the sky is falling! the sky is falling! again.

[shugah]

"the economy will collapse!" "Financial meltdown!"

we've heard this refrain before.

even though most americans had never heard of the so-called debt ceiling before a few months ago we are now all in a panic about it. it reminds me of the last financial meltdown that had to be averted. if we didn't bail out lehmen bros et.al. the economy would collapse! financial meltdown!

yep. so we have nothing but the word of the washington pols that if we don't somehow screw the taxpayers yet again, the entire world will surely collapse.

yeah. thanks chicken little...when did you start crying wolf?

[JDPriestly]

1. We're hearing about the debt ceiling because Congress and Obama

don't want to do anything about jobs or trade -- our real problems.

[BeFree]

3. OUR problems.. not theirs'

In fact, they are blaming us for their lack of statesmanship.

"We give you too much already, and since we are such failures at keeping the people working, we are gonna have to put a whipping on you now."

They should be giving us complete health care, a retirement and anything else we demand. This country has enough wealth to take care of everyone. Not just them and their friends.

[PATRICK]

2. Every time

the clock runs out on doing anything lawful and decent, something terrible comes to birth. Now the sane alternatives are NEVER mentioned as options of the past, present or future. Tick tick tick. Times up, shafted again.

[defendandprotect]

4. Debt BS is there to hide UNEMPLOYMENT - NO JOBS -- DEPRESSION --

There was just a new article at Yahoo about 23,000 new layoffs --

trying to find it --

They raised the debt ceiling 7X for W Bush -- twice in two months!!

[Warren DeMontague]

5. 25% of Americans think the Earth is 6,000 yrs old. More than half don't believe in evolution.

Sorry, but "most Americans have never heard of it" doesn't make it not real.

[spin]

8. True and most Christians today have never read the Bible ...

and if they have they have never actually studied the Bible. It is a great collection of assembled stories that can be used to teach valuable lessons. It is not the actual, literal word of God nor does it accurately describe historical events. It's full of contradictions and errors that can be attributed to the human writers that wrote the individual parts of the Bible and the scribes that copied older documents and in some cases modified them to better fit their times, belief and agenda.

In the first book of the Bible there are two creation stories that differ significantly. In the first version on day five water creatures and birds were created and on day six land animals and humans, both male and female. In the second version Adam was created from dust before the animals and birds and gets to name them. Later God, realizing that Adam is lonely, causes him to fall asleep and creates Eve from one of his ribs.

I find reading and studying the Bible interesting and believe that the basic message of the Old Testament is found in Leviticus 19:18:

“‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

And the basic lesson of the New Testament is attributed to an itinerant preacher and very enlightened individual we know as Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:12:

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

If all Christians followed these simple rules, our world would be far better.

I accept the fact that the earth is far older than 6000 years and that evolution exists but it may occur more rapidly than Darwin thought.

Evolution More Rapid Than Darwin Thought

ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2010) — Evolution can proceed much more rapidly than has long been thought. This is shown by Magnus Karlsson, a doctoral candidate at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, in his dissertation about the impact of genetics and the environment on the color patterns of pygmy grasshoppers.

It has been the accepted view among evolutionary biologists since Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859 that measurable evolutionary changes occur slowly, often taking hundreds of generations. This view may now be about to change.

Pygmy grasshoppers exist in many different color variants and in many types of environment. Through a series of experiments and studies in nature, Magnus Karlsson discovered that the distribution between the color variants of pygmy grasshoppers differs across different environments. In recently burnt over areas, a very high proportion of the grasshoppers are black. In unburnt areas, on the other hand, the black variant is unusual. What's more, the proportion of black grasshoppers changes very rapidly between generations in the burnt areas, whereas the proportion in unburnt areas remains the same over the same period of time.

***snip***

"But the most important part of the dissertation is that I have shown that evolution sometimes proceeds incredibly rapidly. This is huge," says Magnus Karlsson.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100322083654.htm

[Warren DeMontague]

9. The Bible gives me a headache.

I'll take the Tao Te Ching any day. Brevity is the soul of wit.

[spin]

6. We elect people to solve problems ...

I'm getting really tired of this constant "the end of the world is coming" bullshit that leads to very poor legislation.

It's time for the people we elect of BOTH parties to start doing the job we elected them to do. It's time for them to stop playing like unsupervised children in a playground.

To me it's fairly simple. We DO waste a lot of money and we need to review all programs to eliminate unnecessary spending and fraud. On the other hand, this crap about how if we increase taxes on the rich we will inhibit job growth is false. If it were true, we would have plenty of jobs in our nation. The rich and the big multinational corporations, who have been the largest beneficiary of the tax cuts, need to realize that paying a little more in taxes will result in a stronger nation and will benefit them in the long run as much as it will the poor and what remains of the middle class.

One of the big problems we face is that those we elect depend on contributions from the wealthy and the big corporations to run their campaigns. Those who contribute large sums expect a return for their investment and they get it.

I hear Obama expects to raise ONE BILLION dollars for his next campaign. For his competitor to be in the race, he will also have to raise an ENORMOUS amount of money.

Billion-dollar Obama to run moneyed campaign
He amassed a record $750 million in 2008 ... he's expected to hit $1 billion or more in 2012

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is no longer the outsider candidate who fueled his bid for the White House in 2008 with a flood of small donations from new and young voters inspired by his message of hope and change.

As a sitting president he has far greater authority and media access and his 2012 re-election campaign is expected to raise $1 billion, which is unprecedented in U.S. politics.

That would allow him to start campaign fund-raising and much of his war chest is expected to come from the kind of big-money donations he has criticized in the past.

***snip***

Aides note the huge number of individual donors who gave to Obama's campaign — a record 4 million. But only 25 percent of the money came from small donors who gave $200 or less, according to the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute in Washington.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42415155/ns/politics-decision_2012/t/billion-dollar-obama-run-moneyed-campaign/

The amount of money spent on political campaigns is obscene. Is it any wonder that we are often disappointed when we elect candidates to office and they fail to do what they promised? Is it any wonder why we have a growing divide between the rich and the poor and the middle class is an endangered species? Is it any wonder why we never got the healthcare plan we hoped for when we voted Democrats into power in both houses of Congress and into the White House? Is it any wonder that the banks and Wall Street got bailed out, but not Main Street?

The sad part is that I can see no realistic solution.

[CaptRandom]

7. Hmm..Do you also think vaccines are a ploy since you can't see viruses? n/t