Originally Posted by The Rani

The "who are the real zombies" theme just keeps coming back for more.
Even if Eric doesn't get it.

It is quite apparent that Republicans are the zombies. I get it; I hope others get it, for the sake of our republic.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Was it conservatives who divided us into the 1% and the 99%?

It was the Republican policies of Reagan and Bush that caused our nation to be so divided. Those who use the slogan are just calling attention to the facts.

Originally Posted by Weave

Oh please, you liberals live in fantasy land. The only time Dems win is when they pretend, like Clinton that they are moderate and then, when ther true colors show, like in 1994 and 2010 they get slapped out of power. People bought Obama's dog and pony show of simple homespun phrases of "hope" and "change". This was driven by a love crazed liberal media who never vetted a clear empty suit of little accomplishment and experience. He was, in fact a complete joke when looking at his thin resume....Anger towards Bush was the primary driver of his election.

No doubt these are plausible points. I can't really disagree. It is up to the people to relinquish its fondness for the charming actor and his counter-revolution, and to not be so deceived by the right-wing mantras of "government is the problem" and "don't raise taxes to redistribute wealth to people who don't earn it." There is no doubt that Americans have voted wrong, especially in 1994 and 2010, and that they do not now have the vision or the courage to risk making any real change in this day and age. It wasn't always so, and need not be again. We have a lot of problems in our society and our government, and government action is needed. Americans' failure to understand this is costing them dearly, and will cost them further. At least, however, as Gingrich might have said, the people are no more fond of right-wing social engineering than they are of left-wing social engineering. The public also recoils against too much Republican dismantling of government programs and religious freedoms they have come to expect, and against endless war and militarism. That's why the right-wing fails to carry out many of its destructive intentions, and why blackmail and shutdown strategies fail. As the older deceived Reaganoids die out, the chances are not good that this strategy will work in the future. But it is all that your side offers, Weave.

The only barbarians of late are the "occupy" clowns who engage in violence and mayhem driven by their puppet masters at the union halls and the DNC. Tea Partiers, by comparison, have been peaceful. Many "occupiers" continue to threaten violent acton much like Nazi stormtroopers and communist thugs of Wiemar Germany.

Tea Partiers carry guns in a threatening manner, and throw things at congressmen they don't like. The only reason they are not like the few hooligans who hang around Occupy, is that they are all geezers, and thus too old for such bravado.

As much as the left likes to talk about how "right wingers" want to deny rights, its almost exclusive of the left to look for ways to stifle freedom of speech, when it opposes their ideas.

For example?

Right-wingers are seeking to deny people the right to vote in many states, by erecting barriers intended to discourage the poor from voting. Right-wingers impose censorship laws intended to get media people fired. Right wingers want to limit what is taught in schools to what is acceptable to their own religion. Right-wingers oppose government and corporate whistleblowers and try to shut down websites that expose the truth.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

I'm contrasting two individuals -- the employer vs. the employee. It really doesn't matter whether the employer has incorporated or not. I'm just pointing out that the conservative frame on the contraception mandate seems to assume that employee benefits are the property of the employer, which doesn't make any sense.

Your point on this is very well-taken, and is what I have said also.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

If corporations are people, then they are slaves because they are people owned by people. So does the 13th Amendment abolish corporations?

A very good point. Maybe after Texas executes its first corporation, the corporatists will have something to say on this..

Originally Posted by radind

Comparing the NAZI's to barbarians seems totally inadequate. They were evil and wicked.
However, you appear to imply that the threat is only from the 'hard' right.
While I agree that the USA is also vulnerable, it seems to me that the 'hard' left is equally dangerous.

There is no danger from the "hard left" in this country, because there IS no "hard left" in this country.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

I'm contrasting two individuals -- the employer vs. the employee. It really doesn't matter whether the employer has incorporated or not. I'm just pointing out that the conservative frame on the contraception mandate seems to assume that employee benefits are the property of the employer, which doesn't make any sense.

