Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment? - Page 3

That's not a serious legal criticism.

We try to prove the parties' state of mind all the time in law.

It's pervasive.

But no-- you need some outward conduct to prove intent obviously-- some evidence of additional conduct or motivation that elevates the crime to hate crime status. You still have to prove it and a jury still has to find that you did commit those crimes with that motivation and whatnot.

That question is not valid because impeachment is a legal process, not one that judges morals. If it were different, Clinton would have been convicted for having sex with a 21 year old subordinate in the oval office, while married, and then going on TV and on tape and delibrately/knowingly lying about it. But he was impeached for the legal issues behind those activities...

Now:


Got a little case of projection happening there? The fact is that what you consider "wrong" I might support. For example, I fully support the Bush tax cuts. I supported the Iraq war. I supported Afghanistan. I think the US Attorney scandal is trumped up bullshit.
I think we may have to go to war with Iran to stop them from getting the bomb. I think Iraq was a noble effort that has gone wrong, but was not undertaken on lies.

Now let's look at YOUR perception of right and wrong. Let's look at Mr. Clinton's actions:

1. The aforementioned sex scandal.

2. Selling nuclear reactors to NK

3. Treating terrorism as a law enforcement operation only.

4. Selling out national security to China in the name of US Business Interests.

5. Cutting funding for the US military

6. Getting illegal campaign contributions and renting out the Lincoln Bedroom

7. About 17 other sex scandals, possibly a rape.

8. Raising taxes on the middle class. A lot.

9. Blackhawk Down.

10. Waco, TX.



I guess all of that was "not as bad as killing tens of thousands and lying," which is your most likely retort as far as I can see.

I'm against it because it creates people who are more sacred in the eyes of the law than other citizens, when all are supposed to be equal under law. We should punish people differently because they are mean in a way that we find abnormally contemptible? Who gets to decide that? Aren't all victimizing crimes based on some degree of disrespect of other people?

That's a separate issue.

I'm talking only about your characterization of hate crimes as "thought crimes."

I answered all of your points very directly. I disputed the allegation that liberals are displaying over-the-top hate speech, and suggested that "evidence" of this comes from anonymous postings on the internet. I contrasted that with conservative rhetoric that comes not from anonymous internet trolls but the most popular and mainstream conservative pundits recommending the mass murder of Americans. I don't think any liberals, even anonymous internet trolls, have suggested such things.

And I'm not going to let you get away with claiming that it is a misdirection for me to bring up your repeated comparison of liberals to Nazis and concentration camps and the slaughter of 40,000,000 souls while you're trying to make the point that liberal rhetoric is off-the-charts.

The fact that a person holds views outside of the mainstream does not make their crime any more or less serious. If some judge decides that you did something out of "hate" then you are being punished for both the crime, and your way of thinking. It is a way to punish people extra harshly for simply thinking in a socially distasteful way. And the government can decide at any time they want what is and is not socially distasteful or "hateful." We, as a people, have the individual right to believe whatever we want to believe. Adding extreme (by a fluid standard) beliefs into the process of determining punishment is, in essence, making their thoughts a crime as well.

Every time a "protected class" member is killed, we look for hate crime. When it's a non-protected class, we don't. I think killing a person because they are gay should have the same penalty as killing someone because you dislike their tie. Equal action, equal punishment, equal victims.

Folks all we need is a little more of a smoking gun for impeachment. With a year to go there's a good chance it might surface. However that would leave us with Dick!

Even a little while with him might be bad. However impeachment might sober some parties up.

Food for thought.

Nope! It's real.

Get over it.

Ah.

So murder must be a thought crime.

Attempted murder? Thought crime.

Misrepresentation in a contract? Thought crime!

Assault? Thought crime definitely.

See how odd it is when you fail to consider that we take into account the parties' state of mind throughout the law? We must be making their thoughts a crime too.

BRussell, you answered none of the points. You denied people broadly in digg and elsewhere had a twisted feeding frenzy over Falwell's death, and then proceeded in a disorganized attempt to muddy the waters. It's a third-rate response, if it even qualifies as a response and not a deliberate obfuscation. There are broad issues that have been clarified for you again, and again, and again. You wont go near them; you would if you knew how.








