Now that dubya is almost...

[Deags]

Is anyone else feeling that George W Bush's term has come to an end too soon? With the prospects of a blackman or an older guy others have got to be feeling this.

JOKE

[digip]

That joke is like school on sunday. No class...j/k

I vote get out.

And what is with the hidden colored text?

[Snubs]

Oh jeez, for a second I was gonna call you out for being racist and a hick. But nevermind :P I see it's a joke.

[Shaun]

Is anyone else feeling that George W Bush's term has come to an end too soon? With the prospects of a blackman or an older guy others have got to be feeling this.

I knew I was right when I repeatedly called you racist.

JOKE... actually, no, you really are racist

[Deags]

And what is with the hidden colored text?

So i don't give it away and people like Shaun don't let loose :).

[Deags]

Oh jeez, for a second I was gonna call you out for being racist and a hick. But nevermind :P I see it's a joke.

hick i am. but i is far from a racist.

[Shaun]

So i don't give it away and people like Shaun don't let loose :).

I did see your hidden text, which is pretty obvious since I included some of my own, I'm just basing my belief you are racist on your views on aboriginal australians.

[lazaruswws]

Obama would be far worse than Bush ever was. (Not because i am racist) but because Obama is a Socialist and black.

[digip]

and black.

Um, that would be a racist remark in my book. Color has nothing to do with how the man will do the job. His politics on the other hand, that's another story. And I doubt anyone can do a worse job than Bush at this point...

Socialist? I don't think Obama is a even close: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

We're not the soviet union. Just because he wants to give us universal heathcare doesn't make him a commy.

“We now face an opportunity — and an obligation — to turn the page on the failed politics of yesterday's health care debates… My plan begins by covering every American. If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less. If you are one of the 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance, you will have it after this plan becomes law. No one will be turned away because of a preexisting condition or illness.”

— Barack Obama

Give me an example of how Obama is a socialist.

[K1u]

The funny thing is. The president is pre-chosen. The NWO is coming.

[lazaruswws]

Give me an example of how Obama is a socialist.

Universal health care is socialist.

Government control of private corporations, industries and citizens. Universal health care is just another step in that direction. Furthermore Socialized medicine doesn't work in any of the countries that have it so why should we create another federal institution to waste tax payer dollars. The Federal Government is already full of idiots abusing power why should we give them more.

[Shaun]

Socialism is a good thing. Not particularly communism but social liberalism, and the fucking idiotic fear so many Americans have of it is why they have a country so ridiculous that even with the most money in the world it can't look after its own people. There are a lot of good thing about the US, but I would not live there because there are so many fucking idiots who'd rather see the poor die in a gutter than pay a bit more in tax (and if I hear one more American say a progressive tax is a punishment for making money then I think my head will explode).

[lazaruswws]

But does that tax really help those in the gutter? France has some of the mos wide spread social welfare programs and one of highest unemployment rates, why work if the Government is going to take care of you. Most of the people I see on the street are there because of drugs and alcohol for which I have no sympathy. A Progressive tax is punishment for making money, historical data shows that the Federal Government receives more tax income because of the lower the rate. Lowering the highest income bracket tax rate from 90% to around 30% where it is now helped our economy generated wealth. That income started businesses and generated jobs for the middle class.

[digip]

Universal health care is socialist.

Government control of private corporations, industries and citizens. Universal health care is just another step in that direction. Furthermore Socialized medicine doesn't work in any of the countries that have it so why should we create another federal institution to waste tax payer dollars. The Federal Government is already full of idiots abusing power why should we give them more.

You listen to any Ronald Regan vinyl records lately? That's just government bullshit trying to scare people.

"Universal health care is socialist." - Propaganda. Just complete government bull shit.

Why is it that other countries that have healthcare taken out of their taxes or free healthcare, like Canada, UK, France, etc. Lots of countries have free healthcare and it works. Why do some third world countries have completely free healthcare and next to no money for meds? But here in the US, people die in the waiting room or get turned out on the street because their medical coverage is out of network? Why can't my wife see a specialist for her condition close to home, but instead has to drive 2 hours to see a doctor that is "in" her network. Bullshit. No reason she can't pick and choose her doctors and where she goes for treatment other than the fact that our insurance tells us where we can and can't go.

"Government control of private corporations, industries and citizens." -

First off, in the US, coprorations and oil companies control half the government. And the healthcare/medical industry control the rest. Thats only part of the problem. The other part of th eproblem is that the govermnet knows this and allows it. They play together, hand in hand, "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours".

In a lot of ways, we already are a socialistic society. Just not down to the economic side of it, although our economy isnt doing any better at the moment.

