VOTE FOR BUSH, PEOPLE!

ive cleaned house for lisa marie presley. shes a miserable woman. i really feel sorry for her even though shes rich as sh!t she lives like a prisoner. she never goes anywhere she just coops herself up and shes surrounded by money grubbing parasites. but if i had to choose between her life and the life i lived a year ago... homeless, panhandling and selling myself on the street, staph infections on my legs to the point where i could barely walk on my own, the mosquitos trying to carry me off in the night, only getting a few hours of sleep everyday fearing that ill be jacked, gang raped and or murdered.

gee.. i wonder which is better. :roll:

and to any of you that would say that im responsible for my situation because it was my choice to run off to the city to escape my family, my two jobs, my brand new crv. sure i can agree with that. why not. why blame it on my illness. even though my choices were a direct result of my illness at the time.

nope thats a cop out. i should blame myself cause if i really wanted to, i could be as successful and affluent as i want to be. the sky is the limit! we all start off from zero and its OUR PERSONAL CHOICES THAT EFFECT THE RESULTS WE SEE IN OUR LIVES TODAY. isnt that what youre trying to tell me?

right on.

Dear SleepingB,
Your story makes me sad. Interesting. I made many bad choices in my younger years based on the fact that I wanted to get as far away from my mother as possible. Had I been healthy, that would have been easy, or had I had a healthy family, THAT would have made the difference.

In my experience, I find that yes, money is important, it greases the wheel, but bottom line the foundation for the rest of our lives comes from family.

Dear Gavin
Man this debate is great, but again exhausting as I have million things to explain and can't type that fast.

We certainly have differences of opinion as we have grown up in two different worlds. It's pretty amazing that I think of the Americans and Brits as "the same family" -- the colonists were Brits (and of course later many other foreign immigrants) ... but we have been raised with different ways of seeing the world. I understand that.

To sort of clarify the school thing. The public schools in the US can be excellent. The problems run deeper than that.

Public schools are funded by property taxes on the individuals who live in a particular location. (I'm making this very simplistic, and I may say have some things incorrect so don't quote me.) But for example, I went to Private School, that my father paid for. My parents were separated until I was 18 and lived in different areas. My mother paid income taxes and property taxes which went to fund the PUBLIC schools in our district. My father did the same for HIS district. On top of that my father was paying for a private school.

So say there is an elderly couple with no children, living in a wealthy area. Say they never had kids and lived there their whole lives. They still paid taxes which were funneled into the local Public Schools. So there IS an example of 2 homeownders contributing to a school district through taxation, (AS WELL AS FEDERAL FUNDING), though they never use the Public School system. They have no kids, but part of their income pays for the local Public School.

In higher income neighborhoods there is a stronger tax base, so the quality of the school overall will be better (in theory).

But this is interesting. My private school had high expectations, and one thing was, if you did poorly, you weren't allowed to stay, you got expelled -- for good. The fear and terror of that is, your parents would be furious, as they paid good money for you to go and you didn't take advantage of the opportunity. That happens. I have no judgement. And I'm talking about kids WITHOUT problems/disabilities, etc. Who chose to screw around. They got to go to Public school, for FREE, but they STILL screwed around.

Not every kid wants to go to school. I feel it goes back to the family though. The majority of the kids who went to the public schools in my wealthy neighborhood did go on to be successful. I think the community itself had certain standards, and parents were more involved in their kids' educations. Kids from my private school went to Harvard. Kids from the public school went to Harvard. But bottom line -- here are kids motivated by something.

These days, public schools are in bad shape. They are FREE. But there is no such thing as getting anything for FREE. Someone is paying for that out of their taxes, somewhere. Since certain districts don't have a strong tax base, the schools can start heading downhill -- that's not good, it's not fair to the young kids who want/need an education. But more money gets pumped into those school districts and the money is mishandled.

A private school is held more accountable as parents say, "Where is my money going?" "What books is my child reading?" "Why isn't there a music program?" There are stricter rules, parent involvement and expectation.

And despite that, some kids don't want to be scholars. I understand that too. But in a world where manual labor is being replaced by computers, you have to have specific knowledge. The US lags behind many countries in terms of math and science scores. Why? It's complicated.

I'm already tired.

The thing is, where does a child get motivation from? Whom does a child really want to please? His/her parents. I believe strongly in family as the basis for success. Being in a bad neighborhood is NOT GOOD though. I agree. But in the average public school, those children whose PARENTS expect something from them, want them to learn, help them to learn... bottom line LOVE them... they do better in school anyway.

