I respect a lot of people's opinions on this website. I think there are some very smart people here. Most of us are well educated or on our way to becoming well educated. Those that are already in the workforce generally have good jobs and make good livings. Those still acheiving their education have bright futures ahead of them. I see a lot of potential within this community with a number of people that will be high income earners in their lifetime.

For this reason alone I can't understand how some of you support the current regime in the White House. Obama is attempting to place restricitions on what a company can pay it's executives. Obama is making broad attempts to continually increase the taxes of the top earners in this country (the people that already pay the bulk of the taxes). These same people are the one's that own businesses and employ the majority of our country's workforce. What sense does it make to take money away from the employers, which does nothing to entice them to hire, and give that money to people who are either already dependent on the government or don't have jobs to pay taxes to support the government.

It is mainly for these reason's that Obama and his staff truly, honestly scare the shit out of me. Saying Obama is creating initiatives to lend to small businesses is great, but what do businesses need to spend money on right now? The consumer market blows. Hardly anyone is expanding. Investment in new property and new equipment is at historic lows since we industrialized. And our government's best approach right now is to continue perpetuating generation after generation of government welfare dependent families.

His famous "redistribution of wealth" comment is coming to fruition more and more everyday. The educated and successful people of this website amaze me that they are in favor of such governing. WE will be those top earners one day. WE will have the six figure incomes. And if the future continues down it's current path, we will be the one's paying for the poorest 10% - 20% to live.

It's scary, and this health legislation needs to be killed. Stop spending the money. Stop financing our future. Stop taking steps towards socializing our society.

your strong dollar policy is what is screwing your country.

coupled with the chinese pegging the yuan to the dollar in order to steal your jobs.

Thraxle,
even though i havent found a job yet, im pretty sure that i will be a top earner one day. However, there are people in this world who are not educated and successful and it is also in your interest that those people are pleased with their lives, because if they are not it becomes more likely that they turn into criminals and/or fucktards.
I admit that redistribution of wealth doesnt solve the problem, but it's essential to a functioning modern society. Unless you wanna have a split society with a wealthy elite and poor scum.

Top earners are part of the community as well as very poor citizens. And especially the top earners have a responisibility towards the weaker subjects of a society. Their contribution to the welfare system is part of that responsibility. And in my opinion, universal healthcare is the core of that. Everybody wants good healthcare and everybody deserves it. It's not something that needs to be forced on people. They want it and not only rich people should get it.

I think that the financial crisis has shown that many of those top earners have failed to see their responsibility lately. They were basically interested in getting the income system more and more out of balance than it already had been.

I'm convinced that Obama's policy only aims at making the gap between the top earners and the poor people smaller.

Moon, it is that very sentiment that concerns me. You feel it is thr rich's responsibility to financially care for the poor. Unfortunately, the poor also feel this way, and this way of thinking perpetuates generations of government dependent families.

My wife and I make a modest living. We support ourselves very well. We have one child and are currently trying for # two. After that I don't feel I'll have the money to support a family larger than that. This is called "being responsible". So forgive me if my heart doesn't go out to some 22 year old single mother of 3 that lives on welfare. Stop fucking every dick within 15 feet of you and take some god damn initiative to support yourself. No, that won't happen, and 2 out of her 3 kids will be criminals or future government dependents.

Fuck socialism.

Apart from your last sentence, which is pure speculation, I say: fair enough.

But we were talking about top earners, weren't we?

I also don't want that a better welfare system creates further government dependent people. I only want that everybody gets a chance for good healthcare. That's why it is so important that the welfare money is spent carefully and goes to the right people. Still I think it is necessary that we have a good welfare system, especially when it comes to healthcare.

Anyone who thinks officer Crowley acted inappropriately probably does not understand the facts of the case and are reacting in a knee-jerk fashion, similar to Obama. White officer arresting black man in his own home must be racism, right? Please read the facts:

- Gates's neighborhood, and more specifically, his own home, had been burglarized recently. People would certainly be reasonable to report seeing two people breaking into a house, which they were and Gates acknowledges doing.

- There were two people breaking in, and two people reported breaking in, which is the report the officers received. The 911 tape and witness report, along with Gates's own testimony, verifies this.

- Gates initially refused to provide an ID, and then only provided an ID which had no address on it. He became hostile when asked for further ID. The officer still did not know if a second man was in the house.

- The police HAVE TO follow up on calls. The initial report said two men. The police needed to determine who the second man was, and where he went...in part, to insure that Gates, too, was safe, and that there was no one in the house who shouldn't be there. (Gates was furthered angered when asked about who else may be in the house.) Also, even if his ID gave that as his address, it's standard procedure in all police responses to run the names and address of everyone involved to make sure there are no outstanding warrants for anyone, and to make sure there are no orders of protection prohibiting someone to be at an address. This can be problematic in domestic abuse cases, where a husband's ID may say he lives there, but he is not supposed to be on the property.

- Seargent Crowley taught for five years at the police academy. His area of specialty was preventing racial profiling. He was appointed to this decision by a black man. He has a spotless record and numerous commendations. (Not that this would necessarily prove he did nothing wrong, but you know it would be brought up if his history was that of racially profiling.)

- Seargent Crowley was accompanied by a black and Hispanic officer, who both back his account of what happened.

- Gates, by his own admission, in his own words, got "in the face" of Officer Crowley.

- Gates who had been yelling inside the house, followed Crowley onto the porch, continuing to scream while the officer attempted to use his radio.

