Why Stocks Are Surging as Jobs Disappear (Dow is up, Jobs are down, what gives ?)

Stocks are up. Jobs are down. So if you're an investor you're enjoying a vibrant recovery and if you're a worker it still feels like a grinding recession.

Since bottoming out in March, the stock market has soared by about 60 percent, one of the most awesome rallies in market history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average cracking 10,000 may not be strategically significant, but it's a psychological breakthrough that's worth cheering after the demoralizing crash that preceded it.

While the Dow has been racing upward, however, the unemployment rate has also skyrocketed, from 8.5 percent in March to 9.8 percent now. The economy has lost 7.2 million jobs since the recession began at the end of 2007, and the trend is still going the wrong way. The unemployment rate will almost certainly hit 10 percent and hover near there for awhile in 2010, before gradually declining.

So are job losses good for the stock market? Actually, yes. At least for awhile. Stocks are rising because many companies are earning more money than analysts have expected. But earnings aren't up because companies are selling more stuff; most companies are still selling less stuff and grappling with falling revenue. Instead, earnings are rising because companies have cut their costs more than revenues have fallen. And "costs" are often the same as "jobs." Consider these snippets from some recent earnings reports:

Johnson & Johnson. Third-quarter revenue was down 5.3 percent but net earnings rose 1.1 percent.

Domino's Pizza. Third-quarter revenue down 6 percent; net earnings up 77 percent.

Abbott Labs. Third-quarter revenue up 3.5 percent; net earnings up 36.5 percent.

Alcoa. Third-quarter revenue up 9 percent, compared with the second quarter; net earnings swung from a $459 million loss to a $124 million profit.

All of those companies have laid off workers over the last two years, probably necessary to keep the company healthy. And it's worth keeping in mind that when earnings outperform revenue, it's a sign that the company is well-run (assuming there's no Enron-style hocus-pocus). But CEOs also know that you can't grow a company or keep juicing the stock price by cutting costs and slashing jobs. Real growth only comes from new customers, new business, and increased revenue. And on that measure, the outlook is murky for the stock and job markets both.

The same workers who have been getting laid off, improving the cost profile for many companies, are also consumers running out of money to spend. Some are going bankrupt, defaulting on bank loans, and losing their homes. That's a major risk to corporate profits—and stock prices—down the road.

Some companies will be able to coast for awhile. The weak dollar and relatively strong economies in Asia and parts of Europe and South America, for example, are good news for U.S. exporters, since it helps them offset weak U.S. sales with stronger business overseas. And more-efficient companies can withstand lean times longer. But most American companies still rely on American consumers to keep business humming. Sooner or later, the U.S. job and stock markets need to go in the same direction.

The question is whether the job market will hitch onto the coattails of the stock market, with companies starting to hire as their fortunes improve—or stocks will turn south as the ranks of the unemployed swell. Good thing workers and investors both have become familiar with uncertainty.

As a new member, your deceitful twisting of my personal views on abortion (when I said flatly and boldly that because the love of Christ is a higher standard to which we, as born again Christians must adhere, it isn't acceptable at all for me and my family even in the most understandable circumstances such as rape or incest) is inexcusable.

I am not quite sure *what* to think, given what you wrote on your homepage, which is all I had to go on when I first wrote to you; and then your response to me in post #78, which I am replying back to right now.

I *may* have done a ready, FIRE!, aim; and I may have shot myself in the foot with my foot in my mouth.

Let's take my exact quote, and compare it to the exact quote from your own home page.

Then we can look at your reply to me in post #78 this thread.

Here's my quote:

"He is for limited abortions, and for some form of gay marriage, even predicting that they are inevitable (quoting the Boies / Olsen argument)."

Now here's your quotes from your Freeper homepage:

"pro-life, Christian" (3rd paragraph). So far, so good.

