HEY BRAD...Have you been watching the hearings on the IRS? Any thoughts about that. Gotta tell you...this government of ours is truly incredible. BOTH SIDES. But right now? This is a disgrace. The IRS says they did not know about lost emails and that they needed to update their computers. TELL THEM THAT WHEN THEY AUDIT YOU. Its coming..I really believe its coming in this country..a backlash against BOTH parties. I may not be alive to see it but its coming.
I think we have an ongoing generational civil war in our government between three factions: the people who want patronage at any cost (both parties participate in this faction), the people who want responsible government (mostly Democrats with a few long-tenured Republicans also) and the people who want to burn the whole place down and damn the consequences (many newer Republicans.) Obviously it's an unstable situation and it will blow up one of these elections soon.
How are your local roads going to get funded in two years time? Have you ever looked at how exactly your county/state/town funds them at this point? I'd do that pretty quickly before you are driving on potholes with a little road mixed in. What about your local water supply if you're on a distributed system and not well water? Who actually checks the water supply to make sure it's not poisoning you somehow? Who regulates your local water shed such that a tanning works is not giving the local kids leukemia by spilling chemicals into the water supply? How does your local electricity get generated? Are you in the 40% of the country that is covered by a federally-subsidized electrical distribution system or do you live in the 55% that gets other federal monies without which the cost of electricity would go up dramatically, particularly in the peak months during the summer? Electrical utility trucks and the people who drive them use federally funded roads and drink federally mandated clean water on a regular basis. Which of your local banks would the first to go belly up in a recession without the Fed's open window policy in hard times? Banks don't lend to other banks without knowing that the Fed is always there in the event that a crash looms. Banks don't lend much to small businesses either in that situation. Most big banks were company banks prior to 1900. They were there just to make sure a big company could do business without hitches. Before the federal government started printing currency they made and valued their own currency as well. If you were a small supplier you could take the bank/companies currency or not and frequently that currency was a lot less valuable in the next town/state/region over. Who would lose their life savings to a locked door that never opened again if the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was put out of business? Long lines in front of banks were a common sight before the FDIC guaranteed your savings against theft, fraud and other misappropriation. How do the big supermarkets in your area finance their purchases? What lets them manage a 20% spoilage rate and still come out on top even when they have a particularly bad run of luck or a local natural disaster? Before the advent of big government more than half the people in the country produced most of their own food on their own land. How do you plan to get back to that? 40 acres and a mule for every American family? The system couldn't even make that promise work when people wanted the 40 acres and the mule. How is it going to work out when they don't want that, they want a supermarket instead? Lets not even get started on the mortgages that almost nobody could afford in the absence of big banks, easy credit and a mobile economy that produces much higher wages per capita than anything the old small government model ever managed to do. It's easy to see how smaller more efficient government would be better as long as it didn't take anything you depended on away. The problem is that it will eventually take EVERYTHING that you depend on away. Go find a good small government that has a large population with a high standard of living. If you can do that then we can model our government on that government. However when you do it don't forget to factor in the cost of Empire. The odds are excellent that your small paradise has 2 guys with a rifle and a motor scooter as their defense forces nationwide.
yea the democrats are sofa king responsible IRS targeting Benghazi holder pergury 1 & 2 fast & furious VA Obamacare "we have to pass the bill to see what's in it" immigration Bergendahl what a joke. responsible my ass. i cannot believe people actually believe that. they're all criminals on both sides of the aisle with few exceptions. what would be responsible is to follow the constitution that is the law of this country and to stop the unending reckless spending that our government has become all too familiar with. We need hard and short term limits on all government positions. that way they'd have to act as if the choices they make will actually impact them as normal citizens when they are no longer in office.
25 violations of the law by obama and his responsible administration https://www.committeeforjustice.org/content/25-violations-law-president-obama-and-his-administration
Im sorry I ignored the rest of your post..its the reason I don't get into political discussions. Lets just say this..your blind. You mention a bunch of things that the government is involved with while anyone could post the trillions of dollars of waste. Come one Brad..Don't waste time with long winded posts filled with .000001 % of the budget. Its like me coming on here and saying the Iraq war was 100 percent correct because there were weapons of mass destruction....Sadaam used them on his own people. I then stick my tongue out..yell haha...and hit send..and walk away. It would be the same thing. Come on with that post. Justify big government by that post? Its like reading the first few pages of the bible and saying oh...im healed[/quote]
and one more thing brad...are you saying that entire post was to defend not balancing the budget? Was that your point. My answer to that would be this..tough shit then..don't fix the roads. Find a damn way to get all the bullshit out of the budget...make it work. Make some tough decisions and don't post how my savings account would not be protected or my bank might close their doors. That's a typical scare tactic by the party you protect. What a bunch of bullshit. Holy crap...I cant believe that post. I truly cant believe in this day and age that both parties cant look in the mirror and admit that this country is in REAL fucking trouble.
