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It’s “brainwashing” when liberals do it, but “good values” when conservatives do it.
(Children of teabagging protesters)
picture: dunno source, via our lol builder. lol caption: lilyofthevalley
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FIRST !
Despite popular belief, the northern mockingbird, though it is adept at “memorizing” and imitating the songs of several other song birds, actually has calls of its own. However, in order to attract a mate, it imitates other birds.
Kind of like the white guys who wear the baggy pants and backward hat uniform and hang out at hip hop clubs, I guess.
At that age I already had some political views–I’m assuming they’re no younger than about nine or so? In that case, the boys may actually be demonstrating for their own ideas, though of course at that age you learn them mostly from parents. Mine started to diverge from my parents’ views when I was about eleven or so, I think. Anyway, assuming kids don’t ever think for themselves, and any views they hold must be their parents’ or from the TV, is really incorrect.
Nine? The boy on the left is no older than 5. And the boy on the left is 7 tops.
(nesting fail?)
Surely we’re viewing a ‘nestling fail’ here?
Or a nuzzling fail?
somewhat fair enough, but my guess is they didn’t make the posters so assuming they care might be a little bit of a stretch… Most kids just want to be kids, but when they do voice their opinions they shouldn’t be ignored / dismissed
All this sudden concern by conservatives about intergenerational equity (now it’s about debt, that is) really does make me laugh though. It never seemed to matter for any other issue
when I was nine, the only political view I had was agreeing with my parents on whichever candidate they thought was best. If that’s what you mean, then that’s not a political view at that age. And those kids aren’t even nine. Kids their age, they don’t get the recession, or the bailouts, or socialism, or anything. Mommy and Daddy know everything, and that is it to them.
Well, it wasn’t really sophisticated; I wanted my local government to give my school more money. We had a really crappy playground, you see.
That’s the point, innit? When the children of conservatives wear signs expressing political views, it’s because they have minds of their own and are simply participating in the political process. When the children of liberals do the same, they’ve been brainwashed. But then it works both ways.
Kind of like how when liberals protest it’s because they have an enlightened opinion but when conservatives do so it’s because they’re ignorant?
Oh, politics. Your double standards amuse and disgust me so.
The fact that you think because the other side does it it’s all right for you to do it to invalidates your argument.
I’m not saying they were brainwashed, I’m saying that kids that age (Nowhere near nine, btw) Don’t really understand socialism, or using government funding to stimulate the economy.
I know a fifteen year old girl who is only BARELY just started to form her own opinions. “Well, I guess I only think that way because my parents would kill me if I didn’t.” To quote directly.
And TNP, why don’t YOU tell me how homophobia is not ignorant. And how “Obama is a communist Muslim terrorist who goes to a racist extremist church and we should be mad at him for running the country instead of going to church and he’s making the country Muslim because he follows the rule of separation of church and state and he bowed to the KING of another country. What do you mean how do I know? Fox news, is fair and balanced and they say so.” is enlightened? You’d better hope you’re creative.
That’s not the point of the caption at all. It’s the hypocricy of the teabaggers that’s being called out.
I’m charro and I approve this timely message.
God i HATE mockingbirds!! drive me CRAZY all night!!
Just remember it’s a sin to kill them.
Mock–yeah
Ing–yeah
Bird–yeah
Yeah–yeah…
Everybody have you heard
He’s gonna buy me a mockingbird
And if that mockingbird don’t sing
He’s gonna buy me a diamond ring
And if that diamond ring won’t shine
He’s gonna surely break this heart of mine
And that’s why I keep on tellin’ everybody
Say yeah, yeah whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, uh, oh
Hear me now and understand
He’s gonna find me some piece of mind
And if that piece of mind won’t stay
I’m gonna find myself a better way
And if that better way ain’t so
I’ll ride with the tide and go with the flow
And that’s why I keep on shoutin’ in your ear
Say yeah, yeah whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, uh, oh
Now, everybody have you heard
She’s gonna buy me a mockingbird
Yeah if that mockingbird don’t sing
She’s gonna buy me a diamond ring
And if that diamond ring won’t shine
Yes, it’ll surely break this heart of mine
And there’s a reason why I keep on tellin’ everybody
Say yeah, yeah no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
Listen now and understand
She’s gonna find me some piece of mind
Yeah if that piece of mind won’t stay
I’m gonna get myself a better way
I might rise above, I might go below
Ride with the tide and go with the flow
And that’s the reason why I keep on shoutin’ in your ear…
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, now, now. baby
Holy Cow! Why did you do that to me?? Last year my kids were working with a group of entertainers (youth) preparing for a competition and there was a quartet who did this song (very well!), but sitting through the rehearsals twice a week for most of the summer meant that this song was rattling around my brain uninvited till Christmas. Here we go again!
And here I was hoping for some intellectual response to the highly opinionated post… Sigh… guess I forgot where I was.
Then check out mine below. I at least tried to make my comment tie in with the post instead of spewing something all my friends, etc. are saying so I can sound “cool.”
LAST!
“Last” fail!
lol @ Political indoctrination.
I hear Fox News carries it out most of the time too! Haha that is funny! …oh, wait…
Indoctrination, conversion, brainwashing, hypnotism, see I think the real hidden truth is the psychological knowledge of things more than anything!
PROTEST TEABAGGING NOW (at least until after a shower)!
The REAL funny thing is that the kid on the left probably doesn’t even know what ”redistribute” MEANS.
Sure he does: his parents asked him how he’d feel if they took his legos away and gave them to other kids! Of course, it’s all a bunch of hooie…
I’ve threatened to take away my kids Legos before – especially when they have distributed them all over the living room floor. Redistribution is a good thing once you’ve stepped on one of those little suckers.
Lol
I love Legos. But not underfoot–ow!
Yeah, unfortunately for my vacuum cleaner, I’ve redistributed a number of those things into my Dyson.
I loved chewing on Legos as a kid. My mom threatened to “redistribute” them for THAT.
What the hell do Legos have to do in the analogy?
Kids have Legos. Grown-ups have cash.
Are legos a universally accepted form of currency for youngsters or something?
I always thought the word was Logos… but who knows with crazy fundies…
Now I’m thinking ‘Kids have cash. Grown-ups have Logos’.
The wrong place for philoso-humour.
In the beginning was the Legos, and the Legos was with God, and the Legos was God . . . And the Legos became flesh and dwelt among us, as a Transformer G1 Megatron.
Exactly. The analogy is poor because Legos are a toy and there is little connection made, humorously or no, between cash/money and Legos.
For me, it’s a simple equation.
If I have cash money, that means I have leftover money at the end of the months, so I can afford to play (or buy Legos).
If I don’t, I can’t.
Simple. Fu(k credit.
@redwhiteandboom — have you seen the price of legos recently? don’t be too sure that the parents have cash if the kid has a good supply of legos, them things are spendy for what you get!
Most Lego pieces (when purchased in a set) are equivalent to a dime, because that’s what they usually cost. Purchase separate pieces, and its more than that.
Legos are a toy that almost all kids have had at some point in their life (I said almost so don’t whine “I never had Legos”) whether it be a male or female child. Legos are one of the few completely sex neutral toys there are. What do almost all adults have? Money. It is a simple analogy, I don’t know how a person could be so simple to not understand that analogy.
Or to think kids are so stupid they can’t comprehend when someone’s taking their toy and giving it to someone else without cause (I told you if you left them out you’d lose them) or compensation (in willing exchange for something else.)
I must admit that I don’t quite get the “Don’t redistribute my legos” one.
Anyone care to explain it to me?
I get that it means “don’t distribute money that I’ll earn in the future because it’s my money”–but LEGOS?
its just a campaign saying that you wouldn’t redistribute a kid’s legos to someone who doesn’t have legos….why would you take his parents money to give it to people who can’t, say, hold a job?
or won’t, say, hold a job.
Or, say, hold a job, but the pay is so low it doesn’t allow them to pay their bills, put a roof over their heads, supply food, and pay for medical care? The working poor is an ever growing segment of our society, and it’s not because Americans are getting lazier.
Oh, but if they tried HARDER they could make a ton of money! Right? Right? *sarcasm overload, Eric flatlines*
Get in there, men! CPR as necesary! The world NEEDS that sarcasm!
*wakes up*
No, no, no, send in the super hot ladies for CPR as necessary!
*re-flatlines*
uh….you can pay the bills with a shitty job if you cut out the cable, cell phones, constant trips to fast food joints and not having children you can’t afford. How many of the ever growing poorer segment of society decided that keeping their legs closed would save them a few thousand a year?
When I was a kid, I loved marble runs.
My first day of school, one kid stole all my marbles. Another kid gave me some of his. One of my happiest childhood memories.
And the wonderful part about it is that the second kid made a personal choice to be charitable to you. How would he have felt if your teacher forced him to give you marbles.
I wouldn’t have minded so long as the marbles came from the first kid…
But yes, the whole point is people being nice of their own accord. Some people just need a boot up the ass on that front.
ROFL! Use force to make people be nice to each other, give you their worldly goods and believe what you want them to? What is this, the Crusades?
Be nice or I’ll kick your ass.
I don’t see how you got from returning the favour to a thief and valuing an object example of virtue to the crusades, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
It’ll be funny when you get to godwin, I’m waiting for that part.
Hey drillhole, you’re the one who said people need a boot in their asses to be nice to each other…
No, just that the boot must be applied when they’re assholes, and it’s smart to treat good folks in a good way.
Hey, if you want to live on an island with the lord of the flies, don’t let me stop you. I’m just keen to set up a health warning a few miles offshore.
Here’s a bubble burster — not only do I pay taxes, I sponsor a variety of community charitable events as a tax write off. But I choose the ones I want.
If you tried to stick your boot in my ass to make me give you money, you’d pull back a stump.
I do love unsubstantiated claims. No only rich, but beneficent to the masses…. yeah, right… whatever keep you from slotting yourself in your filthy garret…
You’d have shot at robin hood.
If you honestly think that differences in pay are justified, you’re either phenomenally blinkered, and idiot or ludicrously egoistic. It’s ‘your’ money because you were set up to be able to get it, not from some special virtue.
When people are assholes to a sufficient degree that they’re killing people, it’s totally unacceptable. Whether you’re doing it with knives or with money is of little importance.
If you sponsor events -because- it’s a tax write-off, you gain no moral credit. Tax breaks are supposed to let you -afford- to support charitable causes.
I have unsubstantiated claims — that’s rich! Who here can substantiate anything IRL? How do any of you know the others is telling the truth?
I’m not even close to rich. I built a business from the ground up and I know how to use my money wisely.
-
When people are assholes to a sufficient degree that they’re killing people, it’s totally unacceptable.
Sooo…what you’re saying is that if I don’t share enough money to save everyone I’m guilty of murder?
You’re a total loon.
Yeah, us lunatics who believe in equality and fair shares all round. Man, we’re such crazies.
If you’re not ‘rich’, as you say, then I’m pretty damn sure you can’t save everyone. Just your share.
Gee, between your charitable events and running your own successful company, you still have time to come in and be a dick on failblog. How wonderful.
The man is at best 18 and without a date on a Saturday…. that’s what we’re looking at…
*Is reminded of why I’m in a bad mood*
It’s a Saturday night.
