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Beautiful essay!!! Well done, Harpooner1, well done! :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
Of course Obama is a narcissistic psychopathic pathological liar who is here to destroy our nation. He's the man for the job because it requires the talents of a narcissistic psychopathic pathological liar to constantly poke and prod victims before he k**ls them......I think he was installed in the Oval Office (NOT elected) by either the UN, the Muslim world, or a One World Order creature, to cut us down to manageable size so that OWO can go forward without a hitch. I believe that installation was done with the approval of the republican party. That, of course, will be death to the America that so many of us love, and apparently so many of us despise for nefarious reasons. Bear in mind that ALL of the left leaners are our enemies because as long as decency and goodness reign, THEY cannot achieve their goals which are hideous and vicious. All of the followers and hangers-on in the Obama cabal are psychopaths and only know harshness, roughness, crudeness, and hatred.........every last one of them. That includes MOST of the "Democrat" Party, MOST of the media, MOST of academia, MOST of the republican oldtimers in Congress, MOST of SCOTUS. That is a LOT of people to have to overcome, and it may be impossible. I think I can assure everyone that it IS IMPOSSIBLE to change the minds of psychopaths. Nor can they be shamed into altering their route to wh**ever destination they strive for. Psychopaths do not grasp feelings of guilt, of sorrow, of love, of ANY soft emotion. So, if their minds are not changed, exactly what do we do about it? I only see one solution, and I think it is a lose-lose "solution", but eventually it may come. Prayer, yes, but I do believe God relies on his people, us, to do all we can before we call on Him to solve our problems.

I will agree with America is screwed. Both parties are guilty of selling out America. I have always said they are the same party. If one looks closely at the policies of the Democrats and the Republicans one can only come to one conclusion, they are one and the same. I think Bernie Sanders summed one issue up nicely: Obamacare is a great Republican health bill. Gives the insurance and medical corporations a lot of tax payers' money and did nothing for the people it supposedly protects.

In my opinion, our school system has become nothing more than an propaganda tool. We no longer educate, we indoctrinate. Both parties can take full credit for this mess.

It's like a magician. Your 'attention' is distracted by Cosby, Jenner, the Confederate F**g, while the PTB are doing something behind your back...

They can't report on the Sanctuary cities, or TGE murder of the lady in Frisco. The release of the criminals from prisons or how many Muslims are being let into our homeland. TGEY can't report on the I******s flooding across our southern border. No, hell NO, It's Cosby, Jenner, Mt Rushmore etc.
Guess everyone got tired of listening about Lindsey Lohan and her problems.

Understood. The northern states did agree to those terms initially. Until they didn't. As northern states outlawed s***ery, they chose not to enforce those agreements, as it was against their laws. To enforce the terms of the fugitive s***e acts, the northern states that outlawed s***ery were being asked to have their own law enforcement officers break their own state laws.

Which only goes to the point that the Union was coming apart over the issue of s***ery. Your assertion that the south didn't deny the northern states their right not to enforce the fugitive s***e laws is not backed by the South Carolina secession document, which states early on:

“An increasing hostility on the part of the non-s***eholding States to the institution of s***ery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them.”

This is not historical interpretation, nor indoctrination after the fact.

By Erwin Chemerinsky
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA is setting a terrible example for young lawyers. Ignore, for now, his jurisprudence, his famously strict original-ism; it’s his tone that’s the problem.
I have taught argumentation for many years, first as an instructor to high school and college debaters, currently as a law professor. Throughout my career I have always cautioned students away from nastiness as a crutch for those who cannot win using reason or legal precedent. I have told them to stick to persuasion and to dissecting the opposition’s logical fallacies.
But lately my students have been turning in legal briefs laced with derision and ad hominem barbs. For this trend, I largely blame Scalia. My students read his work, find it amusing and imitate his truculent style.
Scalia has long relied on ridicule. In past years he has dismissed his colleagues’ decisions as “nothing short of ludicrous” and “beyond absurd,” “entirely irrational” and not “pass[ing] the most gullible scrutiny.” He has called them “preposterous” and “so unsupported in reason and so absurd in application [as] unlikely to survive.”
Scalia’s opinions this term, however, were especially nasty, sarcastic and personal.
Consider several examples. In his dissent in Obergefell vs. Hodges, which declared unconstitutional state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage, Scalia said that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion was “as pretentious as its content is egotistic” and that its “showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent.”
In a footnote he wrote, “If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth v**e, I ever joined an opinion for the court that began: ‘The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,’ I would hide my head in a bag.” He likened the majority opinion to “mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”
Such mockery does not amount to a legal argument; it’s nothing more than an attack on the author’s writing technique. A litigator who compared an opponent’s brief to a fortune cookie likely would be, and should be, sanctioned by the court.
In Glossip vs. Gross, which upheld the three-drug protocol used in lethal injection, Justice Stephen G. Breyer urged the court to solicit arguments on the death penalty — specifically whether it’s a cruel and unusual punishment and thus in violation of the 8th Amendment.
Scalia wrote a scathing response. He referred to Breyer’s opinion as “gobbledy-gook” and said his argument was “nonsense.” He concluded by stating, “Justice Breyer does not just reject the death penalty, he rejects the Enlightenment.”
What did Breyer do to deserve this treatment? He was hardly the first member of the Supreme Court to question the death penalty’s constitutionality. Fellow doubters include Justices William J. Brennan Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Harry A. Blackmun and John Paul Stevens.
I do not mean to suggest that Scalia is the first or only member of the court to use invective. Nor do I deny that some find such language entertaining or delightfully funny. But Scalia’s browbeating is childish, even vain; like a harshly negative book critic, he revels in his own turns of phrase. And his attitude, just like his legal theory, affects the profession as a whole.
Scalia’s spiteful recent dissents probably reflect frustration; after all, he was on the losing side of several major cases. Still, that’s no excuse for lashing out. Nor should either liberals or conservatives dismiss such behavior as just “Scalia being Scalia.”
If legal professionals ignore Scalia’s meanness or — worse — pass around his insults at cocktail parties like Wildean witticisms, they’ll encourage a new generation of peevish, callous scoffers.
ERWIN CHEMERINSKY is dean of the UC Irvine School of Law.

I agree that as things are now it looks very gloomy. Try not to be too pessismistic. I think the power of good ideas can bring change. I suggest you read two books. The first is Transcend by Ray Kurzweil & Terry Grossman MD and the second book is Abundance by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kolter. I puchase used books from Thriftbooks.com they should only cost 3 or 4 dollars. You might also want to pull up the web page for the Singularity University. I think the books could change you mind and maybe even change your life. The key is Exponential Technologies.

Right.

It's hard to understand why the confederate sympathizers tend to ignore the major cause of the Civil War. Whether secession was (or is) a legal right is still in question. The Constitution is quiet on the issue and the founders were of different opinions. What isn't in question is the cause of the secession movement in the south.....the institution of s***ery was under attack by the abolitionists.

It is ironic that a thread titled 'Historical ignorance' continues to engage in a favorite pastime of the confederate sympathizers: analysis of the war without once mentioning s***ery or the abolitionists, nor mention of the south's own denial of the rights of the states in the north not to enforce southern state s***e laws in their own states.

It can work your just not properly informed. Our present education system stinks, kids drop out and get crappy educations. Education is the key to a better life. Look up the educational ideas of Sir Ken Robinson. The world is becoming connected via the internet. Even in African countries where people live on $2 a day there are a billion smart phones. The progessive tax sysytem was supposed to help the people at the bottom. It doesn't work. All it did is give us more people at the bottom, in part because the g*******t have moved jobs out of the country. $20 is not skin in the game.

You're just flat WRONG!

Social Security receipts go into the the General Fund, and IOU (that essentially means nothing) is placed in a file cabinet. Medicare IS NOT self-sufficient...true, receipts come from employee's FICA payment, but the recipient, later in years, uses benefits that far exceed what they ever paid in. With SS, if the average recipient draws SS benefits for 7 years, they have drawn out everything they ever paid in, plus interest. Currently, 71% of the national budget goes for entitlements and servicing the debt. If, and when, the interest rates reach pre-2008 levels, interest on the national debt could eat up to a fourth of the budget by itself. Currently, the treasury coffers have brought in record amounts of tax receipts over the past two fiscal years, and we're still running close to $440b in deficit spending.