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Lotharr

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Everything posted by Lotharr

  1. HA HA! Yeah.....anyway....if you can answer the argument do it....otherwise try not to black list me if you can't find an answer to a good question.... How does it go.....if I give a starving person a meal I am a saint....if I ask why people starve I'm a communist.... Get over it.
  2. quote: I'm guessing that was sarcasm In my book when you lie to Congress then hide like a little punk and take immunity you are not a "great American".....they are like most in this administration....poor to negligent and representing the worst America has to offer. The guy who smuggled that stuff out could have saved us some serious problems....I know Jag knows everything but I'm glad there are people like that out there. quote: You and your paranoia are something to behold Do you even read before you post. That stuff is in the report.
  3. quote: We are THE superpower Superpower....right...that's why we are being told to be scared all the time and we have to lash out foolishly. Obviously this country is not responsible enough to lead the whole world...or we would be. Everything changes....you can't stay on top forever...and if you think we are on top now than the only criteria for that assessment is how rapidly we can project force and destroy....big deal...I have met some very large and very ugly individuals that could give me a good beating....but that sure as hell doesn't mean I want to be them....and sure doesn't give them the right to beat the crap out of anyone.
  4. As far as I'm concerned if you have a political process that is dominated by wealth then the wealthy will prosper...and they do...greatly. If, like in all other industrialized democracies, workers are free and encouraged to unionize (and in that respect they are the people not the government) then the wealth is shared and everyone benefits. In this country unions are all but illegal and can be trumped at anytime by the wealth that controls the political process that in turn makes the rules on what is considered legal economic participation. You can believe that the government has the right to deny citizens to form real labor connections but then you have just violated the rule that the government should not interfere with economic matters. But all that aside. If the people get together and demand something they will have it. If you deny the people the avenues of self determination by a gross distortion of what is considered "legal" then you have broken the social contract and government has no legitimacy. One person one vote. Free press unfettered by aggregations of wealth and the inherent interest that renders them little more than propaganda outlets. Rights for people -- not phantom organizations that exist to funnel the wealth to a small circle who enjoy their positions mostly by the accident of birth.
  5. http://www.pbs.org/now/ Bill Moyers blew this one off the hinges last Friday....I already wrote my reps....it doesn't make me feel much better... The best part is that under these new rules the government can strip you of your citizenship for donating to a third party that is found at some point to be a terrorist organization. Put you in jail without telling anyone and expanding monitoring of citizens (not that total information awareness is right now being run by that "great American" who got immunity for testimony in Iran Contra affair that he was deeply involved in)....but don't worry anyone who doesn't fit the racial profile....this won't concern you (wink wink)...unless your un-American..... The truly disturbing part is that sources believe the justice department was waiting to submit this to Congress shortly after we went to war with Iraq....but we all know Ashcroft would never do something like that.. Whoever smuggled this to the press is a true patriot and a small hero....who will probably have their career burned because they tried to help the American people....not smuggle guns to terrorists....
  6. quote: Go live in Europe then Lotharr, it is obviously your dream. The EU is a socialist nightmare, and getting closer and closer to oblivion every day. Yeah yeah...you cornered the market on what it is to be an American. I guess Hitler did win the war. Save your jingoistic nonsense for the pea brains that believe every problem can be solved with a few hundred tons of HE. (you know the boards Im talking about) The sad fact is America is the one going down hill. You think that having several hundred more millionaires is progress while several hundred thousand starve....while several million don't have healthcare...and why another several million don't have jobs because your third base hero's see more profit in allowing American corporations to leave this country and take the jobs with them while writing off citizens who cant find work BECAUSE THE JOBS DO NOT EXIST. You need to wake up to the fact THIS country is going down hill and is in no way a model for how another country should live. quote: Yeah, they take care of their subjects all right, they take as much money from those that produce as possible and give it to those that don't. Subjects...right...your the one who goes from job to job believing your serving the greater good.pure blindness.all workers deserve security and a living wage. They pay more taxes but have a cleaner, safer, healthier society....they don't use their people as wage slaves and they don't rape and kill each other on any level near what we can boast about. You need to check your rhetoric....none of the founding fathers would sell us out to corporations and nepotistic aristocrats that you believe in. To the rest whatever....we need to generate a policy for the future from a position of courage rather than from the fear and selfishness that has crippled our economy that you support.