Uh...benefits are offered by the employer as compensation. The government is telling the employer what kind of compensation they must offer.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Didn't you ever see The Bad News Bears?

I have. My mom took me to see it at the movie theatre when I was a kid. I've watched it several times since then. I'm not sure how it relates though.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Was it conservatives who divided us into the 1% and the 99%?

Economic reality did. The Left called the Right to account for its trivialization of the intensifying disparity in economic results between the rich and the non-rich. Maybe the divide is more appropriately between the 3% and the 97%, but that is less dramatic.

Originally Posted by Weave

Oh please, you liberals live in fantasy land. The only time Dems win is when they pretend, like Clinton that they are moderate and then, when ther true colors show, like in 1994 and 2010 they get slapped out of power. People bought Obama's dog and pony show of simple homespun phrases of "hope" and "change". This was driven by a love crazed liberal media who never vetted a clear empty suit of little accomplishment and experience. He was, in fact a complete joke when looking at his thin resume....Anger towards Bush was the primary driver of his election.

Who sets the standard of what constitutes "moderation"? Rush Limbaugh?

George W. Bush earned contempt not so much for his illiberal ideology as he did for lying to induce American politicians to commit to a war for profit, for riding the economic good times of a speculative boom that any person of modest wisdom should have seen as doomed and then holding himself blameless, for the tawdry stunt of flying onto an aircraft carrier, the creation of a personality cult, and for using fraudulent language (the earliest was the "Healthy Forests Initiative" which simply rushed clear-cutting that ensures No Forest Left Behind) to cloak his policies. Little and large things alike discredited Dubya as President to the extent that some historians consider him the Worst President Ever.

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002804

Worst. President. Ever.

By Scott Horton

“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”

America’s historians, it seems, don’t think much of George W. Bush.

Now in all fairness, historians should wait a while before passing judgment on a president’s who served recently, much less one still in office. But the current incumbent is a special case. After all, 81 percent of Americans, according to a recent New York Times poll, believe he’s taken the country on the wrong track. That’s the highest number ever registered. The same poll also says 28 percent have a favorable view of his performance in office, which is also in Nixon-in-the-darkest-days-of-Watergate territory.

Failure. Catastrophic failure. His legacy will long be the atrocities of 9/11 that were eminently preventable, the worst economic meltdown in nearly 70 years, two budget-ravaging wars, and the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina completely out of character with recent Presidencies.

The only barbarians of late are the "occupy" driven by their puppet masters at the union halls and the DNC. Tea Partiers, by comparison, have been peaceful. Many "occupiers" continue to threaten violent acton much like Nazi stormtroopers and communist thugs of Wiemar Germany.

The... clowns who engage in violence and mayhem... deserve to be arrested, charged, convicted, and imprisoned or fined. Law and order is the most basic of human rights without which no other right has any meaning. Union halls and the DNC have the right to support protests against the misconduct of executive elites, plutocrats, and their stooges. If anything it is our economic elites who buy the success of politicians who sell out their states and congressional districts to the super-rich.

Spare the hyperbole.

As much as the left likes to talk about how "right wingers" want to deny rights, its almost exclusive of the left to look for ways to stifle freedom of speech, when it opposes their ideas.

The Hard Right is as capable of using Orwellian rhetoric as any fascist or commie, thank you.

Please tone down the incendiary rhetoric unless you wish to return to my "ignore" list.

Originally Posted by radind

Comparing the NAZI's to barbarians seems totally inadequate. They were evil and wicked.
However, you appear to imply that the threat is only from the 'hard' right.
While I agree that the USA is also vulnerable, it seems to me that the 'hard' left is equally dangerous.

The Hard Left is in hibernation (Commies) or largely irrelevant (Weather Underground, Black Panthers).

