tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15329279.post3662140365808879006..comments2023-08-25T05:18:29.312-06:00Comments on Madville Times: Obama: The Conservative Choicecaheidelbergerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03261598066395322681noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15329279.post-65186072773927627202008-10-31T11:18:00.000-06:002008-10-31T11:18:00.000-06:00"Mad" meaning angry, or "mad" meaning loony?In my ..."Mad" meaning angry, or "mad" meaning loony?<BR/><BR/>In my case: temporarily angry, eternally loony.<BR/><BR/>In my relative's shoes but for the grace of God trudge I.Stan Gibiliscohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15455094392489031332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15329279.post-33055847672090289722008-10-31T08:57:00.000-06:002008-10-31T08:57:00.000-06:00This would explain where the 'Mad' in Madville com...This would explain where the 'Mad' in Madville comes from!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15329279.post-56455867390538679512008-10-31T06:09:00.000-06:002008-10-31T06:09:00.000-06:00I hope your relative can find a good job to cover ...I hope your relative can find a good job to cover his medical bills until he retires, Stan. Unfortuantely, you're right about how hard that will be. Your relative is going to have a really hard time getting health insurance... in large part because his employers have rewarded his hard work with broken promises. I want to believe in the American Dream (part of which is, I think, "Work hard, and you'll get by fine"), but I know that in reality, the rain falls on the good as often as on the not-so-good. Rather than spending time parsing the moral worthiness of every citizen, we need a system that just takes care of problems and helps people get through tough times. Sure, that's socialist... in the sense that we are a society, and we should take care of society. There's a practical motive (we should take care of the society that makes our mostly comfortable lives possible) and a moral motive (helping your neighbor is just plain right).caheidelbergerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03261598066395322681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15329279.post-32365805767725596102008-10-31T03:19:00.000-06:002008-10-31T03:19:00.000-06:00You know, Cory, I'm not sure how to define the ter...You know, Cory, I'm not sure how to define the terms "liberal" and "conservative" anymore.<BR/><BR/>The "political spectrum" certainly is not a one-dimensional continuum. I'd call myself a social "liberal" but a fiscal "conservative." Two dimensions there ...<BR/><BR/>... but even that is not enough. Barack Obama favors progressive taxation. What, I wonder, makes that "liberal" while regressive taxation is branded as a "conservative" notion?<BR/><BR/>I think we ought to evaluate the candidates on the basis of how well we agree with their ideas and past actions, and forget about labels that claim to map their ideologies one-to-one with the points in a continuum.<BR/><BR/>As an off-topic corollary to this wee-hour pre-Halloween rant, a relative of mine was recently given notice that he is to be "terminated" in March. He was given a bad deal by a big company years ago [retirement benefit promises broken (RBPB)], went to another big company, spent over 10 years laboring for them -- and now, in his middle 50s, his reward is to be set free, complete with his defibrillator and history of sudden heart failures. Now for the lottery: Who will insure this piece of meat?<BR/><BR/>I ditched the ladder-climbing executive circus at age 29, set sail via small craft in the turbulent seas of uncertainty, never trusted any big corporation further than I could spit into a typhoon, and have never regretted that decision for so much as a split nanosecond. Life is danger!<BR/><BR/>My relative's fate almost makes me wish I had waited until November 4 and voted for Barack Obama, whose "leftist" agenda includes offering people portable health-care coverage not dependent on the whims of puffed-up plutocrats. A lesson to be learned for the future, I suppose ... but Cory, you warned me. Ach! Another "liberal Republican" cries out in the night. But the sun always rises another time.Stan Gibiliscohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15455094392489031332noreply@blogger.com