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Libya Situation (pg. 36)
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| The17sss |
| lol... you crack me up man. |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by The17sss
...fund the elections of politicians who will let them continue the cycle of destruction. |
My ASS!!
Fcuking hell, dude. Corporations practically own U.S., state, city, and local government. The shades of a democracy are succumbing to those of a corporate plutocracy. I've been ed, here in MI, more times than I can count and more times than I ever have, before, because of Republican sponsored legislation, in the form of deregulation, which has affected every area from banking to labor. And I still don't have the trickle down.
And honestly, while Democrats are operating from a playbook inspired by Strawberry Shortcake, Republicans are a case study in the perversion of intellectual integrity. |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by EddieZilker
My ASS!!
Fcuking hell, dude. Corporations practically own U.S., state, city, and local government. The shades of a democracy are succumbing to those of a corporate plutocracy. I've been ed, here in MI, more times than I can count and more times than I ever have, before, because of Republican sponsored legislation, in the form of deregulation, which has affected every area from banking to labor. And I still don't have the trickle down.
And honestly, while Democrats are operating from a playbook inspired by Strawberry Shortcake, Republicans are a case study in the perversion of intellectual integrity. |
Yeah, you make good points (as always). Let’s not pretend the institution of business is in any way less damaging than that of unions. |
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| Zharen |
| quote: | Originally posted by EddieZilker
My ASS!!
Fcuking hell, dude. Corporations practically own U.S., state, city, and local government. The shades of a democracy are succumbing to those of a corporate plutocracy. I've been ed, here in MI, more times than I can count and more times than I ever have, before, because of Republican sponsored legislation, in the form of deregulation, which has affected every area from banking to labor. And I still don't have the trickle down.
And honestly, while Democrats are operating from a playbook inspired by Strawberry Shortcake, Republicans are a case study in the perversion of intellectual integrity. |
You're from MI? What do you think of this?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap...ac954b8c90c5716
| quote: | Gov. Rick Snyder on Monday made Michigan the first state in the country to lower the number of weeks jobless workers can get state benefits, a trend other cash-strapped states may follow as a way to avoid taxing businesses more for unemployment benefits.
Snyder said he signed the bill reducing state benefits from 26 to 20 weeks because it will allow people out of a job now to get up to 20 more weeks of help from a federal program for those who used up their state and most of their regular federal unemployment benefits. The change will allow them to extend unemployment benefits to 99 weeks.
Those last 20 weeks of federal benefits would have expired for 35,000 Michigan residents in early April and for 150,000 residents by the end of 2011 if Snyder hadn't signed the bill by Friday.
"Cutting them off so abruptly would have jeopardized the well-being of those who are trying hard to find work," Snyder said in a release after signing the bill in private.
But critics, including Michigan's entire Democratic congressional delegation, said the Republican governor should have vetoed the bill rather than sign cuts in state jobless benefits into law. Nearly every state has offered at least 26 weeks of benefits for the past half-century, and Michigan's unemployment rate has been one of the nation's highest for the past five years.
"Gov. Snyder's decision to sign this reckless measure cutting the lifeline for Michigan's unemployed will reverberate for years in Michigan," U.S. Rep. Sander Levin of Royal Oak said in a release. "Republicans hijacked a simple technical change to extend 100 percent federally funded benefits this year and gave Michigan the dubious distinction of becoming the only state in the union with 20 weeks of state unemployment insurance."
A letter urging Snyder to veto the bill was signed by Michigan's two U.S. senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, as well as Democratic Reps. Hansen Clarke, John Conyers, John Dingell, Dale Kildee, Gary Peters and Sander Levin.
"Michigan would be the only state to have 20 weeks of state unemployment insurance and the first state to reduce benefits during a period of high unemployment. These are two distinctions we do not want for our state," they wrote in the letter. They noted that Michigan's action could cause federal benefits to be reduced by an additional 16 weeks in Michigan, possibly costing jobless workers 22 weeks of state and federal benefits.
Michigan added 71,000 jobs between February 2010 and last month, the first sustained job gain the state has seen in the past decade, and its unemployment rate has taken the biggest tumble of any state in the country over the past year, from 13.5 percent to 10.4 percent.
