The GOP: divorced from reality (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-maher24-2009apr24,0,6983740.story)
The Republican base is behaving like a guy who just got dumped by his wife.
By Bill Maher
April 24, 2009

If conservatives don't want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.

It's been a week now, and I still don't know what those "tea bag" protests were about. I saw signs protesting abortion, illegal immigrants, the bank bailout and that gay guy who's going to win "American Idol." But it wasn't tax day that made them crazy; it was election day. Because that's when Republicans became what they fear most: a minority.

The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because ... well, nobody knows. They're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore. Even though they're not quite sure what "it" is. But they know they're fed up with "it," and that "it" has got to stop.

Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law.

And here's the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.

Do these sound like the concerns of a healthy, vibrant political party?

It's sad what's happened to the Republicans. They used to be the party of the big tent; now they're the party of the sideshow attraction, a socially awkward group of mostly white people who speak a language only they understand. Like Trekkies, but paranoid.

The GOP base is convinced that Obama is going to raise their taxes, which he just lowered. But, you say, "Bill, that's just the fringe of the Republican Party." No, it's not. The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is not afraid to say publicly that thinking out loud about Texas seceding from the Union is appropriate considering that ... Obama wants to raise taxes 3% on 5% of the people? I'm not sure exactly what Perry's independent nation would look like, but I'm pretty sure it would be free of taxes and Planned Parenthood. And I would have to totally rethink my position on a border fence.

I know. It's not about what Obama's done. It's what he's planning. But you can't be sick and tired of something someone might do.

Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota recently said she fears that Obama will build "reeducation" camps to indoctrinate young people. But Obama hasn't made any moves toward taking anyone's guns, and with money as tight as it is, the last thing the president wants to do is run a camp where he has to shelter and feed a bunch of fat, angry white people.

Look, I get it, "real America." After an eight-year run of controlling the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, this latest election has you feeling like a rejected husband. You've come home to find your things out on the front lawn -- or at least more things than you usually keep out on the front lawn. You're not ready to let go, but the country you love is moving on. And now you want to call it a whore and key its car.

That's what you are, the bitter divorced guy whose country has left him -- obsessing over it, haranguing it, blubbering one minute about how much you love it and vowing the next that if you cannot have it, nobody will.

But it's been almost 100 days, and your country is not coming back to you. She's found somebody new. And it's a black guy.

The healthy thing to do is to just get past it and learn to cherish the memories. You'll always have New Orleans and Abu Ghraib.

And if today's conservatives are insulted by this, because they feel they're better than the people who have the microphone in their party, then I say to them what I would say to moderate Muslims: Denounce your radicals. To paraphrase George W. Bush, either you're with them or you're embarrassed by them.

The thing that you people out of power have to remember is that the people in power are not secretly plotting against you. They don't need to. They already beat you in public.

Bill Maher is the host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher."

He sums it up nicely, though the bigger problem is that Republicans aren't Republicans any more.

I do have to get around to watching his movie one of these days.

I do have to get around to watching his movie one of these days.
You'd like it but it doesn't eviscerate religion with anywhere near the same degree of logical brutality that Hitchens (or Dawkins or Harris) do in their books. That said, the movie was pretty funny.

Bill Maher has become better at beating up on straw men! (212)

I couldn't quite understand why they were protesting about taxes. Another big tax cut has been passed for most people. The proposed tax increases for the wealthiest hasn't even been passed yet, much less gone into effect.

But yeah, they weren't protesting during Bush years and the wars have been the biggest boondoggle since like forever.

They're just protesting that their party lost the election I think. Of course, I just did that for the last 8 years and know well how that feels.

I couldn't quite understand why they were protesting about taxes. Another big tax cut has been passed for most people. The proposed tax increases for the wealthiest hasn't even been passed yet, much less gone into effect.
Perhaps you don't understand why they were protesting taxes because the primary thing they were protesting against wasn't taxes?

