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View Full Version : Your government at work-What are their priorities?



belgareth
11-22-2002, 11:16 AM
Below is excerpted from an article on the Associated Press today. It goes on to say that Bush is refusing to lead the way in getting it cleared up so these people can get paid. It\'s money we put in the system ourselves! It seems congress and the president were too busy taking away our rights to make sure people had money to eat.

1M to Lose Unemployment Benefits

By LEIGH STROPE
AP Labor Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jo-Anne Hurlston can\'t find a job after nearly six months of searching, even with her master\'s degree and experience in education, human resources and the hospitality industry.

She\'s one of nearly 1 million unemployed workers across the country who will start losing jobless benefits three days after Christmas because Congress failed to grant an extension before leaving for the year.

``All the money that\'s being spent on homeland security and we\'re left stranded,\'\' said Hurlston, 47, a single mother with a 12-year-old daughter. ``If they want more money for homeland security, we have to be able to work to pay taxes.\'\'

Congress passed a 13-week extension in federal benefits in March, on top of the maximum 26 weeks that laid-off workers typically can receive through states. But the extension benefits start expiring Dec. 28. Without congressional action, an estimated 820,000 people will lose benefits that day, with an additional 95,000 each week thereafter.

druid
11-22-2002, 08:44 PM
ahhhh...just when I think my opinion of our government has reached an all time low they do something like this to renew my faith. GOD BLESS AMERICA <extreme sacrarsm>

belgareth
11-23-2002, 07:27 AM
Our government? Are you part of some large corporation?

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 07:29 AM
lol

krtel
11-23-2002, 08:56 AM
Thats republicans for you, they care nothing of the people, but for large companies and the wealthy. Republicans start wars because this way companies that produce anything used in war (I will not mention any names, legal reasons.) make more money. Thats just one thing. Bush has earned my contempt, with the state of our economy, he\'s more concerned about nuking sudam rather than improving the economy.

-Krish

belgareth
11-23-2002, 09:06 AM
It isn\'t just Bush, although he is as guilty as the rest. It\'s the democrats as well as the republicans.

I challenge you to name one person in elected in either party who isn\'t in big businesses pocket.

CJ01
11-23-2002, 10:01 AM
I don´t know if this makes anyone feel any better but over here in Europe we have pretty much the same problems. Even in those countries with `left wing´governments. Only difference it that they´re not into going to war but they still cut benefits, increase taxes and blow the money after shooving it up their own lazy braindead butts. The results are the same. Sad ey.

franki
11-23-2002, 10:05 AM
Cutting benefits is not a bad thing when the expenses have raised to high heaven like here in Germany. /ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif

EXIT63
11-23-2002, 10:09 AM
...Thats republicans for you, they care nothing of the people, but for large companies and the wealthy. Republicans start wars because this way companies that produce anything used in war (I will not mention any names, legal reasons.) make more money. Thats just one thing. Bush has earned my contempt, with the state of our economy, he\'s more concerned about nuking sudam rather than improving the economy...


Painting with a rather broad brush...aren\'t you?

Why don\'t you give Saddam a nice big hug. <smooch=smooch>
Then I can laugh my ass off when he cuts your throat from ear to ear!

franki
11-23-2002, 10:13 AM
\"Even in those countries with `left wing´governments. Only difference it that they´re not into going to war but they still cut benefits, increase taxes and blow the money after shooving it up their own lazy braindead butts. The results are the same. Sad ey.\"

Sounds like you are talking about Germany (the only other \"left-wing\" governments I can think of are those in Great Britain and Sweden). Do you live here? /ubbthreads/images/icons/tongue.gif

Sorry that I am obsessing about where you live, just curious. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif

belgareth
11-23-2002, 10:18 AM
It is a bad thing when most of those people are out of work due to the ineptitude of the same government that just cut their benefits

franki
11-23-2002, 10:20 AM
I agree with you (for the first time). /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif

belgareth
11-23-2002, 10:21 AM
Thanks. Should I note it on my calender? /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif

CJ01
11-23-2002, 10:42 AM
franki so far you are the nosiest person on this board. You are obsessed aren´t you. And I´m not telling /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif hehe.

franki
11-23-2002, 10:45 AM
CJ
You don\'t have to tell me anymore, I know it already. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 11:10 AM
Good, then tell me, because I\'m obsessed too! (2nd nosiest person on the board, if Franki\'s first...)

krtel
11-23-2002, 11:17 AM
I am aware Sudam is a bad person and a threat, however, the point I am trying to make, is that Bush seems to be more caught up with going to war with Afghanistan (previously.) and Iraq while the people in our country are suffering from an economic crisis. Notice how all this happened when Bush came into office. During the Clinton years, sure there were some military action, however, our economy was awesome! If we go to war with Iraq, it will only hurt our economy even more.

