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If no one compromises, than nothing gets done. When our entire government is reduced to competing values camps claiming that everything under the sun is sacred, nothing gets done. Our country was created by compromise. If the Founding Fathers had failed to compromise to create a governmental system that was good for all, the United States never would have existed. I have no problem in defending my position and beliefs, but to claim that those are sacred and totally off the table to compromise means that we can never advance the discussion.
There needs to be give and take. Look at the last go around over the debt ceiling, both sides are digging in their heels hard and wouldn't budge, so we lurch into more stopgap measures. There is a defecit of leadership, because the leaders of both sides Obama and Boehner were willing to compromise and move forward. However, they were being held hostage by the fringe elements in their own parties.
When you choose not to compromise you can never advance. What you are asking for by not compromising is simply to give up. The budget crisis in the country CANNOT be solved simply through budget cuts OR through tax increases alone. Anyone with a basic understanding of budgets and finances will see that we need both to reach a solution. I agree with not yielding on tax increases until the other side yields on protecting their sacred cows, but even when the "leadership" reached a compromise the extremists started howling again. Our government is paralyzed by partisanship.
I know exactly what the term "Tea Bagger" means and where it came from, sorry if you're offended, but it's appropriate. I'm speaking as a moderate conservative who has seen MY party, the party of Reagan and Eisenhower get hijacked by a group of people who are not interested in governing, just interested in soundbites and making a name for themselves. I personally hope the Tea Party succeeds, I hope they split from the Repulbican party and take all the fringe lunatics with them, so the real Republicans can have their party and their voice back.
As for "Evangelical crap", that is 100% true. The idea that our nation must be governed by some sort of guiding Christian principle is ludicrous. The fact that the Tea Party backed candidate for President Gov. Perry is open about his beliefes of a Christian dominated country/world as ordained by God is patently scary. I have no issues with peoples personal faith, just don't think that your personal faith has any place in governing the country or setting policy. The evangelicals are simply another fringe group that has hijacked the Republican party. Their "values" supercede all else. These people would vote for Hitler if he promised to outlaw homosexuality and criminalize abortion. That's scary.
Philosophy/Sociology 101, people can only ever be expected to do what's in their best interest, which is not necessarily the same as what's good for the whole, everything operates this way. America doesn't do what's best for humanity, America does what's best for America. There is nothing wrong with that, but it proves the necessity of government to regulate a society.
No one has a right to tell anyone how much they can/should earn, but you are corrupting the point of the debate with the use of this shiboleth. the point is that within a society, there must be rules that are equally applied to all parties with the intent of creating a level playing field. If that means we end up with rich and poor so be it. However, we no longer have an equal playing field.
When someone who took out a mortgage they couldn't afford is forced into foreclosure and files bankruptcy they deal with that for the rest of their life and at least a decade on their credit report. The bank that gave them the mortgage however, never suffered a thing. There was no consequence to their bad business decisions. This is what people are upset about and they are right. It's not that the CEO makes millions, it's that the CEO's that facilitated the crisis knowing full well it was all smoke and mirrors were never held accountable for those actions.
See, that's the thing, people (even ones who donate to charity) do what's in their own self-interest. You keep food banks going in town and at your church because it makes YOU feel better about saying you helped, or that it appeals to a certain set of beliefs that you value. You are reinforcing, not refuting my point.
NJGOAT: You are someone I like to hear from. You make great points, you challenge my thinking and you are very balanced. I think you should run for something or other!!! ;-)
oh yay! let's have a competition. you post all the examples of "lashing out" and crazy protestors tied to this event, and I'll show you all the crazy examples in the tea party protests.
you can get to work now, should be easy enough for 1 person. i've got to assemble a full team of 40 people, buy a ton of computers, and start reviewing all the footage. i'll get back to you in a month or two with all of mine.
oh, and i like the one quote in the video in the article you linked: "i'm here because i think it's about time we had an open dialouge"...wow, he really lashed out.
NWJersyGrl, is this you?
http://www.funny-pictures.eu/p/20091219/teabagging_for_jesus.jpg (broken link)
At least the unwashed drugged out hippies know how to spell after they spent 6 years getting their degree in sociology...
...and you seriously wonder why I call them "teabaggers". How can anyone throw in with that lot is beyond me.
These wall street millionaires work HARD for their multi-million dollar a year salaries, and they deserve all of the bailouts and tax cuts that we give them.
Why would we raise a millionaire's taxes by 3% when we could just cut a teacher's salary by 20%? Everyone knows it's lazy and grossly overpaid teachers who drove our economy into ruin!
