American politics and news thread

saint mark wrote:

CJB wrote:

Where did you get the Republican bit from?

Gimme, gimme, gimme. ;)

Don't tell me you buy into the notion that cutting taxes constitutes a government handout.

That's like saying a mugger that only takes half your cash is giving you the other half.

CJB wrote:

saint mark wrote:

CJB wrote:

Where did you get the Republican bit from?

Gimme, gimme, gimme. ;)

Don't tell me you buy into the notion that cutting taxes constitutes a government handout.

That's like saying a mugger that only takes half your cash is giving you the other half.

Cutting taxes in time of war (you did fight two moneyslurping wars?) is crimanally stupid. Who benefitted from those wars and taxcuts? What industries did benefit? Yes cut the taxes for all especially the richer 1% since they are so terribly underpaid.


And tiffanywint, while I find you a funny and intelligent person, I find it worrying that you blindly follow the current neoliberal (rightwing from European perspective) ideas that leave no place for any social rest in the long run. The neoliberal agenda is one of the old world where the rich benefitted and the rest works for them at appauling circumstances. The reason many folks ran away from the old world to the new world, and their descendants run into the same trap. Europe chose for a different route perhaps since we are a much smaller place but our societies suffer when our goverments suffer the mistakes of selling of functional services in favor of marketworking that always end up being less of quality and proportionally more expensive.
I find it criminally neglegent that the banks have not been charged with the damage they have caused on society as a whole. We are in a crisis becauise the banks got to much power and not enough rules and yet nobody seems to stop that. I guess they all hope for a decent job afterwards.

I am not a liberal, nor would I ever want to be one in the current state of the world and my country.

saint mark wrote:

I find it worrying that you blindly follow the current neoliberal (rightwing from European perspective) ideas that leave no place for any social rest in the long run. The neoliberal agenda is one of the old world where the rich benefitted and the rest works for them at appauling circumstances. The reason many folks ran away from the old world to the new world, and their descendants run into the same trap. Europe chose for a different route perhaps since we are a much smaller place but our societies suffer when our goverments suffer the mistakes of selling of functional services in favor of marketworking that always end up being less of quality and proportionally more expensive.
I find it criminally neglegent that the banks have not been charged with the damage they have caused on society as a whole. We are in a crisis becauise the banks got to much power and not enough rules and yet nobody seems to stop that. I guess they all hope for a decent job afterwards.

I am not a liberal, nor would I ever want to be one in the current state of the world and my country.

I do appreciate your worry for me Saint Mark. Best to all of you in Netherlands.

I saw a survey this week that both Canada and Holland have two of the happiest populations on the globe.

We both live in happy places.

Neither the USA nor Britain were in a good place though. Much work to be done, getting that happy meter up.

My worry though is pretty simple. Out of control government spending. It's killing our societies and its so crazy it can only be a plot hatched by space aliens. We wouldn't do this to ourselves. :pale:

saint mark wrote:

I find it criminally neglegent that the banks have not been charged with the damage they have caused on society as a whole. We are in a crisis becauise the banks got to much power .

That's not analysis, that's liberal bullshit. When you need a mortgage or a loan you go to a bank. Are they evil then?

If you really believe we are in crisis because the banks had too much power then it must follow that their power came from everyone else's fiscal irresponsibility. In other words, whatever power the banks possessed came from the governments' and people's refusal to spend within their incomes.

Once defaulting became the norm and deposits no longer cover a bank's outgoings then collapse is inevitable. Polonius had the right idea.

I like banks. When I give them money, they give me interest, even if its next to nothing. When they give me money they charge me interest. Plus they provide a handy service to facilitate all and sundry financial transactions.

The staff are usually quite pleasant. We need banks. Society would collapse without them. You can't run a business, large or small without them. They provide a service and they won't charge you any more interest than what you actually agreed to ahead of time.

Wailing on banks is a waste of time. It's reckless government spending that we should be rioting over, but it's lefties that do all the rioting, and they only know one tune - make the rich pay. Yawn.

We soldier on.

