There's no such thing as a "middle class." You either sell your labor, or you profit off the labor of others. Where's the middle in that?

In Olde Europe, people followed leaders who were "Father Figures" and were trusted to serve them. American Leaders are civil servants. Taxes pay for goods and services: Schools, military, medicare, social security, etc. The problems arise when our leaders are not civil servants, but servants to Big Oil, Insurance Companies, Pharmaceutical companies, and Banks.
In the Garden of Eden, God owned the Tree of Knowledge. In the USA, the People own it. Oh, Shit!!

The middle class are the MAJORITY of Americans who make between x-dollars and y-dollars a year. LOTS of small business owners fit in this category. The more money the middle class has, the more money goes to the poor and the rich, TRICKLE OUT. You starve the middle class like Bush did, everything goes to Hell.

Yes, and in a Court of Law, case closed. That's all the evidence you need.
Of course, Jimmy Carter kind of screwed things up. JFK took us toe to toe with WWIII. And Reagan took Moscow.
And if a quake ever hits California like it did Haiti, we're all fucked.

I truly believe that until Americans understand class distinctions, and understand them as a scientific concept provable by economic law, there is little hope for achieving long-term solutions to any of the problems various members of the Forum raise. Yes, we can achieve this or that incremental improvement, perhaps for a limited time, but ultimately the choice is a fundamental reshaping of society or barbarism.

Corporatism
 

This is the main threat to our liberty"

From: Huffington Post
Anis Shivanic

:frown:

The Supreme Court decision makes this even stronger.

Look,, up in the sky,,,
 

it's a bird, it's a plane,,,,it's Obamaman,,, lol. Well it's good to see so many folks here take the time to comment on the guy. What's a shame though is how so very many believe what the mass media 'feeds' them. I could spend hours listing all Obamamans' ills, but I'll just mention 1,,,he's not even an American. Wait now,, b4 consigning me to the ranks of the wild and crazy folk, consider a few facts: he's spent 2 mil and counting fending off numerous suits to basically keep ALL his personal records 'top secret'. In his race for the Senate he tacitly admitted he was NOT born American. Those are verified facts. What's interesting though is 'why', he do that, lol. I mean all he need do is take off 1 sock and shoe, and give the American people a footprint. Case closed either way.... hardly seems so invasive a way to prove he has the right to BE the President of the USA.
Ok, let it rip, lol.

HEAD:

Yes, and Bush 43 was honest, transparent & bi-partisan to a fault.


Talking with Conse 'Pubs on this site is depressing.


TAL

Can we PLEASE get some Republicans on this site like Pat Buchanan? I just saw him sitting next to that nauseating Fox parrotcunt Monica Crowley, admitting that the Republicans have NO platform, and don't need one. He then admitted that as soon as the new wonderboy from Massachusetts gets to DC, he's going to be sat down in a back room and EXPLAINED a few things.....
I just hope Scalia has a history of heart disease in his family. What a prick.....

Ah, the perfect wonderboy candidate. Posing nude and presenting his bikini clad daughters as "available". If he teams up with Sarah the Republicans will have a perfect team for the next presidential campaign. A stud and a bimbo, isn't that great! :lol:

RANDY:

Yeah! Palin-Brown brought to you by Foreign & Big Oil.


TAL

Corpocracy
 

Buy enough members of the house and senate to impeach Obama right after the 2010 election.

Permanent Conse 'Pub governance is fair and balanced.

Mmmmm... Monica :turnon:

Humm, Monica looks very good, do you still have some hot for girlies?

I love hot women. :coupling: If they have a cock, even better.

Yeah, don't you love it when these hot babes show up for interviews on tv, sit on the couch with their legs crossed and you keep wondering if they are going to pull a Sharon Stone right in front of the camera. ;)

Well, if Bush left a "whopping deficit for Obama", just what is Obama leaving the next president?
Or all of us, as citizens, for that matter?
As Tracy CORRECTLY pointed out in another thread...

The day the Bush administration took over from President Bill Clinton in 2001, America enjoyed a $236 billion budget surplus -- with a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. When the Bush administration left office, it handed President Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit -- and projected shortfalls of $8 trillion for the next decade. During eight years in office, the Bush administration passed two major tax cuts skewed to the wealthiest Americans, enacted a costly Medicare prescription-drug benefit and waged two wars, without paying for any of it.

