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apostate wrote:

loadedliberal wrote:nob jIH [liberty] joq nob jIH Hegh

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I love Eddie Izzard.

One of my favorite rants of his is about Germans and Hitler.

"The eastern front, not a good idea, Hitler never played Risk as a kid..."

Ha. I've had Sapporo. Its about on par with keystone in my mind. Not a great beer.

RPB wrote:

loadedliberal wrote:any thoughts about my new sig line

had 2 look twice too

bottom line...is... it's good

Though I've heard it with "liberal" and "conservative" and attributed to Winston Churchill. Not sure who's quote it actually is...something worth research...(but not my research because I'm tired after work today. )

your avatar is very disturbing. Why did you select it?

sjfcontrol wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:And with that, I fear that we have strayed far off topic, which was.................nothing.....

Actually, we've strayed ON TOPIC!

I agree with your general approach, but I want some return on my investment. Just giving my original contributions (over some 45 years) back at this point won't hack it.

And that is why we'll just run the system into the ground instead of fixing it.

If we could simply return what people 40 and over had put in, and people 40 and under didn't get a penny back but we ended the system, I would support it 100%.

The Annoyed Man wrote:
If you're younger than me, then it is safe to say that I am vested to a larger degree in the outcome of social security reform than you are. That "rob Peter to pay Paul" kind of snarkiness can cut both ways. You don't want to pay into my retirement. Fine. I want all my money back. All of it. I want you to get your money back too, but since I'm a bigger investor than you by virtue of having been in the work place for far longer, I should be ahead of you in the payout line. I'll get mine. If there's any money left, maybe you'll get yours. How do you like that? We're not talking about a bad investment in a private corporation here. We're talking about the full faith and credit of the United States of America. I whole-heartedly agree that SS is a ponzi-scheme. I whole-heartedly agree that the system needs to be reformed. I whole-heartedly agree that reformation should consist of privatizing it. But, I also insist on getting paid back every penny of what I put into it, since I had no legal choice in the matter. Anything less is highway robbery. So, if you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet (which seems to be your POV), better that your, smaller, less valuable egg be broken than my, larger, more valuable egg.

How do you like that?

I'd be fine with it, as long as the robbery stopped now.

Edit: You'll notice I never said it was going to be pretty. I don't expect the old folks to take all the suffering and pain. If we have to do it your way, then that is fine. If I never see a PENNY of what I put in, even if I have to put into this lie for the next 20 years, I'm fine with it. I'll consider that the price of doing things the right way and if that is the sacrifice required to stop the lie of govt funded retirement, then I'll gladly pay it.

sjfcontrol wrote:
That's easy to say, at your imagined age. I said that, too. It's different when looking at it from the other end. Trust me. Of course, if your right, then the problem will be solved after you spend most of your life paying into the system (thank you), and receive nothing "because the checks stopped".

If we do nothing, the checks stopping will be exactly how SS is finally ended. As for doing something about it, of course you couldn't have stopped working. We have to work. Heck, some of us even like it every once and a while. BUT if people had been talking about needing to fix SS 20 or 30 years ago, and then voted accordingly, not joined AARP (one of the biggest obstacles to any sort of SS reform) and written to congress critters making SS an issue, we might have at least had some kind of effort to fix things in a way that would be the least harmful to everyone.

If it would have been tackled 30 years ago, it would have been like treating a broken leg, and setting it without anesthesia. Painful, yes...but necessary for the bone to regrow properly.

Now, I'm afraid its become such a problem that at some point we're going to have to look at cutting off the leg to save the rest of the body, and the excuse of "I was stolen from, so now I get to steal from you" just isn't going to cut it anymore.

As for anyone in my generation, All I can recommend is that we continue trying to fix or disable SS, and make our retirement plans with money invested elsewhere. Because every single person paying in should understand: There is no lockbox. That is not my retirement I'm funding. They're using that money to pay on promises they made to other people.

If SS was a retirement program a private company ran, people would be in jail. I don't understand why govt can get away with Ponzi schemes either.

As for an alternative to SS, I'd like to recommend this plan, if we can't just get govt out of the retirement account business entirely(which is what we should do). : http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/art ... 3906.shtml

sjfcontrol wrote:

SQLGeek wrote:So JG Wentworth is lying to me then?

"Snivel and cry..." somebody woke up cranky this morning.

OK, I'll take a deep breath, and try to control my self.
Keep in mind I've had my wages stolen from me since about age 15. Since then, the payments have gotten higher, and the promises have been weakened, and the starting age move higher. During most of that time, I've paid both halves of the tax (which everybody else does too, they just don't see it). It really burns my backside now when somebody suggests that we should end SS now, and that it just sucks to be me.

So you knew you were being stolen from, and didn't do anything about it. And that now justifies stealing from me?

Interesting theory.

Edit to add: If I had to keep paying into this Ponzi scheme, with the full knowledge that I would receive nothing from it(and I won't anyway because SS is failing and by the time I'm retirement age, either hard decisions will have been made or they'll just stop the checks) , but after me my kids would stop being stolen from, I would do it. Just my .02 on the matter.

Social security should be ended now. Just because the boomer generation got suckered into a Ponzi scheme doesn't mean my generation should pay for their mistake.

LikesShinyThings wrote:Laugh if you will, and I wouldn't own it if I hadn't gotten a deal too good to pass up from my parents, but the Prius (aka the Smug-mobile, because most owners are Smug about it) does get awesome mileage. Now if only I had a magic wand to turn it into something less "smuggish". I REALLY do not believe I'm saving the planet when I drive it, I promise.

If you haven't seen the South Park episode where they make fun of hybrids, san francisco and "better than you" attitudes, you should. Its a good one.

The comedian Demitri Martin talks about cats.

My friend Steve likes cats. People are always saying ‘Oh, Steve’s really a cat person.’ No, he’s not. If Steve were a cat person, it’d be, like, ‘Hey, Steve never goes in the pool.’

I love his humor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoCRmfJP ... re=related

Pawpaw wrote:

loadedliberal wrote:

SQLGeek wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:

loadedliberal wrote:Ok. I'm lost.

We're all over here!

Well to the right...

All this prodding has brought me to the conclusion that "liberal" may be a little extreme seeing as how I have revisited many of my held beliefs and have found while I am by no means a conservative I have perhaps have evolved past the strictly liberal stage. Im considering a name change any suggestion? So far all I got is "The Moderate Thinker" or something...

"Evolved" is the correct term for the movement from Liberal to Conservative!

How about "The Evolved Man" ?

"The Formerly Misinformed but now at least slightly right thinking man"? or "TFMBNALSRTM" for short?

And LL, I'd bet you and I have more in common politically then you'd think. I don't really care much for social issues (more of a live and let live guy), but am HEAVILY a fiscal conservative.

DFWTT wrote:There were some good ideas on carry tomatoes but noone had a suggestion for backup tomatoes. Either way somebody said the other day that.... ....wait....are there any good themes for, no wait....have you seen the sun dried ones, sold out of every produce section in town. If I remember right they do have the magic golden ones yet?

we need to ban the small, concealable "Grape" sized tomatoes. The only reason to possess such tomatoes is so you can sneak up on someone like a ninja and kill them with it. Its for the cucumbers.