Conservative VS Liberal

[tdslf1 0]

PG,

What kinda people do you know? I for one don't know any one person who collects unemployment that doesn't need it. Or any of the other services that they get for free. Sad case when you see ten bad apples and label millions unfit to get free services.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

So, what you're saying is you didn't vote for Obama because he's black? That's just as bad as my daughter and her boyfriend saying that they both voted for him because he was black.

You vote for the President of the United States because you feel he is qualified to take on the job and because he is a man of good morals and integrity, NOT because of his skin color.

And as far as people ssaying "We want our country back".....

Yes, we do. We want it back from those who will not follow the Constitution, and from those who wheel and deal in back rooms, and from those who keep us uninformed about what they are doing, (to this day we still don't know who wrote the HC bill) we want it back from politicians who are spending us into Oblivion, from those who are bankrupting us, and from those who squander and waste our hard earned dollars, and from those who are cheats and liars and thieves, and from all those who are corrupt and moving us in the wrong direction. And, we don't care what color they are!

And I want my country back from those who are outraged that a black man would have the nerve to even run for president let alone win.

I want my country back from those angry, violent people who think the government is the problem when it is WE the people who are the government.

I want my country back from those who think the answer is to throw bricks through windows or send death threats to democratic representatives.

I want my country back from being run by corporate america who nearly put us into a full blown depression by recklessly gambling with out money

I want my country back from those who think it belongs only to white men and that all others get to the back of the line.

I want my country back from those who disrupt soldier's funerals with signs saying this is God's revenge for gays.

I want my country back from those who want to take us back to the days before civil rights, women's right and worker rights.

I want my country back from those who only claim to care about spending, deficits, the constitution or our founding fathers when a black democrat liberal is in the white house.

I want my country back from those who think giving healthcare to the uninsured and improving their chances of not dying is somehow socialism, marxism, communism or some other stupid -ism.

I want my country back from those selfish senior citizens who happily take their social security and medicare but want the government out of their healthcare and denied to everyone else.

I want my country back from those who would rewrite history so as to indoctrinate a whole generation of children to right wing conservative views only

I want my country back from the conservative saturated hate radio/tv that is feeding the demented minds of those who already have grudges against _______(fill in the blank - government, gun laws, Obama, blacks, immigrants, gays, etc.)

I want my country back from those who want our president to fail and cheer when they percieve that he does (like not getting the Olympics in the US). This means they want our country to fail.

I want my country back from those who wish to destroy our democratic principles - one being that we have elections and Obama WON by a big margin and the democrats won and are the majority - which gives them the right to pass their agenda with or without bipartinsanship and do it by majority rule or any other procedural rule allowed - BECAUSE THEY WON. They get to spend their capital. So get over it.

Edited April 7, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[Cleo's Mom 257]

RE: The coal mine disaster in West Virginia

The more I hear about this tragedy, the more I realize why I am so proud to be a democrat.

This was a non-union coal mine and it shouldn't come as a surprise that most of the coal mine disasters have happened in non-union mines.

The CEO of this coal mine made $19.7 million last year and is known to be a union-busting CEO. In addition to the hundreds of mine violations, many of which were life and death ones he opposed miners starting a union.

If a coal miner worked a lot of overtime and over the years, he might make $70,000/year and if he makes it out alive, get rewarded with black lung.

There is a saying that mine safety laws are written in the blood of dead miners. Well, the democratic party supports unions and work place safety.

The republican party does not. It, like many on this board, stands with corporate america, their greed and their profits over people. And believes that they should self-regulate. Yeah, right! :thumbup:

I am so glad I am on the right side.

Edited April 7, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[BJean 16]

I tivo'd Letterman when a woman who is president of her Tea Party was a guest. Letterman was amazingly civil and solicitous toward her. Democrats can do that, I'm proud to say. Unlike those on the Fox network who rant and rave at any guest who doesn't agree with them.

One of the things Miss Tea Party starter emphasized was that Americans have demonized business in this country. She said that business is what runs this country and that business provides jobs. And we shouldn't over-regulate them. They should be allowed to make lots of profit because the more profit they make, the more employees they'll have.

