Democrats versus Republicans

[chucklesR]

We passed that threshold (selling of souls) when the SC somehow equated freedom of speech with the dollar; that decision inevitably linked politicians to the money. Silliest piece of judicial crap I ever saw.

People listen to speakers who say what they want to hear, free and equitable access to the media is all it should take. Whacko's get bad ratings, media goes elsewhere.
That's the perfect world. Unfortunately the short attention span theater of american TV says whacko's get good ratings.

Maybe that's why OB gets the nod from the dem's - he's essentially promising a chicken in every pot, cheap gas (he skips over the historical truth that triple taxing the oil companies means they have no incentive and stock holders will sell, driving the cash available to research and explore down).

Any surprise that Mr. Change is now courting the same old same old political machines he supposedly eschewed? No surprise on my part as he always has, just now he does it openly. The higher they go, the more alike all politicians get. They find it's easy to shout from the top of the bleachers but when they get to management there really isn't a lot they can do.

Johnny's not much better, but at least in my opinion he does less harm in the long term than OB.

[sck5]

Hey chucko

The market knows that the Dems will win and the oil company stocks are doing very very very well. Do you REALLY think they wont pump oil at $140/bbl?

And Mr. O got where he is for two big reasons - He said he would get us out of Iraq adn that he would fix the health insurance system. Lately he has added making an energy strategy.

The first will save money. The second will cost (but how much is impossible to say until we see what actually comes out since some proposals would replace all or some of the private insurance most now pay for).

The third (an energy policy) isnt actually all that hard. I dont think the repubs and dems are that far apart in actual fact. We need to do all we can to develop all the alternatives to oil we can since even if we max out on pumping it we still have a problem. I think it should be possible to get nearly unanimous agreement on many parts of a sensible energy strategy. Either candidate wouuld do better than Bush since his only strategy seems to be to drill for oil and invade middle eastern oil companies.

[sck5]

"Johnny's not much better, but at least in my opinion he does less harm in the long term than OB."

Because he is so old he'll be dead?

[erps]

Nonsense. Dont you fly on planes? I like having federally funded air traffic controllers. Dont you drive on roads? I think the feds did a good job with the interstate system (though it is now falling apart from lack of funds to maintain it) Dont you like having a military? Dont you like having a Center for Disease Control to deal with epidemics? And the list goes on. You really shouldnt make such blanket statements.

I argued these very points from your view point one time with a liberterian about twenty years ago. I pointed out big projects like roads and hydro electric dams as jobs just too big for private industry. He pointed out that if the government had not gotten into the road and dam business it's likely that the landscape would be very different today, but their would be some form of transportation and power infrastructure built and sold by private industry that would ulitmately be more efficient than we have now, because the consumer would want to get the most bang for its buck. The truth of his arguments became evident to me.

[erps]

Hahahahahahhahahahahha. Hey did you vote for BUSH? I hope not, with a suggestion like this!!!

I voted against Gore and I voted against Kerry. It would have been nice to know Bush's test scores on intelligence and ethics before casting those votes, don't you think?

[cardiacpaul]

Are YOU SURE you wanna go there? please don't try to confuse us with the spewed forth propaganda it doesn't work for me... lets just for once, try the FACTS.


(USATODAY.com) — While the general impression during the 2004 presidential campaign was that Democrat John Kerry was the intellectual superior to President Bush, it turns out that their grades while undergraduate students at Yale were remarkably similar.
In fact, Bush's were a tad higher. His four-year average was 77; Kerry's 76. Both were C students. Kerry graduated from Yale in 1966; Bush in 1968.

But last year, when Bush and Kerry were campaigning against each other, we only knew Bush's grades, revealed in 1999 during his first presidential campaign by the New Yorker magazine. Kerry's were widely assumed to be much higher, a notion his campaign did little to quell and much to promote.

When Bush's grades were first made public in 1999, he was then the Texas governor and Republican front-runner for the 2000 presidential nomination. Vice President Al Gore was his likely Democratic opponent. Bush's mediocre college record was trumpeted by Gore backers as proof that the Republican candidate was a dummy. But in the spring of 2000, The Washington Post published Gore's college grades at Harvard. Like Kerry, he was hardly an honor student, either.
Nonetheless, Gore backers kept up the "dumb Bush" mantra. Gore himself tried to lend the impression during his first debate with Bush that he was the smart one, often sighing and shaking his head in disdain when Bush answered questions. Post-debate polling suggested that the strategy might have backfired. Many of those surveyed said Gore came off as too arrogant. Some analysts consider that the turning point in the election. Going into the debates, Gore was ahead in the polls. After the debates, Bush, who polls showed came off as more human and more likable, opened a slight lead.

