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)....Bermuda, Barbados, Martinique, Hong Kong, Singapore, Puerto Rico....why bother. Carry on, please.
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )I'll be sure to tell Mugsy Bogues, Spud Webb, Nate Robinson, and Earl Boykins that one needs to be tall to play in the NBA.
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| parent )I almost said "nice", but, no.
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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).
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| parent )The proper balance between defense and welfare are the tectonic plates that lie beneath our political discourse.
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)....that are concerned about throwing innocent people in jail on flimsy evidence and, much worse, keeping them there for transparently careerist reasons, can join me in condemning an instance of egregious prosecutorial zeal. Particularly when it's just to further political ambition.
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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)Just the thing to chip one's way out of a responsibility trap. :)
--"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
–Voltaire
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| parent )I couldn't get past anncoulter.com. That's an ideological porn site. I've got kids in the house.
--“Two clichés make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us, because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion." - Umberto Eco
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| parent )I saw the link in my browser's status bar and now I feel as though I must use a scouring pad in the shower from now on.
My browser probably has the site in its cache due to pre-loading of links and such. I very literally just shuddered at that thought.
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| parent )Personal ambition mixed with confirmation bias can be a powerful sedative that puts reason into a deep sleep.
As a foot note, Ms. Coulter gives off the O'Reilly Effect very often (soon to be renamed the Beck Effect), in which a crazy hyper partisan money grabbing nut, says something slightly sane, but almost begs to taken solely as hyper partisan nutery.
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| parent )Normally I can't stand her, myself, but this was too good to pass up.
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )Yeah, I definitely believe that our conservative brethren, who stand united in favor of systematically torturing random brown people, are deeply concerned about this miscarriage of justice. That's mighty white of y'all.
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| parent )....a "no", then? :^)
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )I'm not particularly interested in the conservative opinion on the issue; I'll work with the grownups who actually do care about such things to reduce their frequency, as I have until now.
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| parent )Deep breaths. Count to ten. There you go.... :^)
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )....pony up or shut up.
I bet! I'd also bet that there isn't any way in Hell a Euro government is going to let those juicy jobs and local supplier contracts go down the tube. They'll pay for the overruns and they'll like it. And screw the Euro taxpayer. EADS chart at Google.
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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)Missile defense being one example.
--The proper balance between defense and welfare are the tectonic plates that lie beneath our political discourse.
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| parent )Stephen Goldman, best baseball writer writing, has a few sane words on the Mark McGwire steroid kerfuffle. (And trust me, it ain't worth more than a kerfuffle.)
More at his regular column, here.
--“Two clichés make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us, because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion." - Umberto Eco
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)If they let Mac off the hook, there's no way they can get away with keeping Bonds (and Clemens, but that's just an incidental effect) out--being permanently picketed by Jesse and Al isn't a lifestyle choice that most anal-cranial conjoined sportswriters are willing to contemplate. They're willing to be called stupid, but not racist. Consequently, they'll need to set a clear precedent before Bonds comes up for a vote, and Mac is the obvious choice, since Palmiero was looking at a long wait before induction even before he flunked his drug test because of all of the idiots with BBWAA cards who think Don Sutton was at best a borderline candidate for induction.
Of course, Mac and Tony LaRussa can screw this all up nicely by letting Mac take a few swings in September this year, restarting his Cooperstown clock. It'd be fun to watch all of the little baseball writer heads explode when Mac comes up to the plate for the first time.
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| parent )I inept injured xenophobe = 45,000+ dead, to some.
Granted, Rush has no soul, but he's full of disdain for humans.
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201001130020
There are other people among us that also seem to forget the nature of earthquakes and hurricanes, earthquakes don't show up on radar too well. A little bit tougher to respond to an earthquake in a 3rd world country with effectively one barely operational airport.
There were many on the left that seem to deride Bush43 & Co for breathing the wrong way, but the current ones that belittle Obama and the left for much less, and those people seem greater in number and seething anger when it comes down to it, call them Legion, for they are many
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)the same number of people died in both events.
