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09-11-06, 10:43 AM | #21 |
Earthbound misfit
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Moses Lake, Washington
Posts: 2,563
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Do you remember the recession that began in 1999? It ended in 2001 and the economy has progressed strongly since then. The Dow is now at its all-time high, above 12,100 points; four years ago it was in the 8,000 range. That's a 4-year, 50% increase for that part of the economy (hint: that's frickin huge). During the same period unemployment rates have stayed below 6%, now at 4.4%. Gas prices have been high, but at the moment they're lower than they have been in more than two years, and crude has dropped to about $60 a barrel. Are you skeptical of the data, Malk, or are your standards just too high?
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09-11-06, 07:34 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: Mar 2001
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09-11-06, 08:30 PM | #23 | ||
my name is Ranking Fullstop
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Promontorium Tremendum
Posts: 4,391
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case in point - me: i have a mid-range five-figure income, i've worked for a Fortune 500 company for a long time, i have two kids, a mortgage, a 401 K etc etc. in short, economically speaking, i'm pretty typical middle class. this is my experience: on the plus side, i have recently seen the value of my stock portfolio increase (after a long slide). this is nice, but since my stocks are in a 401K, this rise is a blip in the big picture that will not benefit me for many years. i have also seen the value of my home rise dramatically in the last couple of years. this is also nice, but also does nothing for me for the foreseeable future - if i sell my house, any gains will be wiped out by the house i buy elsewhere. on the negative side, my company has struggled, as have most over the last few years and we do more with less. i get annual salary increases, but my economic gains severely impacted by increases in health care costs. last year, it cost me about $4000 to insure me and my kids - this year, it has increased to $5400 (plus higher deductibles and copays). add it up and that will be a couple of thousand dollars that i could have spent elsewhere. oh, and gas is already on it's way back up (i paid $2.05 over the weekend - i paid $2.17 today). so i'm holding my own, but i don't see a great economy. my situation is typical - my coworkers, customers, and most of the people i run into every day could tell pretty much the same story and i think the election results reflected that to some extent. at the end of the day, waving unemployment numbers and dow jones industrial averages just doesn't mean much in real terms. |
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09-11-06, 11:17 PM | #24 | ||
Earthbound misfit
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Moses Lake, Washington
Posts: 2,563
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Malk, the Dow wasn't the only metric I cited.
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10-11-06, 06:28 AM | #25 | ||
my name is Ranking Fullstop
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Promontorium Tremendum
Posts: 4,391
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http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/15781393.htm |
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10-11-06, 09:40 AM | #26 |
Earthbound misfit
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Moses Lake, Washington
Posts: 2,563
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Well alright, you go ahead and blame the rich if you want. If the Dems have a solid plan for reducing insurance premiums and copays then let's see what it is. They didn't really talk about it much during the campaigns; Iraq was their sticking point this year so you can understand my reservations about what their domestic policies might be. The seem determined to change things, and I don't like the sound of that where it concerns the economy.
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10-11-06, 10:39 AM | #27 | |
my name is Ranking Fullstop
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Promontorium Tremendum
Posts: 4,391
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-Iraq is and will continue to require massive transfers of tax dollars to the DoD and the companies who are contracted to help maintain the occpation. winding down the occupation of iraq will help staunch the bleeding. - i am willing, at this point, to consider any alternative to the status quo -even a single payer health care system (read government-controlled health care - cue the wingnut screams of "socialism!") because my paycheck simply cannot continue to sustain the kind of health care cost increases i have seen over the past 3 years. the GOP health care policy has been "don't just do something - stand there", but the Dems know they just got elected to be more proactive than that. let's see if they can come up with something. |
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10-11-06, 04:04 PM | #28 |
Just Draggin' Along
Join Date: Apr 2000
Posts: 1,210
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Good News! Amazon.com has a sale on copies of the Qur'an, we will all be needing them before to long, unless you want Muhammad's sword in the gut option.
http://www.amazon.com/Quran-Oxford-W...e=UTF8&s=books
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Copyright means the copy of the CD/DVD burned with no errors. I will never spend a another dime on content that I can’t use the way I please. If I can’t copy it to my hard drive and play it using the devices I want, when and where I want, I won’t be buying it. Period. They can all take their DRM, broadcast flags, rootkits, and Compact Discs that aren’t really compact discs and shove them up their bottom-lines. |
10-11-06, 05:30 PM | #29 |
flippin 'em off
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: the real world
Posts: 3,232
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If you can't afford to pay your medical bills it's a strong indication that you are not fit for survival. Getting the government to steal from fitter humans to sustain you is detrimental to the human race as a whole.
For the good of the species you should let nature take its course and replace you with a healthier or harder working specimen. |
10-11-06, 07:12 PM | #30 | |
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 7
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Or do you think the 40 hour work week is a natural condition?
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11-11-06, 12:00 AM | #31 |
Just Draggin' Along
Join Date: Apr 2000
Posts: 1,210
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It's interesting......
All that talk and griping about problems with the vote and election fraud, up to and including election day. But....... After the Dems win, not a single word about concerns regarding the vote. All the concern about the e-voting machines, "disenfranchised voters", etc. seems to have evaporated instantly. Where is all this "concern" now? I guess all is fair and good, as long as the Dems win.
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Copyright means the copy of the CD/DVD burned with no errors. I will never spend a another dime on content that I can’t use the way I please. If I can’t copy it to my hard drive and play it using the devices I want, when and where I want, I won’t be buying it. Period. They can all take their DRM, broadcast flags, rootkits, and Compact Discs that aren’t really compact discs and shove them up their bottom-lines. |
11-11-06, 09:18 AM | #32 |
Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
Posts: 10,024
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it's there if you look. the fraud websites were hyper on election day. there may be instances where the dems would've picked up more seats or had wider margins on the seats they did get, possible even the reps lost some from fraud although i haven't seen that scenario so far, and really their anger is directed at bush atm, convinced that had he fired rummy a few months before the election their prospects would have been far less severe.
right now however the democratic leadership is involved in other matters, preparing to lead, deciding chair appointmnets etc but it'll all be gone over in post mortems for months to come. i included a good interview on evoting in this week's wir. this isn't some invention of one party or another, it's a real, verifiable problem. here's the link. i can tell you this drak: here in ct we've taken a 90 degree turn where electronic machines are concerned. nobody wants touch-screen voting, they all want to keep the old lever machines - but they're no longer manufactured and getting parts is problematic. we're reviewing everything, and that's with a republican govenor. we will probably migrate to SAT test style paper voting that is scanned and counted electronically with the actual paper ballots kept for two years. - js. |
12-11-06, 07:18 PM | #34 |
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2000
Posts: 5,522
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Almost too good to be true.
:big grin:
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May your tote always stay tight and your edge eversharp :wink: |
12-11-06, 07:36 PM | #35 |
Thanks for being with arse
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The other side of the world
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WOW, He served George Burns a martini.
Give the man a CEEGAR ! |
12-11-06, 10:08 PM | #36 | |
Just Draggin' Along
Join Date: Apr 2000
Posts: 1,210
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Seems to be a fairly reliable, tamper proof, and safe system. Paper ballots and electronic tabulation with the scanner. The scanner apparently does some error checking on the ballots, as a friend told me he accidentally voted yes and no on the same item and the machine rejected the ballot. He was given a new ballot to mark. I'm somewhat disappointed there was no ID checking like they told us there would be. However, for many years the polling place had a list showing all voters with that polling location, and you have to sign the list where your name is listed and print your residence address.
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Copyright means the copy of the CD/DVD burned with no errors. I will never spend a another dime on content that I can’t use the way I please. If I can’t copy it to my hard drive and play it using the devices I want, when and where I want, I won’t be buying it. Period. They can all take their DRM, broadcast flags, rootkits, and Compact Discs that aren’t really compact discs and shove them up their bottom-lines. |
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14-11-06, 12:16 PM | #37 |
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Join Date: Jan 2002
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Many Republicans still don't get why they lost the election. Take Florida U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, as the joke goes, please! He blames everyone but himself. Rep. Shaw believes that had Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resignation been before the election, that he and many other Republicans would have won reelection. "My first impression was that the extra votes that I needed would have been there," said Shaw. Really, in Shaw's mind it is Bush and Rumsfeld's fault that Shaw lost reelection to Democrat Ron Klein. Shaw is in denial. He himself said in the same interview, "I stayed loyal to the president. I believe in this president, as a Republican, I have the responsibility not to run away from the president unless I clearly think he is wrong." Well maybe Mr. Shaw you lost because the people don't want a rubberstamp congressman, or because the people didn't believe in this president and because you believed in a president the people didn't believe in they didn't believe in you, or maybe it is because as a Republican you didn't give any dissent because your loyalty was to your party and not your constituents. Rep. Clay Shaw didn't lose because of Bush and Rumsfeld, Rep. Clay Shaw lost because he stood by them when the people wanted action from their representative not more of the same lip movement. Rep. Clay Shaw and the Republican Party cried wolf one too many times. They try to demonize the Democrats every election but this time the people saw the Republican Party as the party in power, the party that mismanaged the Iraq war, mismanaged Hurricane Katrina, mismanaged the budget, mismanaged the Mark Foley scandal, mismanaged themselves as their own were convicted of bribes and other misdeeds. Where was Rep. Clay Shaw on all these matters? He was silent and nowhere to be heard from...
Rep. Clay Shaw didn't lose reelection because Rumsfeld resigned after the election instead of before it. Rep. Clay Shaw lost because he was part of the corrupt Republican Congress that has mismanaged the country for the last several years. People are tired of the old political party hacks; they want their representative to standup to corruption and mismanagement even if it goes against their own party. If Shaw had any gonads he would have stood up to his own party but he didn't because he was nothing more than a rubberstamp for the Bush Administration and the big spending Republican Congress... Rep. Clay Shaw said, "I wouldn't have run this time," if he thought the Republicans would be the minority party because, "I've been in the minority and it's frustrating." Well fortunately for Clay Shaw and for us, he lost and won't have to be part of the minority party in Congress... |
14-11-06, 04:38 PM | #38 |
Earthbound misfit
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Moses Lake, Washington
Posts: 2,563
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Heh. The Dems aren't as ungracoius about their win as you are, Repo.
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