From the next paragraph:

"Above all I believe in individual freedom of choice and consistency (e.g., we can’t complain about abortions being funded by tax dollars if we are going to say it’s wrong for Catholic charities to close because they’ll lose their tax funding if they don’t support gay adoption; you believe either both, or neither, should get the funding - any other position is hypocrisy -"

I've never heard of anyone who is pro-life who also feels Catholic charities should hold their nose and allow gay adoption. Your mileage may vary: but it is a combination I haven't happened to run into before, and smells like a straw man.

This itself is merely confusing: and your call for thoroughgoing consistency is commendable.

Here's point #4 from your "quick list" on your homepage:

"4. I oppose in all cases abortion with one issue that I haven't resolved entirely: rape or incest. I understand that many people believe even those aren't acceptable but if my married sister is jogging through Central Park and is raped, I don't believe that the man who raped her has the right to carry on his bloodline through her. However, the love of Christ is a higher, and harder, standard. If we were in that position as a family, we could never actually go through with it no matter how hard that is. Still, I understand why some people feel that way on those two exceptions, even if I couldn't do it myself. Understanding is not accepting.

I see you quoted the sentence above in bold in replying to me. And I see the sentences after it, that "Understanding is not accepting." Those are both wonderful.

I see that you unilaterally choose life for yourself and your family. That's great!

However, what set off my alarms...is the sentence *before* the bold, which you didn't happen to quote when responding to me. It says:

"I understand that many people believe even those aren't acceptable but if my married sister is jogging through Central Park and is raped, I don't believe that the man who raped her has the right to carry on his bloodline through her."

It appears that you are making a clear distinction between the Christians and the non-Christians: in other words, that while you "personally oppose" abortion in the strongest terms, that you will not seek to oppose it in the case of rape and incest. And it is this statement which led me to state that "you support limited abortion".

But the most confusing thing about what you wrote is the end of it:

"...if my married sister is jogging through Central Park and is raped, I don't believe that the man who raped her has the right to carry on his bloodline through her."

Where did THIS come from?

The prohibition of abortion is, and never has been, about the rights of the rapist to carry on his bloodline. I have never heard anyone except a pro-abortionist mention such a thing. So your use of it struck me as unduly odd. Are you saying that within your family, a rapist has the right to pass on his bloodline (since you won't allow an abortion in your family), but within your married sister's family, he doesn't (since you would not oppose her getting an abortion)?

It was with these things in mind that I wrote that you support limited abortion: you would allow it in cases of rape and incest in general (as a matter of public policy), but not within your family.

This sounds suspiciously like the RINO (and some Dem) waffle, "While I am personally opposed to abortion, there are hard cases, and I cannot justify imposing my morality..."

Which sounds good, until you realize that by performing an abortion, a woman is imposing (on pain of death, BY painful death) her {im}morality upon her child. ("{im}" because the woman is not immoral for being raped, but *is* immoral for premarital sex willingly entered into.)

NOW, I have read your response. In light of this, it appears that what is on your home page is not in fact an endorsement of abortion in these circumstances, but an attempt to show that you are empathetic to the plight of a woman who is the victim of rape or incest, and not all-too-easily caricatured member of a group "forcing" women to endure anything at all, for the sake of a legalistic restriction (as pro-abortionists would cast it).

I can respect that: but I still don't think it is a good idea to talk about the "right of the rapist to spread his bloodline." That concedes too many of the pro-abortionists stereotypes, as did (in another light) George Bush's phrase "compassionate conservative".

Changing the subject slightly, I think that the issue of rape and incest was developed as a wedge issue by pro-abortionists: recall Norma McCovey and Roe v. Wade. A lot of the issue of "abortion" and "hard choices" would disappear IF the country as a whole would recover its moral grounding (less premarital sex: Whoopi Goldberg's line "it's not rape-rape" sets a dangerous precedent in these days of rohypnol and promiscuity); a culture of life (note that Sarah Palin's daughter chose life, as did Barack Obama's mother); and stigmatization of rape, and true punishment of rapists, supported by men instead of women (or sometimes by nobody, see also Bill Clinton).

