the all-purpose Sarah Palin thread

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Sarah Palin vaguely confuses me, as she seems to be inviting sexism and criticizing it at the same time.

To clarify, I really see two forms of sexism being directed at her. First, that she is less capable then a male; this one is fairly obvious and easy to criticize. The second is that because she is a mother, she must be the primary caregiver of the family; this is a more subtle sexism that's harder to pin down.

It's usually assumed that the mother is going to do more to do more childcare then the father. As a generalization, this isn't really sexism IMHO as it actually is how most families work. It only really becomes sexism if someone assumes or argues that it always is or should be how families organized. If one is taking as a given that Sarah Palin is going to be the primary caregiver for all her kids, then it's reasonable to argue that she would be less capable then a man, since a man wouldn't have to deal with as many family demands even if he also had five kids. In reality this argument fails, as there is no real reason why Sarah Palin's husband can't take on the role of primary caregiver, allowing her to focus on her duties just as much as a male politician could if his wife was the primary caregiver.

Where Sarah Palin is confusing is that she almost seems to be playing up to the second form of sexism. To a certain extent this is unavoidable, since she is a Republican, the party of "traditional family" values; it's hard to buck stereotype when your party rhetoric reinforces it. But she's also repeatedly referred to herself as a 'hockey mom', a label associated with an overabundance of attention to one's children, talked about her PTA experience, and keeps showing off her kids to the media. We've also haven't heard much from her husband; it would be fairly easy for him to dispel most of the second form of sexism by saying he will take on the role of primary caregiver. Perhaps in time he will, but until he does it seems reasonable to me to question whether Sarah Palin can juggle being a 'hockey mom' to all of her five children and fulfil the role of vice or actual president. IMO this isn't sexism, as I would also question whether a man could balance that as well.

In other words, in some ways she giving out a message loaded with the second form of sexism, and treating any criticisms of her ability to carry out the extra demands implied by that message as if it were the first. This is a great catch-22 for feminists, where they either must support her sexist message or be called sexist. I'm not sure if she's doing it on purpose, but if she is it's quite clever in a Karl Rove sort of way.

I don't see the second part, its been of equal or greater strength in the exact opposite direction for decades. It's been the left who said that women who weren't pro-choice and pro-democrat were either failures or sexist against women; the very stuff the left has thrown is taking someone that women who aren't of the left would respect a lot and really bringing the issue to blows. It won't make anyone who disagrees with Palin sexist by any means, she's just an icon of a completely different side of the coin and this may bring about conservative women and their way of organizing and proving to the left that they have more than enough validity and more than enough of an opinion.

double post

Last edited by Postperson on 06 Sep 2008, 7:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The conservatives here are all drooling - she's getting compared with Margaret Thatcher, apparently she made a lot of men go all weak at the knees. Sort of a dominatrix/mummy thing I think.

What makes me weak in the knees is the thought of McCain electing the next for Supreme Court justices, Sarah talking him into drilling in Anwar, more nuclear, far more energy independence, us winning the war on terror, tax cuts to bring jobs back to the states and refuel the economy, possibly conservative values coming back and boldly challenging the left rather than just sitting back passive and idol - *THAT*'s what gets me hot.

I don't think people know how to counter politically correct philosophy (ie leftist). Despite it's seeming inclusion and fairness it's about taking control by certain interest groups. Any criticism attracts screeching about 'hate'. I think people just smell a rat and keep their mouths shut. In my encounters with PC nazis I've found them corrupt and self-seeking.

The reason PC nazis and a lot of leftists are hard to deal with is this; reality doesn't matter. When your debating someone who is logical and thinks things through, has any sense of divotion to truth, and if your like that yourself, its likely by the end of the conversation that either they've given you food for thought or you've done that for them - sometimes both. With the self-serving and with the people who are self first, its like trying to use a manual tool - pick axe, chainsaw, or something of that nature on a body of water than a tree - illogic is fluid, illogic has no standards, illogic can be infinitely wrong and it doesn't matter where it tares at people who do reside in logic by just burying them in ad hominem, random things that make no sense, blatant distortions and mistruths, and the person defending truth or logical thought has to do such an unimaginable amount of research and statistics to back up what they're saying that it gets to the point where the later person just gives up because - all the facts and truths they care about don't matter, and in the end any effort is completely futile. With all people having equal rights of course, social and political solipsism, while the wrong animal to win the fight, tends to win just because there tends to be no tool to beat it...exept for one.

Social solipsism relies on a variety of things for control - peer pressure, conformity, and popularity - popularity mainly through the so called 'cult of personality'. They make it glamorous, they make it the 'in style' thing, and they do it by a couple different mechanisms. One being, make cynicism the mark of intelligence and maturity - if you do reach the truth on something and if it sounds innocent, the person trying to debate the truth is easily made to look like a mental 10 year old just by people's allegations that corruptions is everything, corruption is everywhere, that hidden selfish motivations trump everything (ie. they're projecting themselves on the world around them), and the person who doesn't think like that - just isn't intelligent enough, isn't enough of an adult, is too naive to have any place in the dialog. True, there is such a thing as healthy skepticism but solipsists just keep going with it and won't notice the markers that should tell them that they've ovesteered - gone from intelligence to some alternate reality of creation because nothing was good enough to fit their egos. The other part of course, people are in fact inherently selfish on a lot of levels - varying upbringing causes different results, some people will get by by any means necessary and don't care who they're screwing over, if they want government to take care of them they're fine entertaining the illusion that supplies and resources are limitless, that the government literally generates money, and that prosperity has no underlying sacrifices needed. On the other hand, some people are raised to be self-sufficiency junkies, don't want handouts, don't want anyone to take care of them, and in fact as adults they're more interested in giving back because they realize they've made it and it becomes an inherent need from within - they want to be the best people they possibly can be and they gain self-confidence, self-esteem, and long term happiness by making sacrifices. Its not always that black and white of course, people fall on all different gradients inbetween.

What people get excited about on the right is when you can have a person who not only stands up for what they do but also has a gift in terms of the 'cult of personality' - someone who can make economic reality, foreign policy, and the real world, as well as taking the route that will work in the long term - sexy and attractive. Many of history's greatest were those who had that gift. Truth isn't self-serving usually, it doesn't give short term pleasure as often as social solipsism, it gives far greater long term happiness, gives greater happiness to future generations, but - like depth itself - regrettably most people just don't find it sexy. Those who do find themselves in a minority all their own - they find leftists on one side and religious dogmatists on the right, they're slightly right of center quite often - on the right on worldly affairs but at least moderate or somewhat left even on social issues. People who think analytically about the bigger picture - including religion, social engineering, realizing when something should be applied just because it fits the greater good rather than just being something that excites a religious impulse. For a long time personally I was really on the line between pro-life and pro-choice, I saw plenty of reasons why both worked; then a few things hit me - not religious but strictly cause and effect schematic, that flipped me back to pro-life.

There are many reasons why the left and the political correctness nazi's should be fought - partly they are authoring their own destruction through taking the easy way on things, ie. not examining self and rather projecting blame (which is a form of fascism in and of itself "If we got rid of X group everything would be great" - which is a lie, when they got to those ends they'd find a much worse world and they'd really wonder where they went wrong). People in the center and center-right are really trying to save themselves from being dragged kicking and screaming over to the stove and having their hand forced to the burner to learn a lesson that they learned when they were 4 - its HOT, just for the fact that another group of people hasn't figured it out yet. That goes for the far left, the far right, though quantitatively in numbers - the far left is more numerous and has far more examples (Westboro Baptists and what on the right? KKK maybe, that's it, very fringe, and you have far more Marxists, socialists, progressivists, who all want to take the U.S. to a place were Western Europe was in the 80's and a place where Western Europe themselves are trying to get the hell away from it and go more toward where we are).

Seeing half the things I do on TV, seeing half the things in the media that I do, and yes, seeing many of the things I see on Wrong Planet Politics, Philosophy, and Religion, it just blows my mind - I've never understood it and probably never will. Many people really can't see the big picture, maybe are too wrapped up in their own lives and don't have the interest. Still, reality is the ultimate terrain to explore, probably the most important, and politics do mean a LOT; and its knowing who's where and who gets it, who doesn't. Yes, I'd never in my life vote for a bible-bender, then again it seems like the Republican ticket has moved more and more to the center as the Democratic ticket and what wins with the media has fallen right off the diving board - We've got the most liberal senator in the senate running with a VP who's the third most liberal in the senate - both left of a known and self-proclaimed Marxist who is ranked at fourth most liberal.


