You can deny the existence of the trust fund all you want, but it is real, and contains real Treasury bonds that must be repaid. There is an accounting gimmick where the Social Security surplus is used to purchase the Treasury bonds, and at the same time is subtracted from the deficit. This does not affect the reality of the bonds in the trust fund or the government's obligation to repay them.
Let me make this point clear: I never meant to imply that the US government would deliberately plan to default on it's debt.
But to say that the trust fund does not exist either denies the existence of these Treasury bonds, or implies that the government plans to default on them. Both of these assertions are false.
There really is no such thing as a risk free rate of return.
If there were no risk, there wouldn't be any interest paid on them.
Ok, so the trust fund does not exist, the risk free rate of return does not exist, and even if it did, it would be zero. Can you back any of this up, or do you just "know" it?
You say you welcome a serious debate, but you deny the existence of basic facts relevant to the issue, and show lack of knowledge about others. And if we're to have a serious debate, let's refrain talk about tinfoil hats - agreed?
I made the statement about your post being misinformed or deliberately misleading because of these factually incorrect statements you have made.
Some Republicans may sincerely want to reform Social Security to address the demographic problems it faces. The real motivation behind privatization, though, is a desire to weaken the program in preparation for eliminating it. Their problem is that the program is popular, effective, and cost-efficient, so they cannot overtly advocate its demise. It must be done gradually and privatization is the first step.
Those who want to weaken Social Security must depend on the general public not learning the facts about the program, because the facts are against them. They wish to create misperceptions about the program, and one of those is that the trust fund does not exist. They say that it is only a collection of "worthless IOU's", ignoring the fact that ALL bonds are IOU's. And as I said before, Treasury bonds are the least risky bonds that exist.
Your opinions may be different than mine, but I have been careful to ensure that mine are based in fact. You acknowledged the possibility that you may be misinformed, and I would (respectfully) suggest to you that this is the case.
Based on the facts I have researched, I (and many others) have come to these conclusions:
Privatization will take a program that is fully funded for the next forty years and plunge it into almost instant deficit.
Establishment of the private accounts will not "fix" Social Security. Part of the existing defined-benefits system will remain, and that will face the same problems as the existing program - only sooner.
Transition costs will be massive, at a time when the deficit and public debt are at record levels. 1-2 trillion dollars is going to have to be borrowed over the next 10 years alone.
I've seen this from a few different people now, and its a weird effect. There's a section of the country that was essentially "Democrat-proofed", meaning that no matter how bad Bush f**ked up, or who ran against him, they would have still voted Republican.
I spoke with a few different people who said (paraphrasing now), "Yes, Bush screwed up, he makes me wince when he speaks in public, there's lots of people dead because of him, and he didnt catch the guy who killed 3000 Americans, but Kerry just didn't give me a reason to vote for him". One of these people even said that they made their mind up after watching the debates!
If you're riding in a car, and the driver ignores all advice and gets you hopelessly lost, do you say "Let's let him keep driving, because nobody else knows where we are"? That's crazy.
The trust fund is very real. I is composed of US Treasury bonds that are earning interest and can be redeemed at a future date.
To say that the trust fund is just a bunch of IOU's implies that the US government is deliberately planning to default on its debt. Only the US and UK have never defaulted on a debt payment.
In the financial world there is the concept of the risk free rate of return. The rate on US treasury bonds IS the risk free rate of return, meaning that there is zero risk of default.
If the government backing the world's reference currency were to default on its debt, the result would be an economic collapse that would make Social Security the least of our problems.
Your post, like much of republican propaganda is either misinformed, or deliberately misleading.
So why do you think that this vague concept of "understanding" intelligence is so necessary to creating it?
Are you serious? Well, how do you create anything without knowing how it is made? Your idea of the universe being able to create intelligent beings without understanding intelligence is interesting, but I think it's flawed.
The universe didn't set out to make us, we just happened as a result of a certain set of circumstances. Probably a very long, complicated set of circumstances. The earth doesn't have to understand gravitation to hold my laptop to the table, it just holds it there.
We, on the other hand, are trying to create artificial intelligence, or at least create the conditions that will cause it to arise. But we don't know any of those parameters. You might stumble on these combinations, but I consider this highly unlikely.
That's why I think the alchemy analogy is appropriate. It's possible that some medieval alchemist could have stumbled on the conditions that would have transmuted common metals into gold, but without knowledge of atoms and subatomic particles, it was almost certain not to happen.
