Lets see, Federal prisons are run by the Administrative branch. Congressmen are members of the Legislative branch. So for Congressmen to be locked up in Federal Prisons is a violation of separation of powers.
I know it is a contentious issue, and I know it will not be 100 per cent effective, but after careful thought and consideration I have made up my mind that I am in favor of some sort of physical wall or fence
OK, I am going to say it. I am fed up with W.
I cannot say enough in favor of his tax policy. It is a crime that earned income is taxed at nearly 50%, but dividends and cap gains at 15% was a master move. The freedom meter moved up more on that legislation than the people voting for it realized.
I am not one of those “the war I supported seems to be going badly so I am abandoning W” people. When we undertook Iraq I fully understood that success was not assured.
Never liked the Bushes. The first Bush was put on the ticket to draw in the big government Rockefeller Republicans to the essentially libertarian Reagan. After Reagan gave him the White House, Bush 1 had to govern his own way, and lose the White House first chance the voters got.
When W started, there were a few stories about how he was more Reagan then Bush 1, and I guess I glommed on to them but if you just listened to the person you would discover who he was.
Now, listening him on illegal immigrants, I’m forced to look in the mirror. He never said much of anything I supported. All talk of liberty and limited government ended with Reagan. I made up the President I supported. The real person is not anything like the one of my self deception.
While civics textbooks might suggest that federal decisions are made in a thoughtful manner with the general welfare in mind, that is not how Washington works in practice. Instead, the government engages in many activities that make average Americans worse off. Resources are redirected to low-value uses, civil liberties are infringed, and federal tentacles are extended into areas properly the responsibility of state governments and the private sector.
This site discusses the ways that the government fails to act in the broad public interest, and it summarizes the evidence from recent news articles
Remember top oil company executives could retire today and live comfortable lives, never looking back.
Our Congress could not run a single oil company. (They could nationalize it and appoint administrators and direct its actions but it would not produce oil products at market rates and run a profit).
I wish Congress would stop with the threats of throwing productive citizens into jail.
THROW THE BASTARDS IN JAIL FOR, WELL… WHAT EXACTLY? From the Washington Post:
In a measure passed overwhelmingly by the House this week, lawmakers proposed penalties for price gouging — to $150 million for wholesalers, $2 million for retailers and two years in jail for either — and ordered the Federal Trade Commission to put a stop to it. The House measure also called for the FTC to define price gouging.So let me get this straight. A new law empowers an agency to levy fines and impose jail sentences for a crime that the agency gets to define after the law is passed?
A Politician who believes in increasing the freedom of his constituents is a living oxymoron.
That’s because politics is pushing people around and increasing the freedom of people is not pushing people around. So the politics of increasing freedom is non-politics. No wonder it is something you can not vote for.
Here’s an idea. I’ll bet the database of which numbers called which other numbers was turned over to the government with no restrictions on use.
So, look up the telephone numbers of people who sell abusive tax shelters, three or four will suffice for the moment. Match up the database for people who called those numbers. Look up the names of the calling party in Google. There should be a few tens of thousands. Schedule those people for audits. You are going to get a yield that you do not believe.
While you are at it, do a grep of the data for people who called Republican fund raisers. Schedule them for audits too. Who needs the war and those racist homophobes anyway?
Wait until Hillery or JFK has that data on their desk. Drop a copy on the floor when “The Daily Kos” is visiting. The Internet has unlimited labor to mine such a database. Lets see if I was called May 1st by a New York Times reporter just search for a call to my number on May 1 and see the calling number, then search for every number that number called. Presto, a list of the calls made by that New York Times reporter.
UPDATE: Apparently the phone companies denied giving the information to the government, so maybe it is another case of the MSM simply willing to report anything that makes President Bush look bad (with the added benefit of making some large enterprises look bad) without looking at the gift too closely.
I once again urge everyone to use as much gas as possible.
Every ounce of gas or therm of natural gas that the good old USA fails to consume will be purchased by another country (perhaps England or France or Poland or Anywhere). No gas will be unpurchased and remain in the ground to the approval of green politicians. The powers of the far east will consume the oil not purchased by us for their own benefit.
Present oil production will be used, the only question is if it will be for our benefit or for the benefit of someone else.
Verizon is one of those created words for large corporations. The “V” and the “Z” make is sound high tech and edgy, like a high performance car. The BMW VZ 330ix.
Verizon is one of the telephone companies that reportedly turned over customer dialing records to the government in cooperation with anti-terror efforts.
I have never owned or run a major telephone company, but I started my own ISP (Internet Service Provider). When I started, telephone lines ran into my basement and connected to computers and routers. I told my customers my policy about customer information.
I would not grant anyone access to any information about my customers unless required by law. Since the business is housed in a residence, no one will enter absent force, without a search warrant. No record will ever leave or be provided to any person unless required by law. Is that not what you would expect from someone you had similar business dealings? Should it not be the default position?
Verizon customers might ask why that standard was not applied to their information. Venizon customers paid the CEO, the executives, the grunt workers and the stockholders of Verizon.
My customers pay for my business and deserve my loyalty and protection of their data.
