FAO Americans - michelle bachmann

. . . and the lunatics shall inherit the earth and the stars and the stripes . . .

Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government. She kicked off her unofficial presidential campaign in New Hampshire, by mistakenly declaring it the birthplace of the American Revolution. "It's your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world!" she gushed. "You are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard."


In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely bat**** crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she's living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies.


Young Michele found Jesus at age 16, not long before she went away to Winona State University and met a doltish, like-minded believer named Marcus Bachmann. After finishing college, the two committed young Christians moved to Oklahoma, where Michele entered one of the most ridiculous learning institutions in the Western Hemisphere, a sort of highway rest area with legal accreditation called the O.W. Coburn School of Law; Michele was a member of its inaugural class in 1979.

Originally a division of Oral Roberts University, this august academy, dedicated to the teaching of "the law from a biblical worldview," has gone through no fewer than three names — including the Christian Broadcasting Network School of Law. Those familiar with the darker chapters in George W. Bush's presidency might recognize the school's current name, the Regent University School of Law. Yes, this was the tiny educational outhouse that, despite being the 136th-ranked law school in the country, where 60 percent of graduates flunked the bar, produced a flood of entrants into the Bush Justice Department.

Regent was unabashed in its desire that its graduates enter government and become "change agents" who would help bring the law more in line with "eternal principles of justice," i.e., biblical morality. To that end, Bachmann was mentored by a crackpot Christian extremist professor named John Eidsmoe, a frequent contributor to John Birch Society publications who once opined that he could imagine Jesus carrying an M16 and who spent considerable space in one of his books musing about the feasibility of criminalizing blasphemy. (Highly entertaining LINK)
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A typical fascist American 100% nutjob, she should go far . . . and keep walking ;)
 
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White Mouse said:
She is probably right but it just sounds bad because its a complicated issue summed up in one sentence.

The minimum wage is at best pointless and at worst only serves to destroy the lives of the people it is supposed to be helping. Obviously people with Buy-to-Let empires get a nice kick out of it though.

You can just go to google scholar and type in 'UK minimum wage' - see what the results of the academic journals are that you come back with.
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The minimum wage in America does not go up every year. The late Edward Kennedy did try to push it up a bit but just before his deaath he managed to get it put up for the first time in five years.

She is just another far right American nut job who wants to exploit.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
How bad the net result of having fewer jobs but possibly high paid jobs is also contentious.

Personally I think I'd like to see a reduced or no minimum wage and a fair, more simple universal welfare payment to 'top up' incomes to appropriate levels (like a negative income tax).
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The net result of this is that the tax payer ends up subsidising the employer and a race to the bottom for wage rates - brilliant

As if the taxpayer does not have enough to pay for.
 
Is that really what happens? Or have you just decided to think that minimum wage is an arbitary figure that has no effect on anything else in the economy like rents etc?

Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage, nor does Sweden, nor does Finland, I don't think Germany does apart from for certain industries. I don't see these countries with the scare mongering scenarios that everyone tells me would happen here (despite the fact they never even did when we didn't have one). And in the countries where they do have a minimum wage ours is about 3x higher - like in Poland.

I mean if I could go to Sweden and earn £20 an hour (40k+ a year and little income tax because its the minimum wage) for shovelling mud, I'd be over there with mates straight away living in a bedsit in no time, I would probably do it for a gap year or something after uni but imagine how many people would do that and what effect it would have on the people over there?
 
White Mouse said:
Is that really what happens? Or have you just decided to think that minimum wage is an arbitary figure that has no effect on anything else in the economy like rents etc?

Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage, nor does Sweden, nor does Finland, I don't think Germany does apart from for certain industries. I don't see these countries with the scare mongering scenarios that everyone tells me would happen here (despite the fact they never even did when we didn't have one). And in the countries where they do have a minimum wage ours is about 3x higher - like in Poland.

I mean if I could go to Sweden and earn £20 an hour (40k+ a year and little income tax because its the minimum wage) for shovelling mud, I'd be over there with mates straight away living in a bedsit in no time, I would probably do it for a gap year or something after uni but imagine how many people would do that and what effect it would have on the people over there?
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It depends on the costs of living.

If you are getting £20 an hour but a loaf of bread is £15 then it is not so good. e.g. Japan's costs of owning/renting are really high.
 
White Mouse said:
Is that really what happens? Or have you just decided to think that minimum wage is an arbitary figure that has no effect on anything else in the economy like rents etc?

Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage, nor does Sweden, nor does Finland, I don't think Germany does apart from for certain industries. I don't see these countries with the scare mongering scenarios that everyone tells me would happen here (despite the fact they never even did when we didn't have one). And in the countries where they do have a minimum wage ours is about 3x higher - like in Poland.

I mean if I could go to Sweden and earn £20 an hour (40k+ a year and little income tax because its the minimum wage) for shovelling mud, I'd be over there with mates straight away living in a bedsit in no time, I would probably do it for a gap year or something after uni but imagine how many people would do that and what effect it would have on the people over there?
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Perhaps Denmark, Sweden and Finland have no problems with employers paying peanuts so they didn't need a minimum wage?

Poland has a much lower cost of living and average wage rates so hence their minimum wage is lower. That's why so many Polish people come over here for the better wages. Or are you seriously saying that a minimum wage in each country should be set irrelevant to the cost of living or average earnings? Hell I can hire a gardener in Bulgaria for 50p per hour. They would love the minimum wage if set to the same as the UK.

