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Another patriotic American who plans to give back her Social Security checks and never use Medicare even if she’s old and poor.
Yeah, right.
(Tax Day Teabagger)
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this is goram funny
And sad all at the same time. In the Constitution it does mention something about the welfare of the people, but no where does it say anything about legislating morality.
The Constitution was made by people of morality.
Who went out of their way to not legislate morality, they kinda made a big point about it in fact.
Ben Franklin was an athiest. Just FYI
So you think atheism moral?
Yep. More moral that theism in some regards, in that it requires true examination of one’s beliefs rather than blindly accepting a prescribed code.
That, to me, is what “morals” is all about, working out what is really right or wrong.
How does theism necessarily require blind acceptance of a prescribed moral code?
Atheists tend to be logical and non-violent. When have theists EVER been so?
When they practice a religion that encourages them to be logical and non-violent.
If religions encouraged logic, there wouldn’t be any religions.
They encourage more logic than you may think.
Religion encourages an ABSENCE of logic. Not to mention Genocide, Racism, Sexism, Murder, and Homophobia to name a few.
Hitler – atheist.
Stalin – atheist.
Pol Pot- atheist.
Mao- atheist.
Your argument really stands up, doesn’t it.
King Richard – Catholic
Napoleon – Catholic
Andrew Jackson – Christian
Spanish conquistadores – Catholic
Osama Bin Ladin – Muslim
Idi Amin – Muslim
sycophants, despots and mass murders span all religions, races, ethnic groups and creeds.
Hitler was an Occultist.
Atheism isn’t an organized religion. There is no ‘Atheist’ community or group.
Religion is organized and people kill for it. No one kills in the name of Atheism.
ooooh you came up with 3 and 1/2
bush- catholic
did more damage to the world you live in than any other. and liked to make his connection with “God” know. lol you argument doesn’t stand up does it?
Hitler was actually catholic. At least according to his own book “Mein Kampf.”
The other three were communist, but I’m sure that had *nothing* to do with why the had mass murders, right?
So where does it say that?
Mine does.
Like…….
tlhIngan lalDan, after the initial massacre. But after that they were basically emotionless.
+
Or maybe Buddhism.
Buddhism is more of a method of thought than a religion. Buddha is not seen as a god, more as an example of an ideal.
Buddha not being a god doesn’t make it not a religion. It’s convenient that when a religion doesn’t fit your above statements, you declare it not really a religion. Very logical of you.
No, Buddha said that he shouldn’t be worshipped and never stated that Buddhism is or should be a religion. If Buddhism were a religion, it would defeat the entire purpose of Buddhism.
The point that’s attempting to be made is that most of the world’s most aggressive entities have utilized religious convictions as a method of convincing their countries/justifying their actions that war against another country is moral.
Note that they were religious… but not moral. There is a distinct difference.
Buddhism is very much a politheistic religion. Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) is “The Awakened One” who achieved godhead. As such he is one of the many avatars of a god in Buddhism, as are each of the 28 Buddhas
Guess my ex-husband would be the “exception that proves the rule” then? Lol. I do think it’s a bit of an overgeneralization, though.
Heh heh….ex’s are always a rule unto themselves.
Let me qualify. It’s been my experience that atheists tend to be, in general, logical and non-violent. there are, of course….
EX-ceptions.
You have to distinguish between atheist individuals and atheism as a political/social force, just as one does between Christianity and a murder who happens to be Christian. I know some atheists who are self-righteous so-and-sos, but on the whole atheists (and agnostic) have not engaged in collective violence to spread their views.
I think the “organized atheists” call themselves secular humanists. I’ve never heard of anybody being killed in the name of secular humanism….but I could be wrong.
Morality doesn’t presuppose religion, so why would atheism be inherently immoral?
Theists tend to assume that good comes from or is illuminated by God. Some of the less wise ones then go on to speculate that without God, you can’t have / see good at all.
It’s an understandable logical trap, but flawed logic all the same.
Fundies also seem to think logic itself is evil. Go figure.
The first time I heard that I was shocked beyond belief. Just the use of ‘logic’ like it was a curse-word. It hadn’t even occured to me before then that anyone wouldn’t turn to logic to figure out tricky questions for themselves.
Quite the revelation.
Not only is “logic” a “curse-word”; the term “intellectual” is as well. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? In order to be a fundamentalist Christian (which by the way, according to them is the ONLY Christian denomination), once must reject logic and intelligence. I know this because an employer of mine IS a fundamentalist and has told me flat out this is what he (and those of his church) believe.
Scary, scary stuff.
You people are wacked. This bigorty and fear of Christians is so over-the-top it would be funny if it weren’t so insane. You know when fundamentalist Christians tend to use the word “logic” as a curse? When assh*les like yourselves bludgeon them with FALSE logic and tell them how stupid they are for not accepting it. That’s when.
Crow I’m not calling you a *liar* – at least not at this moment (though you very well might be) but I really have my doubts as to whether your employer (gee, he must not be too brain-dead, must he – he’s your boss, though I’m sure that’s no huge feat) ever made such a statement and that you’re not completely twisting it. It is possible – what is he, some kind of snake-handler? Does he live on a compound with an arsenal? In which case what is he doing running an ordinary business and being your boss? Because people who really believe that are *that* far out on the fringe, to the point they don’t function in ordinary society.
Well, maybe I am calling you a liar. Liar.
you seem to me like you are a fundamentalist christian, by you lack of the use of logic. if you were logical in the least you would realize that the comment you relied to referred to logic in the sense of evolution vs creationism. and yes they do STRONGLY discourage thinking for yourself outside of their conventions. I ask you that before you call some one else a liar that you try some black magic (logic and intelligence). you your self are a horrible christian for the way you berate others.
Oh yeah, you. I remember you from just about every discussion I’ve seen on this goddamn site, all of these times you have fulfilled the role of f-cktard very well. Could you please shut up? Just because not everybody shares your opinion doesn’t mean that your “they want to kill me” instincts flash. Emmbarrasing conservatives everywhere doesn’t get you any friends. It just makes you look like a massive jerk.
…and somehow it always descends into, “without MY god you can’t have/see good at all”. This is the eventual fate and curse of all religion, no matter how well meant in the beginning. It ALWAYS comes to the point where the organization supercedes the idea and becomes the focus, thus the insufferable arrogance of all organized religion. All religion is spiritual racism.
No. It does not matter if your Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Budhist, you still see good.
No, once you form the loyalty to whatever cult you choose you no longer see “good”. You see only the “good” that it tells you to see. You then see, and are encouraged by the cult to see, yourself (and your cult) as superior to all the other cults. It then always turns into Us vs Them. Always. Spiritual racism.
My organization does’nt say that at all.
….and that organization is?
Right on the dot.
To brak:
My organization is the Western Roman Catholic Church;-)
Of couse good is in all things, right?
Get yourself stung by a wasp and tell me all about the good in that….or contract a case of stage four pancreatic cancer and discourse on the good in it. No, my child…..good is NOT in all things. Don’t be silly.
I probably got stung because I threatened the wasps life in some way (which I would NEVER try to do), and the cancer occurs as nature takes its course. You my friend need to be slightly less shallow about the things in life.
Sigma has a point. But people themselves have the option to think deeply about their religion of choice, and many people change it when they see their’s is lacking some viewpoint that they’ve observed in the world around them or felt is a neccessary truth.
Also Brak, good can be found in someone’s viewpoint of a situation. Even at a situation’s worst, you can have some comfort in the thought that without the horrible things in life, the wonderfull things would have no contrast to be viewed by.
I guess I’m saying religion isn’t something to be condemmed or supported, it’s something that we all choose for ourselves to represent ourselves.
BTW, socialism seems more an economic and governmental belief than a religious one… so how did the topic start?
I watched two of my three best friends die slowly and miserably of pancreatic cancer. I could have done quite nicely without the “comfort” of the contrast. Things like cancer are not viewpoints. They are facts that stink that we must deal with. Some facts are just simply bad and no amount of happy-speak or Philosophy 101 will ever change that.
Contrary to what you might think, I am not an overly negative person. I have simply had to learn to live with the fact that bad things are bad and that’s that. You learn and you continue the best you can.
Enjoy your good, young one….I hope your bad holds off for a very long time.
Btw….as to the topic, things morph from one thing to the other around here….unpredictable. Cool.
lmao, perfect point. How did this get to religion?
Thats because it’s a good conversation, dude!
I came very close to going on a bit of a rant here but managed to calm down a bit first because I can see you mean well, you simply haven’t thought things out…otherwise you would not have had the temerity to call someone whose life story you do not know shallow. If I told you the things I have had to live though you would hang your head in shame for being such a condescending twit.
“….and the cancer occurs as nature takes it’s course.” Fine. this is fact. But the fact is BAD. Cancer is BAD. Always. No matter how you use some sort of religious cop out to cope with it, it is still bad. I’m sure when you get some more life experience under your belt, you’ll be a bit more charitable before you tell someone who is telling you a truth that they are shallow. How dare you.
‘TWIT!?’ [LOL]
O.K., you’ve hade some loss. I’ve had loss, too. I can see how you feel.
What I’m trying to say is that A) It’s natural, B) it happens, and if we can’t stop the loss of life it means it was their time. Fatalists and theists have almost the same acceptance.
Calling cancer bad is shallow? I would say just the opposite, someone who claims cancer is NOT bad is shallow and heartless beyond belief. My mom is dying of pancreatic cancer. It is not ‘good,’ unless you twist the definition of good and bad to the point of meaninglessness.
It is all about semantic framing. On one semantic level, good and bad are meaningful words that transmit fairly definite ideas. On another semantic level, nothing is good or bad, it just is. But on that level, ‘good’ is not in all things. In fact, there is no meaningful semantic level on which the idea of good exists without the idea of bad.
You can say, ‘nothing is good or bad,’ and you can say, ‘some things are good and some bad,’ but you can not say, ‘it’s all good,’ without negating the meaning of the word good. Get it?
Yes, things are good AND bad in some way, shape, or form. It’s just that most people tend to see mostly the gloom of the bad things in life and not enough good things.
But…but..if you believe in God, s/he’s going to illuminate good things regardless of whether atheists believe in him/her or not. An atheist Moses: “Whoa…burning bush and voices. Must be hallucinations from the mold on our food from living in a humid place. Better take everyone into the desert for a while so we can avoid doing any witch trials. We’ll have plenty of locusts to eat there.” Atheist non-murderer (most of them): “I don’t wanna die, so other people probably don’t either.” Same stuff happens. Atheism i not inherently immoral, and there’s no inherent reason for theists to see it that way.
Benjamin Franklin was a Deist, not an Atheist.
Ben Franklin…..the only President of the United States who was never President of the United States.
(apologies to Firesign Theater)
What makes you think Ben Franklin was an athiest?
uh… no he wasn’t. He was Christian.
uh … no, he wasn’t. he was a deist, it’s not the same thing.
Who says he was christian?
“lighthouses are more useful than churches”
ben franklin said that
yea… i doubt he was a christian
Actually, he wasn’t. FYI
Yes, but he never desired injustice to be accepted, hence why he was one of the founding fathers.
No, he more or less developed his own religious faith, he stated he believed in God, and that our actions were rewarded or punishd in the after.
Had Presbyterian leanings over all.
In fact, most of the founding fathers were Christian, though Thomas Jefferson was a Deist.
check your sources…modern atheism as we know it didnt exist until the late 19th century…and it was inflated by a scientific movement to release scientists from the bonds of morality and ethics concerning a supreme creator
…who owned slaves.
:/
Something accepted as a nesesity back then. You gotta think in retrospect.
Yep, slave owners, people who had affairs, people who treated women like property, and hemp growers… (Though I think the previous three far outweigh the last one myself).
…But the pamphlet said this was a Christian nation founded by christians. It MUST be true. They were all good christian churchgoers who wanted christian morality set in stone, right? Also a state religion, right??? The pamphlet said so….
LOL
Congrats to everybody above me! You actually managed to have a sane, logical discussion about religion without anybody blowing thier top, or saying anything condecending! I never thought I would see the day…
WE try do every day.
Yeah, hate to break it to you, but one jerk a little while up went Jesus-Rage on us.
No. People of morals, especialy these fine indeviduals, had more respect for others, like women. Their women had a lot of influince at the time.
Like Abigail Adams! Jefferson loved women as did Ben Franklin.
Hemp doesn’t have THC like Marijuana. It’s just a fiber. So you’re right, it’s not QUITE as important as the other three.
Caption Fail. Social security is not like welfare. By the time you can get SS you have been paying into the system for over fifty years. You only get some of your money back. Welfare on the other hand is collected by people who seldom contribute to the pool of funds used to support welfare recipients. People are entitled to the Social Security they paid for, the welfare is a gift from the people who work hard to support the people who can’t work or won’t work.
Ok…but the sign doesn’t have a slash over “welfare”. It has a slash over “socialism”. And Social Security is still socialist in nature.
On a semi-related note, it would be nice if people who were entitled to Social Security were actually going to get it, but many won’t. So maybe people will collect welfare instead, to get back some of the money they’ve paid in. Just a though.
Sorry…thought. Just a thought.
Assuming he truly wanted to get rid of all socialist policies, he would also be want to get rid of Social Security.
And to your point about people who were “entitled” to Social Security actually getting it, Republicans have been saying since, well, Social Security was created, that government programs like that eventually run out of money due to bureaucracy and mismanagement.
Point WIN. ^^^^^^
If you substitute “Social Security” with “welfare”, the caption still stands. People who seriously need welfare will almost certainly use it, and for good reason: they die horribly otherwise.
Apparently that is what Republitards would like for all of us.
Some one that really gets it.
It is about teaching a person to fish rather than giving away fish.
The more welfare we give out the closer we get to being socialized. Some people just don’t seem to get it. The more we give out the more people we will have that don’t know how to “fish”.
a manager of mine had something similar to say. ever wonder why people have so many allergies? it’s because of all the anti-bacterial soaps!
so it makes sense that if businesses/people are never given the chance to fail, they’ll never have their own reserves to back t hem up!
Except that you really don’t get what socialism really is. Sheesh. Where’s Seth when you need him.
I’m going to tell you a story. It’s about my aunt.
She has two kids neither of which are old enough to work. Their father is a deadbeat who has left their lives many years ago. Recently her kidneys and liver failed. Not because she was a drunk or anything like that, but because of Hepatitis. She had major intrusive surgery to replace them, and right now her immune system is depressed so that it doesn’t reject the new organs. No one else in my family can support them, we just don’t make that much money. She certainly can’t “fish” and her kids aren’t old enough to. They only survive because of welfare (and until recently unemployment). How would they survive without welfare? /rant
Then you might as well be giving up your fire department, police department, public school system, etc. Your taxes go into those and people who don’t call the cops everyday, don’t have kids, don’t have their house set on fire still pay into those things. They’re also based on the socioeconomic are you live in. If the area is poor and low population then there is less to pay the police and some have to rely on volunteer fire departments. Also goes the same for schools and why poorer areas have less income for teachers and the education that they’re spending.
You’re a dumbass. That argument is so lame it’s ridiculous. The difference between police departments and Social Security is that society as a whole requires the services offered by, and paid for by, the whole.
In contrast, Social Security is taking money (at a different rate for different individuals) and returning to those individuals in a flat rate for a non-necessary service. And don’t even try to say that “retirement is a basic human right,” because that’s bullshit.
Why should the rich give money to the poor? Cause otherwise, we’ll come and TAKE it! I work very hard at min wage, and i am extremely efficient and conscientous, yet i still can’t afford dentistry, holidays, paint to redecorate my (rented) house, etc etc. Yet UK fatcat banker gets a £16 million pension for screwing up the economy. Long Live The Revolution!
The money we spend on our prison system could be much more efficiently allocated towards a social safety net. If no one is poor, only the mentally ill will steal.
So we should put old people on iceburgs and send them off to sea? Oh wait, we won’t have any iceburgs.
Hey Ed, when was your last fire for which you called the Fire Department? When did you last call the Police?
So, ARE you utilizing these “society as a whole” services, or not?
JC is right on. Some of you want a Chinese Menu to pick from — some “socialist” concepts and programs are clearly more acceptable than others in this American society, but guess what? They are all “socialist”.
Understanding of the Real World fail: I’m paying for the Social Security of everyone over 65 now, and in 40 years, there will be nothing left for me to receive. Oh, wait. My parents were on welfare for six months when I was three, so I guess I deserve whatever I get, yes? Of course, I’m sure that this is just an exception to the rule, right? Actually, no, but you go on believing that so you can keep knocking welfare instead of fixing it to stop the minority that does take advantage of it.
ALL legislation legislates morality. This is a fallacious argument. We make laws against murder, theft, etc all the time- those are moral mores. The laws do not in fact PREVENT violation, but they do provide consequences, which does keep us from all going bat shit crazy on each other …most of the time. But if I hear one more person (my mom makes this same argument BTW, I am used to noting that it is not actually a valid argument), make this argument, I might violate all these laws and go bat shit crazy like some of those teabaggers (DWN- not the good kind, calm down).
All legislation legislates interactions between people (or entities, e.g. businesses).
That we attach some moral values to some of these interactions is irrelevant. The purpose of law is to define codes of interaction so that society can settle disagreements without violence.
Just because many of our laws parallel common moral stances does not mean that those mores are the reason for the laws. Laws are supposed to prohibit actions that would be harmful to society as a whole.
However, it is true that many laws are based on morals, because it wasn’t clear to people that there could be other reasons why we shouldn’t kill each other, steal from each other, etc. People look at existing laws, and jump to this conclusion that they must be based on morality, and so they think they should make more laws that are based on morality, and thus we end up where we are now.
Laws should not be based on morality, because it ends up being one group simply controlling another without any basis. Morals tend to deal with things that are difficult or impossible to prove. Law should be based on evidence, and things that people can come to some sort of agreement on. Morals are arbitrary, and having to live under another person’s arbitrary rules is a terrible thing. As much as people may like forcing their way of life on others, setting up such a legal system opens up the way to living under someone else’s morals. Just imagine living under Sharia law.
A) There is a diference between Muslim social law and moral law.
B) I take it killing inocent people is not all that bad? Based on that statement there is no “evidence” that killing my neighbor would result in HIS disbenifit. He’s dead already, isn’t he?
How in heck is this a moral issue?
Socialism roles right into morality issues.
I bet most of those teabaggers don’t even know what socialism is.
I wouldn’t be surprised. Most of the people at my school hate Obama because he’s a “socialist”, but I honestly don’t think that most of them even know what that is and probably just heard it from their parents. That’s mostly the guys. The girls at my school hate Obama because he’s not against abortions, which is THE most important issue to many people at my school, and we should always pick a candidate based on a single issue. T_T
The beauty of being against abortions… Don’t have one. The end. I will never understanding heavy handed moralizing…
When I was younger I was against abortions. But time and tolerance have taken their toll and I am now of the opinion that if abortion is a sin, then let God sort it out. Otherwise, I fully believe that your conscience should be your guide.
Hell, I am against abortions. I can’t imagine anybody being FOR abortions. I just don’t see making them illegal as there can always be circumstances to justify it.
Agreed. I should have clarified that I am still against abortion. I’m just not in favor of making them illegal.
Great now we can get back to normal things, like throwing loaded school buses and kicking kittens…
Except it’s already illegal under another name: Murder
“My body, my choice.” It’s not your body. It’s someone else’s body that happens to be inside yours. Not to mention that the vast majority of abortions are on knocked-up sluts.
Alrighty, citations, reasoned out arguments… Yep, none are there.
you expected some? usually won’t get them from that crowd, just a bible and some loud words.
because when you don’t agree with them, they are automatically wrong, right?
I think it’s reasonable to assume anyone who characterizes women who have abortions as “knocked-up sluts” is wrong. Probably about everything.
Well, some of them are, but it doesn’t mean they think ALL those women are like that.
Especially with the inflated moniker “Realism”
Or, as Elmer puts it, “Wee-o-wism.”
do you say that to everyone who tells you some piece of information? “Where’s the citation?” I don’t agree with saying abortions are mostly had by knocked up sluts or anything, but there is some pretty good scientific evidence that it is indeed a human life. Also, if you’re feeling brave enough, there are videos on youtube of abortions / the pieces of they baby they rip apart during the abortion. Good times
I think the request for citations was in regards to the ‘knocked up sluts’ absurdity.
Beyond that, there have been reasoned discussions of abortion on this site in the past. I don’t think you would get argument that abortion isn’t a nice thing–the argument is whether it should be illegal. I think not–the alternative results of the efforts of desperate women were dreadful, as my mother the retired nurse remembers; plus there are some truly dreadful medical situations where decisions have to be made between two tragic outcomes…
I’ve seen ‘The Silent Scream’ before. If something like that changes your mind, you’ve either not thought things through or don’t have the courage of your convictions.
Whether it is or isn’t a life is pretty immaterial IMO. It’s a matter of legislating morality, which is unaceptable. Personally, I think abortion is wrong except in cases where there’s serious risk to the mother. But I also think that other people should be free to make their own moral judgments and act on them.
purple switch: The world moderates morality. Murder is illegal. Driving Drunk is illegal. Stabbing someone is illegal. Drugs are illegal. Yelling “Fire” in a crowded space is illegal. Not paying Medicare Tax is illegal (yet according to our VP it’s my moral and patriotic duty to do). All laws have some moral (and most times religious) conotation to them. Do you truely believe in Anarchy (no moral regulation there, might = right!!!)? I’m pro-choice for the simple fact, humans are selfish creatures and will do it anyway. Rather it be done in a clean safe enviroment rather than tax our already crapptacular free health care system (that I continually have to pay for), and their are rare circumstances that yes an abortion is a needed evil. However, it is a life and to take it without justification is murder. (not a morality issue, simply a legal issue).
From what I understand, the vast majority of women who do have abortions do so after agonizing about the decision, well aware of the implications.
I agree entirely. Society can and should restrict people’s actions when necessary based on morality, as in the examples you give.
I also think that this is a necessary evil, and in the case of abortion, is not justified. There is no clear moral case one way or the other, so individuals should be free to choose.
Purple Switch, you said
“But I also think that other people should be free to make their own moral judgments and act on them.”
Just wondering: Do you agree with what Obama believes which, apparently, is that that freedom does not apply to doctors?
but here’s the thing sql, it’s a specialty – i certianly would not expect my neurologist nor my cardiologist to be performing that proceedure first of all, and secondly, not every ob/gyn does them anyway. this is a smoke screen to get pressure put on congress to backdoor roe v wade. if a doc has a problem with this proceedure and it is part of his/her specialty, more is wrong than just their possibly doing this proceedure, like maybe, they need to change specialties?
for the other half the equation – the morning after pill and pharmacists, that can be skirted unless the pharmacist is completely against birth control pills in any form — and again, if a pharmacist became licensed without understanding they’d be expected to fill birth control prescriptions, they were sleeping in class because that is part of their training is to learn all the meds and their interactions. so again, it’s kind of bass ackwards to become a pharmacist and then complain about what it entails.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are against blood transfusions. If your doctor is against a procedure you need, wouldn’t you feel they were in the wrong profession?
Assuming you lived without that blood transfusion.
Why would a Jehovah’s Witness even try to be a doctor, considering they believe that prayer cures all?
the normal ones go to doctors, in fact about 25 yrs ago they perfected open heart surgery with blood substitutes. it’s the christian scientists, scientologists (not the same) and i think the seventh day adventists who don’t believe in modern medicine
They are free to get another job. If selling alcohol would be against your religion, you don’t become a bartender. What’s more, for many of these ‘conscientious objectors to abortion,’ they went into the specialty IN ORDER TO refuse to perform procedures, thus denying patients access. See, unlike bartending school, there are a limited amount of slots in med school. If the OB-GYN residencies are all taken by right wing crazies who then ‘exercise their rights’ as they had planned, they are making women’s decisions for them, de facto if not de jure. It would be like if temperance people took all the slots at all the bartending schools in the country and refused to serve alcohol. If there were no beer or wine.
“Whether it is or isn’t a life is pretty immaterial IMO. It’s a matter of legislating morality, which is unaceptable.”
It’s not immaterial at all whether it’s a human life; because murder is illegal; that isn’t legislating morality. What is material is whether, if it is a life, that life’s rights are superceded by the other person’s (the mother’s) rights. Much as I find the act immoral and abhorrent, much as I would point out that you are dealing with two separate lives there, the fact is that the second person in the equation (the tiny one) doesn’t have an inherent right to occupy the other person’s body and use that person’s bodily resources by which to live, under any legal theory I can abide. So I guess you won’t find me fighting for legislation against abortion, but you might find me writing long treatises against the practice and how abhorrent a thing it is.
But to get to the crux of the matter, ask some hardcore feminists to do a thought exercise. That thought exercise is as follows. Supposing there were a 100% non-invasive, absolutely harmless method of extracting the fetus from the womb the moment she decided on abortion (which would be a lot safer than an actual abortion – this is a thought exercise, ok?) and move it to…well why should she care where, but in this case move it to a Logan’s Run style (ok, maybe “Matrix” for you young people) incubation place where adoptive parents could place their applications and the babies could safely be grown in lab uteri until full gestation, then given to people who want them. Would they agree to this procedure or not?
Invariably over the course of 12 years asking that question I’ve gotten a resounding “No, HELL no” because it isn’t just about safely getting rid of an unwanted pregnancy; it’s not just about controlling one’s own reproductive organs and system; it is ultimately about control over that other tiny human life as well. There apparently must be no chance that it be left to live. If you get different answers, great. But you might find it illuminating to have some people engage in this one. I have.
Here’s one. A mother takes 8 medications a day that she needs to live. Several of them have warnings about potential significant harm to a fetus. Her birth control method fails. Does she stop taking the pills and risk her life and the fetus’ in a gamble? Does she have an abortion? Or does she continue to take the pills, saving her life, but knowing that she will always blame herself for any fetal disabilities, and that even if her baby is miraculously born healthy, every time that child has a health problem or trouble at school, she’s going to wonder if it’s her fault for taking those pills.
