World Politics

[redtreviso]

The TBrs ARE the Republican Party

 

[rhubroma]

Why? Are you that insecure in your beliefs? Or is it you just can't handle anyone not following your long drawn out line of thinking?

Not at all. I'm just adept at making myself scarce if someone, who we already know what they have to say for themselves and who is basically unsupportable, wants to talk to me. I avoid anyone like that who wants to question me and am very smart when it comes to taking evasive action.

 

[rhubroma]

Meanwhile, Abu Mazen has cleverly asked the UN to vote a resolution on the Palestinian State. The arab spring and the so called war to bring democracy to the Middle East, makes the limbo status and the inevitable US veto increasingly unsustainable and hypocritical.

While Europe overwhelmingly supports such an official recognition, which would also gain the palestinians leverage in the International Criminal Court at the Hague in asking for justice in regards to the illegal Israeli colonies. For this reason Israel vehemently opposes any such recognition, though is increasingly finding itself isolated in the destabilized region with Egypt, Syria and Turkey, which did not receive the requested official apology for the relief protesters slain in the waters off Gaza and so has expelled the Israeli ambassador from Ankara, all increasingly hostile to it.

As far as Turkey is concerned, there is also the thorny question of a recently discovered oil field in the waters off Cipro, which the Greek part has claimed under its exclusive patrimony and is backed by US and Israeli industrial and technical assistance; while Turkey has made it quite clear by sending war ships that it intends to exploit the fossil fuel on behalf of the Turkish controlled part of the island.

 

[Captain_Cavman]

...

I now know exactly what it means to be a member of the Tea Party.

Puts you one up on everybody else I suppose.

 

[usedtobefast]

Yes, but I often wonder what good the race is doing us? But that is entirely another matter, I know.

as someone said,"even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat"

 

[ramjambunath]

I have a question for the American users, do any of you support Obama's multi billion dollar packages for every single problem. Many years down the line who will be paying of those debts? If a tax increase for the cream of the society is so widely criticised then how, in the future, are these massive sums going to be recollected. If the dollar wasn't the reserve currency, would he have such leverage in just signing packages (now) worth trillions of dollars, if it is, I certainly hope it's not us around the rest of the world who repay the debt of what is a case of bad governance among the private and public sector.

 

[ramjambunath]

I hope the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gets off his **** in New York to come back and at least make a gesture visit to Sikkim where there has been an earthquake and 90 people at least have been killed with likelihood of massive landslides in the near future. I think the External Affairs Minister can handle any talks (no major negotiations are taking place atm barring the water share with Bangladesh which has completely stalled due problems in share of water with West Bengal so that's not going to be resolved).

He hasn't done anything during his last two years as prime minister in terms of leading the government and the least he could do was visit the suffering people when aid has been slow to arrive due to the mountainous terrain. Even the statements he has made in parliament have been a feeble attempt to hide serious problems he has in the govt and in the intelligence failure against terror attacks (the Mumbai blasts in July and 7th Sept High Court blasts). He held a meeting about the situation yesterday and of he goes to UN General Assembly today.

 

[gregod]

I have a question for the American users, do any of you support Obama's multi billion dollar packages for every single problem. Many years down the line who will be paying of those debts? If a tax increase for the cream of the society is so widely criticised then how, in the future, are these massive sums going to be recollected. If the dollar wasn't the reserve currency, would he have such leverage in just signing packages (now) worth trillions of dollars, if it is, I certainly hope it's not us around the rest of the world who repay the debt of what is a case of bad governance among the private and public sector.

you pose a good question.

since the dollar is the de facto reserve currency, the US could use this to its advantage to borrow its way out of the current economic crisis. unfortunately, this is politically untenable because republicans (and some democrats) are opposed to any increased spending.

in a perfect world, the congress would vote for stimulus and infrastructure spending financed by historically low interest rates (almost zero). when the US economy gets going again, the taxes generated would (hopefully) create a surplus (like what bush had when he took office) and instead of giving it away this would be used to pay down some of its debt.

the above is unlikely to happen, IMO. i foresee an american future of continued political and economic stagnation. ultimately, this will probably lead to the rest of the world having to forgive some US debt; in effect, bail out america at other countries' expense.

it is also unlikely that the US will be able to tax its way out of its problems. any tax on rich people is opposed and the absolute fairest tax of them all, the estate tax, is pretty universally reviled. societies that maintain equality of opportunity and mobility typically have high estate taxes. remember, you have done nothing to earn the money you inherit. it is merely by accident of birth that you get anything. the US used to have practically confiscatory estate taxes. it is one reason why the robber barons created everlasting charitable foundations. but this tax has been so mischaracterized and attacked that it is political poison.