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| parent )Seriously, you can't make this stuff up. He's only seen the NYC's five boroughs "from a helicopter"?
Who does he think will vote for him? And dang, that $1 mil a year salary from Bank of America . . . that's a down payment on services rendered, no joke.
Gonna be fun to watch him get destroyed. Again.
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)The proper balance between defense and welfare are the tectonic plates that lie beneath our political discourse.
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| parent )who voted for Senator Hillary Clinton.
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| parent )it's the utterly unconscious toolery. How can you have such a tin ear for class issues that you would discuss seeing anything, other than a disaster site, by helicopter.
And that BofA thing is just icing on the cake. Between Ford and Steele, I'm starting to think that there's something about being a non-liberal African-American politician that makes you outright crazy.
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| parent )Just saying.
--The proper balance between defense and welfare are the tectonic plates that lie beneath our political discourse.
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| parent )Depends what's in the carpet bag (and just money doesn't cut it). Hillary Clinton at least, made her Senate aspirations known to the NY Dem Machine early on, got their approval (or at least toleration), did her tour(s) of the State, and also had the decided advantage of being the high-profile spouse of a popular ex-President. And, of course, the good luck to draw decidedly lackluster opponents.
Harold Ford Jr.? Not so much.
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| parent )Ford's bid makes her look like a native. IIRC she at least conducted some kind of whistlestop tour of the state prior to announcing.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Senator Robert F. Kennedy?
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| parent )Ford is going to get ground up like those turkeys Sarah Palin used as a backdrop for that one video she did.
That said, I am annoyed at RFK Jr. for being against that Cape Cod wind farm.
--The proper balance between defense and welfare are the tectonic plates that lie beneath our political discourse.
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| parent )Constituency trumps ideology. He can get overruled if it's important.
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| parent )....carpet-bagger central. If there's anywhere in the country he could pull it off, that'd be it. I agree that it should be funny, though. I seem to recall some quote of his where he had to add something to the effect that he didn't shoot at children. Comedy Gold.
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )He's running to the right of an already conservative Democrat. In New York.
He'll be lucky to break 40%.
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| parent )Say it ain't so! As the ending to my honeymoon, Paris holds a happy spot in my collection of memories. We did party more in Spain, tho.
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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)...I find these kinds of stories interesting.
A sampling of the city’s problems: densely packed, mixed-zoned neighborhoods; a lack of late-night transportation (the last metro leaves at 2 a.m. on the weekends, 1 a.m. during the week); and an unwieldy tangle of rules and regulations on bars and nightclubs, applied with uncommon zeal by a “repressive” police force.
Club owners say the central issue is the city’s accelerating gentrification. Real estate values have more than doubled here in the past 10 years, and residents increasingly demand peace and quiet, the club owners say.
*************
And as noted in the story, the indoor smoking ban has driven people out of doors...where they are noisy.
But seriously, for all of these unintended consequences, it is really "the dense mixed use" that I highlighted above that is the prime, or really only problem.
Paris is proud of its mixed use of business and residential...but there is a price.
People do have a right to sleep.
(I may also note that Paris, unlike Berlin or London, wasn't bombed to smithereens during WWII...thereby creating wide swaths of the city for single use and modern planning principles.)
Ahh, the Cruelties of history!
Traveller
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| parent )Everyone has the right to the enjoyment of their property. If someone is swinging their fist and hitting my nose (being loud enough to impinge on my enjoyment of my property), they are the ones who need to take action, not me.
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| parent )...to buy some damn earplugs. It's a city.
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| parent )And here I was taking you for a communitarian of sorts, Desi! Keep up that "screw 'em" attitude and I might make you an honorary Guerreriste. :^)
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )Ear plugs are much cheaper than two-hour commutes. Problem solved.
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| parent )....lived in a city? While I'm sorry to see the Parisian nightlife suffering, I can guarantee you that earplugs would not have taken care of what I found splattered over the hood of my car one morning in Hoboken, etc.
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )Off-street parking (or car-free living) is pretty key.
