Elections

[USMC850T]

-1. I hated Carter and he was a horrible president. The Dow Jones is a reflection of the profit of some corporations, not of the nation as a whole buddy.

~Mike

It's an indicator of investment, which is an indication of the national economy as a whole.

[Volvo Virgin]

It's an indicator of investment, which is an indication of the national economy as a whole.

As much as I'd agree with you on premise,the average middle class American isn't the one subsidizing his income and making big $$$ investing.

And I have one word to explain why the Dow is where it is....401k.....and similar mutual funds..And most of these are being invested by investment groups on behalf of corporations that have scrapped pensions in luei of a 401k type retirement.Many of these are Fortune 500 companies that screwed the older employee out of their pensions with the laughable goverment funded pension program(another bone thrown to big business)that gives the employee pennies on the dollar for his hard earned pension monies.The rest of the employess won't see this 401k money until they are 63 or better,and it's all just pie in the sky until then.Except that it keeps over-valuing the Dow.

Edited November 9, 2006 by Volvo Virgin

[Plan_B]

Studied his policies in AP U.S. History. Horrible Prez imo.

~Mike

You told me last night that you are 22 <_<

Edited November 9, 2006 by Plan B

[HPTDoh]

Me for President!!

Dibs on the sex scandal!

[fastboy]

Dibs on the sex scandal!

lol

[RAzOR]

I think the election was more a referrendum on the war and Neocon Republican arrogance and corruption than it was a vote for the Democrats (who basically ran on and stood for nothing but a generic withdrawl timetable and higher taxes). On the plus side, the congress is far more moderate now on both sides of the isles but with Liberal leadership (Pelosi).

The Republicans lost this. It was their own fault and they got what they deserved. Jerks.

Note how Republicans don't whine about election fraud. They at least take their lumps, self examine and look inward. I have heard a lot of talk of this in the past two days. The GOP has work to do, but at least they know it. Now we have a party in power, the DNC, that thinks control is their birthright, never assumes it is their own fault, and really doesn't have a clue what to do. But for now, I am happy that the GOP got its ass handed to it. They needed this. I just hope they fix the rpoblem and get back in power in two years.

The first thing Pelosi said was we (the DNC congress) is to going to do was try to restrict American corps from outsourcing labor to overseas (a tip of the hat to organized labor, the DNCs biggest single contributor). Right off the bat, a horrifically bad idea for the US, considering our economy is great, unemployment is low, prices are low, consumer confidence high, and inflation is in check. Sure there's some trouble but geez.

The Democrats did not deserve to win but the Republicans and overspending, pork-out Neocons put the American people in this position. Pelosi is a very liberal, very smart, effective leader. We'll see how she handles a chamber full of moderates.

All I can say, is that if W signs an amnesty bill on Illegal Immigration, I'm changing to independent.

Edited November 9, 2006 by RAzOR

[wills]

Am I the only one that remembers the good ole days of double-digit inflation (Home Mortgages at interest rates over 12%) and double-digit unemployment?

Those were just some of the consequences of the actions of the Carter administration.

Right now, the current inflation rate is between 2 and 3 percent...

http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflati...ntInflation.asp

and the current unemployment rate is 4.4 percent...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/fsbr/employment.html

Oh And BTW...

the Dow Jones Index is running at record highs -- over 12,000.

I am going to crawl in a hole for 2 years and then pray that I'm not the only one left that is not Muslim and doesn't speak Spanish when I come back out!!!

Funny thing is the Dow did not change after the election. That's because the market knows nothing will be accomplished...sad but true.

As for the misery index, I had the horror of peanut farmer's dumb jerk son run for Senator...he lost thank God! My state votes mostly Republican so you would think the Dems would have brought a better candidate.

I am not crawling into a hole, now I get to watch and see the "100 day list" fail and the excuses follow.

[gdizzle]

Funny thing is the Dow did not change after the election. That's because the market knows nothing will be accomplished...sad but true.

As for the misery index, I had the horror of peanut farmer's dumb jerk son run for Senator...he lost thank God! My state votes mostly Republican so you would think the Dems would have brought a better candidate.

I am not crawling into a hole, now I get to watch and see the "100 day list" fail and the excuses follow.

I think it's funny how everyone is looking at the Dems like they're some kind of superhero going to fly in on their giant fallic shapped space ship and rid the world of the evil repubs.

[firepuma]

I think the election was more a referrendum on the war and Neocon Republican arrogance and corruption than it was a vote for the Democrats (who basically ran on and stood for nothing but a generic withdrawl timetable and higher taxes). On the plus side, the congress is far more moderate now on both sides of the isles but with Liberal leadership (Pelosi).

