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You guys forgot about the 33 new helicopters we just bought today for the President at 6.3 billion dollars ! Why do we need 33 ? What a joke ! XO
Last edited: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 at 6:31:45 AM
Man,I coulda' bought 33 helicopters for $50,000 at the Flea Market! :)
As far as I am concerned they need to wipe out medicaid wipe out S.S. And be done with it.......and start giving us plain and simple free health care....and as far as social security
start saving........Just get rid of the med tax and the SS tax...........
Ya, and don't like air pollution then just don't breath.
So far Bush is only playing word games while preparing to raid SS and give to his rich handlers. You don't think you will see a savings do you? Think "personal account tax." Thank god we'll have good accounting to watch out for us, like Enron. Or maybe we should let charities handle it all and make them dependent on taxes. Sounds real good. Hmm...
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More on the "liberal" press...
Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher are not breaking new ground in accepting money for favorable coverage. The ethical line separating conservative "journalism" from government propaganda has long since been wiped away.
Sometime after 2009, when historians pick through the wreckage left behind by George W. Bush's administration, they will have to come to grips with the role played by the professional conservative media infrastructure.
Indeed, it will be hard to comprehend how Bush got two terms as President of the United States, ran up a massive debt, and misled the country into at least one disastrous war - without taking into account the extraordinary influence of the conservative media, from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, from the Washington Times to the Weekly Standard.
Recently, it's been revealed, too, that the Bush administration paid conservative pundits Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher while they promoted White House policies. Even fellow conservatives have criticized those payments, but the truth is that the ethical line separating conservative "journalism" from government propaganda has long since been wiped away.
For years now, there's been little meaningful distinction between the Republican Party and the conservative media machine.
In 1982, for instance, South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon established the Washington Times as little more than a propaganda organ for the Reagan-Bush administration. In 1994, radio talk show host Limbaugh was made an honorary member of the new Republican House majority.
The blurring of any ethical distinctions also can be found in documents from the 1980s when the Reagan-Bush administration began collaborating secretly with conservative media tycoons to promote propaganda strategies aimed at the American people.
In 1983, a plan, hatched by CIA Director William J. Casey, called for raising private money to sell the administration's Central American policies to the American public through an outreach program designed to look independent but which was secretly managed by Reagan-Bush officials.
The project was implemented by a CIA propaganda veteran, Walter Raymond Jr., who had been moved to the National Security Council staff and put in charge of a "perception management" campaign that had both international and domestic objectives.
In one initiative, Raymond arranged to have Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch chip in money for ostensibly private groups that would back Reagan-Bush policies. According to a memo dated Aug. 9, 1983, Raymond reported that "via Murdock [sic], may be able to draw down added funds." (For details, see Parry's Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.)
Besides avoiding congressional oversight, privately funded activities gave the impression that an independent group was embracing the administration's policies on their merits. Without knowing that the money had been arranged by the government, the public would be more inclined to believe these assessments than the word of a government spokesman.
"The work done within the administration has to, by definition, be at arms length," Raymond wrote in an Aug. 29, 1983, memo.
In foreign countries, the CIA often uses similar techniques to create what intelligence operatives call "the Mighty Wurlitzer," a propaganda organ playing the desired notes in a carefully scripted harmony. Only this time, the target audience was the American people.
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21149/
I wanted Kerry.....
Oh Please He would have been worse than Bush.........^
Since when is it a "civil right" for old people leech off of young workers? Social Security was probably a good idea for the Depression when old people were in abject poverty but today it has become an expensive ponzi scheme that only enriches Washington bureaucrats and makes people dependent on the Democratic party for their retirement.
You must be one of the less than 21 percent of workers who has a guaranteed pension Nork, good for you. Social Security provides a guaranteed pension, adjusted for inflation, and is not vulnerable to stock market downturns. Average seniors (those with a median income of $19,000/year) rely on Social Security for two-thirds of their income. It is the only source of income for nearly 20 percent of retirees. Is it better to backtrack to abject poverty?
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Ice berg, dead ahead.
Things cost money?
@ stinky / Tally / Flea
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012405H.shtml
Great read about why the republicans won, and will win again...
