You do realize that those meetings were a sham to con people like you, right? I forget which of the three it was (Obama, Reid, or Pelosi) but they said in an interview before one of the meetings that they were going to pass the bill regardless of if Republicans showed up to meeting or not. The "meetings" existed for two possible outcomes - the Republicans show, nothing in the bill is changed, but Obama gets to claim "See, we're working together!" or the Republicans didn't show, nothing in the bill is changed, and Obama gets to claim "See, Republicans don't want to work together!" Either outcome is a PR piece for Obama and works against Republicans (since Republican voters and many Democrat voters didn't want Obamacare passed, as shown by the massive booting of Democrats yesterday - one of the districts near me elected a Democrat two years ago to replace a Republican....then after he voted for Obamacare, they voted him out and put that Republican back in office).
You're forgetting that the main thing in politics is to make your opponents look bad, not to actually get things done.
There was nothing "bipartisan" it was "we need to con a few of these people to vote for it or else we can't pass anything". There was no spirit of "we value your input" it was simply a matter of "We have to get one or two of these people to vote for it in order to have enough votes for it to pass".
First, the rise in health care costs is actually due to PEOPLE abusing their insurance ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WnS96NVlMI talks about this nicely ) and not caring what things cost because "insurance will cover it". Insurance was created to cover extreme situations that can't be prevented (needing surgery, cancer treatment, etc) - it was never intended to cover doctors visits and all medicines. That's a big part of costs going up - because people run to the doctor every time they have a sniffle and they pay little to nothing (maybe $20) and the insurance company has to pay out $200-ish.
Second, you cite the typical fallacious crap for excusing Clinton's impeachment and trying to blame Republicans. Clinton was impeached for committing perjury. He lied under oath and got caught - anyone else would've spent years in jail for that, but since he was a Democrat president, he got a free pass (funny how when it was Republican president Nixon lying, he didn't get a free pass). The Republican priority was to make sure that the President didn't get away with a major crime - call me crazy, but I actually LIKE seeing politicians made to follow the laws they write.
He's also on the record as being concerned that Newt Gingrich was too conciliatory back in the 1990's. Also, the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is on the record as saying that the top priority of the Republican Senate delegation is to ensure that Obama doesn't get reelected. Something tells me the people's business isn't the top of their list.
Read your middle sentence - making sure Obama doesn't get re-elected IS the people's business, or did you miss how rapidly his approval ratings dropped once he got elected and actually had to talk policy and not just say "Hope! Change! Vote for me because I'm black!".
Jesus christ, do you actually believe that shit? People make choices and those choices determine how your life turns out (with a bit of luck mixed in). If you drop out of school, you're not going to have a high paying job and that's purely on your shoulders for making a dumb choice - just like you choose to have kids, especially in this day where condoms, birth control pills, and abortions are a dime a dozen. Those "evil rich" you demonize for "exploiting" workers are the ones writing their paychecks. Why is it so hard for you to grasp that these people would otherwise be unemployed if those "evil rich" hadn't decided to give them a job? You would be unemployed if the "evil" company you work for hadn't decided to hire you. Think about how much you like getting a paycheck the next time you want to vilify businesses.
Yea, those rich pay so little in taxes - that's why the bottom 50% of the country pays 3% of taxes and the top 50% pays 97%. It only gets more unbalanced as you go up. The top 25% of the country pays 86% of taxes, the top 10% pays 70% of taxes, the top 5% pays 59% of taxes, the top 1% pays 38% of all taxes.
The "working class" already got their break in paying a whopping 3% of taxes spread over half the working population.
The real test will be what Boehner does now...will he obstruct, or will he work?
This can be applied to Obama as well.
Well given that Obama said in an interview the other day that the Republicans are his "enemies" (yes, that actually was the word he used) and his behavior the past two years, I'm pretty skeptical about Obama working with them.
It's not your imagination. I've come across news articles online about how girls bodies are maturing faster than they used to and that it is more likely to happen to black girls than other races (though it's happening to them all).
