We can’t keep going on like this….

I know the answer – A TAX CUT!

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Gee, let’s do something the Republicans say all the time but never do, let’s be responsible for our own actions and pay our own way. Institute a war tax now or get out!

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Hi fellow Bookmaniacs … so … did I miss anything exciting over the last 2 weeks???

As for the deficit … how about a gummint rummage sale? bake sale for the Dept of Defense? silent auction for the commerce department?

me, I would have liked to have seen war bonds for the Iraq/Afghanistan war … let all the 101st Chairborn division pony up for the war they were so hot for …

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Hmm, did whine try to change the topic from the Republican failures?

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Howdy USinUK,

Oh, you missed tons!!! Glad you’re back. I hope you had a nice holiday.

Yes, I agree with Fly – we should lower taxes on everything and spend beyond our means. I think that’s a GREAT plan! Whose with me?

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Fly,

War tax? I totally agree. I think it should be a seperate transaction every time you buy anything – even a Coke from the store – not just some added on percent like sales tax, but a seperate transaction – that way you see it, you hold the receipt, and you know how much you spent. In other words – you own it.

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So much for Obama doing something to help the deficit. O wait, he’s helped it all right!!! And now comes health care for everyone! Lord help us!!

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Cut government spending across the board to include subsidies of all kinds unless necessary for national security.

Increase import tarriffs to make it cheaper for companies to make goods here. Maybe that would lowre unemployment and increase the tax base.

Short term tax increase that expires once the deficit is lowered to a managable amount and resets tax rates that are equitable across all income levels.

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USinUK,

Didn’t see that game, but I hate games like that – they are so boring. I did see that score though – wow! I can just imagine the announcers, after the first three or four goals scored by Defoe, there all like in their best sarcastic voice , “Oh, yeah, Defoe [eyes roll]” Eventually they probably started talking the latest rugby scores.

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This just in! United States Of America files for Chapter Seven…film at eleven…

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RW

Another case of the fingers not being able to keep up with the mind. Sometimes I can be dangerous when I’m thinking.

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RW, from below…They didn’t line up 24 hours in advance for the car wreak, they did it for the baby pandas…

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Bosch

That outburst was directed inward.

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And it’s escalating? Really? Any ideas why?

The geniuses at Saturday Night Live seem to have it figured out. (When a skit isn’t seen as a one-off, ‘hey! Hollywood actually took aim at the Obama Administration” but is just one more parody on one more week… well, a corner’s been turned).

Hang in for the clip. If you want to jump ahead, then go to 2:30 and finish watching.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/clips/china-cold-open/1178451/

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ABM, “Another case of the fingers not being able to keep up with the mind.”

I certainly isn’t true when you have your pistol out!

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RW –

“British spelling to welcome USinUK back”

then, I think it would have been “lower – ye olde idiote”

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Hey USinUK,I have just recently gotten back myself. I hear the market is going to tank again soon. Any advice will be appreciated! Hope you had a great vacation.

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wow, paul … SNL made fun of a Dem president??? that’s earthshattering … I mean, they NEVER made fun of Clinton or Carter …

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Scooter –

unless you need funds immediately, ride it out … at the end of the year, you always have profit-taking going on … and this year, they have huge profits to take.

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The US has financial problems? Wow, nobody saw this coming.

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USinUK

Welcome back!

Ummmm…. the point wasn’t Democratic presidents…. the point was the lovefest with the current one. Don’t'cha’ remember the buzz when they first parodied Pres Obama? Don’t you? It made news because it was…. news.

Now it’s not.

’sides which, the skit nailed it.

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And he mused that there were probably pleanty there just like him. As, I suppos, there are plenty more out there just like me…completely indifferent to her and her book.

How open minded of you. I suppose there could also be people that are interested in her story. What say you?

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paul –

wow. SNL skits are news??? and you wonder why I watch the BBC.

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If you’re on vacation why not just give us another picture of a fish?

A turkey, I think.

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Thanks USinUK, I’ll hang in there!

Yeah Normal, but it is only half tanked still. I think! ??????

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ABM,

I was just joking around. I’ve called myself a dumb ass here more than once.

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War Tax and Reinstate the draft (no deferrments all Americans 18 to 30)
(Oh and Universal Single Payer healthcare)

Hope Jay has the filters cranked up…..

USinUK

Welcome back, hope you had a lovely holiday.

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USinUK

Ummmm…. not usually news, no.

But when they first lampooned Pres Obama, it was

Get it? “first time it happened.”

So if you don’t stay tuned in to domestic news why the snide comments about domestic news? Many people, when faced with a topic with which they’re unfamiliar, remain silent rather than cast aspersions.

‘cept here -

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“Reinstate the draft”

Godzilla, I thought you wanted troops to come home?

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“Welcome back, hope you had a lovely holiday”

thanks Bosch, Mrs. G and Normal … actually, we spent the entire 2 weeks dealing with my MIL’s health issues (she fractured a vertebrae) … which leads me to say:

I AM THANKFUL FOR THE NHS AND THEIR FANTASTIC HEALTH CARE SYSTEM. (god willing, one day the US will wake up and realize that bankruptcy is not a good exchange for just being able to see a doctor or spend much-needed time in a hospital)

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Are Minorities Getting Enough Out of the Stimulus?

Powell thinks it’s only fair that more stimulus money finds its way to minority communities, since much of today’s economic disaster can be traced to those areas being lavished with subprime mortgages. Despite recovery.org, the federal website designed for tracing stimulus outlays, Powell argues, “We need to put how this is playing out under a larger magnifying glass, make it more transparent.” If not, he warns, “we’ll have the irony of the first black President presiding over the greatest economic restructuring in decades, but it could actually end up worsening the racial disparity.”
So why is this happening, you libs might ask. It’s because democrats have to leave ‘em wanting…..coming back to the voting booth over and over again…..less power for their punch.

It’s how dems have always operated.

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Paul –

“Many people, when faced with a topic with which they’re unfamiliar, remain silent rather than cast aspersions”

baaaaaaaaahahahaha … you must be new here …

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Hey Bosch!

Worth it!

MUCH better directing and special effects. You’ll know what I mean when you see it. Don’t want to spoil it.

Went with my wife and a friend (her husband couldn’t be dragged to it). Hooked up with six other women in the same situation. A guy in line with his wife and two other couples (he said the guys went to curry favor) came over and said “when we walked up and saw you with that line of women we all said “now that guy has it figured out!” Actually, I didn’t, but I’ll take the compliment.

Laurent getting ripped apart was gratifying. Dakota Fanning is chilling. And forget about avoiding the squeals by going when teenagers are in school. The 40-something women screaming when Jacob ripped off his shirt were quite irritating, but funny.

And it’s pretty long. Not enough time in Italy. Quibble: Volturi didn’t look old enough.

So, when you going?

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Normal, lol. That’s a good one. If someone doesn’t have a job and they volunteer to enter the military, so be it. But don’t force them. IF Obama was dumb enough to reinstate the draft, good luck in 2012. He knows better(left’s hope).

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Paul,

Hilarious!! My son’s girlfriend wants to go see it Tuesday (he’s not too excited, but love does strange things to you), so I’ll take them and see it then. Maybe my daughter will go with me again so I won’t look like a weirdo. I’ll try to find the screaming 40 year old women section. Either the screaming teenagers will have seen it by then, or they’ll be seeing it again.

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Yes, USinUK, I see you are in fine form.

When I read “let all the Chairborn division pony up for the war they were so hot for” I knew you were with us again.

Then you followed up with “the government shouldn’t be run like a business”. Great! You should br happy. The government is being run like a free-for-all give away. But you could call the current policies “monkey business” and be correct.

So we missed you, USinUK. The liberals here needed a little glib reenforcement. Are you going to fill-in for Bookman?

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Bosch

Won’t matter if they’re seeing it for the umpteenth time. They’ll still scream.

I asked one of the women ‘and what would the audience reaction be if when Bella came on screen a bunch of the 40-something guys began panting and moaning and carrying on?”

I love those ‘huh?!!?’ responses.

But the diamond-pattern skinreflections in the sunlight is really good this time.

USinUK

Still haven’t heard anyone who advocates a UK-style NHS here ALSO advocate for the same ‘everyone, with very, very few exceptions, pays a very significant portion of their income in NHS tax. No big subsidies. No shifting to ‘the wealthy.” Everyone pays. A lot.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it doesn’t win Democrats votes and set them apart from the Evul Republicans.

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Paul

November 23rd, 2009
11:24 am

Yours to USinUK, thanks…that was weenies for my beenie (food for thought)…

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Tick….Tock…..Tick….Tock….

Ever wonder how the Soviet Union felt before their demise???????

They couldn’t pay their bills either.

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Let’s do something really Republican –> Kick off the health care reform AND cut taxes at the same time.

How smart those republicans are. We must follow their lead…

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You folks that like this hcr bill need to go back to math 101. You don’t spend 1 trillion dollars to benefit 15 million people at the expense of 300 million people.

There are other ways to reform hc without reinventing the wheel.

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We have so many people shaking their heads over the bill/s congress is debating. So much of it is NOT HC reform. Did they not understand what they were supposed to do? The object was to lower costs. It reminds me of the old joke; something like the user request for a tire swinging from a tree limb finally being built as aa huge roller coaster with big gaps in the tracks.

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I really must respectfully disagree with Dr. Adrian Rogers. If all wealth is accumulated in the hands of a few then the many will see no value in what they do regardless of who they do it for. This country has always had wealth redistribution. It might have been under a different name but it has always been there.

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About 90% of poverty is self-inflicted. Main reason being having children you can’t afford to raise. These people need to take responsibility for their sexual pleasures.

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Busy morning, no time to welcome back our USinUK.

Did MIL’s inconvenient backbone(s) prevent the Wales frolic you’d had planned?

As to the original topic… danged if I know how best to turn this leaky ship around.

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Due to him being a minor investgators are unable to reveal his identity accept to say his name may have been WOODrow or TIMber or CHIPper.

Teen killed in wood chipper accident
http://www.wavy.com/dpp/news/local_news/local_wavy_poquoson_Teen_killed_in_woodchipper_accident_20091122

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hey dB –

“Did MIL’s inconvenient backbone(s) prevent the Wales frolic you’d had planned?”

it prevented nearly everything we had planned.

except we did manage to see the stage version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s before things escallated … it was okay – true to the original novella rather than the movie. The bigger thrill was seeing Ian Hislop on the walk to the theater. Now, he’s cool.

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/

(finest political satire I’ve read … ever …)

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Came across this quote just now…

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
-Alexis De Tocqueville

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Gale –

“I would not even complain –much– about the amount my employer is no longer spending for my HC that the don’t put back in my pocket.”

but … but … but … trickle-down!

