I posted this in my LJ today and thought a wider varity of people should read it and comment on it. Here’s my LJ entry in parts to keep with copyright stuff on the SDMB…
< not checked for typos >
Note some changes from my LJ but you get the gist.
Mods, if you need to change my quoting, I appreciate that, but at the same time it will take away from my post and the reason I am so pissed off about this. So please refrain. I put the NBC link but knowing many people, it will never be read.
I saw that report too. What a fucking travesty.
I believe Bush has threatened to veto it. I hope he comes through.
Hey, you never know when some terrorist might try to worm you to death.
Gotta love those riders.
But this is how our government has worked for over two centuries. If nothing changes, nothing changes.
It can if you vote Libertarian!
With respect, ivylass, I doubt electing Libertarians to office would significantly alter congressional procedure.
Congress would, however, at least pass some more sensible legislation. 
Beh
“Their corrupt administrator is inefficent and throws away money so vote for my corrupt administration that will just admit to not doing anything!”
Beh.
If the libertarians ever got into control of this country the death toll would be horrendious. 
Ooooooookaaaaaaay.
Some really fucked up responses.
To add to my last post…yeah, I can see all those that are Republicans and Democrats and whatever flavor just JUMPING at the notion that there is a bill before Congress that uses the guise of thwarting terrorism to pass some really fucked up spending.
Yeah, real mature. Yeah, really in-fucking-sane.
Libertarian or not, each and everyone of you should be outraged at this. It takes the events of 9-11 and makes them a politian grab bag for frivolous and a lame ass way to get federal funds in their districts.
You people disappoint me, no wonder I rarely come here anymore. Someone mentions Libertarian and you turn your cheek. Had I not said anything about Libertarians you all would be jumping on it like a fly on horseshit.
Fuck you if you can’t see past that.
Well, this is just a gem of comprehensibility and logic, now ain’t it?
Let’s parse the meat of it, such as it is:
Okay, this is straightforward. An accusation that some person in an administrative postion is bad with finances and wastes money. Which is what techchick is basically saying: Pork is rampant, and the Terrorism Excuse is quickly becoming the excuse of choice.
Which is awful.
This is a connective: It suggests implication, like ‘therefore’. So the next clause should be logically implied by the first.
This does not follow. It is a non sequitur, which just means it has no logical foundation in what came before. The poster is accusing, apparently sight-unseen, the Libertarian Party as a whole of corruption. This is very wrong. It is known as stereotyping, and stereotyping is rarely very useful. More often, it is dangerous and leads to fallacious reasoning. Such as the above.
This is another non sequitur, and is a bald appeal to emotions. I doubt the poster has any logical reason to presume this. The poster is, in fact, accusing the Libertarian Party as a whole of homicidal intentions. There is no defense of that argument, it is so far from reality.
My summary: The post is so illogical it is hard to understand. Careful parsing does not help, just reveals exactly where the gaping holes lie.
techie, the main reason I’ve been slow to respond was the unclarity of what you were mad about in the OP. I couldn’t tell whether you were upset that Congresspersons routinely lard up spending bills with garbage like this, and this was just a particular for-instance, or whether you regarded this bill as much more outrageous than the norm. Nor could I tell whether you were aiming at genuine budget-busters, or whether you were Proxmiring (you may have to be of a certain age to grok this verb) the ridiculous-but-minuscule stuff. (If the former, the farm bill would have been a far, far better target - for both your ire, and Bush’s veto.)
The Libertarian thing in the OP was an additional one-too-many in the OP that helped discourage my response. I’ll admit it struck me as having a holier-than-thou, ‘in a libertarian world stuff this bad wouldn’t happen’, tone to it. When the likelihood is that equally bad shit would happen; it just wouldn’t be federal spending of the sort that makes the “That’s Outrageous!” column of Reader’s Digest anymore.
And of course, your most recent post in this thread confirmed that, in spades. “You people disappoint me, no wonder I rarely come here anymore.” I’m sorry we don’t meet your standards. :rolleyes:
Why does everything have to involve the damn libertarians?
And how can you be shocked by the pork?
The only way you won’t be exposed to this sort of SHOCKING federal spending bills is if we either abolished money all together, or we somehow managed to fill the presidency, senate and congress with people who would sit down and logically and unemotionally figure out who needs money the most and allocate it fairly.
But since Mr. Spock is fictional, we’re screwed.
And the libertarian thing doesn’t matter. Its not the politics you practice, its that you’re a politician. Each state wants certain things, and you aren’t gonna get relected if you don’t try your damnedest to get what they want.
200 + years of politics, politicians and political parties and our country is just the same. A new political party and a new batch of politicians isn’t going to make aaaaaaaaannnnnnnnyyyyyyyy difference.
Regarding the OP, most of the requests mentioned sound reasonable to me; but it’s always annoying to see these things tacked onto an unrelated bill. I hope Sen. Inouye gets his coral-reef allocation.
Called sarcasm, I was pointing out that the libertarian message that voting for their party will fix everything is a tad wee bit flawed.
I was referring to the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of elderly who would be out on the street and freeze / starve to death if the libertarian idea of cutting off social security ever came around.
nice that, throwing old people out on the streets. Hope you all are very proud of it. . . .
And no not give me any crud about ‘churchs’ and ‘communities’ helping everybody, yeesh. I cannot believe that is the official party line, ick. Can you guarantee that nobody would starve to death as a direct one step causation result of a policy of immediate termination of social security? No? I know of people who /would/ starve to death; so any proof that you do try and offer would be a tad wee bit null and void.
Elderly, thrown on street, left to starve;
Sounds like murder to me. . . .
Perhaps the solution is to eliminate this “rider” notion, and everything gets discussed/accepted/rejected on their own merits. I personally like the fact that the Smithsonian gets money for its worms and reptiles, and it may well be an important task to map the Hawaiian reefs, but WTF does it have to do with counter-terrorism? Make new, separate, unrelated bills or these things.
Is seems to me an easier task to eliminate this rider concept than to elect Libertarians.
That should be “Make new, separate, unrelated bills FOR these things.”
Com2Kid, call me when you have some real arguments, instead of just slinging appeals to emotion and blatant misrepresentations.
:rolleyes:
Hey, I think the US wasting billions of tax dollars to make companies inefficient is a good thing.