Your argument is based on the assumptions that, a person can not separate theological beliefs from social concepts, and that honest moral standing and religion are mutually exclusive.
There are four types of coercion: economic, social, civil, and criminal; address these four points and do the best to see that everyone is treated equally. Everyone who does not harm or interfere with others against their will is abiding by the law and treated as equals. Under the conditions of the previous two sentences, all religions should be able to coexist peacefully and share in governing provided no religious limitations are decided globally (i.e. at the federal level).
That concept is largely a utopian fantasy. By their nature, nearly all religions require active intervention at their core belief. Religions are the political institutions of our spiritual beliefs; and like all of mans institutions, they exist to perpetuate themselves. Recruiting new followers is either strongly encouraged, or even required by most. This process often creates a dogma of active intervention as the number of people increase that hold similar views. Naturally, as time goes on, a percentage of our politicians reflect the proportion of the population that doesn't care if federal law limits things that their religious beliefs disagree with; regardless if the conditions in the fist two sentences of the second paragraph exist.
Are they aware that when political issues call civil rights into question that hate crimes raise exponentially?
He is right about that though. One day, almost out of no where, the President announces a ban on gay marriage. How many more people get the publicity of a President? The public spends the next few months dividing off and arguing, and most of them not really caring but forced to pick a side. A lot of people don't need a reason to be assholes, just a reminder. Put two and two together. You'd hope two productive members of society could interact in a civil fashion based on that one shared trait, but sometimes it's too much to ask for.
I have one thing to say to anyone who'd oppose an idea like this. The drug issue and the gun issue are linked. Most of America doesn't have a gun problem except in larger cities. Middle America tends to oppose drug law reform on moral grounds and the general majority opposes because of nearly a century of propaganda. Most smaller cities and rural areas don't have as big of a drug problem (except meth) as major urban areas. Wouldn't supporting the treatment of drug addiction as a health issue, and not criminal, along with heavily taxing inspected and regulated drugs also cause less of a need for gun control?
Breaking the cycle of drugs and gangs would be a lot easier if you were to release non-violent drug offenders only who served with good behavior, and allow them to legally tell an employer they are not a felon. Is it necessary to tell people you were convicted of a crime that you were later cleared for? The problem with drug laws no is that they are inherently racist. On average, minorities sentenced time more often and for longer periods than that of a white counterpart of the same gender. A drug offense can also prevent you from being able to vote.
Damn man. Just because you are bitter about it doesn't mean that the function of society is no longer the suport that we give each other. What's next? You don't have a kid so your taxes shouldn't go to public schools. You aren't retired, why should you pay social security? This isn't rocket science. At any rate, one of my freinds runs a website that is more in-line with your philosophy on reproduction.
If corporations and businesses were to have rights, the founding fathers would have extended that to them in the bill of rights. America is built on the people's rights, not the rights of corporations. This isn't the 50's where the man can go out to work and make more than enough money for a young family including a new born.
My brother and his wife just had their first kid. They are lucky to be on the upper half of America's income scale. He just spent over $20,000 in prenatal care. Imagine if your father was working while your mother stayed home to care for you. Imagine all money and labor being converted to current standards. Imagine them having to choose between proper care for you and cooking dinner for themselves. This is the reality that too many parents have to face today. Private health care can not handle this properly. Private insurance categorizes pregnancy that same way they do a disease. As soon as you aren't pregnant, you aren't sick, and need to get back to work. This is why we need government to cover the health needs of the underinsured and uninsured because you cannot expect a corporation to have the people's best interest in mind. They are a business and have profit in mind.
re a business and have profit in mind.
God forbid someone motivates young people to vote on topics that affect them. The draft may not be an issue, but the costs of war will be visited upon the younger generations as they pay for it, socially and economically.
That's not what Kerry was doing. He was *supporting* the North Vietnamese, providing them with information against the US and the South, which theoretically caused more deaths of US soldiers.
