Gotta love trolls

Have you learned how to speak Chinese yet?

This most properous nation in the world is owned by China. Hu was just visiting to check out his collateral.

Try again, Connie

I'ma gonna pick one of your topics here; maybe someone else will take on some of the others.

Responsibility - Personal, Corporate and Governmental. What a quaint notion.

I don't think the idea of responsibility is odd or old-fashioned. There are more and less responsible corporations; there are more and less responsible people; there are more and less responsible governments. Each of these sets of actors should be responsible for its own conduct, and the responsibilities of each interweave in fairly complicated ways.

Take fast food as an example. Someone who eats at McDonalds all the time shouldn't sue when they get fat; they're responsible for their actions. The fast-food corporations' responsibility is to make money for shareholders.

If all we had in the world were those two groups—fast food customers and large fast food chains—you'd have responsibility gaps. For example, who would provide nutritional content information? The restaurant chains wouldn't—why would they? And Joe Blow has a job and a family to worry about; he's supposed to do calorie and vitamin-content analysis on a big mac? In his basement lab? Wages would be another issue. If the restaurants could find people to work for $2.50 an hour they would hire those people and pay them $2.50 an hour, at least for some jobs. And they would be right to do so (remember the shareholders?). Nevermind that earning that kind of dough would put a serious cramp on the employee's ability to meet her own personal responsibilities, and that their labor is worth so much more. There are other gaps as well, of course—healthy food prep environment, interactions with suppliers foreign and domestic, etc.

The government's job is to fill the gaps that nobody else is going to. Another way to look at it (and a way that should be accurate in a democracy) is that the government is us collectively doing the things that can't be done by small subsets of society. We require a minimum wage; we require that food prep areas meet certain standards; we require that nutrition information be provided, and so on.

What we see that is so troublesome is the apparatus of government abdicating the responsibilities that it has been entrusted with to corporate actors. Power plants are now freer than they were in 2000 to decide what's best for the environment in which they operate. Up to the point where customers get angry enough about pollution to stop using their ovens, do you think shareholders care about plant emissions? This is what we're talking about when we say more responsibility. It is up to the government to stand in the place of our collective interests and fill the responsibility gaps. This may mean requiring more of the businesses who want the privilege of doing business in NC (or the US); it may also mean defending corporations from irresponsible individuals.

The Republican controlled Congress is generally failing us in this regard, though there have been some examples of good work—like most of the Sarbanes Oxley Act. The Democrat controlled NC government has offered us some victories—like regulation of smokestack emissions in general—and some failures—like the lame proposed regulation of mercury emissions. In general, though, conservatives have mistaken the fact that market forces eliminate or reduce the need for legislation in some areas as proof that the market can magically handle just about everything. As progressives, we recognize that it takes more than personal and corporate responsibility to make for a decent society.

And as for the definition of "is," I don't believe Bill has ever commented on this site; I don't think you'll even be able to find a single person here advocating Bill as a paragon of progressive virtue. Throughout your comments so far, you have displayed an inability to separate what is being said by the people who will read your comments from some standard right-wing talking points about evil liberals. Try to show that you're listening, and I'll bet people here will spend a bit more time trying to listen to you.

Not many liberals would say they want a stronger America unless they were campaigning for office. Rallying against going to war with murdering zealots who would see our children's corpses dragged through the streets goes a long way toward making our country stronger, dontcha think? Trading our missile guidance systems to China for campaign funds does too.

The results of Republican control:

Afghanistan:

Insurgency is rising in the key provinces of Nangarhar, Kandahar and Helmand: The Senlis Council will release the first part of its Afghanistan Insurgency Assessment Report, on these key provinces. Indicators show insurgents and terrorist groups are gaining power in increasingly large parts of Afghanistan – the already weak Central government is losing more ground. UK troops, based in Helmand, will encounter increasing hostility from insurgents in this volatile region.

Iraq...you don't really need me to spell out Iraq do you?

Terror

Terror attacks around the world tripled in 2004, rising from 175 in 2003 to 655 last year, according to statistics released by the US government's National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) Wednesday. The figure includes the children killed in the Beslan massacre in Russia, and the victims of the Madrid train bombings.

Port Security

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government has spent many billions of dollars increasing airport security but has done less at ports. Only a small percentage of cargo is inspected and many workers undergo little or no scrutiny for possible criminal records.

Port security is a sensitive area. Earlier this year, the Bush administration was forced to scrap plans to allow a Dubai-based company to assume oversight at major U.S. harbors after critics in both major political parties voiced strong opposition.

"The openness of our ports ."…."…. is one of the tremendous marks of success in this global economy, but it also provides an opportunity for terror," said Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., who is sponsoring port security legislation with Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif. "We ought to limit (access) to people who are here legally. We ought to limit it to people who would not jeopardize that security."

Body Armor

Two deploying soldiers and a concerned mother reported Friday afternoon that the U.S. Army appears to be singling out soldiers who have purchased Pinnacle's Dragon Skin Body Armor for special treatment. The soldiers, who are currently staging for combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action...Critics of the Interceptor OTV system say it is ineffective and inferior to Dragon Skin, as well as several other commercially available body armor systems on the market. Last week DefenseWatch released a secret Marine Corps report that determined that 80% of the 401 Marines killed in Iraq between April 2004 and June 2005 might have been saved if the Interceptor OTV body armor they were wearing was more effective. The Army has declined to comment on the report because doing so could aid the enemy, an Army spokesman has repeatedly said.

Not to mention, North Korea getting nukes under their watch.
Millions dying in the Sudan.
Relations with Russia going to hell in a handbasket.

It's too depressing to list all the SNAFUs that your party has made while "Keeping America Safe".

Oh, and then there is this guy, the butcher of 9/11.