NBVegita

I don't defend Bush often, but you can't blame what our economy has become solely on him. First with the .com bubble burst, thousands of people lost jobs, retirement plans and generally took a ridiculous hit financially. We've had some of the biggest financial scams (Enron and the companies that followed) in the history of the world, which tore a giant hole in our economy. Then came along unsecured mortgages with flexible rates with interest only payments. Credit card companies have been giving people with horrible credit cards with steep monthly/yearly fees and high interest rates. And if they can't pay the $300 dollar max balance they have, in the next 6 months by the time the company is done hitting them with fees they owe $800-$1000 for a card that was only worth $300. We can try to blame the government, but the real culprits over the last decade have been ourselves. Not that the government is blameless, but they hold no more fault than we do.

You think we have bad teeth? Just go to the UK. That's not a joke, I'm serious. As for your tax, so currently I pay an 8% tax on goods and services. If I say spend an average of $10000 a year on taxable items, including food, paying an additional 6% means I pay an additional $600 a year just in sales tax. I pay just over that for full medical, dental, vision and life insurance a year. The average middle class american already grosses ~70% of their actual income. Which means excluding sales tax we're already taxed ~30% of our income. Now take the money you've already paid taxes on, and tax it another 14%? I'm sorry but isn't 30-40% of the working families income already too much money to be taking away? As for preexisting conditions, that is one of the bad parts of our health care, but that only is in effect if you've had discontinuous health care. Bak the problem is that if you're on all of those government aids, your not going to be able to jump into the work force making $10-$15/hour. Well its possible if you want to do manual labor or the like, but the majority of the people are either unable to do that type of labor or too lazy. Now to start working you've gotta take an $8 an hour job, meaning your quality of life is greatly diminished. As for caring for where you live, I grew up in a really poor neighborhood. Most, and I don't say all, residents had !@#$%^&*ty run down houses, and instead of taking care of the houses they would make sure they had new cars, the newest clothes, big chains, ect. Most of the families were less concerned with their house and more concerned about their rims. And as for the housing market, if you have decent credit now is the time to buy. Unless you're in a large metropolitan area, where the prices will always be high, you can find a very reasonable house. Or even get a foreclosed house. In Syracuse, most of the houses in the city go for between $60,000-$100,000 and out of the city $,000-$250,000(high end). So instead of buying that pimped out escalade, buy a house in the city, but you get more props for driving that pimped out SUV than you do for having a decent looking house.

No matter how you construe the words it still amounts to socialized health care. Even Clinton mounts the big differences between Obama's plan and hers is that hers makes it MANDATORY for all citizens to have health care, Baracks doesn't. And you can say "oh well you can keep your current health care" If I am a low to low-middle income family, and I'm either going to have to pay $100-$300 a month to cover my family of four, or let the government pay for it, what do you think is going to happen? Even if I make a good amount of money, I have to pay for health care twice now? Once for my family, and once for someone else's? Her plan would make it so that not only do I pay for my own health care, but in addition to paying for welfare, food stamps, low income housing, ect, I now also have to pay for their health care too? How is it not socialism that the government taxes me, for which I have no control over, and then turns around and supports every aspect of a decent amount of american people's lives. !@#$%^&* now if you're poor the government: Gives you a place to live. Gives you food stamps. Gives you money for clothes and spending. Gives you free health care. Awards you more money the more children you have. !@#$%^&* where's the incentive to work? When I moved out at 18, I was a retail manager, full time, with benefits, and minus the health care I would have had a better life if I had lived off the government. Thats a funny statement being a guy I used to work with had Achalasia, which only 1/200,000 in the entire world get. He had Cobra insurance, which is one of the worst insurance companies in America and they covered over 95% of the fees, and to boot, they paid for him to go to Cleveland to see the #1 American specialist about it. No one's health care system is perfect.

How is hillary's plan not socialized health care? The government must pay for all people to have health care. How else do you describe that?

socilized health care = !@#$%^&*ty health care for all

"As a waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to "girl," trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire to with rent at $675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaning woman and a nursing home !@#$%^&*istant, she must first fill out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as "Some people work better when they're a little bit high." In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test." That whole paragraph is bull !@#$%^&*. How is "Some people work better when they're a little bit high" a trick question? It's a legitimate question to determine if someone has worked under the influence before, or would consider doing so in the future. The reason why they ask these questions is because at some point one or more of their employees did such a thing. I'm sorry that if as a waitress being called "girl" offends her, she's lucky thats all she's called. "In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test."" lol? I've managed retail before and the biggest things, in any area of retail you need to look for are sloth and theft. Humiliation of a urine test? Are you serious? Since when is a urine test humiliating? !@#$%^&* every company I've worked for required it for all employees before being hired. Should I be offended. And even making 6-7 an hour, if you do it full time puts you over the poverty line. Everywhere you go there are either !@#$%^&*isted housing which you could get at that wage, or !@#$%^&* just get an efficiency, a one room place all inlcuded for between 250-350 a month ( depending on area). No its not glamorous, but its better than a box. This kid proves what I've been arguing for a while. I wasn't quite homeless, but I was living in a little tiny place that was falling apart when I was 18 and nearly had to move into a shelter, and had to work 2 jobs full time just to barely get by all while trying to get a college degree. But with determination you can do it. Are you saying that to be homeless means you're not intelligent? Also how does coming from a back ground where you're financially "well off" help you when you have nothing but $25 dollars to your name and a duffle bag with a few clothes? I'll tell you intelligence doesn't help you much to become a laborer, or to get hired at a moving company.

