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McCain Decries "Hobbits," Accused of Ringbearing
Oxford_Comma_Lover writes "Senator McCain decried Tea Party 'Hobbits' on Wednesday for their failure to support the GOP's debt deal, at times reading from a WSJ editorial that began the analogy. The Tea Party fired back, with a prominent member noting on CNN that McCain had been corrupted by the ring of power. The full text of his floor remarks should be in the Congressional Record later today."
... if the US Government had the same budget as a Peter Jackson movie we wouldn't be in this fiscal mess, now would we? ;-)
One does not simply walk into Metaphor.
Ok, which one of you hacked his teleprompter?
The Tea Party aren't Hobbits by any stretch of the imagination - hobbits are more like 1970's back-to-the-land hippie organic farmer types.
No, the Tea Party seems to be much more like the Easterlings, who's society has been thoroughly corrupted by promises of power regardless of the decency or lack thereof of the individual members. And Obama seems to be playing the role of Denethor, trying to hold back the tide but not really being able to do so and kinda ambiguous about where he's loyalties really lie.
I am officially gone from
I think we have to admit that McCain does bare some resemblance to Smeagol. I think the problem with the Tea Partiers is that they see it as being their way or nothing. I understand their perspective and conviction but I think the issue is that they want to do it ALL at once. No compromise, every vote they make must include everything they think has to be done for the next 20 years of government. I think the problem is if we do it their way the whole economy is going to come crashing down. People complain about government spending but then seem to forget that a large % of the US is employeed (directly or indirectly) by the government. You YANK that out all at once and I think we'll be reminiscing about the good old days of only 10% unemployment.
So with Tolkien done and Superheros on the way out what's next?
Krispy Kreme the movie?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
So with Tolkien done and Superheros on the way out what's next?
Crossovers! "Saru-man, Saru-man, does whatever a Saru can"
If you hate government so much, move to Somalia. Seriously.
If you love water so much, why not move to the middle of the Atlantic?
The problem is not government in general. The problem is TOO MUCH government, and too much CENTRALIZED government. You have much more power influencing your local and state government than you will ever have trying to influence the federal government. This should be obvious when you consider that 48/50 US Senators don't care about you or your state.
If we had more local control over our lives, your argument would carry much more weight. You could say, "If you hate government so much, move to Mississippi. Seriously." and you would know that the person you are talking to could truly move to Mississippi. Of course, if they are already in MS, you could tell them to keep their noses out of your state's business.
It's all clearly explained in the 10'th Amendment. Unfortunately, all three branches of our government seem to ignore it, even though they've all taken an oath to defend it. Clearly, the 10th Amendment means SOMETHING. I mean, the founders wouldn't have put in there for nothing. It's not like they had nine amendments and said, "Let's make up one more to make in an even 10."
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
McCain is a moderate republican. We don't have many of those out there any more... What happened in the last election was during the primaries he had to seem like he was far right, after he did that he failed to move to the center very well. Oboma had the advantage of being after Bush, If Donald Duck won the Democratic primaries he probably would have been president, and he made the shift from Far Left to Center very gracefully.
We have a hole society who thinks that Moderates are week minded. They are not, they can hold strong to their convictions however they are not stupidly just holding onto Redirect and take each issue as it comes up. We need to demand more moderates, but the ext reams on both sides have us believe if we elect a moderate the ideals of the party will be compromised away, which isn't true.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If citizens actually had free choice in which government programs to fund as well as how much to contribute, the size of the US government (measured both in revenue and power over the people) would be 1/10 the size of today's utter monstrosity.
And if citizens literally had to cut a check at the beginning of every year, rather than pay through deliberately-obfuscated systems designed to hide the true cost of government, the size of government would be cut again by 90%.
