The only money I lost last year was due to the overly inflated price of fuel. Nobody forced anyone to buy inflated real estate prices. If you put your money in the stock market, then that is your gamble. Quit listening to the talking heads on CNN telling you everything is ok. The real loss to Americans have happened in the last few months ... with the bailouts. The frightening loss is still yet to come. Americans are so scared with all markets that they are pulling their money out and putting it into savings. Guess what monster is lurking behind the corner, waiting to rob all those savings? Yes, hyperinflation. And the sad part is the government is telling everyone up front inflation will happen. Back to topic: less government, people. Less government.
If you want less government, move to Afghanistan and live the good life without government interference. See how that works out for you. Less government is what we've had for Reagan and Bush I & II, it's been a grand failure. We want better government, smarter government, more effective government. The wealth redistribution from the working class to the upper class created by the less government crowd is what has this country on the verge of implosion. You guys make me laugh. You chide our government as you bend over backwards to help corporations undermine it while you wrap yourselves up in the flag. Government sucks... but God Bless the (government) troops.
Yes, take the two of us. I am a spectacularly happy, highly intelligent married man with two wonderful children and a fantastic wife. I have the capacity to make arguments supported by facts and available evidence and the ability to comprehend the written word. I also make enough money to pay my bills, provide a great life for my family, save for the future, and even take my boys to Disney World, where the look on their faces is even better than the regular beatdowns I give you. You are a sad, sorry excuse of a man for whom Treasures is the closest you will get to a fulfilling relationship. You do not have the ability to comprehend the written word and you seem to live in the 51st state, Denial. I would take my life over yours 100 times out of 100 even if you made the same kind of money as Bill Gates.
This comment shows your lack of knowledge in our seriously flawed two party system. Just as the right needs to quit listening to Rush and the left needs to listen to less media, both sides need to educate themselves more and see the true picture. The only thing that made those three "conservative" is their pandering of moral beliefs of the right. As politicians, I can assure you they didn't give a rats ass about those beliefs, just as Clinton and Obama don't give a rats ass about the lefts beliefs. All they care about is getting elected. Both parties for years have been increasing the power of the government, regardless of their party affiliate. This is why you are seeing more and more people turning towards the independent side. But you are right, we DO need a better government, smarter government, and more effective government. Unfortunately, that is a complete oxymoron of what todays politics stand for. And you don't get better government by feeding the current vulture mentality in washington more power. Your Obama preached change. It can be debated if he's worse than the others, but at the minimum, he is the exact same as all of his other predecessors. First, do you have a problem with our troops? Our troops have NOTHING to do with politics. Don't even try to blur those lines. Our troops joined the military by choice to defend our constitution. You can disagree on how our government uses them, but don't mock the individual soldier. W/out them, our country would be like Afghanistan. I am, above anything else, a constitutionalists, come hell or high water. Our founding fathers were more wise than all of our politicians put together in the last 100 years. Since the introduction of the Fed nearly a 100 years ago, we have been scrapping our constitution letter by letter. Our country was the land of opportunity. Our wealth redistribution problems have been created because of the government, not the free market. People are giving their money away by choice instead of saving it. Also, your definition of "lower class" is skewed. Here are some tidbids of the lower 12% of America. http://www.heritage.org/Research/welfare/bg2064.cfm Unfortunately, not everyone can live like kings. Apparently those poor people don't have enough ... lets take from the wealthy. Communism is the only fair way of life.
There needs to be a corollary to Godwin's law which states that any discussion of fiscal policy or anything vaguely related to economics will inevitably result in some right winger bringing up the tenets of Marxist-Leninsm and Scientific Socialism as somehow comparable to any/all policies that they disagree with.
Conservatives continue along a hard ideological bent in treating the world as you wish it to be rather than how it really exists. Your answers to the varying problems of our society are constants like lower taxes, less government, traditional values, federalism, etc. The problem is that these aren't always the answers, in fact they're not the answers more often than not. Conservatism is bankrupt. All of your ideas are based on the idea that government is the problem so you undermine government at every turn and then claim a victory of ideas when government fails. You believe ignorant people on their own will make better decisions with their choices than an informed government apparatus even though there is example after example of how government has stepped in to improve the lives of Americans by instituting informed, common sense regulations upon corporations and society. You basically have no freakin clue what you're really asking for when you say you want less government. We've had eras of less government in America and guess what? They gave way to more government because that's what the people demanded as protection to greed, abuse, fraud, racism, and the problems of capitalism run amok. You're fighting a lost battle with stale ideas. The problems we have are complex and conservatives don't have any real answers so they just keep up the nostalgia of our founding fathers and the great principles of conservatism. All things in moderation except conservatism because it's always right even when you don't know the question.
