Are you seriously taking about Big Bird? Talk ab0ut this, instead, thou mewling epitome of shallowness:
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/10/kill-list-democracy/
Barack Obama has a kill list.
Its legal justification is a secret. Its contents are secret, too. You don’t get to see who’s on it. Nor do any members of Congress. Nor any federal judges. Basically no one does.
How does someone end up on it? Obama decides. He decides with a small group of people, all of whom hold their jobs at his pleasure.
Whatever methods they use, they’re secret, too. The evidence — you guessed it — is secret. If there even is any.
We don’t know much about the kill list, but we do know a few things. We know it can include American citizens. That’s already happened. We know it can include American citizens who are minors. That’s already happened, too.
My comment: I hope no one can possibly doubt my credentials as a warhawk only a hair’s breadth shy from being a blood-crazed berserker when it comes to advocating, in the strongest possible terms, a full, robust, wrathful world-wide war against the Jihad, and all who support it, tacitly or openly, foreign or domestic. I am in favor of a Crusade, for Christ’s sake!
So it is safe to say that I am far, far beyond the norm of what polite society is willing to contemplate when it comes to aggressive use of ugly, brutal force; nor have I any romantic illusions about the horrors and costs of war.
But assassinating American citizens, including a minor, without any legal process, death warrant, or writ of a magistrate?
That is a cost of war even I deem too high to pay. What profits it a nation to win a war and lose her soul?
This abrogates not only the Constitution, but the medieval Magna Carta, and all notion of the Rights of Man or Rule of Law. Even the victims of the Star Chamber, or the Terror of the French Revolution enjoyed the mockery of a mass trial: that was more legal process than this.
Both political parties support this practice, namely, assassination by fiat of American citizens deemed dangerous.
Neither political party would not dare support this practice unless you, the public, either tacitly supported it, or by your lack of public outcry, permitted it.
No doubt I would cast my vote for Mr Romney anyway, merely because the only alternative, a second term for Mr Obama, is tantamount to national suicide; but I solemnly assure you that I would cast such a vote with far fewer misgivings if Mr Romney publicly repudiated this abominable and unlawful practice, and vowed a return to what are ironically called the Laws of War.
If I could bring myself to address the orc-hordes of the Left in terms civil and mild, I would ask them politely whose death they find more disturbing, more worthy of headline, more needed for the commonwealth to debate?
This:
Or this?
I will point out the two differences between the two photos, and this is a different the Left cannot understand or appreciate.
Difference one: The first image concerns an unreal creature, a make-believe.
Difference two: the caption on the first image is a shameless lie.
It is also an easily refuted lie, a stupid lie, one not likely to snare any but those seeking self-deception.
If I may quote:
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets
more than $400 million a year from the federal government. If this is an essential expenditure at a time of $1 trillion deficits and a $16 trillion debt, what is a nonessential expenditure?Only about 8 percent of the annual budget of Sesame Workshop, which produces the show, comes from the government. It has
operating revenue of more than $130 million a year, and makes about $50 million annually on merchandising alone.Sherrie Westin, executive vice president of the Sesame Workshop, told CNN the other day that given its philanthropic support, its licensed product, and its corporate underwriting and sponsorship, her outfit is under no threat whatsoever. “So quite frankly,” she said, “you can debate whether or not there should be funding of public broadcasting. But when they always … say we’re going to kill Big Bird — that is actually misleading, because ‘Sesame Street’ will be here.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82267_Page2.html#ixzz290zuGSGz
P.S. I had resolved to write more articles about science fiction stories and fewer about that freakish science fiction story called modern politics (a tale more baroque than any penned by R.A Rafferty or Aldous Huxley) but the shock of seeing allegedly sober men more concerned about fictional danger to a giant puppet than about a real and permanent danger to the Republic, to the rule of law, to human life and dignity, overthrew my resolution.
We permit it (I say “we” because even though I am a Canadian, it strikes me as possible that the Canadian government may have some analogous self-delegated uber-privilege of force), we permit it because deep down all of us are terrified of that eventuality in case of which the Church teaches us to trust Providence: that sometimes committing an atrocity will be the only way to stop a greater atrocity.
I can’t say I don’t understand this terror, but I would have more sympathy for arguments based on it if they admitted themselves willing to pay the price — to throw themselves on the moral grenade, as it were. Choosing to do evil to prevent greater evil is wrong, but forgiveable; trying to pretend the lesser evil is thereby good is unforgiveable, because it refuses to admit something must be forgiven.
To be fair, I have heard from some of my friends on the Left thorough disgust at said kill list. It is not just those on the Right who find the practice distasteful (a woeful understatement).
It is, however, an issue whose absence from the public sphere I find puzzling.
But this post calls to mind something else. I will ask a question that you may consider me crazy or uninformed, even naive, for asking, but it is a question I am posing (in various forms) to a multitude of people (on both sides of the aisle) who are articulate and have some knowledge of and insight into politics. Why is Obama getting a second term tantamount to national suicide? Or, in the way I am asking people: why should I vote for Romney?
(I don’t anticipate an answer to that to be quick or short. I know you are trying to stay away from politics here, but what I am humbly requesting is a reasoned argument, posted sometime before the Election Day, of why someone should vote for Romney)
((I make the assumption that “not Obama” equates to “Romney” in practicality, and that third parties aren’t worth voting for right now))
My answer is here: http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/10/national-suicide/
I had not expected an answer so fast!
Thank you for your indulgence, even if you had written it prior.
I merely hope the dramatic way I phrase things does not obstruct the logic behind the message. It is a fault of my poetic temper.
I gloriously actually WON an argument with a knee-jerk liberal friend of mine on this topic (he describes HIMSELF as a knee-jerk liberal). I simply stated that if he hated corporate welfare, why on Earth did the marketing titan of Sesame Street need it? It took three or four twists of the knife before he admitted I was correct and that his position was indefensible. He did send me a parting shot saying that if Big Bird didn’t need help neither did the oil industry. Which I’m not sure how that was supposed to damage my position, since I have never felt the oil industry needed it either. I guess he just assumed if I agreed with one of Romney’s points that I must agree with ALL of the artificial narrative invented to describe Romney by a largely hostile media.
As a stalwart follower and fan of Ludwig von Mises, I regard taxpayer subsidies to oil companies, unless done for a specifically military purpose in wartime, to be an abomination.
I can understand the emotional argument behind paying a starving widow or orphan out of the public till, but I cannot understand the argument on any level behind taking money from widows and orphans and giving it to oil executives, or to Rich Uncle Pennybags, the guy in the top hat from the Monopoly game.
Even taking the liberal argument for public television at its best, namely, even if we all agree that commercial stations will not put on the shows the public needs to see, children’s educational shows and comedies from England, the argument lack force in a day and age when we have 500 channels instead of 3.
It is an anachronism, akin to the National Helium Reserve which the government enacted to have a supply of Helium for our zeppelins should war with the Kaiser break out. The reserve was established in Amarillo, Texas, in 1925. The process of selling it off to private industry was started in 2007. If only the Helium storage facility had possessed a large yellow puppet, it would be preserved to this day.
“But assassinating American citizens, including a minor, without any legal process, death warrant, or writ of a magistrate”
But non-Americans are fair game?
even though minors, even though non-combatants.
It has nothing to do with Laws of War. The American citizens were found to engage in war against the Govt of US. Any self-respecting Govt would put them out of commission. Ask Lincoln or Roosevelt. The trouble now is too much talk and too much lawyering.
I am afraid I do not understand the relation of this question to any topic we were discussion. Your thought is too incoherent for me to venture an answer.
“But assassinating American citizens, including a minor, without any legal process, death warrant, or writ of a magistrate?”
Curiously, you do not provide a context- as if they were shooting down American citizens in the streets of Washington.
What kind of American citizens were they, where were they killed, and why out of 300 million plus citizens they were picked out?.
What kind of life as citizen they had?
Nothing, no context provided for an attack on something that has bipartisan support.
I am afraid I do not understand the relation of your comment to any topic we were discussion. Your thought is too incoherent for me to venture an answer.
Are you actually objecting to my demand that my government not execute anyone without a death warrant, a declaration of war, or some other due process? We are not talking about battlefield conditions against an enemy in uniform; we are talking about spooks assassinating a boy at a funeral with an airborne bomb.
Please stay on topic.
One of them Samir Khan, of Pakistani parentage, born in Saudi Arabia, naturalized citizen.
in an article titled “I am Proud to be a Traitor to America,” Khan wrote: “It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I was al-Qaeda to the core.” He went on to note, “I was about to officially become a traitor of the country I grew up in for most of my life. I thought about many of the possible effects it could have on my life; but whatever they were, I was ready for it. That’s because I am an individual convinced that Islam’s claim to power in the modern world is not going to be as easy as walking down a red carpet or driving through a green light. I am acutely aware that body parts have to be torn apart, skulls have to be crushed and blood has to be spilled in order for this to be a reality.” He concluded: “I am a traitor to America because my religion requires me to be one… I am terrifically proud to be a part of such a religion and what Muslim wouldn’t?”
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I have no problem with killing enemy combatants with drone strikes, or any other available means to kill them. (Collateral damage is regrettable, but hey, that’s war, and who started it anyway?) If (1) they actually are American citizens, and (2) we capture them, then by all means put them on trial for treason. Such a trial could be an opportunity for great clarification … which is why I don’t expect to ever see one any time soon. Not under Obama, not under Romney.
As for the Awlakis, neither (1) nor (2) really applies.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/11/anwar-al-awlaki-and-the-perils-of-birthright-citizenship/#ixzz297cVb9Be