Instead of beating up on straw men like Bill Maher, you should actually look into what the promoters of the tea parties said they were about instead of just making stuff up, and then proceed to say why you disagree with them and/or find them silly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpZ0vaAwTtU&feature=PlayList&p=3D918F9EECC08504&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=43

They're just protesting that their party lost the election I think. Of course, I just did that for the last 8 years and know well how that feels.
These protests started when Bush was still in office (listen from ~2 minutes in on the last video.) The majority of the republican base disagreed strongly with Bush's bailouts. Just ask this guy how republicans feel about people who vote for big bailouts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QsY2r7HbTM

Perhaps you don't understand why they were protesting taxes because the primary thing they were protesting against wasn't taxes?
There were people protesting all sorts of things. As far as I could see there was little rhyme or reason to it. Some of it was so mind-bogglingly absurd it was embarrassing to watch. I came away thinking they were all a bunch of whiny twits. Seriously, the lunatic fringe of the Republican party makes the lunatic fringe of the Democratic party seem positively mainstream.

If the Dems manage to successfully conflate Limbaugh's views with those of the Republican party then Republicans are going to be taking it in the shorts over the next few elections. I can't believe that the Republicans have been too dimwitted to act to prevent this. Limbaugh's blather may play well to the base but moderates think he's a complete assh0le and it's their votes they need if they want to start winning elections. It will be interesting to see if the Libertarians are able to capitalize on this.

There were people protesting all sorts of things. As far as I could see there was little rhyme or reason to it.

Uhh, yes, there was; 99.99% of the protesters are/were against the following things:

1) Increase in government spending
2) Bailouts (basically all of them)

Beyond that, yes, there wasn't much of a consensus on any one issue. But you must not understand protests very well if you didn't already know that every political protest has a plethora of 'off-topic' voices.

What's going on today is a partisan reversal of what went on in 2002. Back in 2002, right wing blow hards (eg Bill O'Reilly) would cover the Iraq war protests, point out a few "Bush if a Nazi" or "Bush is a Facist" style signs and try to discredit the whole protest based off fo that. Today, it's the same tactic with different people; left wing blowhards. (eg) Rachel Maddow will point a few "Obama is a commie" signs to try and discredit the whole protest.

http://www.credoaction.com/comics/TMW2009-04-22original.jpg

These protests started when Bush was still in office (listen from ~2 minutes in on the last video.)If those protests were really about budget deficits, they would've started in the early 80s. They're didn't, and they're not.

Judging from that video, it looks like yet another band of extremist rednecks protesting the fact that America has rejected what they stand for.

Also, like other libertarians, those people are hypocrites. They want all the benefits of taxes without having to pay taxes themselves. They'll go on and on about government spending, but you'll never hear them saying what sacrifices they'll make in return for lower spending (because they won't make any).

Being against a $700B Wall Street hand out and a $1T special interest payoff bill is an 'extremist redneck' position?

Being against a $700B Wall Street hand out and a $1T special interest payoff bill is an 'extremist redneck' position?Where were your redneck tea party folks when Reagan ballooned the debt by over $4 trillion?

Or when Bush decided to wage a war that's estimated to cost us $3 trillion and gave us nothing but trouble?

Or when Bush gave a handout to drug companies that cost us over $1 trillion, without any real benefit to the people?

Those decisions were far more financially questionable than the recent bailouts, which a) aren't handouts and b) are designed to mitigate a crisis. We went into huge debt during World War II, I suppose you'd complain about that too?

The tea party folks are not protesting debt; I doubt they even have any clue what it's all about. They're protesting the fact that America has rejected their idea of a white-only, Christian-only, xenophobic, ultra-conservative nation, and debt is just an excuse that the hate- and fear-mongering organizers of the event have used to hide their ulterior motives.

Also, I find the notion of low class rednecks complaining about U.S. taxation and debt quite amusing. I wonder how many of them have their credit cards maxed out, or are on unemployment, welfare, or other public subsidy?