But she said that we shouldn't have bailed anyone out. The banks and car manufacturers should have just gone out of business. She said other businesses would have just come in and replaced the old businesses and Americans would still have lots of jobs.

Of course Letterman, very respectfully said, well if the new car manufacturers are in China, thousands of jobs would be lost forever and more Americans would be out of work than there are now. Plus, aren't the banks paying back the money that we used to bail them out?

She had to admit that yes, those things are true.

These are the kinds of things that tea baggers don't understand. They spout all the popular right wing ideology, the things that they think make this country strong: big businesses with no regulations on them. But when you confront them with the truth and facts, they have to admit that maybe there is truth to what the Democrats are doing and saying. At least some will admit it. Some just keep ranting and raving with spittle flying out of their mouths and ignorant buzz words running through their fully endoctrinized little heads.

Labor unions are a big huge truth. It's easy to assume and rant that labor unions cripple businesses. But the truth is that labor unions work to keep businesses safe and fair to their employees. Something that employers should be doing on their own. But in fact those things might cause their CEOs to get a million or two less in bonuses a year, so in many, many cases they are not fair to employees and they don't always keep the workplace as safe as it needs to be.

The corporation arses who continually ignored the welfare of their employees in those West Virginia mines should be made to go down in those shafts everyday for a few of months, under the same conditions their employees had. Breathing the same air, taking the same risks that their dead employees had just to try to eke out a meager existence.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Very good points, BJean. I wish Letterman would have asked Ms. Tea Party how many jobs those huge bailed out banks created with all of our money that they gambled with.

Companies whose main goal is to satisfy stockholders are not concerned about turning profits so that they can hire more workers. They just want to pad their and stockholders stock portfolios. This is one of the biggest lies coming from these woefully ignorant people on the right.

[BJean 16]

And we've come full circle again.

Either the far right is astoundingly stupid (which they are not) or they are only using these arguments as a front to give this administration a hard time.

We all know what they're doing. And I'm pretty sure even their dumbest followers do too.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

I love this because Palin's been yapping all week about one thing or another about Obama in her usual shrill voice and smart mouthed sarcastic manner and calm, cool and collected Pres. Obama just puts her down in a few easy sentences:

President Obama questions Sarah Palin's nuclear acumen

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Thursday made clear he was not going to take advice from Republican Sarah Palin when it comes to decisions about the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Palin, the former vice presidential candidate, has not been shy about criticizing Obama's policies and this week weighed in on his revamped nuclear strategy, saying it was like a child in a playground who says 'punch me in the face, I'm not going to retaliate.'

"I really have no response to that. The last I checked, Sarah Palin is not much of an expert on nuclear issues," Obama said in an interview with ABC News.

Pressed further on Republican criticism that his strategy restricts the use of nuclear weapons too much, Obama added:

"What I would say to them is, is that if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin."

Obama unveiled a new policy earlier this week that restricts U.S. use of nuclear weapons and renounces development of new atomic weapons.

Plus, I heard on tv those who knew Saint Ronnie that he was uncomfortable with nukes and would have supported and signed this treaty. So how can any republican be against it if their patron saint would have been for it?

Edited April 9, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[tdslf1 0]

Selective amnesia. They do this well.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

from: dailykos

This is about those lying edited tapes about ACORN that I posted previously.

ACORN exonerated: The tapes were edited. Will the media retract and apologize?

Fri Apr 09, 2010 at 08:05:55 AM PDT

The ACORN scandal was very real, but not in the ways some think it was real. It was another example of how a dishonest right wing smear machine can use typically dishonest right wing smear tactics to derail and largely destroy what it perceives to be a political enemy. This isn't getting much notice, but it should be.

Joe Conason links to the concise conclusion of the investigation of ACORN by Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes. It doesn't get more blunt:

That investigation is now concluded and no criminality has been found.

Conason:

The prosecutor's findings predictably drew little attention from the mainstream and right-wing media that blared O'Keefe's videotapes so relentlessly last year, as if he had uncovered a massive scandal.

Indeed. As with the Clinton "scandals," which the media did so much to hype, and which, despite years of unprecedentedly intense investigations, found only that the president had engaged in misbehavior of a highly personal nature.