...won't be possible until we understand real intelligence. Until then, it's a lot like alchemy - trying to change the nature of matter before you understand the nature of matter.
Intelligence is, at least in part, the ability to come up with the Eureka! moment. Computers can't do that, and we won't be able to get them to do it until we can explain why it's possible for us.
I also suspect that 'Street smarts' and the type of quantity-based intelligence shown by savants are two different skills that compete for the same resources. In other words, they are an engineering tradeoff in the human brain.
And while I do support the Iraq war I don't believe the US should have put up the bulk of the resources to do it. You can't bring democracy to a country that doesn't want it.
I'm a bit confused.
What exactly about the war do you support?
Who was going to supply the resources if not the US?
What is it that you think we have gained by launching this war?
If we can't bring democracy to Iraq (assuming that's the 'country that doesn't want it' you're referring to), why are we there?
So these researchers are just amoral monsters who want to experiment on embryos for no reason? I suppose only conservative warriors like yourself stand between them and experiments on live children.
This is such classic conservative FUD. You know the public generally supports the research, and is not buying your right to life arguments, and so you spread FUD about the usefulness of the research itself.
I don't know the particulars of which research is more promising, but I sure won't get my technical information from you or your blog.
I do NOT support embryonic stem cell research, but not because the research is supposedly 'useless'. I am opposed to it because:
1. An embryo is not a human being, but has the potential to become one and IS a form of human life. It is vastly different from a child (or even a fetus), but it has a complete (and unique) set of genetic material. Therefore, I believe it qualifies as something more than a clump of cells or a donated organ.
2. The research requires the embryo to be destroyed. Once you have sanctioned the destruction of this form of human life, you have crossed the line marking the start of the slippery slope.
3. The argument that "these embryos would just be discarded anyway" breaks down when you have a breakthrough, and suddenly need to produce embryonic stem cells on an industrial scale. At that point you are creating embryos with no purpose other than to be grown and harvested.
IANAC (I am not a conservative), but I generally agree with them on this issue. What I don't agree with is their all-too-familiar tactics: when you can't win the argument on the merits of the facts, start calling the facts themselves into question ( voting "challenges", Iraq War, "Death tax", etc, etc.)
There were a lot of good reasons to stay the hell out of Iraq. The number of people killed by the US military compared to sanctions was not one of them.
I would disagree. 3 passengers dead in a car wreck caused by the driver trying to flee is a lot different than 3 dead in a car wreck where YOU rammed their car. Especially if they have lots of relatives with guns.
Hard core aristoctratic republicans hate Social Security and Medicare, and would like to do away with them. These programs are successful and widely popular, so doing so would be political suicide. Their answer to that is what they call "Starving the beast", or cutting off streams of revenue to the government, creating a fiscal crisis that brings programs to the chopping block that before were political taboo.
Here's my tinfoil hat prediction of what will happen.
1. Propose allowing a portion of your Social Security funds to be invested in a personal account. A potential gain for you, an unprecedented windfall for mutual fund managers.
2. When questioned about how diverting money from the general fund will help avoid a shortfall in that fund, avoid answering and say things like "it will be cheaper than doing nothing".
3. Gradually increase the percentage to be placed into the personal accounts over the next 20 or so years, thus diverting more money from the general fund and worsening the shortfall for the Baby Boomers.
4. Seed the public's perception of Social Security as a scam and a "Ponzi Scheme", feeding on their mistrust of government. This actually could be placed as #1, since it is going on right now in talk radio world and other conservative circles.
5. Wait for the inevitable collapse, where the trust fund cannot meet its obligations to retirees.
6. Proclaim the system dead, and completely abandon it. Make pious statements about how Social Security was the epitome of the failure of goverment to meet peoples' needs, and thank God that we're finally emerging from the dark shadow of the communist New Deal.
7. Convert all the private accounts to accounts in whatever financial services firm contributed the most to the RNC in the previous election.
About the economy comment, I see the Democrats have programmed you well. Unfortunately, Bush isn't on the Ways and Means committee, nor is he on the Federal Reserve board, nor is he part of any decision making process that Constitutionally *ought* to have anything to do with the control of the economy.
You think those on the Ways And Means Committee (majority Republican) aren't influenced by Bush?
You think that Bush's budget busting tax cuts are not affecting the economy? They were nominally intended to provide short-term stimulus (which it did not provide), but the long term effect of the excessive borrowing required to finance the deficit will likely be higher interest rates.
You think that war (especially unnecessary war) does not have an effect on the market? Do you think war in Iraq and $55/bbl oil are a coincidence?
