Tea Parties, Glenn Beck protest Muslim Family Day at Six Flags Great America

RatherGoodBear said:
And I don't see where using a public park is inconsistent with a belief that our governments at all levels can't continue to spend money that we don't have and push off the repercussions of that spending to future generations.

I don't disagree there. There are things we could cut back on and things that we need to charge more for. I could expand on this but don't want to seem combative.

RatherGoodBear said:
Or that legislators are voting on bills that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars without even reading them. Instead they vote according to what the lobbyists are telling them or gauging whether a yay or nay is more likely to get them re-elected.

You mean the lobbyists who are lobbying our government officials on behalf of the corporations I don't trust?

RatherGoodBear said:
Hope that means you're boycotting Cedar Fair, Six Flags, Hershey, Kennywood, and Herschend. Despicable bastards, every one of them.

Comcast buying NBC can have a major impact on media in our country. BP has so much influence over us that Louisiana's governor scoffs at the mention of not drilling for oil in deep water. Goldman Sachs pushing money around does nothing to advance society. We have pills that make our dicks hard but no affordable way to eradicate malaria or AIDS. If someone found the cure for cancer would it only be available to the rich or would it be freely available like the Polio vaccination?

Cedar Fair, Six Flags, etc, provide entertainment, what they do has little effect on the overall health of our country.

I don't trust corporations to make decisions that will benefit the country. I have made a number of choices in my life that help me sleep at night but that doesn't mean I live off the grid in a cave somewhere.

RatherGoodBear said:
And doesn't NPR rely heavily on donations from those greedy corporations? Hmmmm, shouldn't they be refusing that blood money?

They also rely heavily on donations from the membership public they are accountable to.

RatherGoodBear said:
I believe I already mentioned Maddow as a commentator with her own biases and agenda. I'd hardly consider her a strict "news" source. I thought you'd at least mention the Huffington Post. Try again, and thanks for playing.

I never called Maddow a strict news source nor did I even say that I watch her program regularly. I think the Huffington Post is a piece of garbage.

I trust small business, If they don't treat ya right, They don't stay in business very long. If they do. They hire people, treat em decent and know em by name, Live a higher middle class livelihood with one Mercedes and a SUV Maybe even add a couple other stores or shops, hire some people and pass it on to their family when they are ready to retire.

Big corporations are violating anti trust laws like crazy, They are also so corrupting Govt its insane. By the time the bills written is has very little to do with Joe Citizen and Billions going to every Corp you can think of (Even out of country corps), The Govt used to break them up and are required to under law,

I know they've refused some mergers like Heinz/Vlasic but the last time they really tried to break a monopoly was Microsoft and some lawyer somewhere kicked the Govts butt.. End of Anti Trust..

There are some good things to come from mergers like low cost items, Problem is, Jobs get shed like crazy and the little business has no chance unless its something unique and patterned. They usually don't last long either as they are offered a sum they can't refuse.

Like I said, this has been going on for decades, A lot of the stuff going on needs to be stopped period.

Best quote ever. To Eddie Murphy when he ask how he should vote?
If we vote this way we get $$$$$$$$$$$$ from this and if we vote that way we get $$$$$$$$

BP has so much influence over us that Louisiana's governor scoffs at the mention of not drilling for oil in deep water.

To be fair to Jindal (and I'm a fan of neither him nor BP) offshore oil is a pretty big slice of Louisiana's economy, and a lot of people owe their livelihoods to it. It's not just that BP wants to, but the guys who work on the decks, as do the businesses in the periphery that provide all the secondary services.

Don't wanna talk about politics
Refuse to talk about politics
Don't let me talk about politics
Don't give a s*!? about politic

- Korn

Real intelligent lyrics.

8.3, then you need to qualify your statements. Because you originally said, "I don't trust corporations one bit." You didn't say that didn't include those providing entertainment, or other exclusions based on what you thought was acceptable. That's what happens when people generalize about an entire category of people.

As an aside to everyone who absolutely hates big business or corporations, do you have 401Ks, or other kind of investments? If so, I wonder what the money is invested in.

I don't have to trust a big corp. to have a 401K. WHy don't people understand that you can have differing opinions about a single entity? I don't trust my sister, but I still love her.

I didn't say not trust; I said hate. Not in this forum, but I know of a lot of people who will say they hate corporations, think they should be made to pay all sorts of taxes and penalties, yet are invested in them through their retirement plans. I actually had a person ranting against all businesses, then when I asked the same question I asked above, they told me they didn't invest in corporations, they were in mutual funds. (facepalm)

Tekwardo, then I guess I'd ask you, why would you invest your money in a business you didn't trust, didn't approve of their product, or plain out didn't want to see succeed? Sure, you might be going for the best returns for yourself. But at the same time, the money you invest is giving the oil company money to drill in the Gulf, or allows a company to sell tobacco or liquor or keeps baby cows in little cages.

Maybe you're one of the people who thoroughly researches what companies a fund invests in, or you pick specific stocks that don't do something you don't approve of. But most people don't, and I have a hard time understanding that disconnect.

You don't think you're stretching it a little bit? You're trying to use the realities of the world we live in as an excuse to let large corporations take as much as they want.

To answer your question, yes I have a 401k. It's invested pretty conservatively. Crossing my fingers that it's there when I go to retire.

That's just the bridge between the verses and chorus. The rest is actually quite intelligent, but that's the part of the song that popped into my head while reading this thread. Those particular lyrics are a less formal style, but they convey a very interesting viewpoint. I use my artistic license all of the time.

