Happy Birthday Mister President

I conclude from reports that the president has been running around D.C. all morning holding up fingers and telling passersby "I'm this many!" that today is his birthday. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has thoughtfully prepared a series of e-cards in case you'd like to send your regards.

Comments

[Lisa Simpson]

Stallone's 58 today as well, I noticed on Imdb.

[Ayatollah Usoe]

Agreed, there is no humor on the linked site. Here's my attempt, which is better than theirs:

"This time, elect Bush!"

[Jason Ligon]

The incumbent gets all the flak from libertarians, because they are the ones trampling rights at the moment. No need to get all bent out of shape. I'm sure, if things work out that way, we'll hear plenty about prez Kerry.

[Jaybird]

Truly, Bush is a Cancer.

[Gilbert Martin]

"Trampling rights"?

LOL

You're starting to sound like a leftist.

I have yet to see anything done by the current administration that's had any impact on my freedoms or rights in any discernable way.

Meanwhile the leftists have stomping all over what I consider to be the most important REAL WORLD rights of all for the last 60 years or so - the private property rghts of individuals to keep their own money, control their own property, freedom of contract rights and other economic choice type freedoms.
This stomping has cost me many thousands of dollars over the last 30 years or so and have impacted my ability to buy all sorts of desirable stuff for myself (such as new cars) and has cause me to have to continue working longer until retirement than would other wise be the case if I'd been able to keep and invest that extra money.

THAT is the kind of rights stomping that means something to me. The government throwing some camel-jockey type in the slammer indefinitely to fight terrorism really doesn't get me all that worked up.

[Jason Ligon]

Gilbert:

"You're starting to sound like a leftist."

I don't know that I've ever heard that before ...

[Jesse Walker]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that an innocent man's right not to be imprisoned indefinitely is more important than Gilbert's right to buy a new car. Hope that doesn't make me a Communist in your eyes, Gil.

[joe]

Gil asked everyone in his subidivision - the Smiths, the Fisks, the Woodsons, even Dr. Patel and his wife (who Gil is pretty sure qualify as "camel jockeys"), and not one of them complained of being harrassed by the FBI.

So clearly, the allegations that the Justice Department is trampling people's rights are phony.

[Gilbert Martin]

"Gil asked everyone in his subidivision - the Smiths, the Fisks, the Woodsons, even Dr. Patel and his wife (who Gil is pretty sure qualify as "camel jockeys"), and not one of them complained of being harrassed by the FBI."

LOL

The quintessential liberal - making it all up as he goes along - kinda like the way they "intepret" the Constitution.

[s.a.m.]

So clearly, the allegations that the Justice Department is trampling people's rights are phony.

Aw come on joe, its more complex than that. Fox News has been searching out someone who has had their rights trampled on, and so far come up with nada, no one, no how, zilch. Unless someone has a problem with the investigative journalism of one of the highest viewer rating news sources on TV, the matter is settled.

[xray]

Gilbert: Yup, the democrats have held all the power for the past 60 years and every "rights-stomping" law they passed was nobly resisted by the repub minority.

[Mackey]

For supposed tough guys, Republicans sure are a bunch of whiny bitches.

[Gilbert Martin]

"I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that an innocent man's right not to be imprisoned indefinitely is more important than Gilbert's right to buy a new car."

You can certainly suggest it - and I can certainly disagree with it - and I do.

[xray]

s.a.m.: that doesn't sound too complex. Fox says it's so, they have great ratings, so it must be the truth. Thanx for simplifying it for us all.

[matt]

I'm sure if Mr. Martin were the one imprisoned for an indefinte legnth of time he'd be singing a different tune.

[iconoclast]

"Agreed, there is no humor on the linked site. Here's my attempt, which is better than theirs:

"This time, elect Bush!""

That's hilarious, ayatollah.

[Kevin Carson]

Gilbert,

You mean like the liberals interpreted the Constitution in Curtiss-Wright and Quirin?

But wait--those are decisions the neocons are using these days to justify the total warfare state. So I guess "liberal" loose construction is OK as long as it's all about Executive aggrandizement.

Stephen Fetchet,

You left out some other commonplaces:
Israel=the [stage whisper] J.E.W.S., and
neoconservatives=the [stage whisper] J.E.W.S.

[joe]

So did Faux News hire the same detective than OJ's using to find the real killer?

[Gilbert Madrtin]

"Gilbert,

You mean like the liberals interpreted the Constitution in Curtiss-Wright and Quirin?"

Never heard of it. You'll have to provide more elaboration on that if you want my comment on it.

"But wait--those are decisions the neocons are using these days to justify the total warfare state. So I guess "liberal" loose construction is OK as long as it's all about Executive aggrandizement."

Tell me Kevin, exactly what quantifiable hardship, if any, has the "total warfare" state imposed on YOUR life?

[joe]

Gil, how much hardship has the Saddam regime imposed on yours?

[Gilbert Martin]

"Gil, how much hardship has the Saddam regime imposed on yours?"

That is a non-sequeter.

[Zach Conlyn]

Gilbert:

http://www.cqpress.com/college/quirin.htm

"In the 1942 case of Ex parte Quirin, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of a presidential order authorizing the use of a military commission to try eight saboteurs from Germany, a nation with which the United States was at war... in light President George W. Bush's order authorizing the use of military tribunals for foreign nationals suspected of terrorism, Quirin has taken on new relevance."

[Kevin Carson]

That's not even the right question, Gilbert.

What matters is not that the state finds it politically inexpedient to exercise the police state powers it has on paper, but that it has them. When the state creates the legal and administrative infrastructure for martial law, our civil liberties become something we hold only at the suffrance of the state, and that it can abridge at the stroke of a pen.

You might just as well ask what quantifiable hardship firearm registration would impose on you. The fact that the government possesses a list of gun owners, and that confiscation is thereby that much more feasible, is in itself a hardship. It makes our liberties less secure.

The same goes with monitoring of speech via Echelon, etc. The more the exercise of a right is subject to the constant surveillance, tracking, and regulation of the state, the less it become a fundamental right that can be upheld in defiance of the state; it becomes instead a mere privilege depending on the state's permission and tolerance.

And the total warfare state includes a permanent war economy, which encompasses pretty much the entire manufacturing and high-tech sectors. I'd say the higher than market prices you pay because of regulatory cartelization, and the taxes you pay to subsidize much of the operating cost of big business, is a tangible pocketbook effect. The wars the state gets into to guarantee access to the resources and markets this sector of the economy needs to be profitable would also seem to have a tangible effect on the average American. Or is statism only harmful when it helps welfare moms and unions, and hurts big business?

Curtiss-Wright and Quirin are two liberal SC decisions from the FDR era that set precedents for the modern neocon ideas of executive power. The C-W decision said that the royal prerogative concerning war and foreign policy devolved on the United States at the time of Independence, and did not depend on any positive enumeration of powers in the Constitution. Quirin is used by neocons today as a precedent for the holding of "illegal combatants"--including American citizens taken on American soil--without trial.

My point was that your stereotpical Limbaugh-Coulter idea of "liberalism" is completely ahistorical. There was a time, believe it or not, when it was conservatives who opposed large standing armies and foreign policy activism. It was liberals, not conservatives, who were activist hawks 60 years ago. It was liberals, not conservatives, who maneuvered the U.S. into WWII. The Cold War national security state, like the welfare state, was created by liberals.

[joe]

Gilbert, it is not. It goes directly to your assertion that your personal lack of experience is evidence that the hardship itself is imaginary.

[Gilbert Martin]

"That's not even the right question, Gilbert.

What matters is not that the state finds it politically inexpedient to exercise the police state powers it has on paper, but that it has them. When the state creates the legal and administrative infrastructure for martial law, our civil liberties become something we hold only at the suffrance of the state, and that it can abridge at the stroke of a pen."

Well, Kevin for me the issues are twofold : one is the hypocrisy of liberals who are now complaining about rights violations of the administration and the "unconstitutional" expansion of government power when they've been cheering on exactly that same thing - particularly in the economic and gun control arenas for 60 years and more. I seem to recall that it wasn't that long ago liberals were complainging that Ashcroft had the teremity to suggest that the 2nd Amendment actually had something to do with an individual right, which they've adamamendly denied and now they're squawking about him unconsitutionally expanding government power and violating people's rights.

The other issue for me is the implicit assumption of liberals and apparantly a bunch of other posters here is that property rights, freedom of contract and economic based freedoms are somehow in a "lesser" category than such things as freedom of speech and freedom of religion, etc. - which have been artificially classified as "civil liberties". There is nothing in the text of the Constitution that says any particular type of freedom is more important than any other or that the government has any leeway to interepret them as such.

I consider any such classifications of relative importance of Constitutional rights to be arbitrary and illegitimate. As far as I'm concerned, I'm entitled to the exact same level of autonomy over my physical and financial assets as I am over my physical person. As far as I'm concerned, excessive control over my assets counts every bit a much as being a "police state" as excesive control over my physical person.

I therefore consider the actual occurance of 60 years and counting of government expropriation of literally trillions of dollars worth of property (money) from hundreds of millions of people to fund uncostitutional transfer payments to other groups of people to be every bit as egregious as the supposed detention of "innocents" that people are squawking about now. Especially given the fact that I've seen no evidence presented by the media that there actually ARE any huge number of people being held who actually are "innocent".

[Vynnie]

Gilbert -

I think you're bang-on correct when you say "There is nothing in the text of the Constitution that says any particular type of freedom is more important than any other or that the government has any leeway to interepret them as such."

But the dispute seems to be over your earlier comment that "[Property rights infringement] is the kind of rights stomping that means something to me. The government throwing some camel-jockey type in the slammer indefinitely to fight terrorism really doesn't get me all that worked up." That's the exact opposite, the position that property rights are more important than criminal due process.

Let me take this into a less polarized context by pointing out that it is not just "camel-jockeys" who suffer when the Government is allowed to press the constitutional limits against people it doesn't like. Remember the Ruby Ridge fiasco? The ATF gunned down a gunsmith's entire family, firing pre-emptively, just to serve a warrant on charges that later proved groundless. Or the numerous cases recently filed in California in which small auto repair shop owners are facing jail time over nuances of Bureau of Automotive Repair regulations. Bear in mind that the government doesn't just hate camel-jockeys, it also hates gun owners, small business owners, SUV drivers, etc. etc.

A good rule of thumb for any limitation of personal rights is to imagine the worst President (by whatever measuring stick you prefer) who could conceivably be elected, and ask yourself if you would be comfortable giving him that power.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Patbetic.

[Kevin Carson]

Gilbert,

I fully agree with you on liberal hypocrisy. The Clinton/Reno forerunner to USA Patriot (the 1996 Counter-Terrorism Act) was arguably worse. And during Asscrack's confirmation hearings, I actually sympathized with him during the outrage over his statements on gun rights as a defense against tyranny. Today I use him as a case in point to convince liberals of the virtues of an armed populace.

The growing police state has been a bipartisan phenonmenon for most of the period since WWII, with the Church Committee legislation barely putting a dent in its upward ratcheting.

The latest wave of police state legislation has the bipartisan support of Schumer and Feinstein, as well as Hatch and Shelby.

The hypocrisy is on both sides, though. For every liberal who suddenly discovered civil liberties issues in 2001, there's a freeper who thinks the JBTs are just fine as long as they're under the command of a fine godly man like the sitting AG.

And there is also some integrity on both sides, in the spirit of the old NRA-ACLU alliance against Janet Reno.

[thoreau]

Man, make fun of the President on his birthday and everybody gets angrier than my mother when my wife and I didn't explicitly write her into every nanosecond of our vacation.

Whoever said that the GOP is the "Daddy" party and the Dems are the "Mommy" party got it wrong. Republicans, or at least the ones who post here, are like my neurotic mother when their feelings are hurt 🙂

BTW, my psycho father announced to me during my vacation that he's a libertarian. I saw him at a party hosted by some relatives (I still associate with some of my relatives, even though I avoid my very dangerous father). He decided to announce this to me to try to get my affection or something. 2 thoughts ran through my head:

1) I couldn't care less what his politics are as long as he's still obsessing over my mother and treating my brother like crap.
2) Anyone who subscribes me to crappy left-wing magazines without consulting me first is hardly a libertarian. Especially if he's a money-launderer who thinks that women should have no rights.

[js]

In their um extensive search for someone who had their rights trampled on did faux news interview at Guantanamo?

[MJ]

While Libertarians are the Teenager Party: bratty, nursing a huge pile of petty resentments and imagined slights, full of complaints and devoid of any real answers.

[MJ]

...or responsibility.

[Josh]

I am convinced Sanchez and Doherty are engaged in some sort of multi-thousand dollar competition to be crowned the worst poster to H&R.

[xray]

Hey Josh, did you know that H&R does not actually stand for Home for Republicans? Perhaps you have heard of this weird group of people who support neither dems nor repubs. They are sometimes called libertarians and they like to make fun of both the left and the right. So I nominate you for worst poster in all the blogosphere. for being such a clueless, humorless, doctrinaire republican.

[Kevin Carson]

Dear President Fratboy,

Congratulations on a lifetime of failing upwards. Maybe when you get through fucking up the presidency your daddy will buy you the papacy.

[Matthew Cromer]

What class you have, Sanchez. The Kerry Bandwagon is attracting every freak, weirdo, and nutball conspiracy theorist in the country and Julian can't stand to be left behind.

[geoff]

Bush lied people died, he is dumb, looks like a chimp, what a stupid smirk, no blood for oil, revenge for daddy, he's a cokehead, he's a fratboy, he's a cowboy, i hate him i hate him i hate hate hate hate hate him.

etc.

[TWC]

This might not be Home for Republicans but the you-know-what splats a lot harder on GWB from this site than it does on anyone else in the political arena. Of course, you also have to consider that libertarians have less patience with Republicans because the 'R's' talk the talk but rarely walk the walk, whereas you know the 'D's' are going to screw you outright.

BUT, for my money, anyone in political power who publically refers to the conservative Senator from the State of Taxachussets as "CHAPPY" is OKAY IN MY BOOK.

I'll pass on the link, maybe Chappy will send GWB an E Card.

[Stephen Fetchet]

Geoff - you forgot the now commonplace double at anti- Bush rallies - that Bush = Hitler, and Bush = Stalin.

Sure, it looks like an amazing contrast, and if you were raised on the NY Times, you would wonder why anti-Bush activists would condemn him with one breath, and praise him with the next, but there it is. I see hopefulness in the Bush=Hitler=Stalin comparisons, since the left has apparently conceded Hayek's point that there isn't much difference between Nazism and Communism.

[Jesse Walker]

What class you have, Sanchez. The Kerry Bandwagon is attracting every freak, weirdo, and nutball conspiracy theorist in the country

Thanks for the lesson in class, Matthew. Glad to see the Bush bandwagon is attracting such nice young men.

[iguana]

Maybe GWB should hold up his middle finger and say "I'm THIS old, butthead, want to make something of it"?

[Ammonium]

Now that I've seen Dick Cheney in his underwear in a cartoon, my opinions have changed 180 degrees.

Now I see why they call this magazine "Reason".

[joe]

I think you hurted their widdle feelings, Julian.

[TWC]

Jeeezusss, the stuff on the site is terrible, I mean godawful (okay it outright sucks and sucks bad). If you want funny you need BUSHONCRACK.COM.

How totally fitting that there is a frikking explanation for the masses as to what a got dam Haiku is.

[Josh]

If I wanted jokes of this post's quality, I could just stick to reading indie rock boards.

[Matthew Cromer]

Jesse,

When I write "the president has been running around D.C. all morning holding up fingers and telling passersby "I'm this many!" ", you might have a point.

Until then, you should just be embarrassed to share the stage with Sanchez.

"How far the mighty have fallen".

[joe]

Harumph harumph harumph!

No breeding at all.

[zorel]

thoreau,

I am very sorry if this offends you in any way - I don't know if you wantched "Friends" show. Phoebe dates this 'foreign' guy who is a pshrink, and he looks at each of the 'friends' and begins to 'diagnose' them from a freudian perspective (everyone hates his guts).

Your post reminded of that episode - that was funny (not your post, the sitcom)

[Douglas Fletcher]

Jeez, thoreau, maybe you need to take a cruise this year for vacation instead of visiting the 'rents...

[M. Simon]

I was a true believer once. That was when I was a communist.

I was a true believer twice. That was when I was a Libertarian.

Now I don't believe anything so in essence or fact I have become a regular Republican.

I am pondering why communists and Libertarians would subscribe to the same foreign policy prescriptions? I thinkk I have got it. One wants a power vacuum to fill. The other does not believe in power vacuums. Perfect. Congruent reasons from opposite sides of the political spectrum for ignoring reality (there currently is no power vacuum because the position has been filled not necessarily to every one's liking).

[M. Simon]

thoreau,

Money launderer? Sounds like free enterprise to me. You would think that his failure to report transactions to the gummint would be a plus.

Women ought to have no rights? Sounds like any man from a failed marriage.

Like people every where you will not let mere ideology stand in the way of a personal dispute.

Bravo.

[Gilbert Martin]

"While Libertarians are the Teenager Party: bratty, nursing a huge pile of petty resentments and imagined slights, full of complaints and devoid of any real answers."

And yet somehow they are ALL still infintely SUPERIOR to you!

[Gilbert Martin]

"But the dispute seems to be over your earlier comment that "[Property rights infringement] is the kind of rights stomping that means something to me. The government throwing some camel-jockey type in the slammer indefinitely to fight terrorism really doesn't get me all that worked up." That's the exact opposite, the position that property rights are more important than criminal due process."

What that is is my way of expressing extreme disgust and displeasure at the aforementioned liberal hypocrisy regarding who ACTUALLY is and has been violating rights in this country. Tbe ACUTAL MASSIVE violation of rights and MASSIVE unconstitutional expansion of government power and intrusion into our lives and affairs instigated by the liberals has been going on for 60 years and counting whereas the rights violations they are screaming about now have not actually happened on any widespread scale at all.
To date, the rights violations they've ACTUALLY instigated have had a much more detrimental REAL WORLD impact on people's lives than the things they're screaming that the current administration "might" or "could" do in the future.

Furthermore, holding someone in jail indefinitely is only a REAL injustice if that person actually is innocent of being involved in terrorism - if they ARE involved in it, then it's no injustince at all - particularly so if they aren't an American citizen to begin with. Foreign fighters nabbed in countries where we're fighting a war don't have the same Constitutional rights as American citizens.

[thoreau]

Money launderer? Sounds like free enterprise to me. You would think that his failure to report transactions to the gummint would be a plus.

When the money is from black marketeers who protect their market share with violence, that's hardly a paragon of free enterprise.

Like people every where you will not let mere ideology stand in the way of a personal dispute.

Well, that's sort of my point 🙂 Politics is not the most important thing in the world, and as long as he is a clear and present danger to my mother and brother I couldn't care less what his politics are.

[thoreau]

Jeez, thoreau, maybe you need to take a cruise this year for vacation instead of visiting the 'rents...

Believe me, my wife and I are already checking out brochures!