Monday, April 13, 2009

CHECK THIS COLUMN OUT

Not to provoke my right wing commenters, but this op-ed piece in today's NY Times by the recent Nobel winner Paul Krugman kind of captures some of my thoughts about recent rightwing Republican trends.

5 comments:

JIm said...

Krugman’s Fear of Tea Bags is well placed.

Republicans, or more accurately Conservatives, value individual rights over group rights. Conservatives value the power of individuals who band together to work in concert to influence, defeat or negate politicians who wish to limit individual rights which are protected under the Constitution. Statists, socialists and many Democrats have little or no respect for the Founding Documents. Liberal Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, just said US courts should value international courts to the detriment of US law and by extension the US Constitution. There is a bill being sponsored in Congress to make every law passes Congress be consistent with the Tenth Amendment, namely that the government can not assume powers that are not expressly delegated to it in the Constitution. That is certainly an admirable goal which is unlikely to pass a Congress controlled by Democrats since it violates their goal of group and government control over individual rights and endeavors.

Krugman, as a partisan Democrat party member is right to fear and ridicule individuals who band together to change government, since it challenges his and the Democrat’s Socialistic ambitions for America. Individuals acting together have affected great things in America before and hopefully will do so again. Grab your “Tea Bag” and show up on April 15th to support bringing sanity back to government tax and spending policy.

JIm said...

10th Amendment Clarification

The Tenth Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Lally said...

As usual, the rightwingers interpret the Constitution and other founding documents to their benefit. The right leaning Supreme Court believed solidly in states rights over federal rights in every case they considered since Reagan until they came to Gore vs. Bush in the Florida Supreme Court, then all of a sudden states rights weren't meaningful and all that mattered was the federal perspective which was despite the popular vote and the unfinished-being-counted Florida vote, Bush Junior became our president with the rightwing (as Krugman correctly points out in his column) staging a demonstration to stop the Florida recount, i.e. protesting AGAINST an individual state's rights!
Anyway, it's pointless to argue with these ninnies. But if Jim ever says in a comment again that Democrats don't have any respect for the founding documents of our democracy, I'll have to delete the comment because it's not only untrue, it's an insult to all the Democrats who died in defense of what those documents stand for. Oh, and rightwing Republicans who want to legislate what goes on in your bedroom, deny fair trials to citizens they deem unpatriotic or a threat, what a woman can do with her body, etc. etc. etc. are the upholders of individual rights? In what alternate universe may that be? The same one in which rightwingers say they're all for democracy until they lose power in a democratic election and then instead of accepting the will of the majority in that democracy it's attack attack attack the legitimacy of the results of that vote because they lost!

JIm said...

Gore v Bush was an equal protection issue under the 14th amendment. The idea is that the rules should be the same for all voters. Florida’s Supreme Court violated that standard. That is not surprising. Democrats are attempting the same thing again in Minnesota. Ballots were counted under different rules in different precients. Democrats continue to attempt to invalidate write in military votes as they did in Florida. Hopefully it will end up in the Supreme Court with the same outcome.

I do not believe abortion rights are an individual rights question for the woman alone. Few dispute science that there is life at conception. The dispute is whether it is a valuable life with legal protections. The question then becomes whose individual right is more important, the right to abort or kill or the right to, as declared in the Decaration of Independence, life itself. Obama's opposition to the "Infant Born Alive Act" furthers the right to kill a human life to an ultra extreme level.

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“In a per curiam decision, by a 7–2 vote, the Court in Bush v. Gore held that the Florida Supreme Court's method for recounting ballots was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. By a 5–4 vote, the Court held that no alternative method could be established within the time limits set by the State of Florida. Three of the concurring justices also asserted that the Florida Supreme Court had violated Article II, § 1, cl. 2 of the Constitution, by misinterpreting Florida election law that had been enacted by the Florida Legislature.”

JIm said...

Democrats at work protecting the Consttution

“But if Jim ever says in a comment again that Democrats don't have any respect for the founding documents of our democracy, I'll have to delete the comment because it's not only untrue, it's an insult to all the Democrats who died in defense of what those documents stand for. Oh, and rightwing Republicans’ Michael Lally

Here is an example of the Obamasiah’s Homeland Security Dept. at work keeping an eye on those nasty right wingers who disagree with the Democrats who hold the Constitution so dear that they are perfectly willing to suspend those rights for people who disagree with their Socialist, high tax, out of control spending. Who knew I was so dangerous.
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“The assessment states it was "prepared by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch, Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division" and "coordinated with the FBI." It admits that "The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic right wing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence." Nonetheless, it states that "right wing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about ... the economic downturn and the election of the first African-American President ..."