Please help me (VANITY) (Update)

BARFF. All Dems sound the same. It is like a religion to them. No it is a repacement of religion - Jewish, Christian etc - In Name ONLY, LIKE A rino!

A decisive act with respect to IRAN would bolster any discussion with any Jewish person to favor to GOP. Many Orthodox Jews are staunch Republicans already. The more secular Jews are mostly Dems.

Of the moderates there is: Clinton, Kerry, Gore, ....

Sorry, but anybody who calls THAT bunch "moderates" is too far out in left field to see the home plate.

forget it Hildy... this one sounds like she licks the KoolAid right out of the packet!!!

Lighten up will you?

I want a Plato quote next.

I was also a middle of the road democrat a few years ago, and I too would have said I would never vote for an R. In fact, I would not date a man until he told me he was not an R, and I meant it! We can all change, as the fact is, the left wing IS the D party now. The R party is not what the D party has led us to believe. I sure learned that, and I hope your friend does too. She has been lied to.

As I was reading this, the lies and distortions, I realized just how bad things are in this country. And frankly, it scares me.

I believe that is the typical Republican response...I suspect the reason you don't know what to respond with is because on some of the issues, you can't...Those are not ALL lies and distortions...

The fact is, what is important to some folks is not important to others...There's enough of them that think the way she does that we almost had Democrat Presidents the last two elections...

She's partially right about the motive of Republican Evangelical Christians...And she knows Republicans want SSI to fall under personal responsibility...Save money, or die...She knows Republicans want to eliminate or reduce Medicare...Stay healthy, or die...These are not lies or distortions...You can't defend those Republican issues when talking to limited income people in retirement and expect to be popular...

Be civil....

State factually supported truths....

Don't let her make you mad....

Do your best....but remember.."You can explain it to her, but you can't make her understand it".

If you decide to come back at her with a point-by-point refutation, try this.

Now, with that said, I am not a left wing D!! am a middle of the road D. It is the left wing of the Dems that are to blame, not the middle. Trust me, I know D. politics. I am very careful to avoid left wing gatherings, demonstrations and candidates. With that said, I also feel the same way about the right wing of the R. party. They are just as bad in different ways!! I am old enough to remember when the R. were NORMAL, now, I cannot tolerate their views on most subjects.

The left-wing Ds run the party now. Screamin' Dean is head of the DNC. Cindy Sheehan was invited to the SOTU address. Socialist Hillary has a shot at the presidential nomination. Moderates like Lieberman are shunned.

As far as the Christians favoriing Israel, yes, they do, but their motivations are not mine - too much right wing Christianity and of course, Armedgeddon (spelling??) Their plans are to protect Israel to convert the Jews to Christianity!! Israel needs all the friends they can get, but these are not the type of friends I want to see supporting them.!! Both groups are disgusting to me - the left wing of the Dem. party and the right wing of the Rep. party!! I have a lot of Jewish friends Hildy and they are all Dems and they all are supporters of Israel

Can you give me a single example of a single Republican talking about how the idea behind protecting Israel is to convert the Jews to Christianity? Or anything about how control of Israel is necessary to prevent/bring about/whatever Armageddon? And Israel cannot be protected if the policy is coddling and playing nice with Arab and Persian terrorists. They want Israel wiped off the map, and Ahmadinejad and Hamas have said so repeatedly. There is no reasoning with these people.

Many Dems I know were willing to support his actions right after 9/11- now, they are totally against him since they have watched him all but destroy and divide our country!!

The economy is roaring, inflation is virtually nil, there hasn't been another terrorist attack since September 11th, and the left's sole contribution has been to complain. Who's been destroying and dividing?

As far as Clinton goes, yes, he had Arafat there - I hated it, but this is the way to peace - negotation, something that this administration knows nothing about! They are for war and Iraq and oil are the best example. Clinton was a great president - we had peace and prosperity. Then he was impeached by a right wing congress for a consentual sex affair. Give me a break!!hi Bush would be impeached for a long list of crimes and illegal actions if the Dems had any power in congress. In my view, this is the only reason for impeachment.

