If you think that American flight attendants have become a bit heavy handed, be grateful that you don’t fly Saudi Arabian Airlines flight. A man who refused to put his cigarette out on a flight to Jeddah was sentenced to 30 lashes.
The man reportedly said that he was on his way to a clinic to stop smoking. This would fall in the category of adverse therapy.
In some way, he got off easy. In April 2008, a man was sentenced to 50 lashes for smoking on board a Dammam-Riyadh Saudi flight.
Buddha:
redneck to the core and proud of it, my pappy was a share cropper and my mammy worked over in Bumpass as a washer woman to them nasty rich white folks. I never made it past 2nd grade on account I had to work the fields with my bare tremblin little hands. So skools me Buddha Ise willin to lern iffn ywase tinks ywase ken tich me.
I got my gun and my bible. The gun to shoot myself with after listening to this bs and the bible so I cans pray for yous all fore I ascend into heaven with all the other redneck crackers.
You are a dumbass, you look all them fancy words up in a dictiionary or did you go on line and find them on the cliff notes site?
you are a proto-neopretensious autocratic churlish rube with delusions of grandeur.
Shove it up your ass. Nice cogent reply, half-wit.
Thanks for continually proving my points about you, your character and your tactical methodology.
You want the Big Government argument? That’s a non-starter for rookies and propagandists. Big, small, medium, size is
IRRELEVANT.
It’s a bullshit distraction tactic. Functionality and the protection of inalienable Constitutional Rights is RELEVANT. And living document does not mean you get to choose which parts to you get to piss on out of BELIEF. Parts of the Constitution cannot be changed without destroying the document. An evolved document has utility. A destroyed one has none. You’ve proven you don’t know the difference, Mr. Torture.
And let’s be clear on YOU. You’re an ignorant semi-violent redneck jackass who knows squat about history, law, sociology, science, logic or comparative religion other than the propaganda force fed you by FAUXNews. I haven’t proven this fact, YOU have. Time and again.
I just helped. I’ll have to say, you’ve performed quite well as an illustrative cautionary tale about the price of willful ignorance and being a blind follower. I’ve only ran into two others EVER stupid enough to say they endorsed PNAC. In that respect, you ARE special.
The day a torture endorsing, PNAC loving, Neocon troll dictates to me the nature of liberty is the day Hell freezes solid, fascist enabler. You are demonstrably incapable of understanding the word “liberty”. You can’t define it or use it proper context. Thomas Jefferson would be the first to tell you so.
Keep acting like political turd in the punchbowl. It’s funny and educational (just not how you believe it is).
Rcampbell:
the reason i like free market capitalism is that it addresses those issues, the nature of man is to be selfish, he is out for his own interests and does not give a tinkers dam about the guy down the street. So that is why I like it. It works everyone out for themselves doing there own thing and the government acting as a referee with objective law in the form of the constitution a non-evolving one so that everyone knows the rules.
and yes it seems to me that much of the non smoking type stuff is from the left
Buddha:
so you think the constitution is a living evolving document? If so you do show your true colors – a big government progressive liberal.
as I said above you cannot have both you either believe in big government or you believe in liberty the 2 cannot coexist.
So take your Norman primogeniture from 1066 and shove it up your evolving a…. As for me I will take my constitution straight from 1789 that is.
>>Rcampbell:
>>because it seems to me that most of that nonsense comes from the >>liberal side of the aisle.
Since my post amply dispelled that erroneous assumption, it’s pretty obvious that you’re wrong.
And the government, big or small is US and has a role to play in citizens’ lives. Conservative philosophies have dominated American plitics since Reagan in 1980 (“Government is the problem. not the solution”). This includes Bill Clinton’s business-friendly term (“The era of big government is over”)and the Bush years, especially the disasterous most recent eight years nightmare of laissez-faire attitudes. Given the immense damage conservatives have done to this country over the past 30 years you’d be wise to reconsider their failed policies or at least be wise enough to not attempt to defend them. They, both the policies and the polititians who’ve practiced them, have failed the nation and there is no reason to give them further attention.
As President Obama has said, the issue isn’t big or small, but effective government. The GOP has stated repeatedly that government doesn’t work and as sure as sunlight, whenever they’ve been in charge of the government they proved themselves incapable of running it effectively.
The whole concept of conservatism, supply-side economics and laissez-faire dealings with business, etc., assumes that business owners will act in the best interests of the society as a whole, that they’ll supply good paying jobs at fair wages and a stable environment to conduct business. WRONG!!! When given the opportunity business will do precisely what they have done every time this approach is tried. They will be greedy. They will take advantage of the lack of adult supervision and they will pay the least possible wage to workers to enhance their maximum self-indulgence. They will and they did. As a believer, you should feel betrayed. As an American I surely do. If you don’t, then either you condone or expect this behavior as normal or okay for a society to endure. Liberals do not.
