Sunday, April 10, 2011
Voicing Liberal Views, Explaining Liberal Ideas. A Liberal's work is never done. Again today I spent some time answering the idiotic propaganda of the Radical Right in the comments area of a story on AOL News, "White House: Obama to Lay Out New Spending Plan to Cut Deficit". The following 149 comments, comprising about 8,000 words, speak to a number of different issues that a lot of people clearly do not understand. I don't for an instant think that the Radical Right propagandists will concede they are just plain wrong, but I hope that open-minded people who see RadRite bull side-by-side with Liberal ideas will see how much better we will be as a society if we see to the triumph of Liberalism. I did a fair amount of Internet research and provide links to further information in several comments, which may be useful to other Liberals fiting in other forums.
And such insulting cuts [to the salary of Members of Congress and making Mrs. Obama singlehandedly clean the Executive Mansion!] will save what? $3 a year? Get serious and stop telling people in Government they have no right to live well while doing the people's business.
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You do NOT know how the real world works, but are a mindless propagandist for people who HATE you. It is NOT the rich who employ most people. Small business employs a larger percentage of working people, and corporations of varying size employ many others, while government employs still others. Corporations take small amounts of money from a great many people, including pension funds, to create and run their businesses, hire people, crate products, and provide services. We thus do not need ANY rich people whatsoever, and only the TINIEST FRACTION of all jobs are due to the rich.
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What appallingly stupid advice [boycott General Motors]. We saved GM, and now you want to destroy it? What is WRONG with you?
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[Re a remark by a notorious Rightwinger:] You cannot ever tell the truth about anything, so no one should heed anything you say. When the poor and middle class are going deeper into debt every year, and the rich are getting ever more obscenely rich, what is happening is NOT fair.
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Stop lying. The CBO never said any such thing [that hundreds of thousands of people will quit their jobs once "Obamacare" is in place]. Kindly cite to the URL of a specifi[c] webpage that shows the CBO saying anything LIKE what you say.
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You have one vote for a Representative, and maybe one vote for Senator, if one of your Senators is running next year. I'm sure your Congressman and Senator are terrified of your one vote. If you think they don't deserve to be paid well, then you think YOU don't deserve quality people in office. I would tend to agree that YOU don't.
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[To someone who suggests we close all our military bases outside the U.S.:] And if the world spins out of control and violence rises everywhere, we can retreat behind Fortress America and be safe, eh? Too bad the history of the world in no way justifies such a naive stance.
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Less than 1% of the Federal Budget goes to foreign aid. Stop resenting the pittance we give to people in STARVING countries. And cut the anarchist crap. The Government is NOT dispensable.
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[Re a comment contemptuous of Donald Trumps financial savvy:] Yes, how does anyone run a casino into the ground?
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Perhaps YOU can afford to pay more for Medicare. I CANNOT. Medicare should be MEANS-TESTED. The rich don't need it, so shouldn't get it.
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What craziness. So Government can let all industries self-regulate, eh? The banking industry did a great job regulating itself, didn't it? And that oil well in the Gulf didn't really explode and pour out millions of barrels of oil, because the oil industry polices itself perfectly. And we don't need to worry about lead paint on children's toys, because nobody would paint a toy with lead paint, right? On and on, the things Government do are unnecessary, eh? Yeah, we don't need to build or repair highways or bridges. They last forever without maintenance. GROW UP. Government has MANY jobs, not just two.
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Yes, of course, all those scores of millions of white people voted for him because he was black. That has always been the case. White people vote for black people, black people vote for white people. On what planet do you live? I suppose on your planet gravity pushes rather than pulls.
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Why do you people keep speculating about the future. Do you believe that somehow the mere utterance of a predication makes it come true? I've got news for you: NO, it really doesn't.
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First off, we haven't heard WHICH seniors will have benefit[s] cut. If RICH seniors will be cut from Medicare -- that is, if welfare for the RICH is ended -- in order that poor and middle-class seniors continue to get benefits, or even greater benefits, that would be fine.
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I suppose you think that illegal aliens get rich benefits, and turn up at Government offices to apply. It never occurs to you that illegals HIDE from the Government.
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What? You think it's fine for oil companies to get welfare?
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You're talking trivia when you attack government salaries. Many government workers make less than their private-sector peers; some make a little more; very, very few make a lot more. As for Congressional staffers, they have to serve CONSTITUENTS -- 700,000 per Congressional district, and MILLIONS per Senator in large states. How many staffers do you think it takes to help 700,000 or 10 MILLION constituents solve problems with government benefits such as veterans' healthcare?
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I guess you never heard of ARM -- Adjustable Rate Mortgages, which should be known as BAS: "bait and switch", a con game. Lure people into something they can afford, then switch them to something they canNOT afford, and blame the victim! Very cute. Yes, we'd be much better off as a society if we had millions of people living on the streets, right? Perhaps you should do some research on the value to society of owner-occupied housing.