Great article - though somewhat slanted.
My question, dear Sir: how can someone serve over a quarter century in the United States Senate and still be "an unknown"?
"Come, grasshopper - the answer lies within...."
"Since when is it a "civil right" for old people leech off of young workers? "
Norky, these people, our grandparents, paid into the system for years. They're not leeches. You'd rather they fend for themselves in their dotage?
This underscores a critical difference between conservatives and liberals...
Conservatives see older people as parasitical because they no longer contribute to the market economy. Good grief...
What a nasty, selfish philosophy.
Bill Paterson, investment specialist for the AFL-CIO, sees this change as "a dangerous collusion between industry and the ideologues of the right." The retired person's association, AARP, has published ads in 50 newspapers denouncing the "social insecurity" the privatization introduces. They all draw attention to the failures of similar privatizations in Chile and Great Britain, which have proven to be more costly (with private companies taking a significant portion of the funds and their administrative management becoming much heavier). Counterproposals have been launched that rest primarily on a gentle increase in wage-earners' contributions.
Bush's success in the presidential elections and his majority in Congress give the means to accomplish his project. The future will tell whether those forces aligned with social solidarity will be able to unite to challenge it. Following the ravages of successive recessions, Kennedy, then Lyndon Johnson, claimed to declare "war on poverty." Now with Bush comes the war on the poor.
http://www.humanite.fr/journal/2005-02-03/2005-02-03-455984
Funny...for every anti-populace, pro economic-elite scheme the republicans dream up to further fatten their coffers, there are always legions of the average, not-so-rich, probably under-employed members of the populace goading the wealthy on, defending their position with Fox news bromides...
it is truly the height of stupidity, you lunch-box conservatives, to vote and act against your own economic interests.
If you aint pulling down 100K a year, you might want to watch out for what you are fighting for...privatization isn't always such a good idea ( I know such statements are blasphemous in a market economy) you do remember enron and the energy scandal? How many billions of dollars did that privatization scheme cost the average, not so rich people of the western states?
And if you are pulling down 100k, well...i would at least your attempts to hang on to everything you have make some kind of sense...
The funny thing...is that most of you conservatives consider yourselves christians...not very "christ like" to favor stock brokers over the elderly. To call your grandparents "leeches." not very christ like at all...
Last edited: Thursday, February 03, 2005 at 2:31:24 PM
And rabban...if you are reading this, I challenge you to use your knowledge of the bible to come to the aid of the meek...
Find me something in there regarding "money changers"...we can substitute stockbrokers for that, yes? Find me something about our responsibility to take care of our elderly...find me something about putting people above profit...
Look in the "jesus" parts...jesus would have hated these dam conservatives...the liberal hippy that he was.
Wow - is your silence an admission of my "righteousness"? (Sorry - had to say it).
:)
Ps - nice poster!
Er...come again chieftain...specifics, eh?
If that non-entity is kerry...i believe you can fill in the blanks yourself, and I'd probably agree with you :)
I guess my question is......
What the hell were the Dems thinking running that guy???!!!
They would have been better off running the Budweiser clydesdale.
You guys must have been drinking the Kool Aide. Social Security is NOT a pension system that people pay into and then get their earnings out of with interest. By definition, the government cannot create wealth--they can only transfer it. There is no "trust account" or "lock box" where worker's money is kept to retirement. It is a simple intergenerational wealth transfer that is largely welfare for the rich. Ross Perot colects it while some Wendy's clerk here in Chicago is paying 6.2% of his/her meager earning to support him. Is that fair? In fact, the vast, vast bulk of the wealth in this country is held by people who collect Social Security checks. If you are old and poor then we --as a society--have an obligation to make sure that you have adequate material means but for God's sake someone has to stop bankrupting the young to pay for rich old people!
Oh, SNAP. Did someone play the jesus card?
O no he dind!
Apparently someone is inhaling the exhaust fumes of Chief, but I won't mention names; Norky. It's interesting you mention that Wendy's clerk, which is usually a young person.
More than 3.5 million Americans under age 18 currently receive Social Security befefits because a parent died or became disabled. Wages have been declining for young people since the 1970s, which makes it harder to save. Social Security provides a safety net for young people who don't earn enough to build their own nest egg for retirement or disability.
