2012 President?

[Mr. Heartbreak]

One thing that doesn't really get talked about enough is the fact that most of these large corporations are not strictly "American" companies, even the ones that started out that way. They are large, multinational corporations, and they are essentially responsible only to their shareholders, not to their communities. And, since corporations are people, my friends, they have rights, just like you and me. Actually, they have more rights than you or me.

[IRememberDBoon]

i wonder what libertarians think about things like lets say...........streetlights

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

I probably shouldn't even wade into this, but I'm guessing "big banks" or "central banks" are code for "Zionists."

 

LOL

 

The elders of the protocols of zion.

Jeez. If that's what he's after, I laugh at him, not with him.

[IRememberDBoon]

in the libertarians case it just "jews" the dont distinguish

[Sparky speaks]

This discussion has sure taken on a different tone. If you spent more time trying to think about how we can avoid the shit-storm that is coming to this country than to waste your time trying to break the secret libertarian code book we might eventually agree on something.

 

Here's Abbott and Costello talking in code about the unemployment rate...

 

 

Abbott and Costello Solve the Unemployment Problem

 

COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America.

ABBOTT: Good subject. Terrible times. It’s about 9%.

 

COSTELLO: That many people are out of work?

ABBOTT: No, that’s 16%.

 

COSTELLO: You just said 9%.

ABBOTT: 9% unemployed.

 

COSTELLO: Right: 9% out of work.

ABBOTT: No, that’s 16%.

 

COSTELLO: Okay, so it’s 16% unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, that’s 9%.

 

COSTELLO: WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 9% or 16%?

ABBOTT: 9% are unemployed. 16% are out of work.

 

COSTELLO: If you’re out of work you’re unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, you can’t count the “Out of Work” as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.

 

COSTELLO: But … They’re out of work!

ABBOTT: No, you miss my point.

 

COSTELLO: What point?

ABBOTT: Someone who doesn’t look for work can’t be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn’t be fair.

 

COSTELLO: To whom?

ABBOTT: The unemployed.

 

COSTELLO: But they’re ALL out of work.

ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work… Those who are out of work stopped looking. They gave up. If you give up, you’re no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.

 

COSTELLO: So if you’re off the unemployment rolls, that would count as less unemployment?

ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!

 

COSTELLO: The unemployment goes down just because you don’t look for work?

ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down. That’s how you get to 9%. Otherwise it would be 16%. You don’t want to read about 16% unemployment do ya?

 

COSTELLO: That would be frightening.

ABBOTT: Absolutely.

 

COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you. That means there are two ways to bring down the unemployment number?

ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.

 

COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job?

ABBOTT: Correct.

 

COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job?

ABBOTT: Bingo.

 

COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to just stop looking for work.

ABBOTT: Now you’re thinking like an economist.

 

COSTELLO: I don’t even know what the hell I just said!

 

And now you know why President Obama’s unemployment figures are improving.

 

http://pjmedia.com/t...oyment-problem/

 

iFoodstamps

 

Think Apple is the only thing allowed to hit new records every month? Think again: presenting iFoodstamps - the number of Americans living in poverty (or at least doing a damn good job of fooling the government in pretending they do). As of December, per SNAP this number just hit another record high of 46.5 million, an increase of 384,000 in one month (and ending the trend of declines from October and November), 2.4 million in 2011 (about as many as have dropped out of the Labor force, hmmmm), and 14.3 million since Obama took office.

 

 

Link:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/ifoodstamps

 

Hey, this will solve our problems...

 

http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/how-to-get-food-stamps-welfare/id432452890?mt=11

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

in the libertarians case it just "jews" the dont distinguish

 

Really?

 

Are you for real?

 

Are you playing an idiot or should I just go ahead and put on ignore?

[KevinG]

Ok libertarians out there, give me an historical example where a business has been deregulated and it has worked out better for the American people.

