When Mitt Romney becomes president.... *FLUX THREAD!*

[hypehat]

Go to the Obama campaign website, and you too can "pledge allegiance" to whatever it is this image is asking you to pledge allegiance to. Then post a picture of it, hand over heart with a slogan written in pen on that hand, and you too can join the ranks of celebrities Jessica, Scarlett, and whoever the lesser-known people in these photos are pledging their allegiance.

I hope the nature of American politics hasn't gone as far as to suggest people pledge allegiance to any person, no matter who he/she is, what party he/she represents, or what office he/she holds. Because that, to me, is far beyond what politics or loyalty to any single person should be. It's a little too bizarre, but if that's what people want from any candidate of any political persuasion, the polls will be open in a few short weeks.

So Mitt Romney saying he could give a flying one about 47% of his nation, he has no interest in finding a resolution between Israel and Palestine and that he would stand a better chance of being President if his parents were Mexican passes without comment on this board, and this does? I don't get you guys.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

Well, a lot of Republicans kept their goshdarn mouths shut and sat on their hands during 8 year of Bush horror and might, just might be venting a lot of misplaced rage at Obama because he's, well, ya know, it's OK to bash him. Dick Cheney won't send goons to blow your house up in the dead of night if you do so....

[Dunderhead]

Honestly, I absolutely can not understand what the big deal about Romney's "47%" is. It seems like it's verging on being a campaign ending thing, but I just don't see what everyone else seems to be seeing.
I should qualify myself by saying that I hate Mitt Romney as much as the next guy, but his statement felt sort of brutally honest to me, and not in a entirely bad way. For the most part it felt like something he would have said at anyone of his rallies. It sort of baffles me that it's being blown up into such a big deal, it feels really dishonest, like the actual content of his statement doesn't matter. I feel like people just heard "Mitt Romney gaffe" and "leaked video" and have lost their minds because they so desperately want Mitt Romney to suffer.
Obama has said some pretty moronic things too, but the media/internet has been more willing to forgive that stuff, even when it was arguably worse than Romney's most recent mistake. I just don't get it, I really don't.

[hypehat]

It's only brutally honest if you don't care about the fact that the majority of people who don't pay income tax are pensioners, veterans, the unemployed (in a major recession, the lazy sh*ts AYN RAND 4 LYF) and Mitt Romney.


Plus, are u aware that writing off 47% of the electorate as freeloading scum who you don't wish to represent is not really a good look for a Presidential Candidate or are we ignoring that.

[Dunderhead]

You're just projecting onto him though. It's a very prejudicial reading of that he said to see it in such a negative light. He has a valid point, wages are down and more people are below the minimum threshold for paying income tax. I don't see how just pointing that out is so bad, because it's true, why deny it? How is the Republican position so much worse than the Democratic one? I feel like everyone wants the same thing, they want to see more people paying income tax. When The Republicans say it though it's because they're the evil Sheriff of Nottingham who wants to wring every last dollar our of the bottom class. When the Democrats say it, they're the virtuous heroes that want to put people back to work and see everyone make more money. But it's exactly the same. When the economy gets better and more jobs are created more taxpayers will fall into a higher bracket and less entitlement spending will be necessary, the distinction that people try and draw between the Democratic version of this and the Republican version strikes me as incredibly dishonest.

You're pretending that Mitt Romney in that video is making certain judgements about people that he just isn't making. You're reading between the lines, hearing what *you* want to hear instead of what he actually said. You're taking his comment very personally and acting unnecessary histrionic about the whole thing. Republicans and Democrats can see the same comments in completely opposite ways, and the problem is that many just absolutely refuse to even acknowledge that the alternate interpretation even exists. It's one big strawman that reduces everything Romney says to an absurdity, and then arrogantly criticizes that fictitious argument from some undeserved moral highground.

