G

in one very small car, and then all got out one after another, after another...

The USA?

I have an idea, let's promote more offshore drilling (which might reduce our oil dependence by a stunning 0.5% while simultaneously cutting regulation and oversight of the industry, I know it's already been done, but I think we can do more of it?

What do you think? Election 2010--drill baby drill

Even if it is just taking care of your personal responsibilities or a kind word?

is a black Muslim who has praised Osama bin Laden?

Going to be on local TN news at 10PM. I checked their website, no update yet.

Since the IRS is more popular with the American people than the IRS according to a FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll published April 8?

Group/person --- Favorable opinion

IRS ------------- 49%

TEA Party --- 36%

Barak Obama- 50%

Democrats --- 42%

Republicans - 40%

Atop the fourth page of a Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll released April 8, the questioner explains that respondents would be read a series of names and asked whether their opinion is positive or not. The most popular among the names is Barack Obama, who scored a 50 percent approval rating. Second was the Internal Revenue Service, at 49 percent.

Down below Democrats and even below Republicans is the "Tea Party," at 36 percent approval.

Former US president George W. Bush and his top aides were accused Friday of covering up that many Guantanamo Bay detainees were innocent, amid fears releasing them could harm the 'war on terror'.

The allegations were made in a document by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to Bush's first secretary of state, Colin Powell, in a lawsuit filed by a former Guantanamo inmate and published by The Times in London.

Wilkerson alleged Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld knew that most detainees held at the US detention camp in 2002 were innocent but believed it was "politically impossible to release them".

They were also keen to avoid revealing the "incredibly confused" detention operation, Wilkerson said, claiming prisoners were often rounded up by Afghan and Pakistani forces in return for cash, with little or no evidence as to why.

He alleged Cheney "had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees were innocent... If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it".

Wilkerson, who according to The Times has been a long-time critic of the Bush administration's approach to counter-terrorism, said he discussed the issue with Powell, who left his job in 2005.

"I learnt that it was his view that it was not just vice president Cheney and secretary Rumsfeld, but also president Bush who was involved in all of the Guantanamo decision-making," the newspaper reported him as saying.

Wilkerson's statement was filed in support of Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese man held at Guantanamo Bay from March 2003 until December 2007. He claims he was tortured by US agents and filed a damages action Thursday, The Times said.

Like Russia, Estonia, Romania or Slovakia?

After all, the neoliberal ideas of nearly unregulated markets and flat taxes were put into place in those countries.

They are almost a Libertarian wet dreams from a market regulation and tax perspective.

Sons of Confederate Veterans were who lobbied for "Confederate History Month" in VA.

Southern Poverty Law Center lists them as a white supremacy group.

This is an excerpt about Obama from their newsletter:

"It is very clear to me that if Barack Obama should be elected President, he would be extremely anti-white and would demand reparations for slavery and press hard for affirmative action to the degree that it would hurt young whites who were seeking jobs or admission to College and Graduate Schools. Even if he were elected, I would think he would be a one term President and the Congressional Republicans with a "corporal's guard' of Democrats would stop most of the radical and unjust laws he would propose. However, I believe that his rhetoric and anti-white legislative proposals would stir up racial riots. If he were running for re-election, these riots would turn into an extremely violent nature that would seriously damage race relations in America, and leave entire sections of some of our cities in ruins."

The Government would still need a military to enforce contracts abroad, but the only business of the Government would be to enforce contracts and social order (e.g. murder, fraud, and so on will still be prosecuted).

There will be no unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare, FDA, EPA, FAA, NASA, public works like highways and bridges and interstate power grids unless corporations and private companies take on some of these roles themselves. There will be no federal reserve and no flexible monetary policy.

Durring economic downturns, some people will probably starve to death unless they find work doing something that at least provides meals.

There will be no anti-trust laws and no Government strong enough to enforce them, so the larger companies will either buy up or put smaller competitors out of business (because I am not so sure we can convince them that competitiion is always good despite our Libertarian ideology).

Over time, most people will work for a hand full of large companies, and these companies, out of neccessity will create roads and bridges and schools (but charge for them, of course). These companies will step into the power vacuum opened up when we reformed the central Government according to our Libertarian ideas, and they will take on Governing so to speak.

But we don't get to vote them out if we don't like how they are running things. I imagine, once they become stronger than the Government, they will undertake suppression of people who rebel the way pinkertons were employed to break strikes and such in bygone eras.

So... we will have exchanged a system where we can vote people out of power for one where we cannot?

Ameritopia: love it, or leave it.

“If we've learned any lessons during the past few decades, perhaps the most important is that preservation of our environment is not a partisan challenge; it's common sense. Our physical health, our social happiness, and our economic well-being will be sustained only by all of us working in partnership as thoughtful, effective stewards of our natural resources.”

Hiring an Amish man to fix your car?

Disability insurance and medicare?

The SSDI contribution is a capped flat tax that you only pay on the first $106,800 of your income, and they complain about those programs, but that tax is hyper regressive because not only is it flat, it is capped and you don't pay it on any income in excess of $106,800.

This seems more than a bit inconsistent to me.

Back before the civil rights movement, most racists were Democrats, and Democrats also pandered to the poor and middle class.

Since the racists for whom this is a hot issue joined the Republican party, immigration seems to never get traction (Reagan even gave illegal aliens amnesty).

Could it be because the wealthy arm of the GOP hires illegal aliens, that nullifies the racists and poor GOP members' input, and the Democratic party's poor and middle class are nullified by the left wing of their coalition?

Just throw out a number. I am interested in understanding how they affect the legislative process.

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2010/4/7/sa...

I hear people mention the bail out figures often, but they leave out the off the books debt incurred by the Fed buying up underwater CDOs, and they definitely leave out the lost productivity, lost businesses, and the cost of unemployment benefits needed to cover out of work workers.

The cost of an unregulated derivatives market and removing capital reserve requirements on investment banks, then, is a much larger cost than the bailouts.

The figure I read bounced around by economists just looking at the off-balance-sheet debt taken on by the Federal Reserve takes us from 40% of our GDP to 80%, and that's not building in revenue shortfalls (taxes) lost due to the downturn.

What is your best estimate of the cost of the collapse of the financial sector?

I haven't seen one of those "W" stickers in a long time, and I live in TN where they were ubiquitous/