And its sad, the two party system was made for one purpose - keep both parties in check; to keep each other from misbehaving, to keep each other in line, all by either digging up dirt or by having better ideas. We need the left to come back to its senses and give more credit to the center left; the sorts who'd maybe vote for Lieberman, Gerhardt, Hillary, but who'd never touch Obama. That said, the more solipsist elitism and narcissism grips the left the more damage they're doing to the entire country and to both parties. Utopianism needs one thing - for reality of human nature to dissapear, most people realize it won't and that to build a good world and to reduce general pain and suffering that it takes handling human nature first - whether there is a God or not, more centrist and moderate Christians (not the hell fire and brimstone people) seem to understand that one better than anyone; sin, original sin, natural law, whatever one calls it - its the same thing and regardless of whether they're worshiping Yaweh, Zeus, or the Easter Bunny, they're sense of societal engineering for 'what works' I think is a sheer testiment to either the deity or just the sages and wisemen who created the book and invented God, heaven, and hell, as tools to motivate people to do what worked.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 06 Sep 2008, 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, because putting justices on the Supreme Court that shred the constitution is a good for you no isn't it? Oh and that, what 9 months of oil in ANWAR is worth envrionmental destruction, even though we won't see a drop of it for 10-20 years. Nuclear's good, but what about wind, solar, and Geotheramal. They aren't viable for you are they? I think others would disagree. Oh, and us in Iraq isn't helping the war on terror, in fact it basically serves as a recruiting poster. Yeah, and those Tax really 6-7 years ago really helped. put us in a deficit that is the largest in our history, and we now have on the least efficient governments in our history. The middle class and poor are suffering and neglected by the government because of the tax cut for the rich. Oh and great conservative values, like bashing gays, taking away a women's right to her own body, denigrating other Non-Conservative Christians, and bashing liberals because their different.

Honestly, you conservatives amaze me and make me sick! Your own faction in the US has committed more crimes than any liberals. Your guys are arrested for trying hook with men in airport bathrooms, and you think you can pontificate to us? BS. Go shove your opinions elsewhere, on place in particular.

Not safe for work or children:

http://stevegoodie.com/indeximthinkinbo ... palin.html

I admit I found this hysterical, despite it not being my usual sense of humor!!

She's simply irresistible.

The 'Bush sucks!' thing is so tired, and so bereft of ideas.

We have our first female PM in Australia. Julia Gillard - she cops a lot of appearance based comments (she's probably a 'plainish Jane') but she's quite stoic about it, just gets on with it.

I want a Supreme Court who upholds the U.S. Constitution as the forefathers wrote it. When you look at how many of the more liberal of the 4 or sometimes 5 judges draft their decisions, what bits of law they pull their opinions from, they aren't pulling from earlier Supreme Court decisions, they aren't pulling from even Appelate, Circuit Court, or even local level - they're pulling from *international law*. That said - they can pull a little bit from Mexico, a little bit from Brazil, a little bit from Zimbabwe, even a little bit from Iran or China if they please. Applying random scraps of international law to the constitution is completely corrupt, its done to undermine the constitution by many who want to bring our country more toward socialism or Marxism, many of which like to speak in terms of transubstantiation - ie. saying that the Constitution is a 'living breathing document' and that interpretations should just go with the times and whatever political whims these judges are feeling. Human nature hasn't changed a bit since 1776, 1789, the middle ages, even ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. That's why the Constitution still works, when applied it saves the people from the government, saves the people from tyranny of opinion.

McCain would elect and would be advised to elect - what's called strict constructionists. People who look at the constitution in the spirit for which it was intended, in defense of the people and only in defense of the government to the extent that the government organizes the defense of the people.



And the North slope of Alaska, and the coast of California, enough for us to cut out large percentages and billions of dollars that we're pitching right out the window. Also, the 10-20 years argument has been used for decades by the left in lieu of just saying 'lets never do it'; we're at the point where energy independence means our survival as a country and where we need a bit of EVERYTHING - oil can't be ruled out as its one of our few technologies that we do have nailed down cost effectively (anything that's not cost effective and is forced on the people of course will kill economic well being just because businesses won't be able to maintain - which of course is at the heart of job loss, higher unemployment, just like raising taxes).



