Saryctos

So I should be outraged if people receiving welfare aren't spending that money on getting themselves out of the poorhouse? Or anyone on medicare not living a healthy lifestyle?

I feel the problem here is that the way the AIG situation is being peddled is that the gov't owns the company(in fact Brian Williams says it almost nightly). But the truth is, we the people DO NOT own AIG. Anyone clamoring over their payments is at no less fault than an employee of company X complaining that CEO of company Y is running his business poorly because he pays his workers a different wage. It's true that large payments are being made to AIG, and that these are for AIG expenses, not gov't spending. We accepted this fact(or at least should have) when the money was paid to AIG.

It's important to take note of risks associated with the position. If an hourly employee screws up, their mistake usually cost only hundreds to thousands of dollars in merchandise. If management screws up it costs tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, with possible down sizing to recover the costs, or loss of customers to a really screwed up order. So as a company you'd be willing to shell out a bit more money to attract the higher quality staff. I'm sure there isn't a whole lot of analysis in the general business world on what you're going to pay a position. I'm guessing that it works along the lines of finding what the average pay for a position you want to fill is, then increasing or decreasing the amount based on how important it would be to your business. I'm sure that this data costs large sums of money to obtain from some auditing or consulting business who makes their money on selling this to big corporations.

Actually the unions make sure you don't get paid for making those extra shirts too. They don't like the idea of better performance being paid more, it's "unfair".(as a disclaimer I am only knowledgeable about auto-unions not shirt makers =P)

I challenge this assertion! With no cable it's been a while since I've watched the show, but I used to watch it all the time. Unless things have changed in the last three years I would expect to see much more criticism of the right, and only cheap laughs at the left. It's important to watch how John uses the crowd to make his points.

This is the kind of hatred one risks when trying to make large sums of money. If these payments were called anything other than bonuses, even if they were given in the same manner, there wouldn't be this kind of uproar from the general public and congress(which arguably are making a stink only to pander to the mob). People seem to think that AIG is just chucking some "free" money to the higher ups because they've got large sacks of money hanging around from bailout payments. It would be nice to see how any investigation into these "illegal bonuses" goes(of which I'm sure is already being planned). It might shed some light for many people on just how reasonable these things are. You'll be able to tell when it's stops being reported, since it's not a story unless everyone's angry about it. I'm actually quite angry at the numerous number of Rs I see next to senators' names in articles when I read about this stuff. It's clear that there is some staunch partisanship on the Republicans on this issue. Most of them should know better than to decry these bonuses in the manner that they are, but it's clear they just care about public image in what can be used to fling against Obama and the bailouts.

Not even Hitler would post in this thread

At what point does the little cluster of cells become a clone? Would we be able to create a mass of cells resembling the creation of a clone, but then stop the growth process before it technically "became a clone"? How would regulators define this? You could polish up the process but continue to stop short of the final outcome until it was legalized. Not to mention the problem that this process comes dangerously close to creating the same arguments involved with abortion. Sounds like any ban on cloning that goes to the Supreme court might force a decision on when an embryo becomes a living being; with implications to abortion aswell. Ontop of that they'll have to separate the legality in allowing human breeding, but not scientific creation of humans. I'm actually rather confused on the whole ban on cloning mentality. Do that many people have some sort of sci-fi induced delusion of what cloning really is?

I think it's Ironic that seemingly the purpose of the internet(non-centralized communications), is going to be the downfall of the current internet service infrastructure.

Two things also coincide with doomsaying, Hope and Change

Well, The gov't receives money from these banks in the form of taxes and such. Plus any international activity draws in money from outside the US. By having a private entity doing the loaning they can bring in money from a myriad of different avenues that the gov't wouldn't be able to do. Taking away that cash flow might impede on other credit markets.

It is however much harder to avoid breathing in smoke than it is to avoid contact with the sparse glowing hot phosphorous. That, and the area of coverage of the smoke is larger, so you would be affecting a larger group of people with an inescapable irritant. Certainly the argument can be made that this is of a lesser cause for alarm, but there are reasons that the phosphorous would be more desirable.

Many of the alternatives would seem, at a glance, to be worse.

I chose yes. Although the US is probably not the freeist to the letter of the law, I feel that the general populace and enforcement of laws offers a free(er) quality of life for people if they choose to live in that manner. Move outside of the big cities and you'll see just how useless many restrictive laws are. When I thought about moving to other countries for all their benefits I knew I would miss the free reign of "illegal" activity that occurs in my daily life. The blue law mentality of enforcement on so many laws is what makes the US feel like it entertains the most freedoms for me.

This is however a perfect opportunity to explore the very dynamic that makes this option not viable. What makes it impossible for all these differing views to be represented by a single party? Given that we are under a representative governance system and even people within a single party have differing views on many subjects, yet these parties are massively successful*. I think it would be a good experiment to say the least. I think, in all truth, that zero parties is the same as 1 party(assuming there is no other party to compete against).

You can't simply throw out the parties, they provide funding for campaigns in exchange for idealistic compliance. If you get rid of these funds, then you'll be back to voting in whoever has the most money. If you try to limit funding, then you'll end up electing people who sensationalize their politics to get more air-time in the media. The party system as it stands is a central advertising agency really, only thing is, you can't stick your ad on their wall unless it says what they want Although if you pressured me into a number other than 2, I'd have to say 3, or 5 would be a good number of parties. Use an odd number so that there's always something tipping the scales. A big part of the problem we face is political stagnation. We have to shake things up and keep everything moving or we get into a back and forth rut where America swings left to right just counter-acting the other when they're in power while gaining no net benefit.