Erica Ambler wrote:

saint mark wrote:

I find it criminally neglegent that the banks have not been charged with the damage they have caused on society as a whole. We are in a crisis becauise the banks got to much power .

That's not analysis, that's liberal bullshit. When you need a mortgage or a loan you go to a bank. Are they evil then?

If you really believe we are in crisis because the banks had too much power then it must follow that their power came from everyone else's fiscal irresponsibility. In other words, whatever power the banks possessed came from the governments' and people's refusal to spend within their incomes.

Once defaulting became the norm and deposits no longer cover a bank's outgoings then collapse is inevitable. Polonius had the right idea.

Haven't most of the banks paid their debt back, also?

IIRC, Bank of America has paid back the US government, or bought back their stock from the government. Chase might be in the same boat.

Not all that evil, if they at least kept their word. The CEO bonuses was another issue and, frankly, a dumb move on their part during that period of time.

This is the ugly, wretched face of modern day American feminism (and, therefore, American liberalism):



She's called "Octomom" because she, as a single mother, went to a fertility clinic and got knocked up in a procedure that resulted in her having 8 babies.......in addition to the SIX she already had.

American feminism has essentially tried to remove fathers/dads/men from the discussion, resulting in generations of women who see no value in having a husband. I'm not suggesting that a woman needs a man to be happy, but if you're going to have 14 kids, a husband would seem, at the very least, a sensible thing to have, or a committed lesbian life-partner. In Suleman's case she has neither, and she has finally been forced to breakdown and accept a reality that the rest of the world understood over 3 years ago: she can't support the kids on her own, and now the taxpayers of the State of California have become the de-facto "man" in the relationship, extending to her a lifetime line of credit for which she has no realistic hope of ever paying back.


'Octomom' Nadya Suleman getting food stamps

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/06/BAPQ1NVF20.DTL

.....Suleman, who had vowed not to accept public assistance, said she has been accepting $2,000 a month in food stamps for the last two months. She said she has business ventures in the works to make money, including an online "Octomom TV" project and the release of a horror movie she starred in, "Millennium."

"I'm working as hard as I possibly can to support them," she said.

In response to a question about her financial condition deteriorating to the point that social services may be forced to break up her family, Suleman said, "That will never happen. I can guarantee you of that."

Uh, no, you cannot guarantee the taxpayers that this condition is temporary, and that social services won't need to break up the family (something they should have done a long time ago). Her word and credibility is worthless. This woman is a parasite and should be locked up in a mental institution and her kids sent into foster homes and/or put up for adoption. Mark 'em up and sell 'em off. This woman is hopeless. She will never be in a position to take care of these kids and support them without any help from the government.

I am sorry GS I think you'll find that any feminist will judge the choices this lady makes wrong, solely because the lady made choices based upon dependance of others in the first place. They would support her choices if she was able to take care of her rather large brood.

Feminists would support her choices if she herself could support the amount of children or necessary with a husband/partner. Having 14 kids and making this choice knowlingly that she would need a lot of support of society they would not agree with her choices.

They would perhaps in theory support her choices but not in practice, the ones who do are numpties.

Fighting for the right of women does not make them necessarily blind for economic reality.

how can she qualify for food stamps?

she has received a lot of $ to appear on talk shows, reality shows, interviews, magazine photos, etc

that's income!

nowadays when you apply for food stamps, they will require you to submit your bank statement (original copies) for the last 9 months!

j7wild wrote:

how can she qualify for food stamps?

she has received a lot of $ to appear on talk shows, reality shows, interviews, magazine photos, etc

that's income!

nowadays when you apply for food stamps, they will require you to submit your bank statement (original copies) for the last 9 months!

This may sounds absolutely absurd but with 14 kids your income has to be less than around $110,000 to qualify for benefits. The system is a double edged sword. There are people that truly need it. Families that got too big for all the right or wrong reasons. She seems like an ummm "interesting" person but in reality, a woman has little choice if she's going to pop 1 kid out or 8.

j7wild wrote:

how can she qualify for food stamps?

she has received a lot of $ to appear on talk shows, reality shows, interviews, magazine photos, etc

that's income!

nowadays when you apply for food stamps, they will require you to submit your bank statement (original copies) for the last 9 months!