I won't split the topic as long as the posts don't become singularly about that, as if you are arguing about it in support of one candidate or another that would still be on topic.

My fiance and I don't really celebrate valentines day. The way we look at it is that we don't need a special day to show each other how much we love each other, as we do it everyday. But I still got her a dozen roses and tickets to a show she really wanted to see. I told her if she ever questions how much I love her just look at the rocks on her !@#$%^&* left hand!

Haha, yes over half of our department is contracted. Fortunately for me I'm the "team lead" basically a manager without the !@#$%^&*le for a minimum of the next year ( a probation period) because no matter how much outsourcing we do, they don't want to outsource management. In addition with our new merger we've got a new director who doesn't like outsourcing, and it's nearly impossible to be fired from my company. It's a company that unless you kill someone or sleep with your secretary under the desk (and get caught) you're in until you want to leave. So for now Veg = safe...or as safe as you can be in the IT industry.

Actually I'm fully aware of what a reccession means, but I personally am not scared. I have no debt, besides one minor credit card. All of my college loans are paid off, both my fiance and I have our cars paid off, we have a large nest egg we're sitting on, and quite frankly don't spend a lot of money on most "consumer products" as we have everything we need, and a good amount of things we want. I'm not worried about my 401k as if we have a reccession as soon as we rebound so will my 401k. Actually we're in such solid financial shape that we're strongly considering buying a house because with the fed cutting interest rates and the market the way it is, we'd be almost stupid not to. Call it selfish, but being in a middle class bracket, with a secure economic future, no debt, well budgeted money and a nice nest egg, the thought of a recession doesn't scare me.

I am a Senior Information Systems analyst working for Nationalgrid.

Actually a lot economists are claiming we are already in a recession. And the fact is that a recession doesn't happen over night, if we are "looming" on a recession, then you would already be experiencing some of the economical influences of said recession. The economy isn't going to be fine today and when you wake up tomorrow a recession. I will restate: If we are looming on a recession, being a middle class citizen I am yet to feel any repercussions of this impending recession, which would lead me to believe that we are not as close to a recession as is aforementioned.

lol Sounds about right. They're not trying to solve the housing crisis by giving everyone 600-1200 dollars, they're trying to help balance out this "housing crisis" by lowering federal interest rates. And such a crisis is directly caused by the rapid influx of banks approving interest only non-fixed interest rate housing loans with no collateral. In the past decade its gotten to the point that someone with no money down, with a credit score under 500 can get a very high priced mortgage, which of course will default. Then the banks foreclose, resell the house for the balance of the foreclosure, which being you've been paying nothing but interest and have not paid any principle on your house, can be sold for the full market value to the next poor sap waiting to foreclose. The sheer concept of an interest only non-fixed rate mortgage is mortifying, but the longing to own a house, and the instant gratification it causes has turned our society into naive consumers. Yes you can blame the government and the banks for it, but ultimately we're the ones accepting the terms and conditions. I agree with Sever and Ail on this that any recession people are claiming is not really hurting the general public. Being in the middle class I've not felt any repercussions of this so called recession.

!@#$%^&* I work in an office 8-12 hours a day, m-f and I'm just about as far from PC as there is. You just need to know the few people you have to be "polite" around, and otherwise you can have a lot of fun with it

What the accusations are is that the patriots were video taping the defensive and offensive signals in real time, and then matching them up simultaneously with the game film so that they can predict audibles, defensive formations, blitz packages, ect. What has surfaced against the pats about the rams superbowl is that they video taped their red zone defence, and had alarming good success at stopping it. In fact they would have stopped the rams, except for a holding call on 4th down that brought them to the 3, and then they ran a play not pracitced in at that facility. I don't know the validity, or if this is just coincidental, but this information is allegedly coming from someone who was with the patriots organization at that time. I've been a giants fan since I could walk, and although the superbowl in 90 was nice, I still had a real bad taste in my mouth from those ravens. With that said...GO GIANTS!!!

Version, If you and the rest of the people involved manage to maintain a steady population conclusive to a solid league, I will coordinate leagues for the 17th again. The key words are "steady" and "solid". -Veg

Simply not arguing his point does not mean I agree with his argument. This is the first time I've been on since work, and most times I only have limited time to respond. I even had to put my last post together in chunks. And to be perfectly honest I've only briefly read over his posts so I really haven't even analyzed his arguments lol And I don't know why I'm posting every sentence on a separate line, I will stop doing that in my next post.

