Has the ACLU stopped the goverment from collecting SS taxes? Go ahead and stop paying your FICA and see where that gets you.

But you just go ahead and keep dreaming up excuses on why the reputedly most powerful nation in the world shouldn't provide basic care for each and every citizen. And then keep trying to convince us you're a good American. You're only fooling yourself.

That's like studied stupidity right there.

Hank, WRO is one of the people on your side. This is the base of your party.

Of all the godawfulstupid and retarded things I've seen on this website lately...this one takes the cake...hell, it takes two cakes, a box of brownies, and a dozen fruit filled donuts.

WRO, were you born that stupid, or did you work at it?

Fish on...

Todd

Oh boy, tax credits! That means you get money back that you didn't pay in so you can pay for your own health care. And he isn't going to raise taxes! Talk about inbred whacko dumshits, you take the prize KK. I know that aspect hasn't been finalized. None of it has and that is precisely why the questions are being asked and the charges are flying. See you moron, most of us aren't gullible to swallow the kool aid when the government says "trust us"!

Your bull$hit really makes for good conversation when sensible people get together and talk about idiot left wing whackos. Didn't know you were so famous did you? Keep whacking!

It's said there's no such thing as a stupid question, so I looked again to make sure WRO's post was not a question. Given the excessive collapse of the country's financial structure due to insufficient regulation, I didn't think anyone would say something this stupid. WRO must have been trying to give us all a laugh. Seems to have worked.

Sg

Rather than "I'll tell a funny joke and make 'em laugh" kinda deals, I'm pretty sure it was more of a "I'll say something really stupid, 'cuz I'm not so bright, and then that'll make 'em laugh" kinda things...

Fish on...

Todd

Because of goverment regulation/bailouts no major company has learned a damn thing from their mistakes other than, if they fuk up the goverment will bail them out. With a true free market situation, the weak fail and strong previal creating a better smarter product in the end.. Instead we have companies that have been propped up repeatedly by goverment loans, laws, etc that are directly attached to the goverment [censored].

My thoughts with healthcare, is that the massive amount of healthcare regulations, espicially with regards to anti competition laws etc has created the animal were dealing with now. My contention is that each state was a true free market situation, instead of a goverment implemeted oligarchy like it is now, the prices would fall and the quality would increase. It has worked in many other industries.

With the exception of national security, firemen, and police can one of y'all enlightened folk name things that the goverment does more efficiently and provide a better service than private industry?

WRO,

You think the price we pay for national security is an example of economic efficiency? Maybe an accidental poor example on your part, but I couldn't let it pass.

Inefficiency is one of the prices we pay for democracy. Democracy, by design, is slow and inefficient, yet it better represents our pluralist interests than any other governmental arrangement.

Getting back to your free market, the model of free market of capitalism isn't flawless. It permits oligopolies to become monopolies and allows them to gain a major control of government by purchasing it (as in, we have the best Congress money can buy), and create social economic collapses just like what our government has been dealing with for the past year or so. A totally free market is just as undesirable, from a social economic outlook, as a totally controlled socialist, communist, facist, etc. model. A balance of economic freedom and government control is necessary to create the most desirable mix of social and economic benefits to all citizens, not just the most lucky, resourcefull, ambitious, and greedy. Since those values are largely subjectively defined, we won't agree on the mix, so in a pluralistic society it stays in flux, but absent a reasonable dose of freedom and economic controls, we're screwed.

Sg

Democracies aren't necessarily supposed to be efficient..."efficiency" is how a dictator can change the face of a nation with one sweep of a pen, with no checks or balances.

The drawn out give and take that takes all interests into account and typically ends up pleasing the most possible, while not pleasing a good chunk at both ends of the spectrum, might be the most applicable definition of "democracy".

Fish on...

Todd

Salmo,

I was definately leading on the service side of things for national security, as a model of efficency it most assuredly fails as does almost any goverment ran entity, in thanks to no small part the "purchases" made by companies with regards to their congressmen and elected goverment officials.

WRO,

Well this thread's ending badly if we're no longer slinging mud and calling each other dumb schits and stuff . . .

What now?

Sg

Would you feel better if I called you a Fly flicking nancy boy? It doesn't need to go to the level that it is taken on this board at a general rule. Civil people, no matter there leanings, can have civil debates. Civil people when incited by borderline hate speach, can make comments as uncivil as my first one. One thing that has been established, is that we have problems in our country and politics, what is yet to be decided is how to solve them and thats where in the problem lies. Extremeists on both sides only serve to make the problems worse. I consider myself middle of the road, although by the standards put forth by some on this board, I am gun toting, redneck neanderthal, ready to reinstitute the catholic crusades.

Hey Aunty, I tried to post a response to your bullsh!t challenge at sh.net, but I don't have posting privileges on the Politics forum there.

The sh!t is still hitting the fan.

September 13, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Boy, Oh, Boy
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!
The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.
I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.
I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.
But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

“A lot of these outbursts have to do with delegitimizing him as a president,” said Congressman Jim Clyburn, a senior member of the South Carolina delegation. Clyburn, the man who called out Bill Clinton on his racially tinged attacks on Obama in the primary, pushed Pelosi to pursue a formal resolution chastising Wilson.

“In South Carolina politics, I learned that the oli ve branch works very seldom,” he said. “You have to come at these things from a position of strength. My father used to say, ‘Son, always remember that silence gives consent.’

Barry Obama of the post-’60s Hawaiian ’hood did not live through the major racial struggles in American history. Maybe he had a problem relating to his white basketball coach or catching a cab in New York, but he never got beaten up for being black.

Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension. Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

The state that fired the first shot of the Civil War has now given us this: Senator Jim DeMint exhorted conservatives to “break” the president by upending his health care plan. Rusty DePass, a G.O.P. activist, said that a gorilla that escaped from a zoo was “just one of Michelle’s ancestors.” Lovelorn Mark Sanford tried to refuse the president’s stimulus money. And now Joe Wilson.

“A good many people in South Carolina really reject the notion that we’re part of the union,” said Don=2 0Fowler, the former Democratic Party chief who teaches politics at the University of South Carolina. He observed that when slavery was destroyed by outside forces and segregation was undone by civil rights leaders and Congress, it bred xenophobia.

“We have a lot of people who really think that the world’s against us,” Fowler said, “so when things don’t happen the way we like them to, we blame outsiders.” He said a state legislator not long ago tried to pass a bill to nullify any federal legislation with which South Carolinians didn’t agree. Shades of John C. Calhoun!

It may be President Obama’s very air of elegance and erudition that raises hackles in some. “My father used to say to me, ‘Boy, don’t get above your raising,’ ” Fowler said. “Some people are prejudiced anyway, and then they look at his education and mannerisms and get more angry at him.”
Clyburn had a warning for Obama advisers who want to forgive Wilson, ignore the ignorant outbursts and move on: “They’re going to have to develop ways in this White House to deal with things and not let them fester out there. Otherwise, they’ll see numbers moving in the wrong direction.”

A year ago dissent was patriotic. Today it's racist.

I think a lot of dems voted for the war because they very, very mistakenly thought they could trust the President of the United States of America...a mistake we'll all be paying for for a very long time.

Fish on...

Todd

Your Boy Bill Clinton was saying the exact same thing...remember ?

Bill Clinton's not "my boy", and last time I checked he hadn't been in elected office for quite a while...

Fish on...

Todd

Serious question: How would you rate Clinton as a Prez right now in time ?