  7. It beats the crap out of FOX news. Yeah we know Jag.as long is it doesn't affect your tiny piece of the world it doesn't bother you....until it does, then youll call it a liberal conspiracy...even when it's clear your appointed president and his neofascist crew of corporate pawns are selling out everything this country used to stand for. Unfortunately, the specter of an overtly totalitarian bureaucracy is no longer a threat that justifies unilateral American action. Just wait until your green washed and deregulated political economy continues to threaten peace and sustainable growth. I have to hand it to our one party. They really are making a third choice very attractive for many people. The world may be drawing a line and they arent wrong for doing it. After the brutal attacks of 9/11 this administration opportunistically used that good will to secure economic resources in the most haphazard and destabilizing mannerthen had the nerve to cite humanitarian concerns, after arming all the forces that we now fighting while continuing to support oppressive regimes around the world. Well at least HollowBS industries have received the contact to support U.S. troops in the Mid East (so at least Cheney is profiting). The hypocrisy has to end some time.why not now? Old Europe should stand up and take the lead in world affairs. Their nations are not perfect but they most certainly set the standard when it comes to taking care of their people and applying thought and reason to delicate situations. Seriously, the responsible thing to do is to fill the leadership void when the confidence is gone and the stakes are so high. I love this country, but Bush II and his corporate cronies need to go back to the country club so we can get our house in order.
  8. War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Slavery is freedom. May all your interventions be humanitarian.
  9. The Wheel of Time.....it's good...but long...and that can be a good or bad thing.
  10. We can't declare war, they haven't done anything to us....and at this point, it might not pass. That is the huge difference here. We declare war in self defense....well once upon a time. Perhaps, in the near future, when running for high office requires such massive capital to campaign properly (through corporate media) we will have a corporate consensus we can be proud of. And from this capital consensus our three branches of government can work in harmony to make those hard calls about life and worth that we are unqualified for. Remember, war is peace and freedom is having nothing to hide
  11. No Ep5 that's progress. Remember these corporate axioms "Haste makes profit, employees are assets, profit is life, and toxic sludge is good for you." quote: I say string the bastages up from a very tall Oak tree That would be too good for them. They should have to work fourteen hour days, in a toxic environment, for $1 a day, to produce goods that will be sold for massively inflated prices for the remainder of their natural life (a sentence handed down all across the planet). And when they die, (wipes off a tear) at the ripe age of thirty something we can toss their body in an unmarked grave and get their kids to work post haste....ahhhhh....I smell profit! quote: Corporations are groups of people Stock holders and execs (with labor having no significant input)...and in no way deserving of Bill of Rights protections. None. Why? quote: Because corporations are only concepts, not real living breathing things Yup.
  12. quote: Haggling over the meaning of the words "is" and "alone" didn't help, either. Heh heh the "new democrat" That whole situation was just a sorry look at the eroded state of American politics.
  13. quote: honest lawyer Law as a profession has been perhaps fatally wounded by the legions of corporate lawyers that have destroyed our justice system. Law as a profession is a noble endeavor when we remember who it was meant to serve. quote: J.W.B. ?
  14. Yeah I heard that on crossfire too. They don't hate us....they see our worst projected by crap media and respond.....and they don't hate us they hate our system of government and those that make it up...and I don't blame them.
  15. Hee hee I like Wall $treet Week with Fortunethey were just talking about how insane wall street analysts wereand still areendorsing companies that had their lawyers on the steps, doing the walk of shame, to declare bankruptcy. Then they were talking about how the S+P was still over inflated by a factor of four..then the same analysts are like buy 99% of everything and sell 1%....good bless em for trying. But in the words of Newt Gingrich Dont try to reform the current system. It is hopeless. It is impossible. God bless you newt for telling it like it is. Here Jag this is from a real leader: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country....Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed". Abraham Lincoln
  16. quote: I don't think there are as many corrupt companies out there as you might And I think that you omitting the fact that after ENRON + pals shredded a couple hundred of thousand lives, HUNDREDS of company's had to restate earnings. I'm sorry but today's big time investors and top execs are the biggest cowards on the face of the earth and when crooked execs were hauled off in handcuffs they went to ground and are waiting for "outcry" to die down. They are cowards but they aren't stupid. quote: Clinton era This was a corporate hero...deregulating was the game....self described Eisenhower republican...I would not be surprised to learn he set the stage for recent fiascosbut thats what you will get with corporate infiltration into the political process. quote: If companies focused on the proven methods of valuing performance, then they will survive. Your right it isn't hard to survive. But they are not interested in surviving, they want to grow... vertically integrate and destroy their competition. When the apex is having five jets, 20 houses across the planet, etc everybody wants it. It is this insatiable greed that has come to define American business and hurt the people of this country and people all over the world. It does sound good on paper....but Tommy boy Friedman is turning out to be Stalin with a happy face. quote: I sense a lot of anger from this point on, so I'll leave the rest uncommented. Really? I thought it was animated but not overtly emotional.... Behind the animation and lively descriptions exists some anger. I don't live in happy land. I live in real life and I examine the facts that are hard to find. Behind the veneer of the multi ethnic techno happy land that is America commercially defined one finds greed, unchecked ambition, corrupt political process accepted by the mind numbing group think attitude disseminated by corporate media, and the real abuse of people and families by those who believe that progress is profit and your personal worth can be estimated by your investment portfolio. It does make me angry. It would make any moral person angry. I thought I was keeping it to a dull hum. I will say I find it distasteful to sit back and discuss issues in cool robotic fashion.maybe when I get older.
