U.S. Election 2012

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I put my vote under a more realistic category (Read: Who I'd vote for if I cared) but I intend on writing in Brett Favre on my ballot.

I vote Howard Stern

Name one job an EPA regulation has killed. One.

Then way that against all the jobs in all the following fields that it protects:

Manufacturing fishing supplies, Manufacturing hunting supplies, manufacturing camping supplies, manufacturing boats, manufacturing SCUBA gear, manufacturing surfboards, bodyboards, skimboards, etc., manufacturing canoes & kayaks, manufacturing various other forest/water recreation gear too numerous to list, selling and distributing for all of the above, advertising for all of the above, management for all of the above, dive lessons, various other outdoor recreation lessons/training too numerous to list, writing books on outdoor recreation/survival/species identification, providing printing, editing, and distribution for said books, selling said books, reviewing said books, taxidermy, vacation planning, hotels, ski resorts, dive tours, hunting guides, restaurants and tourist attractions near beaches/mountains/forests, restaurants visited by people traveling to beaches/mountains/forests, shops visited by people traveling to these locations, motels stayed at by people traveling to these locations, gas stations used by people traveling to these locations, airports used by people traveling to these locations, car rentals used by people who traveled by plane, manufacturing of environmentally friendly industrial equipment, distributing/advertising/selling said equipment, managing these processes, installing said equipment, repairing said equipment, Fishing, harvesting shellfish, harvesting wild edible plants, packaging these foods, processing these foods, Distributing/selling/and advertising for these foods, managing these processes, and of course, paying fox news pundits to rant about how the EPA kills jobs because... because fox news says so!

Then consider the damage done to crops and timber by acid rain, and the economic loss there.

Then consider rising healthcare costs due to disease that could've been easily prevented by controlling water pollution/air pollution.

Then consider the fact that much of state income comes from selling hunting and fishing licenses and from visitors to start parks, and that many states would go bankrupt (in some cases, bankrupt-er) if it's parks and wildlife management areas became polluted and unproductive.

Then consider the reduction of quality of life from the loss of all those outdoor activities.

And weigh all that against the job you named. And if you can name more than one, go ahead. See which way the scales tip.

And please tell me how it's unconstitutional. I could use a good laugh.

I still accept my fate. It is my fault that my life has been a failure to the point that I cannot afford health insurance and thus it is my fault that I will face such a fate. Furthermore, with the job I have, should Obama get reelected I will lose my home. Why? Well, I work in the service industry and follow the employer response to the healthcare law very carefully. So far, large employers in this sector are choosing to limit their employees to 29 hours a week to avoid having to pay their insurance for them. So, I will see my income cut below what I can afford and wind up either on the street or having to live off my parents. I have been independent for 16 years now with my own house, a mortgage and several cars. This law will ruin my life and make it no longer worth living. I may take that option if he wins the election for I will lose all hope that this country, or any country can be a fair and just place to live.

lol, You certainly credit the EPA with a lot there. Familiarize yourself with the concept of regulatory capture and the true motive of many government regulations. Do you really think these sacred cow departments are protecting you or are they protecting the profits the big corporations which heavily lobby them? It protects the mega-corporations but goes after the small potato individuals.

Pollution is a violation property rights and can be handled in the courts. At the very least it should be the responsibility of the states. The constitution does not specifically set out the regulatory power of the EPA(or many other executive agencies) therefor under 10th it is the state's responsibility. Every state indeed has it's own little state version of the EPA. It's unnecessary, not authorized in the constitution, and a lot of the time works completely contrary to their stated goals.

if you lived in just about ANY other advanced western nation, you would NOT have this problem! only here [in the land of the wage slave, home of the free-to-fail-and-die] is it a quasi-hobbsian "sink or swim."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk[/youtube]

I'm voting for Mitt Romney once the early voting crowds calm down.. It's my first election I can vote in and I'd feel bad if I voted for Obama and he won..

I live in it, and I'm well aware of it being severely f****d up.

The single best thing that could happen to small business in the US is a single payer (gov't supported) insurance program, but there's no way the Republicans would have let that pass (shame on them). I actually worked for one of those small businesses that Mitt Romney is always banging on about and we lost our health insurance because the premiums became too expensive for the (very small) business to sustain. The owner was in his 60s, one employee had back surgery and suddenly the premiums are through the roof. Oh, and when I was laid off, even if we'd still had insurance, COBRA only covers employers with 20 or more employees. So yeah.

Listen. The truth is you will "accept your fate" until you meet your fate. If you have some maiming injury that leaves you at the mercy of whatever support system you can find... You won't be so quick to "accept". And truthfully you shouldn't be. We need the Other, the disabled, the differently abled, the wonky and the weird to draw attention to the flaws in the system.
Until you know where the gaps in the system are, the gaps aren't seen. Until you need to drag an oxygen tank around, you don't realize how far from the store those "accessible" parking spaces actually are. Until you're in a wheel chair, you don't realize that those little mini-curbs still mean that a person in a chair has to do a wheelie to mount them (which, seriously?! Terrifying for anyone who actually needs to do that)



This is completely ridiculous and you should be ashamed of yourself. Look around you. There are people living in slums and palaces, cardboard boxes and compounds. You seriously think that your problems set you apart from EVERYONE and make your life unliveable?! Sell one of your "several cars" and make do like the rest of us.

when the tea party gets their trojan horse [ryan] in the white house and picks up a few more senators, it's curtains for the working class and for much of the present middle class as well. this will become obvious in a few months. ERs will be free to dump the indigent [repeal of EMTALA]. NO healthcare for the working class and the rump remnant middle class. massive homelessness and mass imprisonment of "vagrants" in more private for-profit prisons, private debtor's prisons for medical debtors [victimizing ALL of the working class] - IOW, de-facto indentured servitude. a supreme court packed with borkian troglodytes to ruin a generation of national jurisprudence, with hardly any justice available for the common man. banana republic here we come...

"nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the american public." [h.l. mencken]

lol dramatic much?

Paul Ryan is a fraud. He has voted for almost every big spending measure in the last 10 years. The wars, Medicare Part D, TARP, the auto bailout, the stimulus, No Child Left Behind, plenty more.

His bold plan doesn't even balance the budget for like 30+ years. It really is nonsensical.

His reputation as some ideologue and intellectual heart of the GOP is probably the most laughable thing on the planet. He's just a party line "George Bush" neoconservative.

LOL all you want. It's actually not that far from the truth. Maybe "debtor's prison" sounds too extreme, but I had to pay an extra $1200 deposit for my apartment because of my bad credit and most banks won't accept anyone below a certain credit profile. So everyone else is left to Walmart's new credit scheme and the cards issued by fly-by-night loan institutions. And you're no one without a card. Almost literally.
You think maybe this is just for those unworthy people who can't handle their finances, but frankly it's what happens to a lot of people who just can't make ends meet. The most vulnerable are the most likely to get dunned.
So yeah, lol away. That's hilarious that people have to choose between having electric light or food to eat. Or that maybe their credit rating will impact their employment prospects. Or their health insurance or car insurance premiums. That's totally fair.

I have a right to my feeling and opinions. As for the several cars... You would have to see them to understand. Selling all of them as they sit would not bring enough money to buy one Nissan Versa (the cheapest new car in the USA). Having less than two of them is financial suicide because I deliver pizza for a living and depend on the tips to make ends meet and I need a backup car. Only two of them are currently roadworthy. Two of the others have no engine or transmission installed (one is a parts car) and the other is nearly roadworthy and will be sold by the end of the year. Of the two on the road now, one has nearly 370,000 miles and has no book value (maybe $800 if I was lucky), the other gets 40 mpg in the city but is getting hard to find parts for (thus the parts car) because it was a cheap city car 20+years ago when it was new (it's worth little more than the $300 I paid for the honor of dragging it out of some guy's back yard). That is the car I drive every day though. It has NO safety features other than seat belts (that are attached to the door posts, a dangerous placement if ever there was one!). It was never equipped with airbags because they were not required when it was new. It has no ABS, no power steering and the crash test report said it was likely to cause crippling leg injuries in a moderate accident. In today's world, a Toyota Yaris would shred it and push the front bumper into the driver's seat because of the difference in crash structures and stiffness (this is not an exaggeration). I have watched the crash test video for the car and it is grizzly. I knew all of this months before buying it because it took nearly 3 months to find one. Yet, it is what I choose to drive because it makes sense to me. I should be able to make the same choice when it comes to health insurance. (I should also be allowed to buy and import the new model of the car I drive now too as it is still made in Pakistan, but sadly the safety and emissions Nazis won't let me.)

Now as to single payer, I would actually agree here. The Obamanation that passed (with not a single Republican vote) is the worst of both worlds. It puts the poor in a very bad position as they MUST buy coverage if their employer fails to do so unless they fall beneath a certain income threshold (I don't). Iikewise, their employer MUST insure them if they work more than 30 hours. So, the employers will just cut their hours and make their lives worse. If it was single payer then this would not be a possible outcome. However, I still think the government has no business providing health care to anyone without a significant disability. We need to go back to a just society, one in which no one is entitled to anything and must work for everything.

Where I live I'm seeing a lot more Romney campaign signs than Obama. In 2008 I saw more Obama signs.
We'll just have to see how it turns out.

I won't vote for any candidate unless they wear a boot on their head and promise every american a free pony. Oh. Wait, Vermin Supreme for president in 2012.

http://www.verminsupreme.com/