03-21-2008, 09:29 AM
| #21 | |
| Banned | Quote:
No one wants to be an Amish, but there is always an alternative choice, it just depends how much effort you want to spend looking.  | |
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03-21-2008, 09:48 AM
| #22 | |
| Lost in the Ozone Again   | Quote:
Nicely said all !
__________________ Old fighter pilots never die.....They just wind up in Texas | |
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03-21-2008, 10:19 AM
| #23 |
| Senior Member  | The media has little affect on the economy. The real reason for the mortgage and housing market fall is because people borrowed too much money on adjustable market interest rates. So, in the beginning, say 5 to 10 years ago the market was good, and as a direct result interest rates were really low. Now, the money people were saving on interest rates they were spending and not saving that money into any kind of investment. Then the market started to go down, so all these people with borrowed money on adjustable market interest rates started getting increasing on their mortgage, that is how it works. So then it gets bad, and if you look at housing and real estate sales it always rises, peaks, declines, repeats, it has done that since the 1950s. So, now you have all these people who can no longer afford their homes because of these adjustable market interest rates. Which is something that bankers or mortgage brokers invented. So, now these people who have paid all that money over those years to those companies get jacked on interest rates and can't afford it. Then the bank owns it and flips it for money. The bank still wins because it has had your 5 to 10 years of payments, and now it owns the house and just sells it. Which is why right now it is a good time to buy a foreclosed house, and it is so bad for the first time the Federal government has stepped in to help. Which is ironic because people want less government but when crap like this happens they plea for help from the government. This is exactly why if you make any kind of major purchase like property or a house, you always get a fixed mortgage rate so when the market declines you don't get screwed. The same thing happened in the stock market crash and private bankers did the same thing. Except during that time it was where you could put down a 100 dollars and buy a thousand dollars of stock, but that loan can be at any time at the lender's disgression called for and must be paid with in 24 hours. I mean really its business ethics that is screwing the middle class right now, not the media. I have to agree with Wingwiper, we reap what we sew, and that is what has happened. We allow in live in a certain economic system that drives us down and is creating the haves and the have nots, and ultimately destroying the middle class. We all need to change for the better, but it is not one single thing causing it, nor will there be one single answer to it all. |
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03-21-2008, 10:28 AM
| #24 |
| Banned | This is simply the left wing news media trying to influence the next election. Many are openly rooting for the Dems, substituting reporting the news for stealth editorials. (See the NY Times, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and just about any news outlet in Kalifornia) According to them, everything is bad because of George Bush and the Repubs. It's Goebel's big lie. |
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03-21-2008, 10:35 AM
| #25 | |
| Senior Member | Quote:
Come on man! There is plenty of right wing media that caters to their political agenda, the media is not ran by the left. That is just a myth, but keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. Rupert Murdoc built a whole right wing agenda news empire, and it has spread over many publications, TV shows, news channels and so on. Quit blaming the media for crap that americans do. We can't blame anyone but ourselves. Once we quit pointing fingers and shifting blames to the liberal media, terrorists, or whatever, maybe we can actually progress. | |
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03-21-2008, 10:38 AM
| #26 | |
| Lost in the Ozone Again | Quote:
But you're right -- we control our own destiny and are ultimately responsible for all of the situations we are in. We own ALL of this process. We can fix it.
