That is why I will never use Black Tar Heroin. Cuz I'm a racist. Nyuck, nyuck.

And what kind of racism was it when the Democrats complained about Bush 1 speaking to the students? Hmmmm.

You do your president a huge dis-service by screaming racism about everything. It's a little suspicious that it's the first and only thing that comes to your mind..... maybe you should look in the mirror and check for some racism in that.

ThinkAgain: The Republican party is well known for its racist beliefs and tactics.

That's why we liberals have to remind you about it every once in a while, since you conservatives are deeply into denial on this issue.

ThinkAgain: The Republican party is well known for its racist beliefs and tactics.

That's why we liberals have to remind you about it every once in a while, since you conservatives are deeply into denial on this issue.

Ask any other repub and they'll tell you that people like bcaldwell are RINOs. And the GOP wonders why their on the nose with educated americans.

FYI, Jim Greer is the Chariman of the Florida Republican Party. Time to get to know your own party! Maybe now is the time to get out. . . ?

I am painfully aware that Greer is the chairman of the Florida Republican Party. But I have no where to go TO.

I fundamentally disagree with Democratic Party principles on the size and scope of government. There is no legitimate Libertarian party, and frankly I'm not sold on its "hands off" attitude to foreign policy.

So what's an old elephant to do?

fyi flavor 13, Jim Greer retracted his comments once he read the Obama speech. He stated he supported people to watch the speech. Follow up flava.

Dear Sophia,
You can speculate on his motivations, or you can look at his actions.

I have yet to see evidence of this "radical left agenda". In fact I see many on the left expressing disappointment that the "change" President isn't actually changing much.

1. The big secret that Mr. Obama doesn't want people to know, is that he didn't attend church often. Rev. Wright may be a hyperbolic blow hard, but since when it is against the law to criticize this country, or anything else?

2. If Mr. Obama had a strong personal relationship with Ayers, don't you think Ms. Clinton would have splashed that across ANY hard (or digital) surface? By the way Ayers never killed anyone, was never charged with anything. Since when is it illegal to have poor judgment?

3. The last example you use is entirely based on the premise that ACORN is "bad". Of course an organization dedicated to the poor and disenfranchised can be characterized as "liberal", but why would we (as Republicans) allow that? Are we too not for generosity, justice, compassion and charity? Are those not the ideals of sound moral character?

If you don't like our President, that is certainly your prerogative. But a bare toothed dislike, will not achieve your desired results.

If those are the extent of your arguments, buckle in, its going to be a very stressful EIGHT years.

Sophia-
I"m delighted
To see that you mentioned


ACORN!!

Sophia, can you name anything more radical than the invasion of Iraq and occupation for 7 yrs with virtually zero positive impact on the. United States? If you can name one good thing that has come from that decision and policy, then I may read your posts without being a skeptic. Please dont forget the over 4000 dead U.S. soldiars and tens of thousands wounded to factor into your response. Oh, yeah, might as well include the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi;s as well. Now then......... Reverend Wright means what to this conversation?. Acorn means what? My god how quickly we forget.

sophia5: At least Obama didn't spend 20 years with Pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.

"And David, praying, is saying, `As a snail which melteth.' See, I'm very scriptural when I brought up about snails being salted. He said, `as a snail which melteth let every one of them pass away like the untimely birth of a woman.' He's saying `like an abortion,' right ? Like a miscarriage. Because that's what an untimely birth is. He's saying, let Barack Obama perish like an abortion. Let Barack Obama perish like a miscarriage. - `As the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.'

"Let me tell you something - somebody needs to abort Barack Obama. It's true. Now, I'm not to do it. I'm not saying vigilanteism. I'm not saying that somebody should go kill. I'm saying there should be a government in this country that, you know, under God's authority, that takes Barack Obama and aborts him. On television. For everybody to see in the whole world."

Perhaps that is just as well...

Ritarita: What happened to my FRENCH ACORNS?!?

Didn't know about Van Jones agenda? Right

I don't recall Ronald Reagan or either George Bush showing their birth certificates to anyone.

And I don't
Recall anyone
Asking to see them.

lyleleander: Orly Taitz has it (it's Kenyan, naturally).

As Bill Maher said, "We'll show you Obama's birth certificate when you show us Sarah Palin's high schoold diploma.

"Hang onto" -- "their share"

What's much scarier than any of the conservative reaction to Obama's upcoming speech to schoolchildren, is that there still exists in this country people with the attitude that money and wealth is somehow set at a fixed amount -- only to be shuffled around amongst the various groups and individuals. So in other words, if I go out and earn 100K in a year then I am obviously taking it from someone else -- probably some poor person who through no fault of their own had it unknowingly stolen right from under their nose.