I just can't sympathize with the Democrats anymore because of sh*t like this. It completely undermines every iota of liberal rhetoric espousing the ideals of tolerance,  acceptance, objectivity, understanding, compromise. Objectivity means standing back and taking a critical view, seeing both sides of an argument, recognizing the equality of multiple interpretations and mitigating between them to everyone's satisfaction. The Democrats talk a big talk, but they don't even make a token attempt to back any of it up, there's nothing objective about it, it's prejudiced, you've made up your mind about everything Mitt Romney has to say before he's even said it! What is there to respect in that? What's honorable about that? Why should anything the Democrats say or do be taken seriously by anyone, when every virtue they advocate is abandoned by the party proper a the very first opportunity.

Put up or shut up. If the Democrats want to lead the country and unite people, actually being objective would do more towards that end than any piece of legislation passed in the last 4 years. The Democrats simply don't have the moral high ground which they are so desperate to pretend to. If you want the moral high ground, you have to earn it, you don't just get it because of rhetoric or the fact that more minorities vote for your candidates.

[hypehat]

If Mitt Romney was so adamant about paying taxes, he would pay what he owed. He admitted to doctoring his taxes yesterday. And lots of people pay less tax due to tax cuts (a baffling concept to me) and the like, which were a staple of Dubya (not exclusively, I dig).

The Democratic position (apart from 'he said what?') appears to be taking the burden of taxation off the lower and middle classes. Tax the rich? But they are the makers! How dare we tax the rich?!

What's to read between the lines of 'I don't represent them'?

As we well know, we're coming at this from very different points of view. Tax the fucking rich imo. Taxes are an integral part of how a society and a government functions in the real world, and  abolishing them is some libertarian wet dream.

(Again, I haven't a lot of time right now so am being brash)

[Dunderhead]

If Mitt Romney was so adamant about paying taxes, he would pay what he owed. He admitted to doctoring his taxes yesterday. And lots of people pay less tax due to tax cuts (a baffling concept to me) and the like, which were a staple of Dubya (not exclusively, I dig).

The Democratic position (apart from 'he said what?') appears to be taking the burden of taxation off the lower and middle classes. Tax the rich? But they are the makers! How dare we tax the rich?!

What's to read between the lines of 'I don't represent them'?

As we well know, we're coming at this from very different points of view. Tax the f***ing rich imo. Taxes are an integral part of how a society and a government functions in the real world, and  abolishing them is some libertarian wet dream.

(Again, I haven't a lot of time right now so am being brash)

That's a red herring. You can raise taxes on the rich, it doesn't make any substantial difference to our long term financial solvency. Our debt rating was downgraded because of long term entitlement shortfalls, The "Buffet Rule" will shore up maybe 1-2% of our yearly deficit, it's like putting a band-aid on ruptured spleen, to even pretend like it's a responsible plan is political hot air at best. http://www.factcheck.org/2012/04/obama-and-the-buffett-rule/

So I don't get it, why is taxing the rich the integral loadstone of the entire liberal plan for the economy? 

The United States has a progressive income tax, meaning people get their income tax (and only their income tax, not their social security tax) back each year after filing IF those people make below a certain level of income. This is equally true of everyone in the economy, meaning that on income between $35,351 – $85,650 each year, someone making $100,000 a year and someone making $1m a year pay the same rate on that chunk of income.

Wages are so depressed right now, and jobs are so scarce that more and more people are falling into the bottom, untaxed income bracket. Fewer people are paying taxes because they simply don't make enough, the top brackets actually account for a larger portion of total federal revenue than democrats seem willing to admit. The top 10% of earners pay 71% of all income taxes, and make only 43% of all income. The bottom 50% (!) of earners actually pay only 2% of all income taxes each year.

You can raise taxes on the rich, go ahead I guess, it doesn't solve the problem. It's not even so effective as to qualify as a stop gap.

The problem is growth. In real, inflation-adjusted terms US GDP has gone *down* since 2008. Technically the recession is still with us, but the CBO and BLS are notoriously dishonest about reporting data (in fact there have been a few real life, very serious accusations made against those agencies by whistleblowers recently). The way the government gets us out of a recession is to drive GDP growth by any means possible. The growth isn't organic, and is undermined by the inflation that government spending actually leads to. The government just pumps money into certain areas of the economy in order to artificially repair the holes in the nation's GDP.