And speaking of welfare for the rich...; Measured over 75 years, Social Security's financial shortfall is $3.7 trillion. This happens to be equal to the 75 year cost of recent tax cuts given to those who earn $311,000 a year or more. We can thank the president for creating and perpetuating an artificial SS crisis. He does not care for all working Americans only the top one percent.
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See there chief, I agree with you...
But what would the nasty GOP have engineered to discredit mr. Horsey? Stall-mucker veterans for truth? Tales of mr. Horsey's wild nights with goats? That sometimes he claims to like grass sometimes he claims he likes alfalfa...yada yada yada. No?
Flea, at whatever age, if you need assistance then you should have it but the fact is that most of the "retired" people on Social Security don't need it. Nor do MOST seniors need prescription drug coverage subsidized by taxpayers though that did not stop Bush from saddling all of today's young people with a benefit for rich old people that will cost a trillion dollars over 10 years. ( Again we will be paying for Ross Perot's Lipitor.) That is why they call Social Security and Medicare middle class entitlements: they principally benefit the middle and upper classes and they are untouchable because this group of voters is politically very powerful.
Hey Nork, would you please provide me directions. I'd love to move and work in your state but I just cannot locate Denial on my map :)
I know you're pushing my buttons. Your question would be another good thread. Something like "Is there a middle-class?" With the top 1 percent of americans owning more than the bottom 95 percent it's gotta be a pretty small slice. Guess we have to settle on a definition of middle-class although we are supposed to be a classless society. One of the veils that has been pulled over most americans eyes is the realization of just how poor most of us are. How many paychecks can most of us miss before we are out of our house? If we own one. BTW, wasn't it Ross Perot who was providing a Greyhound so he and his buddies could road trip to Canada and get their Lipitor cheaper?
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http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/04/markets/gross_social_security/index.htm?cnn=yes
"Without a blockbuster of a program in his second term it is unlikely that Bush can go very far in the history books on the back of a paltry 3 or 4 percentage point tax cut for the rich," Gross wrote.
"Presto!" he continued. "We now have partial privatization of Social Security heading the agenda upon which the president intends to spend his well-advertised political capital."
O, SNAP! He said legacy!
Oh, the wonders of privatization:
In one January 2001 telephone tape of an Enron trader the public utility identified as Bill Williams and a Las Vegas energy official identified only as Rich, an agreement was made to shut down a power plant providing energy to California. The shutdown was set for an afternoon of peak energy demand.
"This is going to be a word-of-mouth kind of thing," Mr. Williams says on the tape. "We want you guys to get a little creative and come up with a reason to go down." After agreeing to take the plant down, the Nevada official questioned the reason. "O.K., so we're just coming down for some maintenance, like a forced outage type of thing?" Rich asks. "And that's cool?"
Nothing like throwing the elderly into the market...i'm sure the market will look out for them. Happens all the time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/national/04energy.html?ex=1107666000&en=01449ebf62df572e&ei=5070
You're welcome.
Run away to Canada!
Flee! Oh the horror of the evil tyrant, Bush.
He's sooo evil. I might have to actually plan
on getting old? I might have to take a minimal
step of responsibility for my own complicated
existance?! Ooooooooooooh NO!
I dare venture that nobody leaning right speaking above me knows much of sociology.
do I stand corrected?
" might have to take a minimal
step of responsibility for my own complicated
existance?! Ooooooooooooh NO!"
Tell that too all the people whoes 401ks dissapeared with the enron debacle, or other similar debacles...you sarcastic simpleton.
At least with social security, these people can afford dog food...
What I find saddest of all is who we are NOT hearing from who should be shouting the loudest; those who are already collecting SS. They are the ones in the best position to tell it like it is about growing older in America and how important SS is in their lives. It's almost like a "I got mine" attitude. Even I and my wife will be affected some but not as much as others if Bush is allowed to screw us.
Listen up kiddies. Ask mom and dad, or grandpa or grandma how much they get and depend on their SS payment. Now figure this in your future. Under Bush's leading privatization plan:
If you were born in the 1960's you'll get -15 percent less.
