Obama: AK-47s are for soldiers!

[cekim]

We should probably continue in PM mode. But to generally answer your questions as to my positions. Affirmative action--no. Two wrongs don't make a right. Taxation to support necessary public functions like police, fire, water, sewer (understanding that some want to privatize these functions an make a profit doing it) is what was written into the Constitution as the power to tax. Redistribution of wealth is an open discussion for me. When the distribution becomes too disparate, you have a situation that a contemporary conservative to the Founding Fathers, England's Sir Edmund Burke, would likely rail against as being ill advised as it leads to social unrest and revolution. Ask any Tsar you meet via seance. Social Security is what I paid into and what I collect from that investment by the SSA. Even Ann Ryand collected it. As to health care, I object to insurance companies making a profit off of illness. Either make health insurers operate as non-profit corporations or set up a single payer system run by a non-profit entity. What kind of entity is open for political discussion.

Your positions don't align well with what the political elite amongst progressives who actually make law are seeking.

Regarding SS there is and could never be an investment in treasuries as treasuries are simply a taxation on future production, not an investment. You paid into a ponzi scheme and now feel entitled to collect from the next batch of suckers.

As to your healthcare comment, farmers make a profit off hunger. Lawyers make a profit off all sorts of human tragedy. Profit is the representation of your production - the most valuable asset you have on this earth. Profit is not good or evil, it is simply a time shifted representation of your labor.

Where profit goes wrong is when progressives try to regulate what they think is the right amount of profit and the connected few use this same regulation to legislate themselves ill gotten gains. It is not the exception. It is the rule. This is why the founders created enumerated powers, to reduce the temptation to fall into this trap.

 

[Baikal49]

Illogical ideology? Did you join this site just to shit on the members who have different beliefs than yours?

Actually, I joined this site because I'm interested in shooting sports. Did you join to engage in intellectual circle jerks with like minded people?

 

[atilla]

Even Ann Ryand collected it.

this was a pretty good article about that: http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2011/10/lying-about-ayn-rand-and-social.html

 

[Baikal49]

So why is he, Bloomberg, Menino, and every democrat politician with a recognizable name calling for more gun control?

This is turning into a "there are five fingers" debate with democrats repeating forcefully that they don't want gun control, but they do want more laws controlling guns?

WTF?

Last I heard, Bloomberg is still a Republican.

 

[NHAtHeart]

No point in trying to discuss anything rational related to politics with someone who claims to be a patriotic progressive. It's an oxymoron at best.

The founding fathers started rolling in their graves when we reverted back to the centralized system of unchecked politics that we fought to get away from in the first place. Yes, I'm sure they are pumped to return to European government influenced by over a thousand years of feudal style rule. The peasant/serf system of "we know what's best" works over there. Not here.

Can you please inform me as to how you can't have a rational conversation with me, since every single point I've made so far holds a fairly decent amount of validity in this conversation. Was it my suggestion to move to Sweden where your thoughts of wallowing in Euro mediocrity are welcomed with a warm loving embrace? Sorry for the hostility, but my fathers business is going to suffer because of your prized king in chief Lord Obama.

Since we're already rolling on the name calling I'll highlight the important part of your post.

 

[SkydiveGuy]

Even Ann Ryand collected it.

Why does every "progressive" I've met always bring this point up? She paid into social security didn't she?

And its "Ayn Rand" BTW.

 

[atilla]

Last I heard, Bloomberg is still a Republican.

as i said in another thread: he's a freedom-hating piece of shit.

romney says he's a republican, so did bush jr. what is your point?

 

[cekim]

Last I heard, Bloomberg is still a Republican.

Funny guy...

 

[atilla]

Funny guy...

let us channel our inner ermey... "what have we got here? a ****ing comedian?!"

 

[atmay]

Look, guys.....you're all missing the most important part. Nothing in this speech will affect broadcasts of Teen Mom or Snooki&JWoww. So what's the problem?

 

[Baikal49]

Your positions don't align well with what the political elite amongst progressives who actually make law are seeking.

Regarding SS there is and could never be an investment in treasuries as treasuries are simply a taxation on future production, not an investment. You paid into a ponzi scheme and now feel entitled to collect from the next batch of suckers.

As to your healthcare comment, farmers make a profit off hunger. Lawyers make a profit off all sorts of human tragedy. Profit is the representation of your production - the most valuable asset you have on this earth. Profit is not good or evil, it is simply a time shifted representation of your labor.

