uh... minumum wage is like 5.15/ hr, my turtles couldn't live on that.

Any company that cannot afford to pay its employees at least that, is doing something terribly wrong, and shouldn't be able to survive as a business anyway.

Not to mention people need to have money to spend money, I like how the same people that are for like no taxes ever because the consumer needs more money, are also for the consumer not being paid any money. I smell hypocrisy.

You liberals? I seem to remember everyone enjoying affordable housing. And the housing bubble didn't burst until well after Clinton's watch, like 6 years after, so I'm not sure what your point is... other than spewing your selective memory over the internet.

lol, listen, you have me banging my head against the wall now... I might as well be talking to the wall I think.

again, you took a snipet of what I said and are vainly trying to throw it back at me.

The only thing I can surmise from this new arguement of yours is that you accept my point as valid. Since my point was refuting a point of yours, I guess I win.

Now on to the arguement which I'm guessing you have now shifted to "there must be another way" which by the way was not your original point, but whatever, since you've so graceously accepted that I am right and you are wrong I will humor you.

No one is suggesting we "soak" the rich, infact getting wet has nothing to do with it. The only suggestion is returning to a previous tax code under which there was much more prosperity for rich and poor alike. Now if you have a better suggestion... I'm actually not interested because as I've said you bore me jafl, but I'm sure someone somewhere will listen, why not start a whole new debate?

First of all I would argue that slavery, infecting indians with small pox, and putting people with AIDS in concentration camps all had and would have much better options available from both an economic and humane standpoint, but that aside,

I hardly think any of those examples are a comparable to say returning to the the tax codes of the 90's, which would mean a 3% tax increase for those making over 250,000 a year.

Like if I were doing what you've been doing in your last couple replies I could take a point you said... The standard explanation for supply-siders is that cutting taxes for the rich will give the rich more money to invest in things like factories and stores which create jobs that help the economy in the long run.

And I would reply with something like:

Oh yeah! Well then like why not just give rich people all the money huh? I mean, that would make a bunch of jobs wouldn't it! (insert sarcasm)

That's basically what your arguement amounts to.

So you see why I said I'm bored with arguing with you and I don't want to do it anymore? I replied to you in another debate somewhere, find that one if you still want to argue with me, I'm done with this one.

I mean really? You're gonna compare my statement to Slavery?

Since when is it fair to tax someone just because they have more that can be taxed?

Where did I say anything about fair? I'm talking about what works.

People build factories as an investment in hopes of making a profit in the future. They don’t always wait for consumer demand to develop.

Then again, why didn't the Bush tax cut work?

You mean solution and your general level of ignorance is showing- or either you are foaming at the mouth to the point that you cannot talk.

Hm, now you're just getting boring. I've given you plenty of real world examples of why Reaganomics does not work, during the Reagan years, and the Bush years.

I assure you I'm not foaming at the mouth, and while I'm certainly not an expert in the subject, apparently I know much more about it than you do.

I see for example you quote me where I say that GDP is not the only indicator of national prosperity. Then you ask me what else is. Well, unemployment, mean income, standard of living to name a few. But that quote was part of a larger point, the point being China has the second highest GDP.

All of my points you refuse to answer, you simply take out a snipet, then ask me another question that would be easy enough for anyone to figure out. So I'm done debating this topic with you. Anyone who seriously thinks Reaganomics still works isn't really worth debating much anyway.

But if you do have another laundry list of lame points, you simply have to look at my above arguement, and I'm sure the come back is there somewhere since you at this point seem to be simply rehashing tired old arguements.

1. Reagan did an across the board tax cut, but it was a percentage across the board tax cut, so to say it was equal is incorrect. ie 3% of 1,000,000 is a good chunk of change, but 3% of 30,000 is like groceries for a week. So yeah, it was geared toward the rich. The middle class and lower economic classes did not see any significant benefit, nor did the economy due to their increased spending, little as it was.

2. Yes, building factories etc is the standard explanation. But that's not how it works. People build factories when and only when there is demand. Demand comes from the middle classes unless you're selling high-end stuff. The rich do not use a tax cut during a recession or depression to blindly start hiring people and building stuff. "Build it and they will come" only works if you're Kevin Costner and in a movie. So Reaganomics cannot work if one just puts a little thought into it, and if one does not bother to think, we can see clearly how it failed miserably when Bush used that template for his tax cuts.