Probably law enforcement could be more effective if it could search homes at will, open mail, monitor web connections, get a report of the telephone numbers you dial, subject you to lie detector tests, force you to submit to drug tests, employ torture when they judge it is required, all with no showing of probable cause.
If an American has done no proven wrong, and the authorities can offer no evidence of his wrongdoing, just a generalized desire to examine his home, activities, correspondence, travels, the individual should be free from monitoring. This generalized watching the activities of 200 plus million persons is an insult to a free people and adds nothing to their safety. Some day it will be used for political purposes and we will resemble the USSR.
Politicians know the power of such information because they will not give citizens the same information about them. They demand information about citizens in order to “protect” citizens. The dialing data of all members of the House and of all Senators (without showing which individual member made which individual call) will never be shown to you and I; because it is power.
Obviously a powerful politician who went over to the dark side (was somehow subverted) is much more dangerous than a hundred citizens subverted. Therefore the phone dialing records of Congress should be posted on the Internet for the bloggers and various nerds to link up the calls to foreign governments, (the Saud?) hookers, reporters, big business, &etc. Wait, when the government looks into your private affairs, it is special, when you seek to look at their records it is a non-starter.
At Russian Ladies many alien Russian ladies with advanced degrees stand ready to marry you to gain legal residence and citizenship in the USA. Their advanced university degrees are probably honest, I have a relative in Poland so overeducated for the opportunities in Poland and the realistic prospects in the USA that it is painful to see. She could not enter America without security that she would leave after her visit, such as leaving a husband or a child behind.
The prospects for an attractive Russian lady with an advanced degree to enter America:
The Fiancée Visa is referred to as a K-1 visa or I-129 visa. This is the only viable way to bring your fiancée into America. Other means, such as obtaining a travel or visitors visa are nearly impossible. People who have tried having others sponsor their fiancées have also run into problems with the US Embassy holding or denying their visa applications. Possessing a B-1/B-2 visitor visa is, sometimes, a gray area where women have actually been arrested by Immigration and Naturalization officers once they have landed on U.S. soil. Deportation and a restriction can be placed on his/her future Fiancée Visa applications for an extended period, possibly 3-5 years.
I wonder why a person who may be unable to read is just an honest person seeking to work in America and who should be welcomed, yet a Russian lady with an advanced degree in the hard sciences and high heels that set my teeth on edge should be guarded against to the greatest degree. Open the borders to the hot, Russian, educated foxes!
I saw BunkerMulligan.net in my referral log, expired domain vampire no doubt. Does anyone else miss Bunker? I do. Man this life is a load of crap. There is no justice, the good die young, no rhyme or reason for anything, even the most significant events. Then you die.
In my mind I went from young and promising to over the hill in about one year. It was forced upon me. The human condition is tragic, anyone who wants to sell you something to the contrary is a snake oil salesman.
RIP, Bunker, see you soon.
I , among many, wrote that the West lacks cultural confidence.
An Open Letter from America to Islam: Please Come and Kill More of Us. @ AMERICAN DIGEST
DEAR ISLAM,
Yes, it’s true. We thirst for death. We would like you, at your earliest opportunity, to expunge our guilt by slaughtering us wholesale. We have so much while you, the petulant children of a whacked-out god, oppressed by your own ratty cultures and fascist governments and unable to contribute anything to civilization for over 500 years, have so little except your “trauma” that it is only fair that you get to incinerate more of us at will.We have a problem with our self-esteem in this country, and that problem is that you are not killing enough of us quickly enough.
He’s right, we lack more than confidence, we lack self-esteem. You know how boys treat girls who lack self-esteem. You know how girls with no self-esteem act.
In the 1990’s, dot.Com’s often had an (unpublicized) “burn rate.” That was the rate that they were spending other people’s money. Those other people hoped that their invested money, after a sufficient amount of it was burned, would earn them lots more money.
I propose that in the year 2006 we all use “burn rate” to apply to indulgent use of gasoline. A family with three SUV’s or one SUV, a BMW M5 and a Sienna qualifies. We Americans should consume as much petroleum products as we an afford. We have to keep the “burn rate” up there as befits a world power.
The converse would be to not consume as much petrol as we can afford - thus advantaging competing economies such as China or India. Their industry will be more competitive if they can afford more oil, and their countries will be more powerful if they are wealthier and can sell more to the world. Their citizens will be driving the miles that we avoid if we do not buy petrol in the amounts we are able.
I’m trying to do my part. Today I test drove a Corvette with the paddle shifters. It was fun. I like it. Personally I think I can consume ten gallons of premium per week above my current consumption (a four banger albeit turbo) after accepting delivery of the Vette.
Isn’t it obvious? Atlas Shrugged should not be a movie (something experienced in one sitting, no one was ever intended to experience the novel in one sitting). It should be a TV series!
A TV series eats up material and ideas like piranha. Shows such as “The Soprano’s” start dredging the bottom of the plot buckets in a season or two. Atlas is epic, and at the thousand plus pages of material, would fill a season or three perfectly.
People who knew the book would look forward to how this or that scene would be portrayed; people who did not know the book would experience a mystery, how can this all make sense?
No, to a movie. It would be so compressed that Dune would look like a literal transcription of novel to film.