The way GDP is calculated means that financial savings are excluded from the final number. A recession is defined as so many quarters of negative GDP growth. In order to get the country out of a recession the government sets policy to discourage savings. We want our GDP to grow in the present, so people cannot save their income, they have to spend it right now, this quarter.

Price of money is a euphemism for the interest rate. Interest is literally the price that you pay for money, when borrowing that money from a lender. The Federal Reserve, in the US, is a central bank that fixes the price of money, that artificially sets the interest rate. For the foreseeable future, the Fed will continue their policy of keeping interest rates extremely low. This means that saving money has less of a payoff, if you make 0% interest on $X you loan out, there's not much point in lending that money out in the first place. You might as well spend it instead, which is exactly what the Fed wants, they don't want you to save, they want you to spend.

This whole policy has caused our money markets to collapse into ruins. Money just isn't going where it needs to go in order for the economy to grow. It's all sitting around going to waste. Savings drive growth, not the other way around. If you want the economy to grow you need to raise interest rates so people can save the money they make.

Until this happens job growth will be stagnant, and wages will remain depressed. The Velocity of Money is a metric which measures how often each dollar in our total money supply changes hands, and right now this statistic is at historic lows. The Fed has put too much new cash into the money supply, and that money isn't circulating through our economy. The people which receive that money directly from the Fed's printing press (i.e. the biggest banks in the world), keep that money on a tight leash, and because they have no real reason to save it, they tend to simply use it as leverage in large, algorithmically determined purchases of financial instruments.

As the money which the banks receive from the Fed slowly trickles through the greater economy, prices increase in certain areas which the banks are most keen to speculate in. OIL being one of the key things which banks love to speculate on. But this type of speculation also drives the rise of stock prices (Apple...Facebook...). By the time the money makes it all the way down from the federal reserve through the banks to the common people, prices have risen in proportion.

The government is trapped in a never ending, vicious cycle. They need to inject cash into our economy and keep interest rates low in order for GDP to grow. The more they do this though, the more people will find themselves without sufficient sources of income, without savings, without any money at all to spend on goods and services with highly inflated price points. Because those people are then forced to spend less, and contribute less to overall GDP through their yearly purchases, the government will be forced to pick up more of the slack each successive year. The whole while, the individuals driven out of the economy by government policy are contributing less in taxes each year, and the government has to borrow more and print more in order to keep financing a deficit that grows ever more substantial. This leads to more inflation, and higher interest payments on the federal debt (which increases the overall budget). The inflation increases the need for entitlement spending and welfare programs and increases the debt to even higher levels. If the government raises interest rates, then GDP will crash and another recession will occur, so interest rates are kept perpetually low but the longer they're kept low the more money is needed each subsequent year to keep GDP growing at "normal" levels.

Do you see the logic here? It just goes on and on, around and around. The medicine is the disease. It's a spiral of debt and inflation. It's not a purely linear increase, it's exponential. Taxes aren't a solution, they just aren't. The more debt we have, the more inflation we cause, the more debt we'll need next year in order to sustain things. The pace isn't X this year, X next year, X the year after. It's X this year, X^n next year, X^n+1 the year after that. Prices and debt will rise at a faster and faster rate all the way towards infinity. Once you get to a certain point it doesn't matter how much you tax people, when you have infinite debt there simply won't be enough money in the world to finance that debt no matter how lofty your rhetoric may be.

[Mahalo]

This. Great post Fishmonk.

[Jason]

I know this thread is already being overwhelmed by statists, but no amount of taxation will fix a debt problem.

[hypehat]

Nice essay. BTW, I wasn't suggesting taxing the rich would suddenly make gold grow on trees and save the economy, only that it's fair and right. I have no problem paying my taxes and I work hard for my money. What makes those people think they don't need to do it?

