2012 President?

[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.

Yea particularly gas prices. All Obama has to do is wave his hand and gas prices will fall. It has nothing to do with private sector speculation or anything like that.

 

LouieB

[KevinG]

But it was definitely all Bush's fault.

 

Never said it was. People in the country like to blame the president for all of the countries problems. It is a lot easier to blame one guy, rather then the 535 nameless people in congress, or the shadowy governmental body that is the supreme court.

[bleedorange]

I don't think I would call the Supreme Court "shadowy."

[KevinG]

I don't think I would call the Supreme Court "shadowy."

 

ok, don't

[bleedorange]

ok, don't

 

What compels you to use that moniker for it then? Every opinion is written in plain English and made public. It just seems like an odd phrase to use when describing the Supreme Court.

[KevinG]

What compels you to use that moniker for it then? Every opinion is written in plain English and made public. It just seems like an odd phrase to use when describing the Supreme Court.

 

Shadowy adj - mysterious or secretive

 

This is why:

1) I would say the majority of American's don't know what the purpose of the Supreme Court, or what they do

2) ...let alone could name any of them

3) They are appointed for life

4) Their proceedings are not televised or disclosed to the public.

 

I was being more tongue in cheek when I called it "shadowy." Though I believe it is apt.

[bleedorange]

Shadowy adj - mysterious or secretive

 

This is why:

1) I would say the majority of American's don't know what the purpose of the Supreme Court, or what they do

2) ...let alone could name any of them

3) They are appointed for life

4) Their proceedings are not televised or disclosed to the public.

 

I was being more tongue in cheek when I called it "shadowy." Though I believe it is apt.

 

Transcripts of all oral arguments are available to the public. Of course, the majority of Americans don't know a whole lot about any aspect of our government, but that doesn't make the whole thing shadowy. Also, the lifetime appointment is a key aspect of the Supreme Court. It remains a constant and consistent rules-interpreting branch that is not subject to the whims of an elected Congress or President. If it were any other way, we would have a crumbling body of law that would never be worth the paper its printed on. So, it really isn't apt at all.

[KevinG]

Transcripts of all oral arguments are available to the public. Of course, the majority of Americans don't know a whole lot about any aspect of our government, but that doesn't make the whole thing shadowy. Also, the lifetime appointment is a key aspect of the Supreme Court. It remains a constant and consistent rules-interpreting branch that is not subject to the whims of an elected Congress or President. If it were any other way, we would have a crumbling body of law that would never be worth the paper its printed on. So, it really isn't apt at all.

 

Everyone has their opinion. If you want to disagree that is fine.

 

I simply was trying to point out in my original point it is a hell of lot easier to blame the President for the countries ills, rather then a large group of people they don't know (Congress) and a body of government they know little about. But that was derailed because you did not like my tongue and cheek comment about the Supreme Court. I guess you never know what people will fixate on.

[bleedorange]

Everyone has their opinion. If you want to disagree that is fine.

 

I simply was trying to point out in my original point it is a hell of lot easier to blame the President for the countries ills, rather then a large group of people they don't know (Congress) and a body of government they know little about. But that was derailed because you did not like my tongue and cheek comment about the Supreme Court. I guess you never know what people will fixate on.

 

It wasn't derailed. I think everyone got your simple point. I just decided to shift the conversation elsewhere. Then again, if it's both tongue-in-cheek and an apt description, it makes it difficult to argue with since you're trying to have it both ways.

 

Also, I find it odd how you use apostrophes for plural words (American's) and plurals for possessive words (countries ills). Interesting, but probably just another strange fixation.

[ih8music]

The sad thing about today's Supreme Court is that the appointments have become so hyper-political that the impartiality & judgement of the inividual justices is called into question. "Justice X was appointed by a D/R, so we know s/he will vote this way" etc.

 

In the past, some of the most liberal justices were appointed by Republicans & some of the most conservative ones were appointed by Democrats -- that simply will never happen today. So what we have now is a situation where a president's idealogical legacy lives on via their SCOTUS appointments; I don't believe that was ever the intention of the framers of the constitution.

