Text 1862, 185 rader
Skriven 2006-06-06 11:44:00 av Robert E Starr JR (2308.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
=================================
* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
            -----------------------------------------------             

@MSGID: <493982lqq7mt2qn2o2b9smri762q1f54bm@4ax.com>
@REPLY: <lj1m72ddd0ptmg160fpodnunkrh3emt9sj@4ax.com>
On Sun, 4 Jun 2006 16:13:19 +0000 (UTC), "Dennis \(Icarus\)"
<ala_dir_diver@yahoo.com> wrote:

>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:ns628218he9pcn369jqogne4rvtjd5mrmq@4ax.com...
>> On Thu, 1 Jun 2006 21:05:21 +0000 (UTC), Rob Perkins
>> <rperkins@usa.net> wrote:
>>
>> >Paul Harper wrote:
>> >
>> >> Well, from a theoretical far-right Bush-type Republican perspective,
>> >
>> >Bush is a religiously-motivated centrist, not a far-rightist.
>> >
>> >Rob, who wonders why more people don't see that
>>
>> Because he isn't acting like a centrist?
>>
>> - Alienating the entire world and running rough-shod over American and
>> international law, including our laws against torture and wiretapping
>
>Merely because the "entire world" forgot the lessons of the 1930s.

Funny, but I thought the lesson of that time was that it was bad guys
like Hitler who made torture, warrantless wiretapping, and contempt
for the law government policy, and that we could win a war against
them without stooping to their level.

>> - Anti-environment at every turn
>
>Oh please :-)

?

>> - Anti-treaty at every turn, appointed UN-hating loon as UN ambassador
>
>Gosh, there are folks who'd be pleased to have a reformist-type person at an
>entrenched bureucracy.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Bolton
>
>> - Banned stem cell research, opposes abortion, supports the gay
>> marriage amendment, supported the Terri Schiavo nonsense, appointed
>> conservatives to the Supreme Court
>
>And Clinton (with Senate advice & consent) appointed liberals.

Sure, or moderates. But the original question here was whether Bush
was a conservative or not, not whether he's right or wrong to do what
he did.

>> - Tried to destroy Social Security!!!!!
>
>Destroy social security? Well... lets see....were I able to take the money &
>plop it into, say, a 401(k) or an IRA, I'd have much, much better results.
>:-) Personally, I'm doing my financial planning presuming that I'll get
>nothing from social security. Heck, put the money in a savings account and
>you'll have better returns.

El Busho has fooled you into overlooking a huge difference. With the
relatively small exception of the Trust Fund, which serves as a buffer
so that taxes don't have to be raised when revenues diminish during
economic downturns, money isn't /invested/ in Social Security -- it's
a pay-as-you go program. So there's no money to /put/ in your Savings
Account, because it's going to current recipients. And you can't make
interest off money you don't invest!

Put another way, most of that $5 you send to Social Security goes to
Gramps rather than being invested. And you have a moral obligation to
pay that money to Gramps, it's a promise you made to him when he paid
/his/ grandpa's social security way back when, just as your grandkids
will owe you /your/ social security check when you retire in return
for the money you put in.

So if you invest that money in a personal investment, there's nothing
to pay Gramps.

How did the Bush plan solve that?

Well, first, it cut benefits for Gramps, and then it cut benefits for
you. These cuts are, by the Administration's admission, the /only/
contribution they made to Social Security solvency.

And then -- get this -- it had the government borrow money so that it
could pay the remaining pittance to Gramps.

But wait, there's more.

That personal Social Security account might go down in an economic
downturn or if you made a bad investment, and that would be a mess,
because you'd have a lot of hungry old people.

So they decided to initially /limit/ your investment to a few approved
plans and then make you buy /insurance/ in case it goes down. 

Of course, at that point, Wall Street was expected to sell us stocks
for less than they earn by lending us the money to buy them. How else
were we to make a profit by investing borrowed money?

And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

If everyone were as familiar with this jabberwockish scheme as I am,
the nation would pass within twenty four hours a Constitutional
amendment to allow impeachment for inconceivable stupidity. How would
that happen in 24 hours, you ask? Well, legislators find pitchforks
and torches mighty convincing . . .

>> - Huge tax cuts for the rich
>
>Who pays the most in taxes?

As a percentage of income? The middle class and poor.

In toto? Probably the middle class, depending on where you put the
line.

Now a question for you: just how much money do you think the rich have
compared to everybody else? And what do you think has happened to
their after-tax income compared to everybody else's over the last 20
years?

>> - "Department of Faith-Based Initiatives"
>> - Radical free trader, cut worker protections, refuses to consider any
>> measures that would benefit labor
>
>Tax cuts benefit the worker. They'll also benefit the employer.

Fiscally irresponsible tax cuts don't benefit the worker. Hell, they
don't benefit anyone.

But in fact, workers didn't see tax cuts, they saw tax increases,
because Bush knew damn well that the tiny tax cuts he gave to workers
-- as opposed to the huge ones he gave to the ultra-wealthy and to
trust fund babies who have never worked a day in their lives -- would
be more than offset by the state and local tax increases which would
follow as the Federal government was forced to reduce funding levels
for the programs it mandates. And he knew that state and local taxes
are typically regressive in that the lower your income the more of it
you pay.

>> Etc.
>>
>> This is way to the right of what most Americans believe. I suspect
>
>Oddly, thats what he ran on, and he got re-elected.

Nah. The during his first campaign, he went out of his way to sound
more moderate than he actually was -- remember that in-your-face lie
he made during the second debate about enacting mandatory restrictions
on greenhouse gases? And he co-opted some of Gore's liberal programs,
e.g., his watered-down false-front version of the Medicare drug
benefit.

By the second election, when the voters knew him better, the polls
show that he would have lost on just about every issue except one,
terror. But -- think back then (and how distant it seems!) -- the war
on terror was almost the only thing we cared about. So he ran on being
tuff on terr and swift boating his war hero opponent to make people
think he would be weak on it. Even then, Bush barely squeaked by,
thanks to what looks more and more like massive election fraud in
Ohio. A lousy showing given the circumstances.

The surveys I've read about show that Americans are more likely to
agree with Democratic rather than Republican positions when they're
questioned about the issues without mention of parties or position on
the political spectrum. They also show that Americans tend to think
they're farther to the right than their opinions on the issues
indicate, the result I suspect of years of right-wing demagogues
portraying Democrats and liberals as flag-burning, latte-sipping,
Jesus-hating radical elitists.

-- 
Josh

"I'm not going to play like I've been a person who's spent hours involved with
foreign policy.
I am who I am." - George W. Bush
                     
--- SBBSecho 2.11-Win32
 * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)