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Quote:
Originally Posted by Advocate
That wasn't hatred of America, that was love of money. Those corsairs attacked ships from many countries.
-Appointing Eric Holder as AG - there really hasn't been much from Eric Holder I have gotten any confidence from. The JD was in disarray when Bush left and as far as I can tell it's just spineless these days. This ties into the following:Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick
-Sucking up to and coddling Wall Street - no excuse for this, after all that has happened. The mortgage refinance efforts have been a dud mostly. The fact that all these crooks are still out there ripping people off is shameful. There's really nothing good here. When he appointed that Daley clown to be his Chief of Staff for the purpose of getting Wall Street money I flipped shit.
-folding on Bush tax cuts at the end of 2010
-re-starting the war on marijuana dispensaries - this is something he claimed he would not do, I still don't know the reasoning, it's bizarre.
Fast & Furious is a symptom of our idiotic gun and war-on-drug culture but as long as Mexicans are dying for it, nobody here is going to change anything. I am fine with the auto bailout. I hate all the "war on terruh" stuff but I've accepted that there is a reason why this stuff happens. Large amounts of American people support it and it would take a lot of work to move away from that. Just voting for a Prez who claims he would stop it doesn't do anything. Unfortunately Romney won't be any better.
Thanks. We's bros.
Group hug!
Shibboleth.
If it were revealed that Fast and Furious guns were used in the Benghazi attacks, I wonder if it'd make the local news for more than a day? Iran Contra was big, but it's a different situation.
Well hell, I was going to list off things Obama completely blew and DiffX pretty well nailed it. There's a couple others out there too, but I'm at the end of my day here. Dumb as some of these things are, though (seriously, marijuana dispensaries?), he's still better than the alternative by a ridiculously huge factor.
Also, this is about the only forum I've seen where anyone thinks Ryan came close to winning, much less came out on top. Biden seems to have gotten almost 100% consensus on whipping Ryan's ass into a red shredded pulp.
James
Hey, here's the math on the Romney/Ryan 20% tax cut. And it's a lipstick-lesbian.
I'm not a big conspiracy guy, but F&F reeked of an actual sale to me. There just wasn't any plan in place that suggested it could be anything but.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
I'm not surprised that some idiot woman from the Times couldn't grasp this, but you can't assume the same tax base from a terrible economy. That's the entire point. So I guess they were right that the "rubes" couldn't understand it. She's a waste of oxygen example.Quote:
Originally Posted by TODE
I'm sure internet forums are a representative sample of voters. They're the virtual equivalent of the occupy movement. They're full of people with nothing better to do.Quote:
Originally Posted by James
So the instant he makes these cuts there will magically be a bigger tax base and the economy will be fixed?Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
Of course not. That's why they're paired with spending cuts to offset the difference.Quote:
Originally Posted by bbobb
Spending cuts that don't balance so we're just assuming that this tax cut will magically work in growing the economy? And meanwhile as it grows it won't be balanced and we'll be adding more debt just like they keep promising they won't do. Amazing.
I fully support increasing the cuts. We're not even close to being down to infrastructure and national defense, so there's lots of stuff ripe for the whacking.
And keep in mind the alternative is higher taxes and no useful cuts. Mr. Ivory (Ebony?) Tower has had his shot at making this work, and he just crossed the trillion dollar deficit mark for the fourth straight year. He needs to go back to running nothing where he's qualified.
You also don't get to assume a massive, unrealistic spike in the economy that every economist says is not possible. Nor can you assume that a tax cut like this will offer any real stimulus to the economy at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
It's also an outright-lie to say he's not going to lower taxes on the upper class. He's just misrepresenting his tax plan in whatever way is convenient at the moment.
Spending cuts shrink the economy. They don't grow it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
You sound like Uncle Mitt, circa February 2012: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...-slow-economy/.
"We hired you to cure cancer, and you haven't done it yet. Out you go. Faith-numbers man will save us."