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You are talking nonsense and trivia. Very few illegal aliens DARE to get any kind of public healhcare unless they are at risk of dying, lest they be DEPORTED. But I guess you and your ilk WANT them to die. It's not enuf for you that they get deported. You want them to DIE.
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You [who accused another commenter of being a poor person] do NOT know Laurie's personal circumstances, do you? You're just projecting your vicious view of the world onto her. If you know nothing, say nothing. There would be a lot fewer comments on these boards if the Radical Right heeded that advice.
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The Radical Right pretends that Reagan was a fiscal conservative, whereas he TRIPLED that national debt, and at the end of 12 years of Reagan-Bush, the national debt had QUADRUPLED. Bush the younger then DOUBLED that, but the Radical Right blames Democrats.
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Cut the "miniscule mind" -- SPELLED WRONG! -- crap. The present intervention hasn't cost the hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars that Bush's wars have. Still, Obama said he was going to withdraw from Iraq, but he hasn't done so.
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You know nothing about anything. All the things you mention don't amount to a hill of beans, and Amtrak was created because private railroads FAILED. As for defunding the IMF, you obviously do not understand how interconnected the world's economies are. A collapse anywhere endangers other economies, and still others, and then us.
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Nonsense. Universal healthcare will kill people. What an astonishing bit of insanity.
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Once again Obama is betraying his base. Some genuine Democrat needs to oust him during the primaries.
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You apparently do not realize that free trade is a religion, and everyone in both parties worships at the altar of free trade. They are all TRAITORS.
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What is "warbamacare" supposed to mean? You apparently think you're clever. You're not.
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The Radical Right does not for an instant believe the people being ruined will ever fite back.
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Why not just advocate that the U.S. Government sell heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy, and every other now-illegal drug [not just marijuana], and establish brothels and offer CIA assassins for hire, and otherwise become the Mafia? Your moral blindness is appalling.
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When the poor VOTE, they will no longer be abused. Note that no one is talking about compulsory voting, so that the poor WILL vote.
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Obama did not give any money to Brazil. (a) An independent agency provided the money you are talking about, and (b) it was a LOAN, to be PAID BACK, WITH INTEREST.
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Oh, and the money did NOT come from Government sources but from PRIVATE funds coordinated by a Government agency.
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Stop talking about Congress and the President as tho they are the enemy, or should be slaves. If you want quality people, you have to pay them well.
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Do you really not know why there is Federal tax on gasoline? Have you never heard of Federal highways and the Interstate Highway system? Do you think they built and maintain themselves?
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So you want our Government to be run by amateurs when "things are about to get very ugly". Oh, that's smart. And if we need to go to war, say, against Communist China, but can't do so because we don't have enuf money, then we should just consent to be taken over by Communist China, right? Stop talking nonsense. The Federal Government is not a state government. It has to deal with a hugely dangerous world, and we can't afford to have new people on the job every few years. We need people who know what they're talking about because they have been in the system and holding hearings and getting intelligence reports.
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Oh, how much do you really know about Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you know, for instance, that the greatest empire of the Middle Ages was the Caliphate, basedin Baghdad, Iraq, which touched both the Atlantic Ocean and China? Do you know that when the West was lost in the Dark Ages, the Caliphate preserved the wisdom of the Roman and Greek worlds' best thinkers, and added things like the concept of zero from India, and gave us algebra and the astrolabe (which helped Columbus find the New World), and brought the invention paper to the West from China? And you think the U.S. is powerless to effect long-term change hither and yon? Why is it, then, that the bulk of Latin America is now functioning democracies? Some people know something of the world, and know that the U.S. has made enormous change abroad, not just in Latin America but also in Europe, which used to have one general war a generation but no longer does -- because of US.
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So the Government of the State of Hawaii is co-conspiring in a massive fraud, is it? Seek professional help.
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Yes, the President of the United States should have to wait for a bus or subway, and do his own typing. Shut up.
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NPR gets very little money, and YES, we do need publicly funded radio. Or do you LIKE nothing but crap on radio?
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You don't listen to anything you don't want to hear. I have heard President Obama refer to his personal relationship with Jesus. You WON'T hear that, tho, not because Obama didn't say it, but because you refuse to hear it.
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The Government agency in charge of futures markets IS looking into ways to regulate speculation without interfering with the legitimate functions of a free market.
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What outrageous, stupid, lying CRAP! The dollar isn't worth 80 cents today when it was worth $1.00 yesterday. You're just LYING! The cost of a barrel of oil has gone up and down with absolutely no relationship to the value of the dollar. Why on Earth are you defending speculators' driving up the price of oil to absolutely unjustifiable levels? If you really believe what you said, you need to be under a doctor's care. But you COULDN'T believe it. You just have a compulsion to answer every Liberal point no matter how much you have to twist the truth out of all recognition, because you have a serious mental disorder that does not permit you to accept ANYTHING that ANY Liberal says, about ANYTHING.
