Prioritization...Finally!!

When I was young and very liberal back in the Carter and early Regan days, that was how I thought. All compassion and very little common sense, which explains the inarticulate part. I did use the "it's only paper part and let's help the poor" line in my arguments. So Joe, please enlighten me and without placing blame, how do you balance debt and social responsibility. Where do you draw the line. What are your priorities. Is there any point at which government programs cross the "not worth it" line.

As for, What would Jesus do, that's one your buds with Occupy Wall Street totally missed out on. WWJD - Beat the bankers. There's nothing like money changers that would drive the Prince of Peace toward acts of violence. You guys totally missed it.

 

Amen. ...Joe?

 

Little Joe's so-called "Bush recession" can be placed directly at the feet of Bubba Clinton who made changes to the Community Reinvestment Act in 1995 and who also signed Gramm-Leach-Bliley into law in 1999. Without those two major changes to banking regulations, there would have been no economic downturn in the late 2000s. Plain and simple.

But, since most liberals, democrats and socialists are inherently low-information voters they see Clinton as just someone who stuck a cigar up a girl's you-know-what instead of someone who caused one of the worst economic disasters in our country's history.

 

I'd be interested to know what caused you to evolve from your liberal days (if you wouldn't mind telling us). From what I read from your posts, you're fairly conservative now.

 

I read a lot of Abby Hoffman in High School. In college I hung out with a few self described "revolutionaries". One actually got arrested in a march on Washington, but he was mostly there to get stoned and have fun. I was told that only stupid people went to Vietnam, and stupid people get what they deserve. I heard stories about all the atrocities and how the military turns people into homicidal maniacs. I was told returning vets couldn't be trusted, that they were dangerous. What they didn't know was that my father was retired military and I grew up in an army town. When I was 15-16 years old I meet returning vets, some were less that 24 hours back in country. Most of the kids I went to junior high had fathers in Vietnam. The more my college buds went on the less credibility they had.
I was a theater major in college and studied lighting design. After I got out, I worked small theatrical events, corporate and fund raising events. I met business people, rich people, roadies and stagehands. Being a military brat, you get use to being uprooted every other year and become somewhat of a social chameleon. When you analyze a script, you try to get inside a character's head, you try to see the world from their point of view, and create that world on stage. In meeting people, I tend to do the same. I listen carefully to their words, their actions, how people react around them. I try to find a point of common interest. I was hired by a performing arts center who had a rather conservative general manager. The more I got to know him and his crowd, I found more points of common interest. I have found in day to day life, conservatives to be less judgmental than many of my left leaning friends. In my career, I have met a lot of people. I've done lighting for 3 United States Presidents and had to deal with their staffers, secret service, and the white house press corp. I worked a PBS round table featuring all the former Secretaries of State, and Secretaries of Defense and got to see how they acted off camera. This was late 80's and got to see Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger. One person I disagree with politically but think is one hell of a good person is Al Gore. He did a bunch of "Town Meetings" in my theater. There is a quote from a playwright I saw on u-tube receiving his honorary doctorate that sums it up and goes something like this "I don't care how rich and powerful you may be, I will be judging you based on how you treat the least of us. How you relate to the wait staff." I have found the left far more likely to belittle people they disagree with using personal assaults and less tolerant of opinions other than their own. I have always had a belief in personally liberties and being able to live life on your own terms. Especially if it disagrees with mine, it's your life, make it a good one. I still have a lot of friends on the left and where I work now, I'm pretty much the token conservative. I don't care what you may be at election time, but I do care who you are as a person.

CoinOKC, I hope this answers your question.

 

I don't know if the Left has the market cornered on bad behavior...a friend of mine worked on the set of The McLaughlin Group. He said that John McLaughlin was very abusive off camera.

 

Excellent, c jay! It sounds like you've lived a very interesting life. Here's to even more interesting adventures ahead!

What a lot of people don't realize is that whether we are conservative or liberal, we all have conservative and liberal friends/family. Naturally, we're going to soak in some of their beliefs, but it's up to each individual to sort out the nonsense. That sounds like what happened to you when you were younger. But, as you found out, the liberals I've also encountered throughout life certainly are more judgmental than conservatives. That really bothers me. I don't like to be around people who are judgmental or have pre-conceived notions about whatever situation they happen to find themselves in. That could be someone who is unwilling to listen to an opera or someone who is inherently racist. I just wish people could open their minds up a bit more.