I'd have to look at the article again, but the $2,000 dollar number listed seems too low. That only comes out to $142 per child, per month. She probably needs closer to $8,000 dollars, at a minimum, in order to put food on the table. And all but one of her first litter are "special needs" children, which means they've got all kinds of other health and financial issues.

Her house is constantly on the brink of foreclosure. In fact, I read within the past week or so that the bank was about to seize it. You think she's making "a lot of $" to appear on talk shows, but I don't know how much of a booking fee she commands. And how much money do you think Millions of Milkshakes pays a Z-list celebrity like her to do a public appearance? I'd say $500 at the most. But even if they gave her a $1,000, that still only pays for food for less than a week.

I'm saying it here, I'm saying it now: She's going to do porn. She's already a whore; she just needs a little extra convincing to take her whoredom to the next logical step.

She should've played a taxi driver in the new Total Recall movie: "Hey man, I gots fo'teen kids to feed!!"

she did pose nude for a UK magazine just last month so Porn may not be far in her future for her....

imagine how much make up they will need to use to cover her stretch marks!!

YEEECH!

http://www.gossipcop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/nadya-octomom-suleman-closer-magazine-307x400.jpg

Why would any woman that already has 6 kids, be going to a fertility clinic?That is simply insane. The Octo-mom is an irresponsible person. I know. No kidding.

===

btw, anyone trying to fathom the destructiveness that is Obama's big government, statist regime only need look to his roots, which is the American progressive movement, a movement rooted in the mid-20th century post-war period. Obama and his radicalized ilk are fundamentally at odds with the framers of the US constitution.

“According to R.J. Pestritto, author of American Progressivism, ‘America’s original Progressives were also its original, big-government liberals.’ They set the stage for the New Deal principles of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who cited the progressives – especially Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson – as the major influences on his ideas about government. The Progressives, Pestritto says, wanted ‘a thorough transformation in America’s principles of government, from a government permanently dedicated to securing individual liberty to one whose ends and scope would change to take on any and all social and economic ills.

“In the Progressive worldview, the proper role of government was not to confine itself to regulating a limited range of human activities as the Founders had stipulated, but rather to inject itself into whatever realms the times seemed to demand. The Progressives reasoned that although America’s Founders had felt it necessary to limit the power of government because of their experience with King George III, government, as a result of historical evolution, was no longer the menace it once had been; rather, they believed government had become capable of solving an ever-greater array of societal problems – problems the Founders could never have envisioned. Consequently, the Progressives called for a more activist government whose regulation of people’s lives was properly determined not by the outdated words of an anachronistic Constitution

In a nutshell the progressives believe government "must take on any and all social and economic ills" Welcome to Ameritopia.

Considering that progressives really started hunkering down and transforming society in the 1970's, (just shy of the U.S. bi-centennial), 100 years from now, American history students will likely be studying how it took less than 200 years to undermine both the American revolution and the creation of the Great Republic. Depending on how Orwellian or utopian, the future-society really is, this development might very well be portrayed as a great thing, in the evolution of the "just" society.

If Obama is re-elected, America would appear to be truly screwed, as he will be emboldened. With no need to worry about re-election, he can go full-hog on the big government progressive agenda. The progressive end-game, being committed as it is to addressing all social and economic ills, must logically be socialism. The state must achieve control of all economic and social activity. Individual freedoms must be curtailed insofar as they impede broader statist objectives. The march towards such a society will never be characterized as such. The constitution will be paid lip-service. The appropriate noises will be made. It's a process.

America does appear to be doomed though. An economy burdened with $13 trillion (an unfathomable number) in government debt does not appear to be salvagable, barring a major war or otherwise calamitous re-set. An economic collapse might be enough to trigger the full onset of statism and the undoing of the Constitutional ideals. After all the constitution is an old, and surely dated document from another time, is it not?

