REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Hawaii State Rep has his own way of dealing w/ the homeless problem.

POSTED BY: AURAPTOR
UPDATED: Monday, November 25, 2013 17:36
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Wednesday, November 20, 2013 7:23 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!



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Saturday, November 23, 2013 9:50 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


If you're wondering, he's a Democrat.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Saturday, November 23, 2013 4:08 PM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


I didn't wonder; I knew, and I'm thoroughly disgusted. Was gonna put that one up today, thanks for saving me the trouble. Unmitigated asshole.


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Saturday, November 23, 2013 4:51 PM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
If you're wondering, he's a Democrat.



...and enough of a dick that I might would not mind him losing to decent Republican.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Saturday, November 23, 2013 7:43 PM

ELVISCHRIST


Time to arm the homeless so they can stand their ground?

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Saturday, November 23, 2013 10:04 PM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


I'm with you, Nick...tho' the way things are going these days, I have all but given up hope there ARE any "decent Republicans" out there. But someone like this doesn't deserve to "represent" ANYONE, and I wouldn't mind seeing him taken down at all.


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Saturday, November 23, 2013 10:10 PM

CHRISISALL


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
If you're wondering, he's a Democrat.

Proof that the dark side is non-partisan.

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Saturday, November 23, 2013 10:13 PM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!


Quote:

Originally posted by Niki2:
I'm with you, Nick...tho' the way things are going these days, I have all but given up hope there ARE any "decent Republicans" out there. But someone like this doesn't deserve to "represent" ANYONE, and I wouldn't mind seeing him taken down at all.




I think they are still out there. Look at Chris Christie, while I do not agree with many of his stances I think he is a good person.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 12:44 AM

ELVISCHRIST


I think Chris Christie is TWO good people.

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 1:51 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Takes a real " good person " to be charitable with other people's money.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 10:20 AM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
Takes a real " good person " to be charitable with other people's money.



It's not other people's money, it is the governments. When compared to what some politicians want to send the money on it does take a good person to want to help.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 10:28 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Quote:

Originally posted by m52nickerson:
Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
Takes a real " good person " to be charitable with other people's money.



It's not other people's money, it is the governments. When compared to what some politicians want to send the money on it does take a good person to want to help.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.



No, the govt HAS no money which it doesn't take first, from the people. It isn't "donated ", it's TAKEN, under threat of force and coercsion, by the govt.

You sound a lot like this person...



Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 11:03 AM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
No, the govt HAS no money which it doesn't take first, from the people. It isn't "donated ", it's TAKEN, under threat of force and coercsion, by the govt.



That is how governments run Rappy. They take in taxes and fees, and they do so legally. It part of the social contract. Once they collect that money it is the governments.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 11:23 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Quote:

Originally posted by m52nickerson:
Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
No, the govt HAS no money which it doesn't take first, from the people. It isn't "donated ", it's TAKEN, under threat of force and coercsion, by the govt.



That is how governments run Rappy. They take in taxes and fees, and they do so legally. It part of the social contract. Once they collect that money it is the governments.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.



I'm not disputing that. My POINT is that it's wrong to assume that " The Govt " has all this money, and that it's some how saintly to give that $ away to those IT decides are ' in need ', and then to claim it as being some sort of charitable giving.

There's a pragmatic duty for govt, to provide for the common defense, to see to it that roads and bridges are kept up, etc... but to basically buy votes in exchange of doling out welfare goodies, is simply wrong. While I agree it's a necessity , on occasion, how much is too much ? If your child likes getting candy instead of a healthy meal, and whines when yo don't give it MORE candy, do you just give in, give it candy, so it'll shut the hell up ? I feel that's what most politicians do , and yes, they absolutely do treat the public as 'children'.

Obama "I do think, at a certain point, you've made enough money. " , or 'If I like your plan, you can keep it.'

Please, Barry. It's not up to YOU to decide such things.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 12:37 PM

ELVISCHRIST


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
Quote:

Originally posted by m52nickerson:
Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
No, the govt HAS no money which it doesn't take first, from the people. It isn't "donated ", it's TAKEN, under threat of force and coercsion, by the govt.



That is how governments run Rappy. They take in taxes and fees, and they do so legally. It part of the social contract. Once they collect that money it is the governments.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.



I'm not disputing that. My POINT is that it's wrong to assume that " The Govt " has all this money, and that it's some how saintly to give that $ away to those IT decides are ' in need ', and then to claim it as being some sort of charitable giving.

There's a pragmatic duty for govt, to provide for the common defense, to see to it that roads and bridges are kept up, etc... but to basically buy votes in exchange of doling out welfare goodies, is simply wrong. While I agree it's a necessity , on occasion, how much is too much ? If your child likes getting candy instead of a healthy meal, and whines when yo don't give it MORE candy, do you just give in, give it candy, so it'll shut the hell up ? I feel that's what most politicians do , and yes, they absolutely do treat the public as 'children'.

Obama "I do think, at a certain point, you've made enough money. " , or 'If I like your plan, you can keep it.'

Please, Barry. It's not up to YOU to decide such things.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall





You say "it's not up to you to decide such things" yet you also say "I agree it's a necessity , on occasion..."

So it's not up to "the government" what it spends money on, but you think it's up to you?





Jongsstraw: "Fuck you and the gangbanged skank that didn't abort you."
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=56881

"If you don't know that, you're just a huge fucking idiot."
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=56819&p=2

"Prove you're not an asshole."
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=56761

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 1:21 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Quote:



You say "it's not up to you to decide such things" yet you also say "I agree it's a necessity , on occasion..."

So it's not up to "the government" what it spends money on, but you think it's up to you?



To say that I acknowledge the need for a govt doesn't then mean to suggest that we blindly kowtow to the whims of those " in power ".

The Founders knew govt was necessary, but also knew of the potential for it to grow out of control, and turn tyrannical. As we are witnessing, before our very eyes. Barry isn't the start of this slide into tyranny, I freely admit. He's just accelerating it.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 1:46 PM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
I'm not disputing that. My POINT is that it's wrong to assume that " The Govt " has all this money, and that it's some how saintly to give that $ away to those IT decides are ' in need ', and then to claim it as being some sort of charitable giving.

There's a pragmatic duty for govt, to provide for the common defense, to see to it that roads and bridges are kept up, etc... but to basically buy votes in exchange of doling out welfare goodies, is simply wrong. While I agree it's a necessity , on occasion, how much is too much ? If your child likes getting candy instead of a healthy meal, and whines when yo don't give it MORE candy, do you just give in, give it candy, so it'll shut the hell up ? I feel that's what most politicians do , and yes, they absolutely do treat the public as 'children'.

Obama "I do think, at a certain point, you've made enough money. " , or 'If I like your plan, you can keep it.'

Please, Barry. It's not up to YOU to decide such things.



You seem to forget the "of the people, for the people, by the people". Every time you talk about the government. Politicians like Obama do have the right because they have been put in place by the people to represent them. So while the President does not have the right to decide issues such as how much money is enough, the government of elected representatives does.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 1:57 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!



Governing not willy nilly as they wish, but under the constraints of the US Constitution, and the laws. Barry seems to want to ignore such things when they get in the way of his agenda. FAR more so than any other President in my life time.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 2:10 PM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Rap would have to back those statements up to have any validity in this conversation, and of course he can't, so why bother?

Bush did FAR more than Obama ever dreamed of when it came to doing what he wanted, Constitution notwithstanding. In support of that view, I offer the following from way back in 2007:
Quote:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.

2. Create a gulag

Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.

At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.

But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.

3. Develop a thug caste

When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution

Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order".

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.

In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.

In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. Harass citizens' groups

The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.

Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.

In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.

Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".

"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.

"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."

"That'll do it," the man said.

Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.

James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.

It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off.

7. Target key individuals

Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.

Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.

Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

8. Control the press

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.

Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.

You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason

Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.

Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.

In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors".

And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)

We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR.

Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.

10. Suspend the rule of law

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.

Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment]


I also offer http://www.princeton.edu/~starr/articles/articles06/Starr-BushConstitu
tion-3-06.htm
, as well as http://digitaljournal.com/article/352455, http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&a
mp;source=web&cd=3&ved=0CD0QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fharpers.org%2Fblog%2F2009%2F03%2Fgeorge-w-bushs-disposable-constitution%2F&ei=5k2SUpeUOqGAiAKv5oGwBw&usg=AFQjCNHURyygfar9d2hyv9DPYT67WVAiXg&sig2=fV-uVSR8qWSeMHfNGS-emg&bvm=bv.56988011,d.cGE
and http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/power-surge-constitutiona
l-record-george-w-bush
.


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Sunday, November 24, 2013 2:32 PM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:

Governing not willy nilly as they wish, but under the constraints of the US Constitution, and the laws. Barry seems to want to ignore such things when they get in the way of his agenda. FAR more so than any other President in my life time.



Funny thing is when things are brought before the Supreme Court they seem to say they are within the Constitution, like Obamacare.



I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Sunday, November 24, 2013 3:13 PM

ELVISCHRIST


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:

Governing not willy nilly as they wish, but under the constraints of the US Constitution, and the laws. Barry seems to want to ignore such things when they get in the way of his agenda. FAR more so than any other President in my life time.




