Please Read

[james380]

Ok folks here's the deal. To save topic space i'm going to start posting a number of stories within the same thread. Each stories title will be in bold. When you respond please do us all a favor and place the name of the story before your response so we can all see what exactly you are responding too.

Also I would like to say something. Part of the minor uproar about this peice of the forum, I believe, is that I post mainly anti-bush related stuff or far left leaning articles. By no means do I expect only like minded articles posted in here. If you guys/gals see anything that interests you from the Right or whatever please post it. I love to debate so by all means join in.

Thanks.

James

[fishnfool73]

JAMES doesn't like bush.....oh so many things I could say all inapropriate here .

[james380]

JAMES doesn't like bush.....oh so many things I could say all inapropriate here .

way to turn a serious post into a joke ya big jerk.

[krash]

Great Idea james, thanks for understanding and the coperative comprimise.

[BoatlessFisherman]

Excellent,

[kyfisherman]

good idea but why pick out one person being bush, he's just the head of the monster, in a few years it will have a new face but same mind......... what's the point in laying everything on to bush when you know as well as anyone that it's not just him it's the whole government

[james380]

Of course your correct KY. I say we implode the whole government and start a new without all the special interests. Vote for Ron Paul. He'll bring the government back to the people. Look him up if you haven't already.

[Lthomas]

Of course your correct KY. I say we implode the whole government and start a new without all the special interests. Vote for Ron Paul. He'll bring the government back to the people. Look him up if you haven't already.

Special intrests.. Hmmm. Would that include the HSUS AND PETA..Heck.Im all for those guys being done and away with.

[james380]

Of course your correct KY. I say we implode the whole government and start a new without all the special interests. Vote for Ron Paul. He'll bring the government back to the people. Look him up if you haven't already.

Special intrests.. Hmmm. Would that include the HSUS AND PETA..Heck.Im all for those guys being done and away with.

What do either the HSUS or PETA have to do with the upcoming election? When one mentions special interests in a political conversation one is referring too oil, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and sugar to name a few of the bigger ones.

[Lthomas]

Of course your correct KY. I say we implode the whole government and start a new without all the special interests. Vote for Ron Paul. He'll bring the government back to the people. Look him up if you haven't already.

Special intrests.. Hmmm. Would that include the HSUS AND PETA..Heck.Im all for those guys being done and away with.

What do either the HSUS or PETA have to do with the upcoming election? When one mentions special interests in a political conversation one is referring too oil, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and sugar to name a few of the bigger ones.

Six to one and half dozzen to another.. They are all special intrest groups all the same.. Same ole situation. Lookin for hand outs while trying to shove an agenda or plan down the average citizens throat...

[james380]

There's a slight difference between buying your way into a presidents back pocket and fighting for the rights of animals.

[james380]

As of today i'm starting to post the links into the stories to make it a little easier on you bums who wont click the source link.

[james380]

Now instead of adding URL's in the middle of the story i'm starting to add the URL's as footnotes. You'll notice the colored number within the story. Just scroll to the corresponding number at the bottom of the story for the source page.

[fishnfool73]

Why bother no one but me reads this rubbish anyways....

[james380]

lol @ rubbish.

Now U know.

[Username28]

Of course your correct KY. I say we implode the whole government and start a new without all the special interests. Vote for Ron Paul. He'll bring the government back to the people. Look him up if you haven't already.

No, over throw the government and start over completely. Thats the only hope we have. Republidouche, Democrap, Libscum, they are all crooks in one form or another. Get rid of them all, and start over from scratch!!

[Sirsnookalot]

James380, you stated that you mainly post left leaning articles, Ron Paul is anything but left. Ron Paul's agenda is mostly monetary policy with little or no emphasis on social matters.
Like to thank Tommy for allowing these topics to be discussed & debated, on another forum I frequent politics are taboo, not allowed and deleted, and about 99.9% of the group is extremely conservative.

[james380]

When I first posted that 4 years ago I was in a different place politically. I'm basically socially liberal and fiscally conservative these days. Registered Republican to vote Ron Paul in the primaries.

Tommy started this area because of all the political crap I was posting in the general area. We've definitely had a few spirited debates in here over the years.

[fishnfool73]

Talk about a blast from the past. I'm surprised this thread survived the political section erasure of 2011. We lost a lot of great threads and comedy in that one if I do say so myself which I do.

[BoatlessFisherman]

That truly was by accident. I just figured this area was a good place to test bulk thread deletion and I screwed up. whoops

I won't do it again.

[Sirsnookalot]

When I first posted that 4 years ago I was in a different place politically. I'm basically socially liberal and fiscally conservative these days. Registered Republican to vote Ron Paul in the primaries.