 

It also doesn't help when certain justices give speeches to overtly political groups (e.g., Scalia), or are married to political lobbyists (e.g., Thomas), or served as legal council for a previous administration (e.g. Kagan). How can they be trusted to be impartial when they're also willing to participate in the political forum, even if only by association?

[bleedorange]

...

 

In the past, some of the most liberal justices were appointed by Republicans & some of the most conservative ones were appointed by Democrats -- that simply will never happen today. So what we have now is a situation where a president's idealogical legacy lives on via their SCOTUS appointments; I don't believe that was ever the intention of the framers of the constitution.

 

....

 

Sure it was. Presidents trying to shape the judiciary in their image has been going on since the birth of this country, starting when John Adams made all his eleventh-hour appointments right before Jefferson took office, and Jefferson trying to undo as much as he could (leading to Marbury v. Madison).

[IRememberDBoon]

It wasn't derailed. I think everyone got your simple point. I just decided to shift the conversation elsewhere. Then again, if it's both tongue-in-cheek and an apt description, it makes it difficult to argue with since you're trying to have it both ways.

 

Also, I find it odd how you use apostrophes for plural words (American's) and plurals for possessive words (countries ills). Interesting, but probably just another strange fixation.

 

I find it odd that you would bring up punctuation when people are typing on the internet's

[IRememberDBoon]

The sad thing about today's Supreme Court is that the appointments have become so hyper-political that the impartiality & judgement of the inividual justices is called into question. "Justice X was appointed by a D/R, so we know s/he will vote this way" etc.

 

In the past, some of the most liberal justices were appointed by Republicans & some of the most conservative ones were appointed by Democrats -- that simply will never happen today. So what we have now is a situation where a president's idealogical legacy lives on via their SCOTUS appointments; I don't believe that was ever the intention of the framers of the constitution.

 

It also doesn't help when certain justices give speeches to overtly political groups (e.g., Scalia), or are married to political lobbyists (e.g., Thomas), or served as legal council for a previous administration (e.g. Kagan). How can they be trusted to be impartial when they're also willing to participate in the political forum, even if only by association?

 

 

its still that way. justices have flipped many times in the modern era. things are just fine with the court and i hope it never gets touched.

as far as the crossover political stuff I can tell that DC is a small town. hell i even used to go to Stetsons all the time!

[Mr. Heartbreak]

HUFFPOST PUNDIT

 

 

serialcoma

Friends don't let friends watch Fox

2726 Fans

3 minutes ago ( 8:55 AM)

WOW! Ten losses in ten primaries in one day.... I'll wager the Paulites are convinced that's a sure sign of a victory in November!

[calvino]

Not part of the Presidential beat, but part of 2012 election none the less - I gonna miss his pocket Constitution. Sure he was a bit of a kook, but I shared many of defense views.

"For First Time in 16 Years, Kucinich Loses His Seat"

 

http://www.nytimes.c...ongress.html?hp

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

Not part of the Presidential beat, but part of 2012 election none the less - I gonna miss his pocket Constitution. Sure he was a bit of a kook, but I shared many of defense views.

"For First Time in 16 Years, Kucinich Loses His Seat"

 

http://www.nytimes.c...ongress.html?hp

 

Men of principle are hard to find. Paul and Kucinich are the evidence that the left and the right are fed up.

[Sparky speaks]

It looks like you all are going to get what you wished for, the fourth term of the Bush administration. Heaven help all of us...

[lost highway]

Compare and contrast US economic growth, budget and foreign policy foot print. Era one 1992-2000, era two 2000-2008. To claim that either party is immune to corrosive influence is naive, to claim that there is no difference is lazy.

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

It looks like you all are going to get what you wished for, the fourth term of the Bush administration. Heaven help all of us...

 

Fourth Bush administration...Sixth Clinton Administration.

 

Mee the new boss. Same as the old boss.

[ih8music]

Clinton = Bush = Obama?

 

you guys crack me up.

 

why stop there? or was Bush Sr. our last great, pristine, uncorrupt president?

