IMHO, the growing frustration in America is about MORE than.....

Cause yeah, all progressives care about is running up debt. Not really concerned with oh, you know... what we're spending all that money on.

 

Majority? Doubtful.

Silent? Hardly.

The only thing the Tea Party movement and GOP have on their side right now are large bullhorns and the willingness to say anything through them. I could probably influence a lot of people to do things against their interest if I were willing to lie in order to have that influence. I am not willing to do so, but apparently the GOP is.

I guess New York doesn't matter.

It wasn't bookends, it was a pack of lies. You made up some straw men you could knock down and then just expected people to buy it. This isn't Faux "News," much as you might like it to be.

So far, it's pretty great. I don't have to have my father move in with me as SS puts enough $ in his pocket that he can support himself in his golden years. I have had a number of friends who have enjoyed the benefits of SS and it is historically one of the most popular programs of all time.

That isn't completely true. It has many of the same IOUs that we are selling to investors and China. The money is earning interest, as it should be.

So the entirety of your argument against SS is that the government is able to borrow from the trust fund? I agree there should be some guarantees that people who have paid in will get paid out, but I do not believe that a government should have several trillion dollars in cash sitting around doing nothing. If we had that kind of money sitting around, a better use would be paying down the debt to reduce interest payments.

Like an investment account that you could deposit more than your payroll tax into?

I would be on board for that.

Agreed. IMO the function of unemployment insurance or welfare should be to support a person while they are undergoing professional development so that they can eventually geta job and support themselves.

I agree with your statement, but disagree with the spirit, which I interpret as you making the assumption that there are millions upon millions of "freeloaders" out there. We should definitely weed out fraud and waste, and people should not be able to simply exist on welfare throughout their entire lives. However, I believe based on the numbers that I have seen that the number of people who fit the definition of "freeloader" is minuscule.

You are completely wrong and make a very insulting assumption here. You are actually trying to claim that the Democrats' constituency is mostly made up of welfare queens and kings who don't work. This isn't a fair characterization at all and you know it. This is a statement designed to draw people into your line of thinking based on a lie.

Virtually nobody in this country, whether Dem or Rep, wants people to be able to leech off of the system for their entire life. The number of people who are able to do this is incredibly tiny, but I would still support putting in more people to check for fraud and waste.

IOW, you used a straw man here, that of the "freeloader."

There should definitely be more professional development help for people who are out of work.

State control of SS wouldn't work, neither would it work for health care, infrastructure, or welfare. There are certain minimum standards to which all Americans should have access and the only way to make that happen is through the Federal government.

That isn't to say I disagree with having the Federal government give back some of the powers it has appropriated, but entitlements is one area where that just doesn't work if all Americans are to enjoy a certain minimum standard of living.

Hey, you're the one who brought up the straw man of Democrats who believe that government knows what's best for the people. Don't make up straw men and I won't ask you to show me an example.

However, you asked me for an example. I didn't make up a straw man, I have one...

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Another straw man. The courts were set up by the Constitution to be the arbiters of what is legal and Constitutional in our system. It is not an "unofficial amendment process," it is the system that the Framers set up. It is called checks and balances and is how our system works.

The Constitution wasn't about setting down laws, it was about defining the baseline for the structure of government. When we started this country, our courts took the common law system set up by hundreds of years of precedent in England and that system was where the courts started. Since the beginning of our country, the courts have never changed from their process of interpreting and reinterpreting case law and precedent as it applies to contemporary cases and circumstances.

IOW, your argument here is against the entire 200+ year history of our legal system. Either that or it is another straw man, which is my personal interpretation.

Rimbaud put it much better than I could just a few posts below yours.

Please, post a link to the "Progressive Agenda" of which you speak. The hypothetical person you made up who believes that everything in life must be "fair and equalized among all its citizens" is a straw man. You made him up out of whole cloth and when called on it, you made up a term and then capitalized it as if it were the title of a book that liberals hold as their Bible.

I'm sure you had a point or joke or something, but I don't have the first clue what your reference is about.

So, you are admitting another straw man since you cannot show me a single liberal who believes that they should get everything for free. Since you cannot prove that looters in a riot are liberal and since no liberal has ever espoused that people should get everything for free, your "argument" here was a tangent that you are trying to use to deflect my question.

IOW, you have no answer. Your inability to respond to my simple queries is puzzling. Is the voting process a reasonable mechanism for rooting out corruption in government or not?

PETA is a bunch of nutjobs that do not represent liberals as a whole.

There must not have been much actual violence or intimidation given that I haven't seen any indictments.

Another great example of fringe nutjobs, except that the fringe that they hang off is Libertarian, not Liberal.