There’s nothing to do.
English essay prevents me from going to find something to do.
*Is going mad with boredom*
Thank goodness there is troll bashing to watch…
*Is reminded of why I’m in a bad mood*
It’s a Saturday night.
There’s nothing to do.
English essay prevents me from going to find something to do.
*Is going mad with boredom*
Thank goodness there is troll bashing to watch…
Gah! Death to nesting! Death! Death! Death!
Sounds like a college’s freshman year orientation, ‘mandatory volunteerism’ program and speech codes.
Ah, the right to call someone ‘F@gg0t!’… didn’t some god botherer already win that case? Porcine, with a unibrow and a shiny face IIRC…
Wanna narrow it down a little there?
Thank you!
Legos represent property to Kids. (video games, candy, toys would all have worked too) The Kid’s probably through an explanation from the parents know that they would not like someone to come in and take their property and give it to someone else..
Just like productive adults who don’t want their hard earned money to be taken from them and given to society leeches (welfare broodmares)
I would rather see my tax dollars going to those broodmares than to see my country borrowing from China to pay the Saudi oil pimp, thank you very much.
we are not really borrowing from china more we are being invested in by china. In order to pay off past debts the treasury issues bonds. Many people, including foreign countries are buying these bonds. Bond buyers however expect a return on that investment hence us selling more bonds. It’s an endless cycle of perpetual debt.
I am not saying that is right I am saying it’s independent of the tax money that is going to welfare broodmares.
more like you redistribute the legos to, you know, BUILD THINGS, like roads and firehouses and schools and shit.
I think it’s an attempt to be cute, and point out that kids can’t really understand what’s going on but will be hurt anyway.
With that said, I don’t care about the kid’s legos. At least he has them.
The caption might have been true, EXCEPT for the captioner’s failure to recognize one point:
Biases are like noses — everybody’s got one. Liberal or conservative, doesn’t matter. In fact, a captioner who hailed from a conservative perspective might reverse the statements and put them on, say, a picture of schoolchildren singing “Yes, We Can, Can, Can” in honor of Obama before he was elected (i.e., “When conservatives do it, it’s indoctrination, but when liberals do it, it’s considered good values). Truth be told, it’s all a matter of perspective.
But the REAL question is: which Bias is the right Bias with which to be biased? For the parents of the boys in the above picture, the obvious answer for them is that they believed a Conservative Bias was the right Bias with which to be biased. And a liberal parent would believe quite the opposite.
Like I said, it’s all a matter of perspective. Glad we got that cleared up.
You are 100% correct.
Unfortunately, this probably means you will be hated and shouted down by the crazies on both sides.
Possibly. I’m not a crazy, though, and I love the objectivity. So when the crazies come, SmuuthCriminal, just remember, slaggingham and I feel ya. (Not that way.)
Amen that. Pundit Kitchen is funny about 30% of the time, while the other 60% is glaring bias. Probably won’t be wasting my time around here any more
Good. We won’t miss you. We did miss the bandwidth you occupied…
oh, an HI HONEY! I’M HOOOOOOMMMMME!
Been wondering where you were. Welcome back.
busy.
and thanks
So that’s why it’s been so nice around here lately.
Oh no! How will we ever live again without…um…what was your name again?
Where’ll the remaining 10% fall?
LOL I was about to suggest that “Boom” study harder. For some, those GED tests are a dire struggle!
Yes, if the government would take 30% of our income in taxes while letting us keep the other 90%, that would be excellent! Mathematically impossible…but excellent.
The “truth value” of one bias over another is irrelevant. The point is the hypocrisy of asserting that the truthiness of your bias means you get to indoctrinate your kids, but the other guy who disagrees with you should be ashamed of manipulating his kids when he does the same thing.
I’d restate your formula thus: Biases are like arseholes. Everybody’s got one and they think everyone else’s stink.
How is teaching your kids math supposed to be “bias?” If I have two apples I can’t give Johnny three apples without borrowing one from Billy. Now I owe Billy one apple and I have to take away from my future apples to repay it. Simple math. Maybe our legislators should learn some, liberals and conservatives both.
Point. Head. Whooosh.
The positions here are completely irrelevant to the lol. Two parents disagree, they each make their kids hold signs at opposing rallies. What the rallies are for DOES NOT MATTER. The point is that each parent is going to think they’re teaching their own kid proper values, but the other parent is brainwashing that poor innocent child and isn’t it horrible.
In reality, they are just making their kids biased arseholes that won’t have an open-mind to any sort of opposing views. So, in the end, both sets are horrid examples of parents for using their kids for their own political biases – no matter the issue.
ha, i think that restatement of my proposition was spot-on. can i copyright that and send you like 20% of the royalties?
Let’s see, 20% would be…nothin’, nothin’, carry the nothin’…
Ah, what the hell. Knock yourself out.
It’s just people rehashing the Daily Show riff, in which context it makes more sense. A lot of clips of conservative blowhards accusing liberal protesters of treason and (accusing them of) brainwashing their children in response to the war, followed a few months later by praising those that take their children out to these ones. Basically either both sides are full of it or neither is, just watch his clip, it is pretty spot-on, lots of trashing of both sides.
No, both sides are pretty full of it. Thats why i enjoy skating firmly down the middle.
The only correct bias to be biased about is no bias. The only way we can live and not have these “massive” protests is to not be biased toward either side of an argument.
Too true, then the government could do whatever it wants without anyone getting in their way.
While at the same time not being afraid to make a choice once the argument has been made. Otherwise, nothing would ever get done.
Trueamerican,
You cannot be serious. There is no such thing as “no bias,” unless you are a sea sponge or a rock. EVERY PERSON ON EARTH is going to have some sort of bias. It’s inevitable. It stems from the unique life experiences of each person.
“No bias” is theoretically and practically impossible for a human being. It can’t be done. Thus, my earlier point holds true: Which bias is the right bias with which to be biased?
‘No bias’ might be impossible, but we can go for ‘as little bias as possible’.
The only answer to your question is inevitably ‘my bias’, whoever you ask and however prettily they put it.
But how do you have a ‘little’ bias? Isn’t it all relative? In which case you’re talking about having as little a difference in bias to the average person as possible, which would ultimately result in a lump of homogenised thinkers with no unique ideas.
When I say ‘as little bias as possible’, I mean ‘making sure your opinions are as free of personal perspective and as based on objective, impartial analysis as possible’.
The idea isn’t to conform to some average bias, or to deliberately choose a ‘small’ bias, but to do away with any and all bias.
Agreed. While I am what one might consider a liberal, I don’t agree with ANY parent using children to promote their own political beliefs. Kids just go along with what their parents tell them. I doubt many have heard the other side of things. Without hearing both sides, you cannot truly form your own opinion on an issue. Reminds me of a baby T-shirt on the Onion website that says “I support my parent’s political beliefs”. XD Love that shirt. I went to a sheltered Catholic school, and before I discovered the internet and found out that there was actually a second side to issues, I just followed what my mom and the crazy principal/other staff at school said: being gay is wrong, death penalty is terrible, abortion is the heartless murder of an innocent baby, and that Catholicism IZ TEH BEST!!11!! and we should all base our political opinions on that religion.
For the record… I no longer believe abortion and being gay are evil things, I am now neutral on the death penalty, and I quit Catholicism and if the US ever became a theocracy I’d leave before the witch hunts start.
So your views changed as a result of seeing the other side of the argument? Is that as a result of weighing out the two sides and picking which one you believed to be the more ‘right’? Or was it simply a rebellion against what you feel has prevented you from growing in your view of the world? You must make sure you have only formulated your beliefs due to the arguments at hand, and not the conditions under which they were presented to you. Simple put in a hypothetical situation: if you had grown up sheltered, being taught the OTHER side of each of those beliefs, would you have (once discovering both sides) stuck to them?
that isn’t the point of his argument. and not at all what he was trying to say *or she*. They were simply stating that you won’t always have the same political affiliation as when you were younger. Experiences make you grow up, make you chose what feels right TO YOU, not to another person, not to the guy down the street, and not to the dog that is peeing on that fire hydrant. The world is full of bias, no matter what, there is no right or wrong bias just as there is, really, no right and wrong in the world. There is only what you believe. What is right to one man may be horrible to another. Just what exactly are you trying to ascertain or are you merely being a loltroll?
I’m just trying to show that sometimes what seems like an enlightening discovery of what you think is your own opinion can actually be as a result of rebelling against what you grew up being taught. And so you formulate your new views NOT as a result of experiences and growing and changing (as it should be), but rather in some strange attempt to spite the teachings you’ve grown to hate due to realising that they entrapped you. And let me say this: being “entrapped” by teachings doesn’t automatically make them wrong; rather it makes the way they were taught to you wrong. Blame the hand that fed you, not the food.
Now, see, now that I know what you arguing for it makes a lot more sense. And I agree. I know many people who believe in what they believe because they’re going through a ‘rebel against my parents’ phase. My ex was one of them. He was raised by a hardcore, sheltering, quite frankly neurotic mother who got better over time but now he’s a hardcore Atheist and Anarcist; he refused to even listen to why I believed what I did but chalked it up to me being stupid for thinking that maybe there was a ‘magic cloud man’. I’m agnostic, so I’m not so hard up on my podium that I can’t see the point of others. It was just annoying.
~~~~~~
You bring up some valid arguments though. Just the way you presented them rankled me a little as it’s the internet, hard to hear someone when they’re in written word.
Kids only go along for so long. They have minds of their own, that’s for sure. So long as they can back up their beliefs, it’s good. Kids are their own people in the end…they are who they are.
And in the end if they adopt many of your beliefs because they are convinced those are truly right; then that’s how it goes. I clawed my way out of ingrained leftism through logic and a hell of a lot of study.
I think you’re right to a point. When you’re dealing with true indoctrination, however, it can be much harder to simply study your way out of it. If you’ve been led to believe your whole life that the study of the unknown is what will send you to hell, you’re less likely to study that unknown.
-
In the case of simple parental training, however, you’re right.
Well, perhaps, but I didn’t raise my kids that way. I know some people who have, but many others that didn’t. I didn’t. My kids think their own way. Feel their own way. Live their own way. Some of it is like mine and other parts of it isn’t. That’s how it goes when you take the chance and instill free thought as part of the package.
I agree with you, and that’s a very good way to raise your kids. Not everyone does it that way though, and the only issue I had with what you said previously is your larger than average brush. There are plenty of die hard Neo-Con, Left-Wing Kooks, and other fringe-type people who indoctrinate their children as opposed to just teaching them what they believe to be right, with the option to choose something different later on. My parents, who are hard core Baptist Neo-Cons, raised my siblings and I to be free thinkers. I know more of “us” who weren’t that lucky.
So it turns out we agree on something really important. (Figures.) Some of my views are set in stone but I never set in stone the views of my children. They HAVE to have their own minds. I unfortunately wasn’t given that option which is one of the reasons I gave it to my own kids.
I think you and I (along with quite a few people here) agree on more things than you think. Not couching arguments in insult tends to have a much better result when trying to communicate your ideals.
“I think you and I (along with quite a few people here) agree on more things than you think.”