This could also be a cross talk created by definitional distinction. Social conservatism and cultural traditionalism are different. The difference being that one view is set that our way is only way even when proven wrong. The other is that we like to preserve tradition. However, traditions are not always good or right and what traditions one observes is ultimately up to the practitioner and the commonality to work out. Rigidity of thought vs. flexibility. I’ve used primogeniture as an example before of outmoded tradition being discarded. I have no problem with preserving cultural practices, but culture is a lot like religion when applied to the common good – it should inform, not dominate, policy decisions. Policy should be the realm of reason and fact, not preference.
When errors are systemic to the basis of argument, not just the individual incidents, how would you address that, MAS?
How so, MASkeptic?
I pretty much think about the left the way you think about the right.
since taxes and the fed creation things have gone downhill ever since. Oh for the days of the “robber barons”.
Basically you are a big government good individual freedom bad kind of guy no matter how you slice it. Fact is you cant have it both ways government will always trample individual freedom. Big government is big government left or right.
You think America is an evil force, I dont. All of your arguments are arguing for big government wether you know it or not. In fact most of the people on this site are big government types even though they say they are for individual freedom. government does nothing to protect our rights. And what I call liberals have been in charge of most branches of government for the last 75 years except for a few republican detours. So get off this I am for individual rights bullshit. You are either for individual rights or you are for big government you cant have it both ways.
Yes Lincoln did suspend habeas corpus and it appears to me it was legal in light of the south removing itself from the union. He did it twice and it was restored in 1866.
What do you think of Japanese internment? Now that really was a suspension of habeas corpus and approved by a liberal court. And somewhat similar to today.
Rcampbell:
because it seems to me that most of that nonsense comes from the liberal side of the aisle.
Buddha paints with too broad a brush.
And don’t try distancing yourself from the GOP now. Talk about a train that’s left the station, Mr. What’s So Wrong With PNAC. Your attempts at appearing reasonable aren’t working very well. It’s a nice attempt at tactical adjustment, but like everything you’ve tried, not convincing and ultimately futile. What’s wrong with conservatism? Why people like you are, the social conservatives. You spew non-fact, vitriol and hatred like a mantra and then you dissemble, obfuscate or threaten when backed into a corner by reality. You can change tactics all you like. As you should have seen if you were paying attention, your targets can and do adjust faster and better to changing conditions than you are capable of. The reason you can’t win is your arguments are all ultimately based in wishful thinking. Wishing that social conservatism and trickle down economics have been not only totally discredited but are about to be marginalized right out of the system one way or another. Wishing that the ideals of the people you so blindly back hadn’t done more damage to this country’s legal system, economy and international standing than ANY terrorist could have accomplished EVER. Wishing that our infrastructure wasn’t left to rot under on the Republican’s watch. Wishing that history was as you THINK it is in contravention to established fact. Wishing that waterboarding isn’t torture by U.S. statute, case law and international treaty. Wishing that you didn’t know your stances fail because they all fall back to either illogic, inaccuracy in fact or definition or your simple burning irrational hatred. It’s not me proving any of this, but your very own actions and reactions.
So trying to appear moderate won’t work. You already screwed that up.
Try.
Again.
Bron
As is the case with many of your posts, I fail to see what point you’re trying to make. I live in the Mormon-dominated city of Mesa, AZ (stated solely to illustrate the CONSERVATIVE leanings of our local politics) where we’ve had no smoking laws governing office buildings, public buildings, bars and restaurants for about 15 years. I’m a former smoker who enjoyed it, but quit for long term health reasons. It has long been my stance that such restrictions are an infringement on a personal decisons, but a legitimate case can be made about public health concerns, to say nothing of the olfactory intrusions. Smokers come in all shapes, sizes, races, religions, political and sexual orientations as do the anti-smoking activists. Why you’re trying to make this an anti-liberal issue is beyond me.
Sense of balance? That’s rich.
Buddha:
ah I see says the blind man.
so you are a classical liberal in the Jeffersonian model?
And quite frankly as much as I hate to admit it some of what you say is why I am no longer a republican. I gave up on them some years ago.
I was going to respond that over the last 30 years we have really had only one republican president-Reagan.
A good deal of republicans are, as you correctly categorize them, theocrats, some are eastern rich white and liberal and the rest are shit out of luck (like me as in no party). Qutie frankly I dont really like Palin, she is quite the progressive if you listen to her and I am sure she has theocratic leanings. I personally wish someone would start a third party but some think that it would cause too much trouble as evidenced by the European model.
