Zelron: We can fix it. Just pass a law that anyone caught lying while campaigning is automatically disqualified from office. I don't mean campaign promises (how are you going to hold anyone to that?) but the blatant lies about their pasts, their records, and their opponents.

Pesky thing that First Amendment...

doyner: Zelron: We can fix it. Just pass a law that anyone caught lying while campaigning is automatically disqualified from office. I don't mean campaign promises (how are you going to hold anyone to that?) but the blatant lies about their pasts, their records, and their opponents.

Pesky thing that First Amendment...

Hasnt stopped the Government before. Its not like the constitution is anything but an old piece of paper.

cman: doyner: Zelron: We can fix it. Just pass a law that anyone caught lying while campaigning is automatically disqualified from office. I don't mean campaign promises (how are you going to hold anyone to that?) but the blatant lies about their pasts, their records, and their opponents.

Pesky thing that First Amendment...

Hasnt stopped the Government before. Its not like the constitution is anything but an old piece of paper.

Not only that, but the Founders all said that the first amendment does not apply to slander and libel.

STRYPERSWINE: "Income equality" worked really well for the Soviets and East Germany.

To be fair they were one in the same.

Puppet and master.

sendtodave: LordJiro: Nobody's saying that there should be NO rich people. To say that the only options are 'Make a few people stupidly rich at the expense of everyone else' or 'nobody has more or less money than anybody' is a retardedly simplistic, black-and-white view.

So, yeah, a typical Republican viewpoint.

Sorry, your post looked like you had said that income inequality is bad.

You're saying it's a matter of degrees. Fair enough. How much should society give to the poor, then, to make things enough enough?

Is it enough if we give them refrigerators? Most poor people in the world don't have refrigerators... I think that's enough.

No? No good?

Your willful obstinacy is irrelevant. It's an inevitable fact that once the gulf between the extremely wealthy and the working poor becomes too much to bear, the political structure goes through a great upheaval. So you can just keep on keeping on with the direction things are headed and bring on the revolution. Congrats on that.

sendtodave: LordJiro: Nobody's saying that there should be NO rich people. To say that the only options are 'Make a few people stupidly rich at the expense of everyone else' or 'nobody has more or less money than anybody' is a retardedly simplistic, black-and-white view.

So, yeah, a typical Republican viewpoint.

Sorry, your post looked like you had said that income inequality is bad.

You're saying it's a matter of degrees. Fair enough. How much should society give to the poor, then, to make things enough enough?

Is it enough if we give them refrigerators? Most poor people in the world don't have refrigerators... I think that's enough.

No? No good?

A Christian nation or one where people consider themselves just by any sense of the word would say the question is not "What is enough?" but rather "What is too little?"

James 5

1Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. 2Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. 3Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. 4Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. 5Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.

/not a big christian but I dig the way the KJV sounds like Shakespeare
//and the idea of living in a nation which is just

sendtodave: Cuchulane: It's an inevitable fact that once the gulf between the extremely wealthy and the working poor becomes too much to bear, the political structure goes through a great upheaval.

Sounds entertaining.

Really, I'm just wondering how to quantify "too much to bear." You'd be surprised at what people are willing to bear if they have to. But let's take it a step further.

Who's to say that, in the event it does reach this tipping point, the revolutionaries will win? Have you seen our military? Hell, even our local police are militarized.

And, even if they do, who's to say that things will change for the better? There have been many, many revolutions... How'd they work out for the common man?

Who says that it will be an armed uprising of some type? More often, it's a sweeping change of national political viewpoint. Like the national viewpoint that led to almost wholesale deregulating of the financial industry, which is almost certain to be entering the blow back phase with large scale national support swinging the pendulum back towards oversight.

As far as the history of revolutions, certainly a mixed bag, but certainly many for the betterment of a society as well as the detriment. Or are you thinking, we would still be better off under a British monarch? The French under Louis the XXXV? India still under the Raj? Maybe we should wholesale move the world back to the colonial setting of the 17th century?

If you think it's a good thing that the average ratio of CEO salary to worker salary is 325 to 1, and that 1% of the population has seen it's wealth increase 375%and it's taxation drop 37% while most of the Americans entering poverty are actually employed workers, then enjoy it while you can, because there will inevitably be a reckoning and you can biatch about it then.

sendtodave: Cuchulane: Like the national viewpoint that led to almost wholesale deregulating of the financial industry, which is almost certain to be entering the blow back phase with large scale national support swinging the pendulum back towards oversight.

Well, that didn't happen overnight either, but yeah, I got ya.

As far as the history of revolutions, certainly a mixed bag, but certainly many for the betterment of a society as well as the detriment. Or are you thinking, we would still be better off under a British monarch? The French under Louis the XXXV? India still under the Raj?

Would our slaves had been better off? Or, the average back-mountain dirt farmer? Seems about the same to me. Sure, the rich landowners made out like bandits, as tensions slowly stewed, culminating in Civil War.