I say that Republicans are trying to rewrite history, because that is precisely what they are doing. They are trying to say again that Reaganomics is somehow the solvent for our problems, when the real answer is the opposite of what they want, tighter regulations, investing in large State and National projects that employ large numbers of people, and a return to the tax codes of the 90s or something similar.

3. GDP is only one indicator of a nations prosperity. China has the second largest GDP after us, I don't think anyone would argue their citizens are well off by any stretch of the imagination.

During the Reagan years we still had a huge national defecit, Reagan "warned" that the national debt our country had accumulated in the 200 years of its existance was approaching 1 trillion... and when he left office in only 8 years it was 2.9 trillion, hm...

Clinton has been the only one in recent history to erase that defecit without a world war, and he did so with what would be almost the exact opposite of what Reagan did.

By Reagan's second year, unemployment reached 10.8%. That was the highest since the great depression, and higher than now. And Republicans blamed Carter for this... that's two years into his presidency, meanwhile they are already trying to shift blame to Obama for this depression.

Again, rewritting history.

On top of that, the Reagan administration used funny math to pad the poor scores.

Things like not counting unemployed people as unemployed after 6 mo. to make the numbers look better.

One of Bush Sr.'s admonishments of the Reagan era was no more funny math, Republicans ate it up,

but again, short memories and they love rewriting history. And of course that funny math remains in government even today.

And finally, are you kidding me? You're actually going to try to credit the House and Senate with anything as far as the economy is concerned during the 90s? The fact is, after fighting those Republicans tooth and nail on nearly every budget issue, it was Clinton who ended up getting his way in the end, at least part of what he wanted, on nearly everything.

Now you want to give the credit for the resulting benefits of those budget decisions to the very people who fought against them?

Jeez, I almost prefer arguing with the plain dumb Conservatives as opposed to the slick slightly informed ones.

Unless they don't spend the money because the majority of the tax cuts are given to the people who don't need to spend it, like what happened with the Bush tax cuts remember, and actually the Reagan ones as well because

1. Reaganomics didn't work no matter how hard you Conservatives keep trying to rewrite history.

2. the minimal "prosperity" you conservatives look back on through rosey glasses actually wasn't all that prosperous.

The longest and strongest stretch of economic expansion happened while Clinton was in office. And as a result of a combination of a bunch of things.

But if you were going to blame a president for an economy, which they do play a hand in, I think Clinton should be the one to emulate.

I mean, why did Conservatives try to distract everyone with the sex stuff? Because his policies worked so damn well that's all they had left.

Well, what's overlooked by a lot of people, the idea behind a representative democracy was that the poor people who make like 90% of our food would have little representation, that rural areas would often be overlooked.

However today, there really is no such thing as a "rural" area. Sure there's poor areas that don't have a lot of communications, but you can find them in the middle of a city just as easy as the hills of Virginia.

So that model I don't believe is relevant any longer.

I would also say that the Senate is currently unfairly biased toward rural America, as less populace = greater direct representation.

I guess that's not so much the point of this though.

I think that the time has definitely come though to do away with hanging chads, and adopt a system of direct representation using technology.

Ironically, if it weren't for the hanging chads, we may have it today :(

Seriously, you have to let this point go jake, the facts are stacked so heavily against even the idea of a multicultural State somehow not being able to survive that it boggles the mind.

Not to mention it's impossible anyway. Every nation, no matter how crappy, has always and will always have multiple cultures, you can embrace it, or become a raving looney like that old man.

Really think about it, name one place that only has one culture... there is none. Ruwanda, who the hell would even want to live there, and they have multiple cultures. Of course they take the road of blaming the minority cultures for their problems and you know, do some "ethnic cleansing" every now and then, yet still there are multiple cultures.

Not to say that this guy is suggesting ethnic cleansing (laughs nervously because any old guy who dresses like it's halloween and would put out a video like this privately might not be against it.)

Well, that guy is not the silent majority, he's the loud minority. And all of our leaders were voted in with a majority, this isn't Iran. And from my perspective it seems this guy is the one who is "uneducated and indoctrinated." Seriously, he sounds like a complete idiot.

And you should watch the "Color of Fear" whether you want to or not. It's a great documentary, and I think only like 40 minutes. It's probably not whatever you think it is anyway. And some Universities require it, so you might be giving yourself a head start.

lmao,

You should watch "the color of fear" this reminds me of the lady who "loves Indians, I collect their artifacts."

At any rate, there's a very good reason we don't want a national language. And the majority has stated very clearly who should be in power right now, and the majority won, so calm down with this revolution bullshit.

For his music eventually. The guy could sing. I liked the Jackson 5 stuff much better than the pop stuff though. Pop rarely survives, but I think a lot of the music from his younger days are pretty classical and can bridge the time gap.

911 was 7 years ago... while your boy was in office (and who consequently received a memo from Clinton warning of a possible strike from Osama, which your boy ignored.)

I'd rather be safe like we were for the 8 years before the last 8 years, you know, when we had a president who knew what the hell he was doing.

Wow are you misinformed. Iraq and Iran balanced out eachother's power, one being run by Sunni the other Shiite. Now Shiites are in power in both countries and they can quit worrying about eachother and concentrate on Israel and the West. There is no advantage to invading Iraq, even Conservatives (mostly) grudgingly agree it was only worth doing if they actually had had WMDs... which of course we know now the Bush admin even knew they didn't.

Not to mention it went from a country where the Taliban was not allowed, to a recruiting mecca.

So let me get this straight, in the world you live in, it's people who are against the war's fault that it's a collosal waiste of time, life, and resources? So if we all just pretend with you that it's a great idea everything will be okay?

Must be nice to live in that world, unicorns magic rainbows and all...

The title assumes that murder is wrong, which it is not.

As said by I don't know how many, the example of a predator killing a weeker animal is not immoral, because the predator has no capacity for empathy.

Problem is, we do. So what do we do about it?

Right now what we do is ignore it, and say it's okay because we're the predator and we observe in nature that this is what predators do.

I would argue that we should try to hold ourselves to a higher standard than this.

Does it really matter if we do?

Probably not, but that does not mean that we should not at least try to kill the food we eat with as little pain as possibe, and it also does not mean we should not attempt to allow our prey to live in comfort for whatever amount of time we give them here.

However, saying that, it is important that we as humans understand that other humans are more important than animals.

I love my tortoises. But if a human being is starving, and in some post-apocolyptic world there is no other means of sustanance, guess what, my great little toroises have to die.

This is where the far left occassionally takes it too far. Humans are more important than animals. End of story.

At the other end though. Just because we can kill whatever we want without penalty, and just because we sometimes do kill whatever we want, does not make it morally okay.

There has to be a level of understanding of what it means to be human and have self-awareness, I find many on both sides lack this completely, making me wonder if we really aren't just "predators" who by coincidence have extra large brains.

I see. That makes sense.

But surely there are some branches that are religious?

My only interaction was with one of those monks at an airport during a layover, really cool guy, but the book he gave me was literally full of deities which I assumed meant it was religious on some level.

Well, if anyone was saying that it was okay to make jokes about underage girls being raped... okay.

But again, as Letterman made clear, and whether it could have been interpreted wrong or not, the point of the joke was not "rape" or "underage"

it was "sex" and "of age"

While I realize that as soon as people accept this fact, the Palin's will once again be out of the spotlight, and so want to desperately hold on to the delusion that he was making an underage rape joke,

I think it's pretty clear from both his statement which followed only 3 hours after the complaint (not a day or days as Sara is claiming) and that anyone who has ever seen Letterman knows he has not made a joke about raping underage girls once for however many years he's been on tv, kind of all points to the situation you seem to be describing as a very different thing all together.

I would point out as well, that while Palin was dragging her children all over the country with her during the campaign, the Obama's purposefully kept their kids out of the spotlight until he was elected. I mean, if she didn't want her kids to be part of her pop-stardom, why take them with you?

That aside though, again, you are comparing a sexually active woman who is over the age of 18, and trying to say it's now okay to make the same joke about kids who I don't even think are 10 yet...

Inspired by the "What's with all the right wing extremism" debate.

Nice try though.

Well, the people in ACORN that I met during the last election all had jobs and families and were pretty damn cool actually.

But as with anything I'm sure there are elements here and there that are not all above-board.