Your comment about the president not having control of the economy reminds me of a quote from one of the Godfather movies where Michael Corleone compares himself to a Senator:
Kate: "Senators don't have people killed, Michael."
"That's just propaganda; there are plenty of nuclear plants in the US. They're hideously expensive to build, which is why they for the most part aren't built anymore."
A major part of the expense in building nuclear plants (at least in Illinois) was timing. At the time of 3 mile island there were a number of nuclear plants in early stages of construction in IL.
After that, the govt stepped in and mandated changes to the design of the plants. The competitively bid contracts were thrown out, and the contractors completed the plants on a cost-plus basis. "Cost plus" means do the job, add up your costs, and submit the bill. Exactly like the sweetheart deal that Halliburton has now for Iraq.
Costs went through the roof. I worked in construction for a number of years, and while all this happened before my time, I used to hear stories about the things that went on. Contractors would hire 5 workers to do work that could be done by 1. Lumber used for concrete forms was always new; once the concrete set and the forms were stripped, the lumber would be cut up and thrown away.
This is why Chicago has some of the highest electricity rates in the nation.
Well, how do you think Bush got into office? If Monica sends the blue dress to the dry cleaners, Gore is President today.
I voted for Kerry because contrary to the Bush camp's flip-flop charge, he's a guy that will not be shaken from a position he feels is right. Three examples:
Iran-Contra: Kerry was instrumental in getting it (the investigation) started.
BCCI: Kerry stuck with this one like a bulldog on a mailman's leg, even though it exposed wrongdoing by some influential Democrats.
POW/MIA Investigation: Kerry took this issue up when all his advisors said it was a political no-win situation. He did exactly the opposite of what you would expect if you believe the Bush campaign's portrayal of him.
Kerry's not perfect - despite the above points, his legislative record is kind of sparse, and IMHO he was wrong on BOTH votes regarding Gulf War I and II. But we need someone who is going to extricate us from Iraq, and Bush just can't see past the ideology enough to do it.
George W. Bush is the first american president to call for a two-state solution,
That is disingenuous. He also said he would sign a bill renewing the assault weapons ban, but with a wink let the congress know that he didn't want any such legislation to ever arrive on his desk.
He called for the establishment of a Palestinian state, but all his policies have worked against its creation. Rumsfeld has stated publicly that a country that wins territory in a war is entitled to that land.
and he's also the first american president to pressure the israelis to withdraw from occupied territories without an agreement from the palestinians - something the israelis just voted to do.
This is a shell game. The israelis will remove the smaller settler communities from Gaza, which they are less interested in anyway, and will solidify their hold on the west bank.
Your analogy about the pie is almost correct. There is not Fred and Tom; there are two Toms. They both want all of the pie.
Arafat was offerered almost all of the west bank, but turned it down. All the arab nations offered official recognition of Israel if it would withdraw to 1967 borders, but it refused.
His purpose in this video is to appeal to the american left, to get them to vote for kerry so that he'll leave us alone, because he knows he can't take another four years of bush.
Three reasons why you're wrong:
The american left is already going to vote for Kerry.
Noone seriously thinks that bin Laden will leave us alone. To a man, Americans are hopping mad at what he did and want him dead. I had a physical, visceral reaction to seeing him on tv.
George Bush is bin Laden's wet dream. W has divided the free world, but united the Muslim world in hatred of us. The pictures from Abu Graib are proof of bin Laden's propaganda in the Arab world. Iraq is both a recruiting bonanza for Al Queda and a shooting gallery where you can take potshots at the infidel american invaders.
The idea that things are going badly right now for bin Laden is absurd. He lost Afghanistan, but an unstable, potentially radical Iraq, in the heart of the arab world, more than makes up for that.
He had to have known that there would be retaliation for 9/11. I think he chose 19 saudis in an attempt to get us to attack Saudi Arabia. American soldiers occupying Mecca would be the ideal political situaition for him, but an unstable Iraq is almost as good.
Well if you're looking at one of the other candidates, let me counter your parents' view of Kerry.
He was a well-respected prosecutor in Boston for a number of years and won some big cases against organized crime figures.
When he entered the Senate in the mid-80's, he was instrumental in the investigations that became Iran-contra. Oliver North hates Kerry with a passion, but without Kerry, North would probably be just another retired Marine.