The Republicans lost this. It was their own fault and they got what they deserved. Jerks.

Note how Republicans don't whine about election fraud. They at least take their lumps, self examine and look inward. I have heard a lot of talk of this in the past two days. The GOP has work to do, but at least they know it. Now we have a party in power, the DNC, that thinks control is their birthright, never assumes it is their own fault, and really doesn't have a clue what to do. But for now, I am happy that the GOP got its ass handed to it. They needed this. I just hope they fix the rpoblem and get back in power in two years.

The first thing Pelosi said was we (the DNC congress) is to going to do was try to restrict American corps from outsourcing labor to overseas (a tip of the hat to organized labor, the DNCs biggest single contributor). Right off the bat, a horrifically bad idea for the US, considering our economy is great, unemployment is low, prices are low, consumer confidence high, and inflation is in check. Sure there's some trouble but geez.

The Democrats did not deserve to win but the Republicans and overspending, pork-out Neocons put the American people in this position. Pelosi is a very liberal, very smart, effective leader. We'll see how she handles a chamber full of moderates.

All I can say, is that if W signs an amnesty bill on Illegal Immigration, I'm changing to independent.

Pelosi???? Don't even get me started....Tow the line buddy, tow the line.

[starfish]

As much as I'd agree with you on premise,the average middle class American isn't the one subsidizing his income and making big $$$ investing.

And I have one word to explain why the Dow is where it is....401k.....and similar mutual funds..And most of these are being invested by investment groups on behalf of corporations that have scrapped pensions in luei of a 401k type retirement.Many of these are Fortune 500 companies that screwed the older employee out of their pensions with the laughable goverment funded pension program(another bone thrown to big business)that gives the employee pennies on the dollar for his hard earned pension monies.The rest of the employess won't see this 401k money until they are 63 or better,and it's all just pie in the sky until then.Except that it keeps over-valuing the Dow.

Obviously you don't know jack about wealth creation, the market, investing or retirement planning. Self-directed 401K's are way superior to most pension programs. Despite your attempts of making corporations out to be the boogey man, currently 50% of all Americans own US equities. Do you have any idea of what the current P/E of the Dow 30 even is? If you feel its so far overvalued why don't you short it?

[starfish]

All your stats are skewed,bogus numbers that die-hard Republicans love to tout.

Inflation numbers are heavily slanted,and aren't an accurate snapshot of the economy with respect to the middle class.

You want a true barometer on the economy.Try asking the average true middle class American in their 60's or 70's when they had it better...today...or any time in the past 50 years.

This is a joke right? People who are 60 or 70 years old saw their President assasinated. Some saw heavy action in Vietnam. They were faced with the daily threat of nuclear attack during the cold war for the better part of their life. Many suffered financially during the oil embargo and the Carter years. They perservered through many severe weather or other natural disasters that devasted their homes. But they pulled through it far better and smarter just like their American predecessors to help build the technology and infrastructure that many of us use today. Now the market is at an all time high and as a group they have a ton of retirement cash to live posh lifestyles. All in all it seems they have it pretty good, so why are you and I paying for their a limp dick?

[flyfishing3]

and I'm a very liberal guy

tree hugger.

i'm so glad santorum lost. he's bad for america and i want everybody to remember his name because he'll take a shot at pres. i'm sure. bad bad man.

fast eddie rendall won again. this guy thinks he's frank rizzo. he already announced tax increases are coming.

i hate politicans.

mike

[robert213]

1) I don't like illegal immagrants and not all democrats support it

You may not like illegal immigrants. Your congressman may not like illegal immigrants. However, GW Bush is a very compassionate person and favors amnesty. It has been the conservative Republican senate that has prevented it thus far. Your party understands that the Hispanic community contributes a significate number of votes on each election day. We will see amnesty for illegal immigrants by the end of 2007.

Besides, didn't the problem illegal immigration escalate during the Clinton Administration in the first place?

2) That has been happening more over the past six years than ever before

Yes, and the problem with terrorism continued to grow in the six years before GW Bush took office.

1993 - The attack of the parking garage of WTC in NYC.

1996 - The attack of Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

1998 - The attack of US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenja.

1998 - The attack of US Embassy in Dares Salaam, Tanzania

2000 - The attack of USS Cole near Aden, Yemen

Yes, and the problem with terrorism will continue to grow after GW Bush leaves office. The terrorists don't hate GW Bush personally. They hate the United States as a whole. They hate GW Bush in the same manner as they hate our flag -- both are recognizable symbols of the U.S.

