Jesus Appalled By Americans?

POSTED BY: Mavourneen
UPDATED: Monday, April 9, 2007 23:32
VIEWED: 11915
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MAVOURNEEN

Friday, March 9, 2007 3:08 PM

Edwards: Jesus Would Be Appalled By Americans
Candidate Advocates Prayer Time At School

http://www.nbc4.com/politics/11187494/detail.html

POSTED: 9:10 pm EST March 6, 2007

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards says Jesus would be appalled at how the United States has ignored the plight of the suffering, and that he believes children should have private time to pray at school.

Edwards, in an interview with the Web site Beliefnet.com, said Jesus would be most upset with the selfishness of Americans and the country's willingness to go to war "when it's not necessary."

"I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs," Edwards told the site. "I think he would be appalled, actually."

------------------------------------------------

RUE

Friday, March 9, 2007 5:22 PM

I saw something funny on my way to work today. A nice, new, black, shiny expensive Mercedes roadster type model with a fish symbol inside the Mercedes logo.

What would Jesus drive?

DAYVE

Friday, March 9, 2007 6:03 PM

...that is funny... my jesus fish has little feet on it....

JKIDDO

Friday, March 9, 2007 6:04 PM

Of course. Sometime after money-changers were driven from the temple the message took a hard right turn to "greed is good".

FUTUREMRSFILLION

Friday, March 9, 2007 6:10 PM

Although I disagree with the prayer in school statement, he is probably right.

When I see that Obi Wan kenobi's crappy ass costume robe went for $104,000.00 at auction my first response is - that would have fed a lot of hungry children, or made medicine available to african children fighting aids.

I am appalled at the state of the world as a whole, and I am not even a perfect being.

Americans have enough disposible income to erradicate poverty in the US. But it is more important to drive Mercedes that you can put your christian symbols on!

*FMF will now get off her soapbox*

----
Bestower of Titles, Designer of Tshirts, Maker of Mottos, Keeper of the Pyre, Owner of a too big Turnippy smelling coat with MR scratched in the neck (thanks FollowMal!)

I am on The List. We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

FORSAKEN original

MISSTRESSAHARA

Saturday, March 10, 2007 2:12 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by FutureMrsFIllion:
Although I disagree with the prayer in school statement, he is probably right.

When I see that Obi Wan kenobi's crappy ass costume robe went for $104,000.00 at auction my first response is - that would have fed a lot of hungry children, or made medicine available to african children fighting aids.

I am appalled at the state of the world as a whole, and I am not even a perfect being.

Americans have enough disposible income to erradicate poverty in the US. But it is more important to drive Mercedes that you can put your christian symbols on!

*FMF will now get off her soapbox*

----
Bestower of Titles, Designer of Tshirts, Maker of Mottos, Keeper of the Pyre, Owner of a too big Turnippy smelling coat with MR scratched in the neck (thanks FollowMal!)

I am on The List. We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

FORSAKEN original

___________________________________________________________________

TESTIFY!

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"We can be Heroes.... if just for one day."[/]

~Peter* Peter* power Re-peater~

What do you mean I have to wait
6 fricken weeks for Heroes?

6IXSTRINGJACK

Saturday, March 10, 2007 5:38 AM

What the hell?

A Demoncrat preaching prayer in school?

What gives? You sneaky Liberals are up to something again.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

GEEZER

Sunday, March 11, 2007 8:42 PM

Yep.

"Vote for me, John Edwards - It's what Jesus would do. He told me so."

"Keep the Shiny side up"

AURAPTOR

Sunday, March 11, 2007 10:17 PM

Where's the ' Edwards thinks he speaks to Jesus ' posts? If Bush does it, all hell breaks loose. But when a Dem does it.... meh.

You're welcome on my boat. Your god ain't. - Me

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

RUE

Monday, March 12, 2007 12:46 AM

He didn't say he 'speaks to Jesus'. That's why there's no 'speaks to Jesus' thread.

As to private time to pray, I'd like to think it means bowing towards Mecca and praying, or lighting incense and praying to your ancestors, meditating, or whatever your religion prescribes. It doesn't means Christian prayer.

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Monday, March 12, 2007 1:22 AM

private time for prayer? They don't have recess? or lunch? or, Gawd help us, study hall?

AURAPTOR

Monday, March 12, 2007 2:00 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
He didn't say he 'speaks to Jesus'. That's why there's no 'speaks to Jesus' thread.

As to private time to pray, I'd like to think it means bowing towards Mecca and praying, or lighting incense and praying to your ancestors, meditating, or whatever your religion prescribes. It doesn't means Christian prayer.

Ok, answer me this, if you will. Does Edwards think he speaks TO Jesus or FOR Jesus. And which is worse ?

Seems to me, it's the latter w/ Edwards, and I think that's much worse.

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

RUE

Monday, March 12, 2007 3:49 AM

So you concede there should be no "Edwards speaks to Jesus" thread? Good. At least we're getting somewhere.

BTW you may have noticed he doesn't claim to be speaking 'for' Jesus either. What he did was offer his opinion on what he thinks Jesus meant. Hence his words "I think ..."

AURAPTOR

Monday, March 12, 2007 9:42 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
So you concede there should be no "Edwards speaks to Jesus" thread? Good. At least we're getting somewhere.

BTW you may have noticed he doesn't claim to be speaking 'for' Jesus either. What he did was offer his opinion on what he thinks Jesus meant. Hence his words "I think ..."

Well, I think Selma Hayek wants to be my love slave.

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

SHINYED

Monday, March 12, 2007 12:03 PM

Look up the words pompous & hypocrite in the dictionary and you'll see pretty-boy Edward's coiffed hairdo et al.

What a tool! He has the unmitigated nerve to admonish Americans????....let's do the math here...:

The guy made mega-millions blackmailing, shaking down, and suing every company & person that he encountered who had an insurance policy ( he's one of the main reasons that healthcare system in America is broken )...so much that he got himself that 97-room mansion compound that he needed so desperately ( wonder how much of HIS wealth is given to charity )...I guess that's where he came up with his first catchy, if not retarded slogan...the 2 Americas..ya know that one....there's one America for Edwards...mansions, estates, limos, free Brylcreme, etc etc...and then the "other" America for all the rest of us dumb, working slobs...and by the way John-boy....America is THE MOST GENEROUS nation on the planet....Americans donate more money to charity than ALL THE OTHER NATIONS on Earth combined!

SIGNYM

Monday, March 12, 2007 1:27 PM

Quote:
Vote for me, John Edwards - It's what Jesus would do. He told me so.-Geezer

Quote:
Does Edwards think he speaks TO Jesus or FOR Jesus. And which is worse ? Seems to me, it's the latter w/ Edwards, and I think that's much worse.-Auraptor

Geezer, Auraptor, since you seem so worried about Edwards speaking "for" Jesus, how do you feel about preachers? Just curious. More to the point, how do you feel about a candidate saying ...

"I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it"

Quote:
The guy made mega-millions blackmailing, shaking down, and suing every company & person that he encountered who had an insurance policy ( he's one of the main reasons that healthcare system in America is broken )...so much that he got himself that 97-room mansion compound that he needed so desperately ( wonder how much of HIS wealth is given to charity )...I guess that's where he came up with his first catchy, if not retarded slogan...the 2 Americas..ya know that one....there's one America for Edwards...mansions, estates, limos, free Brylcreme, etc etc.- ShinyEd

You sound jealous. Are you jealous?

Quote:
America is THE MOST GENEROUS nation on the planet....Americans donate more money to charity than ALL THE OTHER NATIONS on Earth combined!- ShinyEd

Nope, sorry.

--------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

SHINYED

Monday, March 12, 2007 1:37 PM

SignyM....Thanks a lot! I'm sounding like PN? That's pretty scary! I don't reecall using phrases that PN loves like Nazis, or Zionist conspiracy, or so many of his imaginative reasons to hate. I just simply wanted to state that Edwards was, in my opinion, always an opportunist and abuser of America, and now he is also speaking for Jesus about our materialistic indulgences....sounds pretty demented, without even using any of PN's hyperbole.

SIGNYM

Monday, March 12, 2007 2:05 PM

ShniyEd- I edited that out prolly just as you posted because I thought it was unecessarily harsh. But yes, you and Auraptor are beginning to sound like PN. I don't think your position is fully thought out, for example Edwards being the reason why the health-care system is in crisis. Lets' look at Edward's trial history and how it affects the medical system

Quote:
More than half his cases were medical malpractice suits. Many involved infants born with brain damage or other serious conditions that entail a lifetime of expensive medical care.

You know, as a parent of a child brain-damaged during delivery who remained undx for years we face an entire life trying to provide for a child who will never be able to provide for herself. We filed a complaint against the HMO that botched the delivery and subsequent treatment but the system is stacked against us, from limiting the amount of award to the arbitration setup. (Sounds fair until you realize that victims come and go but the HMO is ALWAYS paying the judges) Did you know that illness is the MAJOR cause of bankruptcy? How does "the little guy" keep hospitals and insurance companies on the straight and narrow? Do you think they effectively police THEMSELVES? Do you think that "market forces" come into play when people are facing life-and-death decisions? To continue...

Quote:
Edwards won a $7 million verdict for the parents of a 16-year-old who'd killed himself the day after being dismissed from a psychiatric hospital, an incredibly difficult case to win, Dayton says, because in North Carolina the plaintiff must prove that the entire burden of negligence lies with the defendant. In 1997, Edwards successfully sued a doctor for $23 million on behalf of the parents of a baby severely brain damaged by oxygen deprivation during labor.