Not having one can lead to serious risk for the child (see recent rash of publicised UK child killings). There is no point in forcing unwilling women to bear babies they do not want. Or is Madonna going to take them ALL?
Well, there’s probably very little incidence of abortion among the non-knocked-up population.
Are you bringing logic into this argument? Because Realism won’t have any. It disturbs his bubble of idiocy and makes him have to do more work as a troll.
Sorry! Just trying to figure out what bizarre form of hypochondria would induce a woman to endure an abortion procedure when she wasn’t actually pregnant.
Y’all have fun, now, I’m out of here for the night…
In the long ago dark days of abortion, the late 70s early-mid 80s, when there were lots of free-standing clinics who performed only the one procedure (along with tests of course) you could sometimes obtain a positive pregnancy result when you weren’t in fact pregnant, and so long as you had the money, get an abortion, thinking you were pregnant. This is of course apocryphal because it was before the internetz and thus doesn’t exist, right? But as far as the procedure, what was to it? 5 minutes asleep on sodium pentothol, 3 minutes or so of aspiration while you’re out, a couple cramps, and some ginger ale and a cookie after. Not exactly an amputation, you know?
snork, lol, honey those weren’t the long ago dark days. you want the dark days of womens health care – try any era before that – illegal abortions performed by hacks, women going to jail for using birth control, and spousal rape being legal just for starters.
and as for those free standing clinics, most would still exist if it weren’t for the pro-life terrorists bombing them and the doctors and other care providers who worked in them.
To Bad Fairie above – wrong. There is no need to consider the circumstances of the pregnancy, because no one is challenging the person’s right to end the pregnancy. It is assumed that if this person chooses to end the pregnancy, she can and will.
As to the rest, those are also irrelevant questions, but since I haven’t argued that abortion should be illegal, they are that much more so. You can sometimes trick a pro-lifer with them (one who wants abortion illegal) but they are irrelevant even there…but since I haven’t made the argument against abortion it’s rather silly of you to ask them.
whether or not you challenge the right to the proceedure, there is still an emotional issue that is not being factored in
and those questions are not irrelevant to most people – no tricks intended – that isn’t my thing. but being all about protecting the ‘rights’ of a parasite over the host without giving any concideration to the future of that parasite after it reaches the stage where it can survive on it’s own, is weak. isn’t it better to end a life before it begins than to bring it into this world only for the child to grow up with abuse and being unwanted? and those questions should be asked of everyone who argues against abortions.
Make the distinction – I’m *separating* the “rights” of the parasite from its host entirely and going from there. If she doesn’t want it, no harm no foul. This is purely theoretical; there is not going to be any coming nanotechnology (that we know of) that will be able to perform such a feat as I’ve suggested…but it DOES give you an idea where the argments being made are actually false. {shrug} That’s how it goes.
I can’t imagine why you would think that fetuses removed with no harm to their hosts and adopted by families who want them (hey, maybe gay families!) would grow up to be abusers, but that says something interesting about you.
i said for a child to grow up with abuse, not grow up to abuse. big difference, says you don’t see the details, but then again, it’s late, at least where i am.
as far as the rights of the parasite, until it is seperate from the host, the host determines the rights. if the host expresses no interest in what happens to her dna, then let medical marvels do their thing, but if the host doesn’t want her dna to continue, that is her right.
“snork, lol, honey those weren’t the long ago dark days. you want the dark days of womens health care – try any era before that – illegal abortions performed by hacks, women going to jail for using birth control, and spousal rape being legal just for starters.
and as for those free standing clinics, most would still exist if it weren’t for the pro-life terrorists bombing them and the doctors and other care providers who worked in them.”
Sarcasm isn’t your strong suit. Ok. They were long ago dark ages because you can’t exactly look up a link to what was going on. It was what it was. Abortions were commonplace – so much so that they were “the lunchtime ‘surgery’” sort of like a root canal. But less painful and traumatic. Just needed the cash.
You’re arguing against points I’m not making. You’re arguing a pro-lifer. While I am *personally* pro-life, if you want to argue the points you’re arguing, you might want to consider arguing them against the pro-lifers, eh?
As to, “It’s her DNA,” well, that’s pretty hilarious in light of fetal stem cell research. Make purses out of their hydes if you like, as far as I’m concerned, and see who bites. There was a cool sci-fi story to that effect called “Foet” published in Cornerstone Magazine. In those old dark days of cold hard print before teh intertubez.
“it’s late, at least where i am.”
Me too. Understood.
“as far as the rights of the parasite, until it is seperate from the host, the host determines the rights. if the host expresses no interest in what happens to her dna, then let medical marvels do their thing, but if the host doesn’t want her dna to continue, that is her right.[/quote]
If the host’s desire is that the contents be flushed/eliminated then she should have no objection to the contents being transferred to where they might become, potentially, an adoptive baby. She doesn’t care, why should anyone else?
I can tell you right now that one of the things you signed in 1981 if you wanted an abortion was that you agreed to the “remains” being discarded OR USED – let me repeat that – OR USED – as the agency saw fit. This could include stem cell research or it could include being incubated for future adoption. Why not? You are disavowing all knowledge or care of the remains, so whatever happens happens.
Look, I’m not some big fan of the Snowflake program but you know, this whole thing, that whole thought experiment, has shown me the *mind* of the abortionist in a way few other things can. DNA – heh – they can get that off a loogey you hock at the mailman. It’s null.
for you, those might have been the dark ages, but child, i was alive then and doing research that didn’t involve the internet or as you life noobs refer to is: teh intertubez.
so abortions were less painless and less traumatic than a root canal? care to give a source on that? along with them being called ‘the lunchtime’ surgery…. commonplace, by who’s standards? again, what is your source?
so if you want to burn someone, know your enemy, it saves time and effort (and ammunition). for sarcasm, again, child, know your enemy because i wasn’t trying to be sarcastic, however if you want to match wits with a brain damaged witch, i’ll give you the run for your money you’ve never had. furthermore, i wasn’t trying to argue points with you (i’d have better luck with a fence post since neither one of us will shift positions), but i was bringing up a few points you obviously had overlooked in your unborn life is precious stance. or is that pre-born? i don’t keep up on the latest lingo of so many you fringe groups.
stem cell research isn’t the same as a child carrying someones dna. if a host wants to donate her parasite for research, so what, that’s not the same as agreeing to allow it to fully develop. it’s still her dna, and her choice as to what happens to it, therefore if the host says no to letting someone else have the parasite, it is her right. and while your logic might not agree with that, there are some things that are between an individual and her conscience, and doesn’t include 3rd parties who only seek to extend their own moral code to others.
btw, it’s spelled hide, not hyde, that was the alter of dr jekyll…..but then maybe that is how it’s spelled on teh intertubez…. later
“so abortions were less painless and less traumatic than a root canal?”
Still are, even though they don’t put you to sleep anymore. That’s not including later term, which are another ball of wax.
“care to give a source on that?”
Firsthand experience of both? It hurts more to bump your shin on the coffee table than a simple aspiration.
“along with them being called ‘the lunchtime’ surgery….”
Good Housekeeping commented on the phenomenon in around 1982 – the phenomenon of abortion being referred to commonly that way, that is, not abortion itself. I guess it got so named because the new workforce of women could do it on their lunch hours and go back to work the same day.
“commonplace, by who’s standards? again, what is your source?”
Well, gee, about 1/2 of all women will have one at some point in her life? 1.3 million per year, an estimated total of 46 million since Roe, and the fact that Roe was won because of the spectre of thousands of women dead in the streets with knitting needles and hangers up their twats? Not common, you’re fooling no one with THAT nonsense.
The DNA argument is null – it’s necessary to sign for them to dispose of the material; it’s no longer yours once it’s taken out. They don’t let you take it home and bury it.
I’m not sure what exactly you’re arguing with here – you seem to mistake me for some avid pro-lifer. A case can be made from a libertarian point of view both ways, but legally I have to fall on the side of choice. But morally it’s still murder. The grossest kind, that of the innocent. No, you won’t change my mind about that, but considering I’m not fighting against abortion I don’t see why you give a sh*t. Or what in hell you’re arguing about, actually.
But, didn’t that thought experiment show you something ugly about yourself? It showed me something ugly about you. That’s why you’re trying so hard to fall back on the nonsensical DNA argument even though it’s 8 shades of stupid.
But if they keep the baby (no matter how unable they are to take care of it) and marry the father (no matter how much of a scrub he may be), and accept that jesus is their one true lord and savior, then they’re not sluts
LOL
…Yea.
Who the hell appointed you to be the arbiter of women’s morals? Why is it ok for you to stick your dick in wherever it won’t get cut off, but the stickee has to endure your righteous judgment? What facts are you basing your judgment on that makes a woman a “slut”? What facts back you up when you say “most”? You have none.
I’d say you were worthy of castration, but it’s obvious the blade would have trouble finding your worthless, shriveled equipment.
I love you.
Don’t worry, there’s always the darwin award winner list.
The vast majority of abortions are kept “in the closet.” 43% of women under the age of 45 have had an abortion. Most are from a middle income bracket. No, they are not, “knocked-up sluts.” Keep your stereotypes to yourself.
43%? I find that EXTREMELY hard to believe. Please provide data to substantiate.
Google “abortion statistics,” and click the first hit. It’s an anti-abortion website, and both statistics are there.
It would be nice if people would do the bare minimum before asking for a cite. I found both statistics in less than a minute. If the claim is likely to be the product of statistics or research, do a little work. If the claim is outlandish (e.g. “the vast majority of abortions are on knocked-up sluts”), it’s okay to challenge it from the get-go.
This is simple stuff.
“This is simple stuff.”
Citation, please.
And lay off the left wing blogs, Rho!
*LOLheaddesk*
HI Herb, long time no see.
Except murder is the illegal killing of a person. So even if you think a handful of cells is a person, it is absolutely impossible to argue abortion is murder in America.
Two minutes ago you were arguing that regardless of American laws (the Constitution) socialism is socialism. And now you’re arguing on the basis of American laws?
Make up you mind.
I’ll try and explain it a bit more slowly for you. The definition of the word murder, as defined in the dictionary, is illegal killing of a person. You cannot possibly have legalised murder, it is an oxymoron. Even if you don’t agree with it, it’s not murder, just like the death penality is not murder, even though it is the taking of a life. It’s simply to do with the definition of words.
It’s only not murder because of laws. Laws that you were arguing against below on this very thread.
Are you going to argue from a point of law, or your own principles? Which is it?
What on EARTH are you going on about? What laws have I been arguing about? Where have I been arguing against any laws, murder or otherwise? Are you confusing me with someone else? Have you lost your grip on reality?
You’ve been arguing against Constitutional justification this entire time.
Again, what on earth are you babbling on about? The UK doesn’t have a constitution, but it still has murder laws, abortion doesn’t fall under those murder laws and therefore it’s not murder. What has the American constitution got to do with the definition of murder? I’m not being facetious when I ask you to explain, I really don’t have a clue what you’re trying to get at.
I’m trying to get at the point that on one hand you’re willing to argue that the basis of all law for an entire country somehow doesn’t come in to play, and then you turn around and begin to use legal definitions to justify your arguments. American laws were based largely in the set up of Britanic laws (Common Law, for the sake of correct identification).
@mac: By your reasoning, abortion is the termination of life, and the termination of life is murder, and murder is illegal, therefore abortion should be illegal.
Question for you: do you as vehemently disapprove of the dealth penalty (which is the deliberate termination of sentient human life)?
Manslaughter is the accidental termination of life through carelessness. Manslaughter is also illegal. Should we prosecute/persecute miscarriages thusly?
herb: No, by my reasoning the unjust termination of life is murder. Lives may be taken to preserve others. Or may be justified as punishment.
Sigh…mac, mac, mac! Listen to yourself. The unjust termination of life is murder?
Do me a favor, google the Innocence Project. I’ll wait.
Need another range of examples? The US going to war in Iraq on false pretenses was manifestly unjust. (Read the Senate Armed Services Committee report on torture, it’s fvcking appalling.) Does that mean that every single terminated life in the war was murder?
Even in a just war – I’ll leave it to others to argue whether there’s been one since World War II – there’s collateral damage, people who get killed simply because they were in the way at the wrong time. Those deaths are unjust too. Are they murder?
slan agat: Try listening to yourself first. I did not say I condoned the taking of an innocent life.
I’m all for finding out who the bad guys actually are. It’s ignorant to think I want innocent people to die for anything. *But* there are guilty people out there. And there are rapists who deserve to be shot while their pants are still down. And there are muggers who should be made an example of before they stab someone.
Killing someone while only defending yourself is a way to justly kill someone.
Also, in war, people die. War is an extremely ugly thing.
Also, I did not disagree with the second half of the definition of murder- done in malice.
An unjust death done in malice is murder. Why do I say that? Because law is good for nothing but explanation of morality. If it extends beyond that, it becomes a tool of tyranny and must be shed.
Mac, you’re presupposing that the mother who is terminating her pregnancy wishes harm on the child within her, as opposed to actually agonizing over what she feels is the only decision available to her. I can promise you that abortion isn’t exactly an emotionless thing.
I’m presupposing nothing.
Unless the child within her is a threat to her life. (not lively hood, not living condition) There is no justification for ending the innocent life.
That is the definition; it’s a faulty one. If we made a law that says it’s legal to shoot on sight everyone with a harelip, would you say it wasn’t murder because it’s legal? Get real.
The law isn’t always right.
Hey! Could we show a little respect for knocked up sluts here??!
Yeah, watch what you say about knocked up sluts.
My mother was one!
Oh wait…
Not to mention that the vast majority of abortions are on knocked-up sluts.
The knocked-up sluts are *still* not calling you back, I see…
Site your sources, jackass. I think a minority are, as you say, “knocked-up sluts.”
So, if you are against abortions then tell me…. HOW MANY CHILDREN DO YOU FOSTER? There are hundreds of thousands of kids who parents did not choose to have an abortion and yet they have no home or stability. Put your money where your mouth is and foster a child!
WOOT!
or better yet, adopt a hard to place child (or two)
In particular, foster or adopt a child who has fetal alcohol syndrome, downs syndrome, or other diseases that are either developed or can be tested for in utero.
Actually it could only be considered murder if you believe the fetus to be a separate living being. Scientifically there are only two ways of looking at this, either the fetus is alive and a separate being at the moment of conception when 23 chromosomes from a male and 23 from a female combine to make a completely unique set of 46 chromosomes which is a human being, or when the fetus is finally born and the baby takes its first breath. There is no in between. And I believe that the fetus is alive and a separate being at conception. But getting back to the original point I fully concur with ewwee.
There is a sound argument to be made for placing the threshold at viability, or at the development of the folds in the cerebral cortex that indicate capacity for higher brain function.
Not always 46…by that definition, people with Down’s syndrome wouldn’t be human. They definitely are.
Sweetie, if you’re a Christian, like I am, I am here to humbly remind you that you can be against the sin, but when you go making comments such as “knocked up sluts” you are being unfairly judgemental and doing the opposite of showing the love of Christ.
Doesn’t matter if you are online where noone can see you or know your real name. You still need to conduct yourself in a mindful manner.
It would be tough to perform an abortion on someone who wasn’t “knocked-up,” as you so politely put it, wouldn’t it?
Would you support programs that would take care of these kids once they’re born? Y’know like the products of rape or the ones born into families (or maybe just a single mother) who cannot afford to take care of them? Or the horribly mutated ones who probably won’t live longer than 6 months? Will you support programs aimed at helping them? If not then STFU.
I heard you mom was a kn0cked-up $lut
The question shouldn’t be “Are you against abortions?” The question should be, “Do you think we can reduce the number of abortions more effectively by providing education and access to contraceptives, or by putting doctors in jail?”
Education?? But, but, but…
in order to have information about contraception you have to talk about sex (shhhh!), and if you talk about sex (shhhh!) then people will start having sex! See, if we could just quit talking about it we wouldn’t have any more “knocked up sluts”.
Well, we can just teach them about abstinence… And if we tell them condom’s don’t work,they’ll be afraid to try sex, right?
I am for abortions. It is better to die before one has a brain with which to care, than to live a broken life under incompetent parents.
There certainly are a lot of parents out there that REALLY shouldn’t be… Ranging from the raging addict and pediphiles end of the spectrum, to people just too self absorbed to treat the kid as more than a pet to show around…
Bingo. And who ever said banning abortions prevents them, anyway?
I’m pro-choice and I adamantly disagree with the so-called pro-lifers but unfortunately the “just don’t have one” argument isn’t really useful in this context because these folks believe they are saving human lives. It’s at least a slightly more understandable position than say being against teh gays and teh drugs. Though of course the same folks who are all “pro-life” when it comes to someone else’s fetus tend to be (not always but frequently) of the much less so when it comes to people who are already like, ya know, born. Gods forbid we let the gubmint help poor/disadvantaged people in any way. That’s frackin’ socialism.
The sad thing is that it is that simple. A lot of the prolifers aren’t taking the already living into consideration. They are worried about the sins of others and not their own.
Their little playbook actually has some good thoughts buried in it if they would bother to actually read it and worry about their own sins instead of what they perceive in others.
The same goes for gays and drugs. Don’t want it, don’t do it and leave the others alone. Granted I am sympathetic to some of the high end drugs kept off the market but that might be my morality acting up.
Yeah, why these are ‘issues’ is a mystery to me. If you want an abortion, knock yourself out. If you like men, hey, have a good time (if you like other girls, could I please watch?). It’s none of my business, and it really gets me that the people who say it should be are the ones yelling ‘down with socialism’ on alternate days. What, we can be trusted with finance, but not what we like in our rollies?
And selective reading of the bible is just too funny for words. I’m sure no-one even has to look up ‘the log in your own eye’, and it’s pretty damn clear on the issue.
It is why I could never be more than President of PK. If I was president of the real world, I would write just one hell of a speech pointing out things and then just resign before the cabbage and tomatoes were thrown.
I’d be there to take that tomato for you, sir. It’s the least I could do.
Sweet, I have a Secret Service!
Sorry!! As everyone knows that you have a Secret Service, it’s no longer a Secret. You now only have a Service
Touche’…
I’m starting to feel uncomfortable about my role here.
try a larger size of boxers, should help the comfort factor
“Why don’t you wear pants, Lord Flashheart?”
Is this a good time to bring up the fact that you were photographed on Monday not wearing your PK flag lapel pin?
President Nexus got dressed in a hurry due to, erm, his extreme *ahem* dedication to his job. He cares about doing the best for us. Why do you hate America Rho?
PK is America???
DWN’s mother was from PK, but there is a rumor that he was actually born in GraphJam, his father’s homeland…
But it’s been proven his first language was lolspeak!
I come today before you contrite and willing to answer for the confusions of my past. *wears three flag pins*
My mother was from PK but as for my father, I never knew him. I have solely dedicated myself to this area with only diplomatic visits to other branches of this fine site. Thusly, I have always made sure to have the high standards of this place in mind, no matter what.
Know that a vote for me, is a vote for PK. Thank you and God Bless… I will now direct any further questions to my able bodied press secretary Jane.
*walks off stage all dignified like*
*props up her “able bodies” and prepares for the questions*
*gets Jane’s attention*
How do you account for the recent photos of DWN shaking paws with the President of ICHC, and of accepting a book critical of PK policies from same kitteh?
*is glad that I passed memo about knowing differing ideologies is what helps to temper the fine steel that is our own PK nation…*
Look, President Nexus certainly does not support the radical Kitteh movement, but I think we’ll all agree that the strife and confusion in PK prior to his election is due, in part, to PK’s hard stance on insisting it is the only intelligent lol site. If we are to have a true and lasting peace amongst all the sister sites then we have to be willing to talks. If we can come to an agreement with the kittehs then roflrazzi may fall in line. This isn’t to say that President Nexus supports all the policies of the ICHC sister sites. In fact, just yesterday he called for strict sanctions on Fail Blog. Next Question?
Jane, why are you not writing for the Obama administration? You’d be infinitely better than the chunk of wood we have as press secretary now!!
President Nexus pays me in bites to my person.
*meets Jane in her office later for some extra payment and some forceful growls too*
i was raised in the catholic church. what i learned6was that only god can judge. so…to all the “good christians” maybe you should listen to the golden rule and let your god judge people. judgmental chirstians are the second biggest reason i havent stepped foot in a chuch for 6 years
So picgirl, you don’t step into a church because of the Christians? How about going there for what church is for, worshiping God.
Why do you need a church to worship God? Isn’t he everywhere?
That’s what I thought too. Unfortunately, doesn’t stop judgmental Christians from criticizing my lifestyle and desire to stay at home, enjoy my life and family instead of dress up to impress people I don’t even like so I can say I am worshipping God.
The point isn’t to be a good person. The point is to be the most publicly pious, to give yourself status within the community. Personal spiritual beliefs can be a great thing; organised religion, not so much.
Why do you need laboratories? Isn’t Science everywhere?
It’s a place to get together and do it sincerely for an hour in a proper environment, with your community, and with your priest, doing things you couldn’t really normally just do in your house and it’s in a place recognized as a house of God.
Of course you can pray at home or in public, but really, how many people you know just drop on their knees in a park and start praying?
Eh, before you say it (with your Rabbi, Imam, Reverend whatever, political correctness sucks, but meh, if you can’t beat em, join em.)
Being with your community shouldn’t need religion, and getting guidance and help shouldn’t either.
I’m very strongly of the school that religion should be a reasoned, personal matter. Making it part of a community makes being of that religion a requirement of that community. By all means gather and discuss religion, but do it in mixed-faith groups and makes it a genuine discussion, not just an affirmation of faith. The best examples I’ve seen are Jehovah’s Witnesses, who welcome outsiders (even canvas them) and will openly explain exactly why they think what they do and welcome polite and reasoned discussion.
If you don’t feel like you’re part of your religion unless you have those affirmations, maybe you shouldn’t be. Maybe you believe something else, and would realise it if only you sat down and though about it.
Proper environment? Your surroundings have everything to do with the reaction of what you intend to do. Being comfortable has everything to do with getting a good outcome – it’s like trying to study in a crowded bus station. Some people might like it, but people like myself would prefer to be in my room, with some light music, in my own comfort zone.
Okay, so some religious individuals don’t go to their place of worship. Some don’t want to be surrounded by people they don’t recognize. That’s normal human function. We’re automatically programmed to be a little on edge around people we don’t know. And with some people’s experience, they don’t WANT to know the people who go to a place of worship. If you have a recurring bad time with places like that, why force yourself to go anyway? Obviously it isn’t meant for some people.
Did that make sense? I hope so >_> I’m trying to avoid writing a paper, heh..
>Why do you need laboratories? Isn’t Science everywhere?
^^ Congratulations on perhaps the most assinine comment on the internets EVER!!!!!!!!
(… started about 5 times to type a nice, calm response, but backspaced each one of them. Waaaay too flabbergasted at the sheer mind-flipping ILLOGIC of this to be bothered with the human race ever again!)
How is that Zeli? or are you too full of you full of yourself and “above the human” race to give a reason?
Gah, there goes my typing cursor jumping around and disappearing as i type again. =D
Science is not everywhere. nature is everywhere. Science is the systematic study of nature. Laboratories are used to study natural phenomena. The general public encouraged to mostly keep out, and to please not worship the particle accelerator as an idol.
Also, there are only one set of natural laws, however there are many belief systems based on faith or personal spirituality not cold, hard facts.
plz to not be confuzn teh scince and teh faithz as deez totaly diffent thingz.
But I like idolizing particle accelerators.
That’s cool dude, you can do whatever you want. Just do be hostile to your fellow worshipers.
Didn’t that nice Jewish boy from Nazareth say something about how the ostentatiously pious who prayed in the public square have all the reward they’re ever going to get, but that those who worship privately will have greater reward in heaven?
Such a nice boy, that Yeshua. Best reform rabbi you could ask for.
I believe there was something to that effect…which reminds me, am I the only person who is reminded of the Pharisees by the Big Loud Over the Top churches and their leaders?
Not the only one at all….but you beat me to it.
By the way, kids…tax the churches!
Am I the only person that thinks the Saduccees would be a great name for a rock band?
Yeah, he was a good kid. The only time he ever got mad was because he wanted people to pay less attention to money and more to God. What an idealistic naif.
The beauty of being against murder… Don’t commit one. No. Wait. That doesn’t work so well, now does it?
That’s like saying “if you don’t aprove of murder, don’t kill people”. It’s still something that should be fought against, tooth and nail!
Just out of curiosity… how are the anti-abortion people on here defining “life”? It seems to be the pivotal question here.
Can’t speak for everyone, but I define it as any organism that:
consumes
produces waste
grows
reproduces
and has a genetic code
Human life is simply the same but with *Human* genetic code
So is it then immoral for me to harvest my veggie garden, as it fits your definition of life?
No, I have no problem with harvesting life. I defined *human life* to clarify that very point.
Your school? Are YOU sure what you know the meaning of Socialism, kid? Assuming you’re in college, what does your left-leaning but “non-biased” critical-thinking professor tell you? LOL. When the blinders come off perhaps you’ll be one of many that are starting to understand that it’s not whether the GOP or Liberals are correct, but that the Federal government should not be in the business of telling its people that they can have an abortion or not. The Fed should not be in the business of telling gays if they can marry or not. The Fed should not be in business of telling people if they can smoke pot or not. The Fed should not be in the business of telling science if it can tap stem cells. The list goes on and on.
The Federal government, as setup by our founding fathers, was meant to be very limited. Career politicians from the left and right made it the bloated mess it is today. Citizens need to push aside their ideologies and realize that the most successful accomplishment by both parties has been the weakening of our liberties.
Lemme guess, you didn’t read the post and thus are assuming that the poster is somebody you need to yell at…
I suggest rereading and then seeing if you have the testicular or ovarian fortitude to apologize for your misunderstanding.
Yelling? Apologize? Sense, you’re not making any. The post wasn’t directed your way anyhow. Good day.
