Republicans balanced the budget 4 of their 12 years, for a 33% score. Democrats balanced the budget 0 of their 18 years, for a 0% score.
So. By what definition would this make Democrats the "fiscally conservative party" over the past 30 years??
Just because Congress is tasked with the pursestrings, that doesn't mean that they are the only ones with any influence. You are also assuming, incorrectly, that having a majority, however slight, in Congress means the majority party has complete and total control.
Reagan was immensely powerful and drove the agenda. Congress should have stood firm and done their job, but they didn't. The Reagan agenda was for unprecedented spending and growth of the government. His policies were the driving force behind that growth and the spinelessness of the Democrats coupled with the lockstep party before country mindset of the Republicans allowed them to steamroll over the Democrats. Now, there are plenty of things wrong with the Democrats that allowed them to be made into tools, but it was the fiscal irresponsibility of the Republicans that was the driving force.
We had exactly the same situation under Bush except that there was a strong Republican majority and we ended up with the most corrupt Congress in our history, Lobbyists enshrined as a fourth branch of government, as well as spending that beat Reagan's record.
While both parties are big government parties, the Republicans are much worse. Just looks at where the bulk of the federal wealth transfer goes in this country. It's from the "blue" states to the "red" states at the demand of the citizens of the red states.
Granted, 33% looks good only against a pitiful 0%; we ought to boot both parties out, and try something different.
Agreed. However, those percentages are based on faulty assumptions as I pointed out above. Were the constitution any more than a piece of paper with which to wipe their asses to Congress, and if reality conformed to the rules set out in it, then you'd have a much better point, but it isn't and it doesn't.
the Republicans of the 1990's responded to the Reform Party's success in 1992 by becoming seriously responsible fiscally. The Democrats haven't done so since at least the early 1960's.
No, the Republicans responded to Perot (for whom I voted), by doing a full court press of propaganda while calling anybody who dared actually act on it "RINO".
If it is possible then opposition to an idea proposed by a gay lobby group does not automatically require homophobia.
I'm not saying that there is no possible way for a gay lobby group to have a bad idea. The fact that the anti-gay lobby, which is the issue here, has no valid reason for opposition. Not that it isn't possible for them to have any, but that they do not have any. You appear to be aware of that fact, so you're arguing reality on the one hand against purely hypothetical on the other.
Their only reason for opposing basic civil rights for this group of people is that they despise that group of people based on an entirely irrational fear. That's the reality part. The idea that it's possible for a gay lobby to support something dumb and therefore opposition to that to be reasonable is a purely hypothetical situation which has not been encountered.
I haven't raised any objection to calling it "ignorant religious hate mongering" I raised an objection to classifying all people opposed to gay agendas as homophobic. Can't you stay on topic just this once?
I was raising an objection to a specific thing that you said, not to your point as a whole. However, unless you can present some valid reason apart from irrational religious based fear to support the anti-gay agenda, you're not actually making a point. In theory, it would be possible for there to be one were things different than they actually are. I agree with that much of your point. You're trying to stretch that into reality by claiming that since there's a theoretical possibility of something even though it's never been realized, that dealing with the reality is somehow off base.
So, in the sense that gay lobbyists are now fighting for government administrated gay marriage, I am against that. I'm haven't the slightest fear of homosexuals, I'd abolish government administrated heterosexual marriage too.
I'm for getting the government out of a lot of things, however you are mischaracterizing the whole debate. It's anti-gay lobby groups pushing to get the government more involved. Look at Prop 8. Ignorant hate mongers passed a *law* *banning* gay marriage. It was rightfully thrown out by the state SC as unconstitutional, so the scum went and passed a constitutional amendment for the sole purpose of discriminating against a minority group that they hate and fear. That is the type of scumbaggery that an American style constitution is designed to prevent. Tyranny of the majority. So as long as the government is involved in marriage as the economic institution it is and has always been, the only justifiable course is equal treatment under the law. If you can get the government out of the whole business, then and only then would your position have merit. As long as it is involved it needs to keep a level playing field.
Now I've seen enough of your posts, Darby, to know that you like to keep posting, pretending you are right even when it should be glaringly obvious that you've gone horribly wrong in your arguments.
Laughable. I'm caustic, brutally honest and not inclined to suffer fools, but I have no problem admitting that I'm wrong when I am. You certainly haven't demonstrated that though.
You obviously don't know what a "right" or "left" wing is. The ultra right are.... anarchists. Ultra left are government solutions to every problem under the sun.