"The Federal Government is already full of idiots abusing power why should we give them more." - On this point, I totally agree with you. For too long we have had too many people abusing power, and one of the worst administrations in history doing it right now. Bush and everyone currently in office, on both sides of the fence, have not only abused their power, but done nothing to stop it.

[digip]

But does that tax really help those in the gutter? France has some of the mos wide spread social welfare programs and one of highest unemployment rates, why work if the Government is going to take care of you. Most of the people I see on the street are there because of drugs and alcohol for which I have no sympathy. A Progressive tax is punishment for making money, historical data shows that the Federal Government receives more tax income because of the lower the rate. Lowering the highest income bracket tax rate from 90% to around 30% where it is now helped our economy generated wealth. That income started businesses and generated jobs for the middle class.

I don't know what part of the coutnry you live in, but here in NJ, taxes are higher than they are in any other state, and it's not the rich who are hurting. I think we need to pay more in taxes to get this country turned around, becasue Bush has bankrupted us, when we had a surplus of money, he spent it all. Problem is, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Taxes are needed, but I think only a slight increase on the lower to middle class and alarger increase ont he wealthy needs to be put in place to even the playing field.

Also, the cost of living goes up annually, but the minimum wage does not. You can't live on your own in NJ if you make minimum wage, and there are a lot of older(not kids out of school or college) who only make a little more than minimum wage who have to work 2, sometimes 3 jobs to make ends meet. Most people I know, work 2 jobs. Parents with kids having to get second jobs for the first time in their life. Our government has done nothing to help us out of this mess, and with gas prices going as high as they are, it's not just trying to afford the fuel to drive to work, but the gas to keep your heat, hot water, and cooking gas on just to survive.

There was a man who testified in congress recently about how he makes minimum wage and needs to go on welfare beause he drove so far to work, that by time he was done paying for gas for the week, he had less than half a pay check to pay for food and rent for himself and his kids.

The economy sucks ass, money is tighter than ever, and I can barely make it pay check to paycheck myself. I can imagine how hard it is on people who make less than me, becasue even with the money I make, which is pretty decent, it doesn't give me the chance to buy a house. The only thing saving me right now is that where I live, gas, heat, water and sewage are included in my rent. Otherwise, we would be homeless and "In the gutter"!! And I'm not a drunk or a drug attic, and a lot of those people who are homelss probably weren't before they ended up on the streets with no place to live.

[lazaruswws]

If the cost of living is such a problem why would you want the government to raise taxes and reduce ones existing limited budget? Everyone wants someone else to pay the tax. The economy is a problem but why don't they spend they already have more efficiently, not by abandoning Iraq. Giving the gov. more cash is giving them more power to waste on things like the EPA.

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

Frederic Bastiat

[digip]

If the cost of living is such a problem why would you want the government to raise taxes and reduce ones existing limited budget?

Because those taxes go to pay for things we need in our country, like programs for education, healthcare, research, social security(which won't be there when I retire), medicare and medicaid, etc, etc.

Also, why is it that we spedn more money on our military than ANY other country in the world COMBINED! Yeah, that one kinda pissed me off too, but it's a fact you can look up. Why do we need 2 to 3 new subs each year. oh, I know, because Bin laden might be hiding in a cave at the bottom of the ocean.

Don't even get me started on Iraq. The biggest flop in US history, with no exit strategy, and NO reason to be there in the first god damned place.

What happend to getting Bin Laden in Afghanistan? Why is this fucker still alive? What reasons do we have to be in Iraq other than oil and to raise the price of gas so people like Bush and his cronies who invested in foreign oil can make a profit for themselves.

Why is it that even Iraq wants a time table as to when we are going to leave?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8070801311.html

They don't want us there, and no matter how long we stay there, we are not going to change them or be able to help them. They have to want to change for the better and they need to start taking responsibility for their own country and the people who are in it. They need to have their own police and military step up and take over! Period. I am all for helping when asked, but they not only didn't ask for our help, they don't want it!

The economy is a problem but why don't they spend they already have more efficiently, not by abandoning Iraq. Giving the gov. more cash is giving them more power to waste on things like the EPA.

EPA is needed, only they are not doing their job because the Bush administration leans on them too much and the powers to be are corrupt. You are probably one of those people who thinks global warming is a farce.

Want to have them spend what they have on somethign better, how about putting it to good use by paying the soldiers who protect us more, give them better treatment, better benefits and care when they return home. How about making it so their families who struggle here without them don't have to worry about losing their house because they can't pay the mortgage on what they make now in the military, because as the cost of living here goes up, their base pay doesn't make up for it in the years they have been deployed.

