Question: Are some Men’s Rights Redditors simply incapable of being right about anything? Take this quote I ran across today from the eminent MrStinkybutt, who thinks he has the whole Herman Cain sexual harassment thing figured out.
I’m not sure what I like better, the loopy conspiracy theory or the idea that Ron Paul is a “serious candidate.”
theoretically you could create a regulatory body for food with enough power to implement rules to decrease sugar contents in food and other such things that would reduce the incidence of diabetes. the fda just doesnt have that much power.
owlslave, the logical conclusion of your argument is that we should make the fda bigger.
as an addendum to dkm- the idea that constitutional fluency should be near the top of anyones list of presidential qualities is absurd. do you understand how little of the president’s job involves constitutional interpretation?
I read an interesting living constitution argument about property rights today…from the early 1800s. XD The more things change the more they stay the same…
I would suggest that anyone who wants to think about this issue take a quick glance at international and historical life expectancies and healthcare systems. People actually have seen dramatic improvements in things like life expectancy and infant mortality rates since the advent of medicaid in the US. We have not seen quite the same gains as countries with better systems, but there have been quite a few games. There has also been progress in treating cancer and diabetes. People with severe diabetes often live long and full lives these days, that would have been unheard of 100 years ago. Sometimes, treatment is more expensive than allowing your citizens to quickly suffer and die, short term, but it wastes resources to raise new citizens and, you know, the whole human toll of horrible suffering and death.
Sharculese: I’d like a president who had some solid sense of what his limits really are.
I had higher hopes for Obama, but when he, in effect, ratified the indefinite detention policies, as well as Bush’s approval of torture, well I knew he’d be co-opted by either the principle of, “leeway”, or been scared by the more reactionary elements of the intelligence community (primarily the CIA/National Security apparatchicki.
But trying to reverse 225 years, (more or less) of caselaw, not gonna happen.
I’d like to see the dicta from Union Pacific v Cty. of Santa Clara removed from the odd standing it’s acquired as a controlling ruling, but not with this court; and not so long as Souter is what passes for an acceptable “liberal” to the senate.
*games should be gains
I’d like a president who had some solid sense of what his limits really are.
im pretty rigid about the separation between policy/ethics and constitutionality. i disagree pretty strongly with the course obama has taken and with the obama administrations interpretation of the presidents national security power (and to think i used to want harold koh on the supreme court) but not so strongly that i think his interpretation is unacceptable.
I’d like to see the dicta from Union Pacific v Cty. of Santa Clara removed from the odd standing it’s acquired as a controlling ruling,
a SCOTUS that didnt cite dicta as precedent would be awesome in the same way a SCOTUS that didnt quote the random house dictionary would be awesome, but i don’t believe in miracles
not so long as Souter is what passes for an acceptable “liberal” to the senate.
in all fairness souter passed the senate as a conservative and only afterwards revealed that he actually had a soul. sure he wasn’t stevens or brennan, but who is? he cried after bush v. gore, man. doesn’t that count for something?
@darksidecat
I read an interesting living constitution argument about property rights today…from the early 1800s.
i would like to know more.
Sharculese: My point, re Souter, is that any nominee who is as “liberal” as Souter is almost completely beyond the possibility of confirmation.
ohhhh. well ya, that makes sense.
OWLslave does make a good point; back when little babies died of tainted milk and starvation (or starvation thanks to their diabetes) there were that many fewer people growing old enough to get cancer…
NWO needs to specify if he means incidence or prevalence of cancer etc.
Whenever Ron Paul starts up his roadshow and decides to mount a publicity campaign for president, every libertarian on earth suddenly hears how we need! NEED! to support him! At least it will get libertarianism some attention! Forget your beliefs on choice or immigration or constitutionalism or… You know, electoral politics themselves! You gotta get on board! COME ON! That desperate for any kind of attention, that’s us, I suppose. Sigh.
Meller – Stephan Molyneu makes a great case here for the failure Ron Paul would be as a libertarian president, and the damage he would do to our movement should he try to enact his policies, or should he fail to enact them.
