Jordan pilot hostage Moaz al-Kasasbeh 'burned alive'

[Blind groper]

It is true that the British were not always wonderful rulers. The Indians (of East India) were often poorly treated. However, it is unlikely that the British rule was worse than that of their own Rajahs, and was certainly much better than the Muslim Moguls, which the British kicked out.

The Nadir of British actions was the Opium wars with China. However, nowhere was Britain as consistently bad as the actions of the USA military and government agains their own native peoples. The fact that there is a more enlightened approach today does not change history.

[Seth]

It is true that the British were not always wonderful rulers.

"Not always?" When has an English monarch EVER been a "wonderful ruler?"

\ The Indians (of East India) were often poorly treated. However, it is unlikely that the British rule was worse than that of their own Rajahs, and was certainly much better than the Muslim Moguls, which the British kicked out.

Well, there's an interesting attempt at justifying tyranny and despotism...Our tyranny and despotism is no worse than the tyranny and despotism that was in place before we came along.

Good lord, how idiotic.

The Nadir of British actions was the Opium wars with China. However, nowhere was Britain as consistently bad as the actions of the USA military and government agains their own native peoples. The fact that there is a more enlightened approach today does not change history.

That's simply not true, even a little. We might look at the Zulu situation for another example of British oppression.

And then there's what Longshanks (among others) did to the "native peoples" of Scotland. And of course there's Ireland, where the Brits are still occupying Northern Ireland.

Anyway, this is all Wayback Machine fallacy.

[Blind groper]

Seth

Everything in life is relative. There are no absolutes. If you want to discuss how bad something is, it has to be relative to something else, or the discussion is meaningless.

So if you want to dispute my points about British rule, then make it relative to something else, preferably of the same time period in history. Otherwise what you say is nothing but hot air.

[Hermit]

Otherwise what you say is nothing but hot air.

Otherwise?

[Seth]

Seth

Everything in life is relative. There are no absolutes. If you want to discuss how bad something is, it has to be relative to something else, or the discussion is meaningless.

So if you want to dispute my points about British rule, then make it relative to something else, preferably of the same time period in history. Otherwise what you say is nothing but hot air.

I'm not the one engaging in the Wayback Machine fallacy. What happened 150 years ago is utterly irrelevant to the present. You just want another chance to malign and disparage the US, and I'm just showing everyone else that you've got no justification for doing so. so go fuck yourself.

[Blind groper]

No fallacy when the discussion is about history.

[Seth]

No fallacy when the discussion is about history.

Except the discussion is not about history, it's about current events. You're one of the jackasses, joined by Jackass in Chief Obama, who insist on invoking the Wayback Machine Fallacy to try to lend a whiff of moral equivalency to the events in the Mideast.

That's a despicable tactic.

[Blind groper]

Seth

As I am sure you have observed, forum discussions sometimes wander off into divergent directions. Following such a discussion is not wrong. This discussion wandered off into history, and I have no problem with that, since many aspects of history are also interesting - indeed fascinating.

Posting material on history, instead of the original post is not despicable, but simply sociable, if that is the discussion going on.

[piscator]

So Jordan hits back hard at ISIS... and I've been hearing conservatives whine about how that's the way you deal with them, and why can't Obama be tough against terrorism like that? Meanwhile I've been watching video of dozens of US strikes per week for months, wondering when it'll lighten up.

We've been raining Hellfire missiles on them like ducks in a barrel, and that's the only reason they haven't taken Baghdad and beyond. I'd like to see us set an expiration date for the bombing, wait for our allies in the region to not take up the slack, then watch the whole middle east collapse into the religious civil war it finally ought to have with itself.

Grumble grumble

What'll that do for the price of heating oil?

Alaska has, after 12 years of unbroken undivided Republican rule, found itself going broke on diminishing yields of <$60/bbl oil, so I'm good with most any outcome here. We used to overfund everything @ <$30/bbl and argue about coastal trails before those assholes got in office.

[Seth]

Seth

As I am sure you have observed, forum discussions sometimes wander off into divergent directions. Following such a discussion is not wrong. This discussion wandered off into history, and I have no problem with that, since many aspects of history are also interesting - indeed fascinating.

