Combat Ranting (formerly known as Famicom Mini)

[A Black Falcon]

Erm, you equate SSI/Medicade/Medicare with people with no money robbing people with it? So you want the starving people under the bridge to stay there because they deserve it? Homeless shelters should be illegal! Those bums don't deserve help, it's their fault...

Same with poverty, right? If you aren't out of it it's your fault because of course anyone who wants to can escape poverty!

And that's not even touching on the fact that SSI doesn't just benefit the person who is getting your money now, it'll benefit you a lot when you get older too...

And it's a proven fact that even people who know better are not moneywise. Look at the insane number of people in the US who have credit card debt and that point is proven. So most people, if they had that extra money, would be liable to waste it... I think that the government should step in and do things to help people. It's pretty sad that people like you (Weltall, GR, DJ, etc) would rather let them suffer.

The last fifty years of human experience is so totally unlike the preceding 4950 in America that it doesn't even make sense to say otherwise. Poor people in America live like kings compared to the poor in almost every other nation, and they have opportunities here that people elsewhere could not even comprehend

Better than ever before, but still not in good shape, especially when you look at the standards of modern society. But you clearly think that it's good enough as it is and doing things that would actually help people improve further and maybe get out of the trap of poverty are bad.

I know you'll say 'pessimism', but look. It is proven throughout history that virtually no poor people make it! Yes, once in a while one does... but the number that make it compared to the number that don't? Its infantessimal! That is why governments help the poor. They know that they cannot do enough to help themselves. Not when they must spend most of their time working just so they can pay the bills and put food on the table, for sure! I don't know where you get these delusions of poor people with lots of free time and zero interest of moving up, but I bet that in most cases that is just not true... they just do not have the opportunities... "go to college"? You can't do that if your family needs you to work at least one full time job just so you can keep your apartment and feed everyone!

Bah. Clark is a puppet too. He doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning, and everyone involved in his campaign knows it. The only reason he's running is to hurt Howard Dean, which will in turn bolster Hillary's chances in four years. It has nothing to do with what Clark believes, because Clark is so damned clueless he doesn't know what he believes. This is a very smart move by the Clintons. Hopefully not smart enough though.

Condoleeza for President, 2008 Bill may be a convincing centrist, but Hillary is very frighteningly socialist. If we're gonna elect a first female president, Rice is my choice.

Condaleeza Rice and Colin Powell both made fools of themselves and really degraded their worth in my eyes and in many others when they defended the administration's rush to war. I thought Powell was the more reasoned one in this administration, and then like a idiot he goes off spouting administration lies... and as for Rice, she's just a lapdog really, saying whatever the people really in charge tell her.

Oh, and all these right wing conspiracies about how everything is a way to get Hillary into the White House are amusing. First she was going to run for this election, then she was going to be a suprise late entry into the race, and then she is going to run in '08 using Clark as a stepping stone... sure, I'll give you the fact that she's a top contender for Democrats running for the White House in the future, but the conspiracy stories? Crazy.

Oh, and I'd say the Clintonites like Clark because he's by far the most viable moderate in the race, nothing more.