[IRememberDBoon]

crow daddy you must be unawares of the history of the anti fed, bilderderg, world bank, tri lateral wto blah blah blah movement

[Sparky speaks]

This is not a partisan issue. Forget about political party, left, right, conservative, liberal, Obama, Romney, Santorum and all the rest who support and want to maintain the current system. There is only one person running for president who addresses the elephant in the room...

The Fall of the Dollar - The Death of a Fiat Currency

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAZ81lqppn8&feature=related

[Sparky speaks]

Even the left doesn't like Obama because he is viewed as a corporate puppet...

 

[IRememberDBoon]

yeah the left hates president obama.

 

did you come up with that libertarian govt yet?

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

crow daddy you must be unawares of the history of the anti fed, bilderderg, world bank, tri lateral wto blah blah blah movement

 

You are pretty amazing.

[dagwave]

pretty amazing, indeed

 

well said, cdm!!!

[KevinG]

Someone please tell me where libertarian policies and deregulation have been effective and have benefited the American people?

 

It is my contention that government regulation has been more beneficial then governmental non regulation.

 

Here is an example that effected me. In 1996 Clinton passed the Telecom Act. This allowed major consolidation of media by large companies. This decreased competition and gave rise to companies like Clear Channel and Disney to own a majority of TV, Radio, in markets. It also directly lead to the death of my favorite radio station Rev 105. This made realize that the government is beholden to its corporate masters and deregulation leads to the benefit of corporations at the expense of people.

[LouieB]

Someone please tell me where libertarian policies and deregulation have been effective and have benefited the American people?

 

It is my contention that government regulation has been more beneficial then governmental non regulation.

 

Here is an example that effected me. In 1996 Clinton passed the Telecom Act. This allowed major consolidation of media by large companies. This decreased competition and gave rise to companies like Clear Channel and Disney to own a majority of TV, Radio, in markets. It also directly lead to the death of my favorite radio station Rev 105. This made realize that the government is beholden to its corporate masters and deregulation leads to the benefit of corporations at the expense of people.

Clearly you are missing something. If your favorite radio station were any good, it could compete against the giant corporations and do just fine. It's their problem. (tongue firmly in cheek in case you can't figure that out.)

 

Free and unfettered libertarians really don't give a shit that you have to now listen to crappy stations in your area. Start your own if you really care. (More TIC)

 

LouieB

[LouieB]

Interesting article in the NY Times today about Rick Santorum. Of course it is just liberal crap trap, but for those of us who don't care, its pretty mind blowing.

 

LouieB

 

From ‘Nominal Catholic’ to Clarion of Faith

 

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

 

 

GREAT FALLS, Va. — Rick Santorum was, in his own words, a “nominal Catholic” when he met Karen Garver, a neonatal nurse and law student, in 1988. As they made plans to marry and he decided to enter politics, she sent him to her father for advice.

Dr. Kenneth L. Garver was a Pittsburgh pediatrician who specialized in medical genetics. The patriarch of a large Roman Catholic family, he had treated patients considering abortion but was strongly opposed to it.

“We sat across the table and the whole evening we talked about this issue,” Mr. Santorum told an anti-abortion group last October. He left, he said, convinced “that there was only one place to be, from the standpoint of science as well as from the standpoint of faith.”

For Mr. Santorum, a Republican candidate for president, that conversation was an early step on a path into a deeply conservative Catholic culture that has profoundly influenced his life as a husband, father and politician. Over the past two decades, he has undergone a religious transformation that is now spurring a national conversation about faith in the public sphere.

On the campaign trail, he has attacked President Obama for “phony theology,” warned of the “dangers of contraceptives” and rejected John F. Kennedy’s call for strict separation of church and state. His bold expressions of faith could affect his support in this week’s Super Tuesday nominating contests, possibly helping with conservative Christians, especially in the South, but scaring off voters uncomfortable mixing so much religion in politics.

Central to Mr. Santorum’s spiritual life is his wife, whom he calls “the rock which I stand upon.” Before marrying, the couple decided to recommit themselves to their Catholic faith — a turnabout for Karen Santorum, who had been romantically involved with a well-known abortion provider in Pittsburgh and had openly supported abortion rights, according to several people who knew her then.

The Santorums went on to have eight children, including a son who died two hours after birth in 1996 and a daughter, now 3, who has a life-threatening genetic disorder. Unlike Catholics who believe that church doctrine should adapt to changing times and needs, the Santorums believe in a highly traditional Catholicism that adheres fully to what scholars call “the teaching authority” of the pope and his bishops.

“He has a strong sense of that,” said George Weigel, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, where Mr. Santorum had a fellowship after losing his bid for re-election to the Senate in 2006. “He’s the first national figure of some significance who’s on that side of the Catholic conversation.”

The Santorums’ beliefs are reflected in a succession of lifestyle decisions, including eschewing birth control, home schooling their younger children and sending the older boys to a private academy affiliated with Opus Dei, an influential Catholic movement that emphasizes spiritual holiness.

As members of St. Catherine of Siena, a parish here in the wealthy Northern Virginia suburb of Great Falls, the Santorums are immersed in a community where large families are not uncommon and many mothers leave behind careers to dedicate themselves to child-rearing, as Mrs. Santorum has. Mr. Santorum has been on the church roster as a lector, reading Scripture from the pulpit.

The parish is known for its Washington luminaries — Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court is a member — as well as its spiritual ardor. Mass is offered in Latin every Sunday at noon — most parishes have Mass only in English — and each Wednesday parishioners take turns praying nonstop for 24 hours before a consecrated communion wafer, a demanding practice known as Eucharistic adoration.

The Santorum campaign did not respond to interview requests about the couple’s beliefs, and their pastors declined to comment. But friends say Mr. Santorum believes he is in a “moment of testing” and feels “a calling to be faithful,” regardless of whether he wins the nomination. One friend, Frank Schoeneman, sees Mr. Santorum as carrying out a vow he made to live a life that would make Gabriel, the child he lost, proud.

“Rick found himself in his faith, and he found himself in Karen,” said Mr. Schoeneman, who has known Mr. Santorum for more than 20 years. “He isn’t like one of these born-again people where you get hit in the head by some televangelist and you suddenly see the light. It’s been an evolution. He’s always been a Catholic and he’s always been faithful, but he’s never been at this level of faith.”

The Family Fold

Church on Sunday was a way of life in Butler, the western Pennsylvania town where Mr. Santorum grew up. But by the time he met his future wife, sports and politics were at the center of his world. He was working in Pittsburgh at the prestigious Kirkpatrick & Lockhart law firm and recruited Ms. Garver, then a University of Pittsburgh law student, for a summer internship.

Fair-skinned and auburn-haired, she was from a Pittsburgh family of 11 children, some of whom followed their father’s path into medicine. Dr. Garver was well known in Pittsburgh for a practice that included prenatal testing.

But Ms. Garver, those who knew her say, had broken with her family and her Catholic faith over her relationship with Dr. Tom Allen, who founded Pittsburgh’s first abortion clinic. The two became a couple in 1982, when Ms. Garver was a nursing student in her 20s and Dr. Allen was in his 60s. An obstetrician-gynecologist, he had delivered her and knew her father professionally.

In an interview, Dr. Allen, now 92, said that Ms. Garver rented the basement apartment in the building where he lived and worked, and that they soon became romantically involved. (The Philadelphia City Paper reported on the relationship in 2005.)

“He was a pillar of the liberal community in Pittsburgh, well known for his charitable work, for the arts, and also very well known for his wine collection,” said John M. Burkoff, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who knew the couple. While Dr. Allen was a strong personality, Mr. Burkoff said, Ms. Garver “was not in his shadow.”

She joined Dr. Allen in hosting fund-raisers for liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and for his clinic and expressed strong support for abortion rights, said Herbert Greenberg, a concert violinist and friend of Dr. Allen.

