Tuesday: The fraud (eg Madoff) and other practices that banks (thanks to the relaxation of bank rules globally) take part in could not take place back 200 years ago.

For one.. they didn't have the computers to hide the accounts or to do the long distance banking we now see... socially, it was a different time.

Jim Dandy: As mentioned in the video, our UK government is increasing VAT to 20% from 17.5% to help reduce our governments overspending during the Labour years.
People won't like paying extra, but the alternative is worse. Obama inherited years of increasing national debt from Bush and somehow that debt has to be paid off.

If that means everyone pays a little more, then so be it. It's an investment into the long term security of the USA's economic structure. Something that is needed and any rational government has to do.

We in the EU have seen in the news how certain governments of EU member states have nearly gone bankrupt through the current economic situation. I'd hate to see the USA being put in a similar situation. Riots could follow.

Artful Dodger: Even IF you are right.. 20 million down from 40 million means 20 million USA citizens will have health care who didn't before... Also that means 20 million people in the USA will be paying for care.

The founders of the USA (who Palin does not know the names of) were not of an age that would recognise the current banking system.

Artful Dodger: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WzC9ND5G0Ps/SKiiWSNknfI/AAAAAAAAAvw/hgdR4rQif3s/s400/grandpa.jpg

http://taxfoundation.org/

For example, if Congress fails to act to extend the Bush tax cuts, the federal income tax burden for a married couple filing jointly making $80,000 with two children would be $2,137 higher in 2011 than if all the tax cuts were extended.

odd that you make that claim when the following is being considered right now by the Dems:

Congress currently is debating how to extend the Bush-era tax cuts. President Barack Obama and most Democrats favor extending them for the middle class, defined as families making less than $250,000; Republicans and some centrist Democrats favor extending them for all. But given the divisions in Congress, it’s not inconceivable that lawmakers won’t be able to reach agreement and the tax cuts will lapse on Dec. 31.

Jim Dandy: Well if they let them expire, we'll see how the lying democrats spin it. I trust my information sources (it's not fox news) and frankly I don't trust the link you provided. They are the liars.

Artful Dodger: http://crooksandliars.com/media/play/wmv/17695/

Democrats are liars. Don't believe them about the tax cuts.

By John D. McKinnon

Expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts would take a sizable bite out of middle-income families’ disposable incomes, according to a soon-to-be-released study by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.

The study examines the effects in each state and congressional district for the middle 20% of taxpayers. (The study excludes single taxpayers, which makes the savings appear somewhat bigger, because the Bush-era tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were more favorable to families, particularly those with children.)

Jim Dandy: that's not true.

Artful Dodger: The Bush tax cuts, when they expire, will only effect the top 3%

Yes, that is exactly what I have been refering to.The Republicans are the ones misleading everyone that it will effect anyone other than the top 3%

Jim Dandy: If you're referring to the Bush tax cuts, if they are allowed to expire they will affect everyone.

Artful Dodger: small business make up the top 3%?

Ferris Bueller: that's true, but that's not enough to reject the message.

Artful Dodger:   Its always worth considering the source.

Jim Dandy: Nonsense. Taxing small businesses stunts growth. Every economics student knows this basic fact.

Artful Dodger: voodoo economics, even Reagan's former staff members rebuff that claim, amongst many others.

As I said, 97% will not be effected by the cuts, but Republicans are tripping over themselves trying to save the rich from a tax hike, while thumbing their fingers at those who have expiring benefits.

Jim Dandy: Why should people who are still unemployed continue to get benefits? Their benefits ran out. The government isn't supposed to be in the business of giving people money. We don't have an empty pot. Many people just won't get off their butts and take a job because "it doesn't pay enough." nonsense.

And the tax cuts, if lifted, will trickle down and everyone will be affected. It WILL affect small businesses. It will affect the creation of jobs. It's nonsense to think that picking on the rich is somehow a noble thing to do. Democratic party is run by morons.