He negotiated with Arafat... and look where it got us. Hamas runs Palestine now. Negotiating with these people is an exercise in futility. Hamas wants Israel gone, by any means. There is no negotiating with that. Concessions to them has never brought about peace, nor will it. And if we want oil so badly, why are we even friends with Israel to begin with? They don't have oil. Other Middle Eastern countries do. Invading Iraq for oil doesn't make sense; if we wanted their oil, it would have been much cheaper, not to mention far less risky politically, to simply drop or circumvent the sanctions and buy it, like France was doing. And Clinton was impeached for perjury, not for sex, in a deposition in a sexual harassment suit against him by Paula Jones.

As far as Bush goes, his love of Israel is because he is a born again Christiian with the same hopes about Israel that is on their agenda. Let me stress, I do not mean every Rep. has this idea, just the right wing Evangelical Christians, who rule the party.

Is this the "converting Israel to Christianity" thing again? Because for wanting to do that, we certainly seem to be, well... NOT doing it.

Watch, Bush, carefully, in his term he will also have someone from Hammas in the Oval Office as long as they make they LIE and renounce their aim to destroy Israel we will accept them and then they will do as they please when they get their state. If he deals with Abbas, that will be acceptable to me, but at this point, Abbas has no power.

This, actually, seems to be precisely the policy you were proposing earlier. "I hated it, but this is the way to peace - negotation, something that this administration knows nothing about!", I believe you said. And I'll just write this here prediction on a sticky note and put it up with all the other Dem predictions that never came true.

The right wing C. Evangelicals who have taken over the Rep. party and want Armageddon also have this agenda for Jews - those who will not convert to Christianity will be killed, the ones who convert will be accepted. It is right there to read Hildy.

Where? Free Republic, the rightest of the right-wing, seems to have nary a single member with such an agenda. If you can give me a direct quote from a righty SAYING this (NOT a direct quote from a lefty accusing someone of saying this), then we can talk.

and: the middle of the road Dems. are looking out for people like us - middle class who are retired and concerned about Social Security, Medicare, etc. The Reps. want to do away with all of this Hildy and I do not know what is your financial picture, but when you get that age (my husband is already on Medicare) you too will be concerned.

If you hadn't been paying into all those garbage programs your whole life, you wouldn't need them now. The Dems maintain their power by chaining people to entitlements. Conservatives set them free by letting people do what they will with their resources. It's your money, after all.

In my case, I am an environmentalist also. I care about the air, the water, the forests, Global Warming, etc. everything the Bushies are destroying. All you have to do is check the voting records of the two parties to see what I mean. The Artic Refuge in Alaska is a good example. On and on - the dfferences are obvious - Israel is major but the what I have mentioned is also urgent to us and that means 90% of what the Reps. stand for are totally against what we want and need.

If you're talking about global warming, we aren't going to get anywhere. Man-made global warming is junk science, plain and simple. As for the Kyoto Protocol, look at its history: not one of its signatories has managed to live up to its terms, ever. To do so would cripple the economy of anyone who tried.

Hildy, privatizing SS means investing money through wall st. brokers who charge commissions for handling these accounts, this does not happen now of course, These charges will eat into the SS investiments, SS does not have these fees because they are invested in Treasuries.

Wall Street Brokers who charge commissions? As opposed to the federal bureaucrats who work for free? Add up all the money you've invested in Social Security and then add up what you get out of it. Investing that money on your own is a far better way to plan for retirement than Social Security could ever be.

Small adjustments will get SS back on strong footing - The Reps. want to destroy every benefit program for the middle class i.e, SS and Medicare which means, the Reps. want this because of their contributers are all large corporations such as insurance companies, Wall St. Brokers who stand to gain financially from privatization. There are 45 million people without health care in our country - the Dems want a plan that will help these people (remember Hillary and that went down the drain because of insurance companies, doctors, big business and Rep. legistlators who scared the shit out of people socialized medicine, eeeeek). How scary, every industrilized nation but the USA has it for their citizens and do well especially Candada who have much better longevity than we do with their healthcare program.

