by Jack
UPDATE: 77 people, many were pro’s, showed up to bid on 15 storage lockers. My son and I felt they were all full of junk and so we did not bother to bid on any of them. We wasted about 2.5 hours.
What did you think of the debate? Here’s my take and this is the short version because I am up against the clock. (I have a storage auction to attend this morning! )
One thing I’m learning… the moderators aren’t nearly as smart as they believe themselves to be. Typical of the MSM. Take CBS 60 Minutes anchor, Scott Pelly, he tried to argue that terrorists are automatically entitled to constitutional protections and due process, with Newt! Uh, wrong move! Pelly was chewed up and that got a big round of applause. By acclimation the audience seemed to approve water boarding and didn’t consider it torture. Cain, Newt and Bachman didn’t either, I’m not sure about Santorum. Huntsman and Paul were very much against it.
I don’t think there was any gotcha moments or big revelations. The candidates were well scripted, especially Romney, but once again he was a clock watcher and kept whining about not having his due time; I didn’t care for that much. Perry probably gained a little favor because he came off looking more at ease since his last gaff. Oddly that gaff may have helped him recover some points in his long slide in the polls.
I’m going to have to say Newt probably won it, although Romney and Paul did very well. Cain seemed uncomfortable speaking on foreign affairs, but he did well enough. Like New said, any one of the candidates are far better for America than Obama – I believe that too! Over the next 90 minutes I could see the audience warming up to ol Newt and overall he probably garnered the most applause. It was kinda funny to watch as Pelly tried to corner him, but once again Newt was not a man to be cornered. Newt is doing pretty good, but will he be nominated…it’s a long shot. Romney still holds the best hand, even though he comes off as a lukewarm candidate.
Newt won it hands down!
Romney sucks he is an MSM media darling. Huntsman and Gingrich are the only candidates up there who deserve to be. I do not agree that anyone up there would be better than Obama. I’m not an Obama fan, but I don’t want another liberal Republican like George Bush was so I would never vote for Perry or even Cain who has no political experience.
If Huntsman and Gingrich stick it out I think Romney might not just run away with it no matter how much the media wants him to be the candidate.
I think I know where Princess is coming from on this. 😉
Dan Rather (always a friend to Republicans and Conservatives) —
“Anyone who has covered Newt Gingrich over the years knows better than to underestimate him,” said Rather, referencing his political comeback. “Newt Gingrich on the move politically is as dangerous as a wounded wolverine.”
Rather added that Jon Huntsman was the best candidate for the GOP in the 2012 general election, but would have a hard time winning the Republican primary.
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/dan-rather-newt-dangerous-wounded-wolverine
However it shakes down you can’t count Romney out. If it is Romney then, of course, I and legions of others will vote for him.
What other choice will we have? Four more years of President Fool?
By the way you have to love the lame stream. No bias there, right?
CNN Reporter Asks Obama: Are GOP Candidates “Uninformed, Out Of Touch, Or Irresponsible?”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/11/14/cnn_reporter_asks_obama_are_gop_candidates_uninformed_out_of_touch_or_irresponsible.html
I always thought Huntsman was as liberal as Romney, no?
Well said Pie, we could elect any of the 5 running and still do better than Obama. Man, this guy is setting some historic low marks and I wonder if he is stupid or a crook or both?
Re:”Terrorists are NOT entitled to due process–once they are found guilty of being terrorists.
Unfortunately, you have to give alleged terrorists due process.
Why? Because we are the good guys.
We are America.”
Another bizarre, self canceling statement from a contorted moron who recently posted a “justifiable homicide” threat to Post Scripts authors, forum participants, and the Tea party in general —
“You mess with my country and I will kill you. It really IS just that simple. Just as millions of Americans before me. You got a problem with that? With all the treasonous bullshit you haters post here, I would have NO problem convincing a jury I was upholding the oath I took!”
I think Newt Gingrich said it concisely —
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkdo0LdBU8w
Sorry Jack. This needed to be said. If you decline to post it, I understand.
Someone should tell him when it begins “you have the right to remain silent” it is not an oath. Oh and very well said Pie!!
Fer heaven’s sake, Pie … nobody believes Q meant it literally … not even you.
So why don’t you leave off the dead horse and tell us why you (and the Newtster) believe that only Americans and entitled to the protections embodied in our Constitution, particularly the right to due process of law.
Re Queen Grimhilde’s: “Fer heaven’s sake, Pie … nobody believes Q meant it literally … not even you.”
Dear Grimhilde,
I take people at their word unless given good reason to think otherwise. Colgan meant it to be taken just as he had posted it.
Suppose, oh, I don’t know, someone like me had posted something like that? (Of course I would never post anything like that, I don’t wish to kill anyone, not even you Queen Grimhilde.)
What would be your reaction then?
I can easily guess, you blatantly oblivious hypocrite phony from sfb Colgan suck-up hell.
Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it Queen Grimhilde, I have your number. You fool no one.
He’s not gonna tell us, is he?
… why only Americans are entitled to due process of law, why non-Americans so unfortunate as to have spent, lo, these many, many years in American custody are not entitled to due process of law.