I really don't think we human beings can handle freedom though. The American Republic was a grand idea. Washington, Jefferson, Adams and the others laid a foundation for the freest and most prosperous society the world has ever seen, but alas the lure of the siren's song beckons. As long as there might be "unfairness" and "inequality" in the world, utopia beckons. Enter the statists, with the big government, nanny-state cure-all and promises of hope and change. Sound familiar?

Maybe the American experiment needs to be repeated and destroyed over and over again until, say a thousand years from now, man might truly understand how precious freedom is, but I doubt it. We are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. The lure of Utopia is too powerful. There will always be new generations of progressives ready to serve up the latest "fair" society snake-oil and future generations will continue to energetically gargle and gulp it down.

All progressives I believe should be required to read Plato's Republic. It could knock some sense into them.

In arguably the world's most important philosophical work, the great Greek philosopher, through painstaking application of the Socratic method, demonstrates absolutely, that man cannot build the just society. After concluding that justice can only be the preserve of an omniscient, all-knowing entity, (which certainly isn't man), Plato nevertheless attempts to construct his best-effort at the just society. The totalitarian nightmare that follows serves as an indictment against even attempting such a construct.

I believe Plato's warning to mankind was essentially - don't even try. Read my book. It can't be done. Even your best effort will end-up as my nightmare scenario. I do believe though that Plato wanted his model to work. He gave it his best shot, but alas even Plato just ended up with Big Brother in the guise of rule-by-Philsopher-Kings. Mind you, statists will apply an opposite spin to Plato. They will maintain that he was actually promoting his vision, ( you just got to get it right) rather that recognize his work for the cautionary tale that it truly is.

The great American Republic though, sprang as a response to the tyranny of King George. Alas we may not see a similar response until we have endured, yet another round of similar rule.

Freedom it seems is far too bold a vision for many. The comfort of the nanny state and governance by our betters is far too appealing. Obama has actually said the constitution impedes his goals."Well you know, it turns out that our founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like some times." Amen to that. Obama, Feb. 2012, quoted in Ben Shapiro article "Is the constitution for everybody?"



Recommended reading btw is Mark Levin's (B.A., J.D.) new book Ameritopia. Very timely.

He discusses Plato at length in Chapter 2, Plato's Republic and the Perfect Society. Chapter 3 deals with Thomas More's Utopia and Radical Egalitarianism. Chapter 4 tackles Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and the All-Powerful State, and of course what would such a study be without, a chapter on Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto and the Class Struggle.

it's a word you will never hear being used to describe Osama's Presidency

http://news.yahoo.com/isnt-marvelous-obama-seeks-define-romney-voters-050448171.html

GSA spending scandal gets worse after video shows employee rapping about government perks
Employee caught boasting he'd never get come under investigation from Inspector General

This story is the complete embodiment of why I bristle at the suggestion from President Obama, Democrats, and Saint Mark, that I as a hard-working, tax-paying American should give MORE of my money to the government, not less. These ass-hats in the video openly mock the taxpayers, wipe their feet on our backs, waste millions of dollars at a lavish resort for a "conference" and brag they'll never get investigated, and I'm supposed to just be okay with that?

The story makes me want to puke, but here's just a brief article about it with video:

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/gsa-spending-scandal-worse-video-shows-employee-rapping-government-perks-article-1.1057667#ixzz1rMXu8Xri

Hey GS, nobody in the right mind would like to pay tax for such misuse of money, that has nothing to do with America or Obama (quite sure it is the same under any president regardless of their political nomination).

In Europe in our national economies we have similar people, mostly politicians and their friends or family that feel entitled. ANd more often than not they get away due to legalese or friendly connections.

If you like such people most likely you are one of them.

The Vladivostok customs does it better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TPCvDfSUTg

saint mark wrote:

Hey GS, nobody in the right mind would like to pay tax for such misuse of money, that has nothing to do with America or Obama (quite sure it is the same under any president regardless of their political nomination).

In Europe in our national economies we have similar people, mostly politicians and their friends or family that feel entitled. ANd more often than not they get away due to legalese or friendly connections.

If you like such people most likely you are one of them.

