posted July 24, 2011 04:25 PM            

yes, people will get rich in green businesses. i thought you believed in entrepreneurship (sic) etc. why would you begrudge someone making money from innovation and cleaning up the environment? because it means leaving some old outworn methods behind, as happened when the industrial revolution replaced the existing forms of transport and production?

maybe if you opened your mind you could actually see that there is not much wrong with finding better ways to do things?

i'm not on the carbon bandwagon. i just happen to think the earth is beautiful as she was made, and that anything we can do to keep her clean and healthy FOR US, not just for some pie in the sky altruism, or for profit either, can be a good thing AND a good way to make money.

posted July 24, 2011 04:39 PM            

i know plenty of fabulous wealthy people. and though it gets tiring repeating it, i am not ON the al gore bandwagon. i just happen to think there is a lot of good in the "green" movement too. nothing wrong with living in cooperation with nature as opposed to fighting it and wrestling it into submission!

there is nothing wrong with solar power. while it may NOT work everywhere, as the technology improves that becomes less and less true. what objection do YOU have to people getting wealthy reducing your power bills and dependence on power companies? i think it's great, and anyone who gets rich providing it deserves their wealth.

and what monopolistic control are you talking about? GE's? gore's? what monopoly does he hold?

there is a long way between wanting clean water to drink and jumping on the climate bandwagon, randall. do you know how many medicines are in your tapwater? do you know whether that affects you or not? do you not want to know?

and i know plenty of "warmers" who are anything but hypocrites. they believe it. why are you so quick to dismiss someone you disagree with as a hypocrite or fool? personally the bottom line for me is that every time HUMANS try to correct NATURE, they tend to create more problems than they solve. that doesn't mean i wouldn't rather be off the grid with next-to-free heat and light! or be able to let my grandkids play in water without worrying about what's in it.

posted July 24, 2011 05:09 PM            

Everyone should remember....the man made global warming religion rests solely on computer modeling and that modeling...aside from being manipulated...has utterly failed to predict temperature trends.

Every one of AlBore's predictions failed to materialize, yet this clown has made fortunes off selling the naive...carbon offset credits through Generation Investment Management of which he is Chairman.

Entrepreneurs
Con Artists

posted July 24, 2011 05:22 PM            

You said this and you were right.

"Scientists who agree with our futility to contol climate and/or change it are in the majority."

acoustic said this in response and acoustic is absolutely wrong.

"They very clearly are not. You've never proven such, nor would proving such be an easy task. A layperson with just a rudimentary knowledge of the effects of a nuclear bomb would tell you that a human can in fact affect the climate. You're simply talking from a place of what you wish to be true. There's no reality in it."

31,000 American scientists signed the petition to the US government saying man made global warming is a crock. Yet, acoustic continues to assert the scientific opinion of the 31,000 is the minority opinion but supplies no proof whatsoever.

So acoustic, where is your list of scientists who say man made global warming is the real deal?

I've asked you dozens of times for "The List" and so far, all you've done is duck, bob, weave and evade.

posted July 24, 2011 11:04 PM            

to paying the tab on old debt.

Might be this:

posted July 25, 2011 08:36 AM            

Obama has shown himself to be a fan of the commission approach to cutting social programs and entitlements. Shortly after taking office, Obama held a major conference on deficit reduction and subsequently created, by executive order, The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The White House made two telling appointments to chair the commission: The first was former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), a well-known critic of Social Security who earned notoriety by suggesting, among other things, that the American government had become "a milk cow with 310 million **** !" Yet Obama's Democratic appointment was even more indicative of whose interests took priority: former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. Bowles is a member of Morgan Stanley's board of directors; an adviser to Carousel Capital, a private equity firm; and a director of Cousins Properties Incorporated, a firm with significant investments in commercial and mixed-use

posted July 25, 2011 10:39 AM            

We are in the final days before the US reaches the debt limit established by Congress and signed into law by the president. Notice, this limit IS the law beyond which no further borrowing can take place to fund the US government.

This debt limit didn't sneak up on anyone in Congress and the White House. They've known for a very long time the debt limit would be reached and...within a narrow time frame..when that debt limit would be reached.

So, why are we days away from the day the debt limit will be reached and with no agreement between political parties..and the White House as to how much the debt ceiling is to be raised and what steps are going to be taken to make sure we don't have a re-run of the same event in the future?

An underlying question is...should the United States be borrowing money to fund activities of the federal government?

Right now, the national debt is 14.294 Trillion dollars..within a few billion. Depending on whose numbers you use for the US population of citizens, the individual citizens portion of that money which has to be repaid is upwards of $46,000 per citizen. That number is just each citizen's portion of national debt repayment and does not include any "personal debt".

Clearly, this issue must be dealt with and swiftly.

