Fuck its silent in here.......

[SKO]

Honest question to all:

Is it unpatriotic to want to change your country? Can you not simultaneously love your country and want to implement/adapt new ideas?

Depends. Are they your new ideas or mine?

[Gilgamesh]

Honest question to all:

Is it unpatriotic to want to change your country? Can you not simultaneously love your country and want to implement/adapt new ideas?

No.  Yes, you can.  Though there are a lot of people who would say otherwise.  Many of those people also believe in a mysterious sky creature too.

[Quality Start Machine]

Honest question to all:

Is it unpatriotic to want to change your country? Can you not simultaneously love your country and want to implement/adapt new ideas?

It's unpatriotic to not give a shit.

[Gilgamesh]

Honest question to all:

Is it unpatriotic to want to change your country? Can you not simultaneously love your country and want to implement/adapt new ideas?

It's unpatriotic to not give a shit.

I think it's far too simplistic to sit back and say that because this country is so great (which it undoubtedly is) that to change it - or want to change it - is heresy.  Many people like to cite the Founders for so many things, both rightly and wrongly, but I think one thing that we can credit them with is the foundation of a country that has change and evolution as part of its ethos.  The country was founded by people who wanted to improve not just their lives, but the lives of others.  They wrote a seminal document - the Declaration - that purposefully makes this country's goals practically unobtainable because they wanted future generations to strive towards them - almost without end.  They signed on to a document that espoused the universal rights of every man, let castigated so many to slavery.  They were pragamatists because they realized that addressing the problem would rip the country apart (which it did anyway) but because they wanted to let future generations debate these issues.  Look at the 8th amendment to the Constitution.  It's purely a matter of interpretation.  They put the 9th and 10th amendments in there because they wanted to allow other generations to breathe life into the document, not be bound by their edicts. 

So, in short, I think it's one of the most noble acts of patriotism to want to change your country.  And loving it, whilst attempting to do so, is not a vice. 

[SKO]

Honest question to all:

Is it unpatriotic to want to change your country? Can you not simultaneously love your country and want to implement/adapt new ideas?

It's unpatriotic to not give a shit.

I think it's far too simplistic to sit back and say that because this country is so great (which it undoubtedly is) that to change it - or want to change it - is heresy.  Many people like to cite the Founders for so many things, both rightly and wrongly, but I think one thing that we can credit them with is the foundation of a country that has change and evolution as part of its ethos.  The country was founded by people who wanted to improve not just their lives, but the lives of others.  They wrote a seminal document - the Declaration - that purposefully makes this country's goals practically unobtainable because they wanted future generations to strive towards them - almost without end.  They signed on to a document that espoused the universal rights of every man, let castigated so many to slavery.  They were pragamatists because they realized that addressing the problem would rip the country apart (which it did anyway) but because they wanted to let future generations debate these issues.  Look at the 8th amendment to the Constitution.  It's purely a matter of interpretation.  They put the 9th and 10th amendments in there because they wanted to allow other generations to breathe life into the document, not be bound by their edicts. 

So, in short, I think it's one of the most noble acts of patriotism to want to change your country.  And loving it, whilst attempting to do so, is not a vice. 

They also were elected to SERVE.

[Wheezer]

Many people like to cite the Founders for so many things, both rightly and wrongly, but I think one thing that we can credit them with is the foundation of a country that has change and evolution as part of its ethos.

Let us not forget drainage.

[Wheezer]

I found the braun dsitrict.

I was hoping to "place it in Wyoming," but a depth-first search was aggravating enough. She won the 14th precinct of the Third Ward. Any more, I cannot say.

[Indolent Reader]

Honest question to all:

Is it unpatriotic to want to change your country? Can you not simultaneously love your country and want to implement/adapt new ideas?

It's unpatriotic to not give a shit.

I think it's far too simplistic to sit back and say that because this country is so great (which it undoubtedly is) that to change it - or want to change it - is heresy.  Many people like to cite the Founders for so many things, both rightly and wrongly, but I think one thing that we can credit them with is the foundation of a country that has change and evolution as part of its ethos.  The country was founded by people who wanted to improve not just their lives, but the lives of others.  They wrote a seminal document - the Declaration - that purposefully makes this country's goals practically unobtainable because they wanted future generations to strive towards them - almost without end.  They signed on to a document that espoused the universal rights of every man, let castigated so many to slavery.  They were pragamatists because they realized that addressing the problem would rip the country apart (which it did anyway) but because they wanted to let future generations debate these issues.  Look at the 8th amendment to the Constitution.  It's purely a matter of interpretation.  They put the 9th and 10th amendments in there because they wanted to allow other generations to breathe life into the document, not be bound by their edicts. 

So, in short, I think it's one of the most noble acts of patriotism to want to change your country.  And loving it, whilst attempting to do so, is not a vice. 

They also were elected to SERVE.

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."

-Bubba

[Gilgamesh]

Those fucking atheist bastards at the ACLU...http://www2.wsls.com/news/2011/feb/25/aclu-virginia-defends-floyd-co-high-school-christi-ar-867856/

[Gilgamesh]

DPD, but the Onion hits it on the head again:

"It was just awful—they smashed through our living room window, one of them said 'I've had my eye on you, Roger,' and then they dragged my husband off kicking and screaming," said Cleveland-area homemaker Rita Ellington, one of the latest victims whose defenseless marriage was overrun by the hordes of battle-ready gays that had been clambering at the gates of matrimony since the DOMA went into effect in 1996.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/marauding-gay-hordes-drag-thousands-of-helpless-ci,19325/

[Quality Start Machine]

Gentlemen, I give you King of the Mardi Gras.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/03/02/docs-reveal-tsa-plan-to-body-scan-pedestrians-train-passengers/

Giving Transportation Security Administration agents a peek under your clothes may soon be a practice that goes well beyond airport checkpoints. Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets.

The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Wednesday published documents it obtained from the Department of Homeland Security showing that from 2006 to 2008 the agency planned a study of of new anti-terrorism technologies that EPIC believes raise serious privacy concerns. The projects range from what the DHS describes as "a walk through x-ray screening system that could be deployed at entrances to special events or other points of interest" to "covert inspection of moving subjects" employing the same backscatter imaging technology currently used in American airports.

...

In August of last year, Joe Reiss, the vice president of marketing of security contractor American Sciences & Engineering told me in an interview that the company had sold more than 500 of its backscatter x-ray vans to governments around the world, including some deployed in the U.S. Those vans are capable of scanning people, the inside of cars and even  the internals of some buildings while rolling down public streets. The company claims that its systems' "primary purpose is to image vehicles and their contents," and that "the system cannot be used to identify an individual, or the race, sex or age of the person." But Reiss admitted that the van scans do penetrate clothing, and EPIC president Marc Rotenberg called them "one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable."

[morpheus]

The title of the piece says it all.  There is so much RIGHT in here I don't know where to begin.  I'll try, though:

There are many people who say "Tax the Rich!" as if it's some sort of mantra.  But the top 1% of households (which earn $300k and up) is roughly 1.5 million households.  If we taxed all of their income (that is, a 100% tax rate) we couldn't close the budget deficit.  But we wouldn't collect any of the money either if we did that, because nobody works for free - you'd have a lot of people earning $299,000 and then going home.  What's worse is that the extra income they wouldn't earn also wouldn't get spent.  When tax rates change so does behavior.
...
We cannot fix the problems we have in this country with our federal budget without addressing entitlements.  It doesn't matter if people want to ignore entitlements or not - they must be addressed in order to balance the budget, and we must move away from people sucking on Federal transfer payments.

This isn't optional folks.  We have made promises we cannot keep.  They're mathematically-impossible to keep, irrespective of what we want to do.  We are left with accepting this and making the necessary adjustments or having them imposed upon us by the market in a disorderly fashion.

[Eli]

The title of the piece says it all.  There is so much RIGHT stuff that coincides with my own views in here I don't know where to begin.  I'll try, though:

OK'd.

[R-V]

The title of the piece says it all.  There is so much RIGHT in here I don't know where to begin.  I'll try, though:

There are many people who say "Tax the Rich!" as if it's some sort of mantra.  But the top 1% of households (which earn $300k and up) is roughly 1.5 million households.  If we taxed all of their income (that is, a 100% tax rate) we couldn't close the budget deficit.  But we wouldn't collect any of the money either if we did that, because nobody works for free - you'd have a lot of people earning $299,000 and then going home.  What's worse is that the extra income they wouldn't earn also wouldn't get spent.  When tax rates change so does behavior.
...
We cannot fix the problems we have in this country with our federal budget without addressing entitlements.  It doesn't matter if people want to ignore entitlements or not - they must be addressed in order to balance the budget, and we must move away from people sucking on Federal transfer payments.

This isn't optional folks.  We have made promises we cannot keep.  They're mathematically-impossible to keep, irrespective of what we want to do.  We are left with accepting this and making the necessary adjustments or having them imposed upon us by the market in a disorderly fashion.

The entire scam currently defined as "health insurance" must cease and be prosecuted as the felony it should be.

So - single payer then?

Also, has anyone proposed taxing 100% of someone's income? Nice work taking down that strawman, Karl.

I don't think anyone has suggested that deficits can be closed solely by taxing the wealthy. If they have, they're dumb. But dismissing any sort of tax increase with a wave of the hand strikes me as equally dumb.