How about putting some of that money into fixing New Orleans? Making sure that Katrina doesn't happen again, and that our response and efforts actually make a difference next time around.

How about taking some of that money they use to build al these ships, subs, planes and munitions and put it into shcools, healthcare, education, rebuild housing in bad neighborhoods, lower the interst rates, fix the housing crisis, create more jobs, invest in US companies, stop allowing corporations to do work offshore and get tax breaks for it, stop rewarding the rich with lower taxes while the middle class struggles to put food ont he table, the list goes on.

Our country is in such a fucked up state, the only thing that will help is when Bush is gone, our troops come home, and we start working on ourselves, instead of trying to police the world and run propaganda into scaring us to do what they want. I didn't vote for Bush in either election, and I stand by that! He has driven the world to hate us more than ever, he has detroyed every good thing put in place to protect us and done nothign but spread fear and hate among the people. He has divided the country, and allowed big business to take the reins, while he sits back and collects a pay check. Not one thing he set out to do during his time as president has been successfull. No child left behind is fail. Job and employment rate, fail. Housing market, fail. Stock market, fail. Economy, fail. Foreign policy, fail. Domestic policy, fill in the blanks, their all the same...

And lowering taxes hasn't stimulate the economy, or fixed our cost of living. It has only driven up the taxes on the state level, increased the cost of EVERYTHING, from gas, to food, housing, etc.

If you want to quote the man, quote something that applies: "Government is only too much disposed to follow this diabolical advice, for it is composed of ministers and officials - of men, in short, who, like all other men, desire in their hearts, and always seize every opportunity with eagerness, to increase their wealth and influence. Government is not slow to perceive the advantages it may derive from the part which is entrusted to it by the public. It is glad to be the judge and the master of the destinies of all; it will take much, for then a large share will remain for itself; it will multiply the number of its agents; it will enlarge the circle of its privileges; it will end by appropriating a ruinous proportion." - Frederic Bastiat, and he knew this in the 1800's, aside from the fact that he wasn't an American, but French. He saw this in his country, but it surely applies elsewehre. This is the current state of affairs in our country, and this is only one small part of the problem. Oh, and by the way, he was a liberal, like Obama.

[lazaruswws]

Bastiat was a classical liberal as were our founding fathers and would be called a conservative today. He loathed government bureaucracies and did not believe in allowing government power anymore than Rush Limbaugh does today. Socialists corrupted the word liberal when the failures and gulags associated with socialists became obvious. Obama is a socialist and will put his enemies in re education camps if he can.

[Shaun]

A progressive tax is not a punishment for making money, you are an idiot. It's simply a way to be able to raise enough money to effectively run the country without forcing poor people even further into poverty.

As a small scale model let's say there are two guys, one guy who earns $10000 a year and one guy who earns $100000.

Now, let's say we have a flat tax of 25%. This means the poor guy now has $7500 left and the other guy has $75000 left, with total tax revenue of $27500.

The guy living on $75000 can still easily live a very comfortable life I think you'd agree, but do you think the poor guy can take that $2500 tax hit very easily? Not really? So what's the solution? Reduce the flat tax? Any adjustment of our flat tax to relieve the poor guy of that crushing poverty will reduce the tax income significantly needed to pay for the services and infrastructure of society.

Let's look at a progressive tax instead. Instead of a 25% flat tax we have a 10% tax on the first $20000 of earnings, and 30.625% on anything above that (in real life obviously there would be more brackets, but let's not overcomplicate the example). Now, we have the same tax income for the government of $27500, but in this case the poor guy is only paying $1000 in tax, leaving him with an extra $1500 a year to feed and clothe himself. The other guy is now paying $26500 in tax of course, leaving him with a slightly lower net income of $73500 compared to his earlier income of $75000. Do you think this will affect his life at all? I don't think you can argue that the loss of $1500 is going to affect him in anyway similar to the way it would affect the guy earning $10000.

Anyone arguing that the former is a more sensible system in all honesty is a selfish moron.

[Shaun]

But does that tax really help those in the gutter? France has some of the mos wide spread social welfare programs and one of highest unemployment rates, why work if the Government is going to take care of you.

One of the highest unemployment rates out of what? The entire world? It's 7.5%, which isn't exactly great but I don't think you could call it out of control by any means. The US has 5.5%, making a 2% absolute difference.

I don't know why you picked France particularly, in fact I do because it fit what you wanted to say, but Nordic countries also have extensive social services and large welfare systems (larger than France in fact) with very high taxes. So let's look at them.

