And you say Bush is dumb.....

"salmobytes" wrote in message
. ..
notbob wrote:

"The only difference between the Democrats and the Repulicans is: The
Democrats will take you money and give it to those who have not earned
it.
The Repulicans will take your money and keep it for themselves." --nb

This is a false argument. Yes, democrats do care about social justice.

The putative philosophical underpinnings of the Democratic party are
commendable but they have little to do with the reality of party leadership
or power brokerage (which is to say, politics) on a national level.
Whatever may have been the case in bygone eras (and this is still a
contentious matter in history, subject to repeated revision), the fact is
that the sole objective of the major political parties in the U.S. (and
presumably elsewhere) and the major players within those parties is to win
elections and gain and/or retain and consolidate power. It is a perhaps
unfortunate fact that the voting public pretty much universally align
themselves with one or the other of the two major parties and will, for the
foreseeable future, continue to do so despite the fact that neither shows
much indication of living up to the ideals they espouse.

Despite the frothings of a certain damaged individual of our acquaintance,
the underlying cause of all this purblind idiocy is a nearly universal
refusal to adhere to anything resembling an ideology.

They'd like (among other things) to try to end poverty and ignorance
using education, and yes, even to spend a little money to alleviate
real misery. But the *amounts* of money spent on social welfare, over the
years, is a pittance.

During the cold war years the R's used to wine piteously about all the
money we were wasting on "foreign aid." But we hardly spent a nickel
on any real aid. We spent all the money on arms, propping up
anti-communist dictators all over the world. We're still paying a price
for that, in Afganistan, Guatemala and all over Africa.

The real spending, since the Viet Nam war, has always occurred during
R presidencies. But it all went to the military industrial corporations
and the oil companies (run by R's). They're the ones who increase
spending, usually accompanied by simultaneous tax cuts. They don't like
to pay the rent, it seems.

Yeah, all that is true.

Wolfgang