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Normal, 11:52, I remember reading that when I looked up Alexis De Tocqueville some time ago in connection with another thread. I don’t recall that he said anything about what might happen when the republic failed.

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sfd 11:51

Only in my imagination!

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That’s the problem with bribery, isn’t it Paul. Once you start handing out bribe money, it is real hard to stop.

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“bribe the public with the public’s money.”

Here’s something to think about: ALL politicians try to bribe the public with the public’s money…regardless of what political system you live under. Government might print money, but ultimately it does not generate money. The value of the money rests on the productivity of the people, and it comes to the government in the form of taxes of one sort or another. So the any politician, or government, has nothing BUT the people’s money to “bribe” them with.

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Gale, I honestly don’t know. I just thought the quote might say something about the healthcare Bill. But if there is no more Republic, what WOULD be left in it’s place? Interesting tidbit to mull over…

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There are other ways to reform hc without reinventing the wheel.

We’re all ears! Let’s hear them.

For eight long years Republicans controlled the White House. For six of those years, Republicans controlled Congress. During all that time, not one Republican Congressman or senator even suggested a practical way to get health insurance for people who couldn’t afford it. What we got instead were diatribes against illegal aliens and “welfare queens”.

The American people finally had enough. They turned the controls over to the Democrats. And now that you’re bent over and about to receive what’s coming to you, you tell us that “there are other ways to reform hc without reinventing the wheel.”

The truth is that you don’t give a tinker’s d@mn about how many people die or suffer because of the lack of affordable healthcare. It’s all about you and your wallet. If you indeed had a way to reform healthcare and cared enough to do it, you would have brought it up by now.

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‘Ya know, AmVet, your guy Nader is worth millions. How much did he donate to Katrina victims? Your one-tract mind defeats you. You’re against the R&D parties…you’re against the corporations…that leaves the people and too many of them lack education. You like the idea of being their sole source of education here. Such an ego, yours!

Corporations stepped in enmasse to help Katrina victims

In fact, the Pew Research Center found that 54% of Americans agree that, “when something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful.” He points out that ‘the efforts by corporations in the wake of the New Orleans tragedy appeared organized and responsive — ‘in contrast to the bumbling on every level of government.’

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Seems an inconvenient truth as turned out to be an inconvenient *POOT*.

http://globalwarminghoax.wordpress.com/category/an-inconvenient-truth/

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“The truth is that you don’t give a tinker’s d@mn about how many people die or suffer because of the lack of affordable healthcare. It’s all about you and your wallet. If you indeed had a way to reform healthcare and cared enough to do it, you would have brought it up by now.”

Good job Disgusted. Keep looking at that short term picture, it will take you far.

This bill as written will add unsustainable debt to the US books, debt we can not afford. Looking long term vs your shortsigthed partisan view, we end up screwing 300 million vs the 15 million I don’t give a tinkers damn about.

Try looking at the problem as it exists vs your one sided partisan problem. News flash – it doesn’t matter how the car got to the edge of the cliff, what matters is keeping it from going over.

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And Mr Disgusted, if you would care to go back and do a little research you will find that I hold both parties accountable for the mess we are currently in as they both contributed to the outcome. Unfortunately, you must tend to look at things with a slanted view from the side.

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My republican friends just wondering……………..where was all this concern when the past administration, (who shall remain nameless), was getting trillion dollar loans yearly from China? How did we expect to pay that back? What about the time when the past administration doled out all those stimulus checks, (this was between the years of 2003 and 2007), trying to get americans to buy, buy, buy our way out of trouble? I wonder why we were being bribed and buttered up if there weren’t any problems? What about the time the past administration decided that we didn’t need to raise taxes to pay for two wars? Remember when they said that the oil fields of Iraq would be able to pay for that war? How did that work out? What about the time the past administration, six months into its first term, wiped out a budget surplus that the previous administration, (who shall remain nameless also) had left behind? And I can’t exactly recall, but can you remember who originally said that “Budgets Don’t Matter”, and everyone in that elephant party applauded and said that was correct and that paying down the deficit wasn’t as important as cutting taxes for the wealthy? (who, if i recall correctly are supposedly the ones who are upholding america — although recently we’ve found out that a good majority of them have been witholding from america and using foreign countries to hide their funds instead of paying taxes on them to revamp a failing economy), do you remember that? Didn’t anyone notice then that the country was spinning out of control? A first year economy student could’ve told you that if you borrow trillions of dollars from a country and you have no way of paying it back that you’re going to be in deep doo-doo. OR if you have two wars, at least have a way to pay for them (since you’re not going to raise taxes on the rich). OR if you get surplus funds, PAY DOWN YOUR DEBT FIRST, not use it to extend great tax breaks for people who already pay less taxes then the middle class, and still hide their money so that their taxes will be negligible.

But of course, economist, even first year ones, wasn’t running the country. It was the previous administration who got us into a bigger pile of sh##t then any other in history, cheered and applauded on by their elephant party, (you know the ones — they claim to be “fiscally conservative” but wiped away a surplus in less than a year, in 8+ years of control [six years = Senate under Clinton PLUS 6 years under Bush, 8 years = House under Bush, 8 years = Presidency] did not bring down the deficit not ONE CENT, but managed to triple it); yes they were cheered on by the “fiscally conservatives” and did not veer one inch from the party line of “All is well, move along, there’s nothing to see here”; when our financial house was in turmoil. NOW however, it seems that they’ve come out of their “sleeping beauty” type coma and have suddenly remembered the word budget. It seems just a weeeee bit hypocritical to the average eye and just a tad bit self righteous after 8+ years of f@king everything up that now that party of the elephants are pretending to care about anything that isn’t connected to them getting re-elected. Funny isn’t it?

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@@, your insistence on speaking for me and others here makes discussions with you almost impossible. (…you’re against the corporations…”)

You will seemingly never grasp this simple over-arching concept – you are not allowed to speak for me.

You are not allowed to put words in my mouth.

Not now. Not ever.

And yet, no matter how many times you’ve been admonished by myself and others here for this inexcusable practice, you still refuse to stop.

Which is a shame, because buried underneath that unfounded presumptiveness (is that a real word?) is a lot of otherwise good material and info…

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Jay, this is what the conservatives have been saying all along. We can’t go on spending money we don’t have. So we need to stop it now–and stop it by NOT passing that idiot health care bill, and NOT granting amnesty to a bunch of illegals who won’t contribute nearly enough to support themselves, and NOT passing cap and trade. Let’s get fiscally responsible here before we implode.

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Dusty at 12:36,

True.

But it does not alter the points I made…

And I will not stop advocating for economic justice – righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness – in America…

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Re, Disgusted’s diatribe at 12:09, take out the hyperbolic first two sentences in that last paragraph and I believe not a single Republican here can dismantle the fundamental argument.

At all…

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DDR,

There are many of us that protested then just as loudly as we are protesting now. What I see in your post is finger pointing of blame vs what to do about the problem. And no, the past administration didn’t do it on its own, just about every past administration contributed to the mess as they put policies/programs on the books that are now contributing to the mess.

Anybody that thinks this party or that party created the problem is doing themselves an injustice. The mess is a giant puzzle years in the making, it wasn’t created in just the last 8 years.

I’ll repeat, it doesn’t matter what was done in the past or by whom, what matters is recognizing that we are a broke country with unsustainable debt and spending at the rate we are is not going to fix that.

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AmVet –

“take out the hyperbolic first two sentences in that last paragraph and I believe not a single Republican here can dismantle the fundamental argument.”

What argument? That Republicans don’t “give a tinker’s d@mn about how many people die or suffer because of the lack of affordable healthcare”?

That’s not an argument. That is just mindless demagoguery.

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AmVet:
In Jay’s previous string, downstairs if you prefer, you had a 10:28 a.m. post where you denied having commented about “Legitimate Conservative”. You stated there that I began that subject in my 9:37.

Please go back and read TW’s 9:31 response to you.
What could this mean?

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If George Washington were alive today and attended a session of the 111th Congress, he would vomit and then go about trying to gather his militia army back together.

We have another king and his court of fools that needs to be rebelled against.

Don’t Tread On Me, moonbats!

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That I quoted you who quoted TW.

You insisted I used the term. I did not…

But this deflection over a minor point is of no real concern to me.

I defer to YOUR adjectives, nouns and verbs…

And I still beg the original question…

No, mike. This argument:

For eight long years Republicans controlled the White House. For six of those years, Republicans controlled Congress. During all that time, not one Republican Congressman or senator even suggested a practical way to get health insurance for people who couldn’t afford it. What we got instead were diatribes against illegal aliens and “welfare queens”.

The American people finally had enough. They turned the controls over to the Democrats. And now that you’re bent over and about to receive what’s coming to you, you tell us that “there are other ways to reform hc without reinventing the wheel.”

“If you indeed had a way to reform healthcare and cared enough to do it, you would have brought it up by now.”

It is a fair question…

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DDR

That contact is so important when they’re young. And that sweet personality? Ever notice how many firsters have that? It’s nature’s way to fake the parents out into having more! Then come the……!!

A good point about the political calculation. But one day the pendulum will swing and I will have a fun time reading as you and others remind the new majority of their past postings!

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OH NOES!

Bad apples throw office waste in wrong place!
Next they’ll steal the election!

EEEKKK!

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DDR –

“Conservatives Criticize Bush on Spending – Medicare Bill Angers Some Allies

By Dana Milbank
Saturday, December 6, 2003; Page A01

Last month’s passage of a Medicare prescription drug benefit that could cost $2 trillion over 20 years, after three years of sharp increases in federal spending, has provoked an unusual barrage of criticism of President Bush from conservative leaders.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40090-2003Dec5?language=printer

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AmVet –

“If you indeed had a way to reform healthcare and cared enough to do it, you would have brought it up by now.”

Well you can only take on so many third-rail issues at a time. They did try Social Security reform and immigration reform.

Does the fact that Democrats are not working on those issues now mean they don’t care about them?

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geatalife –

“I guess we are all fiscal cons now.”

Is there anyone out there who does not believe that they are a fiscal conservative?

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Hey deb, how many jobs did that 800 billion stimulus create? Less than 1 million for sure.

Do you know that if we had given $40,000 to companies directly in exchange for the guarantee of hiring 1 employee we would have created 20 million jobs. Funny how it works when the pork is left out.

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They did try Social Security reform and immigration reform.

True, and in my opinion they were as wrongheaded and intransigent as they could be on both. But that is a different matter.

Profligate spending is a disease of both flip sides of the same R&D coin.

