How many children could get health care with the money John Edwards spent on his mansion? How much education could be had for America’s kids with the amount of money John Edwards spends on haircuts? Woops, wrong ad.

Or, how about some real news?? Like, for instance, Wolfowitz being brought back into the cabinet…….

Raise your hands if you’re sick of campaign ‘news’!!

Or, a better idea. Post the candidates’ voting record over the last few years……rather than what they ’say’ (which is always rehearsed)…..

Tim-
I agree with coach that you should put some of your interns to work and come up with a comprehensive list of crucial votes made by candidates on both sides of the aisle. As for the ad, Edwards makes a good point. How about some real substance in these debates. But, I suppose the powers-that-be don’t want an educated and informed voting public. They’d prefer that we talk about long-passed events and somebody’s haircut.

I’m a Democrat, but I’m not black, female or a wealthy, pretty male.

Whom am I to vote for so I’m not consumed by liberal guilt?

I wish Obama would declare that he’s gay or, failing that, Hispanic. Then I could have my mind made up for me and save it for important things like, will a $600 rebate be enough money to pay my Federal taxes?

Here’s some news: Despite over 70% of the public wanting the United States out of Iraq, the President is going forward with long-term military plans.
What kind of democracy is that? Shouldn’t that be put to a vote, at least in Congress?

Yes it should be put to a vote. What’s worse, it should be a treaty and approved by the senate as all international traties are, in keeping with it’s subversion of the constitution, the administration is not calling this a treaty to avoid having to get ratification.

SITM… probably nowhere nearly as much healthcare as the money being GIVEN to industry to do their business, this coming from wealthy men who would not give anyone charity and would give poor people who can’t afford it high interest loans. Or the amountof money (30 billion) being given to israel to help it maintain its apparteid system.

A republic, even a representative republic like ours, should listen when 70% want to end an occupation of another sovereign nation.

I wonder whether we are truly a republic

Which “occupation”? Germany, S. Korea?

Clearly you have no grasp on how a republic works, to say nothing about international politics or world history.

More than 70% of the country agree they don’t want John Edwards for President. He should go home and help take care of his wife.

If we want to stop the downward slide of the middle class into poverty, we had better listen to much of what John Edwards has to say.

The data doesn’t lie: more of us are falling below the poverty line every single day for the last six years.

We have abandoned the legacy of the labor revolution, which IS what created the largest, most prosperous middle class in history, right here in America.

Read Benjamin Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt.

Huh? Clearly you’re pretentious. Clearly you’re comparing Iraq to Germany. Clearly you’re forgetting Hitler was invading numerous countries and our help as solicited. Clearly you’ve forgotten that we invaded a country that hadn’t done anything to us and wasn’t invading anybody.
Clearly

There is a labor revolution going on today and it is called China. How can American labor compete with Chinese labor that is willing to do the same work for pennies on the dollar? Are protectionist measures really going to all of a sudden make American manufacturing boom again?

Don’t forget the US fed the German war machine for several years before deciding to go against it. Hell, even seeing our French and British ‘friends’ bending under german bombing, we demanded payment in cash for supplies. The Japanese didn’t turn against us until we threatened to cut off their oil supplies. Neither of those countries would have been able to carry out their wars of oppression if the US had not supplied the tools and materials with which to implement it. So it would seem your halo is a bit tarnished.

willing to do it(?) or forced to do it because they have no other choice? The beauty of being able to control 85% of the wealth with 5% of the people is that if you decide to retract the amount of money that you pay the other 95% it won’t really hurt you any, but in the long run it will make them so poor that they will be willing to clean toilets for a dollar in order to feed themselves without stealing or otherwise risking their freedom. Get used to it, it is the same thing that is happening in the US. That is what the Ford b*y out is all about. That is what sending our programming jobs to india is all about and the main reason most of our manufacturing jobs are going to asia. It is not good business practice that keeps the american commercial machine going, it is a crafty management of the labor resource and assitance from a callous congress that allows them legitimacy necessary to ignore US laws and take advantage of slave like conditions around the world.

Jed, I see your point about the money going to the healthcare companies, but I think its unfair to say that very wealthy businessmen don’t give money to charity. There are certainly those wealthy businessmen that would break laws, take advantage of people, etc. to get their hands on more money (see Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers, etc.). But I think all told, those are in the minority.

It strikes me as extremely disingenuous when someone like Edwards pushes an agenda for the redistribution of wealth, but lives a life of ridiculous excess. If he really wanted to be taken seriously, he should be living in a modest house with modest things and have donated the millions he made from being a trial lawyer to the poor.

I’ve seen even small businessmen taking advantage of an imperfect syatem. The bigger the company the easier it is to hide wrongdoing. Not that it matters much, did you see the max fine in MASS for killing that poor woman driving through the ‘big dig’?
Like in anything else, not everything is permeated fully with good or evil (if you will), but it sure does seem that the bad side of the equation is being allowed too much of an upper hand, creating a tension that may be released in a bad way if not carefully managed.

Jed-
The Big Dig is one of the greatest engineering accomplishments on the face of the planet. The fallen tile, while a tragedy, represents a very minimal amount of negligence. On a project the scale of the Big Dig, it is not surprising or too alarming that in certain instances things like the wrong adhesives were used. Engineering includes built-in redundancies to prevent catastrophic failure because it is expected that a structure of this complexity is not constructed by robots. The people who failed in this instance are the sub-contractors who used the wrong damn epoxy. This is not an example of corporate titans sitting in a smoke-filled room cutting corners to line their pockets. Certainly, Bechtel is accountable – they have to be – but this doesn’t strike me as an example of corporate irresponsibility, just your average every day iresponsibility. Doesn’t make me feel comfortable thinking that way as I drive thru it, but I will persevere.

I think the word you are looking for is Boondogle. A project that went 15 or more times over the projected budget. That’s 15 times more than the agreed upon competion cost. Not to mention how late it has been and that it is plagued by water leaks and closures. If that is what passes for ‘great feats of engineering’ in your books, it makes it very clear why you hold those other positions.

Bechtel, as the prime contractor, was tasked with making sure that the subcontractors they hired would do the job correctly and follow the engineering designs. Time and again this has been proven to not be the case. Knowing the prevalence of ‘wise guys’ in the construction industry nothing was done to prevent the cutting of corners or the subpar concrete or so many other problems that have been discovered with the project. While the concept was interesting, they would have done much better setting up a closed downtown area and building a state of the art electric shuttle system into the city proper, or maybe building a useful public transportation system. Maybe they could have used all those BILLIONS of dollars in developing a new way of storing electricity for electric cars. So many other options instead of this nightmare project that did little more than drain the public treasury.

I bet the lady and her husband that somehow survived the ‘accident’ in the tunnel would wonder how you can justify such negligence. I wonder if it would take a complete collapse of the tunnels during rush hour, like the bridge in MINNESSOTA, to make you see the crime… then again, you justify invading a country on assumptions and imaginations, so this should be rather easy.