what I get sick of, and it's been a strategem of the left for a while now, is to attempt to claim some kind of intellectual high ground. Saying things like, Fill-in-the-blank Republican is just not smart enough to understand this or that, and Fill-in-the-blank Democrat is the smartest person for the job, no one's got the intellectual firepower this person has.

and the message rings true when they follow that rhetoric with some stained t-shirt wearing hick from the backwoods of Kentucky saying something stupid and racist.

This whole game about "my dad's smarter than your dad" is just juvenile and counterproductive.

For all the intellectual firepower Tim Geithner allegedly brings to the table and vast understanding of the tax code and federal regulatory authority, he still couldn't figure out how to pay his taxes for a significant part of the last decade, an offense that would have landed you or me in a federal "bone me in the a__" prison for tax evasion.. But no cellie named Art for ol' Timmy! No, this guy gets to head up the federal treasury because "he's smart".

God forbid a person should provide for himself and his family.

And I love the stats. The status quo kills 18,000 people a year. Does that include people that die of lung cancer from smoking or of liver failure from a lifetime of drinking whiskey?

does it include all the gangbangers that can't seem to stop killing each other in those wonderful urban utopias from Detroit to Houston, from NY to LA and everywhere between?

What about the glut of the urban poor who suffer from obesity and die of heart disease?.. is there anything in the "Public Option" that will stop their mothers from feeding them twinkies and cocacola with those food stamps their neighbors subsidise, rather than rice and beans, which are far more healthy and way less expensive?

How many of those deaths could a "public option" have saved?

what about the legions of the uninsured who drive around on $4500 sets of 22" rims but "can't afford the premiums" for insurance and who, instead, go to county hospital ER's and skip out on the bill??

what does the public option do about that??

No.. What this country needs is not another taxpayer subsidised entitlement program, but a good shot in the arm of some good old self respect, rugged individualism, and self reliance.

Dependence on Government leads to shackles of economic slavery.

There should be a safety net. We should not leave defenseless those who cannot fend for themselves. But for those that can provide for themselves and refuse to do so, there should be little sympathy. The safety net should not be a destination resort hammock for the perpetually irresponsible. It takes up all the room for those that could have been caught but end up falling through.

I agree that there are problems with the way doctors are forced to deal with their patients and how healthcare is "delivered" (as though it were a truckload of groceries). But the manner in which the Dems are going about fixing it is completely bass-akwards.

please, share with us, then, some of the attrocious behaviour you saw at the "Palin Rallies" as if you actually went to any..

once they've been posted on the internet the whole world has them.

she's trying to close the barn door after the horses have already escaped.

She shold probably just go to Van Nuys where she's sure to find someone trolling around with a video camera and go pro.

I'm sorry. I mis-spoke. I meant useful idiot. (didn't coin the phrase, though) this is the kind of useful idiot I'm talking about..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg98BvqUvCc

He's not trying to fix anything.

He's trying to break it. Wants to break it all. (See his comments on Coal fired power plants and energy prices) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4

And when it breaks, he'll sit back and say, "see them, those damn rich capitalist piggies, they're the ones to blame"

and all the Obamacrats will go right along and he'll have what he wants: legions of wrathful useless idiots who will storm the streets and burn hearth and home alike. Never paying attention (or purposefully ignoring) the fact that their great leader is the one that's been at the wheel of all the destructive economic policies. Cap and trade, single payer healthcare, subprime mortgages..

Thank you Saul Alinksy. Thank you Francis Piven. Thank you Richard Clower. Anti-Americans all. And Obama their disciple.

if she's a porn star (as someone suggested), what's her name?? I gotta find some footage of those puppies in action!!

And yes it'd be quite lesbian of you to say "HOT BOOBS!" but I don't condemn that, I think it's kinda hot!

yes, it's all true. But no, there is something we can do about it..

Those that prefer a functioning society will back politicians who walk the limited government walk, depose those the talk the big-government talk and continue to stash away supplies for when winter comes.

you got it, Toyota. They (He, Obama) accused the bank of racially discriminatory lending practices and the case was settled out of court. Rather than being dragged through the courts, the banks decided it was easier to take on a "few" loans they knew would be defaulted on than to face the lawsuit after lawsuit from ACORN and their ilk under the Clinton Justice Department..

this directle resulted in the upstart of a whole new class of loans that HAD to be made (or face endless lawsuits) for the sake of the poor getting loans on houses everyone knew they couldn't afford..

What was the result? The housing market crashed, despite repeated calls from Republicans in Congress (McCain amoung them) and the White
House to reign in the dangerous practices of Fannie and Freddie who became clearing houses for subprime loans and were given political cover by Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Nanci Pelosi, et al..

that pile of crap to which you refer is of his own manufacture..

http://www.mediacircus.com/2008/10/obama-sued-citibank-under-cra-to-force-it-to-make-bad-loans/

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/10/obama-sued-citi.html

or you can google "Obama Citibank CRA" and read find for yourselves..

agreed. smells like naked fear and day old urine

oh, well.. thanks for that. guess I can go on about my business..

People, Please Disperse! There's Nothing to see here!! Please Disperse!! Move Along!

about 12 months late..

/bump

I'm not letting this go.

I want to hear from the Obaaama-backers about this.

The stimulus, the omnibus, the healthcare bill. all in the first six months of a four year term..