Please provide evidence for the fact that he was a spy for them. Also, please explain why I have not heard ths from from any legitimate sources. I mean, if someone is a spy, and they later run for president, you would expect that fact to be exposed quicker than a minority at the RNC.
See posts describing how Democrats and Republicans have more similarities than differences. See posts describing how mud slinging has taken the place of topic debates because they agree on the majority of said topics. See posts describing how people who still blindly believe party banter and party lines have fallen for this distraction. See how both parties agree to not reform election law and keep the two party game a never-changing two party game despite it being able offer a large and diverse population more accurate representation. See how people still embrace generalizations like "All democrats lack integrity", "All Republicans are fascist", "All black people have a predisposition towards crime and drugs", "People are homeless because they choose to be, not because most are mentally ill and society ignores them", and "People are poor because they choose to be".
We can either keep fighting each other like the parties want us to, or we can choose to see the truth and fight a political system that exists to serve itself.
Between 2002 and 2004, we have seen a 67% drop in corporate taxes and a 17% rise in private citizens' share, and an abuse of off-shore tax havens. During the same period the $197 Billion tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% could have made up for the states deficits'. Do you believe that society exists to provide for the wealthiest citizens and corporations, or should society demand repayment proportional to ones success for providing the framework necessary for anyone to rise to such eminence?
Lucas is a greedy bastard. Does anyone know that he owns the term "android" and its derivatives? He has been suing independent artists and labels left and right that infringe upon his words. He wouldn't sue big guy like Radiohead for their song "Paranoid Android" because that would be big news and might cause a backlash. One example of a small label was a group that called themselves "Dead Droid Records" in Evansville, IN. Here is my question to you: Has the word "android" entered the American vocabulary and become so popular that Lucas should still have the copyright? Before you answer, remember that popular trademarks often enter the public domain as generic words (like scotch tape and aspirin). Also, should a person holding the rights to a single word have the right to selectively sue people as to not start a public backlash against them, or should they sue everyone who infringes regardless of their status?
I'm not religious and I'm not gay; but I am young and still give a shit about the happiness and well-being of others. Maybe my compassion will fade as I age, and maybe I'll even start voting Republican when I give up believing in the goodness of strangers; but for now, I believe that the government has no place defining love. Marriage is the official, legal institution of the love shared between two people. For the government to say that two, loving people can not get married is the equivalent of saying that either they don't love each other, or they (comparatively speaking) don't love each other as much as a heterosexual couple. No one has the right to judge the love between two people, not me, not you, and certainly not the government.
It's is a commonly held misconception that gay people have a desire to marry each other. The last number I heard was below a tenth of a percent of the overall population would take advantage of it, were it allowed. Yet it is the most hyped up talking point of this election, and it all started as a tool for the President to distract the media on the day the 9/11 commission report was released.
If you noticed, he announced his gay marriage ban at the exact time the 9/11 report was released. The headlines for the day focused on the ban, not the report. Since then, he has rarely mentioned the ban. Another example of the "Shiney Nickel Effect".
Mr. President, do you believe that the government should decide whether I can marry 3 people simultaneously, or whether one of these "people" can't be a horse or other arbitrary livestock?
Since livestock has neither legal standing nor the ability to sign a name on legal documents, that would be a negative. Now if, for some reason, you get pleasure from equating homosexuals to animals, then you sir are a bigot. I find it odd that one of the reasons our ancestors left their countries and came to this land was to escape religious law. Now, here we are, debating the institution of religious law. Honestly, if a marriage between a man and woman is so weak that a homosexual couple, that has no contact with them, threatens the value or stability of said marriage, perhaps they shouldn't be together in the first place. Besides, it's not like heterosexual couples are enjoying some record levels of success avoiding divorce. What "sanctity" there was in marriage ended years ago when high divorce rates combined with the popularity of "Who wants to marry a [BLANK]" television shows shamed the institution. I don't recall a loud Christian outcry over such television shows defiling the sanctity. This is just another case of bigots hiding behind their religion. The same was done to condone slavery as well as condone the suppression of women's' rights. Instituting religous law would be a massive step backwards for society and would scar it for decades to come.