Switch to bio-diesel - or maybe by then battery technology will finally have advanced enough that electric cars are both cheap and can go 300+ miles on a charge (with charges taking a reasonable time too, not 8-12 hours). I'd love to see all electric cars be affordable and have a practical range so that we can tell the middle east to go fuck themselves instead of kissing their ass for oil, but unfortunately we've still got a ways to go before we get there.
If you bothered to RTFA instead of trolling, they explicitly talk about how you can add an electric motor to this engine to really put the mpg off the charts. Basically he's saying that, short term, this will boost the mpg of cars until all electric cars are cheaper / the infrastructure for them is built.
I've never understood what was "convenient" about having to arrive 3-4 hours before the flight, wait in line for hours, hassle with security, etc.... but that's my opinion.
Alex Roy made it from NY to LA in 31 hours and 4 minutes by car.
Regardless, with all the bullshit going on in airports, there's no reason to fly unless you're being held at gunpoint. If everyone simply refused to fly until they quit this crap, the airlines would lose money so fast the TSA would be out the door in no time.
Most sane people do not sue six year-olds, even in this country.
Most sane people don't sue without a damn good reason, regardless of who they're suing. I think therefore, that shows most people in this country are not sane.
Seeing how I've seen no mention that the woman had dementia and was unable to know what was going on, I think you're making a huge leap there. I'm not saying she's at fault, but there's no reason to think she wasn't aware of what was going on.
You must be new to the US. In the US, courts follow precedent when it suits the personal views of the judges. If it doesn't suit their views, then they come up with a reason why precedent doesn't matter and they do something different. It's all part of the good old joke we call the "justice" system. Disclaimer: the term "justice system" does not mean any justice will take place or that the US government is liable for the actions of said "justice system".
When did I defend Bush? Never. I've openly been against Bush. However, Obama is NOT trying to get us out, his policies are actively prolonging the recession. He's added plenty of taxes, raised some, and wants to raise more - that is the exact OPPOSITE of what you do in a struggling economy. Taxes WERE very low (but not as low as they'd ever been), but Obama has openly said he wants to change that. Any Economist who's not on Obama's payroll or Paul Krugman will tell you that the stimulus was a massive waste. There may have been a teeny, tiny amount of good that came from it. However, they could have given large amounts of money to every adult in the country and it would have cost the government less, prevented the need for bank bailouts, prevented the need to bail out state governments (since they'd have more taxes), etc.
*sigh* I really wish people around here would learn something about Economics.... That is probably the thing that will have the biggest long term payoff - if they added Economics to the curriculum for all kids in high school. Then people wouldn't just blindly believe the bullshit that lying politicians (on both sides) tell them.
Wow, you are clearly ignorant of the tax system if you think capital gains tax replaces income tax. They pay capital gains tax ON TOP of their income tax, which would be much higher than yours due to the graduated income tax system we have.
Empathy has nothing to do with it. Greed, however, does. It's greed to steal money from one person so that you and your pals can benefit from it - not empathy.
Exactly. There's virtually no reason but personal choices for not having insurance. I had a job until a few months ago where I couldn't get insurance through my company - so I had to buy it online (which many people will try to tell you these sorts of sites don't exist) and purchased individual insurance through one of the major insurance companies. Even paying for medical and dental, it came out to less than $70 a month and you can pick different plans based on your income. Is it the greatest insurance ever if you buy a cheap plane? No, but it'll keep you from going bankrupt if anything bad happens.
I also know many people who grew up poor (several on welfare) who decided to work hard and make something better for their future. Are they rich? No, but they make a good $50,000 or more a year. Even Oprah was from a poor home and had a baby at 14 - yet she worked hard and became one of the richest people on the planet. Motivation is the biggest factor in deciding who's poor. Very few poor people who are motivated to make a better life for themselves stay poor for long.
You're dead on with the last point as well - it doesn't matter how bad your life is, how unfair the world is to you - you do NOT have the right to steal money (or ask the government to steal it for you) from someone else to make your life better off. You have the right to ask people to help you - and you know what? Chances are that you'll find people who will voluntarily give you money to help you out. People rarely object to helping others - what they object to is having their money forcibly taken from them after they worked hard to earn it.