And yes. If you grow up in the ghetto, you have a million strikes against you to start with. You have to worry about drug sales in the hallways. Gangs. Kids who don't CARE about learning. Public schools that existed before the 1960s, worked pretty well here. There is a giant chapter on social/cultural change I can't even get into now.

But the public schools started to fail.

I know we have problems with our health care system now. But when you guys talk about your NHS in the UK, or I hear about healthcare in Canada, I'm shocked. I hear stories here of people not being able to see a psychiatrist for 6 months. Someone with a tumor getting on a list to wait forever to have it removed and biopsied.

The social medical system in Canada and the UK, which I hear the most about is in trouble. OUR system is in trouble. So neither the capitalist system nor the socialist system is working re: healthcare overall. And I do know, that wealthy Brits have private health insurance, and they can get immediate care, better care, etc.

It is so complicated.

I don't know the answers.
But I know one thing. Certain things like starting out well in life start at the family level. I came (as an only child) from a relatively wealthy family, but I was ill. My parents didn't love me, didn't help me. So the money helped in certain ways, but had they given me coping skills, helped me live with my illness, work around it, etc..... let me get help when i first needed it (and my parents were doctors and turned their heads the other way for their own screwy reasons).... had I had support from my family, I would have done 500 times better than I am now at 46.

Personal responsiblity falls in here somewhere.

I wish I could wave a magic wand, and help everyone here.

I wish that millions of Africans weren't starving, dying of AIDS, etc. How can that be happening in 2004?

Very complicated.
There is no simple, perfect answer.

Peace Folks,
Sorry for the ramble. I like this section. It DOES take my mind off the DP!!!!
D

Hmm, I always wonder where Dreamer gets the energy from to write novel sized replies in a row.
I don't even have the energy to read them all, alone write so much.

Well, actually I still wonder why this is a subject people are so keen on writing about.

My message was as clear as it can possibly get.
All that I said was that it is not about money.

When you have problems, there are solutions to those.
And since we suffer from dr or dp here, our problems are emotional.
So, it is not about money.

If we had money problems, we would not suffer emotionally, because money problems are rational and unpersonal problems.

Since you guys suffer emotionally and still moan about money (or school, whatever) at the same time, the conclusion is as follows:
you are connecting your personal emotional problems to other issues ( money for example), and those other issues have nothing to do with your actual emotional problems.

So, this whole discussion is totally senseless.

And, to state something else:

Dreamer wrote: There is no simple, perfect answer.
Well, Dreamer, let me tell you this:
There is really no simple, perfect answer because there are millions of simple, perfect answers.

There are millions of simple, perfect answers because there is one simple, perfect answer to each individual.

If you try to find one perfect, simple answer for all human beings together, you are inevitably in for a disappointment.
Because finding one simple, perfect answer for all means finding millions of wrong complicated answers for most of them who fall in the category I termed "all".

So, this whole discussion is really totally senseless from the outset.

moronic

adj : having a mental age of between eight and twelve years

I wouldn't have used the word, DakotaJoe, had there not been a reason for it. I didn't call I a moron, I simply called his last post moronic, which it certainly was -- it was informationally incorrect, completely, and furthermore showed such a confidence despite its complete erroneous nature, all the more irritating. You can go look at it yourself.

I displays that same skewed confidence here, accusing both Dreamer and Gavin of blaming their emotional turmoils on these other issues, which, clearly, is not the case if one reads these posts here. If one doesn't have the ability to distinguish between emotion and can't respect the importance of philisophical debate, then that's one thing. But to outright acuse the thoughts and ideas as being a mere tool of excusing the former is ridiculous, especially when both Dreamer and Gavin have, again, well-thought out and strictly philisophical ideas here. Again, I's post simply shows disregard for the thoughts and opinions here, and blasphemously (and clearly without reading the thread itself) attacked the m, pretty abrasively I might add.

So no, I think my post stands.

Hey kids, dont start fighting!! I can see where you're coming from JasonFar, but I suppose Joe is right...I is entitled to make his point, although like I said before, if this debate bothers him so much why doesnt he just keep out of it? There's other things to do....

I....2 points....1. Not everybody on this site sees DP as an emotional illness. If you read the descriptions on the homepage, or in the DSM-IV, you'll see what DP specifically is is a sensual/perceptual change in consciousness. Although most people with this thing have emotinal problems too (natch), we do not all have emotional problems.

2. To say that money is a 'rational' issue seperate from emotions is very naive. Try breaking your back to keep yourself fed, housed and clothed with no help without getting emotional. You can't.