Actually, I know exactly what the right and left are but you've proven that you don't have a clue about that.
The ultra right are corporate fascists, or fans of theocracy or Feudalists. They believe in big government every bit as much as the ultra left do, they just feel that it should be used for different purposes.
Liberalism, in the classical sense was the radical idea that individual rights and liberties are paramount. This was a philosophy which came out in *opposition* to both the right and the left. The extreme of this idea would be anarchy, not the extreme of the right. This is the center.
It wouldn't be difficult for you to cure your deep ignorance of the subject. Just go look up where "Left" and "Right" emerged as political descriptions. In the French Assembly, the representatives of the crown, the aristocracy and the Church sat on the *Right*. The representatives of the people sat on the *Left*.
The difference between left and right isn't that one wants a small government and one wants a large one. They both want a big government to use against the individual. The Left because they agree with the fundamental tenet of Liberalism: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal", but they feel that the power of the state should be used against the individual to promote or enforce that equality. The Right is defined by its fundamental *disagreement* with this idea. They feel that certain people are born superior due to title, religion, race or similar and that the power of the state should be used against the individual to promote and enforce this inequality.
The Democratic party of today has more in common with Nazis than the Republican party, though not by much.
Laughable. The current Republican president is the grandson of an avid Nazi supporter. Hitler defined his ideology as the rabid opposition to all things in any way communist. Much as the Republican ideology has gone since WW2. Rah Rah jingoism? It's easy to get the common people to go along, just tell them they're being attacked and call anyone who disagrees a traitor? That's been the Republican strategy and it's straight from Hitler's play book and it's hard right wing. No small government to be found in there.
The Democratic party is mostly moderate right wing with some leftist ideas. The Republican party is extremist right wing with a large leftist contingent living in denial. That's why most red states are welfare states.
What I suspect you've done is fallen for a shell game of propaganda trying to redefine the right as liberal while pretending the real right doesn't even exist. It's clear that you've erred somewhere along those lines as you fail to account for the pro corporate anti citizen big government policies of the Republican party. That whole area which constitutes the bulk of their actions over the last 30 years isn't even describable using your totally broken way of defining things. You might try and apply your definition to reality and notice all the areas it doesn't cover and then note that using the real, accurate definitions does actually span the problem space. That's a clue how far off you are.
Wow, you're the first person I've seen who considers Pelosi and Reid "financial conservatives"! So you consider the Republicans who shot down their first bailout attempt "financial liberals"?:-D
Wow, unfortunately, you're far from the first person who completely ignores the fact that the Republicans shot down the first bill only to vote for the second bill after shoveling in much much more pork.
So, yes, Out of the Republicans and the Democrats, the Democrats are the fiscally conservative party and have been for about 30 years. It's not at all confusing, but you do actually have to pay attention and not just spout slogans and ignore reality as you did above.
Personally, I don't vote for either, because I actually do support a small, fiscally responsible government,but pretending that the Republicans aren't the bottom of the barrel in that respect is just pure ignorance.
Amazing how everyone can agree that in the last decades pretty much all public values and personal virtues degrading.
Amazing how it all coincides with abandonment of the Christian religion and its morals.
Actually, if you looked at the real world you'd have noticed that it coincided with the rise of religious fundamentalism in politics in the US. There's a reason that the founding fathers explicitly rejected religious nuttery as a basis for government. You, in fact, just pointed out exactly why.
Actually, there was not. There was a Nazi party here, but even most of the German-Americans didn't really appreciate it because they didn't like the new Germany as it was not the same country they originally had left. The Nazi party here only got into a few thousand members at it's height, and they were in constant watch of the FBI (we even deported one of it's first leaders). I'd hardly call that support.
Then perhaps you should actually learn something about it? Most of the powerful interests in America were avid supporters of the Fascists. Including Hearst, Ford and even our own Dear Leader's grandfather Prescott Bush.
Fascism is right wing extremism, hence elitist and good for only the wealthy and powerful. That is what the political right *is* after all.
Most Americans were Liberals at the time (back when that word was still used for what it actually means) and so were isolationist and didn't want to get involved. The American Left, back when we had one to speak of, were the ones agitating to fight Hitler, while the wealthy and powerful wanted to either stay out and profit off of the war or to join up on the side of the Fascists.
The Nazi party membership in America at the time is meaningless.