I apologize for being OT, but I just wanted to say that it's great to finally meet someone else on Slashdot who has studied Economics as opposed to all the people who think they're smarter than Economists because they took Econ101 in college.
As someone in grad school for Economics, I can tell you that stimulus spending is good for the economy - if done properly. However, the stimulus bill that was passed was an utter joke. Most of the money went to programs that have no benefit to the economy (such as using stimulus money to buy birth control for poor women), then there are all of those "shovel ready projects" that don't exist and that Obama even said in an interview recently that they don't exist. Then there's the fact that the money was childishly doled out only (or at least mainly) to areas that voted for Obama - plenty of districts (such as my own) that didn't vote for Obama got absolutely nothing.
You mentioned that you hate the Obamacare bill, but "at least it does SOMETHING" - so you're for change for the sake of change, not GOOD change? There are a small handful of good things in Obamacare - they're overwhelmed though by the 99.9% of bad and useless crap in it (such as the clause worked in that let the government take over the student loan industry - remind me what that has to do with health care?).
Frankly, I can't think of anything more fiscally irresponsible than engaging in a pointless war (as we've done many times over the last century) or harming the economy due to being ignorant of the effects of taxes on the economy and taxing away.
As for your claim that Obama isn't worse than Bush as far as spending goes? Remember, Obama spent more in his first year than Bush did in eight years. Bush spent a ton of money on a pointless war. Obama spent several times more on continuing that pointless war, a useless stimulus, bailing out the UAW, etc.
Well, from what I recall, Clinton was forced by the Republican supermajority in Congress and the Senate to pass the bills balancing the budget. I'm not saying that's 100% accurate, just what I remember off the top of my head. I'm very much against government debt - yes, sometimes it's a necessity, but it should be paid off ASAP, not just continually building up. As much as you complained about Bush and Bush Jr. though, remember that what Bush Jr. spent in eight years, Obama spent in one.
As for your anecdotal evidence about personal finances? Most conservatives / non-Democrats I know have little to no debt and most liberals / Democrats I know have a significant amount. I think it has to do more with your region and the culture you were raised in than your political views.
No, I presume that we learn things by trying, and it's better to know than not know. If we make a mistake, the liberals will be the first to suggest change, while the conservatives will want things to stay the same.
Except that modern day liberals keep wanting to do the same things that have been dozens of times before and always ended badly. Every time another communist / marxist society rises, becomes a dictatorship with mass murder and mass poverty, then is destroyed (usually in a war), they always claim "Oh, they just didn't do it right - the communist / marxist theory isn't flawed, just that countries implementation". They never learn that anytime you give a person or group of people that much power over others, they're going to abuse it and they keep pushing for big governments, and the cycle continues. Remember the saying from BSG - "All of this has happened before; it will all happen again".
I'm very "liberal" in the classic definition of the word - I'm for freedom for people to do what they want as long as they're not hurting anyone. Unfortunately, in the US at least, the term liberal has become so corrupted that classic liberals generally get classified into one of two groups - conservatives or anarchists. They (I suppose I could say "we") are not conservative because they do not support the typical conservative views on controlling people's social behavior and religions views. They're also not anarchists because they support government for the things that only government can do and rules to protect people, they merely don't support the government interfering because they're trying to force people to behave in a way the government, and not the people, think is best.
Right now in the US, regardless of if Democrats or Republicans win, the American people lose. They're both tyrants pushing for ever larger government and controlling your behavior (just in different ways), though the Democrats (and sometimes Republicans) also add in wanting to control your finances as well. This is why I, and many people I know, think we need to hold a new Continental Congress and just re-start the government. The current system was the "Grand Experiment" and it proved to have some good aspects and some bad - unfortunately with the bad overwhelming the good. The current system, especially in regards to voting, is set up to prevent citizens from having much of a choice in who gets into the government and to discourage people that the current politicians don't like from having a reasonable chance at running. It's time to start fresh and learn from the mistakes of the past.
Just curious - what's wrong with (non-forced) eugenics? As long as you're not forcing some people to be sterilized and forcing others to have sex (or killing kids), what's wrong from promoting people having sex to have babies with better genetics?
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You do realize that those meetings were a sham to con people like you, right? I forget which of the three it was (Obama, Reid, or Pelosi) but they said in an interview before one of the meetings that they were going to pass the bill regardless of if Republicans showed up to meeting or not. The "meetings" existed for two possible outcomes - the Republicans show, nothing in the bill is changed, but Obama gets to claim "See, we're working together!" or the Republicans didn't show, nothing in the bill is changed, and Obama gets to claim "See, Republicans don't want to work together!" Either outcome is a PR piece for Obama and works against Republicans (since Republican voters and many Democrat voters didn't want Obamacare passed, as shown by the massive booting of Democrats yesterday - one of the districts near me elected a Democrat two years ago to replace a Republican....then after he voted for Obamacare, they voted him out and put that Republican back in office).
You're forgetting that the main thing in politics is to make your opponents look bad, not to actually get things done.
There was nothing "bipartisan" it was "we need to con a few of these people to vote for it or else we can't pass anything". There was no spirit of "we value your input" it was simply a matter of "We have to get one or two of these people to vote for it in order to have enough votes for it to pass".
First, the rise in health care costs is actually due to PEOPLE abusing their insurance ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WnS96NVlMI talks about this nicely ) and not caring what things cost because "insurance will cover it". Insurance was created to cover extreme situations that can't be prevented (needing surgery, cancer treatment, etc) - it was never intended to cover doctors visits and all medicines. That's a big part of costs going up - because people run to the doctor every time they have a sniffle and they pay little to nothing (maybe $20) and the insurance company has to pay out $200-ish.
Second, you cite the typical fallacious crap for excusing Clinton's impeachment and trying to blame Republicans. Clinton was impeached for committing perjury . He lied under oath and got caught - anyone else would've spent years in jail for that, but since he was a Democrat president, he got a free pass (funny how when it was Republican president Nixon lying, he didn't get a free pass). The Republican priority was to make sure that the President didn't get away with a major crime - call me crazy, but I actually LIKE seeing politicians made to follow the laws they write.
He's also on the record as being concerned that Newt Gingrich was too conciliatory back in the 1990's. Also, the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is on the record as saying that the top priority of the Republican Senate delegation is to ensure that Obama doesn't get reelected. Something tells me the people's business isn't the top of their list.
Read your middle sentence - making sure Obama doesn't get re-elected IS the people's business, or did you miss how rapidly his approval ratings dropped once he got elected and actually had to talk policy and not just say "Hope! Change! Vote for me because I'm black!".
Jesus christ, do you actually believe that shit? People make choices and those choices determine how your life turns out (with a bit of luck mixed in). If you drop out of school, you're not going to have a high paying job and that's purely on your shoulders for making a dumb choice - just like you choose to have kids, especially in this day where condoms, birth control pills, and abortions are a dime a dozen. Those "evil rich" you demonize for "exploiting" workers are the ones writing their paychecks. Why is it so hard for you to grasp that these people would otherwise be unemployed if those "evil rich" hadn't decided to give them a job? You would be unemployed if the "evil" company you work for hadn't decided to hire you. Think about how much you like getting a paycheck the next time you want to vilify businesses.
Yea, those rich pay so little in taxes - that's why the bottom 50% of the country pays 3% of taxes and the top 50% pays 97%. It only gets more unbalanced as you go up. The top 25% of the country pays 86% of taxes, the top 10% pays 70% of taxes, the top 5% pays 59% of taxes, the top 1% pays 38% of all taxes.
The "working class" already got their break in paying a whopping 3% of taxes spread over half the working population.
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
The real test will be what Boehner does now...will he obstruct, or will he work?
This can be applied to Obama as well.
Well given that Obama said in an interview the other day that the Republicans are his "enemies" (yes, that actually was the word he used) and his behavior the past two years, I'm pretty skeptical about Obama working with them.
It's not your imagination. I've come across news articles online about how girls bodies are maturing faster than they used to and that it is more likely to happen to black girls than other races (though it's happening to them all).
Switch to bio-diesel - or maybe by then battery technology will finally have advanced enough that electric cars are both cheap and can go 300+ miles on a charge (with charges taking a reasonable time too, not 8-12 hours). I'd love to see all electric cars be affordable and have a practical range so that we can tell the middle east to go fuck themselves instead of kissing their ass for oil, but unfortunately we've still got a ways to go before we get there.
If you bothered to RTFA instead of trolling, they explicitly talk about how you can add an electric motor to this engine to really put the mpg off the charts. Basically he's saying that, short term, this will boost the mpg of cars until all electric cars are cheaper / the infrastructure for them is built.
I've never understood what was "convenient" about having to arrive 3-4 hours before the flight, wait in line for hours, hassle with security, etc.... but that's my opinion.
You're falsely assuming that he would be doing the speed limit.
http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/magazine/15-11/ff_cannonballrun
Alex Roy made it from NY to LA in 31 hours and 4 minutes by car.
Regardless, with all the bullshit going on in airports, there's no reason to fly unless you're being held at gunpoint. If everyone simply refused to fly until they quit this crap, the airlines would lose money so fast the TSA would be out the door in no time.
Most sane people do not sue six year-olds, even in this country.
Most sane people don't sue without a damn good reason, regardless of who they're suing. I think therefore, that shows most people in this country are not sane.
Because this is American - sex is evil and pointless lawsuits are good!
Seeing how I've seen no mention that the woman had dementia and was unable to know what was going on, I think you're making a huge leap there. I'm not saying she's at fault, but there's no reason to think she wasn't aware of what was going on.
You must be new to the US. In the US, courts follow precedent when it suits the personal views of the judges. If it doesn't suit their views, then they come up with a reason why precedent doesn't matter and they do something different. It's all part of the good old joke we call the "justice" system. Disclaimer: the term "justice system" does not mean any justice will take place or that the US government is liable for the actions of said "justice system".
When did I defend Bush? Never. I've openly been against Bush. However, Obama is NOT trying to get us out, his policies are actively prolonging the recession. He's added plenty of taxes, raised some, and wants to raise more - that is the exact OPPOSITE of what you do in a struggling economy. Taxes WERE very low (but not as low as they'd ever been), but Obama has openly said he wants to change that. Any Economist who's not on Obama's payroll or Paul Krugman will tell you that the stimulus was a massive waste. There may have been a teeny, tiny amount of good that came from it. However, they could have given large amounts of money to every adult in the country and it would have cost the government less, prevented the need for bank bailouts, prevented the need to bail out state governments (since they'd have more taxes), etc.
*sigh* I really wish people around here would learn something about Economics.... That is probably the thing that will have the biggest long term payoff - if they added Economics to the curriculum for all kids in high school. Then people wouldn't just blindly believe the bullshit that lying politicians (on both sides) tell them.
Wow, you are clearly ignorant of the tax system if you think capital gains tax replaces income tax. They pay capital gains tax ON TOP of their income tax, which would be much higher than yours due to the graduated income tax system we have.
Empathy has nothing to do with it. Greed, however, does. It's greed to steal money from one person so that you and your pals can benefit from it - not empathy.
Exactly. There's virtually no reason but personal choices for not having insurance. I had a job until a few months ago where I couldn't get insurance through my company - so I had to buy it online (which many people will try to tell you these sorts of sites don't exist) and purchased individual insurance through one of the major insurance companies. Even paying for medical and dental, it came out to less than $70 a month and you can pick different plans based on your income. Is it the greatest insurance ever if you buy a cheap plane? No, but it'll keep you from going bankrupt if anything bad happens.
I also know many people who grew up poor (several on welfare) who decided to work hard and make something better for their future. Are they rich? No, but they make a good $50,000 or more a year. Even Oprah was from a poor home and had a baby at 14 - yet she worked hard and became one of the richest people on the planet. Motivation is the biggest factor in deciding who's poor. Very few poor people who are motivated to make a better life for themselves stay poor for long.
You're dead on with the last point as well - it doesn't matter how bad your life is, how unfair the world is to you - you do NOT have the right to steal money (or ask the government to steal it for you) from someone else to make your life better off. You have the right to ask people to help you - and you know what? Chances are that you'll find people who will voluntarily give you money to help you out. People rarely object to helping others - what they object to is having their money forcibly taken from them after they worked hard to earn it.
