BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | Rage on the Radio | Full Segment | PBS
http://tinyurl.com/4373r5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ3ap-BK0e0&feature=related

Rage on the airwaves / Rightwing Republican Propaganda
July 24, 2009 / http://tinyurl.com/lf3u9n
What happens when America's airwaves fill with hate? BILL MOYERS JOURNAL revisits a tough look at the hostile industry of "Shock Jock" media with a hard-hitting examination of its effects on our nation's political discourse.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07242009/watch2.html

Yes I believe the media as a whole is the BEAST mentioned in scripture.

LOL I Kid You Not!

Half of America believes Obama is a communist / socialist who was born in Kenya and the other half believes he is liberal.

Both halves are wrong because of corporate Right Wing Propaganda and the half truths in corporate mainstream media.

==========================


The Republican Noise Machine
right-wing media and how it corrupts democracy
http://tinyurl.com/jncdt
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Propaganda/Republican_Noise_Machine.html

Oh, as destructive as they may be, I think that we will survive them. Our history is full of extreme rhetoric on both sides. We are still here.

I am not much of a fan of hate speech or even rude speech. I am not a fan of that rhetoric that produces more heat than light. I do not like rhetoric designed to appeal to emotion rather than reason. Nonetheless, I prefer it to the alternative. the ability of anyone to silence it.

I love the fact that I can still choose not to listen.

GET OVER BLAMING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WHILE YOU ARE JUST A LIBERAL MOUTHPIECE. I'D RATHER PROTEST FOR MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS THAN THESE LIBERALS PROTESTING FOR THE "ILLEGAL " IMMIGRANTS.DON'T YOU GET IT THEY ARE ILLEGAL!I'M ALL FOR STANDING UP FOR MY COUNTRY INSTEAD OF APOLOGIZING FOR IT.IF YOU CAN'T SEE OBAMA TAKING OVER THE BANKS AND CORPORATIONS YOUR BLIND OR AS I SURMISE A LIBERAL. AMERICA SHOULD BE STRONG AND WE ARE ANYTHING BUT THAT. DID YOU KNOW THE LIBERALS AT THE PENTAGON WANT TO HAVE A MEDAL FOR "RESTRAINT", THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT YOU WANT.DON'T MAKE FUN OF BECK, HE IS ALITTLE CRAZY BUT HE LOVES HIS COUNTRY AND YOU CLEARLY DO NOT,YOU CHOOSE TO RIDE THE WAVE AND BE A FOLLOWER RATHER THAN A LEADER.

It's the main stream media that is hurting America by not doing it's job. When have they challenged this Administration or the Left? When do they report news that might expose negatives against the Left? I don't see it.

They seem to be an extension to the left wing agenda, when they should be providing the necessary checks and balances. They should be the voice of the people and not the voice of this Administration!

So what choice do people have but to listen to right wing media, which can be extreme at times but it is one of the only ways to add balance. The other is the Tea Party, which probably would not exist if main stream media was doing it's job, instead of pandering.

How about:

"gullible - naive and easily deceived or tricked; "at that early age she had been gullible and in love"
fleeceable, green
naif, naive - marked by or showing unaffected simplicity and lack of guile or worldly experience; "a teenager's naive ignorance of life"; "the naive assumption that things can only get better"; "this naive simple creature with wide friendly eyes so eager to believe appearances"
2. gullible - easily tricked because of being too trusting; "gullible tourists taken in by the shell game"
unwary - not alert to danger or deception; "the shrieks of unwary animals taken by surprise"; "some thieves prey especially on unwary travelers"; "seduce the unwary reader into easy acquiescence"- O.J.Campbell"

Obama, The Left and Their Misplaced Fear

2010 April 30

Apparently, according to the Left, a bunch of middle-aged people dressed up like the Founding Fathers is much scarier than a nuclear Iran.

What kind of politically motivated, Alinsky-style logic overwhelms a political Party that has control of both Houses of Congress and the White House to the point where they are paralyzed with fear over a group of peaceful protestors, and seemingly oblivious to the nuclear threats in North Korea and Iran?

The Alinsky methods that got Obama elected are beginning to make him look strange indeed as a President. Alinsky can help the Have-nots take down the Haves, but once you become the ones in power, Alinsky tactics begin to make you look just a little silly and quite petty.

So how does President Obama react to peaceful protesters exercising their first amendment rights? First, he pretends he doesn’t know they exist, and then he mocks them saying there are “folks out there waving tea bags around”. When the demonstrators prove to be a more potent political force than he first thought he tells them that instead of protesting the inevitable higher taxes that will come with his preposterous overspending they “should be thanking him” because their taxes are “lower”.

Helping to overheat the political rhetoric and stoke the furnace of divisiveness, the talking heads at America’s new Soviet-style Pravda network, aka MSNBC, are uniformly castigating the Tea Parties as though they had assembled on the White House lawn with automatic weapons trained on anything that moves inside. Olbermann, Maddow, Matthews and most of the zealots at MSNBC are just as absurdly obsessed and inexplicably inaccurate about their reporting of Tea Party rallies as they are their reporting on Sarah Palin.

Meanwhile, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is spinning centrifuges like a teenager on Meth spinning a hula hoop, and Kim Jong Il continues to test his missile capacity like he’s conducting some sort of grade school science project. Even in our hemisphere, Chavez continues to build a coalition of the insane while across the globe China is ratcheting up their military prowess at an unprecedented rate.

The President’s response to such global mayhem seems to be conciliatory at best and downright weak at worst: apologizing constantly and bowing when possible. It’s as if the parents are going out of town for the weekend and suddenly the world is a party house for religious lunatics and power hungry, narcissistic nabobs.

A religious lunatic hell-bent on destroying America and ushering in a religious apocalypse is developing a nuclear weapon as we speak. Experts tell us he’ll be capable of reaching the continental United States with his payload of hate and unspeakable destruction as soon as five years from now, but don’t worry America because tonight on MSNBC Keith Olbermann, as he always does, will take to the airwaves like a modern day Paul Revere, and in a delivery somewhere between Edward R. Murrow and a poorly trained Shakespearean actor he will once again sound the warning bell: somewhere, sometime, somehow, just maybe, in the not-too-distant future some “tea-bagger” might, perhaps become violent if we don’t stop this reckless, willy-nilly exercise of the first amendment.

The United Socialist States of America:

Friday, March 5, 2010


President Obama is close to completing his socialist revolution. Since coming to power last year, he has sought relentlessly to transform America. From his days as a student radical, Mr. Obama has been obsessed with smashing the traditional free-market system. Like most leftists, he thinks capitalism is the enemy.

"He was a Marxist-socialist in college," said John C. Drew, who knew Mr. Obama as a university student, in an interview. "He kept talking about the need to overthrow capitalism in favor of a working-class revolution."

One of Mr. Obama's favorite philosophers was Frantz Fanon, a post-colonial Marxist who championed Third World liberation movements. Fanon argued that the West - led by America - was based on racism, imperialism and the economic exploitation of the world's poor. The only remedy was authoritarian socialism and a massive redistribution of wealth from Western nations to developing countries.

Throughout his career, Mr. Obama has had radical associations. At Columbia University, while teaching constitutional law, he embraced postmodernist legal theory that maintains that the U.S. constitutional system presents an artificial veneer for liberty while actually advancing the economic interests of powerful white males. As a community organizer in Chicago, he studied and tried to mimic the activism of Saul Alinsky - a neo-Trotskyite who championed "permanent revolution." His longtime associates, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are supporters of Marxist liberation and share a deep hatred for the United States. They believe only fundamental, sweeping change can redeem America.

Rather than being a pragmatic centrist - as the mainstream media insists on portraying him - Mr. Obama is the very opposite: an ideologue who is pursuing his political project even at the risk of badly damaging the Democratic Party.

This explains his bizarre, almost reckless desire to ram Obamacare through Congress. The president has said he wants an "up-or-down vote" on his health care overhaul - preferably by the end of this month, before the Easter recess. In other words, he has given the green light to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, to use reconciliation, a parliamentary process designed to fast-track budgetary measures. Under these arcane rules, a simple majority in the Senate of 50 Democratic votes plus a tie-breaker from Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will be enough to pass health care reform. The filibuster will be rendered impotent.

This is unprecedented. Never in our history has reconciliation been used to pass a major piece of social legislation on a narrow partisan majority. Obamacare will overhaul nearly one-sixth of the U.S. economy. By contrast, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid passed with overwhelming bipartisan consensus. Contrary to popular myth, numerous Republicans endorsed the New Deal-Great Society welfare state. This is why repealing it has been so difficult (if not impossible).

The White House and its media allies claim that the 1996 welfare reform bill, the 1997 children's health insurance program and the 2001 Bush tax cuts were passed using reconciliation. This is misleading. Every one of these measures had strong Democratic support - especially in the Senate.

Mr. Obama is engaged in an abuse of power. He is thwarting the will of the majority of the American people who do not want socialized medicine. They rightly fear that the proposal's massive $1 trillion price tag will add to our skyrocketing national debt, which has brought us to the brink of ruin. They understand it will stifle medical innovation and reduce the quality of care, leading to rationing and longer waiting lines. It represents the greatest expansion of entitlement spending since the 1960s.