Within 20 years, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the national debt will consume 90% of the entire budget of the United States. Can the US government be run on the remaining 10%?

Right now, more than 60% of the federal budget is consumed by Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, other mandatory budget items written into law and interest on the national debt.

So, what should be done and who can you believe with all the rhetoric flying out of Washington, out of microphones of the broadcast media and off the presses of the so called main stream media?

O'Bomber expressed the opinion...in public..that he couldn't guarantee Social Security recipients would get their checks...unless the national debt limit is raised.

But wait, there's more than $2 Trillion in the Social Security Trust Fund...in the form of US Treasury Bonds.

I'm going to concentrate on the Mendacity...a polite word for lying...by Barack Hussein O'Bomber. There's plenty of lying goin on, more than enough to go around on lots of issues but the issue of federal debt and how to get government spending under control is perhaps the most important issue facing American citizens...and I think it IS.

Who to believe?

CURL: Is Obama a pathological liar?
7:17 p.m., Sunday, July 24, 2011
The Washington Times

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

“Mendacity is a system that we live in.”

- Brick, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”

In the weird world that is Washington, men and women say things daily, hourly, even minutely, that they know deep down are simply not true. Inside the Beltway, we all call those utterances “rhetoric.”

But across the rest of the country, plain ol’ folk call ‘em lies. Bald-faced (even bold-faced) lies. Those folks have a tried-and-true way of determining a lie: If you know what you’re saying is patently false, then it’s a lie. Simple.

And lately, the president has been lying so much that his pants could burst into flames at any moment.

His late-evening news conference Friday was a tour de force of flat-out, unadulterated mendacity — and we’ve gotten a first-hand insider’s view of the president’s long list of lies.

“I wanted to give you an update on the current situation around the debt ceiling,” Mr. Obama said at 6:06 p.m. OK, that wasn’t a lie — but just about everything he said after it was, and he knows it.

“I just got a call about a half-hour ago from Speaker [John A.] Boehner, who indicated that he was going to be walking away from the negotiations,” he said.

Not so: “The White House made offers during the negotiations,” said our insider, a person intimately involved in the negotiations, “and then backtracked on those offers after they got heat from Democrats on Capitol Hill. The White House, and its steadfast refusal to follow through on its rhetoric in terms of cutting spending and addressing entitlements, is the real reason that debt talks broke down.”

Mr. Boehner was more blunt in his own news conference: “The discussions we’ve had with the White House have broken down for two reasons. First, they insisted on raising taxes. … Secondly, they refused to get serious about cutting spending and making the tough choices that are facing our country on entitlement reform.”

But back to the lying liar and the lies he told Friday. “You had a bipartisan group of senators, including Republicans who are in leadership in the Senate, calling for what effectively was about $2 trillion above the Republican baseline that theyve been working off of. What we said was give us $1.2 trillion in additional revenues,” Mr. Obama said.

That, too, was a lie. “The White House had already agreed to a lower revenue number — to be generated through economic growth and a more efficient tax code — and then it tried to change the terms of the deal after taking heat from Democrats on Capitol Hill,” our insider said.

The negotiations just before breakdown called for $800 billion in new “revenues” (henceforth, we’ll call those “taxes”), but after the supposedly bipartisan plan came out — and bowing to the powerful liberal bloc on Capitol Hill — Mr. Obama demanded another $400 billion in new taxes: a 50 percent increase.

Mr. Boehner was blunt: “The White House moved the goalpost. There was an agreement, some additional revenues, until yesterday, when the president demanded $400 billion more, which was going to be nothing more than a tax increase on the American people.”

But Mr. Obama, with a straight face, continued. “We then offered an additional $650 billion in cuts to entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.”

The truth: “Actually, the White House was walking back its commitments on entitlement reforms, too. They kept saying they wanted to ‘go big.’ But their actions never matched their rhetoric,” the insider said.

Now, Mr. Boehner and the real leaders in Congress have taken back the process. He’ll write the bill and pass it along to the president, with this directive, which he reportedly said to Mr. Obama’s face in a short White House meeting Saturday: “Congress writes the laws and you get to decide what you want to sign.”

Watching the one-third-of-a-term-senator-turned-president negotiate brings to mind a child spinning yarns about just how the living room lamp got broken. Now, though, the grown-ups are in charge; the kids have been put to bed. Ten days ago, the president warned the speaker: “Dont call my bluff.”

Well, Mr. Boehner has. He’s holding all the cards — and he’s not bluffing.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/24/curl-is-obama-a-pathological-liar/

posted July 25, 2011 12:11 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by jwhop:

Now emitres, are you sure Italy would not be included on lists of "Western Social Democracies"?