Here's the problem with all your what if's. If Obama is 100% right, and Romney's plan increases the debt by five trillion, it's not much worse than what he's done in the last four years. Ignoring your record is a luxury an incumbent doesn't have. So Romney's worst case scenario is Obama's reality.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
FDR in 1936, seeking re-election:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3RHnKYNvx8
Maybe he shouldn't make promises he can't keep. At least I'm not the dumbass that he sold cutting the deficit by 50% and all the other bullshit he spewed in the name of "change you can believe in." I guess you could have believed in it. His slogan wasn't "change I'll actually implement."Quote:
Originally Posted by TODE
That's an incredible opinion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
Maybe you're misquoting the promises? And not accounting for reality?Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
You're the one that supports the lying sack of shit. Show me the campaign promises he made and kept.Quote:
Originally Posted by TODE
And Romney will definitely keep all of his promises and get everything he wants passed and the math will all work out... look in a mirror.
That's impressive. You can't or won't even find one example.
So now you clam up. I get it. Here's that vaunted deficit promise, btw.
I think this is the deficit promise Yoshi cited:
You can skip to 1:30 if you want the crux of it.
PolitiFact, which TODE linked, does track the president's campaign promises, by the way. The index can be found here: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...ameter/browse/, with 38% of campaign promises listed as "kept" and 17% listed as "broken." Taking all covered statements into account (campaign or otherwise), PolitiFact rates Barack Obama with 22% true, 16% false or "pants on fire." Mitt Romney is at 16% true statements, 26% false or "pants on fire."
That's one of the few times in the past year that Uncle Mitt has been telling the truth. He's not going to cut the budget or lower the deficit if the economy continues to stagnate, I guarantee it. I keep saying it over and over but people really don't care about the deficit unless they are trying to keep the other guy from passing his agenda.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick
I don't know why people care about this crap. Anyone who bases their opinion/vote on campaign promises is setting themselves up for disappointment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick
Plus you know PolitiFact is notoriously biased to liberals.
That's why I excluded the "Mostly True," "Half True," and "Mostly False" judgments. There's too much leeway in there. I've seen candidates' statements judged as "Mostly True" when they seemed mostly false and vice versa. There's less room for bias with the more extreme statements.
The fact checkers really need to be taken with caution, but they are interesting to read and if they stay in the background as one tool in the voter's knapsack, they have their use. For the low-information voter, they are both a godsend and a curse. I hope the fascination with them dies down, though.
I agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by Calliander
I think bringing them up in a conversation is just a way to distract from the more important, measurable topics. How do you argue "you were stupid to believe your guy, but I believe my guy will be as good as or better than your guy"? It's childish.
I KNOW RIGHT! Like when is Guantanamo closing again?Quote:
Originally Posted by TODE
It's not even the fact-checking part that I'm taking umbrage with - it's this (hopefully) feigned naïveté surrounding what politicians promise. Like somehow, this time is going to be different: {X} politician is gonna come through on this, I just know! Obama promised {Y} and he didn't deliver, that lying son of a bitch! There are things that matter every day of every year: jobs, education, war, and such. Instead of caring about what these dicks promised us, let's just care about the state of those things.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick
For me, Obama can get up there and talk about "failed policies" (I believe that's the phrase) all he wants but the Democrats are feeding us the same shit with a different spoon. I'll just take my crap with the socially liberal sprinkles on top.
I didn't want to give rep for a smartass reply, so here's a cookie. Smartass.Quote:
Originally Posted by Advocate
Fuck all of them.
When a fag can marry another fag and then go shoot new AK-47s in the sky and smoke a blunt, all legally, I'll care.
When everyone has good healthcare and we provide it better than that bullshit in Europe, I'll care. (and if you read that and think "but europe is so good at it" well fuck you too, you dumb sack of door knobs. Fuck you right in your stupid ear)
When I can get a car tag for a tank and have an active cannon in it, I'll care.
Until then, fuck every one of them. They don't give the first fuck about anything I care about and they have no plans to. They all just meander and do the same boring bullshit or the same horrible bullshit in secret.
None of them have done a god damn thing in my 29 years of life that has had any significant and positive impact on me. I can not think of one damn period that was some how different than the other because of something they did. I have never thought "Oh man, those years ago fucking sucked. Sure glad ole so and so passed that fucking thing and now all these problems were fixed"
Why do you cuss so much?
Because that is what the conversation deserves.
No one in current office deserves polite discourse.
But I just read another of your posts in another thread and you were doing the same. I have caught myself overusing words like "actually," "evidently," and "seems" a lot. Actually, it seems to me that you evidently use "shit" and its ilk all the time, at least lately. I thought I'd point that out in case you're interested.
No, I'm not interested in knowing that I say the word shit a lot.
Well, shit. You always struck me as the type that took pride in the clarity of your thought. I've been wrong before. Anyway, this is my third off-topic post.
He is mad as hell and he isnt going to take if anymore Nick.
I am 36 and I have never voted before. In the four elections i have been eligible to vote in, ive never seen a candidate that i thought deserved my vote. I wish i was super rich or super poor so that i could feel like i had some skin in the game and needed to vote to keep my agenda going. But I am neither. Nothing any of these guys do is really going to benefit or adversely affect me. Things look to me the way buttcheecks so colorfully described.
It's too bad we don't have metrics for unemployment, the deficit, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by TODE
That is a really, really naive statement. And it's even more inaccurate if "me" includes your children as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Some Stupid Japanese Name
Seriously, if Obama wins the country's finished.
America jumped the shark when LBJ was re-elected, after the Kennedy assassination.
give or take a few years, yeah
Voting for president is not like making a bid on a house or choosing a soul mate. You're not expected to bide your time waiting for the perfect deal. You've been eligible to vote since 1994. Well, Bill Clinton in 1996; Bill Bradley, Al Gore, and John McCain in 2000; John Kerry, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, and Howard Dean in 2004; Hillary Clinton in 2008; and Jon Huntsman in 2012 all seemed like respectable candidates to me. Some might have not made it to the primaries in your state, but it's difficult to reconcile your inaction as a voter with the diversity of candidates that must have run in federal, state, and local primary and general elections in your area in the past eighteen years. There are also referenda on ballots covering topics like school funding, taxes, drug legalization, and others. None of that affects you in any real way?Quote:
Originally Posted by Some Stupid Japanese Name
On the national level, one candidate may be much more likely to send your child to death in the Middle East. One may be more likely to strengthen the social safety net you don't think of a lot now but may rely on in your later years. One may take more money out of your pocket to fund programs you detest (there may be programs on both sides you hate, but the issue I'm talking about is the tax rate). Even the stock market and the economy overall are affected to some extent by who the president is. Bill Clinton was a moderate Democrat, but he did things differently from Reagan/Bush. And Bush/Obama handle(d) things differently as well.
On the local level, I think you may want to do a little more reserach, because local politicians can have a very tangible effect on your day-to-day life. They can have input on what stores are in your area, your children's schools, your streets, and on and on.
You may be able to pick-and-choose sentences to argue with from what I just wrote, but my overall point is worth considering again.
It's worse by an additional 5 trillion. On top of the existing annual defecit which is already 1.2 trillion. See how that works?Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
Fuckin' math.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
You're right, we do. So show me the data that says Romney's plans will actually work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
hint: "There's no way he could do worse than Obama" is not data.
So, instead of answering Yoshi, you pull the show me.Quote:
Originally Posted by TODE
Let's all go back to kindergarten schoolyard days ... he asked you first, you big dookieface.
Like most facts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Doc Holliday
If you mean the metrics for Obama, that data's out there. If you're going back to the promises issue, that's already been covered.Quote:
Originally Posted by Advocate
Just would like to see something substantive about how Romney being president would improve on any of it. If anyone feels so strongly about this, it should be a simple matter to explain the logic of it.
I'm sure you held John Kerry to the same standard, right? It wasn't just that you felt Bush's record was enough.
edit: The most obvious specific example is getting rid of Obamacare, which is going to see rates skyrocket and lots of people lose their private insurance if it's not repealed. And when they lose their private insurance, the public bill goes up, so taxes and or the deficit will get worse.