First, let me let you in on a little secret: in the perfect world as far as Republicans are concerned, every single entitlement program for EVERYONE would be eliminated. From Social Security to farm subsidies to Medicare. Why, you ask? Because none of these programs are free. You and I pay for them. Conservatives wish to get rid of them because we believe that individual people are capable of handling their own affairs better than some nanny state ever could. We believe that the average person is smart enough to not need liberalism. As for the Republican Party being in the pockets of Big Business, take a look at the lists of Democrat campaign contributors some time.

Outrages huh? Like the Reps don't lie - like your president who LIED to get us into a illegal war! This is unforgivable. to many like me.

No he didn't. He had every major intelligence agency in the world telling him the exact same thing. A president would have to be pretty dumb to ignore something like that. And the Duelfer report confirmed most of what we knew prior to the war.

Back to SS - it is NOT TO SUPPORT RETIREES ENTIRELY - it is an INSURANCE PLAN that should be supplemented with investments. Nobody can really afford to live on SS, but it sure is there for millions who count on it. SS also provides disability benefits and to windows with young children???? Privatizing SS would elimite all of those benefits. In other words, SS, does not only provide benefits to retirees, it provides payments to widows with young children and those who are disabled. This would all be eliminated in privatization!! Understand this - SS is not a investment plan it is a insurance plan - big difference when you view it in the right context. Remember, it is titled SOCIAL SECURITY INSURANCE.

I know what it's called. And it doesn't function like that. By any metric, I would be better off investing my earnings myself than I would be relying on Social Security to any extent. Seriously, we would be better off investing our cash in mattresses. As in, stuffing our money in them. Even with inflation, we'd still pull more out of that mattress when we retire than we pull out of Social Security. As for the benefits to widows, nobody is trying to get rid of those.

If I am not mistaken, SS becomes taxable for those who make over $40,000, those under do not get taxed. This was done to balance the budget - Clinton had a balanced budget for 8 years and NO DEFICIT, something Bush has destroyed with his TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH BY INCREASING THE TAX RATES.

A budget surplus means that the government takes in more money than it spends. That's all. If you want to thank someone for that budget surplus, thank Silicon Valley. The technology boom pumped enough juice into the economy to cause tax revenues to increase faster than Clinton could spend (especially with a Republican Congress holding him back). As for the deficit we have now: first, the recession that Bush found the country in when he took office started during the Clinton years. When the country is in recession, tax revenues will fall because there is less economic activity. And if spending remains constant, this adds up to a deficit. As for the "tax cuts for the rich," the Bush tax cut shifted the tax burden upwards. "The rich" now pay a greater share of the tax burden than ever before. Taxes got cut for everyone, but the deepest cuts, in dollar terms, went to the middle class.

SS is a program that has worked since 1935, it has always worked, never defaulted, everyone gets their SS Check.. A small adjustment to wage base would fund SS for another 75 years, minimum. These are Dem. truths, not Rep. lies!

Social Security is about to collapse for two reasons: one, it's a Ponzi scheme. Two, the Baby Boomers didn't have kids. This means that Social Security recipients are about to outnumber the Social Security contributors. Returns are diminishing. Want more proof of how seriously a third-party retirement plan can destroy a budget? Look at General Motors.

Ok, the middle of the road Dems are many - are you talking far left or moderate? Of the moderates there is: Clinton, Kerry, Gore, Biden. J. Edwards, Durgin from Illinois, Richardson from New Mexico, Obama from Illinois, Ron Emanual, (the Israeli from the Clinton Adminstratiion,) . Many more, I am not sure who I am supporting in '08. Oh yes, what about Boxer and Feinstein our two Jewish senators from Calif. I like them both.

If those are the moderates, who are the liberals? What would Lieberman be? Zell Miller? Is a "liberal" anyone to the left of Vladimir Lenin, with everyone to the right of him being either a "moderate" or a "conservative"? What makes those people "moderate"? What right-of-center views do they hold that counterbalances their leftist views on the War on Terror, immigration, gay marriage, etc?

---FIN---

Hope that helped!

She's rich.

I didn't say I didn't know HOW to respond...I was asking if it was worth it.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. --- Plato

This is just sad on so many different levels.

Jeez, all I'd do is respond that she needs a new keyboard, since her exclamation-point key is stuck (at least, that's why I'm guessing there are double exclamation points after EVERY FREAKIN' SENTENCE).

For the rest, she's so wrong it's frankly not worth your time.

"Of course not, or the majority of the world who wants to kill Jews like her. The part that always gets me is the part about Clinton...how great it was when he was President, and that's what's going to be the rallying cry and the part that scares me the most for people like her, who view the world through sound bites and catch phrases."

Of course, in a general way, things were pretty good when Clinton was President. Reason being: we happen to be going through one of the five or six biggest economic booms in American history. And yes, Clinton does deserve some credit for the boom---he yielded to the pressures from the Republican Congress and the need to be elected and passed tax cuts! But mainly, the boom was caused by the new development of the Internet. This is one of those rare events that happens every once in a great while.

Good Luck.

She's an ok woman, although a little ditzy and I thought even before I knew her politics

Why would you want to have a ditzy, lefty friend? My wife has a friend like that, and I tolerate her, but I myself would never have a close friend like that. Maybe women are more tolerant?

In my case, I am an environmentalist also. I care about the air, the water, the forests, Global Warming, etc. everything the Bushies are destroying. All you have to do is check the voting records of the two parties to see what I mean. The Artic Refuge in Alaska is a good example. On and on - the dfferences are obvious - Israel is major but the what I have mentioned is also urgent to us and that means 90% of what the Reps. stand for are totally against what we want and need.

Write her off, Hildy. This is the audience referred to in this quote:

The [Chinese] government official said that they studied Hillary's speechmaking method to understand her power and success. They concluded: her trick was never actually to make any arguments -- just state conclusions that were all already accepted as self-evident by her audience...

Since you do not fall into that category, she might as well be speaking in Kurdu...

"I think I will respond, intellectually, to her. I actually had my evangelical Christian friend write the response about Christians and Israel. I even learned a few things. At least I'll get her on some of these out and out lies. The whole Social Security thing is just absurd, and they can't even see the absurdity of their argument."

As a Jewish person born into Liberalism who spent most of his life working his way out of it (while doing other things as well, of course), let me try to land a little perspective.

The thing about Jews and Liberalism is that they are held to it by social control. Of course, this begs the question, who is exercising the control? I can't claim any special knowledge of the answer for this, though personally, I have come to believe that the Russians are the driving force behind Leftism in the world. But I will admit, their influence is well hidden and I cannot prove it.

What is obvious to someone who grew up Jewish, however, is the penalty for "leaving the fold" of Liberalism. In fact, even non-Jewish Liberals are generally held in place by the same forces. There is a tendency for their families to be Liberal, their coworkers, their friends, etc. What happened to me is that as I deviated from Liberalism over the years, I encountered increasingly greater amounts of friction. I just kept pushing away at it, but most people don't. They just sink down into the conventional view.

If you look at the map of Democratic voting counties, it is extremely concentrated into very small areas of the United States---highly populated cities generally. I believe in part this is because it's easier to exert more social pressure in this type of situation.

Keeping this in mind, if you would start to convince her you were right, she might find it to be terrifying---since it could imply complete isolation from her friends. I don't have any brilliant suggestions to make along these lines, but I'm pretty sure that is the situation she is in.

if we want oil so badly, why are we even friends with Israel to begin with? They don't have oil. Other Middle Eastern countries do. Invading Iraq for oil doesn't make sense; if we wanted their oil, it would have been much cheaper, not to mention far less risky politically, to simply drop or circumvent the sanctions and buy it, like France was doing.

No, if we wanted oil, we would have invaded Venezuela. It's a lot closer, has less of an army and more oil (and natural gas) than Iraq!

Let it go.