Just saw this headline and at first I was a little thrown off..... A celebrity, no less a gay one, that actually has their head screwed on straight?
http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=512954>1=28102
The headline reads: Elton John rips Arizona boycotters.
Please read the article, it's great, I particularly like the libtarded statement - "the musician unleashed a profanity laden diatribe against fellow artists who refuse to play shows in az due to the states new immigration law." (that was part of the blurb leading to the article on MSN. So what..... we lost out on Kanye West, Rage Against the Machine, and Maroon 5.... but we gained a performance from Elton John?! Sounds like a win-win!!! And really, "Unleashing a profanity laden diatribe...." sounds..... like a libtard typed that. Ha! Anyways, Cheers Elton! May the residents of Arizona and in particular the LDS members cheer you on that while you don't have any rights in California as a gay man, and while I don't think that being gay is a characteristic that deserves special rights, I do think you're a fantastic musician, and I respect the fact that you're not libtarded.
The article was totally written by a libtart because they got the Arizona law wrong. It says that the law gives the police the right to arrest someone for being a suspected illegal alien. That isn't true. The new law allows them to ask someone who is already being arrest for something else, or ticketed for some other violation, if they are in the country legally.
ReplyDeleteThe article is wrong in reporting the law in question, it makes me wonder if Elton John even said these things. The press is so screwy.
Ha, the Press isn't interested in truth, they're interested in propagating their libtarded ideologies. -GWH-
ReplyDeleteChalk one up for the conservatards!
ReplyDeleteHa, nice try Charles.... but it just doesn't have the same ring to it! Libtard. ha ha
ReplyDeleteI think conservatard is better. It has the ring of truth to it.
ReplyDeleteGrasping at straws for a good comeback huh?.....
ReplyDelete-GWH-
I thought about it for a second and I wonder GWH, is your applause for Elton John and his lack of protest for the Arizona law an indication that you feel being in the country is a greater sin than homosexuality?
ReplyDeleteMmmmm no. My cheers for Elton John is that he's not an idiot celebrity. I think the fact that he is a homo is disgusting. -GWH-
ReplyDeleteGWH, It seems to me that being continually taken in by the phony liberal-conservative nonsense is a sign of a political disability, so perhaps it is accurate, although politically incorrect, to refer to both sides with disdain. Continuing to attack one another based on the left-right, Republican-Democrat, liberal-conservative meme certainly retards our ability to address the loss of control over our own government. In fact, it plays right into the hands of those who are in control and intend to stay there regardless of who we vote into office.
ReplyDeleteOnce again Charles I agree with you. However you want the country to pull to the left, and I want the country to return to the right - indeed the very principles which made America into the great country it once was. -GWH-
ReplyDeleteBefore we argue over which way to pull, we ought to find out whether we agree on the destination. It might be difficult, but after we wade through the slogans and sound bites, I wonder if we don't actually want the same kinds of things for America and Americans. If we are only arguing about what method is best to achieve a common goal, then we ought to be able to resolve that argument. If our vision of America is radically different, then that would be more difficult.
ReplyDeleteOk, I like the direction you're taking this discussion. What is your goal for America? What would be the ideal United States to you? -GWH-
ReplyDeleteI want us to live in peace. I want every American to have the opportunity to have a first-class education, and be able to find a good-paying job or create a business of their own. I want an America free of grinding poverty and homelessness where everyone has access to high quality health care when they need it. I want us all to be free to speak, print, worship, assemble and vote as we please. I want Americans to control their own government, not be spectators in a political game run by wealthy interests that serves the interests of a small elite.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you want?
Peace, opportunity, freedom, enterprise, poverty free, with healthcare and education for the population, and a gov run by the people for the people. I am with you on all of those. Now, this is where our paths violently diverge. How do you propose we attain these objectives? There are certain facts which exist, in other words there are obviously constraints to obtaining such objectives - which are that we live in a real world with real people with real emotions, such as anger, greed, laziness etc. Here is a link to a video by Milton Friedman, and pay close attention to what he says at the end - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
ReplyDeleteAnd this is where the problem lies Charles. Both you and I have the same objectives and I would say you are as liberal as I am conservative. We both want the same thing but one of us is not willing to accept the fact that there are confines which exist in reality that hinder the obtaining of these objectives. It ultimately boils down to freedom vs. control. And honestly, I don't even think that with complete control you would be able to reach those objectives as completely as you could under freedom. -GWH-
Now here's a clincher, if human emotion could be "modified"...... or in other words if we could become new creatures in terms of loving our neighbor and having charity and not being greedy, indeed having more concern for the wealthfare of each other than our very selves, out of love..... then we could talk about reaching those goals fully. -GWH-
ReplyDeleteHow do I propose we obtain those objectives? I'm actually open-minded on that subject. My only caveat is that I refuse to entertain ideas that have already been tried and failed or ideas for which there is no rational evidence to suggest they would succeed. Yes the reality of our situation hinders our ability to achieve the goal. There are greedy, angry people and if you provide freedom they will use it to their advantage. If you exert control, they will work to take charge of that control.
ReplyDeleteCertainly we could sit back and hope for some miracle that would remove sin and leave all mankind loving and charitable, but that is not a viable solution, unfortunately. I would also agree that attaining these goals fully and completely may not be possible, but failing to pursue them because the road is long and bumpy just doesn't seem to be an answer.