And yeah, I'm a statist. Fuckin' A. I love my schools, my NHS and my infrastructure. The free-market is a blight on British society and anything it lays its hands on is cackhanded and incompetent.

But yes, the economy is f***ed. Thanks for the reminder.

BTW, as even the Republicans are distancing themselves from Mitt on the whole video thing and the only defence or reasonable POV that they've tried to put on it is 'ah, he was off the cuff' (y'know, Mitt relaxed and said as President he doesn't represent 47% of his nation, loljks), I don't actually believe there is a 'good' or critical view - a spade is a spade. You saying he's right is fairly odd, to say the least. Do you seriously think every Democrat voter is on welfare? Do you quite understand the crippling stupidity of that statement?

[Jason]

Just remember that your schools, NHS, and infrastructure are supported by stealing from people. You know what happens to those who refuse to pay their taxes, right? They're physically threatened. Yup...utopian statist SOCIALIST society. Love it. You guys should just become the United Socialist Kingdom, just like the United States should become the United States of Socialist America.

[Jason]

The free-market is a blight on British society and anything it lays its hands on is cackhanded and incompetent.

You're mixing the free market up with the state.

[hypehat]

Just remember that your schools, NHS, and infrastructure are supported by stealing from people. You know what happens to those who refuse to pay their taxes, right? They're physically threatened. Yup...utopian statist SOCIALIST society. Love it. You guys should just become the United Socialist Kingdom, just like the United States should become the United States of Socialist America.

YOU MEAN I LIVE IN A SOCIETY WHERE CRIMES ARE PUNISHED? HOLY sh*t DUDE PASS THE BONG.

[Jason]

Just remember that your schools, NHS, and infrastructure are supported by stealing from people. You know what happens to those who refuse to pay their taxes, right? They're physically threatened. Yup...utopian statist SOCIALIST society. Love it. You guys should just become the United Socialist Kingdom, just like the United States should become the United States of Socialist America.

YOU MEAN I LIVE IN A SOCIETY WHERE CRIMES ARE PUNISHED? HOLY sh*t DUDE PASS THE BONG.

A society where crimes that have no bearing on the state are punished.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

I'm with RealBeachBoy on this one! The national debt is exactly what all this abortion/gay marriage/poor people bashing has been designed to distract us from.

And while I am no Rand follower, I do think we pay way too much in taxes. If even a slight bit more went into infrastructure instead of endless wars and the prostitute/cocaine/rent-boy/private yacht/campaign till for our politicians, I'd be a bit happier with the situation...... And prisons do not count as infrastructure.

[Dunderhead]

Nice essay. BTW, I wasn't suggesting taxing the rich would suddenly make gold grow on trees and save the economy, only that it's fair and right. I have no problem paying my taxes and I work hard for my money. What makes those people think they don't need to do it?

And yeah, I'm a statist. f***in' A. I love my schools, my NHS and my infrastructure. The free-market is a blight on British society and anything it lays its hands on is cackhanded and incompetent.

But yes, the economy is f***ed. Thanks for the reminder.

BTW, as even the Republicans are distancing themselves from Mitt on the whole video thing and the only defence or reasonable POV that they've tried to put on it is 'ah, he was off the cuff' (y'know, Mitt relaxed and said as President he doesn't represent 47% of his nation, loljks), I don't actually believe there is a 'good' or critical view - a spade is a spade. You saying he's right is fairly odd, to say the least. Do you seriously think every Democrat voter is on welfare? Do you quite understand the crippling stupidity of that statement?

Fairness is just an empty word being used here to distract from the more important issues. Like I said, Democrats do not have the moral high ground where they can just unequivocally say that 71% is objectively not a "fair" share of the burden. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it's not like that judgement is unquestionable. We should be focused on entitlement reform and action on the debt instead of quibbling over a few billion dollars which the rich could maybe pay. You can say that it's more fair all day long, until you're blue in the face, but it just doesn't matter. People shouldn't place any emphasis on it, it's a non-issue.

