How much in Federal Income taxes does the average college student “claimed as a dependent” pay, exactly? IIRC many of the people who were bitching about not getting any money back actually paid close to nothing in income taxes. How about you, sven? The year that many of us got our $300 checks, how much exactly did you pay in Federal Income taxes? I paid a trifle more than $14,000 in Federal Income taxes that year - somehow I don’t feel bad at all about getting $300 back.
I know your position and I know you’re one of the good guys, so I’m only disagreeing with you about the process.
“Up to a point, my lord”–certainly the agitation for “protection of marriage” statutes is a backlash against the pro-gay marriage activism of last summer, but I question the phrase “judicially-imposed recognition.” Judges read and, more important, interpret the laws that legislatures enact. They’ve been doing so since the founding of the Republic.
And as I’ve pointed out and you refuse to accept,m you could ask the question of Thurgood Marshall when he was pleading Brown v. Topeka. The Supremes invented law in that case, saying that that segregation violated the Equal Protection clause in the 14th Amendment; the clause deals only with equal protection under the law, not access to facilities. According to the idea that judges may not intrepret the law, the SOCAS should have upheld the “separate but equal doctrine,” without violating the rights of whites not to have to associate with blacks.
But even if the legislatures pass a pro-gay marriage law, the resulting suits by fundie advocacy groups to have it overturned will still bring it under the Court’s purview.
Hey mods, can I get a scarlett letter next to my name or something? I don’t think the mistakes of my past get brought up in enough totally irrelevent conversations.
Better than being a doodoo-head. I raise you one blow-by-blow.
So whats your theory for why some of the world’s best speech writers thought the clucky contruct “we have been placed in office by the votes of the people we serve.” Just giving a general brush-up on how democracy works? He didn’t say “I’m here because I was elected by my nation” or something else, he specifically said this to gloat about having the popular vote without controversy this time 'round.
But see, the “sovereign” is funny because they were sovereign, and then he took down their government, which means he totally disregarded their soveriegnty and made then not sovereign, and now he’s boasting about …well…maybe it’s a bit complicated of a joke for you.
Some of us see a difference between having relations with foreign countries and taking over good chunks of the world. Almost his entire speech, except for social security and a few gay marriage cracks, is about his plans for other countries. As a citizen of this country, I’d kind of like him to focus here for a bit.
Let’s see…latter half of the twentieth century…uhh…I see the Korean War, which I guess turned out okay, and uhh…Vietnam, which wasn’t that great a plan…and some contra stuff…Gulf War 1 didn’t end too badly…sorry, not a lot to reccommend that plan of action here.
Well, lets see how that works out, okay? Economists arn’t half as rosy about things as the pubbies, but then again economists are rarely all that rosey.
Isn’t a starwman a meaningless argument that you tear down instead of contributing to the real debate being had? Well, I beat you there. I wasn’t having a real debate, I was making snarky comments about the SotU.
No, because they were (well, actually, the kids that go there to try to get a leg up on life but need some help) getting federal services and now they arn’t, leaving them in a bad spot. I didn’t say they were “unfairly fucked over a log”. I just think it’s kind of funny how Bush consistantly brings up his failures as achievments.
Ah, consumer rights then. Well, fuck those, too!
Some of us are cool with the poor of their nation being unable to get medical care until it reaches an emergency situation, and some of us arn’t. But if George Bush is admitting it’s a problem, he better offer us some better solutions than his blatherings. It doesn’t take a genius to discover that pretty much the entire Western world has found a solution to this problem, and it aint private medical savings accounts. He’s going to have a tough time convincing me that the poor, who often don’t get savings accounts for much of anything, are the ones he’s concerned about with this.
Sure, drug dealers, child molesters, shoe sniffers, lightbulb thiefs and all sorts of oter dangerous people are still roaming around, but that doesn’t mean you gotta throw them into your speeches with no context like so much alarmist confetti.
Once again, we are one of the only countries in the Western world with this problem, which even then has only really been a problem in the last thirty years or so with the skyrocketing cost of tuition. Now, I do feel like he is making a grave economic mistake by abandoning bright young people with big dreams and motivation- something that countries like India are capitalizing on by educating like mad- but he’s throwing a nickle at a problem with one hand and eggs with the other.
In the last, say, seventy- nine years of stock history (an average female’s life), is their any chance that someone’s “social security” would get wiped out completely leaving them security-less?
Oh, I think you got me there.
No, it’s better that your money goes to fund your old broke grandpa than your snot-nosed go-get-a-fucking-job kids.
