News you might have missed

[Doug]

Tax and Spend = Liberals. Borrow and Spend = Conservatives.

 

You all decide which is better. Personally, the spending is pretty fucked up most of the time, and government probably is too big. But, like most things in life its a compromise.

 

BTW Dru, it is a science. Its called the dismal science.

Edited June 3, 2006 by Doug

[G-spotter]

Political science is called a science too, but it isn't.

[ivan]

Have you seen the little piggies

Crawling in the dirt

And for all the little piggies

Life is getting worse

Always having dirt to play around in.

 

Have you seen the bigger piggies

In their starched white shirts

You will find the bigger piggies

Stirring up the dirt

Always have clean shirts to play around in.

 

In their styes with all their backing

They don't care what goes on around

In their eyes there's something lacking

What they need's a damn good whacking.

 

Everywhere there's lots of piggies

Living piggy lives

You can see them out for dinner

With their piggy wives

Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon.

[Ratboy]

some animals are more equal than others :-))

 

Orwell would be proud.

 

"Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

 

Animal Farm, George Orwell, 1946

[ivan]

so it's only taken 3 pages to figure the matter out and all agree, we ourselves are the corpulent whores - it's very strange - i know josh well and he's certainly smart - and i met jay one drunken rainy night at smith and remember him as damn sharp too - so smart people on both ends of the spectrum and all this and yet we're still as a species as petty and violent and retarded as 10,000 years ago when we were first figuring out that whole farming thing

 

equally odd is that all those intergalactic visitors to the earth choose to congregate before handfuls of dumbass hillbillies - maybe they see something we damn geniuses don't?

[Fairweather]

We're actually closer to $9 trillion in debt now, but here's how trillion is better conceptualized:

 

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/how_big_is_a_trillion.htm

 

We're fucked. I would support a special gas tax of .50 to 1.00 if it were earmarked only for debt-reduction. Unfortunately, the only way to make sure the $$ went to this purpose exclusively would be to enshrine it in a constitutional ammendment. The economy has already demonstrated it can handle increased fuel prices - future declines in retail could be balanced against a sliding-scale gas-tax increase.

 

I'll have to do some research on gallons consumed/yr and $$$ generated. It may not even come close. But with annual interest on federal debt exceeding defence outlays, every bit of principle eliminated is critical.

 

Note: I do not support a completely debt-free Fed. I still like govt bonds.

Edited June 3, 2006 by Fairweather

[cj001f]

We're fucked.

Aye, that we are. Why? Because we've allowed politicians, left and right (best exemplified recently by Bush, imho) to let us believe we can have our cake and eat it to. They, in turn, have cynically exploited this for their own agenda.

 

"Starving the beast"? Right or wrong, that choice should be up to the people if you believe in democracy. When asked directly, people have shown they favor the middle course, as they have with environmental issues. How do you convince them otherwise? By pretending that there will be no consequences for the excesses of the present. As disgusting as pretending that massive taxation and wasteful social programs have no economic cost. Using such ruses to further your own ideological agenda and subvert democracy transcends disgusting and is the hallmark of extremism left and right.