No, not more things than I think; more likely more things than you think. Either way, yes. Raising free thinkers is not as easy as it looks.
Interesting…I’ve never seen a liberal enlist their children to protest against communism. If I ever do, though, I’ll be the first to say that they too are passing “good values” along!
I could just as easily turn that around and say I’ve never seen a conservative enlist his children to protest against bigotry.
That whooshing sound you heard from far above a minute ago? That was the point of this lol, sailing over your head.
That’s because conservatives aren’t bigots. We fight bigotry by fighting liberalism. You’re all in the same nest.
Do you realize that what you just said makes you a bigot? You are judging a group of people. I’m very conservative, but I don’t immediately judge someone because they have liberal viewpoints. If more of us took the time to actually talk to someone with a different point of view instead of just assuming what they think and why they think it, we would be a whole hell of a lot better off.
Kumbaya…row that boat ashore, Michael!
Can’t we all just get along!!!
Asshole.
Pointing out that someone who is contradicting themselves makes me an asshole? Nice to see you are living up to your screen name.
It’s been said, Mother Theresa. Quit being a kiss ass and form an actual opinion.
SQUEEEE! I’m the recess monitor, now you all play nice and kumbaya, kiddies.
ROFL!
I’d place you more as the ‘slightly dull one they don’t leave alone with memer of the opposite sex or sharps’ if I was pressed to make an assessment…
But no one pressed you to, so why waste time on a dullard?
No, it wasn’t forced. Look on it as charity.
Aaaaaand he’s back!
daamm!! you got him good!!
but seriously people the only way to make dicisions is from your own point off veiw. i pearsonaly dont have problems with others having different views as long as they dont hurt me or try to impose their belifes on me. people should chill a bit more and not care about what others think so much. our own happieness is the only thing we should be out for in the end, so Yer an idiot just try to find your own happy and dont try to take others away.
I think you behave like a mentally deficient eight year old and I think you should go blow a goat. How is that for an opinion? I’m sure crudeness is more up your alley. *whacks the troll with a 2X4*
What do you have against goats?
Good point. Goats have never done a thing to me and I apologize to any and all goats I have offended. They in no way deserve to have a moronic troll like idiot anywhere in their vicinity. I would probably worry about them if he actually got close to one. I have no doubts that he finds them attractive.
The joy of the large mouth and small brain, as illustrated by ‘Yer an idiot’… something to frighten children with… ‘You do oxycontin, you’ll have children like this…’
Awwww…that’s some beautiful sweet talking you’re doing there…
you’d know ‘rich guy’… how’s the dumpster diving going? Still keeping you in meths?
You are full of win, sez this radical leftie.
ROFL! All talk, no action…radical leftie! LOL!
Like you’d know action even if you were the E-wing catamite…
And what kind of “action” are you taking there, Idiot? Can I call you Idiot? It’s kind of a nickname for you. Anyway, besides trolling a LOL site, what action are YOU taking to push forward your political agenda? Morons like you make me feel sorry for the Republican party because we hear from more people like you than we do people like Krisee who can post on a site overflowing with liberals without being rude.
It’s the political agenda of a retarded 12 year old… Old enough to be macho about it, but too fence post dumb to be any damn use.
Couldn’t have said it any better.
I’m sure many gay couples across the nation would beg to differ.
Learn some history, read some current events and get back to me.
The Republicans welcomed the Dixiecrats with open arms in 1964, swallowing all that segregationist hatred whole. Conservatives have fought against racial justice, fought against legal equality for women, fought against protections against religious discrimination, fought against such basic civil rights as protection against violence for gays and lesbians, let alone anything that could be called social justice.
Conservatism reeks of bigotry with a stench that has strangled this country for long enough and too long.
And liberalism is just a nice walk in the park, everyone smiling and saying “Hi” just as the invisible pink unicorns come prancing across the fields, right?
Seriously, BOTH parties are full of idiots, and the ones on the internet are the ones too scared to talk to anyone face to face.
You should get over your socialization anxiety. Putting your problems onto the rest of us via accusation is transparent projection.
Okay, then how do you explain the fact that a greater percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats, and if that had not been the case, the Act wouldn’t have passed? You know what you think conservatism is, but you have no idea what actual conservative values are.
And you don’t know your history at all. Read what I wrote there: The Republicans welcomed the Dixiecrats with open arms in 1964.
The Southern Democrats – aka the Dixiecrats – who fought for segregation and opposed the Civil Rights Act LEFT the Democratic Party when Lyndon Johnson (a Texas Democrat) refused to veto the act. They defected to the Republican party and took their racial hatred with them.
THE REPUBLICAN BIGOTS OF TODAY ARE THE SOUTHERN DEMOCRAT BIGOTS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA. The Exact. Same. Group.
Learn your own history before you spout off here, boyo.
But, learning requires reading and thinking! It’s much easier to just let other people tell them what opinion they should have.
Please indulge my curiosity: exactly what is communism, and why is it an evil thing? Is it more evil, in principle, than a system which allows children of poor parents to starve, die from lack of basic health care, or fail to achieve because they didn’t have access to the same education system the children of wealthy parents?
1) When you give out free basic health care to poor people you force everyone else to use basic health care, instead of being able to choose their own
2) People don’t starve under America’s version of capitalism….ever hear of soup kitchens? On of those bums that stands with a sign on the street was drinking a diet coke can….he’s obviously not starving if he can buy a diet coke can….
3) What DarkHawke meant was redistribution of wealth, not the limited forms of socialism we have. “We have enough programs for the poor, now stop taxing us to give them more” is what he’s saying, and i agree.
1) And that would be worse than allowing children to die?
2) There is a lot of starvation in America. Just not in the gated community you live in.
3) Spoken like someone who was born on third base and thinks they hit a triple.
You might want to have that bleeding heart checked…your brain appears to be slowing dying of oxygen starvation.
Sadly the hobo you kicked to death this morning also died slowly. His friends would like a word, though.
Well then go feed them with your money, and you can pay for said hypothetical hobo’s funeral.
And I didn’t kick him to death. I ran him over with my Hummer. It’s not my fault he got wasted and crashed in my driveway.
Now, now… the hobo killing was the only way he can get an erection…
I’m sure you’d know from experience.
I know your sort… all too well. Sad, empty, bragging about imaginary achievements…
and mostly fuelled by jealousy and hatred. Everyone else is to blame for your failure. Thus the fantasy life of ‘riches’… but then the people you hate will take them… paranoia…
Actually, based on your posts, you do fit the profile of someone who would kick a hobo to death for the high…
The only person you hate more than everyone else is what you’ve become… must be hell being that much of a failure.
LOL! Little did I know not only would I be entertained by coming here for a short spell but I’d also be psychoanalyzed!
See? I KNOW how to use my money to my advantage!
Now THIS is entertainment!
Yeah, like you have ‘cash’…
And you do?
I’m not making assertions about my status… you’re the one crying just how bloody rich you are… Go on… tell us you have the biggest dick in the county and are a Mensa member…
No, remember, he was a successful businessman who didn’t start out from much.
He’d be moderately endowed, but a phenomenal lover, and not mentally gifted, but disciplined and a good student.
Too much credit for a cohesive story, perhaps?
Where did I say I was rich? Hmmm?
My dick is probably the normals side of average, and does Phi Beta Kappa count?
LOL!
See? I AM god! Prophecy springs from my lips!
And where did I say I was successful, or a man, either?
This is just so much fun, but I the sunshine calls.
And where did I say I was… a man?
Aye, as if a woman would write all this…
You own a Humvee?
and only a man would make that much of an ass of himself…
Hummer. ROFL!
Given that you don’t understand inference and analogy, I should have guessed hyperbole for comic effect was beyond you.
Do you want me to stick to monosyllables, sorry, words with one sound?
He has accepted me as his deity! My truths flow from his mouth!
Or he’s speaking in tongues, and needs an exorcism. Either way I’m all for it.
Hummer isn’t a Humvee.
You said you ran him down with your hummer, so you forced a hobo to have a blow job to get an erection, after a pursuit… I see… was it the act or the chase that was stimulating?
He’s all about the thrill of the hunt.
Least we know what he’s doing right now…
1) You’re right. We should tax everyone more, to allow some people to live and then force many other people to die because their surgery costs more.
2) I don’t live in a gated community, stop being a smartass, we have numerous programs to give food to the poor.
3) Spoken like someone who thinks that because i hit a triple (metaphorically, i did) and because the guy next to me hit a single we should both be on second base to create a fair and equal distribution of bases.
A fine example of the thinking that drove the economy into the ground, without a single penny of real cash being lost…
Umm… lots of real value was -stolen- from the economy.
Housing boom fraud 101:
A buys house at fair market value (FMV)
A bribes appraiser to value house above FMV. (FMV + 10k)
A sells house to B at appraised value. A nets 10k. B gets house worth FMV and debt work -(FMV+10k)
B repeats. etc etc.
E buys house (Still worth FMV), but gets debt worth -(FMV+40k).
Bubble pops, E cannot pay mortgage.
BANK gets house worth FMV, but is out cash of FMV+40k BANK loses 40k.
A, B, C, D, each end up with 10k for a total of 40k.
Multiply by millions of people ‘flipping’ real estate, and 10k ‘profit’ being the low end of a deal, and it gets big quick.
Value was neither created nor destroyed at any point, and the net sum is zero. Four people gained money without contributing value. In an ideal world, they would be the ones paying for the bailout. In reality, that money is what fueled the prior boom.
The solution is either printing money and dealing with inflation, or taking back the money that was stolen and ‘burning’ it. Spending the money on paper or bad debt IS the economic equivalent of burning it.
Point out the Real as opposed to imaginary value of things.
It can be convincingly argued that the value of things is what makes them real. So everything you see is their ‘value’.
Yes, I’m a big Pirsig fan.
A wise man knows a things value, any fool can know its price.
The ‘Market’ is largely like dealing with an idiot with no memory and a taste for shiny things…
Which is why it’s easy to swindle it. The funny part is when corporations cry out against ruthless capitalism being used on them. “No fair! That’s OUR toy!”
The bully never likes taking a whipping…
Oh, and corporations have entitlement issues. It’s a lot like a governement, but you don’t get to elect them.
And we’ve found the answer to ‘what’s worse than political corruption’. And they said it shouldn’t be done.
Why is it ‘worse’? I’d say it was all much of a muchness…
Word to the wise. Employment isn’t a favour. If they could do it without you, then they’d have an Orang with a spanner doing the job (although then the (R)SPCA would be picketing them)
No. It cannot be argued convincingly that value/quality created objects. That is like saying that the feather duster created the chicken.
Both objects and ideas have cost, and therefore value. However, nothing changed when the the Newtonian Theory of Motion was finalized, even though a concept with value equal to an amount of mental effort was created.
That’s a big hilosophical argument, hence my statement ‘it can be convincingly argued’ (‘convincingly’ being my opinion).
You can’t make a blank statment one way or the other on the matter, unless you’re going to present your irrefutable argument proving that case.
And the idea that Newton’s theories didn’t change anything feels like a reductio of your whole position to me, TBH. A copernican revolution is still a revolution.