And by North Korea standards every news station in the world is extremely liberal. It's all about perspective. Why do people keep dragging out this rhetoric. This is American politics and American mainstream media. Everyone knows by now how right wing the politics are compared to Europe. Does that really mean anything?
Because it's not a matter of perspective. Left and right are well defined terms, they are not relative. So given that the US is far to the right, calling moderate right wing media outlets left or liberal is a blatantly false statement.
Given that in WW2 we were fighting against right wing ideology, it's important to keep in mind how far we've fallen away from our founding principles and stated ideals.
Does it ever occur to you that people who oppose adoption by gays, for example, may do so on the basis of principles they hold and not irrational fear?
The "principles" they hold are based on religion which is little besides irrational fear, so while it occurred to me, it was trivially easy to dismiss after a moment's rational thought. Were any of these people to have ever come up with an actual argument for their position then you might even have a point, but since they haven't, you don't.
but do you think it is possible that gay lobby groups could have a bad idea and that opposition to that idea could potentially be "sensible" rather than "homophobic".
No, if they were at all "sensible" then they would be making "sensible" arguments. All they've done is screech idiotic nonsense about "destroying marriage" and a bunch of other mindless ignorant crap.
So dismissing their position as ignorant religious hate mongering is the only reasonable, rational course as there is no opposing argument against that from their side.
I didn't say marriage belongs to the Christians. I said marriage belongs to religion. Each religion can clamour for it and argue about it. There is no real need for the STATE to recognize "marriage". The state's needs are entirely satisfied by recognizing a "civic-union certificate".
Except it doesn't belong to religion either. It belongs to whoever wants it. The State's needs are not entirely satisfied by "separate but equal". There's plenty of precedent for that. Creating a class of second class citizens in un American. Sorry, but we really can't have that.
there is no bloody reason the state needs to call this statement of legal status a 'marriage'.
Yes there is. Because making up a different word to keep some nutty kooks happy puts gay people in a lower class.
They just aren't comfortable giving them the word 'marriage' due to their religious beliefs.
Well it's too fucking bad that they don't get to control something that isn't theirs. They can't give away something that doesn't belong to them. They need to grow up or move to Saudi Arabia or some other country that's based on their desired principles.
And that's precisely why the state needs to entirely extricate itself out of deciding whether people can get "married".
Creating second class citizens as you are supporting *is* the state deciding that. The state saying, "fuck all you loons, everyone can get married" would actually accomplish what you claim to want. The state banning some people from getting married based on the ignorant hatred of religious loons does the opposite to the extreme.
To me, being a conservative means that I want my government to adhere to the Constitution, not change it as they see fit
Well, the word you're looking for is "Liberal" actually. However that was co-opted by the left and demonized by the right. Then came "Conservatism" which back in the day used to mean anti-Liberal when Liberal meant what the constitution meant. Then that was redefined to mean what Liberalism used to mean.
However, about 30 years ago or so, conservatism took on its current meaning which is "religious extremist nutter and big government Fascist/Theocrat/Feudalist" Now, that word actually came full circle and now means exactly what it used to mean originally.
So, you should probably give up on it and quit wishing the nutters wouldn't use it. It was their word in the first place.
Heck, if we can get the left to quit using "Liberal" then we can bring that word full circle and have it mean what it did when the Liberals wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the disgust of the Conservatives of that time.
We'd do away with 100 years of wasted redefinition and sync common usage back up with the actual definitions.
Sure you still have unregistered drug addicts selling sex on the streets because they can't pass the health tests but that's a drug problem not a prostitution problem.
Who the hell is patronizing them? I mean when it's illegal, it's a risk, but if it's legal and somebody is doing it illegally, isn't that pretty much a guarantee that she has some disease?
However I -do- recognize that organized religions have a special tradition of marriage.
Religious nutters coopted marriage, but it far predates the invention of the Christian religion or that of any other god that currently exists in people's minds. It's not their tradition, they have no right to try and define it for other people. Claiming that we should cede it to them is idiotic and will only encourage them to demand control of other aspects of people's lives which are none of their damn business. That's why this country was founded on the principle that religion has no place in the government of a free society. As soon as you introduce religious delusion into your laws you don't have a free society.
More like 80's but a few also went over to the Democrats.
No, it was the 50's and that is where the Libertarian party came from. The 80's was the second major wave. That was the slow ones who caught on once Goldwater lost to Reagan.
and McCain before he sold out to get the vote was very much one of them and I would have voted for him in 2000
I wouldn't have, but that's because I understand that the person is largely meaningless. You're voting for a party, not a person and while this true of both parties, it's far more true of the Republicans with their "RINOs" and such.
but the overwhelming majority of the party are wackos and unfortunately a lot of people who support them dont realize this fact.
Which given that there have already been 2 waves, one of the smart ones and one of the slow ones, it's hard to imagine what's wrong with those people who still haven't clued in.
Hillary Clinton! Digging up dirt for her 2012 run.
There's pretty much no chance Hillary will run in 2012. 2016, maybe, but barring some major disaster for Obama, typically a party tends to nominate a sitting first term President as their candidate when they have one;-)
No president has ever voluntarily relinquished powers taken on by previous administrations. If you expect any president, Obama or otherwise, to do so in the future, you clearly still have some hard lessons to learn about the nature of man and power.
Where you got the idea that I think any president would act to reduce his power is beyond me. My point is that without the President being held accountable for his actions, the power of the office and the crimes committed by its holder will increase.
I'm aware that the pack of scum running this country won't do anything to help it without helping themselves first and foremost. I was pointing out that that is a major problem and addressed the roots of its current rapid acceleration.
There's welfare everywhere. 10% of the Federal Budget goes to California, with 10% of the population... makes sense, no?
No, makes no sense at all. California pays a disproportionate amount of money into the pool and gets back far less. That money goes to the welfare states. Population is a complete red herring.
Your chart makes no mention of where the money comes from which is a critical point.
You don't really want people to start pointing out government handouts, substance abuse, and violent crime rates in the inner cities, do you? There's plenty of this on both sides of the aisle -- no reason to make it a partisan issue.
It is entirely a partisan issue. Republican states are consistently overwhelmingly the welfare states. The money going to the inner cities is coming from the blue states. The money going to red state leeches is *also* coming from the blue states.
Please, oh fucking please, let's make that equitable and watch almost all of the red states go fucking broke and personal wealth soar in the blue states. I am so fucking behind that.
So for all the talk about "real America" and "free markets" by lying sack of shit Republicans, when are they going to start voting against their own welfare payments? Until they start calling themselves Socialists or quit being the most socialist shitholes in the country, it will continue to be a partisan issue.
Just look at the bailout (which I disagreed with from the start) The Republicans refused to vote for it because there wasn't enough pork in it. They held out for an extra 150Billion and then slopped it up. Their color is red for a reason, god damned communist scum.
1. A Constitutional mandate to maintain a balanced budget, to end deficit spending.
2. The establishment of a commodity currency, to end inflation.
3. Constitutional caps on overall tax rates as a percentage of an individual's income.
Can we add:
4. No state shall receive more in federal spending than they pay in taxes unless all of that state's representatives make a convincing argument for it humbly on their knees hands outstretched.
*That* would do more to cut pork spending and government waste than anything. Also, the look on all the Republicans faces as they realized that it's always their state reps begging for welfare and that the "real America" is a black hole of Socialist leeches. Of course, getting an apology for all their hate mongering and theft would be nice, but we can't really expect that. If they had any integrity, they either wouldn't be welfare leeches in the first place or they would at least call themselves socialists.
I wish I knew the root cause of health-care costs rising so dramatically, but it's certainly better than some giant government bureaucracy mandating "Thou shalt use this health plan"!
It's largely to due with the pharma industry lobbying the government to prevent collective bargaining on health care, and to prevent a national health care plan which would be far less costly.
If it gets passed, though, they'll just bribe their way back to excessive profits (yes, excessive if they can sell the same drugs to Canada and we can buy the drugs from Canada cheaper by *adding* a middleman we're being fleeced)
I could expect that the candidates get up in front of the nation in their debates and on their websites and say "Hey, things are looking dire. I'm not going to bullshit you, you're going to go through some rough times if things are going to be rectified..."
Is that too much to ask?
Yes, it's too much to ask. Carter did that and was fucking crucified for it. That's a good way of describing it since he was the last Christian in the White House.
Slashdot Mirror
Republicans balanced the budget 4 of their 12 years, for a 33% score. Democrats balanced the budget 0 of their 18 years, for a 0% score.
So. By what definition would this make Democrats the "fiscally conservative party" over the past 30 years??
Just because Congress is tasked with the pursestrings, that doesn't mean that they are the only ones with any influence. You are also assuming, incorrectly, that having a majority, however slight, in Congress means the majority party has complete and total control.
