Avoidence or Apathy?

Before reading this, I'd recommend reading my post, "The Bailout That Started It All", so that you may get a good comparison of how liberals were before the elections and how they are after the elections (especially since this is the same person for both "debates"). This was brought up on The 912 Project and I replied to his comment with this.

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I have a profile picture on Facebook that a very liberal friend of mine found very interesting (the same intense Intense Debate profile pic that I have here) and wrote on my Wall about it:

"So are you colbert or obama?

odd profile pixture.

And what's wrong with socialism? It seems to work for education, else you wouldn't know the word."

My response:

"I would have to be Colbert and it's supposed to mean that socialism is now a threat, but whether if it's interpreted that way by everyone else, I don't know.

Since it seems that we're on opposite ends of the political spectrum when it comes to the economy, I think we may end up having a long discussion. I know socialism for the failure that it is and that it only leads to government control over the country; this is adverse to the beliefs of the founders of our country. Socialism also inhibits the only thing that promotes prosperity: competition.

Being on the subject of education, we're very poor as a country on that area. Since public schools are funded by the government at the taxpayer's expense, all failing schools aren't given much of a reason to do better since they're given the same amount of money that a successful school gets. What's worse is that those failing schools set the standards due to standardized testing, which forces successful schools to lower their standards."

He then sent me a message. I was thinking it would be something else like a good debate response that he had to some of mine on a debate 6 months ago on Facebook, which I posted on Conservative Input. But instead I got this:

"So you're a moderate pretending to be an extreme liberal pretending to be an extreme conservative?"

My response- "What makes me a moderate and how am I pretending to be an extreme liberal? I define myself as being a conservative."

His response-"No, thats what steven colbert is. And you said you were steven colbert in that picture"

My response-"Now I'm confused. Could you explain? I don't know what Colbert's political views are. I'm trying to say that socialism in a threat or at least I assume that's what the Threat Down thing is supposed to imply."

Nothing. All he cared about was the chef salad of my responses and completely ignored the meat and potatoes as if he were on some sort of diet. He just went back to sipping his Kool-Aid.

Parliament Member Attacks Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Kudos to Daniel Hannan for standing up for what's right. If only we had someone like this in Congress.

The Bailout That Started It All

September 2008 seemed like a lifetime ago: 2 months before the elections and nobody was entirely sure who was going to win. The two teams being the Democrats who always batted with the left when it came up to the plate and the Republicans who couldn't decide if they wanted to bat with the right or just stand in the middle and be smacked in the face with the ball.

Anyways, a liberal friend of mine had posted a note on Facebook about a piece of legislation that congress was trying to pass and Bush to sign to bail out the banks that were apparently too big to fail. Thinking about the massive amount of spending that Obama has been doing lately, I figured I'd look back on this discussion that I had with my friend about the bill that marked the beginning of this spending spree that Obama and congress has been having. Since then, some of my views towards government and taxation as well as my understanding of the economy have changed: for instance, I no longer think that the banks should have been bailed out and that they should have been allowed to fail so they could rebuild and reorganize. Also, I no longer think that the rich should be taxed like I had flopped around on the idea of half a year ago.

Below is my friend's Facebook Mobile Note along with the series of long-winded comments that followed in which I only used the initials of the people that they belong to for privacy reasons. And yes, I do notice that I was being a little arrogant in my response to JW's comment.

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Mobile Note
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 at 9:41am
It's interesting. Political analysts recently have been complaining about the candidates proposals almost as if they were equal. McCain's plan costs 300 billion, and obama's more comprehensive plan costs 14. why? Becuase he wants to tax people who have 250,000 /yr income. This makes SENSE. Why are people so narrowminded to think that taxes are bad? and what do middle class people have to complain about? 14 bil is a strain on the deficit but not like 300 bil or 700bil like earlier this week. What does everyone else think?
-Ty


JG at 4:11pm September 24
Now the problem with taxing the rich like Obama proposes is that the rich know how to better spend their money than people on welfare and the such. They're typically more educated, so they are smarter about what they invest in. And the problem still is the fact that the money that we'll be paying to help out these companies is money that we can be investing into the failing economy. The government is taking our hard-earned money to do whatever they want with it. True, most of the time it is for a good cause, but a lot of times it's all pork barreled and wasted. So in that sense, taxes ARE bad.


