There are no facts to back up the assertion that Obama used the IRS to go after his opponents either. All we know is that when the IRS first started cracking down on applications for 501(c)(4) tax exemption following the Citizens United decision, the search criteria was slanted toward conservative groups. Whether or not this was a determined excercise on Obama's part is pure speculation.

However, I don't argue that such actions are typical of politics and that presidents are routinely protected by their ranks against the tarnish of scandal.

The only thing I actually find retarded about any of this speculating is the idea that such behaivour is only typical of one side of the political spectrum.

LOL

I agree with abolishing income tax specifically, but not tax in general. I can’t fathom the depth of stupidity that’s required for someone to think we can just abolish taxes entirely. If you don’t have taxes, you don’t have a government. It really is simple as that. The article states that Americans lived without income tax for 125 years. This is true but they NEVER lived without ANY tax, they still had sales tax and they still had property tax and because of these things they also had a government. The only other way to fund a government is to borrow money, but then you wind up with a national debt that you still have to eventually pay off and the only way to do that is… tax. There’s just no way to get around this.

I suppose we could get rid of the IRS specifically, if we are willing to dismantle the Federal Government in particular, leaving the 50 states on their own, but that would force many of the states to increase their respective taxes to make up for the discontinued federal subsidies they get now.

Does anyone else see this? Am I just missing something?

LOL... I've heard people say that before. My son and I used to snowboard regularly at a local resort and we got to know a group of people there, one of which was suprised to learn after two seasons that I am his father not his older brother.

Well, according to our constitution the Senate and House (otherwise known as Congress) ARE supposed to dictate the laws, but I don't see how anyone can dictate thought.

...and I'm not clear on what our standards of living have to do with any of it.


Yes, we are ALL tired of Washington as usual, but we're never going to change it if all we do is play their party blame game. How can we focus our efforts on finding the real problems if we spend all our time "hating" personalities? I think the first thing people need to understand is that personalities have very little bearing on politics. I taught myself that lesson when Bush Jr. was in office. Despite how much I hated his personality which would have made it easy for me to join all those liberals throwing tomatoes at him, I forced myself to look beyond that. I trained myself to recognize that Bush was not much more than a public relations puppet who was basically told what to say and that the real problems and masterminds were lurking somewhere in the shadows back stage and as far as I can tell, they still are.


I would prefer to pay my representative a salary, with the expectation that he would dedicate himself to the job. I would also want him/her to be experienced in law since that IS the field that lawmakers are concerned with. Save the inexperienced volunteer jobs for the soup kitchens.


LOL – I understand the feeling.

What part?


I agree.


I don't even know who Dr. Mann is, but considering all I've read about the issues I would have to say he isn't the only character in the mix.


I don't see what's so unbelievable about that. I don't know what is meant by the "advent of man" as applied to the argument you are referring to but I would say our impact on climate started with agriculture, which emits a lot of methane, an even stronger greenhouse gas than C02.


From what I can tell, the cause of global warming isn't limited to white or rich Americans, but I think the argument comes from the idea that a big share of carbon emissions come from industries who's policies are guided by white rich Americans.


True. I think they need to be targeted as much as anyone else.

Well, if you are lobbying for TRUTH and LIBERTY then you need some serious practice. For instance, you are convinced that I "shill of the pustule democrats". But that simply is not the case... In fact in all my 51 years I have never once registered as a Democrat. So already you've proven yourself to be less than accurate.


You DO realize that this is what almost EVERYONE says. Personally, I never make that claim. I am always open to the possibility that I might have left something out. There is always a question mark on my paper. That's because my thinking style is that of a scientist not an evangelist.


Well, again... you aren't really setting yourself apart. The liberals for which you have such disdain are actually saying the same exact thing... that they KNOW what they believe and why and just like you they THINK their perception is all based on facts. In that sense the similarities between you and those you hate is uncanny.


Me too.


I think any change in policy carries with it a certain risk, but I think (based on what I've been able figure out) that Obama's policies carry less risk to the American people as a whole than the alternatives do.


Most people can recognize harm when they see it. The problem is recognizing the causes of harm before it happens.


Again, there's an abundance of those on the other side saying (and believing) the exact same thing about people like you.

I attribute it to limits of an average person's patience with rhetoric. This is what has allowed me to reconcile with the fact that among liberals AND conservatives there are some very smart people. The key is where they apply that intelligence. For many people, their jobs command the lion's share of their intellectual attention, leaving them with the tired ends of the day to consider 30 minutes of spin on the television. This results in smart technicians with hardly a clue about what's really happening in politics.

I think this can be applied equally to liberals and conservatives.

So did I.


If your assertion is to deny global warming then those "scientists" you are referring to are a combination of under-qualified crack pots, and sell outs to corporate commissions. Almost all qualified, independent scientists in the world agree that global warming is real AND that it was caused by human activity.