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Please do not ever tell people that about Welfare to Work. They don't want to hear it.
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The GAO says that the President's health program would SAVE money. It is not ENTITLED to save money by compelling people to buy something they don't want, but it would save money.
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Huh? Tax cuts to the rich ARE handouts. To the rich.
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Stop calling the President by his middle name. it has nothing to do with anything. Did YOU tell your parents what to name YOU? Apparently you have no idea how small the cost of the Libyan action is as a component of the budget. Nor do you have ANY justification in calling the Libyan "freedom fiters" -- a term Republicans are supposed to favor -- "terrorists".
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The world LOVES Obama, and thinks much better of us since his election. But that is just tearing you up inside, so you have to lie about it.
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Obama is not an idiot, and you make YOURSELF look stupid by asserting he is. Idiots don't graduate from prestigious major universities.
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I suppose you correctly predicted the numbers in this week's lottery drawings, all of them. Why do you people think that your prophecies will fulfill themselves? No Obama supporter is going to stay home because YOU, nobodies, say that Obama will be defeated.
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Do you people really think any sane person is counting the President's vacations? or mischaracterizing Presidential official visits as vacations? Don't you have any serious issues to talk about? You make yourselves look not just petty but also RIDICULOUS with this vacation nonsense, esp. since Dubya took a full 1/3 of all his time in office in vacations.
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Your country. Yes, it's only yours, not anyone else's. Now we know where you're coming from. And all that legislation, like the law that stopped banks from charging outrageous fees, doesn't count for anything, eh? How is it that when the CEO makes spending decisions, he's doing his job, but when the President of the United States makes spending decisions, he is -- what? -- committing crimes?
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You can list a lot of nonsense, but it's all nonsense. EVERYONE who visits a mosque takes his shoes off. It's simple respect, like a woman's putting on a scarf when she enters a Catholic Church. Your 20% figure for Liberals is a fabrication of no conceivable meaning, because "Liberal" is not a narrowly defined term. The Radical Right is probably substantially less than 25% of the total population, and 95% of them are Radical Rightists because they are racists.
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This is why I have long called him "Barack the Faithless". He is so desperate for approval that he will betray the people who already backed him to try to get DIFFERENT people to like him. Never mind that they never will. It's part of the problem of biracial children being raised in a species that doesn't like racial mixing. Eventually, he had to take sides, so chose black. You'd think he'd have learned from that to take sides in the Liberal/Conservative divide. But he still wants to believe you can be BOTH a Liberal AND a Conservative at the same time.
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That's what happens when you cut taxes on the people who have all the money. Fortunately, the cure is simple: SOAK THE RICH.
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You're talking nonsense that makes you look like, at best, a liar, and at worst, a fool. When Obama took office, hundreds of thousands of people a MONTH were losing their jobs. Now they're not, which means that hundreds of thousands of people a month have been finding work during the Obama Administration. Donald Trump does not employ even a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of that.
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Only people who are PROFOUNDLY ignorant think that foreign aid is a significant portion of the Federal budget.
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Most unlikely [that Donald Trump could be elected President]. But I'll be that almost nobody remembers that the last time Trump said he was interested in running for President, he said that the rich are now SO rich that we could pay off the entire national debt with a ONE-YEAR tax on the rich.
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You still want to punish the poor and benefit the rich. How much do you think $2 million is? It's a FORTUNE. Why should someone inherit a fortune for doing nothing? $900,000, the old limit of no-estate-tax, was more than generous. Taxes on the rich were on the order of 78% in the 70s, and the rich were still rich. Why should there be a cap on Social Security taxes at all? Most people pay SS on every dollar they earn. So should EVERYONE. If Medicaid recipients, who have NO MONEY, are forced to pay for medical care, they WON'T go to the doctor until it's too late. So you are really advocating that a lot of poor people die. As for Afghanistan, you do NOT see into the future, so do NOT know that Afghanistan cannot be brought into the modern, democratic world.
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Cut the crap. NO small business makes $2 million. None. Not one. Never have, never will (unless the dollar loses 90% of its value). The typical small business makes only enuf to pay a few employees and give the proprietors a comfortable income, perhaps in the range of $40,000 a year, not $2M. Moreover, anyone who has a business that grows beyond that level knows to INCORPORATE or form a limited liability company, so that the death of a principle does NOT subject the COMPANY to estate tax.
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Yes, we must cut the deficit -- by RAISING TAXES ON THE RICH. Why would ANYONE who is not rich object to that? Surely no one is so delusional as, any longer, to believe in "voodoo economics", that old "trickle-down" con.
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I realy am astounded that the entirely humorless Radical Right keeps trying to 'crack wise'. Do you REALLY think you're funny? If so, your delusional world is wider than I thought.