Dreamer....you make some very interesting points and I'm always glad that you're so generous with the amount of information you put in that you give me some that proves my point nicely! Let me get it straight that I'm certainly NOT against people who've been to private school OR parents who send their kids there...what I want is governments to do a lot more to make things fairer for the less advantaged. And your point about how the public schools there are funded sums up perfectly where a lack of social engineering and redistribution of wealth perpetuates and exacerbates the problems that already exist. It's nonsense that areas that are more affluent should get better funded schools than deprived areas that have a greater need for investment...or at the very least an equal amount. That is why the cards need to be shuffled at a national level and dealt out equally.
As for the differences in our culture, yes there are big differences now, although the similarities remain. A lot of why Britain had to become more socially minded is because we got the crap bombed out of us during world war two and serious measures were needed to get the nation back on it's feet. Another reason is because this country is one of the most densely populated countries on Earth, so it's getting harder and harder for the rich to keep themselves isolated from the rest of us commom plebs. I can understand why a rich american in a big house in the middle of nowhere, far from any urban area might feel a bit resentful when it comes to paying taxes to support the less well off in a world they never see. They are happy to exist in their own world, self sufficent, like the pioneers of old, or if you like, like the anglo saxons.
Some commentators would say that American society is more like Anglo Saxon England than modern Britain is, because in Anglo Saxon times there was less interference by the state (or the King as it was then) and local issues were decided by local people...that's what made England so different from the rest of Europe and so much more free. But that was in an age when everyone was to all intents and purposes, born equal...because the only way of life was working the land and being self sufficient. But we dont live in that age anymore....we now live in the post industrial revolution age age where self sufficiency comes at a much higher price and only those born into money can compete without a little assistance.
I'm not saying the rich dont have problems....Dreamer, my family is financially poor but rich in love and for that reason I feel you've had a much harder run than me....but my concern is not only people's sense of emotional wellbeing, but people's survival. And there's too many people in your country and to a lesser degree in my country, struggling just to survive.

I'm all for self sufficiency, honest hardwork and enterprise by those able to do it. I myself could never be happy living on handouts forever...been there done that, hated it. I dont believe that's the sort of society we want and I think people should always strive to work as hard as they can to make something of themselves and help society, as the socialist mantra goes 'from each according to his ability to each according to his needs'. But there should always be a safety net for those who fall on hard times or who are born to hard times and hard circumstances and in this age, that safety net has to be controlled on a national level so that rich parts of society dont get richer while poor areas decline. It's not a case of taking away people's freedom to control their own destiny....it's about giving other people, one's fellow countrymen, the chance to have good health, food, a place to live and a decent education. Things some people take for granted while others cannot afford to.

that'll do for now.

God bless America and God save the Queen!

Chairman Gav

Gavin, good point about the U.S. and liberalism vs. land per capita. It's no secret here that urban areas are more Democratic, largely for reasons you pointed out and because of higher minority concentrations, which overwhelmingly vote Democratic. That also explains why the Northeastern U.S. is much more liberal. People who live in the midwest/breadbasket states (Nebraska, Kansas) aren't exposed to what people in New Jersey or Massachusetts are. You're not going to find a large minority population in buttf*ck Alabama. Minorities are concentrated in urban areas as are gay populations. People who are gay tend to flock to cities where diversity is concentrated and more tolerated, hence the so-called "Gay Meccas" like San Francisco, New York City, and Miami.

Europe just has so much more history than the U.S., full of conflict and war, church corruption, that you are just over a lot of the issues that face Americans. Seperation of church and state is in our Consitution, so we haven't faced the corruption like many of Europe's past governments, and a lot of people have remained religious. You all have seen it all. I don't mean to say the U.S. is behind Europe, we just face different problems and issues. The socialism/meritocracy you espouse could never be feasible in the U.S. where farmers in Iowa could give a rat's ass about poverty on city streets. The U.S. is "the land of opportunity", so a lot of people (republicans mainly) believe that people are personally responsible for their successes and failures.

Interesting little point, one of my best friends that I grew up with in Tennessee was the biggest Democrat I knew. He then went to college in California and came back a huge Republican because, as he put it, "I realized how stupid being a liberal Democrat was." He said there were just non-stop protests on campus about animal rights, the environment, and other crap. The people were just so extreme, he found them much more revolting than any religious zealot he ever met.

