I'll leave local battles to you locals ... but trying to talk sense to Clayton's "opinions" is like talking to a wall.  Good luck.

Look around you.  America is already imploding ... Instead of cutting taxes (disproportionately favoring the most wealthy individuals in the country) and then cutting spending, we cut the revenue source and then increased the spending 10 fold!  For the past two years, the Democratic Congress has not passed any bill that it could not find revenue for from some other source (except the spendy Defense appropriations that the President continues to demand) ... because the Republican bloc of voters has not completely crumbled around this President, most of those efforts to deliver on the promises it made to get elected have gone down to defeat.  As a result, we have an unregulated financial market that spawned the bundled sub-prime mortgage -- making (again) a select group of individuals wealthy beyond their wildest dreams while destroying the lives of millions of middle- and working-class families and essentially bankrupting whatever reputable lending institutions were still standing -- only a major socialist government giveaway by the FED saved the day (though the crisis is still lurking right under the surface, and refuses to go away and be "solved"). As a result, we have an unregulated market in oil speculation ... again, a very small handful of individuals (you know ... people buying things they’ll never get from people that never had it, making money on both sides ... Will Rogers said that, not I) is growing incredibly wealthy at the expense of an entire country! while the price of other commodities spikes out of control. Other signs of implosion?  Collapsing bridges.  Major sinkholes popping up and engulfing entire towns, but mostly just pocking the nation's highways that are not being repaired.  Crumbling public buildings (schools, hospitals, libraries, etc.).  Anhauzer Busch being bought by a Brazilian firm, CGX being purchased by a London conglomerate representing Saudi interests.  Countless manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas -- even the armored humvees used in Iraq are now built in South Africa (even our military is being off-sourced).  Before World War II, the U.S. had something between 2000 and 3000 military planes in its entire arsenal ... by the end of the war, the number was in the hundreds of thousands.  Even though we are told we are in a war as significant and threatening as WWII, do you honestly think the US could produce that many airplanes, today?  What exactly can the great American manufacturing heartland crank out today? Where do all your kids' toys come from?  How about the ingredients for your pets' food?  How about the key ingredients for your pills and prescriptions (which cost 5x the amount the very same pills are available in other countries than they do here)?  How about the tomatoes that may (or may not) pass on salmonella to you? Talk about imploding?  Who is going to pay the credit card that Cheney and Company have been using for the past 7.5 years?  Will our grandchildren, when the bill comes due, refuse to pay "reparations" for YOUR sins in electing this group of thieves and con-men (who have distorted and misrepresented every bit of scientific evidence in their exclusive hands in order to sell and promote adoption of their policies, knowing that once the policies were in place, it wouldn't matter how much people screamed and howled and got a little incensed about how they had been misled). Who is following America, now?  China is passing us in so many areas of industrial production that it is supplanting us as the primary supplier of key commodities and more and more countries must address the demands of the Chinese ... and knuckle under to what it is that the Chinese want ... before ever thinking about voting alongside us or supporting us in yet another foolish and irresponsible piece of international intrigue.  Ten years ago, I think it was fairly safe to assume that as the U.S. went, so did the rest of the world.  I am not so sure that is the case any longer.  We do still consume a disproportionate amount of the world's stuff, but even that is changing as China's (and increasingly India's) hunger for consumer products increases. It didn't have to be that way.  Mismanagement did not have to be the overriding legacy of this administration ... though it is looking increasingly that way.  But then again, if you look at the history of Bush-led businesses, he never did have a very good management record. So, who's going to bail him out this time?  Certainly not John McCain ... who promises exactly a greater dose of the same economic approach.  Sorry, but the only alternative is a fresh one; a do-over (or a restart) is what America needs.   It is going to take a while to get us back on our feet.  And it won't be easy.  The sacrifices that George W said we didn't have to make (while we had our cake and ate it too) are now going to have to be made.  And they will have to be made by everyone ... not just the middle- and working-classes.  By sacrifice and hard work ... that is, giving up on some of the luxuries we consume because someone has convinced us that we have to have them, really cutting back on the grandiose giveaway of wealth to those at the center of the corporate world by reining in their salaries and benefits (in order to more equitably distribute that income amongst the people who actually produce the value), and paying off our debt the old-fashioned way ... I am confident America can bounce back from thirty years of Movement Conservative efforts to reinstitute the Gilded Age and regain its proud and shining spot in the pantheon of nations. Barack Obama is not necessarily going to do it; certainly not by himself. But he is a start.

Look... nobody likes to pay bills. Nobody is willing. But we will all have to, that's a fact. It is what it is! There's no point in screaming about it, it had to be done. I don't like paying my gas bill, but I pay it in full every month. I like good credit and the rewards I get for having good credit. BUT- I know other people who don't pay their bills, and guess what? They're black, hispanic, indian... so, just because now they are in a tight spot, and because in some way or another they feel repressed, wronged by whites, or their ancestors surely were.... does that mean they deserve my hard earned money? HELL NO!!! Another thing Shays- black people are among some of the most racist people I know. I can't tell you how many times I've walked down the street and passed a group of them, only to be threatened and ridiculed because I'm a little white girl. They focus more on race than anyone I know. I myself, don't notice it unless you make a specticle of yourself, and represent all the bad things and cliches about that particular ethnicity. I have some REALLY GREAT black friends- but like I've always said there are exceptions to every rule. Reparations, like I've said before, any way you want to package it, is asinine. To re-pay a specific race of people is just idiotic. It's the opposite of progress. It will cause more problems than it will fix- people will be resentfull and even MORE racist than before...  What we need to do is get off our lazy [bleep] and actually MAKE this country and our neighborhoods good places to live. Not BILL WHITEY FOR IT, when these PEOPLE have made their neighborhoods a bad place to live ALL BY THEIRSELVES. We as a COMMUNITY, as a STATE, COUNTRY... we all need to step in and make the difference. All of us. Don't put the BLAME and subsequently place the bill on white people! That's soooo stupid! Plus, how do you possibly divy that out? There are half blacks, 1/4 blacks, half black half white... are those people going to have to pay half and then recieve half back??? What a horrible idea! It would cost so much money and waste so much time to actually make that happen in a manner deemed fair (well, by SOME at least...)... I've seen exemplary black people in my life rise to greatness of their own accord. You think they did that by receiving reparations from white folk? NO!! And that is why those black families in my example are so PROUD of who they are. They are wonderful people, people who I could only dream of becoming... hardworking, learned, great people. Reparations will do nothing but add fuel to the already burning fire of racism. We already have enough problems, why prod? Bye bye World..... our will our hope still hold on?

Completely asinine. Enough said. I'm not even wasting my time defending my stance on this one!   Bye bye World..... our will our hope still hold on?