Due to the fall out from the GSA scandal, one administrator has been terminated (or resigned) and two underlings have also followed her out the door. But back to President Obama....I don't blame him for what these employees did at the GSA, however.....it IS representative of a larger problem with public service workers and their unions: they feel entitled to jobs, they feel entitled to the taxpayers money, they feel they are above being held accountable, they forget they are *servants* and *stewards* put in place to administer the needs and affairs of the public, and they openly defy the American taxpayer and hold them in contempt, with a good measure of mockery and scorn thrown in. The lyrics to this song "American Idle" (winner of Best Song at the GSA convention in Las Vegas) doesn't bother to hide how public union/service workers feel about the taxpayers; they're not trying to be coy or subtle. They are coming right out and telling us how they feel about us. You don't have to read between the lines or look for subtext. And they are daring the American public to do anything about it. Everyone involved with this video, no matter how much or how little, should be FIRED ON THE SPOT.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a video Thursday showing the General Services Administration employee strumming a guitar and boasting about the lavish perks he enjoyed working there.

It comes on the heels of a government report concluding the GSA improperly paid for an "over-the-top" training session in Sin City in 2010 that featured a mind reader, bicycle giveaways, and extravagant after-hour receptions.

That's our "stimulus money" right there, going to waste.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/gsa-spending-scandal-worse-video-shows-employee-rapping-government-perks-article-1.1057667#ixzz1rNiYcRoM

j7wild wrote:

it's a word you will never hear being used to describe Osama's Presidency

http://news.yahoo.com/isnt-marvelous-obama-seeks-define-romney-voters-050448171.html

doing good for a dead man

Hypothetical Situation:

A milliion dollars falls out of the sky. Fell out of some Oil Sheiks plane as he passed over.

Question: Will this money do more good if its scooped up by government or by the local charity, which runs a Saturday soup kitchen, on say 20 grand a year, thanks to donations.

I shudder to think what the government might waste the money on. It would really just be a drop in the budget-bucket for one of many over-staffed bureaucracies.

Meanwhile, the soup kitchen would have hit the motherlode. This would be too much money for them to competently handle. The women managing the budget are used to stretching every single dollar for maxium impact. They wouldn't know what to do with all this cash. It would overwhelm them.

A managment consultant would have to brought in to help with putting a financial plan in place. He would be provided a reasonable fee but nothing exorbitant. The women money managers would see to that. I've worked with these women. Nothing mortifys them more than waste when it comes to helping the needy.

So what to do with the cash? Maybe expand the soup kitchen to 7 days a week, but this might not be the best use, as other charities and churches etc in the neighborhood have the other days covered off, which is how things tend to work in Soup kitchen world.

Maybe construct a homeless shelter, which could take people in at night. That might eat up the whole million. Land and property isn't cheap, or maybe simply negotiate a long term lease on an existing property. Maybe set up a dedicated women's shelter, for women in crisis or invest in an existing facility, already run by volunteers and make it even better and more sustainable long term

The possibilities are endless with the cash in the hands of the right people. ie men and women of good will.

Moral of the story. Money is always better off in the hands of people of good will, than with government.

Government has a role to play but the smaller that role, the better. The needy thank you.

While I agree with most of what you say, I must acknowledge the fallacy in comparing the government and charity. Though much of the government's job is welfare, I find it a gross misunderstanding to think the two can possibly be compared. When you consider building infrastructure and funding projects that are crucial to aspects of everyday life, the government runs into the problem of competitive contracting and oversight issues. Just like any large project. And unfortunately, it's not a million dollars that fell out of a plane but billions and billions.

Now consider Sally's Soup Kitchen gets let's say 500 million. Well, 500 million for soup is absurd. She'd have to expand farther to provide soup to others. Now the decisions begins to exceed the issue of providing just meals. Location, staff, blah blah blah. I'm not forgiving the government for its incredible mismanagement at times. However, I believe your analogy is misleading, simplified, and incorrect. Mine is just the same. A government this size is bound to have structural issues just like any other government in the world. You propose a smaller government as a solution. That's cool and dandy but to think a) that a decrease in money to the government directly equals money being distributed elsewhere to be used for social good is well, wrong and b) people are people. If they are in the government or private sector, there will always be bad apples miss using my money (a particular reason I didn't bite on this Kony 2012 nonsense). However, you do make a good point. I would at least get to choose where I put that money.