Moreover, Mr. Obama's actions are undermining the traditional system of checks and balances established by the Founding Fathers. The institutional role of the Senate is to serve as a bulwark against raw majority rule. By circumventing the filibuster, Mr. Obama is not only thumbing his nose at the voters - including those in Massachusetts who elected Republican Sen. Scott Brown - but the very constitutional safeguards meant to prevent this kind of usurpation of power.

His proposal seeks to create a centrally planned medical economy that will erect a gigantic government bureaucracy based on massive taxes, subsidies and regulations. Mr. Obama is willing to sacrifice his party's political fortunes in November - and even his own re-election in 2012 - because he understands one fundamental fact: Nationalized health care is the heart of cradle-to-grave statism. No country that has ever embraced socialized medicine - Canada, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy - has ever been able to regain economic freedom.

This is not because government-run health care is so effective or beloved; rather, it fosters a debilitating spirit of dependency that is fatal to a self-governing people. In short, it kills the self-reliance and individualism critical to a free-market democracy.

For Mr. Obama, that is precisely the point. Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, laid out the Marxist blueprint that has been followed by the radical left since 1917. Lenin urged that any disaster should be exploited to "hasten the destruction ... of the capitalist class." The 2008 Great Recession brought Mr. Obama to power. He has been seizing this crisis in order to overthrow the old capitalist order.

Mr. Obama is relentlessly giving birth to a new nation: the United Socialist States of America - the U.S.S.A.

American corrupt corporate media filter 101:
Clear Channel is hardwired into the Bush political machine. The company co-chair is Tom Hicks, who purchased the Texas Rangers baseball team in 1998 from Bush Jr. That deal made Bush Junior a multi-millionaire. Michael Powell is a neo-confederate of the worst kind. He tried to hijack the FCC to deregulate and give away the public airwaves to his corporate cronies. Expecting Fox News to report real news is about as silly as waiting for Dick Cheney and George Bush to tell the truth. Clinton / Gore Telecommunications Act of 1996 sponsored giveaway of our public airwaves removed long-standing restrictions. Rupert Murdoch owns Fox. General Electric owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC. Time Warner AOL owns CNN. Disney owns ABC. Viacom owns CBS. All Corporate Media doing $Billions with the Pentagon for over 60 years.
================================================================

Silvio Berlusconi was the prime minister of Italy and owns state television networks, radio stations, three of Italy’s four commercial television networks, two big publishing houses, two national newspapers, fifty magazines, Italy’s largest movie and distribution company. Rupert Murdoch just happens to be Silvio Berlusconi’s best friend and as of July 31, all of Italy’s satellite hookups were switched automatically to Murdoch’s Sky Italia.

================

Army Psyops Inside CNN News
http://tinyurl.com/2lgga / March 3, 2000

News giant employed military 'psychological operations' personnel

CNN employed active duty U.S. Army psychological operations personnel last year, WorldNetDaily has confirmed through several sources at Fort Bragg and elsewhere.

Maj. Thomas Collins, U.S. Information Service has confirmed that "psyops" (psychological operations) personnel, soldiers and officers, have worked in the CNN headquarters in Atlanta. The lend/lease exercise was part of an Army program called "Training With Industry." According to Collins, the soldiers and officers, "... worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in the production of news."

When asked if the introduction of military personnel into a civilian news organization was standard operating procedure, one source said, "That question is above my pay grade ... but I hope so. It's what we do."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17437

================

Frank Sesno On Psyops Interns at CNN
August 02, 2000 / http://tinyurl.com/cvrop5
You never know who you are going to run into at the Republican National Convention. Roaming around the non-unionized First Union Center where the convention is taking place, Democracy Now! caught up with Frank Sesno, Vice President of CNN News. We asked him about recently exposed story that CNN was using Army Psychological Operations, or Psyops people as news interns.
http://www.democracynow.org/2000/8/2/frank_sesno_on_psyops_interns_at

Stating the obvious:

America was founded on limited rule, not leviathan

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

The emergence and rapid growth of the Tea Party movement is due in large part to an increasing concern by taxpayers that our government has strayed too far from fiscal responsibility. As many have awakened from our shared national somnambulism, the electorate's attention is galvanized by issues once considered banal or trivial, now viewed as grave threats to our country's security, prosperity and even our national identity. A public that until a few years ago quietly trusted the job that its government has been doing in Washington is now focused like a laser beam on both the role of government and the careers of our leaders.

Tea Partiers' deepest fears for the future of our nation are being realized in Greece. They see the beginnings of anarchy in a social democracy crippled by enormous budget deficits (13.6 percent of gross domestic product) and a heart-stopping national debt (115 percent of GDP). They see a country saddled with massive, unsustainable, unbearable entitlements. This has caused many to reflect on how our own annual budget deficit and national debt may be taking us down the same path as Greece and the other social democracies of Europe. Tea Partiers and their many sympathizers are well informed: They easily see the connection and are making sound, reasoned conclusions.

In addition to fiscal irresponsibility, there is a second major component of concern for Tea Partiers: government exceeding its constitutional limits. Too much power, money and authority are concentrated in our national government. This is detrimental to the functioning of the individual states and increasingly diminishes the freedom and liberty of the American people.

For a very long time, a majority of those who serve us in Washington have worked under the assumption that the national government is better equipped than any other entity to govern and solve all of America's problems, and, therefore, bigger government is better. The result has been ever-increasing regulation, unfunded mandates, earmark projects and increasingly toxic entitlement programs, including the recently enacted health care reform law.

But what if this paradigm is ill-formed? What if Americans actually could be better served by being governed and regulated locally to a greater degree? Our national government has taken on a life of its own, to the disservice of those it was established to serve. Perhaps a smaller national government, with many functions returned to the states, would be better.

On April 15, the ContractFrom America was unveiled at tax rallies held across the country. I co-authored one of the provisions in the contract:

"Create a Blue Ribbon task force that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states."

Our Founding Fathers did not envision a massive, all-powerful, centralized national government, nor was it their intent to lay the groundwork for one in our Constitution. Rather, our current national government exists as it does despite our Constitution. As a result, the national government is too bloated, too greedy, too unaccountable and always hungry for more. Too often, the national government has proved it is inadequate for the task of competently managing its massive programs and exercising good and faithful stewardship over the funds provided to it from the American people.

Much of the power wielded by the national government should rightfully reside with the states. Our state capitals weren't meant to be simply the 50 field offices of the national government, implementing directives from Washington. No. They are autonomous entities charged with governing their own residents. Our Constitution demands that the long era of Washington's usurpation of state power must end.

With the return of power and authority to each state through the intervention of a "federalist panel," money would be returned to the states as well. As the size and reach of the national government abated, that government would require less funding and would, accordingly, derive less tax revenue, allowing more money to remain within state borders. Each state would have discretion as to which social programs and regulatory agencies it would choose to enact and fund and to what degree, with consequences and benefits accruing to each state's residents. "Bringing home the bacon" would be eliminated from the job descriptions of members of Congress because the money would have remained in the states.

When the national government enacts national programs, oppressive national taxes, national regulations and regulatory agencies and other national bureaucracies, there is no escape, no recourse for the citizenry. We are hemmed in in every state. These are tyrannical impositions of unconstitutional burdens.

The beauty of America is our diversity, much of which is still reflected in the personalities of each of our states. If the reach of the national government extends too far and we become thoroughly homogenized, we inevitably start moving toward a type of tyranny. If the rules and the standards are exactly the same in every state, where can one go either for respite or advantage? As the national government grows, this key element of our American liberty recedes.

In its Dec. 19, 2009, issue, the Economist magazine described the wonderful functioning of our local governance very nicely:

"America has 50 states with 50 sets of laws. Virginia will never ban hunting, but even if it did, there are 49 other states that won't. In America, people with unusual hobbies are generally left alone. And power is so devolved that you can more or less choose which rules you want to live under.

"If you like low taxes and the death penalty, try Texas. For good public schools and subsidized cycle paths, try Portland, Oregon. Even within states, the rules vary widely. Bath County, Kentucky is dry. Next-door Bourbon County, as the name implies, is not. Nearby Montgomery County is in between: a "moist" county where the sale of alcohol is banned except in one city. Liberal foreign students let it all hang out at Berkeley; those from traditional backgrounds may prefer a campus where there is no peer pressure to drink or fornicate, such as Brigham Young in Utah."

How will our sublime, homespun American liberty survive if, increasingly, all our laws and regulations are national and onerous demands such as the individual health care mandate are enacted nationwide? There will be no choices left to us other than the single choice to comply.

Tea Partiers see the clear handwriting on the wall: As in Greece, a fiscally irresponsible, overgrown, overgoverning and overentitling national government is antithetical to domestic tranquility and the general welfare. Because of this, Tea Partiers are actively seeking to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

America was founded on limited rule, not leviathan

================

Bellevue is calling Bill F.!