Not sure what you are getting at about the Swedish scenario? Rates of pay in Sweden are not much higher than us and they have some of the highest basic taxation rates (40%). Although they do not have a national minimum wage, they are massive unionised and a minimum wage for particulary sectors is set by collective bargaining for 3 to 5 years in advance. Eg minimum wage for a plumber may be £8 per hour whereas an fast food reasturant may be £5 per hour (which is a better system than a general national minimum wage IMO).

And just because it's a minimum wage, it does not follow that you pay no tax. Even here in the UK the minimum wage puts you about £4000 over tha tax free allowance.
 
You don't even understand my point. The minimum wage isn't just an arbitary figure, what do you think would happen to other areas of the economy if the minimum wage in Bulgaria was set at £6.50 an hour? Do you think everything would stay the same as it was when gardeners earn 50p and suddenly everyone lives happily ever after and is rich?

The point about Sweden is what do you think would happen if there was a country in the EU in which their minimum wage was 3x what ours is, so close to £20 (40k a year), and IIRC on minimum wage here you don't exactly pay much income tax, so lets assume its similar in this other country. What do you think would happen in that country where the minimum wage is £20? Because if that was the case I would have been over in that country with a few mates picking flowers and all living in a bedsit together straight after uni, there would be thousands of people from the UK doing that, and in due course it would destroy the hopes of any native person in that country living on their own on minimum wage.
 
White Mouse said:
You don't even understand my point. The minimum wage isn't just an arbitary figure, what do you think would happen to other areas of the economy if the minimum wage in Bulgaria was set at £6.50 an hour? Do you think everything would stay the same as it was when gardeners earn 50p and suddenly everyone lives happily ever after and is rich?

.
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Errr that was my point about minimum wages (if set) need to be different in every country. You could not set the minimum wage in Bulgaria to be the same as it is here.

And yes, it happens already, which is why there are so many eastern europeans working over here (we have 3 Poles and 2 Bulgarians atm at work). That would still happen without the minimum wage except that our wages would drop/stay stagnant for a while as there would be so much demand for the jobs and then the migrant workers would move to another country or back home once wages equalised.

Without a minimum wage, people would have come over from Bulgaria say where they earnt 50p per hour and take uk jobs for £2 per hour and undercut a British person who wanted £5 per hour as a minimum. We would

Net result of the massive export of labour is that wages rise in the countries they left due to a shortage of labour. I know a few Polish people who have gone back home now as they can earn almost as much money back there but the cost of living is cheaper than here.

So already we have a minimum wage in this country which might be a factor of two or more than some poorer countries wages in Europe.

To take your example, the only way a major economic country in Europe would have a minimum wage 3x ours would be if their cost of living/taxation was extremely high. No point going to earn £20 per hour in Sweden if tax was 60% and a loaf of bread cost £5. Your net disposable income after taxes and living expenses might be no different than earning £6 per hour in the UK.

Anyway the above scenario would never happen unless the country in question had zero exports and didn't need exports as their labour rate would have priced them out of the world market (either that or they made something the world needed and it was the only place you could buy it from)
 
Obama and the Dems are crossing their fingers and have the champagne on ice that someone like Bachmann gets the nomination.

Romney and Huntsman are actually decent and would be a threat to Obama, although Obama still hasn't really done enough wrong to lose, it'll be pretty close though.

The best thing for the US would be for someone like Bachmann to get the nomination and get hammered in the presidential election to show the nutters on the extreme right that they are a minority and should STFU.
 
Hang on, I'm pretty sure Dolph says the exact same thing. ;)

Anyway she's a nutter. Anyone who grows up sitting with creationist sympathies or beliefs needs their brains blown out for the good of man kind. It's scary these people can have a hegemony on global sovereign power.

"Not all cultures are equal" makes me want to stamp on her stupid face.

Arghghhg internet rage
 
Dabbles said:
Obviously you haven't asked people in the North East. A lot of very bitter people around here.
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Were they the ones in the unprofitable mines and steelworks?
Anyway when maggie was in things were a proper crisis of rates and unemployment, but....
Years later major in his later days and blair in the early days cleared the deficit, removed our national debt, took it down to absolutely nothing, then...
They spent and spent and left us where we sit now, short term gains with unsustanable spending.
 
Biohazard said:
Can you tell me why they were unprofitable?
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Because if they were profitable they'd be open and run by some very rich businessman who would make his millions from them.
They'd have privatised not closed.
Better than that one pit in wales did reopen not so long sgo, as now the cost of energy production has gone up so much it became reasonable ti expect a return on investment. One pit.

In 10 years the buy price for home heating oil has went from 12p a litre to 60p a litre, and now alternatuves become possible profit. So now we might see those pits eventually reopen, but i doubt it. Too many lefty whingers woukd block it at planning, etc etc.
Anyway, back t the op, mad american is mad.
She just happens to be a rich politican.
People voted for bush as they identified with him, not because they thought he was a great leader or could run a country.
They voted for him twice.
 
Michelle Bachman, like the vast majority of extremist Republicans, is retarded, naive, delusional and woefully outmatched by cold, harsh reality.

She will be stomped and ground into the dust, where she and her ignorant ilk belongs.
 
After the letting the house prices spiral out of control the minimum wage was one the worst things Labour done. Yes is stopped the really bad wages. On the other hand a lot companies looked at what they are paying and realised they are paying more than they legally have to. Virgin Media never gave us a wage rise in over 7 years. Not even a cost of living rise. When we would complain we just got told we got paid more than the minimum wage. A lot of companies done the same after the minimum wage was introduced.
 
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