Really there are three related words:

"Barbarian" refers to the difference between cultures often upon first contact when one is not in awe of the other. Montezuma and Cortez surely considered each other barbarians at first. A culture that wears kimonos, plays music on kotos and samisens, and has bonsai trees might seem barbarian to Americans before there is any sharing of culture. Just think of how barbarian Commodore Perry must have seemed in Japan.

"Barbarous" implies the practice of behaviors that another culture holds uncouth. As an example, Americans whose culture gives high reverence to dogs might be appalled at some people of old and distinguished citizens eating dog meat.

"Barbaric" implies the practice of inexcusable violations of moral values irrespective of the level of technological and intellectual sophistication of the country considered "barbaric". The Germans during World War II might have been similar enough in culture to Americans to not be "barbarian"; they might have had good table manners. But enslaving people and perpetrating the Holocaust were both barbaric and beyond any ethical excuse.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

I'm contrasting two individuals -- the employer vs. the employee. It really doesn't matter whether the employer has incorporated or not. I'm just pointing out that the conservative frame on the contraception mandate seems to assume that employee benefits are the property of the employer, which doesn't make any sense.

As an employer, the majority share holder and the business owner I chose the company who would provide the companies HC plan (I picked the plan that best suited me) and then I offered it to the employees as an employment benefit. In two years, I won't have to offer that benefit anymore to employees. The contraception mandate assumes that the individuals in government have the power and authoruty to dictate and to control the individiuals who own the business's and the individuals who run and control the churches. Now, I don't know how many constitutional infractions or which one it's going to take to turn the majority of the American establishment against it's government. But, I know that it's eventually going to happen.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Economic reality did. The Left called the Right to account for its trivialization of the intensifying disparity in economic results between the rich and the non-rich. Maybe the divide is more appropriately between the 3% and the 97%, but that is less dramatic.

Realistically speaking, the divide is basically between the have's, have more than enough's and have enough's and the have barely enough's and have not's. I'm a couple of floors above poverty. You might only be a step or two above poverty or you might even be in poverty.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Uh...benefits are offered by the employer as compensation. The government is telling the employer what kind of compensation they must offer.

That's a critique of "Obamacare," not the religious issue.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Uh...benefits are offered by the employer as compensation. The government is telling the employer what kind of compensation they must offer.

The government has also mandated for quite some time a minimum wage. Now you may be opposed to that as well (there are a few who are), but would you seriously argue that the difference between what they pay by law, and what they would pay were there no such law, is an amount of money that really "belongs" to the employer, who therefore has a right to a say in how it is spent? (Since that too was government mandating terms of compensation.) Otherwise I don't get your point here.

Besides, I thought the policy was now changed so that insurance companies must include the coverage for contraception free of additional charge. So it's the insurance companies that are now "being oppressed", not the religious-affiliated employers.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

The Hard Left is in hibernation (Commies) or largely irrelevant (Weather Underground, Black Panthers).

Really there are three related words:

"Barbarian" refers to the difference between cultures often upon first contact when one is not in awe of the other. Montezuma and Cortez surely considered each other barbarians at first. A culture that wears kimonos, plays music on kotos and samisens, and has bonsai trees might seem barbarian to Americans before there is any sharing of culture. Just think of how barbarian Commodore Perry must have seemed in Japan.

"Barbarous" implies the practice of behaviors that another culture holds uncouth. As an example, Americans whose culture gives high reverence to dogs might be appalled at some people of old and distinguished citizens eating dog meat.

"Barbaric" implies the practice of inexcusable violations of moral values irrespective of the level of technological and intellectual sophistication of the country considered "barbaric". The Germans during World War II might have been similar enough in culture to Americans to not be "barbarian"; they might have had good table manners. But enslaving people and perpetrating the Holocaust were both barbaric and beyond any ethical excuse.

Barbaric is a reasonable term to describe the Germans in WWII.
I still think that we should be constantly aware of threats from the left or the right .

Politics is a movie and that's a problem.

Here's a Moyers interview with a cultural historian, Neal Gabler. He describes how politics today is turned into an activity like watching a sporting event and has contributed to our polarity. He says,

“Life itself has become an entertainment medium,” Gabler told Bill Moyers during a PBS interview on Friday. “We are all actors in and audience for an ongoing show. We are so steeped in the theatrical arts … that we have turned our own lives, and life outside of us, into a movie.”

How Pop Culture Influences Political Culture And How Politics is a Movie


Cultural historian Neal Gabler believes that Hollywood movies have shaped our perceptions of political campaigns for the worse.

“Life itself has become an entertainment medium,” Gabler told Bill Moyers during a PBS interview on Friday. “We are all actors in and audience for an ongoing show. We are so steeped in the theatrical arts … that we have turned our own lives, and life outside of us, into a movie.”
“Politics is a movie,” he continued, “and now we’re in a campaign season where what we’re really watching is not so much political debate … as we are watching a movie in which candidates are pretending to be our protagonists-in-chief. … They want to be the hero of the movie because they understand that’s what the American people really are looking for.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/2...ats-a-problem/

Originally Posted by Odin

Santorum is clearly neurotic and is likely a closeted gay or bi person who is repressing his sexual orientation because he is terrified of God condemning him to Hell. His obsession with other people's sexual behavior fits perfectly with repress-and-project behavior.

-Interesting how you manage to use an anti-homosexual ad hominem to show the world how enlightened you are.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

No, because the present standard is to include birth control. Premiums are actually likely to be higher without birth control coverage (since pregnancies are more expensive than the pill). An employer that doesn't want to pay for birth control is actually imposing a cost on themselves...

-"Present Standard?" Whose standard? If someone doesn't want to pay for it at all, or would rather use the money to get a benfit which isn't "standard," they should be able to. Self evident, I think.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

...The distinction is one of degree, not kind. You act as if quitting a job and finding another is the easiest, cost-free thing in the world. It is far more inconvenient to switch jobs just to get birth control coverage than it is for a religious employer to just pay for the coverage...

1) If, as you say, birth control is so cheap, then it is little burden for those who want it to pay for it. BTW, how many bloody condoms are they using, anyway?

OTOH, if it is expensive, then it might be worth their while to find an employer more in line with their needs, don't you think? If it's that big a deal, to them, why did they accept employment there in the first place?

2) If you honestly can't tell the difference between getting a job under free market terms vs. serfdom, you need help.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

...The only cost to religious employers is the psychic cost of having to potentially pay, ever-so-indirectly, for a birth control pill. I see a huge problem with that view...

-No, that's "direct." "Indirect" would be when they pay the employee, and the employee uses that money top buy condoms or what have you. It would be the same thing if I pay you as my employee, and then you use it to pay dues to the KKK or whatever. My moral responsibility only goes so far.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

...Health care coverage isn't the employer's money. It is the employees money, that they earned by providing labor to the employer...

-No, it's the employer's money, because it's part of a package to which both employer and employee have to agree. The employee agrees to work for an employer in return for the compensation package which the employer offers (and pays for). Sheesh.

Again, if it's that big a deal, go work for someone who offers a compensation package more in line with your wishes.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Very well argued. I tend to cringe at the thought that religous orders can own businesses, and use them to indirectly impose their views on others. I haven't change my views, but your argument for why it's wrong is stronger.

-They impinge nothing. See above.

Originally Posted by playwrite

Only those Millies that have as bizarre a definition as yours of what is doing terrible on the economy -

-Interesting. Depending on how you judge it, job growth recovered in MAR 2009, long before anything the Obama administration did could posibly have had effect. But then, in 2010, after he'd been in charge for over a year, jobs slumped. Now, its all rather pekid- far weaker than in previous recoveries. Huh. Go figure.

Did PW give us this chart to make Obama look good?

Originally Posted by playwrite

For those interested in Glick's banality, here is a complete dismantling of it...