The defining case in Edwards' legal career wrapped up that same year. In 1993, a five-year-old girl named Valerie Lakey had been playing in a Wake County, N.C., wading pool when she became caught in an uncovered drain so forcefully that the suction pulled out most of her intestines. She survived but for the rest of her life will need to be hooked up to feeding tubes for 12 hours each night. Edwards filed suit on the Lakeys' behalf against Sta-Rite Industries, the Wisconsin corporation that manufactured the drain....Before trial, he discovered that 12 other children had suffered similar injuries from Sta-Rite drains.

Which of these cases should not have been brought to court? And if you don't like the civil trial system, what would you replace it with?

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

GEEZER

Monday, March 12, 2007 2:46 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Geezer, Auraptor, since you seem so worried about Edwards speaking "for" Jesus, how do you feel about preachers? Just curious. More to the point, how do you feel about a candidate saying ...

"I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it"

Politicians invoking God, whether it be Edwards or (I assume) Bush, is an ancient and dishonorable tradition. I've often wondered how God manages to be on both sides of so many elections, wars, etc. without going schitzo. It's just noise to me, and I chuckle at it and go on.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SIGNYM

Monday, March 12, 2007 3:15 PM

Geezer- what Edwards did, I think, was to express his moral stance (or express what he would like others to think are his moral underpinnings.) That's different than Bush believing that God is paving his path to power. Edwards' statement gave me more of an idea of his moral compass, assuming that he's being honest. Bush's statement was that of a man bent on accruing power, but with out any insight as to what he would do with that power.

But to get back to the original topic of the thread- Are you religious? Are you Christian? How do YOU think Americans stack up to the message of Jesus?

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

RUE

Monday, March 12, 2007 3:57 PM

TarnishED

You really belive that swill about malpractice suits ?

You need to listen to the message from David Walker, head of the GAO.

"He does believe the current health care system is way too expensive, and overrated.

"On cost we're number one in the world. We spend 50 percent more of our economy on health care than any nation on earth," he says.

"We have the largest uninsured population of any major industrialized nation. We have above average infant mortality, below average life expectancy, and much higher than average medical error rates for an industrialized nation," Walker points out."

He's comparing the US system unfavorably to socialized medicine which exists in the rest of the developed world. What he's suggesting is broken is for-profit medicine.

SIGNYM

Monday, March 12, 2007 4:20 PM

Quote:
97-room mansion compound

This is wrong. It's 10 rooms and 10,000 sq ft on 100 acres. Big by any standard but not 97 rooms and certainly not the 60,000 sq ft Bill Gates compound. Edwards is worth about $130 million. Gates is worth about $50 billion. Bush has a 1,600 acre ranch. Cheney is worth about $50 million. AFA charitable (money) contributions, the Edwards have averaged about 9% over the past 10 years the Bushs about 11%. John Edwards also does pro bono work.

Is he a sterling example of charity? No- he's about average for that level of wealth, I'd say.

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

SHINYED

Monday, March 12, 2007 4:39 PM

Pretty-boy chased down so many ambulances that at one point in the 1990's Nike actually considered dropping sponsors Carl Lewis & Michael Jordan, and having Edwards as their spokesmodel for their running shoes.

Pretty-boy then used his insurance settlement millions and vile bloodsucking tort-lawyer buddy connections to get his name on the ballot for the Senate, where he did so many great things during his "term" for America...well I can't think of any just now.....But credentials & qualifications for the leader of our country???..President of The United States??....oh puullleeeze!...gimme Johnny Cochran first..oh wait, he died, then how 'bout Barry Sheck or Ally McBeal?...both eminently more competent than John(how's my hair?)Edwards.

SIGNYM

Monday, March 12, 2007 4:46 PM

Quote:
Pretty-boy chased down so many ambulances that at one point in the 1990's Nike actually considered dropping sponsors Carl Lewis & Michael Jordan, and having Edwards as their spokesmodel for their running shoes. Pretty-boy then used his insurance settlement millions and vile bloodsucking tort-lawyer

This is where you start flirting with PN boundaries.

Quote:
both eminently more competent than John(how's my hair?)Edwards.

If John Edwards is so incompetent how did he make so much money?

BTW- If you don't stop calling him "pretty-boy" and refering to his hair I'm going to start thinking you're jealous of his looks. Or maybe you have nothing more substantive than name-calling in your repertoire?

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

GEEZER

Monday, March 12, 2007 7:52 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Geezer- what Edwards did, I think, was to express his moral stance (or express what he would like others to think are his moral underpinnings.) That's different than Bush believing that God is paving his path to power. Edwards' statement gave me more of an idea of his moral compass, assuming that he's being honest. Bush's statement was that of a man bent on accruing power, but with out any insight as to what he would do with that power.

Edwards could have expressed his moral stance perfectly well without channeling Jesus, just as Bush could have said he thought he was the best man for the job without bringing in his visions of a Holy highway to the White House. They're both playing to the Christian voters of one stripe or another.

God is the perfect endorsement. He doesn't ask for political favors, fully supports your platform, and never goes on the Sunday talk shows to switch allegence to another candidate.

Quote:
But to get back to the original topic of the thread- Are you religious? Are you Christian? How do YOU think Americans stack up to the message of Jesus?

I'm an agnostic bordering on athiesm. I got no problem with people's religion as long as they don't try to force it on me.

Poor Jesus. His "message" has been so massaged, re-interpreted, revised, edited, co-opted and generally pureed that I'm not sure he'd want to claim it any more. People on every side of any issue are absolutely sure that they have the official O.K. from Christ for whatever they want.

What's your version of "the message of Jesus" that you want me to opine on?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

GEEZER

Monday, March 12, 2007 8:15 PM

Dbl post. Oh well then.

To the tune of "I Know What Boys Like" by the Waitresses.

I know what God likes
I know what Christ wants
I know what God likes
I've got what Christ wants

I know what God likes
I know what Christ wants
I see them looking

They want me running
and in the White house
Call up and ask them
And they will tell you

I know what God likes
I know what Christ wants
I know what God likes
God likes, God likes Me.

CITIZEN

Monday, March 12, 2007 8:46 PM

Rue: Please don't feed the Trolls, it only encourages them

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

SIGNYM

Monday, March 12, 2007 9:30 PM

Quote:
Edwards could have expressed his moral stance perfectly well without channeling Jesus, just as Bush could have said he thought he was the best man for the job without bringing in his visions of a Holy highway to the White House. They're both playing to the Christian voters of one stripe or another.

Agreed.

Quote:
God is the perfect endorsement. He doesn't ask for political favors, fully supports your platform, and never goes on the Sunday talk shows to switch allegence to another candidate.

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Quote:
I'm an agnostic bordering on athiesm. I got no problem with people's religion as long as they don't try to force it on me.

Amazingly, we're on the same side of this fence.

Quote:
Poor Jesus. His "message" has been so massaged, re-interpreted, revised, edited, co-opted and generally pureed that I'm not sure he'd want to claim it any more. People on every side of any issue are absolutely sure that they have the official O.K. from Christ for whatever they want. What's your version of "the message of Jesus" that you want me to opine on?

I have no idea of Jesus' original message. But I grew up with the John XXIII version, which emphasized love and forgiveness. I like that message, it suits my sense of "fair". I noticed that there are the Old Testament Xtians and New Testament Xtians- not at all the same!

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

AURAPTOR

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 1:59 AM

Quote:
Geezer, Auraptor, since you seem so worried about Edwards speaking "for" Jesus, how do you feel about preachers? Just curious. More to the point, how do you feel about a candidate saying ..."I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it"

Not 'worried' about Silky Pony,just disgusted at his obvious pandering. Am a bit concerned about the hayseeds who can't see through Edward's country bumpkin act.

Why do you ask about preachers? Don't have much use for them, myself.

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

WRATCHIT

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 2:04 AM

Jesus! I like him very much.

but he is no help with curve ball.................

__________________________________________________
Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?
www.bikerplanet.net

SIGNYM

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 12:10 PM

So Auraptor, How do you feel about a politician saying that God is behind his run for the Presidency?

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

ALLIETHORN7

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 12:54 PM

Such Hubris, ya?
Facts are as they stand; none of us can ever remember being dead, so I'll hazard a guess that we DON'T know what Jesus would say.
YES, America is going down the proverbial tubes. Has been for a while now, come to think.
YES, We spend more money proclaiming our faith than actualy practicing it, and,
YES, we could and SHOULD, very much, help others more. But, Facts as is, we DON'T.
Deal.
We could be better. We should be better. But, we are American's. We choose what's convenient over what is right more than we should. Problem is, we're a reactive society; we need someone to shove something in our faces, take us by the neck, shake us, and scream "Here it is!!!!" in our respective ears until we understand.
Don't tell people what to do. Show them what is wrong. Then, let 'em decide. Odds are, a good half of them will do something out of social need, a quarter because they want to, and a quarter will do nothing. Show people what's wrong, then hope for the best. In the end, that's all you can do.
As to prayers... well, you got recess, ya? That'll do. As it is, I only have two religious friends, Jon, who is Jewish, and Richardo, who is Colombian. Them's it; rest don't go to Church or whatnot (Neither do I).

-Danny

Our Idols lay in Ruins,
We'd have saved them if we Could,
But we still chose to Worship,
The Places where our Idols STOOD!!!
THRICE RULES!!!!!!!!!

SIGNYM

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 1:53 PM

I draw different conclusions about the dichotomy between the message of love, forgiveness, and redemption and the message of social Darwninism:

No matter how revolutionary the original message, it will eventually be twisted to suit the needs of the powerful.

The underlying message of today's elite: Because humans are "naturally" greedy and violent there is no point in setting an unnatural moral code. Rather, it is more effective to allow our "real" motives to come into play, and this will "eventually" create a stronger population. Greed is good Or maybe "Greed is god" There are no victims, only losers.

Americans are caught between these two fundamentally incompatible messages. Americans (who are the most religious people in the developed world) are bombarded day after day with messages of consumerism/ greed, violence, and individualism. If following the religious message of love gets you fucked over time after time, eventually the message of love loses.

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

GEEZER

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 4:15 PM

In a serendipitous event of cosmic proportions, while checking some of the facts in Ann Coulter's book "Godless" I found that Mr. Edwards started his channelling long before he contacted Christ this year.

Quote:
In 1985, a 31-year-old North Carolina lawyer named John Edwards stood before a jury and channeled the words of an unborn baby girl.

Referring to an hour-by-hour record of a fetal heartbeat monitor, Mr. Edwards told the jury: ''She said at 3, 'I'm fine.' She said at 4, 'I'm having a little trouble, but I'm doing O.K.' Five, she said, 'I'm having problems.' At 5:30, she said, 'I need out.' ''

But the obstetrician, he argued in an artful blend of science and passion, failed to heed the call. By waiting 90 more minutes to perform a breech delivery, rather than immediately performing a Caesarean section, Mr. Edwards said, the doctor permanently damaged the girl's brain.

''She speaks to you through me,'' the lawyer went on in his closing argument. ''And I have to tell you right now -- I didn't plan to talk about this -- right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you.''

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9501E3DD1F38
F932A05752C0A9629C8B63

BTW, Ms. Coulter's cite was accurate.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SIGNYM

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 7:28 PM

Well, you know that trial law is part theater, which is what I see in Edwards' performance. And the word "channeling" is hyperbole used to "punch up" the story intro. I seriously doubt that Edwards believes in voices from beyond and I don't think you believe that either. And since I'm SURE you're not seriously saying that Edwards is an occult practioner, your point would be.....?

Quite frankly, I wish Edwards had been on my side when we brought a complaint against Kaiser. At the time it was all the rage to have "natural" births, and this particular birth was attended by a midwife not a doctor. But if they had done a Caesarian instead of letting our daughter slog thru 20 hours of labor she would not have suffered a gade IV intraventricular hemorrhage (brain bleed) at birth, and would now not be disabled. But they did and she did and so here she is, dealing with... and paying for... a preventable tragedy that we had no hand in creating.

Quote:
Thrombocytopenic infants who were delivered vaginally had the highest incidence of intraventricular hemorrhage (63.4% vs 37.5% for cesarean section, P = .005). Vaginal delivery and platelets < 50x109/L on day 1 were independent risk factors for intraventricular hemorrhage ... Extra-axial hemorrhages, intraventricular hemorrhage, acute parenchymal hemorrhage and neuronal migrational disorder occurred with varying frequency

http://www.ajnr.org/cgi/content/full/23/9/1457

Quote:
The affected infant may have intracranial hemorrhage, and the disorder is associated with a relatively high mortality rate.

www.emedicine.com/med/topic987.htm

I work closely with people who within the past couple of months have had to fight HMOs to get medical care. One was dx as being "depressed" when she had a pituitary tumor. One was dx as having "arthritis" and told to take ibuprofin when he had a spinal tumor that reached from his neck to the middle of his back. Looking at the Kaiser kidney transplant fiasco and other large-scale medical fiascos, IMHO if it takes a multimillion-dollar lawsuit to get them to wake up and smell the money, great. Otherwise they will continue to provide the cheapest, shoddiest care they can get away with.

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

AURAPTOR

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 9:08 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
So Auraptor, How do you feel about a politician saying that God is behind his run for the Presidency?

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

That sort of talk doesn't wash with me to much. Why do you ask ?

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

GEEZER

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 9:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Well, you know that trial law is part theater, which is what I see in Edwards' performance. And the word "channeling" is hyperbole used to "punch up" the story intro. I seriously doubt that Edwards believes in voices from beyond and I don't think you believe that either. And since I'm SURE you're not seriously saying that Edwards is an occult practioner, your point would be.....?

Politics, especially the fund raising part, is at least as much theater as trial law. Putting words in either Jesus' mouth or a dead child's mouth to convince someone you're in the right seems manipulative and somewhat dishonest to me, and Mr. Edwards seems to have used it more than once. As noted above, you can't ask Jesus, or the child, for verification. And yes, "manipulative and somewhat dishonest" includes Mr. Bush's "God wants me to run" line as well.

As for Edwards - protector of the weak vs. ambulance chaser, I got no dog in that fight.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

6IXSTRINGJACK

Thursday, March 22, 2007 11:05 AM

Hi SignyM...

Firstly, allow me to say that I'm sorry about what happened with your daughter. My brother had a brain hemmorage when he was 6 due to his premature birth, which was assumed to be due to my mother's bulimea. Nasty situation that is. He suffered multiple strokes and spend over 3 months in a coma and another year in the hospital afterwards. They said he'd never walk or talk again but he did within a year, albeit with a lot of work and self-sacrafice that my Father put into his recovery. He's proving everybody wrong everyday.

Now... something you said earlier rubbed me wrong. I notice you like to throw links out there that prove your stance on something, which I think everyone would agree is a great way to validate your points. The comment you made, which I believe was made only based on your feelings rather than truth... the one I feel needs the most justification and that warrants the most backup you can muster has nothing at all to validate it. I sincerely suspect that it is because no such evidence will be found anywhere.

When ShinyEd said "America is THE MOST GENEROUS nation on the planet....Americans donate more money to charity than ALL THE OTHER NATIONS on Earth combined!" he was absolutely right, regardless of your opinion of the matter here. I would like to see any proof otherwise.

Let's forget completley about all of the charitable contributions that America gives the world and just talk about "Tax Freedom Day" here in America. It won't be until nearly the beginning of May that the average American will have made enough money to pay off their tax burden. What does our government waste all of this money on (besides the war which I am 100% against with every fiber of my being)? That's right..... all of the social programs that we never had a chance to vote on and which oftentimes fail due to lack of planning and foresight. All of the wealth re-distribution aimed at eliminating the middle class. We do have one of the most Communistic non-Comunist countries on the globe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day

I'll stop now before you label me Pirate News too.... but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm already too late for that.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

KHYRON

Thursday, March 22, 2007 11:41 AM

6string, I don't want to butt into your discussion with SignyM, but I'm not quite clear on what you're saying so I thought I'd ask. Are you saying government-implemented social programs are a form of charity?

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

SIGNYM

Thursday, March 22, 2007 5:49 PM

6Six- hold please ...

Huh. You think that we're generous because we pay our taxes? Because our government redistributes wealth? If that's your measure of generosity then we've got a long way to go, baby, before we reach Euro proportions. And by any measure of health, education, and happiness, whatever "charitable" amount of giving (or tax-paying) that we do for our own is either remarkly stingy or unconceivably ineffective because we're pretty far down at the bottom of the list in those measure too. If that's not your point, better clarify.

What about humanitarian aid? Well sicne the USA has a large land mass, population, and economy it stands to reason that in raw dollars the USA would be a big donor. It would hardly be fair to place Sweden (for example) on the same absolute scale as the USA. But in more meaningful terms, here it is the rankning for humatitarian aid per capita (per person)

1. Norway 21.04
2. Sweden 11.81
3. Denmark 5.95
4. Switzerland 5.85
5. Netherlands 5.15
6. Belgium 2.94
7. United Kingdom 2.58
8. Finland 2.38
9. United States 2.34
10. France 2.17
11. Canada 2.10
12. Australia 1.93
13. Ireland 1.83
14. Austria 1.23
15. New Zealand 1.18
16. Spain 0.61
17. Germany 0.61
18. Italy 0.42
19. Greece 0.27
20. Japan 0.06
21. Portugal 0.03
www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001805.html

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, March 23, 2007 12:51 AM

Yes Khyron. That is exactly what I'm saying. I don't care if I'm labled racist or not, because I know I'm not. We've ruined the public school system with the VERY expensive "No Child Left Behind" act which NOBODY I know approved of in the first place. Yup.... that's our money going to fund that collosal waste of resources and future minds. All they've managed to do since it's started is lower the bar for everyone. Oh... let's not forget free healthcare for anybody fast enough to jump the border with their kids. I don't know of anybody here that approves of that either, but we're building water fountains in Mexico so the border jumpers have something to drink while they sneak over here. I could go on about this all night, but my posts are already 5 times longer than most people in here as it is. I will leave that alone for now and label it forced charity.

Signym -

Well, I see a bunch of numbers, but they don't mean anything to me. No disrespect to Mr. Drezner, but I have no clue who he is and I don't recognize his statistics here, nor do I believe them.

