However, I do not believe its healthy for a wealthy society such as ours to have children go to bed hungry, or in serious need of medical attention.
I think you must have listened to one too many Democrat speeches.
Joe, I don't have to listen to too many Dem. speeches......I know instinctively what's right. Its funny how much this bothers you........are you afraid the Dems. are going to take all your money?
Even if that 5% have 50% of the wealth?
What does that have to do with anything?
They have so much money......why do you care what they pay? They don't care if you and your family eat cake or bread or dirt so why do you care about them.
<i.We have income taxes, a number of different sets for that matter. The government can tell person A that he does not have to contribute a penny to pay for the cost of the government. The government can tell his neighbor to pay 100%. Person A is asked to pay 0%, Person B is asked to pay 35%.
You make it sound so arbitrary......do you think I am in high school and no nothing about the tax system?
I wouldn't have a problem with a law saying that everyone pays the equal amount amount, or equal percentage. You would have the same law applying to all people.
I know you wouldn't have a problem with that but then the poor would struggle trying to pay their taxes and the rich would coast. Why should the rich get off so easy. I am afraid the Rep. party has brainwashed. BTW, when's the last time the Rep. party has run a Jew or a Catholic for president or VP? Don't you wonder why that is? You think there are no rich Jews or Catholics in the country?
I understand that conservatives feel there is very little need for gov't and consequently, there should be very little taxes......but they are wrong on both counts IMO.
I think the "need" for government comes from an increasing decoupling of the cost of running of the government with the obligation to pay. The trend is that most people don't carry the burden of paying the cost, so they keep coming up with all these "needs"
Its amazing how you make things fit into a particular matrix. I can just imagine some poor person in Kansas thinking "well I don't pay many taxes so what can I come up with to make gov't bigger and cost more".
There are some people who have to chose between sending a check to the IRS and having their kids cavities fixed, but the number of these people caught in the middle is decreasing, since more and more people are getting a free ride.
Actually less and less......last year, welfare rolls were the lowest they been in 20 years.
When you say my party......I assume that you mean the Dems. Is that a Freudian slip or do you repeatedly forget that I am an independent and belong to no party?
I think it was a Feudian slip, since your formal "independence" gets lost in the substance of your posts, and a spontaneous reaction to them just makes its way to my posts.
I see........in other words I don't side with the Reps enough to warrant that independent label.
BTW what was brought to an end was not communism but a right wing dictatorship playing under the guise of communism.
Good one. Bad = right wing. Very "independent" observation.
I am sorry but Stalin was conservative........so was Krushchev. Would you prefer I use that term instead of right wing. BTW I didn't come to that view on my own......that's a pretty common view.
I have said repeatedly the real battle is between the Arabs and Israel........and the Palestinians are the pawns. And the German refugees forced back into Germany is not the same as the Palestinians forced into refugee camps. At least, the Germans understood they were faulted for being the bad guys in a war, and must take what is dished out; but the Palestinians were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Up to 1948, yes. But since they became the aggressors, and the price of those aggressions is that West Bank, Gaza, Golan Hights are now occuppied territories.
It was the Egyptians and the Syrians, and belatedly Jordan who were the aggressors, not the Palestinians. As a result, Israel seized Gaza from Egypt, the Golan Hts from Syria and the WB from Jordan.
Israel has not done what the allies have done, which is to throw out the Germans at gunpoint from many areas where they lived for generations. Being on the wrong side of aggressive wars (together with Israel's Arab neighbors) should exact the same price, if you agree that expulsion of defeated Germans was the right price for them to pay.
I don't know enough to comment re Suetenland and the Germans. However, in the past, Israel has expelled some Palestinians from the WB. And during the conflicts in 1947-48, Palestinians were forced to flee to neighboring Arab states and the WB. Of course, this was a war and they were the enemy and the Israelis acted accordingly. The Palestinians and their descendants are the refugees interned in the camps.
