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See any dissent on behalf of the Bill of Rights in this photo? |
Top lawmakers in the House and Senate reached a deal to extend the Patriot Act for four years, a week before key provisions were set to expire.
The pieces of the law that allow the federal government to compel businesses to release records, issue roving wiretaps, and monitor so-called “lone wolf” terror suspects were set to run out on May 27. The outline of the deal between Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell still needs to pass both chambers in the next seven days to avoid a lapse in the law…
Extending the Bush-era surveillance law has not been a slam dunk for House GOP leaders this year. In fact, Republicans were unable to muster enough votes to fast-track the bill through the House earlier this year because of objections from lawmakers ranging from libertarian-minded conservatives to liberal Democrats. When a 90-day extension passed earlier this year, Republicans needed Democrats to carry it across the finish line…
Another plus for both parties: the four-year compromise places the vote in 2015 — which is not an election year.
Civil liberties groups reacted with anger to the news of a four-year extension for the controversial law without committee review.
“That is how the Patriot Act first came into being 10 years ago—without meaningful debate,” said the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in a statement issued on Thursday night.
“Today, despite the prior approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee of a bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy to impose some (albeit inadequate) reforms, the congressional leadership is dictating the result of a long overdue policy debate that has never happened.”
I would expect nothing less. Congress hasn’t been so thoroughly-defined by cowardice since the witch-hunt days of Joe McCarthy.
#60 That money belongs to the Government, and therefore tax cuts are GIVING, is your implied premise:
“I challenge anyone to set forth the argument that the Super Rich need more tax cuts while the poor, working, and middle classes need service cuts. Go ahead: make that argument.
You equated giving service with tax cuts, positing both as something that is “given to” either the rich, or middle class.
Tax cuts are not “giving,” they are “taking less.”
Therefore it is morally correct we take less what is NOT our property.
Alfie, I don’t know which is worse: your loopy hate filled religion, or your loopy hate filled libertarianism. How much difference is there really?
Not for you, but for other idiots of similar dogmatic devotion, let’s parse:
#60 That money belongs to the Government, and therefore tax cuts are GIVING, is your implied premise: /// No. The money does not belong to the Government. total fail. My premise is that revenue and expenses must be matched to create a stable but growing jobs environment that best serves society. Anyone that thinks this is achieved by just one side of the equation or the other is a fool. Like you Alfie–a fool.
“I challenge anyone to set forth the argument that the Super Rich need more tax cuts while the poor, working, and middle classes need service cuts. Go ahead: make that argument.
You equated giving service with tax cuts, positing both as something that is “given to” either the rich, or middle class. // No–an appropriate functioning tax/expense budget is required to support a functioning society. Wealth disparity is at an all time high, tax rates at an all time low. The “direction” of needed change is obvious to any honest thinking person==NOT the ramming home of more inequity and deficit spending.
Tax cuts are not “giving,” they are “taking less.” /// I agree.
Therefore it is morally correct we take less what is NOT our property. /// No. Society requires a balanced budget over time. Both Pukes and Dumbos recognize the need/desire to spend on social programs. The Pukes just don’t want to pay for them, the Dumbos don’t either but not as much.
Deal with reality, not dogma.
Oh–and answer the question or take the test.
Why don’t you?
You can recognize you are cutting your own throat but still don’t want to say it expressly? Is it that dogmatic?
#63 Being your dialectic is imprecise, what is moral is dark.
Until the actors in your play are well defined, their actions are obscure.
Its not dogma to realize taxes are taking, not giving.
Its reality.
Because you confuse taxes with charity, what is morally correct is hidden from you.
Better than taxing those who create wealth, like Steve Jobs, rendering it impossible they hire people, and create a product that makes many millionaires, its better they be left free, without your interference, without YOU stopping them from doing what they want to do.
they benefit the middle class and poor far more than the government, which renders people dependent and stupid…and never cures the poverty the program was supposed to address…
hence the war on poverty spent trillions, and there are more poor among us today, than when the Great Society programs began.
total failure, that is why you advocate…slavery, and theft.
nothing about your theories is morally correct…
they are obtuse only.
Crap. Pure Crap.
Do you support turning MediCare into a voucher program or not?
Do you want Soc Security to be privatized?
Do you want Banks to be re-regulated so they are not too big to fail?
Do you want torture reinstituted?
Do you want the government OUT of the bedroom?
Do you want the government telling women they have to give birth once they are pregnant?
Do you want people with barely enough brain material left in their skulls to be kept on life support at the cost of 300K per month?
Do you want estates of 500 Million to go untaxed to the heirs?
Do you want Intelligent Design to be taught on an equal footing with science?
These and so many other issues offer a clear choice between Puke and Dumbo.
They are not the same.