The cons justify it via military crusades and corporate welfare.

The libs justify it through misguided entitlements and corporate welfare.

And the rich get richer and the poor get poorer…

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Just like the Chinese Premier said in the SNL skit, “Bend over Americans and hold your ankles, ’cause Ayatollah Hussein Obama (shouting) IS GOING TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU!!!!!!!

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DDR,

Do you believe in helping those that can’t help themselves and those that won’t help themselves? If so, why would you want to be an enabler for those that won’t?

Have you ever heard of an alcoholic being cured from recieving unlimited alcohol?

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First Dean says the trial lawyers own the Democratic Party, now this.

How soon before Dems fire him?

Not sure what you mean by that; Dr. Dean’s term as DNC chair ended in Jan. 2009.

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Oops! make that navigate.

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Paul: Well, I’m hoping for another little niece or nephew, but when I mention my hopes to Julie, for some reason, she gives me the evil eye. I guess it’s because she’s got Irritable Bowel Syndrome or something…………

Thomas: Debbie, so is your argument that 2 wrongs make a right?

No. My argument is “STOP PRETENDING”. Stop lying, obfuscating, and basically rewriting history to make-up something that just didn’t happen. Call a Spade a Spade.

Who gives a pie if the republicans didn’t complain about spending?

All the people who are wondering why NOW they’re complaining!! If you didn’t think “Budgets Mattered” a few years ago, why all of a sudden NOW you do? Seems a bit shady to me.

You complained about it then and now you don’t so please tell us all how you are better than they are.

I still do — perhaps you’ve missed some of my scintillating posts………

How can spending 800 billion possibly be good for our debt?

I’m gonna answer your question with a question. If you have an old car, and you don’t really have the money to buy a new one, and the transmission goes out on the old car, would it be wiser to spend the money that you have to fix the transmission thereby leaving you debt free in the coming months OR would it be wiser to spend the money you DON’T have to finance a new car for an additional 48 to 60 months at 15% interest?

When there is no proof that it will be budget neutral, only speculation.

There was no proof that the Iraqis would “see us as liberators” or allow us to use their oil to pay off our debts, but we fell for that one………

mike: DR – “Conservatives Criticize Bush on Spending – Medicare Bill Angers Some Allies
By Dana Milbank Saturday, December 6, 2003; Page A01

How many republicans eventually VOTED for that bill and how many voted against it? AND did it pass?

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AmVet (1:01):
I did not respond to TW. Both he and I responded to a post by you. I cannot prove this, but it appears to me that the post that TW and I responded to has been modified. You are correct I cannot prove that.

Since I cannot prove it, as a caution in the future any response by me to a post by you will include the time of the post and quote the full remark that you made.

Have a good day.

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OboboCare is not needed. Persons need to take responsbiity for their actions or lack thereof. I had an emergency room visit this weekend and its gonna cost a bundle. It is my fault maybe/maybe not. However Booger has incurred said cost and will pay the bill just the same.

Why dont you lazyass democrats learn that something for nothing doesnt exists except in the nothingness of your minds. OH…and OboMao’s.

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md: Hey deb, how many jobs did that 800 billion stimulus create? Less than 1 million for sure.

I don’t know….I do know it SAVED many jobs, (police, firemen, etc.); but created…..??? Don’t know for sure. I’ll look it up though ’cause I know you’re gonna hit me with the numbers

Do you know that if we had given $40,000 to companies directly in exchange for the guarantee of hiring 1 employee we would have created 20 million jobs. Funny how it works when the pork is left out.

If we would’ve gave each company $40K, as the banks showed us, they’d have put it into their coffers and used the interest and the tax credit for the next year.

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md: DDR, Do you believe in helping those that can’t help themselves and those that won’t help themselves? If so, why would you want to be an enabler for those that won’t?

I believe in helping those who can’t help themselves. Any TRUE christian does. It is one of the dictates that Christ left to his followers and asked them to spread around the world. As for being an enabler, what’s that about?

Have you ever heard of an alcoholic being cured from recieving unlimited alcohol?

Point?

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AmVet.

Sounds good..”advocating for economic justice – righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness”.

We have the right and freedom to achieve those things in America. But the government cannot do any more than set the standards as our Constitution does. It does not say that the government will award material things in equal amounts. It only gives us the freedom to achieve for ourselves.

Could it be that you do not recognize Communism, i.e., nobody should be rich or poor but all the same in comunality? Communism may be the cure for economic “justice” but it is the death of personal freedom.

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“OR would it be wiser to spend the money you DON’T have to finance a new car for an additional 48 to 60 months at 15% interest?”

You must be assuming that new cars don’t break down, but they do. If one has no money, they should spend as little as possible.

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“If we would’ve gave each company $40K, as the banks showed us, they’d have put it into their coffers and used the interest and the tax credit for the next year.”

You left out my condition of having to hire an employee – that means no employee, no money, something that didn’t happen under tarp.

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Yal’ll want to see a bailout check?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/23/9-billion-check-that-save_n_367391.html

9 billion and the execs that collapsed their companies cashed out.

Capitalism?

No, it is fraud and many lawsuits are filed.

Where is the accountability Obama?

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Tell me DDR, do you support Christ’s message being carried into the Muslim world, China…other parts of the world where oppressive governments discourage its entry? If so, then you better be prepared for confrontations such as the one we’re experiencing in the ME.

Our church, and many like it ask for nothing from those in need. We do encourage them to give back somewhere. More often than not, it doesn’t work out that way. The message is given but not carried out beyond the donation.

Jesus also said shake the dust from your sandals and move on to where his message would be received.

There comes that time…

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Normal So, bottom line, let’s have a discussion about what can be done, if anything.
I offer this. Cut military spending on hardware that was designed for the cold war or other conventional wars. Bring our Troops home from Germany and Japan and any other country where they are not needed. Have a tax that is earmarked for the debt only, by law, insuring that it cannot be pilfered for other reasons. It has to be paid down or defaulted on. I have no idea what a default would have on the global economy, but it couldn’r be good.

Normal, Here are my viewpoints/take on the matter:

a. the first thing we have to do is overhaul Social Security. No one wants to talk about it, but it’s the truth. It has to be revamped, and SOON.

b. Healthcare and Social Security go hand in hand. You can’t really address one without looking at the other.

c. Cut defense spending in HALF. We, as a country, spend more on defense per capita than any other country in the world.

d. BRING THE JOBS BACK!! Instead of propping up other countries economies, let’s start propping up our own. Fine any company who sends jobs overseas.

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“As for being an enabler, what’s that about?”

“If you had said yes to helping those who won’t help themselves, he would have accused you of “enabling” their “laziness” … or something like that.”

Out of curiosity Dog, do you consider those that refuse to help those that won’t help themselves selfish, or are the ones that won’t help themselves sefhish?

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“d. BRING THE JOBS BACK!! Instead of propping up other countries economies, let’s start propping up our own. Fine any company who sends jobs overseas.”

It not that easy.

Lets say walmart sells a product made overseas that because of labor costs $5. To do it here because of labor that same product costs $50. Now how many of that product would they sell at $5 vs $50? And it snowballs from there. If they can’t sell it, they don’t need as many employees, or truck drivers, or warehouse workers, etc, etc , etc.

For every high paying job brought back to produce, how many service industry jobs will be eliminated because of the high cost of labor?

It is not a simple solution.

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“Out of curiosity Dog, do you consider those that refuse to help those that won’t help themselves selfish, or are the ones that won’t help themselves sefhish?”

I won’t answer directly. I think the help should be available to any who need and ask for it, but anyone who receives ANY kind of public assitance should have to work for it. They should be in training for a new job, or they should be doing some kind of public work – even if it’s only picking up litter. They could help train others, work with abandoned babies, help counsel the bereaved. WHATEVER they can do…they should have to do to earn their assistance.

But the assistance has to BE there for them if they need it.

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“But the assistance has to BE there for them if they need it.”

Agreed. A safety net vs a handout.

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To begin a short list of spending cuts, first go to Wikipedia; United States federal executive departments. Scroll down to the list of 15 Departments, then click on one of them.

I chose Health & Human Services. (Used to be Health, Education and Welfare. Education is independent now.)

Scroll down to the list of Agencies. There are 20 of them with 8 sub-agencies. Then there are 11 Operating Divisions.

See if you can see any evidence of duplication or overlap of services. Any possibility of inefficiences or waste?

Repeat for each of the 15 Departments. No President, no Senator, no Congress-person, no Cabinet member, no Department head, no Political Party leadership is willing to really identify inefficiences and cut cost.

Our course is set for the reef, and I don’t think this ship can be turned. However, that is not sufficient reason to not try.

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DDR,

I’m not talking about not providing anybody an education, I’m referring to those that have access and CHOOSE to leave the system. These individuals are putting themselves at a disadvantage and then want to count on others to come to their rescue, when all they have to do is CHOOSE to re-enter the system that they chose to withdraw from in the first place. They should be given a choice – reenter the system to better themselves or wallow in their self created misery. People will usually come around if given an ultimatum.

As it is, this country enables instead of issuing ultimatums.

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Unless we bring back our manufacturing base, our economy will not recover.

Manufacturing of goods has a multiplier that can not be equaled, is capital and labor intensive and gives those that participate a greater level of wealth.

We have outsourced practically everything manufacture. We have less than 50% of our own defense needs produced in this country.

Our standard of living can not be advanced based on profits of services. It reaches a point where those services can not be sold and the benefits derived by others stop.

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AmVet.

Can’t you realize that some people have more abilities than others? That we are all governed by the smae rules with the same opportunities for advancement. Some take better advatage of that than others. That does not mean they cheat. It means they are able to deliver the expertise it usually takes to get rich. Everybody wealthy did not inherit money. Most made money in legitimate ways.

Some of the richest people in our country came from the working class of America. Do you really think that Buffet and the founder of Microsoft came from rich families? No, they did not. They give away enormous sums but not all that they have. Do you give away all that you have earned?

George Bush tried to protect every citizen in this country from further terrorist attacks. He made war against those he thought would harm us. He suggested alternative programs to Social Security but no one was interested. He promoted a new drug prescription program to help with the cost of medicines for the age group that used them most. He approved TARP funds when economic failure seemed inevitable but it was no trillions giveaway. So you call him George the Bungler, King George, etc., etc.

Sorry, AmVet but you are going for communism, hook, line and sinker. You don’t seem to realize it. That line about “corporate masters” betrays you. It is the usual entrance line for communists. Take from the rich and give to the poor. What happened to your freedom for EVERYBODY, even the rich?