Real value is the cost of the raw materials that it would take to create an object, plus the cost of the labor required to create the same object.
The hard part is converting value into a currency.
If you put a different price on an item, you do not change its value.
How does the bubble popping make it so E cannot pay his/her mortgage? The payments haven’t changed just because the house is now worth less. So either E lost his/her job (entirely possible), or E couldn’t afford the mortgage in the first place.
Or E got seriously ill, lost both job and health insurance for being out of work too long (or the illness overran the coverage offered by his health insurance), and is now in so much dept that he’ll never get out of it.
Agreed. I guess my point is that the mortgage bubble popping didn’t make it so E couldn’t afford his mortgage payment, which seems to be the cause/effect relationship Decius is trying to convey.
When he bought the house, he was swindled for the disparity between cost and value. The banks were also swindled for the disparity between the value of the collateral securing the loan and the amount of the loan.
Housing bubble stops expanding, money stops being artificially injected into the economy, economy adjusts downward to new equilibrium. Outlying loans foreclose, the effects of stealing money from the inkwell are evident, economy shrinks even more, until an amount of money disappears equal to the amount which appeared when the bubble grew.
You are pretty on the mark, but left out a couple points:
1) Deregulation of our financial services sector loosened the rules on how much credit an institution could loan out. Prior to the rules changes 1999 thru 2001, institutions could only loan out about 7 times the amount of their assets. Afterward, they were allowed to loan out (might have the specifics wrong here) about 30 times that amount.
2) That same deregulation allowed the financial services sector to treat money they had loaned out as ASSETS instead of liabilities, by turning them into securities and selling them off.
These two factors suddenly “created” a lot of cash lying around that wasn’t representative of any actual wealth. The result of the availability of cheap, plentiful credit led to unnatural inflation of the price of real estate. I can’t help but feel this was done on purpose.
Compound that with the charlie foxtrot of derivative bonds, which allowed rich fools to make side-bets by taking out completely unregulated “insurance” against defaults on bonds in which they possessed no interest to begin with. That’s how a few billions of dodgy debt turned into a 4-trillion-dollar disaster.
and don’t forget all the below prime loans that were made with the ‘promise/premise’ that wages would still rise and money would magically appear in time to make those huge balloon payments, and the loans that can’t be transferred or sold or refied by a different lender so the homeowner must pay off the full amount of the 30 or 40 yr note before being able to resell the house to a new owner……
2) I’ve eaten at soup kitchens. I’ll admit that the food wasn’t always the best (sometimes it was), and I was never able to get 21 free square meals a week. But between soup kitchens, food stamps, and unemployment insurance, I was able to survive and cover all of my bills.
Where have you experienced starvation, or seen people unwillingly choose starvation?
It’s not generally the adults, unless the adults are mentally ill or elderly (they starve because they haven’t got the mental resources to look for food); it’s the children. Many kids of the poorest people try to live on their school lunches and whatever they can shoplift because their parents don’t know how to manage their money and/or are trading food stamps for alcohol.
And there’s the problem of poor nutrition–not starvation; these people are getting enough calories, but those calories aren’t quality food, so they’re missing out on all sorts of nutrients. In fact, obesity is common among the poor–thought to be associated with getting inadequate diets which don’t satisfy their appetites because they don’t contain the nutrients they need, and as a result they crave more to try to get the required nutrition. That comes mostly from food stamps being just enough to buy low-quality food but not high-quality (fresh food, meat, milk, etc.), from people being uneducated about nutrition and cooking, and from people trying to survive by working a lot and simply not having the time to shop and cook properly on a tiny food budget.
“1) When you give out free basic health care to poor people you force everyone else to use basic health care, instead of being able to choose their own”
I must be reading this wrong.
By not forcing those with no choice to pay for shitty treatment, you prevent others from profiting from their suffering.
I’m just not seeing it.
1) When you give out free basic health care to poor people you force everyone else to use basic health care, instead of being able to choose their own
Just factually wrong and foolish here. The major industrialized nations with national health systems – that is to say, all major industrialized nations except the US – have the national health as a minimum standard, to which people can add what they choose and can afford.
Fester, a little help with specifics here? I’m sure I’ve heard you have options available above and beyond the NHS.
I can’t speak for Fester, but I do know via cousins that Denmark has a 2-tier health care system now. The basics, and ‘premium’ that would cost more.
“didn’t have access to the same education system *as* the children…”
Grammar fail. Sorry.
if you honestly don’t know what communism IS and are so clueless that you don’t think it’s a bad thing, you really should do the world a favor and move to china, you’re get it in no time.
Ever hear of the USSR and the MILLIONS of “poor” and “rich” and everything in between who were KILLED by those wonderful communists?
If the “parents” are so damn “poor”, how about they STOP HAVING KIDS for the non lazy to have to PAY FOR? Problem solved.
The problem with communism is that we have never had a truly communist system in the world, yes, there have been leaders who calimed to be communist, but they missed one large point of communism. If it were truly a communist state there would be no leaders in the end as everyone would be equal (for some this is a good thing, for the mass majority a bad thing). If one looks at the ideals of communism on paper it doesn’t seem too bad, though in practice it always falls short.
Even on paper it sucks, because it functions by taking everyone and making them poor. Not everyone can be rich, so to be equal, everyone must be poor.
You are right, it still sucks on paper, I retract my earlier statement and apologize for the apparent ignorance in it.
Though, in my defense, it definitely does not look as bad as it does on paper as the doctrines of communism does not call for massive genocide, that falls into the hands of the so called “communist leaders” who get the complete power communist calls for in order to create a communist state, then fail to follow the final step “and then the government steps down to become equal to the rest of society”
*Though, in my defense, it definitely does not look as bad on paper as it is in practice*
Wow that was a fail
Comparatively, we’re all poor (unless you’re super-rich, in which case, I want to redistribute your wealth).
I’d much rather everyone have enough than some people bathe in currency to get their kicks.
The ability to generate wealth in our society is determined mostly by existing wealth, then social status, then the ability to cope with stress, then a strong work ethic and finally in last place intellect.
Communism has been poorly exectued and has theoretical flaws. Capitalism has also been poorly executed and has theoretical flaws. It just gets better press, so we tend not to see them so much.
Social darwinism, FTW!
Let me guess…you’re crying ‘cuz daddy was poor, so you can’t succeed. Might as well sit on your ass, then, and wait for a “higher power” to even the odds for you.
And you people make fun of Christians. HAH! ROFL!
Since you ask, my parents made enough to be middle class, so do I, and I’ve never felt ‘deprived’. I’m just not a heartless bastard. Social darwinism is sick, evil and wrong.
And I GIVE to charity, so by your analogy I am the one playing god. Heed my mighty words and tremble, mortal!
I didn’t ask. I speculated.
I didn’t offer an analogy. I made a statement.
And the one playing god in YOUR statement? The government. Which you might want more of in YOUR life, but I don’t.
Heartless bastard? ROFL! That’s amusing, when the government takes 40+ percent of my income…
I’d very much like less government in everyone’s life. Some people just can’t hande that responsibility, sadly. Y’see, without government I’d still give a good chunk (40% sounds low, TBH) to help folks. I don’t need it, and they do, it’s pretty simple.
If the government is forcing you to help feed the poor, and you resent it so much, how exactly are you not a heartless bastard? Thinking that your disposable income is more important that someone else’s life and death definitely qualifies.
If you’re so pious, go join a f*cking convent. Just keep your hand out of MY pocket.
Pretty amusing that YOUR higher power starts with a “G” and uses a dusty old book to tell you how to behave, too…
Well, my name doesn’t start with ‘A’, but keep going. I’m sure you’ll have enough to start stalking me IRL soon.
I’m an atheist, and you’re the one responsible for the ‘no god, no morals’ myth that pisses me off so very much.
I know, right? I’m PERSONALLY responsible for all hatred, murder, bigotry, and myths ever perpetuated since the beginning of time.
They do have drugs for that level of paranoia, you know…
Proof the normal distribution curve has a far end. We agree.
Given that you don’t understand inference and analogy, I should have guessed hyperbole for comic effect was beyond you.
Do you want me to stick to monosyllables, sorry, words with one sound?
Oh my, that’s just hilarious, you got me so good with the “U R STOOPID”, I think I’ll just crawl into a corner and lick my wounds now.
ROFL!
I should point out… I agree on the principle of ‘religious based’ initiatives should be paid for by the faithful, not my tax pound…
Like you’d EVER get into the 40% bracket fishing aluminium cans from trash.
You’d be amazed what scrap metal brings these days…
Unless you were running on the sort of uppers you only get in the armed forces, you can’t go with out sleep that long…
As I said, you’d be surprised.
No, you’re just a sad babbling man…
You really shouldn’t type what yourself says to yourself….
The best you can do is ‘I know what you are, but what am I’?
I think the case that ‘Yer an Idiot’ is a moron is proven…
*Has difficulty imagining UF as the sort of person who is surprised by much*
September 11th, 2001.
Last time I was ‘surprised’. That was only a surprise in that someone was as ruthless as I am
“I’d much rather everyone have enough than some people bathe in currency to get their kicks.”
Scrooge McDuck was kind of a dick like that.
So, you *don’t* know what communism is, or why it is worse than an unregulated capitalist system. All you know is abuse, and you hand it out liberally.
I think the issue isn’t whether communism is right or wrong, just that America is not a communistic nation. It was founded on captialism, and the people who live here in America believe in that system. If you want communism, go to a communistic country, don’t force it on a people who have fought and died to keep it out of theirs.
I’m confused.
America was founded as a democracy, right? To ensure that the government reflected the will of the people?
Hypothetically, if ‘the will of the people’ is some degree of socialism, shouldn’t that be enacted?
technically it was founded on a republic. There’s many problems with democracy, it makes huge rifts in populations and it does not protect the rights of the few, as our system is…doing in theory.
So really if the majority don’t believe in socialism, but socialism is the best thing for the country, it’s possible for it to be enacted.
While true, important and relevant, your comments do not help my argument. /humor
I get annoyed by the conflation of capitalism and democracy, which is what I was driving at.
I’m not american, so I don’t know it’s early history so well. Beyond that, I agree wholeheartedly with you on both counts. Though I think you can scrub that ‘in theory’ at this stage, and you’d be suprised how many people are keen on ideas that are socialist by the dictionary, but are never described or thought of in that way (say, worker’s comp).
So you’d rather a system where everyone but ruling party apparatchiks starve, die from lack of basic health care and fail to achieve because the government won’t let them? That’s communism in a nutshell, and that’s why it’s an evil thing.
I think you’re confusing communism with socialism, sweetie. *pats you on the head*
I’m not gonna lie I have no idea who you are patting on the head, damn nesting…
Of course when “Liberals” hang signs on their kids it usually has to do with some kind of ethical/moral message. (ie save our pets, save the whales, save the planet) In this case these kids are 100%, firm, no doubt about it, all the way, totally going to be affected by the issues on the signs. All of you do realize, don’t you, that our reigning pres. has just spent more than 10 years of this country’s GNP to help out business people who are broke because they stole our money.