I apologize for offending you: but my post was by no means "deceitful twisting" of your views. I said you allow some abortions, and it appears that you *are* willing to allow them for the larger society (as opposed to Christians)... there I disagree, and wish to restrict ALL abortions, ALL the time. The way to make this work is to change the larger behaviour of society so as to drive the occasion for abortions down to near zero.

I am relieved that you would disallow abortions within your family, and want to extend understanding to victims of rape. But the language in which you expressed this view is unlike any I have ever seen from a pro-life advocate.

I just now noticed your post #75 was also to me, and I will reply to that separately.

Bandaging my foot, but still wondering.

g_w

1.) I just joined today and I'm working on putting all of my political positions into my "About" page so, clearly, no one is going to take my points on good faith, I'm going to have to re-write it

Please understand, that someone who has just joined FR is necessarily regarded with more raised eyebrows than someone who has a long established posting history.

Also, I *did* read your posting history AND your about page before posting. It is because I took them in good faith -- ALL of them -- that I replied in the way I did.

You might note that this thread's post #45 (especially point 2 and the following paragraph) comes close to the *definition* of the RINO, country-club republican:

Morality doesn't matter, just as long as I make money.

This is discussed in more detail later.

it is clear why Ted Olson is one of the most brilliant lawyers on the planet because he is arguing a technical point related to gender equality.

It is clear he is wrong. And trivially so. How typical of a lawyer. What the argument boils down to is, "This woman is being discriminated against, because as a woman, she is forced to marry only a man if she wants to get married, not a woman. That's double-plus ungood."

The supposed principle is that "you cannot discriminate against someone because of their gender". But saying so is actually a mischaracterization of the issue. The woman is not being discriminated against on account of *her* gender: if she were being discriminated against on account of her gender, then all people of her gender would be subject to the same prohibition. You could take that two ways. Either "no woman is allowed to marry" (an absurdity by definition) or "no WOMAN is allowed to have same-sex "marriage"; which is discriminatory, because men are allowed same-sex marriages,but women cannot (but this is based on a falsehood, as NOBODY, of EITHER GENDER, is allowed a same-sex marriage). In other words, who is the class who is allowed same sex-marriage which this woman is denied? There is none. This is somewhere between sophistry and sleight-of-hand on the part of the lawyers: and in fact, it represents the highest form of petitio principii: it assumes that the issue of whether same-sex marriage is legitimate is already settled in the affirmative, by acting as though a woman wanting to "marry" a woman is in the same legal position going in, as a man wishing to marry that woman. But the definition of marriage is, and always has been, not of "any two willing partners" but of "a man and a woman". In addressing the issue in this form, in other words, they are implicitly assuming a redefinition of the term "marriage" without argument.

Nice try, though.

The *correct* formulation of the problem, without begging the question, is not that "this woman wants to get married, and can't because she's a woman", that "this woman wants to get married, but she's trying to marry another woman. Which by definition is NOT marriage". In other words,it is not the one woman being discriminated against on account of her gender, but that the *combination* of the gender of the one woman, and the other lesbian, is not contained within the definition of a marriage IN THE FIRST PLACE. Once you have *two women* (or two men), it is (by longstanding definition, where is stare decisis (so to speak) when you need it), you are no longer talking about marriage. And so the idea that discrimination is happening goes out the window. You might as well defend Roman Polanski's actions on the grounds of age discrimination (and recall the both the existence of NAMBLA and the contretemps wherein Darth Vader Ginsburg issued an opinion which (appeared) to argue that the age of consent should be lowered to twelve years old. (I believe it was the Volokh Conspiracy which argued that this was actually due to a typographical error).

The other issue against the Court's doing this, is paradoxically the argument used by the très chic Supreme Courts in New Jersey (in allowing the Dems to play switcheroo with the Senate candidate at the last minute) and Florida (in 2000, which Boies and Olson argued in) regarding "THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE". How overturning a millenia-old definition of relations between the sexes, in favor of government approval of a practice which until recently in the US has been a crime (and is punishable by death in Muslim countries, so much for "interpreting the Constitution in the light of foreign law"), represents "THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE" (especially given Prop 8 in California), is beyond me.