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@@

The scriptural reference wasn’t intended to justify the role of gov’t as savior. It was, I thought, a humorous retort. See, you discounted Nader’s message because yahoos like Penn glommed on to it. So, I said, hey, tax collectors and hookers and street people glommed on to Jesus’s message. Do we reject the message when we don’t like those whom it attracts?

What Nader hypocrisy? I understand he lives pretty cheaply and gives away a significant portion of his earnings each year.

It’s the difference I see between him and Gore. Gore finds a cause, then starts up huge investment funds to profit from his ’solutions.’ Nothing more than a secular religious snake oil salesman, in my nonjudgmental evaluation.

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Normal – DDR

[[Bring our Troops home from Germany and Japan and any other country where they are not needed.... cut military spending in HALF]]

Hey Congress, witness bipartisanship. Progress!

Normal – I think DDR made a crucial point. It’s not enough to simply bring troops home from the hundred and thirty some odd countries where we have them, we then need to deauthorize them from the budget. Cut the positions. At a hundred grand each compensation cost to the taxpayers, plus the hundreds of thousands each in support costs, that’s a whole lot of bucks.

Then use some of the money to pay lobbyists to protect us from the Progressives who want to bring back a universal draft.

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@@: With Afghanistan looming, everyone needs to keep their eye on Yemen. Iran’s stirring things up against the Saudis. The Saudis are asking the U.S. to intervene.

I HATE when other countries, who have money of their own, expect the US to come in like we’re the POLICE of the world, and solve their country. Saudi has a military, they can fight their own battles!!!! BUT saudi also has OIL — how much you wanna bet that we’ll be drawn into their fight?

Jackie: Unless we bring back our manufacturing base, our economy will not recover. Manufacturing of goods has a multiplier that can not be equaled, is capital and labor intensive and gives those that participate a greater level of wealth. We have outsourced practically everything manufacture. We have less than 50% of our own defense needs produced in this country.

AMEN!! Say it LOUD — Without an OUTPUT there can not be an INPUT!!!

md: The key is labor – we can not indefinitely raise wages for entry level jobs – it will never work. We have gotten away from bettering ourselves to move up and instead rely on the gov’t to raise our wages, which actually causes people to lose jobs instead of gain jobs.

Well without raising wages, how are the laborers supposed to pay for items that are constantly going up? If they make $7 an hour but gas to heat their homes and put fuel in their car costs an average of $9 an hour how are they to survive? They will be perpetually stuck in those “handout” programs that you talk about.

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DoggoneGA

Gore heavily pushes singular solutions, such as cap n trade. Nothing else considered. He then establishes alliances and invests hundreds of millions in bets that cap n trade monitoring technology will become law, with potential payoffs to his investors in the billions.

It’s just a different form of ‘believe in me, have faith, send in your money and I promise you eternal rewards.”

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It is one thing to prosper off a good green product, it is quite another to prosper off proclaiming the cities will soon flood if we don’t buy his product.

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DDR:

This may surprise you, but I don’t think Obama will allow us to be pulled into Yemen. Both parties need to give their blessing to domestic drilling. May not come on line in the near future, but it’d sure send a message to the ME….they’ll be on their own in the not so distant future.

I’m outta here.

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md did the unions ALSO drive up CEO salaries and board members payouts? (The CEO salary is usually 45% of the company’s yearly projected gross) Just asking………

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“If they make $7 an hour but gas to heat their homes and put fuel in their car costs an average of $9 an hour how are they to survive?”

The costs of products is directly related to the labor. That $9 reflects that $7. Raising wages has several affects, 2 being rising cost of goods or less jobs. To keep a product at a stable price, when wages go up the company must either pass this cost on to the consumer or cut expenses. Cutting expenses usually means cutting jobs.

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“md did the unions ALSO drive up CEO salaries and board members payouts? (The CEO salary is usually 45% of the company’s yearly projected gross) Just asking………”

No, that also needs fixing. The good ole boy club at the top needs to be abolished as well. But the unions did drive up their own salaries at the top as they leach off the employees they are paid to represent.

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md: The costs of products is directly related to the labor. That $9 reflects that $7. Raising wages has several affects, 2 being rising cost of goods or less jobs. To keep a product at a stable price, when wages go up the company must either pass this cost on to the consumer or cut expenses. Cutting expenses usually means cutting jobs.

Yes and No. The cost are AFFECTED by labor but not directly related to it. You keep forgetting the margin of profit that the company puts on every product. It doesn’t cost Coca Cola $1.25 a can to manufacture and distribute a can of coke. It probably costs them less than 35 cents. The rest of the money paid is for PROFIT.

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Dang. I leave to spend lunch with the lil one and everybody goes into full throttle battle mode. I think a few of y’all, nah, make that most of y’all need to back away from the keyboard for a minute. Go sit on the toilet and take a dump or something.

Geez, you’re all gonna have strokes or something. It’s past time for arguing, and it’s time to brainstorm and bring this economic sh*t to an end. It’s assinine to think that here we are in the U.S.A. and we can’t solve our own problems. We can’t solve our problems because we’re too busy trying to bite each other’s head off.

Ok. back to your bickering. I’m going to get started pulling my Christmas decorations out of storage. You all are too d@mn bitter for me today.

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…and nobody is proposing that we do.

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We can’t solve our problems because we’re too busy trying to bite each other’s head off.

Hear the man.

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Paul @ 2:35 Normal – I think DDR made a crucial point. It’s not enough to simply bring troops home from the hundred and thirty some odd countries where we have them, we then need to deauthorize them from the budget. Cut the positions. At a hundred grand each compensation cost to the taxpayers, plus the hundreds of thousands each in support costs, that’s a whole lot of bucks.

Then use some of the money to pay lobbyists to protect us from the Progressives who want to bring back a universal draft.

If the jobs are there, then discharge them, otherwise let their military pay help stimulate the local economy. It is government money, after all.
I do like your last paragraph, though…

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We can’t solve our problems because we’re too busy trying to bite each other’s head off.

And you know what down each others necks!

(If you have to ask, you’ll never appreciate it anyway.)

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Write an article about the SEIU 1000 members beating up Ken Hamidi for trying to exercising his right for free speech at their public meeting. Write about the hyocrisy of the fact that this is barely been a news story. Write about how Obama has as he says “worked with this organization all of his life” but they are keeping this very quiet. Write about the obvious fact that if a black man would have gone into a public meeting and had been beaten up by 4 white men it would be national news and their would be a public outcry on every news channel in this country. Thankyou.

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Normal, DDR and Paul, to the point about scaling back the military,

I would think the Republicans would be ALL FOR THIS!

After all, the government can’t do ANYTHING right.

Right, cons?

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Lets split the country down the middle put the liberals on one side and the conservatives on the other.In ten years the lib side would be a poor socialist east german type government that takes most of their peoples money .And the conservative side would be a thriving free market type government that lets their people decide what to with their own money.
After that happens we might have to build a wall to keep the libs on their side.

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Normal/Paul: I was thinking more on the lines of Defense Spending. Remember a couple of months ago there was this big brouhaha about some plane that was made here in georgia at lockheed and how Obama wanted to not use their option on the contract for more planes and Isaakson(?) got all up in arms about it? THAT’s the defense budget i was talking about.

Countries like Germany and Japan, by the rules of the cease fire treaty, have to be “settled” by the US government; so we can’t leave them all together. We can however keep half the amount of bases currently in those countries and close down the other half. I think Korea has a different type of deal because S. Korea is actually paying for our protection for us to be there. Or something like that. I’m rehashing a conversation I had with my dad years ago. I’ll have to look it up though to be sure.

Oh well, have a great afternoon everybody, I’ve gotta go walk the dogs before they make a mess of the house!!

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AmVet 3:07

NOW who’s having way too much fun?

BTW – I think my post is the last response you’ll see on the matter.

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“How would that work?”

They was I see it would be something like this (but these are just examples, not hard and fast numbers):

If your purchase is less than $500 – no taxes
from $501 to %10,000 – tax is 1%
from $10,001 to $50,000 – tax is 5%
from $5,001 to $250,000 – tax is 10%
from $250,001 to $1,000,000 – tax is 15%
from $1,000,001 to $2,500,000 – tax is 20%
everything over that, tax is 25%

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Scooter

I’ll leave the ball just as long as nobody uses it as a deadly object.

And please excuse me for this next outburst:

The American People

November 23rd, 2009
3:07 pm

Take that post to a conservative blog and you might get your story. If you’re not Bookman’s boss, how are you going to dictate what he writes about? Does he come on your job and tell you what to do?

AmVet, Normal, Paul, & DDR

I think scaling back the military has been brought up here before. I think that would be a great idea. Bring all the troops home except for areas that are important to our national security. Cut the defense budget back to only what we really NEED and not what we want. Take the money saved in defense spending and use it to pay down the national debt.

Another area to look at is trade agreements. Do away with any trade agreements that are not evenly split. Double tarrifs on any US company that exports material to be assembled and returned to the US to be sold.

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Oh, well. We have to raise taxes. We should not have implemented the “bush tax cuts” and should have raised taxes when we went to war.

We were not communists or socialists when we had high marginal tax rates under Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, etc. We won’t be again, if we raise taxes. Although, I think all tax rates probably need to be raised, I am a believer in a progressive tax system. My idea is that the rich have a whale of a lot to protect. In fact, maybe we should create a war tax that is based on how much US wealth a person holds.

Don’t give me the guff about how rasigin taxes will cost jobs. The effect of the Bush tax cuts was a drop in median wages, stagnant middle incomes, and the greatest ooncentration of wealth since the 1920s. I may not know the answer but it is for sure that tax cuts didn’t do what they were supposed to do.

Maybe we could also cut some jobs in Washington. I would start with congressional office staff and aides. Then how about the commerce department? Where else? How about education – I would rather have the feds out of education and get it back under state, county, and city control. Where else?

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DebbieDoRight

November 23rd, 2009
2:57 pm

OH yes he did!

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DoggoneitGA,you mean I’m going to have to pay 25% tax on my new yacht!That’s not fair.

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This country spends as much on our military as the rest of the world combined.

And the dupes who listened to Saint ronnie and all those like hwo him who ensued, want to spend even MORE.

And MORE.

And MORE.

There is no denying that the DoD budget is bloated.

It is jaw droppingly wasteful.

It is rife with corruption and fraud.

And it way past time that it be reigned in to some reasonable level…

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Normal

[[I wonder if any adminstration has the guts to do this.]]

It doesn’t seem so. Which is why I hold to my pie in the sky of term limits and full public financing of elections.

Normal

Even in these times the military meets their recruiting targets. And attracts all they need for the officer corps.