OOOH! NWO! All your spitting at big daddy means you’re finally ready to have a nice libertarian chat with me about what you do, in fact, believe about the state, right? I’m waiting!
How food and drug safety would be provided for in a libertarian or other anarchist society is a very complex and important question. Personally, I believe that both profit and non-profit research and safety organizations, a mix of cooperative watchdog groups, local public safety boards, insurers, and organizations similar to the Underwriters Laboaratories for electrical devices could efficiently take the place of government regulation in a stateless society…
Which is different from “leave everything pretty much the way it is now and can the regulation, the poor businessmen need all the help they can get, NWO…”
Tell me I’m wrong! Tell me what you think we should do! Gimme a hint! Just a little HINT!
zhinxy: I’ve been following Paul since 1976. I’ve been looking at the practical aspects of libertarianism, and the impractical nature of it’s attempted implementations, since the mid-’80s.
I don’t think, honestly, Paul is libertarians real problem. The problem is that Paul isn’t really outside the mainstream of politically active libertarians.
Pecunium: “The problem is that Paul isn’t really outside the mainstream of politically active libertarians”. –
Depending on how you define “politically active,” I actually agree completely. :p
I think my favorite jackassery from Ron Paul is when he claimed we need to deal with pirates ‘like the founding fathers dealt with pirates’.
“A solution involving state power when it’s not abortion? Why, that’s unusual, Mr. Paul”, I thought to myself.
It turns out he meant Letters of Motherfucking Marque. I’m not clear whether those were ever actually issued by the USA (Perhaps he meant the British?), but I do know that when the US finally moved against the Barbary Coast pirates, they did so with the fucking military! And that this was actually the driver behind them surrendering! How in the name of truth and beauty does anyone derive “Letters of Marque” from this?
I don’t believe these letters were never issued by the USA. They came from the European kingdoms (England, France, Spain,…) The owner of the letter, the corsair, had a right to attack ships from specific nationality, under certain rules. In many they were way closer to soldiers than to Jack Sparrow or today’s pirates.
From what I know, the way the founding father dealt with pirates was by, literally, dealing with them. As in, buying their merchandise, to avoid taxes.
By making it an explicitly delegated power of congress under the constitution? Actually, that isn’t too terrible of an idea XD
Congress has the power “To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the High Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations” (article 1, section 8, clause 10)
Yep, pirates are explicitly mentioned in the US Constitution. You deal with pirates how the Congress tells you to! XD
I’m pretty sure that the 13 colonies’ establishment came primarily after the end of the age of piracy, and that you’re thinking of the colonial era smugglers.
Barbary coast pirates were wrecking trade ships for quite some time. The US didn’t really destroy them so much as beat them up until they stopped attacking US trade ships. If you remember that, um, I think it’s the army’s marching theme, it’s the reference to “…to the shores of Tripoli”. So the US really did deal wth some pirates, it’s just… not really the way Mr. Paul would appear to like. And really, letters of marque weren’t how *anyone* dealt with pirates, it was how they created them (privateers, anyway).
But then, the dude pushes the Gold Standard, he’s not really operating off of reality. Maybe he comes from Earth 662.
Rutee: It turns out he meant Letters of Motherfucking Marque. I’m not clear whether those were ever actually issued by the USA
They were, but rarely, and not later than 1815.
Kyrie: Letter of Marque and Reprisal, allowed a privateer (not the same as a corsair, but the differences are perhaps subtle. The period of the corsairs/realm of the corsairs was limited, pretty much to the Caribbean, and from about 1650-1750), to take, plunder, and burn, the ships of nationalities with which a nation was at war.
It was a commission, from a state, to perform specific acts, against non-neutral ships.
If they attacked a neutral ship they were possessed of a limited privilege, so long as they didn’t then plunder it. To take a neutral power’s ship was to become a pirate, as it completely voided the Letter of Marque (it’s arguably what happened to Captain Kidd. He had a valid Letter of Marque, but he took ships which were not neutrals. He argued, at his trial for piracy, that he had no way to know the ships weren’t the bottoms of belligerents , but he pretty plainly violated his commission; even if the total effect of his actions wasn’t contrary to British interests).