Where profit goes wrong is when progressives try to regulate what they think is the right amount of profit and the connected few use this same regulation to legislate themselves ill gotten gains. It is not the exception. It is the rule. This is why the founders created enumerated powers, to reduce the temptation to fall into this trap.

LOL! Oh, I have my arguments with other progressives all the time. You should see the looks and comments when I tell them I CC. Profit is not bad in and of itself. But unregulated or poorly regulated profit systems lead to socially and, some would argue, morally unacceptable situations. The fact that the for-profit health insurance system has lead to over 40 million Americans having no health insurance at all, is in my opinion, a tragedy and a national disgrace. Lawyers, BTW, do make money off other people's suffering to the extent that they recover for injuries sustained by their clients at the hands of others negligence or intentional malfeasance. The injury is already there and the lawyers fees are regulated by various state laws.

What amount of profit is obscene. Hard to say, but I have to stop and think when I here about stock brokers making bonuses of >$500 million a year. Maybe the Catholic Church in the middle ages had the right idea, money not made by ones own physical labor was forbidden. Making money with money was considered usury, a sin, and one punishable by death. Where would we find room to bury all the bankers and brokers at once?


Social Security is far from a ponzi scheme. We'll just have to disagree on that one.

 

[atilla]

Look, guys.....you're all missing the most important part. Nothing in this speech will affect broadcasts of Teen Mom or Snooki&JWoww. So what's the problem?

you get the lattes, sweetheart. i'll be over in 10 with the bon-bons and we can gush about purses during the commercials, i wouldn't want to miss a single second of the quality entertainment which is teen mom.

Social Security is far from a ponzi scheme. We'll just have to disagree on that one.

 

[Baikal49]

Look, guys.....you're all missing the most important part. Nothing in this speech will affect broadcasts of Teen Mom or Snooki&JWoww. So what's the problem?

Good point.

 

[MichaelJR]

Look, guys.....you're all missing the most important part. Nothing in this speech will affect broadcasts of Teen Mom or Snooki&JWoww. So what's the problem?

 

[Baikal49]

I guess I'm not surprised you're a lawyer, you type an awful lot without actually saying anything. You also think courts are the answer for all the countries constitutional violations, which I guess means you support ObamaCare as constitutional?

Are you disagreeing with the conservative Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court? Constitutional is is, IMO. Is it the best way to set up national health care? Not in my opinion. A single payer national non-profit system would be better, IMO. YVMD.

 

[gene]

We should probably continue in PM mode. But to generally answer your questions as to my positions. Affirmative action--no. Two wrongs don't make a right. Taxation to support necessary public functions like police, fire, water, sewer (understanding that some want to privatize these functions an make a profit doing it) is what was written into the Constitution as the power to tax. Redistribution of wealth is an open discussion for me. When the distribution becomes too disparate, you have a situation that a contemporary conservative to the Founding Fathers, England's Sir Edmund Burke, would likely rail against as being ill advised as it leads to social unrest and revolution. Ask any Tsar you meet via seance. Social Security is what I paid into and what I collect from that investment by the SSA. Even Ann Ryand collected it. As to health care, I object to insurance companies making a profit off of illness. Either make health insurers operate as non-profit corporations or set up a single payer system run by a non-profit entity. What kind of entity is open for political discussion.

Funny, Thats the way I feel about some lawyers and lawsuits

 

[cekim]

What amount of profit is obscene. Hard to say, but I have to stop and think when I here about stock brokers making bonuses of >$500 million a year.

Where you find this obscenity, almost without fail, you find government entities, regulation or policy that actually caused it.

Sometimes it is direct as in the case of the banks where the regulator cooperated with, covered up for and then bailed out their fraud.

Sometimes it is more indirect as is the case with compensation packages that are by in large a consequence of the 401k/Ira system providing excess incentive for mindless donation to wall street funds which don't police behavior such as this. Any disconnect between producer and consumer results in this sort of nonsense which is why obamacare is making a bad, already regulated, disconnected broken system even worse.

Where you find thee situations, you allow always find they started with good intentions and happy promises to the very people then end up harming. See prior comment regarding enumerated powers protecting from this trap of progressivism.

Social Security is far from a ponzi scheme. We'll just have to disagree on that one.

No, you will just continue to be wrong until your payments stop.