This is what I get for trying to point out the obvious sarcasm in the post you were chewing on that you missed.
If you don’t want help, that’s your problem.
Repeat after me:
Public
Forum
Very good!
Thank you for “testicular or ovarian fortitude” – made me LOL. I usually use gonadal fortitude.
Ah, very good. I should have used that instead.
I like them both. Full of win! (and hormones, of course!)
While you’re very right about where we are now, it’s also important to realize that you need enough government. You need to decide how much you want by looking at the circumstances and how to achieve your objectives. It’s no good just trying to go ‘less/more government’ regardless, too little is as bad as too much (well, almost).
The best approach is to look at what you want to achieve, look at how to get there, and scale government accordingly. For example, my own views:
1 Want minimal government
2 Want basic respect for human rights
3 People are stupid assholes
Therefore, have as little government as possible to keep assholes and stupidity in check, while educating to reduce both. Scale down government as appropriate, until no government achieved.
When does your campaign kick off, and where do I register to join?
In essence, it’s the political side of classical communism. Obsolescence of government through the empowerment of the working classes, with a little liberalist concern for the people’s welfare thrown in.
It’s called the Libertarian party, too bad you’ll only get 3% of the vote
I’m less bothered about people agreeing with me than I am about being right, or at least as right as I can get (out on the left fringe).
Do you know what the Fed is?
I’ll give you a hint: it’s not the federal government.
“Fed” was short for Federal Government.
Nope- “The Fed” = Federal Reserve. Which is about as federal as Fedex.
That is scary. Where abouts do you live, if you don’t mind my asking?
meh it goes both ways
people at my school are obsessed with obama
and have no reason whatsoever to back it up
they voted for obama and dont even know who joe biden is… its sad
And “those teabaggers who doesn’t know what Socialism is” includes the person who made this LOL. Because medicare and social security isn’t socialism.
Look the word up, morons.
It’s not? The government is taking ‘my’ money and giving it to ‘someone else’. That seems to be the modern definition of socialism, even if it isn’t the historical one.
owned. i don’t know about you guys, but i sure would like for MY money to go into MY retirement, and not someone else’s. social security was implemented to relieve people during the depression. and it just never went away.
and have you noticed more and more government rule? and all those taxes? isn’t this why our forefathers left England and started a new world?
call me stupid if you want, but there are people out there who see it too.
“social security was implemented to relieve people during the depression.”
Because after the first Republican Great Depression, everything was always good, and no one ever had bad things happen to them again, again.
Captioner is wrong, social security and medicare are ponzi schemes, not socialism. Now medicaid and schip, those are socialism.
I’m not up on american domestic policy. How did you come to those conclusions? I’ve heard it said before, and would like to understand.
Social security and medicare are paid into by workers during 45-50 years of their working life on the supposition they’ll get something back for 10-15 years in retirement. Thing is, it only works when there are more people contributing than drawing from it, just like a classic ponzi scheme.
Medicaid and schip are funded by taking from eachworker according to their productivity, and supporting the medical care of those who don’t work, or don’t choose to pay for their own and their children’s medical care.
Google the words Frost and schip to find a classic example of a wealthy family who chose to pursue hobbies and underemployment rather than making/reporting enough income to insure their children, claiming to need the schip medical benefits designed for those in poverty. Very interesting.
Thanks for the clarification. Government-organised schemes can get so very confusing.
Actually, most of the people who came to the US when it was just the colonies were just handed huge tracts of land by the king.. because he wanted them out of his hair.
…With the tons of religious groups (Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, etc.) all causing a commotion about how they want England’s religious ideologies to be changed to fit their needs.. I’d hand them charters too if it guaranteed they’d be gone.
“Huge tracts of land”… I LOL’ed
(Look up Monty Python and the Holy Grail if you don’t get it)
Right on! I was thinking the same thing! I LOL’d.
i can haz shrubbery nao?
You need to look up the terms Debtor Prison and Indentured Servant.
Nope. People left England because of religious persecution, because feudal society left zero space for moving up, etc. Pretty sure socialism had nothing to do with it.
Sounds like the banking system to me……. however, in that case, i suppose could say that you voluntarily give over the goods……
One might also say that that’s what you do when partake of citizenship in a country…. giving (up) something to get something.
I guess if I were going to gripe, I would like MY money to go to social service/welfare issues instead of the military………..
Oh, but wait, we are not a socialist country, which, makes me wonder if we are a militaristic country….. which, I’m not prone to believing, but if that’s where we put most of our money, then maybe we should start thinking of ourselves that way.
Anyone have the latest stats? It’s something like 89% is military? A whopping 11% left to split between the socialist agenda.
But, that could be old statistics from way back in the day…… Sometime in the 90s…..
also flip – I believe the tax issue in England which created the “no taxation without representation” – was that the king/parliament wanted to tax the colonies for the military expenses the British incurred fighting the “french/indian” war and the colonists did not have a voice in parliament. Fortunately, the forefathers attempted to correct that issue by implementing a republican form of government with both state and local representation.
Look up the budget, dude. about 25% of the US budget goes to the military. Well more than half of the budget each year goes to Social Security, Unemployment, Medicaid, Medicare, and Interest on the national Debt (1.788 billion dollars in 2008)
Sorry, 1.788 *trillion* dollars. The problem with Social Security is that the government spends it just like any other tax. And it’s a tax *specifically* on the middle and lower classes. You will only pay Social Security on about the first 90,000 dollars that you make each year (For a married couple, I think. Don’t know if it’s the same for single Individuals or half of that. Never made more than 45,000 a year)
Tax Accountant here…The maximum amount an individual (not married couple) is taxed for Social Security is $106,800 in 2009 and it continues to go up every year.
SS was somthing like 581 billion in 2007. Military was about the same, the total take in taxes was 2.3 trillion. You can go here to find interesting info on budgets and spending in chart form. Supposedly all these numbers come directly from the IRS, just repackaged by Perot’s people.
http://perotcharts.com/category/challenges-charts/
That definition would include theft, which seems like a rather daft definition. Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production, which is a completely different thing. This is most likely also exactly what the anti-socialist in the picture means.
What you mean to define socialism as is typically called “welfare state”, which is a perfectly good word for it, much more exact. And also doesn’t have a definition that is equal to “theft”. I don’t see a reason to resurrect bad words into meaning something else.
I know, lol.
I bet those dirty rotten socialists know what teabagging is…Pinko hippie freaks!
And I know what debagging is. The joys of a Private School education
Weirdly, when I googled “teabagging” (a term of which we are blissfully ignorant down under) I learned that it involved a man dipping his testicles into a lady’s (or man’s) open and receptive mouth.
Which sort of leant an interesting slant to all the PK commentary lately….
Don’t you love knowledge?
“Knowledge is good.”
Faber
Ah but -
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
’1984,’ awsome book.
Socialsm is when the voters who are in the welfare system, pickin’ up their checks, gettin’ free housing and their utilities free, vote for a-holes who promise them MORE (Like, say, free (SOCIALIZED) healthcare), begin to outnumber those who actually have jobs, don’t freeload off the gov’t., and actually PAY the bills. Gee, I wonder what would happen to the welfare system if ONLY legitimate taxpayers got to vote.
Socialism is a broad range of economic theories of social organization promoting public or state ownership and administration of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by economic equality for all individuals, with compensation being done in a fair and equal manner.
and as for your bright (not) idea of only ‘legitimate’ taxpayers getting to vote — READ THE CONSTITUTION! ALL of it, not just the preamble. that idea has already been done in many forms, and has been outlawed. besides who gets to define those ‘legitimate’ taxpayers?
Nice name. I suppose you think most illegal aliens don’t pay taxes, too?
gb2school
What is our country?
Democracy?
If you said yes then you would be wrong.
Representative Democracy, or Republic. What do I win?
Nope. And if you asked them the difference between State Socialism, regular socialism, and social democracy, which one the USSR was, which one Sweden is, and which one they think we are, I bet they couldn’t answer one of those correctly. Well, maybe one lucky guess on the matching questions.
Considering that your Social Security retirement is based on the earnings over your lifetime out of which you paid FICA….yeah. I don’t get it.
It is why I withheld comment. Sometimes it is just interesting to snicker to yourself.
*previously withheld comment
Damn typos.
Social Security retirement is a ponzi scheme just like the rest of the American financial system. And when it stumbles, these same anti-socialists expect the rest of the tax paying public to bail them out. Hypocrisy at its finest.
i don’t think anybody ever told the caption maker that most people under 25 will ever see a single SSI check…
“ever”? or never…? Just asking!
Good catch! I think he had a brain fart, taking the first word from “will never,” and the second word from “won’t ever.”
I’m so glad I’m not the only one! Whew!
stupid n key is sticking again…
Odd that it didn’t stick the first five times…
it only sticks every five times…
It stuck on the sixth time, so it would have to be that it only sticks every six times…
ummm, you got something on your back there lol
They probably won’t get any of their social security money when they are old… and poor. Because it will be gone. That’s how good socialism works.
Exactly, the whole point why they’re out there. This caption fails.
…epically even.
I don’t think that woman holding the sign is under 25. Also, it isn’t the ‘socialism’ part that bankrupts Soc Sec it’s bailing out all these infrastructure companies that were plundered by CEOs who had only THEIR own personal wealth in mind when making business decisions. We should have let most of them go under, sold off their assets and let whatever small businesses could, rise to the top take their places.
Look at the difference in pay from the lowliest peon VS the CEO pay in the 1950s to now – it went from the difference of 80 to 1 all the way up to something like 500 to 1. Where the hell do these guys get off taking golden parachutes with them when they leave their companies to crash and burn.
While you’re not wrong on the anger at the CEO’s, what you are wrong about is to think that SS was there before all this happened.
That bank account has been empty for years
We should have put it in some kind of lock-box or something.
Oh, stars! If you go off on that tangent, you’ll soon be thinking that we shouldn’t rape the environment and plunder resources with no thought toward tomorrow…
What is this “tomorrow” you speak of?
I’m not sure. It was on my “talking point of the day” calendar, and I haven’t looked it up.
I understand, that I pay lots into social security, and it’s expected to be bankrupt before I retire.
The simple fact is, that unless we all start having lots of babies and seriously increase our population, increased socialism in our country (no matter how worthy one may consider the cause) is not financially sustainable.
Hmm. Maybe that is the logic behind ‘abstinence only education’ and the anti-contraception crowd?
We can fix social security, no mess, no fuss, TOMORROW! Just remove the cap on income that relieves the wealthy from paying the same percentage of their income to social security that I do. Problem solved!
I assume you paid your taxes recently yes? On just the 1040EZ tax table, someone that made 100K last year was expected to pay 20k in taxes. That’s a full 1/5 of their income. Those people have paid enough, leave them alone.
That’s the same percentage that the 20K kid at McDonald’s had to pay, but the kid at McDonald’s had to pay Social Security tax on 100% of his earnings, whereas the higher wage earner was taxed only up to the cap.
I don’t believe anyone making $100K should be using the 1040EZ, anyway. I haven’t been able to use that form since I was making dirt wages in college.
Well, if you make money, have no kids, no stocks, no cd’s, no house, and everything you own is paid for, you still use the EZ40
And NO it is not the same percentage. A person making around 25k pays 8-10%
So basically a person who doesn’t exist… Somebody making over three times my income has at least one of those stipulations, at least a house and possibly stocks, and as for everything paid for…
BBWAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAAA!!! That’s a good one. Even millionaires have shit they are still paying on…
Nah, they all have Harley payments….at least those are the General contracting Supervisors I know.
Heh, you had me going there for a second, talking about a mythical character with everything paid for, no house, no kids, nothing.
Makes me look silly to laugh like that, ya know…
I couldn’t resist doing the figures for this scenario. And yes it really is possible. I did a tax return for one of these moronic, yet somehow brilliant future millionaires. (He lived in an apartment and paid cash for everything although his income was close to the 80k range rather than 100k) An individual making 100k in 2008 will pay federal income tax on 91,050 of his earnings for a total of $19465. This equals 19.465% he paid in federal taxes alone. An individual making 25k is taxed on $16050 of his earnings paying $2010 in federal income tax. This person’s actual tax percentage is 8.04.
So, to make a long story short if you’re single, childless, pay rent instead of a mortgage, and don’t invest, you’re screwed.
Moral of this story…have lots of sex, procreate, and get into a lot of debt that you pay off with a second mortgage so you can write off the interest.
Sex and procreation, I took care of already and will do some more sex later. The debt I have and working on paying it off… But I’m not single.
However, I lack the stupid yet brilliant future millionaire brain. Double damn but thanks for the enlightenment.
I am only here to legally screw the US Government out of as much of our hard earned tax dollars as humanly possible!
Love,
Your friendly neighborhood tax accountant!
All I read was legally screw…
We were talking about Social Security (FICA) tax, not Federal Income Tax withholding. I think you’re confusing the two.
…no credits for buying energy saving devices, no charitable contributions, and the list goes on. I think the 1040EZ is for the young, or, if you will, the “beginner” tax payer. Considering that few youngsters make $100K/year, it is likely seldom used for that income bracket.
not only that, but Kid McD will also be paying all the indirect taxes on everything he buys, and life taxes (ie. UK council tax). Thus the percentage of his wage going to tax is actually FAR higher than Mr Fatcat
Damn, this comment has posted to the wrong section! Wish i was a techy…
That table is a myth. In the income bracket you’re talking about, you will not find one percent of the filers eligible to use the EZ, and probably none who actually use it, because the tax code has so many lovely ways to shelter their income. Otherwise there would be no point in the Alternative Minimum Tax.
On a 100k income they pay 1/5th of their income…20%
Down here in the under 50k tax bracket they take 29% after the refund they got around 24% of my income for the year.
You honestly believe that someone making over 100k needs that extra 5-9% more than someone making less than 50k?
Moron.
No idea who did your taxes but you might want to go somewhere else next year. Even on a straight EZ form no deductions on 50k the tax is 6600 which is 13.2%.
Now if you’re including State, SS, and Medi, I can totally get the figure you’ve posted. Keep in mind this hypothetical 100k earner pays 19.45% in income tax alone, or over 7% more than you PLUS his State, SS, and Medi, which caps out at a little over 106k this year. This makes his total payout alot larger than yours.
Does the larger earner necessarily need more? No, but he does pay a larger percentage which I don’t think is fair either.
Of course I think most of us are overworked and underpaid anyways, so we’re all screwed.
Someone making 100k is certainly not wealthy, not in America, anyway. Besides, the cap on S.S. payments is nearly at 100k right now anyway. I just think the people who make more than that should pay social security tax on their entire income, not just the first 100k.
Then, implement a high marginal tax rate on income over about three million per year, say, about the same rate it was the last time America was an economic powerhouse with a balanced budget: the fifties. Under Eisenhower, the marginal rate over the equivalent income was 90%.
Frankly, I think if we can’t provide universal health care, education, and freedom from hunger, then NO ONE needs to make more than a few million per year. Once we provide all those things we can start lowering taxes on the wealthy again.
This makes no sense. Where do you thing Social Security money comes from? Check your next paycheck. It might be enlightening.
Actually, current retirees’ social security comes from your next paycheck. Your social security money is coming from today’s and tomorrow’s babies when they grow up and get jobs.
My bet is that the person who wrote this caption hasn’t held a job in quite some time.
They need to get a job first then complain.
i’ve got a job an i’m complaining. That ok?
I have two part time jobs, two more sub positions, a full load in college, no health care and no SS coming when I turn 65 and I’m complaining…
One must also assume that these people did not recieve a public education, and are either sending their children to parochial school or are home schoolers.
I guess some schools could have spring break this late, depending on when they get out for summer. Not here, though.
Oh. Duh. Just got what you meant.
*headdesk*
Never mind.
You’re forgiven but I am taking my forgiveness tax.
*bites*
Fair enough.
Just think of it as redistribution of tasty flavor.
socialist. . ..
There’s some pretty strong evidence for old-fashioned home schoolin’ in that pic.
Truly, because in public schools they would all be brainwashed into excepting socialism.
That’s “accepting”, I guess my public education is showing.
Lol, guess you caught that at the same time as I did. Don’t you wish we had an “edit” function?
A thousand times yes!
My job here is done… Wait, you were talking about an edit function…
You can edit me all night, baby.
Ooooh, sounds like a mix between dress up and the kama sutra…. Wear this, bend there, take this… and this… and this…
Home scholing can be great, it’s just often terrible. Higher variance, if you like.
Gaaah. It got us both! Damn keyboards.
You had an education? Really?
I thought you just had a tape-recorder where your brain should be, allowing you to regurgitate right-wing talking points.
Oh, and a stone where your heart should be.
Hmm, you don’t like me much I take it? You don’t even know me, pre-conceived notions much?
I take it you went to public school (like me), because a home-schooler would know the difference between accepting and excepting, whereas a public-schooler may or may not.
A home-schooled child only gains the knowledge and socialization that the one parent (usually) with no required training or expenditure, chooses/is able to impart. The mileage varies greatly.
In Texas, HS parents are not required to have high school diplomas, and students are not tested to check progress. HS parents are not required to buy books, even.
My two biggest problems with home schooling are (1) lack of socialization and (2) potential for child abuse, neglect, and/or oppression.
People who grow up interacting with peers are largely better off when facing similar situations IRL. Teachers and school administrators often act as a second line of defense for a child who needs help/rescue.
I’m only going to say this once: I was homeschooled, and I graduated high school a year early by following an education board-certified curriculum. I went on to community college shortly after. My parents were well qualified to teach me in matters such as math, science, first aid, and civics. I have a genuine diploma and “class” ring.
Being homeschooled protected me from so-called “socialization”, which in my case was virtually nothing but being picked on. My parents have never once abused me; in fact, when they adopted me, I was saved from a potentially abusive mother. So I consider myself very well adjusted, thanks.
Education is about what you learn, not where you learn it. Some people do better in public or private school. Some people do better at home without pressure from their peers, not-so-understanding teachers, or rigid school boards.
Do you really think some 22-year-old with a teaching certificate making no money watching 30 kids by herself is going to do a better job at educating my children than their mom, who has not only a masters degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, but a clue? I went to ‘good’ public schools. I was scarred by the capricious authoritarianism used “to maintain order.” I would not put my kids through that.
1) You mean “accepting”;
2) They don’t have time to brainwash them, they’re too busy trying to keep ‘em from using cellphones in school and get ‘em to read and do math well enough to pacify NCLB.
DOWN WITH WHOLE LANGUAGE! We want phonics back! w00t!
Actually, a good, comprehensive reading program should never be either/or. It should incorporate both.
THIS
IS
Tribal Pap?
Ribald Pat?
Stomach Tuck?
READING!!
And even if your school has a policy against cell phone use, you as the teacher better not take that cell phone away unless you want to be slapped with a lawsuit. This has been threatened at the school my dad works at and the school’s policy is that they won’t back you up against the parents if you take a cell phone away from a kid. I always told the kids, you have two choices: you may voluntarily place your cell phone on my desk until the end of class or you and your cell phone can take yourself down to student services where you will be written up for disruption and disrespect.
Wow, they do it all the time, here! That’s weird. (You can get it back, but a parent has to show up and sign for it).
Wow, yeah they used to do that at my school too, but only if they caught you texting or if your phone went off during an exam or something. If it was the second time it happened they’d hold it for a week before your parents could get it back for you :O
I’d say a homeschooled child is far, far more likely to be brainwashed than someone in the public school system. Look at all the homeschooled pillocks being taught that the world is 6,000 years old. Depriving a child of an education in that way should be considered child abuse.
We’re not all bad, but truth is just.. truth. Scientific evidence obviously says the world is older, and teaching students by means of religion is a bit.. odd.
What I saw of homeschooling was mixed – between religious nut-bags straight through to exceptional students who went to exceptional universities. I think there is some intelligence in homeschooling (time management, more chances to get into subjects the student is interested in, more ‘extra-curriculars’ like music, arts and.. oh, hey, foreign language) but it needs to be regulated a little better.
Then again, I’m not sure I’d like to see the National Government take over, either, but there are a lot of misinformed students.
I’m not sure I’d consider it child abuse, as the parent is doing what they can and there’s no actual physical or mental harm or scarring. Intellectual neglect never seemed to be an abusive standpoint unless students aren’t enrolled in ANY type of schooling. Not sure.
I think the abuse argument may be related to the fact that if a child is attending school every day, there is a greater chance that evidence of abuse would be recognized. If a child is homeschooled, he or she is in a setting controlled by the parent(s) and it may be more difficult to get help to that child if there is little regular “outside interaction” between the child and non-related adults.
That sort of made sense, right? That it’s not “homeschooling = abuse” but “homeschooling = greater chance that abuse won’t be caught”.
Oh, nevermind. Ceefax is calling the deprivation of education abuse. Maybe I thought you were responding to someone further up in the thread.
Anyhow, point still stands: actual physical abuse is easier to cover up if a child is kept home.
Makes sense. We still went out in public and everything, but you do make a point.
“RecEIve a public education”, not “recieve”. I before E, accept…er…except after C.
*sings* “…and why 2 plus 2 makes four
Now now now, Im gonna teach you…”
Actually you’ll find that they don’t teach kids that in Schools anymore, mainly because that is crap
And in weird
srsly? this is the second lol about the same issue and is more dull than lol…
please vote with your sense of humor, not your political beliefs…
I’m a little suspect of the fact that the admins here at PK, who are responsible for the description of who or what is in the picture, keep referring to them as “teabaggers”. Whether you agree with them or think they’re loons, it’s a pretty loaded derogatory term that’s been coming pretty exclusively from the equally loony end of the left. (And yes, I will admit that I find the term …amusing in a juvenile way). I think it shows a disappointing level of bias from the admins.
Good point, I often wonder if any of the admins or PK employees actually submit lols or comment.
The admins comment from time to time.
Yes, but they identify themselves as admins when they do…or *do* they???
*eyes Viking Gal suspiciously*
Hey, I’ve got enough to do as a teacher, really!!!
likely story, that…
People have opinions? And they spread them? NO WAY! This could be groundbreaking. I don’t like the name but this is (I guess) a blog so opinions of any type are going to be displayed.
This is not the NY Times. If they have a bias, it’s fine for them to show it to you.
The only reason I comment on it in this case is because I’ve been around here for some time now and the three lols of Tea Party protesters are the first time I’ve seen any evidence of any type of bias in the identification of the subject of a picture. *shrugs*
I found it surprising based on my past experience.
Or the admins might be biased towards the naughty?
I like and adopt your theory. It appeals to me.
so are you saying that the ny times is not biased?
I wouldn’t say exclusively, diss. The Fox Noise crowd, from Cavuto on down, were using ‘teabag’ as a verb for a few weeks in the runup to this craziness. Then someone linked them to urbandictionary.com and they cut it out.
Which is possibly the funniest thing about the whole event.
I can see where that would be embarrassing for them…
Missed that, as I don’t watch a lot of the opinion-style news shows of any slant.
The admins here are a bunch of whining hippie douches that love Obama the way Madonna loves attention.
Does a hippie douche still help you out when you have that not so fresh feeling? Or does it merely leave you smelling of patchouli?
I think a hippie douche is for when you have that “a little too fresh” feeling, but I’m sure it’s available in patchouli fragrance.
The real question is, what happens when you expose your nether regions to black lights?
I have an idea for an experiment…
I’ve heard that hippie douching can lead to the taking off of ties and first shirt button unfastening…
Oh Noes!!!! It’s Teh Soshalizm!!!!Elebenty!!11!!
Icanhasborgouiesieburger?
God, I hope I spelled it right.
I didn’t! I stink and I don’t like me!!!
Maybe that’s how it’s spelled in Portuguese?
(Okay, I don’t think so, but hate to see you bummed out.)
Yeah, that’s it….Portuguese.
It was a test.
Ahem.
I applaud the idea, if not the execution. 6 and a half stars?
Gratefully accepted. I’ll try harder next time, honest. Too much coffee.
While I find these people even more offensive than the average American, and believe that they deserve all the scorn in the world, I have to agree that it’s all about as LOL-worthy as a fart joke.
No, I take that back – Even fart jokes can be funny sometimes.
In bed…
Or in a bathtub…
In a crowded elevator…
or in a car with electronic windows that can be locked so only the driver has control…
On your way to an airplane bathroom when your seat is on the other side of the plane.
Yeah, umm, first, if you work, you pay into both Social Security and Medicare, so it’s (supposed to be) your money you’re getting back.
Secondly, it’s not likely that Social Security is gonna be around when the person in this picture is old enough to need it unless there are some major over-hauls to the system.
It doesn’t matter if you paid into the system to reap the benefits, it’s still a socialized/nationalized system of pension and health care. Socialism does not mean “hard-working taxpayers having to pay for lazy welfare recipients (usually with a racial undertone),” it just means systems and services run by the government rather than private organizations (like, oh, the army, police, interstate highway system, education, parks systems, etc).
The problem is that 30 years of republican propaganda has created this idea that when taxpayers use socialized systems, it’s not socialism, it’s “entitlements” or some such nonsense.
The thing about her taking medicare and social security, is that she actually paid into it. That’s what social security was set up to be. It was set up for individuals to pay into and then withdraw from after they reached the required age, by FDR. Jimmy Carter and his Great Society expanded the number of people who could tap into social security and medicare and that’s the problem we are seeing today. People who never contributed either through taxes or through SS withdrawals from his/her pay check to the system were now able to draw from the poole. It was those leeches that dried up the pool, and what these people were arguing about was the government not just obama but the government as a whole is now planning to expand the payments and number of people able to draw from social security, medicare, and medicaid.
Correction it was not jimmy carter, it was LBJ who started the great society >.<
Um no, sorry, you fail.
You know that letter you periodically get from the Social Security Administration, that goes over your eligibility and income levels over the last ten quarters? You have to pay in before you can get anything out, it’s in the rules. And how much you get out is in pretty direct proportion to how much you paid in. The only exception is in hardship cases of total disability, and when they say total they mean it – you have to be incapable of any gainful employment whatsoever for more than a year.