If you were born in the 1970's you'll get -23 percent less.
If you were born in the 1980's you'll get -30 percent less.
If you were born in the 1990's you'll get -37 percent less.
If you were born in the 2000's you'll get -44 percent less.
Now do you get the picture of who's bending over for the tax cuts Bush has enacted NOW for his RICH handlers.
{WalMart free for over 24 months!}
Or if nork gets his way, dog bones.
Hey! I resemble that...
{WalMart free for over 24 months!}
How do you post a forum? Sorry I'm new to the whole PPT and login thing.
The answer is simple: move to Canada. You know you can have a birth in the hospital here and they don't even ask for your Visa #? It is all free (in a sense) and provided to you no matter what your income. I understand it costs about $7000 for a simple birth with no interventions in the US. Ouch.
-dd
Or you can be happy and make money off of t-shirt sales like the guys from homestarrunner.com
File this one in the "morons who vote against their own interests file."
President Bush plans to unveil a $2.5 trillion budget today eliminating dozens of politically sensitive domestic programs, including funding for education, environmental protection and business development, while proposing significant increases for the military and international spending, according to White House documents.
War abroad, neglect at home.
You guys sure can pick a winner.
THE PRESIDENT: Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised.
Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.
Eh? What?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/20050204-13.html
OMG! Was that really him? The 8 year olds on this forum can speak better than that. How incredibly shameful!
BUSH: HOLDING THREE JOBS 'UNIQUELY AMERICAN'
Tues Feb 8 2005 9:27:01 ET
Last Friday when promoting social security reform with 'regular' citizens in Omaha, Nebraska, President Bush walked into an awkward unscripted moment in which he stated that carrying three jobs at a time is 'uniquely American.'
While talking with audience participants, the president met Mary Mornin, a woman in her late fifties who told the president she was a divorced mother of three, including a 'mentally challenged' son.
The President comforted Mornin on the security of social security stating that 'the promises made will be kept by the government.'
But without prompting Mornin began to elaborate on her life circumstances.
Begin transcript:
MS. MORNIN: That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.
THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?
MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)
Hahahahaha! You damn people have to work three jobs? Hahahahah! And you voted for me anyway? Hahahahahahahah! And you call me a moron? Hahahahahah!
"I think the private savings accounts ought to come from the payroll taxes people contribute into the Social Security trust. And this is an important issue that I'm going to prioritize right after I'm elected."
--Bush, announcing a cabinet appointment; December 20, 2000
Last edited: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 at 4:00:17 AM
"Arbolist... Look up the word. I don't know; Maybe I made it up. Anyway, it's an arbo-tree-ist, somebody who knows about trees."
Bush, quoted in USA Today; August 21, 2001
Where's the outrage? Where's the moral indignation, the moral condemnation...?
Imagine the media explosion if a male escort had been discovered operating as a correspondent in the Clinton White House. Imagine that he was paid by an outfit owned by Arkansas Democrats and had been trained in journalism by James Carville. Imagine that this gentleman had been cultivated and called upon by Mike McCurry or Joe Lockhart--or by President Clinton himself. Imagine that this "journalist" had smeared a Republican Presidential candidate and had previously claimed access to classified documents in a national-security scandal.
Then imagine the constant screaming on radio, on television, on Capitol Hill, in the Washington press corps--and listen to the placid mumbling of the "liberal" media now.
Got integrity?
"I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel."--Rupert Murdoch (Salon, 3/1/01)
Years ago, Republican party chair Rich Bond explained that conservatives' frequent denunciations of "liberal bias" in the media were part of "a strategy" (Washington Post, 8/20/92). Comparing journalists to referees in a sports match, Bond explained: "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time."
