All right Zano, it’s been a while since I responded to your political musings, but it’s taken me nearly a week to get that last bad post of yours out of my mouth. Thank you, Tums! So if the government uses tax money to engage in activities that conflict with a tax payer’s conscience, they should be legally compelled to give birth control to employees? …or bake cakes for gay weddings? …or purchase health insurance? Really? And to make matters worse, all these things happened last weekend at your hacienda of hedonism! I’m sure my lack of an invitation was an oversight on your part. But I see you invited my sister, dick.
You also argue that the IRS violated no laws in targeting conservative groups. You said they should have expected such treatment since ‘teaparty’ groups sought to shut down the IRS. So you say that it doesn’t matter what the administration calls “terrorists” just so long as they kill them? I had another point about your Walmart midget comment, but I will save that for another post. Onward to the main three!
Point 1: The government spends tax money on activities that may well conflict with one’s conscience.
Take the Iraq War, for instance…no really, take it. We must expect that the government can legally force a person to violate their conscience. I’m glad you brought this point up, because it requires clarification. The government cannot force a person to directly violate their conscience. It can take tax money from me to be used to wage a war that I find immoral, but the government cannot force me to directly engage in the fighting of this war. They may draft me and force me to help in the efforts, say as a medic or a chaplain, and the same thing goes for birth control. Although I would not agree with this policy, it would not be unconstitutional to collect taxes and use that money to pay for birth control and abortions; however, the government does not have the right to force me to directly pay for birth control or abortions. They do not have the right to force me to directly contribute to a gay wedding through cake baking, musical performance, or catering. And although this point is slightly different, I would argue the government has a constitutional right to collect tax money to pay for health insurance for people, but they do not have the right to force me to directly purchase health insurance under the threat of penalty of law. If you recall, the Obama administration bent over backward to assure us that the “penalty” was not a “tax”, even though the IRS collects the penalty.
Point 2: The IRS Targeted Republican Groups:
Speaking of the IRS, you flippantly justified their agents targeting conservative groups by writing, “It’s group wanted to shut down the agency that I work for and they were looking for a tax break to do it, ‘Uh, oops what happened to that application?”
The same thing probably happened to those emails. This statement of yours, Zano, shows your argument’s flaw and the essential the flaw in your evaluation of the Obama administration. The Tea Party didn’t just want to shut down the IRS, it wanted to shut down the Obama Presidency as a whole. So by your very “reasoning” (quotes added to incite annoyance), you would look the other way (which you are obviously doing). There is real wrongdoing if the Obama Administration gave the signal to its thugs to target his political adversaries, since they were looking to shut him down.
Point 3: Let’s Placate the Terrorists
My point was not to complain about Obama’s refusal to call a “terrorist” a “terrorist”, although that is an issue, it’s not my issue; and you, by making it my issue have sidetracked my point. I complained that by blaming the terrorist attack on a video, the administration emboldened our enemies, which we have obviously been doing throughout the Obama Presidency. The Obama Administration was directed to blame the attack on the video rather than the people who did the attacking. The video was “hateful and offensive” (Susan Rice), “reprehensible and disgusting” (Jay Carney), “disgusting and reprehensible” (Hillary Clinton, who should have used a thesaurus), and “two thumbs down” (Siskel and Ebert). And these are just the responses to your last post, Zano (ba dum bump).
The administration should not have ever mentioned the video as being a fault in the attack. That’s making an excuse. What was the cause of the Benghazi attack? Plain and simple, it was Islamic fascists. I don’t care how they justify their violence–Israeli apartheid, the great Satan’s U.S. foreign policy, a reprehensible novel, an offensive cartoon maker, or even the Ghetto Shaman’s The Tao of Skullfucking (although I stand by parts of chapter four). It’s all just an excuse, perpetuated by our leaders who are pushing this narrative that ultimately emboldens terrorism.
I have speculated that the Obama Administration has embraced the “reprehensible movie” narrative for its own self-serving reasons. I realize that this is just speculation, but it makes the most sense to me. Leading up to the 2012 elections, President Obama was promoting his “we’ve greatly weakened terrorism throughout the world” theme as a prime selling point for his upcoming election. A terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11 didn’t fit his PR campaign so he got everybody on board to blame the attack on the video rather than the terrorists. That’s the point Zano, and you’re refusal to accept this point makes you a “denier.”
More importantly, my sister is not going to your next party unless I am invited. Her words, not mine.