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The only favor Ryan did was reveal the utter evil of the Republican Party, which wants to make life miserable for people of modest means so the rich can live lives of obscene luxury at our expense.
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If you see corruption in Massachusetts, report it. If not, be quiet. Massachusetts state employees have, in any case, NOTHING to do with the Federal Government. And yes, Obama wants to raise taxes -- ON THE RICH. I very seriously doubt you are rich, so why are you protecting them from taxes they could EASILY afford to pay and would get the Nation's finances in good order?
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All this birther nonsense shows everyone who sees it that you are a RACIST fool who deserves NO respect and NO attention. If you want to turn everyone off, keep up the b.s.
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If your reference is to Donald Trump, he has NOT presented a birth certificate, only a hospital record. But you don't pay attention to anything that does not accord with your insane delusions.
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Liberals don't take marching orders. We THINK, which is something WE can do. Liberals have said they are indignant that the spending cuts will hurt the vulnerable and benefit the rich and powerful. Race is plainly the ONLY reason the Radical Right is so livid at Obama. And as for Libya, Liberals are FOR defending pro-democracy movements. Why does the Radical Right hate democracy?
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Corporations are not people. The equal protection clause does not apply to businesses.
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No amount of b.s. will camouflage the FACT that Bush DOUBLED the national debt: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm.
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So the President of the United States, who has a job that would crush the life out of you in 17 minutes, is not entitled to a vacation, eh? Just be quiet, you foolish, petty person. "Millions" means nothing in the national budgetary context. You're talking complete and utter nonsense.
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Let's put this Radical Right lie to bed once and for all, OK? From CBS News, January 16, 2009: >>today's trip marks Mr. Bush's 149th visit to the presidential retreat. The planned three-day stay, during which the president is being joined by family and former and current aides, will bring his total time spent at Camp David to all or part of 487 days.
Yes, that's 487 days. And Camp David is not even where the president has spent the most time when not at the White House: Knoller reports that Mr. Bush has made 77 visits to his ranch in Crawford during his presidency, and spent all or part of 490 days there.<<
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URL for that CBS report: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-4728085-503544.html. Feel free to check it. Now what are you going to do, say that CBS News is a bunch of liars?
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Yes, I suppose Obama did vote for TARP, because it was NECESSARY. It wasn't designed right, and wasn't applied right, but something of its sort did have to be done. Bush and Obama agreed that the economic collapse was not going to correct itself without Government intervention. But now the Radical Right disowns even Bush. How quaint.
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Liberals are not "regressives". The Big Lie Technique really doesn't work, you know.
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Your confused and quixotic rant makes absolutely no sense. Shut the Government down for several months? You need to be incarcerated in a mental institution. Draft the poor, only, and send the poor overseas to die in foreign military misadventures, eh? "Redistribution"? The only redistribution that has been going on in this country, since 1986, is redistribution UP, FROM the poor and middle class TO the rich. That was fine with you? But UNDOING that redistribution would be wrong? Since your recommendations contradict each other -- take care of military families but shut the Government down! -- we can see that you are very seriously confused. Perhaps you should think before you type.
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Why not compare us to Germany, which has a much more modern view of the relationship between workers and corporations? Germany is doing very well.
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"We all" know no such thing. What we do know is that Obama has repeatedly said he is concerned about the deficit, and thus wanted to restore the pre-Bush tax rates on the rich, rather than add $700B to the national debt. But Republicans wouldn't LET those tax cuts expire by their terms, and now they want to cut taxes on the rich another 10%, so we will have even less money to work with.
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The Tea Party are ordinary folks who are being USED by their betters.
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Obama is NOT a Marxist. "Marxist" actually means something, and its meaning does not cover ANYTHING Obama has either done or even proposed to do.
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Perhaps Bush is not saying anything because his puppetmasters aren't pulling his strings any more.
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If the Tea Party gets its way, people around them will be hurt, and the will see that they have done evil when they wanted to do good.
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Paul Ryan has now been in Congress for 12 years. Isn't he supposed to leave office now?
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Liberals are much better educated than conservatives, have higher, tested IQ's, have better jobs, and make more money than the bulk of conservatives, many of whom dropped out of high school.
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It never occurs to them when they talk about Obama as a Communist or dictator that if he were either of those things, they would be dead.
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There is too much nonsense to address in your fatuous and dishonest post, but let's take one point, the assertion that under Obama "we've literally seen jobs eliminated intentionally" . What are you talking about? Nothing, that's what. Just as with everything else you say: all nonsense.
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I see Radical Rightists talking about Bush more than Liberals do. YOU raise the issue, then accuse US of raising it. YOU make assertions about how wonderful things were under Bush, and then we have to correct you with FACTS. Then YOU complain that we keep talking about Bush.
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Obama did not write the tax code that GE abused. Immelt should, however, definitely be told to get off the President's advisory panel. If GE violated any laws, the responsible executives should be sent to PRISON.
