has everyone signed this? [modified]

Mike Gaskey

Tim Craig wrote:

Does that mean you want to live in Stanutopia?

if you're asking whether or not I think the country is headed in the wrong direction, I most certainly do - we have a government that is entirely out of control.

Tim Craig wrote:

Aren't you catholic?

yes and it causes me a high degree of internal conflict. I agree with the theological teachings, but not the social application; I believe it to be socialism.

Tim Craig wrote:

Better watch out.

I duck from time to time.

Mike - typical white guy. The USA does have universal healthcare, but you have to pay for it. D'oh. Thomas Mann - "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.

Stan Shannon

Mike Gaskey wrote:

Stan may be wrong, but only by a degree or so. then again, he may hit the nail on the head[^].

Actually, I'm not wrong at all. Fascism is simply a form of socialism that rejects the class struggle and internationalism of pure Marxism, and instead leaves the institutions of a society intact but coopts them by one means or another into working toward common state defined goals. Most of our institutions have voluntarily become coopted - Hollywood, the press, educational instituions, etc. The health industry is about to fall. Banking and industry are crippled and hardly able to resist. Most churches are also lining up in obedience. That does not leave much that is not fundamentally a working member agency of the central, collectivist state.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

John Carson

Mike Gaskey wrote:

if it worked that way I would agree it is the correct way but I seriously doubt it works that way in practice - it'll come much closer to the way I described it. I have a specific example where two 21 year old kids stuck up (mugged, at gun point) a woman. both were equally guilty, one white and one black. the white kid turned on the black kid and the white kid's father came up with $50,000 for a lawyer and forensic phycologist to make a case for leniency by the court. the black kid had a public defender. The white kid got a year and a half of house arrest, the black kid got 7 years in the state pen. that is not an unusual outcome. I happen to be aware of the circumstance because the white kid is a distant family member.

I don't doubt that discretion often leads to inequities, but 1. Much of that is unavoidable; you can't remove discretion from the police decision on who to arrest, nor from the decision of the district attorney's office on what charges, if any, to bring. Nor can you prevent juries from exercising whatever biases they may possess. 2. Mandatory minimum sentences don't eliminate racial and other biases. They load all the available discretion onto the police and the prosecuting attorneys, whose decisions are less tranparent and open to review than those of the judges. Mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences have led to extraordinarily high incarceration rates for blacks. 3. I think that the best way to combat these inequities is by combating them in the broader society, as well as holding up legal inequities to public exposure, not by eliminating judicial discretion. For what it is worth, my impression from a distance is that the system would be fairer if there was less plea bargaining with prosecuting attorneys and more judicial determination of sentences.

John Carson

Stan Shannon

John Carson wrote:

Well, insanity is a standard defence.

What about a reasonable belief that it was necessary for the protection of the lives of the nation's citizens?

John Carson wrote:

Please cite an instance in which I advocated a specific criminal penalty independently of the merits of the particular case.

That was not my point. My point is that I don't believe a word you are saying. What President Bush did, even if all your claims are true, is orders of magnitude more morally defensible than either what the Japanese did to their prisoners or what we did to them for doing it. It is ridiculous to claim otherwise, and the more this is pushed, the more ludicrous it will be seen to be. Your side is not defending the rule of law, it is defending a philosophy that so narrowly restricts the options a leader has to defend a nation that the need for any such leadership is essentially negated altogether. The most fundamentally sacred law the democratically elected leadership of any society has is to protect the lives of the citizens that put them into power. Any law that is broken in regard to that far more basic one is entirely reasonable and justified. Any one who argues otherwise is either a lunatic or someone attempting to destroy a political opposition with which they disagree regardless of the harm that it might cause.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

Oakman

John Carson wrote: Someone has already got 10 years over Abu Graib Although I damn well know better than to believe that no-one in the commisioned officer ranks knew anything about what was going on, it is clear that the little shits who taunted and tormented prisoners at Abu Graib were not acting under direct orders or with the direction of anyone in command. John Carson wrote: I was referring to those responsible for formulating the policy. Yes, we are in basic agreement, I was just saying you were calculating the odds that someone who deserves to be held responsible will be as more likely than I do.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin

Stan Shannon

Tim Craig wrote:

Does that mean you want to live in Stanutopia?

Yeah, because traditional American society was such an awful place, and all those guys who died defending it were such a bunch of assholes...

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

Mike Gaskey

John Carson wrote:

For what it is worth, my impression from a distance is that the system would be fairer if there was less plea bargaining with prosecuting attorneys and more judicial determination of sentences.

a pretty logical approach, would work well if judges applied the law with no bias.

Mike - typical white guy. The USA does have universal healthcare, but you have to pay for it. D'oh. Thomas Mann - "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.

