Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

[touchring]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

Racism is terrible and racist speech is hate speech. But calling someone a racist without any proof is also hate speech.

Again I ask those who say there are racists on iTulip. Identify them and show proof from posts. That or retract the statements and apologize.

False accusations poison this forum.

Ok, I think I posted something sensitive which flared up tempers. Being a straight shooter all my life, I'm used to all this, so it's ok to me.

I'll retract all my statements, let's get back to the original topic.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

Racism is terrible and racist speech is hate speech. But calling someone a racist without any proof is also hate speech.

Again I ask those who say there are racists on iTulip. Identify them and show proof from posts. That or retract the statements and apologize.

False accusations poison this forum.

FWIW, vt, I've been hanging around here for 8 or 9 years now I think. I distinctly remember posts that were deleted by Fred for pushing racist nonsense. It happens. But I don't find the conversation occurring here and now to be productive.

It makes me sad when it happens, because there are people here who are not white and are not men and who are not too seldom slighted by some comment or another. I don't think it's always intentional, but it's there. I've had to chime in with things like this several times. I don't think you intended it. But your "brains and looks" secretary of state comment last year was at least somewhat insensitive.

These things happen. I'm not going to throw a fit or try to shut you up. But occasionally, I'll toss in a snide comment when I see them. I don't know how else to semi-productively deal with it. And you responded reasonably. But I don't think that trying to provoke an argument here or trying to equate the act of calling out racist or sexist speech as the equivalent to actual hate speech is a useful way to go about it.

The useful move is to de-escalate and calm the situation down. Threads titled "Liberals mugged by reality" or such things just provoke fights. At least that's how I see it. And the fights are useless, because nobody is changing their minds. Better to discuss deeper, less surface elements of the day. At least that's how I see it. Again, that's just my opinion.

[vt]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

Thank you Touchring. You always been a great contributor.


What I don't understand about some other posters here is why they steer way off the subject to introduce racist charges when the initial article had absolutely nothing

to do with politics or race:


Sobering Truths

• Government: Historically low public confidence
• Infrastructure: Requires at least $3.6 trillion investment by 2020
• Climate Change: Facing a ‘megadrought’ this century
• Wealth: Income inequality highest in nearly 100 years
• K-12 Education: U.S. students lagging behind global competitors.

The article points out negatives such as these for discussion. Read through the first few posts and you can see where a post went completely off topic. Why did these posts steer the discussion into attacks?

Please stick to the subject and invective off the forum.

[vt]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

DC you mean this one:

How about a real Secretary of State with brains and relevant experience:

Last edited by vt; 03-05-15 at 01:05 PM.

The previous post had a picture of the "television" Secretary of State.

Unfortunately politics and anything on TV, including television news, features how one looks.

I'm all for free speech but also for respectful speech.

I'd never make it on TV:

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

I'd never make it on TV either, buddy. Wasn't born pretty or petty enough.

[vt]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

You don't need to my friend. You have brains and and treat everyone with respect.

[santafe2]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

The small biz argument is all a lie on this one too. Corporate tax only hits C-Corps. And nobody organizes as a C-Corp in the 2010s unless you're a big company listing on a major stock exchange or an idiot.

And even then, even with a C-Corp, which is only really useful for going public with a large company with many shareholders, the rate is not just 35% on everything.

35% applies to profits over $10,000,000. The rate is 0% for losses. Then 15% for profits from $0-$50,000. Then 25% from $50,000 to $75,000. Etc. All of this is after deductions. And deductions are fairly easy to take. The brackets are screwed up, and have been since 2000 or so, but that's easy enough to fix, and nobody's proposing fixing it.

I'm not sure where you got that idea or some of your facts dc but tax-wise, C corps work much better for fast growing private companies. I've owned both C corps and LLCs, they both have their place. As for your tax brackets, they're off by several orders of magnitude. Corporate tax rates are 34% on all income over $75. They jump up to 39% for a bit and back down to 34% up to $10MM.

And like I said, all you have to do if you want to pay $0 in corporate tax as a small business is to incorporate as an LLC. Problem solved.

Not solved, problem shifted. Now you pay personal income tax rates. I don't own a C corp today but I do have 6-7 LLCs. We manage the profits, expenses and estimated tax liability for each of them separately. But when tax time comes around all of the profit rolls up into one personal entity. That is, the profits aggregate. The purpose of LLCs is litigation separation not tax advantage. If one LLC goes wrong it can't touch the other entities. It's also very simple and inexpensive to set-up. Tax-wise, it make no sense if you're growing a company 2-3X per year.

[santafe2]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

The useful move is to de-escalate and calm the situation down. Threads titled "Liberals mugged by reality" or such things just provoke fights. At least that's how I see it. And the fights are useless, because nobody is changing their minds. Better to discuss deeper, less surface elements of the day. At least that's how I see it. Again, that's just my opinion.

Tone deaf racists. They're all old, white and expect privilege they've never earned. I finally have most of them on blissful ignore unless people I respect respond to them and I have to read their quoted racist screeds or demands that you, "Prove it!".