---

yes... being Italian - having a mother who watches the Italian news twice a day... an uncle who was Socialist, cousins who are Anarchists and other family members who are Communist i can say that Italy is a capitalist state... the problem lies in what has become the perception of what Socialism actually means - the inclusion of social programs does not mean that the running gov't is in fact Socialist... even when the Communist party was in power(Italy )the country was still a capitalist democracy... one of the core principles of Socialism is that the product of the workers, in part, controls the economics of the state...

" Socialism (pronounced /ˈsoʊ̯ʃəɫɪzm̩/) is an economic system in which the means of production are publicly or commonly owned and controlled cooperatively, or a political philosophy advocating such a system.[1][2] As a form of social organization, socialism is based on co-operative social relations and self-management; relatively equal power-relations and the reduction or elimination of hierarchy in the management of economic and political affairs."

also - " Social democratic political parties, which sometimes also include a democratic socialist element, operate in many developed and developing countries, including France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, Israel and Brazil. Most European social democratic parties are members of the Party of European Socialists,[21] which is one of the main political parties at the European level,[22] and its parliamentary group the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. Globally, most social democratic parties worldwide are members of the Socialist International.[23]

In many cases, social democratic parties are the dominant (India, Portugal, Australia) or second-placed (Canada, Italy, Sweden, Germany, United Kingdom)[24] players within their respective political systems... The United States is the only industrial nation that does not currently have an official major social democratic party, although many consider large portions of the Green Party and some liberal factions of the Democratic Party to be social democratic."

posted July 25, 2011 12:20 PM            

Given the alternatives at present, and with a very shallow pool, there is little doubt in my mind who will win the next election. ~Also, that the correct choice was made in '08.

We live in an incredibly complex time in our history. Many, many factors, and a few decades have brought us to this point. It is easy to state that this might be the end game to certain things. Then again previous generations could [and rightfully so state] that theirs was the fork in the road. Are tougher choices being made now than those in the 1860's? or 1930's? Probably not. But this is huge. A massive power play is going on. That the propaganda machine is also on the chopping block is either a very big distraction or a gargantuan opportunity. who is going to step up to the plate?

it would appear none of our current group of elected officials. There are a few out there with a moral compass, a very few.

This development of a possible new legislative body with the power to rule by fiat is draconian.
That it supposedly came to be to pass legislation that is usually perfunctory is telling. Why passage as a single act of paying old debt is part of the plan to not only not pay old debt, but to make very sure that certain factions have even more power. We are not becoming a banana republic, we already are.

Thanks to Pire for reminding us of the definition.

House Republicans, including Speaker of the House John Boehner were calling for repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law even before it had passed. Once they achieved a majority, House Republicans worked to undermine the law by cutting the budgets of financial market regulators and trying to slow down the implementation of several of the law’s provision.

And Wall Street evidently appreciates the effort, donating heavily to Boehner over the first half of this year.

quote:

---

Bloomberg News reported, “three of the five biggest sources of Boehner’s campaign cash this year are employees of three Wall Street investment houses, a shift from the 2010 election cycle when such contributors weren’t ranked among his top 10 donors”:

---

Maybe that is why in his statements to the press the other day Boner said he believes he has the same responsibilities as the president. ?

quote:

---

Boehner received most of the donations from Paulson & Co., Moore Capital and Cantor Fitzgerald in June, the same month the House voted along party lines to cut the budget of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is writing most of the new derivatives rules, and the House Appropriations Committee voted to limit funding for the new consumer protection bureau.

---

Wall Street has been spending almost as much to influence the implementation of Financial Reform law as it spent trying to block the law. The Center for Public Integrity has found that “the Street and other financial institutions engaged about 3,000 lobbyists to fight Dodd-Frank – more than five lobbyists for every member of Congress – and have hired almost the same number to delay, weaken, or otherwise prevent its implementation.”

And part of Wall Street’s strategy seems to be keeping the speaker’s campaign coffers stuffed. Boehner’s office last week called Dodd-Frank one of the factors “holding back our economy.”

How is financial regulation holding back our economy Mr Boner?

Pubs say that no revenue increases can be part of the deal. What Harry Reid did yesterday was essentially call the GOP’s bluff by outlining a plan that raises the debt ceiling by $2.7 trillion and includes $2.7 trillion in spending cuts, a healthy share of which comes from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Republicans are rejecting this even though it pretty much meets their demands. Why? Because it doesn’t achieve either of their two real objectives. In particular, the plan doesn’t cut Medicare, and Reid is including tax revenue from the expiration of the Bush cuts. In Dec of last year they failed to do so, which was so damn stupid on so many levels.....

Meanwhile Eddie Munster--Eric Cantor is pushing for a short term raise in the ceiling, in that event this girl believes they will ask for even more cuts from those who most need it.

Demand a clean bill. full stop.
_________________________________
:edit to add:

Pawn to Kings bishop

The opportunities of crisis. or Preserving the Fabric of Our Society as They Roll Out the Shock Doctrine
and lest my opening statement in this post lead one to believe I am wholly in favor of Obamanomics....
Reading through the package that was left at the alter, I felt increasingly sick to my stomach. I am glad Bonehead walked. Perhaps the backlash from the base will change it, doubtfull unless he happens to feel it will effect his reelection numbers, but as I said before the competition is in the shallow end of the pool.

Then again maybe he knew anything would be rejected...who knows what those 2 hammered out on the golf course.

posted July 25, 2011 05:20 PM            

By National Journal | Exclusive – Fri, Jul 22, 2011

By Ronald Brownstein
National Journal

With their vote this week to impose strict limits on future federal spending, House Republicans continued an argument not so much with Democrats as with demography. The real current they are seeking to reverse is not some ideological drive from President Obama to convert America into Sweden; it's the inexorably rising cost of providing retirement security, especially health care, to an aging society.

The cut, cap, and balance bill that Republicans muscled through the House would authorize an increase in the federal debt ceiling only after Congress approved a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget. The bill doesn't specify the spending level at which Washington must balance the budget, but each of the major balanced-budget proposals that House Republicans have already introduced would eventually limit federal spending to an amount equal to 18 percent of the nation's total economic output.

Federal spending hasn't represented that small a share of the economy since 1966, when it stood at 17.8 percent. That's an especially revealing comparison because 1966 was the year when Medicare went into effect—the first guarantee of health coverage for the nation's seniors. The program didn't even begin until July 1; Washington spent only about $100 million on it that first fiscal year. Medicaid, which provides care for both the poor and the elderly, was also just getting started; it cost the federal government only about $800 million in fiscal 1966.

Since then, those two programs, along with Social Security, have provided much of the upward pressure on spending. From 1948 through 1966, federal spending averaged just over 17 percent of the economy—about the level that House Republicans are hoping to restore. Since 1967, federal spending on average has grown to just below 21 percent of the economy.

The difference between the two eras is entirely explained by the growth in federal payments to individuals—preponderantly, entitlements for the elderly. In the first period, essentially before Medicare and Medicaid, Washington spent on average an amount equal to 4.2 percent of the economy each year on payments to individuals. Since 1967, the average annual cost of payments to individuals has more than doubled, to 10.5 percent of the economy. If you do the math, that means that as a share of the economy, Washington actually has spent slightly less on everything else—defense, national parks, education, environmental protection—over the past 40 years than it did in the previous 20.

Within the overall explosion in federal payments to individuals, the key driver has been health care—again, predominantly for the elderly. In 1965, federal health care spending equaled less than 1 percent of the economy. Today, the figure stands at 6.3 percent. That's not because of Obama's health care legislation, which doesn't generate significant spending until 2014 and is projected to largely pay for itself by restraining Medicare's growth; it's because Medicare and Medicaid now cost nearly $800 billion annually.

Two factors above all are swelling those programs. One is the unbroken rise in per capita health care spending as medical technology advances. The other is the growing elderly population. When Medicare began in 1966, it served about 19 million seniors. Today, the program serves nearly 48 million. Its trustees project that by 2035 that number will approach 86 million.

Against that overwhelming demographic pressure, mandating that federal spending return to its 1966 level is like ordering the tide to reverse its course. Although many Republicans want to cap federal spending at 18 percent of the economy, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone will consume about 15 percent of the nation's total economic output by 2035. And under other scenarios that CBO has explored, even that figure might be optimistic.

That prospect points toward two large conclusions. One is that it's unrealistic to limit federal spending to levels last seen when the elderly represented only about half as large a share of the population as they will in the decades ahead. Given the demographic demands, future federal spending will almost certainly require more than 21 percent of the economy—although likely less than the swollen 25 percent level reached after 2009's stimulus program. A corollary is that sooner or later, the demands of providing for an aging society without gutting everything else that government does will require Washington to raise more revenue.

The second large conclusion bookends the first: It would be irresponsible to surrender to demography as fiscal destiny. Unless Washington controls entitlement spending, especially by slowing the overall rise in health care costs, these programs will bury all other public needs and impose unacceptable tax burdens on a working population shrinking in relative size; by 2035 there will be only half as many working-age Americans per senior as there were in 1966.

posted July 25, 2011 08:08 PM            

As far as being a "believer," I'm not the one taking the position that ignores the bulk of the science. By any objective measure the people with the conspiracy theory about a topic would generally be called "believers," because it is they that can't make a compelling case (and it is telling that attempts continue to be made on this front). You guys are all talk, and no walk.