He exposed and almost single-handedly brought down BCCI, which was a Jordan-based bank that was not much more than a front for money laundering for terrorist groups and drug dealers. The bank had influence with powerful people on both sides of the aisle in Congress and the Reagan/Bush administrations, and Kerry was repeatedly stonewalled in his investigation. Kerry persevered, and eventually the bank was shut down. The people involved with this bank are some names you might recognize: Manuel Noriega, Oliver North, Henry Kissingere and Osama bin Laden.
The bank also made a $25 million investment to bail out George Bush's Harken Energy.
Some more material on Kerry and BCCI: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bc ci/ http://www.alternet.org/election04/20268/
Kerry also was instrumental in restoring relations between the US and Vietnam, and he and John McCain helped settle the POW/MIA issue. McCain initially disliked Kerry for his anti-war past, but the two are now good friends.
Kerry does not have his name on much legislation, but from the above you can see that he is more of an 'investigative' senator than a 'legislative' one. You can take that as a plus or a minus, but he has shown the following that Bush obviously lacks;
1. He has the intellectual stamina to get to the bottom of extremely complex issues, and does not gloss over the details like Bush.
2. Despite what the Bush camp says, he will not be intimidated and will never back down from a cause he feels to be right. Kerry is truly resolute; Bush is just stubborn.
3. Kerry will not save someone's ass just because they are a Democrat. Prominent Democrats urged him to drop his BCCI probe, but he would not.
4. Kerry will (and has, with BCCI) go after terrorists orginazations with more than an M-1 tank. Bush's approach has no historical precedent for victory; no terrorist organization has ever been defeated by military force alone. Ask the British why the couldn't eradicate the IRA, and ask the Israelis how they are doing agains Hamas. You can only succeed if you're prepared to slaughter the entire population that is sympathetic to them.
My opinion is that Kerry will make an exemplary president given the chance. He's not perfect, but I'm not going to list his faults here - the Bush campaign is listing some of them, and making up others.
The IAEA verified the existence and location of the explosives in January 2003, not 18 months before the invasion.
Its possible that the explosives were moved sometime between January and March, when we invaded. That would take Bush off the hook for their disappearance. But it took 18 months for the Bush administration to wake up and realize that maybe they should find out what happened to them.
This is pure speculation, but I'd be willing to bet that nothing was done because the information was coming from a UN source.
I truly, truly hope that this isn't most people's reasoning for voting Bush.
I think it is. The Republican base in this country is very large; I'd say that about 35-40% of the country would never consider voting for a Democrat.
I think Bush himself is like that as well among the people in his own administration. I just saw a Frontline show last night on PBS that detailed the buildup to the war in Iraq. Nobody in the military wanted it, but the neocons were pushing it. When the brass and Powell cautioned against sending too small a force, Cheney and Rumsfeld just ignored them. Literally.
Bush knows that the neocons screwed it up, but he likes 'men of action'. The military brass was cautious, but the civilian leadership in the Pentagon was confident in their plans to a fault. But that confidence created a dynamic sense, that the neocons were movers and shakers, and I think that appealed (and still does) to Bush's business background. To him, doing something in a hurry with confidence and being absolutely wrong is better than pausing to consider the different sides of an issue.
"I make tough decisions all the time." - no mention of the consequences of those decisions, or whether they prove right or wrong.
"It's hard work" - again, effort over achievement.
Don't have a lot of time for this response, but here goes:
For example, there is the infamous alleged meeting in Prague between an Al Queda operative and Mohammed Atta.
Thorughly debunked. Atta is on video in the US at the time the meeting supposedly took place. Also, I think you mean Iraqi operative - it's pretty well established that Atta was part of Al-Queda
There is good news in Iraq, and most of it is ignored by our press. Iraq has a free press.
Right. Like al-Sadr's newspaper that Bremer shut down, igniting the madhi (sp?) army and inflaming the insurgency? True, he was preaching violence against the 'coalition', but I'd rather have someone talk about killing me than actually doing it.
It seems rather churlish for us to ignore that part of the report and simply say there were no WMDs.
Ok, so when Cheney to takes the part about Saddam's "desire" to "someday" start up his WMD programs again, and uses that cherry-picked morsel as vindication of the war, would you say he's being churlish?
But life's getting better for the man on the street, and although we have made plenty of mistakes, it's nothing like the horrors under Saddam.
Been talking to many iraqis on the street have you? I find it tragic that we're reduced to arguing that "at least we're better than Saddam".