Tommy started this area because of all the political crap I was posting in the general area. We've definitely had a few spirited debates in here over the years.

I don't feel anyone has to justify their choice of political candidates and their own political agenda. Opposing views are healthy to formulate one's own true belief.
I am about as left as liberal as one can be, although I do have one exception that I'm aware of, I'll leave that for another day.

There are very few fiscal conservatives left, ala Eisenhower or Nixon, even Reagan would be considered almost a liberal today and probably couldn't get elected dog catcher. I favored some of the old guard as social responsibilty was on their agenda as well. Today's republican are not cut out of the same mold and I couldn't support any of them. To make drastic cuts and to penalize people that had no hand in creating the mess that this country is in is just a terrible act. People have paid their entire lives in to the system and it's congress that's f*cked up, not the majority of the people. Congress is the problem, not the solution..............a shame times have changed since the French Revolution and we can't escort them to the guillotine.

[crashmister]

One of the largest problems that I see in today's America is revisionist history. Case in point, Sir, you mentioned Regan, Ike, and Tricky dicky. Under Ike the top 10% of the earners in the US were paying a 90% tax rate. OB has been called socialist for wanting to restore them to 35%. Regan cut taxes on the top 10% from 70% to 50% then to 28% and borrowed the money to cover it. In doing so he turned the US from being the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor and taxed Social security and unemployment for the first time since either were inacted. He raised the national debt from 997 billion to 2.85 trillion but lowered the defict with higher import tarrifs which raised prices on consumer good's. On top of that he got credit for ending communisum even though it actually started 8 years before he even took the oath. Truth is no US president had anything to do with it. He did have the largest peace time expansion in history, but mostly in military companies and almost trippled the debt to do it. Under Regan the wealthy saw a huge increase in income while the middle class and the poor lost ground on all front's. Nixon well that's a funny story. He's credited for taking the US off the gold standard in 71. which layed the ground work for unlimited expansion and control of the US dollar. In his book he admit's, "I never understood it but my advisors thought it was a great idea. And besides I was pissed at France for demanding Gold instead of dollars. Who do they think they are". He's also credited with ending the Viet Nam war. Which he did with Kissinger doing the talking. As well as the US military doing the bombing. Where he screwd up was trying to keep the bombing campaigns secret. How he thought he could keep anything that involved 3800 service men secret is it self a mystery. As far as scandals go he still top's the list though. He's also credited with having the most aid's & cabinet members convicted. His resignation was more a testament to the power of the press than anything else. Washington Post reporters Bob woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the story that started the investigation that eventually ended his administration. We could sure use those guy's today.

[Sirsnookalot]

True ^

[james380]

I don't feel anyone has to justify their choice of political candidates and their own political agenda. Opposing views are healthy to formulate one's own true belief.

I didn't feel I was justifying myself. Just putting it out there. I'm definitely not very private when it comes to my political leanings.

RunRonPaul.jpg

^ The last of the old guard.

[crashmister]

James; What I can't figure out and what nobody is saying is the bush taxcut's that paul endorsed and voted for have been an epic failier on all front's. This is from the Pew research center. The #'s are exactly the same as the GAO. The #'s don't lie. The dem's were blamed for not repealing them because so many people were too uninformed to understand that they didn't expire until 2011. By then the economy was so fragle everyone was afraid to end them for fear of causing another recession. The story goes that the Dem's were afraid that corporate America would retaliate with massive layoff's if the cut's were allowed to expire. Considering the Repub's went from "Richard Cheney/Deficit's don't matter" To being the only thing that does, I believe they were right in the belief unemployment would skyrocket. Here's an article from 2008 and the chart's below. RP's proposal's are far worse. He want's to put us back on the Gold standard. Unfortunately there isn't enough Gold in the world to back the US dollar. That's how out of touch he really is. Not grinding on ya Bro, just making a point.

Six Years After Cheney Said ‘Deficits Don’t Matter,’ The National Debt Hits A 50-Year High
By Pat Garofalo on Oct 2, 2008 at 7:30 pm

In 2002, Vice-President Oscar mayer Cheney and the Bush administration’s economic team met to discuss a second round of tax cuts, which would follow Bush’s 2001 cuts. At the meeting, “then-Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill pleaded that the government — already running a $158 billion deficit — was careening toward a fiscal crisis.” Allegedly, Cheney replied by saying that “deficits don’t matter.”

Six years later, the Bush administration’s consistent belief that deficits don’t matter has increased the national debt to over $10 trillion. This is the highest dollar amount ever, and pushes the debt to 69% of the gross domestic product, which is the highest percentage since 1955.

Bush has presided over the largest increase in the debt of any president in history. When he took office, “the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion.” In eight years, there has been an increase of over 70%.