Now... let's just say that I bought these statistics at face value for shits and giggles. When you count all 300,000,000+ people in America also take into account all of our own poor and destitute, and we have A LOT of them, who drastically skew any numbers. I don't even see any aid going to them or the effects their negative incomes have on a list like this mentioned in your article. Ywould also need to have lists of other factors such as this to get a true picture of the way things really are, or else you're not doing anything different than somebody quoting passages from the Bible out of context to prove a point.

Upon further reading of your article, this forign relief aid isn't mentioned to be either private donations or Government aid. I'm assuming it's both, so this just strengthens my stance about "forced" charity as well.

And to take a quote right from it:

Quote:
U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland suggested that the United States and other Western nations were being "stingy" with relief funds, saying there would be more available if taxes were raised.

Are you proposing more forced charity? Who the F

k are you Jan? Go F

k yourself. This is just more Communist bullshit to make people in America feel even worse about themselves then they already do.

I'm sorry, but I'm still not buying it.

(***EDIT: Upon further evaluation of your article, this "charity" seems ONLY to consist of Government aid, and a debate about whether or not we are paying enough taxes, and if whether or not Americans in general want to pay more taxes for Communist programs like they do in europe. It seems the Europeans don't even understand the concept of private charity anymore, and who can blame them with the amount of money is stolen from them by their government? I'm not sure what point you were trying to proove with this other article other than prooving my first point.)

I personally don't give money to charity. It's a dirty and lazy thing in my eyes. The corporations behind them take a lot of money to operate so your buying power is drastically cut after the bottom line has been met first. You want to really help people then go out and volunteer and help the underprivelaged here, in your own country. I don't see any reason why the Tsunamis were any more our busniess than this bullshit war we find ourselves in. (For the record, I don't know anybody who supports that either).

I have been known to pick up hitch-hikers and other people who aren't even hitchhiking when it's cold or rainy out and they look like they need a hand. I'm not saying you all should do it and I understand your reservations. I picked up a crackhead once who turned out to be pretty dangerous once (long, but interesting story), and I've also picked up another guy who robbed a 7-11 earlier in the evening so I had quite a bit of explaining to do to the police afterwards, so even though I've got some coo

SIGNYM

Friday, March 23, 2007 3:39 AM

6Six- A few self-contradictions on your post. You seem so insistenet that America be recognized as THE MOST GENEROUS nation on the planet .... Americans donate more money to charity than ALL THE OTHER NATIONS on Earth combined. And yet, giving to charity is (to you) a "dirty and lazy thing". So what you've just said is that Americans are the dirtiest and laziest people in the world.

FINALLY! YOUR TRUE OPINION OF AMERICANS COMES THRU!

And if we're so generous, the MOST generous in the world in fact (!) and so intent on income redistribution, why do we have so many of our own poor and destitute... A LOT of them, who drastically skew any numbers?

You know, when I put some of your ideas next to other ideas of yours they go poof!. So OOC what ARE you trying to say?

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

SIGNYM

Friday, March 23, 2007 5:00 AM

GEEZER

Quote:
Politics, especially the fund raising part, is at least as much theater as trial law. Putting words in either Jesus' mouth or a dead child's mouth to convince someone you're in the right seems manipulative and somewhat dishonest to me, and Mr. Edwards seems to have used it more than once.

While Edwards could have described his moral underpinnings w/o referring to Jesus, I don't get the idea that he was speaking "for" Jesus. As Rue pointed out, the qualifier "I think" makes Edwards' statement a personally referenced opinion, not a "speaking for Jesus" statement. And for all I know, Edwards' reference to Jesus may be sincere and not at all dishonest or cynical. So IMHO he doesn't lose any points for dishonesty on that account.

The "speaking for the child" thing? Hokey at best and manipulative as well.

I personally don't have much opinion of Edwards' fundamental honesty or dishonesty because I haven't looked at his record substantively, and these two instances aren't enough to condemn or redeem anyone. I like the fact that he represents ordinary people against corporations and government (altho I know that some ppl on this board regard that as anathema) which seems to give some weight ot his "two Americas" campaign, but I have no clue whether his voting record is consistent with that. I know that he has undergone some family tragedy in the past few years (death of his son and wife's cancer) which I think tends to "season" people, and that he's facing more in the near future.

I expect that his decision to continue with his campaign in the face of his wife's cancer recurrence was made either out of out of naivete or out of a desire to affect the primaries. I don't think it's possible to truly understand how gruesome it is to care for someone with metastacized cancer unless you've gone through it, and my guess is that some time in the next two to four years he will be fully involved with his wife dying.

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

DROSTIE

Friday, March 23, 2007 5:08 AM

Random points:

- US citizens do not pay much in taxes, and they are nothing like a communism.

- Other countries who pay more in taxes tend to have a much higher standard of living.

- The U.S. does not pay much in aid in relative terms -- taking the E.U. as if it were one country, the US and the EU have roughly the same GDP. But the EU gives more than the US on just about every indicator that I know of. (It was claimed that the EU doesn't do private charity, but that's just false.)

- Communism is demonized because Russia did it immorally. If you ever bother to read Marx's Das Kapital, you'll notice that it's much more of a passive consequence of people interacting with capitalism. Marx's big mistake was that he thought a revolution was necessary; but the socialist progress in both the US and the EU has gone remarkably naturally -- and both have done incredibly well. By contrast, what Russia called communism was much more a beast of capitalism than anybody could have anticipated.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, March 23, 2007 5:11 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
6Six- A few self-contradictions on your post. You seem so insistenet that America be recognized as THE MOST GENEROUS nation on the planet .... Americans donate more money to charity than ALL THE OTHER NATIONS on Earth combined. And yet, giving to charity is (to you) a "dirty and lazy thing". So what you've just said is that Americans are the dirtiest and laziest people in the world.

FINALLY! YOUR TRUE OPINION OF AMERICANS COMES THRU!

And if we're so generous, the MOST generous in the world in fact (!) and so intent on income redistribution, why do we have so many of our own poor and destitute... A LOT of them, who drastically skew any numbers?

You know, when I put some of your ideas next to other ideas of yours they go poof!. So OOC what ARE you trying to say?

Wow..... so you're just going to throw logic and reason out the window because your source is bunk here and proves my point. If you would like to get serious and keep up this debate, you're welcome to post an intelligent argument. Otherwise... I've said my piece and even though you're trying desperately to twist my words, you know what it is.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, March 23, 2007 5:14 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Drostie:
Random points:

- US citizens do not pay much in taxes, and they are nothing like a communism.

- Other countries who pay more in taxes tend to have a much higher standard of living.

- The U.S. does not pay much in aid in relative terms -- taking the E.U. as if it were one country, the US and the EU have roughly the same GDP. But the EU gives more than the US on just about every indicator that I know of. (It was claimed that the EU doesn't do private charity, but that's just false.)

- Communism is demonized because Russia did it immorally. If you ever bother to read Marx's Das Kapital, you'll notice that it's much more of a passive consequence of people interacting with capitalism. Marx's big mistake was that he thought a revolution was necessary; but the socialist progress in both the US and the EU has gone remarkably naturally -- and both have done incredibly well. By contrast, what Russia called communism was much more a beast of capitalism than anybody could have anticipated.

Random Opinions...... but whatever.

I won't even bother asking you to find references on any of that.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

SIGNYM

Friday, March 23, 2007 5:37 AM

Nope Six, I haven't the faintest clue WHAT you're trying to say. Although I exaggerated to make a point, your posts contain fundamental self contradictions. This is what you've said about charity:

Americans are the most charitable because we donate a lot of money and pay a lot in taxes. So government-funded social programs are (forced) charities, which is the same as communism. But Europeans who pay more taxes are NOT charitable because they don't understand "private" charity, which is dirty and lazy.

So can you take this bag of snakes and lay it out straight? Or, describe for me what YOU think "charity" is.

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

DROSTIE

Friday, March 23, 2007 5:51 AM

*shrug* All of the points I mentioned are wholly factual, and can be Googled.

I'm more intimately familiar with the details, because I'm a dual citizen of the US and NL, and consequently I've seen both first-hand. The improvements tend to be implicit -- things you take for granted. For example, in the US, there are potholes; in the NL, there aren't. In the US, you *sometimes* can catch a Greyhound to the next city; in the NL, the trains run every couple of minutes to any city you'd like.

But, of course, you may also look up actual standards-of-living indices between the EU and the US. The only one that the US consistently beats the EU on is GDP per capita -- and since most of the US wealth is concentrated in precious few hands, that means that your Bill Gateses and Waltons are pulling up the mean, leaving the average citizen in the dust.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, March 23, 2007 6:03 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Drostie:
*shrug* All of the points I mentioned are wholly factual, and can be Googled.

I'm more intimately familiar with the details, because I'm a dual citizen of the US and NL, and consequently I've seen both first-hand. The improvements tend to be implicit -- things you take for granted. For example, in the US, there are potholes; in the NL, there aren't. In the US, you *sometimes* can catch a Greyhound to the next city; in the NL, the trains run every couple of minutes to any city you'd like.

But, of course, you may also look up actual standards-of-living indices between the EU and the US. The only one that the US consistently beats the EU on is GDP per capita -- and since most of the US wealth is concentrated in precious few hands, that means that your Bill Gateses and Waltons are pulling up the mean, leaving the average citizen in the dust.

That's a real nice story and all but I've read plenty of people from the UK bitching about the insane amounts of money that they have that go to taxes and they have no control over. Your definition of standards of living and mine are obviously much different. Mine is higher the less the less that government takes from me and the less they have to do with my life, period. I do very well with my median salary because I show self control and responsibility. Most people in America would be much better off if they could keep their credit cards in their pockets and not spend like a bunch of idiots with a magic goodie getter. For the most part, I'm thinking my quality of life is pretty good. What the government does with our money is a waste most of the time and I'd rather be able to do with it what I will.

As for your post Signy.... I'll get to it soon. I can't give it the attention it diserves at the moment. Thanks for being serious this time and clearing that up. I don't think sarcasm translates very well and your other post came off as pretty insulting.

Oh, and I dont' feel I've contradicted myself at all. It's simply a matter of taking what I said out of context.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

DROSTIE

Friday, March 23, 2007 6:46 AM

- They'd still rather live in the UK than the US. You know that because they haven't crossed the ocean.

- I find it surprising that you hate taxation so much. Especially given the good that it can do -- for example, a government-sponsored health care system would probably save US citizens money. (The NL spends 8% of their GDP on health care; US citizens spend 15%.) The BBC is another good example of how a government can cooperate with a market to produce a better outcome for everybody.

- Expanding on that theme of finding your tax-dislike surprising, I just don't understand why you don't see it as a civic duty. Tax dollars go to roads, schools, hospitals, scientific research -- these are civic responsibilities which you have. What, would you prefer a US with no taxes, and no military, and no roads, and no science? Most Netherlanders feel like taxation is part of a damn fine contract between citizens and their government.

(It is also worth noting that NL citizens are much more active in the political realm. To continue my pothole example, if a Netherlander sees a pothole somewhere, there are numbers you can call to report it.)

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, March 23, 2007 8:03 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Nope Six, I haven't the faintest clue WHAT you're trying to say. Although I exaggerated to make a point, your posts contain fundamental self contradictions. This is what you've said about charity:

Americans are the most charitable because we donate a lot of money and pay a lot in taxes. So government-funded social programs are (forced) charities, which is the same as communism. But Europeans who pay more taxes are NOT charitable because they don't understand "private" charity, which is dirty and lazy.

So can you take this bag of snakes and lay it out straight? Or, describe for me what YOU think "charity" is.
---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

Okay...... here goes nothing. These are the points I made. You got the words right, for the most part, but the punctuation seems a tad off is all.

1) Americans are the most charitable because we WILLINGLY donate a lot of money. (There is absolutely no denying this, and I won't even hear of it)
2) Americans pay a lot of taxes. (This is true as well, especially considering that the entire concept of income tax is unconstitutional in the first place. I don't need to reference the Constitution... you can look that up.)
3) Government-funded social programs are forced charities, which is the foundation of Communism. (Any form of wealth redistribution which is only enforced against and only impacts the lives of the middle class for "so called" betterment of the poverty stricken class is not only forced, but is the basis of Communism. This is how over several generations we become a society with only 2 classes... the poor and the elite. Remember this when your grandchildren are taking out 100 year mortgages on their houses like the Germans do now. Maybe they'll all just be renting houses from the Government by then.)
4) Europeans pay even more in taxes than Americans. (That's a fact. Nobody from Europe will argue it.)
5) Because of #4, they are closer to Communism than Americans are. (Though that margin is decreasing by the year.)
6) Europeans charity is derived primarily from the government funded programs, which are forced charities, which is akin to Communism. (What part of this train of thought aren't you getting yet, if any?)

I think the miscommunication is coming here though.

7) Europeans are less likely to give their take-home pay to charity because thier quasi Communistic governments take so much of it and already make all of those choices for their citizens. (This is true of anyone, no matter what nation. If you have less to give, you're going to give less. I, personally, do not know too many martyrs who willingly sacrafice their well-being and any hope of a future on a daily basis to better everyone aroune them. Americans will give less willingly when taxes increase drastically in 2008 because the Democrats are back in the throne.)

8) The only reason Americans give more to charity willingly is because they have more disposable income, having not given it all to their government to spend it for them. (Simply put, the inverse of #7.)

Other points which I made that are skewing your entire perceptions of what I said:

9) Giving to charity is dirty and lazy. (This is my own personal take on charity done by any organization, be it private or Government sponsored or both. I think giving to charity is something most people do only out of guilt. I shouldn't make blanket statements such as that, I suppose, but it is true. I prefer volunteer work or helping those around you that need it. When they show me starving kids on TV I change the channel. They're not going to get a penny out of me and they're not going to make me feel like a bad person because of it. How many people do you know that will donate a buck a day to Sally Struthers to feel good about themselves but then tell a bum they don't have any change? I know too many.)

10) We should look out for ourselves. What business is the Tsunam

RUE

Friday, March 23, 2007 8:19 AM

"I expect that his decision to continue with his campaign in the face of his wife's cancer recurrence was made either out of out of naivete or out of a desire to affect the primaries. I don't think it's possible to truly understand how gruesome it is to care for someone with metastacized cancer unless you've gone through it, and my guess is that some time in the next two to four years he will be fully involved with his wife dying."

Maybe. The news articles said her cancer was 'incurable' and 'malignant'. Edwards said it would be like 'managing' a 'chronic disease' - like diabetes.

Several different possibilites come to mind - they know she's going to be dead soon but they're trying not to scare the kids (who look pretty young); they realistically do think it'll be managable; or they're in deep denial. Only time will tell.

RUE

Friday, March 23, 2007 8:25 AM

6-string

Different people learn different myths about the way the world 'is' and so perceive and act differently.

Some of the most pernicious myths in the US are the myth it is a meritocracy (it isn't), the myth it's a frontier (it isn't) and the myth it's capitalistic (it isn't).

As to quality of life, I'm curious if you've ever lived in another developed country for a substantial length of time - a year or more. And if not, why do you automatically assume their quality of life is worse?

KHYRON

Friday, March 23, 2007 8:35 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
1) Americans are the most charitable because we WILLINGLY donate a lot of money. (There is absolutely no denying this, and I won't even hear of it)

Brazilians, not Americans, are the most charitable because they WILLINGLY donate a lot of money. (There is absolutely no denying this, and I won't even hear of it).

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
As to quality of life, I'm curious if you've ever lived in another developed country for a substantial length of time - a year or more. And if not, why do you automatically assume their quality of life is worse?

Why a year? An extended holiday should do the trick.

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

RUE

Friday, March 23, 2007 8:56 AM

It seems a practical length of time. By then you'll probably have a chance to use the medical system, go through the seasons, have whatever little things about the new place you don't like wear on you for a bit.

And I've been told that anthropologists go out in the field for between one and two years. That's so they really learn the culture but keep their 'foreign' perspective.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, March 23, 2007 9:05 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Khyron:
Brazilians, not Americans, are the most charitable because they WILLINGLY donate a lot of money. (There is absolutely no denying this, and I won't even hear of it).

I thank Brazil every day for Adriana Lima.

EDIT: I'm so lonely.... jeez

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

RUE

Friday, March 23, 2007 9:13 AM

It's probably your work hours.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, March 23, 2007 9:28 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
It seems a practical length of time. By then you'll probably have a chance to use the medical system, go through the seasons, have whatever little things about the new place you don't like wear on you for a bit.

And I've been told that anthropologists go out in the field for between one and two years. That's so they really learn the culture but keep their 'foreign' perspective.

Perhaps you both are right. I certainly haven't spent any time at any of these other developed countries. I'm basing these opinions on a lot of assumptions and I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that.

I'll grant you that I may be wrong, but here's where I'm coming from:

1) I always hear about how great we have it here, how we're top dog, and how the rest of the world hates us. Usually that kind of hatered comes from envy, but I'll be the first to admit that I probably still have some brainwashing up there.... I'm trying to get better. It's hard. Most of us don't know shit about history and can't do much more math than your basic shit and if we're lucky, balancing a checkbook. They do a great job of filling our heads up with how to think though.

"When I look back on all the crap I learned in High School, it's a wonder I can think at all." Paul Simon ~ Kodachrome

2) My grandfather was able to raise 5 kids and buy a house for his family with a job managing a supermarket. How far is that money going to go today as a supermarket manager, given how much inflation rises above and beyond cost of living increases, and perpetually rising taxes? How far would it go if you had to give as much to the Government as the Europeans do?

Overspending by our government after illegally taxing us has put us all seriously in debt. I have enough to cover mine now. Do you have almost $30,000.00 on you if the piper ever comes to get paid on that 9 Trillion deficit? You can't honestly think that whoever we owe that debt is going to let us welch on it forever..... all the while adding exponentially more to it. I gotta laugh about it to keep from crying.

I'm seriously worried about many of us living in indentured servitude someday and when you're paying over 50% of your income to your government, I don't care how humanitaritan the cause, that seems like indentured servitude to me. Not to mention the bajillion cameras they have up everywhere watching the people in the UK (Primarily London) and the freaky ass "Big Brother-like" posters up everywhere with the eye of Osirus all over them watching you. It's freaking weird. I don't want our own government to have any extra money lying around to do that crap. They've already got way to many cameras downtown Chicago. I'm going there this weekend and that's all I'm going to think about while I'm there. It's impossible for me to enjoy myself at all Downtown anymore.