Yes, I know old G.W.’s group is the one who started it. I’m not blaming Obama for the idea of the bail out, but he and congress (mostly congress) let it go through (after adding all of their special interests into the package). You watch. This country’s debt is going to skyrocket beyond anything we have ever seen in our history.
So if informing our children that out of control spending is a bad thing is “brainwashing” then I guess my parents brainwashed me back in 2nd grade when they taught me to save money instead of giving it to all my friends who had already spent their money on candy.
A very valid point, but what people are complaining about seems like a total ‘duh’ to me. I’m in US history right now, and just when this whole “recession” thing started to get out of control, we had finished the Great Depression unit and started the WWII unit. In the Great Depression, America accumulated huge amounts of debt, because it was necessary to spend that much money to get public works projects going. After that, morale started to be boosted, and then we joined the second World War, so people were all just champing at the bit to help out on the home front and go to work.
It looks to me that the majority of people don’t seem to understand that fact of history: You have to spend money to earn money. You don’t start a business expecting not to be in debt for the first few years. Likewise, you can’t pull a country out of an economic pit without having to spend a little money doing it.
Even though, I do think that bailing out so many businesses was a bad idea. They could just file for bankruptcy and start over, perhaps after learning a lesson about how not to dig your own grave or anyone else’s.
i hope you understand that most of the money FDR spent was a waste, its actually been said that he prolonged it, in fact, the depression didn’t even end until WW2 came and spurred the economy with all of the war contracts.
In capitalism, depressions fix themselves, Obama helped speed that package along so he can tell neutral voters in 2012 that he fixed it with his package. They’ll believe him because most undecided voters are idiots who are only undecided under the idea of voting for “the man”, not the party.
And what were the war contracts? Government spending! Please, give me some proof of you argument that FDR “prolonged the depression” I have only seen proof to the other point so far.
War contracts were government spending, yes, but neccessary for the war effort. It wasn’t just pointless job-creating that went nowhere
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx?RelNum=5409
I’ll have to do a little research on those two economists’ work before coming to any conclusions about their credibility, but I do note that right up front they cite to the anti-competitive policies of the NIRA, which encouraged cartelizing industry by exempting major industries from anti-trust laws prohibiting collusion. Nobody is arguing in favor of that…except of course for that pesky Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that allowed Citigroup and AIG to become Too Big To Fail.
so the interstate highway system, hydroelectric dams, and the corresponding power being supplied to outlaying areas and individual rural homes, public airports, and other infrastructures still in use today (almost 70 yrs later!) were pointless job-creations that went no-where? try telling that to all the folk who benefit today from that spending, not to mention all the folk who benefited at the time by being able to work and feed their families instead of standing in a breadline somewhere!!!!
Shouldn’t you be focusing on the innocents?
…yes…as opposed to Hoover’s approach, the not-spending-lets-balance-the-budget-and-cut-taxes…because _that_ clearly helped. \sarcasm
Plenty of economists after the great depression claimed that the best way to prevent it from happening again is to tax when the economy is going well, and keep it in reserve to be able to spend when shit hits the fan. Unfortunately for us, that will not work in a democracy, because people want to see their taxes change things _now_, as opposed to being saved for a rainy day or spent on investment spending.
i agree with you on that second point, about spending less and saving money. It seems that politicians, when faced with a surplus, always give in to lobbyists and its getting on my nerves how incompetent the congress is and has been for a long time.
No, Politicians give in to lobbyists is money. Politicians want it, the lobby has it. It’s not giving in, it’s called being bought. We elect h00kers. Expensive h00kers, but h00kers none the less. They’ll lick your balls and tell you that you’re the best they’ve had… but only for the right amount of Bennies (or a Houblon in England)
One Houblon? I gotta move to your neighborhood. I’ve been being sucked dry in more ways than one around here.
A requisite number of Houblons… a UK £50…
I call false advertising. It was the ‘a Houblon’, in the singular, that piqued my interest in your ladies in the first place.
I call bad typing. suck it up, loser.
“It’s actually been said that he prolonged it”…but you can’t say who it was said it, can you?
If you look at the facts, however, you’ll see that what prolonged the recovery was FDR tapping the brakes on government spending in 1937. That resulted in a 5% jump in unemployment, which had gone steadily down in the previous three years. [LINK]
From the website you cited:
1. General strategy: to build and promote a one-stop reference source that refutes conservative positions on all major issues.
You looked around to find that statement without even looking at the bottom of the timeline page, where he provides copious citations to source material? Sloppy, sloppy. I call bullshit on your “Unbiased” tag.
And yet anyone who cites a conservative blog, no matter what sources are included, is called erroneous.
Seems double standardish.
Conservative blogs so rarely cite, and much less link, to verifiable sources that aren’t other opinion pieces. If someone did cite to a conservative blog that was adequately referenced and fairly represented facts, I would certainly give it due consideration.
The frequency with which scholars and researchers have come out after some bit of conservative punditry and said no, that isn’t actually what my report meant at all, does give me pause for concern.
“i hope you understand that most of the money FDR spent was a waste, its actually been said that he prolonged it, in fact, the depression didn’t even end until WW2 came and spurred the economy with all of the war contracts.”
I refer you to well known conservative economist Ben Bernanke:
“Take it from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who wrote the following in Essays on the Great Depression: “Only with the New Deal’s rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression.”…
The argument that the New Deal’s efforts “perhaps had prolonged, the Depression,” is a canard. One would be very hard-pressed to find a serious professional historian–I mean a serious historian, not a think-tank wanker, not an economist, not a journalist–who believes that the New Deal prolonged the Depression. (emphasis added)”
You’re missing a different point: Printing the money and giving it to the bankrupt companies or people so they can give it to their creditors is economically the same as giving the money to the lenders who have the bad debt.
A program that paid off all of the bad mortgages and left the borrower with the house but not the debt would be asinine- either you are buying everyone in the country a house, or you are rewarding people who made bad decisions or gamed the system.
So you foreclose the houses, and pay off the debt with public funds. Now the lenders remain solvent, and can lend more money. The missing part is the lending reform.
Now I need to take a radical stance: Prohibit interest on currency loans. I give you $X to buy a house, you give me N equally spaced payments of $X*RT/N, over time T. If you default on your payments, I own the house.
Can anyone tell me why that concept is radical?
Because no bank would ever offer it?
The only way to achieve that would be publicly owned, not-for-profit banking. Which would be very hard to do without massive corruption, not to mention tough to get people to acept or force past a hostile and deeply influential financial sector. But hey, a man can dream.
Actually, it’s because a large portion of the world uses a similar system. The abolition of interest is one of the major -business- portions of Sharia Law. For-profit institutions, including international banks that operate in countries that have adopted Sharia Law, make money under those exact rules.
Sorry, I was incomplete.
“because no bank would ever offer it except at gunpoint”
No, I’m not implying that Islam is a violent religion, or that The Middle East is barbarous. Just trying to be funny, and pointing out that no bank would do that willingly. If you make it a precondition on all their other profits, sure, you can twist their arm if you hold a big enough club. I actually have grudging respect for governments with the stones to stand up to private interests, though we may disagree on pretty much everything else.
My point was that they made money -on those agreements-. That is actually the primary profit stream among lending institutions.
“because no bank would ever offer it except at gunpoint”
What, exactly, were you implying? The responsibility to charge the interest rate that maximizes profit is inherent in the corporate capitalist system. In a socialist system, there would be no need for loans.
Somewhere in between, there is a system where lenders make an amount of money for facilitating transactions. I think that the installment option, or the simple fixed-interest loan, however you want to call it, is the best mechanism for determining the payments involved. Unfortunately, it is also associated with a religion, and apparently a geopolitical region. I can’t seem to discuss the merits of the idea without those issues coming up.
I’m not objecting on those grounds. I’m way out on the left and am generally against enterprise motivated by profit. I pitched in when all of that was brought up, buried in the tons of garbage Idiot (such a cute nickname) spewed above. Hence my ‘but they could make (more) money!’ response.
The idea of an interestless loan definitely seems like a step in the right direction from an interest based loan, and I’d agree when you identify the profit motive as opposing that limit on enterprise. To me that seems like the bigger problem, but it’s fair to say that you tackle big problems step-by-step.
Limiting the freedom of those with the money to tighten the screws seems like a responsible exercise in governance to me. Such a law would be likely to get my vote, assuming loans could still be refused if reasonable grounds could be shown.
I’m actually for starting with “All terms of the contract must be determined at the time of signing.” That would mean no ARMS, no penalty clauses, and in general no surprises.
The next step would be some type of limit on corporate profits. I don’t have the economics background to be any more specific, but anyone in a position to make a decision should.
All the cults of Abraham are violent. It’s what they do. And of course the Middle East is Barbary, it’s just rich, so we can’t say it is. Even when it was preserving the knowledge of the Greeks, inventing chemistry and mathematics (that it largely stole from the Hindus) it was barbarous…
Don’t confuse Barbary and barbaric. They are both of similar Greco-Roman origin, but have come to mean vastly different things.
I’m old fashioned. Barbary is where barbarians come from. Most of the planet now, rather than the coast…
While you’re right, it’s only fair to say that the whole world is barbarous when held to those kind of standards.
Not that you’d ever shy away from stating that, of course.
“(ie save our pets, save the whales, save the planet) ”
I definitely agree that our national debt will affect the kids of our generation in a horrible way, and I’ve been worried about it as Reagan, Bush I and Bush II ran up a nine and a half trillion dollar debt. I’m no less worried about Obama’s deficits.
Still, you seem to think environmental issues will not affect our kids. Would you expect our kids to be affected by, say, a global shift of over 1 billion people as they are forced out of low lying coastal regions by rising sea waters? How about those who will be forced to move by the failure of water supplies as the glaciers that supply many urban centers evaporate?
you understand that basically for every glacier melting there’s one or more glaciers expanding, right? No one can even prove that there will be a rise in sea level because of global warming, which, if true, is certainly not man-made. We can’t “save the planet” because we cannot “destroy the planet”, even if we nuked ourselves to oblivion life would eventually continue and Earth will be chugging along happily. We’re just another species.
You’re right, I guess…Nothing we do matters! So let’s get t’killin’ them whales! Shore is fun making things smoggy and dirty!
you missed my point didn’t you?
Yes, I most certainly did. You said that man isn’t causing global warming. Which is a fine, if counter-factual, opinion to have. But you must’ve had some larger point behind it.
OP said kids will probably not be affected by environmental issues. PortlandMark disagreed. You then came in and said “Man isn’t causing global warming.” Which is either trying to go towards the “kids will not be affected by environmental issues” point or it’s non sequitur. I assumed you were spouting off in relation to the actual disagreement. I guess that was a bad assumption.
No, i was just responding to those questions at the end of your post. But anyway, why is it counter-factual? On your side you believe scientists saying that man-made global warming is true, and on my side i believe those that say its not. Yes, there are scientists that have evidence that points to global warning either being natural or non-existent, and they’re largely ignored by the media which is busy plugging the importance of fighting global warming. Much of my mind was made up by Micheal Crichton’s state of fear.
Is global warming real? pretty much. The planet was colder than it had been prior to the building of the Pyramids since about AD40.