 

[ramjambunath]

Unfortunately, this situation of leave the rich alone is prevalent worldwide. In India (with 40% below poverty) in 2006, a Rs 6000 crore ($1.2-1.5 billion) package for agriculture (farmers here are some of the most impoverished people) was widely criticised by all the electronic and most of the print media (who are after adverts rather than real news) as populism but a financial bailout in 2008 December (which wasn't essential) amounting upto Rs35000 crore($7 billion roughly) was lauded by the same media as necessary. It's highly unfortunate because most of the media here is seriously not in touch with the actual country and with actual issues yet concentrate on a hunger strike by some politician.

 

[Merckx index]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2011/09/20/our_economic_nightmare_is_just_beginning_263849.html

TODAY’S RECESSION does not merely resemble the Great Depression; it is, to a real extent, a recurrence of it. It has the same unique causes and the same initial trajectory. Both downturns were triggered by a financial crisis coming on top of, and then deepening, a slowdown in industrial production and employment that had begun earlier and that was caused in part by rapid technological innovation. The 1920s saw the spread of electrification in industry; the 1990s saw the triumph of computerization in manufacturing and services. The recessions in 1926 and 2001 were both followed by “jobless recoveries.”
In each case, the financial crisis generated an overhang of consumer and business debt that—along with growing unemployment and underemployment, and the failure of real wages to rise—reduced effective demand to the point where the economy, without extensive government intervention, spun into a downward spiral of joblessness. The accumulation of debt also undermined the use of monetary policy to revive the economy. Even zero-percent interest rates could not induce private investment.
Finally, in contrast to the usual post-World War II recession, our current downturn, like the Great Depression, is global in character. Financial disturbances—aggravated by an unstable international monetary system—have spread globally. During the typical recession, a country suffering a downturn might hope to revive itself by cutting its spending. That might temporarily increase unemployment, but it would also depress wages and prices, simultaneously cutting the demand for imports and making a country’s exports more competitive against those of its rivals. But, when the recession is global, you get what John Maynard Keynes called the “paradox of thrift” writ large: As all nations cut their spending and attempt to devalue their currencies (which makes their exports cheaper), global demand shrinks still more, and the recession deepens.

Politicians today might not want to remember, but, in the first phase of the Great Depression, the major economies, oblivious to the paradox of thrift, took steps that made things much worse. In the United States, Hoover, who was a Republican progressive in the tradition of William Howard Taft rather than Calvin Coolidge, responded initially to the stock market crash and the drop in employment by proposing a tax cut and a modest public works program. He also tried to bring industry together to agree to invest and to maintain wages and prices. But, when firms continued to cut back, unemployment continued to rise, and tax revenues dropped—creating a budget deficit—Hoover and the Republicans turned to cutting government spending and raising taxes on the assumption that a government, like a business, should not respond to hard times by going further into debt. In a news conference in December 1930, Hoover declared, “Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the Public Treasury.” In fiscal year 1933 (which began in June 1932), federal spending actually decreased. By March 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt took office, the unemployment rate had climbed to 24.9 percent from 3.2 percent in 1929.
In Great Britain…
In Germany…
In all these cases, the lesson was clear: Cutting spending and raising taxes to balance the budget had made things much worse.




IN THEIR INITIAL response to the recession of 2008, leaders in the United States and Europe appeared to heed the lessons of the Great Depression. Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy each backed generous government spending programs to revive the economy, and they also advanced proposals for reforming the increasingly dysfunctional international monetary system. In the United States, Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke and Council of Economic Advisers chair Christina Romer had both made their mark as academics with analyses of the Great Depression. And Britain’s Labour Party had become a bastion of Keynesianism after World War II. In short, there seemed little doubt that the follies of the late ’20s and early ’30s would be avoided this time.
But then problems began to arise. Obama’s initial stimulus proved woefully insufficient to stem the rise in unemployment. The $787 billion federal stimulus included $288 billion in tax cuts, which were as likely to be saved as to be spent; meanwhile, the stimulus was partially offset by an estimated $425 billion in state and local spending cuts and tax increases. The need for more spending was evident to Romer and to liberal economists, including Paul Krugman and former Council of Economic Advisers head Joseph Stiglitz; but Obama failed in his first year to press energetically for additional spending. His influential treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, believed that, after the initial stimulus, the recovery was proceeding on its own, and Obama’s attention was focused on passing health care reform. By the end of 2009, the failure of the recovery to take hold had emboldened the Republican opposition and given birth to a new right-wing movement, the Tea Party, that called for a drastic reduction of government spending.