__________________ Old fighter pilots never die.....They just wind up in Texas | |
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03-21-2008, 10:52 AM
| #27 |
| Senior Member | We don't. I completely reject your whole point of view on this. We are not perfect and since we are so powerful, our mistakes are likely to mirror the scope of our influence. In other words, a screw-up by the truly powerful is likely to be catastrophic. We have real problems that are screaming for attention. They won't stop being real by ignoring them. We have a duty to ourselves and to those who made this country to figure out what we are doing wrong and to fix it. I don't really care what problems exist in Iran or North Korea or China (apart from normal, human empathy) because I don't love those countries. I do care what problems exist here. Those problems need solutions whether we are at fault or not. |
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03-21-2008, 10:58 AM
| #28 | |
| Banned | Quote:
Now, as for the stats. Note that the link I am supplying is intended to debunk the so called "liberal media myth." Note the stats do not show a conservative bias. Examining the "Liberal Media" Claim "1. Political Orientation One of the basic findings of this survey is that most journalists identify themselves as being centrists on both social and economic issues. Perhaps this is why an earlier survey found that they tended to vote for Bill Clinton in large numbers. Clinton's centrist "new Democrat" orientation combines moderately liberal social policies (which brings criticism from conservative anti-gay, "pro-life" and other activists) with moderately conservative economic policies (which brings criticism from labor unions, welfare rights advocates and others). This orientation fits well with the views expressed by journalists.  When asked to characterize their political orientation on social and economic issues, most journalists self-identify as centrists (Q#22 and Q#23). Of the minority who do not identify with the center, most have left leanings concerning social issues and right leanings concerning economic ones. This is consistent with a long history of research on profit-sector professionals in general. High levels of education tend to be associated with liberal views on social issues such as racial equality, gay rights, gun control and abortion rights. High levels of income tend to be associated with conservative views on economic issues such as tax policy and federal spending. Most journalists, therefore, would certainly not recognize themselves in the "liberal media" picture painted by conservative critics." Looks like an 80/20 split to me there buddy. In addition, I strongly suspect that the ones that consider themselves "centrist" are just left of Castro. After all, they call Hillary "centrist." and more: Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist / UCLA Newsroom and I don't hink Rupert owns this outlet: Journalists give campaign cash - Politics - MSNBC.com "MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties." I could go on................... | |
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03-21-2008, 11:06 AM
| #29 |
| Senior Member | Yeah sure, Rush Limbah and Sean Hannity report fair news with no political agenda what so ever. Yup, the whole Fox news network and all its subsidiaries are totally non biased. Come on man, you seriously think that? I can produce all kinds of statics too, that disprove your claims. This still does not change the fact that you are playing the blame game. Don't blame, talk to people, learn and educate yourself. Everyone is way different, and really the only way we can change if we compromise our differences, get all this crap behind us, and start to progress. Too many hands are in our government, there are too many politicians in big buisness's pocket. It goes like that old saying, "Too many cooks in the kitchen and you'll never get anything done." What really pains me is the ignorance in our country. Yes, I agree the media (on both ends) has a lot to do with it, but so does our pop culture, and outlandish life styles of consumption, our lack of education, our poor health care, and the list goes on and on and on. More people in the USA vote for American Idol than they do for people in office. |
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03-21-2008, 11:13 AM
| #31 | |
| Senior Member | Quote:
And I'm not speaking hyperbole, either. There was a family up this way where Daddy is a writer for one of the major national magazines, I forget which one. He made an agreement with his editor that for the purposes of a cover story illustrating how pervasive Chinese imports are in American culture, he and his family would not buy Chinese-made products for a year. They'd track the difference in costs and degree of difficulty in finding non-ChiCom goods to buy for an American family (admittedly an upper middle class family by the sound of it). Family is Mommy, Daddy and two boys, 7 and 10 I think. It was a really tough year for them. They became compulsive label readers. They went looking for a new car, and it took them months to find one that didn't have any Chinese components in it, not even nuts and bolts. (I think they ended up buying a Mercedes sedan.) Clothing was incredibly difficult for the boys. One thing that stuck in my mind was when the 10 year old needed a new pair of gym shoes because he'd outgrown the current set. It too his mother something like 10 days before she found an Italian-made pair that would fit him; she could not find any "American" sneakers that were made in the USA. It was actually easier for them to replace a washing machine than it was to buy the clothes they washed in it! They had to stop buying certain foods. Turns out a lot of the artificial ingredients and extenders like wheat gluten that go into national brands of prepackaged foods are made in China from wheat we export to them. One positive thing (from a health point of view) was they had to eat a lot more fresh food, and in season they bought a lot of their food at farmers' markets that was locally grown. Home improvement projects had to be put on hold because they could not find hardware they needed that was not made in China. You have