So after this encouraging sign that the entire act, which abridges the freedom of speech of all Americans, will be struck down, the following discussion was held on facebook of all places.
The names of the parties have been changed to keep from embarrassing the ignorant...
Ingrid Hippieton No no no no no! This can't be happening! The Supreme Court just ruled that companies are allowed to give as much money to each candidate as they want, and pay directly for ads for political candidates?!?!? I'm in public right now, but mentally I'm swearing loudly.
Fidel Pelosi
Actually, liberals control the world through the Illuminati and MSNBC.
Like Taggart, we exist to hear libertarians scream because although we lack the motivation to do anything to help ourselves or change society, we have devoted our lives to the overthrow of society. And we're winning. Because despite our all-powerful laziness, we're still more than a match for rugged individualists with sunglasses and '57 Chevies.
Keith Olbermann and Noam Chomsky are molesting your pets every time you leave the house.... See More
We control the horizontal. We control the vertical too... but somehow we just can't control the diagonal.
Like Taggart, we exist to hear libertarians scream because although we lack the motivation to do anything to help ourselves or change society, we have devoted our lives to the overthrow of society. And we're winning. Because despite our all-powerful laziness, we're still more than a match for rugged individualists with sunglasses and '57 Chevies.
Keith Olbermann and Noam Chomsky are molesting your pets every time you leave the house.... See More
We control the horizontal. We control the vertical too... but somehow we just can't control the diagonal.
39 minutes ago
Fidel Pelosi
Fidel Pelosi
Let's try a syllogism.
Premise 1: Liberals are lazy, self-interested mooches who lack the motivation to influence society or work to better themselves.
Premise 2: Liberals are destroying America and their voices are drowning out desperate Republican attempts to save our imperiled country... despite the fact that most news organizations, most of the wealthiest citizens, most of the biggest corporations, and most religious organizations are all staunchly Republican.
Conclusion: Republicans are either spineless weaklings with a victim complex... or there's a problem with the premises
Sorry, but you're not allowed to paint us as lazy mooches and then claim that we're overwhelming all opposition. Unless, of course, you want to be ridiculed back to the soft teat of your recently-defiled house pet.
Premise 1: Liberals are lazy, self-interested mooches who lack the motivation to influence society or work to better themselves.
Premise 2: Liberals are destroying America and their voices are drowning out desperate Republican attempts to save our imperiled country... despite the fact that most news organizations, most of the wealthiest citizens, most of the biggest corporations, and most religious organizations are all staunchly Republican.
Conclusion: Republicans are either spineless weaklings with a victim complex... or there's a problem with the premises
Sorry, but you're not allowed to paint us as lazy mooches and then claim that we're overwhelming all opposition. Unless, of course, you want to be ridiculed back to the soft teat of your recently-defiled house pet.
25 minutes ago
Jeremy Fain
You are a child. I will not speak in broad terms about liberals to you, because I believe that most liberals, like Ingrid I'm sure, are good-hearted, well-meaning and smart, but just wrong. You on the other hand are an immature petulant child who is "liberal" because you think it's cool to be like Janine Garofalo or Keith Olberman. Your parents are probably good people, but you are still trying to be rebellious so you defy the existence of God and make crude comments about bestiality to try to get a rise out of people. You made good grades in school, but you were picked on relentlessly by the cool kids because you were weird, played Dungeons and Dragons and collected comic books. You throw a football like a girl and speaking of girls, you didn't kiss one until you were 22 because then and only then did you find a girl who wears black fingernail polish and thinks she is a witch. You are interested in the occult because you can't fathom a religion of love, because no one loves you. You like to watch the Daily Show and laugh at people in power who wear suits and have jobs that are trying to make a difference in the world and contribute to the economy. You hate people with money and power. Instead of striving and working hard to attain power and money so you can do things differently, you are apathetic and in a Xanax haze. You need to grow up, buy a tie of your own and learn about the REAL world, not this fantasy land you live in.
There is an old saying, "If you're not liberal when your young, you have no heart and if you're not conservative when you're old, you have no brain." I don't subscribe to that. Stupid is stupid, young or old. Congratulations on being bitter, ignorant and unbelievably annoying. I'm glad I don't know you.
There is an old saying, "If you're not liberal when your young, you have no heart and if you're not conservative when you're old, you have no brain." I don't subscribe to that. Stupid is stupid, young or old. Congratulations on being bitter, ignorant and unbelievably annoying. I'm glad I don't know you.
a few seconds ago ·
This is just one discussion with a liberal that ended just as I thought it would. For those of you who are worried about the direction of our country, this is what we are up against. And for those of you who think we are on the right track, acting like these people is not the way to sway the hearts and minds of America. There are too many apathetic and uninformed young people who get their news from Olberman and The Daily Show, that listen to Hollywood socialist cynics like Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon when they should be listening to serious people like Newt Gingrich, Justice Antonin Scalia or Michelle Malkin. When TV raises your kids, this is what you get.