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President Obama has visited Kenya, it's true. But he never lived there, is thoroughly American, and has no desire to live there.
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I suppose you weren't paying attention in November 2008, when the people elected Barack Obama President by almost 10 million votes. Kindly stop misrepresenting the will of the people. You represent nobody.
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Obama has not hidden his birth records. The State of Hawaii has them, and the State of Hawaii says he was born in Hawaii. Why do you find that impossible to believe? No, you actually know full well that Obama WAS born in Hawaii, but you somehow think that if you keep saying he was not, you can undo that fact. Sort of like self-fulfilling prophecy in reverse. That's not the way reality works.
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Who or what is the American Small Business League, and why should we believe anything it says? There is NO article about it in Wikipedia. So maybe it's some kind of front organization funded by the Radical Right. Pls cite to a REPUTABLE media or organization for your assertion.
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A Google search on American Small Business League produces almost nothing not put out by itself.
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The Republicans are pressing for the destruction of Social Security, starting with people under 55 and working downwards. Remember that Bush wanted to privatize Social Security, and after leaving office has dared to say that his greatest regret is having failed to privatize Social Security. Mind you, when the stock market plunged, millions of seniors would have seen their portfolio wiped out! Obama and the Democrats MUST end all talk of ending benefits for most people on Social Security, but RICH people should get NO Social Security. Let's see who is targeted for what cuts before getting hysterical.
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Learn how to QUOTE. And everyone please stop talking about shariah in the United States. The First Amendment won't let Christians or Jews impose religious law; certainly it would not permit Moslems to impose religious law. Kindly stop raising phony issues.
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The amount is the ENTITLEMENT, and should not be higher for people who made more money, and not be lower for people who made less money thru life. Think about it: one person who does nothing is to be paid more than another person who does nothing? How does that make sense? The fact is that payment into Social Security provides only an ENTITLEMENT to receive in the future. The amount actually paid, even with interest, NEVER equals the benefit. CURRENT workers' taxes pay for current recipients. It is not a bank account, from which you can draw only what you paid in. It is an ENTITLEMENT to draw in perpetuity once you qualify, no matter how long you live.
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Stop the birther nonsense. No one has spent millions to cover up President Obama's birth in Hawaii, or to create, after the fact, a birth announcement in a Honolulu newspaper. But keep harping on this idiocy. You hurt only yourself, by showing yourself incapabable of coping with reality.
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The United Nations does NOT tax Americans. Stop this insane propaganda.
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Pls note that every President is blamed for the deficit/national debt during his Presidency, not Congress. Note the attacks here on the OBAMA deficit.
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No, the Nation's enemies are the racists and liars who want to set us against each other.
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It's not Liberals who are trying to undo the progress of a century.
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Kindly stop pretending you know the future. You know nothing about the future, even less than you know about the present or past.
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Perhaps you are confused. I virtually never see anybody attacking white people here, but anti-black bigotry plainly underlies EVERYTHING irrational that the Radical Right says about the President. They don't speak to issues and say, "I wish the President would do X or Y". They call him "Obummer", "chimpanzee", and the like, attacking him viciously and totally irrationally in a way that plainly speaks ONLY of racism. They call his wife "moochelle" and talk about sending the Obamas a crate of bananas. But to you, that is civil discourse.
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That is all LIES from the corporate elite. If they get tax cuts, they will STILL export jobs. How do we know? Because they HAVE gotten tax cuts, and they HAVE exported jobs. Do you REALLY think that corporations should be permitted to poison the air we breathe and water we drink and cook with? In China, "a World Bank study done with SEPA, the national environmental agency, concluded that outdoor air pollution was already causing 350,000 to 400,000 premature deaths a year. Indoor pollution contributed to the deaths of an additional 300,000 people, while 60,000 died from diarrhea, bladder and stomach cancer and other diseases that can be caused by water-borne pollution." (NYTimes, 8/26/07: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html?pagewanted=all). Do you want that for Americans? I don't even want it for Chinese, yet the export of U.S. jobs to China contributes to Chinese deaths from environmental devastation.
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Republicans don't want any restrictions on corporate bonuses or compensation, and want the rich to pay a lower tax rate than the middle class. The bulk of people on Social Security would LOVE to make $20,000 a year.
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You're talking nonsense. Total foreign aid is on the order of $15 billion out of a total Federal budget of $3.7 TRILLION. Read before you write.
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You plainly do not understand what "racist" means. Calling someone out for racial bias is not racism. Calling a black person a "chimpanzee" is racism. The Radical Right attacks not the President's proposals but his person. They do not speak to ideas; they attack the man in ways that can be explained ONLY by racial animus, since he is NOT a Marxist, NOT a Socialist, NOT born abroad, etc. No amount of documentation can budge the Radical Right from its delusional accusations. It is not possible for rational people to assign anything but racist motives to such attacks upon President Obama.
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What "state run media" are you talking about? There are NONE in the United States. There are some news and public-affairs programs on PBS and NPR, but the bulk of Americans get their news from PRIVATE media owned by CORPORATIONS. But truth means nothing to you.
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What an excellent way to raise money and reduce the deficit [$100 tax on bullets].
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Barack Obama has indeed betrayed Liberals, and you are quite right to land on his hypocrisy. As for 4.4% unemployment under Bush, that is a half-truth: >>From December 2007 when the recession started to December 2008, an additional 3.6 million people became unemployed. And, in January 2009, his last month in office, the nation lost 655,000 jobs, raising the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent, the highest level in more than 15 years.<< (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration#Unemployment) What this means is that during the housing bubble and stock-market bubble, we had a few years of prosperity built on war spending and debt that subverted the basics of the economy, so by the end of his tenure, the Nation's economy collapsed. When Obama arrived, 655,000 a month were losing their jobs; now it's down to almost none, or actual job growth. As for Bush spending "a few days at his ranch", he spent 490 days at his ranch and 478 days at Camp David. (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-4728085-503544.html) I don't know how many days he spent elsewhere, but he spent about 1/3 of his entire term on vacation.
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Pls learn to use QUOTATION MARKS. It had to read your comment twice to figure out what you were saying, because your text contradicts itself. I live in NJ too, and tho I haven't heard the particular statistic mentioned, I do know that Christie's Republican administration is doing very severe harm to the economy, education, and localities. My property taxes went up 16% because Christie cut state aid to Newark. It's the same story, with different numbers, for a host of NJ towns and cities.
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Learn to QUOTE correctly. As for how many people are posting Radical Right propaganda here, I haven't done a count, but it's a reasonably small number of familiar names, who seem to be part of a carefully coordinated Radical Right propaganda machine which posts hundreds of short, inflammatory remarks designed to mislead casual visitors into thinking they speak for most people. They do not.
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What are you talking about? Feeding the hungry, providing healthcare to the sick and education to children is about power and money? The Radical Right Big Lie Machine thinks that saying something that is exactly contrary to fact will persuade people.
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So you can plan for an auto accident or catastrophic illness, can you? NO YOU CAN'T. Not even millionaires can plan for such things, esp. if the stock market crashes. You're living in a fool's paradise, where the best-laid plans of mice and men NEVER go awry.
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No, he's not. I was paying $477 a month for health insurance as a single person, which is close to $6K a year, and for one person, not two. If we cut Medicare not to the rich, who don't need it, but to the poor and middle class, who do need it, $6,000 a year (as against the current $1,164) is completely believable.
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What people have not yet realized is that the rich are pitting group against group so they don't focus on the real cause of social problems, the viciously greedy behavior of the RICH.
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Cut the crap. President Obama DID consult Congress: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/obama-consults-with-congressional-leaders-on-libya/2011/03/18/ABc4iNq_blog.html. Simply saying something that is utterly false doesn't make it true.
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Again, The Big Lie Technique in action. Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Lewis Black, and a host of Liberals are professional comedians, who laugh all the time. It is the Radical Right that is humorless, as evidenced by some amazingly off-the-wall unfunny attempts at humor in this comments area.
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No, we are, and I think I'm quoting a lot of Conservatives when I say this, "the richest country in the history of the world". We're only "broke" when it comes to doing justice to the poor and middle class.
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Yes, we always get our information from West Virginia, the most advanced and best educated state of the Union, right? And never mind the money saved consumers in the endless repairs that old cars cost their owners. And forget about the costs to public health of the air pollution from old engines, and the injuries and deaths from accidents in cars without airbags, and all the other costs of keeping old cars on the roads. I suppose you didn't notice that a very large proportion, if not outright majority, of all the Cash for Clunkers money went to JAPANESE carmakers who don't HAVE American union workers. That is the real problem with that program: that it was not restricted to AMERICAN carmakers. And what exactly does this have to do with the present budget controversy?
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Let me try to explain something to you people. This is NOT a chatroom. You are NOT entitled to waste everybody's time with personal messages. We don't CARE when you come on board or when you leave. And there's no God, to boot.
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Find someplace else to be. This is not your playpen. You are not funny. You are not witty (perhaps half-witty, but that's another story). You are not sensible. You are not fair. You ARE an annoying, miserable excuse for a human being who approaches much of the world with resentment. I'm tired of your dreary, contemptible, and really quite sad comments.
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So you really think $15B or $20B in foreign aid to STARVING countries will save us, do you? The budget is on the order of $3.5 TRILLION. But yes, everyone who has ideas as to what we should and should not be spending money on should feel free to convey their sentiments to their members of Congress. Of course, if the Radical Right gets its way, there won't be any Congressonal staff members to read those messages.
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Ah, there we see open racism [a reference to black farmers]. I guess you didn't get the memo: you must always HIDE your racism.