I apologize for being OT, but I just wanted to say that it's great to finally meet someone else on Slashdot who has studied Economics as opposed to all the people who think they're smarter than Economists because they took Econ101 in college.
As someone in grad school for Economics, I can tell you that stimulus spending is good for the economy - if done properly. However, the stimulus bill that was passed was an utter joke. Most of the money went to programs that have no benefit to the economy (such as using stimulus money to buy birth control for poor women), then there are all of those "shovel ready projects" that don't exist and that Obama even said in an interview recently that they don't exist. Then there's the fact that the money was childishly doled out only (or at least mainly) to areas that voted for Obama - plenty of districts (such as my own) that didn't vote for Obama got absolutely nothing.
You mentioned that you hate the Obamacare bill, but "at least it does SOMETHING" - so you're for change for the sake of change, not GOOD change? There are a small handful of good things in Obamacare - they're overwhelmed though by the 99.9% of bad and useless crap in it (such as the clause worked in that let the government take over the student loan industry - remind me what that has to do with health care?).
Frankly, I can't think of anything more fiscally irresponsible than engaging in a pointless war (as we've done many times over the last century) or harming the economy due to being ignorant of the effects of taxes on the economy and taxing away.
As for your claim that Obama isn't worse than Bush as far as spending goes? Remember, Obama spent more in his first year than Bush did in eight years. Bush spent a ton of money on a pointless war. Obama spent several times more on continuing that pointless war, a useless stimulus, bailing out the UAW, etc.
Well, from what I recall, Clinton was forced by the Republican supermajority in Congress and the Senate to pass the bills balancing the budget. I'm not saying that's 100% accurate, just what I remember off the top of my head. I'm very much against government debt - yes, sometimes it's a necessity, but it should be paid off ASAP, not just continually building up. As much as you complained about Bush and Bush Jr. though, remember that what Bush Jr. spent in eight years, Obama spent in one.
As for your anecdotal evidence about personal finances? Most conservatives / non-Democrats I know have little to no debt and most liberals / Democrats I know have a significant amount. I think it has to do more with your region and the culture you were raised in than your political views.
No, I presume that we learn things by trying, and it's better to know than not know. If we make a mistake, the liberals will be the first to suggest change, while the conservatives will want things to stay the same.
Except that modern day liberals keep wanting to do the same things that have been dozens of times before and always ended badly. Every time another communist / marxist society rises, becomes a dictatorship with mass murder and mass poverty, then is destroyed (usually in a war), they always claim "Oh, they just didn't do it right - the communist / marxist theory isn't flawed, just that countries implementation". They never learn that anytime you give a person or group of people that much power over others, they're going to abuse it and they keep pushing for big governments, and the cycle continues. Remember the saying from BSG - "All of this has happened before; it will all happen again".
I'm very "liberal" in the classic definition of the word - I'm for freedom for people to do what they want as long as they're not hurting anyone. Unfortunately, in the US at least, the term liberal has become so corrupted that classic liberals generally get classified into one of two groups - conservatives or anarchists. They (I suppose I could say "we") are not conservative because they do not support the typical conservative views on controlling people's social behavior and religions views. They're also not anarchists because they support government for the things that only government can do and rules to protect people, they merely don't support the government interfering because they're trying to force people to behave in a way the government, and not the people, think is best.
Right now in the US, regardless of if Democrats or Republicans win, the American people lose. They're both tyrants pushing for ever larger government and controlling your behavior (just in different ways), though the Democrats (and sometimes Republicans) also add in wanting to control your finances as well. This is why I, and many people I know, think we need to hold a new Continental Congress and just re-start the government. The current system was the "Grand Experiment" and it proved to have some good aspects and some bad - unfortunately with the bad overwhelming the good. The current system, especially in regards to voting, is set up to prevent citizens from having much of a choice in who gets into the government and to discourage people that the current politicians don't like from having a reasonable chance at running. It's time to start fresh and learn from the mistakes of the past.
Just curious - what's wrong with (non-forced) eugenics? As long as you're not forcing some people to be sterilized and forcing others to have sex (or killing kids), what's wrong from promoting people having sex to have babies with better genetics?