Australia decides - election 2010

[sandorski]

From the guy who hasn't mastered the shift key yet, I'll take that as a compliment. If you aren't bright enough to figure out punctuation, how the hell are you supposed to be even remotely correct on something infinitely more complex?

The Shift key is my bitch. You still have Failed, sorry.

 

[0roo0roo]

lol from first woman to bye bye in almost no time at all.

 

[Orignal Earl]

From the guy who hasn't mastered the shift key yet, I'll take that as a compliment. If you aren't bright enough to figure out punctuation, how the hell are you supposed to be even remotely correct on something infinitely more complex?

lol

You didn't vote for someone like GW, for something as complex as President, did you?

 

[manimal]

Thing is, the US has NEVER been as capitalist as say.. Romania is right now, you have ALWAYS had your regulation of the free market and every single time a conservative has been president it's only gotten worse.

See, spending a lot of government money while lowering taxes isn't anti-socialist, nor is it capitalist, it's just plain irresponsible to the nation to do so, raising taxes on the population can be socialistic, but in the mixed economy you, along with France, Germany and every other western nation have come to enjoy, these things will drive wages down and while deflation sounds great on paper, it's a fucking horrible thing when it comes to national economics, it means that your economy is shrinking.

Now, market regulation in itself, which is what socialism really is, regulation of the free market has NEVER been pushed as hard as it was during Reagan ang GW years, so if you are looking for the most socialistic governments in recent US history, Reagans and GW's administrations were the absolutely most socialistic administrations the US has EVER seen, Clintons was the opposite.

Not that you'd care because in your world, ideogogy trumphs reality.

Most will read what you say and think. Its unamerican to bash america! terrorists....


For the last 30 years the US has been a bubble economy.. Boom bust cycles that benefit mostly the rich. Last bust thought the rich got spanked...


What I find most funny is the almost riligulous zeal for capitalism that has happened over the last 30-40 years. People protect capitalism in this forum more than they protect their religion...

 

[onlyCOpunk]

Hung parliament, but I think ALP will pull through. They better, if it were up to Tony Abbot we'd all be living like we did in the 1950's.

 

[Craig234]

TBH, it's what makes the US unique and powerful. Notice the more we lean toward socialism and anti-capitalism the less powerful we become. With that, we can also do alot less for other countries. Those that lean on us will now have to lean on whoever takes our place after our decline. I personally would rather have the US's will imposed than, say, China's.

One of the problems with the right-wing ideology is its brainless pursuit of power.

They don't get than there's a tipping point where the US becomes so powerful as to become a de facto one-world government, even if other powers still exist, but in what JFK called (and said America does not want to force on others) a 'Pax America', able to get what it wants.

'Sounds good, American values and liberty around the world'. No, it pretty much inevitably leads to the US being corrupted and not its historical 'values'.

It becomes something else,and people say 'what were we thinking, creating any global power like this, now there is a tyranny with no power to oppose it'.

But the right isn't concerned about that - they just have an appetite for power, and care as much for consequences as your average crackhead criminal.

Analogously, it's like the pursuit of science that led to nuclear bomb, where Einstein first suggested it that started the Manhattan Project, and then regretted - there were comments that man was able to develop weapons faster than the societal readiness to handle them. Might seem alarmist now, but the world did come close to nuclear disaster, and still runs the risk of terrorists getting nukes at least.

We need to get the world political situation better than one of competing nations and regions vying for power, with wars from small to massive along the way.

But the right, like the polluting company looking only at its quarterly profits, is only concerned with the next target to get power from.

Just as - to indulge in one last ideology - the ideology of 'Manifest Destiny' blinded nations to kill millions and feel justified pursuing land, the right does to get power.

Balance is needed that they lack.

We should be out for global liberty with a diversity of power - not the mere pursuit of conquering the world, even under the US's banner.

I know, the right will protest we're not trying to conquer the world - they don't even realize it's their own ideology, they just look at 'who's the next one to conquer'.

Save234

 

[Craig234]

The united states is not a world superpower because of liberal or conservative policy.

It is the enormous amount of resources along with the advantage of not having the entire country razed in the 1940s.

Sure, taxes and policy do make a difference, but the primary reason we are in the position we are in is happenstance.

Those are things but there are a lot more, many pretty ruthless and indefensible.

Foreign policy has had all kinds of economic benefits - 'gunboat diplomacy' was coined for when we sent our navy into Japan to order them to open to trade or be killed - we've had corporate dominance in Latin America, resource extraction from Africa and many other places, favorable access to Middle Eastern and other oil. We've taken land from the Natives to Hawaii to half of Mexico. We had infrastructure built by slaves.

Indeed, we've benefited from 'underclass' cheap labor from not only slaves but immigrants, to blacks with racism, to illegal immigrants and at times even much of 'mainstream America' from poor farmers to the old days of factory labor - enough to eat, with children, 16 hours days and little safety.

Our wealth resulting has served us well too as we've attracted quality people from around the world who want to come.

As for free trade - in the late 19th Century, Britain at the height of empire preached free trade to the world. Ulysses Grant said to them:

“For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within 200 years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade.”

After the US became the dominant economy after WWII, it preached free trade.

 

[Sea Moose]

Yep hung parliment we have no prime minister! Time for anarchy?