But I believe the registering of the dead and other things of that nature have been greatly exagerated. And it's not as if you guys don't do the exact same thing here and there. Visit Dwight IL if you're ever around Chicago, and ask those backwood farmers how many times they voted for Republicans each. They literally used to brag to my parents because they were pretty much the only liberals in town and I would overhear something like this, "Well now (spit tobacco) I dun gone done an' voted once in X county, then we's took a trip and voted in Y county, then we went on up North over there to Z county... cuz dem liberaaals is tryin' to take me guns (spits tobacco)"

And that's like half those imbred retards doing this like every election.

So if anything, it probably evens out.

But it's 2009, we need to figure out some way to stop voter fraud by now I think.

I always liked Buddhism because they approach is from a position of 1. not trying to force or guilt others into it, instead they simply live their lives. 2. they stay out of politics, which is kind of an extension of the whole live and let live credo.

As for the 4 noble truths, they're awsome. A "religion" that actual is based on inherent facts of human life and nature is fantastic, as opposed to the obvious and inherent fallacy of every other religion.

However, outside of these, and what everyone knows about Buddhism, I have no idea how their deity system works, and I am generally opposed to any deity anyway.

That said though, again you don't have to believe in Krsna, Budha, etc. in order to really get something out of Buddhism.

Buddhism = calm, interspective, peaceful

Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, Mormon, Protestant, Catholic, etc. = inner turmoil, self-hate through self guilt, fear of death, fear of afterlife, pressure to conform

Yeah, if I ever decide I need to make believe in a religion, Buddhism is definitely the route to take.

interesting response.

I pasted the definition of what terrorism is from a dictionary, then I described why Tillerman's murder is terrorism.

Are you upset by the definition? Or by me pointing out that the right wing is trying to pretend it's not an act of terrorism because they pander to the religious base?

Why is it so hard for people to just say "yes, that is an act of terrorism?"

Why do you feel it's necessary to throw in gay rights activitists?

Very revealing.

The made up situation of the gay guy grabbing some innocent persnon's cross and stomping it or whatever (is that what you think goes on? I have yet to hear of one gay protest or pride event getting violent.) If that were to happen, then if it were part of an organized political movement to strike fear into the hearts of cross carrying people, then yeah, it would be a terrorist act. Why is this confusing?

The animals rights people who throw blood or paint or whatever are participating in terrorist acts. They shouldn't do that... and I would mention that is not nearly as bad as killing someone, but whatever, that's not the point. I have no problem labeling eco terrorism when it happens, and saying it's wrong... so why then is it so, soooooooo hard for you guys when it's the other way around? Again, very revealing.

And the situation of a father telling someone about to rape his daughter he's going to kill them, I fail to see how that fits in my definition, the father is not part of an organization, there's no pre-meditaion, there's no political goal, and it's self-defense.

I realize the weekness of your arguement was forcing you to make stuff up, but you could come up with something better than that I think.

Anyway, the problem isn't the definition here, as apparently confusing as it is, the problem is that people have been living in a bubble of fear with terrorist alerts, terrorist this, terrorist that, people forget that most of the terrorist violence is home grown, right here in the U.S. And that terrorism is not just arabs from another country, and it's not just murder on a massive scale. When we first started this "war on terror" people said "wait though, how are we defining terror..."

Did anyone listen? God no, too busy being cowboys or whatever, now no one remembers what the fuck it is.

And this has nothing to do with being PC. PC has to do with speach, nudity, and other things where no one is hurt. Unless you believe no one was hurt in the Tillerman murder, there is no connection.

And yes, the right wing, and anyone pretending that it was not a terrorist act are either being hypocrites, or just very very dumb.

Promote and encourage people's legal right to vote?

how dare they...

I love that he said "knocked up," which is not "rape," and was refering to the daughter who is legally of age, and obviously sexually active...

And the father, who happens to be from the backwoods of Alaska, automatically assumes he talking about raping an underage family member.

wonder where his head is at...

that's really the funniest part of the whole thing.

But pc is out of control, he's a comedian, he wasn't advocating anything illegal, the Palins know this, they just want back in the spotlight.

Well, thousands of teenage girls don't have a mother who is against sex-ed, against condoms, and against pre-marital sex,

who is also governor of the state.

I realize you have trouble seeing hypocricy when it's your home team, but surely you have to see the humor in that situation...