But it gets worse. Conason:

But with California Attorney General Jerry Brown's release of unedited videotapes of the ACORN "stings" in San Diego and Los Angeles -- which demonstrate clearly how editing distorted those events -- the Brooklyn probe takes on added significance.

Because Brown also found that there was no criminality. But more tellingly, Conason refers to this article in the New York Daily News:

While the video by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles seemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement source.

"They edited the tape to meet their agenda," said the source.

As Conason points out, and despite all the outrage and hype in the both the right wing and mainstream media, the "scandal" was manufactured. Deliberately and dishonestly. A smear. Typical right wing tactics.

ACORN committed no crimes. They were smeared. The unedited tapes, of course, have not been released to the public, because the smear merchants don't want to reveal their tactics. One would hope that the media would now treat all productions of right wing smear merchant Andrew Breitbart as the type of productions that they are: fictions.

Of course, the real criminal in the story turned out to be the man who made the video. That would be confessed criminal James O'Keefe. Who got caught tampering with the phones of a U.S. Senator, in another attempted smear campaign. That one failed, but the smear of ACORN succeeded in one way: ACORN has been all but destroyed.

Meanwhile, Conason concludes with a pointed question to those media dupes that played along with the smear campaign:

When will they ask Breitbart to release the tapes in full, as they should have done months ago? And when will they ask Roger Ailes to explain why his network doesn't owe its viewers a full and humble retraction?

We all know the answer to that. ACORN was just another victim of right wing smear merchants and our perpetually incompetent mainstream media.

This is the WHOLE basis of the right wing conservative's response to everything from Obama and the democrats: LIE, LIE AND LIE SOME MORE.

The reason they have to lie is that they have no truth to refute anything Pres. Obama has done or the legislation that the democrats have passed.

If they had the truth, they wouldn't have to lie. But from the stimulus to healthcare to ACORN, it has been one lie after another.

If they thought they were right, then they could stand on their truth.

But they are wrong, so they have to resort to lie after lie.

Everything the teabaggers, limbaugh, hannity, beck, palin, bachman, cheney, et al say - IS ALL LIES. AND THROW IN A GOOD MEASURE OF FEAR (WHICH IS JUST EXAGGERATED LIES). :biggrin:

Edited April 9, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[Cleo's Mom 257]

"This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by _____________ rather than hung from a tree.[24]"

When I heard these words I thought how prophetic they were as to what is happening to our current black president. Just fill in the blank with- tea partiers, right wing militia, conservatives, republicans, etc..

These words were said by ultra-conservative Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas in his testimony to Congress on 10/11/91 and his blank was the Senate committee.

[BJean 16]

Was anybody really surprised about the truth of the Acorn tapes? Well yes, of course the Republican sheep were. They had bought the terrible lies about Acorn long before the "damning" tapes were made and shown on Fox. Those tapes were just the nails in the Acorn coffin.

Talk about a lynching. It was a metaphoric lynching, but it caused the death of Acorn so it seems to be an accurate depiction of what's been done to them.

None of us should trust one thing that comes to us labeled as news from the Fox network. Or from the numerous mouthpieces that do all the media dirty work for the Republican party.

And if we put all the pieces together over the past 40 years (and maybe more, but before my time) it is easy to map out the way the Republicans plan and carry out their political strategy: make up terrible stories that are shocking but seem plausible and repeat them until everyone believes them and keep repeating them until your opponent is defeated - both physically and at the polls.

It works for them time after time. And we allow it. Can anybody understand why or when this is going to crush them, as it should?

I know it isn't easy. that's abundantly clear since there are still people who believe that our president isn't an American citizen by birth and that "death panels" are a reality of the health care reform bill and that Joe the Plumber is just an honest good old boy trying to eke out a living as a plumber.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Income Gap Grows During Recession

Even as the economy shrank last year, the income gap—the divide between the country’s richest and poorest citizens—kept growing. In 1978, CEOs at the largest U.S. companies earned 35 times as much as the average worker. Today, that figure is more than 300:1, according to the Harvard Business Review.

In 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that income inequality had reached a modern high, with the wealthiest 10% of the population earning 11.4 times as much as the poorest 10%. Research by Kevin Hallock, a professor at Cornell University, indicates that the trend persists: “From 1979 to 2009, after adjusting for inflation, the highest earners in the U.S. saw dramatic growth in their earnings while the lowest earners now make less than they did 30 years ago.”