General question: why do so many posters have such a fetish about having other people speak to their body parts?!!? (ref Boogers at 3:25)

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Paul, yes I’m pretty sure that history taught us that when the economy was bad, the miliary had its recruits. I wonder if it would be so if times were good?

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DoggoneGA

November 23rd, 2009
3:32 pm

Now that sounds ok.But like Normal,I don’t think it will ever happen.The folks who make our tax laws are not going to pass laws that cost them more money. IMHO

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Paul, an answere to your general question…Booger, hand…need I say more?

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“The folks who make our tax laws are not going to pass laws that cost them more money. IMHO”

That’s why you never see it discussed, because then the politicians would have to pay attention to the people who pay their salaries: the voters

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Sometimes I think it is just a waste of time to vote at all! Whew!

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Paul:

I knew if I pushed hard enough, you’d let down your guard. Your superior attitude would become transparent.

Didn’t even bother to read the article, did ‘ya?

@@

LOL!

I find no value in your penny’s worth of condescension. Condescension is a badge of honor worn by those who think their opinion is more valuable that everyone else’s.

Nader fits that bill. Perhaps you do to.

You and I agree on many things, but Nader ain’t one of ‘em.

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I gotta get out of here in a few…Tonight is Dessert night. My self, my daughter, and two grand daughters are starting our cooking tonight for Thanksgiving. We will be blogging, telephoning and otherwise irritating each other with our requests, suggestions and such. I’m making my mother’s family tradition of Indian Pudding. A cornmeal and molassus dish that is baked and sets up. Yummy, pies, puddings and pralines. This is the night that drives the young ones crazy. All that aroma, but no can have…ain’t we cruel?

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“Yes and No. The cost are AFFECTED by labor but not directly related to it. You keep forgetting the margin of profit that the company puts on every product. It doesn’t cost Coca Cola $1.25 a can to manufacture and distribute a can of coke. It probably costs them less than 35 cents. The rest of the money paid is for PROFIT.”

There are many companies operating on very little profit, that is why we are where we are now – job loss. And are you advocating for no profit? Companies need profit to expand and hire more people not to mention profit is needed to boast stock prices, that very same stock that many unions hold in their/your 401k.

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Good p.m. you grouchy bunch of malcontents!

What am I thankful for? There’s so much, but let’s say, life! L’chaim…

DDR–sorry, not to bad mouth your alma mater but it is a diploma factory just like all the rest of them and I bought a piece of paper from AU…

What to do about the big bill a’coming? Put on another shift and expand the facilities at the mint…

Katrina and who’s at fault? Napolean, Jefferson and all that’s come afterward…

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The folks who make our tax laws are not going to pass laws that cost them more money.

That pretty well sums it up.

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JAY–if you’re going to be gone, give us a picture of turkey (I’ll send you one of me which ought to suffice) and see how many clicks you can get…we’re here to do our part in making you the Blogmeister of all time…

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ABM–so you met General Honore! That man is my hero and I hold him up to my kids as such. I could listen to him and his commentaries for hours and never grow tired…

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@@

Went through part of it, but when I scanned through the first part and didn’t see a Nader or policy reference. Having a passing familiarity I disagreed with the position of the author regarding gov’t role in private firms’ audits. Systems compliance can be bogged down in administrivia – but that’s the fault of implementation, not concept.

As far as the second link I obviously didn’t read: it was the same article as the first link. So I went back to work on my other monitor.

Did you read your two links?

So what you’re saying is, the majority parties field candidates who are more worthy of your vote than Nader is?

That’s fine. I just find it remarkable.

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Hillbilly–the corporate takeover of American society began as a direct outgrowth of that little set-to back in the 1860s that we’re not supposed to talk about–funded by the r*pe and pillage of the defeated separtists and let run amok by the most corrupt regimes yet seen in this country…the Age of the Robber Baron…imported their working class from the destitute of Europe rather than the destitute and disenfranchised in their meridinal colony…it was all part of what Hannah Arendt called “the vogue hypocracy of the Late Victorian Period…

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Paul:

There was no second link, just one.

Maybe rather than discounting it so quickly, perhaps you could’a read the whole article.

You recall the study done by Arthur C. Brooks, right? The study that showed conservatives, for religious or non-religious reasons give more to charity? Well in his book “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism” excoriates Nader for this comment:

Several times throughout the book, Mr. Brooks quotes Mr. Nader, the political activist, who said during his 2000 presidential campaign: “A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.”

Mr. Brooks calls it a “bitter irony” that those favoring income redistribution are not doing much redistributing from their own bank accounts — and he blames liberal leaders like Mr. Nader for letting liberals off the hook.

“In essence, for many Americans, political opinions are a substitute for personal checks,” Mr. Brooks writes.

In an interview, Mr. Nader, who had not seen an advance copy of Who Really Cares, says he has a tough time believing that Mr. Brooks’s conclusions about weak giving among liberals are accurate.

“If you look at the liberal environmental and antipoverty groups, you don’t see counterparts on the right wing,” he says.

“Everyone could be giving more to charity,” Mr. Nader says. “I don’t think liberals give enough, and I don’t think conservatives give enough.”

That’s ^^^ Ralph promoting Ralph’s income redistribution policies…..or what he calls justice.

You have every right to support your “third party candidate”…..I won’t laugh at you for doing so.

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Oh, and Paul….

nor will it find it remarkable when you do.

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@@

From the spacing I thought you intended two links.

{A penny for your thoughts.

I’ll have to read them later. It’s the laws that need changing. Laws that hinder government control, not the people’s control.)

I’m taking off for the holiday tomorrow late so have several days’ of work to plow through. So as I said, when it was another corporate controller pretty advocating tossing out all the bathwater, rather than changing it (and yes, I’ve sat in on those discussions in professional life) I realized I wasn’t reading anything that was new for me.

Brooks, it sounds to me, missed Nader’s point to make his own. I think Nader has a point – much of the need for charity comes from situations befalling people because of what’s legal. Witness the recent financial meltdown. By and large, legal. So when people lose savings, jobs, homes, the need for private charity increases. But if we had systems in place to have prevented that from ever happening, then the need for charity would have been eliminated, as the situation would never have occurred.

The last part of your post – so Nader held the same beliefs shared by many, if not most, people: that libs were personally generous? So what? We’re a nation that loves myths. When data comes along that challenges those myths, that’s the real test: to see if people change their minds.

But to say someone isn’t worthy of your vote because he believed something believed by many libs and cons, before a data analysis result proved otherwise?!!?

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Josef

It has never made sense to me that corporations should have the rights of an individual but not the responsibilities. You are right about the great waves of immigration in the late 1800’s-early 1900’s; they had an awful lot to do with providing a source of cheap labor.

This country has a history of finding cheap labor. First they had indentured servants but after a few years he’d up and leave you and go out on his own. They figured out slavery would be a better source of cheap labor and they had that for a while. Then came the sharecropping system. In theory it gave the sharecropper a stake in his output but in reality it often was abused by the landowner who charged just about whatever he wanted to the sharecropper for seeds, housing, etc. They were often kept in a form of semi-slavery because they could never get out of debt. This system was further refined in the cotton mill town and the coal mining town. Often in these towns people weren’t even paid in money they were paid in company script, good only at the company store. Sort of hard to save up money and become independent that way. Fast forward to now and we have illegal immigrants. They’re a cheap source of labor and they really can’t go and complain if they are being exploited. Sort of makes you wonder what the thing they come up with will be.

And the great railroad fortunes that were built in the 1800’s were built in a large part by the railroads being granted the right to take private lands for their own use. That’s sort of like now a local government can condemn your property and give it to a business to increase their tax base.

As for the concept of “too big to fail”, that’s what our anti-trust laws were about but they’ve been eroded away down through the years. Don’t let them get big enough to take down the whole country with them. It’s a variation of the “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” theory that they taught in economics back in the day.

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Paul…there wasn’t anything in that, that I didn’t already know

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My Daddy worked for Ford Motor Co. for over 3 decades. In his early years there, old man Henry Ford was still alive. One day Daddy had to call in sick, something I only saw a handfull of times in my entire life. He was having to visit the bathroom every few minutes so he couldn’t really go to work like that. They started work about 6:30 AM in those days. Daddy said about 10:00 he heard a knock on his door. They had sent out a company detective to see if he was sick, so ol’ Henry wasn’t exactly altruistic.

And of course, a plant the size of the Ford Plant had it’s own company doctor on site at all times. I know personally of several instances where men were injured on the job, patched up and sent right back to the line. In fact one I knew, after he got home, decided to go see his own doctor. Turns out he had a broken arm, and that happened in the 1960’s. You don’t see much about that in the history books though.

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DoggoneGA

[[Paul…there wasn’t anything in that, that I didn’t already know]]

Really? You knew about John Lee? And that the purpose of the $5 wage was primarily to reduce turnover, not to spur car sales? And why Sorenson was fired? And what he wrote in his memo? And how Edsel Ford Died?

You already knew all of that?

Wow.

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“Drop all other taxes, and tax directly those who are paying them anyway. That way you would greatly reduce the influence of corporations anxious to get their “tax burdens” reduced.”

What, corporations would not pay taxes on what they purchase? They buy corn, wheat and chickens from farmers. They buy coal and iron ore. They can’t make anything without buying something, except a song writer.

“Zoning would stop being influenced by companies and be of more direct benefit to those who pay the salaries of the zoning boards: the voters. etc, etc, etc” We already pay their salaries. Do you think there would be less influence peddling, less bribes, less opportunity for the person on the board to later get a fat job with the companies he/she used to hve some power over?

Does someone spend money when he buys shares of stock or bonds? Is that taxable? Does it make sense that money put in a bank earns interest but the productivity of that money is different from the productivity of my labor?

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“We have unions with virtually no power today and look at the position the American worker is in.”

No power??? They had enough power to circumvent the creditors at GM, I’d say thats more power than they need. Unless the union plans on loaning GM money down the road, that little manuver might be very costly long term when the banks decide never to give GM money again.

“Coca-Cola must be doing quite well”

There are some companies that are doing quite well and then there are many more that are not. For us to survive, we need most companies to do well or we all lose.

And ole Henry was operating in a different environment. Like it or not, we now have a global economy, and our high priced products can not compete on the world market unless the dollar is weak, which it is at the moment, but keeping the dollar weak is not a good long term solution.

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I hate to think where we would have wound up…

My guess is we’d be well on our way to a return to feudalism and somehow I just don’t think I’d have made a good serf.

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Hillbilly

“My guess is we’d be well on our way to a return to feudalism and somehow I just don’t think I’d have made a good serf.”