As far as Vietnam is concerned, in hindsight it probably wasn't the greatest idea to get involved there, but who at the time could honestly foresee what would happen? I think our leaders probably had the best of intentions or merely it was just a political game between the US and the Soviet Union. Whatever the reason, it gives no one a reason to disrespect the men and women who fought at the behest of the country. I can understand why a lot of people were against the war, but I think many of them were simply lazy potheads who used the war as an excuse to become more rebellious so that they could justify becoming even lazier slackers.

I'm glad you finally realized that your college buddies were just talking out of their ass. That's a problem with many college kids today; they learn from books but have little, if any, life experience. Once they graduate, they're simply a "breathing book". I dismiss most of these people as ignorant about life.

Were McNamara and Kissinger on stage together? If so, I bet that was one lively discussion! I think Al Gore is actually a good person, too although I also disagree with him politically. Had he been elected president, I think we still would have gone into Iraq. He would have received the same intelligence info that George W. Bush received and I think he would have made the same decision especially considering that most prominent democrats at the time were also convinced of WMDs and the need to take out Saddam. It's something we'll never know, but it's something the Left should think about whenever they excoriate Bush on Iraq. I think most liberals aren't even willing to admit that Gore would probably have done the same thing. That's just one of the reasons I find liberals to be disingenuous and biased toward their own (skewed) opinion and unwilling to accept anything that doesn't fit their mantra. As you obviously did, I hope more liberals begin to think for themselves and realize that their failed logic is not helping this country.

 

Obama has spent more money than any human in the history of planet earth now he wants his credit limit increased.

 

Well it is interesting that you've lost your compassion. I guess that is a necessary conversion when you move to the Right. I've never been anything other than what I am today. I have compassion for those less fortunate without judging them for their own situation and I believe in being fiscally conservative and saving resources for a rainy day. Social justice has been an issue in this country and any country you can name for longer than you and I have been here and it remains so today. I didn't go through some kind of Right/Left or Left/Right conversion when it became convenient to do. I think basic fear makes people become more conservative as they grow old, at least some people. Uncertainty about retirement, social issues changing, and just becoming more frail as we age all contribute to some people becoming more conservative as they age. Any reasonable former liberal has to admit that the only constituency of mainstream GOP types is money and the only constituency the social conservatives have are the religious fanatics and even those two sides are fracturing as we speak under the weight of their own hypocrisy.
So you asked me how I balanced debt with social responsibility.... The fiscal conservative in me that has been a part of me since I started working at 13 says that you do not give away your revenue to special interests and you do not continue to help the relatively few people gaming the system once they have proven to be incapable of social contribution but you definitely do not paint everyone in need as the same based on the few exceptions. The Right's strategy has been to do exactly that. The socially liberal person I have been all along says neither the government nor religious nuts should be telling me what I can do in my bedroom, who I can marry, or whether they think abortion should be allowed. We have Virginia GOP types trying to outlaw sodomy in this day and age. What the hell! What business is it of the GOP if two people choose to sodomize each other in the privacy of their own bedroom. You and I may not want to do anything like that but why should anyone be allowed to decide for others? Makes no sense. The Right has moved so far to the Right, you most likely have more in common with the Left these days. I guess its time for another conversion.

 

Well that's interesting Jack. Can you actually point to new programs and provide numbers that have been spent in this Obama-spendfest or is this just a talking point? Hum?

 

"If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain."

- Churchill

 

It's hard to argue with "Crazy"...

Why Obamacare won't help Joe...

 

I guess if it fits your agenda, the truth is not all that important eh?

These quotes make for good story-telling but popular myth has falsely attributed them to Churchill.

"Conservative by the time you're 35"

"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University makes this comment: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?"

 

I don't know what Churchill did or didn't say (I wasn't there), but as far as his political loyalties were concerned, he was an opportunist. He Flipped-Flopped between Conservative and Liberal...based on whichever party had the votes at any given time.

Here's a quote I know...

"Conservatives make the most sense, but Liberals are more fun" ...Art Buchwald.