Mr. Greenberg’s wife, Mary, a mother of three, sought counseling from Dr. Allen on whether to terminate her fourth pregnancy for health reasons. Mrs. Greenberg said Ms. Garver offered to accompany her for an abortion.

“She said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing,’ ” Mrs. Greenberg recalled, adding that she went alone for the procedure.

Ms. Garver and Dr. Allen spent six years together, but she left him when she met Mr. Santorum. Her relationship with the politically conservative, aspiring politician brought the young woman back into the family fold — and seemed to change her political orientation.

“It’s a total 180,” Mr. Greenberg said. “Her change could not be more extreme.”

God and the Senate

Mr. Santorum often says that before he and Mrs. Santorum married in 1990, they had long talks about the life they wanted to build: a large family and a relationship with God. One former aide likened them to “two halves of a circle coming together.”

Mr. Santorum’s religious beliefs would come to infuse every aspect of his political life — not just his views on social issues like abortion, but also his work to overhaul the welfare system, increase financing to fight AIDS in Africa and promote religious freedom. “He is passionate about all of these issues, which all come from a deep faith,” said Mike DeWine, the Ohio attorney general, who served with Mr. Santorum in the Senate.

But at the outset of his career, Mr. Santorum was not particularly guided by the tenets of the church. A former law school classmate, Charlene Bashore, recalls him saying when he ran for the House of Representatives in 1990 that while he opposed abortion, “he didn’t see himself as a leader in the cause.”

Mr. Santorum was elected to the United States Senate in 1994. He likes to say he found God there.

In the speech to the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation last October, he described himself as having arrived “almost exhausted, just having poured it all out to get where I thought I wanted to go.” Faith, he said, “was sort of a part of me; I went to church, I could check all the boxes, but it wasn’t at the center of my life.”

His more spiritual path, he said, was prompted in part by a hallway encounter with Don Nickles, then a Republican senator from Oklahoma, who urged Mr. Santorum to attend a Bible study with fellow senators. And the Santorums moved to Northern Virginia, where they ultimately found a spiritual home at St. Catherine of Siena.

“We ended up moving into a neighborhood and joining a parish where the priest was just amazing — an absolutely amazing pastor who just energized us and filled us with the Holy Spirit,” Mr. Santorum told the anti-abortion group. “Over the course of that time, I just saw changes in me and changes in Karen.”

The loss of the Santorums’ son Gabriel, in 1996 — just as the senator was leading the fight in Congress to ban the procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion — was devastating for the couple. Mrs. Santorum was nearly 20 weeks pregnant; doctors discovered a fetal anomaly. After a risky operation, she developed an infection and took antibiotics, which the couple knew would result in the birth of a baby who would not survive.

Critics likened it to an abortion, but in a 1997 interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer, Mr. Santorum said that was not the case. Mr. Schoeneman, the couple’s friend, said the death convinced them that “God had a purpose in Gabriel’s life, and they were going to live out that purpose in their lives.” Both Santorums began speaking out more strongly against abortion; Mrs. Santorum became prominent in her own right after publishing a 1998 book, “Letters to Gabriel.”

In the Senate, Mr. Santorum started a prayer group and would go on to help convert a fellow senator, Sam Brownback, now the governor of Kansas, to Catholicism.

After Mr. Santorum’s re-election in 2000, the family traveled to Rome, where they had a private audience with Pope John Paul II.

“He said to the pope, ‘Father, you’re a great man,’ ” Mr. Schoeneman said, recounting the session as Mr. Santorum told it to him. “And the pope turned to him, because Rick at this point had all six children sitting there, and he said, ‘No, you’re a great man.’

“And it was like a message from God,” Mr. Schoeneman said, “that he was living his life in the right way, that his path was correct.”

‘For the Sake of Our Souls’

Mr. Santorum made another trip to Rome in 2002, this time to speak at a centenary celebration of the birth of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei. In a little-noticed interview there with The National Catholic Reporter, he said John F. Kennedy had caused “much harm to America” with his 1960 speech calling for strict separation of church and state.

That remark foreshadowed the candidate’s recent comment — he said the Kennedy speech “makes me throw up” — that set off a controversy and made some Catholics wince. It grew out of Mr. Santorum’s view that libertine culture has put America and American Catholics on a path toward moral decline.

In a 2002 essay, Mr. Santorum wrote that too many Catholics had been exposed to “uninspired, watered-down versions of our faith” and that it was time for more committed Catholics to reclaim religious institutions, like colleges, schools and hospitals, “for the sake of our souls.”

He also blamed liberal culture for the sexual abuse scandal involving Catholic priests. “When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected,” he wrote.

Mr. Santorum has been a supporter of Regnum Christi, the lay wing of a conservative, cultish order of priests known as the Legion of Christ. In 2003, he was the keynote speaker at a Regnum Christi event in Chicago that drew protesters because the group’s charismatic founder, who had spent years denying that he had sexually abused seminarians, was scheduled to share the podium.

The founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, did not show up, but critics faulted Mr. Santorum for agreeing to appear at the group’s forum. “He was certainly lending them legitimacy,” said Jason Berry, a documentary filmmaker and the author of a book about Father Maciel.

Many Catholics take issue with Mr. Santorum’s approach to their faith. Mr. Santorum, polls show, has lost the Catholic vote in every primary contest so far, some by wide margins.

Garry Wills, a cultural historian and professor emeritus at Northwestern University, is among many Catholics whose touchstone is the Second Vatican Council from 1962-65, which opened up Catholicism to the modern era and proclaimed that the church is its people, not just the pope and his bishops.

“Santorum is not a Catholic, but a papist,” Mr. Wills said in an e-mail.

Mr. Santorum’s defenders say there is nothing troubling about his approach to faith and politics. “What he is saying is something very simple: I should not shed my moral beliefs when I walk in the Oval Office,” said Mr. DeWine, who is also Catholic.

To listen to Mr. Santorum speak to an audience of the faithful is to hear a man for whom God is at the center of everything. In his talk to the anti-abortion group last October, as his presidential campaign was just beginning to heat up, he likened himself to his special-needs daughter, Bella — a child capable, he said, of nothing but love.

“I think, ‘That’s me with the Father,’ ” Mr. Santorum said then. “I am profoundly disabled in his eyes. I can do nothing for Him, except love Him.”

 

 

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Great Falls, Va., and Laurie Goodstein from New York.

[Sparky speaks]

Ron Paul Revolution: THE GREAT AWAKENING

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co0WmN_0piw

[lost highway]

This discussion has sure taken on a different tone. If you spent more time trying to think about how we can avoid the shit-storm that is coming to this country than to waste your time trying to break the secret libertarian code book we might eventually agree on something.

 

 

You should respond to some of the serious questions if you thing an agreement can be found. A lot of the things in that 'revolution' propaganda piece I actually agree with. Sparky, you are posting the most on here, but not responding directly to anyone. It makes it look like you don't have an argument. If you are confident about the candidate, the perspective, and the issues you keep pushing on here, then you should entertain some of the questions:

 

What's wrong with raising taxes on a powerful corporation (of the same type targeted in your video)?

 

Why shouldn't the governement regulate to prevent monopolies?

 

If you hate public funding for things, then how do you respond to simple infrasturctural needs such as street light, or pavement?

 

There is potential for invigorating debate here, but it is derailed by a lack of dialogue in favor of monologue.

[Sparky speaks]

Here's some of that change Obama promised...

 

Obama Sets NDAA Detention Guidelines

 

Students of history may recall the year 49 B.C. Early in that momentous year, a popular soldier-statesman crossed the Rubicon River, thus effectively declaring war on the citizens on the Republic whose acclaim had exalted him to the pinnacle of authority and strength. The details of the story are recounted by the historian Suetonius. Suetonius writes that upon approaching the banks of that historic boundary, Julius Caesar stood before his legion of faithful soldiers and uttered the now-famous phrase: alea iacta est ("the die has been cast"). With those three words, Caesar signaled the end of the Roman Republic. The rule of law soon was supplanted by the rule of one ambitious (audacious?) man.