Reagan was immensely powerful and drove the agenda. Congress should have stood firm and done their job, but they didn't. The Reagan agenda was for unprecedented spending and growth of the government. His policies were the driving force behind that growth and the spinelessness of the Democrats coupled with the lockstep party before country mindset of the Republicans allowed them to steamroll over the Democrats. Now, there are plenty of things wrong with the Democrats that allowed them to be made into tools, but it was the fiscal irresponsibility of the Republicans that was the driving force.
We had exactly the same situation under Bush except that there was a strong Republican majority and we ended up with the most corrupt Congress in our history, Lobbyists enshrined as a fourth branch of government, as well as spending that beat Reagan's record.
While both parties are big government parties, the Republicans are much worse. Just looks at where the bulk of the federal wealth transfer goes in this country. It's from the "blue" states to the "red" states at the demand of the citizens of the red states.
Granted, 33% looks good only against a pitiful 0%; we ought to boot both parties out, and try something different.
Agreed. However, those percentages are based on faulty assumptions as I pointed out above. Were the constitution any more than a piece of paper with which to wipe their asses to Congress, and if reality conformed to the rules set out in it, then you'd have a much better point, but it isn't and it doesn't.
the Republicans of the 1990's responded to the Reform Party's success in 1992 by becoming seriously responsible fiscally. The Democrats haven't done so since at least the early 1960's.
No, the Republicans responded to Perot (for whom I voted), by doing a full court press of propaganda while calling anybody who dared actually act on it "RINO".
If it is possible then opposition to an idea proposed by a gay lobby group does not automatically require homophobia.
I'm not saying that there is no possible way for a gay lobby group to have a bad idea. The fact that the anti-gay lobby, which is the issue here, has no valid reason for opposition. Not that it isn't possible for them to have any, but that they do not have any. You appear to be aware of that fact, so you're arguing reality on the one hand against purely hypothetical on the other.
Their only reason for opposing basic civil rights for this group of people is that they despise that group of people based on an entirely irrational fear. That's the reality part. The idea that it's possible for a gay lobby to support something dumb and therefore opposition to that to be reasonable is a purely hypothetical situation which has not been encountered.
I haven't raised any objection to calling it "ignorant religious hate mongering" I raised an objection to classifying all people opposed to gay agendas as homophobic. Can't you stay on topic just this once?
I was raising an objection to a specific thing that you said, not to your point as a whole. However, unless you can present some valid reason apart from irrational religious based fear to support the anti-gay agenda, you're not actually making a point. In theory, it would be possible for there to be one were things different than they actually are. I agree with that much of your point. You're trying to stretch that into reality by claiming that since there's a theoretical possibility of something even though it's never been realized, that dealing with the reality is somehow off base.
So, in the sense that gay lobbyists are now fighting for government administrated gay marriage, I am against that. I'm haven't the slightest fear of homosexuals, I'd abolish government administrated heterosexual marriage too.
I'm for getting the government out of a lot of things, however you are mischaracterizing the whole debate. It's anti-gay lobby groups pushing to get the government more involved. Look at Prop 8. Ignorant hate mongers passed a *law* *banning* gay marriage. It was rightfully thrown out by the state SC as unconstitutional, so the scum went and passed a constitutional amendment for the sole purpose of discriminating against a minority group that they hate and fear. That is the type of scumbaggery that an American style constitution is designed to prevent. Tyranny of the majority.
So as long as the government is involved in marriage as the economic institution it is and has always been, the only justifiable course is equal treatment under the law. If you can get the government out of the whole business, then and only then would your position have merit. As long as it is involved it needs to keep a level playing field.
Now I've seen enough of your posts, Darby, to know that you like to keep posting, pretending you are right even when it should be glaringly obvious that you've gone horribly wrong in your arguments.
Laughable. I'm caustic, brutally honest and not inclined to suffer fools, but I have no problem admitting that I'm wrong when I am. You certainly haven't demonstrated that though.
You obviously don't know what a "right" or "left" wing is. The ultra right are .... anarchists. Ultra left are government solutions to every problem under the sun.
Actually, I know exactly what the right and left are but you've proven that you don't have a clue about that.
The ultra right are corporate fascists, or fans of theocracy or Feudalists. They believe in big government every bit as much as the ultra left do, they just feel that it should be used for different purposes.
Liberalism, in the classical sense was the radical idea that individual rights and liberties are paramount. This was a philosophy which came out in *opposition* to both the right and the left. The extreme of this idea would be anarchy, not the extreme of the right. This is the center.