Come on, Pie, explain it to us.
Or better still, don’t. And when the great socialist, liberal, conspriatorial Cuban welfare recipients, who
now rule the world, have incarcerated you as forced labor on the Martian solar array … without due process … you will have nothing at all to complain about.
Libby: “… why only Americans are entitled to due process of law, why non-Americans so unfortunate as to have spent, lo, these many, many years in American custody are not entitled to due process of law.”
I’ll answer your question…no, better yet, I’ll let the founders answer it. The answer can be found in the Preamble to the Constitution…ahem:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The people of the United states establish for the United States…not the world…not enemy combatants…and not citizens of other countries.
Got it? Good, it’s about time!!!
But it doesn’t say: “all citizens of the United States are created equal” … it says all “men”, entirely unqualified … the exclusionary aspect (women), we will be pass over, for the moment.
And is this not the basis upon which we meddle in everybody’s affairs? The Vietnamese? The Hondurans? The Russians? The Iraqis?
Come on. Follow through.
Libby: “…it says all “men”, entirely unqualified … the exclusionary aspect (women), we will be pass over, for the moment.”
Huh? We will be pass over? Are you saying because they did not write men and women women weren’t included?
If so it’s time to give up the whiney feminist crap.
“And is this not the basis upon which we meddle in everybody’s affairs?”
A lot of us believe that the human soul longs to be free…so? That philosophical or religious belief doesn’t place enemy combatants or citizens of other countries under our Constitution and laws.
Also, we do have international agreements that cover how enemy combatants will be treated. These laws respect the sovereignty of each country while making accomodation for justice in international conflicts. That system of justice is what guided the decisions made regarding enemy combatants…they were receiving due process under those international agreements.
Objections to the contrary were political. (The silence under Obama the proof)
Tina, surely you have to admit that detainees in Guantanamo were not and are not receiving anything close to “due process.” Guantanamo was a total failure–the vast majority of detainees have been released due to lack of evidence, and there have been less than a handful of convictions. I agree that there has been too much silence toward Obama’s Bush-like policies, and that this silence is political. But that does not excuse Bush, it only condemns both of them.
Tina, how many decades after the founding were we females granted the right to participate?
A hundred and some … I think it was.
And the “enemy combatants”, they are “men”, are they not?
If you believe, there can be no quibbling. Apparently, you do not believe. I have suspected as much for some time.
Chris I will acknowledge only that the legal community disagrees regarding the actions taken and laws established under GWB.
While you are judging the situation you should remember that these men were treated humanely, fed well according to their tradition and religious needs, given every accomodation to practice their religion, and afforded adequate healthcare. The Red Cross was alowed to visit. Reporters were allowed to observe and report on conditions. Both Bush and Obama made efforts to return detainees to their countries of origin, a difficult task since often they would not accept them. Many of the charges of inhumane treatment ignore these facts.
Guantanamo was by no means a failure. It was the best possible solution, likely the only possible solution, to a very difficult problem.
Objections, including many legal objections, were political…hence the silence and lack of furor now.
Enemy combatants do not abide by the laws that govern individual countries or war. They choose to operate outside the law which is why they are not protected by those laws.
Our readers can review:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3437703874.html
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-379239
Read the language of the act here:
http://issuepedia.org/US_Public_Law_109-366_revision_of_USC_10.A.47A#Sec._948c._Persons_subject_to_military_commissions
Libby: “Tina, how many decades after the founding were we females granted the right to participate?”
So? Our founders were learned men well versed in the use of language. They had the good sense to use “men” to refer to human beings. If not, would we not still hold slaves in this country? And had they intended to exclude women and others I believe they would have so designated.
Consider:
http://www.higheryet.com/LanguageFactor.htm
“And the “enemy combatants”, they are “men”, are they not? ** If you believe, there can be no quibbling.”
I’ll ignore the snide remark. Read the sentences in full…words mean things:
I repeat, “the people of the United States” establish for the United States. The people of the United States did not establish for the world, enemy combatants, or citizens of other countries.
Didn’t you say you were an English (or was it liturature?) major? Surely you know how to pick out nouns, verbs, and prepositional phrases!
The current enemy combatants are men of a very different creed and religion. They don’t respect or live by our laws and in fact would spit on our laws, our constitution, our flag and by golly…they would also resort to murdering innocent civilians including women and children and brainwash their own children into blowing themselves up for their so-called cause. I have little sympathy for them in their long detention.
You show a great deal of hostility and disdain toward the male gender when it suits you…what’s with all the gooey sentiment regarding these terrorist male b-tards?
Libby, can you tell us who pushed for and introduced the right for women to vote and got that thru congress and had it signed into law? What party would that be Libby?
Would you call that party “enemy combatants”? Because you have called the men in that party who fought for your right the enemy. They were all men Libby from the one party that you hate so much, that fought for your right to vote.
Tina: “Guantanamo was by no means a failure.”
I don’t know how you can call a prison which has had to release the vast majority of its prisoners with no charges after years of keeping them there with no evidence and no trial anything other than a failure. Unless the goal of Guantanamo was to waste our time, money, compromise our constitutional ideals, damage the reputation of the United States, and worst of all, wrongfully imprison hundreds of innocent people. In that case, mission accomplished.