To put the breathtaking scope of this irresponsibility in perspective, the Bush administration's swing from surpluses to deficits added more debt in its eight years than all the previous administrations in the history of our republic combined. And its spending spree is the unwelcome gift that keeps on giving: Going forward, these unpaid-for policies will continue to add trillions to our deficit.

This fiscal irresponsibility -- and a laissez-faire attitude toward the excesses of the financial industry -- helped create the conditions for the deepest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. Economists across the political spectrum agreed that to deal with this crisis and avoid a second Great Depression, the government had to make significant investments to keep our economy going and shore up our financial system.

That is why President Obama and Congress crafted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It is widely accepted that the difficult but necessary steps Obama took have helped save our economy from an even deeper disaster. It was President Bush -- not Obama -- who signed into law the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout for banks, the Obama administration's rigorous stewardship added transparency and accountability that have cut the expected cost of that program by two-thirds.

Obama has proposed billions of dollars in cuts, and he'll continue to fight for them and others in the upcoming budget. Obama had been more successful in getting his proposed cuts through Congress than his predecessor was in any of his eight years in office.

And even as Obama has pursued landmark health insurance reforms that will hold the insurance industry accountable and expand coverage to working Americans, he has insisted from the beginning that any reform legislation must not add to the federal deficit and must help reduce it over time. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the legislation making its way through Congress upholds this principle. As the president has said, the federal budget is like an ocean liner, not a motor boat, and it will take time to redirect its course. But the course correction that was so badly needed after the previous administration has begun in earnest.

There's an old saying that everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.

See, that's where you've already gone off the rails. But at least you used the right word to try and sneak one through.

When Bill Clinton left office, he did the exact same thing that ALL presidents are required do: namely, he submitted a 5 year PROJECTED budget report based on the economic indicators that HE (as current president) was basically GUESSING the way the economy would go, if Congress pursued his suggestions in the future.

The only problem for Clinton is that he basically guessed WRONG on pretty much everything across the board. In his 5 year projection, he stated (for example) that the boom "dot coms" that were currently blossoming at the time and making people overnight multi-millionaires would continue and grow the economy...when in fact the "dot com" bubble actually burst and NEVER lived up to Clinton's projections. Likewise Clinton predicted that energy costs would drop and thus trim the budget...except than the direct OPPOSITE happened and energy coasts literally SOARED, coupled by energy companies like Enron even going bankrupt due to financially fake book-keeping.

And before anyone on the Left tries to pull the old bullshit line about Bush being in the pocket of companies like Enron, keep it mind that it was UNDER CLINTON that Enron grew in size and doctored its books and went unchecked. Why? Because Clinton wanted to cite and incorporated their profit numbers as proof that his economic plan was working.

The crock of this being that during the 1980 presidential debates, Bush literally POINTED to the fact that far too many companies were doctoring their books...that far too many of Clinton's numbers were actually waaaaay off and misleading...which prompted an infamous historical exchange in the debates where Gore accused Bush of trying TO CREATE a recession by talking down the economy. Those on the Left love to conveniently forget that in 1980 Bush WARNED that a recession was looming, while Gore (and the running candidate) and Clinton said it was all nonsense and the economy was perfectly sound...

...At which point it turned out Bush was right, and we did enter a recession. And Bush was right again as companies like Enron went under. And for all the talk on the left how Bush was in the pocket of Enron, let the record show that it was BUSH and HIS justice department that went after Ken Lay and Enron, to throw them into jail and to expose the bookkeeping corruption that was going on.


Which the Democrats ALSO continually voted for as well.
So your point? Or are you admitting the Dems have no clean hands as well?

As for Bush handing Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit after 8 years, given your indignation, how do you feel about Obama QUINTUPLING that amount in only ONE year?

Nice try, but as a historical TRUTH that is actually a well-documented and proven FACT about Obama. The bottom line: in only ONE YEAR in office, Obama has now SPENT MORE THAN EVERY PRECEDING PRESIDENT IN U.S. HISTORY COMBINED.

Actually, it's NOT "widely accepted" anymore. In fact, just as many economists -- and even polls of the American people themselves -- now show that a majority of people feel Obama basically "scared" people into allowing him (and the Democrats in Congress) to break the national piggy bank and to spend like drunken sailors on shore leave, by constantly labeling the crisis "the worst disaster since the Great Depression."

As many economists have noted -- including even people like Paul Krugman, noted LIBERAL economist, who of late has likewise turned on Obama -- how can you call it "the worst crisis since the great depression" when all it took was a one time cash infusion to right the system, and in only ONE YEAR the veru same banks Obama was claiming were on the verge of total collapse have not only paid their loan money back, but are now likewise posting RECORD PROFITS?

You're right. So congratulations on proving my point. Even if you DO want to call it "the worst crisis since the Great Depresssion", then the CREDIT for saving the banks and re-stabilizing the system should NOT go to Obama, but should actually belong to -- yes -- George Bush!

I call bullshit on that one. It's not that Obama CUT the cost by 2/3 through any stewardship. And the idea that ANYTHING Obama does can be called transparent is laughable. The reason there was a savings is because they never NEEDED to spend all the allocated money -- which dovetails right back into my point above, that the banks righted themselves to a large degree and are now even back to posting profits.

Not true at all. What the CBO report states is that it would INITIALLY save money, but that only a mere 5 years out costs start to rise -- and 10 years out the program is running a huge deficit, nearly a whopping $2 trillion.

In fact, even the CBO's assertion that there will be some initial savings were highly dubious and could only be derived through Enron-like doctoring of the books, which EVEN THE CBO ACKNOWLEDGED IN THEIR REPORT.

Basically, to pay for a $1 trillion health care plan, Obama simply CLAIMED he would come up with $500 billion of that through Medicare cuts (in other words, that's how he'd literally find HALF of the money for his progam) -- and yet to this day O-dumba (and the Democrats) still can't actually name where these so-called cuts are going to come from. Instead, they just SAID they'd magically find HALF A TRILLION in savings, and then decided to add that money -- still sight unseen -- into the pile.

Tell you what.
I can play the Democratic game of creative accounting too.
Here's how it works...

I have bills to pay... I need to save money this year... but hey, no problem!
Since I work in Hollywood, I'm SURE that I'm gonna sell a $1 MILLION screenplay this year.
I'm SURE things will break my way the best way imaginable!

What's that? You want to know if I have a $1 million offer on the table now?
Uh...no...I don't. But, hey, I'm thinking positive, and that's all that counts -- right?
So since I'm SURE it's gonna happen, I'm just gonna go ahead
and add that million bucks into my bank account, BEFORE I've even made it.

WOW! LOOK AT THAT!
Once I toss a mythical million dollars into my bank account, I have no more debt!
Wow, that sure was easy to balance my check book.
Guess I won't have to worry about any bills this year after all!

And, yes, that's EXACTLY how Obama and the Democrats did their health care reform math...

Politics on this site sucks
 

C-MIN:

Tracy is correct and she just happens to agree with you? I'm not going to engage with you, because I don't want to read a short story.

Conse 'Pubs have the POV that any pol who isn't
a Conse 'Pub will FAIL, and a Conse 'Pub who fails isn't Conse enough. Can it be any more narrow that? Make it short or don't reply.


TAL

OWWWCH!!! Another post deleted?
OK, lets wrap this up...Would SOMEBODY tell me Bush's greatest achievement?

That's so easy: TAX CUTS.

The best way to buy a vote legally.

For the country? Taking the fight to Al Qaeda after 9/11 and keeping America safe from 9/11 till the end of his presidency. This is something Obama has failed at. He's lost soldiers at Fort Hood because of domestic terrorism and came dangerously close to losing hundreds of American civilians on xmas from that underwear-bomber. You will say why didn't Bush stop 9/11, and I'll remind you the hijackers were already in the country before Bush took office. And something else you probably didn't know is that he went from Clinton's neglect of Al Qaeda to signing an order for military action against Al Qaeda on September 10th, 2001. It might have been sooner if his transition into office hadn't been delayed by Gore's antics.

What else is his greatest achievement from my perspective? Initiating the Moon/Mars exploration program at Nasa. It's been 38 years since we've been beyond low Earth orbit and there's still several years to go, but we're finally on track.