-Notice that PW NEVER actually takes us to what the SS Ponzi Scheme actuaries have to say:

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2011/tr2011.pdf

As for this:

Originally Posted by playwrite

.
The SS program is nearly 70 years old and the Right has always told us that its pay-as-you-go mechanism is a Ponzi Scheme just waiting to collapse...

...PW misses out on the fact that the pyramid had a narrow apex of people born in the 1930s, followed by a wide bulge of people at the bottom who were born 1946-1964 propping it up. Now, it's the other way around. The difference in the Euro welfare states, like Germany, is even more extreme. Tick tock!

This is why Obama is going to win by a landslide:

Originally Posted by Odin

This is why Obama is going to win by a landslide:

-Apples and oranges.

Originally Posted by Exile 67'

As an employer, the majority share holder and the business owner I chose the company who would provide the companies HC plan (I picked the plan that best suited me) and then I offered it to the employees as an employment benefit.

The tax code gives you a tremendous amount of power over an employees health care. Even if you gave them a cash-equivalent, they could not buy the same amount of coverage since for them buying insurance is not tax deductible. As a result, any items that you refuse to cover constitute a pay cut for them. Which makes the "conscience carve-out" exactly the same as if you told an employee that you'd cut their pay if they ever bought a condom.

Originally Posted by Exile 67'

The contraception mandate assumes that the individuals in government have the power and authoruty to dictate and to control the individiuals who own the business's and the individuals who run and control the churches.

No, the mandate assumes that when the government has tilted the playing field toward certain people, that it is appropriate to prevent those who benefit from abusing that power.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

...No, the mandate assumes that when the government has tilted the playing field toward certain people, that it is appropriate to prevent those who benefit from abusing that power.

-The real problem is that the government has no business in this to begin with.

On related issues:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...nd_113235.html

...It made me want to try to jump through the legal hoops required to open a simple lemonade stand in New York City. Here's some of what one has to do...

...We couldn't finish the process. Had we been able to schedule our health inspection and open my stand legally, it would have taken us 65 days.
I sold lemonade anyway. I looked dumb hawking it with my giant fire extinguisher on the table...

Politicians say, "We support entrepreneurs," but the bureaucrats make it hard... There are so many incomprehensible rules that even the bureaucrats can't tell you what's legal. In the name of public safety, politicians strangle opportunity.

Originally Posted by Deb C

Politics is a movie and that's a problem.

Here's a Moyers interview with a cultural historian, Neal Gabler. He describes how politics today is turned into an activity like watching a sporting event and has contributed to our polarity. He says,



How Pop Culture Influences Political Culture And How Politics is a Movie


Cultural historian Neal Gabler believes that Hollywood movies have shaped our perceptions of political campaigns for the worse.

“Life itself has become an entertainment medium,” Gabler told Bill Moyers during a PBS interview on Friday. “We are all actors in and audience for an ongoing show. We are so steeped in the theatrical arts … that we have turned our own lives, and life outside of us, into a movie.”
“Politics is a movie,” he continued, “and now we’re in a campaign season where what we’re really watching is not so much political debate … as we are watching a movie in which candidates are pretending to be our protagonists-in-chief. … They want to be the hero of the movie because they understand that’s what the American people really are looking for.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/2...ats-a-problem/

It does remind me of Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages."
William Shakespeare

Originally Posted by JDG 66

-The real problem is that the government has no business in this to begin with.

On related issues:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...nd_113235.html

...It made me want to try to jump through the legal hoops required to open a simple lemonade stand in New York City. Here's some of what one has to do...

...We couldn't finish the process. Had we been able to schedule our health inspection and open my stand legally, it would have taken us 65 days.
I sold lemonade anyway. I looked dumb hawking it with my giant fire extinguisher on the table...

Politicians say, "We support entrepreneurs," but the bureaucrats make it hard... There are so many incomprehensible rules that even the bureaucrats can't tell you what's legal. In the name of public safety, politicians strangle opportunity.

It would be funny if it were not true.