Re:Oh no neither party is helping
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But can you imagine getting 250 million people to vote on the budget? With proper information sent out to everyone, it could be done. How about something like Sarbanes-Oxley (corporate governance) or Gramm-Leach-Bliley (banking privacy)? Could you inform enough people of the issues to get a good vote on it?
To be fair, I doubt most politicians know about those either. Many have admitted that they don't usually read what they sign. Anyway, most votes aer bought and traded. Most votes for bills are recieved because people offer to sign bill A if the other person signs bill B.
Look at the conflict in Vietnam. On Monday, you may run across a village that is either apathetic to the American presence or friendly. On Tuesday they get carpet bombed. On Wednesday the survivors pick up gins and side with the communists, not because they believe in their cause, but because they want to side with their own people against a foreign entity that had decided their lives have little or no value.
The same is happening in Iraq. The longer we stay there, the more militants our presence creates. All of the sudden there are hundreds, even thousands, of people willing to carry out attacks against our population who otherwise would have been apathetic. Peaceful doesn't always mean welcoming or friendly, it could simply mean "don't mess with me, and I won't mess with you."
Tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens, who never committed a crime against us, are dead. Who are the surviving family members going to blame?
You know, I keep hearing about how bad the economy is, and I was starting to believe it myself. But I'm in software development, the first field to be hit by the downturn and one of the first fields to start recovering (after financial institutions--they always feel it first). Well for the last year or so, I've had no trouble finding work, and things have really picked up lately. I'm in Silicon Valley and during my latest job search, I put my resume up on DICE and was getting 3-5 calls per day.
Congratulations on the new job. It's a shame that IT represents only a fraction of the workforce, and training for IT is more time consuming and expensive than the average joe can pick up and start life again from scratch. Besides, if everyone switched to IT, you could expect to see your luck dry up with the influx of new labor.
I was starting to believe the Kerry hype over the last year or so, but this latest experience with this job search I just went through, turning down offers and having multiple offers on the table at one time, all while in the industry supposedly hardest hit by all of this outsourcing...I'm thinking Bush is right after all. The economy is on an upswing and it's only a matter of months before everyone feels it.
It's a shame that you would let your personal luck allow you to make a sweeping statement that the economy across all sectors is on a rebound. Your earlier statement that management is the first to go in a bad economy is quite false. Labor is almost always the first to go. Management decides its own fate, labor does not have that luxury. I'm glad that everything is looking up for the college educated, but you must remember that the majority of the population did not attend college.
It's too bad that if Kerry gets elected, everyone's going to think that he somehow magically did something to recover the economy in his first couple of months, because that's how long it'll take before things are back in full swing. As if that was even possible.
It's not possible, because the rebound is only happening to a small sector consiting of mostly white collar, college educate people. Besides, if and when the economy rebounds, the conservatives won't let Kerry accept credit. It would be like them admitting their own guilt for doing anything for over 3 years, something which has not happened once in the last 4 years.
It's like when 9/11 happened, the Dems are saying, Hey, that happened on Bush's watch. Not fair, people. You don't have a weak-kneed (when it comes to foreign policy) Democrat in office for 8 years who doesn't take any kind of stance against terrorism, and then we get hit 8 months after Bush is in office, and "it happened on his watch."
You are right, it happened under Reagan's watch when we trained, funded, and armed Osama. At least Clinton threw a couple strikes at him. Unfortunately the conservatives accused him of deflecting attention away from his sex scandal, but they don't like to bring that topic up. In all fairness, Bush ignored everything related to terrorists and terrorism up until the point when over 3000 people paid for his ignorance. Not to mention he diverted resources away from the real attacker to invade Iraq. The man that killed over 3000 people may be free, but at least we got Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction! It only cost over 1000 more lives and billions and billions of dollars that had no better use.