But Kerry strategists and backers never seemed to pay much heed to that lesson of the past. They plunged headlong into painting Bush as the dummy and Kerry as the genius.
Kerry himself apparently believed it. In April 2004, he was quoted in Newsweek as saying, "I can't believe I am losing to this idiot." The widely published remark was made in an aside to aides while watching a Bush news conference.

That theme carried over after Kerry lost. Many of his backers publicly attributed Bush's victory to a dumb electorate. During the campaign, his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, underscored that feeling while promoting Kerry's health care plan.

"Only an idiot wouldn't like this," she told the Intelligencer Journal in Lancaster, Pa.

Kerry's grades were made public this past week by the Boston Globe, which found them in his U.S. Navy officer training school application. During the campaign, Kerry refused to waive privacy restrictions for the full file, but gave the Navy permission to release the documents last month, the Globe reported.

The transcript showed that he got four Ds in his freshman year, Bush received one D in his four years, in astronomy. At the time, Yale considered grades between 70 and 79 a C and 60 to 69 a D.

I'm hearing that deafening silence once again, you know, the one that is heard when a Democract is confronted with the FACTS.

[knothead]

"1. Above all, maintain civility towards each other. Personal attacks and harassment are forbidden...."

Originally Posted by knothead

Are you kidding.You don't think that the families of the people serving are making a sacrifice?
You don't think that the companies and coworkers where the people who are serving worked are making a sacrifice?
You don't think that all of us as a society are making a sacrifice?
You have to be one of the most shortsighted people that I have ever heard.

sck5, The above could easily be interpreted as a personal attack and I should be ashamed of myself.
Therefore let me modify my comment to say that your position is one that I strongly disagree with and I am sure that you meant no offense to all those who are missing or have lost a loved one. I am sure that you don't really believe that only those fighting the war are making sacrifices.
Again, my apologies. I am sure that I misunderstood your meaning.

[AdamLein]

Originally Posted by sck5

"America's infrastructure, pretty much up to WWII, was entirely privately built"

You need a history book my friend. And it is even less true nowadays.

I'm sort of disappointed that instead of discussing the principles I brought up, you picked on one small aspect. And in a logically invalid way, might I add -- no statement about what happened in the past becomes more or less true as time goes on.

Anyway, you seem to be ganged up on a little bit here, so I'll keep my response short:

- telegraph
- electric light
- steam engine
- railroads
- capital markets

All the results of the ingenuity and daring of individuals, who sometimes needed the government's permission, but nothing else.

As to my nationality, I am an American expatriate in Canada (though my boat (private property) is moored and registered in the land of the free). Not only that, I attend a university founded in the 60s - the sort whose philosophy departments teach that there is no reality, and whose political science departments teach Marx - and not only that, I was on the board of directors of the local student society, an quasi-governmental organization that epitomizes heavy regulation, redistribution of wealth, and waste. I saw first hand how much better individuals are at accomplishing their goals, than a government is at accomplishing people's goals for them. Basically I live in my own far-left microcosm, and I cannot fathom why the experience has not pushed my colleagues -- who get no benefit from this system, have no sense of principles or values whatsoever, and hold only non-committal and self-contradictory opinions on the matter -- in a more libertarian direction, as it has pushed me.

Living in Canada is something every freedom-loving person should try for a month, because you don't know what you had until it's gone. I think the only thing that keeps Canadians from waking up is this pervasive and self-perpetuating hatred of America and Americans for no pronounceable reason -- they often justify their opposition to policy based on the flaw that it is "too American". I can't think of a better way for state with an already powerful government to prevent its subjects from demanding more freedom.

I'd like to state for the record that I support taxation, since I support the existence of government as that body which protects my rights, which it needs funding to do. I would propose that the approximately 60% of the federal budget that goes towards Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and General Assistance be redirected towards paying off the national debt, and that once that is accomplished, that taxes be adjusted so that the budget is balanced at 40% its 2003 size.

[sailhog]

You guys need to develop a nasty little qualuude habit. Maybe smoke some dope, think impossible thoughts, perhaps ask youselves questions like, What would the citizens of the world do if they didn't have access to my brilliant thoughts?

[chucklesR]

Originally Posted by sck5

"Johnny's not much better, but at least in my opinion he does less harm in the long term than OB."

Because he is so old he'll be dead?

cute. Stupid and typical, but cute.

That's not a personal attack, it's an observation