SOMETIMES LEADERS do things that harm their own nations because they don’t know any better. Hoover, like many Republicans and Democrats at the time, couldn’t conceive of deficit spending as being beneficial under any circumstances. But others have had choices and have still adopted the alternative that is most damaging to their country. That was true of British Labour during the beginning of the Great Depression—and it is true of the leading American and European politicians who have backed the current round of austerity measures.
There are three factors that explain these bad choices…The third factor has to do with what economist Robert Skidelsky, trying to explain the dogged adherence of MacDonald’s Labour government to the gold standard and to laissez-faire capitalism, called “political culture.” It is particularly relevant to the United States and Britain. Nations, like individuals, grow up with certain assumptions about government and the economy that can persist over centuries. Britain and the United States both have strong anti-statist traditions, dating from the English and American revolutions, that were reinforced by their economic success. Writes the anthropologist Jared Diamond, “The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity.”
In the American political culture, opposition to “big government” has become an article of faith that brooks no contradiction. When I was in New Hampshire this summer, I accompanied Republican Congressman Charlie Bass on a visit to a small factory that produces industrial-strength air-conditioning filters. Bass asked the factory owner what he would do first if he were Obama. The owner replied immediately: “Cut spending.” Later, as I was touring the plant, I learned that schools, government buildings, and the military bought their filters there.
As Bass was leaving, I asked the owner whether, in proposing that Obama reduce government spending, he wasn’t cutting off his nose to spite his face. He was taken aback and took a moment to reply. He began by denying that cutting federal spending would have any effect on his business, which was mostly local, but then acknowledged that schools and offices now had less money to buy filters. It was as if he had never made the connection before between his deep-seated cultural assumptions about government and the fate of his own business—and by extension that of other businesses.

 

[rhubroma]

as someone said,"even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat"

I thought this might interest you, since it regards the question I posed and the quote you gave in response:

Economic Fundamentalists

During the Age of Enlightenment of Bacon, Descartes or Hegel, nowhere around the world was there a difference in living standard that was more than double in proportion to the poorest zones. Today the richest country, Qatar, vaunts a salary pro capita that’s 428 times greater than that of the poorest country in the world, Zimbabwe. And one is talking about, let’s not forget it, a comparison between median values that is a record of the proverbial two poles statistic.

The tenacious persistence of poverty, as well as the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, on a planet that is obsessively caught up in a market fundamentalism that preaches the dogma of eternal economic growth to proselytize the masses, is sufficient to constrain reasonable people to take a pause for reflection on the collateral victims of the “goings of this operation.”

The ever more profound abyss that separates who is poor and without opportunity from the opulent, optimistic and rowdy world – an abyss that in these times can only be surpassed by energetic and unscrupulous climbers – is another evident reason of great concern. Just as the authors of the cited articles below admonish us, if the instruments at our disposal for survival and for living with any dignity become increasingly rare, scarce and inaccessible, such that just to get by we have to resort to a ferocious struggle till the last drop of blood between those that are abundantly provisioned and the destitute who are abandoned to themselves: the principle victim to the growing inequality will be democracy itself.

Yet there is another and no less grave reason to be alarmed: namely, the growing level of opulence translates into a growing rate of consumption. Moreover, to make yourself rich is such a desired value today only in so far as it helps to better the quality of life, by which “better quality of life” (or at least to render it less unsatisfactory) exclusively means “consume more” - that is according to the jargon of the followers of the Church of Economic Growth that’s by now diffused throughout the entire planet. The followers of this fundamentalist faith are convinced that all the paths to redemption, salvation, divine and secular grace and toward happiness (both immediate and eternal) pass through the stores.