Then enter the dot-com bust, the accounting fraud crisis that boiled over after it festered under the Clinton years, as well as 9/11.
You're wasting your breath. People are way too short-sighted to believe that a president isn't the direct cause of everything that goes on during his term, especially when people have a political agenda.
It's absolutely amazing that, under Clinton, everyone could not criticize him enough. Blind accusations, popular rhetoric and cliché, and conspiracy theories were common talking points by the population and media. Generally speaking, it was a good thing; government should exist under the constant scrutiny of the people.
Then Bush gets elected, the attacks happen, we invade Iraq to retaliate (not sure of the logic there) and all of the sudden he is a "War President" and criticizing him or the government is tantamount to treason. The same people that define patriotism as "agreeing with your government" were the same personalities that sided against true patriots over 200 years ago. Government derives its power, its very existence, from the people it is supposed to represent. Anyone who fails to raise questions, anyone who blindly fall in line with the status quo, is in dereliction of duty as a good citizen. When people stop asking questions, they are a short step away form not being allowed to ask questions; and that is the first sign of a dictatorship.
People are wrong to blame Bush for inheriting a sour economy. They are right to hold him accountable for doing nothing to stimulate growth. He has no intention of shifting the tax burden back on corporations (pre- Reaganomics) or on the upper 1% of citizens. He fails to see that a society capable of fostering such wealth and success demands arrears as its cost. One can not live in a society, extract so much from it, and expect no retribution. People argue that a CEO earning 8 figures a year had to go to school for a long time and had to crawl his way up the ladder. If you were to place a mine worker, struggling to stay in the middle class, and one of these CEO's side-by-side, no one would be able to judge the value of a man. All we can judge is what society has given them, and what society is owed in return.
Bush's complete inability to foster economic growth, his desire to maintain environmentally destructive strategies (like oil dependence), his almost negative progress in education, and his stubbornness to admit when he's wrong so that he may learn from his mistakes are indicative of everything that is wrong in American politics. Without cheap education and easy access to it, how are we able to learn new skills as time passes and the economy shifts? In less than 10 years, with a fraction of the money spent on Iraq, America could have shifted over three quarters of its energy demands to hydrogen and other renewable sources. New technology requires new education and new jobs. We wouldn't even need to abandon our oil processing centers. Hydrocarbons are rich in hydrogen and result in more efficient production than separating hydrogen and oxygen from water. It can also be extracted from coal which is too dirty to burn. And when all of the above have been used, we can easily switch to other sources. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.
Unfortunately, Bush lacks any insight into the future. I can not trust a man who can not admit guilt when it's due. Say what you want about Clinton, when he got caught lying, he admitted to it on national TV. The result: He shamed his family, ruined his credibility, and made his mistress an overnight pop icon. When Bush was caught, he blamed everyone around him. The result: Over 1000 dead soldiers, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, his own Veitnam, a still floundering economy, a damaged environment, no international credibility, and has given otherwise peaceful middle-eastern citizens even more reason to hate us, to name a few. He has made no progress and can not be expected to change his ways if reelected.
As anybody with a calculator can figure out, Bush's plan has a huge hole. The cost of switching from pay-as-you-go to individual-investment plans is dumbfoundingly large (some estimate it as $1 trillion), and I've seen no coherent explanation from Bush's administration as to where the money will come from.
It's going to come from each individual. Part of his plan to ensure the survivability of SSIt's going to come from each individual. Part of his plan to ensure the survivability of SS is allowing people to set aside a percentage of their pre-tax income in a tax free savings plan that must be used to augment private health coverage or saved for retirement. His solution guarantees that the current day elderly continue to receive benefits just as their parents did. My generation will end up paying twice; once into the existing system to support the baby boomers, and again into our personal accounts to support ourselves.
