AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

I googled the last one of her quotes, ican, since it seemed one of the more loony of them (so hard to pick out one over the other there), and yes she said it, and here's a video clip of her saying it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/28/michele-bachmann-links-sw_n_192493.html
and she apparently got her facts wrong, swine flu broke out in 1976, under Gerald Ford, which makes her attempt at a conspiracy theory even loopier.

Unable to use google ican?
1.) Bachmann speaking at the Heritage Foundation
(Video available) Bachmann has backtracked

2.)Bachmann speaking on Hardball with Chris Matthews -
(video available)

3.) Bachmann on KTLK radio (audio available)
No evidence of any "re-education camps."

4.) Bachmann in interview with Newsmax.

It appears they are all her words.

As to their accuracy. Even you can't believe some of them ican.

ican has some nerve to question the accuracy of others. He posted and reposted and reposted a highly questionable piece in which he misspelled a man's name and incorrectly identified the man's home institution. The error filled piece originated with ann coulter who seems unable to check her own 'facts.'

Thank you, parados and jack for your research. How can anyone doubt the lunacy of Michelle Bachmann? The woman is brain dead. Perhaps, her party should speak to her in private and urge her to do the right thing. No, it does not involve a bathtub filled with warm water.

Once again you make unsubstantiated claims, you think just saying something proves it. How much you can accumulate is not governed by law only the means by which it is obtained. Now tell me how the democrats and Obama have broken the rule of law?

xris,

Ican has made his argument repeatedly. He thinks that taxation is taking his money without due process of the law. It is an idiotic position that isn't supported by anything other than his psychosis.

Ican is not alone in holding this sort of distorted Cartesian point of view. For these arch-conservatives, it is, "I think, therefore, I am correct."

I read through several threads last night without responding to most and what struck me about the posts of ican and two or three other arch-conservatives is their sheer egotism. A continually repeated phrase was, "I think you are wrong" which was not followed by fact or anecdote or statistic.

Rene Descartes is still inspiring debate today. The ideas of these extremists will die with them.

Just one example would be nice, to support your ignorant claims. I think government monopolies are by far the more serious threat. With corporations, at least we have a choice whether to buy or not, but with government, typically we have no choice but to pay for a vastly inferior product, which we currently have now in Washington, both Congress and the Whitehouse.

Explain the inferior monopoly the government have imposed on you? Now for the monopolies that personally effect me. Do you really want me to give you examples? If they are good examples, will you agree with me that the UK needs more laws to control them and their greed,,are you agreed?

There are thousands of examples, but how about our road system? We are stuck with paying tax on gasoline, plus other taxes, which supposedly should go to fixing roads, but most of which is mis-spent or when actually spent on roads, it goes to the wrong roads or to jobs that are done poorly. In other words, our money is not buying what it should buy, because it is a government monopoly controlled by bureaucrats that are more interested in paying themselves than they are serving the taxpayers. Not all of them, but many of them. I don't think they are doing a good job.

Its a good thing the government does not have a monopoly on producing and marketing gasoline, because I am convinced if they did, it would cost at least twice what it does now.

Unfortunately, Obamacare is moving us toward a government monopoly of health care, which will be an utter disaster.

Is there a more illustrative example of a person's self image transferred to others?

In regard to your last statement, pom, no, the desire for liberty and freedom will never die. Unfortunately, not all bad ideas die with despots either, example Karl Marx, Stalin, etc.

Reality is something that happens every morning when your head leaves the pillow..Taxes are taxes , would you prefer your road fund goes to the police or the fire brigade or fills that pot hole. Is this your only gripe the idea that a road taxes are a monopoly ? I noticed not one right wing advocate responded to my post on our national health insurance in the UK. So you cant have your own health insurance with this health care, its banned? I dont think you even understand what a monoploy is.

Trust me, he does not. He surely thinks it is some sort of Nazi publication.

Ego alert:

Ican's comments here are in blue.

JM: You asked me a few pages ago about potential Repub candidates for President in 2012.
I (a Dem) was thinking Mitt Romney. But perhaps he is too much of a centrist in your party with views on some issues that would never appeal to those more to the right.
Newt is well positioned ideologically but, as you noted (and I had to look up), he sure does carry a lot, a lot of negative baggage. I don't see how he can get past that. Debates between him and Obama would be fascinating to watch, though.
Palin is out of her league. I can't imagine the Repubs going with her.
I have been watching Bobby Jindal of LA and Marco Rubio of FL. They seem to me to be rising stars but each has his plate full and may decide to wait until 2016.
Brewer of AZ is a one trick pony.

Is there anyone else I should be watching?

You asked me for a government monopoly. I gave you one. It is not my only gripe. I have many gripes, but one main one is I would like to see government corruption prosecuted to the full extent of the law, example Fannie and Freddie corruption, but unfortunately, the corrupt administration is protecting them.

Of course I can have my own health insurance currently, which I do, but I believe Obama's end game is complete government take over of health care, and in fact he has admitted that is what he wants.

I do understand what a monopoly is, but I doubt you do. I will await one example now from you. I won't expect a reasonable answer, because I have yet to see you post one.

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Giant Sucking Sound

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.

So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.

Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.

Lie alert:

Beautiful example of liberal reasoning. pom thinks it is the government's job to penalize businesses that move jobs offshore, instead of creating a better business climate here that would reward them for staying here. The best incentive is rewards, not penalties, pom.