Voting 2008...

Because it only took Viking-Sensei three years (and the approaching end of Errant Story) to come up with a better name for "General Discussions"
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Boss Out of Town
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Re: Voting 2008...

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In that case, I'll try to work up a more detailed answer. As one must be impartial, I"ll leave off my initial reaction on the topic of whether Weyrich is a war criminal, a dangerous fanatic, or just a bigoted fool.
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Voting 2008...

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Addenda to the Illinois situation: Blago has an 11% approval rating and Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn, who works in the same building as the Governor, has not spoken to him personally in about a year.
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Voting 2008...

Post by Viking-Sensei »

Well, like I said, it wasn't an issue of censorship or thought-policing, just making sure some random hacker or hackor-bot hadn't swiped you account.

As to the Asbergers and stuff... don't worry, I get that. A good thing to try and remember to help with communication (and this goes for EVERYONE) is to frame with context. Don't just say, say why you're saying. It really helps, if you can remember to do it.
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Re: Voting 2008...

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Some weird stuff coming up in the debate over the stimulus bill, featuring, among others house minority leader John Boehner and Spearer Pelosi. . .

“How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives?” Boehner asked. “How does that stimulate the economy?”

Boehner said congressional Republicans are also concerned about the size of the package.

“Government can’t solve this problem,” he said . . .

Pelosi suggested that the package . . . could become even larger.

“It has grown,” Pelosi said, “and we’re still in the process.”
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Voting 2008...

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Boss Out of Town wrote:Some weird stuff coming up in the debate over the stimulus bill, featuring, among others house minority leader John Boehner and Speaker Pelosi. . .

“How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives?” Boehner asked. “How does that stimulate the economy?”
Did the distinguished gentleman from the state of Nevada answer this one, by chance?
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Re: Voting 2008...

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Graybeard wrote:
Boss Out of Town wrote:Some weird stuff coming up in the debate over the stimulus bill, featuring, among others house minority leader John Boehner and Speaker Pelosi. . .

“How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives?” Boehner asked. “How does that stimulate the economy?”
Did the distinguished gentleman from the state of Nevada answer this one, by chance?
Something like this . . .
Reid said a Congressional Budget Office report that says the stimulus funds won’t be pumped into the economy until 2010 doesn’t provide an accurate picture.

Republicans have used the report to back up their argument against a near $1 trillion package. But Reid said Obama Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag told them CBO only analyzed 40 percent of the bill.
The complaint, like every one Boehner has been making this past week, is pure bullshit. Every dollar spent by the government stimulates the economy. The only question is how efficient the stimulus is per capita. Putting hundreds of millions of dollars into family planning programs puts most of that money into immediately useful services and purchased goods. It has the added advantage of making the work force more productive by keeping female workers physically and emotionally healthy and on the job. It also happens to advance government policies favored by the Democrats. What would you expect? They should spend money to advance Republican policies? Who won the election?

Boehner and his cohorts have been tossing out nit-picking talking points about the stimulus package because they have no viable counter-argument to it. Their monetarist economic philosophy says it cannot work and should not be done, but they have no credibility left after spending the past thirty years pushing the monetarist policies that creating this ongoing catastrophe.

The public wants action, and they voted people into office who are willing to take action. Boehner can't stop them, and his personal beliefs (mainly that all outside his faction are phony, lying, anti-American socialists, socially inferior, and beneath contempt) prevent him negotiating.

From Boehners hyper-emotional point of view, Democrats are losers and scum who should not be running the government. He should be running the government, and its wrong, wrong, wrong that people won't let him do it. So, he throws temper tantrums, nit-picks, delays, and smears. He's got nothing else.
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Voting 2008...

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You actually took that question seriously? I was referring to the ... industry ... in Nevada that could indeed receive "stimulus" from the manufacture of contraceptives.

Amusingly enough, it still fits, as in my experience, Reid is a nickname-for-Richard.
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Re: Voting 2008...

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I am neither democrat nor republican. I'm libertarian, if that helps matters any. But I am confused a great deal about the stimulus package, as well as the bailouts.

I have a simple question I have yet to have answered.

"Where is the money coming from?"

Now, I am no economist. So I know I don't understand things well. But I can see only three answers.

The first is through increased taxes. Which completely flummoxes me. How can anyone think that taking money from the people, then running it through the inefficient organ that is the federal government, then giving back what is left after all the expenses running it through the government will garner could possibly improve the economy? At a time so many are struggling, taking even more money from them either directly (taxing them) or indirectly (taxing the corporations that pay most of our salaries, reducing the money they use to pay our salaries) is, frankly, asinine. It's a good way to put people out of work and into bankruptcy. I trust no one is proposing this.

The second is through simply printing more money. Hey! They own the mints. They can do that. Of course, if they do, then that means they flood the economy with money for which there is no actual value. If anyone recalls, in order to pay their war debt after WWI, that's what Germany did. "We need more money to pay the reparations? Okay, let's just print more so there's enough!" Anyone remember the exchange rate in Germany in 1923? 4,200,000,000,000 Marks to 1 US dollar. People had to use wheelbarrows to cart the money needed to buy a loaf of bread. Yeah... I don't want to be paying $5,000 for a candy bar in five years.

The third is to just tack it on to the National Debt. Anyone recall that every election cycle since we started having a national debt, people have decried it as the looming doom that will destroy the nation? Yeah... let's just bump that up shall we?

I don't get it. Anyone care to tell me how we're going to pay for this without undoing the very good we're trying to do?
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Re: Voting 2008...

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Graybeard wrote:You actually took that question seriously? I was referring to the ... industry ... in Nevada that could indeed receive "stimulus" from the manufacture of contraceptives.

Amusingly enough, it still fits, as in my experience, Reid is a nickname-for-Richard.
Liscenced prostitution in Nevada makes enough money to pay for its own contraception. We're told by the Libertarians that this is one of the better reasons to legalize prostitution: you can regulate it properly, so it causes less physical and emotional damage to the sex workers employed in the brothels and escort agencies. This is the reason armies try to regulate it in war zones. It is going to happen, and you need to have it happen in such a way that it doesn't generate more casualties than actual combat.

Family planning programs have only a limited connection to prostitution. They have been proven over and over again around the world as a cost-effective way to minimize human misery and improve public health, to lower crime and raise living standards among the impoverished, the working poor, the semi-literate, the religiously and culturally oppressed, and, yes, among the foolish and morally debauched. As an economic investment, you can hardly find a more effective boast to productivity than giving the lower working classes and the underclass the means to control their fertility.
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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Re: Voting 2008...

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Sareth wrote:I am neither democrat nor republican. I'm libertarian, if that helps matters any. But I am confused a great deal about the stimulus package, as well as the bailouts.

I have a simple question I have yet to have answered . . . "Where is the money coming from?"
Ah! That’s the simple part of the question. We’re going to borrow it from the Chinese and Japanese, same as we’ve been doing for the rest of the 5 trillion dollars in debt we’ve run up over the last 8 years. The Chinese federal bank decides to stop buying our paper, our currency collapses and we get hyper-inflation.

We’ve given the Chinese an economic gun pointed right at our heads, and we have to hope no international crisis pops up that might incite them to pull the trigger. Peking has proven over and over again over the last 60 years that it is perfectly willing to inflict harm its own people to strike at an enemy. We will have to be very careful to avoid any drastic confrontation with them for the next decade or so.

You put crooks, liars, incompetents, and cowards in charge of the government, this is what happens. We've been digging this hole for 45 years and it will take about that much time to crawl out of it.
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly. --- Henry Fabre
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