Posting material on history, instead of the original post is not despicable, but simply sociable, if that is the discussion going on.

No, it's a derail, particularly when linked to a general atmosphere of US-bashing.

[Seth]

So Jordan hits back hard at ISIS... and I've been hearing conservatives whine about how that's the way you deal with them, and why can't Obama be tough against terrorism like that? Meanwhile I've been watching video of dozens of US strikes per week for months, wondering when it'll lighten up.

We've been raining Hellfire missiles on them like ducks in a barrel, and that's the only reason they haven't taken Baghdad and beyond. I'd like to see us set an expiration date for the bombing, wait for our allies in the region to not take up the slack, then watch the whole middle east collapse into the religious civil war it finally ought to have with itself.

Grumble grumble

What'll that do for the price of heating oil?

Alaska has, after 12 years of unbroken undivided Republican rule, found itself going broke on diminishing yields of <$60/bbl oil, so I'm good with most any outcome here. We used to overfund everything @ <$30/bbl and argue about coastal trails before those assholes got in office.

Er, stop spending on welfare programs. That's a start.

[piscator]

So Jordan hits back hard at ISIS... and I've been hearing conservatives whine about how that's the way you deal with them, and why can't Obama be tough against terrorism like that? Meanwhile I've been watching video of dozens of US strikes per week for months, wondering when it'll lighten up.

We've been raining Hellfire missiles on them like ducks in a barrel, and that's the only reason they haven't taken Baghdad and beyond. I'd like to see us set an expiration date for the bombing, wait for our allies in the region to not take up the slack, then watch the whole middle east collapse into the religious civil war it finally ought to have with itself.

Grumble grumble

What'll that do for the price of heating oil?

Alaska has, after 12 years of unbroken undivided Republican rule, found itself going broke on diminishing yields of <$60/bbl oil, so I'm good with most any outcome here. We used to overfund everything @ <$30/bbl and argue about coastal trails before those assholes got in office.

Er, stop spending on welfare programs. That's a start.

We gave a massive tax break to the oil patch, and that didn't help. So, you're right, we need to end that first.

[Warren Dew]

So Jordan hits back hard at ISIS... and I've been hearing conservatives whine about how that's the way you deal with them, and why can't Obama be tough against terrorism like that?

If Obama would actually answer that question, and explain why it's better to have local boots on the ground rather than U.S. boots that will be looked on as oppressors, those complaints would go away.

But no, Obama insists on comparing the Islamic State to Europe of the Crusades, and in general providing cover for extremist muslims, refusing even to admit that there's a religious issue there. That leaves everyone with the impression that he doesn't care about U.S. interests, and that at best there's no one at the helm and our actions there are the result of a military industrial complex on autopilot.

Personally, of course, I suspect that we're far better off with the military industrial complex on autopilot than with Obama actually taking an interest.

Meanwhile I've been watching video of dozens of US strikes per week for months, wondering when it'll lighten up.

We've been raining Hellfire missiles on them like ducks in a barrel, and that's the only reason they haven't taken Baghdad and beyond. I'd like to see us set an expiration date for the bombing, wait for our allies in the region to not take up the slack, then watch the whole middle east collapse into the religious civil war it finally ought to have with itself.

Grumble grumble

Everyone understands that airstrikes without ground forces are pointless - let alone at a low enough operational tempo, of less than two per day, that it's clear they are only for show rather than for effect. No one is pointing out that there are perfectly valid reasons for the lack of intervention, and that's what needs to be explained.

[Seth]

So Jordan hits back hard at ISIS... and I've been hearing conservatives whine about how that's the way you deal with them, and why can't Obama be tough against terrorism like that? Meanwhile I've been watching video of dozens of US strikes per week for months, wondering when it'll lighten up.

We've been raining Hellfire missiles on them like ducks in a barrel, and that's the only reason they haven't taken Baghdad and beyond. I'd like to see us set an expiration date for the bombing, wait for our allies in the region to not take up the slack, then watch the whole middle east collapse into the religious civil war it finally ought to have with itself.

Grumble grumble

What'll that do for the price of heating oil?

Alaska has, after 12 years of unbroken undivided Republican rule, found itself going broke on diminishing yields of <$60/bbl oil, so I'm good with most any outcome here. We used to overfund everything @ <$30/bbl and argue about coastal trails before those assholes got in office.

Er, stop spending on welfare programs. That's a start.

We gave a massive tax break to the oil patch, and that didn't help. So, you're right, we need to end that first.

No, we need to end all welfare programs at the same time. Government has no business being in the welfare business to begin with.

[piscator]

We need to promote the general welfare instead of that of BP and ConocoPhillips.
Norway has over $85billion in its Permanent Fund. Alaska's lost $$ over the past years because we elect oil company lobbyists to positions of power over our state, and they sold us out to enrich themselves.

General Welfare

Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Financial, Wikipedia.
General Welfare

The concern of the government for the health, peace, morality, and safety of its citizens.

Providing for the welfare of the general public is a basic goal of government. The preamble to the U.S. Constitution cites promotion of the general welfare as a primary reason for the creation of the Constitution. Promotion of the general welfare is also a stated purpose in state constitutions and statutes. The concept has sparked controversy only as a result of its inclusion in the body of the U.S. Constitution.

The first clause of Article I, Section 8, reads, "The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." This clause, called the General Welfare Clause or the Spending Power Clause, does not grant Congress the power to legislate for the general welfare of the country; that is a power reserved to the states through the Tenth Amendment. Rather, it merely allows Congress to spend federal money for the general welfare. The principle underlying this distinction—the limitation of federal power—eventually inspired the only important disagreement over the meaning of the clause.

According to James Madison, the clause authorized Congress to spend money, but only to carry out the powers and duties specifically enumerated in the subsequent clauses of Article I, Section 8, and elsewhere in the Constitution, not to meet the seemingly infinite needs of the general welfare. Alexander Hamilton maintained that the clause granted Congress the power to spend without limitation for the general welfare of the nation. The winner of this debate was not declared for 150 years.

In United States v. Butler, 56 S. Ct. 312, 297 U.S. 1, 80 L. Ed. 477 (1936), the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a federal agricultural spending program because a specific congressional power over agricultural production appeared nowhere in the Constitution. According to the Court in Butler, the spending program invaded a right reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment.

Though the Court decided that Butler was consistent with Madison's philosophy of limited federal government, it adopted Hamilton's interpretation of the General Welfare Clause, which gave Congress broad powers to spend federal money. It also established that determination of the general welfare would be left to the discretion of Congress. In its opinion, the Court warned that to challenge a federal expense on the ground that it did not promote the general welfare would "naturally require a showing that by no reasonable possibility can the challenged legislation fall within the wide range of discretion permitted to the Congress." The Court then obliquely confided,"[H]ow great is the extent of that range … we need hardly remark." "[D]espite the breadth of the legislative discretion," the Court continued, "our duty to hear and to render judgment remains." The Court then rendered the federal agricultural spending program at issue invalid under the Tenth Amendment.

With Butler as precedent, the Supreme Court's interest in determining whether congressional spending promotes the general welfare has withered. In South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203, 107 S. Ct. 2793, 97 L. Ed. 2d 171 (1987), the Court reviewed legislation allowing the secretary of transportation to withhold a percentage of federal highway funds from states that did not raise their legal drinking age to twenty-one. In holding that the statute was a valid use of congressional spending power, the Court in Dole questioned "whether 'general welfare' is a judicially enforceable restriction at all."

Congress appropriates money for a seemingly endless number of national interests, ranging from federal courts, policing, imprisonment, and national security to social programs, environmental protection, and education. No federal court has struck down a spending program on the ground that it failed to promote the general welfare. However, federal spending programs have been struck down on other constitutional grounds.
Further readings

Rosenthal, Albert J. 1987. "Conditional Federal Spending and the Constitution." Stanford Law Review 39.
Cross-references

Congress of the United States; Constitution of the United States; Federal Budget; Federalism.
West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.