(And, once again, you still haven't countenanced the cartoons (perhaps they don't exist as well?), an inaction which adds a notable amount of insincerity to your argument.)

I'm curious, Jubelum, do you support anti-terrorism laws?

You're not paying attention. The goal with hate crime legislation is to punish the extreme beliefs themselves in conjunction with the crime. Legal personal beliefs as aggravating circumstances. "Thinking wrongly" makes "acting wrongly" much, much more dire.

If crime A gets 20 years, and crime A+ "abhorrent belief" gets 50 years, then that leaves one conclusion... that the abhorrent belief itself is punishable. Thinking "wrongly" is a crime.

Definitions, please.

dmz, I've never been to digg, and I don't know what it is, though from the sound of it, it is more anonymous internet troll postings. And I don't know what cartoons you're talking about. Perhaps you could provide a link. In the meantime, I do know that I refuted the examples that I could research (DailyKos and Huff-post), so I'm not exactly impressed by your track record. And I also know that I've seen very specific evidence of over-the-top, hateful language from you, and from mainstream conservative opinion-leaders.

***WHOOSH****

The argument is not that he killed tens of thousands (which some might argue is perfectly acceptable) and lied (which is par for the course).

The argument is that he lied to the American public, which resulted in the death of tens of thousands, and cost taxpayers their money, especially future taxpayers who will have to pay for the unprecedented debt that was also a result of the lying.

See the difference?

And I suppose you support the illegal wiretapping as well. Well of course you do. You've already said that if what Bush has done is proven illegal (i.e. he's proven to have committed a crime -- which is impeachable) he shouldn't be held accountable, because uh... because why again?

You don't know the difference between right and wrong. And I'm not talking about policy.

I'm talking about laws that people like the "Blind Sheik" have been convicted of. I'm talking about sentence enhancement laws that add punishment to people who commit an act such as blowing up a building if they're a part of a terrorist organization. I'm talking about laws that make it illegal to be a member of and transfer funds around in terrorist organizations. Are you in favor of those kinds of laws?

That's just plainly wrong.

I can't think of a single circumstance in the law where we punish people solely for a belief.

Unlike "thought crimes," there's gotta be some action in conjunction with the belief.

Yes it was a dumb list, but I decided to at least check out the first 'high crime' of Bush...

HIGH CRIME: Election staff convicted in recount rig in Ohio 2004 presidential election that gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat

Apparently two (or three) employees of the Cleavland Ohio County department - according to the prosecutor - wanted to avoid weeks and months of extra work in a full scale recount so they picked the 'sample' precencts that would likely give the least flaws in a limited hand recount. The employees claimed that they had always selected the districts to sample in the diverse county, and thought that was okay.

Although they were convicted of serious negligence The prosecutor never claimed it was voter fraud, and accused them of trying to avoid a time-consuming and expensive process.

And as it turned, in a County-Wide recount of the largest County in Ohio gained KERRY 17 votes...LOL...some conspiracy eh? (BTW they never mention the party affiliations of the workers, which usually means they are Democrats...that would be interesting to know).

HELL YES THIS MAKES SENSE, IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT!

BRussell!

read carefully

HuffPo and KOS are political, digg is not. digg is a popular site, with millions of users. The Falwell thread had over 1700 comments. They were bad. Really bad. people were digging posts like "I hope the fucker rots in hell" up by 600 and 700 diggs. The other sites showed comments of exactly the same broad response.


Point #1 --> People are broadly showing creepy vicious hatred, hatred I can't find in recent memory, hatred Saddam Hussien didn't even get when he died.

Point #2 --> This is bad.

Point #3 --> This hatred can be likened to the unfeeling hatred of Nazis (sorry, but we are definitely in the ballpark)

Point #4 --> Where can this level of hatred go? Answer: nowhere good. You raise children on the 'fundies are feces' routine and we have a recipe for trouble. Ostracization, stigmatization, social coercion, etc.

