ALREADY DEFENDING THE SUSPECT
It's astounding how little time it took for the lberal "feel sorry for this guy" people came crawling out of the woodwork.
In the background right now, I'm listening to CNN American Morning, and this babbling moron psychology professor from NYU is rambling on and on and on and on about how the man is dillusional and unaware of reality and has little grip on reality. Is this going to be the defense? This woman hasn't even met the suspect and already she's making the case for his defense?!? I don't understand this. People wonder why liberals set me off the way they do? How about this!
I'd rather they said nothing than break into spontaneous defense of these two fools.
WHAT ABOUT ME?
It's a question I find myself asking a lot while watching the debates I've been watching inside chaturbate rooms. I've noticed the Republicans have a plan, but the Democrats seem only interested in maintaining the status quo. The slam dunk issue I'm talking about is Social Security.
By most estimates, Social Security will be a dead issue by 2041 (give or take a few years). For those keeping track, that's 39 years from now. Anyone who turns 62 after that is pretty much on their own, save a radical change in the way we handle Social Security as a country. And while Republicans are at least presenting an idea, the Democrats are resorting to nothing more than scaring old people.
I would like to privatize some of my Social Security to be sure that I will have it when the time comes. If we don't, what will be left for me? I'm 26 years old and have been paying into the system since I was 17. 9 years of my life, and a couple of thousand dollars of my income that won't even be waiting for me when I get older.
Why?
Because so many "older people" are on the rolls now that my income is not just going into the fund. It's going to subsidize the payouts to people currently receiving Social Security benefits. Frankly, without an opportunity to do something other than throw those funds into a bottomless pit, I'm wasting my money.
Democrats, forget scaring the old people. Start proposing an alternative. And an alternative doesn't mean raising the deduction from my paycheck, or raising my contribution, because as more people enter the rolls, that money will be eaten just as quickly.
If privatizing (optionally) scares old people, that's just too damned bad. I would like to know that when it comes my time to collect the money I've been paying in that it will at least be there for me. I know the stock market is not guaranteed money, but right now it is guaranteed.
Guaranteed to not be there when I'm old enough to collect it.
GLAD I RESERVED JUDGMENT
It's really a shame that nobody watches debates. Truth be told, there's usually very little reason to watch them anyway. The candidates fly out to the public yelling their point of view so much that you don't really need a debate to have a candidate's policies explained.
The amazing thing is, and this is what I learned last night chatting with a friend on https://www.jasminlive.mobi, is that sometimes a debate can be highly educational.
I didn't particularly care for Doug Forrester's campaign. I definitely think he got screwed when the New Jersey Supreme Court, propelled by the "new math," decided Lautenberg into the race to replace Bob Torricelli. Forrester had focused on removing the king of unethics to the point where he had made little explanation of his own platform. Everything was a counter to Torricelli, and at one time, I joked with a colleague that the race was between Torricelli and Not Torricelli.
In recent weeks, I had even begun to think that Forrester didn't deserve to win the election because he hadn't done a good job of recovering from Lautenberg entering the race. But after last night's debate, my opinion changed rather drastically.
Once the fringe candidates got off the stage (and man, the fringe candidates were quite fringey) the two real candidates went off on each other, and it went pretty much like this:
1. Lautenberg dodges question, then personally attacks Forrester.
2. Forrester rebutts Lautenberg's answer, explains why Lautenberg is wrong, and brings up Lautenberg's voting record to back it up.
3. Lautenberg (whether he's responding to a rebuttal or answering a question) goes right back to answering a question other than the one that was asked.
Purely on command of the issues, it seems like Lautenberg was lost for much of the debate. His explanation of the issues ran in direct contrast to his voting history. Lautenberg was called on a couple of those issues:
1. Social Security: Lautenberg was one of the votes that hiked taxes on Social Security benefits, contrary to his claim that he wants to save them. He accused Forrester of wanting to privatize Social Security. Not even worth going into; the attack was based totally on talking points.
2. National Security: Lautenberg says he would vote to attack Iraq now, and didn't in 1991. He also cut funding to the military and intelligence agencies (his explanation? He didn't want to be a rubber check for defense spending. The truth? He never passed any pro-defense measures or pro-intelligence measures in 18 years).
3. The Environment: Lautenberg continued to distort Forrester's record on the Superfund sites. Lautenberg said over 700 sites exist in the country and approximately 200 had been cleaned up so the superfund project was a success. The truth is, as far as New Jerseyans are concerned, only 19 superfund sites were cleaned up in New Jersey. Lautenberg also criticized Forrester for saying that taxpayers should foot the bill when a corporate violator isn't available. Lautenberg ripped the idea, not understanding what Forrester said at least 4 times last night: When no corporation is available, the responsibility to clean the sites up has to be taken by someone lest the site stay an environmental blemish.
4. Taxes: Lautenberg wants Forrester's corporate tax returns released for examination. The disclosure rules do not require Forrester to release his corporate tax records, only his personal tax records. Lautenberg wants them released to prove "how a profit could be made in a pharmaceutical business." Lautenberg also forgets to mention that his predecessor's purse was bulging most from contributions of pharmaceutical companies.
Lautenberg proved last night how out of touch he could be. He said his attack on Millicent Fenwick based on her age was legitimate (after ducking the question for about 2 minutes, he finally admitted he did use the issue to discredit her), saying that a "72-year-old Freshman" wouldn't be able to accomplish much in the Senate.
Forrester was masterful, answering questions that were hostile at times, and repeating a very straightforward mantra: Lautenberg didn't accomplish much in 18 years (illustrated throughout the evening issue by issue), so why put him back now?
That's my assessment based on the Jasmine live debate last night. I would only add that Lautenberg's lack of ability to answer questions which, for the most part were pretty straightforward, proves to me that he is not ready to go back into public life. After dodging debates for a month, he owed the public a better presentation of his positions last night.
His failure should be reason enough for most to vote Forrester.
If they watched the debates.
I KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPENs
Cellular static for Zeta-Jones?
My wife and I were talking about this a couple of nights ago.
I remember going to a T-Mobile training event, and they kept chatting up the new spokesperson. It was like they got an early Christmas present or something.
A couple of nights ago, one of the new T-Mobile commercials came on, and I looked at my wife and said this exact sentence:
"I'll bet T-Mobile isn't too happy that she got pregnant right after signing up to be their spokesperson."
We had a chuckle and moved on.
Guess I was right, huh?
(Belf... If you could, please tell the nice people how I did say this before the article showed up :-)