When someone starts with "weather is cyclical" I get the impression they just learned about science yesterday. Of course weather is cyclical. It's also very complex - so complex that it's study has lead to new areas such as Chaos Theory. I've read just about every denial argument and they all start with a flaw on some level and make conclusions from there, but for each of these conclusions there is another set of parameters that they ignore. When all the "cycles" that we are currently aware of including the long term celestial cycles are stacked up, the consistent answer is that we should be getting cooler right now, not warmer.


So are you actually predicating your logic on the notion that the rate of change can only be consistent? I guess you never watched a vat of beer being fermented. LOL.


LOL - they call it climate change now which better encompasses the the complex effects of global warming. But I think your conspiracy theory is far more entertaining.

In any case, you mentioned the relentless pursuit of the "Ugly Truth"... All I'm saying is that this pursuit as well as it's anti-theme has been a constant from the very beginning. Global Warming is just one of many examples that span the years AND the party lines.

IMO, the problem isn't so much about protecting intellectual property. The problem is in allowing intellectual property to be applied to self-replicating products. So what if the lack of patent protection for genetically modified food inhibits innovation in that area? Most Americans don't even WANT genetically modified food! The Supreme Court is using a buzzword to run this one through... that buzzword is "innovation", like "freedom" it's a free word that people buy without question, but it SHOULD be questioned because what the Supreme Court is effectively saying now is that they don't want to "inhibit" the innovation of food monopolies.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/15/supreme-court-supports-monsanto-in-patent-dispute.html

Any debate... You just described how your mind is made up that any perspective that isn't in line with right-wing propaganda is a lie. Do you realize how easy it is to control people like you? People who are emotionally attached to one side of a political balance are already bent over with their pants down and BTW, it happens on BOTH sides!

So MY side is a bunch of low-life worthless liars and hypocrites that lie as a matter of course unlike Bush... who simply didn't lie - period.

Alrighty then. Guess that ends that debate - ;)

Well said.


Oh, I am quite aware of the abundant rhetoric on both sides of the spectrum. All things considered, I find the difference of perception between extreme liberals and extreme conservatives to be insignificant compared to their similarities in how they both arrive at such perceptions.


Yes, the supposed "fourth estate"...


I haven't actually verified that. I *hear* it a lot. What is easy enough to verify is that almost all media in the US is owned by the "big five", Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's New's Corporation, Bertelsmann (Germany) and Viacom.
I don't know which of these giants actually qualify as obsessively liberal or progressive, but I know for a fact Murdoch is anything but.

I know more about the papers, perhaps since I read more than I watch or listen. There are only a few left that have managed to escape the grasp of the big five... New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. What's interesting is that all of these papers tend to lean left of current issues, which suggests that all the big distribution conservatives papers are owned by the media monopoly.


Well, selling ad space IS the source of revenue on the commercial bandwidth, which in a corporate structure becomes the #1 priority and influencing the minions to "see it their way" IS the ultimate goal of any marketing campaign.



The idea a "democracy" and a "republic" are mutually exclusive is exaggerated by the populists that you seem to follow. You're basically correct about the protection against the omnipotent majority as added to our specific brand of government, but that has more to do with our particular constitution than the inherent nature of a republic, which in itself is a very loose term applied to many different forms of government.

Democracy, on the other hand is ANY form of government in which people vote. When means that we can call ourselves a republic if we want, but we are also a democracy.


The relentless pursuit if the "Ugly Truth" has always been there and so has it's suppression by equally relentless parties. Great example... the denial of global warming that lead Al Gore to write a book that's actually called "An Inconvenient Truth".

Just read this...

Thanks for the stereotyping... :thumbup:

OK... I understand where you are coming from here... My bad, I was being too vague and wide sweeping in my description. By tax cheaters I meant, political groups that were trying to hide their donors (which IS cheating) by applying for 501(c)(4). * and by "cracking down" I meant denying these organizations the ability to cheat in that way.

And Auntie... this isn't about "small organizations" anymore, not since the Citizens United decision on UNLIMITED funding. I WILL admit that I am slanted on this issue because I strongly oppose that decision. I feel that the influence of money is overpowering the vote and in that sense, providing unlimited political funding with 1st amendment protection is a gross violation of democratic principals and a clear and present danger to American people.


None of it.


None of it.


The entire thing.

I will have to look... I can look it up myself but if you have a link I would appreciate it.


*note: In my previous post I said it was 503(c)(4) - that was a mistake - it's 501(c)(4).

Relax Auntie... I knew you were joking and I was keeping that air of humor with my opportunistic jab at what you have to admit was an element of truth, without which neither of our jokes would have made sense.

This is the second time now that I got negative reactions to my playing on what I thought was obvious humor. Maybe I need to rely less on my dry English sense of humor and start using "emoticonic" disclaimers. ;)


Of course... sleep sand on it's way. ;)