I challenge anyone to set forth the argument that the Super Rich need more tax cuts while the poor, working, and middle classes need service cuts. Go ahead: make that argument.
If not, Wake Up Fools. The Republicans want to Kill America but they can’t do it without your vote.
Vote to save America.
#65-66 You deluge me with talking points or insult my Christianity…then lecture others to think.
Why didn’t you acknowledge my point and then move on…?
Because your arguments are irrational.
The Tea Party wants to roll back socialism, that includes social security…but no one is arguing we do that on the backs of those who use it now, or have been counting on it being there for the last 20 years…
We allow its morally incorrect to change the rules of the game for them…but
Social Security is BROKE now, so is medicare…so is everything.
Its disingenuous to claim these programs have money…when progressives never funded the programs…they spend the money…and we are running on borrowed money, and paying these entitlements, with borrowed money.
Without radical cuts in spending, those collecting social security NOW, won’t be very soon.
We are broke, and are printing money because no one will lend it to us anymore…
We aren’t credit worthy.
So if we follow your advice, the Great Depression will take away everyone’s money, and they will die starving in the street.
We must do something NOW, before its too late.
And destroying wealth creation, the ONLY thing that can save these people from dying in abject poverty, is NOT the way to do it.
It is morally incorrect you kill the chicken that lays the golden egg, because YOU think it gets too much feed.
#66 This isn’t rocket science, everything can be boiled to its common sense parts.
If you make being in business, as hard as climbing a mountain, FEW will do it, and there won’t be rich people to steal money from via taxes.
Its that simple…make being in buisness like walking down hill, and EVERYONE will want to do it, and you will have MANY rich people to tax, and spend to your hearts delight.
BUT if you mug people going down hill, rob their money and not let them enjoy it, they won’t walk down what road…
Then you won’t have rich people to steal from, via taxes…
Its quite elementary…nothing too hard to figure out here…
Alfie: Do you support turning MediCare into a voucher program or not?
#69 We pay doctors with printed money now, the program is broke. Should we allow our financial system to collapse, and all the sick people thrown out onto the street to die…
Or should we fix the socialist monster progressives never funded properly…and spent the money so that we now are bankrupt.
Socialism doesn’t work, the idea you can feast on the work of others, get a free ride on the back of others, does not work…
People don’t work like animals for nothing.
When people pay for their own medical care, they spend LESS, they don’t bankrupt themselves.
when people pay for their own medical care, the doctor patient relationship is correct…doctors try not to bankrupt their patients.
When socialized medicine pays, everyone spends like there is no tomorrow, and bankrupts the system.
So yes, vouchers are a good way to make sure we don’t pay for the medical needs of the rich…they can pay for their own…
But the poor get vouchers.
Does anyone reading/posting here support turning MediCare into a voucher program? A program that by design will very rapidly cause medical care/insurance for the elderly to be unaffordable and therefore unavailable?
How is America in any sense an exceptional nation except it already spends twice what other first world countries do and gets rated in the mid 20′s on the list for outcomes?
And the PUKES want to make it worse–as in so many things, regress to what our nation overcame 50 years ago?
and that is all as you may wish–but it is brain damage to think dying from lack of health care access is the same as being fully covered. Puke vs Dumbo.
There is a difference. Deal with Reality. Animby? you who would never make such a claim? Man up when you wake up. Yes, a very long slumber evidently.
WAKE UP!!!!!!!!! The Pukes are trying to KILL America, but they can’t do it without your vote.
#71 I answered your questions, repeatedly, but you evade the very question you raised.
YOU misunderstand vouchers…and won’t admit it.
Its not rocket science.
When YOU pay for something, you make sure you get your money’s worth, and you don’t buy what isn’t necessary.
when you spend other people’s money, you aren’t that careful.
Socialized medicing makes people think they are getting a free ride, that they are spending someone else’s money.
Doctors also believe its other people’s money, so they order medicine they otherwise wouldn’t if they thought the patient had to pay for it.
So medicare is broke, because its designed that way, to go broke…everyone spends like there is no tomorrow.
Prior to 1932, people weren’t dying in the streets, they paid for their own medical care…
Vouches are for poor people, but designed so they spend it like its their money, carefully, not wasting it on medicine they don’t need.
It isn’t rocket science, its common sense…
Vote Tea Party, its time we send the progressives packing…
I note the PUKE position is to let Alfie represent the deepest convictions (sic) of the party/movement.
Nuff said.
Dear bobbo–my, such vitriol for something that should be obvious to all: the path we are on leads to the very destruction of America that you decry. Very hard difficult changes must be made to avoid this cataclysim. Are the Republicans so wrong to take ANY course at all rather than maintain the status quo?
