Starlifter wrote on 05/19/13 at 21:29:56:

No Star, I'm not saying that. I started this thread just to get members opinions. I think Obama isn't living up to a lot of his promises but you can blame a lot of that on Congress. I grateful he has kept us out of another war. Maybe things are so furked up no one can straighten them out. My biggest gripe with Obama is leave my guns alone. Guns are a family tradition where I come from. Conn. has a no assault weapon ban and it worked about as good as the war on drugs.

"The world was an awful, dirty and miserable place until capitalism freed the masses to move upwards. WM"

Unfettered capitalism...Ah for the early days when robber barons ruled, when children worked the coal mines, when women worked 12 hours a day in sweatshops, when union busting thugs did their talking with guns and clubs.

In the early days of Capitalism If the Irish won't do it, or you run out of them, hire the Chinese, they work like hell for next to nothing. The Irish and the Chinese and the Blacks and every other poor chump in the world busted their backs and died to build what we now take for granted.

Flash forward.

Republicans. They'd like to see us return to those golden years of yore. If they could arrange it, the Minimum Wage would be 1 Dollar an Hour. Or less. The fact that there even is a minimum wage law is obscene.

The Mexican slave laborers, (guest workers), have undercut the minimum wage, and many people blame THEM, and not the lawmakers on the hill. They blame the poor, hard working least among us, then toss them out, and bring in the next batch, and we treat them as what they are, slaves.

Meanwhile, the honored and admired CEO's whom are paid so very, very well, who are living in mansions and riding in limos, refuse to raise the minimum wage for the serfs while regularly giving themselves midnight pay raises on the sly, or golden parachutes if their business goes under. At a time of austerity. With subsidies, tax breaks and other government perks, it's beyond absurd that billions of our tax dollars are pouring into executive pockets.

Corporations today have forgotten Henry Ford's brilliant insight. Henry Ford did "get" the way that capitalism can work:

Business owners have to find the "sweet spot" where you're paying your workers enough, and also making your product cheap enough, that your workers can buy one of them.

And the "outsource it" mentality isn't just about production, it's about loosing American jobs, cutting wages and benefits to the point where the average Joe can't afford to buy the products they make.

Defense contractors like Halliburton  ripping off government is as old as defense contractors. They steal as fast and as much as they can while they have a "war" to give them an excuse. They never know when they will be able to incite the next war. Eisenhower was dead on with his farewell address warning about the military industrial complex.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

credit is available to business (that was a fear in 2008)
New housing starts are up
housing values are not in decline
unemployment is increasing at slower rate
-Pine

Can't GIVE AWAY property on the Gulf Coast. Can't GIVE AWAY "McMansions" in TN. If you have ANY physical impairment there is no work (McSlime's and Hellmart here want white employees to have a four year degree, but a negro or wetback with no education is hired on the spot)...  

Shelby County TN properties devalued an average of 10% across the board (commercial, industrial, residential, agricultural) in the last month. Taxes haven't gone down any though, in fact, with the forced city/county school merger they are going up to "make up for lost revenue"...  

Y'all have what, Nissan, Siemens and ??? We've got Kellogs, Lockheed Martin (weapons division) and a down on it's luck Navy base that looks like it was last overhauled about 1962. Pretty much everything else (including most Fed Ex jobs), other than agriculture, is "No whites allowed"...

Better under Obama? Um, no.

My good for nothing stepson lives in Oxford and works at Ole Miss... shall I arrange a hook up? Kidding, wouldn't wish him on anybody.

We did get a Mitsubishi heavy electronics plant contract, but, it's stagnant. The educational level here leaves a lot to be desired, a master's from any local university is equivalent to an associates degree on the west coast or in New England....

Pine wrote on 05/21/13 at 09:19:43:


Ronmey wouldn't have been much better except he would have preserved civil liberties and human rights. We need a very strong leader now who can take charge and do what's right regardless of the short term political consequences. Obama is all about Obama and his legacy will show what a worthless president most of us know him to be. We need a JFK or Reagan to save us from ourselves.

Starlifter wrote on 05/21/13 at 12:11:51:



I'll take that one:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/with-reservations-obama-signs-ac...

In his last official act of business in 2011, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act from his vacation rental in Kailua, Hawaii. In a statement, the president said he did so with reservations about key provisions in the law — including a controversial component that would allow the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge.

The legislation has drawn severe criticism from civil liberties groups, many Democrats, along with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who called it “a slip into tyranny.” Recently two retired four-star Marine generals called on the president to veto the bill in a New York Times op-ed, deeming it “misguided and unnecessary.”

I think this pretty much bring George Owells 1984 to reality. If you disagree that allowing the US military to capture and detain indefinitely without charges, trail, or any other chance of reprive isn't a blow to civil liberties... then wow.  

Then there is this: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/05/the-presidents-kill-lis...

I kinda wonder if the president slips into bed and when the wife asks how his day was .. he says... "well I scratched 12 more people off the list".

Star I'll never say my life was better under Bush. I think I had more cash flow under Bush but I would trade the extra cash and more to have kept all those body bags from coming home. Sometimes I just throw questions out like this one just to see how people really feel. I'm very grateful Obama hasn't led us into another war yet. Obama is a long ways from being perfect but it could be a lot worse.