The irony in chiding socialism and then talking about free minds. What if a dose of socialism is the answer to a complex issue? We should ignore it because it's socialism? That's dumb. I consider myself to be an independent progressive but you can continue to bash liberals for spending and creating debt but it's Reagan and the Bushes that have created all the debt. Go look up the national debt figures under these characters. We're not screwed because liberals spent us into oblivion, it's because conservatives spent us into oblivion and cut taxes at the same time. If you're going to characterize groups of people, at least be somewhat accurate. And there will always be poor people in the world but too often in this country it's women and minorities who are the poor and the reason they're poor has less to do with how hard they've worked and as much to do with how the system has historically been rigged against them. The conservative solution to this problem is to do nothing, as usual, and that's not a solution a lot of Americans want to live with in their communities. Government action did stop slavery, did stop segregation, did stop separate but equal, etc. What societal inequalities did Wal-Mart ever rectify?
Republicans are not conservatives, you just said it yourself. They are big spending, big government. Then you blame free-markets for economic problems. You can not have it both ways. There has been way too much of "doing somethings". Doing something is the Patriot Act, doing something is the War on Drugs. Doing something is Iraq. Doing something is all the bailouts and the stimulus package. Doing something are smoking laws. Yet were are TRILLIONS in DEBT. Doing something is the problem. Following the the Constitution ended big government separate but equal as it was ruled unconstitutional. Segregation laws should never have been enacted in the first place, but that was the government doing something. Amendments were added to the Constitution to make sure the government didn't do something again. http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/10/62-knowing-whats-best-for-poor-people/?cp=2
You're right. Lets catch them up to speed with the acceptable level of poverty. That is what welfare is all about, right? Where shall we get these funds to provide these billions of people with the amenities of modern level of poverty? Well damn, now that I put it that way, you and I are now suddenly the upper 5% of the wealthy class of the world. We'll both agree there is no way in hell they are going to take our wealth away to provide a bunch of desolate third world people, .....but..... its perfectly ok to rob those wealthier than you?
I spent all my money on fancy-ass book learnin' at my high falutin-law school, when I didn't realize that 10 years later, Artesticle would descend from on high (or emerge from underground...) and tell me the meaning of the TRUE CONSTITUTION. Boy is I embarrassed now.
Whoa dude, Bush introduced the Patriot Act. Nixon and Reagan propped up the War on Drugs. Bush started the war in Iraq. Bush bailed out the car companies and rushed TARP through Congress. States rights created segregation and separate but equal. Those are all Republicans and conservative principles in action. You're making my point for me. This isn't too much doing something it's too much doing something stupid and that is why we need smarter and more efficient government, not necessarily less government.
Relax, CometsWin. Artesticle (or the character he is playing here) is one of these semi-libertarian-bunker types. Not quite serious enough to join the bunker and scout for black helicopters, but not quite serious enough to know much abou Libertarianism as an economic system and its strengths and weaknesses either. Put it this way, if you asked him of the top of his head about his thoughts on Hayek, he'd probably ask if that's where the oar has one or two sides. Anyway, these t-shirt libertarians tend to claim divine power to interpret the constitution, generally advocate some bizarro form of 19th century mercantilism, as well as some form of isolationism. - all in the guise of being true conservatives, while claiming any counterpoints are the work of communist agents bent on fomenting Marxist-Leninism. Not much point in arguing with them (or their internet characters) as they are way too out of touch to make much difference in the real world.
Black southerners who live in caves, warrens, or burrows is my target demographic. And Viennese. Nobody likes Viennese, what with their refined cafe life and such.
It is interesting how the number of libertarians seem to have tripled since last year. Ron PAUL!!! Mmmm.... Hayek.... me likey.