Until recently, it was the literal definition of a ponzi scheme. Old "investors" we're paid from the proceeds if new "investors" without any underlying growth instrument available to produce the appreciation required.

Now we are in phase two of the ponzi scheme where the aren't enough new investors and still no underlying grow instrument. Free marksman destroy these scheme normally, but this is a government fraud.

Treasuries pay interest. That interest, along with the priciple is paid from future taxation. There is no investment vehicle here. No means of growth, only time shifting of Taxation.

This system could never work, it was only ever a question of how long people could be fooled into thinking it was anything other than a welfare program. When it was created, it was targeted at a very narrow rang of the most needy, few lived long enough to collect. No almost everyone gets some.

This is not a political interpretation it is a factual one. Treasuries do not invest in anything and return from that thing via future profits. They return only from future taxation.

 

[BOBKATT]

A single payer national non-profit system would be better, IMO. YVMD.

What is so "progressive" about giving tyrants who make a living of lying and deceiving the American public for their own financial and political gain, control of my medical needs? That sounds archaic, to me.

I can't understand why you "progressives" call yourselves progressive. You're big-government socialists who derive your political views from the dark ages. You know what progressive is? It is that a nation would limit its governmental powers in favor of individual freedoms. You, on the other hand, are regressive. There is nothing progressive about you. You all should call yourselves "ironics". Because, that is what you are. It is with complete irony that you believe you are pregressive. What you are not is historians. If you were, you'd see that you aren't very progressive at all.

 

[MichaelJR]

Are you disagreeing with the conservative Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court? Constitutional is is, IMO. Is it the best way to set up national health care? Not in my opinion. A single payer national non-profit system would be better, IMO. YVMD.

I have a question, being that you're a member (former) of the legal system. Do you think that justices being appointed by presidents circumvents the system of checks and balances, and do you believe it should become an elected position as opposed to an appointed and politically motivated position? I understand president appoints, legislative branch confirms, but at what point based on party domination in the legislative branch does it become an instance where the people are no longer represented, and it's politics that comes into play.

I think this is one area of government that needs a close look at policy wise when it comes to appointing of justices. It's becoming a soapbox for ideology that has long reaching ramifications that ripple into the very fabric of our constitution.

 

[Baikal49]

What is so "progressive" about giving tyrants who make a living of lying and deceiving the American public for their own financial and political gain, control of my medical needs? That sounds archaic, to me.

I can't understand why you "progressives" call yourselves progressive. You're big-government socialists who derive your political views from the dark ages. You know what progressive is? It is that a nation would limit its governmental powers in favor of individual freedoms. You, on the other hand, are regressive. There is nothing progressive about you. You all should call yourselves "ironics". Because, that is what you are. It is with complete irony that you believe you are pregressive. What you are not is historians. If you were, you'd see that you aren't very progressive at all.

Thank you for sharing with us today.

 

[cekim]

Single payer just funnels more money into corrupt hands. There are already non-profit healthcare options and there likely would be more we're it not for insurance regulation in particular.

If you believe in non-profit healthcare, then by golly make it happen. Donate your time money or expertise. I already do that.

What you are saying is that with the force and violence of government, people providing healthcare may not sell the fruits of their labor in a free market and consumers may not choose.

This isn't just agreeing to disagree, your ideology imposes your will violently upon me. My ideology leave you free to implement whatever utopia you like so long as it only uses YOUR money and labor.

 

[cekim]

Thank you for sharing with us today.

No, his question gets to the heart of it. Progressive policies end up being easy picking for tyrants and corrupt politicians because they all require a benevolent dictator to implement.

How is that "moving forward"?

We already tried benevolent dictators, they are called monrchs. Turns out, most of them aren't so benevolent.

 

[Baikal49]

I have a question, being that you're a member (former) of the legal system. Do you think that justices being appointed by presidents circumvents the system of checks and balances, and do you believe it should become an elected position as opposed to an appointed and politically motivated position? I understand president appoints, legislative branch confirms, but at what point based on party domination in the legislative branch does it become an instance where the people are no longer represented, and it's politics that comes into play.

I think this is one area of government that needs a close look at policy wise when it comes to appointing of justices. It's becoming a soapbox for ideology that has long reaching ramifications that ripple into the very fabric of our constitution.

US Supreme Court Justices are nominated by the President and are only made sitting justices if the US Senate approves the nomination. That's an example of how the system of checks and balances works.

