Want to talk about sore losers? look in the mirror and repeat after me:

"Kerry lost"

I don't think it has sunk in to your cranium.

I'm still waiting for an intelligent, mature response from you... obviously I should stop waiting.

It is the government's responsibility to protect the population from harm. Most Republicans seem to think that only means protecting them from violent attack by terrorists, or from crime. But there are other ways you can protect your people such as protecting them against starvation, protecting them against health problems by providing adequate health care, or even protecting them against natural disaster as should have been done in New Orleans last year.

As I recently pointed out in another thread, if our infant mortality rate was equal to that of Canada, then 72,000 American babies who currently die each year would instead live. And Canada does not have some sort of "world class" health care system. There are countries whose infant mortality rate is much much lower than Canada.

But apparently our government thinks that 3,000 people killed in a terrorist attack 5 years ago is far far more important than something that kills 72,000 infants each year. The amount of money needed to improve our health care system in this way is miniscule compared to what is being spent on the military.


I propose we do the same thing that Canada, Britain, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, Russia, Israel and every other non-3rd World country on the planet does. They all manage to provide health care to all of their people. It would be a shame if the richest country on the planet somehow was not able to manage that.


Then get ready for that revolt to happen a few years down the road, because unless there are drastic changes made, things are moving in that direction. Here are some numbers from an Auguest 2006 report by the Economic Policy Institute:


More Wealth Flowed to the Top

While the distribution of income and wages has become increasingly unequal, the distribution of wealth has become even more so. In 2004, about 17% of all income nationwide went to the top-earning 1%, while the bottom 90% received just under 58% of all income. That same year, however, the top 1% held over 34% of all net worth, while the bottom 90% held a little under 29% of net worth.

The wealth disparity has grown over time. In the early 1960s, the wealthiest (top 1%) Americans held 125 times the wealth of the typical (median) household; in 2004 the wealthiest held 190 time more. In dollar terms, the disparities are clear. Between 2001 and 2004, average wealth grew by $1.2 million (about 3% per year) for the wealthiest 1%, raising their average wealth holdings to about $15 million. Wealth for an average household (the middle fifth) grew only about 0.8% per year to reach an average of about $82,000 in 2004. Meanwhile those at the bottom of the wealth distribution (the bottom fifth) fell farther behind, as their average wealth fell from -$8,700 in 2001 to -$11,400 in 2004 – as they owe more than they own.

Many households have little or negative wealth. About 30% of households had wealth holdings valued at less than $10,000 and for 17% wealth holdings were zero or negative.

Taking Stock of Stock Ownership

It probably would surprise a lot of people to know that less than half of American households are invested in the stock market in any form--either directly or indirectly through mutual funds or 401(k)s. The percentage of households that own stock declined from 51.9% in 2001 to 48.6% in 2004 – the first decline recorded.

Furthermore, the percentage of households with more than $5,000 in stock fell from 40.1% to 34.9%--the first decline in this share. Stock ownership remains concentrated among the wealthiest households. The wealthiest 20% of households own over 90% of all stock value. For the top 1%, the average value of stock holdings was $3.3 million in 2004, down from $3.8 million in 2001. The average value of stock holdings for the middle 20% was $7,500 in 2004, down from $12,000 in 2001.


Red Ink Rises

A key finding regarding the other side of the wealth ledger – liabilities – is that household debt has continued its upward trend. Since the early 1980s debt has grown significantly as a percentage of disposable personal income, and steep increases have occurred since 2000. In 1982 debt was 67% of disposable personal income; by 2000 it was 102% and in 2005 it reached an all time high of 132%.
Debt consumes a growing share of household income – up from 12.9% in 2001 to 14.4% in 2004. Middle income households spent close to a fifth (19.4%) of their income paying down debt in 2005, an increase of 2.3 percentage point since 2001.



Do you still think that things have gotten better in recent years?

Yes, I support all of those initiatives.


Here is a picture to help you understand...

http://www.russmo.com/05_07_10ExitStrategy.gif

You're very scary then.


And if you believe that exiting Iraq is as simple as that picture, it explains why you believe what you do on those other issues. Maybe you should put some more thought into it.

I don't get it, we should do just that, admit we were wrong, WHICH we were, Get the heck out because they HATE us and get on with it, why is it so hard for us to admit we failed? Its simple, get out, leave, go home, done, who friggin cares what happens after we leave, we dug our own grave on this one, thats why I do NOT support our president because he does not share my views, his government does not represent me one bit

"who friggin cares what happens after we leave"

spoken like a true humanitarian.

By the way, bush and rumsfeld and the rest of the crew already said that they made a mistake. Pay attention.

I don't care why you don't support bush. (no pun intended), that's not the discussion at hand.

I'm still waiting for your answer as to what you believe the Dems will do in office. Do you not see the idiocy of blindly voting for someone when you have no clue what their plans are? What if the guy you voted for just because he's a democrat is against the war but never said he was against gay marriage? how would you feel then? are you catching on to the discussion here? will you ever?

jeeeeez. :rolleyes:

Um i voted because I wanted F*in change, i'm sick of the current party, they failed and suck royally so we're trying something different, they way I view it: anything is better then our current cabinet, so thats it, I want change NOW, and as for Gay Marriage, I've stated many times before I don't give a shit what people think because I'll be with and do as I please, so thats not the biggest issue to me, NEXT

The problem is that some people actually believe that our troops are contributing to keeping order in Iraq, however they are not contributing enough, i.e. the idea that we need more troops.

The truth is that our troops are contributing to the violence and chaos. If we were to put more troops there, then there would be an increase in the violence and chaos. The problem is not the Sunnis and the Shiites. We are the problem. The sooner we leave, the sooner the violence will end.

Our invasion has already caused over half a million people to die. The longer we stay, the higher that figure will become. We need to leave immediately and let the Iraqi people handle their own affairs.

What are you affraid of? You think if we leave all of a sudden there will be anarchy?? Well, incase you haven't noticed, there is anarchy now. Our troops are doing nothing to keep order. Our troops are simply staying away from the violent areas and occasionally going in and fighting battles with insurgents. For the most part, our troops are sitting ducks for whoever wants to try to attack them. They are serving no useful purpose there except for increasing hatred for America.

ugh.

I give up.

One day you'll understand. I hope.

Have a nice night.

"
The truth is that our troops are contributing to the violence and chaos. If we were to put more troops there, then there would be an increase in the violence and chaos"

wow, where the hell do you get this shit from?