On Thursday, March 1, the die has been cast again as the American Republic entered the post-NDAA era. On March 1, the major provisions of that unconstitutional measure went into legal effect. Then, with another stroke of his pen, President Barack Obama implemented a set of regulations establishing the policies for implementing the immense powers granted him by the National Defense Authorization Act. Thus, he, and we, crossed into uncharted territory.

 

The media have portrayed these directives as a move by President Obama proving the strength and sincerity of his resolve to never deploy the military to detain American citizens without a trial. A closer look reveals that the media blowing of the President’s trumpet is mostly sound and fury, signifying nothing.

 

Nearly two months have passed since the President signed the NDAA into law. On December 31, 2011, with the portentous affixing of his signature to that law passed overwhelming by the Congress, the writ of habeas corpus — a civil right so fundamental to Anglo-American common law history that it predates the Magna Carta — became voidable upon the command of the President of the United States. The Sixth Amendment right to counsel — also revocable at his will.

 

Don't worry, though. The President adamantly denies that he will ever "authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens." That guarantee is all that stands between American citizens and life in prison on arbitrary charges of conspiring to commit or committing acts belligerent to the homeland.

 

The President continued by explaining that to indefinitely detain American citizens without a trial on the charges laid against them "would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation."

 

These promises were made in the signing statement attached by the president to the NDAA. Of course, the NDAA is an expression of power granted by the Constitution to neither the legislative nor the executive branch. The irony is that the document ostensibly guaranteeing the law-abiding use of that authority is itself unconstitutional.

 

In fact, the signing statement in which President Obama recorded these assurances is itself violative of the Constitution, the separation of powers established therein, and serves to demonstrate his proclivity for ignoring constitutional restraints on the exercise of power once those powers have been placed (albeit illegally) at his disposal by a complicit Congress.

 

Despite all of this, the policy directive is being promoted by the media as the etching in stone (promulgation of regulations) of the President’s determination to preserve our liberties and the timeless civil rights that undergird them.

 

The broad strokes of the NDAA are by now well-publicized, but a brief review is appropriate.

 

Most of what is contained in the over 500-page NDAA is in fact “inimical to liberty.” For example, under the provisions of Section 1021 of the NDAA, the President is afforded the absolute power to arrest and detain citizens of the United States without their being informed of any criminal charges, without a trial on the merits of those charges, and without a scintilla of the due process safeguards protected by the Constitution of the United States.

 

Furthermore, Section 1021 gives the President absolute power to arrest and detain citizens of the United States without their being informed of any criminal charges, without a trial on the merits of those charges, and without a scintilla of the due process safeguards protected by the Constitution of the United States.

 

In order to execute this immense power, the NDAA unlawfully grants the President the absolute and unquestionable authority to deploy the armed forces of the United States to apprehend and to indefinitely detain those suspected of threatening the security of the “homeland.” In the language of this legislation, these people are called “covered persons.”

 

Regardless of promises to the contrary, the language of the NDAA places every citizen of the United States within the universe of potential “covered persons.” Any American could one day find himself or herself branded a “belligerent” and thus subject to the complete confiscation of his or her constitutional civil liberties and nearly never-ending incarceration in a military prison.

 

In these new enforcement guidelines, however, the White House insists that the treatment of a “belligerent,” including the decision regarding whether or not to grant the armed forces custody over that person, will be circumspectly monitored so as not to place non-terrorists under the control of the Pentagon.

 

A more discerning reading of the policy, however, reveals that the kid gloves are more likely to be placed over the iron fist of government when the suspect is a foreigner.

 

An article published recently at RT.com explains the situation:

 

The signing could indeed bring a cease to the requirement of military detainment for alleged adversaries of America, a requirement that is authorized under Section 1022 of the act. It does not, however, squash the indefinite detention without trial provision of Section 1021, nor does it negate the fact that the US government has already allowed itself to approve a nasty legislation that denounces the civil liberties of every American and has marred the administration of a president who campaigned on upholding constitutional rights.