But when Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour cable network, debuted in 1996, a curious thing happened: Instead of denouncing it, conservative politicians and activists lavished praise on the network. "If it hadn't been for Fox, I don't know what I'd have done for the news," Trent Lott gushed after the Florida election recount (Washington Post, 2/5/01). George W. Bush extolled Fox News Channel anchor Tony Snow--a former speechwriter for Bush's father--and his "impressive transition to journalism" in a specially taped April 2001 tribute to Snow's Sunday-morning show on its five-year anniversary (Washington Post, 5/7/01). The right-wing Heritage Foundation had to warn its staffers not to watch so much Fox News on their computers, because it was causing the think tank's system to crash.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1067
"‘The press isn't quite as biased and liberal. They're actually conservative sometimes,’ Kristol said recently on CNN. If Chris missed that one, he might have come across a similar admission by Kristol offered up in the spring of 1995. ‘I admit it,’ Kristol told The New Yorker. ‘The whole idea of the 'liberal media' was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.’"
“The biggest lie fed the American people by conservative pundits is that the United States is dominated by the ‘liberal media.’ As if Rupert Murdoch, Michael Eisner, General Electric, Time-Warner AOL and Viacom are owned and operated by liberals.
Almost all media that reach a large audience in the United States are owned by for-profit corporations--institutions that by law are obligated to put the profits of their investors ahead of all other considerations. The goal of maximizing profits is often in conflict with the practice of responsible journalism.
Not only are most major media owned by corporations, these companies are becoming larger and fewer in number as the biggest ones absorb their rivals. This concentration of ownership tends to reduce the diversity of media voices and puts great power in the hands of a few companies. As news outlets fall into the hands of large conglomerates with holdings in many industries, conflicts of interest inevitably interfere with newsgathering.
FAIR believes that independent media are essential to a democratic society, and that aggressive antitrust action must be taken to break up monopolistic media conglomerates. At the same time, non-corporate, alternative media outlets need to be promoted by both the government and the non-profit sector.
How did what's coming outta your mouth...get into your head in the first place?
(psssst...thank you for the edit of those following posts!)
Last edited: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 at 7:48:07 PM
How did what's coming outta your mouth...get into your head in the first place?
Pastor Dave told me.
How long ago was 1992? Someone remind me again?
Bush has set off alarm bells among human rights groups with his nominees for the U.N. Ambassador and the top state department post for Latin American affairs, along with his appointment of a convicted Reagan administration official to head a National Security Council office.
While closely linked to the Reagan administration effort to overthrow the democratically elected Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the three controversial appointees - John Negroponte, Otto Reich and Elliott Abrams - all served in the 1980s as instruments of a wider U.S. Policy to train and arm right-wing militaries in Central America.
But then again, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, right gang? The blood of nuns on his finger tips....he shouts, "FREEDOM!" freedom for the Dole coporation to increase their bottom line....
The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. Military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. Occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. National security officials told Congress yesterday.
"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. Jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."
And all the buffle-heads say, as they stumble out of their SUVs with bumper stickers exlaiming "I voted my values"...they say, the world is a safer place without saddam hussein...the ends justify the means.
What a nation of bufoons...
Hmm? Really? Ok..code green...code green. Everything's cool. Huh? Whats that? O shit! Code red code red! BE VERY AFRAID...DON'T CHANGE HORSES MIDSTREAM!
AP Uncovers Ridge Meetings with Pollsters During Presidential Campaign
Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge met privately with Republican pollsters twice in a 10-day span last spring as he embarked on more than a dozen trips to presidential battleground states, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.
Ridge's get-togethers with Republican strategists Frank Luntz and Bill McInturff during a period the secretary was saying his agency was playing no role in Bush's re-election campaign were revealed in daily appointment calendars obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act.
"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security," Ridge told reporters during the election season.
His aides resisted releasing the calendars for over a year, finally providing them to the AP three days after Ridge left office this month.
Could republicans be any more crooked? What are your values again? Human rights abuses, manipulating 9/11, overthrowing democracies, lieing...and that's just today's headlines...what will we find out about you savages tomorrow? Unbelievable...What the hell's wrong with you people?
Last edited: Thursday, February 17, 2005 at 2:27:19 PM
: :
Bout time the we get this country on the right track! What the hell did FDR know anyway?
Can I also thank them for the 200 billion dollar fiasco that is Iraq? I'll thank them on behalf of the 1300 dead servicemen who aren't around any longer to thank them personally. I'm sure democracy will flourish there one day... . good call bush
Thanks republicans...for all that compassion.
Last edited: Sunday, January 09, 2005 at 7:27:08 PM