Unfortunately, SS can not be fixed because of uneven population growth, the rapid influx of SS requests caused by the aging boomers, unstable economy, and non-linear increases of inflation. There are simply too many variables and the slightest change in one would require reworking the entire equation. We have to find a way to support the graying boomers and the currently retired. They paid into the system their whole lives, expecting it to be there when they retire. To cut them off would be just as bad as Bush suggesting that my generation pay twice.
Unfortunately, nobody with an actual working model of a new system will ever get elected. Senior citizens vote in record numbers and anyone suggesting a new system would not have a chance. Old people, if anything, are stubbornly resistant to change.
Although very questionable, and highly inflamitory, the above quote would provide better evidence of a corporate conspiracy (much more likely) than a conspiracy by the Republican party.
Quote from that website:
The variables for Democratic and African American supervisors are negative; the coefficient for Republican supervisor is positive. The only justifiable conclusion from these results is once again that there is no statistically significant relationship between whether election supervisors are Democratic, Republican or African American and either overall ballot rejection rates or racial disparities in ballot rejection rates.
Your source has failed to indicate a Republican conspiracy. Here is a direct link to the chapter where I found the above quote. If you can find a better quote suggeting a conspiracy, please include it along with an exerpt in the reply.
They want to hate Republicans for possible taking advantage of flaws in evoting,
Who? Where? Please provide examples of a credible (ie. non-conspiracy theorist) source suggesting that Republicans might abuse a security hole.
and they also want to hate Fox News....
I'll give you the Fox News thing, but since your previous argument is now void, the novelty has worn off of this argument too. Anyway, "Hate corporate run news media" would have been a much more accurate term.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?
It means that your trolling was unsuccessful today. Please move along.
Everything is a threat to national security. There are a half dozen other free websites that offer nearly the same services as this one. Soon, the EU will have its own version of GPS which can be accessed by the public. If someone really wants to kill others, they will find a way regardless. Has anyone noticed that most security implementations after the attacks tend to make people feel safer without making them truly safer? No security is better than a false sense of security; at least people would be on their toes instead of walking around oblivious.
Check the 9th and 10th Amendments in the Bill of Rights. Just because privacy isn't spelled out in the constitution doesn't mean that we don't have a right to it. The founding fathers had a fear that in the time following the ratification, an imperialistic federal government would limit personal freedoms that weren't specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Since they didn't have the ability see into the future and predict evolving social concerns, they left in a clause saying that people have more rights than just the ones they spelled out.
Republicans have no problem with big, intrusive governemnt as long as it concerns topics that the undereducated masses won't revolt against. I grew up in a small town called Jasper. It's not uncommon to see parents give their young children beer when they say they are thirsty. Many families have a side business which is usually a bar or pub. Everyone there will always vote Republican until the day one stands on a platform of prohibition and gun control. Subtract the beer and bar part, and you have most all of middle America.
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Your argument is based on the assumptions that, a person can not separate theological beliefs from social concepts, and that honest moral standing and religion are mutually exclusive. There are four types of coercion: economic, social, civil, and criminal; address these four points and do the best to see that everyone is treated equally. Everyone who does not harm or interfere with others against their will is abiding by the law and treated as equals. Under the conditions of the previous two sentences, all religions should be able to coexist peacefully and share in governing provided no religious limitations are decided globally (i.e. at the federal level). That concept is largely a utopian fantasy. By their nature, nearly all religions require active intervention at their core belief. Religions are the political institutions of our spiritual beliefs; and like all of mans institutions, they exist to perpetuate themselves. Recruiting new followers is either strongly encouraged, or even required by most. This process often creates a dogma of active intervention as the number of people increase that hold similar views. Naturally, as time goes on, a percentage of our politicians reflect the proportion of the population that doesn't care if federal law limits things that their religious beliefs disagree with; regardless if the conditions in the fist two sentences of the second paragraph exist.