Granted, as I said before most people I know are idiots and buy tons of shit that they don't need, so for the most part this big freaking mess we're in is something we can collectively share the blame for. I used to be almost $7,000.00 when I was unemployed and I bought cigarettes on credit. In fact, I can't think of a sicker thing to do than to pay for your slow suicide with credit and then pay interest on it. I'm not above anybody in this regard other than I learned from my mistakes young and I have a higher positive balance with absolutely no debt than most people my age in this country. Put those acorns away in the summer time so you have a little to eat in the winter time.

In a perfect world where your Darwinism and Free Market (not sure if Free Market was every REALLY tested) could thrive on it's own, there would be no Bankruptcy at all. There would be no safety-net for stupidity and horrible judgement. Yet, here we are..... Everytime somebody successfully claims Bankruptcy, we borrow money from the FED to pay those debts and it's like somebody split stock you own (the American dollar) and they didn't give you the split. They gave it to the asshole who

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, March 23, 2007 9:30 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
It's probably your work hours.

Awwww... thanks Rue.

I'm pretty sure you know it's my ability to drive people crazy, but you didn't say it.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

SIGNYM

Friday, March 23, 2007 3:13 PM

No it's Adriana Lima. I looked at her picture. Most guys would feel lonely too.

BTW- what ARE your work hours?

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Saturday, March 24, 2007 12:24 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
No it's Adriana Lima. I looked at her picture. Most guys would feel lonely too.

BTW- what ARE your work hours?

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

Yeah.... I was joking about Adriana, but.... I really wasn't joking about Adriana.

I work 3 to 4 days a week, 12 hour shifts from 6 at night to 6 in the morning. Pretty rough sometimes, especially on the 4 day weeks, but I love my weekends. That's why you see me around here all kinds of weird hours. I'm rarely on when I'm not working.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

ALLIETHORN7

Saturday, March 24, 2007 2:46 AM

Hate to cut in to your lil' conversation, 6ix, but there're a few things I gotta point out;
1) Charity is very much done out of a guilty copnciense (And, yes, I have seen a few of the bastards who won't give a dime to a homeless dude, and then give twelve bucks to some guy in a Santa costume on a street corner). Problem is, EVERYONE does charity of a fixed desire that the problem, whatever it happens to be, will go away if they throw enough money at it. I know that I'm but a young boy, and my opinion doesn't count for shit- I openly admit THAT aspect of life- but, Gorramit, Society at large (Not jusat the U.S.) has stagnated; we are too capitalistic. We lost the values of actually doing something; we assign the work to lower peons and sit on our collective asses and count pennys. Being frugal is actually more helpful than giving to any old charity- if you save money, than you help yourself and your family and freinds. Giving to charty's- while it once was a good thing, it now has lost its point. There are two dozen I could name off-hand (BEFORE you give me ten minutes to write some down!), and they simply will not get things done- if you want to help folks, volunteer yourself. Keep your money- most folks will gladly give it away to almost anyone so that problems just go out of sight- not gone, not away, just masked under a green cape. It really is sickening to me- Society has lost all sense of actually helping one another just cause they can, and not because it looks good.

2) (FINALLY!) People spend too much on nicities- cuz they are there to begin with. We've been conditioned to spend what we have left on whatever happens to catch our eyes- it's part of the reason why America is a Super-Power. I agree with you, though- America has lowered the bar, the rutters in D.C. Capital. Truth is, the Bueracracy has its' head shoved so far up its ass that the head is starting to come out of the throat once again- a rather awkward posistion to be in. In the words of Carlos Mencia, "Dee dee dee!"

3) The only thing I really got a problem with; taxes. Once it goes to the IRS, it's not your money any longer. It's Uncle Sams', for better or )Most likely) worst. So it ain't "Forced Charity", as you put it. What they do may not be right or just- but, we common folks don't get a say. Like you don't tell Bill Gates how to spend his odd 90 or so billion bucks, you can't technicaly tell the Gov't either (I say "Technicaly", cuz folks do it anyways). Also, we may be some odd 9 trillion in debt, but one must remember; as a country, we make 12 trillion a year. Even saving a fraction of that, we could be out of debt in a few years time. Maybe twenty or so, which isn't really all that much, when you look at it.

That's all, I think.
Having fun yet?

-Danny

I wanna take the Bullet,
The one aimed straight for your Heart;
I wanna meet the wolves halfway,
And let them Tear me APART,
But that's not the way they do it here...
THRICE RULES!!!!!!!!!

SIGNYM

Saturday, March 24, 2007 7:13 PM

Hi there Danny! It's always nice to have new and thoughtful crew members come on-board!

As a general response on the topic of charity, I have two thoughts that always pop up on the topic. One is a paraphrase of William Blake: Pity would be no more, If we did not make men poor and the other is the disquistion on heroes in Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage. In essence the play says that if you need heroes (or charity, in my intepretation) that's because someone f*cked up. A well-planned war needs no heroes, a well-planned society needs no pity.

If it were possible to have a decent-paying job for everyone who wanted and was capable of work, then our need for "charity" would be waaaay waaay down- limited to victims of natural disasters, accidents or disease. But in our capitalistic system where the scarcest resource of all is a decent-paying job, one wonders... or at I least do... that in a world where so many people need houses, clean water, education, and medical care, and where the earth could use reforestation, recycling, clean energy and general remediation why do we have so many poor people? There is certainly no lack of work to be done.

I leave that thought with y'all for further dicsussion, but right now I have to boogie from my work (yeah, workng Saturday AM) to home and hop on the OTHER treadmill!

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

SIGNYM

Sunday, March 25, 2007 4:19 PM

No bites?

Okay, I'm going to expand on that a bit.

/rant on
"Charity" is what we give people when they can't find decent-paying jobs. Various "charitable" government programs (Social Security, unemployment, welfare and mortgage relief) were effected during the Great Depression because at that point capitalism had fucked things up so badly* that large parts of the United States were bordering in insurrection and chaos. Look up "Hoovervilles" if you don't believe me.
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761564651/New_Deal.html

The decade of the 1930s saw the Great Depression in the United States and many other countries. During this decade large numbers of people lived in poverty, desperately in need of more food, clothing, and shelter. Yet the resources that could produce that food, clothing, and shelter were sitting idle, producing nothing. At the worst point of the Great Depression, in 1933, one in four Americans who wanted to work was unable to find a job. (Sounds like today worldwide.) "Charity" is what governments do to PROTECT CAPITALISM from it's inevitable self-generated catastrophic failure. All of you pro-corporate types who want to eliminate charity might want to remember that we've been there and done that more than once, and capitalism has had to have it's bacon pulled from the fire more than once by "charity".

I have no great love for "charity". Yes, it is a necessary response to catastrophe like tsunamis, volcanos, pandemics, and disabilities- but used on an ongoing basis as the "bread" part of "bread and circuses" it is a smarmy, self-gratifying meager substitute for justice.

I can think of several ways to eliminate "charity". The first is to look long and hard at laws that govern corporations, because corporations are "super people" - endowed with ALL OF THE RIGHTS (free speech, privacy) of individuals but NONE OF THE RESPONSIBLIES (paying taxes on an equal footing, doing anything beyond their "fiduciary duty" to their stockholders) and facing FEW OF THE SAME PUNISHMENTS (when a corporation faces the death penalty for killing people en masse, we'll be heading in the right direction.) I don't believe in playing in a gamed system, and we should neither be fighting over nor sharing the crumbs that fall from the table.

And the very first thing we need to do is raise the fucking minimum wage. That's not charity, that's justice.
/rant off

* data provided on request
---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

CITIZEN

Sunday, March 25, 2007 7:37 PM

[[]CEO[]]
We can't raise the minimum wage, it'll effect our profits and we'll have to lay people off.

What's that, a million dollar bonus for sitting on my arse? Thank you very much.
[[]/CEO[]]

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

SIGNYM

Sunday, March 25, 2007 9:00 PM

A million? Try a couple hundred million!

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

CITIZEN

Sunday, March 25, 2007 9:30 PM

Naw, that's only if they're not very good and are fired.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

SOUPCATCHER

Sunday, March 25, 2007 9:33 PM

Too sad and too true. Gerald Grinstein is the exception that proves the rule. How crappy a commentary is it that we find it exceedingly noteworthy when a CEO says that the workers deserve the bonus more than he does ( http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2007-03-20-delta-pay-usat_N.htm )? I haven't been paying attention to Delta's struggles with bankrupty but I seem to recall that management worked with the unions rather than taking a "fuck you" approach to labor.

And, re: charitable giving, the CBO estimated that repealing the estate tax would decrease charitable giving in the US by 6 to 12 percent ( http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5650&sequence=0 ).

* hat tip to Rachel Maddow for the Delta CEO story

RUE

Sunday, March 25, 2007 11:16 PM

"desperately in need of more food, clothing, and shelter"

If you all remember the famine going on a few years ago in Afghanistan, how shocking it was that people were so hungry they were eating grass ... the same was true in the US 'Great Depression'. But in the US the problem wasn't weather, it was completely economic. People were starving to death due to capitalism.

GEEZER

Monday, March 26, 2007 1:59 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
"Charity" is what we give people when they can't find decent-paying jobs.

Interesting take on charity. I always considered it what is given to people who, due to age, infirmity, accident, disaster, social situation, or whatever, can't hold a job, get a good education, get health care, pay for major emergencies, etc. I also consider charity to be something that individuals or non-governmental groups do. This sort of charity is done from a desire to help other people who are in need.

Quote:
"Charity" is what governments do to PROTECT CAPITALISM from it's inevitable self-generated catastrophic failure.