Thing is no one really knows the cause. Might be us, but the average scientist seems to have an aversion to catastrophic change, despite there being every evidence of catastrophic change in the geologic record. It’s written on the face of every rocky planet and planetoid we’ve visited. I blame the hold of the Judeao-Christian view on that. Having said that, people deliberately wasting what we don’t know to be renewable resource is wrong, but I have the feeling that most of the chicken little crying is pissing in the wind.
Regulars here know I’m pretty apolitical.
My eval of the science:-
1) Global warming is real
2) It may be man made, but looking dispassionately at the geology, it’s nothing new. Similar rates in the onset of climate ‘change’ (up or down) have been seen. Man has been around for 1,000,000 years (give or take). We got fire 20,000 years ago. We’ve been industrialised for 200 years. We became significantly visible from space only in my lifetime. In effect, you’re looking at something that has become a significant effect in less than 60 years. This doesn’t correlate with either biomass or technology. Thus, I’d say we’re not proven as the root cause. Note that the Fall of the Roman Empire was concomitant with a global cooling, without any noticeable terrestrial cause. For the Brits among us, there was wine production in Carlisle until about 10 years before the Romans left.
To me, we’re looking at the other hockey stick graph… and what caused it… let’s say the god’s are angry…
true, we probably can’t destroy the earth. However, we can make uninhabitable for humans for long enough to kill ourselves off…which, for all intents and purposes is the same thing from our perspective.
As for global warming not being human-accelerated…perhaps you should try reading at least one of the many peer-reviewed articles written by climatologists on the issue…
The states were democracies, before the population grew too big to be realistic.
The States have too many people to be a democratic? Jesus, 40 of them have less than 7.5million people (the population of Greater London). How few people do you want?
Sorry, it was posted to the wrong thread thing. But it was truly democratic when there were only a few thousand people per state. There weren’t any boards or governors; whenever there was something concerning the state, the citizens just voted for it.
This. The IPCC, AAAS, AGU, AMS, and APS, along with dozens of other national and international scientific academies have concluded that anthropogenic pollutants are at least contributing to climate change (if not the original source). Sorry for the OT post, I didn’t mean to nest it under your comment.
You are factually wrong about the accretion of new glaciers being equal to the loss of glaciers. Even if you weren’t, the new glaciers forming in, say, some remote part of Antarctica will not help India, when India is in danger of prolonged periods of drought when the glaciers in the Himalayas disappear. I guarantee you, when China and India start looking for a solution to their problems, it will become our problem as well.
As for saving the Earth, I agree. We cannot possibly destroy all life on Earth. We can only, at worst, hit the reset button and bring everything back to the primordial soup phase. Personally, I consider this a bad thing, but at least I wouldn’t have to listen to any more idiot tea baggers.
I don’t see how the reset is a bad thing. We arose. We shall pass. Big fat hairy deal.
Speak for yourself Old Man! I still have beers to drink and bottoms to pinch before I’m ready to kick the bucket! :^)
Damn straight! I haven’t had nearly enough pairs of boobies mashed around my face to die just yet!
You’ve actually hit upon one of the reasons the so-called green revolution of the second half of the last century was so much more successful in Asia than in Africa or South America…the quality of the soil, which is a direct product of glacial action. The continents of the northern hemisphere are contiguous with the glacial regions of the north, but the Antarctic has no connection to other land masses. The soil of sub-Saharan Africa and South America is old, played out stuff that hasn’t had the turnover and resultant enrichment that glacial movement brought to the north.
One thing you missed was that 650billion went to a down payment on nationalized health care. Then there was 400+ billion spent on keeping the government running in the omnibus bill. The 25 (or was it 50) billion dollars given to GM. Then GM was forced to change its lineup of vehicles and the president fired the CEO when they didnt do it the way he wanted. Now they are looking like they are going bankrupt anyway so we basically just blew 25 billion to keep them running for another 3-6 months… If they were going to fail they should have failed. If you make bad decisions you have to suffer the consequences. Being propped up by the government is not only unconstitutional but its a waste of other people’s money.
The tea party protests are all about that sort of wasteful spending no matter what its spent on. The reason these people are pissed is because bush doubled the debt in his 8 years and obama has put us on a path to double it again in 4 years. When you keep borrowing money from other countries or print more money long enough it will come back to bite us in the ass and our children and grand children will end up owing china their paychecks. That’s not just the republicans that’s everyone thats going to be screwed by this out of control spending.
When democrats protest about saving the whales or cutting co2 emissions, thats great but they are calling for more government action and more control over our lives. Government action takes tax dollars and once a government program starts it never gets smaller.
The EPA started out doing great things in the 60′s I think it was when Nixon started it. Now they just announced that co2 emissions “pose a real serious threat to the environment” and I could be off on the quote but they basically said that any company or any machine that emits co2 can and should be regulated by them.
Look at what california is doing… they are trying to ban cars painted black and crt tvs. The cars because they get hotter and need more AC to cool them down and the tv’s because they use more electricity. Great ideas in theory and Im sure they mean well but its another form of government control of your life. no one should have the right to tell you how to live your life as long as you dont hurt anyone else.
But the more you vote for big government the more freedoms you lose. Likewise in any emergency (including 9/11) we should not allow our government to fundamentally alter our rights to solve a “crisis” either.
The tea party protests… my that was a joke. A prime example of neotony.
I do like the idea that they didn’t get permits in some places. One could almost think they wanted engineer a kick off with Law enforcement, if one was a cynic…
It’s brainwashing either way. Any one that decides to picket or protest or march, get a babysitter and leave the tykes at home. Don’t politicize your children.
Their better off knowing what’s going on now so they can at least prepare for the future.
Then why not give them the news. I came from a home that was politically “Off the edge of the map, here there be monsters” territory. So that both conservative-rail-up-ass-listed-democrat dad and bleeding-heart-liberal-listed-republican mom both got their say, each of the three kids saw news shows biased toward both sides.
Why not? The family is a unit. What values and beliefs the parents hold should be passed to the children and the biased media shouldn’t raise them.
Because our children HAVE no thoughts of their own!
Please. A parent’s duty is to help a child develop their own indepenent, questioning mind. What they chose to think with it is up to them.
Pardon? Of course they have thoughts of their own. Unless they lay and drool most of the time, children think a lot… or was that a rhetorical question with incorrect punctuation?
I didn’t want to throw the exclamation-question, and thought it would be clear enough. Internet, you have foiled me once again… it was a weak attempt at sarcasm.
No I actually caught the sarcasm. I think it was the all-capital “HAVE” that did it.
Children think a lot. As far as political thoughts, not so much. But I was not talking about political beliefs that should be passed on. I was talking about basic values and beliefs that the parents hold. If I believe strongly in something, and I feel that it is right, I will raise my child to do the same.
Everything is relative, so although you might think what I believe in is wrong, it is still what I will teach my child.
Simply because it is my child and it is my prerogative to raise them as such.
The very fact that children have only rudimentary opinions of their environment is even more reason that they should not be raised by a television.
It is the parent’s responsibility to raise the child.
While I don’t think that you should plop a sign on a kid when the kid doesn’t really have an idea why he is holding the sign, I still believe that the parent’s have every right to do so. Because the children belong to them and no one else.
I agree that a parent has a responsibility to raise a child. But I think it’s important to understand what that means.
I’d say that raising a child is about helping them become a happy, functional adult. A big part of that, in my opinion, is having an open, questioning mind.
I’d say a parent’s duty is to encourage their kid to think for themselves. When they can manage it, let them make choices for themselves.
Once they are old enough to understand, introduce them to the important issues. Explain what you think, and why you think it’s a good idea, but let them make up their own mind, based on a fair analysis of the evidence.
Depending on their age, that might be sitting them down and talking to them, giving them some reference books, or a few quality newspapers, or a free and open internet search.
Trying to force them to believe what you do will only make them resent you in time, and encourage them to rebel. It’s going to help them a lot more in the long run if you equip them to figure things out for themselves.
Children are not property but they still belong to the parents. If not the parents, who do they belong to?
You are having trouble differentiating between property that you use/sell/trade and something that belongs to you.
The idea of family is that the family belongs to each family member. And you belong to it.
It is mostly to show that you have a responsibility to the children that belong to you. If you claim that children don’t belong to you then you are also saying you have no responsibility to those children.
Until 18 children belong to their parents and must get emancipated to break that bond.
Oh and yes, hey have yet to find an effective way to communicate sarcasm over the interwebs. I think this problem isn’t new. Written word has no tones or feelings, except for those explained by the author.
Problem is, when you explain that you are going to be sarcastic, it sort of loses the snap to it.
I meant “they”, not “hey”.
That’s my pet peeve. I was at a protest rally, when some people sent their kids over to hassle me, without knowing who I was, my state of mind and what I might have in my pockets.
Really, I have spent time in a mental institution. For real.
If only they’d known.
It really is that the worst candidates for raising children are parents.
Actually It’s all brainwashing.
No it’s not. It’s education. Rich kids get more/better.
So you’ve heard…
Liberals call conservatives fascists.
Conservatives call liberals communists.
As far as I’m concerned, they’re both idiots. Both sides want people to follow them unquestioningly, while ridiculing the other. Each side is as bad as the other.
The funny thing about calling Conservatives fascists is that fascists are socialists…..
People choose a side because each side represents something. People like you (probably a neutral voter, if you vote) are the most foolish, because you’ll vote for a democrat one election because you like that guy, then vote republican the next because you like HIM. You vote for almost complete opposites because the guy has good speech writers, pretty much.
As opposed to blindly following one party -no matter what changes it undergoes- all the time, without paying attention to the other side of the argument?
I’m not saying you should never change, just that you SHOULD consider yourself either a Rep. Or Dem., especially if you’re voting for one of them. The idea that you’re neutral is broken the moment you cast your ballot
The idea that you’re neutral is broken the moment you cast your ballot
Well, naw…
You can be neutral up until the point when one of the candidates proves to you that you should vote for them.
Then you vote for the person whose lies you like.
As Chris Rock said, some things I’m liberal on. Other things I’m more conservative. As politically liberal as I come off here, there are some things I’m a little more conservative on, and I would have no problem voting for the right Republican. There just haven’t been any I want to vote for lately.
Even as a lefty, I just COULDN’T vote for the Democrat in a few cases–John Silber in particular. One weird, paranoid, very smart man…he was mostly right, but brutal about it while running Boston U, and there was no way I wanted someone that brutal and paranoid running my state!
I thought you were going to take it all the way back to Bulger vs. Romney.
When you have to choose between a crook and a zealot, choose the crook. At least he’ll screw you over predictably, for practical reasons.
Know Grinbig well, do you?
Guess what, meooot. People can’t be categorized that simply. Some of us who vote for the best candidate, rather than along party lines, ARE sticking to an ideal. Because the candidates don’t. You think W really practiced conservatism? Or that McCain would’ve? Or even that Obama’s really going to stick fast to liberal principles?
You have to vote for who you believe will get the most important parts of your agenda accomplished. And that isn’t always the guy from the same party.
Fascists are fascists, not socialists or communists or capitalists. Fascism is different, and deals more with militarism and nationalism. As in, yay state pride! Yay my government! Yay let’s march off to war for the glory of our wonderful precious state, and all that good crap.