I have one thing to say to anyone who'd oppose an idea like this. The drug issue and the gun issue are linked. Most of America doesn't have a gun problem except in larger cities. Middle America tends to oppose drug law reform on moral grounds and the general majority opposes because of nearly a century of propaganda. Most smaller cities and rural areas don't have as big of a drug problem (except meth) as major urban areas. Wouldn't supporting the treatment of drug addiction as a health issue, and not criminal, along with heavily taxing inspected and regulated drugs also cause less of a need for gun control?
Breaking the cycle of drugs and gangs would be a lot easier if you were to release non-violent drug offenders only who served with good behavior, and allow them to legally tell an employer they are not a felon. Is it necessary to tell people you were convicted of a crime that you were later cleared for? The problem with drug laws no is that they are inherently racist. On average, minorities sentenced time more often and for longer periods than that of a white counterpart of the same gender. A drug offense can also prevent you from being able to vote.
Damn man. Just because you are bitter about it doesn't mean that the function of society is no longer the suport that we give each other. What's next? You don't have a kid so your taxes shouldn't go to public schools. You aren't retired, why should you pay social security? This isn't rocket science. At any rate, one of my freinds runs a website that is more in-line with your philosophy on reproduction.
What about a business' rights?
If corporations and businesses were to have rights, the founding fathers would have extended that to them in the bill of rights. America is built on the people's rights, not the rights of corporations. This isn't the 50's where the man can go out to work and make more than enough money for a young family including a new born.
My brother and his wife just had their first kid. They are lucky to be on the upper half of America's income scale. He just spent over $20,000 in prenatal care. Imagine if your father was working while your mother stayed home to care for you. Imagine all money and labor being converted to current standards. Imagine them having to choose between proper care for you and cooking dinner for themselves. This is the reality that too many parents have to face today. Private health care can not handle this properly. Private insurance categorizes pregnancy that same way they do a disease. As soon as you aren't pregnant, you aren't sick, and need to get back to work. This is why we need government to cover the health needs of the underinsured and uninsured because you cannot expect a corporation to have the people's best interest in mind. They are a business and have profit in mind. re a business and have profit in mind.
God forbid someone motivates young people to vote on topics that affect them. The draft may not be an issue, but the costs of war will be visited upon the younger generations as they pay for it, socially and economically.
See posts describing how Democrats and Republicans have more similarities than differences. See posts describing how mud slinging has taken the place of topic debates because they agree on the majority of said topics. See posts describing how people who still blindly believe party banter and party lines have fallen for this distraction. See how both parties agree to not reform election law and keep the two party game a never-changing two party game despite it being able offer a large and diverse population more accurate representation. See how people still embrace generalizations like "All democrats lack integrity", "All Republicans are fascist", "All black people have a predisposition towards crime and drugs", "People are homeless because they choose to be, not because most are mentally ill and society ignores them", and "People are poor because they choose to be".
We can either keep fighting each other like the parties want us to, or we can choose to see the truth and fight a political system that exists to serve itself.
Forwarded to YouthDebate.com
Between 2002 and 2004, we have seen a 67% drop in corporate taxes and a 17% rise in private citizens' share, and an abuse of off-shore tax havens. During the same period the $197 Billion tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% could have made up for the states deficits'. Do you believe that society exists to provide for the wealthiest citizens and corporations, or should society demand repayment proportional to ones success for providing the framework necessary for anyone to rise to such eminence?
Lucas is a greedy bastard. Does anyone know that he owns the term "android" and its derivatives? He has been suing independent artists and labels left and right that infringe upon his words. He wouldn't sue big guy like Radiohead for their song "Paranoid Android" because that would be big news and might cause a backlash. One example of a small label was a group that called themselves "Dead Droid Records" in Evansville, IN. Here is my question to you: Has the word "android" entered the American vocabulary and become so popular that Lucas should still have the copyright? Before you answer, remember that popular trademarks often enter the public domain as generic words (like scotch tape and aspirin). Also, should a person holding the rights to a single word have the right to selectively sue people as to not start a public backlash against them, or should they sue everyone who infringes regardless of their status?