- Krish

CJ01
11-23-2002, 11:23 AM
...and then you can tell me too. The UK is certainly better for income tax than others. Althought the talks of putting tax on orange juice several years ago were more that ridiculous. Oh and fags are so bloody expensive they can give you a cardiac before you´ve even lit one up. But on the bright side they let you drive on the `wrong´side of the road.

CJ01
11-23-2002, 11:25 AM
I am now on my third glass of wine... tell me when I sound too much of a nutter.

Elana
11-23-2002, 11:26 AM
CJ-You can down three bottles of wine and still make more sense then most of the people here. /ubbthreads/images/icons/tongue.gif j/k

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 11:30 AM
...so expensive they can give you cardiac before you\'ve even lit one up ...

roflmao

Party on, dudette!

belgareth
11-23-2002, 11:33 AM
Our economy was in the toilet before Bush came into office. The economy is a big ponderous mass. It can take years for any action to have an effect. One of the biggest, but not the only cause of the slump was the bubble created by the dot coms bursting. That occured under the Bill and Hillary regime. The intellegence failure that lead to 9-11 was as well.

For the rest, it\'s beyond my comprehension why the entire government is going off on this crazy war while the economy suffers, unless the government is using it to bolster the economy.

You keep mentioning war and the republicans; Kennedy got us into that awful fiasco in Vietnam and he was a democrat. He nearly got us into a nuclear war with his idiotic grandstanding! (Read the book: The Cuban Missle Crises) Nixon, a republican, got us out of Vietnam. The economy under Reagan was better than it had been since WWII and he was a republican. Under Carter, Inflation and interest rates hit an all time high. He was a democrat. Under Carter, mid-east terrorists were allowed to hold about 50 Americans hostage while he sat and apologized.

upsidedown
11-23-2002, 11:37 AM
>>I am aware Sudam is a bad person and a threat, however, the point I am trying to make, is that Bush seems to be more caught up with going to war with Afghanistan (previously.) and Iraq while the people in our country are suffering from an economic crisis. Notice how all this happened when Bush came into office. During the Clinton years, sure there were some military action, however, our economy was awesome! If we go to war with Iraq, it will only hurt our economy even more.

A lot of the reason the economy was awesome during the Clinton years was due to the overinflated value of Internet stock and all the super hype surrounding it. The great economy during that time was a bubble just waiting to burst. It actually burst during the last 8 or 9 months of the Clinton administration, and was already heading south when Bush took office.

CJ01
11-23-2002, 11:58 AM
The dot com problem was an international prob. But it was just bound to happen really.

Something else:
WHY is Bush gagging to be a wartime president so much? Does he think it´s a cool thing or what. ? :
I was rather relieved when Germany AND France voiced their opinions against military attacks back then. The guy must be SOOO pissed off because of that.

belgareth
11-23-2002, 12:02 PM
Agreed on the dot coms.

I think Bush has lost it! All he can think about is war and he\'s killing the country to do it. A good solid dose of a powerful anti-psycotic medication might help him.

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 12:02 PM
Because he\'s a puppet of the oil companies and businesses that would profit from war.

CJ01
11-23-2002, 12:05 PM
Has Bush not done anything positive for good old USA yet then? Have there not been any improvements of any kind - even the `little´ things. I´m very interested.

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 12:08 PM
The place is going to hell in a handbasket at warp speed. If you ask me.

belgareth
11-23-2002, 12:09 PM
Honestly, not that I know of. He\'s been so busy between the war, homeland security and helping other republicans get elected that he hasn\'t had the time to pay attention to unimportant things like the general welfare of the country as a whole. His actions are frankly scaring the crap out of me. It\'s almost like he is trying to pull all power away from the citizens and rule us under marshal law.

CJ01
11-23-2002, 12:12 PM
FTR , I was told of a journalists´ theory that this war is more about the United States´oil resources ( ie the energy recources) than anything else. Allegedly the US has another 10 years worth of recources left if they keep going the way they have been ´till now. Do you know if there´s any truth to this at all. Could it be?