It's hard for people to think economically, economics requires logic and scientific reasoning. You have to learn to think about the economy in a special way which most people aren't used to.

"Infrastructure" is one good example. We absolutely love infrastructure here in America. It's such a feel good concept, we can't help but get all warm and ooey-gooey inside just thinking about our wonderful, extraordinary, magical highways.
Anyone would concede that highways have dramatically altered the US economy, Liberals would not concede the fact that many of the consequences of our state-funded highway programs were actually negative.

Liberals hate chain retailers like Walmart. How is the Walmart business model possible exactly? Interstate shipping by semi-truck along that beloved infrastructure.

The retail take over was only exasperated by our highway system. In a network of 4 or 5 rural cities, without highways each of those cities would have their own grocery stores and movie theatres and what not. With highways walmart can build one store and capture the market in an entire county, putting grocery stores out of business in multiple cities in one fell-swoop.

The highways provide an extra value for people who own vehicles. The mere existence of the highways is a fact that helps the auto-industry. The highways are part of the reason why American families sometimes own 3 or 4 separate cars. The highways are part of the reason why Americans consume so much in gasoline each year. The auto-industry was one of the major lobbyists in favor or building the highways back in the 50s and 60s.

The highways have led to increased congestion, urban sprawl, and air pollution that most Americans are probably all too familiar with.

The highways have created unnatural "food deserts". Communities have sprung up in places they otherwise wouldn't have because of the highways. These communities are supported mainly by overland shipping of junk food to gas stations and minimarkets.

Our entire attitude about food, the way it's distributed in America, the control that corporations have over it is a product of the highway system. Without the highways completely centralized factory farms each shipping millions of pounds of meat and produce across the entire US would not be nearly as effective. Because of the highways Americans feed themselves in a way that's unsustainable, local, decentralized farming just isn't profitable. Not only that, but these centralized factory farms are also the ones that PETA is always complaining about, the ones where thousands of cows are stuffed shoulder to shoulder in dingy stalls.



I mean, when you actually stop and think about all the profound ways that the "infrastructure" has changed our economy, it's important not to get carried away with the good things. I think, unquestionably, highways have done just as much harm as good.  

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

Fishmonk: I did not specifically mean highways when I wrote "Infrastructure" ..... But you are right, however, all things have their downside as well as their upside (even The Beach Boys) ... I mean, planes crash sometimes: killing hundreds at a time, yet they still take off and land safely en mass each day. What can you do? I happen to think the implementation high speed rail and street cars is an absolute necessity in order to ween ourselves off foreign oil and perhaps transform the automobile industry into something more productive... The again there's plastic and rubber: important things that don't grow on trees either..... And highways also provide transportation via bus, motorcycle, bicycle, horse  & buggy (Amish folk at least use the side of the highway) and transport necessary goods and services via long haul trucking which also provides/creates jobs etc.... I'd rather there were more rail lines than highways, but SOMETHING would have been invented to transport goods/commerce if it hadn't been highways and cars. We can only learn and move forward from where we are now. We can't go back.

And I was taken to task (probably correctly) earlier in this thread for making a generalization about Republicans, so please stop referring to basically anyone who disagrees with your views as a "liberal"..... Can we all try it? This merda that anyone who is not a hard right winger is a "liberal" is pathetic nonsense.

[Dunderhead]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GbOWiJ94Xvg#!

He's in charge of trillions of dollars.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

Idiots with money is nothing new

[guitarfool2002]

Go to the Obama campaign website, and you too can "pledge allegiance" to whatever it is this image is asking you to pledge allegiance to. Then post a picture of it, hand over heart with a slogan written in pen on that hand, and you too can join the ranks of celebrities Jessica, Scarlett, and whoever the lesser-known people in these photos are pledging their allegiance.