That said, I don’t think conservatives or liberals are fascists. We might slip into fascism in the future, but at the moment, it’s not quite here.
Rabid nationalism is one aspect of fascism, but another is the intertwining of interests between the state and corporate factions. This is as much government becoming an arm of the corporations as corporations becoming an arm of the government – Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex becoming too powerful fits in very well here.
So does the revolving door between Goldman Sachs and Washington.
@meooot
Actually, no, they’re not ‘socialists’, they’re corporatist. It’s a subtle difference, but generally, it’s a govt stake, rather than out right ownership, that is a lynch pin of Fascist thinking. It keeps jobs in country. Basically, the Bush-Obama bailout is corporatist, not socialist, thus owes more to Mussolini than Marx (I would have said Engels, but it lacks alliteration)
Our nation is incredibly divided. More so than I’ve ever seen in my life. I say that we either split it down the middle and each side take a side (which is ridiculous), or we all just shut up about our fundamental beliefs and learn to live with each other.
We are all Americans (unless you’re not an American and you’re just reading this) and we should remember that. We all hold very different beliefs but we also hold some of the same. One belief we all share is that America is the greatest nation on earth and we should act like it.
If you don’t believe that maybe you need to rethink your loyalties.
I would take more issue with the FACT that these kids are ALREADY in debt for tens of thousands of tax dollars and you want to complain about their signs.
It’s paying for the Reagan boom… and the myth of Austrian School.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
You’re all morons
Does adding more “O”s mean you’re laughing louder or longer?
Just pronounce it like school.
The capitals mean he’s serious….
I’d have said ‘delerious’, but it’s all good.
after huffing evo-stik from crisp packets that long, you can expect nothing more…
Uh, okay.
So you’re saying Laugh Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Loud? That doesn’t make much sense except that you’re definitely out.
It does if you’re stone or have systemic necrotic processes in the cerebellum…
Maybe he’s stuttering.
At the risk of being harsh… I hope he’s choking on his tongue.
How about keeping the “teabagging” label for the perverts who demean their humanity that way?
It was a tea PARTY protest, named in honor of the original tea party in Boston, where the message was NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.
Except the folks who attended these tea parties have representation. The fact that they are pissed off at them is another matter altogether and the actual reason for the rally.
Anastasia is 100% correct. I find it extremely offensive that it was labeled as “teabagging”. I guess we can thank CNN for that one.
Actually the GOP used the term a lot… then someone told them what it meant…
I find it funny.
Ditto.
If you’re from DC you could have a “no taxation without representation.” Otherwise, not an accurate protest… as pointed by lowly grunt
Can you be serious?
Congress and the current resident of the White House have just indebted us for generations to come.
Did you want that? I sure as hell didn’t, and it was done without my consent and my representatives ignored me and many others about the issue because our darling lightworker created panic and confusion.
That is taxation without representation, and we have every right to protest, and our children have every right to protest being saddled with this irresponsible, unconstitutional THEFT.
Did you vote? Then you were represented. If you don’t agree with the majority, you have every right to use the legal means at your disposal (such as protest) to make that clear.
Unless you want to argue for direct democracy, of course.
Or there is the EXTREME message…
[Link]
Point of order: The Congress has only caused the government to indebt itself. You and I, and every individual, is free from any of the national debt. The government is also free to declare that debt invalid, and nobody, anywhere, would have any legal recourse.
Nobody will ever pass a law wiping the debt out, because nobody would ever make a business transaction with the government again, but that’s a practical concern. There’s no legal or even moral obligation for the government to not pass or repeal any given law.
Maybe not where you or I live.
But America has a Constitution. Not that’s it’s relevant in this case, but still. The principle is unsound.
What does the Constitution say regarding the matter? I believe that Congress, in the performance of its duties, explicitly has the responsibility to indebt the government, and to levy taxes and duties as it determines are needed.
(Note that the People and States have ‘rights’, while Congress and the President have ‘powers’ ‘duties’ and ‘responsibilities’ congress does not have ‘rights’)
I was saying that “There’s no legal or even moral obligation for the government to not pass or repeal any given law” is inaccurate in principle.
As far as I know, you’re right about the constitution not applying to this case.
Anya, sweetie, I’ll make a deal with you.
You make under $250,000 a year, right? If you do, here’s the deal.
Make the same amount in 2009 as 2008, and if your 2009 tax is higher than your 2008 tax? I’ll pay the difference.
But if it’s less, you pay me the difference.
Then we’ll talk again about the validity of your comparison to the Boston Tea Party (which was actually a protest against the British East India Company being EXEMPT from excise taxes that merchants in the Colonies had to pay).
I’ll bet you a dollar that Anastasia will not take you up on that!
Could I be more fair?
Are you just counting income taxes, or are you factoring in all the other taxes (gas, beer, cigarettes, sales, sin, phone, etcetera) and the cost of those taxes on businesses and corporate gains that inevitabley get passed down to the consumer?
Inflation has a good shot at giving Anya the win.
Those are inconvenient taxes largely ignored by those who’d rather think of it as an income tax decrease.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander! LOL
Political humor (on a political humor site) is only OK when it’s against the other guys. ANGRY NOISES! RAWR!
Are those Palin kids?
They’re not vacant looking enough…
Seeing kids at the protest was disheartening, considering what it was truly about. Wasn’t conservative, Republican, or whatever. This is a battle people have been trying to fight independent of party lines for the past twenty some-odd years. The whole trying to get the people to wake up and realize that the administrations from the past twenty years or so have been doing nothing but shredding the Constitution and leaving the general populace as disenfranchised as ever. It’s not about Obama, Democrats, or the Left. It’s about self-serving, career politicians who don’t care about the country, and just want to use seats of power as their ATM. It’s about being against the Patriot Act, Big government, and socialism (which, contrary to the less intelligent of those who showed to the protests, is quite different from Facism… which we’re not aiming for either.) Nevermind the fact that Jon Stewart’s clips focused on those who brought the wrong message with them to these protests. Said protestors need to re-think and realize they’re wrong. For the rest of us, we have one goal, and one goal only: Bring America back to the Constitution and reduce the size of the government as a whole. Any government big enough to give you everything you want, is also big enough to take everything away.
Bringing kids to a political protest is no better than likening a political figure to Hitler, or throwing around the “facist” term. So – while some of the protesters blatantly were in the wrong, there were people who showed for the “right” reasons, and were at least respectable in exercising their rights to freedom of speech and assembly. It’s funny, groups like GreenPeace attack ships in international waters, and they’re “a legitimate activist group”, but a bunch of people get together to show distaste for the direction of the country, and they’re “right-wing extremists.”
try complaining about the tax hikes or the school union raping the tax payers… and your a right wing nut, apparently
PETA is a terrorist organization
Always hurting me with all those naked women… girls making out with one another… yeah, they’re definitely on the same plane as the TaliFreakingBan.
Trouble is, veggies always leave an oniony taste after kissing…
Hmm, I wonder if a Latina PETA member would be even spicier. I do believe that’s a subject that deserves further investigation.
You’re one of the original Ron Paul tea-partiers, aren’t you?
I bet you’re pissed off about the mainstream GOOPers co-opting your protest. I know I’d be, if it were me.
Negative. I’m just pissed at the government and people in general. People as a whole are too stupid to realize what they actually need in a government (hence the incredibly large federal control we already have) and the government itself is playing predator to that stupidity, using the democratic process to their advantage. With more and more unconstitutional laws reaching the books negating the Constitution every year *coughpatriotactcough* *coughhr1022cough*… the people have no choice but to eliminate the corruption via any means possible. The problem is, the majority of the people in the country are too stupid to realize that a problem exists, compliments of a failed education system.
And the bull they’re fed on TV as ‘news’…
You don’t see that stupidity as an argument for a government big enough to, say, provide a decent education system?
Not the Federal government, no. State and local governments? Yes. Allow the political power to reside as close to the people as possible. Allow it to remain as accessible as possible. Once again – keeping it all in D.C. leaves people on the westernmost ends of the country unable to march on the Capitol as necessary in case the educational system starts shoving “Robin Hood” down our throats even further.
Fair enough. I’d agree that looking carefully at what you want to achieve then figuring out the government you need for that is the way forward. Keeping things transparent and accountable is something I’m onboard with to the end.
Though I think you’d find that empowered local government would lead to a hell of a lot of ‘robin hood’ redistribution. If ten workers and one foreman vote on wages, you can bet it’ll end up a lot more even than if the workers don’t care enough to show up on polling day.
God, this wesite is so liberal.
I mean, this is bullshike! Who captioned this? I would just lke to give them a little run-down of my dictator obama’s plan. He’s going to take from the rich to give to the poor. just like robin hood, right? Well, I’m not for rich people. As a lower middle class, I’m kind of against them. all the ones I know are spoiled brats. But anyway, they are rich because they OWN the businesses that people like ME work for. They’ll start paying their employees less, so that they spend less, so they’ll have more for themseleves. I
ll have to expond on te fairness dotrine late, though. Damn! I’d be mad to, if i were those boys!
You seem to fit exactly what I was speaking out against.
1) You still don’t know what liberal means.
2) You completely miss the freaking point – it’s about how NEITHER SIDE should be using children to score political points with photo ops.
3) Go ahead and “expond” (or expound, if you do it in English) on the fairness doctrine, but you’ll be the ONLY one doing so. The administration has repeatedly said they have no interest in bringing it back – it’s a bullshit propaganda strawman the far right keeps propping up so they can whip up fury about people “wanting to ban Rush.” It’s a LIE.
4) The tax increase on people making over a quarter million a year, that so many idiots think is going to be bloody financial Armageddon? FOUR points. Bringing the top marginal rate to what it was in the boomingly successful Clinton years. Keeping it TEN points lower than it was for most of the Reagan administration.
I don’t think you’ve been dishonest, I just think you’ve been misled.
The Dow average was around 1,000 for nearly 100 years (save for 1929) before Clinton. That boomingly successful set of years were a list of false inflation culminating in the subsequent .Com market crash as the overinflated bubble popped. Those same unethical, flat-out greedy day traders moved from the .com market to the housing and oil markets, heavily overinflating those as well, hence the wonderful crap Obama was elected into. Those day traders weren’t capitalists, they were leeches. True capitalism exists when the capitalist keeps the cash-cow alive and milks it for as long as they can. They try to keep prices competitive so people can afford their products. They try to keep the market alive as long as possible, for when you kill the cash-cow, you kill your source of income.
Oh, please… the ‘new true scotsman’ ploy. Bollocks. Markets are not self regulating, they’re army ants…
You live in fairy land…
If it’s as you say, then how can you explain the massive false growth from 1996 until mid-2007? Believe me, it’s the day-traders. Check the 100-year historical charts. If it’s a crock, then please explain the relative stability of the market from 1950-roughly 1996? Notice, between 1923 and 1929, there was exponential growth, then the whole thing crashed. Once again, from 1996-2007, there was exponential growth. In similar fashion to 1923-1929, the market was largely unregulated and left to the bottom-feeders of the financial world. Now that those bottom-feeders have killed the cash cow, we’re only kept at this current point on the scale due to the corporatist bailouts being handed out by the former, and current administration. Big government is to blame, and it all needs to be brought back to the Constitution, and back to leaving the States the power they were supposedly endowed from the beginning.