Even more ridiculous is the notion that the top 10% or really any grouping of individuals wishes that the bottom of society be kept from an education and upward mobility. I guess this kind of thinking is only possible in an economic world where you believe that one man's gain is always anothers loss.

The Connie's of the world are probably one of Obama's Army that is now sitting around waiting for the Messiah to redistribute some of the money that was stolen from her by a top 10%'er, rather than trying to go out in the world and achieve something on her own.

Cheap response, Grimmace. I'm 61 and I've been self employed my entire life, so I guess I did "go out in the world and achieve something." My husband was a Navy fighter pilot most of his life. Obviously at 62, he doesn't do that anymore, but he's still employed full time.

Yeah, people like us are the problem, Grimmace. You just keep chanting that over and over. Make sure you don't give the problem actual thought.

Grimmace,

You couldn't be more wrong. Unless you believe that resources, including space and money, are infinite, which they are not, then in fact when you take something for yourself, you do in fact do so at the expense of another.

Whether you work for a private company, yourself, or the gov't., there is a finite amount of money to divvy up amongst all employees. If a company with 50 employees makes a profit of $500K/yr., and shareholders decide the CEO should make $400K/yr., then that leaves $100K to divide amongst the other 49 employees. If the CEO makes$100K/yr., then you've got $400K to spread amongst the employees, which makes a HUGE difference in their incomes and therefore quality of life, and even the economy because you've got 49 people out spending versus one.

The myth is that anyone can make a lot of money and that if they aren't, it's because they are doing something wrong or are lazy or have made bad choices. That is Reaganthink, and it's a big part of the scheme to shift most of the resources to the top 10%, and within the top 10%, most of THAT to the top 10%. Fill people's heads with false hope that they too will one day be wealthy and are NOT like those lazy, bad-choice-makers, then you get them doing the bashing of the Have Nots so as to feel separated from them, then being the serfs to the few who actually make the money.

That is what Reaganism was about. And Connie is absolutely correct, that keeping the general population ignorant, emotional and uneducated (keep dangling those shiny keys in their faces, ie: crap they don't need but convince them they're nothing without it), then you can control them (because not only are they dumb and therefore malleable, but they are also ADDICTED - to feeling good via buying crap - and addicts will do anything to feed their habit), and once you control them, you call the shots and can run off with the riches, and many of those fools will actually THANK YOU, as we see on the right with so much adoration for the likes of Limbaugh and Beck. Their own audiences are the ones they abuse, NOT the left, and their own audiences don't see it.

But you're wrong. If 70% of the money goes to 10% of the population, then it is in fact be diverted there and away from the other 90%. It's simple math and physics.

Well connie, I'm at a loss to explain your Marxist idealogy in light of someone with a fighter pilot husband and being self-employed. How do you live with yourself knowing that your achievements have come at the expense of others? You enter the realm of delusion and paranoia when you make statements that some demographic or entity wishes to keep people uneducated and poor.

Danbury, there are economic concepts known as growth and productivity. With growth and productivity come greater opportunity and income for all. People who are able to fuel growth and productivity expand the pie and usually make more money, and believe it or not this larger pie doesn't require that their larger salaries come at the expense of someone else. No one ever said that everyone can and should be wealthy if only they would work for things. I do however believe that most capable competent human beings with a decent work ethic can achieve a comfortable lifestyle. That's not to say that there won't be hardships and difficutlites along the road because life just doesn't work that way.

Grimmace,

Unable to respond to me, you stoop to calling my family Marxist, delusional and paranoid. I guess you can add us to the "elite" too, since we both have college degrees. In fact, I took another one in my 50s, so I must be elite beyond belief.

Here's what you don't understand, Grimmace, once your crackpot assumptions are stripped from the conversation .... common decency.

One other thing you don't get, Grimmace is history.

Grimmace said, "Danbury, there are economic concepts known as growth and productivity. With growth and productivity come greater opportunity and income for all. People who are able to fuel growth and productivity expand the pie and usually make more money, and believe it or not this larger pie doesn't require that their larger salaries come at the expense of someone else."

A few points, Grimmace:

"Growth" and "Infinite" are NOT synonymous. If your family's income grows in a year by $50K, that does NOT mean you can now afford anything you want. You still have to live within your means, even if your means are greater now.

You also need to do some research into where GNP growth has gone over the last decade, even the last three decades. The VAST majority of it has gone to the top 1%. You don't seem to understand money, that money is relative. Whether you have $30K or $500,000,000, you still have an infinite amount with which to spend.