[Woodsman]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

How about a real Secretary of State with brains and relevant experience:

That's perverse. What kind of moral universe must one inhabit to point to her as some sort of exemplar? She is a war criminal as defined by international law. Doesn't make her particularly unique in the annals of that job, but all the same such people I wouldn't let watch my dog over a weekend.

She played a key role in launching a war that contravenes the United Nations charter, which requires that use of force against another country come either in self-defense after an attack or be authorized by the United Nations Security Council (as was the case with the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Libya).

Not only did she back an illegal invasion and occupation, she did so on the basis of a set of demonstrable falsehoods. She retailed 56 distinct lies to the American people. She warned that we do not want the smoking gun for Iraq’s (non-existent) nuclear weapons program to be a mushroom cloud, as if that poor, weak, ramshackle place, lacking a navy or air force and under severe economic sanctions for a decade, posed an existential threat to the United States. As it turned out, the existential threat was from the Bush Administration. We have seen the enemy and it is us.

She left a broken country, with hundreds of thousands dead, 2 million displaced abroad, 4 million displaced internally, likely 400,000 badly wounded, where car bombings and sniping still take some 800 lives a month and where radical Sunni al-Qaeda affiliates have established themselves and Iranian-backed radical Shiite militias have free play. She hinted around at an al-Qaeda link to Iraq before she invaded it, but there was none. It took her actions and that of the administration she represented to bring al-Qaeda to Iraq. Once invited in by the hamfisted ineptitude of idiot savants of Rice's character, it went on to kill far more Iraqis than the 3000 Americans whose lives it took on September 11.

The things one must willfully ignore - piles and piles of dead bodies of children, rivers of blood, broken men and families - to believe such nonsense. Talk about offensive. You guys are quick to point out when silly children get too far ahead of themselves, but you praise people like Rice. What are we to make of your moral understanding? Your intelligence and common sense? How does one argue here? What premise do we defend? Surely the most rational response is to poke one's ears and eyes for nowhere else can such a mindset exist but a dark and deaf place impenetrable to light and sound.

I've never been able to figure you out, vt. I don't know if you are naive or dishonest, vt. And that is as honest as I can be.

[vt]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

You might remember I have called the Iraq war a mistake. I only was stating Condi was qualified for a high government post. Remember you just steered a thread that had nothing to do with race into that quagmire. And I brought up an earlier post that only praised the qualifications of a Black Woman!

Also Hillary voted to enter the Iraq war.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephe...b_7941264.html

And WTH were Obama and Hillary doing going into Libya?

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/08/politi...election-2016/

Iraq was a terrible mistake and a wrong reaction to 9/11. Saddam was a perfect counterweight to Iran.

Do you equally now condemn Putin in Syria and in earlier in Chechnya?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheche...ssian_conflict

[Woodsman]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

It was a mistake but you praise its author and manager because she is black. Oh brother.

[santafe2]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

She is a war criminal as defined by international law.

Her, Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney took another 153 victims tonight in Paris. I hope these war criminals are proud.

[lektrode]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

Originally Posted by Woodsman She is a war criminal as defined by international law.

Her, Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney took another 153 victims tonight in Paris. I hope these war criminals are proud.

hahahahahaha!

ya know...
i used-to think santafe2 was reasoned/reasonable in his POV - hell, i even thot woody was, at least some of the time (like when he wasnt waaay up there on his high`n`mighty intellectual hobbyhorse railing against all that is 'conservative' or 'rightwing' or 'southern' (his fave flavor of religious intolerance) or hey - merely Republican - with all of these terms interchangable 'codewords' for institutionalized racism...

but you've both just outed yerselves as staunch card-carrying members of the delusionary-left freakshow wing of the demorat crony club thats 'delivered us' full circle from clinton's '2nd coming of camelot' - even as they opened the gates of hell which allowed the lower manhattan mob to fully develop their axis of evil with the beltway (and then installed his carpetbagger wife as a NY senator, thus fully energizing the connection)

the very same bunch of shitferbrains demorat party aparatchix that 'bequeathed' unto geedubya&co everything thats happened since 2000-01 (esp after they let osama go in the first place, in the 90's, when he'd been jailed in sudan) is now somehow their fault, AGAIN?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

THE COMMENTS on this one:
Context for Paris Terror Attack: U.S. and Its Allies C-R-E-A-T-E-D ISIS
esp the 1st, are priceless...

[vt]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

We would have never had 9-11, or been in a second Iraq war, or Afganistan if Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, and Richard Clarke had used one of at least two clear chances to kill Bin Laden:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymil...-bill-clinton/


http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noe...ave-killed-bin


Sandy Berger and the Clinton team even covered up their failures when Berger stole documents from the National Archives:

http://www.washingtonian.com/article...-sandy-berger/


We would never have had the financial meltdown or the banksters still controlling both political parties if Clinton, Rubin, and Greenspan had not repealed Glass-Steagall:

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/...nancial-crisis


Our two left wing doomers accuse forum members of racism but still have given no proof. They need to retract and apologize.

They also need to document any wild claims.

[LazyBoy]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

Is iTulip Approaching a Golden Age or a Deep Decline?