What buggered the system was increases in life expectancy. Social Security worked just fine to keep Granny from having to eat cat food when she could be expected to shuffle off in her early to mid 70s, but Granny’s living ten to twenty years longer than that now. And Grandpa’s outperforming the old life expectancy even more, but that’s because he was expected to die that much younger.
Early to mid 70′s is a pretty nice age for when SS was first implemented. You were expected to die like a good little old person about 3-5 years after you retired at 65. Damn doctors and their damn life extending drugs! *shakes fist at sky*
*shrugs* systems have to be built to work in the circumstances they’re for. If that means that people work longer because they’re living longer, that’s how it is. I’m not unhappy to work for 5-10 more years if I can expect to enjoy a similar extension on the Best Before date.
Sadly won’t happen for me, heart disease takes the men in my family in the early 70′s at best. Still, the theory is sound.
I think if I had to putter around my house all day instead of working I’d go nuts, so working until the day I kick it in the harness doesn’t sound that bad to me. But then, I’m still under 30. I may feel differently when I’m 60 and sick of work.
I was just reading an article on yahoo today and they were saying not retiring is one way to extend your lifespan. People who retire will often end up overweight and developing diabetes and other weight related diseases apparently. It sure would be better for the lifespan of SSI!
Of course this assumes the worker has a non-crappy job that doesn’t induce huge amounts of stress! Me? I plan to work until they pry the lecture notes and microscope out of my dead fingers!
Best Day at Class EVAH!!!!11!!1!!
this is why it is important to develop interests other than work – things that take you out of your home and encourage mingling with others is best –
Another important statistical occurrence was the Baby Boom. Suddenly, all of those babies are retiring, pretty much at the same time. IIRC, the 62 year option was implemented in part to soften the blow of the sudden influx of retirees.
that’s only part of the problem, and the smaller part as well…. when reagan was in office and looking for extra $$$ for his star wars bs, the financial twits looked around and discovered this large amount of money not being spent — so he finagled his way to getting the social security funds added to the general funds pool – lo and behold, like magic, there was the $$$ for a program that never got off the ground….and the social security savings that we should have as a nation are still integrated into the general funds for use where ever
Ouch! For real?
yes, only after i hit the add comment i realized that i wasn’t poss about which pres it was. turns out it was before reagan (darn, i liked being able to blame him for it too, lol). wikipedia isn’t a great site, but did have some good points and excellent cites…. but the deal with the social sec funds being mingled in with general funds is something to nag your elected officals about if you want anything to change. not right that our savings are used to balance the budget for other areas…
Al Gore’s famous “Lock Box” reiterations were all about getting politicians out of the Social Security funds. Unfortunately, nobody listened.
What? I wasn’t listening, I was too busy pilfering money from this fund that I won’t need because my government pension will take care of me when I get old.
Some of the stupidity and outrageous bias I’ve seen on most of these has struck me as ridiculous, but this just takes the cake.
I think the woman who is standing out in the rain standing up for her beliefs in the picture (while you sit on your rear end eating bon bons and typing out hilarious insults like “teabaggers”) is referring to the federal government getting involved in the private sector of business. There should be no bailouts, and no rearranging private companies according to Obama’s will. That is not the government’s job in a capitalist state. That is only the government’s job in a Socialist state.
Can’t say I disagree completely but i’ll figure one out eventually. I refuse to have the same opinion as someone else.
Trouble is you live in a democracy. If people want socialism, then it’s their right to advocate it, promote it and ultimately vote for it.
That’s where we went wrong. When the Constitution was ratified it was understood that we lived in a Republic, and the protection of minority rights was emphasized. There is such a thing as the tyranny of the majority. It can be a terrible thing for 49% of the population, but this country was set up to try and prevent it. We’ve forgotten that, now it’s “whoever gets the most votes can ride rough over the rest!”
Oh definitely, there’s a balance to be had. I’m just reading ‘democracy=capitalism’ in the original post and it hacks me off endlessly whenever I see that one wheeled out.
The stimulus package included the largest tax cut in history. I fail to see how that ignores the pleas of those calling for tax cuts.
Because it wasn’t a tax cut for the rich, just, y’know, everyone else. Surely you can see how a man with two mansions has earned them, and deserves to be taxed less than the guy living in what’s basically a shack? Because clearly he’s never worked hard a day in his life to stay above the breadline.
It calls for tax cuts, but the amount of spending involved has those of us on the “other side” worrying about the eventual tax INCREASES to pay for it. Also, some of the other programs being asked for (cap and trade and the like) will raise costs of doing almost everything else and will negate whatever tax cut we actually get.
It’s true that this degree of spending is worrying and dangerous. But I think we can agree that it’s necessary, at this point. Arguing about the degree, how it should be done and pointing out the need for oversight and accountability is fair enough. The trouble is that the sensible message gets drowned out by those screaming ‘socialeeest! no spend, no spend!’.
But we’re saving money by buying paper clips in bulk
Jus’ so longs as them’s not comin’ from no eeebil corporashuns.
Then where will we get them? Thats the problem, maybe it’s me but the “eeebil coporashuns” are the only bulk producers I can think of.
Please clarify: Are you thinking we are getting paperclips from eebil U.S. corporations? Last time I checked, all our paperclips are belong to China.
Excellent, the other question is what about the cost of “fees”? It’s just another kind of tax but is never part of a budget so it’s hard to notice when they impact us unless you can find the info, which i have not been able to locate.
Except of course that there’s a ridiculous degree of distortion going on about those programs.
Take the “$13 rebate” you mentioned a few lols ago. That’s actually a reduction in weekly withholding. 13 x 52 weeks = $676 less bitten out of your year’s pay.
Now, John Boehner has been saying that cap & trade will increase the average family’s energy bill by $3100 and change. Lots of people take that at face value, but one person who doesn’t is the MIT researcher whose research Boehner claims to be using. John Reilly at MIT says that increase would be only $79. [LINK]
So you’re still ahead $597. What’s next?
Because $13 per paycheck doesn’t compare to $8,000 per taxpayer in any way, shape, or form.
That’s the math: cost of stimulus divided by number of taxpayers = $8000+.
$13 per pay times 26 pays = $338. (Not even the $800 promised back before the election.)
And most of THAT will be immediately eaten by inflation, and the raising of other taxes, the costs of which will eventually be passed on to us.
Are you trying to equate withholding reduction to rebate?
If so, please learn the difference.
This is where it gets tough though. This is such an “either/or” nature to the decision, and there was no human rights type of reason not to follow popular will. I get what you’re saying, but it is just a colossally bad situation that we’re in, at least (surely more, I’m being conservative) 35% of the population will be pissed off. And nothing gets mentioned about compromise
Something tells me you weren’t complaining eight years ago. Is that correct?
Calling them “teabaggers” is not an insult. It’s what they’ve been calling themselves. Conservatives are a self parody.
What do you suggest happen to the failing companies and banks then? When did Obama, and just Obama, “rearrange” private companies? And when was the US a 100% capitalist country?
Teabagger, according to the Urban Dictionary, has about 15 other meanings that don’t have anything to do with the slang version that is so popular. Now, granted, they *really* should have looked it up first to make sure, but the other meanings are there.
It only takes one naughty meaning to ruin 14 innocent ones.
Well yeah
I think that the people who decided to use “teabagging” as a descriptive term are too trusting and naive to be allowed sharp objects.
And deserved to be pwned in FPS games.
A pox on you and your FPS games! Fie! Fie!! *makes cross with index fingers*
-
*must have TPS or NOTHING*
Haha, sucker…
Hubby has gotten hooked on “Resident Evil 4″ for the Wii. He’s already beaten it and is going BACK through it with all of the weapons he accumulated before. He won’t let me in the room with him when he plays, because unless I’m playing as well, I shouting at the screen “OH MY GOD THERE’S ONE OVER THERE SHOOT IT SHOOT IT!!!!!!!!”, and it makes him nervous
LOL, that is awesome! I know another way you could distract him though…
Lynn used to distract me while I was playing Diablo as a lad. Very hard to concentrate with such talented lips at work.
Battlefield Bad Company uber alles
That is an awesome game froo.
On the second play through, if you get enough money you can buy a Tommy Gun with unlimited ammo that you never need to reload. Oh, sweet revenge!
Hubby’s trying to get the infinite rocket launcher, but he keeps spending his money to amp up his existing guns. Did you know there’s an “exclusive” phase that maxes the guns out beyond their capability?? Boss guys down with four shots, max. Zombies explode in clouds of dust after one blast from the 9MM. It is a beautiful thing.
So am I the only one to notice the octagon that the “circle slash” socialism is on…
Octagon implies stop to me…like a stop sign…
So I’m reading this as “Stop no socialism”…meaning the wearer is pro socialism. I may be reading into this too much…or the creator/wearer of the sign is failing at a higher rate than origionally expected.
Now I’m thinking of MC Hammer on socialism. Stop! Redistribution time!
A circle is perhaps too geometrically/artistically challenging of a shape to draw for someone who doesn’t bother to learn the definition of socialism before protesting it.
Just a thought.
Sigh. No, 90% of Americans haven’t a clue what socialism is, or communism. In fact, if a real communist were to talk to the average right-wing camp-follower, the conservative’s head would explode.
In fact, I think I should import a bunch of real socialists from some European fringe party to do a speaking tour in the US. It would be great way to curb the US population growth, and increase its average intelligence somewhat, too.
lol, i think i’d even pay to get into one of those just to watch all the exploding heads.
I would buy a couple tickets to watch the tour…
Opening act: Talking Heads!
I’m *so* buying a T-shirt there!!
I find it sad that people THINK others don’t know. The cold war wasn’t too long ago, yet people forget how people constantly try to LEAVE communist countries. Socialism and communism works on paper… But why should I, or anybody else work hard when pay is so regulated, I get paid the same if I do a great job, or just enough to prevent me from being fired.
That would be why Sweden is losing population at such an alarming rate.
Oh. Wait.
See, you just proved the point. Communism does not equal socialism, and the totalitarian regimes of the old Soviet bloc did not equal either one.
Personally, I prefer a bit of both because I find neither extreme very appealing.
For such a great system, you’d think that immigration TO Sweden would be higher than it is…
VERY long dark winters. As in 3 hours of sunlight or less in December.
dear slan agat,
you will find that sweden’s population has been consistently increasing since at least the 1960s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden
please check your facts first
The “Oh. Wait.” portion of his comment implies sarcasm. Generally.
The “See, you just proved the point” was the dead giveaway there, should there have been any question after the “Oh. Wait.”
Orangebag could do with some reading comprehension exercises.
Lol, even though medicare is a gigantic failure.
$60 billion paid out in fraudulent claims to doctors per year! WHOO!
Is it? I work in the insurance industry and see hundreds of people using it legitimately every day. So private HMOs are the way to go? Have you acctually tried using one for a difficult or expensive medical issue?
Medicare isn’t perfect but at least the elderly have that small hole filled safety net.
Fraud is due to lack of regulation (few are allowed to rate or double check the work of a health provider), checks and balances (Doctors want to be treated as Gods who shall never be questioned) and greed (they pay off patients to not say anything as they jack up their costs) not a failure of the basic idea. But how many doctor’s opinions do you want before Grandma is allowed to have that life saving operation? How many bean counters do you want sticking their noses into your medical decisions?
where as on the NHS everyone is covered by a large safety net
Nobody is going to give them up after they’ve paid taxes into the system their whole life! But I’m 25, and I say, cut the system off starting now, or at least make it optional. I’d be very happy to be allowed to keep my money and save it as I see fit, thank you. The Democratic party is far too anti-freedom most of the time.
yep, you caught us, we sure hate freedom. Have I mentioned our pro-fascist agenda yet? Don’t forget our hatred of the troops, treason, and Christianity. Thanks for pointing out the grand conspiracy, your Congressional Medal of Honor should be arriving in the mail sometime next week
It’s love of treason, for pete’s sake. I didn’t disclose that national security information to unstable middle-eastern regimes for the conservative agenda!
You’ve just attributed a bunch of stereotypes to me that you have no idea whether I believe or not, while completely ignoring my fact-supported point that the Democratic party is often anti-freedom. I hope you see that. Ad hominem attacks are a logical fallacy, you know. Tell me – why can’t we make Social Security optional?
because it was designed as a supplement to savings and to be the alternative to unions and corporations absconding with company/union controlled pension plans. which is why it also wasn’t set up to allow people individually invest in the stockmarket with their soc sec savings –
That doesn’t answer my question. You see, all I’m asking for is the right to save the money as I desire. Then, if I really do think government run Social Security is the best way to do that, I can still use them. If I’d rather invest in the stock market, I have that choice. But today government takes that choice away from me, totally and irrevocably. And that’s anti-freedom. Call it better in other ways if you’d like, but it is most assuredly anti-freedom.
Because, as I explained below, you’re not responsible enough to be given that freedom. If you’d leave someone to starve, it’s the state’s duty to rob to to feed that starving man. Just like if you’d go out and knife someone, it the state’s responsibility to keep you away from sharp objects.
Total freedom is anarchy, which is only viable with perfect people. To aleviate sufering to a tolerable degree, some freedoms have to be restricted based on how imperfect people are right now.
Oh, I know total freedom is total anarchy, I guess I just feel like we tilt way too far toward government control nowadays. And government is very unique as far as “charities” go. The more government becomes your provider and sustainer, the more power they have over your entire life. That’s not something you have to worry about with the local soup kitchen.
Definitely, there are aspects of government which are messed up, and I wouldn’t trust a politican with my donations (hell, there are plenty of charities I don’t trust). I see the answer as transparency and accountability, to ensure that what power is needed is being exercised in the right ways, because I don’t think we can take all the power away right now.
But yes, in many ways modern government is oppressive and overbearing, and could well stand to be cut back in many areas.
Yeah, they could quit tapping out phones without warrants, seizing our assets for minor drug crimes, making me practically undress at airports and any other number of “security” measures that don’t really make us any safer but just give the government real power over us. Some money out of my paycheck? Much less worried about that. You want to talk about taxes, talk to my family in the Netherlands. We’re a bunch of pikers when it comes to taxes.
Anti-freedom is a pretty offensive label – if you go chucking it about expect something in the way of return fire.
The statement ‘far too anti-freedom’ is particularly weak, as it relies on some objective judgement of the ‘right’ amount of freedom.
A program like social security is designed to take up the slack when some individuals decide they dont want to help others. As such, it needs to be applied to everyone, to a degree determined by the needs of those in poverty. You don’t get to decide that you don’t want to help out the starving – society will force you to, out of a moral obligation to care for it’s members.
OK. So you’ve admitted that it’s anti-freedom, but think it is a good thing nonetheless. So be it.
I admit this is only one issue, but I do think this is a trend with the Democratic party. They are usually the party responsible for such things as the banning of high flow showerheads and incandescent light bulbs across America, and transaturated fats and plastic bags in many towns. They fight against school vouchers while insisting that you pay to support the public school system no matter where you send your kid. They join (with many Republicans alas) in restricting campaign speech near elections, and speak openly of limiting radio station choice in content in the name of “fairness.”
It’s like one of the few issues where they actually put emphasis on individual choice is drug legalization, and that’s such a small thing in comparison that it’s like a carrot they dangle before the youth while they meanwhile steal the whole freedom feast.
I’m not a democrat, or even an american. I’m just intelligent enough to see that an absolute position based on objective anaysis is unworkable as a political perspective. We have to be pragmatic, or we will end up causing more harm than good. And opposing anything and everything that’s ‘anti-freedom’ is not a pratical position.
Freedom is overwhelmingly important, but we can’t let it outweigh a need for a basic respect of human rights.
You do not have the moral right to tell me what my moral obligations are
Then STFU about choice.
Oh, so very WON!
A Brak is grateful.
(smiles and rubs toe on ground)
If this is referring to the abortion tangent on this page, you fail, I never chimed in on it. nor would I, neal Boortz, take him or leave him, is correct when he states that no one can ever change someone elses position on that subject.
On a personal note, I don’t think that issue will EVER be “settled”.
If you were NOT referring to the abortion tangent, please explain further…if you’re referring to my moniker, I have no affiliation with the Statist group by the same name.
Oh, so you are pro-choice?
I am Pro-confused.
While I find post term and partial birth abortions absolutely appalling and cannot in good conscience support them, I always rememeber….
There was a dude I knew that liked to party, he hooked up with this pill popping hottie, she got pregnant, she immediately aborted. As far as I’m concerned, it was the right thing for the two of them to do. And not for each other, but for the child.
When I was in the service an old senior chief taught me the term “set up to fail”. That’s what that kid would have been. Drug use and alcoholism run genetically.
Also, I’m male, and agnostic, kinda takes me out of the equation. Fact is I’ve never had a passionate feeling about the subject. Therefore I have to refer to my “bible” for guidance.
Constitutionally, it should be allowed as it does not violate this statement:
You have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Hapiness*
*In so much as your pursuit does not injure or interfere the opursuit of others
Now, as to who pays for it….well, I’ll jump in on the “not the taxpayers” side of the debate all day long.
I have no right to tell you what your obligations are, but society does. Society as a whole has to be able to impose it’s morality on you, or it doesn’t exist. As I see it, the whole justification for a society that takes away any freedom is that it is obligated to do so to care for its members. I don’t see that killing someone with economics should be treated differently than killing them any other way.
Unless you want to argue for anarchy, of course. I dont think that it’s an aceptable option right now, because of the horrific consequences it would have, but it is a theoretical alternative. You could also argue that society shouldn’t restrict freedoms based on morality, but then you’re going to have a mighty hard time finding a foundation for jurisprudence.
Government is the result of two things:
Laws and people’s need for safety.
Laws are created for one reason only; to justify a punishment for a particular action. Now, society deems theivery unacceptable, and always has. Long before the 10 commandments. Therefore, society asks government to do what it fears to do, which is administer punishment.
Safety is the absolute opposite of Liberty. You’re not supposed to drive faster than 65 miles per hour because of safety. however, it’s your car, why not go as fast as you want? Laws prevent you from doing so.
I do not adhere to the anarcho sentiments of my libertarian bretheren. I cannot call them wrong, but I feel as you do, that we would devolve into chaos because people simply are not ready to have that much personal responsibility put on their own shoulders. They are used to their nanny.
I am a Constitutional Libertarian because I think that the original intent of the Constitution can achieve the best balance of safety vs liberty in the known world. If you feel that where you live is too free or too safe, you can move to s state with different laws.
You cannot do that today as the Fed Gov controls all.
Perhaps my stroke was a little too broad. I presupposed from your generally conservative oriented comments that you would naturally be anti-choice. My apologies if not so….and you are correct. This issue will never be settled to anyone’s satisfaction.
I thank you for the apology/retraction. It says alot about character when someone does this on the web as it’s aninimounous (is that a word) nature means never having to say you’re sorry.
My generally conservative views are all purely fiscal. I know this because religious right wing types hate my social politics.
so have you lived in a large community during a drought and had no water?
have you lived in a large community where demand exceeded production of electricity and had to survive rolling brown-outs during killing heat waves?
do you like paying higher insurance rates because you’re part of the demographic for high heart risk?
when your private school kid opens his own company, you don’t expect him/her to be able or even want to hire educated, capable employees? or you don’t want to have educated, capable employees working for you?
do you want to be accosted with in your face politicking from the opponent of your chosen party as you enter the voting booth?
and for the burning bush of radio time — what a fallacy that is — nobody but the religious right is getting their knickers in a knot over that — and even if the fairness doctrine were to be put back in place, it would mean that for every hour limpdick and his cronies get to lie on the air, the left side would have to be given equal time. somehow that sounds like expanding content and choice instead of limiting content and choice… and it would work both ways, for every hour of intelligent dialog on npr, limpdick, et al would get equal time….. as far as the religious right goes, it would mean that they’d have to allow programming to counter jerry falwell and his fellow schizophrenics….
freedom feast being stolen — that is rich in light of the so called freedom act the shrub and the bad shot created — illegal wiretapping, search and seizures without open warrants, citizens arrested and not being given access to their attorney or due process….. yup, the left steals freedoms — who do you think pushed for miranda rights to be read to every arrest in the us? it sure as heck wasn’t the right…. who do you think supports the idea to counci in court? the right? sure, when it’s one of them….
Each party is known for restricting different rights. The Dems do it no more or less than the Repubs. I can’t believe high flow shower heads and incandescent light bulbs are what your bringing up, and then call legalizing drugs a small thing.
Then again, we can also get into the abortion and stem cell restrictions and how the Republicans curtailed the rights of scientists and women in a huge way. Like- down to freedom of speech restrictions for health care providers. The day abortion is murder is the day the 40% of fetuses that miscarry naturally, become prosecutable as involuntary manslaughter. Be careful what you wish for.
The school vouchers thing is such a crock – It’s only for the few kids they choose, not for every kid (or parents of a kid) to decide where they want to go – [sarcasm]I got an idea, lets do it like Japan, where only the kids who can pass the tests can go on to college – your dubass kid only gets to go to ‘Ditchdigger U’ because he didn’t qualify for one of those golden ticket vouchers [/sarcasm] I hate the NCLB rules, but some attempted fairness in education for all kids would be nice. Of course, requiring parents to act like parents would be nice too, but for that I can only dream.
That’s where you’re completely wrong. only a Marxist douchebag would think what you think. Freedom means having the right to do the follwoing:
Fail
To be indifferent
To starve
To flunk
To be a jack ass
To hoard your wealth
To do all and ANY of the things you think make people “bad” because you take what you think, add a quarter, and still only have 25 cents.
You and your “economic justice crowd” have issues reading the Constitution. I have ZERO moral or Constitutional obligation to assist people living in California. I have just as much moral obligation to help them as I do to help the French.
I have an obligation to those around me that live in my city, my county, and as large as up to my state.
If everyone was concerned with the people directly around them instead what people are up to over a thousand miles away, we all would be a lot better off.
I give money to soup kitchens in my area, how about you?
That’s what I’m talking about! Sweet response!
“The Democratic party is far too anti-freedom most of the time.” Most of the time. Thus more than 50% of Democratic votes suppress freedom? Your point makes more sense than it did on first reading, anti-choice might have been better phrasing, but “anti-freedom” is a fairly strong charge. I applied no stereotypes to you, merely stated some other loaded wording that gets thrown against what is a perfectly respectable set of views. And where do I say we can’t make it optional? I simply didn’t like your wording, and so decided to mock it. Ad hominem isn’t really the phrase you’re looking for in that phrase, but no, it wasn’t a strictly logic-based argument. It is reducing your argument to the level of the absurd. I could have said “You haven’t defined too anti-freedom, you haven’t proven using that metric that Democrats go too far >50% of the time, thus you need to reword your argument.” But really, when you start treating the ideology with respect, I’ll treat your argument with some, there’s no need to demonize the other side. You want the country to succeed, so do they, so do I, can’t we all just treat each other like human beings?
Democratic party is anti-freedom. Yep, we want to ban gay-marriage, support prohibition, and make abortions illegal.
Oh, wait…which party were you saying is anti-freedom?
To clarify, I think abortion is a terrible thing, but making it illegal won’t stop it from happening. I would rather see women treated by trained and license physicians in a safe environment than send them to back alleys to have the procedure performed with dirty instruments.
I thought we could at least burn some books now that Obama’s in office.
Stupid Obama…not letting us burn stuff! *kicks pebbles*
*hands Rho some travel brochures*
Here, this’ll have to tide you over…
Haha, I think it’s funny how people admit that socialism is coming to America, and simply disregard it. Ignorance (as in “ignore”ance) is bliss…
Were there buzzing electrical lines over your childhood home?
I thought Eddie Murphy was coming to America?
Yes, yes! F*ck you too!!!
HAHAHA!
if only my generation was even getting social security!!!
whoo.
thanks old people for screwing up the economy AND my future. thanks:]]]
omigod calm down kid. jeez.
o dear. it seems we have been developing MPD again…maybe we should tell someone?
That would be the Baby Boomers
Another liberal puke who probably doesn’t work and doesn’t even know what socialism is. Social security USED to be paid for by people who W O R K E D and could only be collected by people who W O R K E D.
Socialism hands money to lazy stupid people who never have and never WILL work.. If you think socialism is so great, MOVE TO CHINA!
Tough break, kiddo. By your lights, China’s comin’ to you, because it’s what people voted for.
By that logic, people voted for the Iraq War, and that makes it right.
It doesn’t make it right, just makes it justified by a democratic system. Feel free to provide reasoned argument for or against, just don’t try to claim “there’s no place for that here”.
Now if only we were a democracy…
Amen. Democracy would be paradise compared to the stifling authoritatrian plutocracy america has become, and my home is sadly becoming.
I disagree that a democracy would be better.
We’re intended to be a Constitutional Republic, which gives us the greatest time and liberty possible.
I’m not saying it would be ideal; I’m saying it would be better than what exists right now, which I would describe as an authoritarian plutocracy.
Just a little casual griping about corruption in politics and oppresive policies.
Noted and agreed.
really, you are too funny. China? Socialist? Really, the truly socialist countries are the Scandanavian countries – Sweden, specifically.
Where is Darbala to help out with this discussion, anyway?
Damn you PK for dying just as I get to a point in my day where I can post!!! DAMN YOU!!!!! *shakes fist at invisible PK in the sky*
*shakes fist too*
*shakes her booty*
WOOHOOO!!! PK DANCE PARTY!
I approve of this Cabinet party… *dances*
Tired old logical fallacy. It would be pathetic except for the unintentional humor – in all it ends up being pretty funny. So points for that.
anniee, i think you should change your name to “tired old logical fallacy”. it seems to fit well with your mentality.
She can’t seem to come up for air amongst the insults long enough to actually get her point across. It’s sad, really.
Alcoholism rears it’s ugly head once again.
*pops popcorn*
*waits anxiously for Libertarian-on-Libertarian action to begin*
c’mon rho, she’s as much a libertarian as i’m the president of the uncle fester fan club…
Hey! There’s a topic to fight over! W00t!!
its not like the government has any money to pay for her social security anyway. why make a stupid caption about something everyone already knows dumbass
Communism and socialism are doomed to fail because they remove the incentive to work. Either way your going to end up with the same stuff everyone else is getting no matter how hard you work.
Ummm…hey poster…all the working people in America *pay into* Social Security for their entire working lives…get a clue.
bingo
I can’t believe that more people haven’t realized that the caption makes no sense. By giving back Social Security checks and not participating in Medicare, the person will be paying the government twice over! The checks we get for Social Security and the benefits received as a result of Medicare have already been paid for through deductions from your paycheck every week. The government is in effect holding onto your money for you and then telling you how to spend it when it gives in back. Perhaps this is why the person in the picture is holding a sign protesting socialism.
This lol makes no sense
Dear God, I’m glad I don’t post on here very often!!!!!!!
Me too!!!!!!!!
I don’t understand what Americans have against socialism. If you listen to Americans you would think it was this big evil thing. Could some one please fill me in?
One of the biggest issues that Americans have against socialism is that our country was not set up to be socialist. The type of socialism that is being railed against isn’t sustainable and will bankrupt the country even worse.
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Socialism works on paper, and is a beautiful system. People forget the human factor, and that always screws it up.
Works pretty well in Denmark, according to my cousins. You pay through the nose in taxes, but they increase the salaries accordingly, and with work, one can have a pretty nice quality of life.
it’s been working pretty well in canada, too. we pay a lot in taxes (it’s mostly the sales tax that is ridiculous). doctors visits (including specialists) and required surgeries are paid for. we get one year paid maternity leave and disability payments (with doctor approval). are education system is pretty decent and the post-secondary education is subsidized. it’s not perfect, not by any means, but it works for us.
and people don’t complain too much about the tax. we know it’s needed to keep our people healthy and looked after.
My family in the Netherlands is largely happy with their lifestyles as well. And they are all very hard workers so if people could quit with the “disincentive to work meme” now please. My aunt retired a couple years back but is going back to teaching because she was bored being retired. My grandmother is well provided for despite being very ill now and no one has to worry about whether they can afford to pay for her meds and for a nurse to come in to help her each day. Oma in fact sends money to us grandkids here in the US because she worries about us (no matter how often we tell her we are pretty well off here.) LOL!
It’s not perfect – my University educated cousin is having some trouble finding a job just now and the government wants him to take some make-work jobs for a couple of years when he would rather be doing what he went to school for.
But, hey, MJ is decriminalized there so that makes up for a lot. LOL!
Benign socialism works in European countries sitting under our nuclear umbrella and reaping the benefit of our advances. We’re the last domino and if we go down, so do they. It’s also a completely different type of civilization where it seems to work – small, homologous populations. We don’t have that here.
At any rate, it’s completely unconstitutional. If it’s so great, people can go live in any one of the socialist countries of their choice or they can form a mini-socialist society within this one comprised of volunteers. They are not free to draft the rest of us and force us into it.
America was set up as a democracy (or a Republic, as I’ve been corrected to before). What the people want is what they’ll get – and if they want socialism then you’re in for the ride. Not because it’s right or good, but because they want it.
Whether Obama will follow a broadly socialist agenda, and if so if it will be well thought out and productive, has yet to be seen.
is not socialism a form of democracy? from what i understand in a socialist government (theoreticly) everyone votes on every thing (of course this is not practicle) or is that communism. in that case what is the difference between socialism, communism, and being a republic?
Socialism is a very broad set of ideas grouped together, but fundamentally, it’s about taking things from individuals and giving them to the community. A democracy can be socialist, or adopt some socialist policies.
Communism is an extreme form of socialism in which everything is owned by everybody, equally. There are no economic, class or racial divides and everyone is the same. In the final, utopian form of communism, there is no government, so it can’t be a democracy or anything else (and everyone is perfect). Up to that point it could be administered by a democratically elected government with a communist constitution or mandate.
A republic is any government where the people have some degree of choice as to the head of state. A democracy is a kind of republic. In comon use, republic tends to connote a whole host of other ideas, but I’m no expert on the subject and just stick with the dictionary here.
If you want basic primers, wiki is actually very helpful (where it’s well-cited).
so would any public founded/owned entity be considered socialist or exhibition of socialism/socialist ideas? something like that?
If it’s funded by taxes, yes, most probably. Money taken from the people at large and spent on public works on their behalf is the foundation of socialism. Note that socialism only covers certain areas of expenditure, though. Armies are not inherently socialist, nor are governments.
would other public services (healthcare, education, postal service) ?
Yep, yep and yep. Any of those, if it’s not private, and it’s funded from taxes, is a socialist policy.
Education is a crock (for numerous reasons), and the post office is being overrun by Fed-Ex and UPS. All they need to start doing is carrying actual mail and the post office would be toast. They’d have to raise the postage rate to $20 a letter to pay for their parties. It’s a beautiful example of capitalism overruning government bureaucracy and bloating. It doesn’t work every time, but in this case, if the post office wasn’t government funded, it would have failed long ago.
There is no excuse for incompetence, bad administration and waste. All of them should have no place in a public body. And when a service can be provided in a responsible way without government intervention, the government can and should butt out.
I agree, but the way the post office is run is hardly responsible. It should have failed, but since it’s a government entity, it can’t be allowed to fail.
You’re right, and it’s a prime example of when we don’t have enough transparency and accountability to enforce good governance.
All they need to start doing is carrying actual mail and the post office would be toast.
Except that they’ll never start carrying actual mail. Why? Because there’s no profit margin in it for them. UPEx cherry-picked the services they could provide at a profit and left the Post Office with the losing propositions…the services that private companies have stepped in on used to subsidize the everyday mail.
And in fact, the USPS receives no taxpayer funding. It is entirely self-sufficient, which is why first-class stamp prices have risen since UPEx grabbed the premium services.
[LINK] for more history of the USPS than you ever wanted to know.
so then the person in the picture would not object to all those systems in the states being privatized? (emergency services and such) it looks to me like those things are a good thing
That’s exactly why a lot of people here are ridiculing the position “socialism = bad”. The person in the picture probably hasn’t though it through as far as you have in the past hour, and would indeed object to the reality of those things (as would most sane and rational folks). There are services that are better off public in our society.
*Some* socialism is not bad. It’s total socialism that will fail every time, as the human factors of greed and dishonesty will cause it to fail. Like I’ve said before, on paper, socialism is a great idea. But it won’t work in true practice.
Based on human nature as-is, yes probably. But I’d argue that human nature came from evolution – it is mutable. On a long enough timeline, we can work to improve it.
So maybe, at some point in the distant future, if we have not gone extinct, we will be able to live in a totally socialist (personally I’d want communist) way because greed and dishonesty won’t come naturally to us.
Yep, that’s a bit of a pipe-dream.
what would you suggest as a more ideal system then socialism?
Hell, as a Right Wing Religious Nutter I can say with all honesty that Jesus was a total Commie. Peace, love, and beads, that’s what He was about. But it’s the human factor that screwed that up. I seriously doubt that the human race will be on this planet long enough for us to evolve the kind of humanity needed for communism or socialism to work properly.
Whether or not we can get there, I still think that the pursuit of perfection is important. not that I’d ever want anyone to feel obliged to agree with my idea of perfection – coming up with your own is half the point.
The alternative to socialism is either services provided on a volunteer basis by the community, or provided at a cost privately. Both have their merits, and both have their flaws. Personally I feel that the best way to provide a service depends on it’s nature.
Thanks for the discussion, it’s been fun, I gots to sleep. Hope to catch you another time.
You already have. USA has not been a free market capitalistic system for a long time, if ever. Its a mixed economy.
Jesus wasn’t a communist. He never advocated stealing from anyone who had something in order to give it to the poor – he said give your own damn stuff. He also sent his apostles out the second time and told them to take up their swords and carry money with them and take care of themselves. It is called growing up, and he advocated it. He “raised” them from so-to-speak children into responsible adults.
“What the people want is what they’ll get”
Haven’t read the constitution yet? The country was set up as a group of sovereign states (which may individually enact a socialist agenda if they choose, perhaps, it could be argued) under a loose umbrella of *stringently* limited federal power which exists for the purposes of facilitating *commerce* between the states and providing for the national defense. Commerce. Trade. Free trade. The government is supposed to promote it and facilitate it. It’s the opposite of socialism.
Obama is already following a broadly socialist agenda. The reporting to the feds of every single doctor’s visit by every single person who sees a doctor so that they can then tell the doctors how to cut back on expenses (i.e. treatment) is a massive power grab written right into the stimulus; we already have massive things like the Patriot Act (no repeal in sight, though he might rename it something furry); over a trillion dollars and at least 4 – 9 trillion in proposed spending over the next several years (making it equal to our entire national debt incurred over generations – more spending than we’ve been able to accomplish in 200 years); yes, this is defacto socialism. There’s no other way to look at it.
By definition, socialism is not well thought out or productive. It is also coercive and evil. Happy to help.
“Socialism works on paper, and is a beautiful system. People forget the human factor, and that always screws it up.”
Exactly like capitalism, then.
don’t just single out capitalism! almost every “great” political idea has worked on paper but not as well (if at all) in person
The free market has been responsible for the greatest amount of prosperity to the most amount of people in unprecedented fashion, and also for the greatest achievements of mankind. It has produced great societies like the Roman Republic (who were on the verge of massive technological revolution the likes of which we can only imagine; since when it went into a socialistic empire it collapsed and all was lost – bread and circuses everyone!). It has produced the most foreign aid – you don’t see anyone begging communist countries for money – they don’t have any. Or goods.
Socialism doesn’t work on paper and never has. Free markets work both on paper and in practice.
Your average American hasn’t the slightest clue what socialism is–they’ve only heard the term used as an alternative word for ‘evil pinko communism’. A classic failure of public education, I”m afraid!
and probably a good portion of home schooled and private religious schools as well.
I take offense at that remark.
You’re free to bag on socialism as unworkable, and yet are offended by accurate comments on the poor state of american schooling as a whole? You get what you dish out.
I take offense at the homeschooling remark, not the sorry state of public schools.
I dunno, it seems fair to me. Everybody rails on public school kids, but I’ve met some slow people from all forms of schooling. There are good and bad examples of both. I could just as easily be offended by the public school comments. Either viking gal went earlier than I did or was in a place more conservative than the Deep South where I went (do these exist?)
The homeschooling thing is a near and dear issue, which is why I take exception. If you’re talking about some random mother who doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing trying to teach her kids, then yes, you have a point. If you’re talking about a mother with a teaching degree who has decided that she can do better than public schools, and test scores of every kind back it up, then that’s another matter entirely.
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The major problem with public school is that it has to teach the lowest common denominator by design, and that’s bad for those at the top. It also has to teach the biggest range, which is bad for those at the top AND at the bottom. If there was some way to narrow the range and allow those with gifts to soar while at the same time actually helping those with disabilities (as opposed to just babysitting), then public school might have a fighting chance. Otherwise, it’s a crock.
home schooling as a concept is great and many parents teach their kids very well. not to mention there is no way in holey hades i could have ever done home schooling – not enough patience for it at all. however for every good homeschooling parent i know, i also know one who has no business trying to educate their children, starting with the ones that are teaching only based on the bible.
and the same applies to many of the private schools – while they might teach according to the minimums of state requirements, there is much that is missing inc. human biology & sex ed.
I went to public school, teachers pushed everybody as far as they could possibly go, didn’t teach the lowest common denominator. So I take offense to your generalizing about MY background just as you take offense to somebody generalizing yours. There are good and bad of both. No need to trash one without recognizing the faults of the other
I agree with you, Johnathan, and I apologize for overgeneralizing the education system. Speaking from my background, and from the POV of my mother being a Special Education Pre-K teacher who had to revamp the programs at the school in which she teaches by herself to turn the classroom from a day care into an actual place of learning, it tends to skew my view on it a tad.
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When were you in school? (grade school)
Re overgeneralizing: Now you sound more like yourself!
I know the topic is near and dear to you, so I understand.
No worries, sorry for the overreaction as well, and I understand where it comes from. I’m still in college, recently escaped from grade school.
You must have gone to an exceptional school, that’s for sure. (I escaped from college a few years ago, so I sympathize with you)
Froo, I’m agreeing with Johnathan here. Take a step back, and see how overgeneralizing about one thing while complaining about overgeneralizing of the other is a bad way to press. Yes?
I’m an old fart for this crowd. Graduated HS in 1981. (cringes)
if you’re an old fart for this crowd, then i’m practically teetering into my grave, lol
Company!
*hugs bad fairie*
Well, My sister graduated about that time. I’m pushing 35 myself…
lol, i have aches and pains older than that
thanks sweetie, you’re such a nice young thing
1982, here. We didn’t have any of them new-fangled computers, but we did have….typewriters! (And a smoking area…can you kids imagine that now?)
In 1981? I was 3 years old. (That makes me, what, 12 now? No? Oh yeah, 30.)
Thanks, guys. You made me feel young (I NEVER get that).
Born ’84, I am a proud Orwell baby.
Tough nuts, dearie. A bias that’s pervasive in the American public at large is going to be magically absent from home schoolers? Not bloody likely.
I can only speak for public schools…didn’t go to the other forms. And my public school was waaaay too cautious about avoiding anything that could possibly offend a parent, politically or otherwise. Which means we learned no politics or history outside of the ‘mainstream’, and no history at all after 1945. Sad, really. No sex ed before 12th grade either, but that was pre-AIDS.
so how did the Americans get there school system so screwed up? ( i know i watched a documentary on it somewhere). Canadian teachers used to go to the states for training i’m not certain if they still do. I do not think our education system is to messed up ( i do think it could be improved, but i’ll do that later
By mandating it and putting it in the hands of the government. Your usual recipe for any disaster. If you want something to fail, mandate it and let the government do it.
By the way, I’m putting a link in this post (behind my name) to an article by a 30-year veteran teacher, who won many awards for his teaching, about what’s wrong with schooling in this country. I cite him in particular because his insight is so vast, he knows the history, and because he is not a conservative. It’s the 6 Lesson School Teacher by John Taylor Gatto.
Public education raises almost nothing BUT socialists. It is in itself a monopoly and a socialist entity; how could one possibly avoid picking up the message of socialism? They might not know what to call it, but it’s the recently publically educated that vote for it every time.
The failure in education is, beyond the basic failure to educate at all (rather to indoctrinate) is that it doesn’t bother anymore to paint communism or socialism as a negative, or to teach anything about civics, non-revisionist history, human rights (in school you have no rights except maybe to birth control) or, worst of all, economics. Being based on the Prussian model for raising good creatures of the state, this is to be expected. Castro and the USSR always boasted of their schools as well; a pope has said that if you can get a child by the time they’re 7 they’re yours for life, and Hitler had his youth too, didn’t he? Mandatory government education was so abhorred in this country children had to be marched off by armed guard in some places until people got used to it. Would that it were still so. Only the homeschoolers (well, some of them) still get it.
There are many of us who honestly believe that the country would be a much better place if people did not feel that their need somehow justified taking from those who have earned it. IE– tax refund to those who did not pay. We will ruin our country if we think that want is all that is required to justify getting something, and that is what Tea-baggers are protesting. If you work for something it is yours to enjoy, not for some looter to take because he was to lazy to work for it himself and believes that his need is justification. John Galt would a good source for all “progressives” to look into before they decry what Tea-baggers stand for.
May I suggest an amputation for your necrosis, so as to prevent gas gangrene? Those who did not pay taxes had insufficient income to tax…usually because they could not find a full-time job. There is a shortage of same, these days. And while you are having that amputation, maybe you could get an empathy implant?
under those circumstances, that would be fine!
but wait, there’s more! those children, the house payment, car payment, Tv and whatnot! oh yes! i went and got a loan for all that, then went and got married and started popping out kids! all before having the income to support them! weeeee! gimme your money, Mr. Taxpayer!
seriously, people should get a license to have children… and lenders should go to jail for lending to people who can’t afford to pay back the money.
*giggles madly at any people offended*
Until you can converse like an adult, you’ll probably get a lot more value out of education and study (both in academics and basic courtesy) than open internet forums.
really? and if i can’t i don’t have a voice? what sort of freak are you? i suppose you believe more taxing will get us out of this recession faster?
sigh*
I’m just trying to encourage you to develop tones other than hysterical and screeching. If you enjoy geing mocked and ignored, please, go though life like that. Because that’s what it’ll get you.
The screeching worked for Yoko Ono, but it’s usually a risky direction. Of course, that’s assuming Cowpie’s goals fall anywhere near seeking respect.
jeeze, humorless robots… to think people like you reproduce!
Oh no, I find you very funny. Just not in a nice way.
i find her kind of like a car accident on the freeway – you don’t want to look, but you just can’t help yourself
It seems to me that the lack of jobs may in fact be a result of allowing the non-producer to collect from the system. If you take from the economy only to give it to a person who will not add to the economy the economic system as a whole is depleted. This is what we do by paying for “need.” If you need a job so bad get one, at McDonalds if you have to, or like me, get an education that will provide you a means to support yourself. Don’t whine to me, i don’t care. I work for my own success and will never work for yours.
Which makes me wonder where you got the money for the education, if you say grants, I will laugh myself silly. Also, if you think your success isn’t link to the success of another, then I really don’t know what to tell you besides you’re shortsighted.
I do not use grants for my education. I use my own resources coupled with educational loans, which in case you missed it, is a way for some investor somewhere to make a pretty penny at my expense. But that is capitalism, I want to attend school, so I find someone who feels that I am a worthy investment and so they load me they money I so that I can get my education. Nothing socialistic about that. That is capitalism as it is supposed to be, not this contorted half-socialism that we have now that despises success and applauds failure, as in yours to understand how capitalism really works. The more you learn about economics, the more you will be sickened by socialism.
I’ve thought for years that grants (and subsidized loans, to some extent) are probably one of the more effective expenditures the government makes. It’s like an investment….give people the money to educate themselves and it pays off over the following decades as they earn higher incomes on which the government can tax them.
This idea ignores the fact that the government is a terrible money manager and that private operations can be much more productive.
I wouldn’t argue that it’s been executed in a terribly effective manner by the government, but if the intended outcome is the eventual strengthening and enlarging of the tax base….why would a private operation care about that?
with more than 7mil workers laid off in less than a year and an average of 400 people applying for each opening, regardless of industry….easier said than done. i take it you have a job and job security?
I don’t want to sound truly heartless, because I am not. But I would disagree with you, i believe, as to the cause and solution for those people who have lost their jobs. The current economic situation resulted from the practice of extending loans to people who felt that they “needed” a larger home, this practice was brought about through workings of our generous and benevolent government. Now, we have millions unemployed because someone’s need outweighed the reality that they could not afford to purchase that house in a fair and reasonable market. Now you and I are paying for the foolishness of bankers through our taxes, which reduce are ability to achieve our own goals, all because someone felt their need superseded my productivity.
telling someone to get a job when there aren’t many available, then going into a long spiel about why the economy is the way it is, is bs. do you really think the unemployed who can’t get a job even at mcdonalds, let alone within their own field care about why the economy is tanked?
as far as the housing situation goes, i agree about the oversized homes, but guess what was being marketed as ‘starter homes’? it sure wasn’t 3 bed/1 bath – those aren’t even being built. and it isn’t from lack of demand, but from inability of contractors to get development loans and permits. regulations on finances and loans have been slowly being eroded for a very long time – the chickens have just now come home to roost is all. however all that still does not provide jobs so people can get back to work now does it?
But, my point is, it is absolutely insane to think that continuing the policies that got us into this place will somehow get us out. The economy is in trouble, and the way to fix it is to allow capitalism to work, interference created a problem and interference will not fix it. I feel for those without jobs, my wife is without steady employment, but that does not cause me to blame, or take from those that do, instead we work to find a solution to OUR problem.
unfettered capitalism isn’t the solution – regulations and controls keep business practices honest and above board (as much as they can) ago back to your history books and read about the “robber barons” a nd then compare that list of names to people in politics in the last 50 yrs even…. the connections are there. and if you connect the dots to various peices of legislation and the politicians who promoted them you might learn a few things about who benefits from a free market and who doesn’t
I am not advocating unfettered capitalism. I recognize the limitations that are necessary as a result of unethical practices. But I do not think that just because unfettered capitalism is not viable, that the opposite extreme is useful. I do look at what happens in government, and I think that it may just be worse than the effects of unfettered capitalism. Unfettered capitalism can easily be changed by those who are under its influence by changing their own practices, but socialism by nature removes the power from the individual, something that I feel is un-American. I believe that you are implying that some benefit from capitalism more than others, but could it be that, barring cases of unethical practices, that these are the people who have applied their minds to the full potential, and turned that into money. To say that for some to achieve more than others is evil is to say that the potential of the mind is evil. If you have not already done so, you should read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It may open your mind to the true meaning of what socialism stands for.
“Unfettered capitalism can easily be changed by those who are under its influence by changing their own practices”
Going back to healthcare, if you don’t like the way your government runs your healthcare system in a democracy with universal healthcare, you can vote them out. You can’t do the same if healthcare companies conspire to form a cabal or monopoly, especially if your provider is chosen by your employer and not you. Both pure capitalism and pure socialism can remove power from the individuals.
Pure capitalism would never dictate what provider a person can use, that my friend is socialism. And the reason that i don’t like how my government runs health care is due to the fact that they are way too involved. If one looks honestly at the evidence, the world cannot support providing the full range of health care options to all of its citizens. Our science is way beyond our ability to pay, and to think that by making the government pay we are reducing the problem is to ignore reality. Simply put, people cannot get what they cannot afford, but if they do we will all pay a terrible price. And i think you are completely wrong about capitalism removing the individuals power. A citizen can always chose which person to support with capitalism through their dollar.
Actually pure capitalism is how we ended up with child workers before regulations were put into place. You are mixing up history and facts with theory.
The reality of capitalism is that he who has the most shit wins. Period. It means that companies can coordinate to corner the market and control it by falsely limiting supply. You do understand supply and demand. Or He who has the gold, makes the rules. Stuff like that?
The gas prices that Slan tried valiantly to explain to you and it completely missed your cortex is a result of this. They created a false demand which drove the prices up against the limited supply.
They received pressure and that dropped out. He just explained that to you.
So no, pure capitalism could most certainly dictate what you do and who you use. As a matter of fact, corporations know that they get more money when you lack options.
Economics in general is a system of control used by societies to keep their populations in check. Capitalist or Socialist, it’s about getting people to buy into the state in the end, and let it take away some of their freedom.
Not that this is a bad thing, in moderation. Just that ALL of these systems are about limiting people’s freedom. Heck, you can make a compelling case that any system is about limiting people’s freedom.
if your healthcare is through your employer there isn’t much choice, nor is it socialism according to your definition since it’s not government offered. and if you want to carry your own private insurance, depending on pre-exsisting conditions and previous treatments your premium can easily be $1000 a month plus co-pays, and that doesn’t include prescriptions or long-term care coverage. if you have pre-exsisting conditions such as diabetes, good luck finding private insurance!
“Pure capitalism would never dictate what provider a person can use, that my friend is socialism.”
Pure capitalism leads to monopolies, conspiring between companies to fix prices etc, dodgy deals between healthcare companies and your insurer in a world where many people simply have NO option but to use their employer’s provider. The idea that capitalism always ends up giving free choice is as much of a myth as the one that banks will “self regulate”.
on that note, i recommend ‘the jungle’ by upton sinclair, and ‘the grapes of wrath’ by John Steinbeck
I will make a sincere effort to read them during my summer break and I hope that you will be willing to do likewise. Thank for engaging in an honest and civil discussion of the issues.
Oh, you’re still a student! Much is explained and much is forgiven. And much is left to learn, grasshopper. Pray keep an open mind.
Steinbeck – he should have called it “Sour Grapes”. He was as bitter as Dickens.
But this is to Ceefax in his/her erroneous assertion that free markets cause monopolies. This isn’t the case in a competitive free market tempered by common law (against fraud, theft and direct harm). I particularly like Brad Edmond’s words that “the fear of industrial concentration is the last refuge of socialist theory.” I don’t know that it’s the *last* refuge, but it certainly is a big one.
Tempered by common law against fraud, theft and direct harm = prudently regulated. We’ve seen plenty of examples the past few years of how regulators keeping their thumbs tucked will lead to fraud, theft and direct harm on a truly massive scale.
Aren’t you cute, digging back into lols that haven’t been touched for three days to make unsupported claims where you think they won’t be challenged.
But, my point is, it is absolutely insane to think that continuing the policies that got us into this place will somehow get us out. The economy is in trouble, and the way to fix it is to allow capitalism to work, interference created a problem and interference will not fix it.
Say goodbye to your credibility, right there.
The policies that got us into this place were essentially to let capitalism run unchecked. Gramm-Leach-Bliley set off a feeding frenzy in the financial industry by taking down regulatory limits on the size and diversity of the financial conglomerates, alowing Citi and AIG to have fingers in every pie. Then came derivative bonds, which allowed the financial markets to slice, dice and repackage debts into investments without any real knowledge of the worth of the underlying asset, sold as highly rated bonds regardless of the real risk. That generated an ever-more-hungry secondary market for more loan paper regardless of quality – loan originators got greedy and stopped caring about the quality of business they were writing, because they were just going to turn around and sell it to the bond writers for a hefty fee and not have to worry whether the loan would ever be paid.
Top that off with credit default swaps – a mechanism that let anyone effectively buy insurance against a bond defaulting, anyone whether they had an insurable interest in the bond or not. The same bond could have a dozen different entities holding CDS paper, all essentially betting the obligor would default on the bond. And the government blocked every attempt to regulate the CDS trade.
Just for fun, throw in the commodities futures market. Remember $4-5/gallon gas from last summer? The single biggest factor was an unregulated futures speculation market that allowed traders to buy up all the advance orders for oil they could get their hands on with no intention of ever taking delivery on one drop of it, then turn around and sell the orders off at a huge markup. Pure speculation, all unregulated, and when the government merely threatened to take regulatory action or release the strategic reserve, the bottom fell out of the game.
Now tell me again about how allowing capitalism to work without interference is the answer to the problem, not the problem itself.
Your argument is deeply flawed, you quote last summer’s gas prices, which if you haven’t noticed have falled steeply in the interim, because the consumer used their power. The fact that large banks were willing to take such inordinate risks stems from the fact that they were counting on the government to bail them out if the poo hits the fan. If you had the stomach for capitalism than this wouldn’t be a problem, but you don’t and it is. More government involvement will only allow more businesses to be run into the ground because Uncle Sam will always pick up the pieces. I feel no civic duty to pay for the negligence and stupidity of those corporations with my taxes, and to assume because I am a student that somehow you are more intellectual, experienced, endowed with knowledge or experience is to make a fool of yourself.
your being a student isn’t why we disagree with you, it’s because you are wrong about laisses-faire capitalism.
are you for unfettered immigration?
no minimum wage standards?
no quality control on products sold to consumers?
no regulations stipulating food and drugs must be safe for humans/animal consumption/use?
no child labor laws?
10-12 hr workdays, 6 days a week?
no regulations covering workplace safety?
your wife, mother or sister’s job dependent on them putting out to their boss?
no compensation for being hurt on the job?
being fired for protesting unsafe working conditions or unfair wages?
and honey, more experience doesn’t make a fool of us, but of you for not paying attention to our history and learning from it so that it doesn’t happen again… read beyond what is in your textbooks and what your teachers tell you, there is a lot more out there than you can imagine and definitally more than can be covered in school.
don’t be a parrot, become an eagle -
I am not for unfettered immigration, and i find no part of capitalism that requires that. I believe that consumers are responsible to decide the quality of their products, and that reliance on the government is simply a way to live mindlessly. Many of the items you list grow out of unethical situations, not capitalistic. I have already stated that I believe that limited governmental controls are required. To assume that a capitalist believes that unethical behavior is what is called for is a gross misunderstanding of reality. It is also a misunderstanding of reality to think that my schooling is the source of my economic beliefs, I majored in life science, and am now in medical school, where economics is the least of our worries. I have developed my beliefs as a result of my life experiences, most of them in manual labor. I honestly believe that more government involvement is simply a tool for those who have no desire to better themselves to acquire the life that they want, but without working for it.
Capitalism is amoral, it doesn’t believe in the concepts of right and wrong in ethical terms. If it is the driving force behind a society, that society will be amoral.
If you believe in having a representative government by, for and of the people under which a capitalist economy exists, then that’s a different matter. What’s at question here is the merit of capitalism as the foundation, or at least cornerstone, of a state.
Once you take the position that there are things that take precendence over capitalism, say the will of the people as expressed through their duly elected representatives, then you are no longer bound to it if people do not want it.
and i majored in business, so in this situation, that trumps your med school when discussing economics! and yes, those are unethical situations, but why do you think the regulations were put into place? because out of the blue some politician said we need to screw with the free market? not at all, the regulations were put into place because of greed, unethical business practices that nearly destroyed our country on several different occasions, and to protect the powerless from the powerful.
when baron acton said: “And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely” he was referring to government, however, the same could be said for capitalists as well.
as far as economics being the least or your worries – guess again – you’re going to have to deal with clients/patients unable ot pay, insurance companies who want to pay below costs and slowly too, with having to budget for new equipment and increases in staff costs. even if you work for a private hospital, these and other economic issues will affect your practice. you should have at least a working knowledge of such things if for no other reason than so you know if someone is trying to take advantage of you and how, not to mention being a more well rounded individual who can discuss other things than the latest problem patient while in social situations, especially with facility administrators.
You’re leaving out common law. Free markets have to be regulated by *common law*, which gives every individual recourse against fraud, theft and personal/proprietary harm or encroachment. It’s not the government’s place to concern itself with how many hours someone works – that’s between the person and his employer. Unsafe conditions would lead to direct damages paid to those harmed, and would bankrupt a company. Anything your government can do, the free market coupled with common law can do better, cheaper and more efficiently.
Except of course that it didn’t – you’re challenging the validity of laws that came in under Teddy Roosevelt now. The abuse continued to happen in the free market, because people who couldn’t afford lawyers couldn’t exercise the common law remedies. That’s how these regulations got started in the first place.
Anything government can do, common law and free market can do for the rich. The other 90% of the population is fvcked. But you don’t care about that, do you?
You’re the one who’s deeply flawed, son, for your failure to read and look around you. I told you EXACTLY when and why gas prices went down, because I was watching while you were studying – the president made a speech threatening to propose regulations and release the strategic reserve, and prices (which had merely leveled off) went into free fall.
If I have the stomach for capitalism? What you mean is if I have the stomach for a system without regulation. You claim to be a med student. Do you think patients will be able to tell when a doctor is committing malpractice before their condition goes south? Do you think hospitals strapped for cash because of the growing legion of uninsured won’t cut corners that will affect patient safety, unless there are regulators holding their feet to the fire?
Regulation doesn’t mean the government covering all risks. It means the government setting the boundaries beyond which private enterprise becomes abuse of the public.
You’re not only making a fool of yourself, you are demonstrating that you lack the ethical awareness to practice medicine.
Disgusting. Being a socialist is NOT a prerequisite for medical ethics, you lying fool. That’s the most preposterous claim I’ve ever heard made, and is in fact a filthy lie that would disqualify most of the best doctors that have ever existed. Sick.
Having a sense of ethics is a qualification, and it’s one this whelp doesn’t have. Neither do you, so it’s no wonder you get along so well.
“Anything government can do, common law and free market can do for the rich. The other 90% of the population is fvcked. But you don’t care about that, do you?”
God, you’re not even fun enough to argue with; your insults aren’t amusing, and you’re just stupid. I’m gonna find someone else to argue with today, I think. But not before I call Quality Control to send me better trolls for batting practice.
Could you please do a little reading on the history of COMMON LAW and how it applied to the common man (not the rich man)? Magistrates and bringing your case to them to be settled? The meaning of outlaw? Stuff like that? Because you REALLY need to know those things before spouting something as mindbogglingly stupid as you just did about the rich. Lawyers – yeesh. One would think you were TRYING to sound stupid.
Also, a genuine free market brings prosperity to the majority over time
When an entire population is upwardly mobile, the standard of living improves among all classes. That’s why our poor have a better standard of living than those in other countries. Like the people in the soup kitchen taking pictures of Michelle Obama on their cell phones. Heh.
“Say goodbye to your credibility, right there.”
Actually, say hello to your credibility, at least economically.
“The policies that got us into this place were essentially to let capitalism run unchecked.”
Say goodbye to YOUR credibility right there. We haven’t had a free market in a long, long time, and this “massive deregulation” you people blat on about never happened. You’re talking about things that are way over your head. I realize Krugman is making that easier to do, but trust me, from the other end (i.e. an end educated on the subject) it just doesn’t hold any water. The very face of it – arguing that we’ve had unfettered free markets – is beyond absurd.
Facts. Supply some. You haven’t got any, you’re just making a trumpet of your arse.
You haven’t supplied any. At least I bothered to give a link about monopolies. But how ignorant do you imagine you really sound going on about how we have had an unchecked free market? Something we haven’t had in three generations? Something you people yourself acknowledge when the purpose suits you – for example when we protest creeping socialism, you and your lot say, “Well we already HAVE taxes and roads and schools and medicare and medicaid and you people USE them, you hypocrites – we already don’t have a free market so you’re just complaining now because you’re racist” LOL. Can’t. have. it. both. ways. slan. Fool.
We have an inadequately checked market, as the past ten years have demonstrated. History exposes you for a ranting liar and the weakest link. Goodbye.
By the way, dumbazz, Ceefax commented TODAY – it was in my inbox and I replied. I don’t have your short attention span, dipwad.
Doesn’t keep you from being an idiot. Nothing ever changes, does it?
One thing has changed. Krugman and his ducklings makes socialist idiots sound dumber because they now think they sound educated. He’s a genius, really.
And you’re still an idiot.
As Americans, we have an entitlement problem. We do believe that want is all that it takes and we do believe that we deserve everything and then some. We always want more and we always want to work less. It’s a never ending cycle. Somehow, I have more of an issue with corporate welfare, business loopholes, earmarks (although earmarks create jobs), and the tax savvy millionaires scrimping every little penny (and/or lying) than I do have with lower income people who might be playing the system. When you think about the “lavish lifestyle” of those who you are saying do nothing and get paid for it, living with 5 kids in a 1 or 2 bedroom apt. is nothing compared to having million dollar mansions and screwing the gov’t (and us) out of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.
i find its nice to share, sharing makes you feel good you should try it (go through a drive through and if there is a car right behind you pay for there meal)
if you are making millions of money what do you have to spend it on?
why not help people out who are not as blessed as you?
i’m not saying they deserve a free ride but maybe they were not as lucky as you when being born ( i didn’t get to pick the family i was born in otherwise i would have been bill gates son or something
but why not help them out by paying for there education/healthcare so that they can get a good job /live the “American dream” and in turn maybe help some one else out?
would that not make the world a better place?
would that not then show the world that America was better then the rest of the world because you help each other out instead of killing each other over table scraps?
ya i don’t know where i’m going with this
It’s nice to see a comment on a social issue post that is not patronizing or vicious.
Although your post will elicit many warm fuzzy feelings, it will never work. People will only value that which they know the cost of, and if you hand them money they did not work for they will spend it freely with no regard for the future. I am not wealthy, and I never plan to be. But I regard my own success as nothing but my own responsibility. I will never call on Mr. Gates to give me that which he has earned through his effort. The American dream is not a package deal. You don’t get the house/car/ lifestyle just because you were born. You get it because that is what you want in life and then you devote yourself to success. Very few people who truly devote themselves to success actually end up penniless, although there are exceptions, most people who work hard and diligently will succeed. I feel that it is immoral to subsidize those who do not.
I could afford a lot more if it were not for my government.
Can I get an “AMEN!”?
Uh… can you be considered a troll by just making a picture like this?
Socialism or not…why should she have to give back her social security checks anyway. She paid into the system…but that is where Social Security is flawed. It will be bankrupt very soon….GOVERNMENT should be less not more….they (and I mean both parties) can’t run anything but into the ground. The Senate and the House and the Federal Reserve have gotten us into this mess. Look it up for yourself, Bush and Obama are merely pawns to the Fed and Congress….Go to endthefed.com and learn about the private corruption…Paulson-Geithner-Chase-WaMu-etc. Congress needs to take back the power to issue money and put us on the gold standard. SRSLY this is not a Democratic or Republican issue…but an AMERICAN issue.
See above. The answer isn’t “end it all now”, the answer is “cut back where practicable and enforce accountability and transpacency”.
Less catchy, I know, but it has the advantage of actually working.
There you go again, inserting reality into an argument…
Shhh!! Stop that! You’ll be accused of watching Fox News and being a racist fascist! You know they can’t handle facts!
Hillariously, we’re both liberals.
But please give me more laughs, they soothe the soul.
No, you’re a liberal, rhorho is a Janine Garofolo clone. I don’t what that is, but I certainly don’t like it.
Citizens are the ones responsible for paying for the well-being of our elderly; the government should not be forced to do this. We need them for government and law enforcement, not much else.
See above. People won’t do it of their own accord, and not caring for those in need is unacceptable. Less government yes; total lack of support no. Any government has a moral duty to care for it’s citizens.
wow, you all over, SeeAbove.
and by all over, i meant… replying to the point of spam
Unpatriotic because she plans on saving for retirement instead of racking up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card bills, declaring bankruptcy and living off of hard working American’s tax dollars for the greater portion of her life? Is the definition of “patriotism” bending over and taking it?
Presume she didn’t drive to this event on a socialised road.
Roads fall under Article 1 Section 8 of the US Constitution. Please educate yourself before you start sounding like the author of the LOL.
That’s completely and utterly irrelevant. If you’re completely against socialism you should be campaigning for private roads.
The point is that people go “OH NOES, SOCIALISM” when America and every other country in the world needs a degree of socialism – in my opinion in terms of policing, military, roads, transport and healthcare.
Policing became socialized. And I think we’ve suffered for it. We originally voted on a sheriff, who deputized his help.
The military is Constitutional. As are commerce and roads.
Healthcare is not. Nor should it be. All government healthcare is flawed deeply and provides less aid to fewer people over a greater time frame than private practices do.
Your current healthcare system is flawed deeply. If healthcare was written into the constitution of America, would that mean that all government administered healthcare worldwide would suddenly cease to be “socialised”?
Policing is an interesting one. People with the most property gain the most benefit from the police force (with property laws being pretty much the biggest aspect of modern law), which throws a spanner in the works of arguments as to if the highest earners should pay the highest tax percentages.
If our current methods of healthcare are flawed so deeply, why is it that Canadians come south for their emergency medical needs? Why is it while Vancover doesn’t have a single medical helicopter- something even towns of 40,000 population have in the States?
Oh, Americans go abroad too. Those stories exist, but I guess you don’t see them if you choose to put blinders on.
Why are 50 million excluded and why do those with health insurance might not be covered since they might not be profitable.
Why do you pay so much yet receive so little? Its clearly inefficient. Lobbyists even pushed to ban parallel imports for drugs. Law makers of course easily bought (both sides)
No one is “excluded”. Our hospitals accept all, even illegals. What ends up happening though, is they get over crowded.
And I don’t pay that much, thank you, and I recieve quite a lot. My son was born to the tune of 8,000 in his own care alone. And it was covered by my employer- whom I picked to work for due to benefits!
Keep in mind that those uninsured people the hospitals accept are getting billed between 30% to 50% more, in general, than the hospital accepts as full payment from your insurance company. An interesting point a lot of people are unaware of.
…And they’re uninsured. What do people want? My insurance to cover their health care?
I can’t say what people in general want, I was just pointing out the inherent inequity in charging more to an uninsured patient receiving the exact same care. If Patient A and Patient B receive the same treatment from a hospital, and Patient A has insurance and Patient B doesn’t, then the hospital sends Patient A (and his insurer) a bill for, say, $10,000 and Patient B a bill for $10,000. Patient A’s insurer then sends the hospital payment of, say, $5,000 and Patient A probably was on the hook for maybe $700 or so in copays/deductibles; and the hospital….considers the matter closed. Now, if Patient B offered the hospital payment of $5700, would the hospital consider the matter closed? No, they’d take him to collections and then to court and get a judgment for the other $4300 plus.
I’m guessing a lot of uninsured people would be happy just to get charged what the hospitals/doctors charge the insured and their insurance company rather than getting screwed because the individual has little or no negotiating power in that situation.
You’d be surprised that medical bills don’t go against your credit, and if you’re illegal and used a fake name to get care, who exactly are they billing again?
@froo: But when they get a judgment against you, that does go on your credit. True enough that if they don’t have your real name/address they can’t really bill, but there’s plenty of normal law-abiding people who just don’t have insurance. (I’m not currently one of them, but I have been from time to time over my adult life. It can be a little scary.)
a medical collection account is weighted less in most FICO systems than a regular collection, but it will still screw up your credit and they don’t have to get a judgment to put it on your credit report…
Roads are Constitutional. Article 1 Section 8.
Please explain how that matters in the slightest. in a true capitalist society the roads would be privately owned and there would be free market, unregulated competition. The rich could pay for luxury, well maintained roads, the middle class would take economy roads and if the poor needed to use a road to get to a new job and they couldn’t afford it, tough. The US road network is a socialist system. What the country’s constitution says about it is completely irrelevant. Enjoy crusing along on your pinko roads, commie.
I’ve done nothing but argue for the Constitution in this case. I know it’s par the course to insult people for no reason on here… but really? You’re going down that path?
he constitution has NOTHING to do with this conversation at all. The fact that the constitution is socialist in sections is completely irrelevant!
Uhm… let’s see here…
The Constitution is a document that is intended to keep government as close to anarchy as feesible (while maintaining some form of government) this is to ensure liberty of the individual.
Socialism is an expanded concept of government that embraces larger powers being given to the same.
While elements of some form of social structure are indeed present in the Constitution, however, the concept is far from the idea of Socialism.
Perhaps you’d like to take a chill-pill now?
I know you seem to have a comfort zone where you just go “The constitution!!!” when you can’t think of anything to say, but it has no relevance to the point in question. Socialism isn’t an I/O thing. There have ALWAYS been socialist principles present in the US and there are no governments in Europe which are truely socialist.
Keep telling yourself that. And enjoy your gun ban.
You prefer a country were people are shot daily? Personally I don’t.
People are shot daily in any country (population statistics willing). Difference being, in America- you get to shoot back!
Not true. And just in case you wanted to know, USA is in the lead when it comes to killing people with guns. Per 100,000.
Does say a lot, doesn’t it.
To paraphrase Archie Bunker- would it make you feel better if they were all pushed out of windows?
The problem isn’t the method, its the actions. In the mean time, gun bans in America make about as much sense as banning sky scrapers and trains in Japan.
There are still guns illegally owned by criminals in the UK, and I’m not going to deny that. When thinking about the effectiveness of gun bans, I think you have to consider the different ways guns are used for crime. Illegally held guns are most often used by criminals against other criminals. Spree killings, of the kind seen most often in America are almost always by previously law abiding citizens with legal guns. You don’t hear of some gangbanger or methhead street punk planning and carrying out an attack in the mode of walking into a workplace or school, killing as many strangers/family members/co-workers as possible and then shooting themselves. A gun ban in America might not be particularly useful in terms of stopping rival drug dealers taking pot shots at each other or holding up petrol stations, but I think it would certainly greatly reduce spree killings because those who carry them out rarely have the kind of connections to obtain blackmarket weapons in a ‘gun-free’ society. Same goes for crimes of passion and sudden flip outs, where if there was no gun on hand it wouldn’t turn into a massacre. Of course it then comes down to if people are willing to make the sacrifice of giving up guns to only eliminate some forms of gun crime and probably only reduce others.
So, mac, basically you’re okay with gun violence if you have the possibility to shoot back IF someone ever attacks you? (Which I consider highly unlikely..)
And Ceefax, I do agree with you. Of course I see that banning guns won’t solve everything. Though I think it would at least prevent those extremely unnecessary shootings (though in my opinion one should never really shoot someone in the first place.) I do, however, realize that their culture, sadly, prevents it from happening in the near future.
I’m in the US Army- I EXPECT people to shoot back. I feel that our citizens deserve no less than to be equally equipped.
And as for the desire to prevent mass shootings- if only Chairman Mao had felt that way…
So you’re all for violence and vengeance. Okay, let’s make a nice scenario. A robber enters an old lady’s home, armed. Do you think it’s most likely that
A. The old lady shoots the robber and secures both her safety and her belongings
..or
B. The robber instinctively shoots the old woman when seeing her gun
Of course if she didn’t have a gun, an option C would be available:
C. The old lady gives the robber some of her personal belongings, instead of being shot.
Just think about it.
And as for Chairman Mao – I see you take pride in knowing the name of someone not American? Keep it up, armyb0i.
Your old lady story…Holy SH*T. There are so many logical fallacies and so many other things just so wrong about it that…it’s kind of a masterpiece.
Look, you’re going to realize on your own why it was outrageously silly – because I’m asking you to spend a LITTLE time – just a little, mind you – maybe a couple hours – talking to people about that exact scenario/post. Except people who will very patiently explain to you exactly what’s wrong with that scenario and what the reality is. I’m talking about responsible American gun owners.
You head over to Warrior Talk with Gabe Suarez, tell them Anniee sent you (I don’t really hang there but Gabe might recognize the name; if not just explain why you’re there) and ask them if they would patiently and kindly explain what’s wrong with your post and what’s not wrong with it. You won’t be abused for simply posting the question; they are decent people, and you are going to get schooled probably a little better than you’re looking for, but I’m assuming you want real, good answers and it’s just not possible to educate anyone in this particular environment. But it’s worthwhile to learn, so please give it a shot, all right? I don’t think you’ll be sorry.
I am perfectly aware of the “many logical fallacies”, though the story itself isn’t my point at all, and therefore not really meant to be important or realistic. The actual point is that regular people are not trained in using a weapon. Especially not guns.
Sorry about the double posts… new to this forum.
And no, I’m for a Constitutional government.
You seem to think that the constitution of your country was somehow divinely dictated and is infallible and if something is in the constitution of one particular country then it can’t possibly be a socialist principle.
I somehow seem to think that our Constitution hasn’t had a role in our government in almost 60 years.
And you seem to think that increasing government powers will increase general welfare of liberty.
I agree, government, by nature, will be opposed to liberty and the larger that it gets the more liberty that is swallowed up into oblivion.
Couldn’t say it better.
Ohhhh that was beautifully stated, Mac. Bravo! And you used one of my favorite Archie Bunker lines LOL. Defenestration is sometimes funny.
What people fail to realize is the enormous number of lives that are saved every year by the presence of a handgun or shotgun. It’s estimated in the millions. Wherever concealed carry is permitted, crime goes down, completed rapes go down, murder goes down. It was when a visitor to a school during a shooting went to his car and got his gun and ended it (obviously not Columbine, which is why I don’t remember the name). Had a single teacher or student had the ability to defend themselves at Virginia Tech imagine how many lives could have been saved. Or at that Canadian school where that guy came in and started shooting feminists. It’s a horrible waste of life that occurs when people aren’t allowed their basic human right to defend themselves.
There is a site about women and gun defense that twists the statistics about rape and murder prevention of women who are armed because the fact is most of them never have to KILL their attacker. They have to show force and it generally ends there. And what kind of responsible parent doesn’t keep protection in the house to save the lives of their children? Even on Morgan Spurlock’s 30 days the anti-gun nut was sent to visit a family whose husband had saved the lives of his wife and children by shooting an invader who was intent on murdering them. It’s our right, even Obama claims it’s an individual right (though he speaketh with forked tongue).
It’s posts like these and overly serious dick bags like the ones in the conversation above who spend all their time arguing political points online that make me hate Pundit Kitchen.
I just hate seeing all the hate, even if it doesn’t physically affect me. Conservatives are all greedy vampires, Democrats all naive and lazy, moderates just spineless and too dumb to decide. This if you listen to the responses. Yeah, it’s the internet, but it’s still a human being harassing another human being
Which makes it especially damaging when they start going after Tea Party goers… people who are fed up with the crap that you listed above.
Wake up America! It’s citizens demanding freedoms versus a government demanding power!
We need to work together on this if we’re going to see real change and take pride in real accomplishments!
The Tea Party goers are an excellent example of that crap listed above, a lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, mixed with anarcho-capitalists which are basically the right’s naive equivilant of anti-globalisation rioters. The people who took part in the Boston Tea Party must be spinning in their graves when they see these morons.
Democrats attended most of these parties as well.
And yes, we are anti-globalists. We LIKE being free from the rules of outsiders.
Keep in mind, the original Tea Party was because of YOUR government.
Onyl about one in five Democrats has a favourable view of the tea parties, and that’s from the survey that teabaggers themselves keep citing in these comments
So, when 20% of the opposition party approves, that somehow still makes it a “lunatic fringe”?
If it’s a fringe, then there should barely be support from the original party, let alone a full 5th of the opposition!
You’re right. These non-funny “lols” that are just bitter BS make the whole experience not funny. When I first started reading the site (but not the comments) there were a lot of funny ones, enough that I could skip past the Bush and Palin-bashing to get to the funny stuff. But the left isn’t satisfied with being in full control; they intend to rub our noses in the turds then demand we like the smell.
This is perfect.
I’ll never accept Medicare, personally. I chose my employer on that. And I’m sorry, SS is going to be bankrupt soon enough.
The current US system gives less freedom than the socialised health systems of Europe. It’s a failed model and the laughing stock of the western world.
The source of every innovation that a socialized Europe enjoys is American. The last mark of personal invention to come from them was the automobile- before socialism took hold.
Also, if we’re such a laughing stock, what are their immigration numbers like? You don’t hear about millions waiting in line to become French citizens.
Wow. That is ignorant. Don’t ever write a report on that because you’ll be laughed at.
Prove me wrong.
Well in my home town of Newcastle, England we’re leading the way in innovation in stem cell research at The Centre For Life, a field which for some reason has seen very little American innovation over the past 8 years in spite of a conservative government in the US which supposedly supports innovation.
And adult stem cell research is still producing results, where as all accounts point to embryonic stem cells being largely tumor causing. Try again, shall we?
Even if what you were saying is true those would be important findings. And where would have that research come from? Keep believing all this nonsense, it’s amazing what some people will believe.
Also, the reason that medical advances have come from Europe recently is because the form of capitalism that the US medical industry thrives on actually discourages innovation in many cases. If a company starts developing a drug and realises it won’t be able to sell it for a big enough profit, it shelves it and keeps the patent, preventing other companies from continuing development or developing their own version. The idea that socialism inhibits innovation is simply bollocks, capitalism can be just as, or more constricting. Anarcho-capitalism and under-regulation is what got us into the financial mess we’re in now, and in the polar opposite if the fairytale we’re told about how the failing companies are the ones that suffer,the fat cats who caused the problem are being rewarded for failure and the normal man in the street is paying. All that sh!t we were told by these wooly headed western right-wing idealists about self regulation was lies.
Medical advances in Europe? Ever wonder where the stereotype of the Englishman with bad teeth came from?
Oh, you want to get into stereotypes, great. I guess you’d like me to retort by asking how the healthcare system in the US is dealing with obesity and heart disease and we can truely bring this conversation down to your level as we shout “Fatty” and “Rotten mouth! at each other while waving little flags.
We can, but Europe is being consumed by gluttony as well.
Shall we try again?
Try what? How about you prove that EVERY innovation in Europe has come from America since, in your imagination, it became socialist in spite of at many times over the last decade many countries in the EU having leaders which leaned more to the right than some US leaders over the same period.
