Yes, we can.

[innerSpaceman]

And frankly, since - as scaeagles rightly alludes to - every entity from oil companies to your local dentist passes on their tax burden to their customers, I say more than just the tax breaks should end for certain industries. I'm ashamed to be an end user consumer who can't pass on my taxes to the next lower toad on the toadempole ... and all the lowly citizens of my ilk pay the taxes of everyone above us in the American food chain.

Fine. I'll pay my barber's taxes. And I'll pay my shoe seller's taxes. All in addition to the one-third of my own income I pay in taxes ... meaning I likely pay something near a 50% tax rate in total.


And so I support anything deemed a life necessity to be NATIONALIZED and included in the 30% income tax I already pay. That means ENERGY, FOOD, and HEALTHCARE. My dentist can stuff it, and so can the oil companies. I don't care if this creates a huge government bureacracy less efficient that Exxon Mobil or my DDS. I'm tired of paying their taxes.



I'll pay Amazon's taxes, because I have a choice to shop there or not. You cold-hearted bastards who will say fixing my teeth, using electricity and eating breakfast are choices also can go fucyourself.



And thus ends my sunday morning rant.

[flippyshark]

Good rant, iSm. I don't contribute to political discussions much owing to my own ignorance, and the fact that no matter how much one reads up, there is always someone there with a contradictory fact, quote, document or theory, and it would take a year or two to get caught up enough to reply. It's all I can do to scan the daily barrage of media crap and try to decide who makes the most sense on any given day. That said, what iSm said above is very close to how I feel. (emphasis - how I feel versus what I know, which is exactly nothing.)

Carry on, y'all. This thread has been chock full of interesting tidbits.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Once again, Garrison Keillor puts things in perspective in his own colorful and inimitable way.

And it's an amazing country where an Arizona multimillionaire can attack a Chicago South Sider as an elitist and hope to make it stick. The Chicagoan was brought up by a single mom who had big ambitions for him, and he got scholarshipped into Harvard Law and was made president of the law review, all of it on his own hook, whereas the Arizonan is the son of an admiral and was ushered into Annapolis though an indifferent student, much like the Current Occupant, both of them men who are very lucky that their fathers were born before they were. The Chicagoan, who grew up without a father, wrote a book on his own, using a computer. The Arizonan hired people to write his for him. But because the Chicagoan can say what he thinks and make sense and the Arizonan cannot do that for more than 30 seconds at a time, the old guy is hoping to portray the skinny guy as arrogant.

Good luck with that, sir.

Meanwhile, the casual revelation last month that Mr. McCain has never figured out how to use a computer and has never sent e-mail or Googled is rather startling. It's like admitting that you've never clipped your own toenails or that you didn't know that toothpaste comes out of a tube because your valet always did that for you. It's like being amazed at the sight of a supermarket scanner. What world does Mr. McCain live in? Where does he keep his sense of curiosity? My 94-year-old mother has sent e-mail. Does somebody plan to show him how it's done and will they explain to him what "LOL" means?

[scaeagles]

Elitism isn't all about money. I know many middle class elitists who simply think they are better than everyone else. Whenever you say that you are the one the world has been waiting for or that you have become the symbol of all the greatness of America's past (or however exactly it was worded), you come across as elitist.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Elitism isn't all about money. I know many middle class elitists who simply think they are better than everyone else. Whenever you say that you are the one the world has been waiting for or that you have become the symbol of all the greatness of America's past (or however exactly it was worded), you come across as elitist.

I think it is safe to say that you are reading far more into what he actually said than what was intended.

For the record, these are his words -

"this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for."
"It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign -- that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol. I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions"

[scaeagles]

I can find it and will. I have heard him say it and read it. Don't currently have the time....just between sets working out right now.

[scaeagles]

I was in the process of quoting that. I still think it is arrogant even with the full quote.

There are other things which involve more a feeling than a direct quote. To even presume to try to speak at the Brandenburg gate while a candidate, making a pseudo-Presidential seal to put on a podium he is speaking behind, his whole much discussed quote about people clinging to their guns and religion, numerous quotes by his wife (while that may not be fair, they are a package, and yes, Cindy McCain bugs me as well), many other things....it all adds up.

[Strangler Lewis]

What candidate doesn't do that? When Ross Perot ran on behalf of the hard working people who play by the rules, he was implying that they were better than everybody else and that their glory reflected on him. Rush Limbaugh says that red state people are better than blue state people.

Until recently, your signature line spoke of the better men and women in the military, an observation that makes no sense unless it means that we need people to do the jobs we would rather not do. In which case, people who do any number of dirty jobs are better than we are. It also means in all likelihood that we are not educating our children to be better men and women.

[scaeagles]

We have a slightly different perspective on Ross Perot, but that's besides the point.

What candidate has tried to speak at the Brandenburg gate? What candidate makes (or has a staff that makes) a seal that looks exactly like the Presidential seal and sticks it on the podium from which the candidate is speaking? You may not find these things to be arrogant, but I do.

I get why he's doing it. He needs to look Presidential because he has no (or more properly very little) experience in anything. I think he's working a bot too hard at it. And yes, I do completely understand that just as he is trying to look Presidential, his opponents wish to make him look presumptuous and arrogant.

[Alex]

I know it has been said before, but I want my president to be an elitist who thinks s/he is the best things since sliced bread.

If he says he doesn't and is running for president then he is either lying or admitting to a lack of qualification.