Thus the more the shelves are full at stores waiting for them to be emptied by researchers of happiness, the more we drain the earth, the only container/producer of resources (primary materials and energy) that are necessary to newly restocking those same shelves. This is a truth which science has confirmed, but (according to a recent study) is cut out of 53% of the space dedicated to “sustainability” themes in the American press, and is minimized or completely hushed-up in other cases.

That which gets ignored in this blinding and deafening selection, which dims and makes us irresponsible, is the warning launched two years ago by the British academic Tim Jackson in his article Prosperity without growth: Economics for a finite planet: before the end of this century “our children and grandchildren will have to survive in an environment with a hostile climate and diminished resources, among destroyed habitats, decimated species, a scarcity of food, mass migrations and inevitable wars.” Our consumption, fed by credit and hastily instigated by the market culture, as well as assisted and amplified by the governments, is “unsustainable from the ecological point of view, highly problematical from the social one and extremely unstable form the economic one.”

Another illuminating observation of Jackson is that in a social scenario such as ours in which a fifth of the global population enjoys 74% of total annual earnings, while the poorest fifth has to make themselves content with just 2%, the widely diffused tendency to justify the devastation provoked – namely, a wealth imbalance caused by the economic policies of the rich nations and their rapacity – through claims that economic growth responds to the noble exigency of moving civilization beyond poverty is none other than a brazen act of hypocrisy and an offense against reason. Yet even this observation has been almost universally ignored by the most popular (and effective) information apparatuses , or else in the best of cases has been relegated to the back pages and late night programs famously dedicated to inviting guests who are normally used to being voices crying out in the desert.

Back in 1990, twenty years or so before Jackson’s work, American economist Elinor Ostrom in her Governing the commons : the evolution of institutions for collective action had warned that the conviction that has been propagated without rest according to which individuals are naturally predisposed to seek short term gains and profit, and to react following the principle of “each for himself and God for everyone,” doesn’t hold up to the facts. The conclusion of Ostrom’s research on small businesses was rather different: in the communal ambit people tend to make decisions that are not entirely based upon profit. It’s now time to ask ourselves: are those forms of “communal life” that the majority of us only know through the ethnographic studies of the few remaining vestiges from the past still extent in the today’s world, which have been “surpassed and left behind,” truly things that have been irrevocably concluded?

Or, perhaps, is there about to emerge a more truthful and alternative vision of history (and with it an alternative conception of “progress”): which says that the current recourse to happiness is merely an episode and not an irreversible and irrevocable jump forward, is rather a simple historical deviation, una tantum, intrinsically and inevitably temporary?

Source: Zygmunt Bauman, la Repubblica

 

[redtreviso]

Warren Tells It Like it Is: "No One in This Country Got Rich on his Own"


""My favorite part of looking at this hole, we got in this hole, one billion dollars, uh, one trillion dollars, on tax cuts for the rich under George Bush. We got into this hole two trillion dollars on two wars that were put on a credit card for our children and grandchildren to pay off. And we got into this hole one trillion on a Medicare drug program that was not paid for and was 40% more expensive than its needs to be because it was a giveaway to the drug companies. That's just four trillion right there.

So part of the way you fix this problem is don't do those things!

I hear all this, oh this is class warfare, no! There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there -- good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid forYou didn't have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea -- God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.""

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/20/1018700/-Warren-Tells-It-Like-it-Is:-No-One-in-This-Country-Got-Rich-on-his-Own?via=siderec

 

[redtreviso]

PNAC member

""The law that created the deficit committee also created a zero-sum game: Any expensive program that escapes the budget knife does so at the expense of cuts to other programs. If the military contractors succeed in keeping the war budget intact, they'll likely do so at the expense of Social Security and Medicare. That means money that would go to your Social Security or Medicare benefits will instead go into the hands of people like Lockheed Martin CEO Robert J. Stephens, who last year made $21.9 million, almost totally from taxpayer-funded military contracts.
""

http://warcosts.com/keepsocialsecurity/

 

[aphronesis]

I thought this might interest you, since it regards the question I posed and the quote you gave in response:

Economic Fundamentalists

During the Age of Enlightenment of Bacon, Descartes or Hegel, nowhere around the world was there a difference in living standard that was more than double in proportion to the poorest zones. Today the richest country, Qatar, vaunts a salary pro capita that’s 428 times greater than that of the poorest country in the world, Zimbabwe. And one is talking about, let’s not forget it, a comparison between median values that is a record of the proverbial two poles statistic.