I'm not religious and I'm not gay; but I am young and still give a shit about the happiness and well-being of others. Maybe my compassion will fade as I age, and maybe I'll even start voting Republican when I give up believing in the goodness of strangers; but for now, I believe that the government has no place defining love. Marriage is the official, legal institution of the love shared between two people. For the government to say that two, loving people can not get married is the equivalent of saying that either they don't love each other, or they (comparatively speaking) don't love each other as much as a heterosexual couple. No one has the right to judge the love between two people, not me, not you, and certainly not the government.
It's is a commonly held misconception that gay people have a desire to marry each other. The last number I heard was below a tenth of a percent of the overall population would take advantage of it, were it allowed. Yet it is the most hyped up talking point of this election, and it all started as a tool for the President to distract the media on the day the 9/11 commission report was released.
If you noticed, he announced his gay marriage ban at the exact time the 9/11 report was released. The headlines for the day focused on the ban, not the report. Since then, he has rarely mentioned the ban. Another example of the "Shiney Nickel Effect".
Look at the conflict in Vietnam. On Monday, you may run across a village that is either apathetic to the American presence or friendly. On Tuesday they get carpet bombed. On Wednesday the survivors pick up gins and side with the communists, not because they believe in their cause, but because they want to side with their own people against a foreign entity that had decided their lives have little or no value.
The same is happening in Iraq. The longer we stay there, the more militants our presence creates. All of the sudden there are hundreds, even thousands, of people willing to carry out attacks against our population who otherwise would have been apathetic. Peaceful doesn't always mean welcoming or friendly, it could simply mean "don't mess with me, and I won't mess with you."
Tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens, who never committed a crime against us, are dead. Who are the surviving family members going to blame?
It's a shame that you would let your personal luck allow you to make a sweeping statement that the economy across all sectors is on a rebound. Your earlier statement that management is the first to go in a bad economy is quite false. Labor is almost always the first to go. Management decides its own fate, labor does not have that luxury. I'm glad that everything is looking up for the college educated, but you must remember that the majority of the population did not attend college.
It's not possible, because the rebound is only happening to a small sector consiting of mostly white collar, college educate people. Besides, if and when the economy rebounds, the conservatives won't let Kerry accept credit. It would be like them admitting their own guilt for doing anything for over 3 years, something which has not happened once in the last 4 years.
You are right, it happened under Reagan's watch when we trained, funded, and armed Osama. At least Clinton threw a couple strikes at him. Unfortunately the conservatives accused him of deflecting attention away from his sex scandal, but they don't like to bring that topic up. In all fairness, Bush ignored everything related to terrorists and terrorism up until the point when over 3000 people paid for his ignorance. Not to mention he diverted resources away from the real attacker to invade Iraq. The man that killed over 3000 people may be free, but at least we got Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction! It only cost over 1000 more lives and billions and billions of dollars that had no better use.
Then Bush gets elected, the attacks happen, we invade Iraq to retaliate (not sure of the logic there) and all of the sudden he is a "War President" and criticizing him or the government is tantamount to treason. The same people that define patriotism as "agreeing with your government" were the same personalities that sided against true patriots over 200 years ago. Government derives its power, its very existence, from the people it is supposed to represent. Anyone who fails to raise questions, anyone who blindly fall in line with the status quo, is in dereliction of duty as a good citizen. When people stop asking questions, they are a short step away form not being allowed to ask questions; and that is the first sign of a dictatorship.
People are wrong to blame Bush for inheriting a sour economy. They are right to hold him accountable for doing nothing to stimulate growth. He has no intention of shifting the tax burden back on corporations (pre- Reaganomics) or on the upper 1% of citizens. He fails to see that a society capable of fostering such wealth and success demands arrears as its cost. One can not live in a society, extract so much from it, and expect no retribution. People argue that a CEO earning 8 figures a year had to go to school for a long time and had to crawl his way up the ladder. If you were to place a mine worker, struggling to stay in the middle class, and one of these CEO's side-by-side, no one would be able to judge the value of a man. All we can judge is what society has given them, and what society is owed in return.