And the Bush administration has seemingly not learned any lessons from this, as the FY2009 budget had a near-record deficit of $407 billion. This deficit was calculated before the administration spent $900 billion rescuing troubled financial institutions and proposed a $700 billion economic bailout. The bailout bill put forth by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson increased the federal debt ceiling – the amount to which the debt is legally allowed to go – to $11.3 trillion.

As the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities has shown, 42% of the “fiscal deterioration” and explosion of the deficit that occurred under Bush was due to tax cuts:

The key factors have been large tax cuts and increases in security-related programs. For fiscal 2009, some $1 trillion of the $1.3 trillion deterioration in the nation’s fiscal finances stems from policy actions, and tax cuts account for 42 percent of this $1 trillion deterioration.

The conservative practice of cutting taxes while spending millions on wars has led to the largest debt in half a century, and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is proposing exactly the same policies. An analysis by the Center for American Progress found that if McCain’s economic plan was in place for eight years, it would leave a debt of $12.7 trillion, besting Bush’s record.

[Big Daddy]

I didn't feel I was justifying myself. Just putting it out there. I'm definitely not very private when it comes to my political leanings.

James, I always thought you were very subtle about your politics.

[Aventura]

As much as I am fascinated with US and international politics, and despite my strong opinions on allot of things, like religion...I would rather use this forum to talk fishing. Why alienate a potential fishing buddy based on things that are for the most part out of our control. Having said that....Here is my contribution to the discussion and hopefully it's my last:

You come home from work and watch two "news contributors" (paid liars) argue like they are on rival hockey teams and the host moderates to push a predetermined political narrative or just stoke anger for the sake of entertainment. For anyone paying attention... its lame. You aren't learning anything new and in fact, being consistently misinformed makes you dumber.

Real investigative journalism is dead. We are misinformed daily. Some networks do it intentionally for ratings, but usually its because real journalism and getting to the real facts is too expensive and doesn't fit the 24 hour entertainment news model. There aren't always two black/white, good/evil, winner/looser sides to everything, but its easier to frame the debate that way. Besides, talking about Charlie Sheen for two weeks is WAY more important than foreign policy.

If you form your opinions about issues based on facts and not on how your favorite political entertainer makes you feel when they manipulate the facts for you (by feeding your own biases), then there is a show on Sirius XM's POTUS (channel 124) that is for you:

Stand Up With Pete Dominick http://standupwithpetedominick.com/ M-F: 3PM-6PM

Pete, the host, has his own opinions, but he doesn't push them on you. Most of the time he has people call in that strongly disagree with him, but it isn't the usual shouting match. His guests are usually high profile people who are experts in their field, not paid liars who push a narrative. It's a discussion and sadly its one of the few sources for some level of truth about the US and our politics. If you are a die hard fan of Glenn Beck, you think the founding fathers wanted the US to be an Fundamentalist Christian Theocracy, you read Alex Jones religiously, watch Fox News and only Fox News... then it's probably too late for you.

Listening to Pete's show I have learned about different topics, books, websites, facts, history... that I never would have known about, cared about or considered. I have always been an independent, curious and skeptical person, and I try to take things issue by issue and think for myself. Too many people fall into the trap of aligning themselves against an issue before they fully understand it. Don't be one of those people!

Unfortunately there isn't a political TV show that I can recommend that meets the same standards as POTUS.

[MoJo]

Of course your correct KY. I say we implode the whole government and start a new without all the special interests. Vote for Ron Paul. He'll bring the government back to the people. Look him up if you haven't already.

Well James you and i have both switched our beliefs/thoughts around upside down and backwards.

Personaly i think that the only way for the radical change this country needs, is for it to go thru some type of total Anarchy.

By Anarchy i mean something will and has to happen, EX: Class Riots/revolution/natural disaster...who knows what or why.

This present form of government will never make the changes the people want made. Hell the people dont even know what changes they want or they cant agree as to what?

At this time you see this type of change happening in many country's...BUT they so far seem to only change the furniture around with no real change...

BE READY!

[james380]

MOJO... Yeah I agree with you. The only way to fix the problems are for massive social disorder to take hold. If the big Obama fear that is perpetrated happens and guns are outlawed all hell will break loose, but that'll never happen. I really think that this country is too apathetic to stand up for what needs to happen. The mainstream will always run things and when it all comes down to it the reps and dems are all the same.

[Big Daddy]

Aventura, thanks for your contribution. reasoned debate with source data is constructive; I couldn't agree with you more about our media-all of it. I hope I have the chance to hear the xm show sometime; don't pay for radio. ( I dropped cable a few months ago as well.)

James-reps and dems are all the same: yep
so are independents and anarchists.

People are all the same-"my way is the right way"

I always believed that everyone is entitled to my own opinion!