The similarities of the philosophy of your political party and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain frightens me.

http://www.english-zone.com/esl-jokes/brown.html

3) How do you expect to pay for the war with low taxes. Their tactics don't work because the big companies just invest and the money does not go to anything but the stock-market. We need to tax the top 1%, not everyone. So, unless you're a multi-billionare and you want your children to pay for the war, don't complain about it.

Studies have revealed that GW Bush Tax Cuts DO work.

-- more tax revenue is being collected

-- the wealthy are enduring more of the tax burden

-- everyone (large income or small) is benefiting

They work because the wealthy have less incentive to play games sheltering their income and have placed lower emphasis on tax effect in their investment strategy.

Remember,

-- the top 50% of people reporting an income pay 96% of federal income taxes

-- the top 25% pay 83%

-- the top 10% pay 65%

-- the top 1% pay 35%

http://taxesandgrowth.ncpa.org/hot_issue/share/

Remember,

Social Security is 12.4%, and Medicare is 2.9%

You are responsible for half; your employer the other half

Federal Unemployment is .8% of 1st $7,000 -- paid by employer

State Income Rate varies by state. Indiana is 3.4%

State Unemployment varies by state. Indiana is 2.7% of 1st $7,000 -- paid by employer

Sales Tax varies by state. Indiana (Indianapolis) is 7%

If you have a $20,000 salary, then you and your employer have paid a combined $4,655.66 -- an amazing 23%, before including any Federal income taxes.

[robert213]

4) If you're an idealogical, head stuck in the rear person about gays, you need to open your eyes and mind and be aware of them for who they are, not their sexual orrientation.

And did anyone notice that for the first time in U.S. History, the percentage of households being composed of traditional married couples has dropped below 50 percent?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/us/15cen...p;ex=1318564800

To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered

Published: October 15, 2006

Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census figures by The New York Times.

The American Community Survey, released this month by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7 percent, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of married couples — with and without children — just shy of a majority and down from more than 52 percent five years earlier.

The numbers by no means suggests marriage is dead or necessarily that a tipping point has been reached. The total number of married couples is higher than ever, and most Americans eventually marry. But marriage has been facing more competition. A growing number of adults are spending more of their lives single or living unmarried with partners, and the potential social and economic implications are profound.

“It just changes the social weight of marriage in the economy, in the work force, in sales of homes and rentals, and who manufacturers advertise to,” said Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. “It certainly challenges the way we set up our work policies.”

While the number of single young adults and elderly widows are both growing, Professor Coontz said, “we have an anachronistic view as to what extent you can use marriage to organize the distribution and redistribution of benefits.”

Couples decide to live together for many reasons, but real estate can be as compelling as romance.

“Owning three toothbrushes and finding that they are always at the wrong house when you are getting ready to go to bed wears on you,” said Amanda Hawn, a 28-year-old writer who set up housekeeping near San Francisco with her boyfriend, Nate Larsen, a real estate analyst, after shuttling between his apartment and one she shared with a friend. “Moving in together has simplified life,” Ms. Hawn said.

The census survey estimated that 5.2 million couples, a little more than 5 percent of households, were unmarried opposite-sex partners. An additional 413,000 households were male couples, and 363,000 were female couples. In all, nearly one in 10 couples were unmarried. (More than one in four households consisted of people living alone).

And the numbers of unmarried couples are growing. Since 2000, those identifying themselves as unmarried opposite-sex couples rose by about 14 percent, male couples by 24 percent and female couples by 12 percent.

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National brokeback and Lesbian Task Force, said brokeback couples were undercounted because many brokeback people were reluctant to disclose their sexual orientation. But he said that inhibition seemed to be fading.

“I would say the increase is due to people feeling more comfortable disclosing that they are brokeback or lesbian and living with a partner,” he said.

The survey did not ask about sexual orientation, but its questionnaire was designed to distinguish partners from roommates. A partner was defined as “an adult who is unrelated to the householder, but shares living quarters and has a close personal relationship with the householder.”

Some of the biggest gains in unmarried couples were recorded in unexpected places. In the rural Midwest, the number of households made up of male partners rose 77 percent since 2000.

The survey revealed wide disparities in household composition by place. The proportion of married couples ranged from more than 69 percent in Utah County, Utah, which includes Provo, to 26 percent in Manhattan, which has a smaller share of married couples than almost anyplace in the country. But Manhattan registered a 1.2 percent increase in married couples since 2000, in contrast to the rest of New York City and many other places.