In this part of the empire we did descend into feudalism and only began to emerge in the 1960s. In great swaths of my much beloved South, we are still there…but, shh, we’re not supposed to talk about it for to do so we have to use such terms as “colonialism,” “imperialism” and such Marxist terminologies and with them a left wing perspective to domestic conditions that, well, just aren’t politically correct, right or left, given the population we are talking about here…

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“You already knew all of that?”

Why wow? Do you really think it’s not possible that I already knew that? I also know that Adrew Carnegie lowered the pay of his workers to fund his philanthropy, because he knew better than they did how their money should be spent. You won’t find that in most history books either.

And I know that, like Ford, most of the inventions of Thomas Edison were not invented by him…they came out of his “invention factory” and were the work of others that he hired. Though, to give him the credit he IS due…they also worked to flesh out into a working object the ideas that he did have.

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DoggoneGA

Parts of it, didn’t surprise me. But when you said you already knew EVERYTHING Mr. Wallace wrote about… no exceptions… all the little factoids… including the story of Mr. Lee… how Edsel died… the ‘make a list’ task Sorensen was given… yeah, I did find that surprising for just about anyone except a Ford researcher.

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DoDo says, “The CEO salary is usually 45% of the company’s yearly projected gross) Just asking………”.

WHAT A PILE OF COMPOST! What must it feel like when you are pulling those numbers out of your bung DoDo? Must be good because you do it constantly. Just asking!

Oh, and your little Coke thing doesn’t add up either. There are way more costs (both O&M and Capital) involved than just the simplistic production/profit scenario you portray for a can of Coke. Yes the profit margin is high but so are all incurred expenses for producing and selling the product. I must surmise that you must have been rejected by Coke in Atlanta for a job at one time or another or maybe you got a job with them but it didn’t work out.

Nevertheless, you are a typical Socialist/victim. Blame the ambiguous, greedy and all evil “Man” for this countrys problems. Responsibility could never lie with the government nor the populace could it? Did you receive indoctrination in some substandard diploma mill or what? Do you also own a “Che” t-shirt? Maybe you can join up with AmVet and you two can spend your days rallying the masses on this blog (all 30-40 of us) against the industrial machine. Meanwhile, the idiots in our government are sucking the marrow right out of your bones and yet you still yell “its the greedy corporations fault!”.

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So Paul is a condescending pig and Doggone is a socialist? (We already all know I am a fill in the blank…)

Man I’m out for a few hours and my how the world has changed!

And let me be the first to say to everyone, in the most politically incorrect of choices, Happy Holidays!

(And in a sinister voice, “Let the war on Christmas begin!!! Bwahahahahahahaha!”)

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AmVet

Liberal, socialist, conservative, anarchist, neocon…

but, sigh… now I have to go and have my personality assaulted.

It takes a lot of creative effort to be irritating, don’tcha’ know?

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jt

His attitude was normal up north…not down South and in the West…the triple K took off in his industrial wasteland and never reallhy did down South or out West (regardless of what the happy textbook story says). It’s anti Semitism was one of the key reasons why…sales of his scurrilous anti-Semitic publications in the South and West were only a fraction of their sales in the Midwest and Northeast…no small part of this, of course, was from the traditions brought in with the workers from Central and Eastern Europe.

Hillbilly….

“But if it’s you’re own country colonizing you, it can’t be colonialism can it?”

Well, the Ukrainians, Quebecois, Scots, Zulu, among others might have an opinion on that…

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Paul:

You were hoisted on your own petard.

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The nugget to my link is the last few paragraphs. FDR’s policy wonks at least admitted their errors. I just can’t see Obama doing this————————————
—————————————————————————————————————————————-
” Economists at the Brookings Institution reported, “The NRA on the whole retarded recovery.” Roosevelt’s Brain Truster Raymond Moley was among the framers of the NRA who later acknowledged the error of their ways. “Planning an economy in normal times is possible only through the discipline of a police state,” he reflected.

They cannot have the cake of free enterprise and also eat it away by government directives. Government … cannot summon the talent to create positive means for operating a free economy.…

“Economic planning on a national scale in a politically free society involves contradictions that cannot be resolved in practice. The bones of the Blue Eagle should be a grim reminder of this reality.

Experience with the NRA ought to offer a warning for President Obama and others who imagine that government is smart enough to make an economy prosper. “

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josef nix

November 23rd, 2009
5:37 pm

jt

His attitude was normal up north…not down South and in the West…the triple K took off in his industrial wasteland and never reallhy did down South or out West (regardless of what the happy textbook story says). It’s anti Semitism was one of the key reasons why…sales of his scurrilous anti-Semitic publications in the South and West were only a fraction of their sales in the Midwest and Northeast…no small part of this, of course, was from the traditions brought in with the workers from Central and Eastern Europe.

Didn’t know about publications. I’ll have to bone up. I thought that he was just a run-of-the-mill early 20th century bigot.

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Paul:

AmVet can claim it’s schtick now, but believe me….there was no schtick in the schmuck when he was HUGE. His ego knows no bounds.

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The libs whine about their little pet Zombie-

Moreover, G.M. is not, in the strictest sense, paying back taxpayers at all. Rather, it is refunding $6.7 billion of an $18 billion escrow account that was given to it by the government when it emerged from bankruptcy. The rest of that account will be used to cover fourth-quarter losses (including $2.8 billion pledged for the rescue of G.M.’s major parts supplier, Delphi), repay loans from the Canadian government, and possibly prop up the automaker’s shaky European operations. That escrow account is due to expire in June, at which time G.M. will repay what remains of the $6.7 billion from this week’s pledge — and then pocket the estimated $5.6 billion remainder.-TreasonTimes

Why, it’s almost as though the Union leeches aren’t sucking GM dry, of course not, blame GM for their losses.

When you got an idiot liberal readership, you can make up any story you want.

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What I don’t understand is why the news media allows the right-wing to keep fallaciously suggesting that the Democrats are mainly responsible for the sizeable National Debt. A review of the National Debt since 1950 shows that approximately 84 percent ($9.9 Trillion) was incurred under Republican Administrations and 16 percent ($1.9 Trillion) under Democratic Administrations. It should be noticed that at the end of the Clinton Administration, there was a beginning of a reversal of the rising trend. That effort was quickly reversed with the appointment of Bush to be president. Also, it is noticeable that the news media never makes mention of the wide variance in the performance of the stock markets under Republican verses Democrat Administrations. A review of the DOW Industrials since 1900 shows that the net gain under Republican Administrations was 25 points verses 10,400 points under Democratic Administrations. Likewise, there is a substantial variance with respect to the S&P. Since 1900, the S&P (there has been various aspects of this index) has a net loss of 131 points under Republican Administrations and a gain of more than 1,200 points under Democratic Administration. Wake up America!

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Julian, do you think the info at the end of the Clinton era had anything to do with the dot.com boost and then followed by the dot.com bust?

BTW who controlled congress, you know the group that delegates money, at that time you are speaking of?

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“yeah, I did find that surprising for just about anyone except a Ford researcher”

Well…I might not have been able to recite it word for word if you’d asked me, but on reading it – it all came together as stuff I had learned before.

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Julian and thomas, I think that what it really indicates is that as is true with so many other misnomers the GOP is not and has not for a very long time been what they pretended to be.

THEY ARE NOT CONSERVATIVES.

And they haven’t been since Nixon at the very latest.

Reagan was an imperialist and a dictator coddler who ballooned virtually every aspect of government. From profligate spending to militarism to having Eddie Meese and the Theocrats (a helluva band name, doncha think?) run his Sex Police.

They are NOT fiscal conservatives.

They are NOT social conservatives.

They are reactionaries and corporatists.

And by and large, failures…

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@md

Do you refuse to acknowledge the unions in the Midwestern States have a contract with GM and Ford?; do you understand the UAW amended their contract with GM and Ford and took over health care benefits from the company prior to the bailout from the Government?’ do you realize that ALL Southern states are right-to-work states meaning the unions are only for purposes or organization and do not have the right to force the companies to bargain with the unions in good faith?’ you do realize real wages have been falling for union and non-union employess throughout the USA since the 1990’s?

Secondly, you are trying to qualify your argument. Coca-Cola is one example used to show how American companies prospered and shared the properity with those who invested in that company. Does that paradigm work consistently today?

Henry Ford was working in a different time. The manufacturing environment has not changed relative to how pricing of products are accounted. You know that material, labor and burden/overhead are ALWAYS used for cost accounting. Right?

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Doggone, according to up and down you are.

Hey at least you’re not a loon!

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AJC Headline: Clayton County Sheriff: “No hot meals any time soon”

“Jail violating state law, which requires 2 hot meals daily for prisoners ………….
On Monday, ……. the 1,900 inmates in Clayton got a cold chicken patty and some pasta salad.”

Hey, you’re breaking my heart! I ate a lot of cold C-Rations in Nam for a year. You’ll live. Quit whining ………….. if you don’t like it there …….. don’t go back!

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On Ford–he published, among other things, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion…

Be back in a bit, grandbabies dropped in for a surprise visit…

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DDR:

josef; i read an article a few weeks back that stated basically that for the past 300+ years, modern man has been blaming all their social wrongs, bad fortunes, and bad decisions on two ethnic groups, blacks and hebrews. No matter what, it’s always their fault.

One thing you won’t see in today’s modern times, is a conservative calling a black conservative, Uncle Tom.

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@@: One thing you won’t see in today’s modern times, is a conservative calling a black conservative, Uncle Tom.

They mostly call them dumb. Behind their backs of course….

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DDR:

No way, now how. Independent thinkers can never be labeled as dumb.

AmSweat:

Hey at least you’re not a loon!

You’re gonna have to show me where I called you a loon. I said Ralphie was a loon.

I’ve always called you a big A$$.

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DDR

Here’s a link about the people in the audience. Google had it listed part 1, 2, 3 etc.

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md:

Question to a former union member. Are they not among the biggest abusers of workman’s comp claims? I’ve known many who brag about their ability to escape job responsibility thru workman’s comp.

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What I don’t understand is why the news media allows the right-wing to keep fallaciously suggesting that the Democrats are mainly responsible for the sizable National Debt. A review of the National Debt since 1950 shows that approximately 84 percent ($9.9 Trillion) was incurred under Republican Administrations and 16 percent ($1.9 Trillion) under Democratic Administrations. It should be noticed that at the end of the Clinton Administration, there was a beginning of a reversal of the rising trend. That effort was quickly reversed with the appointment of Bush to be president. Also, it is noticeable that the news media never makes mention of the wide variance in the performance of the stock markets under Republican verses Democrat Administrations. A review of the DOW Industrials since 1900 shows that the net gain under Republican Administrations was 25 points verses 10,400 points under Democratic Administrations. Likewise, there is a substantial variance with respect to the S&P. Since 1900, the S&P (there has been various aspects of this index) has a net loss of 131 points under Republican Administrations and a gain of more than 1,200 points under Democratic Administration. Wake up America!