The Constitution 101:

In the Federalist Papers it said: We were not going to have a monarchy, and we were not going to have a democracy. $$$$$$$

And to this day we have neither. For two hundred years we have had an oligarchical system in which men of property can do well (Dumbya Bush), and others are on their own. $$$$$$$

American politics is essentially a family affair, as are most oligarchies. When the father of the Constitution, James Madison, was asked how on earth any business could get done in Congress when the country contained 100 million people whose representatives would number half a thousand, Madison took the line that oligarchy's iron law always obtains: A few people invariably run the show; and keep it, if they can, in the family.$$$$$$$

Our founding fathers had such a fear and loathing of democracy that they invented the Electoral College so that the popular voice of the people could be throttled, much as the Supreme Court throttled the Floridians on December 12, 2000. $$$$$$$

We were to be neither a democracy, subject to majoritarian tyranny, nor a dictatorship, subject to Caesarean folly. $$$$$$$

As American media is controlled by that corporate America which provides us with political candidates a well-informed electorate is not possible. $$$$$$$

America’s Constitutionalist Revolt:

April 15, 2010


The tea partiers want a return to the Founders’ principles of constitutional limits to government.

So much is being written in the mainstream media about who the tea partiers are, but very little is being recorded about what these folks are actually saying.

We know that this is a decentralized grassroots movement, with many different voices hailing from many different towns across the country. But the tea-party message comes together in the “Contract from America,” the product of an online vote orchestrated by Ryan Hecker, a Houston tea-party activist and national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots.



With nearly 500,000 votes recorded in less than two months, this Contract forms a blueprint of tea-party policy goals and beliefs.

Of the top-ten planks in the Contract, the number-one issue is protect the Constitution. That’s followed by reject cap-and-trade, demand a balanced budget, and enact fundamental tax reform. And then comes number five: Restore fiscal responsibility and constitutionally limited government in Washington.

Note that two of the top-five priorities of the tea partiers mention the Constitution.

Filling out the Contract, the bottom-five planks are end runaway government spending; defund, repeal, and replace government-run health care; pass an all-of-the-above energy policy; stop the pork; and stop the tax hikes.

What’s so significant to me about this tea-party Contract from America is the strong emphasis on constitutional limits and restraints on legislation, spending, taxing, and government control of the economy. Undoubtedly, the emphasis is there because no one trusts Washington.

As I read this Contract, tea partiers are reminding all of us of the need for the Constitution to protect our freedoms. They’re calling for a renewal of constitutional values, including — first and foremost — a return to constitutional limits on government. The tea partiers who responded to this poll are demanding a rebirth of the consent of the governed. The government works for us, we don’t work for it.

All this makes me think of President Reagan, who never quite succeeded in gaining a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget, or for limits on spending, or for a two-thirds congressional majority for any new tax hikes. But throughout his presidency, and for many years before, the Gipper argued for constitutional limits on government, especially government spending.

And now this message is being echoed perfectly in the tea-party Contract from America. In effect, it picks up where Reagan left off.



The tea partiers, whom I call free-market populists, desire a return to Reaganism. In particular, their demands for a balanced budget (third plank), for restoring fiscal responsibility (5th plank), for ending massive government spending (6th plank), and for stopping the pork (9th plank) all underscore the populist revolt against runaway government spending, and therefore runaway government powerThere are mentions in the Contract of tax reform and stopping tax hikes. But it is pretty clear to everyone nowadays that the massive run-up in spending of recent years will inevitably result in an equally massive tax-hike movement — that is, unless the spending is strictly curbed and reduced.

Yet the tea partiers don’t trust Congress to do this, so they want to bring in constitutional restraint.

A recent survey by the Brookings Institution spells out this spend-and-tax problem with great clarity. Under current spending trends, tax-the-rich efforts to bring the deficit to just 3 percent of GDP — not balance, mind you, but 3 percent deficit — would require a nearly 80 percent marginal tax rate on the most successful earners. And if taxes are raised across-the-board, the marginal rate would rise to nearly 50 percent for the top earners, with state and local tax burdens bringing it up to 60 percent. Otherwise, a European-style value-added tax (VAT) would become necessary.

The tea partiers know this and they don’t like it one bit. And so, at bottom, they have formed a constitutionalist movement to revolt against big government and big taxes — and oh, by the way, to stand against big-government control of large chunks of the economy, such as energy and health care.

Harking back to the Founders’ principles of constitutional limits to government is a very powerful message. It’s a message of freedom, especially economic freedom. The tea partiers have delivered an extremely accurate diagnostic of what ails America right now: Government is growing too fast, too much, too expensively, and in too many places — and in the process it is crowding out our cherished economic freedom.

It’s as though the tea partiers are saying this great country will never fulfill its long-run potential to prosper, create jobs, and lead the world unless constitutional limits to government are restored.

Now, as the tea partiers rally across the country, the big question is only this: Will the political class get it?
.

I have listened to Richard French and this guy makes Keith Olbermann look conservative. He drums up hate speech against Republicans, but when it comes to Democrats, he backs off. Tell me Frenchie, who has the better ratings, RNN or Fox News. It isn't RNN baby.

The Most Biased Name in News
Fox News Channel's extraordinary right-wing tilt
http://tinyurl.com/kdo9k
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1067

OUTFOXED : Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
http://tinyurl.com/25l8t9
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6737097743434902428

"Fox News Channel's extraordinary right-wing tilt"

I would agree with that and if circumstances were different we might feel like we were drowning in a flood of right wing bias.

However, with far left press, mainstream media, the Senate and the Congress following in lock step with, in my opinion is a fairly radical, even Socialist, left wing president, Fox news is like an Oasis in a desert quenching our thirst with life giving balance.

A repost:

An open letter to conservatives
March 22, 2010, 3:16PM


Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now. You've lost me and you've lost most of America. Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation: Come back to us.

Now the advice. You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum have become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some examples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

If you're going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you'll have to start by draining this swamp


http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/a/m/americandad/2010/03/an-open-letter-to-conservative.php?ref=mp

However, with far left press, mainstream media, the Senate and the Congress following in lock step with, in my opinion is a fairly radical, even Socialist, left wing president.

---------------------


Mike G. Liberal mainstream media in America is a myth.

Was it conservative to increase the size of government for 12 years of Reagan/Bush? Highest deficits in history.

Was it conservative to increase and bloat the size of government for 8 years of Cheney/Bush? ( Yes Cheney First ). Highest defitics in history.

Was it liberal for Clinton to undo Glass/Steagall?

Was it liberal for Clinton to give more power to the wealthy few who own most of our airwaves?

Was it liberal for Clinton to sign regime change into law for Iraq?

Was it liberal for Clinton/Gore to push NAFTA which only benefits the wealthiest?

Guess who showed up at the Clinton White House to sell NAFTA to our citizenry?

Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Reagan would have been there if he wasn't so sick.

================================

Reagan and Bush were not conservative and Carter , Clinton, and Obama are not liberals

Who said the following?

Government cannot solve our problems, it can’t set our goals, it cannot define our vision.

Government cannot eliminate poverty or provide a bountiful economy or reduce inflation or save our cities or cure illiteracy or provide energy.

And Government cannot mandate goodness.

Ronald Reagan?

No, those were the words of President Jimmy Carter, in his 1978 State of the Union address.

=======================================

And who said this?

We know big government does not have all the answers.

We know there’s not a program for every problem.

We have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington.

And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means.

The era of big government is over.

George W. Bush?

Actually, that was President Bill Clinton in his 1996 State of the Union address.

One year ago, Ralph Nader on an Obama
One year ago on election night, The Real News spoke to presidential candidate Ralph Nader Pt1 / November 5, 2008 / http://tinyurl.com/5ssswa
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=2717

Re: "An open letter to conservatives"



The height of hypocrisy and gall!
Clean up your own dirty house first!!!

You chronic leftists set the bar for your indiscriminate gutter treatment of President Bush, Republicans and Conservatives for eight years while he and his administration were doing what was humanly possible to keep every American man, woman and child safe from terrorists who wanted nothing short of our heads on a stick.

----------------------------------------
Bush-hating disorder:
A pathology for our time

Friday, January 23, 2009

Bush-hating disorder, or BHD, is a condition in which a person feels and expresses a degree of antipathy toward former U.S. President George W. Bush that is grossly out of proportion to any remark, proposal, or action of the former President, or to any combination of such or to the sum of Mr. Bush's weaknesses as the leader of his country.

BHD may describe the same feeling and expression of antipathy toward other socially and/or politically conservative public figures, such as radio talk-show hosts. The use of the term Bush-hater is therefore analogous to the use of the verb "bork," which originated in the U.S. Senate's rejection of the nomination of Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987 after a concerted attack on the nominee's character and judicial philosophy.

Some studies suggest that elements of intermittent explosive disorder and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder may be present in BHD. Bush-hating disorder seems to occur in men and women equally.

The symptoms of BHD will vary with the occasion during which they are manifest or the occupational activity in which the person with the disorder is engaged, and may be either overtly or covertly expressed. All, however, have in common a fixed and extremely critical mindset toward the former president, and a sometimes obsessive focus on the perceived negatives in his behavior or comments. The person with BHD will frequently resort to ridicule in his or her attempt to make a point.