Hmmm, well… Airplanes were invented in America. TV was invented in America. The internet is a US military experiment that gained popularity. Nuclear Fusion. Radio. And then there are the countless medical practices that are now common world-wide, with the overwhelming majority of them originating in America or by Americans.
And I was pointing out that Europe has a “growing” problem now as well. Trying to call all Americans “fat” as a stereotype doesn’t keep up with the times.
Prove me wrong.
Well I live in England and we turn away huge number of immigrants, thanks.
“Huge numbers” to a population of 61 million isn’t exactly impressive to someone from a counrty with 5.6 times that.
I wouldn’t expect you to understand complicated terms like per capita, so I’ll just let you go get some sleep, all these words must be tiring for you.
It’s 1320 where I’m at now, buddy. I’m wide awake. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind trying to stay on the conversation instead of assuming I’m an idiot? (Especially since you seem to think you know so much about American history and government… while your own country is infested with an “asian youths” problem.)
Which “problem”? The fear de jour is knife crime at the moment, but that’s mostly characterised as being a problem endemic amongst mainly poor, mostly black but also largely white teenagers.
Wow, so… sharia law isn’t an issue to you?
No, not in the slightest because there is not a cat in hell’s chance of it being implimented, ever, unless you listen to absurd scaremongerer’s such as the likes of the Daily Mail. Please don’t tell em these ridiculous urban legends are believed over there?
Funny, the Archbishop of Canterbury says otherwise…
Click my name for what he actually said. It’s worth noting that we don’t actually let religions choose the laws in this country, luckily.
Of course you don’t let religious heads make laws.. I mean, that would be like a monarchy or something, where you’d have your own state originated church… Oh… yeah… hmmmmm
The monarchy, although I dont’ agree with it, has no real power at all. The State Church is a funny one, I’d prefer us to not have an official state church, but I don’t think that we actually need separation of church and state as much as the US because religious groups here are so politically impotent.
Power and influence are not one and the same.
I’ll have cheese with my mac
Wow, you’re like a breath of fresh air. I hope you’re sticking around.
@mac: just out of curiosity – how do you choose your employer based on whether or not you will participate in medicare when you are retired? it is a mandatory deduction from your paycheck and if your employer is not deducting it or paying their portion, they will be penalized.
There’s some government jobs where you don’t have FICA taken out. Maybe mac works for the government. I think the only other possibility to get out of that is working for cash under the table.
Of course it’s also possible that he meant he works for someone with an excellent benefit package for retirees so he won’t need to rely on Medicare. (In which case….hope your employer doesn’t go bankrupt. It’s not GM, is it?)
you are correct… congress, for example, does not pay into medicare…
and neither do minister types who take a vow of poverty, but their not exactly an employee. i can understand having an excellent pension program from an employer, but medicare? only the military and politicians have their own retirement medical coverage that i’m aware of…. unless i’m wrong?
so do other govt type jobs… especially DoD civilian contractors…
The DOD doesn’t pay into Medicare.
Its just the latest buzzword used to smear the opponent. The constant campaigning continues, where everyone is busy attacking the other side instead of trying to figure out how we got into this mess and how to get out.
It looks like a lot of people have no idea what a Republic is, which, BTW, is what the US is. It also looks like people have no idea what history has taught. It looks like those in favor of socialism have never lived in a socialist country, which BTW, I have. There is a big difference between SS and a socialist country. There is a big difference between the morality of taking care of those that cannot take care of themselves and socialism. But, I see today that the ideals of freedom are takingback seat to those that can vote for “Change” and take from those that earn versus those that refuse to earn.
It appears that people have forgotten the reasons this country was founded. No, not the settlements of this country the foundation of this country, again, a difference. This country was founded in part (notice the IN PART) by a people that were sick and tired of being unfairly taxed and taxed too heavily. It appears that the government has done the job right in omitting the basic fundamentals of economics. Theory is one thing proven working economic history another.
No wonder the USA has such a low educational rate compared to other countries. You know, the same countries that are telling the US not to go down this path. The ones that have traversed it and understand the problems with it.
You people that keep ranting on the wrongs of capitalism are the very people that profit by capitalism. If you think it will be better with a socialist, communist, or Marxist regimen try living under one before committing the one thing that no other country as ever been able to do and that is destroy what makes America, America.
When you have lived under one for a year or so… come back then and tell us all how wonderful that system is.
My pride took a couple of hits as an American, but you are 100% dead on.
Well put.
I live in a country with what you would consider “socialised medicine” for 30 years and there is no way, no how I would ever live in a country where health care was managed by insurance companies instead of by those elected by the people. I don’t consider myself to live in a socialist country by any stretch of the imagination, however. It’s worth noting that there are NO political parties in my country, no matter how right-wing, who would even consider doing away with the NHS because to do so would simply be political suicide.
Congrats, you now have admitted that comfort trumps liberty in your country.
Sigh, have you ever had that argument used against you by any chance when you’ve called for wider ranging anti-terrorism powers? Being too crippled to work and having no healthcare because you can’t afford it is not liberty, it’s slavery.
Just like there needs to be a balance struck between liberty and security, there needs to be a balance between capitalism and socialism, and that goes for every country in the world. Allow it to go too far towards socialism and you get yout of control unions and general strikes, let it go too far to true capitalism and you get the kind of economic mayhem we’ve seen recently (which you’ll notice didn’t effect so called “socialist” countries such as France as badly due to their higher levels of regulation on things like bank investments and consumer debt). True capitalism has never, and will never be achieved. You always need some socialism in the mix as well. True, pure capitalism is as much of a naive dream as true communism.
Uhm, American hasn’t been anywhere near actual capitalism since the Fed was created. The first two incarnations failed, but for some reason, after Marx wrote a book that many took as prophetic (even Marx wasn’t a Marxist) the Fed got enough support from enough ranking officials to survive. And since that day, the US has been in debt to a private organization- and as such the government has taken every chance it could to raise capital for itself to feed the beast.
You’re arguing points I never raised?
Nice of you to assume things of me.
That has to be the silliest thing I’ve ever read in my life.
So, in your opinion, socialised programs increase liberty?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but, at the time of the Boston Tea Party, tax revenue generated within the colonies was largely not being spent for the colonies. It’s not difficult to liken it to putting us into debt for a pointless war. The fact that Bush didn’t collect enough revenue to cover his frolic in Iraq, and that we have nothing to show for the expenditure begs the question: Why weren’t tea parties being held before now?
Sorry, but this “shooting the messenger” business is transparently partisan in nature. Nobody likes the feeling of runaway spending by any government, but there’s a huge difference between pissing it to the wind and protecting the citizens from what otherwise would be an erasure of our economy.
That is what I have been wondering. This whole tax issue didn’t start this year and neither did the economic problems.
I think the timing was probably bad, but regardless, the message was the same. Gross overspending by the government is a bad idea no matter who did it, and I hear almost as much Bush-bashing from the Right as I do from the Left.
Oh sure, now that he’s safely out of power. Now the Republican mainstream can be against him too…that is, until the prosecutions start, then he’ll be Messianic again.
Apparently you missed the last 6 months of his presidency, as told by right wing talk radio. They pretty much blasted him for the spending. Funny how that never comes up in the mainstream media, which has right wing talkers worshiping at the feet of Bush.
They blasted him for the spending? Really?
Rolling back civil liberties, approving torture, wars transparently for personal fiscal gain, grossly oversteping the bounds of the executive, fine, go for it.
But you’d better keep your murdering, theiving, oppressive, power-hungry hands off of our cash.
/ hyperbole for comic effect
HALLIBURTON!
That’s really all you had to say LOL
prosecutions lol. Caterpillars.
With Pelosi the first up against the wall. Never gonna work, not when all the ts were crossed and is dotted in triplicate, with the Speaker in attendance wondering why we weren’t gonna be tougher than THAT. Caterpillars lol. Good luck.
Releasing those memos was a stupid, stupid mistake. Obumbles really isn’t very smart.
Boehner was lying, Pelosi was not briefed about those techniques being actually used. And if she had made a public noise about the contemplation of their use, she’d have been in the dock for giving away state secrets. Nice little trap, but it’s bullshit.
Listen and learn, little girl. We HANGED people for this shit in WWII. We sentenced our own people to 20 years for waterboarding prisoners in the Spanish-American war, we sentenced them to 15 years in Vietnam.
We tortured people. Us. Americans. And someone has to pay for that.
When you’re a conservative and a Fox News anchor tells you you’re wrong, you’re fvcking WRONG.
I guess Pelosi was lying when she said she knew all about it and had been on the virtual tour, she just didn’t know exactly when they were going to use it. That wasn’t even a nice try, zero credit on that one.
These weren’t prisoners of war, but again you’ve already demonstrated your utter ignorance on that score.
Frankly, I couldn’t give two sh*ts if they hooked Sheikh Mohammed’s gonads to a car battery just because they were bored. Because of who he is. Two of the meanest terrorists in the world were boarded, others got caterpillars. Caterpillars LOL
At any rate, the legal counsel was rock solid, all bases covered, and your people KNEW. It’s never, ever, ever going to wash. Obama recognized that right quick, I think – BIG mistake.
I don’t watch television news. Never have. Oh, except for Linda Ellerbee in the mid 80s. Why should I care what a Fox News anchor thinks? I don’t care what any of them think.
Point is, your bias doesn’t wash anymore.
YOU’RE. FVCKING. WRONG.
/thread
The law wasn’t rock solid, it was bullshit through and through. The Army’s lawyers knew it. Condoleeza Rice’s own staff lawyer knew it, wrote a memo thoroughly taking it apart, and the Bush administration was so afraid of it that they tried to confiscate and destroy every copy of the memo.
Pelosi did not get a “tour,” she got a briefing that the techniques were being authorized in advance and couldn’t talk about it. Evidence otherwise or you’re lying as usual.
That’s true. I haven’t lived under socialist circumstances but I appreciate what I have.
They spelled socialism right. Impressive.
The captioner is definitely showing how stupid he/she is. Obviously they’ve never gotten a paycheck, or they’d see that the gooberment takes money from you every payday to pay for Medicare and FICA. Why shouldn’t this demonstrator keep her Medicare and Social Security check–after all, it’s HER MONEY the gooberment takes, then “kindly” doles back out to keep her at barely subsistence level.
Why not let people keep their money? They can manage it a helluva lot better than the gooberment ever thought about.
Because that’s NOT how social security works. The money taken out of your paycheck TODAY, pays for TODAY’s retired people. The system only works as long as there are more people paying in, than drawing out. When the baby boomers retire, this will no longer be the case and the system will be paying out more than it takes in, thus it is not sustainable.
It wasn’t set up to work like that. The monies were supposed to go into a fund for later disbursement, but said monies were burning a hole in the pockets of you-know-who (I mean come on, SS is paying for kids in school who have never contributed to the fund) so here we are, victim to forced socialism pre-abused by the gov’t to ensure we continue to throw years of our life away for nothing.
Brilliant.
I didn’t say that was how they set it up, I was explaining how it works.
Try not to confuse “how it’s supposed to be” with reality.
In Socialist Canada, Health Care pays for you!
Tee hee.
What you fail to mention is that if the government would stop taking my money for FICA and Medicare, I would be perfectly happy to never take social security or medicare. I made the mistake of actually adding up how much of my income I lose to taxes, not just federal income taxes, but FICA, Medicare, and state taxes. I lose 39% of every paycheck to taxes. If that doesn’t piss you off, nothing will.
I love how the captioning on this picture is so misguided.
If the person in the picture paid out to those programs from years and years of hard work (what’s that?) then they have every right to collect those checks. It’s not like they are TAKING anything that they didn’t already pay for.
If they collect checks and benefits that they did NOT already pay for, it’s welfare.
And if they DO choose to give back their money and refuse pre-paid benefits (again, funded by their many years of paying into these programs), then it’s “forced charity”.
another liberal blogger that thinks money grows on trees. We want to stop paying our money into these failed institutions and save it so we dont have to look to the goverment to steal more money to pay for our medical bills and retirement. We are sick of paying for peoples mistakes, like having to pay taxes to pay for medical bills for people that have been smoking their entire lives. our paying for sombodies retirement after they had squandered it all away on casions and Rims for their 64 impala. But if you want to depend soley on the government to make all your decisions for you… I’m sure you could convince them to make a plantation for you and your liberal friends to work on.
Oh I love the idiot who captioned this. We’re all forced at gunpoint to pay for the miserable schemes that are Social Security and Medicare, so damn straight we’re all going to use them when we’re old if they’re available.
What this guy said.
I only read this comment but I’m sure about 50 other people beat me to it as well.
Caption guy is a moron.
Great! Another unfunny, heavy handed caption with all the satiric subtlety of a boot to the head. I thought the Left was supposed to have all the funny people?
Well, you see- they can’t find any god joke material on Obama, therefore “funny” has to be making fun of the dissenting view points.
This dissent make sense.
Oh all right. Bill, Hillary and Barack die and go to heaven. They’re standing before God, when …
hehehe
We do. This person is not one of them.
Why is is when a conservative is protesting it’s to be ridiculed, but liberals are protesting it’s their Right to Free speech? “Don’t judge me man, you dang facist bas tardo”. I don’t believe in what the left protests but they have a right to protest, apparently they are the only ones………
Right, because the conservatives never ridiculed war protestors, much lest called them traitors or anything.
Oh. Wait.
And the left never ridiculed soldiers, or spit on them or called them traitors or anything.
Oh. Wait.
Exactly. Those that say that socialism is bad don’t realize how much socialism this country already has. Now, this shouldn’t spread to the free market, but the people that throw the “socialism” label around like a scarlet letter, definitely run the risk of looking like fools.
Tubby, maybe people don’t want this country to swing more to the left than it already has in terms of Socialism. When the President of the USA can have a CEO fired/ fire him, it is a sad day in America. That’s more liberty loss than say the NSA listening to some non-American making phone calls without a warrant. Yet the outrage is minimal b/c the Media has us brainwashed. Wait until the media starts losing their ability to print stuff b/c Obama doesn’t want people to know it.
I understand they may not want a bigger socialist state. I don’t mind that, because I agree with them in that respect. But there is a small, but very vocal, uninformed minority in the US conservative population that makes the rest of us look bad. This minority has fallen for the bogus logic of the Limbaughs of the world, and they have let slippery slope arguments, guilt by association, and straw man arguments guide their thinking. The truth? In the grand scheme of things, this country has been WAY more gov’t-controlled than it is now. Look at the 50′s… or the Japanese camps during WWII… or the Depression… you will see that, even with the expansion of government, the money being thrown around (things I disagree with as well), we could be a loooot worse off. All I’m saying is, if you’re going to be hacked off at the government, there are plenty of real reasons that don’t involve throwing a buzzword around until it loses it’s meaning.
” Yet the outrage is minimal b/c the Media has us brainwashed.”
By the way, that argument holds no water anymore because the “liberal media” concept has become a myth. Remember, the “media” includes conservative blogs, FOX, Washington Times, NPR, Clear Channel, Hannity, Michael Savage, and Drudge Report in addition to the “evil liberal media” outlets.
Tubby: NPR is one of the most liberal Radio Stations, it was Air America prior to Air America. You mentioned ONE large media TV outlet, FOX. That leaves, ABC, NBC (MSNBC), CBS, and CNN. You mentioned ONE moderately sized news paper. That leaves, Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, Boston Globe…… We have our few conservative outlets, however there are far more numerous outlets for the liberals to spread their word. Not to mention Colbert Report and Jon Stewart Show. Also only FOX NEWs station is conservative, the local stations tend to be more liberal, like FOX 5 in DC. The local Fox stations also don’t air anything like 20/20, Dateline, 60 Minutes, etc which tought their liberal bias all over the place; “If I only Had a Gun”… ridiculous showing.
20/20 has a liberal bias? The show that gave libertarian John Stossel his career has a liberal bias? Now what about those other outlets:
MSNBC: former republican congressman Joe Scarborough has a show, and arch-conservative Pat Buchanan is a regular contributor
CNN: Robert Novak is a regular contributor
NYT: Conservative columnists like William Safire and David Brooks, as well as Judith Miller, who parroted Bush administration propaganda leading up to the war.
Not to mention that conservatives pretty much dominate talk radio. But that’s okay, you keep on whining about how you don’t have an equal say in the press, after all, it beats having to come up with actual ideas and solutions.
As a liberal who shamelessly watches and enjoys Keith Olbermann, I have to say that in no way do I pretend that MSNBC is balanced. It’s a great way to fuel my liberal POV, but balanced? Not so much. Sure, they’ve thrown in a couple token conservatives, but that’s it. It’s not balanced. I just personally prefer their bias to FOX’s.
“NPR is one of the most liberal Radio Stations”
Really? Because I listen to it on way to work in the morning, and at 9am central time, Diane Rehm gives me the most informed, balanced, and respectful discussions on the issues facing our country today. They are, by far, the most balanced news source in this country (even though there are some whows that make me gag). Have you even bothered to LISTEN to NPR? Or are you assuming it’s liberal because it’s government-funded?
If you listen to NPR, then listen to the same story on HLN or CNN, then listen to the same story on Fox, there are words added or left out to change the overall meaning of the actual story. So yes, NPR is liberal, but that’s ok. I’ve found that HLN is about the most unbiased news source in the mornings.
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Also, if NPR wasn’t getting those government funds, it probably wouldn’t be in business anymore. It’s not exactly killing in the ratings department.
(And, to clarify, NPR isn’t the only one trying to change the overall meaning of the stories it reports. Fox does the same thing, along with the mainstream news media. Just wanted to clear that up before I got accused of bias
)
I think it’s actually pretty silly when people try to claim that their favorite news outlet is balanced. NONE of the major news outlets are particularly balanced. FOX & MSNBC are the most blatantly right and left leaning, respectively. But as a former journalism student, I can tell you that there isn’t enough balance out there. Objective journalism has become a diamond in the rough. The sad part is, a straight news story shouldn’t be that hard. Report the facts. Don’t sensationalize the story. Keep it balanced IF THE FACTS ALLOW FOR IT. There aren’t always two sides to the story, and sometimes, there are several sides to the story. Anyway, I’m rambling now, so I’ll end today’s lesson in Media Ethics by saying that today’s news is little more than entertainment with some facts thrown in. Sometimes.
I agree completely. Will you marry me? Oh, wait. Dammit.
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I think objective journalism went out the window about 30 years ago, honestly. Like I said before, I like HLN because even though they are a spin off of CNN, they seem to only report what’s there with very little if any commentary. At least in the mornings. I wake up to Robin Mead. I’d love to smack her makeup artist.
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My praise of HLN notwithstanding, I think Nancy Grace should be put in stocks and have tomatoes thrown at her head.
The Internet was the final nail in the coffin of real journalism, ironically enough. The “information superhighway” has led to more misinformation than anything, and the competition for viewers and readers has lead once reputable publications and stations to embrace sensationalism and obvious bias in order to attract whatever target audience they might have. The fact that news has become so corporate doesn’t help. Reporting the news fairly is only worthwhile if it makes money. Otherwise, screw it.
[LINK] for an impressive article by Jay Rosen on how He-Said-She-Said articles are killing journalism and wounding the body politic.
TL;DR summary: Pursuit of a false centrism and ‘neutrality’ lead us to crap like “Scientists, White House Differ on Shape of Earth.” When one person says something absolutely whack job and another says no, that’s not really true, a journalist really ought to do a bit more than report what each person said. Especially now when five minutes with Google can give you enough background to provide necessary clarifying facts to the reader.
@froo: I volunteer to help with that! Gossipy aside: I have a childhood friend who was working in the Atlanta legal community around the time NG was a prosecutor. She was, um, not widely respected according to what I heard.
Eric: That’s exactly why I like to look at coverage of stories I’m interested in from more than one source. I figure if you get a variety of biases, somewhere therein lies pretty close to the truth. I was explaining this to someone I work with who is VERY liberal once and he couldn’t believe I would include Fox in the spectrum of coverage. You would’ve thought I said that I always liked to see what The Onion had to say about issues. I guess it’s sort of my Rashomon theory of news coverage.
while npr gets some of their funds from the gov’t, it isn’t anywhere near all their funding sources according to their financial statements:
* 31% from listeners in the form of pledges, memberships, and other donations
* 20% from businesses via corporate underwriting
* 11% from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which is federally funded*
* 10% from licensee support
* 9% from foundations and major gifts
* 5% from local and state governments
* 14% from all other sources
http://www.npr.org/about/privatesupport.html
and
http://nprstations.org/conferences/treasurers_report_may_2005.pdf
trying this again – somehow i’m on moderated status?
so i’m posting again, if it comes through twice, mea culpa, mea culpa
while npr gets some of their funds from the gov’t, it isn’t anywhere near all their funding sources according to their financial statements:
* 31% from listeners in the form of pledges, memberships, and other donations
* 20% from businesses via corporate underwriting
* 11% from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which is federally funded*
* 10% from licensee support
* 9% from foundations and major gifts
* 5% from local and state governments
* 14% from all other sources
{http://www.npr.org/about/privatesupport.html}
and
{http://nprstations.org/conferences/treasurers_report_may_2005.pdf}
To be fair, Neil Conan (Talk of the Nation, 2-4pm ET; political correspondent, DC bureau) is clearly right of center and his personal bias definitely creeps into the discussion. Juan Williams has had scandalous flirtations with neoconservatism, and he’s heard in NPR’s straight news broadcasts daily.
worried moderate, just because a media outlet is “more liberal” than another doesn’t necessarily make it liberal, that just means that it isn’t as conservative as the one you are comparing it to. most radio stations tend to be more to the right of center from what i have listened to with npr being firmly on the moderate left, then there is the stations that carry limbaugh and that guy who wears a cowboy hat – those stations tend to be very firmly on the left. toss in the christian stations that broadcast their version of the news, those are also very firmly on the left as are every televangelist i’ve heard. so when all stations are taken into account, the airwaves are more conservative leaning than liberal. television tends to run the same, but isn’t as noticible because watchers usually pick up the same programs each week and opposing viewpoints are usually aired at the same time to compete for the same viewer share.
(15 second snark here: just because something/someone isn’t an arch conservative, doesn’t mean they are a flaming liberal; it’s all a spectrum and most will be found clumped closer to the middle that at either end)
Fox one second “The media is completely liberal!”
Fox one second later “Look at our absolutely massive cable share, go us!”
Tubby: Actually we’re getting pretty close to the Big Government pre-WWII. The country owning publically traded banks? Don’t remember that as part of Roosevelts Big Deal!!! How many of his programs became permanent now adays? Social Security, welfare, etc…. once plans that allow the private citizen to suckle from the government’s teet at no expense to him/herself is in place, they are hard ot get rid of. Hence let’s stop it before it grows. Last time I checked I didn’t want the governement to own/ run/ operate publically traded companies, helk any companies for that matter. This Administration has taken liberties in the wake of public outcry, and soon we’ll find ourselves in a world of hurt. Sorry I pay for my own insurance now, why should I pay for other people’s, unless I choose to give to Charity?
“once plans that allow the private citizen to suckle from the government’s teet at no expense to him/herself is in place, they are hard ot get rid of.”
Well, if you look at programs like SS and welfare, then it’s easy to assume the above statement. But what about government programs that dissolved? You didn’t mention the temporary nature of the Unamerican Activities commitee, the Guantanamo Bay detention center, or the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
Anyway, again, I agree that the government should have no stake in private companies, but let’s face it, it’s not like anyone held a gun to Citibank’s (or AIG’s) head – they could have said “thanks but no thanks” to the TARP money, filed for Chapter 7, and Obama would have had nothing to go on.
@worried moderate
“This Administration has taken liberties in the wake of public outcry, and soon we’ll find ourselves in a world of hurt. ”
so it bothered you just as much when the last admin suspended habeus corpus and did illegal wiretapping of amer citizens and awarded no bid contracts to halliburton and other companies owned/ran by his buddies? and how did you feel about the other 750 laws bush said he could set aside if they disagreed wth his interpretation of the constitution, or when he said the constitution was “just a piece of paper” and he could do whatever he wanted? where was your justified outrage then?
Considering that people are comparing the new administration to Lincoln, doing all of that stuff has a different sting, yes?
that’s something i never exactly got – how he’s so much like lincoln… on what basis? so he’s from illinois? big deal, my sister was born there and she’s tall too, but that don’t make her like lincoln. we might end up in another civil war by time his presidency is done, but at least for now, that’s just a wild guess based on all the hate i see every where. but lincoln now? i see more of a jfk influence, only without the womanizing and the mafia connections – maybe the same type of charisma? and forthrightness? or just flat out universal appeal plus the willingness to talk to our enemies instead of going in guns blazing ala john wayne or dirty harry…..
as far as what the shrub said & did, it p!ssed me off then and it does now. part of me would like to see the whole kit and caboodle strung up for the lying thieves they are, and part of me would like to see them all stand trial at the hague. i’m glad i’m not the one who has to make those decisions since i’m rather partial to rapid and sure justice.
and maybe i’m a little more tolerant of this admin since he doesn’t have a ‘little boy’ syndrome to compensate for.
I’ve heard comparisons to Lincoln, FDR, and Kennedy. Let’s explore those, shall we?
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Lincoln was a racist who suspended Habius Corpus during the Civil War and said that if he could have stopped the war without freeing the slaves he would have.
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FDR rounded up Asian-Americans and put them in internment camps just to make sure they weren’t Japanese inserts.
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Kennedy possibly killed Marilyn Monroe and had more mob connections than the Cambino family.
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I really don’t think that comparisons to any past president are flattering, LOL. All of them have done illegal acts at some point in their presidency. Bush’s screw-ups are epic, but honestly not that much worse than some others we could name. Everyone hates him now, but I’d be willing to wager that time and history will be kinder, and see him as the mediocre president he was. Even Lincoln was hated in his day.