Frankly, unless your AGI is $250K or greater, you have no business complaining about the budget, since the people who are paying for 95% of it are the rich people in New York and Los Angeles that you are so quick to mock. They are the ones supporting you, not vice versa.

You should have a party thanking them, for building your roads and schools, arming your military, and paying your unemployment and welfare checks.

Talk about being a stereotyping bigot.

European levels of spending and taxation do have consequences, btw.

http://www.dallasfed.org/research/swe/2005/images/swe0504b_c3.gif

Talk about being a stereotyping bigot.I'll take your ad hominem attack as a reluctant capitulation.

I'm not surprised you have no meaningful response, since every point I made is correct.

Frankly, unless your AGI is $250K or greater, you have no business complaining about the budget, since the people who are paying for 95% of it are the rich people in New York and Los Angeles that you are so quick to mock. They are the ones supporting you, not vice versa.
Republicans whine about welfare while their states are biggest welfare queens.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2165/2994934040_ca5b05d221.jpg

Derived from info posted at The Tax Foundation (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/92.html).

Nevada looks like a real bargain. We should have prostitutes, casinos, and nuclear testing sites/waste dumps in every state.

I'll take your ad hominem attack as a reluctant capitulation.

I'm not surprised you have no meaningful response, since every point I made is correct.

Your post was full of hyper partisanship, 'redneck' bashing, and the fallacious (and often repeated argument) that if anyone benefits at all from government they're not entitled to be critical of rising level of government spending.

I didn't go into detail because it wasn't worth it, but ok.

Your post was full of hyper partisanship, 'redneck' bashing, and the fallacious (and often repeated argument) that if anyone benefits at all from government they're not entitled to be critical of rising level of government spending.Actually, I hate the parties.

And there's nothing wrong with saying that the people actually paying the money should be the ones complaining about how it's being spent, and that the people who are accepting the handouts shouldn't bite the hands that feed them.

European levels of spending and taxation do have consequences, btw.

http://www.dallasfed.org/research/swe/2005/images/swe0504b_c3.gif

So your quoting a graph showing unemployment rates of high taxation countries. Europeon taxation is way higher, and I agree talking from people who play EQ and are either stationed or live there. My question is...

How can you do unemployment rates in 2001-2005 in any country when EVERY country was in a recession including the US. Not to mention the US only tracks unemployment of an individual for 6 months, and thats if they qualify for unemployment. I believe Europeon countries track everyone (correct or wrong?).

In the 90's when we were doing good, wasn't the asian stock market crashing? Or was that 2000 also?

My point is your comparing apples to oranges. Not to mention while are enemployment was "low", are debt (spending more than we were collecting in taxes) put us in the bind we are today. And it was the Republican party who was in power when this debt was amassed. Historically speaking Democratic parties raise taxes to pay the debts Republicans run up. Thats why the national debt tends to go down when Democrats are in office. The only problem is our taxes go up.

Note also...
I said our Unemployment was "low" in the 90's. It actually was quite high as MANY manufacturing jobs went oversea's, Mexico, and Canada. But because of the "tech" bubble it was staved off until 2000 when everything went BOOM! like Enron. The reason this wasn't a problem was cause we were in a bubble. Thank NAFTA and the 1996 Congress for pushing it through. And a stupid President who should of made sure it would expire after 10-20 years. So today we have no jobs, high unemploment, and no tax base to bail us out because "we have to bail out" the few remaining buisnesses remaining in the US. The same ones who consolidated like crazy in the 90's and 00's because "it was in our best interest."

We shouldn't of bailed them out. We should of let them fail. File bankrupcy so we could break them up again. And finally allow mom and pop organizations be created, the ones who wont leave our borders.

So who's to blame. Both parties but don't blame the Democrats for trying to solve our problems. We've spend 8 years with a party who ignored them. Now hopefully the band-aid doesn't hurt worse than the wound

The problem with your argument is that France and Germany have more barriers to trade and more protections for manufacturing jobs than we do.

Oops... nm.

Also, like other libertarians, those people are hypocrites. They want all the benefits of taxes without having to pay taxes themselves. They'll go on and on about government spending, but you'll never hear them saying what sacrifices they'll make in return for lower spending (because they won't make any).
http://punditkitchen.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/political-pictures-patriotic-american.jpg

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=39231&tsp=1Specter switches parties, breakthrough to 60 for Dems in sight

Facing a conservative primary challenge, moderate Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is switching to the Democratic Party.

If Al Franken wins the Minnesota seat, that gives Democrats a 60 vote filibuster-proof Senate majority and President Obama an LBJ-style shot at history.

Obama told Specter he was "thrilled" with the decision.

Specter was among the last of the vanishing moderate northeastern Republicans. He was key to passing Obama's $800 billion stimulus, one of three Republicans, with Maine's two other Republican moderates, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, to provide the necessary votes for passage. Specter said that vote produced a "schism" in the party that created "irreconcilable differences" between him and the GOP.Please, "Republicans," keep being extremist hate-mongering Christian zealots, until your party is marginalized to the point where you're irrelevant.

http://punditkitchen.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/political-pictures-patriotic-american.jpg

+1 more...

the fallacious (and often repeated argument) that if anyone benefits at all from government they're not entitled to be critical of rising level of government spending.

the fallacious (and often repeated argument) that if anyone benefits at all from government they're not entitled to be critical of rising level of government spending.You're missing the point.

The rednecks in the South whining about socialism are also the ones that make the most use of it. That's called hypocrisy, and there's no fallacy whatsoever in exposing it.

Of course, those rednecks aren't really mad about socialism (and probably don't even understand what it is), but that's another point that you refuse to acknowledge.

Wow Spector switching parties is huge, just huge!

Wow Spector switching parties is huge, just huge!Yes, especially if Al Franken is actually seated before his term is up. :biggrin:

Here's a bunch of GOPers weighing in on his defection. Interesting how many of them sound very critical of their own party. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/28/AR2009042802261.html
Snippet
In the United States Senate, Arlen Specter and I were both part of something called the Wednesday Group -- a regular meeting of moderate Republicans who gathered once a week over lunch and to discuss policy and plot strategy. When I first arrived in 1979, there were about 20 to 25 Senators at the lunch each week. By the time I left the Senate in 1997, there were about five regular attendees. So it does not surprise me to see that our old group has dwindled by one more member.

Arlen Specter's decision to leave the Republican Party was both practical and ideological. Practically speaking, he saw that the conservative base of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania was less and less willing to accept his brand of moderate Republicanism. Ideologically, he probably felt less and less comfortable within the ranks of his own increasingly conservative party -- and more at home with the Democrats. So he decided, likely with regret, that the time had come to switch sides, and he has enhanced his chances for reelection by doing so.

I don't see why anyone cares about Specter switching parties. The reason why he's leaving is ultimately because he doesn't mindlessly follow the republican leadership; what would make anyone think he'd mindlessly follow the democrat leadership?

He's pretty straight forward about why he's doing this. He went through quite a long list of big ticket democrat items he won't support as a democrat, and basically said the reason why he's doing this is because he won't likely win the republican primary.

One of the main reason why he's doing this is because Pennsylvania (unlike a lot of states) doesn't allow people who ran in a primary to run as an independent in the general. So in other words, if he ran in the republican primary and lost, he'd be out of the running all together; the law would prevent him from pulling a 'Joe Lieberman.'

Yeah, you're probably right. He'll be very independent minded like he normally is. But at some level he will have to toe the line if he wants to get funding from the DNC. I think that might have been some of the reason he left, the GOP liked the other Republican candiate better, he was more Republican-y... whatever that means these days.

The problem with your argument is that France and Germany have more barriers to trade and more protections for manufacturing jobs than we do.

NAFTA was what destroyed the few barriers the US had remaining. And I mean few cause NIKE sure exploited it way before NAFTA was around. /Agree Kamion

Germany and France have as many barriers as we do now. Strictly speaking, the EU as been leveling the playing field now for almost a decade. What barriers they do have are eroding as they must compete with every other country that belongs to the EU. They may not have NAFTA, but their dealing with similiar problems as jobs leave for other Europeon countries. It also explains why they've been buying American, Canadian, and Asian componies to streagthen their own buisnesses.

Erm? China is our biggest trading partner, and we do not have a free trade agreement with China. 26% of our imports come from Mexico (10%) and Canada (16%.) And a lot of our imports from Canada are things like oil and hard commodities, things that couldn't exactly be done in America (unless we invade and conquer Alberta or something.) I also find your view at NAFTA funny because one of the successful states at growing manufacturing jobs in the past decade was Texas, which if you've looked a map lately is pretty close to Mexico. No rational business person would bother building a plant in Michigan or Ohio. I think you should be directly some of your NAFTA hostility at overreaching state governments instead.

Europe has always been more protectionist than us. Their tariff rates were higher than our's in the 80s, and they're still higher than our's are now. But the EU trading block has greatly reduced their tariff rate. Europe also subsidizes local industries more than us in general, and especially so back in the 1960s and 70s. For example, the annual subsidy for French cows is larger than the income for the majority of people in Sub-Saharhan Africa.

And if protectionism is the road to success, than Morrocco and India should be the most prosperous nations in the world because their tariff rates are over 4x that of Western Nations.

One of the biggest issues facing protectionism in America is our hostility towards foreign investment. Luxembourgian/Indian steel giant Arcelor-Mittal tried to buy old steel mills in the rust belt a couple years ago but was stopped by anti-trust suits. The idea that Arcelor-Mittal has anything close to a monopoly in the steel industry is absurd, and most of the steel mills they were going to buy aren't doing anything better today.

http://punditkitchen.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/political-pictures-teabaggers-work-ethic.jpg

The trickle up poverty sign made think of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHA7YXsu110

Fast forward to the 2 minute mark.

Hostility towards foreign investment? You're joking. China probably has invested a trillion dollars or more in the US. In fact, we've been the place where the entire world invests. Part of the reasons everyone hates us more than ever now is that we didn't take proper precautions to safeguard those investments with good regulations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7942924.stm
The White House has sought to assure China that its $1 trillion (£0.7tn) in investments in the United States is safe despite the economic downturn.

It sounds like you're taking one example and trying to prove a case with it.

We get hit with anti-trust stuff all the time in Europe, remember Microsoft's anti-trust issues?

Erm, I meant to type foreign DIRECT* investment. Obviously, being the world's financial capital and largest debtor nation means that plenty of investment flows through here.

And there's more than one example about hostility towards foreign investment, mainly in the auto sector. Some politicians are hostile to southern states that give tax incentives to foreign car companies to build plants in US when those same politicians support giving subsidies/bailouts to "American" car companies. I put American in quotes, because when you're dealing with multinational giant corporations like Toyota and GM, the country the company is headquartered in doesn't matter a whole lot.

Other examples include shipping, where the US makes special regulations to favor US based shipping companies. Other industries where protectionist regulations exist include banking, mining, defense contracting, certain energy-related industries, fishing, communications, and aviation. Obviously, there is some merit to having some forms of protectionism in some of those industries, but nevertheless, industries/unions/etc that have enough lobbying power are able to use the government to knee cap foreign competition.

Re: Anti-trust

I don't care if we hit foreign companies with anti-trust suits, what I was pointing out is that there are incidences when protectionist tendencies can politicize specific anti-trust suits. The foreign anti-trust lawsuits against Microsoft, in my judgment, had a stronger legal argument than the American one against Arcelor-Mittal.