Among counties, the highest proportion of unmarried opposite-sex partners was in Mendocino, Calif., where they made up nearly 11 percent of all households.

The highest share of male couples was in San Francisco, where, according to the census, they accounted for nearly 2 percent of all households. In Manhattan, they made up 1 percent of households. Hampshire County, Mass., home to Northampton, had the highest proportion of female couples, at 1.7 percent. Some of the highest numbers of unmarried couples were recorded in the South, which as defined by the census, has the largest population of any region.

(Page 2 of 2)

David Blankenhorn, president of the marriage advocacy group the Institute for American Values, said married couples had become a minority largely because of the growing number of households made up of people who planned to marry or who used to be married.

Steve Watters, the director of young adults for Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group, said that the trend of fewer married couples was more a reflection of delaying marriage than rejection of it.

“It does show that a lot of people are experimenting with alternatives before they get there,” Mr. Watters said. “The biggest concern is that those who still aspire to marriage are going to find fewer models. They’re also finding they’ve gotten so good at being single it’s hard to be at one with another person.”

But Pamela J. Smock, a researcher at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center, said her research — unaffiliated with the Census Bureau — found that the desire for strong family bonds, and especially marriage, was constant.

“Even cohabiting young adults tell us that they are doing so because it would be unwise to marry without first living together in a society marked by high levels of divorce,” Ms. Smock said.

A number of couples interviewed agreed that cohabiting was akin to taking a test drive and, given the scarcity of affordable apartments and homes, also a matter of convenience. Some said that pregnancy was the only thing that would prompt them to make a legal commitment soon. Others said they never intended to marry. A few of those couples said they were inspired by solidarity with brokeback and lesbian couples who cannot legally marry in most states.

Jennifer Lynch, a 28-year-old stage manager in New York, said she had lived on the Lower East Side with her boyfriend, who is 37 and divorced, for most of the five years they have been a couple.

“Cohabitating is our choice, and we have no intention to be married,” Ms. Lynch said. “There is little difference between what we do and what married people do. We love each other, exist together, all of our decisions are based upon each other. Everyone we care about knows this.”

If anything, she added, “not having the false security of wedding rings makes us work even a little harder.”

With more competition from other ways of living, the proportion of married couples has been shrinking for decades. In 1930, they accounted for about 84 percent of households. By 1990 the proportion of married couples had declined to about 56 percent.

Married couples have not been a majority of households headed by adults younger than 25 since the 1970’s, but among those aged 25 to 34 the proportion slipped below 50 percent for the first time within the past five years. (Among Americans aged 35 to 64, married couples still make up a majority of all households.)

“It’s partially fueled by women in the work force; they don’t necessarily have to marry to be economically secure,” said Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College of the City University of New York, who conducted the census analysis for The New York Times. “You used to get married to have sex. Now one of the major reasons to get married is to have children, and the attractiveness of having children has declined for many people because of the cost.”

William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, attributed the accelerated trend to the lifestyles of baby boomers.

“It’s the legacy of the boomers that have finally caused this tipping point,” Dr. Frey said. “Certainly later generations have followed in boomer footsteps, with high levels of living together before marriage, and more flexible lifestyles. But the boomers were the trailblazers, once again, rebelling against a norm their parents epitomized.

“This would seem to close the book on the Ozzie and Harriet era that characterized much of the last century,” he said.

[prasamin]

This morning, when I woke up, my yard was filled with brokeback illegal immmigrants. Then like 50 terrorists tried to recruit me to terrorist camp, but my taxes had gotten so high by that point, I couldn't take any time off. I tried to ask some lady what had happened, but she was a damn lesbo and then I had some explaining to do to my kids. They told me that the country had gone democrat.

after 2 hours of hannity, 3 hours of limbaugh. I felt much better. Then I tried to go to 7-11, but the damn clerk didnt make any sense, like he was speaking a second language or something. I was like WTF what should a republican do???

Thanks for listening.

You're not a Republican, you're a dumbass. What, you think Democrats want illegal immigrants swimming across the river all day long? You think they enjoyed watching people jump out of the WTC's on 9/11?

And seriously, you felt better after listening to "Unfair & Unbalanced", and then on top of that, a drug addict fatass?

Then, to put the dildo on the face, you went to 7-11 to insult a person that doesn't speak fluent English, but can nonetheless communicate and make a living in this country?

You think that stupid rant you just went on above was easier to understand than the man behind the counter at 7-11 working hard to feed his family?

Shit, if you call yourself a Republican, you should be ashamed of yourself, and the GOP should come to your house and arrest you for trying to represent their interests with such retarded comments.