A reporter, editorial writer or newscaster will generally ignore or marginalize those elements of a story or an issue that reflect positively on the former president, and will build the news article, editorial or broadcast on the negative elements.

An elected official will use the circumstance of an action or lack of action by the former president to criticize Mr. Bush in remarks that may be inappropriate and actually contemptuous in tone, before colleagues in a public session or at a press conference or in some other public forum.

A citizen will compulsively initiate a discussion on an event in which he believes the former president performed poorly in order to be able to repeat his arguments for Mr. Bush's incompetence or maliciousness.

A symptom common to virtually all people with BHD is a gleeful reaction to any event that reflects badly on the former president or on another conservative public figure, when that event would ordinarily evoke compassion, sadness, concern or even anger in others, and when gleefulness is clearly an inappropriate reaction.

BHD normally does not affect relationships with spouses, friends or co-workers, but because the hatred can be consuming, and because of the loss of perspective involved in the rage, the disorder can affect a person's behavior in many aspects of life, including job performance. BHD generally causes distress and increases tension within the person afflicted, and may lead to physical problems associated with a high level of tension.

BHD is widely believed to originate in a person's internal recognition of and grief over the decline of liberalism in the United States. That decline began early in the second half of the 20th century but became clearly manifest during Ronald Reagan's presidency in the 1980s and the Republican takeover of Congress in the 1990s, and was no longer plausibly deniable after George W. Bush's defeat of Albert A. Gore, Jr. in the 2000 presidential election. Thus, it is believed, Mr. Bush became a symbol of the loss the person with BHD feels, of that person's fears related to the rise of conservatism, and of much about which liberalism tends to be intolerant.

People with BHD may be frustrated over the failure of liberal policies and programs to have a substantial impact on the social problems the policies and programs addressed. They may also have a deep fear of conservative power, and of the restoration of standards and values in the society that will curb the ability of individuals to do as they choose.

The justification of the anger the person with BHD feels is believed to be the motive for that person's persistent focus on any perceived negatives in the former president's comments or actions. Likewise, the ridicule that the person with the disorder frequently employs is meant to build self-esteem.

(Note: While the symptoms of anti-Bush and anti-American feeling and expression in parts of the international community resemble BHD, that condition has a different origin and history and is not addressed in this summary.)

Some think that BHD is untreatable. In addition, treatment is complicated by the fact that a large percentage of helping professionals suffer from the disorder and either do not recognize it, or in effect refuse to diagnose it in those who come to them for help. When BHD is diagnosed, treatment may involve medication (antidepressants and mood stabilizers) or therapy, or a combination of the two. A typical course of therapy will focus either sequentially or simultaneously on the intolerance involved in the person's anger, and the loss that provokes the grief. An intense course of therapy will also address the insecurity and sense of confinement that the person may fear about living in a conservatively governed society, and the feelings of inferiority that may lead to the person's frequent use of ridicule.

As for the future of BHD in American society, it is almost certain that the existence of the disorder will be relatively short-lived. This will be either because of a long-term (beyond President Obama's administration) revival of liberalism in U.S. social and international policy, or because a prolonged period of conservative rule in the United States, one that may last through the end of the 21st century, will create the conditions for widespread acceptance.

What about Obama hatred disorder?

What about Pelosi hatred disorder?

What about Reid hatred disorder?

Or the murderous rage behind the slaying of "liberals" in that church in Tennessee?

Or the vile and violent fulminations against just about everybody except hard-right-wing white males?

"Liberal mainstream media in America is a myth.Was it conservative to increase the size of government for 12 years of Reagan/Bush? Highest deficits in history. Was it liberal for Clinton/Gore to push NAFTA which only benefits the wealthiest?"

Caspian, nobody is 100% pure Conservative. There are always reasons politicians sway left or right. So what is a Conservative? (No Robert it is not one that believes in hatred or fears any change for the better. That is clearly an extreme left viewpoint attempting to label those that believe in traditional Christian values and freedom as racists and cold hearted in order to push a big government agenda).

A conservative, in my viewpoint, is one who believes in small government and individual responsibility. One who believes freedom and liberty is more important then making sure everyone is equal. One who has faith in a God of Love, over that of government. One who helps support those in need by their own means and does not rely strictly on government to redistribute wealth or to provide for themselves. One who recognizes a strong military is needed to vigorously protect those values from an evil world but not abuse others. One who is a Patriot but recognizes the rights of other countries to govern themselves. So the left and far left is not Conservative but neither is the extreme right.

So was Bush a conservative? In my opinion, no way, just a Republican.

Clinton? In my opinion, he was more Conservative then Bush.

Reagan? In my opinion, more conservative then Bush and Clinton, for sure.

Obama? Less Conservative then any president, more of an anti-conservative.

Caspian, nobody is 100% pure Conservative. There are always reasons politicians sway left or right.

=====================

Money, Money, and more Money and it has very little to do with liberalism or conservatism.

Mike G. your dreaming if you think any Republican in the White House is going to give you smaller government, and freedom.

They all talk a good game but it is all smoke and mirrors.

Republicans controlled the Congress for 12 years 1994-2006.

Where was the smaller government mandate?

Why didn't they out law abortion?

The Supreme Court is still Republican and last time I checked they did not overturn Roe vs Wade.

Democrats took over Congress in 2006 and now with Obama every liberal proposal is off the table.

Why didn't Obama bailout the home owners? The lost pensions? 401k, IRAs, help college students by lowering interest rates?

This too me is not liberalism but corporatism. Obama did what Bush did by bailing out Wall Street and NOT MAIN STREET.

I guess I'm in the minority with this kind of thinking.

===================

DON’T BAIL OUT WALL STREET CROOKS
Sen. Bernie Sanders, Robert Scheer and Dean Baker on the Proposed $700 Billion Bailout of Wall Street, the Largest Government Bailout of Private Industry in US History / September 22, 2008 / http://tinyurl.com/3j789r
It’s being described as the largest government intervention in private markets since the Great Depression. The Bush administration has asked Congress to swiftly approve a massive $700 billion package to rescue the crippled financial institutions on Wall Street. Some analysts say the final cost to taxpayers could top one trillion dollars. Over the weekend, the size of the proposed bailout grew as the Bush administration said foreign banks, including Barclays and UBS, should be eligible for the bailout.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/22/sen_bernie_sanders_robert_scheer_and

================

Socialism vs. the government bailout of capitalism
15 October 2008 / http://tinyurl.com/4sabze
The breakdown of the US financial system and the government bailout of Wall Street have seriously discredited the ideological justifications of capitalism.
Worship of the “free market” has long been something of a secular religion in the US. Capitalist ideology has proclaimed that the market’s “invisible hand” will best advance the interests of historical progress, that taxes on the rich and regulations on big businesses must be reduced because only the “risk-takers” know where resources can best be allocated, that any sort of government intervention to improve the living conditions of workers, the poor, the elderly and jobless youth creates a “climate of dependency,” that government cannot simply “throw money” at problems, etc., etc.
All these shibboleths now stand exposed as rank hypocrisy, as the biggest financial institutions belly up to the public trough. Yet amidst this historic crisis of the capitalist system, some of those opposed to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s Wall Street bailout have claimed that the measures employed are “socialist.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/soci-o15.shtml

===================

The Senate bailout vote for George Bush & Wall Street
How the Senate voted Wednesday on the financial bailout bill (S. Amdt. 5685 to H.R. 1424
10/1/08 / http://tinyurl.com/4veyy6
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14196.html





Republican House Members Who Voted FOR The George Bush Wall Street Bailout / http://tinyurl.com/67wpba
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/755sd/a_list_of_house_republicans_who_voted_for_the/

"Obama? Less Conservative then any president, more of an anti-conservative." -MG

I don't know what you're seeing. What about FDR? Regulated business, created Social Security, had massive works projects,-sounds almost radical. Meanwhile, Obama does all the Republican-sounding things Caspian mentioned. Clearly. Yet Caspian says "I guess I'm in the minority with this kind of thinking."

“Why didn't Obama bailout the home owners? The lost pensions? 401k, IRAs, help college students by lowering interest rates? This too me is not liberalism but corporatism. Obama did what Bush did by bailing out Wall Street and NOT MAIN STREET.
I guess I'm in the minority with this kind of thinking.”

Caspian, I think I understand your way of thinking and I agree with you in the sense that people are what matters and not corporations or wall street. Perhaps, the lack of consensus comes by HOW we are helping the people. Capitalism works when the people are in control. I for one felt don’t bail out the banks / Wall Street but it was government that felt they were too big to fail and must be bailed out. So if we did not bail them out who gets hurt? The banks and walls but so would WE. So it was done for US and them. And if Obama bails out the homeowners who pays? If he uses government money then WE pay. Government should not be extorting money from corporations and people that play by the rules in order to redistribute it to those THEY feel deserve it.

So if I have my pension or 401k invested in a Madoff like company or bank that did not play by the rules, then I agree, that government should make them pay and regulate those abusers. So how much should they regulate? If governments rig the game or if company’s rig the game so that people will fail then it is not Capitalism but a corrupt unjust game. However, if government rigs the game so people CANNOT fail it is not Capitalism but an assault on our liberty and the free market. I want government to protect us only with a fair, honest, free market. I don’t want government to take over the game.