Chief of SIS wrote:

that a decrease in money to the government directly equals money being distributed elsewhere to be used for social good is well, wrong

But my point isn't about how money should be distributed. The less government supervised wealth re-distribution the better. My point is essentially that in any big city, charities are at work, 24/7 taking care of the needy, the most destitute and troubled in society, and they are doing it all under the radar, and they get this work done far more efficiently than government could ever hope to. In fact government can't even do this work. The government is not in the charity business. It has to pay all its workers and pay them well. And any government program serves a broader political agenda. Its the nature of the beast. Government need not be giving money to charities either. The charities then cease to truly be charities but rather become de-facto branches of government policy. Any reputable charity generates its own funding and relies heavily on freely donated time, money and resources.

So my broader point is that the less money the government is sucking out of the economy, the more money and resources men and women of good-will have at their disposal to do this work that needs to be done.

What is very bothersome thought are comments from hard-core big government leftists which surface from time to time, chastising charities for doing work that "government should be doing". One of these activists actually went public recently, managed to get herself on radio shows, complaining that the Daily Bread Food Bank was allowing government to abdicate its responsibility to feed the poor, and thus it was actually causing harm to society. I don't think those that needed the food had much use for her opinion.

This sort of hard-core progressive mentality though is symtomatic of the broader group-think which maintains that government need be addressing all societal ills, both economic and social. That is a recipe for totalitarianism. Always has been and always will be, but progressives are too dense to see that.

In a free society, we need to keep the power and scope of government in check and resist any trends towards statism. Its a tough job. Its almost hopeless. Its too bad though. The U.S. Constitution is IMO the most profound constitutional document ever created, with its emphasis on idividual liberty and decentralized authority. The framers knew exactly what they were doing. Compare with the Canadian consitution which promotes Peace Order and Good Government. It sound like a recipe for prozac, with an emphasis on governance as opposed to liberty. Groan.

Bye, Bye, LOSER!!

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/rick-santorum-calls-mitt-romney-concede-180027008.html

well, at least those 2 girls still have a future in PORN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7pv7sO5Gng&context=C422614cADvjVQa1PpcFNzg48AeOjm4f7selFfKP4TMxzag5ssAWY=

The owner of that YouTube channel, FIRST LOVE, is a Hypocrite!

He promotes God and Love For All and Free Speech yet....

1. you cannot THUMB DOWN anything

2. any comment posted by anyone needs to meet his approval and if it's negative or something he doesn't agree with, it doesn't get posted

so what happened to God and Love For ALL and Free Speech?

just like SANTORUM!!

TO THE IDIOTS who supported him: I hope you're never out of health insurance, cause Rick won't care if medical treatment leads you to bankrupcy. I hope none of you ever need to take contraception, 'cause Rick will force you pay for it in full. I hope none of you dream of going to college, cause Rick will consider you a snob.  I hope none of you stop being Christian, 'cause Rick will think less of you. I hope none of you ever come out of the closet, 'cause Rick will stop being your man. SANTORUM claimed to be the best GOP candidate Since REAGAN!! Ronald Reagan held many Libertarian beliefs as the "core" of conservatism. Santorum is against Libertarian ideals. If anything Santorum disagrees with Reagan! Anyone who would use the name of God to discriminate against homosexuals, and would agree with Rush Limbaugh on calling an innocent college girl a slut for advocating for women's health, DOESN'T DESERVE to be President of ALL THE PEOPLE!! Jesus befriended a prostitute because Jesus accepts ALL, especially the outcast. You self-righteous christian-right zombies are always so willing to cast the first stone.

Putting up with J7's relentless crap isn't tolerance, it's surrender.

Does anyone still give a damn about this place?

Some do but are powerless to do anything I'd imagine.