He´s a puppet of the oil companies... I imagine that seing as he´s texan and he is or was in the oil business himself that those people donated a lot of pesetas for his election campain, so now he `ows´ them right.

upsidedown
11-23-2002, 12:18 PM
I think the thing driving him was a little thing called 9-11.

I think he probably realized just how vulnerable our country is, and he\'s obsessed with our security. It\'s easy to judge a person\'s motives from the comforts of our homes and simple lives. But, if you put yourself in his shoes, and imagine the weight of the world on your shoulders and the security of our citizens in the aftermath of 9-11, it might be a little easier to see where he\'s coming from.

If he didn\'t become obsessed with security, and another 9-11 happened, everybody would be all over him for not doing enough to prevent another tragedy.

So, he\'s kind of in a difficult position...and can never make everybody happy.

CJ01
11-23-2002, 12:22 PM
Maybe this war BS is intended to distract peoples attention from the fact that he´s got sod all of an idea what to do as a president? Like well I got here in a more than questionable manner, I´ll get a nice pension when I get kicked out again, but what do I do till then ... because I know f*** all about making a positive contribution.
`Ask not what I can do for my country, ask what they can to for me´ .

BTW that goes for most politicians around the world not just Bush. ´I just lost all possible respect when that [censored] happened on the days after the elections......aaaaaaaaaah!

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 03:22 PM
Bush benefits financially from the Iraq debacle in two ways:
1 He has interest in a texan oil comapany so if we get our hands on Iraqi oil he will personally benefit.
2 His family are majority shareholders (and have seats on the board) of the Carlisle group which includes the 3rd largest american defense contractor. So he benefits on that front regardless of the outcome.
I have read theories (of the conspiracy type) that the US may have had a hand in 9-11 to give our gov\'t a reason to wage war and institute marshall law. Why didn\'t air traffic control notice the planes were off course? After the first plane hit the WTC why weren\'t military jets scrambled when a second plane was (presumably) seen headed for the WTC as well? It seems a bit suspicious to me.

PHP 87
11-23-2002, 04:01 PM
Sorry, but that lady gets *zero* sympathy from me.

I worked in High-Tech and was laid - off 2x in 2000 (While Clinton was in office)

I didn\'t sit around watching Oprah while collecting UI

Instead, I started working in Construction.
I make half of what I used to and work twice as hard for it, but it beats sitting around whining with my hand out.

Being 42 years old and running a 90 lb. jackhammer in 90+ degree heat, digging trenches and such is no fun, but it beats the hell out of what the woman in the article is doing.


As for Bush concoting 9-11 for financial or political gain, you people need to grow up - your utter hatred of Bush has blinded you and made you devoid of using logic.

As for the accusations that a possible war with Iraq is just about Oil, where do some of you make that jump of logic?

Bush owns Oil stock, therefore the War is about Oil?

Please. I haven\'t seen or heard on person make a cogent argument to back up that claim, and blindly reciting inane chants overheard at Anti-War, Pro-Saddam rallies doesn\'t count.

If that were the case, we would make Kuwait the \"Fall Guy\"
They have far more Oil and would put up far less resistance.

Again, use some logic people.

There are Islamic fanatics who want to kill each and every one of us, what part of that don\'t some of you understand?