In the end, I support President Bush not because he's always right - of course he's not - but because he is steadfast and resolute when confronting our enemies
Osama Bin Laden killed 3000 people on 9/11, and since the beginning of 2002, Bush has been steadfastly ignoring him. Depending on how much of a shitstorm the middle east becomes before we come back to our senses, this may be viewed as the worst period in American history since the Civil War. There is a kind of mass delusion going on here now, where at least half of the country is looking at the disastrous failures of the Bush administration (no WMD, failed planning, "where's Osama", etc), and is saying "Four more years of this, please."
John Kerry is not the kind of person who will take strong and decisive action when faced with a threat
There's a guy in vietnam with an RPG who would disagree with you, if he were still alive.
Slashdot Mirror
A freelance IT consultant whose slashdot name is ScrewMaster? That should be on Dilbert.
You can deny the existence of the trust fund all you want, but it is real, and contains real Treasury bonds that must be repaid. There is an accounting gimmick where the Social Security surplus is used to purchase the Treasury bonds, and at the same time is subtracted from the deficit. This does not affect the reality of the bonds in the trust fund or the government's obligation to repay them.
Let me make this point clear: I never meant to imply that the US government would deliberately plan to default on it's debt.
But to say that the trust fund does not exist either denies the existence of these Treasury bonds, or implies that the government plans to default on them. Both of these assertions are false.
There really is no such thing as a risk free rate of return.
If there were no risk, there wouldn't be any interest paid on them.
Ok, so the trust fund does not exist, the risk free rate of return does not exist, and even if it did, it would be zero. Can you back any of this up, or do you just "know" it?
You say you welcome a serious debate, but you deny the existence of basic facts relevant to the issue, and show lack of knowledge about others. And if we're to have a serious debate, let's refrain talk about tinfoil hats - agreed?
I made the statement about your post being misinformed or deliberately misleading because of these factually incorrect statements you have made.
Some Republicans may sincerely want to reform Social Security to address the demographic problems it faces. The real motivation behind privatization, though, is a desire to weaken the program in preparation for eliminating it. Their problem is that the program is popular, effective, and cost-efficient, so they cannot overtly advocate its demise. It must be done gradually and privatization is the first step.
Those who want to weaken Social Security must depend on the general public not learning the facts about the program, because the facts are against them. They wish to create misperceptions about the program, and one of those is that the trust fund does not exist. They say that it is only a collection of "worthless IOU's", ignoring the fact that ALL bonds are IOU's. And as I said before, Treasury bonds are the least risky bonds that exist.
Your opinions may be different than mine, but I have been careful to ensure that mine are based in fact. You acknowledged the possibility that you may be misinformed, and I would (respectfully) suggest to you that this is the case.
Based on the facts I have researched, I (and many others) have come to these conclusions:
Bush was motivated to act against Iraq because of 9/11. s/motivated/given the window of opportunity/
I've seen this from a few different people now, and its a weird effect. There's a section of the country that was essentially "Democrat-proofed", meaning that no matter how bad Bush f**ked up, or who ran against him, they would have still voted Republican.
I spoke with a few different people who said (paraphrasing now), "Yes, Bush screwed up, he makes me wince when he speaks in public, there's lots of people dead because of him, and he didnt catch the guy who killed 3000 Americans, but Kerry just didn't give me a reason to vote for him". One of these people even said that they made their mind up after watching the debates!
If you're riding in a car, and the driver ignores all advice and gets you hopelessly lost, do you say "Let's let him keep driving, because nobody else knows where we are"? That's crazy.
To say that the trust fund is just a bunch of IOU's implies that the US government is deliberately planning to default on its debt. Only the US and UK have never defaulted on a debt payment.
In the financial world there is the concept of the risk free rate of return. The rate on US treasury bonds IS the risk free rate of return, meaning that there is zero risk of default.
If the government backing the world's reference currency were to default on its debt, the result would be an economic collapse that would make Social Security the least of our problems.
Your post, like much of republican propaganda is either misinformed, or deliberately misleading.
That's a joke? Jeez. Even their humor was clunky and inefficient.
So why do you think that this vague concept of "understanding" intelligence is so necessary to creating it?
Are you serious? Well, how do you create anything without knowing how it is made? Your idea of the universe being able to create intelligent beings without understanding intelligence is interesting, but I think it's flawed.
The universe didn't set out to make us, we just happened as a result of a certain set of circumstances. Probably a very long, complicated set of circumstances. The earth doesn't have to understand gravitation to hold my laptop to the table, it just holds it there.
