I know exactly what you mean. It was that little sense of surreality that you’re having a serious grammar discussion including the word “fuck.”
Preach it!
Y’all ain’t no northerner; y’all are a Yankee. Y’all might even be a damn Yankee, although y’all don’t really come across that a way.
I, sir, am a supporter of the Mets. The damn Yankees (and the Republicans, but they are irrelevant for this thread) are the anti-Christ (with apologies to What Exit?, who is a wonderful person despite his misguided thinking on this one issue)!
So Oy! was told. So Oy! believes. A virtual cookie for anyone who recognizes that reference.
ETA: Have to go away for a few hours, so I will be back with the cookie later, if anyone claims it.
Of course, how can they do that if you don’t vote them into office?
I don’t disagree with your estimate of politicians, but I do disagree with your estimate of the likelihood for change in this area. Many of the bad things done in the area of civil liberties have been done at the discretion of the executive branch. This story, for example, is about “Justice Department guidelines” which can be changed with the stroke of a pen. The new administration won’t have to struggle with Congress to re-instate those safeguards because they were not specific laws.
And I think an Obama administration would probably do that. That seems to be where his mind and heart are.
Further, I think he would be more likely to appoint supreme court justices (and lower court justices as well) who would make it harder to overturn these safeguards in the future.
If I were in a state where it mattered, I might even bite the bullet and vote for a Democrat. That’s how important this issue is to me.
And finally, a big shout-out to those whose entries in this thread were at least tangentially on topic, and to you, Bobo, for the only attempt to rebut the OP.
Roddy
We did vote them into office 2 years ago. I can’t think of a single thing they’ve accomplished in that time. That’s not to say there hasn’t been any accomplishments, just that nothing significant enough for me to remember.
Democrats don’t seem to understand the Constitution any better than Dubya does, and they’re letting him get away with anything he wants. The President shouldn’t have the power that they’ve given him, and I really don’t believe they’ll take that power away from one of their own party when Obama sits in the oval office. If they don’t have any interest in limiting their political opponent, why should we think they’d limit their own?
Sure, Obama might not abuse the power to the extent that Dubya has, but abuse it he will. Of course the lock-stepping conservatives don’t think Bush has abused his power, and the koolaid swilling liberals won’t acknowledge it when Obama does. Abusing power in a way that some group agrees with is still abusing power.
No, I don’t honestly think that voting for a 3rd party will accomplish anything as long as the majority of the voting public cares only if there is a (D) or (R) next to the candidates name. I seriously doubt there is anything Obama could do that would change the vote of most of the people on this board, the same goes for McCain and his supporters. I realize I’m wasting my time even suggesting this, but there’s nothing on TV at the moment.
Crap, missed the edit window.
I’m admittedly not qualified to comment on politics, but that doesn’t seem to stop anyone else 
Also, I have no comment on the fucking Yankee (or Yankee fucking) debate. Here in the west we speak American the way it was meant to be spoken without any accent whatsoever. So there 
I would think the proper pluralization would be contextual, are we saying “fuck you” to multiple individuals or are we saying it multiple times to the same individual?
Using y’all (you all) to reference an individual is wholly inappropriate. Youse really need to stop dat.
Agreed. Additionally, it is perfectly appropriate to say “Fuck y’all” when speaking to a group of people. And if necessary to resolve any ambiguity, one may use the superplural: “Fuck all y’all”.
TO begin with, I did respond substantively, before going off on a grammatical tangent. (Like that’s never happened on the SDMB before. :rolleyes:)
Second, on what, Bob, do you possibly base the idea that a constitutional law professor of liberal (as currently defined) tendencies (i.e. one who supports civil liberties) wouldn’t “seem to understand the Constitution any better than Dubya does?” Are you following the same election and the same principle participants as I am? That he might be forced to compromise, yes. That he doesn’t understand or wish to fix the issue? You must be kidding.
Third, Sarahfeena, it’s obvious you’re going to dismiss any example presented to you, so why bother saying you’re not? Obama is pro-choice - is there anything he could do that would overcome that in your eyes? McCain’s record of dishonor both in campaigning and questionable financial dealings is long and well documented; his so-called reforms have amounted to new ways of disguising and even soliciting soft money while making him appear noble and reform minded. He has pretty consistently opposed any financial regulation, and certainly resists any campaign reform that he himself along with his lobbyist advisors, haven’t themselves structured.
Lastly, my plural was intended to be applied to the term “fuck you” rather than to the term “you.” Therefore no plural of the term you (such as y’all or you’uns) in and of itself is going to cut it. The administration was not saying “fuck you all.” It was saying “fuck you each and every one” individually to each individual, at least from where I sat.
So sorry to distract with syntax issues again, but some of us kind of care about that stuff too, and it is a debate of sorts, albeit not a political one.
No one got the reference? I guess I’ll have to eat all my virtual cookies alone. 
I must be crazy or blind, but I can’t see any response from **Sarahfeena **in this thread. Are you responding to another thread? Except that the parts I snipped do seem to be related to this thread.
And yes, I was counting you as someone (initially) on topic. I have to say I don’t care who is a northerner or a southerner or a yankee, or how many f-bombs find their way in. The so-called syntax debate didn’t seem very serious, to me.
By the way, parsing his user name out it is "Bobo-the-optimist, I’m not sure how he feels about being called “Bob”.
Roddy
Sounds like Zathras to me…
Whoa, take a step back and look at this again. Read my posts as an attack on the Democratic party rather than as an attack on your messiah. Obama is no more an individual operating outside his party than Bush is. The OP asks us to vote for Democrats (not Obama, just the party) because Republicans are doing bad things. I maintain they are doing bad things with the full support of the party that holds a majority in Congress.
I’m not too impressed with what I’ve seen of your constitutional law professors understanding of the Constitution, but that’s another thread.
I’ll go there. Obama voted YES to reauthorizing the Patriot Act, which is where this new authority is rooted.
Feel free to ingore his actual record and be confident he won’t support it, though. :rolleyes:
How cute… some people still think the FBI doesn’t operate this way yet…
Right on both points. It was late, I was tired, and apparently Sarahfeena was in a different thread altogether. And I’ve been misreading** Bobotheoptimist**'s name for years. That’s ok (from my standpoint), I still think the guy’s name is something along the lines of “Wookie in a pub.” It’s a character string I’ve learned to recognize that “that person.” I hope you’ll forgive me, Bobo, I meant no offense.
I’m pretty much going to be off line for the next two weeks or so, except for sporadic drop ins. Please forgive me, but I’m in the throes of moving over the next couple of weeks, and very short on time. It would have to be less than a month before Election day. :rolleyes:
SmartAleq, do you prefer chocolate chip or oatmeal?
I was just listening to a podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. They discuss mostly science stories, and, as their name suggests, bring a skeptical perspective to various topics.
They have a name for those of you who view this DOJ announcement as the end of the world: “true believers”. You accept 3rd-party accounts without question; you never attempt to reevaluate your original hypotheses; you create an over-simplified worldview with one answer to every complex problem; you fall back on ad hominem attacks; you rely on arguments-from-ignorance.
How many of you actually went to the source? It’s not hard to find, or to read. It’s a 43-page pdf, written in fairly plain language. Download it here. Before you moan about how terrible and nasty the Evil Republicans are, why don’t you skim through it. Go ahead. No? You’d rather just stick with the soundbites from a secondary source? Okay, I’ll give you some choice cuts:
Does that clear things up? I will grant you, that some of the investigative techniques outlined in there are scary (see II(A)(3)(a)(i) on p. 19 for the freakiest provision IMO). But this document is not law. It explicitly states that it doesn’t increase the FBI’s power. And the Department of Justice is an arm of the executive branch of the government. Every investigative technique outlined in the document will be tested by the Judiciary, and will be subject to the exclusionary rule. Many of them will fail.
None of these methods go beyond what your local police department can already do. Skip to page 31-33 if you’re interested in the stuff that really gets the journalists excited. But note that nearly every investigatory method outlined there has already been found to be constitutional, and the ones that haven’t are NOT going to be found constitutional just because of this document.
Every extraordinary search/investigation outlined in the Guidelines calls for administrative approval before it can be initiated. I know this doesn’t comfort those of you who don’t like the current executive branch, but ease your mind by remembering that illegal searches and seizures are still forbidden by the legislative and judicial branches, and this document has nothing to do with what constitutes “illegal.”
In a nutshell, this is an excellent example of what happens when skeptics forget to be skeptical. The Post piece is a bit of sensationalism by a journalist who most likely does not understand the law.
Disclaimer: I’m not a fan of this Guideline in general, and feel that there is a legitimate debate to be had here. But no one is having it, and it pisses me off to see otherwise intelligent people dancing around an echo chamber with their critical thinking turned off.
So that’s it? Someone levels some criticism at you and y’all just bail?