Yep you start it from your home, I'll attempt to control my home, and everybody else do the same.. Leave the government out of it...

Mega City 1 here we come!   I'm really looking forward to the new Judge Dredd movie

Better off..no. Worse off... no. Just a trade off. Watched the home we were buying lose 50% of its appraised value over 6 years. Moved back to the farm, where the decreased value is a good thing, taxes on 54 acres here are the same as our one acre was out west. Instead of driving semi trucks pulling import/export containers I'm driving a John Deere or Massey Ferguson and growing foodstuffs for our local population.

Better off is a relative term. Our friend moved here from Seattle and has flat out failed at this lifestyle. But still has a roof over his head (surplus FEMA trailer) and something to eat (food stamps and the garden here), if he'd stayed out west he'd be on the street and in the soup kitchen line. Or dead, the shelters I formerly volunteered at out there wouldn't help white men. At all.

Not the slightest bit inclined to think one party or the other will ever change the harsh realities of life for many in this country. Too many of our populace refuse to acknowledge the simple fact that they, and they alone, are responsible for their own upkeep, actions and attitudes. The nanny state has been proven an unnecessary drain.

& after that Huge Tsunami, ( Not Japan) a few years ago,, there, on TV, sat Slick Willy & The Shrub, shoulder to shoulder, tellin the American people how desperately the victims needed our help.

Ohh,, but dont send clothes & blankets & food, send MONEY,,

Phhhht,, thieves,,

Yes I'm better off than 4 years ago I've less teeth to brush.

I'm not getting into the abortion argument here.  I will some other time, but Lifter's question isn't about that.

What constitutes "better off"?  Does it mean that you have more money, a more secure job, or is it that you may have lost some freedom, which can't be qantitatively measured?  Or being in fear of the future rather than anticipating it?

We argued the health care change bill a couple of years ago until the cows came home.  To me, I lost a little bit of freedom here.

The tax issue - the "Bush" tax cuts are inappropriately named because Congress passes tax laws, not any Pres.  If Obama is successful in getting Congress to let them expire, the gov't will take a small bit more of my money, and yours too.  All taxpayers saw a bit of relief with the Bush tax cuts.  However, I would let them expire purely because we've got to start reducing the deficit.

And there, my friends, is one area where we're not better off.  This Pres has exploded the deficit, and people who think with their heads rather than their stomachs can't help but see that this deficit will kill us, driving us off of that fiscal cliff.  So, are we better off because we're facing eventual ruin unless we get the spending under control, and the only way to do that is cutting programs?  For sure, we can't afford any new spending, such as Obamacare will generate.

I fear becoming what Greece, Portugal and Spain are now.  So, just for that reason if for no other, I'm a long way from being better off now than I  was 4 years ago.

As for wars, neither party has a cap on that one.  Wars are sometimes needed, sometimes not.  Even as a diehard Republican, I was against the invasion of Iraq, feeling as I did that Saddam was a stabilzing influence who kept his animals in check.  We invaded the wrong place - the target should have been Iran.

The Israelis won't wait much longer - they will attack Iran, and they must.  WE need to be ready to take out any and all who support Iran and their acquiring any sort of nuclear capability - you don't give a madman that kind of potential.  Didn't we learn anything from the 1930s in Germany?  Yet, fools would rather forget that those who ignore history are only bound to repeat it.

No one hates war any more than a career soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine.  After wearing the uniform for 30 years, mostly in a reserve capacity, I can attest to that.  But I wore it for a reason - be ready to act if necessary.

The Israelis won't wait much longer - they will attack Iran, and they must.


Really? WHY?


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Netanyahu in 1992: Iran close to having nuclear bomb

Posted on 09/16/2012 by Juan

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is trapped in reflection theory. He was allegedly himself involved in illegally smuggling nuclear triggers out of the US, and he assumes that Iran desperately wants a nuclear weapon as well. But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given a fatwa against nukes, and there is no solid intelligence pointing to an Iranian weapons program. Iran can’t be close to having a weapon if it doesn’t have a weapons program.

He has no credibility left on such warnings.

Reprint edn.:

Scott Peterson at the Christian Science Monitor did a useful timeline for dire Israeli and US predictions of an imminent Iranian nuclear weapon, beginning 20 years ago.

1992: Israeli member of parliament Binyamin Netanyahu predicts that Iran was “3 to 5 years” from having a nuclear weapon.

1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres predicts an Iranian nuclear warhead by 1999 to French TV.

1995: The New York Times quotes US and Israeli officials saying that Iran would have the bomb by 2000.

1998: Donald Rumsfeld tells Congress that Iran could have an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the US by 2003.


& IF they had that capability, what makes anyone think theyd start a war?

& FFS do NOT go running with the mis quoted crap about Wipe them off the map,

Those are lies, by our media, still, wise up, go look for an accurate translation. Ive posted it at least twice.

Seriously, Iran isnt the one with the history of aggression. WE ARE,,Quit buying the propaganda.

Jerry Eichenberger wrote on 09/17/12 at 15:03:56:


Oh this pres has exploded the deficit ? I thought congress makes laws, not any president ?

I am sorry most of the expansion in giovt has been due to people aging and collecting on medicare/medicaid and SS, 2 wars and the related medical and rehab costs, a depression and hence the explosion of poverty and hence the larger population on food stamps and the repairs to infrastructure and so on, all of which is IMHO not negotiable ... The roads get tore up, bridges start to look like they will fall apart, people get older, sorry I dont think tossing them onto the street, or ignoring the roads and bridges is a solution. Neither is privatising them like Romney wants to.

Cool.
Srinath.