The fact is, the vast majority of Americans have NOT been party to growth, and i suspect that includes you.

Your use of the buzzword Marxist is illogical and is meant mostly to satisfy your own emotional need. It is not logical to suggest that, in a society in which the top 10% owns as much wealth as the bottom 90% combined, that Marxism and Socialism are a threat. That is irrational. It's like saying that the Atlantic ocean is on the verge of drying up completely and suggesting we MUST take the last few drops of water from a draught laden area to give to the Atlantic but to suggest that we divert fresh water from an area with more water than they need to people who lack it is Socialism and simply too dangerous and should not be done.

In fact, YOU have been deliberately fed this (knowing it is your ilk that will spread it w/o thinking about its logic or lackthereof) for a reason: it is not Socialism that is threatening this counry. It is FASCISM - a takeover of gov't by corporations in order to enrich the few at the expense and exploitation of the many - that is. If you are a Fascist and can convince the proletariat that Socialism is a real threat, then you can really succeed at instilling Fascism.

The cries of Socialism simply do not make sense. What you are confusing Socialism with is an attempt to stop the spread of what more resembles Fascism.

I find it interesting that people such as yourself think it is CRAZY and HORRIFYING to suggest that the Middle Class and below also share in growth (another buzzword for you, "Share", so I'll change it to "participate, since people like you are so vulnerable to buzzwords) and have their incomes rise to keep up a fairly basic quality of life, that that is Socialism to you, while you DEFEND individuals making hundreds of millions of dollars, more money in one year than they need for a few lifetimes. THAT is perverted, Grimmace, and the resistance to such a culture is NOT Socialism. It is more like social justice and acknowledging that it is not simply the executive class that creates that wealth growth, the workers are a pretty big part of it.

There is a reason your "masters" fill your head with absurdities (and outright lies) like Socialism coming and death panels and forced abortions and Kerry wanting to ban the Bible and libs wanting to ban guns...it's because they know you'll buy it and run with it without any regard to whether it is true or not. To be successful at this ploy requires a dumbed down population (smart people don't respond to rubbish with blind obedience). Connie is right, Americans have been dumbed down deliberately, by the right wing and the corporate media, and the results are overt: the wealth of the top 1% has skyrocketed and continues to grow while the incomes of the middle class and below have at best remained stagnant and for the poor gone down.

It's interesting that you buy the death panels and Socialism stuff, which don't even make sense, yet you see some out-there conspiracy in claiming that Americans are being dumbed down when in fact there is a TON of evidence to support that they are, including the fact that Americans ARE dumber now than ever.

Grimmace,

Your argument, above, is superfluous and you logic is bullshit.

In the first place, the value of all functions is fixed at any given set of defining coordinates.

Secondly, being a function, the relationships will remain the same. Accordingly, if $100K in new wealth is created, 70% will go to the richest 10% of the population and, well you can calculate the rest.

Your chunk if the pie will remain, relatively, the same. That is the whole point of connie47's argument.

Of course the Haves and Have-mores don't want the Don't-haves to be better educated; that would mean that the Haves and Have-mores would have to actually share more of their unfair share.

It also shows the pseudo-con education policy and ideology of anti-intellectualism. Less education means that people will believe what the white masters want them to believe.

If the pseudo-cons were better at math they might better understand the health care debate and they might actually understand that spending was higher under the Republi-cons over the last 30 years than it has been under the Liberalcrats.

Very well said.

Grimmace: If your screen name refers to a facial expression, are you aware that you're misspelling it?

Totally inappropriate!!!!

Ozone makes a good point.
It's infuriating to think that the President
Would attempt to indoctrinate
Innocent schoolchildren
With this Marxist
Nonsense.

Very wrong. I found the pledge to be a servant to Barack Obama inappropriate. Plus the flushing and other nonesensical pledges by the left coast crowd.

Ozone, what the hell are you talking about?

roger37: Ozone69 is spaced out on Fox News talking points (i.e. lies) again.

I agree with ritarita. Obama's speech was definitely close to plagarism of Jesus Sermon on the Mount.
Lord knows the religious right has a monopoly on all things relevant to Jesus, God, the Bible, New Testament, and all things related to the hereafter. They hear after all right, after what they hear from Lush Windball.

Excellent post. Of course, it is the RACISM, stupid.

Thank you, Connie.

i cannot help chuckling at the back patting between connie and danbury. two people who evidently have nothing better to do than write comment novellas all day. good thing you have one another or you just might break an arm patting yourselves on the back.