-----------

The US is actually very good when it comes to foreign direct investment. We're not the best, but we're better than any other high population country. I was mainly pointing out that there are more protectionist tendencies when it comes to foreign companies doing business here compared to our companies doing business in foreign countries or foreign companies selling their products here.

So I heard today that something like 27% of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/773/fewer-voters-identify-as-republicans) (36% as Democrats). They used to have a dozen or so senators in the NE, that's now down to 1 or 2 and they're very moderate. Republicans are becoming a regional party. As the moderates drift away they are getting even more conservative, causing even more moderates to drift away.

The swing states have gone democrat... sure doesn't spell good times ahead for Republicans and even the states that went big for Bush in 2004 have lost a lot of Republicans.

They may be wandering in the wilderness for quite some time to come...

http://pewresearch.org/assets/publications/773-4.gif

The thing about this entire situtation, is I wonder if it would be better to change the model of expanding out of an economic crisis, to instead deflate out of it.

I have a couple of theories and numbers I could run on it, but, I doubt it would ever see light outside of a university. People would hear the less money thing and freak, even if my idea actually involved fixing health care, social security, encourage foreign investment, making products to sell worldwide with free trade, giving people jobs and stuff, and ditching our "super power" status.

I think we're going to ditch our "super power" status whether we like it or not. :p I've had a feeling for a couple of years that we're kind of in the twilight of our bright day, definitely for the country, perhaps for all of civilization as it currently stands.

How can we make money in the future? We've don't seem to have a lot of choices, Either be protectionists and bring everything back home. We can't rely on people to give us bucket loads of money in investments any longer to fund our markets, we've demonstrated we can't be trusted with it. About the only thing left is new technologies but how does that help us if they're just taken abroad for manufacturing? I've never quite seen the logic in globalization and out-sourcing of everything.

I get the feeling Olympia Snow might defect from the GOP too."There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party," Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine -- now one of only three Republican senators from the Northeast -- wrote in the New York Times on Wednesday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/opinion/29snowe.html
She sounds pretty unhappy.

quote"How can we make money in the future? We've don't seem to have a lot of choices, Either be protectionists and bring everything back home. We can't rely on people to give us bucket loads of money in investments any longer to fund our markets, we've demonstrated we can't be trusted with it."

Not neccessarily. But, my deflation idea would essentially work like this, without throwing around numbers. Now keep in mind you might want to read the whole thing before it gets cherry picked. A slow gradual raising of the interest rate of the Federal Reserve, although the best way to do it would be to jack it up to 30% or so, but, anyways. What will end up happening would be banks would drop interest rates on savings, cd's, etc. While at the same time they will raise their interest on loan rates, or just absorb losses and stuff. Obviously, they will police themselves with when and how they do their loans and whine alot. Without going into to much detail on the process. Businesses and health care will cut their costs as they are getting deflated, wing themselves off credit, and be forced to absorb some losses.

Some key points to address with this, Capitol losses will go through the roof. Therefore, it would be in the best interest to secure and clean up that tax code for the wealthy, in other words, force those that make over 150k a year suck up their losses. Other thing that will have to be done will be to prorate for deflation, the prices of autos and homes, amongst other. Now the real kicker to deflating, minimum wages, leave them the way they are or maybe an increase. This will force a standard. This will cause wealth to be distributed evenly.

Now for those not in the know, when you raise the interest rates on the Federal reserve, you are essentially collecting money, which this increases the amount of money the government has to work with minus taxes yada yada. With the extra money while all that is going on, that is what will pay down health care, the trade deficit, pay up social security while making deflationary cuts so your grand children of generation x can retire. I am skipping quite a few things in the interests of saving time.