 

[cekim]

US Supreme Court Justices are nominated by the President and are only made sitting justices if the US Senate approves the nomination.

Moreover the lesson of history in the US in the lower courts is that the only thing worse than appointed judges are elected ones.

Lifetime tenure should go, but appointed for terms long enough to ensure independence is the least of evils.

 

[Baikal49]

No, his question gets to the heart of it. Progressive policies end up being easy picking for tyrants and corrupt politicians because they all require a benevolent dictator to implement.

He is that "moving forward"?

We already tried benevolent dictators, they are called monrchs. Turns out, most of them aren't so benevolent.

Last I observed, our Constitutional system of checks and balances was still in place. President Obama is no more a monarch, or potential monarch, than President Bush the Younger before him.

 

[cekim]

Last I observed, our Constitutional system of checks and balances was still in place. President Obama is no more a monarch, or potential monarch, than President Bush the Younger before him.

That is part of the problem. Bush behaved like a monarch too... And we committed acts of war aginst Lybia without congressional authorization, so that is in dispute.

The dictatorship is created when you create a government agency responsible for something like healthcare.

As I said, the crux of the problem with progressivism is that you impose the violent will of the government on everyone to make them happen. I can't choose government or private care. I have to pay for government care whether I use it, like it or not and in some instances around the world private care has been outlawed all together.

Progressives like to contrast what we have with Obama care as free market and not, this is totally false. Insurance regulation, pre tax deductions, employer bundling, HMO and Medicare already have us in a government system now. It's just as broken as you would predict such a system would be.

 

[Baikal49]

Moreover the lesson of history in the US in the lower courts is that the only thing worse than appointed judges are elected ones.

Lifetime tenure should go, but appointed for terms long enough to ensure independence is the least of evils.

At the Federal level, life-time tenure is ok with me. Those judges, magistrate judges and administrative judges are appointed with consent of the Senate. Elected judges are problematic. They can be more susceptible to pressure from supporters and their friends. Some states have introduced bi-partisan judicial screening committees that help to correct the potential problem, but then sometimes the favor game just gets played out a a different level. There is no easy solution.

 

[atilla]

At the Federal level, life-time tenure is ok with me. Those judges, magistrate judges and administrative judges are appointed with consent of the Senate. Elected judges are problematic. They can be more susceptible to pressure from supporters and their friends. Some states have introduced bi-partisan judicial screening committees that help to correct the potential problem, but then sometimes the favor game just gets played out a a different level. There is no easy solution.

your bleating is deafening.

 

[MichaelJR]

US Supreme Court Justices are nominated by the President and are only made sitting justices if the US Senate approves the nomination. That's an example of how the system of checks and balances works.

I understand, I wrote that, I'm asking you if you believe that it should be reconsidered in its process to be a directly appointed position by legislative branch and citizens, excluding the president. Basically, to put a party dominated senate on the hot seat to adhere to individual votes rather than appease party lines and the president.


Sent from my iPhone in the secret lair of the Supreme ruler of the ozone layer, the Dark Lord Kramdar.

 

[Baikal49]

That is part of the problem. Bush behaved like a monarch too... And we committed acts of war aginst Lybia without congressional authorization, so that is in dispute.

The dictatorship is created when you create a government agency responsible for something like healthcare.

As I said, the crux of the problem with progressivism is that you impose the violent will of the government on everyone to make them happen. I can't choose government or private care. I hav to pay for government care whether I use it, like it or not and in some instances around the world private care has been outlawed all together.

Progressives like to contrast what we have with Obama care as free market and not, this is totally false. Insurance regulation, pre tax deductions, employer bundling, HMO and Medicare already have us in a government system now. It's just as broken as you would predict such a system would be.

I think we have different definitions of dictatorship. BTW, I can't think of any US Presidents who might be accurately labeled progressives other than Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt.

I just got off the phone with a friend in Amarillo, TX who is presently suffering from a kidney stone. She has no medical insurance and will not go to a hospital ER despite the pain. In virtually every other Western industrialized society this would not be an issue. She would simply go to a doctor or hospital and be treated. IMO, we can do better here in the US and that has NOTHING to do with dictatorships, progressives, libertarians, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, socialists (if you can find one other than US Sen. Bernie Sanders of VT) conservatives, evangelicals or whatever. Oops, I left out anarchists, but they wouldn't want any system at all.
You know those anarchists........