It is the Arab aggression, and subsequent occupation of West Bank and Gaza that brought Israel into those areas, and another result is that now, since these areas are under some Israel control, the can of warms (that the settlers are) has been opened.
You have it turned around........after WW II, Jordan was given control of the WB, Syria the Golan Hts. and Egypt, the Gaza Strip. During the 1947-48 conflict, the Palestinians were pushed into the WB and Gaza as refugees. Later, after the 1967 War when they took those lands away from Jordan and Egypt, the Israelis began to settle in those territories.
That's assuming that everything started with the first suicide bombing. What the truth is that the whole thing started when the first Zionists settled in the Palestinian region in the very early part of the 20th century. By the twenties, the two sides were already in a state of conflict. As more Zionists settled into the area, the Jews developed an edge that became a win when the Brits agreed to let them create Israel.
Why not go back to Adam and Eve, or Abraham.
I don't have to......the Palestinians have been in the region for a long time. Control has shifted from the Arab/Muslims to the Christians back to the Arabs then to the Turks then to the Brits. During that time, there were few Jews in the region. However in the early part of the 20th Century, Zionists began to emigrate to the region. At some point in the 20's, they worked out a deal with the Brits that they would get to set up their homeland there. However, the Brits made promises to all those involved and could not keep them, so then they turned the thorny mess over to the UN to handle.
So there is no need to go back to Adam and Eve; however, I think a good starting point is the arrival of Zionists to the region. After all, the Zionists were the founders of Israel.
I don't think it is very constructive. Ther is nothing that the current citizens of Israel can do (short of a collective suicide) that would undo the creation of Israel.
That's right but if you understood the history better than you seem to do, you might be better able to understand why the Palestinians are so angry. To gloss over the region's history makes it possible to turn the Palestinians into the sole bad guys very easily.
If you look at the situation today, and do it realistically, Israel is there, it is a constant in this equation, not a variable. They are not going to admit a single Palestinian to come back to Israel from abroad (after all that has happened over time, and is happening as we speak.
Yes, I understand and I agree with it. The Israelis and the Palestinians can barely tolerate each other within a 30 kilo distance. How could they possibly be next door neighbors.
So the settlement could be an independent Wet Bank and Gaza, free of Israel's occupation. Palestinians could have had it years ago. The reason they don't have it is because this is not enough for them. They started the current wave of terror because Palestinians want more. The unleashing of the killers is a calculated move.
So goes the popular argument.
Since then, the Palestinian position has weakened considerably. Let also not forget what Sharon means to the Palestinians......he is the Butcher. He is a slap in their collective face.
They asked for him they got him. It was entirely with the power of Palestinian leadership to keep Sharon away, and keep Barak.
How did the Palestinian leadership have this power to keep Sharon away?
So how come the Israelis elected him over Netanyahu? They share the same politics, are both hard liners.......Netanyahu is the one more articulate, more charismatic, the one more prime ministerial etc. Yet they chose Sharon even as they knew their own tribunal had found him guilty in the early 80's. Why? Netanyahu would have been as hard on the Palestinians. Why Sharon? He is a jigger of salt in the Palestinians' wounds. How could the Israelis not know that?
The exact reason why Sharon and not Netanyahu is because Netanyahu lost election, and resigned his seat in the parliament. I don't know if his move was permanent or just to take some time off for one term, what happened is that the Palestinians unleashed the wave of terror, and instead of responding, Barak turned the other cheek, while he continued the "peace process". The citizens of Israel got so outraged by the wave of terror that the Barak government disintegrated, and new elections were called. The sequence of events was so fast that Netanyahu was caught without a seat in the parliament, therefore ineligible to run for Prime Minister. Sharon was. And he was not only eligible, his stance was proven to be correct in that Palestinians and Arafat can't be trusted.
I forgot the political game of cat and mouse that Netanyahu and Barak played with each other in which they managed to turn over the PM position to Sharon by default. I suspect some time in the future, political games will be the undoing of many democracies. ;~))
ted |