 

The President, of course, offers and alternate explanation for not only the NDAA, but for the purpose behind the policies:

 

Tellingly, however, in his comments made at the time of his presenting of the directives, did not seize the opportunity to denounce outright the NDAA and the sections of it that have been called “kidnapping provisions.” Rather, he instructed Americans that:

 

The executive branch must utilize all elements of national power — including military, intelligence, law enforcement, diplomatic, and economic tools — to effectively confront the threat posed by al-Qa'ida and its associated forces, and must retain the flexibility to determine how to apply those tools to the unique facts and circumstances we face in confronting this diverse and evolving threat.

 

Words hardly soothing to those who recognize the danger to freedom posed by the powers concealed under the cover of the grey areas created by so many of the key terms of the NDAA’s most noxious provisions.

 

To facilitate this flexibility, the President wrote that he needed to interpret Sections 1021 and 1022 in a manner most conducive to maintaining the security of the homeland.

 

The chosen method of distinguishing between “covered persons” (that is, those subject to indefinite detention under the custody of the military) and mere criminals is waiver. The NDAA provided for a 60-day window for the President to devise directives for the issuing of those waivers. The regulations were signed by the president on day 59.

 

Under the provisions establishing the rules for awarding these waivers, the Attorney General, in consultation with a cadre of other national security officials, is given the authority to waive the mandates of Sections 1021 and 1022 for “categories of conduct, or for categories of individuals, or on an individual case-by-case basis, when doing so is in the interest of national security.”

 

Even a cursory reading of this policy reveals that the language thereof represents little more than the putting forth of policies to accelerate the process of qualifying a suspect for a bunk on the boat to Guantanamo.

 

Regardless of the myriad alternative analyses of the White House’s regulations, the majority of news outlets will portray the act as a step in the right direction toward de facto evisceration of the most frightening provisions of the NDAA.

 

Others, however, might discover that in spite of the hype, the President’s ability to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens without the recourse of habeas corpus yet abides in the NDAA.

 

http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/11075-obama-sets-ndaa-detention-guidelines

[Sparky speaks]

Your answers are written in the Constitution of the United States...

 

http://constitutionus.com/

 

This is pretty good...

 

[LouieB]

Your answers are written in the Constitution of the United States...

 

http://constitutionus.com/

 

The Constitution is like the Bible. People read into it whatever they want, Loose construction or strict construction or batshit crazy construction.

 

LouieB

[KevinG]

You should respond to some of the serious questions if you thing an agreement can be found.

 

I am fairly sure Sparky is only interested in what he wants to tell, posting Ron Paul propoganda films, anti-Obama rethoric and vaugue platitudes (seriously a respone to direct question is, "Your answers are written in the Constitution of the United States..."), rather then have a thoughtful discussion. I am willing to listen to a resonible arguement of why Ron Paul is a viable canidate with valid ideas, however these one sided "rants" are off putting and truthful hard to follow.

[LouieB]

Even Ron Paul knows he isn't going to win. Ron Paul is a serious non-contender. (Cue the Marlon Brando quote from On the Waterfront.) He is mostly doing it for the entertainment value.

 

Big shock for Obama supporters (like me) - Obama is also supported by corporations and rich people. Wow, NO SHIT??!!??! Obaman can't deliver every promise? Also no big secret - who can? Every politician can promise the moon (which Gingrich did) and won't be able to deliver. Big news - the President of the USA doesn't run the country all by himself. WOWOWOW!!!

 

 

LouieB

[KevinG]

...Big news - the President of the USA doesn't run the country all by himself. WOWOWOW!!!

 

 

LouieB

 

Now you are going to tell me there are 3 separate, but equal branches of the government.

 

I could have sworn all the problems in the country solely rested on the shoulders of the president and he alone has the power to change things.

[bleedorange]

But it was definitely all Bush's fault.