From http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-social-welfare-state

As we can see, in these countries they have a HIGHER income per capita for the working age population (in fact Norway has the second highest GDP per capita overall in the world after Luxembourg). They have a slightly higher average unemployment rate, but even with 1% more of their population out of work they are still more productive than the English speaking countries on average (since as the article says "the low-tax, high-income countries are mostly English-speaking ones that share a direct historical lineage with 19th-century Britain and its theories of economic laissez-faire"). They also have less than half of the level of poverty we do.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Norway, Denmark, Sweden, etc are perfect utopias and they do have some problems with their system, because there is no perfect system, but your suggestion that somehow high taxes and comprehensive welfare systems leads to social breakdown in some way doesn't fit the evidence.

[digip]

Bastiat was a classical liberal as were our founding fathers and would be called a conservative today. He loathed government bureaucracies and did not believe in allowing government power anymore than Rush Limbaugh does today. Socialists corrupted the word liberal when the failures and gulags associated with socialists became obvious. Obama is a socialist and will put his enemies in re education camps if he can.

I'm going to just let you bury yourself with your own words, as you seem to have no clue what you are talking about. You sound like a complete anti social, racist, who bashes his government in one sentence, but yet defends the politics of people like Bush, who is one of the worst, if not the worst president we have ever had, who has destroyed every good thing we had in this country in just a short 8 years. If anything, Bush has been liberal in spending our money, abusing our rights by running illegal wire taps, allowed oversight on all aspects of his job and the people under him, including Dickhead Cheney who is one of the main reasons we're in Iraq. He has fumbled the ball so many times, butchered the english language to the point that I'd say he needs to go back to school and participate in the "no president left behing" education program, turned over laws protecting wildlife, clean water, and land preservation while pushing for more drilling in Alaska and off the coast of Florida, when we already have millions of acres set aside for drilling that they haven't even broken ground on!

"Bastiat was a classical liberal as were our founding fathers and would be called a conservative today. " - Conservative? Horse shit. Just total horse shit. He detested big government and how they corrupted and abused their power and the people's rights, and he would have wanted the people's voices heard and understood as to what we need. He was by no means conservative in the sense of "more of the same" which is what we have now with Bush. He would have wanted change!

Obama might be young and not the most experienced in playing the game of ploitics, and evne though he wasn't my first choice for president, at least he knows what the hell he is talking about and understands that we need a change. A change from Bushism's, and lies. A change from feeding the rich while raping the poor. A change from forgetting about the people in New Orleans while you're off playing war. A change from all the same lies, failed promises, and rhetoric spouted from the mouth of Bush and his people. A change in congress, where we stop pointing fingers at the people on the other side of the aisle and start reaching across to shake hands and work on the peoples needs. A change from big business controlling the interest of the government while the rest of us struggle to get by, watching them corrupt officials with bribes and lies...

Just one last question, because I'm done replying to this, but when you answered the poll, did you choose stay,

get out, or Could be worse could have been kevin rudd? I see one vote for stay, and I am starting to think it was you.

[digip]

--nevermind--

[antirem]

Is anyone else feeling that George W Bush's term has come to an end too soon? With the prospects of a blackman or an older guy others have got to be feeling this.

JOKE

I dont care if its a joke. I know you dont mean it but if enough people says stuff like that enough people will think its normal and use it without joking.

Even tho I dont agree with Alex Jones all the time...

sums it up.

Im going to read some chomsky now :(

[Shaun]

I don't think it's true that you can't joke like that, I think humour can be a very powerful weapon against racism, using satire in such a way as to point out how absurd people who say those kinds of things are.

That said, I don't think Deags had any satirical point he was trying to make, he actually is just racist.

[Deags]

That said, I don't think Deags had any satirical point he was trying to make, he actually is just racist.

I don't know why you keep calling me a racist. I feel my views on inequality among Australians are justified. Why is one race of people getting ridiculous amounts special benefits while others are not? Your a fucking idiot and better yet you seem to be basing your opinions off fucking nothing. What's the difference between me and you? I have worked with aboriginal Australians and lived in area's where Aboriginals are the majority. I feel I have a much better understanding of these issues than most senators and yourself. So mate all I have to say to you is get stuffed. You have no fucking idea about what problems Aboriginal Australians face. Would I vote for an aboriginal for prime minister? Only if he represented me best.

I started this thread to pick fun at the common misconceptions of Americans.

Also the services like health care for "free" put more power to the government. Why is it that you can't understand why Americans would be reluctant to do something like that now after what their government has done?

Fuck off Shaun and get a fucking clue.