Bush et al gave bin Laden everything he wanted. Watching this is maddening. You realize how many people died that simply did not have to. Without the USSR - it is as if people wanted a substitute, and chose Islam, and let bin Laden have it as he wanted. Everything from "everything is changed" to the invasion of Afghanistan - bin Laden wanted all that. We did his bidding (or Bushco did).

How long before one of them talks in terms of gods judgement and praying as the way to cure the disease?

An epoch is defined by a culture. People were getting sick of the Cold War.

One person having enough power to define an epoch would be horrible. The last person who did that was Hitler and even in his case he could not have done it without the German people.

The Chinese had to have been ready for it too.

http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/traffic/2014/07/16/visit-obama-announce-infrastructure-plan/12768219/

Cracking up at the breaking news. The Charcoal Pit is a local chain of about 3 restaurants. We heard he was going to lunch on Concord Pike, and guessed that would be the place, as the rest are chains like Olive Garden, and he never goes to places like that.

He was here to talk about infrastructure. Recently, I-495, a beltway around Wilmington, was closed, because of defects in a bridge on it. It has caused great traffic problems on I-95 though the city.

They care about the war. They use the troops as a way to argue with people against the war.

That's why it works. If they stayed on top of things and didn't allow themselves to be influenced so much by TV ads (leaving the advantage to those who have or can raise the most money) and did more on the local scene, that is, took self government seriously, different people might get elected. Say someone who is perhaps ugly but is right on the issues.

The shallow nature of the average voter is what allows this, but they have the right to vote too. They don't use it responsibly. Listening to Beck and Limbaugh and letting that type of person influence you, that's lazy.

Most DUers would not fit into that category, but even here we often don't do a lot.

Jefferson thought that if every voter could read, all would be safe, but that has not proven to be the case. People don't take self government seriously and don't take the time to read and think about it, and let themselves be swayed by emotions and slick ads and slick appearances. This is where the problem should be seen and attacked. Ranting against the corporations and the banksters and the politicians doesn't attack the real problem.

They should be proportionate to income.

Children are not entirely a burden though. We do benefit from other people having children. Taxpayers, future and future workers, soldiers. We can't do it all on our own. These are fellow Americans too. We don't need all from well off backgrounds. I think there's an argument they are not a burden.

The man in the story is unusual too. General rules should not be made for this situation.

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In fact we should start from the bottom. There would not be nearly as much money involved in Congressional races. People ignore them and focus on the POTUS. That's where the problem lies and why the money has so much power.

You could have Hugo Chavez himself in the WH - nothing would happen, because Congress is part of the equation.

I live in a blue state but the state representative district is very red. So the work cut out for me is that state district - the real work. Dreaming about Dennis K in the WH - even if that came true, your "disappointment" would set in the first time he had to compromise to keep the government going.

We do have a system that can make changes without violent revolutions. We aren't Egypt and don't have to suffer through things like that. Look at our history, and we have come a long way.

We had to get up to change the channel on TV. Actually walk over to the TV to change it. And we only had 4 channels that worked. The dial only went to 13, and the ones that didn't work had snow only.

We had only one phone in the house and it was attached with a cord. You actually had to stay by the phone to talk on it. When it rant you had to go pick it up with no idea who was on the other end. If you called somebody who was not home, all you got was endless ringing. No way to leave a message unless there was someone there. And they had to write it down.

In the car all we had were radios. No record players in cars! No phones. No GPS. We had to use a map - a paper map - to find directions.