Point #5 --> There is a subtext in all of this (see Ron Moore's podcast on episode 320) that 'once we don't like you, that's it' you get whatever rights we feel like giving you at the moment. Bush as Baltar vis-a-vis a lot of collective guilt over Iraq is not bringing the sane side out of many. Denouncement and getting deleted politically or for real was, sorry, a big feature of those, sorry again, Leftist regimes that butchered 40,000,000. A socially acceptable free-for-all.

Point #6 --> This is bad. The parallels are bad. This will go nowhere good.

...and then for the cartoons:


[CENTER]







[/CENTER]

You're ignoring my post, DMZ. Why?

Again, finding extreme sentiments on something like Digg is no trick, for any ideology or subgroup you care to name.

Do you really want me to go do the spade work and dredge up the internet comment world of kill the fags, drive the liberals into the sea, Hillary the cunt, its time to deal with the niggers once and for all, hang all the Democrats from the highest tree, if it takes a blood bath let's get it over with?

Hell, I can find all that in the comments on You Tube. Once you start digging on blogs like Little Green Footballs, Powerline etc. it gets really ugly.

So what? That teaches us that people will say amazingly vile things under cover of anonymity. Some people seem to get off on expressing "forbidden" sentiments, like calling Obama a nigger, when they feel they can get away with it. You know, like when CBS had to close the comments section on an article on Obama because the racial taunting got so intense.

So a couple of questions: why do you feel compelled to go looking for examples of "liberal" nastiness by combing through Digg comments? Why does vitriol directed at public figures with highly controversial, divisive careers strike you as more "hate filled" or "more of a problem" than equal or greater vitriol directed at whole classes of people? And why are those remarks more telling when they come from anonymous internet posters than when they come from well established, high profile pundits?

You get worried when somebody at Digg thinks Falwell can go to hell, or Bush is an asshole that deserved to be impeached.

I get worried when Coulter, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Beck, Malkin, Hume, etc, etc, think that "liberals" are a disease and a cancer, that being against the war is treason and that being brown, gay, poor or simply not powerful makes you a contemptible loser in the big cage match we call "the economy".

I have a couple of friends who have had there teeth kicked in for being gay, and that's in the terrible bacchanalia that is Northern California. And Jerry Falwell was one of the people that kept that action going.

You know a lot of "Christians" that have been getting knocked around, do you, DMZ? Which one of those scary, hate-filled anonymous posters has been given a national forum within which to advocate for kicking the ass of a few comfortable, self-satisfied "Christians" just to send a message to the rest of them? When was the last time you turned on the television and saw a panel trying to out shout each other in amping up the rhetoric around how Christians and conservatives are putting "ordinary" Americans in danger by undermining the very fabric of our land? Anybody going to show up at a funeral for one of your friends with signs that say "God hates pompous fake Christian assholes?"

You are, in short, totally full of shit with your sorrowful "no good can come of it". We already live in the country where we see what comes of the sort of bullying Jerry Falwell represented. Take the fucking log from your eye.

digg users are among the stupidest people on earth. Really. It's basically a sandbox for spam and astroturfing (*cough*Ron Paul*cough*) and virtually all of the community is too oblivious to notice.

You keep going the astroturfing route with Ron Paul. Links, please. Proof, somewhere? Wishful thinking on a partisan basis? What gives?

I mean, I know that accusation is bullshit, just wondering where you are getting that from?

I guess you missed the FReepers play-by-play the night they executed Saddam? Heck, I think the post rate there hit 1 per second at various times. I found it rather entertaining!


Yes, but who begat the bad to begin with? IMHO, the FAR right!


Predicated by, oh I don't know, but perhaps 1,600 years of hatred by religious fundamentalists! Kinda like these "soulless" people;

The Most Hated Family in America




The left will stop "hating" the haters, when the haters stop hating!


The basic reason for my reply, the SAME five cartoons in the SAME order that I posted in the Falwell "haters" thread.

The odds that you are not specifically referring to my post are 5,100,480:1, which is about as certain as DNA evidence in a crime case!

And since I'm an agnostic, I do find Falwell's life and death rather AMUSING!

Yes, please find all those sentiments on digg for me.


I didn't have to comb, is was the top post in the "World and business category" Nor did I have to 'comb' through the comments.


What whole classes of people are being hated?


Factually incorrect, it helps if you read my posts.