TU at 5:21pm September 24
TAXES aren't bad. A road to nowhere and a 700 bil bail IS bad. And the rich know how to spend their money, but some taxing will give us enough without taxing people who WOULD have to change their lifestyle if taxes got higher. Middle class can't afford more taxing, the richer people can with enough left over to invest. Rich people dont give poor people healthcare and roads, the government does.


JG at 5:38pm September 24
True. I fully agree with having the rich taxed, but targeting JUST the people with higher income and not distributing a good portion of that weight to the lower and middle class like Obama suggests doesn't work all too well in the long run.


BM at 3:05pm September 25
I believe... the rich should be taxed. One of the reasons we're in this situation is because the rich were given tax breaks. The top 1% of America's wealthiest people are getting 20% of the profits. Its unproportional and doesn't make sense. Maybe to Republicans it does, but I think its dumb.
I'm backing Obama on this one.


JG at 5:09pm September 25
Like I said before, you can't force all the taxes on the rich. The one's that receive a higher income than most are generally more smarter about what to invest in. And I mean things that will greatly benefit the economy. So good comes out of it. But when you start loading them with taxes and giving the people who are generally more likely to spend ... Read Moremoney on things that the economy won't benefit from a break, it doesn't work too well in the long run. And you also have to remember that the rich aren't the only ones benefitting from tax breaks. Illegal immigrants, retired citizens, and people on welfare are also fortunate to not have their money taken away away from them by the government, and not only that, a lot of our taxes are actually going towards them. So remember, the next time you pay your taxes, you're buying some illegal alien or some person below the poverty line a free lunch.


BM at 6:34pm September 25
Just because they recieve a higher income, doesn't make them smarter. My IQ is 150 and I get paid minimum wage.

I still firmly stand by my opinion. You won't be able to sway me.

I live below the poverty line. I appreciate getting a free lunch. And I'll gladly share it with an illegal alien. GLADLY.


JW at 7:56pm September 25
the whole reason we're in this mess is because of left winged democrats, and it goes back for 25 years or so starting with carter and clinton


TU at 8:38pm September 25
John, thank you. Sweeping generalizations is exactly what we need.

Bush's tax breaks for the rich had nothing to do with it obviously ;)


TU at 8:40pm September 25
oh, and gordito has a point. Intellegence doesn't mean you have money smarts. And your point could be valid gordito, but only if you think we should tax large corporations more. Thats where the rich's money goes and ends up benefiting most. Remember the 1800's and the trust crap. We want to eliminate holes in the economy that money is sitting in ... Read Morewith taxing, and if thats huge corps then tax them. The reserve needs, well, a RESERVE. no man in america is as proportionally in debt as the country is.


JG at 11:07pm September 25
I'm glad to know that you're as generous as you are, Bonnie, but seeing that they're illegal, illegal aliens have no right to be in this country, especially if they're give not going to give a little back after taking a little.

And to clear up what I said earlier, I'm not prejudice towards those who are having to take in welfare checks. As long as you're trying to make the commitment to succeed in life and not taking in the welfare checks as if the nation owes you that money, I'm perfectly fine with that. But there are many out there though that are like that, generally blacks and latinos, who DO think they're special and DO think the nation owes them the money, so they're robbing us.

Now when I say generally, I don't mean by EVERYONE. I'm fully aware of the fact that there are corporations out there that are corrupt and there are wealthy people out there that wouldn't give anyone a single dime to anyone unless if they had to. And earlier I said that I do agree with taxing the rich, but only to an extent. And you could tax the big corporate businesses, but that would only mean higher prices, like gas for an example. So basically you've accomplished nothing. And if you put the full load on the corporations, prices would skyrocket, making it impossible for us to buy and them to sell. And you know what happens after that.... Read More

And Bonnie, I said they're smarter in what they INVEST in. Not IQ smarts. GENERALLY, the wealthy are people who are more educated in how to better spend their money. That is usually why they become so successful in the first place. I'm not saying this is always the case, but usually it is.