It wouldn't be difficult for you to cure your deep ignorance of the subject. Just go look up where "Left" and "Right" emerged as political descriptions. In the French Assembly, the representatives of the crown, the aristocracy and the Church sat on the *Right*. The representatives of the people sat on the *Left*.
The difference between left and right isn't that one wants a small government and one wants a large one. They both want a big government to use against the individual. The Left because they agree with the fundamental tenet of Liberalism: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal", but they feel that the power of the state should be used against the individual to promote or enforce that equality. The Right is defined by its fundamental *disagreement* with this idea. They feel that certain people are born superior due to title, religion, race or similar and that the power of the state should be used against the individual to promote and enforce this inequality.
The Democratic party of today has more in common with Nazis than the Republican party, though not by much.
Laughable. The current Republican president is the grandson of an avid Nazi supporter. Hitler defined his ideology as the rabid opposition to all things in any way communist. Much as the Republican ideology has gone since WW2. Rah Rah jingoism? It's easy to get the common people to go along, just tell them they're being attacked and call anyone who disagrees a traitor? That's been the Republican strategy and it's straight from Hitler's play book and it's hard right wing. No small government to be found in there.
The Democratic party is mostly moderate right wing with some leftist ideas. The Republican party is extremist right wing with a large leftist contingent living in denial. That's why most red states are welfare states.
What I suspect you've done is fallen for a shell game of propaganda trying to redefine the right as liberal while pretending the real right doesn't even exist. It's clear that you've erred somewhere along those lines as you fail to account for the pro corporate anti citizen big government policies of the Republican party. That whole area which constitutes the bulk of their actions over the last 30 years isn't even describable using your totally broken way of defining things. You might try and apply your definition to reality and notice all the areas it doesn't cover and then note that using the real, accurate definitions does actually span the problem space. That's a clue how far off you are.
Wow, you're the first person I've seen who considers Pelosi and Reid "financial conservatives"! So you consider the Republicans who shot down their first bailout attempt "financial liberals"? :-D
Wow, unfortunately, you're far from the first person who completely ignores the fact that the Republicans shot down the first bill only to vote for the second bill after shoveling in much much more pork.
So, yes, Out of the Republicans and the Democrats, the Democrats are the fiscally conservative party and have been for about 30 years. It's not at all confusing, but you do actually have to pay attention and not just spout slogans and ignore reality as you did above.
Personally, I don't vote for either, because I actually do support a small, fiscally responsible government ,but pretending that the Republicans aren't the bottom of the barrel in that respect is just pure ignorance.
Amazing how everyone can agree that in the last decades pretty much all public values and personal virtues degrading.
Amazing how it all coincides with abandonment of the Christian religion and its morals.
Actually, if you looked at the real world you'd have noticed that it coincided with the rise of religious fundamentalism in politics in the US. There's a reason that the founding fathers explicitly rejected religious nuttery as a basis for government. You, in fact, just pointed out exactly why.
"Christian morals" is an oxymoron.
Actually, there was not. There was a Nazi party here, but even most of the German-Americans didn't really appreciate it because they didn't like the new Germany as it was not the same country they originally had left. The Nazi party here only got into a few thousand members at it's height, and they were in constant watch of the FBI (we even deported one of it's first leaders). I'd hardly call that support.
Then perhaps you should actually learn something about it?
Most of the powerful interests in America were avid supporters of the Fascists. Including Hearst, Ford and even our own Dear Leader's grandfather Prescott Bush.
Fascism is right wing extremism, hence elitist and good for only the wealthy and powerful. That is what the political right *is* after all.
Most Americans were Liberals at the time (back when that word was still used for what it actually means) and so were isolationist and didn't want to get involved. The American Left, back when we had one to speak of, were the ones agitating to fight Hitler, while the wealthy and powerful wanted to either stay out and profit off of the war or to join up on the side of the Fascists.
The Nazi party membership in America at the time is meaningless.
And by North Korea standards every news station in the world is extremely liberal. It's all about perspective. Why do people keep dragging out this rhetoric. This is American politics and American mainstream media. Everyone knows by now how right wing the politics are compared to Europe. Does that really mean anything?
Because it's not a matter of perspective. Left and right are well defined terms, they are not relative. So given that the US is far to the right, calling moderate right wing media outlets left or liberal is a blatantly false statement.
Given that in WW2 we were fighting against right wing ideology, it's important to keep in mind how far we've fallen away from our founding principles and stated ideals.