That statement is nothing more, or less, than a anti-religious slur (as well as irresponsible and completely unsupportable.)


I remember high school, yes. Check out http://www.persecution.com


How did Falwell represent bullying?

Links to what? Digg's upcoming stories page? Screenshots of a long series of upcoming Ron Paul stories that show how the early digg pattern exactly mirrors what you see with both user/submitter spam (you'll even get the same user/submitter diggers hitting a series of Ron Paul stories at the same time as they are hitting spam blogs), with the added bonus of a core group Ron Paul-digging accounts mirroring the tactics of certain sectors of digg spamming teams. It's the most obvious when you have the same 30-so accounts digging up a long series of Ron Paul stories in a matter of minutes.

Believe what you want. In this case, there's likely no reason why you'd know about the specific mechanisms of spamming sites like digg unless you have an academic or economic reason to, but at this point the effects of the spamming and astroturfing are so awfully obvious that it's really a testament to popular ignorance that digg users and, in this case, Ron Paul fanatics are unaware of what they are being fed.

One single website is not evidence of astroturfing, giant.

Uh, sure it is. Anyway, digg is just a place where it's relatively easy for regular people to see exactly what's going on. In many areas of online marketing it's more opaque unless you actually have ongoing experience with the meatspace side of it.

I dunno, the experience at digg was a pretty severe case, but there is a general 'fundies are feces' attitude that is pretty ubiquitous. I'd be inclined to say your're right about digg --there are definite strings that you can pull, but even a site like slashdot was no better. And don't get me started on boing boing.

I get the feeling that there is a generation Z coming up that is going to hate fundies, but not really know exactly why.

I really just have to disagree. The criticism of christianists is much more nuanced and specific than you are making it out to be.

Where though? Certainly not on slashdot, digg, or boing boing.

Except there is no proof he lied. "Bush lied" has become Truth by Repitition. We've been through it before, but consider: If Bush lied, Blair lied. Israel lied. France lied. Russia lied. Everyone lied. Every major intel service in the world thought Saddam had WMDs. You can argue that it was a mistake to go in...that Bush was wrong and that the war's aftermath has been bad policy. Those aren't the same as lying.

And as for debt, you're just spouting off some rhetoric. The deficit is shrinking, despite record spending. And as long we have ANY deficit, there will always be "unprecedented" debt.

Now, wiretapping: "Ilegal" is a problematic word in this case. The problem is that FISA was not created for the type of wiretapping we were doing. FISA was created for specific wiretaps, not surveillance of all calls from certain geographic locations. So what the admin did was brief members of Congress and reauthorize the program every x number of days. Even if a court rules the practice "unconstitutional" or "illegal," that doesn't mean it's a criminal offense. What I'm saying is that "criminal" is different than "illegal." It's really no different than when the Supreme Court rules that a President can't do X or Y...it doesn't mean that person is a criminal...and that's the standard for impeachment: Criminality.

Jerry Falwell said that the whole issue of homosexuality contributed to 9/11. IOW, people died in 9/11 at least partially because gays want to be gay, and America accepts gayness as normal. You don't think that saying something like that can easily incite some people on the edge of violence to violence? Hearing words like that on the radio couldn't fire someone up to beat up a gay person?

Let's say I said "The crops died and we went hungry last summer because God doesn't like us living among black people". If millions of people believed me and agreed with me, you don't think that might incite some actual violence against blacks incremental to the current level of violence?

This is simply a practical matter. What Falwell said, even if hypothetically true, could easily lead to violence.

The is a mountain of proof that the administration knowingly distorted and fabricated information. Bush cited a non-existent IAEA report saying "what more proof do you need?", Powell repeatedly citing fictitious incidents supposedly encountered by inspectors, various administration officials taking information from IAEA reports and bastardizing it beyond recognition, etc, etc. Not only could I spend months relaying incident after incident, I already have done so.

That you continue to stick your head [in the sand] about it after all these years is simply disturbing, although it doesn't really matter much.

"Fed?" I have seen the wide-based support first hand in my area. People who just years ago would draw blood on each other at barricaded protests are now sporting the same Ron Paul bumper stickers. He's gaining support from anti-war people, conservatives, libertarians, and even some of the literai that float around these parts. I can tell you that your astroturfing argument, in my personal on-the-ground experience, is utter nonsense, digg or no digg.

In a separate, yet related question... do you have a problem with Ron Paul's stance on the issues?

It's not an argument, it's a fact. Whether you choose to acknowledge it is up to you, but that's ultimately inconsequential.

My opinion of Ron Paul's politics is irrelevant in this discussion. That you and your high school friend Spammy demand expressions of political allegiance from other members demonstrates your inability to look at candidates with any objectivity. It's clear that any criticism of Ron Paul is a threat to the pedestal on which you've placed the Great Saviour of the True Republican Party.

I cannot deny what I have seen with my own eyes. You, too, can believe whatever you want.
Why do you care anyway? Maybe it is because the old-school left fears him just as much as the old-school right.


Bullshit. You keep throwing out one piece of bait after another, and then claim it does not matter.
You want to attack people, and not talk issues like.... lets see... THIS:


You holding court on the issue of objectivity? Ooooo!... Ooooo! <pops some popcorn>

I'm not "demanding allegiance" you silly person. I simply asked you to stop dancing around attacking someone's supporters and actually talk issues. My apology for asking you directly to speak to policy and substance. I asked you a question to find out what your criticisms are, and further a dialog. You obviously have no interest in that. Saying what you mean always gets more people to agree with you than snide allusions to your ill-informed beliefs about others.

If you have no interest, then simply say "I do not consider Ron Paul to be a real candidate" and be gone...no harm, no foul. Don't just throw out a bucket of flame bait and then act all pissy when you get called on some of it.

You refuse to see that Ron Paul is not the True Republican Party. For president, he's run as a libertarian more times than as a Republican. He's pulling voters from all over the spectrum. But hey, why bother you with the facts. Your not seeing how his positions would draw a wide appeal is the stunning lack of objectivity here, BTW.

What have you seen with your own eyes? The stuff that I didn't quote and didn't talk about since it's irrelevant to the fact that his campaign is astroturfing?

In this case, his supporters are the issue.

What's really becoming interesting is your insistence on placing everyone and everything into a frighteningly flawed set of categories. It's not just the low-brow "old-school left" and "old-school right" kind of labeling you are so fond of. That's bad enough, but being unable to interpret criticism of Ron Paul without trying to link it to an "I do not consider Ron Paul to be a real candidate" kind of argument shows that you don't actually consider the specifics of the criticisms being presented. Instead, you group it with totally unrelated criticisms and respond through canned, inapplicable defenses with claims of victimization sprinkled on top.

If you would actually PRESENT A SPECIFIC CRITICISM, we'd be off to the races.

In either case, as iTunes would say:

HELLL YEAH!




He works way too much for way too little
He drinks way too early til way too late
He hasn't had a raise since New Year's Day in '88
Gets trampled on by everyone 'cept when he comes in here

He's a product of the Haggard generation
He's got a redneck side when you get him agitated
He got the gold tooth look for a stiff right hook he's proud he took
For his right wing stand on Vietnam says he lost his brother there

He yells out Johnny Cash and the band starts to play
Ring of Fire and he walks up and stands there by the stage
And says

Hell yea turn it up right on
Hell yea sounds good sing that song
Guitar man play it all night long
Take me back to where the music hit me
life was good and love was easy

She got an MBA and plush corner office
She got a don't mess with me attitude
She'll close the deals he don't reveal she can feel
The loneliness the emptiness 'cept when she comes in here

She's a product of the me generation
She got a rock and roll side when you get her agitated
She got the tattoo there on her derriere form a spring break dare
In Panama when love was all she thought she'd ever need

She yells out to the band know any Bruce Springsteen
Then she jumps up on the bar and she starts to scream

Hell yea turn it up right on
Hell yea sounds good sing that song
Guitar man play it all night long
Take me back to where the music hit me
life was good and love was easy...


The hottest songs from Montgomery Gentry

I couldn't possibly state my criticisms more explicitly, directly and in extreme detail then I already have in this thread and in others. Really, Jube, you are just further proving my last point.