I really feel that the failures you're describing are less of a party # thing, and more of a disparity in representation among ever growing populations. There may be only 2 prominent parties, but there are plenty of personalities out there, the people struggle to find representatives they can identify with when all their eccentricities are marginalized by appealing to a large group of people. I feel like there needs to be a surge in local and state government power to correct this trend. I think the political stagnation comes from an increase on focusing on the federal level for too much legislature. If states had the power to decide to conduct stem cell research on their own, this would, in my opinion make far less people upset about it. The main problem in the federal arena is that you have a large number of people who refuse to have their name tagged on a piece of legislature, now if it was state level they wouldn't even have a say, so they would be able to save face, and not interfere with something they would have no control over anyways. You can have pro-gun democrats, and atheist republicans on the local level, it's just the fed that we see the proliferation of staunch partisanship and cookie-cutter politicians. If we can't solve these problems, we can at least try to lessen their impact on daily life by transferring more power to the states. EDIT: I was going to say something about increasing the size of state government for better representation aswell, but I only get so many breaks @ work =/ RE-EDIT(2nd break yay ^^): Another thing that comes to mind is describing what exactly do people feel is wrong? Not the cause, or ideology behind the undesirables, but the actual problem that people attempt to avoid. A possible breakdown of what people do and don't like about elections, where they feel inadequate, where they feel helpless. The first step in figuring out solutions to problems is outlining what exactly constitutes the problem. Is it the number of parties? Is it the power the parties wield? Is there a framework for changing the problems we face already in place? Is there a problem with that? Too many questions stem from what appears to be the root cause of the two party system outcry for me to think it's the parties at fault.

Jobs are not a right. I hate seeing this entitlement bullshit propagate through such a large % of the population. Take for instance a company employing plenty of racists. Sure, being racist is their problem, not the potential new hire. However, when all your employees threaten to quit if you hire a black person are you going to risk having to lose your workforce because the law demands you hire them? That's crap. What is it about a "now hiring" sign implies that now you no longer own your business, and that it's now some civil entity that is hiring instead of you? What if you're racist and own a small shop with employees you know and like and work in a good atmosphere. Should the new hire be subjected to your bigotry? What if you specifically don't hire them to avoid making their day miserable because you know that you're a prejudice bastard, but would rather not have an outlet for that bigotry? What if you don't hire them because you know you're just hiring a lawsuit waiting to happen? Then there's the other side, what if you want a specific minority? Lets say you've been having getting asian customers to buy your products because they feel alienated by your all (insert race here) staff. So you throw out the now hiring sign, and fish through the applications for an asian to improve sales. Racist? Hell yes. But there is a valid business decision here. Why should a business be forced into doing something that they don't want?

This is the same sentiment I felt after reading the OP which led me to comment on the implication that this was Obama's strike by Bascule's comment. Mainly because it produces the ideas that lead to posts similar to that which Paranoia responded with. These strikes are nothing new, 'nor were they ordered by Obama. This is business as usual and I don't think Obama needs to be credited already for something that he didn't really have a hand in. Although I suppose you could say that not canceling the strike shows something, but I wasn't arguing against that. See above.

Sounds more like he just gave the nod of approval on an already planned strike.

Sorry if this has been covered already in the thread(it sort of just popped into existence on page 4 today >_>, but I did go back to find the original post on the Neumanss). With an undiagnosed, untreated condition, what level of medical knowledge was expected of the parents to know that something life threatening was going on? For all they know it could have been faking, or perhaps a form of temper tantrum. I'm not suggesting that's what they thought, but I'm more interested in how the line is drawn in respect to innate medical knowledge before a parent is considered negligent of a condition or illness?

I think that in my own personal conversation I downplay the fact that Obama is black as an unconscious reaction to the massive amounts of press almost trying to shove it at me with an "in your face you white bastards!" tone. Truth be told, it is an historic occasion, Americans do love to party and celebrate 1sts, so I can understand the cost. I hope Obama is not as bad a president as I imagine he would be, I can see promise in the way he thinks, not necessarily in his ideologies, but in the fact that he presents an inquisitive persona. I am pleasantly awaiting changes, not in the gov't, but in the people's state of mind. Everyone seems to be very enthusiastic about change, enthralled with wanting to fix things they see as broken, and that for the most part is more important than if Obama is even capable of it. For the moment, I like the guy...but we'll see how that goes when he starts spending my money I look forward to post-Bush television and political commentary aswell, and I wonder how long it will take before his influence fades from the spotlight.

I would hardly consider these methods anywhere close to "stooping to a terrorist's level".

Why aren't Palestinians doing something about it? If there's a hungry dog in the room and someone lobs a piece of meat onto your crotch you throw it back at them, you don't let it bite your balls. If you have reason to suspect there's a weapons cache near your home, or if you've heard rocket fire coming from your local area, go yell at them to go away. I have no idea if there's any outcry against hamas inside Palestine, but I certainly have never heard anything about it. There's a pretty simple explanation for why everything's exploding around you, if you can't get away from it, go solve the problem. What if Israel starts offering rewards for dead hamas militants, or weapons from weapons caches? The only way to end a terrorist meme is to take the people away from them. If they start turning against them, others will see that it is possible to do something about it, and if the benefits of defying their existence are immediately attainable people will come around. Both peoples stand to gain from a peaceful relationship, unfortunately hamas does not. They just need to get the word out that destroying hamas is far easier than attempting to destroy Israel. And there's no way that anyone would even start to think this without an immediate return on their efforts, which wouldn't really happen without an outside source of benefit.

The rockets aren't in contention, just the source. Whereas the white phosphorous, not who done it, is in question. The difference being a motive vs. an act, which I think is a big difference.