Although our government seems to work best with a democrat president and a conservative congress as in part of the Bill Clinton years or the Reagan years with a conservative president and a mostly liberal congress.
The ones that go to the evangelical free churches scare me the most, they do want a tyranny of God, by God and for God. No arguments on that one. And then most republicans are like Bush and his compassionate conservatism pretty much the same old big government bullshit except from the private sector.
I direct you to an article by C. Bradley Thompson (he is a profeesor at Clemson University) on what is wrong with conservatism. I cant remember the exact title but it has conservative in the title. I actually think you would find it a good read.
I add a half hearted “you liberal Nazi” so as not to loose my sense of balance
“So is a local ordinance banning smoking not a liberal platform?”
No it’s not. In case you hadn’t noticed, at the local level there are a lot Republicans who favor anti-smoking legislation based on the fiscal conservative stance that it has a huge health care cost. There are also moderates of all flavors who favor it for health reason, not political. Once again, a classical liberal wouldn’t care if you smoked out of every orifice of your body. The modern liberals that you whine about usually agree with the conservatives about health costs and with everyone else about general health concerns.
You keep looking for a justification for your hatred. We’ll keep protecting liberty.
rcampbell:
here is a little article from “reason hit and run”
Yesterday I got an e-mail message from Michael Hafken, a public information specialist for the City of Calabasas, offering a “correction” of my column about the town’s new outdoor smoking ban:
Please note that there is NO possible jail time for a violation of the Comprehensive Secondhand Smoke Control Ordinance in the City of Calabasas. Penalties range from warnings (most cases) to a potential $500 fine for extreme, repeated and willful violations. Violations are coded as infractions and NOT misdemeanors.
I wrote back, pointing out that the ordinance says, “A violation of this ordinance shall constitute a misdemeanor punishable pursuant to chapter 1.16 of this code [which specifies a penalty of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine] unless the prosecutor determines to prosecute it as an infraction as authorized by section 1.16.010(a).” Ten hours later, I received this reply:
You are correct regarding the ordinance text. I should have said that the City has publicly maintained that there are no plans to treat violations as misdemeanors. As is true of any violation of the City Code, we have a broad range of remedies, ranging from administrative fines (like parking tickets, which top out at $500), infractions (which also top out at $500), and full-blown misdemeanor prosecution. For the initial period of enforcement, the City only plans on educating people about the ordinance and issuing warnings. In extreme situations, such as repeated and willful violations, a fine may be levied as an infraction.
I guess my point, poorly made in my previous email, was that there are no foreseeable instances where the City would arrest people and put them in jail for smoking under this ordinance. I apologize for any confusion.
So the city’s position is that although it has the authority the put smokers in jail, it will never use that authority. If so, why put it in the ordinance to begin with?
so is a local ordinance banning smoking not a liberal platform?
My guess is that when you get enough states you will make it a national law. Or if you get national health care then you liberals will really be able to have a field day. we will be up at 6 am doing jumping jacks and eating oatmeal for breakfast. the elderly will be mercy killed because of limited resources and abortions will be mandatory for people that have more than 2 children. Seems pretty free to me.
Oh and we wont be able to have a cigar or a scotch or whiskey, only red wine (I guess that is what goes with liberal cheese) because of its health benefits.
>>I guess liberals are all excited about this precident!
Yes, we’re VERY excited about this PRESIDENT!!
>>Here we just get to throw smokers in jail.
In what country do “we” throw smokers in jail?
“I guess liberals are all excited about this precident! Here we just get to throw smokers in jail.”
1) Not our precedent. Despite Bush’s best efforts, We the People are neither subject to the retrograde laws of Saudi Arabia nor their barbaric legal traditions. It’s called The Constitution.
2) Liberals by definition are less likely to give a damn if you smoke than anyone (except for children, any drug needs to be kept from children). Your lungs, your choice. In case you haven’t noticed, the Feds only care about tobacco ads on TV, taxes, smoking on planes and in Federal facilities, and sales to minors. The tobacco lobbyists made sure of that. Anti-smoking legislation is done piecemeal by city, county and/or state government. You cast a local political issue in a national cast. And all just to attempt to smear liberalism, a subject you have a clearly demonstrated lack of understanding of the underlying principles. You have a problem with a local ordinance? Be a man. Take it up with locals. Or you can whine about liberals some more. Because whine goes good with cheese.
I guess liberals are all excited about this precident! Here we just get to throw smokers in jail.