- Crowley was warned multiple times that his behavior was disorderly.

- Gates was then arrested for disorderly conduct. He was placed in hand-cuffs which is standard procedure.

- The woman who reported the incident was called all sorts of nasty things by some leftist news sources for also being a racist. The more upstanding ones apologized aferwards when the 911 tape revealed she was not sure of the racial identity of the people breaking in, nor that she was even sure they were breaking in, just that she wanted someone to check it out to be safe. The house had already been broken into and what she did was perfectly reasonable.

I guess I would expect that if an officer responds to my house because I did indeed break into it, I wouldn't have any issue providing ID. This would be compounded by the fact my house had already been broken into. I would fully understand that they want to check me out, and to check on the person who helped me break in, and that for their (and my) safety, then would be concerned about another man being on the premises. And mouthing off to a police officer for an extended period of time will get you arrested.

Personally, I think this is more about affluence than race. A well-to-do man was arrested by a police officer and took offense that it could happen to him, and tried to denigrate the officer in the easiest available manner. (This paragraph strictly my opinion.)

What may also be my opinion, but that I doubt many would disagree with, is that mouthing off to a police officer is pretty stupid, no matter who you are. The Professor is pretty fortunate he has money and friends and high places, and thus media attention, or he probably would have been charged.

And for the President to comment on a local matter without all the facts is just dumb. He tried diligently to make up for it, to his credit, but it would have been better if he waited for the facts before passing judgment.

When people state he was arrested for "being in his own house" they're being facetious because it makes the arrest sound worse than it was. He was arrested for not treating a police officer with respect. Those of you who drive and have been pulled over know that disrespecting that police officer is a sure way to get yourself in trouble, regardless of your socio-economic status, race, or presidential friends.

OMG I NEED TO POST A WALL OF TEXT

but first lets start off with something more important than this whole discussion. check out that due in the sidebar ad. HE WAS A FAT SLOB Until he Got RIPPED in <i>4 weeks</i>

i mean, i want to click that ad and buy whatever he's selling. thats a sexy tat. (tat = tattoo to all suburban white people who want to sound badass.)

he looks p freaky imo

anyways, heres what i think:

i grew up in a southern Bible belt republican home where we were all confused about jimmy carter (southern baptist? YESSSSSS. democrat? WTF!?!)

anyways, i think ive become mature enough to think on my own, as seen by how seriously i have taken kdice.

when clinton was in office, i hated his ass, because he cheated with lewinsky and who knows who else. the heathen. then when bush was elected, i breathed a huge sigh of relief, because good god, gore wouldve been the most spineless fatass of a president when it came to dealing with 911 (having grown up in tennessee, i knew how big a dope gore was... and so did the rest of tennessee which voted for bush instead of gore.)

meh, anyways. i liked bush through most of his term, and voted for his 2nd term notsomuch because i liked him as much as good god kerry would be an idiot. i mean, we all used to joke that the democrats WANTED to lose the elections based on the guys they nominated (gore and kerry come off as idiots).

i got tired of bush within 3.5 days of his 2nd term, but was still happy that it wasnt kerry. when it came election time for obama/mccain, i said fuck that, and didnt vote, because i dont like either of their policies. ya, take that america, i ditched my right to vote.

what i like about obama:
hes good internationally it seems. my international experience is limited, only 2 years in asia. but i know that under bush, americans were branded as proud ignorant children. and that is somewhat a self-fulfilling prophecy. under obama we seem to be re-establishing ourselves as a peacekeeping, seeking-to-understand nation. which i like. no need to alienate ourselves from the rest of the world (except the uk i guess).

what i dont like about obama:
one of the first things he did was spend $700B more of my future family's money. and a shitload of that is going towards insanely wasteful pockets. this was the biggest thing i was hoping that he would change: americas fiscal responsibility. we just finished another term of W, which ended with a mindblowing $700B give away to save an economy that really didnt need saving. obama had a chance to make things right, but (this is pure conjecture) he didnt because he realized that giving away free money to everyone made everyone happy with him. fuck that i say.

america has totally forgotten how to be fiscally responsible, and i hate this more than anything. republicans and democrats BOTH recently have implemented policies of spend-our-childrens-money-so-that-we-can-have-a-better-life-and-fuck-if-we-care-what-hell-they-have-to-go-through-to-repay-it-later-hell-they-should-just-spend-their-grandchildrens-money-that-should-work-forever.

and then i realized that my favorite president for my entire life (b1979) was ironically the one i liked to hate the most originally: bill clinton. cus whatever else you say about the man, he knew how to balance a budget. he was given a govt which liked deficits pending, and after 8 years had gone by, he finally got to the point that we actually had a yearly surplus. sure, that involved some higher taxes. but it also involved less spending in several areas, and none of these fucked up bailout billion plans.

and fuck the idea of using the economy as a terror-inducing-method to be able to spend trillions of dollars. the economy naturally has its ups and downs, and if its going down WE DONT NEED TO BAIL IT OUT. jesus. if people who had large corporations were idiots and made fucked up decisions, then hold them responsible and let them lose their business and money. and let the people who were fucked up enough to invest in them lose their money too. bah.

its only a limited amount of time before america doesnt have the credit to pay off any of these monster bills that we owe to everyone, and good god, stop just printing magic money to pay shit. that doesnt work. i will vote for ANYONE who makes it priority #1 to balance a budget and re-teach america all the lessons we learned like 60 years ago: dont spend money you dont have.