Also, losing the actual document… a fatal error. Unless one was taken back to port, and allowed time to get in touch with the issuing power, and they confirmed the letter of marque… you’d be hanged.
Corsairs were a sort of freebooter, who took advantage of the, at best, semi-lawless state of the Spanish Main, and the semi-constant enmity of the British and Spanish (and the vulnerability of Spanish ships and port towns). That the British weren’t above asking/letting them tag along on military ventures (and that some, like Morgan, were thoroughly rewarded) because there was no way to police them, puts them in a sort of perpetual limbo.
They were not acting legally, but the Spanish couldn’t bring them to heel, and so long as they left English ships/ports alone the British weren’t going to bother them.
It was when the Spanish lost any real power/influence that the British sent in squadrons to root them out, and widespread piracy in the Americas was wiped out.
Rutee: It’s the Marine Hymn (the Army has a version of, “The Caisson Song”).
It was a bit more than beating up their shipping.
Stephen Decatur invaded, captured the city of Tripoli, and burnt a lot of it to the ground.
But as you say, Letter of Marque and Reprisal weren’t for dealing with pirates (no one did that) but for harrassing the shipping of enemies, by making piracy legal.
no, I mean Barbary Pirates were hitting US shipping. Hitting the shipping of Pirates seems… difficult, to say the least! Did not realize it was the marines, but that makes sense.
But for all that burning, the pirates weren’t really ended by this. They just agreed to stop hitting US shipping, which is all the US needed.
I can’t avoid noticing that there is no discussion of at least two cold blooded premeditated murders, committed on Presidential order, of American citizens (solely because of their religion and nationality??) without any shred of due process, any shadow of trail by jury, or any indictment or charges! There is an awful lot of noise concerning the issue of Ron Paul’s electability, since obviously he IS electable, or the efforts to silence him and his message would not need to be so frantic on the part of the mainstream noisemedia (especially from the branches, and the personalities that are self-described most often as”conservative”!,
YOUR crystal balls are just as cracked as anyone in, or outside, the Ron Paul campaign. You have absolutely NO IDEA whether Ron Paul is “electable” or not, You have NO IDEA how successful or not his Presidency will be, and you have no ideas of any alternatives to both Ron Paul’s libertarian Republicanism or the clearly failing and decrepit status quo of Obama, Hillary, Pelosi, Romney, Cain, Bachmann, goofy, daffy, sneezy, dopey, and the other (political dwarfs)!
One primary reason for such ignorance regarding the nature and prospects of a Ron Paul Presidency is that peaceful (one hopes), democratic (one hopes) and complete (one hopes) establishment of liberty, private property, and self-responsibility has NEVER been done before, least of all not on a Continental scale and with 300,000,000+ people! Ron Paul–and the rest of us–are on altogether uncharted territory here!
Every other revolution in history resulted only in a change of ( usually far worse) masters!
We are at the point when the existing Democrat/Republican system has broken down, present institutions (banks, schools, regulatory bureaucracies, armed forces, healthcare delivery systems, newsmedia, etc. are the PROBLEMS, not the solutions, and Ron Paul, whether he is electable or not, is the only public figure who is willing–or perhaps even able–to discuss this, and offer worthwhile alternatives! We don’t–and can’t-know what Ron Paul’s Presidency will bring, but we may surmise on the historic basis of much smaller and more localized catastrophes of e/g. hyperinflation, civil wars, terrorism, famines, etc. what the terminal (and inevitable) breakdown of the existing order will produce!
Yes, I expressed the same outrage at violations of OUR Constitution when Bush II, Clinton, Bush I or even St. Ronnie was in power, and for the same reasons!
Happy now?
After a quick wikipedia search:
It seems this word has different meaning according to which country it applies.
Very possible, since I didn’t know the difference between the two.
Doesn’t matter, piracy rules are congressional business, as per the constitution XD