He's a student of Saul Alinky. He's studied the principles of the Cloward-Piven Strategy and has been applying them all his "professional" life. He's been attempting to overload the system and his first major sucess came when he sued CitiBank in the 90's under the Community Reinvestment Act to force the banks to lend to unqualified "borrowers" and won. And we all saw how much of an economic success that was and the lot of you still blame captitalism for the housing bubble.. which brought down the economy (not Bush policy, no matter how much or how loud you scream it)

Tell me how the Obaaama strategem is incongruent with the Cloward-Piven approach?? Tell me.. I want to hear how extending unemployment benefits, putting the legions of the impoverished on a gov't healthcare system that's doomed to fail before it gets out of the blocks.. only then to come back and blame the failure on the capitalism and the rich (And you can;t tell me he/they won't. Capitalism and the Rich are his favorite target, see the $250K tax-cut promise, see the AIG ruckus over contractual payments, see Executive Compensation Czar)

I'm waiting.

here's the problem: who sets the limits? who decides what's reasonable?

some one, some body, some entity has to decide what that limits is and then to enforce it. This will always tend to fascism.

You point out in earlier posts that people have a misconception or misunderstanding (or however you put it) about socialism because all the examples we have in history involve fascist regimes at the base.

Wonder why that is? I don't. I know, for all that's good and right, that when you limit the extent to which people may achieve success, most limit themselves and are good little subjects while those that don't and aren't get rounded up for re-eduation.

If every example in history shows you the trend, it's foolhardy to ignore it. Or arrogant to think *you* are smart enough to make it work.

and as the previous discussion relates to the OP, (and as it;s been alluded to in other posts in this thread) the collective doesn't benefit from someone having, say, a Down's baby. So the Collective will decide that for it's own benefit all baby's will be screend for down's syndrome (and you know there will be a list of malities that will be considered undesirable) and when one pops positive for the Down's gene (gene sequence), the egg tester will sound the siren and the child bearing momma will be escorted off to some operating room and the child ________. (I'm thinking of the scene from the original Willie Wonka when the rich girl [verruca salt?] turned out to be a bad egg and dropped through the trap door and down to the incenerator)

This scenario is part and parcel to the type of system you're talking about. There's no way around it. Once you decide there are undesireable genes and that ALL need to have access to genetic screening, it's only a tiny step from there to designed reproduction, managed by the State, where some will be permitted to reproduce and others sterilized.

Is that the world you want to live in? Would YOUhave been allowed to be carried to term in that world?

I'll take Liberty, thanks.

never said the world is as I prefer it to be. I said I'll take my chances with Liberty and that I reject your vision of an ideal world organisation, knowing that your vision is and always will be destined to fail and bring poverty and misery on untold masses, (see soviet breadlines of the 1970's and 80's..)

He also said, "the Lord helps those who help themselves"

I reject your assertion that we should strive for socialist society.. it devalues the individual and his/her potential for contribution and in so doing, dehumanizes the entire populace..

perhaps liberty is not for you, perhaps all you seek is a just master.

I, for one, will take my chances with Liberty. And the historical fact is that socialism crushes liberty here on Earth. If indeed Heaven is a socialist utopia, I'll wait till I get there to experience it, thanks.

And perhaps you didn't see what you said as bashing, but how might it be taken otherwise? Humans are inherently competitive. Put a bunch of liberals in a room and they'll soon begin competing w/ each other over how liberal each of them is..

the classical experiment that refutes the premise of a working socialist society can be observed in any classroom in America..

After the first exam, the teacher says, "ok, on the recent exam we had 5 A's, 15 B's, 35 C's, 17 D's and 13 F's. As a socialist society, we will redistribute the grade points equally amoung the class. Everyone will get the same grade, from each according to his ability to each according to his need. Therefore, all students will recieve a C on the exam regardless of what you scored"

Next exam comes and goes and the teacher gets infront of the class gives the score distribution, "This last exam, students, there was only 1 A, there were 5 B's, 14 C's, 45 D's, and 20 F's. So according to our socialist model, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, the grade points will be distributed amoung all the memebers of the class, therefore all will given the grade of D+"

See, it's all about human nature. Once people get it in their heads that someone else will make up for their own lack of production, they (we) take this for granted and soon all the producers stop producing such that soon none produce and all go hungry..

So let's have someone refute that the Obama/Rahm Emmauel white house is not employing this strategy..

Is not Rahm Emmanuel on record as saying not to let a good crisis go to waste? Is that philosphy not straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook? Is that not the driving idea behind this Cloward-Piven strategy??

Are not some black activists on record as saying they didn't want stimulus funds appropriated to constuction to go to "white construction workers"??

Please show me how the Obama/Emmanuel White House's strategy incongruent with this Cloward-Piven strategy...

I think our dear El Presidente would disagree with you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-dQfb8WQvo

my opinion has documented in an earlier posted thread. and there's little point in duplicating that effort.

however, I'll add this. I was listening to Coast to Coast last night, trying to battle insomnia, and the first guest George had on was commenting on the cash4clunkers program. Something that was said really got my attention.

the guest indicated that it was more environmentally friendly to drive the car you have into the ground rather than buying a new car. The reason was that it takes so much energy to manufacture a new car that it outwieghs any "greenhouse" gas emmision savings over the life of the new car over the old car.

Personally, I drive an SUV that has almost 200K miles on it and I don't plan on trading it in any time soon. She's good for at least another 100k as long as I keep oil and gas in it..

so..

that's something that the greenies might find a little disturbing, to find out that the Prius they're driving came at the cost of a greater environmental impact than driving that old volvo that had the really cool skinny puppy and dead kennedys sticker on it into the ground..