And one of these days the democrats need to stand up and quit blaming Bush. They asked for the House, Senate, and White House. They have them. Now they should take the blame same as the glory.
True, but they shouldn't take the blame for things that weren't their doing. No matter how much i enjoy criticising politicians, you can't blame Obama for something that he didn't have the power to overcome. You can't blame Obama for the recession, for example. Actually, i'm not entirely sure you can blame Bushy, either, but the point stands.
Agreed.
But any empty suit can just blame someone else for 4 years. We need him to do something "useful". Like stop writing checks on an overdrawn account.
I would have imagined that the responsibility for Government, including its faults became Obama's when he took the oath. I would have much more respect for him if he could focus on solutions instead of on the problems and who have been responsible for them.
Agreed.
Agreed. We need to recognise that Government revenue and the economy are completely different. Neither should play a part in the other. I don't think that the Government has any responsibility for the economy. If bankers make toxic loans and the housing bubble bursts, neither Bush's, nor Obama's, nor Brown's checkbook should be taken out to help them. It's our money, not wall street's or the city of london's.
Oh, don't worry. If the Feds fail to realize this, they'll have an outright rebellion on their hands. Ether they'll wise up or they get thrown out of office at the end of a gun barrel.
Not in a plutocracy, which is exactly what we are having right at the moment. If one looks through all the decisions that have been made with regard to the economy during the last year, Government and money are one.
No!
People were critical of Bush for his total lack of intellect.
But lets talk debt. Take a look at http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/CHARTA.gif (note also that the data is from the Congressional Budget Office).
When GW took office, the total of all the money in the world (there is a finite amount) was around 32 trillion. When GW left office, that amount had increased to around 60 trillion. Much of the increase was due to thre fed and their printing presses and China buying our bonds.
I do not particularly like Rense.com but the graph is one item that should be bookmarked for every citizen.
I am holding off on a broader discussion. Those tend to clear up nothing.
I am not all that goo-ga over Obama. I think Bernachi (sp) should have been fired, no reconfirmed for another term. And that is just one misstep.
Back to GW for a moment:
I think he did his best. But Chaney was running things. Go to the outing of the NOC by "Scooter". That alone should have been a prison term for someone. But poor scooter had suffered enough so GW gave him a pardon.
Did Clinton do well with NAFTA? no
Yes there is an evening out of the messes. But Iraq? No excuse.
peace
People were critical of Bush for his total lack of intellect.
But lets talk debt. Take a look at http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/CHARTA.gif (note also that the data is from the Congressional Budget Office).
When GW took office, the total of all the money in the world (there is a finite amount) was around 32 trillion. When GW left office, that amount had increased to around 60 trillion. Much of the increase was due to thre fed and their printing presses and China buying our bonds.
I do not particularly like Rense.com but the graph is one item that should be bookmarked for every citizen.
I am holding off on a broader discussion. Those tend to clear up nothing.
I am not all that goo-ga over Obama. I think Bernachi (sp) should have been fired, no reconfirmed for another term. And that is just one misstep.
Back to GW for a moment:
I think he did his best. But Chaney was running things. Go to the outing of the NOC by "Scooter". That alone should have been a prison term for someone. But poor scooter had suffered enough so GW gave him a pardon.
Did Clinton do well with NAFTA? no
Yes there is an evening out of the messes. But Iraq? No excuse.
peace
Shucks!
This is an excellent postings, interesting graph as well, thanks for posting it. I wonder if we could have a World Graph as the United States was not alone in the wars, they were world wars that involved other countries too. So would interesting to see how their graphs would have worked in comparison? Important to note that Bush did not do those wars single-handedly. There were multiple players involved, UK, France, Italy ..... Clinton was lucky as he did not have to deal with 9/11. What I am trying to say is that the President cannot be much larger than the system that he has to deal with both domestically and internationally. There was more than one country that was convinced of the "weapons of mass destruction" as those countries had in actual fact been responsible for exporting that equipment to Saddam Hussein during their "friendly" pre-Gulf War days. UK as far as I can remember did most of the exporting, followed by France, or the other way round so the decision to invade and make war would have been inspired by those countries too. I can imagine it must have done something to their deficits too?We lose more than that by an order of magnitude in automobile accidents on a yearly basis. Just implementing Swiss type traffic laws and enforcement would greatly reduce that. However, we feel that the right to drive incompetently is more important than safety. Is it perhaps that an attempt to reduce traffic fatalities would not lead to political power that removes its luster?
300 people on the plane plus how ever many people on the ground when the plane crashes.