We, on the other hand, are trying to create artificial intelligence, or at least create the conditions that will cause it to arise. But we don't know any of those parameters. You might stumble on these combinations, but I consider this highly unlikely.
That's why I think the alchemy analogy is appropriate. It's possible that some medieval alchemist could have stumbled on the conditions that would have transmuted common metals into gold, but without knowledge of atoms and subatomic particles, it was almost certain not to happen.
Intelligence is, at least in part, the ability to come up with the Eureka! moment. Computers can't do that, and we won't be able to get them to do it until we can explain why it's possible for us.
I also suspect that 'Street smarts' and the type of quantity-based intelligence shown by savants are two different skills that compete for the same resources. In other words, they are an engineering tradeoff in the human brain.
It's actually very well documented. Here's what it looks like
I'm a bit confused.
What exactly about the war do you support?
Who was going to supply the resources if not the US?
What is it that you think we have gained by launching this war?
If we can't bring democracy to Iraq (assuming that's the 'country that doesn't want it' you're referring to), why are we there?
"Anything I missed?"
Only the entire issue.
So these researchers are just amoral monsters who want to experiment on embryos for no reason? I suppose only conservative warriors like yourself stand between them and experiments on live children.
This is such classic conservative FUD. You know the public generally supports the research, and is not buying your right to life arguments, and so you spread FUD about the usefulness of the research itself.
I don't know the particulars of which research is more promising, but I sure won't get my technical information from you or your blog.
I do NOT support embryonic stem cell research, but not because the research is supposedly 'useless'. I am opposed to it because:
1. An embryo is not a human being, but has the potential to become one and IS a form of human life. It is vastly different from a child (or even a fetus), but it has a complete (and unique) set of genetic material. Therefore, I believe it qualifies as something more than a clump of cells or a donated organ.
2. The research requires the embryo to be destroyed. Once you have sanctioned the destruction of this form of human life, you have crossed the line marking the start of the slippery slope.
3. The argument that "these embryos would just be discarded anyway" breaks down when you have a breakthrough, and suddenly need to produce embryonic stem cells on an industrial scale. At that point you are creating embryos with no purpose other than to be grown and harvested.
IANAC (I am not a conservative), but I generally agree with them on this issue. What I don't agree with is their all-too-familiar tactics: when you can't win the argument on the merits of the facts, start calling the facts themselves into question ( voting "challenges", Iraq War, "Death tax", etc, etc.)
Sometimes, talking about committing a crime is the crime.
If you don't believe me, make a tape of yourself saying you're going to kill the president and send it to the FBI.
this is a bit late, but...
There were a lot of good reasons to stay the hell out of Iraq. The number of people killed by the US military compared to sanctions was not one of them.
I would disagree. 3 passengers dead in a car wreck caused by the driver trying to flee is a lot different than 3 dead in a car wreck where YOU rammed their car. Especially if they have lots of relatives with guns.
Hard core aristoctratic republicans hate Social Security and Medicare, and would like to do away with them. These programs are successful and widely popular, so doing so would be political suicide. Their answer to that is what they call "Starving the beast", or cutting off streams of revenue to the government, creating a fiscal crisis that brings programs to the chopping block that before were political taboo.
Here's my tinfoil hat prediction of what will happen.
1. Propose allowing a portion of your Social Security funds to be invested in a personal account. A potential gain for you, an unprecedented windfall for mutual fund managers.
2. When questioned about how diverting money from the general fund will help avoid a shortfall in that fund, avoid answering and say things like "it will be cheaper than doing nothing".
3. Gradually increase the percentage to be placed into the personal accounts over the next 20 or so years, thus diverting more money from the general fund and worsening the shortfall for the Baby Boomers.
4. Seed the public's perception of Social Security as a scam and a "Ponzi Scheme", feeding on their mistrust of government. This actually could be placed as #1, since it is going on right now in talk radio world and other conservative circles.
5. Wait for the inevitable collapse, where the trust fund cannot meet its obligations to retirees.
6. Proclaim the system dead, and completely abandon it. Make pious statements about how Social Security was the epitome of the failure of goverment to meet peoples' needs, and thank God that we're finally emerging from the dark shadow of the communist New Deal.
7. Convert all the private accounts to accounts in whatever financial services firm contributed the most to the RNC in the previous election.
You think those on the Ways And Means Committee (majority Republican) aren't influenced by Bush?
You think that Bush's budget busting tax cuts are not affecting the economy? They were nominally intended to provide short-term stimulus (which it did not provide), but the long term effect of the excessive borrowing required to finance the deficit will likely be higher interest rates.
