Wrath of Dagon

Shouldn't have taxed our tea.

No, to grow you have to produce more than you consume. Consuming more than you produce is a recipe for disaster.

Nothing wrong with celebrating your heritage, so long as you recognize you're an American citizen first. Unfortunately that no longer always holds, as the editorials pointed out.

Actually it can be, if you lie on the US entry application. These people are enemy combatants, not regular criminals. We need to have the option of interrogating them instead of reading them Miranda rights and letting them remain silent. That was the Bush administration position, apparently until a 2006 law which states that even terrorism suspects (edit: if US citizens) have to be given full constitutional rights unless they're affiliated with Al Qaeda. That's a stupid way to tie our own hands in a war.

Nah, in the US we've been trained to like being spat upon.

They did remove the bandannas. It's the T-shirts they refused to do, and were sent home. That's a blatantly hyperbolic misrepresentation of what happened in the school in the original news story. Seriously, this isn't about flags. It's about some idiot kids who decided to piss other people off, and got told not to. Yes, piss off other people by carrying their own flag on their own soil. Just like Mexicans are constantly pissing me off by carrying their own flags in their own country. You just don't get it, do you?

Not only not flying it, but not letting anyone else carry it either. That is the issue. If both flags were there there would be no issue. If you are on a coutry's soil, you have to respect that country's flag. You don't put up your own flag on foreign soil without also putting up their flag, that's simply respect. This is much worse though, these are American citizens offended by the American flag on American soil in an American public school paid for by American taxpayers. You get the point?

That's total nonsense. The only polite thing to do would be to put up both Mexican and American flags, so that the locals don't feel left out or like you're insulting their country. And these aren't Mexicans, these are supposed to be American citizens!

Veteran's Day is not "hate Mexico day", so why couldn't they wear a Mexican flag? I see lots of people wearing Mexican flag shirts, no one notices or objects.

You mean live peacefully, you can always leave peacefully.

What would the Mexicans say if I went to their country and told them not to wear the Mexican flag because it's the 4th of July?

All legislation is ultimately interpreted by the courts. Personally I feel at the point where we cannot expect the courts to administer fairness and common sense using grey area legislation is the point where we surrender ourselves to draconian black and white law enforcement. As - if you will excuse my being pointedly rude - you have to put up with in the United States; and which is complicit in a culture of aggressive punitive policing. This isn't just my view, but it gets mentioned quite regularly in the House of Lords. The worry here is that someone in power will claim hate speech for something that is legitimate dissent. Already people get called all kinds of names for objecting to the prevailing PC or criticisizing those in power. It's a pretty short step to having dissent outlawed completely, and we're not that many activist judges away from that happening, so it's a legitimate fear. You could probably draw up very narrow legislation where the threat of violence would have to be very explicit, but I think most people would just rather not move in that direction at all.

OK, so waving a foreign flag in our faces is not disrespectful, it's a cultural celebration. But wearing an American flag in front of supposedly American citizens is disrespectful? Wow!

The story I linked doesn't mention any racial problems at the school, do you have extra info?

But the government would be compensated for default by charging the insurance premium, so no, it wouldn't cost it anything. If the default rate was higher than expected, or if everyone defaulted, then yes, but in those cases goverment usually has to step in anyway as we've seen in the financial crisis. Besides, the insurance could only be available for very safe investments anyway, like short term money markets.

Context matters. I think everyone involved understood pretty clearly that, in a racially divided high school, 4 white kids wearing USA shirts and American flag bandanas on Cinco de Mayo was meant to convey the message that "we're real Americans and you're not." What's the message of decking out a school in foreign flags to the exclusion of American flags? Had they put up both flags, there would be no issue. Other ethnic groups display flags of their country of origin/ancestry, but always in combination with the American flag, unless they're purposefully trying to be provocative. And what does it have to do with "racially divided"? The race determines how American you are?

OK, so aren't the hispanic kids supposed to be Mexican-American? So how is an American flag antagonistic to Americans, unless they don't consider themselves Americans?

Yes, but that encourages living beyond your means, exactly the problem with the US economy. I agree about borrowing during a recession, but that's somewhat artificial as it's being manipulated by the Fed anyway, really the Treasury is borrowing from the Fed. The other applications are easily substituted by government guaranteed debt, as I mentioned earlier, not necessarily actual government debt.

Well, the flag is sometimes referred to as "colors", as in "these colors don't run". But overall, yes, it doesn't bode well for the future.

Exactly, government is big enough to fund everything from current revenues, it's not like a business which is counting on future growth to pay back current debt.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local-beat/...e-92945969.html So when are we ceeding sovereignty?

And a commie.

No different from the US.

At one point that was actually a concern in the US also, the Fed worried there wouldn't be enough Treasury bonds to provide a 100% safe investment where needed. I see all government debt as bad, since the interest paid on the debt is wasted money which could go to spending or tax cuts. Government surplus is also bad, that implies that taxes are too high and need to be cut. If a safe investment is needed, private capital can buy insurance from the government to make those investments government backed, that's all.

An American president bowing to a foreign potentate and cordial relations are not the same thing. If anything Americans are a bit too fond of the British monarchy.