We obviously do not do a good job with anti-terrorist security- if there can even be such a thing when there are 12 million or so illegal aliens in the country. But I seriously doubt that the Founding Fathers would have allowed any individual?s rights to take precedence over public safety. Nobody has a right to do something that puts other people at risk- as, as it has been said, freedom of speech does not entitle you to yell ?fire? in a crowded theater where there is no fire.
Our security does not work- as is evidenced by September 11 when hijackers took over 3 airplanes with box cutters. We are more vulnerable to sabotage today than we were during World War II, but apart from airports we are doing practically nothing to guard against it. The only thing that has saved us from a September 12 is the ineptitude of our enemies.
There were less than 3,000 people killed in 9/11 the last time I got the score. Over 40,000 die every year as traffic fatalities. It seems a very achievable goal to save at least 3,000 of these by a few change in traffic laws and enforcement. Somehow, nobody seems interested.
Actually, my readings of the Federalist Papers gave a slightly different impression than you seem to have. Revolution puts people at risk. I have the sneaking suspicion that the founding fathers didn?t believe that freedom was free.
Now that I think about it, driving a car puts people at risk. It?s one of the riskiest things young people do. A drivers license is a privilege, not a right, or that?s what the people at the DMV say.
Just think of the lives we could save by doing away with the private automobile. After all, up until the 20th Century, people got along just fine without the private automobile .
The Federalist Papers were written by only 3 individual persons (one of whom would shortly part political company with the other two), and thus do not adequately represent the beliefs held by the 2,999,997 other Americans alive at the time.
Furthermore, the American Revolution was not a revolution. Americans wanted to maintain the status quo, i.e., they considered themselves to be British and they wanted the same rights that Britons had in the British Isles. By and large most Americans did not want to overturn their long-established socio-economic conditions. In fighting the Revolutionary War and drafting the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Americans did not claim any rights that they had not already claimed as subjects in the British Empire.
A certain part of the brain is involved in decision making and risk assessment. That part of the brain allows you to anticipate and judge the effects of consequences of your physical actions. But, this part of the brain is not fully mature before the age of 20 or so. It is not well developed or functional in 18 years and even less so in 16 year olds. So how does it make sense to put 16 year olds behind the wheel of a car?
Like it or not society has a right to regulate your behavior, lest your behavior infringe on the rights and safety of others.
Obviously the Federalist Papers didn’t represent the opinions of all of the three million Americans at the time. The majority of the three million were probably illiterate.
The Federalist Papers were political propaganda to convince the minority of the American electorate who could both read and vote to support the adoption of the Constitution.
Since the Federalist Papers were an attempt to convince the majority of the targeted audience, it would seem probable that they tried to stay within the bounds of general opinion of that time. I would assume that the three men involved were better informed on that subject than you are.
Your opinions on the American revolution reflect the redefinition of terms outside of the norms of accepted historical practice. Suffice it to say that I won’t go there. As for my source as to accepted historical practice for the subject, I refer you to a "Concise History of the American Republic" by Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry Steel Commager and William E. Leuchtenburg.
I will agree on this point. In the beginning, the colonials did not want a revolution, and they sought only to preserve the freedom that Englishmen enjoyed in England for themselves.
I disagree strongly that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights did not go beyond the rights that Englishman enjoyed in England. However, that was not a goal of the revolution.
As to your argument involving the mental development of adolescent, or recent post adolescent Humans, I fail to grasp the relevance. It would seem to support my argument. Our social order allows adolescents to drive with full adult privileges. By denying or limiting this privilege, it would seem likely to reduce traffic fatalities. Yet, our social order refuses to fully utilize this option.
Your final sentence is especially perplexing as I cannot see where it in any way refutes a thesis that I have advanced.
One of the three million Americans in 1789 were slaves, and most of them likely were illiterate (even though state laws that required them to be illiterate had not yet been enacted). But most of the remaining Americans likely were literate for the simple fact that many, if not most Americans, at the time wanted to be able to read the Bible.
The franchise likely was not as limited as you are thinking when the Constitution was ratified. The Constitution says that the qualifications for the electors of the U.S. House of Representatives (the only part of the federal government that was originally popularly elected) could not be any more stringent than the requirements for electors for the larger house of each state?s legislature. So voting requirements varied from state to state. None of the states (to my knowledge) had literacy requirements for voting at the time. Some (but I am not sure all) states had property requirements to vote at the time, but the requirements were not uniform from state to state. And since America was short on labor and rich on land, anyone who was willing to work for a few years could easily own enough property to meet whatever property requirements were in place for voting.
