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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (323149)	1/26/2007 5:02:44 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1574098

Ted, > The reality is the world is more like Ugly Betty but even that has been sugarized by Hollywood.....ie everyone including her sister is goodlooking except for Betty and her boyfriend. Have you seen an episode of "Ugly Betty"? It's a characature of society and its focus on superficial looks. Pretty good one, too. But it's more of a mockery of reality, not a representation of it. Anyway, I wouldn't mistake Ayn Rand's literary license for a misrepresentation of reality. > If that were true, they would not be sending their money back to Mexico et al with the hope of eventually setting up a business there. Cultural ties remain strong, even after they've given up on their governments which have coincidentally resorted to more and more socialism. > Please stop reading the tracts they send you from RNC headquarters......they are not anywhere near the truth. All I get from the RNC are solicitations for donations. It makes me want to give up my party membership. And to think that I joined so that I could vote in primaries. Tenchusatsu

To: tejek who wrote (323149)	1/26/2007 5:45:06 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574098

Excellent economic shape By Lawrence Kudlow January 26, 2007 Parsing through a dozen or so newspapers and Web sites this morning, I was stunned not to find a single reference to the very strong economic state of the union. Sure, there's plenty about global warming, carbon caps, President Bush's poor polling numbers, Republican opposition to the troop surge in Iraq, and the usual horse-race speculation about Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Democratic primary race for presidency. But there's nothing -- and I mean nothing -- about the excellent economic state of the union. I did manage to find one article, buried deep in the Wall Street Journal, titled "Class of '07 Gets Plenty of Job Offers." It talked about employers planning to hire 17 percent more graduates this year than they did last year. This happens to top the college-hiring peak of the last economic boom in 2000. There's also an interesting op-ed by Deputy Treasury Secretary Bob Kimmet (an old friend with lots of supply-side blood in his veins), who notes the positives of "job churn." More than 55 million Americans, or 4 out of every 10 workers, left their jobs in 2005. Since there were more than 57 million new hires that same year, this is good news. It also means that new hires exceeded employee separations by an average of 364,000 per month. Per month. Eat your heart out, Lou Dobbs. The fact is, jobs continue to boom. So do real incomes, productivity and profits. Economist Michael Darda points out that real wages over the first five years of the Bush expansion are actually growing more rapidly than over the first five years of the Papa Bush-Bill Clinton boom. Meanwhile, unemployment today is only 4.5 percent. Federal, state and local tax collections are soaring through the roof. Budget deficits are plunging. Inflation-adjusted GDP is averaging just more than 3 percent. Family wealth stands at a record of slightly more than $54 trillion. Total employment is at a record 146 million. Stock markets, as you might have noticed, also continue to rise. They have done so, almost without interruption, for four years, on the shoulders of a remarkable surge in business profits -- which itself is a function of the high-tech, knowledge-based product explosion. These corporate profits, along with our record-setting stock markets, have enriched the more than 100 million investors who are participating in this prosperity. In fact, this American boom is spearheading a global economic surge. While the American free-market model is often derided as "cowboy capitalism," imitation remains the sincerest form of flattery. And it isn't just China, India and Russia who are acquiescing to the worldwide spread of American capitalism. It's also Eastern Europe and parts of South America. Heck, even the socialists in Old Europe -- like France and Germany -- are getting into the act by reducing individual and corporate tax rates to promote growth. Note to John Edwards and other modern-day class warriors: The best anti-poverty plan is a growing economy, one that creates jobs and higher middle-class living standards. As free enterprise has been unleashed around the world, government planning once again has been rejected. This is the spirit of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," where he argued almost 250 years ago for free markets, free trade and a very light touch with respect to taxes and regulations. Someone should be making the point that if the economy ain't broke, there's no need to fix it. Taxing the rich will not make the non-rich rich. Attacking businesses will not produce more jobs and investor-class profits. Imposing trade barriers will not help high-quality, low-cost consumer imports, nor will it promote job-enhancing business exports or help poor nations grow richer. As for the global-warming alarmists, imposing carbon caps or carbon taxes won't do anyone any good. On the economic side of things, this will severely depress production and employment. And for what? An estimated global temperature reduction of four-hundredths of one degree Fahrenheit? Government meddling and failed liberal social policies are precisely what we don't need today. As President George W. Bush took the podium for his seventh State of the Union message, his policy of lower marginal tax rates and a general absence of overregulation (with the exception of Sarbanes-Oxley, but including the opposition to carbon caps) had succeeded in nurturing low inflation and entrepreneurial economic growth. Of course, Mr. Bush gets very little credit for this in the mainstream media or in the polls, which is a shame. The truth is, the president has had the economic story basically right for six years. His overall economic record is rather solid. But the bottom line is the bottom line: As we enter 2007, the economic state of the union is excellent. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Lawrence Kudlow is host of CNBC's "Kudlow & Company" and is a nationally syndicated columnist.

To: tejek who wrote (323149)	1/26/2007 5:53:46 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574098

Curious argument "Sen. James Webb is the toast of Democrats and their allies this week for his impressive response to the State of the Union speech — impressive in terms of rhetoric and delivery, if not always content," Rocky Mountain News editorial page editor Vincent Carroll writes. "Webb was eloquent in denouncing Bush's policy in Iraq, although his perspective is now the distilled consensus of most Democrats and many other Americans. More curious was his take on the economy, which amounted to another version of presidential candidate John Edwards' 'two Americas' theme. "Webb's America is a portrait from Upton Sinclair — a place with a fantastically wealthy overclass lording it over the struggling masses, who are steadily ground down to despair. The middle class, 'our historic backbone and our best hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table,' Webb maintained, while promising to address the 'economic imbalance in our country.' "Factually, the idea of a vanishing middle class is rubbish — populist folklore and little more. By any reasonable standard, most Americans are easily better off than they were 30 years ago — and the economy continues to hum. Yes, there is a fantastically wealthy elite — not just in corporate board rooms but in entertainment, sports, the media and several other nooks of the economy — but they are not cashing their checks at the expense of the rest of us."