I seriously don't get into this kind of stuff. It's not that I don't understand it, or that I can't follow it. It's because people get so heated up, when it doesn't really matter at all anyways. The people in charge (government Big business, ect.) are going to try their hardest to do whatever they want to do anyways, make as much money as they can anyways. No matter how corrupt or bad for society their actions, or products are for us, they'll find a way around it, and there is usually not a darn thing "We The People" can do to stop them.

Why get all heated and emotional about it? That's exactly what they want us to do, because we can focus our energy bickering amongst ourselves, instead of taking care of the problems that we are complaining about in the first place.

And now back to the regularly scheduled program...

LostKause said: And now back to the regularly scheduled program...

Porn...yay! ;)

Bow-chicka-waow waow...

;)

Jesus... do you guys sit around in your bunker all day waiting for the apocalypse?

Charles Nungester said:
I know they've refused some mergers like Heinz/Vlasic but the last time they really tried to break a monopoly was Microsoft and some lawyer somewhere kicked the Govts butt.. End of Anti Trust..

You don't know what you're talking about. Not only has the free market taken care of itself, particularly in the area of Web browsers (where the anti-trust case started), but the EU has been messing with and fining the company ever since. We've dispatched a team of Storm Troopers to your house to correct your misinformation.

I seriously feel sorry for some of you. Whether or not you're really as angry and pessimistic as you appear in your written word, I don't know, but bitching and moaning never fixed anything.

Agreed Mr P. Its lost on the me anger and vitriol some people have against this administration. They prophecy the downfall of America and "the end of capitalism" as we know it. On the flipside though, I do remember a few years ago when Bushikins issued ass kickings to Iraq, I thought it was a dangerous (and senseless) decision. I dont think the left was as acidic (forming a new party et al) but we were just like...WTF? I guess that is how the some of our friends on the right feel. Health care for all? Doomsday!! Extended benefits for those without work? Armageddon!! Bailout of Auto industry that holds hundreds of thousands of jobs? The Rapture!!

RatherGoodBear said:
Cropsey, do you really think the sampling of your coworkers is indicative of the population as a whole? Do your co-workers who identify as Christian or caucasian represent the entirety of those groups too? The criteria for ranking coasters on this site is more stringent than that. Maybe the people you work with are the nicest people in the whole world, but I don't know of anyone who could say they spoke to 10-20 people and can unequivocally state that they know about the entire population.

You're right I just got lucky.

By the same example you just stated, you're holding the actions and beliefs of a small extremist group against the followers of a religion that's 1.5 Billion strong.

If 1.5 Billion people were all about blowing up and punsihing the western world, wouldn't there be a lot more of that happening?

Delan, you know a lot of us fall in the middle and you are really simplifying the arguments. Im not a fan of Mr. Beck, and have no issues with SFGAm doing this day however, that health care bill you mention does not give health care for all. Also no one on the right is against giving health care to everyone, its just that most of us question a. how are we going to pay for it, and b. how are not going to end up rationing health care. The bill as it stands now is simply going to destroy our current insurance market in 10 years and does not supply an adequate replacement. To make that replacement is litterally going to cost billions of dollars, billions of dollars that we cant afford. Meanwhile Medicare is about to go insolvent, and states are cutting back Medicaid left and right because of budget cuts. Extending benifts to more people with the same funds is simply going to bring about Health Care Armageddon closer. Unless something changes 2020 is going to be a disaster on the health care front.
Democrats know that too, they designed it that way to force a socialization of health care, the only way to prevent this is to get a Republican Congress to modify the bill so this does not happen, which is going to be very difficult.

Extended benefits for those without work, how long are we going to keep kicking that ball down the field instead of fixing the problem in the first place, lets get those people jobs. How? I have no clue Im not an economist but I do know that we have done jack squat to change the current economic environment to this point and no bill is currently going through legislation to change things. This is simple short term, costly, election year political maneuver. If a bill was actually in the works, I would not have a problem with extending benefits a little longer to cover them until the bill takes effect. One thing I know that is not going to help is the Bush Tax Cuts expiring next year.

Bailout of the Auto industry: I was initially against this but it looks like it did manage to prop up the industry and got them to get a plan to begin fixing their pension plans. In retrospect this looks like this was a very wise investment.

So...who likes coasters and stuff?

Me! I do!!!

Touchdown, you are right, these initiatives are astronomical. But I don't recall anyone giving a rats ass when we entered a trillion $$ war and issued tax cuts to the top 2%. But...I'm no pundit so....

Touchdown said:
...how are not going to end up rationing health care. The bill as it stands now is simply going to destroy our current insurance market in 10 years and does not supply an adequate replacement.

You mean the insurance market currently rationing health care? Seriously, has anyone heard of a place called Canada. Ryan Reynolds is from there, so it must be good.

But who cares, that's off-topic. I don't believe there has been any time in human history as interesting and transformational as the one we're in now, save perhaps for the Industrial Revolution. When I graduated from college 15 years ago, no one had cell phones, let alone instant access to almost any piece of information in the world.

And while the Chinese are fighting for access to that information, Americans squander it by believing any ridiculous sound bite about the people we elect, making asinine generalizations about a billion people and their religion, and not learning about how to take care of their fat ass so they can get strapped in to Millennium Force. You want to be annoyed with something? Be annoyed with that, because at least those are things we can control and do something about. No president, congressman or asshole on TV are going to change that.