And to pretend that this form of argument will slow down the juggernaut towards open marriage, multiple marriages, and ultimately, bestiality and child sex, is nonsense. It's not a "slippery slope" as the gays would preen. It's a abyss.

As to the gay marriage issue: I suspected that you had a close friend or family member to whom this was a matter of some personal importance, given the undue emphasis you placed on it. ("My two best coders are gay..." and all that).(*)[+]

If you want to know where I stand on specific issues, or you want to know what my moral values are for me and my family, why don't you just ask like a man?

I thought I could take you at face value on your home page, where you *implied* that you would allow abortion under rape and incest for non Christians, and (apparently) would not even dissuade your own (married) sister from such.

And nowhere - literally nowhere - have I bragged about my finances or businesses.

See I own several businesses and I’m in my 20’s.
and
I've already said on here that I've bought somewhere around $100,000 in LEAP options / derivatives on GE for a couple years out, meaning that the long and short of it is, that is not an academic opinion; I've backed it up with my own cash.
and
This is already the case for the wealthy. My life is setup this way. Wells Fargo’s private bank sends one MASSIVE statement where your entire life is integrated into what appears to be a single account.
and
heck, I’m from a *firmly* established republican family, who owns a whole lot of businesses in the Midwest and are about as conservative as you get
and
Two of my most brilliant coders, guys who have made me millions of dollars, are gay.
and
Many of us work on a cash basis now; yesterday morning, for instance, I bought another 6,800 shares of GE derivatives (LEAPs, actually), that will pay off between 500% to 700% depending upon the ultimate price of General Electric but I paid 100% CASH for them. My total exposure is somewhere north of 25,000 to 30,000 shares. The key is that if they don’t work out, I only lose the $100,000 or so that was invested.

Paying $100,000 *cash* in this economic environment is indication of considerable wealth To mention it in such a fashion comes across as backhanded bragging -- *if* your goal were merely to instruct, you could have fictionalized the purchaser in your account.

Incidentally, if you were really conservative as you claim, why would you be calling Brownback "right wing"...?

And why would you be (in tone and content) all but cheering for gay marriage, describing it as generational, if you are really a Christian?

An example of your attitude towards gay marriage in this post:

Given that gender discrimination is firmly established in constitutional law, this is a breathtakingly simple argument that could be the silver bullet.

"silver bullet" is a term of approbation.

Secondly, you use abortion as a distraction from gay marriage in this post:

I just don’t get the whole gay thing; isn’t abortion a much bigger concern? It seems to be to all of my friends.

But then (as discussed earlier) you seem ready to allow abortion in the case of rape or incest, as a matter of law.

So this isn't adding up.

Like most 20-somethings, my perspective is different (not better, just different) from those who are older.

This is contradicted (apparently) by the following sentence from this post: "At family reunions, the grandparents are baffled by our social views but the feeling is mutual."

as well as your saying in this post that:

"People of older generations tend to have a problem with the fact that no one cares these dudes are gay, or if I let one of the secretaries have pink hair. (It’s like they expect us to get offended and when we don’t, get angry my grandmother thinks I’ve lost my mind but then she wonders why I was able to build a company that made as much profit 4 years out of college as she did in 25 years of 18 hour days. It’s not hard: Hire the best people.<snip>...I really don’t think the older generation has any idea how out of touch they are in terms of culture, business, and personal freedom."

This sounds to me like you are more than willing to sell out morality for money, and morality be damned. Otherwise, why go OUT OF YOUR WAY to point out that your two best programmers, who *by the way have made you millions of dollars* (no bragging, eh?) are *gay* ??

I am pointing out verbatim quotes from your posts on two "hot button" conservative issues for social conservatives; all of these quotes seem to go against the grain of social conservatism in tone and leaning.

Would you care to explain more completely how you reconcile these, or are you just going to say I'm "twisting your words for my own purposes" (as your homepage now reads)?

Cheers!

(*) Coupled with the atypical description of a "pro-life" point of view (I allow abortion for rape and incest for the larger society, but not my own familiy) -- which is reminiscent of the "I personally disapprove of abortion, but..."