Note: The American people did not vote directly for the Constitution. The voters in each state selected delegates to a convention that would decide whether or not their state ratified the Constitution.
You are talking yourself in circles. First you say ?The Federalist Papers were political propaganda to convince the minority of the American electorate who could both read and vote to support the adoption of the Constitution? and now you say the Federalist Papers merely reflected the prevailing public opinion of the day. The Federalist Papers cannot be both.
And apparently I am better informed on that subject than you are; I?ve actually studied the matter since my bachelor?s degree in biology comes with 40 credit hours in history.
Oh? How many college history courses have you taken?
One source?
Then explain what rights we Americans gained by the Revolution that we had not previously had as British subjects up to the year 1763?
The relevance is that teenagers are not physically or mentally mature enough to be trusted behind the wheel of an automobile.
This is precisely what I said. Teenagers are not mature enough to drive as safely as adults, but society allows them to drive anyway- and restricting automobile use by teenagers for the sake of public safety is precisely the kind of law that internet conservatives, i.e., libertarians, complain about on the grounds that it somehow violates people?s liberty.
If I had my way the voting age, driving age and drinking age would all be 21.
Granted, I concede the point.
Of course women did not have the franchise at this time. That meant that the approximately half of the population that was female could not vote. Since only males that were of the age of majority could vote, that farther diminished the franchised. Amerindians and slaves were also excluded. As for the property owners who so easily gained the franchise. Probably true in New England more than any other area. Not so true in other areas. Philadelphia had a high property requirement which pretty much excluded everyone but the oligarchy. The South was dominated by the aristocracy of land. I think we can assume that eligible voters were in the minority. I haven?t the patience to find out by how much.
I take it that semantics was not one of your college courses, and if logic was, your teacher should have been ashamed for passing you. I suggest you reexamine my statement. Your restatement of my statement is in gross error.
Which puts you at a disadvantage, apparently you have much that I can learn from you, and little that you can learn from me.
None, I?m a high school dropout.
One that I listed.
My argument applied to Englishmen in England. There they had the press gangs for example.
Rights are a tricky subject. They imply that there is choice, free will, if you will. In addition, there are ontological issues.
I noticed the year 1763. That?s when things started to go downhill in the American colonies.
In the normal context in which the words are used, the Colonials had no rights before the revolution. They had privileges. The curtailment of these privileges is what brought about the revolution. After the revolution, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution gave a framework for assumed rights.
In Great Briton of that time, rights came from precedent and tradition, but they were in the context of a King who was God?s vicar on Earth.
Actually, no document gives rights, and rights as the term was used by Jefferson, can not be granted by legislatures, they can only be recognized. However in the normal context, after the Revolution privilege was replaced by declared rights.
I would say that that is true for some teenagers but not all. However, since there is no reliable way to establish maturity, obviously if this set were to be removed from the roadways, it would decrease the death toll. This is incontrovertible because this is a the most dangerous age for drivers, with the possible exception of the senile. It is quite probably that you would save more than three thousand people a year by doing this. Yet, the government shows no interest whatsoever in doing this even though it is an easily implemented option. Therefore it would seem that the government is not really concerned with saving three thousand lives a year, unless it can be used as an excuse to grab political power.
If you raised the age of citizenship to 21 as you suggest, then the argument of infringing on rights is moot. We do not grant those below the age of citizen the normal rights of a citizen. I really can?t see where there is a valid argument against your proposal as a violation of individual rights. The only exception might be over the age at which one is capable of being a citizen. Obviously, there is an upward limit on setting the bar for citizenship. Still, it was 21 years of age for a very long time in the United States.
http://www1.cuny.edu/portal_ur/content/voting_cal/milestones.html
As of 1776 both women and free blacks who met a property ownership requirement could vote in New Jersey .
http://theautry.org/explore/exhibits/suffrage/suff_time.html
Free blacks could also vote in Pennsylvania and Connecticut in 1776.
I doubt that any state had enough Indians to make a difference at the ballot box in 1787.
http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=1325
A Pennsylvania law in 1700 imposed property ownership requirements on voters (so they?d be wealthy enough that the Penn family could not buy their votes), but since land was so plentiful at the time historians estimate that at least 50% and perhaps as much as 80% of the male population of the colony could vote. And then Pennsylvania ?s 1776 constitution eliminated property ownership as a qualification for voting.
Then explain how. Did you not claim that the Federalist Papers reflected public opinion at the same time they were meant as political propaganda designed to sway the opinion of voters? How can you sway public opinion at the same time that you agree with public opinion?
I wasn?t under the impression that I am here to learn anything from anybody already here.
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