Should the U.S. do more to address income inequality?

Yes 62%

No 38%

Income inequality tends to be high in places with large populations of the very rich, like southern Connecticut, or the very poor, like Brownsville, Tex. It is also high in cities like New York, Miami, and Chicago, where middle-class people have fled to the suburbs over the years.

A gap between society’s rich and poor can have ugly consequences. Countries with greater income inequality have higher rates of teen pregnancy, infant mortality, obesity, mental illness, drug use, imprisonment, and homicide than countries where wealth is more evenly distributed, according to research by epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

In the U.S., measures like the progressive income tax, Medicaid, and welfare are used to address income inequality, but some economists and advocates say that we should go further. Nations like Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands spend 7% to 8% of national income on social services for working-age people, compared to 2% in the U.S.

That figure is unlikely to change, however, as polls show that Americans believe people get ahead in life by virtue of their own efforts. “If you think the process is just, you might think the outcome is just, even though some people are homeless and others are very comfortable,” says Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution.

parade.com

We only spend 2% of our national income on social services for working age people? Well, to hear some of those on here continually yapping about this, you'd think it was close to 100%.

Also, see that part about the highest earners seeing dramatic growth in their income? They're called republicans and they like the status quo (tax cuts for them, no expansion of healthcare, etc..) because things are working out great for them. Forget about everyone else.

Edited April 11, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[Cleo's Mom 257]

The mine owner was very wealthy, politically connected, and openly disdainful of his critics. He donated large sums to Republican candidates personally, through his company, and via political action committee. He was able to pressure both local and federal officials to get his way. He also contributed to industry groups fighting against environmental regulations and was a vocal critic of global warming, saying that Al Gore "was more dangerous than global warming." When the Sago Mine disaster killed 12 West Virginia miners in 2006, calls went out for new safety regulations, but he lobbied against them, saying that politicians should stay away from his workers. When a roof collapse struck his own mine, he blamed a small earthquake for the deaths.

Sound familiar? That's not information taken from this week's news. The mine operator in question is Bob Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy Company. Murray owns the Crandall Canyon Mine, where six miners and three rescue workers died in 2007.

Yesterday, hope for a miracle deep beneath the mountains of West Virginia was extinguished as the bodies of the last four miners were found. The cause of the explosion that took the lives of 29 men has not yet been determined, but from the nature and strength of the explosion, it seems likely that it involved both a build up of methane and an accumulation of coal dust -- both of which should have been prevented by adequate supervision and implementation of safety regulations.

The CEO of Massey Energy, Don Blankenship, is even more wealthy than Murry. He donates huge amounts to conservative causes, has funded a good chunk of the Tea Party movement in West Virginia, famously spent over $3 million to get a friendly judge elected to the state Supreme Court, and donated another $3 million in an attempt to fund a Republican takeover of the state legislature. Blankenship regularly engages in calling Democratic leaders "the crazies" and has said that any move to regulate pollution is the first step toward communism. Grist named Blankenship the "scariest polluter" in the country.

Now that Blankenship's disregard for safety has cost the lives of 29 men, what should we expect?

Not much. After all, this isn't the first time. In 2006, two West Virginia miners died in a fire at Massey's alma Number 1 Mine when fire fighting equipment turned out to be non-functional. The company paid out a record $4.2 million in fines, but still turned a record profit. Blankenship personally pocketed an extra $14 million in stock options that year -- not exactly an incentive to change.

Better still, take a look at what happened to Bob Murray who is... still the CEO of Murray Energy, still operating mines across multiple states, and still donating big to conservative candidates (Scott Brown was a recipient of Murray's largess, as were dozens of other candidates since the Crandall Canyon disaster -- all of them Republicans).

They say "follow the money" - well, when you follow the money to the teapartiers and other republicans, you find people like this, resposible for the deaths of miners from their safety violations. But hey, the teabaggers are just grass roots. Yeah, right.:confused:

[LeighaMason 19]

They just didn't say what type of grass.:confused:

[tdslf1 0]

Is it true that when they wanted to start a union in that mine, the owner threatened people so they wouldn't do it? Why exactly was this mine not unionized?