It is enough to raise questions: just as I did in post #72. Note that I used the phrase "smells like" and "at first pass" rather than declaring you hell-bound etc. (despite the response of Mr. Jeeves in #79).

[+] The philosophical problem with this approach is that skill or excellence at a trade, and the morality of sexual activity, are orthogonal. They don't have anything to do with one another. The reason people disapprove of homosexuality is that they maintain that homosexual behaviour is *wrong*, and not necessarily that someone who is homosexual is utterly unreliable in ALL other areas of life, simultaneously. To suggest so, is merely a strawman. The counterexample would be the controversy over Roman Polanski's drugging and rape and oral copulation and sodomy of a 13-year old (who repeatedly "Just said NO!"); his theatrical masterpieces do nothing to make the behaviour acceptable in vitro so to speak; the only argument in that direction is "special pleading" that "you shouldn't punish him, the world will lose so much": which itself surrenders the central point that the conduct is *wrong*. That line covers punishment, not culpability.

In retrospect, I understand how you could take what I wrote the way you did. I’ll try to be clearer in the future; given it was my first day on the site, there was a lot of ground to cover and I thought getting my positions out there would have been preferable to leaving everything blank so there would be no doubt that my posts are legitimate and I really do want to have a discussion about the state of the country.

1.) I understand your point about the wording of the bloodline and see how that could be confusing; I hope that I made it abundantly clear that I do not approve of or support abortion. (For what it’s worth, that wording came from a discussion I’ve been having with an orthodox Christian friend of mine regarding God’s order to smite the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15; we were trying to work through how, if God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, he could order that even the infants and children be slaughtered for the sins of their great-great-great (ad naseum) grandparents. They were being killed because of the bloodline despite their innocence yet, on the same note, Christ was born through the bloodline of Solomon who was born the product of David’s sin with Bathsheba. Since that’s been the conversation that we’ve been having on this particular topic, the vernacular of that discussion found its way into my writing on the subject. I completely see how that is confusing and would appear odd without context. I’ll take that out of my About page so other people aren’t confused.)

2.) Regarding my comments on Ted Olson and his legal strategy: I love politics and I love the law. When I was in junior high, I stayed home to watch the Clinton impeachment trials, just as I missed a couple weeks of school during the Bush v. Gore mess. Regardless of whether or not I agree with the merits of someone’s position, I have tremendous respect for intelligence (it’s the reason my library’s filled with biographies of history’s worst men such as Mao and Hitler; having respect for and learning from their strengths in no way implies I agree with them on anything because clearly the world would be better had they never been born. As C.S. Lewis put it, those with the greatest capacity for good also have the greatest capacity for evil). Given my understanding of the court’s past decisions and the novelty of the argument he was presenting, I was caught off guard by the simplicity of his argument. In two weeks of launching his case, he had put together a brief that made everyone who came before him on the issue look like they had been writing in crayon. My position on whether or not it would be successful was, and remains, that is has never paid to bet against Ted Olson. The man, it seems, always wins. Again, given that I was new, I understand how that could be taken the wrong way.

As I’ve said before, my generation does have a different - I don’t want to say perspective, but we struggle with this. Let me provide an example as to why:

My grandfather died several years ago but shortly before he did, he and my grandmother got divorced. This was extremely hard for the family. My grandmother met a widower (they are both in their 70’s). They dated for several years and wanted to settle down together. This older man was a Catholic and his religion was extremely important to him, just as my grandmother’s was to her as an evangelical. When they went to get the union blessed by the Catholic church, they told my grandmother that she would have to annual the 40+ year marriage to my grandfather, declaring all six of her children (including my father) bastards. As an evangelical, she believed that she could not do this because it would be a lie; she had taken a vow before God, honored those vows, and had a wonderful family. To say that it never existed would have been intolerable. The result: The Catholic church would not marry them because it violated their dogma. Of course, this was devastating, but it didn’t stop them from going down to the courthouse on the town square and getting married in a civil ceremony.