Source: Zygmunt Bauman, la Repubblica

when did he publish this? i'm not finding it readily.

 

[VeloCity]

Great post by Andrew Sullivan today:

"I will never think of America the same way after the Bush-Cheney administration. They ripped the scales off my eyes; they proved that America isn't, in the end, different; that its core moral principles, such as the prohibition of torture, are nostrums to be tossed aside at the whim of a few very scared and incompetent men; that the rule of law ends when it comes to presidential power, when he can simply order dip**** lawyers to say black is white; when no regret is ever truly expressed about the tens of thousands of Iraqis who died under US occupation; when the architects of these strategic and moral disasters are given legal immunity and peddle books on talkshows defending and bragging of their own awful legacy.

It has sickened me - the lack of morality, the lack of accountability, the constant recourse to mass amnesia. And in a man like Perry, you see all the characteristics of this belligerent, diplomatically autistic, aggressively stupid, and fundamentalist psyche. The dragon we thought we had slain is stalking the land again."

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast...of-american-exceptionalism-was-shattered.html

 

[Captain_Cavman]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2011/09/20/our_economic_nightmare_is_just_beginning_263849.html


A truly astonishing article. One that avoids all mention of banking, of margin collapse, of the effects of WWII, of property values, of policy on bankruptcies, of the cost of borrowing, of devaluation, of commodity prices... I could go on.

 

[rhubroma]

when did he publish this? i'm not finding it readily.

Correction: Well if you are refering to Zygmunt Bauman the orignal context is: LIQUID MODERNITY AND DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT, which was originally published in 2000.

 

[rhubroma]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2011/09/20/our_economic_nightmare_is_just_beginning_263849.html




I've come to the conclusion that the numbers are simply too large.

 

[Captain_Cavman]

I've come to the conclusion that the numbers are simply too large.

As borne out by the (non-) actions of the Fed yesterday.

Looks like they've given up any attempt to salvage into the economy and it's just a case of making sure they get to the lifeboats before any women and children.

 

[ramjambunath]

I think Obama's speech at the UN yesterday was not good. He pointed out revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and the ongoing Libyan rebellion and said that Iran and Syria were not giving their citizens their fundamental rights. Now, I agree that Syria is an actual situation but he shouldn't be trying to force Iran govt(which is a democratically elected govt and far more than the Afghan president with whom he gave joint statement not one week ago) into submission. Iran is much more forward as an Islamic state than many others including their allies Saudi Arabia and Bahrain (which he says he helped the govt listen to the rebellion in the speech, but that's ********).

Yes, the Libyan rebellion seems genuine and deserves support which the west has given but the Bahrain rebellion (Bahrain is predominantly poor, inexplicably so due to their oil) was swept under the carpet and instead of claiming to do something which he hasn't he could just have left it out of his speech.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

By Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Special to CNN

At http://www.thepurpleplans.org, I provide five radical, but absolutely essential plans to fix taxes, health care, Social Security, the financial system, and energy policy. Collectively, they would more than eliminate the fiscal gap and get our economy out of the emergency room.

Finally got around to reading his Purple plan. It is very, very similar to the Fair Tax, the way it's proposed by Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, a republican running for president who is candid, but has no chance of winning (I don't think he was even invited to the last debate).

First there are plenty flaws in the Fair Tax. For one all the elderly people who paid payroll taxes for decades, and now live a life of very low taxes, will be taxed again every dollar above poverty. So, if you were a skilled worker who saved good money over the years and now live on $60k a year - not rich, but not bad- you are going to get shafted. Second this tax doesn't adequately address securities and capital gains tax. So if you're a trust fund baby, don't produce a single thing in society, fly across the planet on vacation all the time, but don't spend much money in the US, this tax is for you. Next, there are a lot of very small businesses who if it weren't for itemization on their taxes would be out of business. I'm talking about someone running a company with a handful of people, with a net profit of about $100k or so. Right now, if they take that profit and put it back into their business, they will definitely pay very low taxes. If they don't, and simply pocket, the cash, they'll pay more. With this tax, that incentive is suppressed.

People love the sound of a flax tax, or fair tax, but the real benefit it appeals to with people is something that should be taken care of in the progressive tax system: the fact that the entire system is corrupted with bribery in the form of campaign contributions and lobbying. While on the surface it would appear a flat or fair tax would eliminate all the special interest warping of the tax code, it isn't foolproof in the long run, and doesn't get to the root of the problem. So until we have a system where people like the Koch Brothers or George Soros can't buy access to politicians, there isn't going to be a lot of change.

 

[rhubroma]

I think Obama's speech at the UN yesterday was not good. He pointed out revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and the ongoing Libyan rebellion and said that Iran and Syria were not giving their citizens their fundamental rights. Now, I agree that Syria is an actual situation but he shouldn't be trying to force Iran govt(which is a democratically elected govt and far more than the Afghan president with whom he gave joint statement not one week ago) into submission. Iran is much more forward as an Islamic state than many others including their allies Saudi Arabia and Bahrain (which he says he helped the govt listen to the rebellion in the speech, but that's ********).

Yes, the Libyan rebellion seems genuine and deserves support which the west has given but the Bahrain rebellion (Bahrain is predominantly poor, inexplicably so due to their oil) was swept under the carpet and instead of claiming to do something which he hasn't he could just have left it out of his speech.

Iran is a theocracy, which is the worst type of government of all. The elections are a joke, the clerical/political class is tyrannous.

The country is about as horrendously governed as it could possibly be. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is illuminating in terms of just how bad the country has been run since the religious fundamentalists took over.

Having said that, until America keeps up its unwavering support of Israel, to the scandalous detriment of the Palestinians, the rhetorical diatribes of Ahmadinejad against the Jewish state will unfortunately have a responsive audience in the muslim world; which is a shame, also because the non-fundamentalist people of Iran are the ones who have been the principle victims of his oppressive regime and it is only the most recent case of the Persian tragedy that has persisted since the revolution. Obama's speach was, consequently, most disappointing in regards to the Palestinian struggle.

The US-Saudi Bahrain backed monarchy, though, which has repressed the shiite population in its recent uprisings, only makes America look even more hypocritical in its quest to promote democracy in the region and in its choices regarding where to deploy its military and where not to. For example in Libya, but not Bahrain.

 

[VeloCity]

The more of those Republican debates I watch, the more I believe ALL conservatives (and most Republicans) are shallow, reprehensible, morally bankrupt, ignorant people who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the levers of power.

Perry and Bachmann and Santorum and Gingrich and co are the people who you want to represent you?? That would just be pathetic if it weren't so scary for the rest of us.

 

[redtreviso]

The more of those Republican debates I watch, the more I believe ALL conservatives (and most Republicans) are shallow, reprehensible, morally bankrupt, ignorant people who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the levers of power.

Perry and Bachmann and Santorum and Gingrich and co are the people who you want to represent you?? That would just be pathetic if it weren't so scary for the rest of us.

Why do you hate America? (sniff sniff)

 

[fatandfast]

The more of those Republican debates I watch, the more I believe ALL conservatives (and most Republicans) are shallow, reprehensible, morally bankrupt, ignorant people who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the levers of power.

Perry and Bachmann and Santorum and Gingrich and co are the people who you want to represent you?? That would just be pathetic if it weren't so scary for the rest of us.

what should really shake your core is who they are appealing to, forget how shallow a few hundred elected right wingers are. Think of the simple solutions that they are offering up.
Then if you want to be hide under your bed afraid watch Obama speak to the UN. He has to stay on point not to dump the Israel everything vote down the toilet.
Then if you want to really feel shame for him, watch him stand on an overused rust clump that leads from Ohio to Kentucky yelling about creating jobs in the expanding industry of bridge repair. He should start saying shovel ready again because that's where he is leading the dems.

He has think tanks trying to figure out how to make new college grads not default before they get started w life. Maybe they should have studied bridge construction rather than civil, mech engineering, the actually shovel ready part of the constriction. Not how to design the bridge. Each morning I check the headlines to see if we have invaded Canada for the cash, coal and oil they have, I put nothing past this guy.

One party wants FEMA and the EPA the other says they should be destroyed. I hope we are not asked where we fall on these issues, at least not outside the ballot box. I already feel sick when I hear clapping for Bachmann or Perry and it's not an audio track. Obama found the equiv to Dan Quayle in Biden.
Looks like I votin' for Nader