I want to run our government according to an old piece of paper in the National Archives. I don’t want the decisions of the supreme court, whoes duties are well-laid out in that paper, overruled by other branches of the government, except by the constitutional way- constitutional ammendments. If they pass an ammendment banning gay marriage and abortion, I’ll cry in my soup, but I won’t bitch about the process. Do you really think any one of these people complaining about “judicial tyrrany” is not just upset that these black robed tyrants don’t agree with their backward ass ways?
I think it’s an apple and you think it’s an orange. I think he’s manipulating the supreme court to get them to rule that established laws arn’t so, and you think I’m manipulating the court to gtet them to rule that established laws arn’t so. And never the 'twain shall meet.
And the job of the supreme court is to determine if the law is consistant with our constitution, the founding law of our government.
I’m a commie pinko leftist nutjob, and I don’t expect my nation to adopt my views any time soon, which honestly is probably a good thing. Doesn’t keep me from being able to see when an asshole with a jesus complex is running the place into the ground and calling it a ham sandwich.
Well, I know we’re in agree-to-disagree territory here, but I feel that given the legislative history of the 14th, it’s correct to apply it to racial divisions.
Ah, but if they are, I’ll be on your side for both process AND result: the fundie groups will be the ones asking for an activist judge to overturn a legislative mandate.
bite me, grammar-boy!
I see that that the thread dissectors are out in full force! It’s truly a magnificent spectacle. It’s like watching a pack of feral corporate lawyers stalking a wounded actuary.
And the thing is, anyone trying to go the judicial route to overturn a pro-gay marriage statute wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, would they? I can’t imagine on what basis such a lawsuit would be brought.
Just a general comment before I begin: I thought the tone of your OP was whiney, petulant, uninformed, and childish. That reaction shaped the tone of my reply.
Your reply to me, in contrast, was much more reasonable, and relied more on fact without (I thought) giving away much in the way of snarkiness. It’s almost a pleasure to read it and reply to it.
I just offer my reaction for your consideration.
No, I think it was there to underscore his notion of a mandate: “Look, Congress. There’s more of us GOPers than there are of you guys. And that’s because the people put us here.” Now, this may reasonably be characterized as gloating, but it’s not a reflection of 2000 so much as it’s a reminder - ham-handed, perhaps - that there were seats lost to the GOP in both houses of Congress as a result of the People’s actions.
I get it. I get jokes. Heh, heh.
I think maybe you’re finding an unintended subtext there. Iraq Now Free. Period.
Not an unreasonable position, to be sure.
Um. “The Truman Doctrine.” I was serious. Look it up.
I’m willing to wait and see. But I do feel compelled to point out that things are objectively, measurably better with the economy now than they were three years ago.
Fair enough. But I was making snarky comments about your snarky comments and my snarky comments had some actual logic-type stuff in them, so they beat up your snarky comments.
Fair enough.
There is a fair measure of debate on how much class action tort litigation protects consumers and how much it protects the ability of Gulfstream to continue to sell top-notch jets to lawyers.
Yet the entire Western world seems to gravitate to the United States when it’s time for expensive, high-end treatments. Why is that?
I’ll allow there there might have been some hyperbole afoot, if you’ll allow that your utter dismissal of any threat whatsoever from that quarter was also a bit premature.
I maintain that a motivated person with no financial resources can obtain a college degree in this country. I did it, and it was less than 30 years ago.
No.
But more to the point: I don’t want the government to be responsible for taking care of me. I want ME to be responsible for taking care of me.
And why is grandpa broke? Why didn’t grandpa fund his retirement account, like I’m funding mine? If grandpa spent his money on the craps tables at Atlantic City and getting full body massages at shady Asian establishments where tipping was enouraged, what moral claim does he now have to be supported over Uncle Lou, who decided to forgo the heady excitement of hitting a ten the hard way in favor of sound financial planning?
We agree, then. Let abortion (and same-sex marriage) be a subject for law, not judicial interp.
And for the record: I’m not just as upset when they don’t rule my way. Kyllo v. US - the Court ruled infrared scanners are a search within the meaning of the 4th. I disagree, but I acknowledge that’s their job: to interpret what a “search” is. I don’t decry them as “activist.”
OK, then. As long as we’re clear on that. 
Hell, see Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” the pamphlet that arguably best captured the ideology behind the American Revolution. One of the reasons he gives that America should break off from England is to provide an example of democracy and freedom for the rest of the world.
So – even before we were a country, we’ve been espousing ourselves as a scintillating light of freedom. It’s not new with Bush, and it’s certainly not going to pass with him.
As far as this portion of the western world is concerned, it’s because our government has been listening altogether too much to the likes of you over the last 20 years, and progressively starving the health care system for the funds it needs. And then pointing and giggling when its functioning deteriorates.
And a bang-up job he’s done to, if by “foreign relations” you mean “roundly mistrusted and despised”. You must be so proud!