No. It would not, unless, of course, you have some facts to back up this remarkable assertion. No? Didn't think so. Please stop parroting stuff you've heard parroted by various Fox News personalities. Simplistic "solutions" like this sound attractive until one spends more than ten seconds thinking about them. Then their absurdity becomes obvious. And no, I don't mean fiscal responsibility is absurd. I mean that it's absurd to suggest that the government we want can operate on a tiny fraction of it's current revenue. Not even close. So this suggestion, one that is near and dear to Tea Bagger hearts everywhere, is nothing but an absurd distraction from the critical process of meaningful reform, reform that actually has a chance of solving the very real problems we are facing. It is the folly of indulging this absurd distraction that Senator McCain refers to, and (I can't believe I'm saying this...), he's absolutely right.
Everyone thinks some of government should be cut.
No one agrees on what that some should be.
That's the entire problem.
Do you really think this is the case? What I see is a lot of people saying: "Don't touch my Medicare, don't touch my Social Security, don't raise my taxes, and balance the budget." Which is sort of a ridiculous position to take. Even if we're allowed to touch defense (which a lot of people don't want either) that's not enough room to maneuver. Hell a strikingly large percentage of Americans don't even seem to realize that Medicare and Social Security are tied to the federal government and the debt. Remember back during the health care debate when the nice old lady stood up to President Obama to say something along the lines of "I hate socialized medicine and don't touch my Medicare?"
I don't think people are stupid, but much like with technology they often lack the bandwidth in their daily lives to learn as much about politics as they probably should. People want more responsible government, and smaller government until they see how it's going to affect them personally. Everyone's happy with the idea that we should cut "stuff" out of the budget, but when the "stuff" gets personalized to "My Medicare", "My defense industry job", "My road project in my town" or whatever the happy starts to wane. Then you start hearing the "Well don't cut stuff like that, cut stuff like funding for research on the affects of cow methane on the local owl population (or pick your ridiculous government project of choice)" crowd starts up; blithely ignoring that fact that a) some of that research actually is valuable, just not in obvious ways, and b) it represents a really small portion of the federal budget.
We have among the lowest taxes in the developed world in this country, and we have the infrastructure to prove it. I'm not saying we should move to the European model of 40% taxes (yes, I pulled this number out of my butt, your European taxes may be higher or lower than this figure), but we can easily balance the budget with some prudent and moderate cuts to spending, along with very modest tax increases to say, where they were just 10 years ago. I know that real "small government" people like you probably understand the cuts that would be needed for true "small government", I'm not saying that you don't full understand your position. I'm saying that if most people truly understood what it meant to cut government this way, far fewer of them would support the idea.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I'm not convinced that it is the quantity of government, but rather its specific content. The government is doing things that it should not, and not doing things that it should. Reducing the size of government might reduce the number of things it is doing that it should not, but I assure you the other side of this imbalance will only get worse, because the government will likely also stop doing several things that it should be doing.
www.wavefront-av.com
What are you basing this on? In the 19th century the USA wasn't a super power and wasn't doing all that well with pretty much slave labor camps otherwise known as textile mills just to get started. In the 20th century we became a super power due to massive infrastructure investments giving us our highway system and DARPA helped us build the Internet as we know it today. Sorry, government played a huge part in all of that. Everything from establishing minimal wage to setting fire codes help improve the way of life of every American and not just the robber barrens of the 19th century.
I don't see anyone leaving this country because they feel the government is too oppressive, if they did I'm not sure where they would go since Europe has a lot of the same policies, Asia is even tighter on freedom of expression and Africa is filled with strike. I guess that leaves Australia? While full of nice people and hot aussie chicks, they too have been spying on their citizens and doing the same things as our government including failed regulation leading to a massive oil spill off of their shores. So I guess that leaves Antarctica? Of course there are our dear friends to the north but Canada has its problems too, the grass is always greener on the other side. So I guess I have trouble picturing what a freer nation is. There aren't many nations out there where you will pay less in taxes, usually twice as much and don't forget the artificially low cost of gas here.
McCain is a moderate republican. We don't have many of those out there any more...
Moderate Republicans aren't hard to find, however most of them call themselves 'Democrats'.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.