I think I got that way from the internet. Before that I mostly read and listened to stuff that supported what I already believed. When I ventured into cyber land I frequently found myself in the middle of the left wing nuts and the right wing nuts and concluded that I must be more moderate than I thought I was. Either that or the extremists on both sides have gotten more extreme than they used to be, while I have stayed pretty much the same.
I don't think paying people more money makes them work harder, I think it's the other way around. First you improve your performance, and then we'll talk about raising your pay. Truth be known, pay scales are probably more linked to supply and demand than they are to work performance. The harder it is to find qualified candidates to fill a position, the higher the wage scale is likely to be. I'm not sure if that holds true in the management positions, though. With them there's the "who you know and who you blow" factor, but I don't know how much relative weight they give to that. I understand that women still make less money than men in the executive world because the job titles and job descriptions can be more easily manipulated than in the world of the hourly worker.
I don't know much about the Clintons or the Bushes either. In those days I was a Libertarian and believed there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Since then, both parties seem to have assimilated their fringe groups, which has pulled them away from the center. I agree that most of the old line Republicans would seem liberal by today's standards, which is why I never voted for them back in the day.
I think the old time Republicans were more interested in immigration "reform" than the new breed is today. I seem to remember that the last amnesty program was passed during the Reagan administration. John McCain used to be for amnesty too, until he found out that the majority of his fans were against it. I don't think that either side has this health care thing right. Insurance is not the solution, it's a big part of the problem. If health insurance had never been invented, I'm sure that health care costs would not be nearly as high as they are today.
I used to worry about creeping gun control laws, but not so much anymore. Lately it seems that, the more they talk about gun control, the more people buy guns. If they keep it up long enough, everybody in the country will be armed to the teeth.
I never was in favor of wasting money on the Mideast. Back in the 70s, when the OPEC states first started flexing their muscles, I said that we should cut off all aid and trade to them. We have other sources of oil, but those camel jockeys don't have other sources of money. Well, they didn't used to back in those days, by now they have diversified into all kinds of investments. Do you know that the tallest building in the world is in Dubai? Those people used to live in tents before we gave them all that money.
What I looked up over the weekend was those goofballs in Oregon, and I learned that they are even goofier than I thought. Ammon Bundy claims that he started this whole thing because God told him to. He's the kind of guy who gives Mormons a bad name. Dwight and Steve Hammond, the guys who got arrested for playing with matches, have been warring with the Feds for decades. They own 12,000 acres right next to this wildlife refuge, and they think that entitles them to control the refuge too. Once, back in the 90s, the Feds tried to build a fence to keep the Hammond cattle off the reservation, and the Hammonds threatened people and interfered with the effort so much that they were arrested for it but, for some reason, the charges were eventually dropped. Back in 2001 they started a "controlled burn" on their own property that got out of control and turned into one of those classic western wildfires that burns all summer. Then, in 2006, there was a big fire burning on the federal land and the Hammonds started a backfire in an alleged attempt to keep the main fire off their own spread. The problem is that they didn't think it necessary to coordinate with the crew that was fighting the main fire, and four guys got caught between the two fires and barely escaped with their lives. That's why they were charged under the terrorism laws, because people's lives were jeopardized on federal property.
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