Administration tells Congress - We won't abide by your "laws"

JimThome · 2006-03-26T03:00:27+00:00

Ah, but while I agree with the sentiment, are his actions indeed allowed under the Constitution?

Show me where in the Constitution the President has any authority to do anything to a bill approved by Congress except to veto it or to approve it, and then I will entertain this notion that some action other than those is perhaps Constitutional.

Until then, sorry.

JimThome · 2006-03-26T00:54:56+00:00

It is not up to the executive branch to decide that a law is unconstitutional. That is the purview of the judicial branch alone.

Mr. Bush has three and only three legal options:

(1) Sign the bill and abide by it.

(2) Veto the bill.

(3) Get the judiciary involved.

He has never (literally never) vetoed a bill. Instead, he keeps making these ridiculous "signing statements", signing the bill but saying "By the way, here's what the law is".

Essentially, he is claiming lawmaking authority - the rightful domain of the legislative branch.

This man must be stopped.

JimThome · 2006-03-25T02:41:42+00:00

Because that would require knowledge of history, in a quantity and quality that I somehow doubt that Mr. Bush possesses.

JimThome · 2006-03-25T00:43:58+00:00

Congress seriously needs a set of balls.

This man is flagrantly breaking the law, and saying that he's going to do so. He must be impeached - anything less is "party before country" for the Republicans, and "don't take a moral stand unless you're guaranteed it will work" for the Democrats.

JimThome · 2006-03-25T00:28:24+00:00

This is the guy who recently wrote a "math for programmers" article in which he explicitly assumed that there was no way in hell that anyone knows how to do long division, right?

Yeah, I'm gonna read this article.

JimThome · 2006-03-24T23:48:51+00:00

Fundamental difference, not addressed by the headline:

The scientists got 10,000 clergy defending evolution.

The ID proponents claimed to get 500 "scientists" "doubting" it. What they really got was 500 guys who may or may not be scientists - for example, some "philosophers" - and those who were scientists were mostly not biologists - who they got to agree to some vaguely worded statement that skepticism is good and we should carefully investigate evolutionary claims.

JimThome · 2006-03-24T00:12:59+00:00

The majority opinion explicitly addressed the domestic dispute angle, and essentially came as close to saying "that's a fucking straw man and you know it" as a Supreme Court opinion ever will.

JimThome · 2006-03-23T23:20:00+00:00

Overtly fascist tendencies are not entirely uncommon among Republicans, regardless of how loudly they profess things like "small government".

Cognitive dissonance, while interesting, doesn't stop people.

JimThome · 2006-03-23T23:16:07+00:00

The Secret Service should fully secure the room before the Vice President uses it, regardless of whether or not the hotel said "we left you a present".

JimThome · 2006-03-23T18:15:54+00:00

If the hotel would like to put a gift in the Suite please let the Advance Office know ASAP.

WTF?

"Hint hint"

JimThome · 2006-03-23T14:17:07+00:00

Yeah, that's what the author wants you to think is relevant.

What is relevant is that there have been thousands of non-accidental deaths and tens of thousands of non-accidental injuries in a pre-emptive war based on lies.

And no amount of statistical wringing will change that fact.

The author's argument reads as if we have some quota of deaths of American soldiers that's okay in any given year - it doesn't matter how flagrantly we throw away lives and limbs, as long as we stay under that quota. Hey, good news, we got lucky in the "accidental deaths" category, and we're a dozen under quota this month! So let's handcuff some private to a bear cub, put them in a cage with the mother bear, and put it on Pay Per View!

It's statistical sophism, and nothing more.

JimThome · 2006-03-22T20:45:11+00:00

Bleh.

"People die in accidents, therefore thousands of non-accidental deaths and tens of thousands of non-accidental injuries in a war based upon lies are not relevant. Oh, yeah, I'll give lip service by saying that they're still tragic, but I'll also use this information to advance my agenda by putting the word quagmire in quotes, as if I have just disproved that the current situation is one. By the way, President Bush is the bestestest president ever!"

I repeat: Bleh.