The French got the Reign of Terror and Napoleon for their troubles.

As far as India goes, the partitioning after Independence was declared led to terrible riots and massacres.

I guess the point is that, sure, sometimes the status quo sucks, but social upheaval can suck more.

If you think it's a good thing that the average ratio of CEO salary to worker salary is 325 to 1, and that 1% of the population has seen it's wealth increase 375%and it's taxation drop 37% while most of the Americans entering poverty are actually employed workers, then enjoy it while you can, because there will inevitably be a reckoning and you can biatch about it then.

I don't think it's a good thing. But I don't think it's a thing worth fighting (and losing) for.

To me, that's the most frustrating thing. The super wealthy could easily have their cake and eat it as long as they want if they were just wise enough to realize that allowing a modicum of social balance and actively encouraging even a minimalist effort to maintain a sense of well being for the general populace is in their best interest. Yet those who's existence is governed only by pure greed and acquisition seem inevitably self destructive. Credit card companies that seem hell bent on driving their customers to bankruptcy, mortgage lenders who seem fanatically driven to pushing customers into foreclosure, Wall Street financiers unable to see the downside of a nation headed towards poverty. It's some type of inexplicable insanity.

goodwynn: Republicans have ruined the USA, and Springsteen is pure corporate bs. Hey Bruce, lets talk about ticket prices for your next tour...

Thats odd, considering the Republicans sort of want America to be what it was 50 years ago. The process of social change which brought us things like addictive poverty and the entitled mentality of spoiled brat government babies is the work of the progressive forces in society.

Springsteen seems to be crying out for an America where you are entitled to everything you need but nothing more than that.

I wonder what he would say if he ever actually sat down with a calculator and figured out how much money the progressives have spent keeping poor Americans poor so they can be manipulated at every election.

Just a few numbers for you:

Annual federal and state budgets for all social spending inc public education, Social Sec, Housing, TANF, SNAP, SSID, Medicare and Medicaid, Medicare prescription drugs, etc......

Over 3 Trillion dollars a year.

Divide that by the number of Americans living below the poverty line (depending on how you determine that) and you get about $30,000 each per year.

Thats right, a poor family of 4 has $120,000 spent in their name by the various social programs in America.

But somehow they dont get that much benefit.....what they actually get is the right to live in an economic situation that Democrats describe as Crushing Poverty.

Personally I dont benefit from any social spending programs, not even public education, and I support my family on less than that. We live reasonable comfortably.

So how has progressive-ism screwed up so badly that they can spend 3 trillion dollars per year keeping 100 million people miserable?

That cant be a mistake can it? Could it possibly be intentional?

What reason could progressives have for wanting 100 million people in America to live in poverty? I mean if it werent for the huge poverty bureaucracy that the democratic party has set up to manage and spend all that money we could just direct deposit $30k a year into every poor persons bank account right? Why arent we doing that?

Because then the democrats wouldn't control them.

Straight up. Its all about control.

Mavent: STRYPERSWINE: "Income equality" worked really well for the Soviets and East Germany.

I love the way retards like you have never learned the entire "correlation doesn't equal causation" thing. Of the ten countries with the highest standards of living in the world, 8 of them are Socialist. America is #16.

Pick one and move there, i dare you.

Evilsmurf: Heron: To be fair, he's always made protest music. "Born in the USA" is one of the most god-damn depressing songs you'll ever hear if you pay attention to the lyrics (which I guess makes it a pretty sarcastic song given how upbeat the tune is), and it's entirely about how the hell-scape wrought by Reagan and his ilk of owner-friendly politicians.

If you want a god-damn depressing song about the hellscape wrought by Reagan without any of the sarcasm of "Born in the USA" I recommend The River.

/Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?

Im looking on a map, cant find the Reagan hellscape.

/Fondly remembers the 80's

archichris: Im looking on a map, cant find the Reagan hellscape.

/Fondly remembers the 80's


I guess if everything was good for you then that's what the '80s were all about. Some other folks though, they remember a different story and maybe that's what the '80s were all about for them. I don't expect you to understand, but I'll tell you a little story I remember.

I remember a cold January morning when I got off my night shift job as an unarmed security guard on the Milwaukee lakeshore. I'd seen the promised land in the form of a help wanted ad in that morning's paper. The guard work was only 3 nights a week and minimum wage at that. Enough to rent a third floor unheated apt and eat a few times a week though most days I lived on literally scraps.

No this job was going to change everything. Six days a week for four hours every morning. What made this job so special was that it was morning mop up at an all night porn parlor. No one would want this job. I was sure it was mine as I walked hands in pockets the three and a half miles to apply.

Then I turned the corner and there in the early morning light I saw what was probably 50 men lined up outside the door. The ones in front filling out applications. The ones behind waiting their turn.

That was Reagan's shining city on the hill. 50 men lined up in the freezing dawn hoping they would be the one picked to be the part time jizz mopper.