JG at 11:07pm September 25
John, I would back up your statement all the way if you gave more of a valid reason as to why liberals solely to blame. If you're just going to blurt something out and not explain yourself, you're more likely to get a better response from your conservative friends (if you have any that are interested in politics) than in a political debate. So it would probably be a good idea if you were to keep the bias to a minimum. I'm not shutting you out of our discussion, I'm just trying to help.


BM at 10:50am September 26
This is a good debate. Thank you, Ty.
One question.
Gordito?
O.o
... Read More
And thank you, Justin. I just wanted you to explain yourself a bit more. Trying to get you to prove more of a point.

:D


JG at 9:22pm September 26
Gordito was my nickname in Polk County High


BM at 1:21am September 27
Ah. Makes sense.


JW at 8:03pm October 4
yea i just threw that out there

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Of course, we've come a long way from this: 2.897 Trillion in fact when you include the 700 Billion dollar bailout that was debated here as well as the 787 Billion stimulus bill, 410 billion omnibus bill, and the 1 Trillion in toxic assets. We're now trillions more in debt due to this massive spending and since all we're doing is just printing money without having something there to back it up, we're just trashing our dollar.

The Media Smokescreen

This segment on The Glenn Beck Program backs up what I was saying yesterday about the government using the AIG bonuses thing as veil for any background projects they plan on doing.

America's Most Popular Game Show

I normally only listen to Fox News, but yesterday I decided to check out MSNBS and see their views one things. Of course, Ed Shultz, the substitute anchor of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue which was on when I tuned in, was talking about the whole thing about the AIG bonuses. Ed repeatedly announced that he was outraged and appropriately called himself a game-show host for playing on the word "outrage" when he started off and made sure that everyone he interviewed on the show was "outraged". His whole beef was the fact that AIG was using our money to pay these bonuses and added onto that saying "and don't give me any crap about their contracts. Businessmen negotiate those things all the time". I agree that it wasn't right for them to use tax dollars to pay only their executives and give their employees nothing, but "negotiating" contracts would be an immoral decision on their part just like any company before them. I believe that contracts should be treated as law and for Congress to suggest that the contracts should be just thrown out in this situation is like saying that we should sometimes maybe not go with the constitution if we decide to agree on disagreeing with whatever it says.

I think that this is all a game like Ed Shultz unknowingly admitted. I don't completely agree with the actions that AIG took to take care of their financial problems, but for the government to make this out to be a bigger deal than it really is and to say that the people who took the bonuses should commit suicide and should be taxed 1,000% is going a little far; especially since they were the ones who took money from us to give to AIG to begin with. What they're really doing here is trying to pull off a show to make it look like they really are "outraged" and with David Shuster and the mainstream media as the hosts of the show, they make it make it out that capitalism breeds nothing but corruption and that Obama and Congress are the heroes that are going to save the day.

Now it would come as no surprise that the government would pull off a stunt like this since they did something very similar when passing the Omnibus bill only a couple weeks ago. When Obama signed the 9,000 eamarks into law, not much was said about it since the whole deal about him lifting of the ban on publicly-funded (a.k.a. taxpayer funded) stem-cell research seemed to have more of an importance on all of the news channels, so it just passed on by. All they're doing is creating a diversion.

On Second Thought....

I just deleted all 6 or so of my posts over the weekend since I found that some, if not all, were inaccurate with the information that I put into them and I found myself ranting about stuff that I didn't fully understand. I was hoping to get at least one post done per day, but it seems that by setting this goal, I end up rushing it and not doing the research that I should be doing. My views are still the same; I'm just taking a different approach.

I'll be updating my blog at least once a week and I'll make sure my posts are the quality they should be. Also, please comment and make any suggestions by emailing me at silverfox11202@yahoo.com