Still, finding a job isn't easy. Michigan last year ranked third-highest nationally in the percentage of unemployed workers who had been looking for a job for a year or more — 36 percent out of 590,000 workers, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
State Democratic lawmakers supported the extension of the federal benefits but voted against the overall plan because of the other changes to the state jobless benefits system.
Republicans who hold majorities in the House and Senate pushed the bills through last week, saying the plan makes sense given the poor financial shape of the state's unemployment insurance system. Michigan has had to ask for $3.9 billion in federal loans to cover the cost of unemployment benefits over the past two years.
Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled Florida House passed a bill that would cut the time that an unemployed worker could receive state benefits from 26 weeks to 20 weeks. Some Florida lawmakers have targeted state benefits cuts as a way to reduce an increase in unemployment taxes paid by businesses that otherwise would automatically go into effect as a result of Florida's continuing high unemployment rate. |
I think it sends a bad message to your constituents that the state is unwilling to give you guys the full amount of UI weeks just because they want to slash across the board, and let the feds deal with it. But perhaps I'm missing something here. |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Zharen
You're from MI? What do you think of this?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap...ac954b8c90c5716
I think it sends a bad message to your constituents that the state is unwilling to give you guys the full amount of UI weeks just because they want to slash across the board, and let the feds deal with it. But perhaps I'm missing something here. |
He's also signed into law what's being called a financial emergency marshal law act which would allow appointed financial managers to take over a city's governance and terminate union contracts.
http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region...ancial-managers
The termination of unemployment benefits is icing on the cake to a state still reeling from the last Republican governor and bad business practices of companies like GM. Snyder's immediate democratic predecessor didn't have a lot of success versus a largely Republican legislature and, to be sure, a lot of the measures that Democrats were able to enact, such as anti-smoking legislation in bars and restaurants, were of nominal benefit if not entirely counter-productive. |
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| EddieZilker |
My girlfriend told me a story about how Wisconsin fire-fighters closed their accounts at a bank which funded Walker, which basically forced it to close, early, the day they did it.
http://www.alternet.org/newsandview..._funded_walker/
I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more fly-in-the-ointment types of action, in the future, as well. Personally, I've had it with this bull. Everything I've been seeing or reading about Republicans reeks of predation, in one form or another. |
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| Zharen |
Republicans = 
We could use more blue states in 2012. |
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| DJ RANN |
Oh man, sorry to hear it Eddie.
MI gets so royally pounded by corporation, and then they you even more when the economy tanks.
The only part of industry that does well there is defense contract manufacturing and military aerospace engineering, which is so weighted towards making very small numbers of people perversely wealthy it's probably not worth having in your state, especially with the corporate lobbying and control that goes with it.
I'm quietly confident about there being more blue states, come the next election. The shift from the last election to republican has not helped those states that did so, and unlike the situation with Bush, where he just over rode everything, they can't blame Obama for keeping them down or not letting him work with them.
on the contrary, Obama has been too keep to try to partner and help the other side, when what he really needed to do ram it up their manginas, whether they liked it not, and make them say thanks afterwards.
I think we're going to see the usual swing states, swing back to blue, and the usual blue seats, that were lost in 2010, go back to blue.
The more the republicans pull, the more ing bat and desperate they look.
Did you hear Santorum stating today that social security problems could be solved if there were tighter controls and less access to abortions, so we could have more population in the USA and could pay more people to look after the retired. I mean seriously, WTF.
I've heard of going for the old vote but me, that's a new level bull right there.
The great thing is however, is that the republicans are doing all the work for the dems to hand them a tasty election win. I can't give much credit to the dems as they're been such pussies recently, but with enemies like that you really don't have a need for friends. |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Zharen
We could use more blue states in 2012. |
I've pretty much concluded, at this point, that if you were to personify today's Republican Party platform you'd wind up with an amalgamation of Jim Jones and Charles Manson. Republican spin imparted to events in the news along with ancillary punditry is practically psychopathic, as are the policies they've been able to enact. With absolutely no empathy, for instance, companies like Monsanto are allowed to bleed farmers dry while maximizing profits for itself. It seems to be that way for a lot of industry fields from banking to investing to energy. Corporations have been given a green light to victimize the consumer and there is little to no relief for that.