As a born-again Christian, I have my specific beliefs. I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, that he came to Earth, died for my sins, and rose from the dead three days later. I believe that because of his sacrifice, and not my actions, that I’m forgiven. Those are my beliefs. Those are sacred to me, and to other Christians, to the point that we’ve literally staked our soul on them. (This is not a passive conviction!)

My question is this: Those beliefs are sacred to me and my family, just as the Catholic church truly believed my grandmother should not get remarried unless she annulled her prior marriage. Because we live in a republic, and not a democracy, she still had the right to go get married to take advantage of the social security benefits and hospital visitation rights that were extremely important to both of them because of their age. As someone who really, deeply believes in the American model of government, how can we deny two people certain property and contract advantages comparable to civil marriage if they have no personal beliefs on the matter?

This is the conversation most of my friends are having. The problem is, for the most part, we can’t discuss it with our parents (mine are an exception but we used to debate social security at the dinner table so that’s not normal) or the olders members of our church because they provide a standard one-line answer (”no”), without giving any other rational explanation as to what we do with a massive portion of the population (even if it’s as little as 3%, that’s still more than 9 million people - can you imagine if someone tried to pass a law that had a direct effect on the lives of every single person in Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Maine *combined* and we said, “It’s only a tiny portion of the population - who cares?”). You walk into a church youth group, or a young adult’s bible study program at most of the churches in the suburbs and ask for honest, no-holds-barred opinions of this. The book we’re reading now, called unChristian by David Kinnaman, talks about this generational disconnect from the perspective of those inside the church and why it’s an issue for us younger Christians (http://www.unchristian.com/). It really does sum up the divide perfectly because when they were detailing the beliefs of the younger, modern evangelical, we’re all sitting around nodding our head; you really should read it because it will explain what I mean more eloquently.

What my generation is saying is: What do we do with these people? What, as Christians, is our goal? No one is answering that question and that’s why you see so many college students and young adults baffled by the passion the older generation feels on the issue. (And seriously, I want to know your opinion on this because I don’t have any answers): Do we want them to end up married to women? I don’t buy that some guy is going to wake up and want to sleep with a woman if he’s gay and, even if he did, why would a woman want to deal with that baggage? Do we want to tell them that they can live as they wish but if one of them dies, they have no legal protections? Even if I don’t agree with someone’s lifestyle, I know how hard it is to build a business; the idea of a cousin or sibling coming in and taking something such as a house or car after a death ticks me off because I hate when people don’t work and they expect everything to be handed to them.

This is not rhetorical: I am asking you as a younger, Christian Republican: What is our answer? We have to have some game plan or proposal; merely saying no or we are against something isn’t going to get us elected and return to power. There is a demographic crisis brewing in the Republican party and I really don’t want to see all three branches of government controlled by Democrats for the next ten years.

In terms of personal importance, you’re right: I get possessive of my employees, friends, and family. My personality has always been to protect the people around me (one of my weakest moments in life was when a woman who owned a small business in my hometown made my mother cry so I opened a jewelry store next to hers, put my mom in charge of it, and ran the women out of business; I know it was wrong, I still feel guilty, but I just get protective). The fact that I personally know two people who will be directly affected by the issue does make it more important to me (frankly, I didn’t give a crap about it prior to realizing the legal and financial toll it took on them because there were more important things for me to deal with every morning). This is why I asked how we, as Christians, address the issue. It’s no longer academic; the real world consequences for both side can’t be avoided.

