@georgeob1,
Good old George is laughing his ass off as the country returns to the failed Bush policies that nearly threw the country into another great depression. Maybe the super-rich will trickle down on him, or perhaps throw some crumbs his way. What a jerk!
@Advocate,
Quote:Good old George is laughing his ass off as the country returns to the failed Bush policies that nearly threw the country into another great depression. Maybe the super-rich will trickle down on him, or perhaps throw some crumbs his way
you'd have a better argument if you had an alternative. Free spending government intervention in the economy has neither worked nor been done in a fair way. Are there any other ideas floating around?? I have not heard any that have gained any traction.
@Advocate,
Advocate wrote:
Good old George is laughing his ass off as the country returns to the failed Bush policies that nearly threw the country into another great depression. Maybe the super-rich will trickle down on him, or perhaps throw some crumbs his way. What a jerk!
I've always regarded such resorts to name-calling as evidence of the absence of any real alternative ideas, or at least the ability to express them.
@mysteryman,
Quote:What specific action do you suggest to " protect our economy and jobs—and to move our country forward"?
So far, very few have noticed that the Repubs have no specific answers in the Contract with America 2, also known as Forward, Into the Past.
@Advocate,
There was an interesting piece on NPR's Planet Money this evening. The show has not been posted to the web yet, so I can not provide a link.
The speaker compared the Wall STreeters to the Baathists in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. The wealthy Baathists wailed the loudest just as the Wall Streeters are wailing. When it is pointed out to them that the government saved them, they deny it and continue to hatch plots on how to destroy Obama.
I'd listen to this if I were you. I have been saying the same thing for months.
@plainoldme,
Nice dodge, but you didnt answer my question.
@georgeob1,
Quote:I've always regarded such resorts to name-calling as evidence of the absence of any real alternative ideas, or at least the ability to express them.
You typically use this line when the name called hits home.
@mysteryman,
If anyone knows nice dodges it's you, MM.
@georgeob1,
Let's not be more of a hypocrite than you usually are. You recently referred to me using a British slang term meaning "crap." I guess it was due to your intellectual bankruptcy.
@Advocate,
That's not true. I have never referred to you as "crap", either in British slang, or in any other form.
What I did say in response to your earlier assertion that Ican's nickname should be "SPAM", was that in keeping with that, yours should be, "WEFT".
WEFT is a bit of old Navy shorthand, used by carrier landing signal officers in grading carrier landings. It stands for "Wrong every ******* time".
As you have again demonstrated, you are WEFT.
WEFT, so I wonder how that would sound pronounced? Doubt it would sound as cool as the words said straight out.
However, Ican does have a tendency to repeat himself using capitalized letters and words he puts together himself and other gimmicks in spam like style.
What is spam?
Quote:Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it.
bingo; for proof one would only have to go past posts of the Iraq thread.
@JTT,
Criminal offenses are those judged as harmful to society while civil matters are usually between individuals or organizations. That said, a civil charge does become difficult to understand.
Another piece from my former neighbor, Robert Kuttner:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/the-optimistic-scenario-f_b_739775.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=092710&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FeatureMore
Does anyone know about the whispers in the wind about Boerner that Kuttner refers to? Boerner is not friendly toward the "average" American and deserves to be put on a short leash.
From John Wojcik:
A growing part of the 2010 mid-term election campaigning by labor and other progressive groups involves warning voters what life would actually be like if the Tea Party took over the Congress.
Even Democratic Party campaign leaders are talking these days about what they say are the dangers posed by right-wing extremists.
Earlier this week a Democratic organizer working in a state with a contested Senate race was quoted in The Hill: "These are not your run-of-the-mill Republicans we're talking about here. When you actually start telling voters what these candidates are about, it scares the hell out of them. In the past several weeks, when Democratic activists cite the ramifications of a Tea Party Congress, they say, more volunteers have signed up to knock on doors to preserve a Democratic-led House and Senate."
Along similar lines, also earlier this week, the AFL-CIO issued a warning about Tea Party-backed Sharon Angle, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada, who is trying to unseat Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The labor federation warned that "if she unseats Sen. Harry Reid, she says she is not going to be wasting her time worrying about putting Americans back to work. After all, she'll have to get started on eliminating Social Security and Medicare."
The AFL-CIO issued its statement Sept. 8, a day after Angle was quoted saying, "As your senator, I'm not in the business of creating jobs. People ask me, what are you going to do to develop jobs in your state? Well, that's not my job as a U.S. senator."
"So, if elected, just what is her job?," the federation asked rhetorically.
A new ad from the Reid campaign, airing throughout Nevada, says that "among other items on her to-do list are protecting tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, opposing Wall Street reform (In fact, she says it doesn't need any reform), and other extreme ideas that will make things worse."
The AFL-CIO statement also took on Angle's recent attacks on progressives now serving in the Congress: "If she does win, maybe she won't have time to free Wall Street from government oppression or throw a protective shield around job-exporting companies because she'll be awfully darn busy protecting the nation from all the ‘domestic enemies' she says are now serving in the Congress. Maybe she can use Joe McCarthy's old office."
Hans Johnson, in a recent Huffington Post article, joined scores of progressive commentators who are now describing what election of rightwing extremists could actually mean:
"Fluency in fringe ideology and appeals to intolerance now substitute for leadership among conservatives. That means rehashed fights about posting of the Ten Commandments, citizenship and voting standards, enforcement of sodomy laws, access to contraception, and the legality of clean-water and emissions standards, the minimum wage, and Social Security. It means a diminished state of our democracy and our standing in the world."
Progressives say the Tea Party has to be taken seriously and challenged on the issues and note that failure to do this contributed to Tea Party victories in Republican primaries in both Nevada and Alaska. In Alaska Joe Miller, a right-wing extremist backed by Sarah Palin, was able to unseat Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski.
Political observers note that the Tea Party victories have come, in part, because the group has successfully targeted states with small populations, making it easier to win elections. A third example of this targeting of small population states is Delaware, where a Tea Party candidate is running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.
If even 40,000 people vote in Delaware's GOP primary Sept. 14, the turnout will exceed all previous records for that state.
It means that with just 2 percent of the population of Delaware behind them, the Tea Party candidate, Christine O'Donnell, who is challenging the regular Republican, Mike Castle, could pull off a victory.
The Tea Party hopes to translate this support from tiny minorities in three or four under-populated states into four U.S. Senate seats - the same number of senators now representing 40 million people who live in the two big states of New York and California.
THE TEA PARTY'S CONTRACT FROM AMERICA
Quote:
The Contract from America
We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.
Individual Liberty
Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.
Limited Government
The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.
Economic Freedom
The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.
1. Protect the Constitution
2. Reject Cap & Trade
3. Demand a Balanced Budget
4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington
6. End Runaway Government Spending
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy
9. Stop the Pork
10. Stop the Tax Hikes
1. Protect the Constitution
Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)
2. Reject Cap & Trade
Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)
3. Demand a Balanced Budget
Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)
4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington
Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)
6. End Runaway Government Spending
Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy
Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)
9. Stop the Pork
Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)
10. Stop the Tax Hikes
Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)
We joined the WILCO Tea Party for one reason and one reason only. We want to rescue and secure the liberty of our grandchildren, your grandchildren, everyone’s grandchildren.
The WILCO Tea Party is a political action group. It is not a social group. We must not fall into the popular “go along to get along” trap. We must accept whatever social consequences there are for our true pursuit of rescuing and securing America’s true rule of law.
In order to rescue and secure the liberty of our grandchildren, your grandchildren, everyone’s grandchildren, it is necessary to impeach and remove President Obama. He is relentlessly leading our country away from our constitutional republic into a socialist dictatorship.
@ican711nm,
Quote:The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people,
The "people" didn't relinquish anything. A few men decided what's what and everyone else had to go along with it.
Quote:When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.
The government has increased "its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals" manifold times since 1876. It started right in from the get go and it hasn't stopped since. You aren't whining about all the strictures that were place upon business all those many years ago.
These words resonate with idiots like you, Ican. If it ever went beyond this pablum, you and probably all of the tea slurpers would be as lost and confused on the issues, just as you are lost and confused in your postings.
@ican711nm,
ican.
Your math is wrong again.
Extending the tax cuts will add $4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.
Your plan to limit spending doesn't begin to cover the shortfall which means you can't hold to a balanced budget.
Wishful thinking won't balance a budget nor will making contracts that are not in touch with reality balance the budget.