The top 1% in this country only control 40% of the wealth! The CEO to worker pay in this country is only 475:1. That's BARELY keeping pace with China and other third world nations where middle classes don't exist! That is, of course, unless you want to end up with a crummy economy like Germany or the UK, where CEO to worker pay is 12:1, and 22:1, respectively. The middle class is not disappearing fast enough in the United States. The top 1% in America NEED our help. Can't you all see that?
Please post link/proof where teachers salaries were cut 20%.
Attacking the protestors may not be attacking "Democrat prinicples" as in the platform of the Democratic party, but attacking them at all is a dismissal of democratic principles. These people have a RIGHT to protest and voice their discontent.
no, attacking the protestors (verbally) is also me expressing myself. so it isnt dismissal of democratic principles. i understand we all want to pretend everyone's opinion has significance, but the opinions of these college kids is meaningless. my guess is this protest is primarily college kids but because nyc is so densely populated and visited, lots of randoms and normals pop in for a few minutes, protest, have a starbucks frappaccino then head back home.
some of the talking heads feel the need to say "they have some legitimate demands." what does that mean? everyone in the country has complaints about various things. but these people have no cohesive point or goal. there isnt a clear statement of "these people protesting want _______."
...and you seriously wonder why I call them "teabaggers". How can anyone throw in with that lot is beyond me.
good point. i wouldnt want to be a part of any group who would have members hold up signs with words spelled wrong!
even our presidents cant spell or speak properly. obama thinks we have 57 states and cant talk to a group of third graders without a teleprompter and bush couldnt say nuclear properly for the life of him.
i support the tea party knowing not everyone involved with it is a genius or agrees with everything i do. we can all be brilliant geniuses like all the democrat voters are and all our politicians who know better than us little people. i support them because they are conservative and they do not want politicians to compromise with leftists. i do not want compromise. when someone wants to destroy things and someone wants to fix things, you dont say ok lets make the "destroy things" group happier by letting them destroy things more slowly. compromise got us a debt nearing 15 trillion dollars, it got us this economy, it gets us going further into the red. its time for the tea party to pull the car out of the ditch, take the keys from obama and hit the gas.
Last edited by CaptainNJ; 10-07-2011 at 05:42 PM..
maybe it is. but i don't believe so. most people who are for progressing to the future energy production that will obviously take over in the future want it because they want to be free from pollution that causes multiple diseases and medical problems. they want to be free from being tied politically to specific areas of the world for our daily lives to be able to go on.
hate to break it to you, but even if every bit of energy consumed in America was renewable, there would still be plenty big market for our coal industry. so there's no destroying the coal industry. just look at how much coal the northwest region exports to asia.
There should be as many coal plants as possible, none of them should be closed because of the EPA wanting to regulate them out of business so their friends can benefit financially from unsubstantiated alternatives, friends such as Al Gore. We should be doing everything we can to become self-sufficient as far as energy goes. Cuba is allowing Chinese owned Companies to explore off-shore, yet the US 35 miles away can't do that? we can't drill in Alaska?
Quote:
Originally Posted by bradykp
you obviously haven't been on City-data very long if you don't know the general message of NJGOAT's posts. you can poke him for saying Tea Bagger if you want, but how's using that term any different than the right calling it "Obamacare"?
why is compromise bad? that's exactly what a our government is founded on. That's exactly how a Republic is supposed to operate.
what government is it that you refer to that spends more than it takes in, always? what time period are we discussing, and who, specifically, do you hold responsible for the policies?
what is it that you refer to as "printing money", and what situations are we "throwing money at the problem"?
no one is telling anyone what they should or should not earn. government/society tells people what they need to pay in taxes, and because we use a progressive tax code, that increases as you enter higher brackets. you can still earn as much as you please, but to drive a productive economy that will allow growth, you do pay higher taxes on higher earnings. this has helped us build one of the greatest nations in the world. it has helped us grow as a country. it has positioned us in the world as a leader. it has helped give us a standard of living that is not available everywhere. would you like to see those policies removed, and revert back to a society that is more in line with some monarchies?
why does it take nerve to say someone will only do what is in their own self interest? it's not a huge outrageous claim. in fact, it's the key argument used in displaying why the various flavors of socialism tried throughout history cannot work.
where is your evidence for this Cheney 78% and Gore 0.18%? and how much time did each devote to causes? remember - donating money is easy, and doesn't cost someone very much sacrafice. donating time is what actually costs someone. but that's a different topic.
Obamacare has a sexual connotation? who knew!
Compromise is bad when it's done such as I referenced when it comes to cutting back on spending, there is no compromise, you either continue down the road with Obama spending more than every past President combined, or you cut back as the average person has to do. I can't spend money I don't have, why can the Government?
And you know that we're printing money that we don't have, and since the 60's we've been throwing money at problems, have the schools improved with all the money that's been thrown at them? have food stamps and welfare usage gone down?
oh yay! let's have a competition. you post all the examples of "lashing out" and crazy protestors tied to this event, and I'll show you all the crazy examples in the tea party protests.
you can get to work now, should be easy enough for 1 person. i've got to assemble a full team of 40 people, buy a ton of computers, and start reviewing all the footage. i'll get back to you in a month or two with all of mine.
oh, and i like the one quote in the video in the article you linked: "i'm here because i think it's about time we had an open dialouge"...wow, he really lashed out.
There's way too many youtubes out there showing how crazy these protesters are.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT
Oh yeah, that's horrible. Almost as bad as when the Bush campaign had the Enron jet fly plane loads of Republican Congressional pages down to Florida to "protest" the election in 2000. I actually knew two people who were part of it.
In case you weren't aware (having actually worked on polticial campaigns, I'm aware ) many of the people you see at rallies, protests, townhalls, etc. are actually planted there by the different campaigns or sides in order to make their message/candidate seem to have more passionate support than it really does. They will literally drive busses up to college campuses and hand people a sign and a bag lunch and take them where they are needed. On the way there they are given a pep talk about what they are protesting for/against and a promise of $40 or so when the event is over and they get back on the bus. The Tea Party does this as well. On national campaigns there are even professional protesters/supporters that follow the campaign around to help energize the crowd.
So, it's not suprising to me that some of these protests would have professional or paid protesters involved. However, I do think the majority are primarily grassroots individuals.
You show me where Tea Party protesters are paid, you show me where Republicans buy food and cigarettes to get constituents out to vote.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT
NWJersyGrl, is this you?
At least the unwashed drugged out hippies know how to spell after they spent 6 years getting their degree in sociology...
...and you seriously wonder why I call them "teabaggers". How can anyone throw in with that lot is beyond me.
Seems to me if you really are a fiscal conservative/social moderate you'd have more in common with the Tea Party than the "What are we protesting again on Wall Street" crowd. From what I've read you've pretty much denigrated the side you're supposedly on politically, and have pretty much approved of the confused Wall Street protesters running around with the Capitalism has failed and pro-Socialist signs.
Now THIS is the kind of individual I am talking about. The kind of individual the whiners on Wall St need to become. The kind of person who defines what it truly means to be an American.:
Preston Venzant, 47, who lost his job in Houston repairing commercial kitchen equipment, said he had decided not to apply for unemployment benefits over the objections of his wife. “I don’t want the federal government giving me an incentive not to work, period,†he said. “My personal opinion is, you’re supposed to go find work, and if you can’t find it in the business that you were once in, be it a C.E.O. or a street sweeper, you have to find employment and your lifestyle has to change, so be it.â€
That is one of the stupidest things I have ever read. People pay into unemployment. It is supposed to be a form of insurance. Not taking it is really, really, stupid and there is nothing commendable about that
That is one of the stupidest things I have ever read. People pay into unemployment. It is supposed to be a form of insurance. Not taking it is really, really, stupid and there is nothing commendable about that
Did they pay 99 weeks worth into it? and you're totally missing the point, getting paid for not working, most people don't have a problem with those collecting short-term, but 99 weeks?
Did they pay 99 weeks worth into it? and you're totally missing the point, getting paid for not working, most people don't have a problem with those collecting short-term, but 99 weeks?
I did not say anything about 99 weeks... I agree, you should be able to find work within a year at the very most.
The guy in question forgoed his unemployment from day one. It is something that he paid money towards every week while working. It is very stupid to not collect it.
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) many of the people you see at rallies, protests, townhalls, etc. are actually planted there by the different campaigns or sides in order to make their message/candidate seem to have more passionate support than it really does. They will literally drive busses up to college campuses and hand people a sign and a bag lunch and take them where they are needed. On the way there they are given a pep talk about what they are protesting for/against and a promise of $40 or so when the event is over and they get back on the bus. The Tea Party does this as well. On national campaigns there are even professional protesters/supporters that follow the campaign around to help energize the crowd.