I hope the nature of American politics hasn't gone as far as to suggest people pledge allegiance to any person, no matter who he/she is, what party he/she represents, or what office he/she holds. Because that, to me, is far beyond what politics or loyalty to any single person should be. It's a little too bizarre, but if that's what people want from any candidate of any political persuasion, the polls will be open in a few short weeks.

So Mitt Romney saying he could give a flying one about 47% of his nation, he has no interest in finding a resolution between Israel and Palestine and that he would stand a better chance of being President if his parents were Mexican passes without comment on this board, and this does? I don't get you guys.

You're above this kind of reply and a deeper thinker than this, I know that from previous posts.  

If you'd like a fully realized list of all of Obama's faults and all of Romney's faults, would anyone here have time to do that? Of course not.

It's called a discussion, where we discuss issues that we *choose* to discuss.

There should not be a standard as far as which issues to comment on, any more than someone posting criticisms about, say, the new Beach Boys album has to be questioned why they didn't post criticisms of "Still Cruisin" or similar. It's not productive at all.

Of course, I could also repost my thoughts on "Big College" and how and why college needs to be that expensive, however when I posted it the first time no one bothered to say a goshdarned thing about it. I felt like I hit the "third rail" where there just may not be a defense for the practices of "Big College" essentially putting young people into debt way beyond their means before they're 24...so no one bothered to go near the issue for fear of not having a good defense. Or something else...who knows.

But I didn't go around bashing people as to why no one brought it up in favor of other issues. And I'm sure there are more than a few participants in these debates who are paying off college debt and perhaps not working in the profession of their choice or within their major, yet still paying off the debt every month while administrators, professors, book companies, etc take all of it to the bank.

And above all, I posted the pledge thing because the notion of pledging allegiance to a man, especially in America, is batsh*t crazy and I find it more disappointing than anything. America does not pledge loyalty to politicians, since ultimately...raising my voice here to make the ultimate point...

THE POLITICIANS WORK FOR US, WE DON'T WORK FOR THEM
 

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

I'm just curious as to how you took that poster for being a suggestion that we pledge our allegiance TO Obama?

It's a democratic poster with a bunch of "celebrities" and other folk pledging their allegiance to The United States Of America with specific issues written on their hands as if to say: we pledge our allegiance to the flag of, blah blah, .......  and liberty and justice FOR ALL, and not just some......

At least this is how it appears to me.

[Jason]

Nice essay. BTW, I wasn't suggesting taxing the rich would suddenly make gold grow on trees and save the economy, only that it's fair and right. I have no problem paying my taxes and I work hard for my money. What makes those people think they don't need to do it?

And yeah, I'm a statist. f***in' A. I love my schools, my NHS and my infrastructure. The free-market is a blight on British society and anything it lays its hands on is cackhanded and incompetent.

But yes, the economy is f***ed. Thanks for the reminder.

BTW, as even the Republicans are distancing themselves from Mitt on the whole video thing and the only defence or reasonable POV that they've tried to put on it is 'ah, he was off the cuff' (y'know, Mitt relaxed and said as President he doesn't represent 47% of his nation, loljks), I don't actually believe there is a 'good' or critical view - a spade is a spade. You saying he's right is fairly odd, to say the least. Do you seriously think every Democrat voter is on welfare? Do you quite understand the crippling stupidity of that statement?

Fairness is just an empty word being used here to distract from the more important issues. Like I said, Democrats do not have the moral high ground where they can just unequivocally say that 71% is objectively not a "fair" share of the burden. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it's not like that judgement is unquestionable. We should be focused on entitlement reform and action on the debt instead of quibbling over a few billion dollars which the rich could maybe pay. You can say that it's more fair all day long, until you're blue in the face, but it just doesn't matter. People shouldn't place any emphasis on it, it's a non-issue.

It's hard for people to think economically, economics requires logic and scientific reasoning. You have to learn to think about the economy in a special way which most people aren't used to.

"Infrastructure" is one good example. We absolutely love infrastructure here in America. It's such a feel good concept, we can't help but get all warm and ooey-gooey inside just thinking about our wonderful, extraordinary, magical highways.
Anyone would concede that highways have dramatically altered the US economy, Liberals would not concede the fact that many of the consequences of our state-funded highway programs were actually negative.

Liberals hate chain retailers like Walmart. How is the Walmart business model possible exactly? Interstate shipping by semi-truck along that beloved infrastructure.

The retail take over was only exasperated by our highway system. In a network of 4 or 5 rural cities, without highways each of those cities would have their own grocery stores and movie theatres and what not. With highways walmart can build one store and capture the market in an entire county, putting grocery stores out of business in multiple cities in one fell-swoop.

The highways provide an extra value for people who own vehicles. The mere existence of the highways is a fact that helps the auto-industry. The highways are part of the reason why American families sometimes own 3 or 4 separate cars. The highways are part of the reason why Americans consume so much in gasoline each year. The auto-industry was one of the major lobbyists in favor or building the highways back in the 50s and 60s.

The highways have led to increased congestion, urban sprawl, and air pollution that most Americans are probably all too familiar with.

The highways have created unnatural "food deserts". Communities have sprung up in places they otherwise wouldn't have because of the highways. These communities are supported mainly by overland shipping of junk food to gas stations and minimarkets.

Our entire attitude about food, the way it's distributed in America, the control that corporations have over it is a product of the highway system. Without the highways completely centralized factory farms each shipping millions of pounds of meat and produce across the entire US would not be nearly as effective. Because of the highways Americans feed themselves in a way that's unsustainable, local, decentralized farming just isn't profitable. Not only that, but these centralized factory farms are also the ones that PETA is always complaining about, the ones where thousands of cows are stuffed shoulder to shoulder in dingy stalls.



I mean, when you actually stop and think about all the profound ways that the "infrastructure" has changed our economy, it's important not to get carried away with the good things. I think, unquestionably, highways have done just as much harm as good.  

This, this, this, this...oh, and THIS. Perfectly said.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

Well, doesn't some of this boil down to personal responsibility?

My uncle lives in Castro Valley and he (as well as myself, though I may be presenting a conflicting view via devil's advocate) feels much the same as you, Fishmonk, and his neighbors and him have set up a sort of local co-op food exchange program. One family grows this vegetable, this family specializes in another, this guy grows this, and this guy grows that, this guy is a fisherman, this family has a little farm behind their house, ect ect.... they all exchange these good with no dollar currency or credit..... All well and good, but now the local general store/market would certainly suffer if this caught on, so what  do you do?

[Jason]

If they agree to it, what's the problem? Who said you couldn't trade in a free market?

[guitarfool2002]

I'm just curious as to how you took that poster for being a suggestion that we pledge our allegiance TO Obama?

It's a democratic poster with a bunch of "celebrities" and other folk pledging their allegiance to The United States Of America with specific issues written on their hands as if to say: we pledge our allegiance to the flag of, blah blah, .......  and liberty and justice FOR ALL, and not just some......

At least this is how it appears to me.

Do you see a flag anywhere in that panel? Is the word America anywhere in that panel? The focal point is the Obama logo, which is an O with a flag-like graphic, but not the flag.

If they were pledging the flag in that ad campaign, I'd be fine with them showing the common hand-over-heart American gesture made when pledging the flag or standing as the anthem is played at sports events and whatnot.

Remember this is a campaign that has something called the "Obama Event Registry", which asked his supporters to consider donating their birthday gifts to Obama, as well as including him on your wedding registry so your wedding "gifts" can help his campaign. Article here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8334-503544_162-57459110-503544/obama-campaign-soliciting-birthday-wedding-gifts-in-fundraising-ploy/

For me, the pledge, the Event Registry, the children singing songs, it all adds up to a cult of personality scenario bordering on idolatry which I don't think any US politician should have around him or her, no matter the party.

And I just don't care for seeing Americans, with hand-over-heart, pledging *anything* to something or someone other than the flag. It's disturbing, but that's just me. Again, where is the flag?