Artful Dodger: How about those Republicans misrepresenting the lifting of the tax cuts? They are wrongly depicting them being lifted for anyone other than the top 3 %

and they also blocked unemployment insurence benefits.If there was ever any confusion of who the Republicans are looking out for, all doubt has passed.They are looking out for the top percentage of earners, but couldn't care less about the unemployed.

It's a sham that the Democrats are the party of the everyday people. They USE people, buy votes, and keep people in poverty so that they can stay in power. And there is BIG money backing the Democrats. They try to pretend that they don't have big business behind them but that is a lie. They do. They don't care about the people, they care about POWER and CONTROL.

Ferris Bueller: That's a fallacious argument. You don't address the points, you just attack a few of the supporters. That tells me you have either a very weak argument or none at all.

Artful Dodger:   More scare tactics from an obscure right wing blog.  Support statements from Ed Meese and Phylis Schaffly.  Give me a break, Dan.

The Aristocrat Party
Clarice Feldman
Even the generally clueless Boston Globe is catching on. Our "people's party" is headed by rich aristocrats with lavish, ostentatious tastes:
Democrat John Kerry sets sail in a $7 million yacht built in New Zealan d. Republican Scott Brown hits the campaign trail in a GMC pickup truck with 200,000 miles on it.
From Newport, R.I., - where Kerry's "Isabel'' was berthed before heading to Nantucket - to Rhinebeck, N.Y. - where Chelsea Clinton will marry in a mansion modeled after Versailles - today's Democrats are looking more like Louis XVI than Tip O'Neill.
Kick in the First Family's vacation plans for Martha's Vineyard, and there's a real air of Marie Antoinette & Co. retreating to idyllic gardens, while Fox News whips up revolutionary flames. The ethics charges against Representative Charles Rangel of New York are added foie gras.

You can blame Obama in part for the media silence.  He's anti Israel.

>

Near-Massacre in Israel From Gaza Rocket Fire -- and the Media Yawn

Late Saturday, July 31, an upgraded Qassam rocket from Gaza scored a direct hit on the ceiling of a children's hydrotherapy rehabilitation center.

rod03801: Right on. The majority of Americans were/are against the health care bill. There's not going to be enough money to pay for it. There are fewer health care items in the bill than there is PORK. And even so, in ten years there will still be 20 MILLION people WITHOUT any health care.

As for banking, the Founders of the US warned against the very thing that Obama has done with banking.

As for Iraq, Obama is just trying to score political points. He's all talk, no substance.

rod03801: People have been saying the world is going to end for thousands of years.

.. It's an industry.

Tuesday: I just hope that Bush's invasion of Iraq is the last 'cold war'-ish type crap we have to have our soldiers die in.

Tuesday: Of course, if the Mayans are right, it won't matter.

Tuesday: To think.. if advice was followed regarding regime change in Iraq.. Saddam would have been left to die of old age.

But the thirst for oil was tooo strong... gotta protect the flow.

Sounds a bit Dune-ish

Tuesday: Yeah, hopefully we will be able to recover from his horrible year and a half in office. Let's see what more damage he can do by 2012.

The intelligence on Iraq's weapons threat was not "very substantial", former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott has said.

He told the Iraq inquiry he was "nervous" about the intelligence being presented in 2002 - some of which he said was based on "tittle-tattle". However, he said he did not have the knowledge to challenge the assessments. Nevertheless, he defended the military action taken as "legal" and said he would take the same decision again.

Lord Prescott, deputy prime minister between 1997 and 2007, is the last senior former Labour minister to be giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the war. The inquiry is looking at the UK's role in the build-up to the war and the handling of its aftermath, and is expected to publish its report around the end of the year.

In an interview in December, Lord Prescott expressed some doubts about the war. However, he told the inquiry that MPs had backed the action and that "democratic accountability had been satisfied". While former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had a "difficult decision" to make before deciding the war was legal, he said he accepted the judgement that military action was justified on basis of existing UN disarmament resolutions.