to go to extremely upscale home decor stores, and even there the chances of your finding something made in the USA by Americans is slim. Most of the really nice stuff is coming out of Italy and Germany these days, and it's not cheap. (Like you and the family under discussion, I try to buy American at every opportunity. I won't buy anything made in China unless there is absolutely no alternative, even if I have to pay more to get stuff made in a free nation. For what it's worth, I have found ChiCom-made hardware is distinctly inferior in quality to New Old Stock made in the United States 15 or 20 years ago that I sometimes turn up at out of the way independent stores or at estate sales. The problem is unless you are very patient or very lucky, you cannot turn up enough matching hardware to do a home improvement project when you want to.) The only things they could be sure of were prescription drugs. Mostly, those are still made in the United States. Hooray for us. All things considered, they were relieved when they could go back to their "normal" pattern of life that cost them less money and didn't demand their constant attention to where things were made. I think their eating habits stayed changed since the food tasted better, but I don't know if they learned the lesson of how harmful a global supply chain can be to the people of a nation whose industries are outsourced to the Third World. That's one thing none of the politicians want to talk about. What happens to the ordinary people who used to work in the industries we don't have anymore when an American company that only pays a dollar a day and a bowl of rice to some Third World worker pays more dividends to its stockholders but relocates its plants outside the United States? I saw it happen in the Merchant Marine starting after World War II with the 1947 act that established flag-of-convenience fleets owned by American companies but manned by foreigners, that led to the total collapse of American-flag shipping in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The same thing is happening in other industries here - textiles, steel, electronic assembly, automobiles and their subcontract companies (although part of that is due to the gross stupidity of the American car companies), just to name a few. It's a serious problem, and no one wants to discuss solutions that involve putting the screws to management to stop the hemorrhage of good American jobs for American citizens. I don't know where this trend is heading, but its resemblence to the world postulated in 1975 by William Harrison and Norman Jewison in their cautionary movie Rollerball is become more daily apparent. And I don't like that world at all. Watch it sometime (the 1975 original, not the lousy 2002 remake that totally misses the point Harrison and Jewison were making)and tell me what you think. Last edited by Cyrano; 03-21-2008 at 11:17 AM. | |
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03-21-2008, 11:25 AM
| #32 |
| Banned | Whoa! Guys, that is the problem.... There is NOTHING wrong with the Left nor is there anything wrong with the RIGHT, it is when we decide to HATE the other guy for position he holds in his Heart. It is when we all decide to BASH for the sake of which side of the line a person is on. Attack the ISSUES and may the best source of factual delivery win. I am as bad as the next person, I think the Left has gone whacko, but I try my best not to bash for the sake of bashing, although I am as guilty as anyone. I do not like some of the positions that the Dems and Libs hold on an issue and I do not like their argument for their support and I too, will get carried away and bash the person for merely speaking their mind. No doubt the Liberals are not who they were, 40 years ago and the same holds true for the Dems and the Pubs. We all need to Respect one and nother and hear a person out and try harder to understand where they are coming from and why. If we disagree then present our argument and keep the respect. We need to focus on ISSUES and not which side a person VOTES for. We have poor quality candidates running for President this time, because of our actions and how we bestow the office they hold. We seem to blame the President for everything and yet if we were as smart as we pretend to be, we would be looking closer at our Congress and our Senate and doing some serious changing of the guards there. I fully and truly believe there is no one to blame but our very selves, papers don't sell unless WE buy. Excellent Post Cyrano there will NOT be an American Pride again until people learn to CROSS THEIR HEARTS and feel the pride when they face their flag. There will NOT be an American Pride again until we stand committed behind what we build and make and not just whine for the pay raises. I fly my flag and I cross my heart and I stand tall in her presence because I really do see the faces of so many American folks who gave all for me to be able to make CHOICES. We need to tell the people who want to remove the Pledge from our schools to relocate to another country where they can share the Pride. We need to start with ourselves and not constantly look over our shoulders for acceptance or for support but just do it. There ain't a damn thing wrong with being PROUD and loving your Country and respecting all we stand for, it is a contagious action. So let it start here with us and let us start a movement of Loving our country versus bashing it and finding fault with it. Let's suggest alternative choice and not just bash a person for their positions. Let's offer Hope to each other and see how soon the crowd will grow..... Last edited by Wingwiper; 03-21-2008 at 11:33 AM. |
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03-21-2008, 11:36 AM
| #33 | |
| Banned | Quote:
[/quote] I can produce all kinds of statics too, that disprove your claims. This still does not change the fact that you are playing the blame game. Don't blame, talk to people, learn and educate yourself.[/quote] I will gladly read any legitimate cites that you care to present. Good luck, I already looked. [/quote] Everyone is way different, and really the only way we can change if we compromise our differences, get all this crap behind us, and start to progress. Too many hands are in our government, there are too many politicians in big buisness's pocket. It goes like that old saying, "Too many cooks in the kitchen and you'll never get anything done." What really pains me is the ignorance in our country. Yes, I agree the media (on both ends) has a lot to do with it, but so does our pop culture, and outlandish life styles of consumption, our lack of education, our poor health care, and the list goes on and on and on. More people in the USA vote for American Idol than they do for people in office.[/quote] The far left liberals are Communists. Plain and simple. Promotion of socialism in the liberal media is a given. The plan is to change America into something you will not recognise, but Castro would love it. | |
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03-21-2008, 11:43 AM
| #34 | ||
| Senior Member | Wing, Good post and I agree with you. I will admit that my political stance is not very common with people on this thread. I am not a liberal, or a democrat, I am a registered independent, but I do have more liberal views than conservative. I do also have conservative views on some matters. I get labeled as a democrat immediately. I see so many posts with people just ultimately blaming the democrats on this forum. While they do have their share of blame, the things that this current Administration has done I think is outlandish, and it gives the republicans a bad name. They have broken the law, and have done very unethical things, and they have exercised their power for personal gain, which totally disgusts me. With that power comes certain responsibility. I think we have lost sight of our checks and balances, because there seems to be not accountability for anyone these days. They have also gone against the foundation of checks and balances that our government was designed upon to regulate control, and not to give any branch too much power. Free market and capitalism have changed through out the last 100 years. The industrial revolution changed lots of things economically. Out sourcing is nothing new, and taxes have little affect on companies out sourcing. They may say it is because of the high dollar tax rate, but really its about money and global market. Dell, can buy up a bank in India for pennies on the dollar. They now have tons of money in India, and they can now pay people pennies on the dollar from those banks and make money on the exchange while doing so. Also, with newer technologies like VOIP (voice over IP if you aren't familiar) allows for very cheap telecommunication across the Earth. So, obviously they will migrate their technical support to India, it is a smart business move. Duh, anyone would do it if they stood to make millions of profit off it. This will happen regardless of taxes until there is only one world economy. Once India catches up economically, they will just move to another third world country and repeat what they just did in India. Now as for the media and guns. I mean I had to dig through my local news website to find this, but it is an example of why they get bad reps. It wasn't on the front page, nor was it on TV as far as I can tell, but every day I can probably pick out one story with something related to guns and violence. Gun Battle Rolls Through Brookside Area - Kansas City News Story - KMBC Kansas City Quote:
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I even disagree with this. The far left people I have met or known are more like anarchists and don't believe there should be any government at all, which is a far thing from socialism. Another misunderstanding I think of the far left, or extreme liberals. I also don't understand why the words, "liberal" and "social" seem so bad to people on the right. We have good working social systems in our country today, and we could easily have more if we did it right. Also, liberal should describe a view or opinion, not a political party. I think Regan coined that whole liberal thing, but I could be wrong on that part. Why is everyone so scared of those words? Would it kill us to instead of spending trillions on military to spend a few billion to help give us some sort of standard health care or better education? They don't want us healthy or educated, and they brain wash you with words like liberal and social, then fear monger the rest of everything else for their own agenda. The Democrats are just a bunch of over PC cry babies that bitch about the republicans being dicks and screwing everyone over yet never doing anything about it, and ending up just voting along with them anyway. Think for yourself, don't just obey. Last edited by tlarkin; 03-21-2008 at 11:49 AM. Reason: Automerged Doublepost | ||
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03-21-2008, 12:08 PM
| #35 | |
| Banned | Quote:
The Congress and the Senate are a mixed bag of people. Who is this THEY you refer to when you want all to believe it is Republicans at fault and not the Dems or the Libs or the Independants? You are doing exactly what I was refering to.  I agree very much with your first paragraph and people would be amazed at how Liberal they are or how Conservative they are. Understand though, Liberal by defination is not the same as some of the Liberals who are claiming to be Liberals. go here, it is interesting and a great way to see what you real positions are. OnTheIssues.org - Candidates on the Issues Go here to see the Grid and see if YOU are really who you think you are. Pop-up Grid: Issues I assure you, many who go to these grids will be amazed at who they really are and which candidate seems to sell themselves on that position on the grid.  | |
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03-21-2008, 12:19 PM
| #36 |
| Senior Member | Everyone knows the Media is ultra Liberal and they are not happy unless they are unhappy. To them nothing good ever happens, look at the Iraq war The Media has been told by the head guys not to send good news only bad. I have a simple answer for the people who tell me how bad it is here. I just ask them where would they like to live instead? They can never come up with anywhere as good as here. I feel lucky to live here and say so. |
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03-21-2008, 12:27 PM
