The thing that has changed about the Republican Party over the last few years is that they are an entrenched majority party that is becoming arrogant.

The other major problem is that the Democratic Party is dominated by its fringe left wing, so it provides no competition in the middle. This allows the Republicans to drift into a big government mentality in order to pick up marginal Democratic voters. It also allows Republicans to ignore their small government base since no one else is competing for those votes.

We really need a functional Democratic Party in this country in order to keep the Republicans in check.

hey, come back when you have something to say, OK ?
an actual argument, maybe a fact or two ?
douchebag..

A douchebag is a hygenic product, but please, humor me. What does "dulce et decorum est pro Halliburton mori" mean to you.
edit; color

I heard someone discussing this exact topic the other day on NOW. He said exactly the same thing you did, and then compared it to the democratic party at another time in history. I believe it was the late 70s. The dems had been in control for quite a while, and the repubs were directionless. The repubs found an inspriring person to lead their party and then the whole country moved towards the repubs.

I agree with your points, but I also think there is a major problem in this country right now with people thinking 'it's my way or no way.' Bush is leading that charge. He's empowered all the assholes in this country that don't care about other people's point of view and don't like to hear things that don't support what their views. I find this anti-democratic and maybe even fascist.

I love the Krugman Kool-Aid!

But, even leaving Krugman out of this, I still haven't heard anyone explain where you come up with the $2 TRILLION needed to transition over to the partial privatization. Got any ideas?

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What a drag it is getting old. -- Stones

>"Not so fast, SDI put me through college, and missile defense writes my paycheck. Why do you hate me??? ;)"

I don't hate you - I love you, man. But can't you do something useful with your engineering skills? Maybe you could help make cars more energy efficient or design a maglev train, or any number of other things I could think of. How about designing a really bitchin' tri-bike? Teleportation? Write a sit-com? cure teenage acne? figure out a way to block bad music coming out of other people's car stereos? etc.

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What a drag it is getting old. -- Stones

Yeah, extend the retirement age by an amount enough to offset the short term effect.

Second idea that will never happen, sweep government employees into the system.

Third idea: change the indexing so that it more accurately reflects inflation.

Fourth idea: Get rid of that disasterous prescription drug benefit.

There are plenty of ideas. They need to be debated. Hopefully Bush will force the debate.

Bush doesn't have the power to do that. That process was in place before him and will be there after he is gone.

The biggest problem causing the radicalization of the debate is gerrymandering. Essentially no Congressmen have to worry about reelection. To the extent they do worry, the ensure reelection by appealing to their heavily Democratic or heavily Republican activists depending on their district. No member of the House has to fight for his seat by appealing to the middle.

That is anti-democratic, but you might want to look up the word fascist since that term does not apply in the context in which you are using it.

...All of these plus means testing. The biggest problem is the retirement age. When Social Security was enacted the retirement age was 65 and the average life expectancy was 63.7 years. You were only supposed to collect Social Security if you beat the statistics and outlived your retirement savings and/or your ability to work. Today the retiremetn age is still 65 and the average life expectancy is about 74. Seniors vote in larger numbers than other age groups and an embarrassing percentage have no retirement savings other than Social Security - zero, zip, nada.

Someone mentioned analyzing government expenditures like a business and throwing out the bums who spent our money in ways we didn't like. The problem with that is about half the population is spending someone else's money when they vote and they want it spent on themselves.

Sorry, not to get to OT. But... I think missile defense is a problem worth looking into. Just because it's very hard doesn't mean we shouldn't try to figure it out. However, since long range missile defense is so far out, I think we ought to temper our spending on it. Research it yes, draw a line in the sand saying we need a capability in 4 years and fund the hell out of it, no.

There are plenty of other technologies we could sink money in that would have a real near term impact on national defense.

Also note that I have no real engineering skills to speak of. I just write software that simulates things.

I like some of your ideas and have thought of them myself. However, those might just be enough to get us through the baby boom years. Adding another $2 trillion problem on top of that is insanity and a step in exactly the wrong direction mathematically. I won't even go into the policy reasons I don't like privatization.

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What a drag it is getting old. -- Stones

All else being equal, it would be great to have a missile defense system. But if I had to pick the top 1000 things in my life that I am concerned about, getting hit by a missile doesn't even come close to making the list. There are plenty of more useful ways to spend that kind of money and employ intelligent software writers and engineers.

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What a drag it is getting old. -- Stones

"But if I had to pick the top 1000 things in my life that I am concerned about, getting hit by a missile doesn't even come close to making the list."

Ha ha!! I don't disagree. I just think it's an interesting problem and one worth looking into. Now as to the definition of "worth", well....

Yo dougie boy, still waiting for your response.

What does "dulce et decorum est pro Halliburton mori" mean to you.

Also, i'm sure you didn't come up with that yourself. Please give credit to the source that you stole it from.

Eagerly waiting you reply

-somerandomdouchebag