What has always troubled me about Ronald Reagan the most is that he was a Screen Actors Guild spokeman and president. i.e., a flaming liberal union organizer all of his professional life as a B-Grade Hollywood actor.

Reagan was a liberal until anti-American GOP fatcats bought his loyalty, made him change his party affiliation and then made him governor of California so they could run him for the presidency and steal as much money as they could.

And this rouse worked because the sheeple of America will believe anything coming out of the mouths of most Hollywood actors.

None of my friends ever liked the aging Holloywood actor Ronald Reagan when he hosted “Death Valley Days” because he was pitiful.

When Reagan, once a Democrat and president of the Screen Actors Guild (the actors union) sold his progressive soul to the wealthy GOP and became a Republican just so he could be elected governor of California we all called him a California joke and laughed at him when he bumped his head and stuttered over hard words like “tax.”

Can you imagine how we felt when the ancient California joke named Reagan turned out to be president of the United States? And then was re-elected?

And By The GOP Having Their Lips Planted On The Tea Party ASS They Are The Same Problem!!!

Perhaps if more intelligent Americans like poster ChristianMartin would stop all the blaming and finger-pointing and run for high public office themselves they would be able to fix the problem identified by poster ChristianMartin: the human inability to admit error.

They Sold Their Souls To The Devil Years Ago, They Love To Thump The Bible But They Are The Ones Who’s Doing The Wrong The Bible Talks About!!!!!

The main reason that several tea party Republicans are now getting dumped on by the incoming GOP leaders in the House is because they have stubbornly refused to support any legislation that adds one more penny to the national debt, ever, for any reason whatsoever.

Example: Even if the rest of the elected members in the legislature see some long-term value in getting rid of some very costly, rapidly growing federal programs and replacing them with other needed and much less-expensive programs that will not grow quite as fast, that is still NOT good enough for the anti-debt tea party crowd.

I thought Grover Norquist’s rediculous pledge forbidding legislators from voting for any legislation increasing taxes for any reason, or supporting legislation creating any new tax for any reason, including paying for emergencies and wars, was just an impossible dream that would fade away over time. Not.

The hard-core anti-deficit tea party clowns actually wanted to shut America down completely rather than vote to borrow even one more penny from anyone, for any reason; — even at a time when Treasury interest rates are at their all-time lows!

No wonder the new GOP leaders are removing them from important committees where they can do more damage to America (and destroy the GOP) during the next two years.

You just assumed that all of the DoD budget is spent on your no-bid, frivolous contracts.

A single mother of two working full time at a minimum wage job would earn over $24,000/yr. So why are we ‘assuming’ $14,500? During the time that my daughter was a single mother, she was not getting any help from me or from Child Tax Credits. She is not a college grad, yet she was able to find a job that paid enough to support her and my grandson. A job she hated, but did it anyway.

It appears you have a problem with people paying their own way and being responsible for themselves. The GOP is railing against the unsustainability of these programs. Far different than the left’s propaganda about ‘doing away with them’, which, by the way, will come naturally if they are left to continue as is.

I have to admit to not knowing the minimum wage. I improperly assumed that the hourly rate I pay part time manual labor was minimum. So the $14.5k was close to the national average.

I did forget that there should have been a father or two paying child support, regardless of marriage. If not a marriage, then our mother had made a couple of bad decisions. A mother of two, divorced, should have at least child support and possibly alimony. A widowed mother should have had an insurance settlement.
You relate tough situations, many brought about by bad decisions. But there are always options. I employ a young single mother (at my minimum) who does cleaning work. She has elected to spend her evenings going to diesel mechanic school. She has worked out child care with a group of mothers in a similar situation.

I certainly agree with you that people should run their own lives. However, it is certainly not just the GOP who has invaded our rights to make our own decisions. Obamacare is the latest single biggest invader.

I don’t want anyone’s tax dollars going to government welfare programs. There is not a single program that couldn’t be run with more care or more efficiently by a private sector group. Almost every one of the initially good intentioned, government hand-up programs has been subverted to hand-out. Hand-out means servitude.

FYI: My daughter and her former husband took care of day care.

Don’t know about the rest of you WT readers but I’m thinking that poster johninPC has one heck of a lot more common sense than most of the conservative right wingers I’ve been seeing on these WT threads screaming and yelling about things they have not ever bothered to think all the way through.

OK, so you bought life insurance instead of food and clothing for the kids. Fair enough. Other parents wouldn’t make that choice.

Home phone requires a down payment plus a monthly expense, and you can’t get one in a hostel. Disposable cell is $20 and you use it until you’re done. The working poor don’t have the luxury of a home phone.