Democrats suffer from malignant optimism for believing that Republicans want a reasoned and fair exchange. When Democrats have demonstrated some awareness of Republican mob-styled plays, they still up into their game, such as with the NPR executive who made a fool of himself in front of none other than James O'Keefe. I can't tell if the Democrats are traumatized and hyper-vigilant or simply naturally incompetent when it comes to putting up a fight but when you do like fire Juan Williams for being honest about his feelings (he wasn't making hate speech), you're pretty much guilty of enacting a thought reform campaign of your own.
Until the Democrats can pull their head out of their ass and figure out that Republicans are pretty much gaming them and are not interested in mutually beneficial compromise beyond what is necessary to achieve a lop-sided result, along with dropping the Political Correctness on steroids, which pulls like firing a black woman for speech excerpted from its favorably anecdotal context, America is ed. |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
Oh man, sorry to hear it Eddie.
MI gets so royally pounded by corporation, and then they you even more when the economy tanks.
The only part of industry that does well there is defense contract manufacturing and military aerospace engineering, which is so weighted towards making very small numbers of people perversely wealthy it's probably not worth having in your state, especially with the corporate lobbying and control that goes with it.
I'm quietly confident about there being more blue states, come the next election. The shift from the last election to republican has not helped those states that did so, and unlike the situation with Bush, where he just over rode everything, they can't blame Obama for keeping them down or not letting him work with them.
on the contrary, Obama has been too keep to try to partner and help the other side, when what he really needed to do ram it up their manginas, whether they liked it not, and make them say thanks afterwards.
I think we're going to see the usual swing states, swing back to blue, and the usual blue seats, that were lost in 2010, go back to blue.
The more the republicans pull, the more ing bat and desperate they look.
Did you hear Santorum stating today that social security problems could be solved if there were tighter controls and less access to abortions, so we could have more population in the USA and could pay more people to look after the retired. I mean seriously, WTF.
I've heard of going for the old vote but me, that's a new level bull right there.
The great thing is however, is that the republicans are doing all the work for the dems to hand them a tasty election win. I can't give much credit to the dems as they're been such pussies recently, but with enemies like that you really don't have a need for friends. |
I've got a response for this but I'm going to start a new thread, since I feel like going on a ing tear on I can't ing stand about the U.S.A.
To bring it back on-topic:
The U.S. has started bringing A-10's and AC-130's into the fight, now that they've reduced Libyan air-superiority to all but high-velocity blood spatter carbonized to the interior of an SA-9 Gaskin's husk. |
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| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by EddieZilker
I've pretty much concluded, at this point, that if you were to personify today's Republican Party platform you'd wind up with an amalgamation of Jim Jones and Charles Manson. Republican spin imparted to events in the news along with ancillary punditry is practically psychopathic, as are the policies they've been able to enact. With absolutely no empathy, for instance, companies like Monsanto are allowed to bleed farmers dry while maximizing profits for itself. It seems to be that way for a lot of industry fields from banking to investing to energy. Corporations have been given a green light to victimize the consumer and there is little to no relief for that.
Democrats suffer from malignant optimism for believing that Republicans want a reasoned and fair exchange. When Democrats have demonstrated some awareness of Republican mob-styled plays, they still up into their game, such as with the NPR executive who made a fool of himself in front of none other than James O'Keefe. I can't tell if the Democrats are traumatized and hyper-vigilant or simply naturally incompetent when it comes to putting up a fight but when you do like fire Juan Williams for being honest about his feelings (he wasn't making hate speech), you're pretty much guilty of enacting a thought reform campaign of your own.
Until the Democrats can pull their head out of their ass and figure out that Republicans are pretty much gaming them and are not interested in mutually beneficial compromise beyond what is necessary to achieve a lop-sided result, along with dropping the Political Correctness on steroids, which pulls like firing a black woman for speech excerpted from its favorably anecdotal context, America is ed. |
You know, I'm beginning to think the naivety and optimism of the Democrats goes with the territory; that the beliefs and values of being a liberal and democrat are at worst, an open season hunting invite for predatory politics and at best simply not compatible with with another group of people who just want to you to make personal gains, not move things forward for the general population.
I wish some hardcore Dems would come forward and seize the party. It hink they book a no bull and you too stance on their policies, the republicans would want to work with them rather than just taking them for whatever they can.
Back on topic myself - I saw reports today that Gadaffi duck pwnd the rebels when they tried to take his home town and they had to make a panicked retreat? |
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