Just because Fox says it doesn't make it true. I don't watch MSNBC, CNN, or Fox because they are all steaming piles of crap. Learn to read your news instead of having it read to you and interpreted for you.

None of these people are Americans, thus none can be involved in our political process, and as a result of this logic, you have admitted to another straw man, the "line does not apply to them" guy.

Personally, I would go further than this. I would require participation in a "guest worker" program for a number of years before they would be eligible for the "Ellis Island" program you espouse.

All of this is already in place in the current classes to become a naturalized citizen.

Another straw man. I have to give you credit, you have used enough straw men to chase away every crow in America. Unfortunately, you won't be able to find me a liberal who wants to simply give illegal immigrants US citizen rights and encourage them not to assimilate. That person doesn't exist.

Your link didn't even talk about HOW Greece git into trouble, so I guess we can assume that my analysis was correct. In fact, the article specifically says that the new Prime Minister of Greece had to come out after he was elected and disclose a debt that was three times as large as previously thought, which bolsters my point that Greece had "a debt load that was hidden from its citizens and the rest of the EU by corrupt politicians and corporations lining their wallets with everything they could before the whole thing came crashing down."



Too easy, drill Sergeant!

 

Andy: Sometimes I think you need help man.

 

I wonder how many more angry white male outbursts we're going to have to sit through - we've had them in the 80's, the 90's and now the end of 00's.....yawn.

 

Compare the amount of wealth we have to any country in the world and you will come up with the "why" of your statement.

You're right, it shouldn't. Rich people have gotten their taxes lowered time and time again in this country and as this has happened, our infrastructure has begun to crumble, our schools have begun to fail our students, and our government has failed the people time and time again. If the rich weren't so bloody greedy, maybe the Army Corps of Engineers would have had the budget to shore up the levees that failed in New Orleans. Perhaps we wouldn't have bridge failures killing commuters if there was money to upgrade or replace old infrastructure.

You have heard? I call BS until you can provide a credible source, one that does not opine on Faux "News."

No, rich people will just fight tooth and nail to not give their fair share. They have done it since the progressive income tax was introduced, they do it because they are greedy.

Your "bookends" aren't accurate. One of them isn't at least. Educate yourself a bit on what the other side actually believes so that your "bookend" isn't made up of straw men and mistaken assumptions, that is unless you are only interested in lying to the people to get them to support you.

Constitution: Basis and structure for American government.

Health care reform bill: Legislation designed to regulate health insurance, provide insurance for the uninsured, and set up health insurance exchanges, among other things.

Pictorial analogy:

Constitution: Five pieces


Health care reform: ~1000 pieces

Simple is good for frameworks. Not so much for detailed legislation that is supposed to take into account every possibility for every circumstance where the legislation might apply.

I thought we were talking about our own opinions, well, that and those of the straw men you made up.

I don't give an Earthly crap who are the organizers of the Coffee Party, I am far more interested in their ideals. Civility and an interest in actually getting down to the meat of the issues is a far better model than the lies, distortions of the truth, straw men, and completely misinformed people that are prevalent in the Tea Party.

No doubt, which is the reason that the history was rewritten by the people who had "In God We Trust" inscribed on coins in 1864, nearly a century after the country was founded. These are the same kinds of people who inserted "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance in the 1950s.

Then I guess I don't have to say it.

Yes, you will. I hope between now and then you develop more allegiance for the truth than you currently have for an ideology.

No, I took your remarks as an attack on the truth, not on me.

More than you will ever know.

 

You're probably right, I just can't stand to let the lies and straw men influence people.

 

/thread

 

See what happens BrotherFish when you upset Glad? He went rowdy on your ass. hehehe.

 

He didn't upset me, just told lies and set up straw men in an effort to try to distract people from the truth.

I'm not upset at all.

 

Oh I know. I enjoyed reading everything you wrote.

 

Best line of the day

 

::yawn:: Fanny and Freddie

Swell memory there.

 

So is this like, a new thing for conservatives? Did El Rushbo or Fox up their usage of the term recently? I think I've heard about a half-dozen variations over the past week.

 

I'm begging you Andy....don't do it.

 

I think it came from one of Palin's brilliant writers, but I'm not sure.

It works in a self-referential way for them, kind of like when basso replied to his own post with "you fail."

 

Ok, I did that, and it turns out Kucinich is the closest match. Thanks for the advice.

...oh wait, never mind. I'm not a "Christian values" person so my opinion is obsolete.

Face it, America's progressivism will grow along with the rest of the world - it has for many, many years, and it will continue to. Keeping progressivism out of our society/culture is like trying to keep sand in a bucket filled with holes. I for one welcome it with open arms.

 

You welcome sand?

 

seconded

 

you can thank ms Palin