June 24, 2015

I don't know about anyone else here, but

I have absolutely no use for Christians and their holier-than-thou Bible-based self-righteousness. Who's more intolerant as a class than Christians, especially fundamentalists? While I'm not exactly a bigot (definition: a prejudiced person who is intolerant of any opinions differing from his own), I certainly don't care for the opinions of many of those who claim to be Christians.

Do many of those who post here seem to be Christians? Or any other religion?

June 24, 2015

In that case,

let's make a point of punishing the South now. What do you have in mind?

June 24, 2015

And the Supreme Court would be left to determine whether or not

the right to own and possess firearms exists under Amendment IX -- and how far it extends if they rule such a right exists. Regarding Amendment IX, "Failure of the Constitution to mention a specific right does not mean that the government can abridge that right, but its protection has to be found elsewhere." (Emphasis added.) Where else is the right to bear arms going to be found, absent the Second Amendment?

The result of the case you suggest would depend not on the Constitution itself, but on how SCOTUS was constituted when the case reached it. Replace one of the conservative justices with a liberal justice, and the "implied" right to bear arms under Amendment IX would very likely be determined to be a lot more restrictive than is currently the case given the Second Amendment. My desiderata -- essentially no private gun ownership -- would be a lot more likely to come about absent a Second Amendment than with one, hence my favoring repeal of the Second Amendment.

Furthermore, if the right to bear arms would be the same whether or not it was covered explicitly in the Constitution, why did the Founders bother with the Second Amendment?

By the way, you can take your smart aleck and non-contributory derp and shove it. Did you lie about being thirteen years old or older when you signed up? If not, how do you account for behaving in such a juvenile fashion?

June 23, 2015

I'm all for eliminating voter registration and voter identification completely.

I was able to vote in Oklahoma for years without showing either a voter registration card or identification. Why shouldn't that work everywhere? I checked with multiple county election boards and the state election board -- all agreed that voter fraud was not a problem.

All that was done when I went to vote was to check that my name was on the voter registration rolls. ... Uh-oh.

Actually, I almost always voted by absentee ballot -- but I had to register (without being asked for identification or proof of residency, age, or anything at all -- just signed up and Bob’s yer uncle) and fill out a form asking for an absentee ballot before one would be sent to me.

June 23, 2015

Ross Perot was the only prominent politician

I remember who strongly opposing NAFTA in 1992. He was right about its consequences, particularly about the loss of American jobs.

No one knows for sure what's in TPA -- and it's not actually a trade deal itself. However, the fact that so many foreign governments are thrilled about it and are spending money to lobby for its passage tells me all I need to know about it: It will be a good deal for other countries and a bad deal for the United States -- at least a bad deal for Average Joe.

From Wikipedia:

The "giant sucking sound" was United States Presidential candidate Ross Perot's colorful phrase for what he believed would be the negative effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he opposed.

In the second 1992 Presidential Debate, Ross Perot argued:

We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor ... have no health care — that's the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.

... when [Mexico's] jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.

Perot didn't get elected, of course, and he won no electoral votes. However, his 19,743,821 and 18.9% of the popular vote was more than any non-major-party candidate since George Wallace in 1968. Wallace got 46 electoral votes, 9,901,118 popular votes, and 13.5% of the popular vote. That wasn't enough to keep Nixon out of the White House (301 electoral votes).

June 23, 2015

They shouldn't even be available as vanity plates.

They come too close to hate speech for that.

[Edit: Corrected ytpo.]

June 23, 2015

She stopped short of what I called for earlier today.

"Destroy every Confederate flag that isn't in a museum of some sort. In addition, the public display of a Confederate flag anywhere in the United States should be made illegal."

June 23, 2015

In no way did the three-judge panel “affirm [a] right to birth control.”

All it ruled is that employers who want an exemption from providing health plans that cover birth control must fill out a form if they want the exemption. The employers must have a bad case of the stupids if they think they can be exempted without filling out the required form.

In addition, no one seems to be saying that women don’t have a right to birth control, just that some employers should be exempt from paying for their employees’ birth control -- and, presumably, birth control for their employee’s families.

Stuff like this annoys the hell out of me. It's a waste of taxpayer money to pay federal judges' salaries to deal with crap like this.

June 23, 2015

Now that Amazon has stopped allowing the sale of Confederate flags,

it's time to take the next step: Destroy every Confederate flag that isn't in a museum of some sort. In addition, the public display of a Confederate flag anywhere in the United States should be made illegal.

But what are we going to be able to do about statues honoring the traitors who served in the Confederate Army? And how about the statues of them -- even outside the South? Then there's the problem of military bases named in "honor" of Confederate generals.

June 23, 2015

Libertarians kept thinking Ron Paul would become President of the United States, too.

He didn't.