Charities that run with volunteer labor are more cost effective than government programs. The best charities using paid administrators rarely break 75% distribution of funds, and they only do it because of huge cash volumes (red cross and Koman come to mind). The local church-run charities here with paid administrators rarely break 50% and garner support because their church affiliation makes the gifts tax deductible and pays the parson.

I worked for DOE at the height of the nuke weapons program when every hair-brained scheme got funded and no amount was too much (during the Reagan years.) That was the era of $1200 toilet seats and $700 hammers. The GAO survey for that time period pegged the waste at 20%. I’m sure 50% plays well on the Glenn Beck Fantasy Hour, but it’s no more real than 0%.

“Meanwhile, New York continues to play catch-up as disaster recovery specialists look at the New York response as a Katrinaesque example of what not to do. Mayor Bloomberg continues to ignore the plight of the citizens in the areas of Staten Island and Rockaway, Queens. In absence of a coordinated relief effort, the residents have begun organizing their own relief centers as FEMA remains visibly absent. ” So, the lack of FEMA response on Staten Island because of the magnitude of the disaster is an indicator that FEMA should be smaller? Would you feel better if Bain Capital rented generators and sold water at inflated prices to them?

So in your mind, FEAM responding to a disaster that covered 600 miles of coastline is roughly the same as FEMA not getting to the city of New Orleans? You do know that’s a false equivalence, right?

Yeah, hundreds of thousands of hammers and toilet seats and every other piece of overpriced junk Reagan bought is roughly the same as one overpriced conference. You do know that’s a false equivalence, right?

Giving up smoking is roughly the same as choosing between food and life insurance. You do know that’s a false equivalence, right?

Poster montanabill still has a problem with poor people having cell phones this late in the year of our Lord 2012:

“Seems to me that cell phones are the most expensive way to communicate. How about a good old fashioned simple house phone?”

FYI: The Republicans that you elected to represent you in the Congress, and the Republicans that you elected to represent you in your state legislature (and all the Democrats that I and other Democrats voted for) decreed that all humans receiving unemployment compensation as well as all welfare recipients have the ability to contract and be contacted by telephone.

That opened the door for three sharp very wealthy Republicans who own cell phone companies to bid on and be awarded lucrative contracts to get rid of enormous inventories of trashy low-feature cell phones they cannot sell anyway and then provide “free” cell phone service to the poor people receiving state and federal unemployment and welfare benefits.

The three wealthy Republicans that own the companies are making additional huge fortunes by this latest “government give away.” They are laughing all the way to the bank while Lush Rimbaugh and others tell all you ignorant conservative right wing haters that the federal government is wasting their tax dollars giving away free cell phones to poor people.

And you believe it.

Poster montantbill was mistaken when s/he said: “A single mother of two working full time at a minimum wage job would earn over $24,000/yr.”

According to published government documents the current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. That hourly rate equates to $15,080 per year, not $24,000 as montanabill said.

FYI: The state with the highest minimun wage in America is Washington, which requires covered employers to pay workers $9.04 per hour. Since there are also 2080 working hours in an given year in Washington too, their hourly rate produces an annual earnings of $18.803, not $24,000 as montanabill said.

And finally: Assuming that poster montanabill actually lives in Montana then s/he should know that Montana’s current minimum wage is only $7.65. Montanabill’s hypothetical “single mom with two children” working in Montana would only make $15,912, not $24,0o0.

Note: I am expecting montanabill to come back swinging hard, saying s/he was including some unstated amount of free government money avaiable to most poor people who suffer with these pitiful minimum wage jobs and are smart enough to file income tax returns.

The reason I left out federal earned income credits is because not every low paid single mom with two children files tax returns to get it, and because it is not a wage. It is a credit. It is given BECAUSE these wages are so pitifully low and cannot be included in these low wages (by honest people).

You (poster montanabill) are to be admired for voluntarily paying almost twice what many other small business owners pay their part-time uneducated employees.

(Unfortunately, the fact that the federal minimum wage is a “federal law” is too often used as an excuse by greedy small businees owners who do NOT pay higher wages to any employees.)

Also unfortunately, every separate state has vastly different laws and very different enforcement methods regarding child support and alimony. Some states really go after the deadbeat dads (and some deadbeat moms too) because they recognize that all parents must be responsible for all of their children.

America also long ago abolished “debtors prisons” because America is “enlightened” and does not think humans should go to jail just because they are in debt. IMO, we should re-visit that position and either allow states to put deadbeat dads in prison or make them work for minimum wages on chain gangs again (like some southern states used to do) and give all their earnings breaking rocks to their poor children.