I like reading your posts, Tracy. You bring a sane perspective to all the antiBush rantings that are so common throughout your country. I would like to know though why you blame Obama for what happened at Fort Hood. I don't think that anyone could have prevented that except those in the army.

Oh boy! Tracy, you are amazing! How can such an intelligent person be so biased and then actually blame Gore for 9/11! :rolleyes:

It is more of Clintons fault than anything. When he was in office, he mandated that on any military installation, any weapon not in use for training be locked up, effectively disarming everyone on base. Before that, people could carry sidearms on base. Had another troop been armed, alot less people would have been hurt and the Major would have had a couple more orifices to breathe out of. That and Clintons EO policies which if you aren't "tolerant" towards other people's feelings or background, could get you canned or possibly sent to Leavenworth. Had anyone protested or questioned the Major's recent evangelical and radical positions, odds are, he could have complained about them being "racist" or "xenophobic" and ruined that persons career.


Feel free to blame "Bubba" for Ft. Hood.

Read it again Mr. randolph. She said nothing of the like.

Amazing Conse 'Pubs
 

RANDY:

Didn't you know that according to Dana Perino, there were no domestic attacks on Bush's term.

St. Rudy of 9-11 said there were no attacks under Bush and 1 under Obama, but then his staff changed it to after 9-11. He forgot, no doubt. Or he meant to say, or he meant.

Mary Matilin said Bush inherited 9-11.

We were attacked under Clinton & Obama, while Bush-Cheney kept us safe.

Rush Limbaugh blamed Obama for the economy in 9/08, and like Palin said about us: Quit making things up.


You and I have opinions, and so do they. One of them on this board feels Obama is not an American. He's an illegal alien who plotted his way into office. and fooled all but a few Conse 'Pubs. He needs to be arrested and imprisoned. Now, if I was a rich Conse 'Pub, I'd buy a majority in the house and senate to impeach and convict Obama after the 11/4/10 election. Just buy what you need to convict and imprison Obama for deliberately trying to ruin the country, like Coulter knows for a fact. Conse 'Pubs on The SC have evened the playing field that was unfair to Conse 'Pubs, no doubt.

TAL

ILA:

We south of the border have an interesting dynamic of debate: honest and political. In an honest debate you deal in only facts or bluffs. In a political debate a Conse 'Pub (conse-rvative re-pub-lican) can claim that Obama is NOT an American, and that is an EQUAL opinion.

Using that yardstick, any attack that occurred on American soil is due to Clinton or Obama. Conse 'Pubs feel insulted when they are mocked, and they feel outrage over Obama on a daily basis for what he last did or will do or is doing. We used to have this only during election time, we now have it every day, and it used to be called silly season.

TAL

ILA:

According to Cheney, hundreds of thousands of lives were saved, because of their policies.



TAL

Tracy--"It might have been sooner if his transition into office hadn't been delayed by Gore's antics."

The implication of this statement is that if Bush had had more time, he could have prevented 9/11. This is total BS!

1) The attack would have happened regardless of who was in office. They were already here so the finding of the terrorists would have been a job for our alphabet agencies. That shows failure of our security measures and our policies which were emplaced by Clinton who knew about the threat and brushed it aside.

2) He recognized a threat and did not casually blow it off. Could he have found the terrorists had his order been signed earlier? Probably not. Our measures are more defensive and reactive in nature. Bush actually had an offensive mindset and took the fight to them rather than bending over and taking it in the ass.

3) I guarantee you that if Gore won, he would blow off the threat of Al-Qaeda just like his predecessor and once we were attacked, he would try to engage in "peaceful dialogue" and "empathy" or "understanding" with Al-Qaeda. Meanwhile his little tip-toeing would present the country as spineless and invite even more attacks against us.

This was from the NY Times, 2004

You guys seem to have rather short memories.:rolleyes:

President Clinton took the fight to Bin Laden when he dropped a cruise missile in his camp in August '98. Missed him by two hours. Republicans called this a publicity stunt to divert attention from Monica Lewinski. It was actually this attack that probably prompted 9-11.

Thank you :) I blame Obama indirectly. He is the one who sets the tone of political correctness that we can't allow to get in the way of security. See here.

What? I didn't blame Gore for 9/11. I said Gore antics delayed Bush's transition.

How? Considering that Bush had a certain amount of time to work on the Al Qaeda problem, and that it progressed to the point that he signed an order for military action on September 10th. Obviously if he started working on the problem sooner, he would have initiated military action sooner. When you look at the fact that Bush was delayed in receiving funds to start his administration, and putting together his cabinet because of the contested election, you have to realize that that delayed any action against Al Qaeda. Or am I a Time Lord and therefore the only one able to see such complexities in SpaceTime?

Yes, they did warn Bush. But later than they would have if Bush had been given the win earlier. Also, Bush was unable to assemble a team to act on the information. Also remember who the source is. Bill Clinton does not want to look like they dropped the ball. But if they had such urgent warnings, why didn't they act on it? Why didn't they at least hand Bush their draft of a plan of attack?

What is labor? Is work with your brain considered labor? Cause I'll tell ya, physics & calculus are pretty laborious....

The Ft. Hood shooter had a questionable record. First he lied on his papers to get into the Army (under nationality he listed palestinian, when he was born and raised in Virginia), he repeatedly stated that he admired the suicide bombers, when he interned at Walter Reed he was trying to convert his patients and other staff to islam, and he was already under investigation for posting on terrorist websites. Every time someone raised a concern about him, it was ignored.

Yes. If you are a drafter and get paid to doodle all day, all the effort you put into designing is considered labor. You are getting compensated for your effort by the way of money.

I don't think I'd ever be able to grasp calculus or physics. I was reading something on quantum physics and it was so mind boggling that I went into my Keanu Reeves mode...

"Whoa!"

Kinda like when you turn an electron around 360 degrees, it doesn't look the same. You have to turn it around another 360 degrees before you're back to where you were.

Obama is expected to call for a spending freeze for the next free years on "non-security" budget items. How convenient, now that he's finally getting around to figuring out what to do with the space program.

Yes, work with your brain is labor. The point is about whether you get paid the full value of your labor, or whether someone else who does none of the labor succeeds in boosting the "price" of the labor to profit in some way.

Engineers get paid pretty damn well. BAM! Solution found.

I meant more like the math behind all that. I understand the basic concepts; I'm just not a whiz kid when it comes to the math part.

I guess if your looking for a simplistic measure, to which little thought has been given, you could say that. But if you want to grasp the complexity, you need to be a bit more scientific. One's wage level is decidedly not the criterion.

Prediction
 

Conse 'Pubs will savage Obama's speech.

They will say this proves the people have realized Obama was a mistake.

Polling has proven the American People want Change, but they want somebody to change things for them, "The Party of No" is what the people want right now, Obama knows this. Ignore the State of the Union Address, the state of the union sucks. Even with losses in the House and Senate this year, "The Party of No" has no legs, and certainly has no leaders. Obama knows it's always darkest before the dawn, and he's manipulated the Republicans into cowering together in the dark. When Dawn breaks, the Truth will be seen by all, and the remaining stench of the Bush/Cheney Death March will be expunged.

That idiotic ambiguous line isn't going to work next election. People will have seen what 'Change' means and they won't want it. TMF will be forced to talk about issues and that's the last thing he wants to discuss.

Thank your president.

That's because it's a true grass roots uprising that's pushing the dems out.

You're a good cheerleader, Tracy, but your team is fucked, and they know it. Corporate America isn't so sure it wants Repunlicans back, seeing as how THEY ALMOST DESTROYED THE STOCK MARKET!!!!!!!
You saw Corporate America rear it's ugly head in 2000, when they gave little Bush the election, 5-4. You just saw them come out of the shadows again last week when they suceeded in enacting a Law that will enable them to skip any possibility of them losing power, 5-4.
There are two kinds of power: PEOPLE and MONEY. Each needs the other. The face of the Republican party is Sarah, Rush, and Glenn. That has Corporate America shitting it's pants! They want a sleepy president, like Reagan, or Daddy Bush.
The question is will Corporate Money back Romney, a sure loser? No, they'll pick up nickel and dime candidates now and wait til 2016, after Obama has fixed the Economy. The Republicans have no platform and they know it. If the terrorists attack again, Obama WILL become FDR! People will flock behind the President then. They always do.