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 04:22 PM
Opinion Dude, we\'re discussing the possibilities and trying to figure out what\'s going on. I don\'t give a rat\'s ass for Bush one way or the other. Read www.disinformation.com and tell me what you come up with. Read some conspiracy theorists and some articles left of center and just consider the possibilities. Bush\'s ties to oil are not a secret;they can\'t be, they\'re too obvious to even try to hide. Our wish to control oil in that region, ditto. There is good evidence we were being used as tools via 9-11. Boom! and suddenly we\'re all waving the flag and ready to march ... into something ... about we know not what. Revenge for two high rises gone down. We\'ve been bombing in the middle east for ... how long? Why bomb foreign countries for acts of internal terrorism? If the purpose is national security, the emphasis should be internal defense, and on better intelligence, not bombing the crap out of people. That won\'t keep the INS from letting people in that shouldn\'t come, or intelligence from not recognizing what they\'re looking at, etc. etc. -- which is to say that it doesn\'t keep it from happening again. We can bomb Irag to the stone age and then back, but it won\'t keep us from terrorists who already live here, or keep our airspace any clearer of enemies if we don\'t know they are... You can\'t tell me Bush is not a puppet. But whatever the discussion, at least on my part, it\'s not personal. I just want to know what\'s going on. And I think we\'re being dicked around.Just one thing about the unemployment issue, although I do see where you\'re coming from. It\'s just that having worked in a mental institution for years, I got to see that there are people who are physically healthy and apparently, at least, reasonably sane, who are not competent to hold a job, and a lot of those people are on public assistance and need to be or they die of starvation and exposure. I don\'t like it, either; I wish they could fend for themselves. But some people truly cannot. And they\'re citizens, too. Will you let a fellow American die in the street? ... I\'m personally aquainted with someone who\'s been out of work since August and is in nearly complete despair. It\'s not for lack of wanting to work. In some areas, in some fields, there are no jobs. Suddenly. When we were all working fine just a few months back. How did this happen? Kismet, \'tis the will of Allah? I don\'t think so. I\'m not saying I know. I\'m saying I find it hard to believe. Money has been diverted. To what? To war? Then I\'m asking you, war? huh. what is it good for? ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN\'(say it again) WAR (good god, y\'all!) WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? absolutely nothin\' If brute violence worked, it just seems to me it would have worked already. I\'m not against brute violence. I\'m against stuff that doesn\'t work. It seems to me (could be dead wrong) that we\'ve driven those people to absolute and total despair, therefore recklessness and fury. We\'ve screwed with and meddled in and manipulated and punished and [censored] with and switched sides and played games with their lives and their economies to suit whatever our purpose was at the time and now we want to cry because they hate us. Today you\'re our friend, tomorrow, maybe not so much. Maybe tomorrow you should watch your back. People starving, sh*t all bombed up, thugs ruling the people, that\'s ok, you\'ll get over it. BOMB! have some more, we like it like that, \'cause we don\'t care. Oh, P.S. Guess what? In-house, if you\'re out of a job and you thought that was bad? It gets worse. 12/28 your benefits run out. Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! or ... not. You tell me what those people are supposed to do who don\'t have jobs, can\'t find work, and have no bankroll. Pull themselves up by their bootstraps? What about the people who don\'t even have boots? Hey, Belgareth - the economy was good under Reagan for certain sectors. Others of us were really feeling the \"Trickle Down Economics.\" I certainly felt trickled down on. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif

EXIT63
11-23-2002, 04:54 PM
Yeah...And I suppose we didn\'t land on the moon either!

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 05:09 PM
I\'m sorry, what? What was that, Exit?

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 05:38 PM
I\'m not saying that our government is full of sh*t, I\'m just saying that if you look at the facts, and do research beyond our corrupted mass-media, there appears to be some ulterior motives for this \"war on terror\".

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 05:47 PM
That is how it would appear.

PHP 87
11-23-2002, 05:48 PM
FTR, posting URL\'s to extremist, fringe web sites to bolster your argument creates the opposite effect.

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 05:53 PM
PHP - try this one instead. It links to more mainstream media sources.

http://www.propagandamatrix.com (\"http://www.propagandamatrix.com\")

PHP 87
11-23-2002, 06:02 PM
Didn\'t you just claim the mainstream media was corrupt?

That web site is even more fringe extremist than the one FTR posted.

Sorry people, but those types of sites really damages your credibility.

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 06:05 PM
It\'s not an extremist group. It\'s not the only thing I read, either, nor do I swear by and want you to swear by everything there. I just put the website as an example of a place to hear debate that is not mainstream. Democracy\'s based on a literate, thinking society. It\'s good to read things that your opposing party says, or that people outside the party system say. It\'s lazy to just say that\'s all crap without even investigating it first. Don\'t you think? I\'m not being unpatriotic or disloyal. I love my country. I don\'t lay any claim or care one way or another about my \"credibility.\" I\'m not selling anything except that it\'s good to look at several sides of an issue. It appears you\'re done looking and made up your mind. That\'s cool too.

PHP 87
11-23-2002, 06:17 PM
I form my opinions from a number of sources, liberal, conservative and everything in-between.

All of them credible, too.

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 06:21 PM
That\'s good, then. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif I\'m curious how you decide what sources are unassailably credible and which are pure crap? It seems fairly black and white in your mind. I wish I had your certainty; I envy you that.

PHP 87
11-23-2002, 06:26 PM
``All the money that\'s being spent on homeland security and we\'re left stranded,\'\' said Hurlston, 47, a single mother with a 12-year-old daughter. ``If they want more money for homeland security, we have to be able to work to pay taxes.\'\'

And just how much money has Congress apporpriated towards homeland defense?

And how much of that was taken away from UI benifits, which have already been extended 2x?

And does Ms. Hurlston realize that single-motherhood is one of the fastest ways to poverty?

Again, there are jobs out there.
They may not be in ones prefered field, but they do exist.

I see people come to this country not speaking a word of English and finding work, and going to night classes to learn the language as well.

Has Ms. Hurlston gone back to school during her work hiatus?
Is she willing to work 2 jobs in order to make ends meet?
Is she willing to work in a different field to make ends meet, or does she want an indefinite handout from taxpayers to subsidize her until she finds a job more to her liking?

PHP 87
11-23-2002, 06:27 PM
Sources that promote an agenda usually raise a red flag with me.

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 06:51 PM
PHP, doesn\'t every news source promote an agenda?

On the subject of Ms. HandOut - I completely agree, if she couldn\'t support children by herself, she should not have had them. I know that\'s draconian. But it\'s the reason, after working for Child Support Enforcement in my late teens and seeing first hand the poverty an unplanned pregnancy can throw a woman into, I had my tubes tied. HOWEVER. Once the mistake is made, what do we do? I\'m asking you seriously --I don\'t know. I\'ve seen women have child after child with no ability to provide support and I think it\'s heinous --but it\'s not the baby\'s fault. The baby\'s a citizen of this country. For our own good, it seems to me it needs good nutrition, a decent environment, a basic education. I think its parents should undertake to provide, but if they can\'t or they won\'t, should the child suffer? On the subject of working two jobs --where is the single mother supposed to park her kids while she works these two jobs? Childcare is very expensive. She\'d be working to pay childcare. Better to stay home and tend to the kids herself. At least they have the benefit of their mother being with them. What if she got pregnant and didn\'t have job skills before she was a mother? what if she doesn\'t have the money to go to school?


There are people, lots of them, in that situation. I don\'t know what to do about it but I hate to see them homeless and wandering the streets. There are a lot of homeless in DC. It\'s a problem that\'s in your face every day, even just a couple of blocks from the Whitehouse in a \"nice\" part of downtown where I work --the parks are filled with homeless.

Resources to house and care for the mentally ill were cut years ago and people were turned out who can\'t care for themselves. Just because they can walk and talk doesn\'t mean they can work.


I don\'t think it\'s so easy for some people. What do we do with those people? Disown them? No mercy for the weak?

PHP 87
11-23-2002, 06:54 PM
If taxpayers keep bailing out irresponsible behaviour, the behavior will continue.

**DONOTDELETE**
11-23-2002, 07:07 PM
Dude, you\'re colder than I am. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif

CJ01
11-24-2002, 10:01 AM
PHP what precisely do you mean by `irresponsible behaviour´?

And what you wrote in the other post ... that single motherhood is on of the fastest ways to poverty. - Do you really believe that women or men actually CHOOSE to be single parents? I think not. But sometimes they end up being one for many different reasons.

CJ01
11-24-2002, 10:11 AM
FTR I totally agree with you regarding people who have so many children without being able to support them. Deliberately too. totally braindead and irresponsible indeed but no it should never be blamed on the child itself.

I guess this is also where the issue of abortion comes in. Bush as I recall announcent that financial aid (or something along those lines) would be cut or so - to save money I presume. Well this means more childbirths - wanted or not- and the result will inevitably be that more government support is required in some way, right. And in the long run more money is gonna be needed by those people (realistically) than for a simple abortion. This makes no sense to me.
Of course by the time this happens Bush and his buddies will be long gone.

**DONOTDELETE**
11-24-2002, 10:26 AM
CJ, maybe you\'ve had similar thoughts - I didn\'t understand until I came in contact with some of these women and was immersed in the problem -- there is a population of women who just shrug when they get pregnant. It\'s their lot in life, what they\'re here to do, make babies. Oh, well, knocked up again. Sigh. Abortion would never occur to them, nor birth control. It\'s hard to believe, but it\'s true. And there is a population of men who brag about how many children they\'ve had by how many women, and they make no effort to support them or be fathers to them. It\'s just what happens. You have sex and she gets pregnant, huh. Ok, see ya \'round.