“Objections, including many legal objections, were political…hence the silence and lack of furor now.”
This may be true for some, but there are people out there who are still protesting Obama’s continuation of Bush’s policies on this matter, including myself. Our objections are not political.
“Enemy combatants do not abide by the laws that govern individual countries or war. They choose to operate outside the law which is why they are not protected by those laws.”
The lack of logic inherent in this position should be obvious. You are still talking as if all of the people who were designated “enemy combatants” are guilty, even though you know at this point that most of them were not guilty. And how could we have known they were? The government had no intention of proving their guilt! How can you not see how stupid that is? Whenever the government decides that they will hold someone indefinitely without taking a case to trial, that usually means they don’t have the evidence they need. And if they don’t have the evidence they need, then there is at least a strong possibility that the person they are imprisoning is innocent. And as we now know, most of the people imprisoned at Guantanamo were law-abiding people who had no connection to terrorism, and that is why they were eventually freed.
If our government can simply proclaim that someone has committed a crime which makes them outside our laws, and thus are not entitled to due process, then we have no way of knowing whether or not the government’s accusations against them are true. What you fail to understand is that when even one person is declared to be not protected by our constitution, then we ALL are in danger of losing our freedom. Many of the people wrongfully imprisoned at Guantanamo were ordinary civilians, minding their own business…you’ve heard some of their stories. I’ve posted them here. There are many others out there. You could have been one of them.
Also, your insistence that human rights need only to apply to American citizens is ridiculous and totally antithetical to one of your core beliefs, that these rights come from God. I doubt that God decided to grant these rights only to American citizens. ALL PEOPLE are entitled to a fair trial. I cannot find an ounce of respect within me for a counter-argument to that self-evident truth.
Chris: “I don’t know how you can call a prison which has had to release the vast majority of its prisoners with no charges after years of keeping them there with no evidence and no trial anything other than a failure.”
Harumph!
A fairly large number of those released (under pressure from folks like you) went right back to blowing people and things up…so much for the innocent! Also, hindsight is such a wonderful thing, isn’t it? How in 2001 and immediately thereafter was anyone supposed to know which of those detainees might be “innocent”. You do know that efforts were made to identify and release innocent people?
You do know that some weren’t all that anxious to “go home” because they were living under better conditions at Gitmo! Life, and particularly war, is messy.
“there are people out there who are still protesting Obama’s continuation of Bush’s policies on this matter, including myself. Our objections are not political.
Nor are they loud or effectual. Notr does it change the fact that the voices speaking under Bush were doing so for political reasons alone!
“You are still talking as if all of the people who were designated “enemy combatants” are guilty…”
NO! Which is why I called them enemy combatants. the thing is, innocent people get caught up in war, even in situations that are unjust…dying for instance is unjust but it happens. The left always holds a republican president to the highest (impossible) standard for political purposes. Young minds like yours fall right into the trap and cry foul but as we have seen when Obama took over the situation is far more complex and not easily resolved. The blame for all of the injustice should fall on those who chose to blow up the twin towers but that wouldn’t be politically expedient!
“The government had no intention of proving their guilt! How can you not see how stupid that is? Whenever the government decides that they will hold someone indefinitely without taking a case to trial, that usually means they don’t have the evidence they need.”
Or the evidence is top secret! Conducting civilian trials risks letting information out so the enmy knows what we have and that would endanger the lives of our military as well as Muslims and their families that are risking their lives to help us!!!!!!!!!!!!
“And if they don’t have the evidence they need, then there is at least a strong possibility that the person they are imprisoning is innocent.”
Liberal talking point! What we know is that some were innocent and some were not…which proves that holding them was both smart and necessary!
You and I have both acknowledged that efforts were made to release the innocent!
“If our government can simply proclaim that someone has committed a crime which makes them outside our laws…”
Our government CAN”T do that! The laws that apply to enemy combatants are just different because they involve war waged outside the rules or laws that states/countries have agreed cover war.
“What you fail to understand is that when even one person is declared to be not protected by our constitution, then we ALL are in danger of losing our freedom.”
Utter nonesense! Liberal talking point!
“You could have been one of them.”
Yes! Life happens! Blame the terrorists. Leave those who are doing the best they can under complex and unusual circumstances alone! Better yet get your act together and understand that life is not fair but Bush was not a war monger using the excuse of war to imprison innocent people and deny them their freedom…he was being very careful in order to prevent more attacks on innocent people ALL OVER THE WORLD…INCLUDING MUSLIMS!
“…your insistence that human rights need only to apply to American citizens is ridiculous.”
I never said that!
“ALL PEOPLE are entitled to a fair trial.”
And there is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with military tribunals when the crime is an act or acts of WAR!!!!!!! In fact military tribunals are superior because they ensure more innocent lives are not lost unnecessarily!
“I cannot find an ounce of respect within me for a counter-argument to that self-evident truth.”
You cannot find an ounce of brainpower to realize that truth would be kept with military tribunals and the processes used to determine which detainees were innocent!
The arguments you pose are political, period!