The sad part is that 80% of Americans do not even understand the bolded examples. Of the remaining 20%, most feel its just party against party crap. A serious case..for anyone following it but a serious case could be made that the IRS targeting threat has many MANY Watergate comparisons to it..MANY. Now how high does it go? Let the people find out. They cant though because the person that needs to order a special prosecutor is an Obama appointee. I mean..you cant make this stuff up. The IRS went after groups that were against the president. So...let the left be quiet about that...and lets wait for the other party to get control..and all the posters...man..I can remember the posters that would come on this site..of all different ages..who would claim their fear of the Republicans was that they would lose all of their privacy protections. AGAIN..LET ME REPEAT...the Lefts big concern was they would lose their privacy when a Republican was in office. AGAIN...I REPEAT...young democrats feared they would be monitored by the big bad Republicans. I REPEAT.... EDIT: I wrote younger posters and corrected that..it was actually older posters too...that would be an insult to young posters here and that was not accurate.
Please. Four - count them - four people lost their lives in Benghazi (not to minimize the loss of life). Yet in the fiasco that was the Iraq war, 4500 American lives were lost, 10s of thousands were injured, 100,000 vets are suffering from mental illness, upwards of 250,000+ were Iraqis killed, and trillions of dollars were spent. If Benghazi is not a trumped up partisan issue, then I have not seen one in my lifetime.
The hypocrisy of John Chaney and the Republicans responsible for the Iraq mess is mind boggling. Here is a quote from John Chaney in 1994 "Once you got to Iraq and took it over, and took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim, fought over for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire." Yet, less than ten years later, he and his fellow neocons had no problem lying to the American people, Congress, and the world to get us into a trumped up needless war. Now, 10 years after that, when his prediction from 20 years ago is coming true in spades, he has the gall to blame the Obama Administration? Unbelievable. The issue with the current situation is not gas prices or oil supply or the role of government. It is the threat to the region and to the US and the world that this mess of a needless war created by Bush and his neocons has continued to create and the lack of any real viable options we have to deal with it. It makes Saddam Hussein's Iraq seem tranquil.
So, as a Republican..if you read back..I totally admit sending our troops into a region that has no desire for true freedom was a waste. Did you get that part? With that said, how does that compare to a government that told us those 4 people....AN AMBASSADOR....were killed because of a video put on youtube by a schlep. I mean...that's the problem. Nobody..nobody in this administration will be held accountable because of the Iraq war..please..tell us when its even steven. My take is that our economy is still because of Bush/Cheney too. Come on guys...let your guard down and don't be so blind..in fact..I know you guys are not blind. Its the definition of hypocrisy. The IRAQ war was horrible. Stupid. Now lets look in the mirror today to an administration that is a total embarrassment.
And if you want to quote JWWS.....don't forget to add in the part when BIDEN declared the Iraq war won..he stood at his podium and declared that things under the Obama/Biden time in office...that Iraq was now going great. What happened since he declared that? Of course..that doesn't count either.
If anyone wants to talk about both parties and the problems we are facing because of both parties...go for it..but this blind hypocrisy of the both sides is a waste of time. Please..Don't waste everyones time. and jwws..you know Im a huge fan...and this wasn't totally directed at you. Its just that this country is in trouble IMO and man....if the level headed people that can see both sides but don't use it..don't start to use it? There is a feeling there is no way out. You have brad telling me that big government and our spending is better off...I mean...the debt scares nobody? BUT THE WARS!! THE WARS! cause the debt. Come one..stop it..I know that...but has anyone checked out whats coming across the border? Everyone is ok with paying for all of that? That's a starter.
Yep, the Us v. Them political handjobbery by supporters of one party against the other is funny, and pathetic. Unless you want to talk about the government as a whole, instead of just assigning blame to one side, you're part of the fucking problem, guys.
ITS OUT OF CONTROL abyz. I had a twilight zone experience today...are you guys ready to chew on this one? Rarely do it..but was watching the senate hearings about the IRS and there are the democrats blowing the IRS and the Republicans going after the IRS. HUH? Fuck the parties...everyone here is ok with the IRS targeting any group because of their beliefs? Stop and think about that a second...screw the tea party people for a second (although their main complaint is government spending..those crazy nutjobs) but screw them for a second. THE IRS IS TARGETING ANYONE? And the real liberal democrats on the panel are defending them? Now..while that in a normal time is hysterical...it describes our times of ..FUCK THE COUNTRY...its better to look right. That..is....scary stuff.
jaywayne I agree with everything you are expressing. I am a lifelong democrat and throughout my adult life I have been very politically tuned in and enthusiastic. The results of recent years have changed me. I am very apathetic and cynical now - the type of people I used to hate. But I'm not going to defend things like the IRS targeting certain groups of people, the NSA spying on everyone, trading 5 terrorists for one guy who quit on his country, etc... I just can't defend it. And I would find myself to be quite hypocritical if I found myself fighting battles that I completely disagree with just to defend the bonehead decisions that leaders from my political party make....
Your problem is that you still identify yourself with a political party, as if it were a sports team that you can't separate yourself from. For years, I had it drummed into me that Republican was the way, support the party. It's a ruse. It's lower level brainwashing by your life situation. The fact is that if you can find a way to get out of that mindset, you see the government as it is, a system designed for lack of responsibility because every four to eight years, the "power" is handed over to the opposite party and the other team gets to point the fingers at a side that was pointing fingers previously. It's an endless cycle designed to keep people from pointing fingers at their government as a whole. Endlessly flawed, by design. Break that cycle, understand that a party is in it for them, not for the people that supposedly put them in lower.
And "by design" means that our most holiest of holies, our sacred constitution, was and is, in reality a poorly drafted piece of law laden with compromise and inconsistency that simply does not by any coherent analysis stand the test of time.