You’re on the right track here. But tracing back to the Clinton administration is a tad shaky. It takes time for these charlie-foxtrots to build momentum. I think you’ll find the stage was set by the religious faith in deregulation that arose in the Reagan years and, regrettably, accelerated through the Clinton administration, culminating in Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999 and Bushco’s gelding of the SEC.
I think you’re just a flaming, liberal homosexual.
-Ahem- LIBERAL: to give freely. Yes, that is why this administration is going to fail. I DO NOT WANT this administration to fail, it is just a possibility. People without jobs will rampantly support whatever Obama-Akbar says, because he’s going to give people who won’t get off their lazy arses a freebie. Some people can’t work. I know this. THEY are the ones who need this money, NOT people like my sister. I went to a teaparty, and you must understand–you are not dealing with people who are lackingly informed. Most of the people there were actually mentally sound. I even saw a group of teens (about sixteen) who went of their own accord. Perhaps you have been misled. I apologize for my rant, and sincerely wish you will see the light when all of your constitutional rights have been revoked. Have a wonderful, liberal day.
Yeah big businesses that are tanking and going bankrupt by the minute. Small businesses owned by lower payed people are the foundation of America. They will be the ones left when this is all over.
Silly to get your children holding signs. but the reason is good! especially in cowlifornia, where taxes are going beyond any other states, and the liar governor wants moar!
then again, taxing the rich to feed the poor? yes. lets tax the well to do people to feed the non high school grads and the people who screwed around and made babies before they were financially sound.
we all screwed! *mad cackle*
Hm, do you make over 250,000 a year?
Being financially sound is making enough to support your self, your family, your bills. Most people do not need 250 grand to do so. So in all fairness they don’t need a lot of that money.
Somehow, I doubt they see that quarter million…
so, if you make over 250k, you can’t keep it? wow… socialism at work!
ah, I see… you’re a moron…
come up with a proper retort!
You are awesome.
Of course it’s Good Values when conservatives do it. Didn’t you know? Conservative values are inherently BETTER than liberal ones!
DO NOT WANT
Just for the record these are supposed to be- and usually are- bipartisan events. In most areas these events have brought together equal amounts of Dems and Reps. If you want and example of media bias (neither liberal nor conservative, but toward shok and entertainment value) call up your local Tea Party representative or attend an event and get the facts. Just a shameless plug, sorry…
By the way, there is no “Tea Party” as of yet. Just wanted to avoid any confusion.
That’s a bit dishonest. Democrats show up at these things, try to tell people the TRUTH about what’s going on rather than the Fox News spin, and get chased off with boos and threats.
I’m actually indirectly involved in running these events. In my area, on of the largest democratic areas in the country, not a single person showed up to protest the protest and a large number of Democratic public officials came to show their support. The protest isn’t against Obama, in fact many people brought Obama/Biden signs along with their rally signs. Obviously things don’t go down the same everywhere, but the movement was by independents, not Republicans. The protest was designed to protest a piece of legislation that really started with the bogus bailouts and has been continued as “a stimulus package.” They’re really one in the same.
They’re still dragging it on and on? It’s just embarrassing…
You know you’ve maxed out on lame when it isn’t even worth it to tell you what an idiot you’re being.
Like she knows you’re talking to her… self reflection isn’t a strong suit with that one…
Alternately, the kids’ signs might have read: “Sharing is naughty!” – “I oppose society!” – “Freeloader” – “I want lots of government services but I don’t want to pay for any of them” – “Who needs police and firefighters anyway?” – and finally – “Love thy neighbor? Go to hell!”
Give it time… we get them here all the while.
Lawl. The government doesn’t need half of what it gets. Eliminate pork-barrel spending, reduce the presidential, congressional, and other salaries. Make tax codes easier (21% federally flat across the board.) Reduce the size of the IRS, the government’s most wasteful organization to date. Reduce social spending, for most social programs are broken and are in need of reform or elimination. The federal government does not fund the police or firefighters. State and local governments do. Give states their rights back, and reduce the size and power of the Feds and I’d be happy.
The reason most people don’t get involved politically is because Washington DC is too far to travel to march on. A state capitol, a county seat, a town hall is much easier, and closer to march on. Give states their rights back, and people will become more active in politics as a whole, because it’s more accessible.
But we don’t want to give people any power, do we? Because that would be bad for the welfare freeloader who just got a house, two boats, and a new Cadillac CTS on my tax dollars. (True story, Westhampton, NY. Look it up, happened in ’08.)
Right on! Here’s a man who knows his stuff.
Coming from Captain Free-Market, I think eddie should be insulted by you saying that. You seem to have the most tenuous grasp of how large businesses work…
A+
Country is broke and people still want taxcuts?
How much is enough on the credit card?
The GOVERNMENT is broke, not the country. The way to make sure the COUNTRY does go broke is to take money (in the form of increased taxes) away from the people who make this economy run.
The economy is NOT the government. The economy IS corporate America and the Americans (of all income levels) those businesses employ.
The business of America IS business!
If people will keep riding red on the table, then sooner or later black, 0, or 00 will come up… only in a Casino, you don’t whine so much, otherwise you get kicked out.
Absolutely true, however many of these problems started when the Government started artificially protecting business. People are saying capitalism is failing, but capitalism isn’t even a work much in this country anymore. Capitalism means business should be left alone to fail if they do shitty business and businesses should compete, ultimately to the benefit of the consumer. Neither of these things are true anymore.
Bingo! Right on the nose!
Like you could win an arse hunting contest allowed the use of both hands, a copy of the current printing of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and a lighted blowtorch…
And if the financial institutions largely failed en-mass, you’d end up with a monopoly in the financial services sector.
I really loathe the idea of bailing the iniquitous, money grubbing, slime, and their only 24x7x52 floating craps game, but the alternative would be dealing with THE Bank… and I know how much ‘free marketeers’ (generally people who couldn’t run a dress shop are the loudest on this crap) love the idea of monopolies…
This is exactly why the gummint does NOT want Goldman Sachs to pay back the TARP money right now. The TARP is the only federal aid they took with restrictions on bonuses and compensation. If they dropped that whilst keeping all the other goodies, they’d be able to plunder the executive offices of the competition for the best talent and end up all but monopolizing the field.
This makes me sad.
Not because of the signs that they are wearing, but because someone already made up their mind before they can fully understand whats even going on.
That is part of the learning process. We are taught by our parents, and hopefully when we reach adulthood we are capable of forming our own opinions. I’m sure you haven’t bought into everything your parents taught you, did you?
Problem with the ‘right’ (note quotes) is that they seem to tie religion to politics. And religion is a filthy meme to impose on a child at the best of times and look at the cripples who turn up here hobbled by the whole religous/political meme mix…
“I’m sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we’re Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.”
-Senator Hilary Clinton
And quoting that vile old harridan proves what?
That she’s right.
So damn true.
Though I’d argue that there are almost as many people who treat Government as something pretty close to their religion.
At least the Church only wants everybody to tithe ten percent.
I pretty much believe the same things about God that I do about Government:
It exists… somewhere… but it isn’t like what everybody thinks it’s like. It may run things, but it doesn’t care about us as people, it doesn’t listen to our entreaties, and it has no real interest in helping us.
If you don’t believe government exists and has an effect in your life, try not paying your taxes! You will become a true believer real quick!
Unless you are an Obama cabinet appointee! LOL
Politics weren’t talked about in my house.
I have no idea who either of my parents ever voted for.
I don’t know whether they are pro life or pro choice.
I have no idea if they are republican, democrat or other.
Ideas and theories weren’t forced upon me.
Then you’re the exception rather than the rule. In most households the children are taught the fundamentals of right and wrong. Aside from that, they also pick up on things that mom and dad believe in, whether it’s pro-life, pro-choice, Republican, Democrat, bigotry, tolerance, exceptance, rejection. My point is, if everyone was raised as you were, then in all likelihood the stupidity that goes on daily around us would probably cease.
Are these the original thoughts of the children, or is this a plot created by the parents to induce guilt?
More conservative-bashing. Yawn. Come back when you have original material.
Agreed. You’d think no liberal had ever done anything worthy of a slap upside the head.
When will Americans learn that “Lego” doen’t need pluralising?
Lego my Eggo!
Liberals indoctrinate, conservatives educate. Jeez you guys, learn! *end sarcasm* Honestly though, the kids will eventually form their own opinions in their teenage years, when your rebellious and hate your parents for not letting you go to the concert etc. etc.
And in their forties, they will end up being just like the parents they “hated” for not letting them go to the concert when they were teens!
I think we’re all missing the point here.
It’s Lego – not Legos! There’s no S at the end.
Dear Parents and Children
The word LEGO(R) is a brand name and is very special to all of
us in the LEGO Group Companies. We would sincerely like your
help in keeping it special. Please always refer to our bricks
as ‘LEGO Bricks or Toys’ and not ‘LEGOS.’ By doing so, you will
be helping to protect and preserve a brand of which we are very
proud and that stands for quality the world over. Thank you!
Susan Williams
Consumer Services (Susan’s name is a
pseudonym for the service dptmt.)
ROFL! Sorry I can’t link to the web page …
Nesting fail. @Gustav
The question of election alone does not settle the matter of whether or not someone is a dictator, or behaves dictatorially.
Cuz one view is right and one is wrong.
No no, here’s how it is:
When someone teaches their children something you don’t believe in, its brainwashing and indoctrination.
When someone teaches their children something you believe in (or you teach your own children something you believe in), its good values and proper education.
You see, the difference is, Conservative PARENTS are teaching the kids what to think, not crappy cartoons, daytime TV and Liberal school teachers and principals. That’s the difference.
Though I appreaciate your prim grammar, that is rude. Especially on the LOL circuit, where it is expected and approved.
What was I thinking?
The hypocrisy of the caption is readily apparent. Trying to make a political statement while rendering your point invalid is the utmost of hilarity.
Yup it’s brainwashing. But so is teaching a kid anything.
Of course learning math and being lead to preach propoganda in a highly emotionally charged atmosphere are two different types of brainwashing.
It doesnt guarantee they will keep their political views but more than likely they will have very strong and narrow minded views as a result.
That goes for whether they are conservative or liberal kids at rallies or protests or marches.
Let kids be kids, they got enough to worry about without being afraid the world will collapse any moment.
It’s almost as bad as the doctrine of hell shoved down their throats by religion.
Um, Obama was the one who came up with that stupid “redistribute” plan and not a right wing assumption. It’s obvious what side this site is on
You mean the spoiled brats don’t want to share their toys? Don’t they have any broughten-upness?
someone woke up on the partisan side of the bed this morning…
It’s the difference between re-enforcing the values parents teach their kids at home… and substituting different ones.
…in 20 years the Liberals will be wearing these…
EXACTLY.
Everyone uses kids to promote their political agenda. Get over it. Besides conservative values have been held for generations generally, or were never an issue (ie protection of marriage, anti abortion, religion, etc) until recently. So it is good values because conservatism generally promotes values that have been traditionally seen as good, even though the extreme ends of both sides brainwash their children.