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Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on Earth (8th or 9th poorest, by some measures), and long has been: http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world.htm. The mere fact that it has mountains does not mean that those mountains are filled with mineral riches that lend themselves to profitable extraction. And it is hardly so centrally located as to be important in oil and gas distribution.
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A lot of Liberals are very unhappy with the idea of causing ANY injury to the poor and middle class for the sake of the rich, and don't want to compromise on that at all. Republicans are very big about talking about "shared sacrifice", but then they announce their intention to cut taxes on the rich by 10%!
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Don't you mean a KANSAN [not Kenyan]? You want to speak to only one half of Obama's ancestry? Why not the Kansas half? Or are you uttering more "birther" nonsense?
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How convenient your memory is. You forget $4 gasoline under President Bush. Gas prices go up; gas prices go down. The President has precious little power over them. I think part of the problem with people in these comments areas is they attribute to the President infinite power, when his actual power in many regards is very slite.
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Of what conceivable relevance is the behavior of the First Lady? Odd that the Radical Right is so upset at Michelle Obama for her activism on behalf of healhty eating and physical activity for children, but you don't say a word about that. How wondrously flexible the mind of the Radical Rightwinger is, that it can make a mountain out of a molehill one week and a different mountain out of a different molehill the next, whereupon the first mountain becomes a molehill again.
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Learn how to quote. As to your poisonous points, let me first point out the inconsistency of the Radical Right, which keeps talking about term limits for Congress, but now praises John McCain for having been in Congress for eons. As for your silly assertion about people being told they won't have to pay rent, kindly stop talking nonsense. What Barack Obama did was to break the color barrier to the White House, and that shocked the racist whites of the South and Midwest, who thought that if nothing else was "safe" for "us", it was the Presidency. Obama didn't divide anything; his election just brought out the divisions we have had all along. Rather than let their racism go, and open their minds to see what this new President could do, the Radical Right mounted a new Confederacy of hate, and has worked to divide the Nation and foment intergroup hatred. And it doesn't matter what the issue may be. They will attack him for not being warmonger enuf AND for being a warmonger. They will attack him no matter what he does or does not do. And they will sell out their own future by handing everything over to the rich if the rich will save them from a black man.
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Haven't you posted this exact same crap at least once before? Stop repeating posts! As for your implication that we are going bankrupt, you forget that we can at any tme reverse the insane elimination of taxation of the rich, return to the tax rates of 1978 (a top bracket of about 78%), and be rolling in dough.
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No, provision for the poor, the disabled, the elderly, etc., must NOT be on the table. Let grandma die of starvation of preventable illness to feed the Pentagon's insatiable lust for money? I don't think so.
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Naturally the Radical Right disapproves of any effort to work together. Thumbs down on cooperation to save the Nation! We must consider the possibility that there are several million people in this country who are pure evil, and they hate all decent people who do want to work together.
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President Obama thinks he will NEED a billion dollars to counter the vast inpouring of money from the rich that the Supreme Court unlawfully unleashed upon our political system. The President's re-election fund will, in any event, arise for the most part from voluntary CONTRIBUTIONS by willing givers, so what is your problem with that? I thought you people WANTED people to put their money where their mouth is. And how much do you THINK the President of the United States should be paid? A dollar forty-nine? We can restore the Nation's finances by raising taxes on the rich, any time we want. But the rich want you to think that the only way we can restore the Nation's finances is by cutting spending. No. You can cut spending or raise revenues. That's the way REALITY works, but we are never to see reality, only illusion, the illusion that it is impossible to raise taxes on the rich.
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racquetguy1, the rich are to have their taxes CUT, not raised. They are to get NO cut in services or benefits. How do you not understand that they want OTHER people to sacrifice, not themselves?
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Obama has sold out, again. Real Democrats need to get rid of these pseudo-Democrats, like Clinton, who was more Republican than Democratic. We need a strong primary challenge from someone who doesn't need to be loved by everybody but is content to do the right thing for the people, not curry favor with Republicans.
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Nonsense. Just look at the past 30 years to see who was really spending crazily. Reagan-Bush QUADRUPLED the national debt, Clinton got it under control and produced the largest surplus in the history of the world, Bush the Younger (and Dumber) came into office, got rid of the surplus in 10 months, then DOUBLED the national debt again!
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Paul Ryan is NOT popular, and stands a very good chance of becoming the most hated man in the Nation in short order. I don't hear any call for Ryan to run for President.
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Naturally, you have it exactly backwards. A Radical Rightwinger, not a Liberal, bragged that someone has developed software to detect Liberal trolls, and urged people on the Radical Right to check it out and use that software. NOBODY who trolls these boards is wealthy, so it is really puzzling that these poor, mostly uneducated people, who will NEVER be rich but are told that if they take care of the rich, the rich will take care of them, keep believing the "trickle-down" b.s.