Do you have any kind of list or cites that would lend any credibility to that claim? You appear to be saying that this president has had more of his policies declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court than any president in the last, what? 40 years? 30?



Jongsstraw: "Fuck you and the gangbanged skank that didn't abort you."
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=56881

"If you don't know that, you're just a huge fucking idiot."
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=56819&p=2

"Prove you're not an asshole."
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=56761

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Monday, November 25, 2013 12:08 AM

ELVISCHRIST


I take his silence as a no.

Jongsstraw: "Fuck you and the gangbanged skank that didn't abort you."
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=56881

"If you don't know that, you're just a huge fucking idiot."
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=56819&p=2

"Prove you're not an asshole."
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=56761

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Monday, November 25, 2013 12:52 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.



I haven't read this thread b4 now, so I was wondering what the fuss was. What does this guy do? Have people disappeared into the legal system for lengthy times? Threaten them with death? Set homeless camps alight with people in them? What exactly was all the fuss about?

He disables abandoned shopping carts.

Really? REALLY? THAT'S the problem? As actions go this seems pretty tame. I can understand stores having a poblem with it - carts aren't cheap and they might want to retrieve them. And it puts him out of step with the Hawaiian spirit of live and let live. And I can think of better, more humane ways to 'deal' with the homeless if they bother him that much. I question his perspective and understanding.

So, yeah, he's a myopic crank and a small-hearted grinch. I'd say that much about him. But that seems to be as far as it goes.

Little rappy sure seems desperate to find any example of 'democrats are pure evil'.

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Monday, November 25, 2013 6:09 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:

And I can think of better, more humane ways to 'deal' with the homeless if they bother him that much.



Then write to him and offer up some suggestions. I'm sure he'd love the input.

Quote:

I question his perspective and understanding.

So, yeah, he's a myopic crank and a small-hearted grinch. I'd say that much about him. But that seems to be as far as it goes.

Little rappy sure seems desperate to find any example of 'democrats are pure evil'.



To the contrary, I'm just showing the inaccuracies of the promoted 'conventional wisdom' which is so often fed to us by the MSM. Had this guy been a Republican, FAR more would have been made about this story. " Evil, mean, cruel, hard hearted Republicans don't care !! " , or some such.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, November 25, 2013 6:14 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Quote:


I take his silence as a no.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-02/obamacare-birth-control-manda
te-ruled-unconstitutional.html


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57565869/court-obama-appointments-
are-unconstitutional
/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/nlrb-appointments-unconstitut
ional_n_3613034.html




Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, November 25, 2013 12:50 PM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
To the contrary, I'm just showing the inaccuracies of the promoted 'conventional wisdom' which is so often fed to us by the MSM. Had this guy been a Republican, FAR more would have been made about this story. " Evil, mean, cruel, hard hearted Republicans don't care !! " , or some such.



Far more would have been made of it had he been a GOP member not because of the media but because conservatives would be coming out defending his actions.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Monday, November 25, 2013 12:51 PM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
Quote:

Originally posted by ElvisChrist:
Do you have any kind of list or cites that would lend any credibility to that claim? You appear to be saying that this president has had more of his policies declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court than any president in the last, what? 40 years? 30?



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-02/obamacare-birth-control-manda
te-ruled-unconstitutional.html


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57565869/court-obama-appointments-
are-unconstitutional
/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/nlrb-appointments-unconstitut
ional_n_3613034.html



Not really what he was asking for and all cases that have yet to ruled on by the Supreme Court.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Monday, November 25, 2013 1:15 PM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Not to mention the fact that things that are ruled unconstitutional are STOPPED; thing the courts don't take UP, go right on happening (and did), constitutional or not. It comes down to what the courts decide to pursue as opposed to what politics might preclude being dealt with.


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Monday, November 25, 2013 4:52 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Quote:

Originally posted by M52NICKERSON:
Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
To the contrary, I'm just showing the inaccuracies of the promoted 'conventional wisdom' which is so often fed to us by the MSM. Had this guy been a Republican, FAR more would have been made about this story. " Evil, mean, cruel, hard hearted Republicans don't care !! " , or some such.



Far more would have been made of it had he been a GOP member not because of the media but because conservatives would be coming out defending his actions.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.



Again, playing into the false perception about Republicans. In fact, most GOP will run and hide when ever there's any sort of controversy. ( See Trent Lott ) Even when they've done nothing wrong. Dems, on the other hand , revel in their misconduct or law breaking. Be it Charles Rangel, the Kennedys, Anthony Wiener, Bill Clinton...
It's next to impossible to shame a Dimocrat, because their end always justifies the means, and holding onto power is first and foremost their TOP priority.



Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, November 25, 2013 5:06 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


In fact, most GOP will run and hide when ever there's any sort of controversy. ( See Trent Lott ) Even when they've done nothing wrong. Dems, on the other hand , revel in their misconduct or law breaking. Be it Charles Rangel, the Kennedys, Anthony Wiener, Bill Clinton...

or 'War crimes' Dubya? or Rumsfeld? 'Oil tanker' Rice? 'Congressional page' Foley? 'I'm just an innocent john' Vitter? 'Wide stance' Craig? 'I'm hiking' Sanford?

You sure do have a selective momory. And unlike you, I didn't have to dig into the prehistoric past of 55 years ago.


As evidence of "rape mentality"

Tuesday, July 30, 2013 8:11 PM
MAL4PREZ
And just remember, according to Rappy, the term befitting a women who wants the insurance she pays for to cover medications affecting her reproductive organs is

whore

Wednesday, July 31, 2013 4:23 PM
little rappy
The term applies.


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Monday, November 25, 2013 5:07 PM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
Again, playing into the false perception about Republicans. In fact, most GOP will run and hide when ever there's any sort of controversy. ( See Trent Lott ) Even when they've done nothing wrong. Dems, on the other hand , revel in their misconduct or law breaking. Be it Charles Rangel, the Kennedys, Anthony Wiener, Bill Clinton...
It's next to impossible to shame a Dimocrat, because their end always justifies the means, and holding onto power is first and foremost their TOP priority.



Don't recall a lot, if any, Democrates coming out to defend the people you mentioned for what they have done.



I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Monday, November 25, 2013 5:10 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Quote:



or 'War crimes' Dubya? or Rumsfeld? 'Oil tanker' Rice? 'Congressional page' Foley? 'I'm just an innocent john' Vitter? 'Wide stance' Craig? 'I'm hiking' Sanford?

You sure do have a selective momory. And unlike you, I didn't have to dig into the prehistoric past.



Your imagination is running wild.

War Crimes ? Non existent. Oil tanker ? No idea what you're even saying there. Foley ? He left, for merely sending texts, never once touched a page. ( Meanwhile, Democrat openly had a homosexual affair with a page, and still stayed in Congress ) Craig left. Sanford married the woman he had an affair with. Did Clinton marry Monica ? Hell know. He just used her as a humidor. ( blech )

Vitter is the only one who still stuck around.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, November 25, 2013 5:13 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.




His trouble increased dramatically a year ago when Bush — along with former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and several other top Bush administration officials — were convicted of war crimes in absentia by a special war crimes tribunal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal was convened and conducted according to internationally recognized procedures and rules of evidence, and the week-long hearing ended with the five-member panel unanimously delivering guilty verdicts.


As evidence of "rape mentality"

Tuesday, July 30, 2013 8:11 PM
MAL4PREZ
And just remember, according to Rappy, the term befitting a women who wants the insurance she pays for to cover medications affecting her reproductive organs is

whore

Wednesday, July 31, 2013 4:23 PM
little rappy
The term applies.

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Monday, November 25, 2013 5:17 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.





As evidence of "rape mentality"

Tuesday, July 30, 2013 8:11 PM
MAL4PREZ
And just remember, according to Rappy, the term befitting a women who wants the insurance she pays for to cover medications affecting her reproductive organs is

whore

Wednesday, July 31, 2013 4:23 PM
little rappy
The term applies.


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Monday, November 25, 2013 5:21 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Sorry. A photo shopped pic of a oil tanker isn't telling me much of anything.

And kangaroo courts don't amount to a hill of beans.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, November 25, 2013 5:25 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Just google, dear.

Here, I'll make copy and paste easy:

"Condaleeza Rice" "oil tanker"

Bush "war crimes"


As evidence of "rape mentality"

Tuesday, July 30, 2013 8:11 PM
MAL4PREZ
And just remember, according to Rappy, the term befitting a women who wants the insurance she pays for to cover medications affecting her reproductive organs is

whore

Wednesday, July 31, 2013 4:23 PM
little rappy
The term applies.

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Monday, November 25, 2013 5:27 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
Just google, dear.

Here, I'll make copy and paste easy:

"Condaleeza Rice" "oil tanker"

Bush "war crimes"



I know one to be ridiculous on its face, and have never heard of the other. You make your case, or not. I don't care, either way.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, November 25, 2013 5:36 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Just Google, dear. Learn something, for once.


As evidence of "rape mentality"

Tuesday, July 30, 2013 8:11 PM
MAL4PREZ
And just remember, according to Rappy, the term befitting a women who wants the insurance she pays for to cover medications affecting her reproductive organs is

whore

Wednesday, July 31, 2013 4:23 PM
little rappy
The term applies.



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