Those are all great. We need our scientists working as feverishly as they can to develop those things so we can put the whole oil thing to rest. Oil is a temporary, an intermediate, we can try to save the planet but we need the wherewithal to keep our country and democracy safe in the meantime.




The value of us going in is debatable, the value of us finishing the job is imperative. If Iran could take over, we'd be looking at a worldwide crisis with them right nextdoor to Israel - not just U.S. and Israel, worldwide.




The tax cuts stopped an all out crash, Clinton was really lucky that he didn't need to see 9/11, Arthur Anderson, GLobal Crossing, Enron, Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, the whole mortgage bubble, in fact he had the great luck of cutting our military by 1/3 and being able to put that money back into the economy as well as enjoying the results of Alan Greenspan's skill at managing monetary policy in the Federal Reserve. Not that I wouldn't give Clinton any credit, just that I can't see him doing much better with the situations we've had in the last 8 years - situations that were caused by dynamics that came from everywhere - policies of the right had a hand in the accounting fraud, policies of the left had a hand in not only the subprime mortgage crisis by calling racism when a lot of people weren't getting mortgages to bailing out Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac - which is a terrible idea, their shareholders should pay not the American tax-payer, for their indiscretion and buying into their own inventory and making their own portfolios.




Well, the rich do one thing that other people don't - they provide jobs. Even if their money is sitting in the bank its there for mortgage loans. When the rich make purchases, say a private jet - Boeing employees have a project. If its Cynthia McCain's beer distributorship, its hundreds or thousands of people who have jobs, can pay their rent, can pay their bills. Taxing the rich on income - should be pro-rate like everyone else. As it is right now the top 20% pay 71% of the taxes, sure its not 100% but its not bad. Their business though, being we now have a global labor market, NEED either the sales tax cuts or income tax cuts to have cost/benefit that makes staying in America and employing American's viable. Otherwise they go out of business, they cease to be. Businesses aren't invincible, they're only a pooling of resources just like government, and just like government they can't create money that isn't there with the wave of a magic wand. They have limits just like you or I who are trying to pay our rent, pay our car insurance, pay for groceries, pay the phone bills, electrical, heat, water and sewage, property taxes - the rich themselves, as individuals, aren't as stuck in the trenches but they aren't hoarding the money; our system makes it impossible to hoard money unless you hide it all under a matress - which yields a 0% interest rate, no one does it for that reason.



There is a concrete difference between real conservatives and bible-bending wackadoodles. Real conservatives will not bash gays, treat them with equal respect, they realize their life position has valid causes and that like anyone - at the roll of the dice the script could have been flipped. The only thing conservatives are against is the marriage aspect, as our sexualities are on a sliding scale. Gays should be respected as much as anyone else, but the ideal of marriage as it stands needs to be kept so that it doesn't become a larger minority or even majority of marriages when most people come to the understand that underneath it all most people have bi-proclivities. Its no disrespect intended to anyone.

And no, conservatives do NOT bash liberals because they are different. In fact the left hates the right more, and its caused by disagreements in basis of reality. The right though knows what works but sees the left as well intended but misinformed, the left sees evil in what it doesn't understand.



Let me ask you something. How many conservative viewpoints to you see in this forum? How many have you seen so far in this thread or most threads? 95% of what's here is bashing conservatives. Is that an equal perspective? Do the people here who are bashing conservatives and only seeing posts from other liberals have any idea of what they're bashing? For the most part I see a huge strawman, an ignorant, distorted, and unreal characature of what conservatives are - so its not even conservative bashing, its bashing some inbred two-headed cartoon character that people have been told to 'think' is idealistically what conservatives are. Also, with what your saying about conservatives being more criminal than liberals in congress - I think you should really go and see the rap sheet, its available on line with who's been charged with what, politicians by and large are dirty period.





And that's why I feel the need to speak my viewpoints from time to time. From the tone of things I can tell a lot of you don't know what a conservative is, what they believe in in terms of government, economics, foreign policy, general humanity toward others - its like you've never really heard one talk at length or pay attention. If you don't understand what both liberals and conservatives are really about, you'll have no idea what's going on, what side you'd really even want to endorse, but rather its just flowing with peer pressure and popular opinion - usually two things that often have almost no correlation to truth anyway.

Yes, it's terrible when you make a stupid mistake and other people keep on pointing out how stupid it was, isn't it?

Bush is a moron. Because of him, the U.S. is less safe than it was 8 years ago. Terrorist attacks around the world have *increased* since the beginning of the war on terrror, not decreased.
Neocon ideas do not work. The American economy is in a shambles, and dragging down the rest of the world with it; our army is at the breaking point. By nearly any measure, we are worse off because of Bush and the neocons. And yet the neocons now want another 4 years, and are preaching the same ideas that got us into the situation as though they will have different results the secont time around.

Bush sucks.
You may not like hearing it, but it's the truth.

yawwwn

Yes, the rebate policy did predate her. We have had the dividen since 1982, the very first dividen was a thousand dollars even and it has grown since then. Here is the link to our dividen this year. http://www.gov.state.ak.us/news.php?id=1440

And she did reform the refund in oder so that the industry has incentives to explore for more oil. Here is the link to the proposal of the Petroleum Profits Tax (PPT) reform, http://gov.state.ak.us/news.php?id=587

I would think all of this would qualify Palin to be the Secretary of Energy instead of the Vice President.

Also, you mentioned that with her and how she wants to open ANWR is helpful to McCain, but McCain doesn't want to open ANWR and Palin actually stated that she liked Obama's energy plan in which he states that Alaska must have a gaspipeline which is something this state has been working towards for about thirty years.

http://gov.state.ak.us/archive-59841.html

I guess people just didn't notice that she agreed with Obama energy wise a month ago now she is up on critizing him about his community organizing after he got out of college.

More news articles about Palin here: State of Alaska > Governor > News

You will NEVER be allowed to drill any more wells off the coast of California. Our coasts belong to us: not the oil companies, not the American public. We won't allow it. We have the Governator on our side.



*snort*
you got away, to some extent, with blaming Clinton for the economic problems that started as soon as Bush got into office, because no one believed that Bush could screw things up that badly that fast. That, however, was eight years ago. 9/11 happened a year into Bush's first term, and he was specifically warned that Bin Laden was planning an attack within the U.S. and did nothing. You can't blame that on Clinton. Face the facts: Bush has failed. Neocon philosophies have failed.



Greenspan? Isn't he that guy who said that real estate was the perfect investment, that prices would never, ever go down....?



Ahh, good old trickle-down economics. That doesn't work. That has been known not to work for decades. Economies need to be built from the bottom up for stability, not from the top down.



Hmmm.... How about we treat companies that employ Americans as American companies, and companies that do not employ Americans as foreign companies?



And yet, right up until the credit crisis, the Dow Jones was skyrocketing and companies were reporting record profits. Boo-Hoo-Hoo. It is a myth that the profits of Wall Street are a direct measure of economic health. It was a myth during the gilded age, just before the great depression, and it was a myth during the early 2000's before the credit crisis. Read up on your history a bit.



Tell that to the Republican party. Did you see whom they picked for a VP? Oh, yeah, that's what this thread is supposed to be about: the wackaloon dominionist that's running for veep.



what? you think that allowing gay marriage will make everyone run out and be gay because of bi tendencies?
Even if that is true, why is it a problem? It's not like we're short of human children in this world.


Rush.
O'Reilly.
Savage (Weiner).
Hannity.
Holmes.
Fallwell.
Buchannan.
etc.


but can't admit when its policies have been an abject failure.



I see evil, allright, but I think I understand it pretty well.



I'd say more like 70%.



I see Sarah Palin.

Let me ask you then, what do you believe? Are you with Pelosi in the idea that its all a scam? If so I'll let it pass, however if your not and do believe we're having both a huge economic problem and a definite crisis related to buying oil from all kinds of other countries ranking from semi-hostile to all out, I don't see where the argument would come in - sometimes actions are imperative; of course California has every right to turn it down and I'd imagine, if it turns out that their help was needed for the greater good of the country, every right to blush about that decision as well as the national impact of it. Though if Maxine Water's gaff had its way and we socialized our energy, this would probably be a nonexistant argument, we'd be drilling off of California. Still, I'm for having the state of California make its own choices and having its right to reject the proposal - partly because I believe in state's rights and partly because we're far better off with the oil companies being free enterprise rather than government.




And your right on one thing, no one person can. As for 9/11 and how he could have prevented it, you can say that shotty bureaucratic habits between the CIA and FBI were really what caused the ball to get dropped. In research of what lead up to it there was so much chatter and static as well that finding that plan and finding the credibility - without proper interorganizational communication was like finding a needle in a haystack. Given how things were, any one of maybe 1,000 threats could have been legit, no way to tell. If Bush did have some God-like powers, some mystical omniscience to know what the CIA and FBI couldn't corroborate all on his own, then your right - he did fail in his duties as a psychic medium or deity.



No, your right on one bit, the guy's not perfect. I'm really not sure though when one mortgage company started almost predatory lending, some people think it was racism charges leveled against lenders, I'm really not sure. I just know that when businesses are in close competition and one gets away with it, it almost forces the rest to follow - kind of like steroids in baseball. Its bad stuff, it needs to be prevented in the first place. On the other hand though with the Dems ultimately getting the Fanny Mae/Freddy Mac bailout to happen, that's just sick. The fact that they had no oversight - a privilege no one has - by playing one side of inspection off against the other, they really should just be allowed to fail.




Ah, an economics expert. Let me ask you then, being that supply-side economics doesn't work in your opinion - what does? In lieu of creating jobs to give people money to spend, what system allows people to actually have more and spend more themselves? If you have a better answer than I do I may very well be persuaded - I'd really think it over long and hard though and make sure it represents the best of your own thoughts on the matter.




Your talking about a reality of maybe a couple centuries ago. With larger corporations there's barely such a thing, most are international, some are headquarted and have nexus in the U.S., others are headquartered overseas, were formed by other countries, and have plants or outlets in the U.S.. They're all treated equally though in this sense, if they provide jobs here in the U.S. they're providing jobs to people who live in the U.S., they're paying taxes to the U.S. federal government and also the state and locality that they're based in. The U.S. in turn makes about as much money off of each regardless.



Still trying to find the correlation between that quote and your response.....




Are you going to at least throw facts at me? Emotional adjectifications are worthless, there's no debate in them and it really if anything makes me feel like your proving my point - that the left is driven my a mix of emotion and ignorance where each amplifies the other. Aside from Ragtime, you generally don't see conservatives talk like that.

I will say one thing in rebuttal - he husband is a motorsports buff, she admits that she both smoked weed and inhaled (+++ in my books, I'd love it if she changed her stance on legalization though), and when she was mayor of Wascilla she did open up a skate and BMX park. Maybe I just have a very narrow view of what makes a bible-bending wackaloon - my definition of that would be someone like Laura Schlessinger, Westboro Funny-Farm, or pretty much anyone who puts dogma over clear thought and who takes things literally in the bible rather than trying to get bottom line purpose and reconciling it against reality. Palin, to me, sounds like on many issues she's social moderate even leaning social liberal (just not on abortion perhaps).

Its almost sounding like you'd make the wackaloon charge of almost anyone who has an (R) by their name just on the letter.




I think the danger is when a teacher or educator is asking a young child "So which will you marry, a man or a woman?". It has no effect for people who were raised on the status quo just because, it wasn't a part of our social development. All through history there have been many societies who were very open to homosexuality, very tolerant, some even elevated it, however even in these cultures it was never a marital arrangement. You figure that these cultures had to fight a lot harder to survive, the world was far more violent and far more doministic back then than it is now - that meant that they had to do everything they could to make their societies as strong as they could, otherwise they would fall to the next kingdom and be conquered, and either killed or sold into slavery. The strength of family units matter and the reproductive aspects of family units matter. Gays fall on both sides of this argument as well, those who want marriage for the sake of pushing themselves into full normality and those who are against it because they feel that taking marriage is really shoving something down people's throats and if anything has more negative impact on the people its put upon and more negative reaction to the gay community than any benefit it really gives the gay community in turn.




Poetic. Would you rather keep this sort of banter to specifics?

[/quote]

I just see someone trying to grind the victim-ideology card into these people, indirectly into myself (which I don't get angered, rather just saddened); aside from a few small points of concrete critique you've been able to give here this is all just going more to prove a point - the views on the left are a huge dose of emotion peppered with fragmented and incomplete facts just to taste. If you want to debate economics, if you want to debate societal issues in terms of parsing the specifics of what people do to make this a better or worse place, and your willing to keep the emotion and carte blanche statements out - I'm good with that. This post though, a bit of a let down; hoping for better quality responses in the future.