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| parent )as much as Scott Brown, the GOP nominee for MA-Sen, is really just a clown, making fun of him for posing nude in a magazine once is simply inappropriate. I've seen the pics, and they're pretty obviously in good fun. Separately from that, the last thing progressives need to be doing is mocking any expression of sexuality; we've already got plenty of that in our society currently.
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)No, seriously. Well, sort of.
Some faves:
-“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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)interest in not airing this debate?
"The trial that started on Monday in San Francisco over the constitutionality of California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage could have been a moment for the entire nation to witness a calm, deliberative debate on a vitally important issue in the era of instant communications. Instead, the United States Supreme Court made it a sad example of the quashing of public discourse by blocking the televising of the nonjury trial."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/opinion/14thu3.html
If it turns out one way or the other why not let the nation watch? It seems that the public interest would be of of open debate? I mean I happen to think the whole Marriage thing is a equal justice under the law problem... That being said it would be nice to see the debate from both sides....
--Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your
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)the debate is excellent, reminiscent of "Inherit the Wind," and with a similar likely outcome -- that the justices will make up some reason to throw out the good arguments and say something that keeps them in line with popular opinion.
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| parent )since they didn't allow live broadcasts, it will be made into a big budget Oscar-bait movie that will advance the liberal views of this issue more than the actual trial ever could.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Committee recommends that State Senator Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens) be expelled from the NY State Senate. Nice guy, apparently slashed his girlfriend's face during a domestic dispute. You'll recall Hiram was also involved in shenanigans last year where he helped get a Republican elected Majority Leader for a short period, so he certainly isn't new to controversy.
Scott Ritter, ex-UN weapons inspector and darling of the anti-war left, charged in child-sex sting.
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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)Given that the main claim-to-fame of the New York State Senate seems to be in boldly blazing new frontiers in legislative dysfunction, I'd guess it's at least an even-money bet that Hiram Monserrate will skate on these "recommendations" - or at most get a (functionally meaningless) censure. From your link:
Maybe they need Monserrate's vote on the ethics package....?
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| parent )I don't think any 15 years are a "child"
--Stupid writing of laws using the wrong definition.
In reality, he was charged with trying to have sex with a minor.
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| parent ).
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| parent )For real.
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| parent )that a government mandate to purchase private health insurance is unconstitutional. As he also notes, however, he is right only in a theoretical sense, because no Constitutional challenge could possibly succeed in today's climate of extreme judicial deference. I give him bonus credit for recognizing that conservative hatred of "judicial activism" is partially responsible for that climate.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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).
--"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
–Voltaire
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| parent )The government doesn't require you to have auto insurance. It requires you to have liability insurance, i.e. be able to pay off a claim from someone else, not make claims of your own. It's perfectly reasonable to demand that someone have that in order to drive (that's the other difference, of course: driving is optional, breathing is not).
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent ).
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent ).
--"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
–Voltaire
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| parent )At least insofar as the constitutional issue is one of legislative authority, rather than violation of rights.
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| parent )As Blue Nep. points out, the government isn't forcing you to engage in commerce. It's taxing you if you fail to engage in commerce (in a way that costs taxpayer money, no less).
It's a somewhat specious-sounding argument, but it is quite within the letter of the law. The proposal is actually a tax on all Americans who don't carry insurance, and there's no constitutional issue with a (non attainder) tax.
--"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
–Voltaire
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| parent )I think you and Blue are right about the ultimate constitutional authority of Congress for the health care mandate, but just wanted to point out that the reason it doesn't come up in auto insurance mandates is because states have legislative authority to legislative whatever the hell they want so long as it doesn't infringe on federally protected rights. Congress, at least theoretically, is only allowed by the Constitution to legislate in limited areas.
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| parent )I'm not saying a HC mandate is unconstitutional - just that it's a different kettle of fish from auto insurance.
(Thanks, BChurch!)
--Bene vixit, bene qui latuit
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| parent )making it a rights issue, despite the Commerce Clause talk. Maybe I'm wrong. Commerce Claus issues are pretty much old hat from all I can tell, so why bring them up seriously? Then again, we are dealing with conservatives here. :)
--"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
–Voltaire
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| parent )I have seen this argument played out before and just as Will has done those saying the mandate is unconstitutional ignore the welfare clause.
Also, the gov't isn't making you buy health insurance. You won't go to jail if you don't. You simply pay a tax. The Federal Gov't compels states to do things using the exact same tactic and SCOTUS said it was constitutional. LINK
This is an interesting topic, but if Americans are to going have this discussion we shouldn't ignore the strong points of the argument.
I do agree with you and will about "extreme judicial deference". It seems like SCOTUS thinks we don't have any rights unless the government grants them to us. The 9th amendment means nothing.
--I went to YOUR institutional learning facilities?! So how can you say I'M crazy? - S. Tendencies
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| parent )It's a fine. The General Welfare Clause does not apply and would not be invoked at trial. What would be invoked is the Commerce Clause -- the same clause that underpins the entire war on drugs, oddly enough.
Neither is the withholding of federal funds from the states germane. There are two obvious differences: individuals are not states, and demanding money is not the same as withholding it.
Clearly you will go to jail, at some point, if you refuse to pay the fine. Otherwise there'd be no point in having it.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Reducing the mortgage deduction isn't a "tax" either but congress is allowed to do it. Congress has the ability to determine how your taxes are calculated. This mandate "penalty" would just be an additional calculation.
Why doesn't it apply?
Again it is semantics. Give everyone a deduction of $x,xxx for having health insurance and withhold it from those who do not.
South Dakota v. Dole is a good example of how the general welfare clause has and can be implemented. I think it is germane.
The same can be said of any tax. Individual citizens don't get to pick and choose which laws they will obey.
--I went to YOUR institutional learning facilities?! So how can you say I'M crazy? - S. Tendencies
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| parent )Only if one considers all language a matter of semantics. Taxes and fines are two different things. A speeding ticket is not a tax, and sales tax is not a fine for making a purchase.
I suggest you consider the larger implications of allowing Congress to impose punitive financial penalties upon any activity it happens not to like. I recognize your partisan stake in this issue, but it is much, much larger than that.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )What are the larger implications "of allowing Congress to impose punitive financial penalties upon any activity it happens not to like."
--I went to YOUR institutional learning facilities?! So how can you say I'M crazy? - S. Tendencies
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| parent ).
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| parent )...to like?
See poor tobacco....taxed into almost non-existence in the US and, in Finland, it appears that smoking even outdoors is about to be banned.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8458347.stm
The Federal Government taxes anything it damn well pleases.
Traveller
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| parent )Let's try some others:
A new tax of 1000% on annual income. There will be a 975% deduction for people of either sex who permanently and irrevocably waive any limitations on the power of the federal government.
Under your theory, would this be OK?
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| parent )You would have to amend the Constitution to 'permanently and irrevocably waive any limitations on the power of the federal government'.
--I went to YOUR institutional learning facilities?! So how can you say I'M crazy? - S. Tendencies
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| parent )The waiver would be null and void. You can't grant the government a waiver on power it doesn't have.
However, the 1000% tax would be constitutional.
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| parent )As snk pointed out, proper reading went out of style a long time ago.
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| parent )Sandy Koufax to be the guest of honor at charity function in late February.
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)... the Haiti earthquake was actually a "blessing in disguise" - full of Christian charity is old Pat, obviously.....
BTW, anybody know WTF the old crackpot is talking about with his babblement about Haiti's "deal with the Devil"? Not, given Haiti's awful long history of awfulness, that it's a completely off-the-wall notion, but I've just never heard this meme before.
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)Perhaps it's that.
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| parent )the revolt was led by vodou religious leaders.
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| parent )It really isn't kind to point out the disabilities of others.
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| parent )...of his appearances on the supposedly "liberal" MSNBC to ours, I wonder?
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| parent ).
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| parent ).
---“It is unwise for the government to tell people how they can spend their money” - Barney Frank, Chairman House Financial Services Committee, on on-line gambling, 2009
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| parent )