See Batista, Trujillo, Pinochet, Uguarte, Duvalier, Reza Pahalvi, Samoze, etc. for more details. Some goddam ideals.
Economics is that most flexible of sciences, wherein you can find at least one Ph. D. to support any view. Yours, for instance.
At least statements were made. You are reduced to an empty, snide rejoinder.
Huh? Did Auntie Ayn write that for you? Ever hear of the GI Bill? Would you have opposed it, since it siphons federal funds to the colleges?
Indeed, as mentioned above, the dread asbestos liabilities. Wherein the President proposes to give a big ol’ helping hand to the downtrodden and deserving. Haliburton, in a word.
We all applaud your competence and wisdom. But even if your slander were fact, which I doubt, because someone is “too stupid” to pay for health care, they should simply curl up and die, so friend Bricker can afford more loud, shiny crap?
A nation is a collective, much as a tribe, with a much larger scope. We hold citizens accountable for themselves, and for others. As much as can be, I will not abide the suffering of my fellow. We like to regard such concern as “common decency”, though it is regrettably not as common as we might like. Clearly, as you demonstrate, there are exceptions.
Tough noogies. We need to educate children, if for no other reason than we need better citizens for our collective enterprise. Our country, in case you’ve forgotten. While the OP may have been asleep during Civic class, you seem to have skipped Sunday School altogether. Sermon on the Mount? “Do unto others”? Ring any bells?
Entirely meaningless. One could just as easily take a slice of time during any of a number of stock market debacles. Kindly do not pretend that represents evidence of anything but your refusal to engage the argument.
No, better it goes to all our kids than simply to the kid who has the good judgement to be born to the right parents. You seem to regard property rights as the essential dignity, and all the rest as decoration.
Where I grew up, in Texas, my fellow citizens thought it perfectly acceptable that persons of the wrong skin should be oppressed, downtrodden and shat upon. They were wrong. And they were not about to make any laws or elect any legislators to correct their grievous error. When forced to it, eventually, they came to accept it.
Justice is of primary importance, methods come a distant second. By any means necessary. Whatever it takes.
I do. Have for years, and will continue.
When “people” talk? People that agree with you, for instance? Or do you mean that roughly half of the citizenry who disapprove of GeeDubya? The people who talk about how “clueless” the liberals are are, for the most part, clueless and morally bankrupt conservatives, who value their wallets above their souls.
But why has that approach, applied here in the US, not resulted in a similarly-starved system?
In other words, if you’re right, the US would be the LAST place to turn to for high-end medical treatments. Yet the “trade deficit” that exists is towards foreigners seeking medical attention here in the US, not the other way around.
The suffering of the foolish is just as repulsive as the sufferng of the prudent.
OTOH, Bricker, surely you’re aware that even in the US, many people, even insured people, cannot afford high-end health care. Those people are not all hippie parasites, either. M
Haven’t you been following the news besides the Michael Jackson trial?
Sounds to me like a starving system – and one that feeds on ordinary folks…
Because your system is set up to provide the wealthy with excellent health care, and it functions very well at doing so. (Yeah, I saw the carpeted floors and piano foyer at the Columbia Medical Centre.)
Our system was set up to care for everyone; when it is starved of the resources to do so, it breaks down. When it obtains those resources, it works famously.
This is the most fun I’ve had in a week!
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. You wrote a moronic OP that, luckily for you, raised some interesting points that focused the discussion away from your whining and onto the problems with health care management in this country.
In re you complaints, I’m happy and in fact fgeel duty-bound to contribute to the commonweal so that the least of us can count on a social safety net. Anybody can falll onto hard times, and some people, like the elderly and the incapacitated, need help from the rest of us. This, however, does not excuse the grasshopper for taking advantage of the working ants. The world does not owe you a living, kid.
Y’all already pay higher taxes than we do, and you have a larger country with more natural resources than the US, yet only 1/10 of our population, and you still can’t fund unlimited on demand health treatment for everyone. To what percent of your income are you willing to raise taxes in order to fund your cradle to grave never pay a dime for anything medical plan? More importantly, if a majority of your fellow citizens don’t want that tax hike, are you comfortable forcing it on them?
And who do you propose to make that judgement, friend Gobear? Who will seperate the grasshopper from the ant, the wheat from the chaff? Who is so wise, and can peer into men’s souls and determine who deserves to suffer, and who does not? I’m sure it’s not me, and, frankly, I doubt that it’s you. I’m not even certain it’s Bricker. No, really, I have my doubts.
(Besides, ants eat grasshoppers, don’t they?)
I know Jane Fonda is the heroine of you moldering commie-pinko-liberals, but do you have to drag her old movies into an unrelated discussion?