While it was "fashionable" to criticise Tony Blair for taking the UK to war, he said the former prime minister had "agonised" over the death of every British soldier. In his opening statement, he expressed his "deepest sympathies" to the relatives of the 179 British service personnel killed in Iraq.

Lord Prescott, the final witness in the current round of public hearings, said he attended 23 out of 28 Cabinet meetings which discussed UK policy towards Iraq as well as holding a number of private meetings with Mr Blair.

Asked about the intelligence shown to ministers about Iraq in 2002, Mr Prescott said had "no evidence" it was wrong but admitted he was a "little bit nervous about the conclusions on what I seemed to think was pretty limited intelligence".

"I got the feeling that it was not very substantial”
"When I kept reading them, I kept thinking to myself, 'is this intelligence?", he said.

Describing it as "basically what you have heard somewhere and what somebody else has told somebody", he suggested the conclusions drawn on the back of it "were a little ahead" of the evidence.

"So I got the feeling it wasn't very substantial," he said.

With hindsight, he said recommendations made by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) "were frankly wrong and built too much on a little information".

Artful Dodger: Are the Republicans willing to take account for the increase in daily costs from kicking them all out?

The UK coalition government has decided to abandon EU rules on doctors working limits. From 100+ hours for a junior doctor it was cut to 48 to stop doctors falling asleep on the job. This, has been found to be to low. Other EU member states have decided to drop the 48 hour limit and now the UK gov plans to up the limit to 65 hours.

This is on advice from the Royal college of surgeons who say the hour limit interferes with patient care, from the feedback of the majority consultant surgeons and trainees.

Ferris Bueller: Just a small correction but an important one: it's NOT anti immigration, it's anti ILLEGAL immigration. ;)

Ferris Bueller: I guess that's possible but I think the Republicans are in a better position all around.

Artful Dodger:  The negatives of AZ being front page news in November could cut both ways.  The Republicans could loss a lot of their Hispanic votes and/or the Dems could loose anti-immigration votes.

There was a winner in the cold war??

Millions of dead from sponsored (not in my backyard) wars.. Radiation levels increased globally due to atmospheric testing that the world will never be the same again. Trillions spent on WMD's.. whole countries gone to pot thanks to interference from outside powers..
... one war still going on officially.. Korea.

Millions dead from having an opinion, millions in ruins and lives devastated as they might have been communists.

Not to mention certain lands now destroyed.. that's why the USA took to using barges to test nukes.

Palin stupid.. no.. she's worse... she's incompetent. I can understand why the Republican party picked a woman to get votes.... Surely there was a better choice??

Neither Roosevelt nor Reagan
Clarice Feldman
Noemie Emery explains how Obama blew his lead and devastated his party in the August 2 edition of the Weekly Standard. Don't miss a word of it. Here's the conclusion:

As Henninger concluded, "Barack Obama took a rising reservoir of public trust for his party .  .  . and emptied it." Gallup's annual Confidence in Institutions poll, conducted in the second week of July, showed that only 11 percent of Americans have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Congress. "Half of Americans now say they have ‘very little' or ‘no' confidence in Congress, up from 38 percent in 2009-and the highest for any institution since Gallup first asked this question in 1973." Talk about change, if you care to. And as for health care, Obama's major achievement, when the bill passed, it was opposed by a 20-point spread by the general public, and since then it has only sunk lower. In some polls, around 60 percent of respondents say that they want it repealed.

AZ immigration appeal scheduled for week of November 1
Clarice Feldman
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will not hear Arizona's appeal of the injunction order issued by Judge Bolton on an expedited basis. Instead the hearing is scheduled for week of November 1.

Professor Jacobson once again expresses my own thoughts on this:
The case now will be argued the week of November 1.
That may make DOJ lawyers happy, because they will have more time to put together their brief.
But it will not make Democratic politicians happy to have the Arizona case on the front page as voters are walking into the voting booth on November 2.
Democrats wished too hard for something, and they got it.

Clarice Feldman