 

I don't deny that there are certain similarities in some of their policies, but to portray them as equivalents is frankly asinine.

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

Clinton = Bush = Obama?

 

you guys crack me up.

 

why stop there? or was Bush Sr. our last great, pristine, uncorrupt president?

 

I don't deny that there are certain similarities in some of their policies, but to portray them as equivalents is frankly asinine.

 

There aren't any heroes here. We are all being distracted by silly, irrelevant issues. We are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

[lost highway]

There aren't any heroes here. We are all being distracted by silly, irrelevant issues. We are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

Every nation crumbles... eventually. In the mean time, the decisions the people of a democracy make effect the lives of everyone in the country and in the case of a super power like the U.S. other people around the world. From another solar system this is all irrelevant, but for me right now, the level of aggression in our foreign policy and the support for social services is extremely relevant. For this reason I participate in our democracy by having discussions and voting in a manner that I calculate will have the best cost/benefit ratio.

 

I don't mean to lecture, but election season has amplified the conversation significantly. There are a lot of people around me who are yelling quite passionately about how little they care. The irony seems to escape them.

[calvino]

I live here... well, in the re-drawn district that Dennis lost. Marcy Kaptur (DK's opponent) will be facing Joe the Plummer in November for this congressional seat. JOE THE PLUMMER! I didn't realize what his real name was. I think its Wurzelbacher.

 

I didn't realize she will be facing Wurzelbacher - wow.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

Here is an interesting read. Sorry, Sparky, you will not like this one:

 

http://news.yahoo.co...presidency.html

 

Ron Paul's Pointless Internet Presidency

 

Four years ago, the shrewdest presidential candidates used YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and a dash of Twitter. They also tried to gain a strange new psychic edge called—in the contrived conceit of the day—"mindshare in the blogosphere." Apps were nowhere in campaign strategies. The iPhone was new. The iPad didn't exist.

So who e-campaigned best last time? During Super Tuesday week in 2008, Garlik, a British firm that monitors digital reputations, ranked the day's presidential candidates by online popularity. It didn't take Nate Silver or that Zogby person to call the winner. If you hung around social media even a little, you knew the fix was in.

It wasn't Hillary Clinton. Nor Mitt Romney, John McCain or Barack Obama. Blowing them all away—sealing for himself, in fact, the Presidency of the United Cyberstates of Digital America, commander-in-chief of the Information-Wants-To-Be-Free World—was, naturally, Congressman Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul.

Ron Paul, President of the Internet! Hail to the online chief! Four more years!

Ron Paul. Elfin ob-gyn goldbug. Ayn Randian. Foe of war, abortion and government. Texan. Rejector of Medicaid, rejector of Medicare. Climate-change skeptic. Keeper of odd company. Espouser of tendentious views.

In 2012, he's still kicking back in the Online Oval Office. Ron Paul, commanding the mad and visible support of somebody. Sure he doesn't fare so well with actual flesh-and-blood voters of majority age who are motivated to drive gas-burning cars and appear with their laminated IDs at three-dimensional voting booths. But you can't have everything.

Tim Hwang, a researcher of online movements and memes and the managing director of the Web Ecology Project, says that Ron Paul illustrates a fact we often overlook: "The Internet is notcoterminous with the real world." He told me by email, "Like in a rearview mirror communities can be smaller than they appear on the Internet: discussion is often subject to parties who are loudest and can rally the most participants to appear online and participate at that specific moment."

This time around, for Paul, the Internet rally seems to have been sound and fury signifying little.Paul's big hopes for Alaska, Idaho and North Dakota were dashed on Tuesday, and he has yet to score a victory in a single contest in this election.

However, he's still logging mindshare in the blogosphere.

So how does he do it? Paul, for all his flat, engineer-like charisma, hardly seems like a Julian Assange mastermind, able to bend the Internet to his Machiavellian hacker will. Instead, it seems the President of the Internet just got lucky.

"I was on YouTube looking for some sort of guitar video or something," an ardent supporter of Ron Paul told PBS a while back, by way of explaining how he came to his candidate years ago. He had stumbled on a Paul propaganda video: "

." "He was just speaking truth," concluded the guiter-vid-hunter. A Paulian was born.

And then: lots more Paulians were born. Pop pop pop—everyone on the Web was for Ron Paul! Or so it seemed. They all seemed to have those punk RE/ EVOL /UTION stencils and theories about fiat money. And if a blogger in those days dared to criticize Congressman Paul for, say, taking money from card-carrying neo-Nazis or claiming authorship of a newsletter that talked smack about, oh, black people ("I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in [Washington, D.C.] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal") she was roundly creamed by organized commenters.

I know, because this happened to me. I'd give a link to my interrogation of the Paul scene from the waning days of 2007, but it doesn't exist. My editor at the New York Times fully expunged the record after hundreds of Paulians swarmed the site—like bacteria or antibodies—and sowed the comments section with vitriol.

The complete retraction delighted the Paulians. And to their credit, Paulians can bring the bombast. Lew Rockwell, the "anti-state, anti-war, pro-market" blogger wrote ominously at the time: "Those who smear Ron Paul will live to regret it." He went on: "MSM, here are the new rules: no lying, no ridiculing, no suppressing. Remember 'journalistic ethics'? You really have no choice. The Internet rules."

A victory for Ron Paul would be a victory for the Internet, then, and in theory that victory would be a victory for people—anti-statist, libertarian people, the normal kind who have grave doubts about paper money and spooky conceptions of the Federal Reserve Bank.

The grassroots support Paul lavishly enjoys is either illusory—"astroturfing" by a campaign determined to make its marketing initiatives seem organic—or real.

Most observers feel it is real, as far as it goes. Hwang doesn't believe the campaign is funded well enough even to seed all the user-generated Paul propaganda that's out there.

Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham legal scholar who organized Howard Dean's online campaign, has said that where most campaigns make "Stepford" Web sites that aim to control a candidate's brand, as Coke or Apple would, Ron Paul's sites, many of them made by fans and not PR firms, look like places where anyone can belong and contribute.

Paulians, Teachout says, do not endeavor to meet the candidate, which would be costly for the campaign. Instead, they content themselves with meeting one another—online and in live meetups. Thus convened, they figure out clever ways to engineer shows of online force.

Some of Paul's most ardent supporters are sui generis, including Trevor Lyman, an Internet music entrepreneur and Ron Paul superfan. In 2008, Lyman abandoned a lifetime of political apathy to throw in with Paul, whose opposition to the war in Iraq appealed to him.

Though he's now not on the campaign's payroll, and has had very limited contact with the candidate—no tete-a-tete flights in Gulfstreams to discuss pet issues—Lyman is credited with having staged the campaign's biggest fundraising initiatives (many of them Internet-driven "moneybombs"). He also co-owns a for-profit company that flies blimp advertising Ron Paul for President in 2012. Giving money to Lyman's company is one way for donors to do an end-run around the federal contribution limit of $2,500, per election, to a candidate.

Getting around limitations imposed by government or big business is second nature to digital natives like Lyman who are the right age to have grown up getting music and movies from Napster and BitTorrent. Ron Paul's politics are a natural fit with the frontiersman ideology that drives longtime users of the Internet—especially the pure-hearted ones, trained in the 1990s, who can code, develop online projects, create and curate user-generated content and start digital initiatives. They also happen to be the ones who don't expect money for their labors.

For now, they have only one problem as a support base. There are not enough of them. Ron Paul has about 900,000 Facebook likers, almost precisely the number of votes he has received this election, which he is not—you heard it here first—going to win.

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

Bringing ideas and issues to the table for debate is probably more important than getting delegates for a protest candicacy.

However, in this beauty contest that the primary system has devolved into makes serious debate and consideration of issues seem silly and old fashioned.

 

It is looking inevitable that Mr. Obama will get his second term. With the economy still in the crapper and our military neck deep in the quagmire of all quagmires, I was at least expecting a lively race, or an interesting campaign with clear cut choices and debate over the issues at hand.

Guess I am a dreamer.