Does it ever occur to you that people who oppose adoption by gays, for example, may do so on the basis of principles they hold and not irrational fear?
The "principles" they hold are based on religion which is little besides irrational fear, so while it occurred to me, it was trivially easy to dismiss after a moment's rational thought. Were any of these people to have ever come up with an actual argument for their position then you might even have a point, but since they haven't, you don't.
but do you think it is possible that gay lobby groups could have a bad idea and that opposition to that idea could potentially be "sensible" rather than "homophobic".
No, if they were at all "sensible" then they would be making "sensible" arguments. All they've done is screech idiotic nonsense about "destroying marriage" and a bunch of other mindless ignorant crap.
So dismissing their position as ignorant religious hate mongering is the only reasonable, rational course as there is no opposing argument against that from their side.
I didn't say marriage belongs to the Christians. I said marriage belongs to religion. Each religion can clamour for it and argue about it. There is no real need for the STATE to recognize "marriage". The state's needs are entirely satisfied by recognizing a "civic-union certificate".
Except it doesn't belong to religion either. It belongs to whoever wants it.
The State's needs are not entirely satisfied by "separate but equal". There's plenty of precedent for that. Creating a class of second class citizens in un American. Sorry, but we really can't have that.
there is no bloody reason the state needs to call this statement of legal status a 'marriage'.
Yes there is. Because making up a different word to keep some nutty kooks happy puts gay people in a lower class.
They just aren't comfortable giving them the word 'marriage' due to their religious beliefs.
Well it's too fucking bad that they don't get to control something that isn't theirs. They can't give away something that doesn't belong to them. They need to grow up or move to Saudi Arabia or some other country that's based on their desired principles.
And that's precisely why the state needs to entirely extricate itself out of deciding whether people can get "married".
Creating second class citizens as you are supporting *is* the state deciding that. The state saying, "fuck all you loons, everyone can get married" would actually accomplish what you claim to want. The state banning some people from getting married based on the ignorant hatred of religious loons does the opposite to the extreme.
To me, being a conservative means that I want my government to adhere to the Constitution, not change it as they see fit
Well, the word you're looking for is "Liberal" actually. However that was co-opted by the left and demonized by the right. Then came "Conservatism" which back in the day used to mean anti-Liberal when Liberal meant what the constitution meant. Then that was redefined to mean what Liberalism used to mean.
However, about 30 years ago or so, conservatism took on its current meaning which is "religious extremist nutter and big government Fascist/Theocrat/Feudalist" Now, that word actually came full circle and now means exactly what it used to mean originally.
So, you should probably give up on it and quit wishing the nutters wouldn't use it. It was their word in the first place.
Heck, if we can get the left to quit using "Liberal" then we can bring that word full circle and have it mean what it did when the Liberals wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the disgust of the Conservatives of that time.
We'd do away with 100 years of wasted redefinition and sync common usage back up with the actual definitions.
Sure you still have unregistered drug addicts selling sex on the streets because they can't pass the health tests but that's a drug problem not a prostitution problem.
Who the hell is patronizing them? I mean when it's illegal, it's a risk, but if it's legal and somebody is doing it illegally, isn't that pretty much a guarantee that she has some disease?
However I -do- recognize that organized religions have a special tradition of marriage.
Religious nutters coopted marriage, but it far predates the invention of the Christian religion or that of any other god that currently exists in people's minds. It's not their tradition, they have no right to try and define it for other people.
Claiming that we should cede it to them is idiotic and will only encourage them to demand control of other aspects of people's lives which are none of their damn business. That's why this country was founded on the principle that religion has no place in the government of a free society. As soon as you introduce religious delusion into your laws you don't have a free society.
Prostitutes are almost always victims in several reguards.
And making it illegal only makes that worse, which was his point.
More like 80's but a few also went over to the Democrats.
No, it was the 50's and that is where the Libertarian party came from.
The 80's was the second major wave. That was the slow ones who caught on once Goldwater lost to Reagan.
and McCain before he sold out to get the vote was very much one of them and I would have voted for him in 2000
I wouldn't have, but that's because I understand that the person is largely meaningless. You're voting for a party, not a person and while this true of both parties, it's far more true of the Republicans with their "RINOs" and such.
but the overwhelming majority of the party are wackos and unfortunately a lot of people who support them dont realize this fact.
Which given that there have already been 2 waves, one of the smart ones and one of the slow ones, it's hard to imagine what's wrong with those people who still haven't clued in.
Hillary Clinton! Digging up dirt for her 2012 run.
There's pretty much no chance Hillary will run in 2012. 2016, maybe, but barring some major disaster for Obama, typically a party tends to nominate a sitting first term President as their candidate when they have one ;-)
if i was Israel i'd want to know if the next American presidential candidate was going to be a complete ass and try to stop supporting Israel
And by "be a complete ass", you mean put the interests of his own country above those of Israel.
That would be an extremely good thing for everybody but Israel. Color me utterly unconcerned about that.
No president has ever voluntarily relinquished powers taken on by previous administrations. If you expect any president, Obama or otherwise, to do so in the future, you clearly still have some hard lessons to learn about the nature of man and power.
Where you got the idea that I think any president would act to reduce his power is beyond me. My point is that without the President being held accountable for his actions, the power of the office and the crimes committed by its holder will increase.
I'm aware that the pack of scum running this country won't do anything to help it without helping themselves first and foremost. I was pointing out that that is a major problem and addressed the roots of its current rapid acceleration.
There's welfare everywhere. 10% of the Federal Budget goes to California, with 10% of the population... makes sense, no?
No, makes no sense at all.
California pays a disproportionate amount of money into the pool and gets back far less. That money goes to the welfare states. Population is a complete red herring.
Your chart makes no mention of where the money comes from which is a critical point.
Disclaimer: I didn't vote for Obama or McCain.
Neither did I, so he's not my candidate. It is quite telling that rabid racists would pick a black man because the white guy is such a fringe loon.
You don't really want people to start pointing out government handouts, substance abuse, and violent crime rates in the inner cities, do you? There's plenty of this on both sides of the aisle -- no reason to make it a partisan issue.
It is entirely a partisan issue. Republican states are consistently overwhelmingly the welfare states. The money going to the inner cities is coming from the blue states. The money going to red state leeches is *also* coming from the blue states.
Please, oh fucking please, let's make that equitable and watch almost all of the red states go fucking broke and personal wealth soar in the blue states.
I am so fucking behind that.
So for all the talk about "real America" and "free markets" by lying sack of shit Republicans, when are they going to start voting against their own welfare payments? Until they start calling themselves Socialists or quit being the most socialist shitholes in the country, it will continue to be a partisan issue.
Just look at the bailout (which I disagreed with from the start) The Republicans refused to vote for it because there wasn't enough pork in it. They held out for an extra 150Billion and then slopped it up. Their color is red for a reason, god damned communist scum.
For every dollar an Alaskan is taxed, the federal government gives back two dollars.
That's why they call Alaska the queen of the welfare states.
That's the real America according to McCain/Palin and the Republicans. A bunch of fucking leeches.
all of the campaign ads so I can slowly wean myself off instead of going cold turkey.
Holy shit, do you have a PhD in black comedy?
1. A Constitutional mandate to maintain a balanced budget, to end deficit spending.
2. The establishment of a commodity currency, to end inflation.
3. Constitutional caps on overall tax rates as a percentage of an individual's income.
Can we add:
4. No state shall receive more in federal spending than they pay in taxes unless all of that state's representatives make a convincing argument for it humbly on their knees hands outstretched.
*That* would do more to cut pork spending and government waste than anything.
Also, the look on all the Republicans faces as they realized that it's always their state reps begging for welfare and that the "real America" is a black hole of Socialist leeches. Of course, getting an apology for all their hate mongering and theft would be nice, but we can't really expect that. If they had any integrity, they either wouldn't be welfare leeches in the first place or they would at least call themselves socialists.
I wish I knew the root cause of health-care costs rising so dramatically, but it's certainly better than some giant government bureaucracy mandating "Thou shalt use this health plan"!
It's largely to due with the pharma industry lobbying the government to prevent collective bargaining on health care, and to prevent a national health care plan which would be far less costly.
If it gets passed, though, they'll just bribe their way back to excessive profits (yes, excessive if they can sell the same drugs to Canada and we can buy the drugs from Canada cheaper by *adding* a middleman we're being fleeced)
I could expect that the candidates get up in front of the nation in their debates and on their websites and say "Hey, things are looking dire. I'm not going to bullshit you, you're going to go through some rough times if things are going to be rectified..."
Is that too much to ask?
Yes, it's too much to ask. Carter did that and was fucking crucified for it. That's a good way of describing it since he was the last Christian in the White House.