John Carson

Stan Shannon wrote:

What about a reasonable belief that it was necessary for the protection of the lives of the nation's citizens?

A. It was not reasonable. B. The treaty against torture that was signed by Ronald Reagan, passed by both houses of Congress, and now forms part of US law contains the following provisions:

Article 2 1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction. 2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

I think that would seem to rule out the legal defence that you cite.

Stan Shannon wrote:

What President Bush did, even if all your claims are true, is orders of magnitude more morally defensible than either what the Japanese did to their prisoners or what we did to them for doing it. It is ridiculous to claim otherwise, and the more this is pushed, the more ludicrous it will be seen to be.

Ah, the Nixonian defence. When a President does it, it is legal.

Stan Shannon wrote:

The most fundamentally sacred law the democratically elected leadership of any society has is to protect the lives of the citizens that put them into power. Any law that is broken in regard to that far more basic one is entirely reasonable and justified. Any one who argues otherwise is either a lunatic or someone attempting to destroy a political opposition with which they disagree regardless of the harm that it might cause.

You and Saddam seem to have a similar philosophy.

John Carson

Oakman

Mike Gaskey wrote: a pretty logical approach, would work well if judges applied the law with no bias. Well, they certainly couldn't do any worse than the average jury does now.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin

Tim Craig

Stan Shannon wrote:

because traditional American society was such an awful place

In many ways, it was and is.

Stan Shannon wrote:

all those guys who died defending it were such a bunch of assholes...

Again as has already been pointed out to you, you confuse them with you. You're only a hero in your own mind.

"Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." -- P.J. O'Rourke

I'm a proud denizen of the Real Soapbox[^]
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!!!

Tim Craig

Mike Gaskey wrote:

I happen to be aware of the circumstance because the white kid is a distant family member.

A Gaskey committing a crime and then gaming the system and not accepting responsibility? :wtf:

"Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." -- P.J. O'Rourke

I'm a proud denizen of the Real Soapbox[^]
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!!!

Mike Gaskey

Tim Craig wrote:

A Gaskey committing a crime and then gaming the system and not accepting responsibility?

no, I said distant.

Mike - typical white guy. The USA does have universal healthcare, but you have to pay for it. D'oh. Thomas Mann - "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.

Oakman

Stan Shannon wrote: all those guys who died defending it were such a bunch of assholes... Since, when you were younger (and our nation was at war) you made choices deliberately designed to keep you out of harm's way, one has to assume that you do indeed believe that soldiers who fight and die for their country are assholes - and not nearly as deserving of the fruits of freedom as you are.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin

Stan Shannon

Tim Craig wrote:

In many ways, it was and is.

Tim Craig wrote:

Again as has already been pointed out to you, you confuse them with you. You're only a hero in your own mind.

Never mind me, you are the one saying these guys were dieing to defend an awful place. So, are you suggesting that their deaths were worth while so that your fat, perverted drug addict ass could do whatever you please? When those guys died on Omaha beach, you think they had you in mind, or their moms and dads and their sharia law like view of American culture? Which do you think it was?

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

Stan Shannon

Oakman wrote:

when you were younger (and our nation was at war) you made choices deliberately designed to keep you out of harm's way,

Why do you keep insulting me? What have I ever done to you? I did my duty.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

Oakman

Stan Shannon wrote: Why do you keep insulting me? Truth is never libel or slander.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin

Tim Craig

Stan Shannon wrote:

your fat, perverted drug addict ass

Sorry, I'm not a member of your family.

Stan Shannon wrote:

When those guys died on Omaha beach

Again, you don't bother seeing anyone's point of view other than your own. I'm merely pointed out that your narrow little Stan glasses view of the country isn't and has never been valid. There's a lot more to it than you seem to be capable of comprehending.

"Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." -- P.J. O'Rourke

I'm a proud denizen of the Real Soapbox[^]
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!!!

Stan Shannon

Tim Craig wrote:

Sorry, I'm not a member of your family.

With a name like Craig, don't be too sure.

Tim Craig wrote:

Again, you don't bother seeing anyone's point of view other than your own.

I'm willing to bet I have given far greater consideration to far more points of view than have you.

Tim Craig wrote:

I'm merely pointed out that your narrow little Stan glasses view of the country isn't and has never been valid. There's a lot more to it than you seem to be capable of comprehending.

My analysis of the history of this country is completely valid. The issue is that you are representative of a class of people who have been made to hate your own civilization. Let me ask you this, Tim, were your grandparents christians?

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

OakManTest

Oakman wrote:

I think it depends on what media

Testing functionality with different identity

Oakman

OakManTest wrote: Testing <strike>functionality</strike> with different identity

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin