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fyatuk

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Everything posted by fyatuk

  1. Anyone else think it odd for the Arab League leader to be calling the US an "honest broker"?
  2. so this just means that whenever the democrats regain the texas congress its redrawn. and they will enact revenge. what fun. And then the Republicans will be hiding out in OK to prevent a quorom?
  3. The bold part of the article I find to be the biggest problem. I don't think it's fair at all to let either party redraw the district boundaries any time they want to. That can easily get out of control. It's also going to confuse the hell out of some people. I agree with you. I think this particular Texas redraw, no matter how much I disagree with it, should be considered an exception in that the Courts drew the boundaries initially due to disputes between the two parties (aka, it wasn't done in the normal manner). Personally I think there should be an external, non-partisan, suvery group that draws the boundaries. They'd be more fair.
  4. 20 right. #19 isn't that hard, the correct answer is the most obvious choice.
  5. If they crack down on automobile emissions you can expect gas prices to go up. It depends on how they do it. If they demand fuel additives as a way of combatting emissions, then yes, fuel prices will go up in most places. If the demand stronger built in controls (they'd have to grandfather existing cars and give a year or two advance notice), then the price of cars and vehicle inspections or registrations will go up, but gas won't.
  6. Ick! I'm sure everything will get solved. Does this mean news on the Marlins is going to get a large placement in my newspaper again? I was getting sick of those articles BEFORE the "offer" was retracted...
  7. Meh, if they can prove it's beneficial to us in the long-run, or the current rate it's harmful I'm all for it. But they have the burden of proof on their shoulders. Well, they not only have to prove that carbon dioxide is a harmful agent (which since global warming still hasn't been proven to be caused by man could be tough), they have to prove that that is enough to qualify it as a pollutant, and that the EPA is legally obligated to regulate it. My guess is that the states will lose the case because of the fact that man-made, CO2 based global warming has not been conclusively proven. I'll laugh if all these people end up doing is challenging the constitutionality of the EPA to exist (watch the judges decide regulating pollutants isn't enough to qualify as the "general welfare" therefore the agency violates the 10th amendmnet ). And of course what's really funny is in the past few years the US has done a better job of handling CO2 emissions than most Kyoto countries.
  8. How do you feel about political leaders turning to psuedo-science for advice? As long as they don't blindly follow the advice, I have no problem with it. Same thing with religion. As long as they don't blindly follow, i don't care. Everybody needs advice sometimes, and everyone has the capability of giving good advice. Heck, most of the time, psychics and such don't really give advice but help you realize what you want to do. Works very similar to prayer. Either way, at least is isn't as bad as Caligula.
  9. I don't think anyone would argue with a conditions based timetable, or a date based timetable as long as certain minimum conditions are set for each rollback of troops. I imagine it will probably be a slow withdrawal that will take years. I can't say I really disagree with making the distinction between resistance and terrorism and granting amnesty for the resistance. It's actually a good idea for the Iraqi government. It makes a statement that the government cares for all Iraqis, but not the terrorists who want nothing but death. It may leave a sour taste in the mouths of Americans, but it's probably the right thing to do, as long as all parties cede their militias by either giving up arms or absorbing them into the military/police. As for the release of security prisoners. If you grant legitimacy and amnesty to the resistance, you'd have to release anyone who was rounded up in connection with the resistance, and at this point, with some of the mass roundups and such, it would be difficult to figure out who is resistance and who is a terrorist. The records are probably not good. They shouldn't release any non-iraqi's though. I don't think non-iraqis have a legitamate claim to being resistance. And they aren't going to release people convicted of terrorist acts, once they define terrorism. Overall it looks like a decent plan, and at the very least the Iraqi government has taken the lead in accomplishing something instead of having to be pushed by the US and coalition.
  10. Why do the oil companies have to be MADE into doing research? Why not allow capitalism to work and allow the market to force them into research. Nuclear power really is the way to go, biggest problem is fallouts and terrorist attacks. But from an energy standpoint it is by far the best, b/c its clean, not overly hazardous to the environment and will reduce foreign oil dependancy. Ethanol and wind power and such are good, but cant produce energy at the rate and amount we need in this country problem with nuclear power is the tons and tons of radioactive water that needs to be stored for thousands of years. But it is certainly the best choice for electricity production under current technology levels, of course supplemented with solar, wind, and hydro power. Not to terribly relevant to a discussion on oil though, since oil isn't used to produce electricity (natural gas is, but we're not really in a natural gas crunch yet). Ethanol is currently the most viable solution for one of (if not the) biggest use for oil, gasoline. It's also more of a stop gap, since there is likely no way to ever completely fulfill our gas needs with ethanol. But it is quite effective and an easy switch over until better fuel cells are developed. Of course, eventually we will need to develop enough power through completely renewable energy sources since there's only so much usable uranium in the world (granted, centuries of it even with greatly increasing needs). Oil companies won't put in any real research into alternative fuel methods until the last few years of oil supply (scheduled to be a few decades from now). They'll spend their money researching ways to get to oil they haven't before. It'd be nice if they did, but you are right in that we shouldn't force them to. Offering tax incentives for them contributing to alternate fuels research would be a nice thing though.
  11. nucular nucular nucular... In all seriousness, remove the import tariff for ethanol might make a lot of sense. Brazil has gotten ethanol production down pat, and if it had a trade partner willing to invest some research time and share information, ethanol could become a really good possibility. Of course that'd probably mean cutting down more rain forest to make room for sugar cane fields, so that might not be good...
  12. does this mean they actually will finish 35 and make it less congested? :lol It'd be nice, wouldn't it! Might also lessen traffic if the get around to doing I-69. Don't hold your breath on any of it Has 35 ever been not under construction?
  13. http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15497 Big deal. They might not be advertising any plans, but these kinds of plans have been in the works for a long time. I-35 is called the Pan-Am Expressway for a reason. It was always meant to be a major throughfare from the Panama Canal up through Canada, and lately South America has made plans and efforts to extend it all the way to its southern tip. The TTC that often gets talked about in conjunction with a "NAFTA superhighway" has been in the works since the early to mid 80's, long before NAFTA, and even Bush in politics. Also at the moment, the section of I-35 from SA to Austin is the busiest and most dangerous stretch of interstate highway in the nation, so plans to either greatly expand or build a through traffic bypass are greatly needed. Heck, with the way NAFTA is worded, it was obvious from the beginning that I-35 was going to play a central role in ground shipments between the 3 countries (special priviledges were given to cities along I-35, including some pretty good ones to SA which have greatly benefitted our economy). People are trying to portray this as Bush abdicating US sovereignty to the NAFTA coalition, when it reality improving the central corridor is a necessary action. Now it probably wouldn't be necessary without NAFTA, true, but for the most part these plans have been hovering around for a couple decades.
  14. fyatuk

    Knock Knock?

    I guess we should just throw out the Constitution, it's being made irrelevant by this government and the court. "A 'Bill of Rights'? How quaint!" -AG Alberto Gonzalez :plain Do you really think that police not knocking, announcing themselves, and waiting a few seconds constitutes an "unreasonable search"? When there's obviously significant evidence, which is required to obtain the warrant in the first place? As long as the warrant has been legally and truthfully obtained, the constitutional issues involving it have been fulfilled. And locality, state, or the federal government COULD restrict it further to make the knock/announce/wait thing legally required (if they did that, I'd like to see an exception rider that could be added to the warrant if there is a significant chance either evidence could be destroyed or someone at the location might be a violence risk).
  15. Not going to cheer that he died a painful death but I guess it's poetic justice. He'll get his from whatever name he wants to call Satan anyways, no need to worry about how he was transferred over. I thought it was clear he always referred to Satan as "America". Or wait, I might have that backwards I personally would rather he had been saved and kept alive. Had to be some valuable info in that head of his...
  16. Had his second rehab start, for the AA Corpus Christi Hooks: 6 IP 2 H 0 ER 0 BB 11 SO 73 pitches. Simply dominant, if he wasn't scheduled for the AAA start this Friday there is no doubt he could join the Astros now. I wouldn't get too excited. I'm not sure half the Missions team belongs in AA. Mariners farm system has not been good to us. I kinda miss the Dodger days... Even the guy who was supposed to start (Talbot?) and came on in relief made most of the Missions batters look silly. But still an impressive showing.
  17. They reported on ESPN that the NCAA softball finals had a better T.V. rating than the NHL Playoffs.... Am not a hockey fan but this has to be embaressing to the league and its fans.... how do u hockey fans feel about this.... I would have watched more of the playoffs, but I didn't know I even HAD OLN until like 2 days ago... It's like channel 137 or something on my TV. That's not a good way to get ratings...