But, eventually you will pay down to a point, where you can remove the interest rate really low. While all that is essentially going on, the value of the everyones currency will be increasing as it will begin to equalize with the dollar, which is what I want, as countries no longer have to inflate as the United States does. Nor will they have to deflate unless they want to keep being our little puppets in trade. Now there you go. That will encourage global trading by essentially making the asian market a very lucrative place to conduct business. But, ya we had to give up our superpower status, the most mass consumerish per capita in the world, but, we now have lots of jobs making and producing things again.

quote"About the only thing left is new technologies but how does that help us if they're just taken abroad for manufacturing? I've never quite seen the logic in globalization and out-sourcing of everything."

And that is the point, our current method is we are building in third world countries or countries with a lousy currency exchange rate to dollars. Then, we are effectively killing off our own economy by distributions to the very wealthy already, and we can not effectively sell our products at or near the same prices as consumers purchase them for in the US. In order for our economy to function properly there needs to be a distribution of wealth.

It doesn't mean with stagnating wages and a glut of housing that we jack up the prices on average housing, then, we end up with where we are at today and wonder why, what happened. In order for a global market to exist, other countries gotta catch up, so we can build and sell products to them, and they can not do that without the US expanding all the time.

If you want to use the sexy quote boxes you put the beginning of the quote in square brackets like this: {quote} (only use square brackets). The end of the quote is like this {/quote}.

The hard part about your proposal is basically the people starving as massive numbers of jobs are lost. Other than that, sounds reasonable. :)

ya, I do the quotes like that cause it is alot less personel when debating. The way it is in it's current format of the expanding out is people do starve as well until the distribution comes in. That was something I thought of though just failed to write it down, but, more diversion of funds towards the food aspect. It is a viable option, but, will not see the light of day anytime soon. On the plus side people go to work for 50 years or so without a forseeable recession or depression.

I do the quotes like that cause it is alot less personel when debating.It looks a little weird though. Kind of hard to separate out when you're talking and someone else is.

I think our long expansion kind of lulled people into forgetting about recessions and depressions. And everyone got caught up in the greed of making huge returns on everything from housing to investments and made terrible decisions. This is what I think the Republican party kind of thrives on... the big gamble. Do we allow the sort of economy where you can roll the dice and possibly get very wealthy even if it means that some people will not be able to even play the dice game, or some will roll the dice and get very poor. Democrats want to take the dice out of the game. Stability and slow growth, or even 0 growth and stability, for everyone versus playing the lottery which seems to be the Republican model.

Unfortunately it seems like Republicans like to think their dice rolls are due to skill and intelligence versus getting lucky.

May you translate that?

Here we go: President Barack Obama's move to curb overseas tax havens and job out-sourcing was his first major proposal in what promises to be a broad overhaul of the U.S. tax system.

Americans have little sympathy for companies that park their money in places like the Cayman Islands in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

And they are even more fed up with companies who have benefited from tax incentives for shipping jobs overseas, blaming these policies for a broad erosion of the U.S. labour market.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE5435LM20090504

aight, summary, current model for recessions and depressions. Expand out by making more money, that way people will try to make more money. My idea, instead of inflation, go with deflationary measures. Use the deflationary money to pay off deficits, healthcare, social security, and other social programs.

Other countries no longer have to expand to keep pace, so, they see stablity. They build up infrastructure better living conditions. We sell our Nike's and Reeboks to them for the same price as the United States citizens does, because of their infrastructures, wages equalize, and quality of life, go up. We make lots of things, and sell lots of things worldwide. Your great great grandchildren can retire, the world is a lovely place.

Other countries no longer have to expand to keep pace, so, they see stablity. They build up infrastructure better living conditions. We sell our Nike's and Reeboks to them for the same price as the United States citizens does, because of their infrastructures, wages equalize, and quality of life, go up. We make lots of things, and sell lots of things worldwide. Your great great grandchildren can retire, the world is a lovely place.

What countries are you speaking of?

China, India, Russia, plus it opens up Africa, most of Asia, and South America.