The small-government idea is great for the kind of unregulated piracy that has given capitalism a bad name. It's funny, too, that the espousers of small government festoon themselves with the flag of the US government, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance before every tea party.

If, though, it's not big government that the right abhors, but rather it's liberal government they can't stand, then the comforting claims that this movement is primarily libertarian-led can sound less convincing. A major trait of that supposedly passe mindset called fascism is the need to virulently assault anything remotely liberal or left-wing. This typically racist, ultra-nationalist state of mind seems to remain endemic here, giving us a perpetual tension that interferes with significant progress in just about all areas except militarism.

"I don't know what you're seeing. What about FDR? Regulated business, created Social Security, had massive works projects,-sounds almost radical."

Mike Q- I was referring more to recent presidents. I guess perhaps at the time of FDR, the mindset could have been similar, although it would seem those times were more desparate then today.

You see, when it comes down to it, I am not against government stepping in to help people when really needed. However, if the idea is to step in simply to change our culture, traditions or economy to something perceived to be better for reasons of ideology, then that is where I have a problem. I perceive Obama is trying to change America for reasons of ideology and not for necessity. I feel I am right from the programs he is pushing and because of his political background but I am not 100% certain.

"The small-government idea is great for the kind of unregulated piracy that has given capitalism a bad name."

Mike Q - as an individual nothing of what you contend relates to me. I simply don't want to be dictated or controlled by several untrustwhorthy people how to run my life. I want the freedom and liberty to make my own decisions by my own authority and not that of some higher power, unless that power is my God.

"What about Obama hatred disorder?"

Bush endured, and overcame a full eight years of indescriminate leftist spoiler tactics and harrassment that hurt an entire nation as well as two war foreign war efforts,and the war on terror. After only one year and six months if Obama and company can't stand the heat.....well you know the rest.

"What about Obama hatred disorder?"

Bush endured, and overcame a full eight years of indescriminate leftist spoiler tactics and harrassment that hurt an entire nation as well as two foreign war efforts,and the war on terror. After only one year and six months if Obama and company can't stand the heat.....well you know the rest.

Obama's Katrina:
------------------------------

Only 16 Percent Approve of Handling of BP Crisis

Thursday, 27 May 2010

Positive opinion about the federal government's handling of a British Petroleum (BP) Gulf of Mexico oil spill is down 13 points from two weeks ago, dropping from 29% to 16%, a new Zogby Interactive survey finds.

Currently, 16% rate the federal government's response to the spill as excellent or good. The same question in a May 7-10 Zogby Interactive survey found a total of 29% giving a positive rating. Opinion of British Petroleum's handling of the spill is also down from the previous poll, going from positive ratings of 25% then to just 15% now.

The Zogby Interactive survey of 2,085 adults was conducted from May 25-27, 2010, and has a margin of error of +/-2.2%.

The survey also asked respondents which of the following descriptions best matched their opinion about the spill's impact:

58% say the spill is, "A disaster that will cause long-term environmental and economic damage."

28% say it, "Is a problem that will cause some short-term environmental and economic damage on the Gulf Coast."

11% say, "The potential damage caused by the spill is being exaggerated."

There are significant partisan differences, with 83% of Democrats calling the spill a "disaster," compared to 32% of Republicans and 51% of independents.

Another question from both surveys referred to a statement from the Obama Administration that one of its primary roles is, "Keeping the boot on the neck of BP." The number of those who agree with that statement dropped from 42% on May 10 to 33% now.

Despite the spill, the percentage of adults who agree that, "Offshore drilling is still a safe, reliable and cost-efficient method of producing oil," remains unchanged from May 10 at 58%. Agreement that expansion of offshore drilling will lead to increased environmental problems is also unchanged at 51%.

Conservatives Are the Mainstream:

Monday, May 24, 2010

The impression you get from dominant opinion makers is that conservatives who support the free enterprise system are cranks who are in the minority.

The truth is quite the opposite.

“Whether we look at capitalism, taxes, business, or government, the data show a clear and consistent pattern: 70 percent of Americans support the free enterprise system and are unsupportive of big government,” Arthur C. Brooks writes in his book “The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future,” which hits bookstores this week.

“By contrast, somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the adult population opposes free enterprise and prefers government solutions to our problems,” Brooks writes. “To be generous, let’s round up to 30 percent and call them the ‘30 percent coalition.’”

So why do Americans have the opposite impression?

Sometimes it takes someone who was on the other side to explain things clearly, as Brooks does in his eye-opening book. Brooks grew up in a liberal family in Seattle.

“It took me until I was 30 years old to be able to actually say with a straight face that America is a gift to the world,” Brooks tells Newsmax.

Now Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute. Previously, he was the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University. Founded in 1943, AEI it is the oldest conservative movement think tank.

Brooks explains that the “30 percent coalition” has been able to present its views as representing the majority because it controls public discourse.

“The 30 percent coalition is led by people who are smart, powerful, and strategic,” Brooks says. “These are many of the people who make opinions, entertain us, inform us, and teach our kids in college. They are the intellectual upper class: those in the top 5 percent of the population in income, who hold graduate degrees, and work in intellectual industries such as law, education, journalism, and entertainment.”

Heading the intellectual upper class is President Obama. To illustrate Obama’s views on the free enterprise system, Brooks quotes his words to graduating seniors of Arizona State University on May 13, 2009.

“You’re taught to chase after the usual brass rings, being on this ‘who’s who’ list or that top 100 list, how much money you make and how big your corner office is; whether you have a fancy enough title or a nice enough car,” Obama said. “Let me suggest that such an approach won’t get you where you want to go. It displays a poverty of ambition.”

This from a man who reported $5.5 million in income last year.

Crammed with telling statistics, Brooks’ book says that academia is a particularly important part of the “30 percent coalition.”

“Academics as a whole align massively with the far left — more so than any other profession,” Brooks says, citing General Social Survey data from 1996 to 2008. “A 2002 study examined the political ideology of social sciences professors in a number of our nation’s top universities. At Cornell, for example, 166 were liberal and 6 conservative. At the University of Colorado, 155 were liberal and 5 conservative.”

Journalists are another influential component of the coalition.

“When asked in a 2005 poll about their political views, nearly three times as many journalists described themselves as liberals as those who described themselves as conservatives,” Brooks notes.

Conservatives need to educate the public about their principles and the fact that they are actually in the mainstream, Brooks tells me. Indeed, Brooks says, Newsmax, rather than Time, represents the mainstream.

“Anybody who says that this is just a Republican or a conservative thing simply is either a vested interest on the 30 percent side or hasn’t bothered to look at the data,” Brooks says. “Seventy percent of the American public is in favor of free enterprise; 30 percent is either actively against it or is passively against it. So it’s a mainstream thing, and that is what we have to keep in mind and publicize.”


Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-mail. Go here now.

Capitalism works when the people are in control.

--------------------

Mike G. we the people are never in control.

The Wall Street game is rigged against the masses and the share holders.

Many companies stocks never go up and always stay the same "YET" the top echelon fat cats take turns cashing in their stock options worth millions for only a select few.

Many companies are downsizing, outsourcing, not giving bonuses to the rank and file and yet pay themselves very well.

Donald Trump said not long ago that even he could not get any loans for new projects.

Obama is a corporatist just like Bush was.

Wall Street are in collusion with Congress and that is the American way.

"The Wall Street game is rigged against the masses and the share holders."
"Many companies are downsizing, outsourcing, not giving bonuses to the rank and file and yet pay themselves very well."

Caspian, I also agree in this respect. Something happened that changed the game about 10 or 15 years years ago. Of Course the owners and execs made a lot more money then the average worker back then but I'm okay with that. Now however, it has devolved to the point where the owners and execs are making more then ever, while the average worker is making less and less.

The reason I think is simply because they can. They can because of out sourcing and off shoring in a global economy where the American worker can't compete. By government allowing this they took the power away from the people and gave more power to the corporations. What many don't see is at the same time they gave more power to themselves because the less power and independence the people have the more we need and rely on government.

So the order of things are people in control of government and government regulating only enough to make sure the game is not rigged but this order has been broken.

"Conservatives Are the Mainstream"
"So why do Americans have the opposite impression?"

I agree that the media and entertainers are primarily left and the majority of Americans are somewhere right of center which I think is conservative. However, I don't think Americans have the opposite view. They know who they are and what they believe in and can see it by their real life interactions. If all they did was stay home and watch the news, I guess they would not know.

By government allowing this they took the power away from the people and gave more power to the corporations

=====================

You hit a home run Mike G.!

This is the root of the cancer that has to be removed.

General Tony Zinni a few years ago wanted to buy an American car and was told if you want to support the American worker buy a Toyota or Honda because they are made in Ohio.

Most American cars are manufactured in Mexico.

Another quick example would be Exxon Valdez 1989 and 20 years later still protected by crooked judges and politicians.

Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens comes to mind.


===================



In the case of Baker v. Exxon, an Anchorage jury awarded $287 million for actual damages and $5 billion for punitive damages. The punitive damages amount was equal to a single year's profit by Exxon at that time. To protect itself in case the judgment was affirmed, Exxon obtained a $4.8 billion credit line from J.P. Morgan & Co. This in turn gave J.P. Morgan the opportunity to create the first modern credit default swap in 1994, so that J.P. Morgan would not have to hold so much money in reserve (8% of the loan under Basel I) against the risk of Exxon's default.[22]

Meanwhile, Exxon appealed the ruling, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the original judge, Russel Holland, to reduce the punitive damages. On December 6, 2002, the judge announced that he had reduced the damages to $4 billion, which he concluded was justified by the facts of the case and was not grossly excessive. Exxon appealed again and the case returned to court to be considered in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling in a similar case, which caused Judge Holland to increase the punitive damages to $4.5 billion, plus interest.

After more appeals, and oral arguments heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on January 27, 2006, the damages award was cut to $2.5 billion on December 22, 2006. The court cited recent Supreme Court rulings relative to limits on punitive damages.

Exxon appealed again. On May 23, 2007, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied ExxonMobil's request for a third hearing and let stand its ruling that Exxon owes $2.5 billion in punitive damages. Exxon then appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.[23] On February 27, 2008, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for 90 minutes. Justice Samuel Alito, who at the time, owned between $100,000 and $250,000 in Exxon stock, recused himself from the case.[24] In a decision issued June 25, 2008, Justice David Souter issued the judgment of the court, vacating the $2.5 billion award and remanding the case back to a lower court, finding that the damages were excessive with respect to maritime common law. Exxon's actions were deemed "worse than negligent but less than malicious."[25] The judgment limits punitive damages to the compensatory damages, which for this case were calculated as $507.5 million.[26] Some lawmakers, such as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, have decried the ruling as "another in a line of cases where this Supreme Court has misconstrued congressional intent to benefit large corporations."[27]

Exxon's official position is that punitive damages greater than $25 million are not justified because the spill resulted from an accident, and because Exxon spent an estimated $2 billion cleaning up the spill and a further $1 billion to settle related civil and criminal charges. Attorneys for the plaintiffs contended that Exxon bore responsibility for the accident because the company "put a drunk in charge of a tanker in Prince William Sound."[28]

Exxon recovered a significant portion of clean-up and legal expenses through insurance claims associated with the grounding of the Exxon Valdez.[29][30] Also, in 1991, Exxon made a quiet, separate financial settlement of damages with a group of seafood producers known as the Seattle Seven for the disaster's effect on the Alaskan seafood industry. The agreement granted $63.75 million to the Seattle Seven, but stipulated that the seafood companies would have to repay almost all of any punitive damages awarded in other civil proceedings. The $5 billion in punitive damages was awarded later, and the Seattle Seven's share could have been as high as $750 million if the damages award had held. Other plaintiffs have objected to this secret arrangement,[31] and when it came to light, Judge Holland ruled that Exxon should have told the jury at the start that an agreement had already been made, so the jury would know exactly how much Exxon would have to pay.[32]

Is The President The Kind of Leader Chairman Mao Warned Us About?

"Academics as a whole align massively with the far left....They (lefties) are the intellectual upper class: those in the top 5 percent of the population in income, who hold graduate degrees, and work in intellectual industries such as law, education, journalism, and entertainment."-Arthur Brooks, courtesy of Bill F's paste

It always amazes me how the right keeps shouting out loud, to all who'll listen, that smart people favor leftist worldviews, meaning then that conservatives must be the stupid ones. Hey, it was Brooks who said it, and so many other righties.

Analyze what it means when academics all over the world, throughout human history, favor a leftist view. What does it mean? A worldwide conspiracy to make the John Birch Society and Ayn Rand and Rush Limbaugh look bad? Some kind of superstition of evil, requiring us to burn the books and the academics? Please tell me how to put a spin on this that makes the right look good, after they make such a strange argument thinking it's somehow damning to the left.

Gulf Spill, Immigration, Markets Drag Obama Down in Polls:

Friday, 28

President Obama's job-approval rating just hit an all-time low. And there's a pattern behind the trifecta of issues that are driving the drop — the oil spill, the Arizona immigration-policing law, and the fallout from the Greek crisis.


After four months of hovering between a low of 46 percent approval and a high of 49 percent, Obama just fell to 42 percent in the daily Rasmussen polls. What's hurting him, and why?

The president originally seized on each of these issues to make populist political hay. But then the problem wouldn't go away — and voters began to realize that Obama is, in fact, the president and (logically enough) started giving him much of the blame.

When oil started to spill into the Gulf of Mexico, Obama seized the opportunity for a partisan attack — blaming Republicans who had chanted, "Drill, baby, drill," the whole summer of 2008 as high gasoline prices gave John McCain's candidacy new steam.

Even though the president had himself, with lamentable timing, moved to allow expanded drilling a few weeks before the rig exploded, the impetus for drilling was clearly seen as Republican, and the disaster hurt Republican ratings. Obama couldn't resist also piling populist scorn on British Petroleum, lambasting big oil for the spill.

But then the leak didn't stop — and the slick kept heading to shore. Now the public is wondering why it's seen no presidential action to stop the spill.

As the oil seeps onto the beaches of Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, it also seeps into Obama's poll numbers and drags them down. His press conference yesterday was a clear effort to look decisive and effective and stop the bleeding — but it came awfully late in the crisis.

As soon as Arizona passed its law authorizing cops to pick up illegal immigrants, Obama jumped on the issue, trying to use it to drive up Latino turnout for Democrats later this year. But it became clear that the majority of Americans strongly backs the law — and now he's sending 1,200 National Guard troops to the border to stop the bleeding in his polls.

Then there's the stock market.

After the crash of 2008, Obama was quick to blame banks and other big businesses for their irresponsible behavior and then to take credit for averting a global collapse in the aftermath. So when Greece exploded due to its top-heavy debt load and dragged the market below 10,000, people wondered if Obama's populist treatment of the financial markets and his big spending and borrowing were subjecting America to economic peril.

When Moody's announces that it is considering downgrading the credit rating of the United States — the richest nation, by far, on Earth — it raises understandable alarm.

Of course, Obama's polls will rise and fall in the weeks, months, and years ahead; today's 42 percent may prove a long-forgotten blip. But it's a bit like noticing the line of seaweed on the beach. The tide comes in and goes out — but the seaweed marks where it will likely return to.

Look at it this way: Obama got 52 percent of the vote in 2008 — so his 42 percent approval means that one in five of his voters has turned on him.

And it's a traumatic event for someone who voted for Obama and had stuck with him since, saying he approved of the president's policies, to finally turn and say he doesn't approve. That voter may go back to approving of his president again — but it gets easier and easier to voice disapproval.

Especially if the oil keeps spilling, the illegals keep coming — and the market keeps tanking.

Obama's Katrina........Bring back Bush!
---------------------------------------
Whose Blowout Is It, Anyway?

May 28, 2010

When you anoint yourself King Canute, you mustn’t be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.

Here’s my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?

Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama’s tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we’ve had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

So we go deep, ultra deep — to such a technological frontier that no precedent exists for the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

There will always be catastrophic oil spills. You make them as rare as humanly possible, but where would you rather have one: in the Gulf of Mexico, upon which thousands depend for their livelihood, or in the Arctic, where there are practically no people? All spills seriously damage wildlife. That’s a given. But why have we pushed the drilling from barren areas to populated ones, from the remote wilderness to a center of fishing, shipping, tourism, and recreation?

Not that the environmentalists are the only ones to blame. Not by far. But it is odd that they’ve escaped any mention at all.

The other culprits are pretty obvious. It starts with BP, which seems not only to have had an amazing string of perfect-storm engineering lapses but no contingencies to deal with a catastrophic system failure.

However, the railing against BP for its performance since the accident is harder to understand. I attribute no virtue to BP, just self-interest. What possible interest can it have to do anything but cap the well as quickly as possible? Every day that oil is spilled means millions more in losses, cleanup, and restitution.

Federal officials who rage against BP would like to deflect attention from their own role in this disaster. Interior secretary Ken Salazar, whose department’s laxity in environmental permitting and safety oversight renders it among the many bearing responsibility, expresses outrage at BP’s inability to stop the leak, and even threatens to “push them out of the way.”

“To replace them with what?” asked the estimable, admirably candid Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander. No one has the assets and expertise of BP. The federal government can fight wars, conduct a census, and hand out billions in earmarks, but it has not a clue how to cap a one-mile-deep out-of-control oil well.

Obama didn’t help much with his finger-pointing Rose Garden speech, in which he denounced finger-pointing and then proceeded to blame everyone but himself. Even the grace note of admitting some federal responsibility turned sour when he reflexively added that these problems have been going on “for a decade or more” — translation: Bush did it — while, in contrast, his own interior secretary had worked diligently to solve the problem “from the day he took office.”

Really? Why hadn’t we heard a thing about this? What about the September 2009 letter from Obama’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration accusing Interior’s Minerals Management Service of understating the “risk and impacts” of a major oil spill? When you get a blowout 15 months into your administration, and your own Interior Department had given BP a “categorical” environmental exemption in April 2009, the buck stops.

In the end, speeches will make no difference. If BP can cap the well in time to prevent an absolute calamity in the Gulf, the president will escape politically. If it doesn’t — if the gusher isn’t stopped before the relief wells are completed in August — it will become Obama’s Katrina.

That will be unfair, because Obama is no more responsible for the damage caused by this than Bush was for the damage caused by Katrina. But that’s the nature of American politics and its presidential cult of personality: We expect our presidents to play Superman. Helplessness, however undeniable, is no defense.

Moreover, Obama has never been overly modest about his own powers. Two years ago next week, he declared that history will mark his ascent to the presidency as the moment when “our planet began to heal” and “the rise of the oceans began to slow.”

Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute, you mustn’t be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.

(Just in time to help me in the direction my comments of the past couple days were foreshadowing, “the Nation” magazine for June 7, 2010 carried reviews of Ayn Rand retrospectives.)

After having benefited from collective largesse in her youth, Ayn Rand bee-lined straight from her home in Russia to Hollywood to learn the methods of moving the masses (whom she so contemptuously sneered at in her books) in the style of the melodramatic heroes-of-the-fatherland propaganda movies coming out of Nazi Germany. So like the preachments from today’s C Street in praise of people like Hitler, (for C Street not necessarily for a specific ideological point,-but then, not particularly NOT, either,-but because such history-makers are so EFFECTIVE,-Rand’s obsession was with the individual,-not the popularized society-atomized-into-anarchy individual, but the heroic individual who achieves miracles purely because of his individuality (as if the world doesn’t contain hermits and misfits galore who can’t even work the miracle of soap and water much less revolutionizing the world).

She has been particularly popular among pirate financiers for comments such as this, from THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS: “If civilization is to survive, it is the altruist morality that men have to reject.” HER “civilization” that so resembles fascism. Eerie parallels between speeches Hitler gave and Rand’s heroes’ speeches or her essay comments, could fill this screen page, so I’ll refrain.

Hitler said that “people are not of equal value.” Private property, then, “can be morally and ethically justified only if (we) admit that men’s achievements are different.” So important is this need for inequality that even Glen Beck said on his radio show “I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes.” Religion provides a means of “revolt of the lower orders against their betters.” (book reviewer Corey Robin)

At the worst of our current recession, in already depressed Adirondack communities, local economies came to a standstill, until an emergency system was tried in a couple of these communities (I don’t remember which ones). Take the case of a surgeon and a plumber. No one has a job, and therefore no medical insurance, so the surgeon gets no work. Likewise, people can’t afford even a lowly plumber’s services. But in these communities, the surgeon spends two hours fixing the plumber’s injured arm in exchange for the plumber’s spending two hours fixing the surgeon’s old-fashioned plumbing. Both people utilize various materials and service providers, aiding the local economy. The communities utilizing this “time bank” idea revived their economy while outside communities stayed locked in depression.

It’s shockingly offensive to most of us, this equating of the plumber and the surgeon. It doesn’t matter to many of us that it was our insistence on the traditional rigid ranking of people that had been locking the economies of these communities in stagnation, and that it was the communistic-sounding equivaluation of people that brought these communities back to life and health. No, we’re so imbued with this philosophy of fascism –as described by Hitler and Rand- that we would rather stay trapped in the economic depression of a counter-productive ideology than question who it is who espouses the philosophy we so ardently believe in, and why we listen to these people.

Book reviewer Corey Robins said “It should come as no surprise to find Rand in such company, for she and the Nazis share a patrimony in the vulgar Nietzscheanism that has stalked the radical right, whether in its libertarian or fascist variants, since the early part of the twentieth century.” But it’s OUR way, the American way, we say. My favorite exchange on “Lost” was this: (Locke) “Why is it so hard for you to BELIEVE?” (Jack) “Why is it so easy for you?”

My favorite exchange on “Lost” was this: (Locke) “Why is it so hard for you to BELIEVE?” (Jack) “Why is it so easy for you?”

Wow, maybe Jack had a hard time believing because it's all twisted nonsense. The article is trying to make Glenn Beck and those that believe in the American Way and individuality somehow a kin to Hitler Fascism with little morality or concern for others? You realize this is far left wing, communistic propaganda with no basis in truth.

Most Americans, Conservative's, moderate right, Independents believe that "all men or created equal". What we don't believe is all men must be forced to be equal by others, either government or some higher ruling power. We believe in freedom and the right to be unequal but not being forced to be unequal either.

The surgeon and the plumber are equal. The barter system worked wonderful in your article because it was two individuals being allowed the freedom to barter instead of some government ruling power forcing and controlling it.

So I contend your article is nonsense because it is not the moral justice that many on the right oppose but the controlling and forcing of our lives by those in power, that Glenn Beck and others oppose. It is for this and other reasons that many would say that Hitler and Fascism is considered a far left ideology much more so then a far right.

As per the following:


“His party was called "National Socialist". Clue is in the name. In terms of American politics, he was more left wing than right. Hitler advocated socialist policies including universal access to healthcare, cradle to grave welfare, government control of virtually ever aspect of citizens' lives etc. While he had some traits in common with conservatives, including nationalism (love for ones country), and a large military, most of his policies were indeed left wing.”

“In terms of world politics, his ideas were also left wing. His views and the views of Joseph Stalin are remarkably similar, including a tight control of the media, mass genocide, and extremely powerful government. Hitler disliked Communism because he believed that there was "Jewish influence" on Communism, due to the fact that the author or the "Communist Manifesto" and the creator of Communism in general was Jewish. However, his policies were indeed similar to the 20th century Communist policies, which are extreme leftist regimes. “

So I contend your article is nonsense because it is not the moral justice that many on the right oppose but the controlling and forcing of our lives by those in power, that Glenn Beck and others oppose.

=====================

Excellent observations Mike Q.!

The conservative Tories in the United Kingdom also believe in Socialized government run Health Care which would be considered liberal/communist here in America.

LOL

Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and associations; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions of property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed. ,

The tone is familiar. Is it Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996?

Is it the Bush Patriot Act of 2001?

No. It is from Hitler’s 1933 speech calling for an Enabling Act for the protection of the People and the State after the catastrophic Reichstag fire that the Nazis had secretly lit.

"the right to be unequal but not being forced to be unequal either."

What a charming way of explaining why the down-on-their-luck are poor,-they have a God-given right to lose their homes, just as long as it wasn't some awful,stinky government that made them poor.

The surgeon and the plumber were not making their own bartered arrangement; the "time bank" WAS the system. Sure, they were perfectly free to refuse to use it, and starve, if their principles were more important than eating.

Germany had already had socialized healthcare before Hitler, so he didn't dare try to take it away. Indeed, he knew that the way for him to gain support was to give the people what they wanted,-more socialism, not less. People do like it.

PS: Only in your quote (from Beck?) is fascism considered leftist. The rest of the world has always considered it far right.

The Enemy From Within:

Obama and the Democratic/Progressive left.
A must read


http://apathetic-usa.com/

“What a charming way of explaining why the down-on-their-luck are poor,-they have a God-given right to lose their homes”…“The surgeon and the plumber were not making their own bartered arrangement; the "time bank" WAS the system.”..

Mike Q - it is not often because of “down-on-their-luck” they end up poor but because of poor choices. There are programs to help the poor and they should be helped not only with their immediate need but helped to make the right choices in the future to be self sufficient on their own and not having to rely on government.

The surgeon and the plumber only works because your story begins AFTER initial choices were made. Those initial choices would have been different if a rigged system like Communism had been in place to begin with. Let me explain:

I think I am united with the left in fighting corruption in a Capitalistic system where all are not equal. I agree with equal opportunity for all to have the freedom to choose and strive to be whatever it is you want to be. Why would anyone be the surgeon? Extra schooling, extra responsibility and more sacrifice when the plumber or for that matter in Communism, even the painter would be equal. Those that choose to take the harder path, more education and responsibility, deserve more and if you decide to take a path that pays less, then it is your choice.

So Capitalism fails when greedy people try to rig the game and not give everyone the same opportunity and people fail when they don’t take advantage of the opportunities but Communism fails because it is a rigged system by design, by trying to make everybody the same, it destroys initiative.

"Why would anyone be the surgeon?"

The surgeon does what he does because he has the intelligence and the manual dexterity to do so, and because he wants to spend his working life fixing broken people. People who choose to be surgeons for the income, from what I've seen, make mediocre surgeons, if they even make it all the way to a practice.

The plumber may have a marvelous work ethic, but maybe wasn't able to do well enough in difficult academic studies to pass med school. Or he was smart, but preferred to be constructive in people's homes rather than in their bodies. Many bright people choose the hard and poor life of a farmer because farming means something to them more important than a summer house in the Hamptons. One of those "poor choices" you were talking about? Maybe the person who chooses his profession according to the expected size of his future income is the one making the poor choice.

Yes, pure communism fails. So does pure capitalism. The middle course, though, seems to work quite well. I feel I'm trying to pull you closer to the middle, and you probably feel the same about me.

“Maybe the person who chooses his profession according to the expected size of his future income is the one making the poor choice.”


Mike Q - it is not all about income, it is about compensating and recognizing the individual that chooses to sacrifice more with the extra schooling or even individual talent. It is not just that individual but how much he means to others. His financial worth is dictated by what others are willing to pay. The problem with Socialized medicine is everybody gets the same but not every surgeon is the same. Some are a better a talent or work harder then others. Although everyone is equal in their value as a human being, they do not all share the same talents. If I choose to want the best surgeon, I should be able to pay more and select that surgeon.

So the government run system allows the relatively poor to make bad decisions, say buying a fancy new car or a fine set of threads, instead of investing in the best surgeon money can buy. Yet, it does not allow those that would rather sacrifice the car and the threads and invest in their own health. By design it favors those that might use their money unwisely with the next logical step of taking away all of peoples choices in order to be equal. I am not against government programs in general, only when they take away my power to choose or tries to force everyone to have the same choices or does not encourage individual efforts.

In a much deeper sense a society who’s individual choices are controlled by government is a society that believes in government over God. God thought it so important that man have free choice that he allowed Adam and Eve to make their own choices, even though they chose wrong, resulting in the ultimate fall from grace and being thrown out of paradise. If free choice is that important to God, who are we to try to change that?

"the individual that chooses to sacrifice more with the extra schooling"

It's not a sacrifice to the future surgeon to do this schooling. He wants to be a surgeon, so he does what is needed to achieve this. Getting it is his reward. Other than amortizing the cost of this schooling in his billing, there's no law of rightness that says he has to charge what the market will bear.

In those Adirondack communities, the surgeon apparently didn't find it offensive to see two hours of his labor valued the same as two hours of the plumber's labor. The idea of total market control of how people do business basically says "If you want me to save you from a horribly painful death, you'll have to pay me what I demand." If a surgeon told me that, I'd at least pray that he catches a nasty disease from French-kissing my ransom money,-it would serve him right. It would serve all the bastards right who hold society hostage for ransom.

You would compensate a person even for inborn talent, you said. Sure, lavish extra compensation on the person with blue eyes or the ability to say what day of the week it was on March 3, 1199? That's reasonable and sends a wholesome message to our youth and the world, right? We're committed to saying that "all men are created equal", but we support an economic system that says that we're different at birth by virtue of unearned graces or curses, and the system exacerbates the inequalities compulsively, relentlessly.

We're way too smug and way too concerned about the poor choices other people make. There is no government short of pure communism in which poor choices do not cost the ones who make these poor choices. The right makes it out that people who make bad choices are handed a standard of living just as good as yours, on your dime. That's the kind of highly exaggerated narrative I'm trying to chip away at.

Why No One Wants to Be Director of National Intelligence Under Obama:

June 2, 2010, 7:19 am

Little noticed before the holiday weekend was this piece in the Washington Post, where Obama administration officials bemoaned the fact that they can’t find anyone to accept the job of Director of National Intelligence (DNI). After floating the name of General James Clapper, the Obama administration is apparently looking elsewhere because of pressure from Capitol Hill to appoint a civilian. Problem? Apparently no qualified civilian intelligence experts are interested. The Post quotes an intelligence official saying, “Nobody who knows this stuff wants this job.”

Now why is that? Could it be the fact that the Obama administration has effectively declared war on the intelligence community—taking away the tools our intelligence professionals need to protect the country and then blaming them for their failure to anticipate and prevent plots like the Christmas Day and Times Square attacks?

In a piece entitled “Setting impossible standards on intelligence,” the Post’s Walter Pincus explains that blaming the Office of Director of National Intelligence for the Christmas Day attack, as the Senate Intelligence Committee recently did, “would set a standard that no future head of any intelligence agency could meet. The failures were, in the first instance, human errors, and there will be more, over which no DNI could have direct responsibility. It would, in some ways, be much like calling for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to resign or be fired if sanctions against Iran do not work, or the Arabs and Israelis don’t reach agreement in their talks.”

As I have explained here before, the intelligence community is being given a nearly impossible task: they are being asked to put together a 1,000-piece puzzle without being allowed to see the picture on the cover of the box. The only way to get that picture, so they can connect the dots, is to allow them to capture and interrogate top terrorist leaders who know what the picture looks like. That does not necessarily require waterboarding. But it does require some capability to hold and effectively question high-value detainees in U.S. custody. America does not have that capability today. Until that changes, the intelligence community will have their hands tied. And they will get the blame for failing to connect the dots, when the blame really lies with the president who took away their capability to do so.

All the blame if you fail without the tools you need to succeed—no wonder nobody wants the job.

"In those Adirondack communities, the surgeon apparently didn't find it offensive to see two hours of his labor valued the same as two hours of the plumber's labor. The idea of total market control of how people do business basically says "If you want me to save you from a horribly painful death, you'll have to pay me what I demand."

Mike Q- You are conveying your point from the evil minded, greedy, powerful, elitist angle which is an extreme that I would not defend. It is not 'offensive' to be paid the same, if both parties agree to it.

It is also not "offensive" to me to be paid different. I believe it is the market for the most part, that decides on the value, not some ruling power unnaturally rigging the game forcing everyone to be the same when really we are all different. Equal in value as a human being but different in respect to ability, which demands more money naturally.

I would pay more for a good surgeon rather then a good plumber. My health is worth more then a leaky faucet. If the plumber can't make it as a surgeon too bad, get paid less and be a plumber. It is not unjust in my world, if they don't get paid the same. I also would pay more for good talent. I'd pay to see great baseball players but not mediocre ones. So what if you can't play baseball and make a lot of money do something else and make less money. Let the market decide, after all it is only money. It may turn out that the plumber making less money is the one that is the richest in terms of happiness or perhaps you think we must be equal in that respect as well?

"Equal in value as a human being but different in respect to ability, which demands more money naturally."

"Naturally?"

We've talked about "Star Trek" before. One thing that sounds alien to most of us is the idea that future humanity got over their this ranking of people. They explore space if they so desire, and are competent to do so. There is no paycheck. Or they create art, which they give to the community. Since their needs are taken care of (somehow,-it's not explained, of course), so they're free to occupy their time as they see fit. Sure, at first there would be a few who would just lounge around all day. Their loss. Eventually they would learn that they need to do something, preferably useful to society in some way.

Every person needs a bag of groceries. No billionaire is so huge in size that he needs a hundred million bags of groceries, so why is he paid so absurdly much?

"If the plumber can't make it as a surgeon too bad, get paid less and be a plumber."

You're definitely ranking people by some standard of monetary value, which you don't seem to distinguish from non-monetary value, or from need. The plumber may very well have been twice as smart as the overcompensating surgeon, but liked working with different materials from what he would have encountered as a surgeon. So for this he's paid say $80/hour while the surgeon gets $1,000/hour or more for a face lift? Both workers need a bag of groceries, a place to live, insurances, and a few more things. It's pointless and silly to pile mountains of cash on someone because he's in one occupation rather than another.

In the future, if you want to watch the best ballplayers, you would go to the ballpark where the best are playing. Any potentially good players who couldn't be bothered to play well unless they're lavishly compensated would be the sorry dregs of society until they got over their silliness and played well because they wanted to, and because it pleased the fans. This day is coming.

OK, so it's not likely. Not until society forgets the age-old systems of ranking, and the motive for a person's doing his best is his own satisfaction and the respect of his fellows. When this happens, the trap of communism is no longer a threat.

I can dream, can't I?

"We've talked about "Star Trek" before. One thing that sounds alien to most of us is the idea that future humanity got over their this ranking of people. They explore space if they so desire, and are competent to do so. There is no paycheck. Or they create art, which they give to the community. Since their needs are taken care of (somehow,-it's not explained, of course), so they're free to occupy their time as they see fit."

Mike Q - Your Star Trek analogy gives me reason to pause and consider your Socialized concept. I think it is valid on Star Trek for three reasons.

One is that it is on smaller scale within a government financed program such as NASA or the military. I suppose the funds are supplied by taxpayers back on Earth, I don't think these space travelers are wiring their taxes back to the homeland, they work for the governmnet or Federation.

Two, it works because there is very much still ranking and individualism on Star Trek, it is just not compensated with more money. If we compare the Federation in contrast to a Borg collective, where nobody is better or worse then anybody else, then you will see where I am coming from. A system that forces everyone to be the same, is like a Borg collective which I firmly reject.

Three, if it is a community of people that play by the rules and trust each other like the early Christians did, then Socialism is again possible. Compare this to our untrustworthy and wasteful big government and to the crooks that manipulate the system for their own benefit and your dream ends up being a nightmare. It is not a nightmare to the scam artists, they get the free ride. It is a nightmare to those that have to pay for their ride.

Bring Back Bush!

With much of the temporary "stimulis" abruptly ending as scheduled, and
with tody's jobs report showing the only gains in jobs being the temporary census worker's hired by the Federal Government and a double dip recession looming, as real as ever, then Obama's and the Democratic left's moronic tax and spend method of stimulating us into recovery has fizzled out on schedule. It seems that the right wing media was right on target and it is the left wing loons who are destroying America and the Bush tax cuts haven't even been phased out yet. Just wait!