Actually Charles, you might find that most Mormons accept the idea that part of God's plan in this life is that sin exists, or at least the opportunity for sin to exist. The freedoms to chose sin is an essential part of our growth as individuals, but they are also parts of what helps us grow as a society.
ReplyDeleteWe must be able to feel the weight of our mistakes if we are to learn and act appropriately. Bailing out companies and banks who made bad decisions was a bad idea in part because it removed the punishments for their sins - economically speaking. What the government did was eliminate the punishment of sin and in essence took away their sins.
So your statement that it would be great if we had a society where people didn't do these bad things is correct, but I sense that your proposals simply take away the possibly for sin which in my view of things is just as bad as the bank bailout or taking away the punishment for sin. Of course this is all economically true as it is spiritually.
Therefore the solution is not to regulate away or have the government take over anyone's behaviors or actions in an economy so as to prevent sin, but to simply punish those wrongs that are committed. The end result is an economically educated society that is able to operate on its own.
I have no problem with the concept that sin exists, but to imagine it will suddenly disappear just doesn't seem like a rational hope - in the political world at least.
ReplyDeleteI would agree that the bank and corporate bailouts were wrong in every sense, but they were a natural outgrowth of a deregulated environment that permitted these institutions to gain effective control over the people's government. Now that we have permitted criminals to buy the government, we cannot hope to enforce the law - at least as it regards them.
You are probably right. "Sin" is not magically going to go away in a snap. I am not sure I ever suggested it would. Societies grow and shrink over periods of time. Just how China has slowly become a better country for embracing free market systems, over time that will continue to increase. I realize that these things take time, but they also took time to get bad. It simply means that the opposite is also true if we put the right efforts in.
ReplyDeleteHow does deregulation naturally call for bailouts? For the record the lending industry has regulations. Tons of them. I worked in the lending/real estate industry for years. I saw a great deal of regulations in place. The thing is, what happened was not illegal as much as it was bad business. People got into loans the shouldn't have. We can chastise banks all we want, but the people had to chose to make bad loans too - the people got greedy, not just the businesses. When businesses made the bad moves they needed to pay for it along with the people that entered into bad debt.
Let us not forget that it was a government program/regulation that both Bush and Obama put in place that is an equally reprehensible program. As I see it, if the businesses failed in their bad decisions, then the people suffer, but mostly the people that did or invested in the stupid stuff. Now, with the massive bailouts, a government program that came with regulations, ALL the citizens are forced to pay for the faults of these companies. Some now are paying double, both as investors and as tax payers.
So I would say that the nature of the bailouts is the natural reasoning of people that think that government regulations are always solutions. The bank bailouts is reason to say that government intervention has caused the natural laws of economics to be corrupted. Additionally, the more government is involved, the larger the government hold over the people, the more reason for businesses to corrupt it. If government is a smaller, less centralized system, businesses have a less attractive target. So in a matter of speaking, regulations are the methods and "golden carrot" that is dangled in front of businesses to enter government and seek to control it. To eliminate government from these equations is to reduce the desire and opportunities for corruption.
I think we agree that bailing out failed people, businesses and banks is a bad idea. What we don't agree on is how to prevent it. When we have a bank that is so large and so interconnected with other banks, investment houses, consumer credit companies and insurers that its failure threatens the entire financial system (and with it the livelihood of millions of Americans), then that institution has become too large.
ReplyDeleteHow did it get that way? Primarily because the regulations that prudent lawmakers had put in place after the last depression were intentionally removed. Why were those sensible regulations removed? Because the banks and other financial institutions spent billions of dollars lobbying Congress, contributing to campaigns, and misinforming the public so that they could make more profits in the short term, knowing that when the bubble they created burst, the government would be forced to bail them out.
The 2008 collapse would never have happened if the government had not decimated the regulatory structure that prevented too-big-to-fail and a casino-like speculation in financial markets. There is only one force in our society that is large enough and strong enough to punish corrupt corporations or make them behave by fearing punishment and that force is the federal government.
Hoping that these large corporations and financial institutions will behave honorably and honestly just doesn't work any more than hoping people will suddenly stop sinning. We would not think of allowing our community to exist without laws or without a police force capable of enforcing those laws, but we somehow think big business should not be restricted by laws and that we don't need to bother having any entity that can enforce what laws remain. That just doesn't make much sense.
Government has become more corrupt because it has stopped regulating business and therefore given business more power to corrupt government. There's more money available to buy lobbyists, regulators and Congressmen because government has drastically cut taxes (and tax enforcement) on the wealthy and the big corporations. Now we have a corrupt government that not only cannot and will not enforce the law, but actively colludes with those who break it to hold them harmless.
We have had periods in our history where we have let big business do whatever it wanted, and each time it led to a decade of horrific depression and suffering. We are fast entering another such decade unless we take control of our government and use its power to rein in the excesses of the financial market.
I have 2 questions for you Charles:
ReplyDeleteOne, do you think that regulations can prevent all of societies evils?
Two, do you feel that by taking away failure or enacting regulations that help to prevent failure, that by consequence opportunity for success is limited?
James,
ReplyDelete1. No.
2. Good regulations don't prevent failure, they prevent fraud. If a business fails, it should be allowed to fail, but if it intentionally defrauds its customers, shareholders, or the general public it should be prosecuted. And by prosecuted, I mean dissolved, charter revoked, assets sold at auction - just like you or I would be treated in the same circumstances.