"How does one support a system characterized largely by credentialed, centralized bureaucratic privilege and unconstrained power, while continuing to always posture as an egalitarian populist on the side of the masses?"1) cognitive dissonance
"Obama is arguing the executive has the power to execute American citizens without a trial, without even so much as an airing of the charges against them, and that it can do so in complete secrecy, with no oversight from any court, and that the families of the executed have no legal recourse.read it all
You can’t even make the weak argument that the executive at least has to claim this power in the course of protecting national security. Because it doesn’t matter. Obama is arguing that he has the right to keep everything about these executions secret—including the reasons they were ordered—merely by uttering the magic phrase “state secrets.”...
If there’s more tyrannical power a president could possibly claim than the power to execute the citizens of his country at his sole discretion, with no oversight, no due process, and no ability for anyone to question the execution even after the fact, I can’t think of it."
The typical mode of academic disagreement on the left... whether the issue at stake is Darwinism, global warming, or whatever... is not to calmly reply to the dissenters with arguments and evidence to show how they are mistaken. It is rather to avoid engaging them with arguments at all and instead to punish them, vilify them, and portray them as scientific lepers. Here's Booker:[N]othing better reveals the hole at the heart of their belief system than the fanaticism with which they turn on anyone who dares question the assumption on which it rests, who must be anathematised with all the venom once turned on heretics by the churches...The left is trying to use science as a Trojan horse for smuggling into the culture a naturalist, materialist worldview that they want hardened into a dogma that will brook no challenge. They are totalitarians of the mind, seeking to impose a tyranny of uniform thought on a society that largely has no idea what's happening. They are contemporary Torquemadas, and the more they succeed the less free all of us will be to say, think, and believe what we wish.
(16 years ago in Washington, Republicans gathered) on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to sign the GOP's vaunted "Contract With America."... an announcer described the fete as "a Republican campaign rally promising a Republican agenda for the next Congress."If I wanted a rerun from the Republican Party, I'd rather see one Reagan than a thousand RINOs...
In 1994, the GOP codified core principles of small government and lower taxes into a ten-point, legislative bill of fare. Republican leaders promised to bring that agenda to the House floor and pass it within 100 days if voters rewarded them with control of the House for the first time in 42 years.
The Contract featured "The Fiscal Responsibility Act," which imposed a Constitutional Amendment requiring a balanced budget . It also included the "Personal Responsibility Act," a euphemism for welfare reform...
...in words that eerily mirror the rhetoric heard today about President Obama. "The present administration wants to take away from the family budget to have more in the federal budget," said Gingrich when discussing tax reform. "It tells you about how out-of-touch they are with the public."
Washington's so freaking broken that the usual platitudes and rhetoric can't and won't suffice.
How about starting with... THE CONSTITUTION?... You could have come to me for the one-page pledge. It would read as follows:The GOP Pledge to America: We pledge that every action we take will be gauged by the answer to a single question: Does it show fidelity to the Constitution, our highest law?It really is just that simple.
We are fighting to prevent the destruction of the American way -- and the remedy is simple. It's been right in front of our faces the whole time.
Somewhere, James Madison and John Adams are looking down on us with expectant gleams in their eyes.
So was it because of Bill Clinton the tradition was started of each president getting a new Oval Office rug?
The left doesn’t have a monopoly on argument styles that immediately turn off large swaths of people.
So while O’Donnell could be a nut, you can’t say she’s too inexperienced to be a Senator. There’s no such thing. For pete’s sake, Obama almost did that job.
For a couple days now, I’ve been trying to think of some pun off of like “hyper-aware” and “Delaware”, but can’t put it together. I’ll try anyway: “The GOP isn’t only aware of conservative anger, it’s DELaware.”
You mean the Nobel Prize he won wasn’t for best of breed?
If he had only been treated like the fool he is all along we could have avoided all of this and saved several trillion dollars to boot.
He thought he could get a little sympathy from his most loyal followers – the unions – and instead gave us a glimpse into the real Obama: an over-praised nincompoop bewildered and enraged that the unwashed masses who elected him are daring to turn against him.
What goes around, comes around, Barry. You trash-talk Tea Party Patriots, Republicans, Fox News, Cops, etc. etc. When they bite back, you start squealing like a little stuck pig. Suck it up, El Presidente, you deserve it.
The fact of the matter is Obama has been treated with kid gloves compared to Bush, and Sarah Palin has been roasted compared to Obama.
It's the first time the Yankees have been swept in a three-game series this season.
The Rangers swept the Yankees at home for the first time since 1996, which was also the year Texas made the playoffs for the first time. The Rangers upped their lead to eight games in the American League West...
I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting.read both parts
"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," he said.
This struck me as the mother of all Emily Litella moments. Did the leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, "Never mind"?
I asked Julia to interpret this stunning statement for me. She said, "He wasn't rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under 'the Cuban model' the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country."
Paramilitary troops patrolled the streets of a town in eastern Pakistan yesterday after Muslim radicals burnt to death eight members of a Christian family, raising fears of violence spreading to other areas.(emphases mine)
Hundreds of armed supporters of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Islamic militant group, set alight dozens of Christian homes in Gojra town at the weekend after allegations that a copy of the Koran had been defiled.
The mob opened fire indiscriminately, threw petrol bombs and looted houses as thousands of frightened Christians ran for safety. “They were shouting anti-Christian slogans and attacked our houses,” Rafiq Masih, a resident of the predominantly Christian colony, said. Residents said that police stood aside while the mob went on the rampage. “We kept begging for protection, but police did not take action,” Mr Masih said.
Police and local officials said that at least eight people, including four women and a child, were killed in the fires. Two others died of gunshot wounds. Residents said that the casualties were much higher; one claimed that the number of dead could be in the dozens as many bodies were still buried under the rubble.
Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, said that 40 Christian homes were torched in rioting. He said there was no truth to allegations that a Koran had been defiled, and accused the police of ignoring his appeal to provide protection to Christians...
Christians also face intimidation because of discriminatory blasphemy laws, including one that carries the death penalty for defiling the Koran and images of the Prophet Muhammad. The law is often misused to settle personal scores.