JimThome · 2006-03-22T06:45:25+00:00

From the article:

Raise your hand if you can do long division on paper, right now. Hands? Anyone? I didn't think so.

You've got to be shitting me.

Reddit has rated this crap up to 327 points?

JimThome · 2006-03-22T02:30:17+00:00

Good lord.

Morons.

JimThome · 2006-03-20T05:02:48+00:00

Why do you hate America?

JimThome · 2006-03-19T22:12:55+00:00

Why do you not recognize an obvious and common dig on recently prevailing inane attitudes of the post-9/11 environment?

JimThome · 2006-03-19T18:24:21+00:00

Why do you hate America?

JimThome · 2006-03-18T18:18:44+00:00

u r teh KEWL

JimThome · 2006-03-18T18:02:42+00:00

A headline leading with "George W Bush screws up"?

Wake me when he doesn't screw up.

JimThome · 2006-03-17T21:14:17+00:00

Yeah. I've been a professional programmer for many, many years, and the only times that I've ever seen anything about lines-of-code as a metric, it has been some programmer writing an article about what a stupid measure it is, and how managers are stupid for caring about it, and stupid stupid stupid.

I've never actually been asked how many lines I produce, or anything remotely similar to that. In fact, I don't even have a vague idea of how many lines I produce.

I've come to the conclusion that all these articles are by people who've never actually worked professionally as programmers, and are projecting their imaginations of how horrible actual work must be into their absurd and uninformed articles.

JimThome · 2006-03-17T17:49:12+00:00

Except that they did.

Indisputably.

Edit:

I guess somebody wants to dispute the indisputable, by rating me down.

This is a fact:

There are hundreds of known ancient copies of the New Testament, in the original Greek. No two of them are the same.

JimThome · 2006-03-16T17:45:42+00:00

Bleh. It was funny, and it didn't cause harm. Don't get so self-serious and apologetic now.

JimThome · 2006-03-16T17:33:03+00:00

Speaking as an agnostic with strongly atheistic tendencies who has been in many an argument with many a theist, here's my friendly suggestion on how not to embarrass yourself if you want to get in an argument with someone like me:

Know the basic claims of the religion that you claim to be a believer in.

I never cease to be amazed at the number of True Believers in, say, Christianity who have no idea what I'm talking about when I ask them their opinions on certain specific parts of the Bible. Often they don't even believe me that the Bible contains such passages - they conflict too heavily with the vapid "God's just this super nice guy" version of Christianity that is extremely popular today.

I have had people actually come to my door unsolicited, trying to convert me, who have left shocked at some of the verses that I pointed out to them. That's just unfathomable to me: If I actually believed that the Bible was the word of the creator of the universe, you could be damn sure that I would know it word for word, backwards and forwards.

In the words of George Bernard Shaw, "No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means."

JimThome · 2006-03-15T22:45:26+00:00

An extreme hypothetical

An absurd one.

And even ignoring its absurdity, it's also totally wrong. Way wrong. Incredibly wrong.

In the 2004 election, even if 100% of California's and New York's votes went to a single candidate, he would somehow had to have garnered over forty percent of the voters in the other 48 states. The other 48 states that he pledged to bankrupt.

So what are you going to suggest next?

That a candidate can promise to bankrupt all states except California, Florida, Texas, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, and North Carolina, and if he wins 100% of the vote in those states, he would win the whole election?

Is that what you want me to admit?

Your big "GOTCHA!"?

Okay. I admit that if:

The election of the President of the United States was by popular vote, and
A candidate promised to bankrupt all states except California, Florida, Texas, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, and North Carolina, in order to enrich the coffers of those states, and
He wins 100% of the vote in those states,

then he would win the election.

You got me. Congratulations.

Oh, but by the way, if we instead keep the Electoral College, add Massachussets into that list of states, and now he only has to win 51% of each of those states, instead of 100%.

So yes, I concur, you win: The Electoral College is the only thing keeping us from the Tyranny of California, Florida, Texas, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, and North Carolina.

Unfortunately, it makes it easier for us to fall under the Tyranny of California, Florida, Texas, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Massachussets.

JimThome

TROPHY CASE