There is also the case of the woman who is in a relationship with a man and they\'re both poor and neither has any job skills or has substance abuse problems that keep them from being able to hold down a job for long, so money is a constant problem. She gets pregnant and they want the baby but can\'t afford him. In this case, for her to continue to receive food stamps, qualify for housing assistance, and get a little bit of money, he can\'t live with her. She claims she doesn\'t know who the baby\'s father is so that he can\'t have his wages garnished for support payments if he does work -- usually he will work under the table. And they lie about the fact that they live together to the child support enforcement officer. I don\'t know how many cases I read where the field worker goes on a visit and notices a man\'s shirt draped across the back of a chair, or a pipe lying out, or some similar evidence of a man in residence ... if the worker could get the man\'s name from the woman or from a neighbor, he would then be listed as the \"putative father\" and pressure would be brought to bear on him to support the child financially and get him off the state rolls, but usually to no avail.

It\'s a mess.

Watcher
11-24-2002, 05:08 PM
I think everyone has the urge to breed, have a look at any woman that hasnt had children, unfornatley its very hard to turn off that genetic urge and concrception isnt 100% effective.

The thing with government, it relies upon lobbying and special interests groups and often they have links to big business. And its always been that way - the rich and powerful have influence and despite unions etc the balance of power still exists with those that influence with the power of votes and the dollar.
So all we can do is to keep pressuring our local members to do something in our favour.

belgareth
11-25-2002, 05:45 AM
It\'s a nice debate about should and shouldn\'t. But in fact, you are all overlooking some important facts. There are literally millions of people out of work. You can cry about them needing to take a job, any job. That\'s an absurd evasion! There are only so many jobs available and far more people out of work. When these high paid technical types start taking 2 jobs to be able to make ends meet, they displace somebody else. What is the displaced person suppossed to do? What about the guy who was making $80k a year, can he take 4 $20k a year jobs? So what if that means he has to work 32 hours a day to do that, no problem.

What happens when the $80k a year guy starts making $50k per year? His house payment falls behind, his car gets repossessed and so on. Look at the ripple effect of that! It creates a glut on the market of foreclosed homes, fewer new homes purchased and banks raising interest rates to cover their losses.

The point here is that our government is so rabid about going to war that they have let the economy continue to go to pot. Telling somebody to take a substantially lower paying job is fine for one person, but not for a million. The gross effect on the national economy would be horrendous.

CJ01
11-25-2002, 01:18 PM
This negative effect which this war might end up having on the economy as a whole strikes me as strange too. After all Bush is or was the one who went on and on about how the countrys economy was more imprtant than anything else, right. It was such a priority that they said fuke the Kioto ( is tha the right spelling?) treaty, fuke the planet and so on. Well I´m pretty optimistic by nature but you can´t win or reason, let alone compromise with people who are so dogmatic and self-serving. And let´s face it most governments are. Sadly.

belgareth
11-25-2002, 01:33 PM
I felt very strongly that the Kyoto protocol was flawed and was glad to see it dumped. While tackling rich nations, it did nothing to address the emerging and third world nations\' pollution output. Net effect would have been little gain, if any.

About the rest, it\'s true and we, the world community, are the big losers.

PHP 87
12-14-2002, 01:43 PM
\" It goes on to say that Bush is refusing to lead the way in getting it cleared up so these people can get paid. It\'s money we put in the system ourselves! It seems congress and the president were too busy taking away our rights to make sure people had money to eat.\"

Looks like the Bush Bashers got it wrong again.

Bush calls for extension of jobless benefits

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2002-12-14-unemployment_x.htm (\"http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2002-12-14-unemployment_x.htm\")

BTW, can you reference any instances of anyone losing their rights?

Bruce
12-15-2002, 02:27 PM
What\'s that they say about \"religion and politics\"? If you\'re in the mood for a fist fight, start a conversation about either one. Something like that.

It\'s tempting from my position to just hit one button and delete the whole thread, but it started out peacefully enough. I didn\'t really notice the thread until it got hostile. Anyway, I deleted the flame war at the end and will shut the thread down but leave the rest up to read and see how that goes over. I gave the last word to PHP because volume-wise there is so much more on the left. I gave the right the last word.
Merry Christmas anyone?
Bruce