I admit it, in '04 my primary reason for voting Kerry was a great dislike for Bush and what he did to this country. I was actually hoping for someone else to win the Dem's nomination but we got stuck with him.
But after eight years of growth on my part I think I've gained a greater perspective on things than I've had in the past.
Oh, I learned to like John Kerry but I never felt he commanded a significant enough of a presence, in posture or in ideas, to really persuade people outside of the people who vote Dem every year. He could not change people's minds and lost the election.
And now eight years later it's all happening again almost exactly the same way. It's not a completely true equivalency of course but all I see with Romney is another "I'm not him, therefore vote for me" who shifts his position often enough for it to be noticeable, with lots of big ideas built on shaky unproven premises.
it's all the same trappings and it's just sad. The Republican Party blew it. Maybe 2016 will be their year.
Remember, Kerry won his first debate too.
I have only read the posts in this thread over the past week or so and I can't wrap my head around what most of you are spouting off.
I don't have a horse in this race. I'm a firm believer that Democratic capitalism isn't going to work out in the long run. Corruption will only increase with time and while that's happening the citizens will bicker for years and years over tiny differences (in the big picture) between the democrats and republicans. And those in power (Senate & Congress mostly) will continue to listen to whoever is going to pay them the most/get them reelected. It's sickening that people can sit in the same seat of power for 20+ years. It's really no wonder most of them care more about pleasing lobbyists then the citizens who elected them.
Things like term limits for Congress & the Senate, campaign financing, and these god awful Super Pac's being able to say blatant lies on TV without any repercussion are some of the things I want a candidate to address.
We came close to only having public funding for the presidential election in 2008, but that was one of the plethora of promises Obama broke. You're exactly right though. As long as elections are for sale and then congressional votes are too, we're fucked.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timber
Also, the only reason I'm going to vote Obama over Romney is that he can't run again. The only time anyone in the white house will ever try anything worthwhile is when they don't have to worry about pissing off groups and not being re-elected. The first 4 years of every president are going to be them doing their damndest to not piss off as many groups as possible.
Do I think he'll actually do anything worth a damn? Doubtful.
You mean the only time someone will try radical, dangerous shit is when they don't have to worry about being reelected. If Obamacare was designed not to piss anyone off, imagine the mess we're going to see if that clown has nothing holding him back.
Yeah, you aren't going to win me over there.
Before Obamacare it was impossible for me to acquire health insurance on my own because of a preexisting condition (same goes for my Father who's a cancer survivor).
I said piss off as few as possible, it's impossible not to piss of some people.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
the preexisting condition stuff is bullshit.
Obamr is the gretaest presidet of hte 21st century.
Close thread, we're done
Finch, go watch Panda go Panda on Hulu. You will like it.
I read this today
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=40366
has a lot of stuff Diff's been saying all year in it. But it has charts!
Incorrect. Bill Clinton was still president for a little bit of the 21st century.Quote:
Originally Posted by Finch
Yeah, the bar is pretty low.
How does it work? This $5 trillion figure comes from a Tax Policy Center estimate that $480 billion of revenue will be lost in 2015 if Romney's tax cuts are put into effect. If that is an average yearly amount, the losses over a ten-year period near $5 trillion, so that's where we get that number. (I don't know why we're using a ten-year figure instead of a one-year figure. Seriously, why? Our total federal tax revenue in 2012 was $2.9 trillion, but hearing some Democrats talk, you'd think we were in danger of losing $5 trillion in one year while still maintaining 80% of the tax rate we now have.) However, Romney and Ryan are always going on about these loopholes they are going to close and the fact that they expect the economy to grow and bring in some more revenue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogacuda
The economy will probably grow in some desirable ways over the next four years whether Obama or Romney is president, but we don't know that for certain, so we can't reasonably factor that into the calculations as a given. But I wanted to know more about the other ameliorating measures the Republicans are proposing. So I went straight to the Tax Policy Center itself. You can find a paper about the Romney plan's possible effect here: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/Uploa...Tax-Reform.pdf
The plan obviously has a problem if we assume (a) that there will be insufficent economic growth and (b) we are trying to avoid placing an increased burden on the middle class. But let's get the figures straight, since so many are spouting them off as if they studied the issue.