Actually the fact that Arar is a dual syrian/canadian citizen, they officially can deport him to any country in which he is a citizen. Simply because his home was not there does not mean he was not a citizen. The first Geneva Convention was in...1869? ish. As for Khadr, he did throw a grenade and kill a U.S. soldier. His father was considered, even by the canadian government to be highest ranking al qaeda Canadian national. As for being a canadian citizen, yes he was born there, but spent a mere 3 years of his life in canada. So I do agree that he is a canadia citizen, but only under technicalities. (in the above situation Arar actually lived in syria for 17 years of his life.) All of the Khadr boys have been through military training. He has admitted (supposedly) of committing acts that would down right condemn a full grown man. His torture is alleged. As for being unclear if he was forced, he was in a military compound that was heavly !@#$%^&*ualted by air strike and one of the only survivors. If he merely had not thrown the grenade, after being discovered as one of the only survivors mind you, chances are he'd be back in Canada right now. I mean put 2 and 2 together. To be honest I could care less if they kill him today. One less terrorist in the world is better for me. I wonder if you would think the same way if it was your father whom he killed with that grenade.

That type R civic looks disgusting. Its an egg with wheels. The only moderately appealing aspect of the car are its tail lights and rims.

You're right, not everyone is as motivated as me. And you're right, motivation doesn't matter when you're rich. But to become rich someone in your family either got really lucky, or had a lot of motivation. Vice versa if you're poor someone in your family either was very unlucky, or made very bad decisions/was unmotivated. Being born into a rich family is a very lucky break because life is much easier for you. !@#$%^&* you could drop out of school at 16 and still live a nice cushy life, unless your family drops you as a free loader. Unfortunately simply because you were born into a poor family is a poor excuse for staying poor the rest of your life. Is it fair that someone with money, with the same motivation as someone without money can stay wealthy, and the other stays poor? No, but that is life. You can always try to point fingers at everyone and anyone but yourself, but ultimately the only person who controls if you're going to stay poor or not is you. And ironically these kids are motivated to do athletics, which also have considerably less money in "poor" schools. They'll dedicate themselves to sports regardless of how many times they're told they will never make it. More irony is that it is much harder to be a great athlete than it is to be a great student. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/internati...the.oranges.cnn !@#$%^&* take a page from her book.

If living in a !@#$%^&*hole with no money, no food, and fighting to get by is not motivation enough to try to make something of your life, how the !@#$%^&* do you plan to motivate these people? Yes. It's not the governments, or the publics job to take care of you simply because you've made bad choices. No matter how you cut the cake, you're telling these people that it is ok to make bad choices because those of us who make good choices will take care of you. And it would just be 1 girl, it would be hundreds of thousands of people.

A post of mine from another topic: Also most retail and food service companies are known for having more affordable benefits than most companies. When I was a manager in retail I had full medical, dental, vision and life for under $25 a month.

It must be coming from the all knowing LOSA lol Its them glorifying their lives to young ones. You sell millions of albums talking about how you had to cheat kill and steal to make it through life, and kids start imitating that. !@#$%^&* have you ever seen the movie Alpha Dog? Based off a true story where a bunch of rich suburban kids decided they wanted to play "gangsta". Do you know where most of the hip hop trends started? Wearing clothes 4 sizes too big: Families didn't have enough money to buy clothes for all the kids, so the young kids would have to wear the hand me downs from the older kids that were often much too big. No Belt/shoe laces: In jail you're not allowed to have a belt or shoe laces (depending on the security of the jail) Sagging pants: You didn't have a belt in jail to hold up your pants so they would sometimes sag some/ they were your brothers and too big for you. You can keep going, most of the trends weren't done to be "cool" or because they thought it was tight to dress that way, it was done out of necessity.

"Two years ago a guns amnesty was hailed a success by the government after more than 17,000 firearms and 450,000 rounds of ammunition were handed in to police stations across the country. There have also been recent high-profile operations to crack down on guns in inner cities." Whats the point in posting an article if no one reads it? Yes I would, and I'm sorry by posting those numbers and already posting that we have 4.96 times the UK population that you couldn't see that we still have approx 130 more metropolitan cities even if you multiplied theirs. As for China they also have a very strict death penalty and other similar things which help discourage crime. !@#$%^&* they even have mobile execution chambers. If you're caught stealing, they still take part of you off. !@#$%^&* I vote we start doing this in America. So you can use your statistic not considering any other factors, but I can't use mine not considering any other factors? Give me a break, you can't take one statistic and attempt to compare one law effecting the entire population.

What you don't understand, which I've stated twice, is higher population = higher crime rate. The more metropolitan areas, the more minorities, the more poor people ect. = higher crime rate. Example in the US at a very minimum, most metropolitan areas have at least double the crime rate of suburban areas. US: 280 metropolitan areas UK: 36. I don't think you guy get that a per 100k means they took an arbitrary number like (examples) 20,000 gun deaths, with a population of 1000000 and simply divided the population by gun deaths. That gives you your per 100,000 rate, which has no consideration for any other factors than sheer deaths, which doesn't prove anything concerning the effectiveness of their gun laws. In fact in that article I posted: "However, gun crime figures released last October showed a 3% rise to 10,590 incidents in England and Wales in the year to June — an average of 29 a day. Gun crime has more than doubled since Labour came to power in 1997." I will reiterate for the third or forth time: