Kudos to Saffire and Briggs...'nough said. About the Exxon thing...I want them to suffer not monetarily, but like all the animals in their oh-so-famous oil spill. :dozey:

 

Oh yeah...and SEEYA, Bush!...finally.

It will be a day of rejoicing.

 

...Followed by several years of whining on all sides no matter who wins. *sigh*

but who will be there to comfort me by lying about the economy? :bigcry:

If you read Marx, his theories aren't all that bad; just mis-applied.:P (I prefer Groucho; and Harpo's harp playing is pretty cool). I'm betting that Obama will be as brilliant as Bush is dull, so there's a good chance we will see massive improvement if we get a new batch in congress as well.

But what a relief! Gone will be mad king George and his reign of errors! No more barking at us! No more pathetic attempts at selling messages that aren't true! No more preemptive/preventive/lie-through-the-teeth wars crafted & sold on the false belief that it will be a cake walk! No more suppressing research on climate change!! And the torture memorandum will be made history and buried for good (hopefully). Well, maybe we could make one exception.:sneaky:

What a mess to fix though.. 8 years of living hell, brought to us by "The Crazies" - this will be a monumental task to restore our broken nation.. Laughter could have come other ways - less deadly and hurtful ways.. Ever see someone go squirrelly from a flashback via trauma in war?? Not too neat, and they're the lucky ones to have made it back alive and in one piece. Lots of vets, and lots of suffering, in the US, and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Diplomacy should always be our first line of defense. Those who make war seldom have seen up close what war really is.

Well, anyhow, yes!! It Will Be A Day of Much Rejoicing!! Relief!! And recovery.

I like this thread.

I don't exactly consider myself politically educated, but I try and keep up. I guess I officially support Obama and would vote for him were I an American, but I'm more neutral than anything. It's great to see opinions other than the ones I have been spoon-fed.

I think I'd like to see the government shut down for a few years. Why do we need Congress to keep making laws? We have enough law on the books to last us a good while.

 

What further confounds me is how Democrats seem to love everything associated with European-style governance. Why do they try so hard to change America when their Disney dreamland is right across the Atlantic? Or just north of the border, in Canada? I'm being absolutely serious. In fact I've considered that the ideal situation for humanity would be if there were a spectrum of governments, thousands of them. Dictatorships, theocracies, anarchies, liberal democracies, etc. And you could just pick which you wanted to live under. It would be like picking between Coke or Pepsi. No more wars necessary, thank you! Sovereignty above all!

Saffire, what do you mean? Are you saying that Democratic Americans should just move to Canada or Europe if they don't like the government?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking the piss. My brain just isn't computing.

If you read Marx, his theories aren't all that bad; just mis-applied.

 

Marx makes the mistake most people do of getting confused about the source of value. His "labor theory of value" basically asserts that capitalists get rich from the work their employees do. This isn't exactly true.

 

When you claim that value comes from labor, you open this whole can of worms... for instance, I can spend many hours, days, or years polishing a piece of elephant dung. I could put massive effort into this task. But all my labor adds no value to society, because there isn't a demand for polished elephant dung.

 

Demand is the source of value. Money is just a tool to measure value. So when you wrap your mind around this fact, you can begin to see that government is incapable of adding value to society. It is simply a wealth reallocator. Ironically, the very process of reallocating wealth skews the ability of money (the tool we use to measure value) to accurately do its job.

 

An example of this is paying for higher education. Over the years, scholarships and government aid programs have become available to students to help fund their college careers. This is all fine and dandy, but the colleges realized very quickly they could take advantage of this and get away with jacking up their tuition! Look at the pace of college tuition's rise over the last 30 years and compare it with inflation - it's gone up much faster.

 

Similarly, when government tries to get in on the whole "solar energy" thing by giving people tax credit for buying solar panels, the companies that manufacture solar panels suddenly raise the price of the panels to match the tax credit - again, because they realize they can get away with this (as it won't affect the purchaser's decision to buy the panels in the end).

 

Reallocation of money by politicians is a very dangerous thing, even if it is well-intended.

 

EDIT - While I was brushing my teeth I thought of yet another example: Federal insurance for coastal development. For some brilliant reason, the government thought it was a good idea to make people in Kansas and other landlocked states help pay for the hurricane insurance of rich folks who own homes along our coasts. The result was beach house prices dropped dramatically, causing a sudden boom in coastal development in the 1960's and 70's. Not to mention the whole Katrina debacle.

 

There's a reason coastal land costs more, and it's not just the view!

Saffire, what do you mean? Are you saying that Democratic Americans should just move to Canada or Europe if they don't like the government?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking the piss. My brain just isn't computing.

 

I'm absolutely saying that. I'm seriously considering leaving this country, and renouncing citizenship one day very soon (when I have some basic financial independence). The whole idea that we are citizens of one state, attached by ball and chain, is archaic in my view.

I'm absolutely saying that. I'm seriously considering leaving this country, and renouncing citizenship one day very soon (when I have some basic financial independence). The whole idea that we are citizens of one state, attached by ball and chain, is archaic in my view.

 

But one could argue that that would make Canada Democratic America. The world would be far more chaotic if everyone upped and left if they decided they didn't like their government, but even as I type this, it seems to make a lot of sense in a way. If there were a country for every political subdivision...well, I don't even know. I think I should stop talking as I don't know what I'm on about, and go to bed :P

I was just gonna say, "Know what song that is?"

 

Then I saw your avi and sig.

 

hahaha, nice to find a fellow fan :)

OMG PRESIDENT BUSH IS LEAVING COLDPLAYING?!!?!?!

 

Lol. YEah, he's been posting as some guy named busybeeburns!:lol:

 

(OMG, If I was Ian, I'd ban me for such an insult!:laugh3:0

He'll be replaced by a another bad president. I just learned some really bad things about Obama and his connections to many racist and extremist. Scary things....

I was moving my support towards him but now that i see many of his close friends are crazy radicals, i don't think im voting for him.

they are all corrupt and in it for themselves-no matter what party

Oh well out with one arse hole in with another. Charm the public with there plans and end up stirring shit and rasing taxes the world really doesnt need jerks like these anymore. I think Americans take all this politcian and election thing way way to seriously. Look where it has got the world in the last 8 years. Glad to see the back of the twat. To bad the damage has already been done now.