I take it that by "charity" in this case you mean (lowercase)social security - the money government spends on social programs such as unemployment, health care, pensions, etc. If this is true, would the countries with the highest (lowercase) social security costs be the nearest to catastrophic failure?

And the next question would have to be: If capitalism is bad and will inevitably fail, what alternative can we turn to? Is there a country we can use as a model for full and decent-paying employment?

BTW, I'll be offline 'til Wednesday, but I'm really curious about alternatives, so don't take my not posting for disinterest.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

RUE

Monday, March 26, 2007 3:31 AM

Fog has made every surface gleam with damp. A tuneless whistle and hard footsteps echo in the dark. The place is empty. Deserted ...

SIGNYM

Monday, March 26, 2007 5:30 AM

I make a distinction between charity and compassion. More later.

The footsteps pause briefly, then fade away in the distance. The street is quiet once again.

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

SOUPCATCHER

Monday, March 26, 2007 5:47 AM

Fog has made every surface gleam with damp. A tuneless whistle and hard footsteps echo in the dark. The place is empty. Deserted ...

N

Fog has made every surface gleam with damp. A tuneless whistle and hard footsteps echo in the dark. The place is empty. Deserted ...

E

Fog has made every surface gleam with damp. A tuneless whistle and hard footsteps echo in the dark. The place is empty. Deserted ...

S

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

Aw crap.

GEEZER

Monday, March 26, 2007 12:07 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I make a distinction between charity and compassion. More later.

I always considered real charity to be a function of compassion. Government relief, social programs, etc. while possibly containing an element of compassion, are more politically driven.

Looks like we're having fun with semantics again. Darn. How about charity for compassionate aid and "Charity" for government aid?

Speaking of driven, I'm out the door and on the road. later.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SIGNYM

Monday, March 26, 2007 3:39 PM

Not trying to play with semantics, just trying to get across a concept. "Charity"- like "tolerance" - has negative connotations. It is a word of separation and superiority, most recently derived from benevolence for the poor. Charity is what Gates or Soros or Buffett or the Waltons do after they rob everyone first. Compassion most recently derives from to suffer together, to see oneself in the other. It is a natural outflowing of sympathy i.e. community of feeling. Which reminds me of a story:

--------------------------

Three women come across a river full of drowning babies floating rapidly downstream. One immediately jumps in the river, and grabs babies as fast as possible, tossing them on the riverbank and calling out for help. The second hesitates, then turns away.

"Where are you going?" screams the first.

"I'm going for help!" answers the second.

The woman in the river turns to the third, who starts to run away as fast as possible.

"WAIT! HELP! Where are YOU going??!?!"

"I'm going to find the sonofabitch who's throwing them IN the river!"

---------------------------------
Pity would be no more if we did not make men poor.

SIGNYM

Monday, March 26, 2007 4:47 PM

Fog has made every surface gleam with damp. A tuneless whistle and hard footsteps echo in the dark. The place is empty. Deserted ...

(W) You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

The smell of damp grass rises from the field and a train's call rises and falls away in the distance. Footsteps approach the mailbox and

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

SOUPCATCHER

Monday, March 26, 2007 10:18 PM

The smell of damp grass rises from the field and a train's call rises and falls away in the distance. Footsteps approach the mailbox and

Uh oh. Is it dark? Is that a grue? And how come my bag is empty right after that shifty guy came through the field? (I guess now I've completely outed myself as a nerdling )

-----------------------------------------------

This isn't directly related to what you're talking about, SignyM, but I wanted to add a piece on charitable giving. I do believe that tithing is considered giving to charity. It's tax deductable (or at least it was years ago when I was tithing). I personally don't consider donating a portion of your income to your church to be the same as donating money to the American Red Cross. So, at least from my perspective, stats on charitable giving are artificially inflated by tithing. How widespread is tithing? Who knows. At my church it was suggested that we do everything in our power to tithe the biblically recommended ten percent (and there were arguments back and forth on whether that was calculated pre or post tax - with God and the angels on the side of pre-tax, naturally ). This money was used to pay the pastor, keep the church running, etc. (* edited to remove the part about property taxes since I'm not sure if churches are required to pay taxes)

Anecdotally, when I was a pre-teen we would sneak out of Sabbath School and explore the church. There was a room underneath the steeple where boxes and boxes of old financial records were kept. We usually used it as an access to the roof (you could remove a vent cover to get outside) but sometimes when it was raining we would go through the contents of the boxes. The short summary is there was a lot of money coming in through tithes, much more than from offerings.

GEEZER

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 6:09 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Not trying to play with semantics, just trying to get across a concept. "Charity"- like "tolerance" - has negative connotations. It is a word of separation and superiority, most recently derived from benevolence for the poor. Charity is what Gates or Soros or Buffett or the Waltons do after they rob everyone first. Compassion most recently derives from to suffer together, to see oneself in the other. It is a natural outflowing of sympathy i.e. community of feeling.

OK. I was brought up to consider charity the action of expressing compassion by aiding someone in trouble - recognizing that we're all in the same boat, more or less.

So for purposes of this discussion, charity is something other than compassionate giving, eh?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SIGNYM

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 6:54 PM

IMHO "charity" smacks of Victorian almshouses.

But let's get past wordsmithing. Let me tell another story:

The Christmas Bonus

Up in the northern wilds, a prospector and his faithful dog found themselves pinned down by a major blizzard without any supplies. The prospector knew it would let up in a week, but that wouldn't be soon enough because they would starve to death by then. Several days passed while he and his faithful dog huddled by a small fire in the forest. Each day as he got hungrier and hungrier, the prospector eyed his dog a little longer. And finally, late on Christmas eve, he couldn't stand it any longer; he jumped the dog and quick as flash cut off its tail. After roasting and eating the tail, and feeling some guilt and pity for his whimpering companion who stood shivering just outside of the firelight, he looked at the bones in his hand and held them out.
"Here dog" he called softly.

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

SIGNYM

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 7:13 PM

When we see historical pictures of the wealthy and powerful handing out a few coins- like Louis XVI Displays Charity in 1788 (LeFevre)-it's easier to recognize the irony of the situation: the King, whose palaces and expenses helped to ruin the country, "sharing" a few meager coins with a rare few lucky ones. It's harder to recognize the same irony in modern circumstances. oops- later

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

KHYRON

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 7:35 PM

Okay... so in feudal societies, every now and again kings gave money to the poor. Yep, that proves it, charity is evil.

Hate to say it, SignyM, but you seem to be doing what Geezer is always accused of doing by some members of the board, which is being slick, i.e. shifting the goal posts. Maybe we should just accept the definition of charity that Geezer gave, which is the commonly accepted one, and restart the discussion from there.

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

SIGNYM

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 7:48 PM

No I'm not. My point is different than what we call "giving to the poor". Can you figure out what it is?

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

KHYRON

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 8:14 PM

Your point seems to be that if rich people give to the poor it shows the hypocrisy of charity, since the rich exploited the poor in some way in the first place. I get this impression from your dog analogy, the king example and the following:

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Charity is what Gates or Soros or Buffett or the Waltons do after they rob everyone first.

If this isn't your point, maybe you should re-think your wording.

In the meantime, explain to me how Gates and co. robbed everyone. You mean there'd be less poverty would it not be for commercially successful people such as Gates?

After that, tell me what you call a middle class citizen giving money to a homeless person. Surely the middle class person didn't rob the homeless person in order to do so? What do you call Western societies giving money to NGOs to help bring food to Africa, or rebuild tsunami-hit countries? Your criticism of the word 'charity' seems to be very one-sided.

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

GEEZER

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 11:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
When we see historical pictures of the wealthy and powerful handing out a few coins- like Louis XVI Displays Charity in 1788 (LeFevre)-it's easier to recognize the irony of the situation: the King, whose palaces and expenses helped to ruin the country, "sharing" a few meager coins with a rare few lucky ones. It's harder to recognize the same irony in modern circumstances.

I see. You're talking about what I always understood to be "largesse", defined by my Webster's New Riverside as liberality in giving, esp. when attended by condescension

So how do you define giving attendant to a feeling or compassion or benevolence, as opposed to condescension?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SIGNYM

Thursday, March 29, 2007 12:21 AM

In the meantime, explain to me how Gates and co. robbed everyone. You mean there'd be less poverty would it not be for commercially successful people such as Gates? Yep, that's exactly what I mean. It may be easier to see how the Waltons screwed people by paying their staff shit and shifting production to China. But let's take a look at Bill Gates.

The Microsoft empire grew for several reasons, but NOT because they offered better software than their competitors but because they engaged in "uncompetitive practices": they told PC makers that they would cut their balls off if the PC makers ever loaded anything but Windows, they bought up competitive companies and killed them, and created onerous end-user-license-agreements (EULAs) backed by Clinton's DMCA. MS has pushed hard to make deals with governments, agencies, and universities by wining and dining key people. As a result, individuals pay hundreds of dollars for crappy software when they could get better software for free, and government agencies and universities pay on the order of tens of thousands of dollars that they would not need to expend. Because MS software is so bloated the purchasers wind up needing relatively expensive computers, because it's so inefficient it needs to be routinely "rebooted" because it can't clean up it's own memory. (Remember the failure of air traffic control outside of LA? Due to un-rebooted PC.) And finally, the software is so insecure that users need special "anti-viru$" software, when that software fails (as it routinely does) credit card companies, banks, consumers, agencies, and businesses have to go through the hassle of cancelling old cards and issuing new ones, wiping and reloading software etc. I personally have had my card cancelled twice because a third-party credit-card processor's MS database was touched by outside parties. And that's not even getting into network management and the future of Digital Rights Management (DRM).