The report puts the 2015 revenue loss at approximately $360 billion to $456 billion (updated from the figure I cited earlier), not taking into account a stronger economy or spending cuts. As the report reasonably states, it is likely that "cutting spending would make the plan even more regressive because government spending tends to benefit low- and middle-income households more than tax preferences do." But even with no spending cuts at all, the middle and lower classes would probably be hit if the Romney plan went into effect. As the report states, "even if tax expenditures are eliminated in a way designed to make the resulting tax system as progressive as possible, there would still be a shift in the tax burden of roughly $86 billion from those making over $200,000 to those making less than that amount."
To be clear: how much is the anticipated shortfall if the Romney tax reductions go into effect? According to the Tax Policy Center, "maintaining revenue neutrality mathematically necessitates a shift in the tax burden of at least $86 billion away from high-income taxpayers onto lower- and middle-income taxpayers. This is true even under the assumption that the maximum amount of revenue possible is obtained from cutting tax expenditures for high-income households."
Of course, that's in a more idealized scenario than we might get, so let's say instead of $86 billion, the shortfall is 50% higher: $130 billion dollars a year. If the Democrats really want to cite the Tax Policy Center, in order not to mislead voters, the talk should be about $86 billion dollars in additional debt, not $5 trillion! If they want to dispute the figures, they might use a 50% higher figure, like I did, or even a 100% higher figure, but unless they can point to some other independent research, more than doubling the TPC's estimate makes me wonder why they would even bother citing it in the first place.
You say that, but then you state how important coverage for pre-existing conditions is. Better check your racing sheet. It sounds to me like your horse is Barack Obama. He pushed through the Affordable Care Act and Romney wants to repeal it. As you and your father age, the ACA might become even more important to you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timber
Charts . . . and a ton of anecdotes. In fact, the entire piece centers on how the author is trying to reconcile his personal experience with official statistics, which he is skeptical of. I want to know more than just how the Lowe's in his area are doing and that "[t]he closest [strip mall] has . . . lost its Genuardi grocery store, Sears Hardware, Blockbuster, Donatos, Sears Optical, Hollywood Tans, hair salon, pizza pub and a local book store. It is essentially a ghost mall, with two banks, a couple chain restaurants and empty parking spaces. The other strip mall lost its grocery store anchor and sporting goods store." I don't know enough about that local economy to tell you where people are getting their groceries, but I can guess where the customers for the book store, Blockbuster, the optician, and the sporting goods store went.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fe 26
The author says, "This has happened in an outwardly prosperous community," but makes the blanket conjecture that "the apparent prosperity is a sham." Yes, there is enormous credit card debt, but much business has consolidated and moved online, resulting in shuttered shops and vacant offices. The author even opines that we've become "an obese drunken species with excessive narcissistic tendencies that prefers to play video games while texting on our iGadgets as our debt financed lifestyles ultimately require professional financial assistance." I can ask who's fault that is, I can ask what that says about the real extent of our poverty, and I can also point out all the growth in my own city and a recently read article about how many people this year are expected to buy Halloween costumes for their pets. Since we are playing the personal observation game, those are fair "arguments," right?
Walmart may be hurting some businesses, but if you believe in competition, you have to be careful about what you propose. People are going to move toward more online shopping. They will use and abuse lines of credit. They will overconsume unless there is a compelling, maybe life-threatening reason not to. We're not going to fix that by legislation. Laws should protect citizens from outright exploitation by others and should endeavor to create a fair playing field. Insofar as the author wants that, we have common ground. But if he is looking for government to cure stupid purchases and foolish investments, he will continue to be disappointed. And he might do better exploring the inner city if he truly wants to write about urban decay.
I know all this, but Yoshi said "assuming that figure is completely true" so I didn't get into all that. Yoshi was clearly operating under the assumption that that 5 trillion debt was not going to be piled on top of our existing annual defecit for some reason.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick
This chart should scare anybody not in the top 5% or so of household incomes from voting for a Republican ever:
http://dailyreckoning.com/wp-content...09-13-12-1.png
This country's economy has grown a LOT over the past 3 decades. Yet most people have seen not a dime of it. In fact, they've seen a negative amount of it, since that growth was fueled by cheap consumer debt. This is what happens when you start voting for a party exclusively focused on entrenching a plutocracy. Our country's Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality) is in "corrupt banana republic run by colonels wearing mirrored sunglasses" territory. It's bad bad bad, but the only thing the people in DC can talk about is how much spending that goes to old and poor people can we cut. This is not "broad-based prosperity", this is not "growing the pie so everyone's slice is bigger." This is the decadent and corrupt capitalism that Karl Marx warned against. This is theft of a nation's wealth of the sort you would see in the Russian Empire or Medieval France.
The irony of it is all is that all this talk that basically focuses on how we can make rich people even richer ends up hurting the rich in the end.
It's really unfortunate that the Republicans have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for that 30 years. It's clearly a single party issue.
Voting for Mitt Romney, someone who grew up in that entrenched plutocracy and has lived his entire life in it, sure as hell ain't gonna change anything. Up until that first debate he didn't even pretend otherwise. I also see not a single statement from any GOP Congressman or anyone in the GOP running for Congress that indicates any different feelings.
What is he not going to change? The steady decline of the median curve above under Obama?
Yoshi is in full on panic mode because he knows his guy already lost.
It's ok Yoshi, maybe Obama will put a conservative on the Supreme Court.
Keep fighting the good fight man. Maybe one day David Koch will flip a nickel in your direction, it'll make all your support of Team Republican worth it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
That chart would suggest that the problem was worst during the Clinton years.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
I have to agree with Yoshi that this is not a Republican or Democratic issue, it's a power of money issue that affects both parties.
It WAS worst during the Clinton years. All those liberal eggheads that predicted shit like NAFTA would undermine good US manufacturing jobs and what not turned out to be exactly correct. It wrecked middle class income/wealth and sent the money to the bosses.
People who said that deregulating financial companies would bring uncertainty and disorder to the market turned out to be exactly correct. Income inequality WAS a big problem during the Clinton years. Clinton and Democrats of the time adopted right-wing economic policies in the late 1980's and as such helped perpetuate the problem.
If one party supports the wealthy 100% and one party supports the wealthy 80%, that means two things:
1. One party is better than the other for non-wealthy people.
2. Both parties suck.
Sounds about right.
As to money, just follow it. After Citizens United, we have a bunch of unaccountable interest groups spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect one guy over the other. The money is coming from a small cabal of extremely wealthy people. This is a farce and not even democratic in the least. Nonethless, there's no doubt these people are spending for an agenda to be enacted once their guy gets elected. It's not something that about 99.9% of people would have a seat at the table for.
How? Most of the years showing median household income lower than the baseline are during Democratic administrations. During the Obama years, you see GDP go up while median income goes down.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
Speaking of the Obama years, the very article you linked had this to say:
"Exhibit A is the bipartisan, $700 billion rescue of Wall Street in 2008. Exhibit B is the crony recovery. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that 93 percent of the income gains from the 2009-10 recovery went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The top 0.01 percent captured 37 percent of these additional earnings, gaining an average of $4.2 million per household."
This is why I asked you if you ever disagreed with the Democrats. In the face of what are obviously bipartisan faults, you are arguing in a partisan manner. The income gap, what's called "the Great Divergence" began near the end of the 1970s and has continued a general upward trend since then, regardless of who controlled the White House or Congress.
Neither candidate's plan is going to address the income gap adequately. I'm not sure government can, without a ton of regulations and intrusions into private corporate budgets.
You can certainty argue that the Republicans want to mess with entitlements, but can you provide an example of existing safety-net benefits being slashed or eliminated by a Republican presidential administration? Reagan campaigned on heavy spending cuts, sure, but what actually happened when he was in office?
It will probably be addressed some day with guillotines, that's how it usually works.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick
Look, if McCain were to be elected, that same 93% of income gains would go to the same 1% of people. That's the system that has been built. One man cannot stop it. We keep voting for these people based on this phony nonsense and they get to do what they really want to do, which is to ensure that 93% of income gains go to the top 1% of people.
We elect Congresspeople every 2 years and that is, in the end, more important than voting for President. But nobody votes for Congresspeople and the only people who care about what Congresspeople do are the ones who, again, work to ensure that 93% of income gains go to the top 1% of people.
This isn't about team red or team blue, although I feel that 'team red' has done more to build this system while 'team blue' only hopped on board after they lost a bunch of elections.
That's why primaries are often more important than general elections. Also, this crazy-ass public we have almost guarantees that only dysfunctional people make it to White House. What kind of person wants to go through all those caucuses, town hall meetings, "doing the common man's job" photo ops, etc.? It's an insane process.
But I truly think consumers are being let off the hook here. With all this knowledge that's available, there's less of an excuse than ever before. We might be able to get meaningful change eventually without the revolution you alluded to.
When congress allows for inmate relocation? At least that's the going story last I heard.Quote:
Originally Posted by Advocate
It is hell of a coincidence that union participation started to decline during these years as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick
How? Every consumer crossing their arms and not voting? Not going to happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick
I sincerely doubt Yoshi is sitting there going, "Gee, you know, that Mitt Romney? He'd sure make a GREAT president. Just tons of great ideas abound." More likely it's, "That guy is scary, but less scary to me than Obama."Quote:
Originally Posted by dave is ok
Yoshi's hoping for change.
A little fun with fact-checking: Analysis of the Mega-Powers
MSNBC's grasp of science matches their grasp on everything else:
Click for full size
Wouldn't we all be dead if he did that?
I think it resurrects Lois Lane, but she's alive.
She is now, anyway.
Jesus fucking fuck all.
Romney just said no taxes on dividends, interest and capital gains. Holy fuck that is the worst thing. He said it's for just families making 200k or less but I'm 100% sure that it would be ordinary income of less than that which would allow people like him to pay NO fucking taxes. That is the most sickening thing I have heard in this entire campaign
Romney just said he wants to eliminate capital gains for the benefit of the middle class. If anyone is dumb enough to buy this shit they should be executed.
What's funny is that he framed it in a way that middle class families won't have to file tax returns on their savings account interest. lol.
I am absolutely sickened by that. I can't get over how incredibly disgusting it is. I can't wait to see Yoshi try to spin it as a good thing because that is some of the most horrendous ideas that have ever been thrown out
Did I just skip to the NY Times to hear Mitt Romney saying something about helping women by making sure that they have flexible work schedules to take care of babies?
Yea...
Now he is talking about how he is better than Bush because we have computers to get oil. And Bain Capital is now a small business.
Don't forget he actual grew businesses and balanced their budgets as he said, definitely didn't swing in, gut the companies and leave them saddled with a ton of debt while making himself and his business rich.
Seriously? But no, seriously, I mean, really? I have to make sure because that *may* be one of the most sexist things I've ever heard.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
I didn't realize this debate was on for so long - I checked earlier and heard "manufacturing" and "middle class" so many times it was almost vomit-inducing. How do people listen to these two and even think for ONE second they actually mean it? Is it the same theory as advertising, where you have impressions and stuff?
Obama called out Romney on his previous statements where he said that medical insurance shouldn't cover contraception, that employers should be allowed to decide if their plans should cover birth control or not, and that Romney wants to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. This is all shit that the press has been reporting on Romney for ages, right?
Then Romney took the mic and said that women should be allowed to use contraception, that medical insurance should cover it, that employers shouldn't be allowed to make those decisions, and that Obama was basically wrong and that he never said any of that shit. wtf.
Yes. He seriously said it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Calliander
Did he?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dolemite
Those are some brass balls right there. I might be able to stand behind that kind of crazy.