You think that war (especially unnecessary war) does not have an effect on the market? Do you think war in Iraq and $55/bbl oil are a coincidence?
Your comment about the president not having control of the economy reminds me of a quote from one of the Godfather movies where Michael Corleone compares himself to a Senator:
Kate: "Senators don't have people killed, Michael."
Michael: "Now who's being naive, Kate?"
"That's just propaganda; there are plenty of nuclear plants in the US. They're hideously expensive to build, which is why they for the most part aren't built anymore."
A major part of the expense in building nuclear plants (at least in Illinois) was timing. At the time of 3 mile island there were a number of nuclear plants in early stages of construction in IL.
After that, the govt stepped in and mandated changes to the design of the plants. The competitively bid contracts were thrown out, and the contractors completed the plants on a cost-plus basis. "Cost plus" means do the job, add up your costs, and submit the bill. Exactly like the sweetheart deal that Halliburton has now for Iraq.
Costs went through the roof. I worked in construction for a number of years, and while all this happened before my time, I used to hear stories about the things that went on. Contractors would hire 5 workers to do work that could be done by 1. Lumber used for concrete forms was always new; once the concrete set and the forms were stripped, the lumber would be cut up and thrown away.
This is why Chicago has some of the highest electricity rates in the nation.
I voted for Kerry because contrary to the Bush camp's flip-flop charge, he's a guy that will not be shaken from a position he feels is right. Three examples:
Kerry's not perfect - despite the above points, his legislative record is kind of sparse, and IMHO he was wrong on BOTH votes regarding Gulf War I and II. But we need someone who is going to extricate us from Iraq, and Bush just can't see past the ideology enough to do it.
Hopefully that "thing" was not a shredder...
" won the candidate that used less future tense in the debate" Yoda? Is that you?
If you're bin Laden, and you want Kerry to win, will he benefit from your endorsement? I think not.
George W. Bush is the first american president to call for a two-state solution,
That is disingenuous. He also said he would sign a bill renewing the assault weapons ban, but with a wink let the congress know that he didn't want any such legislation to ever arrive on his desk.
He called for the establishment of a Palestinian state, but all his policies have worked against its creation. Rumsfeld has stated publicly that a country that wins territory in a war is entitled to that land.
and he's also the first american president to pressure the israelis to withdraw from occupied territories without an agreement from the palestinians - something the israelis just voted to do.
This is a shell game. The israelis will remove the smaller settler communities from Gaza, which they are less interested in anyway, and will solidify their hold on the west bank.
Your analogy about the pie is almost correct. There is not Fred and Tom; there are two Toms. They both want all of the pie.
Arafat was offerered almost all of the west bank, but turned it down. All the arab nations offered official recognition of Israel if it would withdraw to 1967 borders, but it refused.
His purpose in this video is to appeal to the american left, to get them to vote for kerry so that he'll leave us alone, because he knows he can't take another four years of bush.
Three reasons why you're wrong:
The idea that things are going badly right now for bin Laden is absurd. He lost Afghanistan, but an unstable, potentially radical Iraq, in the heart of the arab world, more than makes up for that.
He had to have known that there would be retaliation for 9/11. I think he chose 19 saudis in an attempt to get us to attack Saudi Arabia. American soldiers occupying Mecca would be the ideal political situaition for him, but an unstable Iraq is almost as good.
Well if you're looking at one of the other candidates, let me counter your parents' view of Kerry.
c ci/
He was a well-respected prosecutor in Boston for a number of years and won some big cases against organized crime figures.
When he entered the Senate in the mid-80's, he was instrumental in the investigations that became Iran-contra. Oliver North hates Kerry with a passion, but without Kerry, North would probably be just another retired Marine.
He exposed and almost single-handedly brought down BCCI, which was a Jordan-based bank that was not much more than a front for money laundering for terrorist groups and drug dealers. The bank had influence with powerful people on both sides of the aisle in Congress and the Reagan/Bush administrations, and Kerry was repeatedly stonewalled in his investigation. Kerry persevered, and eventually the bank was shut down. The people involved with this bank are some names you might recognize: Manuel Noriega, Oliver North, Henry Kissingere and Osama bin Laden.
The bank also made a $25 million investment to bail out George Bush's Harken Energy.
Some more material on Kerry and BCCI:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/b
http://www.alternet.org/election04/20268/
Kerry also was instrumental in restoring relations between the US and Vietnam, and he and John McCain helped settle the POW/MIA issue. McCain initially disliked Kerry for his anti-war past, but the two are now good friends.
Kerry does not have his name on much legislation, but from the above you can see that he is more of an 'investigative' senator than a 'legislative' one. You can take that as a plus or a minus, but he has shown the following that Bush obviously lacks;
1. He has the intellectual stamina to get to the bottom of extremely complex issues, and does not gloss over the details like Bush.
2. Despite what the Bush camp says, he will not be intimidated and will never back down from a cause he feels to be right. Kerry is truly resolute; Bush is just stubborn.
3. Kerry will not save someone's ass just because they are a Democrat. Prominent Democrats urged him to drop his BCCI probe, but he would not.
4. Kerry will (and has, with BCCI) go after terrorists orginazations with more than an M-1 tank. Bush's approach has no historical precedent for victory; no terrorist organization has ever been defeated by military force alone. Ask the British why the couldn't eradicate the IRA, and ask the Israelis how they are doing agains Hamas. You can only succeed if you're prepared to slaughter the entire population that is sympathetic to them.
My opinion is that Kerry will make an exemplary president given the chance. He's not perfect, but I'm not going to list his faults here - the Bush campaign is listing some of them, and making up others.
Nice try.
The IAEA verified the existence and location of the explosives in January 2003, not 18 months before the invasion.
Its possible that the explosives were moved sometime between January and March, when we invaded. That would take Bush off the hook for their disappearance. But it took 18 months for the Bush administration to wake up and realize that maybe they should find out what happened to them.
This is pure speculation, but I'd be willing to bet that nothing was done because the information was coming from a UN source.
I truly, truly hope that this isn't most people's reasoning for voting Bush.
I think it is. The Republican base in this country is very large; I'd say that about 35-40% of the country would never consider voting for a Democrat.
I think Bush himself is like that as well among the people in his own administration. I just saw a Frontline show last night on PBS that detailed the buildup to the war in Iraq. Nobody in the military wanted it, but the neocons were pushing it. When the brass and Powell cautioned against sending too small a force, Cheney and Rumsfeld just ignored them. Literally.
Bush knows that the neocons screwed it up, but he likes 'men of action'. The military brass was cautious, but the civilian leadership in the Pentagon was confident in their plans to a fault. But that confidence created a dynamic sense, that the neocons were movers and shakers, and I think that appealed (and still does) to Bush's business background. To him, doing something in a hurry with confidence and being absolutely wrong is better than pausing to consider the different sides of an issue.
"I make tough decisions all the time." - no mention of the consequences of those decisions, or whether they prove right or wrong.
"It's hard work" - again, effort over achievement.
Call it the "Entrepreneurial" administration.
Don't have a lot of time for this response, but here goes:
For example, there is the infamous alleged meeting in Prague between an Al Queda operative and Mohammed Atta.
Thorughly debunked. Atta is on video in the US at the time the meeting supposedly took place. Also, I think you mean Iraqi operative - it's pretty well established that Atta was part of Al-Queda
There is good news in Iraq, and most of it is ignored by our press. Iraq has a free press.
Right. Like al-Sadr's newspaper that Bremer shut down, igniting the madhi (sp?) army and inflaming the insurgency? True, he was preaching violence against the 'coalition', but I'd rather have someone talk about killing me than actually doing it.
It seems rather churlish for us to ignore that part of the report and simply say there were no WMDs.
Ok, so when Cheney to takes the part about Saddam's "desire" to "someday" start up his WMD programs again, and uses that cherry-picked morsel as vindication of the war, would you say he's being churlish?
But life's getting better for the man on the street, and although we have made plenty of mistakes, it's nothing like the horrors under Saddam.
Been talking to many iraqis on the street have you? I find it tragic that we're reduced to arguing that "at least we're better than Saddam".
In the end, I support President Bush not because he's always right - of course he's not - but because he is steadfast and resolute when confronting our enemies
Osama Bin Laden killed 3000 people on 9/11, and since the beginning of 2002, Bush has been steadfastly ignoring him. Depending on how much of a shitstorm the middle east becomes before we come back to our senses, this may be viewed as the worst period in American history since the Civil War. There is a kind of mass delusion going on here now, where at least half of the country is looking at the disastrous failures of the Bush administration (no WMD, failed planning, "where's Osama", etc), and is saying "Four more years of this, please."
John Kerry is not the kind of person who will take strong and decisive action when faced with a threat
There's a guy in vietnam with an RPG who would disagree with you, if he were still alive.