| #37 |
| Senior Member | they as in the Bush administration. I mean the way they handled the 9/11 commission is totally asinine. Cheney refused to release information about his office, claiming that the VP office was not part of the executive branch, which it is, and he broke the law and lied, and abused his power and was not held accountable Condi, bold face lied to all Americans when she said they had no idea they would ever use air planes as missiles, even though both the Pentagon and NORAD had run exercises like that in the past. Nice government contracts given to known business ties over seas, in total self interest. We found no WMDs in Iraq, after promising us they were there. Even General Powell, spoke up against it at first but was silenced rightly after saying we had no evidence of any WMDs. Our economy is crap now because of their budgetting, and yes congress have to pass it, but the Executive branch comes up with it. However, they have overspent so much on the military it came back and bit us in the ass. We are already developing infrastructure to pipe out oil. I know all about this first hand. One of my life long real good friends has an Uncle who is in the Middle East right now as privatized military, protecting the goods, ie the oil. I get to hear about everything they do first hand from my friend. Right now he is watching his uncle's house while he is over seas and remodeling the basement so they talk on a regular basis. This is all in self interest of business, not for the greater good of our Nation. Even though it is privatized, they still get money from the government and contracts to do so, and there is a lot of it. His Uncle gets paid pretty well. All of this passed by the current administration Mission accomplished, that was just golden The Patriot Act, what a load of crap that is No student left behind, wow that actually hurt our already degrading educational system Ashcroft, he lost to a dead guy in MO, that is how bad he sucks, I won't go into all the other crap he believes in or has tried to pass in my state, but man that guy is a nut job. Rumsfield, well i think he is a tool Hurricane Katrina Home land security - ha way to create more government, even though you preach less ABM treaty I could go on about how "they" suck and have pretty much made our country worse, and given every republican a bad reputation, but I think everyone gets the point. |
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03-21-2008, 12:47 PM
| #38 | |
| "Blazing Saddles" GOV  | Quote:
You forgot to mention the "errors" in judgment that Clinton made... like:
Both parties have their dirty laundry... try at least making the conversation bipartisan... makes more sense that way. You say that President Bush makes all Republicans look bad... well, so did Clinton (and his wife) make the Democrat party look bad... | |
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03-21-2008, 12:55 PM
| #39 |
| Senior Member | You are right Larry, Clinton had his faults as well. Adultry I could care less about, all the politicians do it, and whatever, their marriages are illusions on imposed family values. Anyway, this administration disgusts me more than clinton ever did. What is worse, gutting the military and increasing our economy and lowering our debt, or spending like several trillion dollars on the military on a false war, killing americans for no greater good than personal gain, and actually lowering our economy for the first time in like 75 years on a global scale? For the first time in a long time as of January 2008, the USA is now the second best global economy. It was due to a lot of things I outlined earlier in this thread about a debt based economy, and adjustable market interest rates. However the overspending has also decreased the value of our dollar which is what did us in this year. I would much rather have less military and a better economy. I do agree with some of your points on Clinton though, he definitely had his faults. |
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03-21-2008, 01:50 PM
| #40 |
| Lost in the Ozone Again | Cyrano, Excellent post on China. This is exactly what we need to keep in mind. We may want the "government" to come in and help us with everything, but this always makes our economy much less efficient. All the regulation, laywers, lawsuits, job protectionism, excessive "safety" studies/placards, treating EVERYTHING as HAZMAT (even stuff that really isn't), "environmental impact" studies etc., costs us all kinds of money. The "blank check" given to the environmentalists/legislators to regulate to the Nth degree as they see fit basically keeps us from making steel and refining oil. Our productivity hasn't outrun this incredible burden. So, guess what: The jobs go overseas to China. We need to be able to compete on a global market. We can't shut our eyes and hope it goes away. China has its problems too -- incredible pollution (I know--I fly there all the time). They haven't discovered (or are ignoring) that this has long term health effects. Their quality control is sometimes terrible. Also, there's a growing disparity for resources between cities and rural areas and one hellavalotta people. We CAN have it all -- we CAN be an industrial nation again AND have clean air and water. We have the resources, intelligence, creativity, cleverness, and productivity in the good old US that can give us an "edge" iin a global market. We can exploit the lack of quality control of China to build our own high quality goods which people will buy--I'd pay a little extra to get something much better. We need only to not be wacky when we regulate pollution and commerce (witness CO2 which is NOT causing "global warming" and is NOT a pollutant). We need to balance environment and commerce; we need to balance safety and mission accomplishment; realizing that going overboard hurts us greatly in the long run. We can't make anything totally safe, but we can make it "safe enough." THE LACK OF DOING THIS is why we have a credit gap--we're not making anything and we're borrowing to buy stuff.
__________________ Old fighter pilots never die.....They just wind up in Texas Last edited by TXplt; 03-21-2008 at 01:53 PM. |
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