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Actually, Liberals are sorry for the poor, uneducated, credulous losers on the Radical Right, whose only solace was that they are white. And then along came a BLACK man (half-white, really, but self-identified as black) and took away their last basis for seeing themselves as anything but failures. Liberals take joy from the positive things in life; the Radical Right tries to enjoy the misery of others, and increase that misery. Liberals are generous, and that is not just ennobling; it also produces contentedness. The Radical Right is viciously selfish and intent on doing harm to others out of malice. It's sad, really. But the mere fact that Radical Rightists are nasty people choking on their own bile in no way requires us to take it easy on them and let them strike out at their betters without retaliating.
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None of the three current wars has anything to do with either oil or commerce. The Afghan war was to displace the Taliban, which had not just tolerated or turned a blind eye toward, but actually invited Al-Qaeda to train for war against the United States. The iraq war was ordered by Israel, which was incapable of destroying Iraq but thought Iraq might be capable of destroying Israel, so the U.S. had to do Israel's dirty work. That is why we did NOT "take out" but waged a full-scale war of destruction of the COUNTRY, not the dictator. The Libyan intervention is to protect and promote a pro-democracy movement, so Republicans who pretended to favor Dubya's pretense that he was trying to "liberate" Iraq and democratize the Middle East should be enthusiastically supporting the Libya intervention. And in fact John McCain IS gungho to help the rebels -- so of course the Radical Right denounces John McCain. Oil has NOTHING to do with any of these conflicts. Nothing. The Iraq war CUT oil supplies for years. The Libyan uncertainty is being used by oil speculators to raise prices, which victimizes the United States. Afghanistan HAS NO oil of consequence. And as for waging war for "commerce", what exactly is that even supposed to mean? War does not improve commerce; it invariably interferes with normal commerce.
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Why are Radical Rightists so illierate that they don't know how to show a quote? As for immigration, you plainly have not noticed, but immigration from Europe has essentially vanished, and did so decades ago. Only people from the poorest countries want to come here any more -- except of course for the rich, who have homes in more than one country. The people who have worked long hours for decades RARELY have gotten rich. That's just a scam on the stupid. Do you really think that the Chinese convenience-store operators in NYC get rich from their hard life? Get real. It's not how hard you work, nor how long, but in what industry, at what pay rate. Hard work is no guarantee of success, not in business, not in life, and certainly not in terms of accumulation of wealth. Many of the rich INHERITED their wealth; others lucked into an idea that just happened to work out; others got paid ridiculous amounts of money for playing a children's game. Nor is wealth secure. Today's big thing may be tomorrow's whatever-happened-to? (e.g., MySpace). The American Dream was, in any case, NOT about wealth but about freedom, family, comfort for oneself and security for the people you love. And fairness: liberty and justice for ALL, not fame and fortune for the few.
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Obama has said he came into a bad situation. Do you deny that? He's not looking backward, except to learn the lessons of the economic calamity Bush left him. He wants to move forward and help the people who need help, not the people who don't.
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Ron Paul is a lunatic who thinks that selfishness is a political philosophy.
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I think Boehner voted for all of Bush's budgets that DOUBLED the national debt.
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Democrats were in charge of both houses and the White House for only two years. Bush would never have gone along with raising taxes on the rich, so don't blame the Dems for his time in office. Yes, Democrats SHOULD have raised taxes on the rich as soon as Congress and the President were sworn in. But don't forget the Party of No behavior of the Republicans. Democrats kept refusing to believe that the Republicans would never cooperate in working on the people's business. I hope they have learned their lesson, so that if they regain control of the House and Senate, and retain the White House as well, they will ram thru the kinds of change the Nation needs, no matter what the Republicans try to do to stop them.
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Radical Islam is not the subject of this article, but there is a big difference between being concerned about extremism in the Middle East and worrying about shariah law's being imposed in the United States -- which the paranoids keep pretending to believe could happen, in as little as five years!
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Please do not make up statistics, but supply URLs to reputable websites for such assertions. Your figure as to jobs created is of course ridiculous. The economy was losing 655,000 jobs a MONTH whn Obama came into office. Had his emergency measures, including the stimulus, not worked, we would have lost 17,685,000 jobs ON TOP of the number unemployed at the end of 2008. In actuality, the total number of unemployed today is 13,500,000 (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm). So your 582,089 figure is a total fabrication.
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You don't have to cut spending if you increase revenues. Deficits and debt are the negative difference between income and outgo. Republicans want you to believe that there is only one element, spending. That is malicious nonsense.
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Lies. Democrats did NOT have four years to do anything they wanted. The first two they had to work with a Republican President who favored the rich over everyone else.
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There is no recall in the Constitution. You think a government of amateurs would do a good job of mastering the enornous mechanism of the Federal Government, do you? You are speaking emotionally, not rationally.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,446 for Israel.)