  17. quote: Many corporations are headed by people who started out in the mail room (or equivalent) 25 years ago. That is not an acurate statement. The vast majority of CEO's and senior execs started in the top 20% or the second 20%. Society is becoming more static. quote: The issue of double taxation resonates with the lower, middle, and upper classes because even the poor envision a day when they will do better, and they don't want to see their successes taken away from them. They want their children to be better off than they were. I would agree with the last part. However when people lose their jobs and their pentions and college options are destroyed by a reckless company....then that same company covers the execs and cuts everyone else loose with nothing....people wake up. When media focus on rags to riches BS stories utilizing synergistic strategies to inflate the reality of the situation you have one class pushing its values on another.only now its ok for some reason.however, if say, the workers want to go back to the jobs they got locked out of they are terrorists and threatening our economy for not eating a b*llshit contract like good little disposable people.ercontingent workers. Come on. In our country workers were told it was wrong to think in those terms and were beaten, shot, and legislated against until they lost track of themselves. That's ok....times will change. The only thing that keeps destructive greed in check is a strong union hence a damaged America economy with a withering capital goods infrastructure and corporations falling over each other to get the hell out of dodge before that dreadfully boring labor people realize that all their jobs are gone.. The latest round of commercials is trying to get people into the market to keep even their meager earnings turning a "profit". That is until everyone got burned and didnt want to go back. Reallyif the ever declining middle class wasnt invested in the market they might start looking at the national gambling addiction and emperor Dow Jones in perhaps a new and peculiar light.. So instead of having real reform you have a government overrun with wealth and no punishment for doing "wrong". This is why a smart person will not take their money to Vegas regulated by law or a stock market regulated by crooks. As far as investment theory....it sounds good. It does. Until you live it and loose your entire livelihood and your kids ticket to college so some rich kids can play Rockefeller and run back to the trust when it doesn't work out. Industry should always be secondary to, and take orders from, an insulated political body that represents the peoplethe real people, those who have to live in whats left after capitol flight..those cozy toxic wonderlands of poverty stricken crimetopia of those who deserve it because of a poor showing in the crap game of life where the house always wins (right GW wink wink)..these people of course stand in glaring contrast to our noble industrialists who are ever burdened with being able to hop a plane to wherever...to do whatever, and I mean whatever, whenever they get the urge.. Further these people should not get my tax dollars for R+D so they can make drugs that I might not even be able to afford....never mind I don' even want to get started on this....Cato blew that one off the hinges. If you think that success is right there for the motivated you better check your socioeconomic background and know your role. This country is in a state of delusion and maybe when we run out of countries to bomb (this would of course leave us with a gaping industrial void) people can calm down and really take a look at how they are living and why they are living that way..or maybe they will stop voting status quowho knows.hell Bush actually acknowledged the global pandemic of AIDS [another liberal conspiracy (smirk)] and renewable energy so ANYTHING can happen.
  18. quote: In order to buy enough shares in a stock to garner $50,000 in dividends, one must have put a lot of money down in the first place, but being rich enough to purchase a large chunk of a company shouldn't disqualify that person from fair treatment by the government. I understand the logic...it sounds good until you live in America and live with the upper 5% who earn at least 155,000 annually. Where the top 400 people examined by Forbes had a minimum a worth of $725 million and includes about 280 billionaires. The captains of industry who inherited most of their wealth (Thurow, 1987; Queenan, 1989) Then it's a romp through Harvard vaguely remembered through a drug induced haze and it's off to maintain the status quo from on high. Here is your fair treatment in government: http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/mems.asp What does it mean to be an owner? That's an interesting question. I guess when competition is so cut throat if you manage to pull your self up (assuming you aren't swimming in a sea of wealth already) you feel your entitled to just about anything you want...I don't know I never been there and I don't really care to....I know I'd end up doing all those stupid things like trying to take care of my workers and their families and go bust.yeah I can understand climbing up high and looking out and realizing that either this mountain is really shear and really high or damn if I can do everyone else can too. Of course we know that there is only so much opportunity to go around.. Lets go down the list and try to understand how that system that sounds entirely reasonable and "good" would lead to these facts in America: 20.4% children live in poverty 10.9% elderly live in poverty America spends 12.4% on health care (the most of any country in the world) but and doesn't even cover everyone. US infant mortality is 10 per 1000 the highest of any industrialized nation. We have no national maternity leave program. We are fifth in the world for murders...in the world... American workers get 10.8 paid vacation days a year. Of course we are last again. And the lowest voter turn out rate of any western democracy. Canada, sometimes the next up from the bottom rung, outperforms us in every every area and usually by a wide margin. But I guess we can destroy any other country the fastest.... As we are starting to see....with the consolidation of industries, power, and wealth perhaps the myth of ownership will no longer appeal to a disenfranchised population...maybe when the promise of political choice is actually offered, people will see a light and move towards it. Or maybe the haves will do everything in their power to have one branch of the government decide our elections.....or have the media only focus on certain stories with engineered content..and maybe shift education under the wise and fiscally responsible wing of industry (cause we all know they do a good job until some dictator acts up and causes our economy to tank)because they paid good money for that election, those media outlets, and that society anyway.right?
  19. Wolf I am also sorry to hear about your situation. What can I say...it doesn't have to be that way. quote: I am unable to work because of a Government regulation designed to protect everyone I only take issue with this statement because if you think industry is going to police themselves or treat you better without regulation....history is clear. The only time industry acts as a responsible social partner is when the people demand, usually in blood, that reality. In this country a propaganda system has been instituted against working people and itÔÇÖs still going strong today. Our labor history has been buried and people manipulated by converging systems of thought that really only serve a tiny portion of the country. Government can be a strong ally in building a future concerned with issues of social and economic justice but those reps have to be held accountable. Petition recall, instant runoff, debates shaped by vision and ideas rather than corporate sponsorship/ownership, transparency and accountability for those in public and private office. Until that happens theyÔÇÖll throw all the nonsense in the book at you...but the simple fact is that power of self determination begins and ends with the people and their communities. Anyway, thatÔÇÖs how I feel.
  20. No kidding...I cut out after "distinguished American's and (hesitation) fellow Americans ..." (translation top 5% (smirk) and the rest of you gullible fools") Truly pathetic....yep anyone else part of the 35% (and growing) group of American's that do not identify with either flank of our one party. *rant on Yes...all you third base heroes out there....keep being born into wealth and American workers will keep payin' for your humble lifestyles...under laws enacted by eighth term millionaire insiders / CEO types of course....but hey no one said life was fair (smirk).... And don't give us no guff or we'll thin the herd with a blatant war of aggression to secure the wealthiest oil zone on the planet for future strong arming tactics..its really is only a coincidence that oil happens to be the key ingredient for maintaining our meager lifestyle(wink wink).and any parallels like.oh.all the top officials in the executive branch are big oil is just silly.and the fact that Halliburton industries was awarded the multibillion dollar contract for supplying the American troops in the Gulf region is well(smirk), trueandyes.that was Cheneys old companyand yes, Halliburton does receive a bonus if they go over budget.BUT REALLY THIS IS ALL A CRAZY LIBERAL CONSPERICAY(wink wink) And hell, just for kicks when you get back from fighting.were gonna send your jobs to some American territory in the pacific.where the cheap labor makes our stock options blow up like car bombs of gold! Its a win win situation  What? What? Daddy.why are the peasants looking at me like that? *rant off
  21. Unreal.... That guy should get a raise...
  22. RE was no 1 even if I didn't see most of the others.....I liked the tough female, really on point....I think they could have added an hour and really made the movie better.
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