Lost track of what this thread was even about. Later

I can totally relate to why your friend says that...there's too many pseudo-left wingers who jump on any old bandwagon they can find, even if it means defending some right-wing dictator against their own government. Very true. But a true socialist shouldn't be swayed by the behaviour of people like that...in my experience those type of people are not true socialists, they're just rich kids who as soon as they leave the shackles of their parental home start playing the right-on che guevara act. Maybe if they'd experienced a bit of hardship they'd know that the common man doesnt give a toss about the causes they bang on about, the common man cares about schools, hospitals, welfare, crime etc.
Also, I like that comment about the seperation of church and state in the US constitution. That made me laugh! Okay so the US government aint affiliated to any particular religion or denomination, but old George Dumbass Bush certainly likes to wear his christianity on his sleeve....well, it's a few tens of million guaranteed votes in the bag aint it. Tony Blair's a bible basher as well, but at least he has the dignity not to keep shoving it in people's faces. Then again, unlike in the states it wouldn't be such a vote winner in this heathen country.

gav

I said separation of church and state is in our constitution. Never said politicians couldn't be religious. We have never had people here forcing others to accept their religion or denomination a la Henry VIII or the Nazis. i think that has a lot to do with why people have remained religious here.

I have more respect for George Bush who has the balls to wear his religion on his sleeve than John Kerry who completely feigned his devotion with his "i was an altar boy growing up" crap. I saw right through that. The guy is a once-a-year Christmas Catholic, and it was a piss-poor attempt to attract Christians.

Mixing religion and politics is dangerous ground in politics, even in the U.S. You are just as likely to turn off voters as you are to attract them. The thing with this election is that nobody really loved John Kerry, the only thing that united Democrats was their hate of Bush and opposition to the war. John Kerry was THE most liberal member of the Senate and I think a lot of people were worried his presidency could compromise traditional Christian values, not Christianity. They felt more comfortable with Bush.

People blow Bush's faith and politics way out of proportion. Opponents threaten that he will appoint conservative Supreme Court judges and have Roe v. Wade overturned. Total scare tactics. He really only talks about it when confronted about it, which the media likes to do all the time. I think Christian values influence his agenda, but religion doesn't pass legislation in Washington. It is very easy to associate values with religion, because what are considered to be traditional values, right vs. wrong, are dictated in the The Bible, the Torah, the Koran, etc. Christian values of right and wrong, the Ten Commandmentsand such, coincide with the general population's concept of right and wrong. So, if you want to say his faith influences his politics, I guess you have an argument.

Bush is not going to come out and say he supports stem-cell research, partial-birth abortions, and gay marriage because he doesn't, but if Congress passes bills in support of any of these (stem-cell research is probably the only one that could be passed any time soon), he is not going to veto it. Most Americans are against partial-birth abortions and gay marriage so he can oppose those all he wants for now. When stem-cell research came up 2 or 3 years ago, it was such a new issue, I think people just took the conservative route to ban it for the time being.

I know people can argue against this. Whatever.

Jason wrote:

it was informationally incorrect, completely, and furthermore showed such a confidence despite its complete erroneous nature

Click to expand...

From my point of view, it is your post that reveals exactly what you were stating above.

If you are not able to discuss things in an adult manner and are furthermore not even able to accept other opinions, it is your posts that should be discarded.

Go educate yourself and come back when you have gained some insights that are true.

Besides, I was not affronting and posting childish accusations over nothing.

If you check out all my posts on this board you will find out that the only person I ever insulted here was George W. Bush.
I would never be so dowdy to directly insult people here just because they have other attitudes.

In my opinion you really revealed where you are coming from and what person you are.

I, first of all, let me reiterate: I said what you said was moronic, obstuse, and naive. Full of misinformation. You stated, dare I quote, that fruits have everything the body needs -- protein, vitamins, minerals. You stated this, along with a fat "you're wrong in almost every respect", after I posted simple, completely factual information. I had no opinions of the sort, and was merely sharing the wealth of knowledge. I just posted #'s, #'s that are universally accepted among any and every Human being regarding nutrition numbers. Nothing disputable, nor did I make it that way. At any rate, my point was somehow you completely discredited something that is WRITTEN INTO STONE with such brevity and seeming self-assurance, pointing out I was wrong with (what?) information besides "you're just wrong.". When I call the advice moronic, I very much mean that in these regards: if someone were to follow the advice and eat nothing but fruits, they would most likely succumb to severe vitamin, mineral, fat, and protein deficiencies, and death would ultimately follow. When one displays such wrongful advice with such confidence, it is a danger indeed, and at the very least needs to be contradicted with correct information.

My beef with your post here was simple as well: your post was spiteful and angry, dissmissive and negative. Anyone just has to read it to see that.

But geeez, I'm done with this thread. Sorry, I just have a penchant for playing "Mr. Cop" for that exact thing; I've seen too many people in my Life possess the trait, and I can't stand it. A higher-than thou sense of rightness in the midst of wrongness.

BUT PLEASE, CONTINUE WITH THE DEBATE, FOR IT WAS BETTER WITHOUT I OR I'S POSTS. (get it?) :shock: