Dana

B)--> QUOTE(Plan B @ Sep 29 2005, 09:01 AM) ←Do you believe everything you read? that guy has been charged many times and been found not guilty every time. Oh god, that's gotta be about the weakest defense ever. John Gotti was tried 3 times on racketeering and money laundering and found not guilty. To quote Bill O'Reilly "If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck..." -Dana

When it comes to people with disabilities, i.e. "Old Folks", the Federal Government is DEFINITELY in charge and takes a pro-active role. If fact, read the Executive Order our Dear Leader signed just over a year ago: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...0040722-10.html

Beer + Vicodin. I win.

I don't agree with you on the Kerry position. If Kerry was as bad as people say, then why did he lose by 3% of the vote? Let's see how the Nov '04 election went down: You take the absolutely most-liberal senator and nominate him for President. Then you take the 4th most liberal senator and nominate him for Vice President. Then you put these two bleeding-heart liberals up against a popular war-time president who's got everything going for him: broad tax cuts, 9/11, Iraq. Then you have these candidates vehemently oppose the Iraq war and the tax cuts during campaigning. Then we have a bunch of guys called the Swift Boat Vets for Truth come out and smear John Kerry and claim he was really a coward, not a hero in Vietnam. In the end, John Kerry was still able to pull in over 48% of the popular vote despite all of the things going against him. I think that he did better than could be expected, considering the circumstances. -Dana

The President is doing poorly and public opinion is against him? Look over there! Howard Dean! "Yeeeeeeeaaarrrrrrrgh!" Nice try. I'll be sending flowers to Karl Rove when he's in prison. -Dana

Um, ok. Remember about 2 1/2 years ago when this was a 'popular' war? Remember the New York Times' (that beacon of Liberalism) reporter Judith Miller writing story after story about Saddam's hidden nuclear capabilities that turned out to be completely baseless? Remember Clear Channel Radio holding "Support the Troops" rallies in every major city? Remember how Bush was at an all time high, 85% job approval rating? That was the work of a liberal media against the war? Yeah right. They were friggin cheerleaders not dissenters. True dissenters like myself were told to Shut Up by guys like Bill O'Reilly, Tucker Carlson, Chris Mathews, Paula Zahn, Wolf Blitzer and other pundits. We were told we were traitors/unpatriotic if we disagreed with the President and his path to war. Maybe now that we're in a quagmire and public opinion has shifted on Iraq, the news media has begun to make their coverage mirror opinion. You don't question Bush for going into Iraq? Even now?? You're still convinced we did the right thing? What we've accomplished so far is worth the $200 billion we've spent and the 1700+ soldiers we've lost? And I'm not sure what the Bill Clinton comment means. I've read it half a dozen times but I can't figure it out.... Lemme paraphrase your quote: War is ugly, very ugly. People who think we should never go to war are even uglier. Brown people who are poor, uneducated and oppressed are incapable of fending for themselves and require someone who is whiter and smarter than them to come in, pick them up and show them how to be free. Did I miss anything? -Dana

http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/?ci=17584 Oh, wait, I'm sorry, you were saying something about the Democrats? How's your "popular war-time Preznit" doing now? -Dana

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/stor...5158433,00.html Hmmmm 50% increase... Horrible, just horrible. -Dana

War is soooooo beautiful, isnt it???

I don't vote based on personality, I did that in Junior High voting for student council. -Dana

I'm sorry, which particular point was weak? Me biased? And you're not. Nice. You bring a knife to our intellectual gun fight, you mental midget. Go play in the sandbox with the other kiddies and let the big people "talk adult". There, there, scoot along now.... -Dana

Well, it depends on what you mean by better off or worse off. If the poverty rate can be used as an indication, we're clearly not better off now than we were four years ago. This means more people are sliding downward than are climbing upward. If you want to use job numbers to judge how the economy is going then you should look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. The accepted rule is that you need atleast 155,000 jobs a month created in order to just keep up with the growing working age population in the U.S.. There have been many, many months during this administration where there have been net jobs lost rather than gained. I think you are completely wrong about Americans being 'too good' for manufacturing jobs. Those jobs provide a good income to people who may not have a college degree or higher skills. Don't tell me that they closed all those Chevy assembly lines in Michigan during the 80's because they couldn't find enough employees to take the $25/hr jobs installing windshields and welding unibodies. Those plants closed because we realized that japanese cars were cheaper and often built to better standards than American cars. How about all those people who assemble computers for Gateway in South Dakota? Do you think they resent the repetetive nature of their jobs when they get their paycheck every friday? I doubt it. If we simply become a nation of consumers, and not producers, what do we have to offer the rest of the world? Intellectual, moral and miltary might can only take you so far. After that, you gotta have stuff to sell to them! -Dana

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not trying to ruffle any feathers here, Mr. Administrator. I applaud you and your friends for having succesful careers. There are of course going to be exceptions to every rule, as you have been kind enough to point out, otherwise I stand by my original post. -Dana

See this is a good example. You are young and started out at an entry level position and have been able to receive regular raises because your are very upwardly mobile. I would suspect that most people in that demogrpahic make less than $30,000 a year, though. I would venture that many of the users here are in that category. Most people haven't acquired all that much debt by the time they are in their mid-twenties, so a good portion of their income can go towards entertainment items like fast Volvos. As people grow older, they gain experience and expect the salary they receive to reflect that. These people have mortgages that run in the thousands of dollars, sometimes 2 car payments between a husband and wife, plus the added expenses of raising children. These are the people who are making fifty, sixty or even eighty thousand dollars a year. When companies downsize or outsource jobs many of these upper level employees are the first to go because they cost the company the most. If you are a young person and lose your job, you can hack it and find another entry level job and exploit your high mobility along with your low wage demands. For an older worker this can prove disastrous because they have come to expect a certain level of pay and benefits in order to maintain their lifestyle. With the general lack of new jobs being produced, according to the bureau of labor stats, and even fewer good paying, non-service jobs out there these days, there could be a serious adjustment in our expected standard of living in the U.S.. I'd hate to think of us turning into a third world country in 60 years, Many people have self-invested in the stock market, and I would guess that many of your parents have. They expect there to be a nice nest egg when they retire in 10 years, don't they? What happens if the stock market stays relatively flat like it has? Can your parents afford to let their money sit their and stagnate for another 4 years? Probably not. Luckily they have the guaranteed benefits of Social Security to add a level of, well, security. The number of people living in poverty has a huge impact on us. As the federal government cuts our taxes, more and more people are becoming dependent on public aid. Because of the lack of revenue, the goverment is able to offer less and less support. A viscious cycle indeed. I hope that some of you take a look at the numbers and think about how they impact us all as a society. You can't isolate yourself from the world, so these things actually have a direct impact on our lives. I hope that the knee-jerk "whiner" and "he's got issues" comments were hastily posted and not the actual views of the authors. We can actually discuss the issues and problems we face, not call eachother names. -Dana

One more thing: How old were you guys 4 years ago? -Dana