Bye bye Kerry? Hello John Edwards!!

So what's wrong with electing a President with balls?

 

Does anyone else smell a little Rovian magic in the air?

 

Ask Hillary

 

This won't hurt Kerry at all. It makes him look more like Clinton. And all liberals loved Clinton, his charm, and his straight forward honest way of addressing issues.

 

Kerry's infidelity pales in comparison with some of the other skeleton's in his closet.

Kerry makes klinkton look like a saint.

 

Silly us, expecting a President to be, well Presidential. You know, being engaged, decisive, and extremely hard working. Still, if you prefer royalty befit a lawnchair throne, well that is your choice come election day. Meanwhile, we have a country to get back on track.

 

Hmm... turns out this was just another one of Matt Drudge's wet dreams!

 

LOL! Not only are his romantic slumbers frequent, but often amazingly timed.

 

No one's accused President Bush of doing nothing about the economy. We'd be much better off if he had done nothing. He's the only presdent since Hoover to loose jobs during his term. Does the economy seem better to you over the last 6 months? I've got a good job, so the economy never felt bad to me, personally. I've got several friends that have been out of work the last several years. Actually, they're not "unemployed", they've been working temp jobs and whatever they can find to keep body and soul together. For them, the economy sucks.

The GDP had been up because those of us with jobs have been working harder for less money. The economy is great if you're a corporation or CEO. For the rest of us, it's more work or now work. And hte administraton thinks it's a good thing to ship jobs overseas. (Manufacturing jobs are about see a huge increase soon, when the President classifies fast food workers as manufacturing jobs. If you can't create more jobs, change the definition.) I guess taking responsibility for your actions only applies to "other people".

And, yes, I've read UN resolution 1441. It was passed on President Bush's assertion that we had "irrefutable evidence" that Iraq had reconstituted it's chemical and biological weapons programs, that they were producing large quantities of checmical and biological weapons, that they had an advanced nuclear weapons program, and that that Iraq was mere weeks from building a nuclear bomb. We have yet to prove any of these allegations, or to show any of the "irrefutable evidence" that we have of these programs. Of course Hussen was a horrible dictator, and murdered a huge number of people. He was a horrible dictator and was murdering a huge number of people when he was a "good guy" and we were selling him chemical and biological weapons. There's also no shortage of murdering dictators. Why was it suddenly so imperitive that this one be removed from power, and the other completely ignored? Or are we invading Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, Sudan, North Korea, Viet Nam, and China soon?

This isn't a liberal/conservative split. It's about U.S. credibility in the world. We've abandoned most of our treaties and allienated most of our allies. We need a president that can "be a uniter, not a divider", and work to build allianses and coalitions. The United States accounts for about 40% of workwide military spending. With the Bush administration in power, that's all that protecting us. Lets elect a president (for a change) that will bring us back to being a leader in the world community, rather than telling the world how things are going to be, and allowing them to be with us or against us.

 

It is very interesting that I keep hearing about how we have lost manufacturing jobs. I would think that liberals and tree huggers would love to hear about those loses as it equates to less pollution in America. It is cost prohibitive to create manufacturing plants and have a minimal impact on the enviroment. The red tape alone in California stopped new power plants from being built, and since we are in a global economy now, where I work has found that it doesn't matter where the product is produced as it has to be shipped to the destination anyway. History will teach you that we are transitioning to a service and engineering job market and that we must adapt.

I had an economics professor in college say that the effects of a president's fiscal policies are not truly felt until near the end of their 4 year term. I think that it is interesting to look back at history and see how it works out. Could be that Bush truly did inherit the poor economy from the Clinton's, with the collaps of Enron and MCI which all went astray during Clinton's watch, but then again it could also be from the 9-11. It's not 20/20 on this one. I can say that I am proud of his handling of it, and believe that the reason we haven't been hit by another attach is due to him.

Creditability isn't important in the world. A big stick is important. History is the guiding light on this fact, and no amount of good will, money, or intervention will change peoples minds. China doesn't have a good standing in the world, but it doens't hurt them. They back up what they say, and do what they want. I think we should call in all of our loans to other countries, and get out of the International Community. If they are so much better than us, then obviously they don't need us. We have enough problems at home to deal with. Put the National Guard on the border, and get rid of this ridiculous open border stuff.

That ought to be enough to get me flamed for a couple of days. My work here is done. :mrgreen:
Atoyot

 

Globalization, as presently constituted, means that goods, capital, and the people who own them, can travel freely from one nation to another, while workers are more or less confined to their country of origin. (A few are let in, when cheap labor is needed.)

This gives a great advantage to big corporations and the wealthy in all countries, and puts workers in all countries at a great disadvantage. The result is the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, just like always.

There are several arguments in favor of this arrangement, but what it comes down to is a tool that management uses in its eternal fight against labor. And the effect is lower and lower real wages.

And neither party is going to change it. Edwards gives lip service to Labor, but won't make significant changes. Kucinich talks pretty good, but his own party will see to it that he never gets on the ballot, and even if he got elected he'd never get his own party to support any of his plans.

Tweedledum or Tweedledee, those are your choices.

 

I'm all for that!

 

Our loans to other countries??? Ha, ha ha!!! If other countries stopped buying our treasury bills we'd be bankrupt over night!

 

There's no doubt things would need to change, and it would take time. But, I strongly believe we are a self-sustaining country.

I think it's time to take care of US!

 

We are so dependent on the rest of the world it's pathetic! Without Mexican agricultural workers, none of our crops would get harvested. Without foreign oil we'd have to start conserving energy. Without (cheap!) foreign raw materials our industries would collapse. The third world subsidizes us to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year, if not trillions, in the disparity between the artificially-depressed prices we pay them for raw materials and the (inflated!) prices we charge them for finished goods. And if it were not for the Japanese we'd have had to wait a hundred years longer for anything like the Prius.

 

That's just it! We are not dependent on other countries; we just think we are.

We can harvest our own crops AND create jobs in the process. Contrary to popular belief, we do not need foreign oil; we produce our own. We're just greedy and want ALL of it! We can also manufacture our own materials AND create more jobs in the process (see a trend here).

OK, you're right about one thing -- we would never have produced the Prius.

 

In order to harvest our own crops we'd have to pay a living wage to get people to take the jobs. That would drive up the price of food. So we'd have to pay everybody a living wage so they could afford to eat. That would cut into corprorate profits. And I'm sure you don't imagine that our politicians would allow that to happen.

There's also the matter of the national debt. Americans refuse to pay taxes to pay for the services they demand and the wars they are brainwashed into supporting. So the federal government finances itself by going into debt. This takes the form of Treasury notes. And while Americans buy some of those notes, mostly they are bought by foreigners. For 50 years the dollar has been relatively stable, and the treasury has been solid, so investors, both foreign and domestic trust it. But especially the super-rich in politically-unstable countries see U.S. Treasury notes as a safe hedge against the instability of their own economies.

In the short run this is good for us. But over the long term it has made us entirely dependent on foreigners for the cash we need to run our entire country. The bubble grows because a crash would hurt the people who hold our debt as much as it would hurt us, maybe more. But it is a bubble. And bubbles have a way of bursting.

Of course, we could get out from under, simply by paying off our debt. But the Shrub has plunged us so deeply into debt with his jingoistic and imperialistic wars for oil, and giving away the entire surplus to the super-rich (including his cronies and the corporations who own him) that it's not going to be easy.

And now the European Union has created a monetary system solid enough to present an alternative to the dollar for foreigners looking for a safe place to put their money. And while the dollar has a longer record, the euro is going to look better and better the more U.S. politicians continue to be financially irresponsible.

I don't think it's either possible or advisable for us to become independent of the rest of the world. I think we need to recognize that we are part of the world. And rather than acting like a mad dog, biting everyone around us and grabbing every morsel we can get our hands on, we need to start acting like a responsible global citizen, treating others with respect, and sharing the resources with our fellow global citizens.

Not that Kerry or Edwards is going to be any better than the Shrub. They are not total morons, but they are owned by the same corporations and serve the same basic interests. And no, I don't see any answers. I'm just glad that, for the time being, I've got a roof over my head, food on the table, a pretty decent bank balance (while the bubble lasts) and a fun car to drive.