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As far as not having the “little boy” syndrome to compensate for, even his buddy Castro was saying that Obama really doesn’t get it (said he was superficial), so I’m still reserving judgment on what his presidency will bring. He’s made some interesting decisions, that’s for sure.
since castro idolizes norega, i kind of take what he says with a dump truck full of salt
the only thing that i have found that makes obama similar to lincoln is having a cabinet packed with people who are opinionated including those from the ‘other’ side. i hate that phrase, and the ‘opposing party’ as well. we’re all americans and should all want the nation to succeed.
arg, it’s lart and brain damage is kicking in. coherent thoughts are going away
Thanks to the failed policies of the Democrats, when this person is eligible for Social Security it won’t be there (even though she paid into it for her entire working life). As for Medicare any benefit she recieves from that will (thanks to the Obama Administration) be paid for by YOUR grand children!
-GEJ
“When the President of the USA can have a CEO fired/ fire him, it is a sad day in America. That’s more liberty loss than say the NSA listening to some phone calls without a warrant.”
No it’s not?
“CEOs” of corporations only exist because of the goverment.
In a pure capitalist system there wouldn’t be any such thing as a corporation or limited liability.
Don’t forget driving on highways and calling 911 in an emergency!
You realize that those things are mainly funded by local/state municipalities rather than the federal government? One exception (among others) being the interstate highway system.
But generally speaking, these are your sales tax dollars at work ( depending on where you live )
“Depending on where you live” means it is up to individual states- thus being Constitutionalism.
Yay for socialism!
I’m one of those Americans who would gladly let them have every dime of Social Security I’ve paid in the past right now if I could be exempt from paying it ever again. And I swear I will never want any social secuirty or medicare or any of that bullshit. I can take care of myself thank you. I don’t need a government mommy. And those who do should be the ones paying for social security insurance. (which is what it started out as)
it is impossible to make a well reasoned, well evidenced, well thought out defense or critique of the current state of american government in the scope of a comment board on a satirical internet website.
but i will try.
First of all, haven’t we tried laissez-faire free-market capitalism already? didn’t it result in terrible human suffering during the industrial revolution?
the captioner is slightly misguided but certainly fall within the framework of a fungible argument. if you are arguing that socialist policies are bad, then you are arguing that public ownership of certain industries is bad, and tax-financed social service programs are bad. therefore, what you are effectively arguing for is an end to social security, medicare, medicaid, food stamps, TANF.
therefore, i implore you: set a date. write your congressmen and say that people who are born on or after january 1st, 2010, should no longer pay payroll taxes, but will not be eligible to receive medicare, medicaid, TANF, food stamps, or social security. i’m interested to see what sort of society this creates. it might have something to do with the fact that during the Gilded Age, a portion of the elderly were homeless and eating out of trashcans, because poor and even middle class jobs didn’t pay enough to save for the time when you could no longer work. Or perhaps it has something to do with the amount that crime would increase due to desperate, poor and uneducated people resorting to immoral means when the free market doesn’t magically provide them with jobs.
btw, the highest federal tax rate during the eisenhower administration was 91%:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977623449&nav=Namespace
you’ll notice in that graph that after reagan left office, it was another conservative republican, George H.W. Bush, who found it necessary to raise income tax rates in order to keep the federal budget solvent. and as we all know, the Bush family is a bunch of raging socialists.
almost every policy obama has advocated that has been branded “socialist” has a reasonable justification. the credit crisis was caused by investment banks that had horrifying debt ratios. Credit swap contracts did not require the seller to have a reserve to pay potential claims. there is a law that requires most insurance companies to prove they have the liquidity to pay out claims on all their policies. Since CDO’s (collateralized debt obligations) are such a new investment tool, they were largely unregulated. The math behind them was also (supposedly) bullet-proof: Rates of Return on CDO’s were calculated using something called the Gaussian Copula:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_copula_model#Gaussian_copula
the long and short of this is that investment banks like Bear Stearns made the same mistake that alot of banks made prior to the crash of 1929: they kept a liquidity rate on their outlays of only about 15%. when the sub-prime market started to fall out, people came back to cash in their Credit Default Swaps. Surprise! Bear Stearns didn’t have enough to pay them out. government regulation (FDIC insurance, rules on insurance liquidity) keep banks and most insurance companies from falling victim to this phenomenon. because these regulations did not apply to Credit Default Swaps, they repeated the same mistake that the banks made in 1929, and brought an entire economy down with them.
conservatives talk alot about human nature: about the fact that people are greedy, selfish, and only work for personal gain. that socialism doesn’t work because people are only motivated by profit. well, that’s true. and it was precisely these motivations that caused the crash of 1929, and it was precisely these motivations that created the catalyzing circumstances that brought us into this recession. greed caused the banks to overextend themselves. selfishness led our nation’s wealthiest to continue to paint progressive taxation and new financial regulations as unfair, and personal profit led banks to issue bad loans and to push for a lack of regulation on Credit Default Swaps. a derivatives instrument that is almost entirely to blame for the collapse of the financial sector.
so given all this, how does raising taxes back to what they were during the Clinton era (when we experienced unprecedented economic expansion) constitute Socialism? How does installing common sense regulations in the derivatives market in order to prevent another financial collapse in the future constitute Socialism? aren’t these things in the interest of keeping the market stable? in keeping vital gov’t services funded? and if this is Socialism, if we’re going to give it that name, then is it really as bad as you say it is?
too much reality – the right will never read it – no limbaugh-like quick-to-be-indoctrinated-by soundbites being repeated over and over. must keep your sentences short, and your words simple (and don’t use any verifiable facts, especially from history!) — sorry, sarcasm bug bit me
So what actions caused all the credit defaults that triggered this? Why was there ever sub-prime lending anyway? It is my understanding that it was the Gov’t that “encouraged” (for lack of better word) banks to issue mortgages to people even though they a) didn’t have 20% down, b)shown inability to make good on past loans, c) couldn’t possibly afford the home on their current income and many other criteria that would have before disqualified you from owning a home (for good reason). It was a disaster waiting to happen, so how could you blame people for inventing instuments to try to soften the blow for when the inevitable happens? Also inevitable was the peak and decline of the cyclical real estate market.Both problems being related, made the disaster much worse.
According to Clinton: “Everybody deserves to own a home”
My question also to you is… What really caused the problem? Was it the capitalist reaction to the socialist-style reform, or was it the initial reform itself? Obviously one woudn’t have happened without the other.
You seem like a smart guy/girl, which is why I find it hard to believe you would have accidently left out the egg that hatched this chicken. But, I guess if you have an agenda to push, it’s understandable.
Basically the problem is in two parts:
1) The Gov’t in the 90′s decided it was prudent to encourage lenders to put aside those guidelines for mortgages that have worked and kept the market healthy for many years past. In order to extend home ownership priveleges to the “disadvantaged and underpriveleged”. Some people work hard and smart enough to eventually be able to own a home, others don’t deserve it because they don’t work hard and smart enough. However, the latter can still rent, and that is what they deserve.
2) So, the banks realize that there will eventually be a flood of defaulted home loans. They invent vehicles to trade these loans in bundles along with less risky mortgages to better spread out the losses. However, excessive Greed by the heads of these companies, due to lack of regulation, prevented them from remaining liquid enough to absorb the inevbitable losses down the road. All that money went into multiple personal mansions, private jets, islands, you name it.
So to sum it up where we are now was triggered first by dangerous social reform, and followed by a rampant naked capitalist reaction. To lay complete blame on one or another is false. There is a fine line that needs to be walked when talking about socialism vs capitalism, because the extremes of both ends don’t work, a happy middle-ground needs to be found. Neither side came close to that line on this issue.
Someone’s (or some people) probably already said something like this, but I’ll say it anyway: why should she return her social security checks and medicare? That’s the money SHE paid. She just wants to keep her money instead of loaning it to the government interest-free for forty years.
But that’s not how it works either, because the workers of today are paying for the workers of yesterday-and they hope that tomorrow’s workers will pay for them once they retire. It’s a crappy investment with low returns, no guarantees, and bad management.
I have never left a comment on a picture before, but… I can’t deal with the constant liberal loving bs on pundit kitchen… It a joke website… I get it, but try not to be so obvious that you’re in love with King Obama.
That aside, the lack of knowledge potrayed by this picture is what truly saddens me. Those of us who despise government control would prefer not to have EVER paid into SS or Medicare! Thus if this were an option for us to take that money and invest it more wisely, then YES I would gladly reject any attempt to pay me any SS.
So, go ahead and let the government do you thinking for you, I’ll do my own… thank you.
Invest it more wisely? Like in the stock market?
Oh, wait…
566 posts? Wow! Only a hundred more to go and we’ll all explode and go to hell! C’mon, people – I know we can do it!!!!
My mouse just wore out scrolling down the entire list of posts. Especially since we now have several walls of text. Enough to build a house of text! Can anyone make a ceiling of text?
Well, certainly, but you need supporting joists of text and don’t forget the spackle of texts to cover up the nail holes of text. AND since there were 684 posts when I added this, and since the world has not exploded, and since I am pretty sure I am not currently in hell, I am a bit disappointed. I was looking forward to a break in the routine.
Another illustration of the Right’s motto: “Oh but it’s different when WE do it!” From Rush Limbaugh’s drug addiction to gay-hating senators sneaking blow jobs in airport bathrooms, these folks give a whole new meaning to the word hypocrite.
More like another patriotic American who thinks there won’t be any Social Security checks to pay out, even if she’s old and poor.
you know, i don’t think i would have sat through reading all of these responses if i wasn’t so mad at how the women in the picture were labelled. jeanine garofalo was out of line calling me and everyone else who went to those tea parties “tea baggers.” you could call us what we were: protesters. hell, you could even go so far as to call us republicans, even tho i’m not. calling large groups of people such names is a defense mechanism, one that i feel was used for no reason. i’ve never said the democrats were ever wrong about any of their protests. maybe i’d be even more upset if i hadn’t have needed to go to work right in the middle of my local tea party–to attempt to pay for my rent, and apparently the rent of people who can’t/won’t get a job (and i barely make over minimum wage).
and to whoever gave that ridiculous definition of abortion (as just the termination of cells), this is the definition given on http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abortion
1: the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus: as a: spontaneous expulsion of a human fetus during the first 12 weeks of gestation — compare miscarriage b: induced expulsion of a human fetus c: expulsion of a fetus by a domestic animal often due to infection at any time before completion of pregnancy — compare contagious abortion 2: monstrosity3: arrest of development (as of a part or process) resulting in imperfection ; also : a result of such arrest
i’m not trying to start an argument with that definition, i’m just setting your facts straight in interest in keeping all of you sound like hypocrites.
sorry to burst your rant, but teabaggers was the term originally used by fox and right wing pundits for several days at least before anyone else picked it up. their own fault for not being technologically or slang savvy to not make fools of themselves
can you show it to me? i was listening to fox news all that day while i wasn’t working and never heard the term.
it was in the first several days of being promoted – you’ll have to look for the old articles yourself, i didn’t keep track of them, didn’t think i’d have to cite those sources
You watched Fox “News” all day while you weren’t working? Were you collecting welfare, unemployment, or workman’s comp? (For the kids at home, those are all programs designed to give money to people who don’t work. You can even collect WAY MORE THAN YOU PUT INTO THEM. Isn’t that neat, kids?)
The most ridiculous definition of abortion in this thread was to erronously call it murder.
once gain- make up you God-damned mind- is law the definition of morality, or is it something else? You’ve argued from both sides now and ass such are an idiot.
You little dummy. Social Security… Look at your paycheck. (You Do have a job, don’t you?) You pay into social security, and every year get a statement of what your projected benefit will be. So, not socialism. Medicare: You pay premiums every month, have a co-payment and a deductible you must pay for your benefits. Not socialism.
Universal Health care… Free. Paid for by taxes out of my paycheck, or, like in England, from 50% of the gas prices. You get it weather you work or not, paid for by OTHER PEOPLE. Socialism.
awwww…you killed it.
THANK YOU !!!
once again i’m glad not to be american.
America is glad with you.
I doubt anyone will read this…
Social security (evening assuming it will last) cannot support anyone above the poverty level. So it’s a safe assumption that the person in the picture will in fact not be relying on social security, but on other self-generated means to subsist through retirement.
If you actually think social security is a healthy, working system, you’re an idiot.
It was read. And yes, it was agreed with. Well put, Tony.
Socialism = awsome
Awesome if you like failure.
Sorry bub. Your parents signed you up for this when you were born and got you that social security number. Paying for programs that give people an alternative to starving is part of being a citizen here. You don’t like it, I’m sure the Republic of Minerva has an opening.
Excuse me? I’m FOR the socialist programs, in case you weren’t paying attention.
There is a big difference between a socialist government and social programs!!
Just Saying
Wow, introduce religion and morals into a discussion and watch the comment count soar!
List of “non-violent” atheists: Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung…
napolean wasn’t an atheist. hitler was catholic. stalin and lenin were both deeply involved in the eastern orthodox church, pol pot was a maniac too whacked out to even be considered rational enough to be an atheist, and mao…well, i don’t have enough time to get to mao here.
the fact that these people did horrible things has nothing to do with whether or not they were atheists or theists. they were madmen. full stop. madmen do what they do for reasons that are beyond the scope of rationality, and rationality is exactly what atheists stand for. the list of sarcastically quotationed “non-violent” religious nutjobs is just about too long for the internet to handle. before you start waving that particular retard finger in the face of the rational part of humanity maybe you should get your facts straight and your head out of your ass.
Does the person who made this one even know what socialism is?
I find it rather amusing (I mean, obnoxious) that the minute people start calling socialism what it is, the socialists (who don’t KNOW that they’re socialists because they don’t understand it) start accusing the people using the word of not knowing what it means. Yes, we know what socialism means. We don’t want it. It’s against the constitution of the united states to institute it, though we’re halfway there. We don’t want to get 3/4 there.
Seconded.
Really, that is truly a ridiculous statement. Halfway there? If you think the United States of America is anywhere near socialism, then you simply don’t understand what socialism means.
Commies.
I lean toward real liberalism, not the nanny-state bullshit that’s happening now.
The meaning of liberal (as in liberty) has been coopted but I am a liberal too. Poor von Mises, spinning in his grave after writing the definitive free-market treatise, Liberalism, and having it now used to employ socialism and the opposite of liberty. Yikes.
People who have a problem with nationalizing things like health care should not be allowed to use other things such as the post office or the library, other nationalized things…dun dun duuuuuun
http://madamesofi.com
libraries aren’t nationalized, idiot.
Kudos for the picture, but I have to say:
Holy shit.
It’s a good thing government policy isn’t based on internet posts.
This caption is ignorant. Social Security and medicare are paid for by the person using them. The only money you receive from social security is the money you put in which is why people who pay more social security tax get more money. It is not socialistic so whoever made this caption is a moron
So much fail in this…
First off if nothing were changed in the way SS worked, the system wouldn’t miss a payment until at least 2042. (A testament to the system considering what Reagen pulled.) Real simple fix there is, as someone mentioned early is take away that $106,000 cap. That alone would create a billion+ dollar surplus in the system.
Ndndndnd4 and other like you, please stop calling people morons when you don’t know what you are speaking of.
Of course they’re not going to give it back. Would you after paying into it for your entire working life?
The basic idea behind the tea parties (as it has been presented to me) is to protest this growing trend of the gov’t spending more money than it takes in, creating a deficit that must be recovered by future generations. The idea is that current spending will eventually tax future generations who are not being represented currently. Hence, the “taxation without representation” angle.
Yes but this has been going on for years. I am against SS for many reasons, the main one being that the old are rewarded for getting old and becoming less productive members of society. The concept of socialized retirement is fairly new in the history of the world. The only real version of retirement is financial independence. I’m all for helping out someone who’s temporarily hit a bad patch but there’s nothing in the Constitution about the inalienable right to good health and living to an old age. Of course, back then the average life span was much shorter.
Hey, maybe we can just get rid of people when they reach “retirement” age! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
I have enough health problems to know that I will never “retire” before I die. So my SS taxes may help some senile octagenarian be a burden to her yuppie spawn for a few more years. That’s enough payback for me.
With respect to the abortion issue, in my opinion a fetus is not a human, it is a POTENTIAL human, much like a chicken egg is a potential chicken.
And an off-topic thought here, I think that one of the greatest blunders made in the history of America was when corporations were given the same rights as individuals. Now talk amongst yourselves
Apologies for topic-bouncing — first-time reader of this site and I’m glad to find some place on the Internet where there is at least some semi-intelligent discourse.
“And an off-topic thought here, I think that one of the greatest blunders made in the history of America was when corporations were given the same rights as individuals.”
Yes. This is absolutely not free market practice. Huge mistake.
If I am paying into social security, it is not socialism. It is socialism when you don’t work and take the money I have paid in.
what is this “give back” crap? when the hell did social security become something that was the governments to begin with? are you people insane? the government takes our money. OUR money. it is never theirs. every time we receive a check form the government it is them giving our money back to us!! is that clear enough for the moron who captioned this picture? these tax rallies are more an expression of people wanting the feds to keep their damned hands out of our pockets than anything else.
Welcome to the Jungle, clutterfish. “It is never theirs.” It’s disgusting, truly, how much people DON’T understand this anymore. Hopefully you’ll stick around a while. Not everyone here is stupid or brainwashed or leftie-socialist (redundant as those terms are.)
Captioned by some idiot who has obviously never paid the 6% social security tax (12% if self employed).
I’m not giving it back, I’ll be lucky if I get out of it what I’ve paid.
Social Security is the worlds biggest Ponzi scheme, but the government does it, so it’s ok, I guess.
I know people who had jobs the entire eight years Bush was in office. Two of them are now almost bankrupt and have lost their small businesses since Obama came into power. I will not forgive him for what he has sone to good people. Palin 2012, BECAUSE I WANT MY GUN BACK!! : (
really, who took your gun away?
and you can’t tell any sensible person that in 4 months your friends went bankrupt and lost their businesses if they were firmly in the black to start with – or are you not aware that this recession started some time ago? (on gwb’s watch)
I will admit that business began to slow when Bush was leaving office, but it has really decreased since Obama came. Everyone has been trying to hoard their money under a mattress, since they are afraid that this recession will turn into a depression. No one is buying novelty items anymore, the likes of which the 2 businesses I mentioned were selling. I may have been to hasty in completely blaming Obama, but I still feel that there is a connection there somehow…
So…you had to sell your gun because the economy sucks so bad? *is confused*
Take a look at the three powers of the government during the last two years of Bush’s 2nd term. Who controlled two-thirds of the federal government? Don’t be apologetic when your views are disputed.
I would be glad to sign a paper waiving my rights to social security and medicare if only they would give me back the money that I have already put into the system.
Actually, she won’t be cashing in on Soc. Security and Medicare because Obama pissed all that money away in his first 100 days.
Oh well, you can just decide not to pay into social security, and instead of a NEGATIVE rate of return on your investment, put it in a mutual fund and GAIN 12%. Uncle Sam loves freedom so this is of course both legal and possib…. wait, what? You can’t opt out of SS? BECAUSE IT’S A HUGE PONZIE SCHEME wake up people WAKE THE F UP
I don’t think you understand how it works. I’ll gladly not take Social Security or Medicare if the government gives all of my money back that I’ve already put into those programs. I could take the money, put it in a IRA or CD, and by the time I retire be a millionaire- assuming I’m not one by the time I get there.
Socialism is the slippery slide that deposits you into communism !
This attempt at humor is EPIC FAIL.
Social Secuirty and Medicare are both organizations that you automatically pay into with each payroll check you receive (this is assuming your work doesn’t replace SS with a pension like most government jobs do). It’s more like a forced savings account. The more you put into it and the closer you are to the actual retirements age, the higher your pay rate will be.
Socialism would be saying “Ok, everyone gets to have a SS check once they reach 65 years old, even if they never had a job or paid into it.”
I also agree with Marco, give me back all the money I paid already and we’ll call it even.
Dear bleeding-heart, blame-America-first, CONSERVATIVE pussies: your guy lost, get over it. Things aren’t going the way you’d like them? You’re more than welcome to leave and go find a country that will allow you to have your way no matter what the majority of people want, (we call the leadership in those places dictatorships).
Good luck in 2012. Until then, though, enjoy your shit sandwich.
“applause” clap clap clap!! you hit it right on!
Bad caption. we PAY into SSI and Medicare for the entire time we are employed during our lives. Of course I would partake of the benefits of Social Security and Medicare, I paid for them. I just don’t think we need more taxes for little or no foreseeable gain
Possible, if they let her keep and invest HER MONEY which they TAKE out for SS and Medicare in the first place.
i really don’t understand what the problem is with this picture. sure, if you want to attack the Tea Party, feel free, but do it with a picture that sums up the negative aspects of the group. most of the arguments in the comments are about religion and government groups, but this guy doesn’t have a sign that has a cross through “atheism” or “welfare”. He is protesting socialism, which he obviously perceives as a threat. regardless of whether or not it is a threat, most people agree that pure socialism isn’t a reliable economic or political option. if you think socialism is great, good for you, i don’t have anything against that, but other than the possibility of offending socialists, i don’t see how this picture portrays anything undesirable or offensive.
Buddha was a deadbeat dad, and the Constitution was written by a bunch of rich white guys who didn’t want to pay taxes,owned slaves,and killed Indians
I say use the system to make a point. If you can’t beat them mooch off them until they become bankrupt and see what you mean. Besides Liberals tend to think the government is a limitless piggy bank anyways.
Obama is continuing and expanding what Bush did.
In a way he has to. Because the ship was almost under water and the repairs for it will cost money.
Apply current economic policy to your own practices then. Spend more than you make, and then demand a loan. Just try it.
If a citizen can’t do it, how can we expect the mother of all beaurocracies to do it?
Simply because the people who suffer will not be the people who acted irresponsibly in the first place.
Welcome to socialized medicine.
I’ve told you, I like living in a country with healthcare that’s free at point of delivery, even if it means that as a higher than average earner I pay a bit more tax. I’d rather know it’s still there if I fall on hard times, and that people aren’t going without any healthcare than have a bit of extra cash to spend. Except I wouldn’t have extra cash to spend, because private healthcare in America is massively more expensive than the amount of extra tax we pay here for our “socialised” system, so I’d probably be poorer as my employer would have to pay me less to cover the huge amount demanded by private healthcare providers in an anti-competitive cabal.
Of course it’s there. I just hope you don’t mind the 4 week wait for a broken leg.
It IS there. Mark Levin had a whole series of callers last night from people who were uninsured and who were treated to the full enchilada at point of service here in the US. This includes a woman who was biopsied, given an MRI, set up with an oncologist, and beginning treatment all within 48 hours, and the hospital working out the details later. Another had an emergency appendectomy and it ran into 60 thousand dollars. They are not legally allowed to come after you for it or make you go bankrupt; it already is absorbed by taxpayers and profits. I myself tried to call as I had a 38 thousand dollar hospital bill which saved my life and made me able to be a productive citizen again. We already have a safety net; socializing the whole thing just means care will have to be severely rationed because there just isn’t enough money to pay for it because no one will be profiting. It can never serve a population like that of the US, and it causes progress to come to a grinding halt. Less for everyone, yay!
The whole problem to my mind is that you can never draw a line and say ‘now it’s a person, and not before’ with any kind of credibility. This is why I tend to look at moral issues from a ‘what moral duty should I be exercising here’ as opposed to ‘what rights does this thing have’.
I find that it helps immensely when the focus isn’t on what you can get away with, but what you ought to be doing.
The latter is better.
That’s what they tell you over there? Seriously? I sliced my finger open a while back, walked into the nearest hospital, took a seat in a waiting room for a bit (A little girl came in with concussion who was seen before me, which made sense) got it stitched up within 30 minutes, went along to my local doctors surgery a few weeks later and got the stitches out. There was none of this “Wait 2 months before having an operation done in a warehouse with no electricity” that you guys get told about. And when deciding if I should go to hospital all I had to base it on was how bad the wound was, not what it would do to my insurance.
http://hotmedicalnews.com/uk-health-care-system-in-need-of-repair/
Given that your helthcare system makes our VA hospitals look good… I’d have to say I got told the right things.
Do you guys have to make any type of copay or anything when you need treatment? I’ve noticed (yes, this is anecdotal and I have no statistics to back it up) that there seems to be a pretty good self-triage factor with a copay. (How serious is this? Do I need to go to the ER and pay my ER copay, or can it wait until the morning? Do I need to go at all or is this something that will probably get better on its own?)
Unless you’re one of the lazy bastards who work for me, then you just go to the ER to justify leaving work early with a headache (true story)
What kind of demon of a boss are you where people want to go to the ER rather than work for you?
I’m in HR. I mete out the punishment, not administer the lashings on the line
-
Seriously though, I’ve had people who, on a Friday, instead of working the entire shift, will elect to go to the hospital and pay money in order to get a note that will allow them to come back to work. And, this usually happens less than two hours before the end of the shift. I dont’ get it.
You’re linking me to “hotmedicalnews.com”? Seriously? Yes, the NHS isn’t perfect, but it’s nowhere near as bad as you’ve evidently been told.
Okay, have you even actually been under American healthcare?
Have you been under British healthcare? Private healthcare is bad not just for those without healthcare, but for those with healthcare, because they have a profit driven company between them and their doctor. The problem with health “insurance” is it makes no financial sense whatsoever to provide health insurance to someone that is ill.
So you admit to not having had the enjoyment of being provided American healthcare. Good enough for me. In the mean time we’ continue to service rich Internationals as they pour into American systems. You enjoy footing the bill for people coming from third world countries with no insurance (as I met in Cairo they were going to London and Cuba because it was “just the cost of a plane ticket”)
Have fun with that.
By the way, there’s a link to Barbara Wagner’s story of what happens when government is in charge of your health and there’s no out clause. You are denied life-prolonging treatment because it’s too expensive and not worth it, but they will kill you if you like. The drug company offered her the drugs she needs free. Why can they do that? Because they’re still allowed to make a profit and they can afford to. Now I wonder who the villain is in that situation…the big bad pharma corporation or the government who offered to kill the sick woman? Think hard.