THAT is something thinking men can think about and debate. The Parties are equal in that respect==both advocates for destruction. Only the TeaParty suggests an alternative, and alternative that as you dourly note is on part with Democratic/Liberal leaning electorates: 40 to 40 you accept as near the truth. The Wisdom of Crowds, not self appointed bell ringers such as yourself.
I agree the Ryan Budget is a disaster====BUT it will provoke change, change that is needed, change that is not coming from the established/ensconced/inbreed/stayed to long current crop of power brokers.
What is it about reality that YOU can’t handle bobbo? What is that Reality???
Silly Hooman. All is hubris.
Think, just think. You should realize the Ryan Horribles while very, very, bad still won’t be as the horribles 5-10 years later if we stay on our path. As you like to say: not good vs evil but a choice between evils.
Pull that lollipop out of your mouth and deal with the reality you say we are all missing. It won’t hurt, that much.
///////////////// Easy Peasy.
Get a room.
#75
Preferably one lined with rubber.
#73 You live in fantasy ville, I in literal ville.
Both Social Security and Medicare are broke…its an accounting ruse to say these are funded until xyz year…
Progressives robbed the funds, they left behind IOUs that are paid, as needed, from the general fund.
The general fund is broke, you may have heard, there is a trillion dollar + deficit…
The Fed is printing fiat money because no one with any common sense will lend us a trillion + a year.
If you owed yourself $5, and told everyone tommorrow you would pay yourself $5 to clear the debt off the books, EVERYONE would laugh at you…
The Government is doing precisely that, why aren’t you laughing?
Why aren’t you applauding the theft of your social security and medicare funds, to give to union workers in government jobs?
Why aren’t you cheering the theft of your social security and medicare funds, to give to freeloaders who refuse to work for a living?
Why aren’t you cheering the theft of your social security and medicare funds to pay for the abortions of promiscuous sluts?
Why aren’t you cheering the theft of your social security and medicate funds to bail out the bankers and wall street tycoons who pal around with Obama everywhere he goes?
No, you aren’t cheering, you are screaming at the Tea Party that is trying to stop the theft, and restore some fiscal sanity before the sick and old are tossed into the streets to die.
Good job…if you win, and the old and sick start dying, look in the mirror, congratulate yourself, you fracking turd.
#75 & 76 & Puke Voters of any other stripe: my my. I would think ANY regular reader of this blog would encourage any interaction with Alfie that brought out the only sane response I have witnessed him make. True, it crumbled and reverted to his well worn irrelevancy on first opportunity–but it was a ray of light. What do you guys have against hope? Against helping those who so obviously need it?
But beyond Alfie, why don’t either one of you man up and answer the question?
Come on PUKES===answer the question. And for those of you who would NOT vote the Ryan Budget Plan how can you still consider voting for the PUKE party 18 months from now for whatever candidate supports the Ryan Budget now and then scurries for the center for the general election? How can you support such perfidy?
And for those of you who would vote to support the Ryan Budget==do you do so in full recognition that the PUKES are about KILLING America in favor of a few rich corporate international types or do you think it is somehow saving………what……WHAT do you think such a vote is saving???
And for all of you ((Animby!) how can you help the Ryan Budget along by mouthing that the two parties “are the same?”
How about a little response on the subject? A little, just a little, serious thinking on the subject. Shouldn’t be that hard.
Go!!!!!!!!
I can remember when there was some semi-serious talk about eliminating the CIA. And then 9-11 happened (or was allowed to happen), which turned that truck around pretty fast. And instead the US added another layer of bureaucracy on top of the existing layer cake of anti-personal-rights-and-freedoms. Not to mention increasing the federal budget to fund it all.
Ya know, in most cases. when businesses merge, they do so to eliminate redundant jobs and cut their labor and other resource expenses. Only the government figures out that increasing inter-agency information and resource sharing, requires an increase of personnel and funding. IOWs, increased redundancy. And increased waste.
What this “Congressional” decisions boils down to is this. They recognize that the Pentagon is really in charge of things. And it doesn’t trust the US citizens in general, not to oppose its rule in some way. So why not use every little excuse, to increase its ability to spy on its own citizens? And they seemed to be more concerned about “anti-war” advocates and peace demonstrators, than actual real terrorists. As if protesting wars, is a gateway “drug” to domestic terrorism. How convenient an interpretation is that?
So one has to think they’re getting ready for when more US citizens being to object to the 100s of billions spent yearly on the military expense, to save the whole damn world from some “evil”. While hardly anyone else has a decent “normal” job, to earn enough to pay the burden of these high taxes. Or the borrowed funds, which taxes what’s left of the US shrinking GDP, thru inflation.
#73 Bobbo, I apologize for calling you a fracking turd…insults don’t advance the discussion and you don’t deserve that…I apologize.
As for Ryan’s budget, its not legislation, its a blueprint open for debate.