  18. when you control the house and a majority in the senate it shouldnt be a victory. Well, if you look at his campaign promises, and the platform he ran on, and then see what he accomplished, it looks worse. Reduce Government Spending: Has actually increased it by a significant amount. Social Security Reform: Failed. Gay Marriage Amendment: Failed/Failing. War on Terror: Not going so well. Iraq: Getting worse by the day. Immigration Reform/Guest Worker Program: (which he brought up only recently): Stalled in the House. I'm not a big fan of Kerry, but can anyone honestly say that he could have done a worse job this term than Dubya? I honestly hope not. Social Secuirity Reform is a qualified failure. Bush has gotten congressmen to talk about alternative solutions (other than buying time with payroll taxes), which is more than any other president has managed to do. This will get done, probably under the next President, but it'll be because of Bush pushing for a "permanent solution". The immigration/guest worker thing was just weird. It's so against what most Republicans would want. He was always going to have a hard time selling that, since he needs bipartisan support. Unless he includes tough penalties for current illegals, it won't get enough support from Republicans, but if he does include them he loses the support of the Democrats. War on Terror is debateable. There's no way to truly quantify how well its going (unless you want to just go by whether bin Laden has been captured/killed, which is a pretty bad measuring stick). We have pretty much captured/killed any notable al-Qaeda members except bin Laden though, and he's no longer mouthing off (heck, he basically asked both Europe and the US for peace). I can honestly say that I think Kerry would have done worse. There's obviously no way to prove it since you'd be talking about what ifs, etc, but I believe it.
  19. Good. We don't need that garbage in history's most important document. Well, most important document is extremely debateable. Now if you said US history...
  20. Like I said before, that needs to happen anyway. If only to make the Texas Legislature meet more than once every 2 years and to give the governor something consisting of powers, considering now its basically a figurehead position. The Texas Constitution is one of the most asinine documents ever with amendment over amendment and amendments of amendments. Its really quite hilarious. I'm not going to argue that point. Legilature needs to meet more often instead of calling a "special session" nearly every year, and it's weird that the Governor really has no power (although there are historical reasons for that, I think because of the Civil War, but I don't remember fully). And the insane number of amendments, and the weird separate levels of amendments with no restrictions on what goes where. I mean, a normal amendment can cover anything and can be voided or overwritten by another amendment. I bill of rights amendment can cover anything and cannot be voided or overwritten without invalidating the whole constitution. At the very least the BoR needs to have restrictions on what could be put in there. How many amendments are there? 120+? Kinky for Gov! Political Reform here we come!
  21. Faith always win Tell that to Saints fans. The Saints motto last year was "Faith" and they ended up being really really bad.... As for the idiot in the story... There's a saying "God helps those who help themselves". Aka, if you're dumb enough to put yourself in a situation to get hurt/killed, God is going to let it happen. God is a darwinist
  22. Sorry for the long post, but Id really like to clarify the equal protection law in this area. Loving v Virginia might run counter to that argument. There Virginia banned interracial marriage and used the argument that it applied to everyone, white and black, equally. Whites couldnt marry blacks and blacks couldnt marry whites but neither was denied a right to marriage that the other had. The court steadfastly refused to accept this argument. Language: "There can be no question but that VA statute rests soley upon distinctions drawn according to race. It bans generally accepted conduct if engaged in by members of different races?there can be no doubt that restricting freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause." Of course racial classification is held to a higher standard of constitutional scrutiny because there is rarely if ever a compelling reason to make legal race classificatios. That said, the issue being run into today is not that of the federal constitution but how state courts have interpreted their state constitutions and their own state equal protection clauses. So really the whole founding fathers stuff isnt even relevant to this discussion. In fact, the funny thing is that conservatives are trying to go opposite to the "let the states decide argument." They are trying to nationalize an issue that state courts have interpreted a certain way through state constitution. This has never been a federal issue until they made it one. That is why various states have passed constitutional amendments to their STATE constitutions-so that their courts don't rule a certain way. Of course even those amendments are subject to the federal equal protection clause. And although they havent applied the higher levels of scrutiny to homosexuality, there is some protections against state acts motivated out of animus towards gays, including state amendments, that rests in equal protection clause jurisprudence. Basically in Romer v Evans, Colorado passed an amendment that said no city within the state can try and prevent discriminations against homosexuals through local anti-gay discrimination laws(and Colorado's argument was that it treated gays and non-gays equally). The basic idea is that a law or amendment against any minority group can't single out a group because of animus towards that group and impose a heavy burden. For this reason, the court struck down the amendment. Put this another way, no state or goverment in this country can pass a law saying all Marlins fans are not allowed to drive cars because we don't like Marlins fans. Even though this group doesnt get higher protection like race or gender, they still get protection under the equal protection clause. Colorado offered non-animus reasons in Romer but they were a bunch of crap and the court saw them for what they were. What's my point? The argument that banning gay marriage is a bad idea but not unconstitutional runs counter to the way state's have interpreted their constitution and could also run counter to the US Constitution if based on dislike of gays. And despite what some people say, I believe it is. It is also irrelevant if the law treats gays and non-gays equally in preventing gay marriage. It still classifies based on a characteristic and in doing so, has at least a basic run in with the 14th amendment. Excellent post. The first comparison is a little irrelevant (but still apt), equal rights based on race is specifically discussed in constitutional amendments, while sexual orientation is not. Granted several federal laws that specifically mention orientation can be construed to mean that the government has accepted sexual orientation is on par with race and gender issues. I think the Colorado case might have had a different outcome if it forbid local anti-descrimination laws in general, instead of singling out orientation. That's a much clearer case. Also the reason many states have passed amendments is because Massachussetts proved the courts can and will overturn state marraige laws. I haven't look at the specifics of the Massachussetts laws, but most people I've heard from tend to think the decision was borderline acceptable at best. Dunno though. I would LOVE to see the fall-out from the Texas admentment being overturned by federal courts. If that happens, then the entire Texas constitution is scrubbed, and without a consitution Texas would no longer qualify as a state and revert to independence. Could lead to some really interesting things since Texas does have quite a few seperatists. I'm also waiting for the fallout of the first gay married couple from Mass. to sue the IRS because they are being audited for filing married/jointly and seeing the true test in the US Supreme court of DOMA.
  23. Wait... The articles says the US offered to provide Iran with nuclear technology, but the only thing they mentioned was civilian air-craft parts? Weird. Either way, providing nuclear technology as an incentive to stop nuclear weapons research sure worked really well with North Korea, didn't it... :banghead
  24. I have no problem with gays marrying. Neither do I. Where I have issue is that laws banning same-sex marriage are being declared unconstitutional. Just because something is a bad idea doesn't make it unconstitutional. It is if it violates the US or state constitution. We are all entitled to equal protection of the law. See, it doesn't REALLY violate the legalities of equal rights protections. Everyone has the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. No one can marry someone of the same sex. Equal rights for all. It's not the government's problem if you choose not to use that right (legally speaking). It might violate the spirit of it, but not the letter. And honestly, if the founding fathers had thought homosexuality would become so popular, they likely would have done something to prevent gay marraige themselves (if it even occurred to them that could be an issue anyway). It does violate the ideals in the Declaration of Independence ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"), but that's not a legally binding document. Banning gay marraige should be considered constutional, at least on the state level (on the federal level there are 10th amendment issues). The argument for allowing gay marraige is less about legality and more about what is morally right and what is consistent with the ideals of this country that promotes diversity within its borders. I must say thats the first argument against gay marriage on this board that was actually logical. But I do think the Founding Father's allowed for the Constitution to be so open so as ideals change and people change, it would not become antiquated. Granted, the states lost a lot of their power after the Civil War but this really is a state by state issue. In the least if a state is going to prevent gay marriage, at least allow for the couples to adopt children. There is no scientific or anecdotal evidence that gays raising children affects them anymore than a normal household. Isn't it interesting that the first logical argument you see against it comes from someone that supports it. I agree the founding fathers knew their morality wouldn't be eternal, which is why only one "law" was actually put in the constitution (treason). That's why it has been called a "living document". Lincoln made a big mistake by solidifying power at the federal level during the Civil War. He made our government into something it was never meant to be, and in fact violates the very ideals of the Bill of Rights. Now granted that was in the process of doing the admirable and morally just thing of freeing slaves, but it would have been nice if he had found a way to do that without bashing through the Constitution. Especially since his way of freeing the slaves is a large part of the cause of lingering racial tensions. But meh, that's a whole 'nother discussion. I agree with you on the raising kids thing. There is more evidence that being rased as a ward of the state is more damaging psychologically than being raised by homosexual parents.
  25. I have no problem with gays marrying. Neither do I. Where I have issue is that laws banning same-sex marriage are being declared unconstitutional. Just because something is a bad idea doesn't make it unconstitutional. It is if it violates the US or state constitution. We are all entitled to equal protection of the law. See, it doesn't REALLY violate the legalities of equal rights protections. Everyone has the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. No one can marry someone of the same sex. Equal rights for all. It's not the government's problem if you choose not to use that right (legally speaking). It might violate the spirit of it, but not the letter. And honestly, if the founding fathers had thought homosexuality would become so popular, they likely would have done something to prevent gay marraige themselves (if it even occurred to them that could be an issue anyway). It does violate the ideals in the Declaration of Independence ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"), but that's not a legally binding document. Banning gay marraige should be considered constutional, at least on the state level (on the federal level there are 10th amendment issues). The argument for allowing gay marraige is less about legality and more about what is morally right and what is consistent with the ideals of this country that promotes diversity within its borders.
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