This is just one discussion with a liberal that ended just as I thought it would. For those of you who are worried about the direction of our country, this is what we are up against. And for those of you who think we are on the right track, acting like these people is not the way to sway the hearts and minds of America. There are too many apathetic and uninformed young people who get their news from Olberman and The Daily Show, that listen to Hollywood socialist cynics like Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon when they should be listening to serious people like Newt Gingrich, Justice Antonin Scalia or Michelle Malkin. When TV raises your kids, this is what you get.
It also wouldn't be an issue if we didn't have the absurd 14th Amendment which gives corporations the legal rights of citizens. It's incredibly stupid and incredibly harmful. The premise of the current decision is that corporations = people (essentially double voting with massive additional resources since the executives in these companies are doubtless donating everything they can personally, and can now spend corporate coffers as well) and spending = speech. You could jump over the moon with that leap of faith.
Corporations 1. did not have free speech for the first two centuries after this country was founded and 2. used to have a corporate charter which made them work in quantifiable ways first to improve their industries and only second to generate money, rather than simply being legally beholden to generate maximum profit in minimum time.
This decision is a joke and it will be dealt with as such, even by Obama's spineless administration.
Court justices are appointed by the President and approved by Congress, and you probably remember the huge fiasco during Bush's term because he was picking poor candidates. Naturally, a poor president will pick poor justices and naturally, a poor congress will approve them.
Alito refused to state opinions during large portions of his confirmation process, which was an obvious attempt to avoid painting himself as a biased conservative. He also lied to Reagan about his affiliation with the Concerned Alumni of Princeton and then disavowed the lie (and the group) during his hearing. Roberts has his own issues, but that's not at issue here
Obama can deal with this absurd by working with congress to create an amendment superseding the Supreme Court decision. He can voice his support for congresspeople working on the amendment, and he can put pressure on obstructionists both by traditional media outlets and because he has a powerful, effective web-based group called Organizing for America that contributed significantly to his campaign and remains active in day-to-day issues. I could lecture you on the details, but the takeaway is that there are plenty of ways he can deal with the problem that don't violate separation of powers. Your assertion that "he can't do anything" because he can't write and push through his own amendment is absurd.
Heck, he could even start pushing to overturn the 14th amendment and nip this crap in the bud. Obama doesn't have the spine for that, but he could levy massive support for the issue if he chose to.
Dissenting opinion on the Supreme Court case for anyone interested: http://www.supremecourtus.
What most people don't realize is that the corruption plaguing tobacco companies is the usual method of operation in a capitalistic society. Right now, at this moment, large food companies are behaving the same way, selling us food that hurts us and often kills us. (ConAgra, Kraft, and Phillip Morris are all the same company.) Right now, factories and coal plants are polluting areas around them so badly that everyone in the area gets sick, and their usual response is to donate money for a cancer wing of a hospital instead of cleaning up their byproducts enough to stop giving people cancer. (My hometown is a perfect example of this.) Large corporations behave in evil ways, and sweep the evil under the rug by throwing money at the problem, and our politicians continue to let it happen because large corporations pay their bills too.
When we were kids, raw cookie dough was safe to eat because nasty bacteria were almost never found in eggs. Large egg companies have continued to use their leverage (paying off politicians) to weaken food regulation to the point that we can't safely eat raw eggs any more. The number of children killed by e.coli and salmonella continues to rise every year. If the free market were regulating corporations, we wouldn't buy eggs anymore, but the reality is that we do. The large egg manufacturers will have to create products so poisonous that people are dying in epidemic numbers before people stop buying eggs. As an alternative, the FDA could get its power back and regulate corporations instead of leaving the American consumer to be the whipping boy of the capitalistic system. And the ONLY way that will happen is if politicians stop cowtowing to big business and start keeping the average American's best interests in mind.
To address your last point, the Bible is pretty good but I prefer Grimm's Fairy Tails. The Bible just requires too much suspension of disbelief.
You never addressed the point that corporations did not have personal rights (you know, because they aren't people) for the first 200 years since the country was founded. You also never addressed my point about the corporate charter being dissolved (you know, because the founding fathers knew a tiny group of people with tons of money could destabilize the balance of power). You just don't seem to have much respect for the founding fathers
I find it funny that you just called capitalism a conspiracy. It's actually true that people didn't know smoking was harmful - otherwise they wouldn't have been filling restaurants and planes with unventilated smoke, been allowed to smoke even in hospitals and delivery rooms, etc.
That whole thing about people who don't know history being doomed to repeat it, I guess. How's the Pat Robertson protein shake?