3.) On the businesses: I understand how you took my statements that way. Please realize that we are all influenced by our environment and I am no different. Here’s my daily perspective: Two of my mentors include an investment manager on the east coast who controls $5 billion in assets, and a regional bank President that manages hundreds of millions of dollars. These are the older guys I call when I’m learning how to structure a derivatives trade or buy my first apartment building. My numbers, although substantial to a lot of people, are literally rounding errors to them. That’s my daily reality. At some point, you forget that this is not the reality for most people. I can say with a clear heart that it didn’t even occur to me making a factual statement about a set amount of money could in any way, shape, or form be taken that way by anyone on these boards because that’s just not my daily reality. The old saying “birds of a feather flock together” is completely true. Please understand that I am no different in terms of being shaped by my experiences. You take my brother, who is fighting in the middle east right now as part of the Air Force, and he has no debt and more than $50,000 in cash saved from his time in the service. He’s barely 24 years old and we never received any inheritance. This is our family’s culture - we’ve always been entrepreneurs that believed every generation sort of had to prove themselves and go out in the world. The way we “proved” we had succeeded was to become financially independent through honest, hard work.

On some level, we all think that every family is like ours. Probably 99% of my discussions on Free Republic will be in the economic forums and deal with finance, accounting, or business. I understand that I can use hypothetical scenarios or abstract, third-person constructs but that seems so disingenuous. If someone is asking a question about a specific financial instrument, such as a derivative, and I have first hand knowledge of it, isn’t taking the time to make them feel better nothing but political correctness? I can’t even manage to be politically correct in my day-to-day interactions with friends, how on earth will I manage it on a political forum?

4.) In closing: I’ve figured one area of life out and that is money. It, and my Christianity, are the paradigms through which I see the world and through which all issues are framed. As a young man, there are a lot of things I don’t understand - I’ve haven’t been blessed to get married or have children yet, so when I do, I’m going to be relying on the friends and family who are older and know how to deal with teenagers to help me get through it. The same goes for a lot of other areas. On 90% to 99% of issues, we’re going to agree wholeheartedly from the economy to health care to missile defense systems. What I want to know is on the handful of social issues that we must confront as citizens of the United States in 2009, a rational explanation of proposed actions plans for our position. As a party, if we are going to return to power, we cannot just be against something; e.g., being against socialism isn’t good enough - we have to be *for* capitalism, and we have to sell that to the public. I want to know - what are we proposing??? Again, the question I’m asking are not rhetorical - I really want your thoughts and input.

(P.S.: I called Brownback right-wing because, like me and virtually everyone else on these boards, he is on 90% to 99% of issues. That’s not a pejorative. That’s just where we fall on the political spectrum.)

I've re-read your FReeper "about" page; thanks for the re-writing it to make it more clear.

While I still have some significant differences from you on some of the issues (I am to the *right* of you!), I'm not going to start a fight. Instead, in keeping with the request at the end of the page, I'm going to throw in a couple of more topics into the mix for you to discuss, should you feel so inclined.

1) U.S. support for Israel

2) non-proliferation (What to do about Iran, North Korea)

3) offshoring / outsourcing (sending jobs overseas or importing H1-B or L1 workers to increase your profits).

4) Evolution; teaching of creation in the schools

5) Roe v. Wade -- repeal to return to the states, or not?

6) Illegal immigration

7) Welfare reform, social security, "The Great Society"

8) Strategic defense initiative and related. Weaponization of space.

9) Restoring the tax-deductibility of research for US corporations

10) Premarital sex.

11) Contraception in the schools.

12) Sex education in the schools.

13) Abstinence education in the schools.

14) Home schooling.

15) Prayer in school, "separation of church and state"

16) Legalization of drugs.

17) "War on drugs" in general -- asset forfeiture, no-knock raids, etc.

18) Most-favored nation status for China.

19) "Free trade".

20) The "bailout bill" and "stimulus bill"

21) Nationalization of GM

22) de facto nationalization of banks

23) nationalization of health care

24) Obama's birth certificate

25) 2nd amendment -- individual right or not, should the bill of rights binding on the feds be held to be binding on states?

26) Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, etc.

27) Sarah Palin

28) Third party?

29) Who do you favor for President in 2012?

30) Throw the RINOs out or work within the GOP?

31) States rights / 10th amendment

32) War in Iraq / war in Afghanistan

33) 9-11 truther (some *very* respected Freepers have left FR over this issue)

34) Reparations for slavery?

I'm sure I can come up with some others.

But these ought to keep your secretary busy for a week or two.

Cheers!

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