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md

**Why do you think the foreign automakers set up shop in the south?*

Most Southern plants are still UAW shops, but because of the laws, the unions doesn’t have as much power and it is manageable.

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Dusty

Might I suggest forgetting the mint julep and having some bourbon, neat, before proceeding further? At least if you do burn something (doubtful) you won’t care!

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I don’t wanna cause undue alarm, but all indications are that we’re about to engage in a military confrontation with Iran.

NATO Deputy Secretary-General Claudio Bisogniero is leading a top-level delegation to Israel on Nov. 23-24, according to a statement from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The delegation will meet with senior ministry officials, including Foreign Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor. The talks are taking place in the framework of the Individual Cooperation Program.

Russia is not coming on board as fast as Obama would like. They’re withholding from Iran, but all their offering is sanctions. China could care less, and Israel is getting antsy given Iran’s bloviating. That could be the only logical reason for Obama’s delay on Afghanistan.

The only thing that causes me to doubt is Iran’s ability to block the straits.

Maybe a naval blockade…something’s goin’ on.

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JC

**A review of the National Debt since 1950 shows that approximately 84 percent ($9.9 Trillion) was incurred under Republican Administrations**

Go back and see how many years were under control of a Democratic Congress. The president has the power to veto, but laws that determine the economy are determined by Congress, not the president. A great example is how the economy was roaring in 2006, but as soon as the Democrats took over Congress, we started crashing and burning.

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I know EXACTLY what ya mean Doggone.

He is one of the more even tempered posters here.

He’s ALWAYS p!ssed off!

Yes, DDR, I am sorely convinced that among the misnamed conservatives, they have no bigots in their ranks. None, nary, nada, zip.

It was after all, mainly the southern, white, male “conservatives” who fought, sometimes giving up their own lives, alongside minorities and women in the fight for basic human justice for in the 60s!

While the liberals tried to do everything in their power to stop them.

Too funny…

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Jackie: Wonder what platitudes conservatives give to Clarence Thomas?

They probably say, “That’ll do pig, that’ll do.

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NIF that Doraville staff was the most productive, and made more cars with less deficiencies, than any other Ford plant in the world. Maybe everyone should get high in the parking lot.

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“If you were a member of a labor union, how do you denigrate your fellow workers?”

I’d say it was the other way around. How could many of them push their corruption and sorriness on the ones that wanted to put in a good days work for a good days pay.

Unions came into existence for all the right reasons, now many exist for all the wrong reasons.

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@Debbie Do Right

Funny, how those that want to make a counter-argument seem to have amnesia.

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**Wouldn’t you want your product to be manufactured by the most productive and best educated work force in the world?**

Unions actually work against this principle, not for it. Union contracts don’t allow for the firing of dead wood until the discipline process is exhauted, sometimes years. That is hardly the climate for having the “best and brightest”.

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@md

You want to extract an element of your observation to extrapolate that to the entire operation. I believe it to be not a valid comparison.

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In 34 years on the line, Daddy never had a workman’s comp claim, including when he stuck the pnuematic screw driver in his hand. Bandaged and back to work in about 30 minutes. He also has tinitinits (sp?) and can’t hear himself f*rt because they had no ear protection until a couple years before he retired. (I knew a lot of the guys he worked with and none of them can hear theirselves f*rt either.) And he’s still a member of the UAW and still pays his dues every year, even though he’s long retired

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7 days and ElBaradei is out (thank gawd). I wonder who’s gonna take his place?

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jackie

Because Americans want to buy American Cars. I still own one, but I can’t drive it because it has almost 100,000 miles on it and it is falling apart and the toyota that I just traded in had almost 300,000 miles on it.

Back when other countries had to assemble cars by hand, like we do here, we were very competitive. Then in about 1980, they all started converting their assembly lines to robotics and that required a good education for the much fewer employees. The UAW would not allow that to happen here so Detroit went away.

Take a walk through the Toyota Plants in Tennessee or the BMW plants in S.C. and see how the cars are assembled. they are light years ahead of the way we do it. Ford is doing much better because of the robotic technology that they use in the South and off-shore. If you buy a Ford, you are probably not buying an American car.

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Hillbilly Deluxe

**Doraville plant was a GM plant but it was one of GM’s most efficient plants in the country.**

What? No it wasn’t. It was the smallest plant in operation for the last ten years it was in service. That made it the most dangerous and the most likely to produce cars that had to be recalled. It was UAW, through and through and now it is nothing but yet another empty group of buildings.

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@NIF

The union members do not design those cars.
As for American cars, if you will recall, European and Japanese cars used to be laughingstocks.

American companies designed in obsolescence for many years.
In Europe, Ford is the best selling car because they designed their cars to last and be stylish. Why have cars made for the American market been so bad? Do you think it was the union worker that cause this problem?

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@md

Of course you will; if you don’t believe in you, who will?
You are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your set of facts.

And the beat goes on.

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Jackie

it isn’t the design of the cars, it is the manufacturing process. Have you ever heard the expression: never buy a car that was built on a Monday or a Friday? Robots don’t vary the quality of their work depending on the amount of alcohol they drink on the weekend.

You keep ignoring the robot factor. A simple Toyota Corolla has every single nut attached to a specific torque. They will not vary that if they are distracted, because they are never distracted. We are in the 21st century. We either start building our cars like we are in this century or we see what happens.

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Ok I got the FORD plant and the GM plant confused!! GM was the one in Doraville. Sorry for that.

md: found this article about unions/management (auto) from 2005 — thought it might interest you on how much/many concessions the union has given to management over the past few years…

The United Auto Workers did not respond to the Wall Street Journal story. Since the mid-1970s, the UAW has collaborated with the Big Three automakers in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of auto jobs to boost profits and help US automakers better compete with their international rivals. After agreeing to an unprecedented cut in health care benefits for GM workers, the UAW is currently negotiating similar agreements with Ford and Chrysler.

The massive destruction of workers� jobs and living standards�which numbers alone do little to convey�belies the glowing reports from the Bush administration and the media that the US economy is rolling ahead. On Friday, the US Labor Department reported that unemployment held steady at 5 percent in November and that the economy had recovered from the dislocations of Hurricane Katrina. �Our economy continues to gain strength and momentum,� President Bush claimed at a White House appearance.

Pardon me, I just couldn’t resist a little “bush bashing” while I was at it. Sorry.

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DebbieDoRight

We lost a lot of buggy makers when the automobile came along. It’s a very sad thing but when automation results in a much better product, in order to compete in an international market, we have to adapt. So we see what happened to Detroit when the UAW insist that we build cars like they built the model T. So which is better, a highly skilled much smaller work force that is turning out a world class product or empty buildings and downtowns that are crime infested ghost towns?

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Hillbilly Deluxe

**So does every other vehicle made. **

Simply not true. theoretically, that might be true if every single worker used the wench the same way. Harley Davidson motorcycles had bolts that would come loose in their transmissions until the plants started buying foreign made trannies that were made by robots. Now they build almost the entire bikes with automation and they are again, good bikes that don’t fall apart.

.

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NIF according to statements AND to a few articles on the demise of Ford, BAD PLANNING and implementation was the cause of Ford’s problems. Not the Union or lack of automation:

The plant closings are expected to be just one part of a major shake-up of Ford, which announced it was reducing production after its US sales fell by 15 percent in November, the worst of any automaker. The company saw a 52 percent decline in sales of its highly profitable Ford Explorer SUV, despite an extensive redesign of the vehicle. Ford once sold as many as 400,000 Explorers a year, according to the Wall Street Journal, and ran two Explorer plants on overtime. This year, it will do well to sell more than 240,000�a single plant�s worth.

http://www.jobbankusa.com/News/Layoffs/layoffs120305a.html

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I worked in NYC for most of the 90’s, building and installing espresso bars in some of the most historic bldgs there. Had about 6 projects get buried in the world trade center, put an espresso bar in the empire state, two in at rock center, one in gramercy park, and so on…

I experienced the best and the worst of the unions.

Good: quality workmanship, clean, don’t take a lot of personal breaks for phone calls and to smoke cigs.

Bad: If your working in some of the area’s that I’m talking about, you will need to make sure you have local union representation. We actually had a union carpenter, who was not working on our job he was just walking by, come in to check to make sure we had enough locals on the site, we did not. The next day two lawyer looking guys showed up and “negotiated” a short term union contract for the duration of the week. Union reps dress REALLY nice, probably had shoes on that cost more than all the clothes in my closet put together. Oh and our first foray into the WTC, when the trucks showed up, all the trades gathered outside the trucks, and the electricians unloaded the extension cords, and immediately told us we could not use those, they would have to make cords for us to use. Then the rest of the unload proceeded with the plumbers unloading plumbing, electricians unloading electrical, riggers unloading anything that resembled heavy equipment, etc…

It took 3 times as long to unload those trucks because we were not allowed to touch anything, and the trades all had to unload thier own materials…

Then there was break at 9:30, 12:00, and 2:00, didn’t matter if the building was burning, the time to put the fire out was after the break…

It’s much better up there now, but the historic properties are still firmly in the grasp of the unions.

I would still trade those union guys for the white trash you find down here working. Personal phone calls all day long, missed work for visits to the probation office, I actually had a guy blow off two days of work because his chinchillas had babies… (he don’t work here no more). I suppose if I supplied them internet connections and computers in the shop they probably spend thier days on this here blog…

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@@

I don’t know about the discount programs for people who took buyouts. They have a plan for current employees and the Z plan is for retirees. Ford didn’t have those until the 80’s though, before that you went to the dealer and haggled like everybody else.

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DebbieDoRight

I don’t know much about the Ford plant in Hapeville, but I was in the Doraville assembly plant about once a week for the last two years it was in operation. The problems were a direct result of an incompetent work force and the lack of automation. GM was willing to leave the plant open if it could produce an upswing in quality, but the union would not allow the automation that would have improved that quality.

I simply won’t be convinced that workers, doing repetitive jobs, day after day, week after week and year after year are going to compete with state of the art assembly robots. Your article doesn’t address the automation issue, and I would not it expect it to address those problems.

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AmVet

No. Here’s a question: Do you support the Democratic Party?

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“Like so many libs, here, you’re like a little pee-shooter. I’ll take the honesty of Andy’s shotgun any day of the week.”