Bush's complete inability to foster economic growth, his desire to maintain environmentally destructive strategies (like oil dependence), his almost negative progress in education, and his stubbornness to admit when he's wrong so that he may learn from his mistakes are indicative of everything that is wrong in American politics. Without cheap education and easy access to it, how are we able to learn new skills as time passes and the economy shifts? In less than 10 years, with a fraction of the money spent on Iraq, America could have shifted over three quarters of its energy demands to hydrogen and other renewable sources. New technology requires new education and new jobs. We wouldn't even need to abandon our oil processing centers. Hydrocarbons are rich in hydrogen and result in more efficient production than separating hydrogen and oxygen from water. It can also be extracted from coal which is too dirty to burn. And when all of the above have been used, we can easily switch to other sources. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.
Unfortunately, Bush lacks any insight into the future. I can not trust a man who can not admit guilt when it's due. Say what you want about Clinton, when he got caught lying, he admitted to it on national TV. The result: He shamed his family, ruined his credibility, and made his mistress an overnight pop icon. When Bush was caught, he blamed everyone around him. The result: Over 1000 dead soldiers, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, his own Veitnam, a still floundering economy, a damaged environment, no international credibility, and has given otherwise peaceful middle-eastern citizens even more reason to hate us, to name a few. He has made no progress and can not be expected to change his ways if reelected.
Unfortunately, SS can not be fixed because of uneven population growth, the rapid influx of SS requests caused by the aging boomers, unstable economy, and non-linear increases of inflation. There are simply too many variables and the slightest change in one would require reworking the entire equation. We have to find a way to support the graying boomers and the currently retired. They paid into the system their whole lives, expecting it to be there when they retire. To cut them off would be just as bad as Bush suggesting that my generation pay twice.
Unfortunately, nobody with an actual working model of a new system will ever get elected. Senior citizens vote in record numbers and anyone suggesting a new system would not have a chance. Old people, if anything, are stubbornly resistant to change.
Although very questionable, and highly inflamitory, the above quote would provide better evidence of a corporate conspiracy (much more likely) than a conspiracy by the Republican party.
Quote from that website:
The variables for Democratic and African American supervisors are negative; the coefficient for Republican supervisor is positive. The only justifiable conclusion from these results is once again that there is no statistically significant relationship between whether election supervisors are Democratic, Republican or African American and either overall ballot rejection rates or racial disparities in ballot rejection rates.
Your source has failed to indicate a Republican conspiracy. Here is a direct link to the chapter where I found the above quote. If you can find a better quote suggeting a conspiracy, please include it along with an exerpt in the reply.
Everything is a threat to national security. There are a half dozen other free websites that offer nearly the same services as this one. Soon, the EU will have its own version of GPS which can be accessed by the public. If someone really wants to kill others, they will find a way regardless. Has anyone noticed that most security implementations after the attacks tend to make people feel safer without making them truly safer? No security is better than a false sense of security; at least people would be on their toes instead of walking around oblivious.
Define commercial. Would that still cover creative commons (which isn't public domain) and free distribution approved by the copyright holder.
Check the 9th and 10th Amendments in the Bill of Rights. Just because privacy isn't spelled out in the constitution doesn't mean that we don't have a right to it. The founding fathers had a fear that in the time following the ratification, an imperialistic federal government would limit personal freedoms that weren't specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Since they didn't have the ability see into the future and predict evolving social concerns, they left in a clause saying that people have more rights than just the ones they spelled out.
Republicans have no problem with big, intrusive governemnt as long as it concerns topics that the undereducated masses won't revolt against. I grew up in a small town called Jasper. It's not uncommon to see parents give their young children beer when they say they are thirsty. Many families have a side business which is usually a bar or pub. Everyone there will always vote Republican until the day one stands on a platform of prohibition and gun control. Subtract the beer and bar part, and you have most all of middle America.