By forming a monopoly by illegal means, everyone pays for the inefficiencies and cost of using using MS. It constitutes a theft of taxpayer dollars, if nothing else. Bill Gates didn't "produce" anything. What he did was shift the costs to others, and the benefits to himself.

---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

GEEZER

Thursday, March 29, 2007 1:14 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
By forming a monopoly by illegal means, everyone pays for the inefficiencies and cost of using using MS. It constitutes a theft of taxpayer dollars, if nothing else. Bill Gates didn't "produce" anything. What he did was shift the costs to others, and the benefits to himself.

Taking all this as a given for the sake of your argument, is it not possible that Mr. Gates, or the Waltons, or Mr. Buffet, or Mr. Soros actually provide the money they give to improve the lives of others from a sense of compassion, and not of...guilt? After all, what you consider fair business practices in the U.S. aren't tied to reducing HIV/AIDS in Africa, whereas billions in donations may have an effect.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

GEEZER

Thursday, March 29, 2007 1:14 AM

Damn. Double post again.

Andrew Carnegie was another Capitalist SignyM would probably hate. Lot's of folks wouldn't have had much exposure to history, literature, philosophy, art, etc. without the libraries he endowed all over the country. So is that a plus or a minus?

6IXSTRINGJACK

Thursday, March 29, 2007 2:53 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
....in our capitalistic system where the scarcest resource of all is a decent-paying job, one wonders... or at I least do... that in a world where so many people need houses, clean water, education, and medical care, and where the earth could use reforestation, recycling, clean energy and general remediation why do we have so many poor people? There is certainly no lack of work to be done.

Sorry I wasn't there to bite Signy.... finally got my well diserved 4 day weekend. I'm just starting to read what I missed while I was gone, but just had to post to say that this is probably one of the best questions I've ever read. Communism scares me, but Capitalism has shown itself to have plenty of faults itself. Perhaps either one would be just fine if you took humans out of the equation altogether....

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

6IXSTRINGJACK

Thursday, March 29, 2007 4:06 AM

Great post by you too Danny. That just about sums up my thoughts about sending money to an organization to ease your conscience.

Just want to say that Government has absolutely no place spending our money on social programs. I know how deeply ingrained the concept of the Government taking care of its citizens is in most of our heads, but that's not the way it was supposed to be. We need smaller, decentralized government and we need to be free to run our own lives and give and direct our own resources to causes we feel strongly about. Any statistics regarding what money governments gave as aid is all trivial bullshit to me. Any government giving money to other nations is just "borrowing" that money from the "Federal" Reserve with no intention of ever paying it back, while at the same time, increasing the debt burden of each and every citizen in its jurisdiction.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

SIGNYM

Thursday, March 29, 2007 4:46 AM

After all, what you consider fair business practices in the U.S. aren't tied to reducing HIV/AIDS in Africa, whereas billions in donations may have an effect. What? Repeat please? Lot's of folks wouldn't have had much exposure to history, literature, philosophy, art, etc. without the libraries he endowed all over the country. So is that a plus or a minus? Lots of folks wouldn't have been working in poverty conditions w/o the time or energy to access libraries if it hand't been for the robber barons. A minus in that respect.
---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.

GEEZER

Thursday, March 29, 2007 1:11 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
After all, what you consider fair business practices in the U.S. aren't tied to reducing HIV/AIDS in Africa, whereas billions in donations may have an effect. What? Repeat please?

In words of one syllable, then.

Though Bill Gates may have made his dough in what you think is a bad way, he might still give it to fight HIV/AIDS not from guilt, but just to help folk. Would a bunch of small guys give as much as one big one? I don't think so.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SIGNYM

Thursday, March 29, 2007 3:08 PM

If people were not so desperately poor, would anyone need to "fight HIV/AIDS" in such a big way?

And what about malaria? Clean water?

The problem with "big donors" is that they get to pick the issues and how to tackle them. If they were to go back to the root causes of poverty- and not just poverty's effects- they might find themselves staring back at them.

---------------------------------
Pity would be no more if we did not make men poor.

SIGNYM

Thursday, March 29, 2007 4:44 PM

AFA the "middle class"- the "middle class" - in fact most people- have NO idea how very rich the very rich are. The "middle class" may like to think that they're in control, and hence share some of the responsibility for what goes on. After all, nobody likes to feel powerless, and it's part of our national mythology that we're all the same and we all have equal options. But the middle class is not the group that decides to shift production from the USA to China to India to Vietnam, it is not the group that traps nations into onerous loans, or controls the media. The only power that the middle class has is to select from a group of candidates which has to some extent beeen pre-selected by money. So I think the middle class should get over itself and stop feeling guilty.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

GEEZER

Thursday, March 29, 2007 7:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
If people were not so desperately poor, would anyone need to "fight HIV/AIDS" in such a big way?

And what about malaria? Clean water?

...and continuing your little guessing game, I suppose that we are to assume, based on the rant in your prior post, that doing away with capitalism would somehow make people worldwide not poor. How would this occur, pray tell?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SIGNYM

Thursday, March 29, 2007 9:01 PM

More would have to occur than "doing away with capitalism". I suppose you want me to come up with an entire social/ economic structure to answer all of the world's problems?

HA!

Who do you think I am?

I suppose in one way I appreciate the backhanded respect (thanks Geezer ) but so far even the best thinkers have not yet figured out THAT problem! I do have some ideas, but I have to get back on my treadmill for the rest of today.

Later, dude.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

KHYRON

Thursday, March 29, 2007 9:16 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
More would have to occur than "doing away with capitalism".

Oh so then it's NOT capitalism that's the root of poverty... then what was that ranting against commercially successful people about?

I'm getting really confused by all the goalpost-shifting in this thread.

Dizzy Khyronisall

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

SIGNYM

Thursday, March 29, 2007 10:08 PM

There are several repeating themes in our history as a species, and one of them is the development of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of others. Capitalism is not the only economic system which has created poverty, and it is not the only economic system to justify itself on the basis of greater themes. Emperors, pharaohs, kings, high priests, and robber barons have all at one time or another justified their inordinate positions on the basis of representing the gods, keeping the natural order from collapsing, improving the human race, or leading to a brighter and better future for all. Capitalism just happens to be the one we're dealing with today.

I'm surprised I have to explain that.

There is a "however" to that part of human tendency. Several cultures which were quite advanced for their day apparently did not develop in that direction, including the cities around and including Mohenjo-Daro and the Minoan culture. (One might ask- if they were so good why didn't they survive? The answer is that they were apparently overtakne by natural disaster and/or ecological change.)

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

SIGNYM

Thursday, March 29, 2007 10:58 PM

I'm getting really confused by all the goalpost-shifting in this thread.
Dizzy Khyronisall

Heh. Maybe if you sought a wider perspective then little shifts wouldn't bother you so much. It's like trying to read in a car and then looking out the window. Take a deep breath and look at the horizon.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

SIGNYM

Thursday, March 29, 2007 11:55 PM

Speaking of crappy software, I just wanted to pound this nail into Bill Gates' feet of clay and mix a few metaphors while I'm at it.

In 2005...

The personal information of over 40 million people has been hacked... "data from roughly 200,000 accounts from MasterCard, Visa and other card issuers are known to have been stolen in the breach," although 40 million were vulnerable... Microsoft software may be to blame.

www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/cardsystems_exp.html

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, March 30, 2007 12:15 AM

There is no middle class. There is only the elite and many degrees of poverty and living on the edge.

According to my annual salary, I'm not too far above the poverty line, but I save every spare penny. (A skill I only acquired after I lost my job and everything I had) The truth is, because of this ability to save, I have more money banked than many so called "middle class" people who are drowing in debt because of the nice cars and their McMansions and all of the crap they spend on their kids. This is not wealth. This is worse than a poor family who cannot get credit that is struggling to survive from paycheck to paycheck.

Couple this with the fact that we'll give free healthcare to illegals and anyone who is paying little or nothing into the system, wheras if you're "middle class", you're expected to foot this bill yourself. During a 4 year nearly jobless stint, working mostly under the table when I could even find work, I thought I had testicular cancer at one point. Of course, being unemployed, I had been without health insurance for years. I waited a full month before seeing a doctor because I was already over $5,000.00 in debt with no way that I could even pay that off, given my current situation. When I couldn't handle thinking about the fact that this could kill me if I didn't get it checked out, I went to the doctor who sent me to the hospital to get labwork. In the end, it turned out only to be a cyst... A cyst that cost me nearly $1,000.00 that I didn't have to get checked out. I can't even imagine how I'd be paying this off still if I had to have an operation. The collections agency wasn't buying my financial situation, however, when they told me that their computer said I had access to over $35,000.00 in credit.

Yeah... did I mention that they give WAY too much credit to poor people too?

No guilt here. If you're feeling guilty about anything and/or you just feel in your heart that you need to help people, go and volunteer in your community. We've got a Federal Reserve who just prints up more money all the time. Ultimately, they are the decision makers when it comes to who gets aid and how much they get. Bill Gates couldn't even imagine the power they have.

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

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