Hopefully, @@, you’ll realize one day that folks like “Andy” do far more harm to the conservative movement than any liberal could ever do in their wildest dreams.

And once again, here’s my list of ways that conservatives can win back an alienated populace:

(1) Return to true conservative values such as limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual freedom/responsibility.

(2) Stay out of people’s personal lives. Accept that abortion is here to stay regardless of your personal feelings about it.

(3) Distance the party from religious extremists. It’s not worth alienating the middle to appeal to the far right. And that doesn’t mean compromising conservative principles. Strict “constructionists” respect the non-establishment clause.

(4) Return to a more limited foreign policy. Following 9/11, some type of military response was required, but 2 long dragged-out wars cannot be considered a successful outcome, IMO. I do see benefits in knocking Saddam out of power, but it came at a huge price. I am of the mindset that radical Islam must be dealt with from the outside because the Muslim world doesn’t have the political will to do it from within.

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Ooops sorry. You were talking about IN-LAWS, oh well then……..carry on.

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DDR:

Lint heads are what they called themselves. My husband was one in high school. That’s what he tells everybody….”I was a lint head.”

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DDR:

I thought my in-laws were GREAT! Loved ‘em to death. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for them.

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Needing a crew to install an Espresso machine is nothing to pontificate on, just sayin…..

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Bruno:

Honesty carries a lot of weight with me. Why don’t you let me decide whose honesty I’ll accept when it comes to bloggers?

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Bruno- When you have to beg and grovel to get people to believe you are a Conservative, well, you know what I mean.

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Why tax only spending? Is there something about spending that makes it more a taxable activity than receiving income? Is it sinful to spend or somehow more virtuous to save? What is wrong with taxing income?

Because Neal Boortz’ salary is in the seven figures and he’d save a ton of dough;
no;
no and not necessarily;
and nothing, especially.

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Paul- You know it. It’s my little cup o heaven to start the day. That thing has converted several of the plunger crowd, they thought they had it going on until they took a sample of the real deal.

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I publicly denounced the Democratic Party over 12 years ago.

PUBLICLY, AmVet? What….were you like, up on stage with a microphone an’ everthin?

Is there a You-Tube video we could look at.

My, oh my….you must’ve been an important man to require that your announcement be made PUBLICLY!!!

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pleasant evening, all -

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@@

*What….were you like, up on stage with a microphone an’ everthin?**

A blog would be a public announcement. He’s not Bono (as far as I know).

But it is amazing how many people now claim to be against both parties. I believe AmVet. We almost always disagree, but he speaks his mind and I respect that.

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NIF, thanks for that gracious response.

It is my considerable experience that blind hatred knows no political affiliation, land or gender. Liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, white, black, rich, poor. No one has a monopoly on it.

And as I’ve said before I’ve fought my own demons over race, and as is true with all other forms of social injustice it is a constant battle not to let the dark side (of me) win…

Some of the greatest harmony ever recorded…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVHKSTJgOzE

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@@- Maybe we missed something in 2008, I coulda swore we ran the biggest squish moderate that has ever lived, a guy that passed a law against free speech, was for illegal immigration, big government, etc, and he got barely beat by a total clown.

Now we need to aisle reach some more?

Bwahahahahahahahaha.

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Bruno:

I’m not one who goes for the mealy-mouthed approach. Where I work, it’s all women…except for our speech therapist who’s a guy. We have staff meetings where everyone has input regarding this problem (usually one child) or that problem (usually another child). Everyone (teachers) put in their two cents worth.

When all is said and done, the Director, myself, and the speech therapist usually sit down…take all that we’ve heard…then set out to observe the teachers in action. ‘Ya know wherein the problem usually lies? The teachers.

Now granted, I’m not the director or the speech therapist, but my opinion is highly valued by both. I’m not so eager to blame the kids. We’re there to serve the kids…it’s not the other way around.

I have no idea why I just shared that story. It just seemed an appropriate response.

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NIF:

I don’t believe anything that comes off AmVet’s fingers. His unsightly fingerprints have been all over these blogs for years. He’s a tyrant!

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I figured Common Sense was the return of The Corporal and now I know.

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“I coulda swore we ran the biggest squish moderate that has ever lived, a guy that passed a law against free speech, was for illegal immigration, big government, etc”

And where exactly was the viable conservative candidate who articulated the conservative message so well that he put Obama back where he belongs being a community organizer?

In case you didn’t notice, a whole bunch of House and Senate seats were lost as well. Were all of the losers in those races “squish candidates” as well?

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beck and rush called one of my Senators a pros-t-itute.

No not vitter.

He is the one that ♥ them.

I knew there was “something about Mary” I liked.

Did sanford break the record on ethic violations?

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HEY! I thought Apple’s never broke down!

Seriously, sorry to hear about it, but none of us are immune from the wrath of the technology gods.

“i loved working up north. The garbage they are fed about Southerners…”

Me too. When I firrst moved here I was struck at how blacks and whites did simple things like ride in work trucks together, etc.

Now that I write it, it almost doesn’t even sound true or right. But it was.

I found the northern cities much more segregated. The ethnic histories (and associated fights) there were sometimes VERY pronounced.

And lets face it, as a society we’ve moved a long way form those not distant times. I, and most of us here, I suppose could make a long list of ethnic slurs! Just thinking of a few makes me laugh! (Crass and politically incorrect, I know.)

It was a sweet little ditty from Neil Young’s Zuma (with CSN) doing the harmony…

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Hummm …………… this is interesting. Michael Jackson must be spinning in his grave ……………

“Do Dems See a Lighter Version of Obama Than Conservatives?”

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Politics/perception-race-political-views-influence-skin-tone/story?id=9154170

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Nah Andy but do you have that SNL clip on Palin 2012?

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“I’m not one who goes for the mealy-mouthed approach.”

A simple, direct message is best, but you can’t overlook packaging either. Reagan mastered it, Bush flubbed it.

“The way the dummiecrats are shredding their own party, Republicans don’t need to do ineething except stand aside and let them cut their own throats.”

That may be, but we’re suffering a lot in the meantime. I don’t want that to happen again, there’s too much at stake.

Are there any of my recommendations for improving the party that you disagree with? You think we should push the abortion issue a little harder? Maybe try to put prayer back in public school?

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“Bruno- You speak for the baby killers, that’s great, have you ever viewed an ultrasound video of a late term abortion? You want to? Put your money where your mealy mouth is.”

Alright, making some progress now.

I’m personally against abortion. I know that biologically, morally, ethically, life begins at conception. Period. Do I think simply making the procedure illegal will solve the problem once and for all? No more so than I think making recreational drugs illegal ever solved that problem once and for all. You might think it’s worth the effort to lose elections over this issue, I don’t.

Any other areas of concern?

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“I can understand where you may have missed my point.”

I got your point, @@, just trying to understand how it relates to my specific political positions. Are you specifically talking about abortion, or do you have other concerns?

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@Common Sense

Don’t understand what you are trying to say.
Could you be more specific. I understand your indicating you were a member of a union at some point in time, but, the rest is not clear as to your intent.

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What’s the matter Bruno, don’t you have the courage of your conviction?

Do you even know what you speak of?

Google it, man, “late term abortion ultrasound,” watch that baby scream when no one can hear it.

You da man, be a real moderate for us.

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“Do you even know what you speak of? Google it, man, “late term abortion ultrasound,” watch that baby scream when no one can hear it.”

Don’t need to, Reporter, and don’t support the procedure.

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@AmVet

Many people don’t realize that one of the most segregated cities in the USA, was and still is, Washington, DC.

You hear the politicians talk about the level of education, the money being put into the schools, housing, government jobs, and on and on and on…

Just for information. Elgin Baylor, NBA hall of fame and a native of Washington, DC tells the story of how he was a big time baseball player, yet, was chased away from the playgrounds in NW DC because he tried to play baseball.

If you have ever spent any amount of time in the District, you will understand that all education is funded by the Congress of the USA. The citizens of DC do not have a representative that has voting power. The physical public schools of DC are so bad, 3 out of the 8 were condemned. There is a public/private Catholic school system in the District where black kids could not attend until the late 60’s. Often times black kids were denied the right to ride the city bus.

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The national debt was stable from WWII until the early 1980’s, when Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts, coupled with increased spending, not only exploded the budget deficit, they exploded the national debt. The national debt quadrupled, from $900 billion in 1980, to $3.2 trillion in 1990. From 1980 to 1990, the national debt increased from 33.3% to 55.9% of GDP. The national debt as a percentage of GDP stabilized in the 1990’s, but went up again in this decade, to 90.4% of GDP, started in large part by the two Bush tax cuts. What I’m saying to conservatives is that tax cuts increase both the budget deficit and the national debt if they’re not coupled with spending cuts. Neither your hero Reagan or either of the Bush’s did that.

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“This country is 75% Christian, 3 quarters of the people profess a belief in a Savior that died for our sins, and we are extremists?”

More progress….

I don’t give a rat’s ass what percentage of people believe in what. Is that straight enough for you?

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Oh wow, Bruno does have some firm, uncompromisable beliefs, well, aren’t I surprised.

Let me guess, when you were itlle bitty Bruno, some Catholic Nun wrapped you across the knuckles, hahahaha.

I hate to break the news, sweetheart, but you might want to consider registering yourself as a democrat, being that you are one.

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“I hate to break the news, sweetheart, but you might want to consider registering yourself as a democrat, being that you are one.”

And I guess you’ll have to keep settling for voting R since the last remaining Fascist Party died out around 1945.

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Fascist movements have commonly held social darwinist views of nations, races, and societies.

I’m just taking a shot in the dark here but how do you feel about “evolution,” sweetie, hahahaha.

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Watched this great hour about the bomb today on The History Channel.

We kill more civilians in Hiroshima or Iraq?

That’s an OK argument about the bomb having saved lives, as it replaced the need for a ground invasion.

We got one of those conscience clearers for Iraq?

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Nuking or blowing up children is pro life TW.

“Kill em all”, another pro life argument.

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Sorry to miss your earlier shout. I was just trying to get to the root of what was bugging RW,

Bruno,

I’m just reading here for the first time since probably page 1. Just wtf have I said to you while I was away that has your panties in a twist?

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For AmVet and Getalife:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKKgua7wQk

enjoy!!

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“Uh, so where did we come come from, oh great moderate?”

To be fair to the athiests, I studied Big Bang Theory, etc., but found it to be lacking. However, that doesn’t prove mythology by default.

The bottom line is that some things will always be a mystery. Some people can live with that, others have to fill the void with mythology.

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Midori,

“Uh, I don’t know her policies, uh.”

Yikes.

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