Just a few observations.

First: Sonny must have way too much time on his hands.  If he is truly a financial adviser/investment rep/whatever.....get back to work! All these posts and you are never going to persuade anyone to come to your "side" by calling names and being a bigot.

Second: Your generalization that the North West is "blue" is also another stereotype.  You need to get out of town occasionally.  I live in the North West and the county that I am in consistantly votes 87% Republican.  You will find that outside of the urban areas in the West Coast so called Blue States we are extremely RED.  See the map.  If you want to be a minority, be a bleeding heart liberal tree hugger in my "neck of the woods"

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/coun tymap.htm

How many Blacks and Latinos do y'all have as customers? Friends sure, but how many ethnic minorities have the readers of this forum gone out and tried to win business from?

I don't know about the others, but I target people who have money to invest and need financial advice.  If they turn out to be of any particular ethnicity, that is just demographics.  As a matter of fact, I have quite a few Hispanics as clients, because I speak Spanish (somewhat) and they are great savers and very goal oriented.

Hey dude, I am from the north and just playing with you.. On top of that I go to church three times a year (Christmas, Easter and one other sunday).   

Chill man this whole thread is a joke. I just throw out the bait here and there to get a kick out of life and your responses.

As for customers....

I dont break any segment of my life down to races, religions or sexes. I count each American as a customer. If they need financial advice or consulting I will serve them.

The bottom line is I respect all Americans and foreigners until they do me or the country wrong. Jessy Jackson has the ability to influence so many in a positive way, but he is corrupt. He uses his power to stir up racial issues to make money. Look at the Burger King issues in NYC. Look at the tens of millions of dollars in consulting kickbacks he gets.

Since this issue is so big in America I think he does the country wrong. Maybe we are not united on certain issues including abortion and why we went to IRAQ, but every month I see millions of American flags flying high. Every month we have millions of people celebrating AMERICA and our freedoms. Think about it.. New Years, Christmas, St Patricks day, Labor day, Veterans day, Memorial Day and everything else to July 4th.

People from other countries tell me how surprised they are to see so many people in America wearing the flag logo on their shirts. Every day I see a lot of people with patriotic stuff. America is an awesome place to live in. As Americans we are lucky.

I need to be a professor. Maybe my doctorate will come in handy some day. I just need to master this spelling thing. Well thats why I have my secretary and she is awesome!

There is no place but urban centers. It's the numbers that make the difference.

Tsk Tsk.  You are deluded my friend.  Lots and lots of mildly qualifed prospects with a few weathly thrown in in the cities= a ton of prospecting, wasted time and smaller results for the amount of energy expended.   Lots and lots of very highly qualified prospects in the rural areas (mine at least!) = means I get more from less.  Prospecting people who don't know you from squat and who are overwhelmed with people trying to get them to give a few bucks v.s. prospecting people who know your name in the grocery store and whose children went to school with yours.

The (again) stereotype is that all the rural people are nose-picking religious-fanatic type rubes that have just now gotten indoor plumbing and are kicking the dirt clods from their boots.  Far from the truth here. Many of my clients are millionares if not multi,multi millionares but you wouldn't know it by their lifestyles, clothing or old pickup trucks. (OK so they are classic old pickup trucks worth more than a new truck  ) They have retired and sold their businesses in the urban centers to be able to get away from the cities and have bought brand new mini ranches.  The "old guard" of ranchers and farmers, own everything outright including those million dollar ranches and they have plenty of discretionary income to invest.  The large number of self employed small business owners lends very nicely to Simple IRAs and Owner 401K plans.    I'll take my clients and prospects over those in the city any day!

And it isn't as if I don't have a basis of comparison.....I am from the SF Bay Area and all my family still lives there.

alan who? What did he do?

With Rita coming the president (at the request of the governors involved) has declared a state of emergency in the areas Rita seems to be headed towards. It was metellnonames theory that THAT meant the Feds had taken over the evacuation and relief efforts.

Since that's obviously NOT the case, can we all agree menotellnames was blowing smoke?

[quote=mikebutler222]

With Rita coming the president (at the request of the governors involved) has declared a state of emergency in the areas Rita seems to be headed towards. It was metellnonames theory that THAT meant the Feds had taken over the evacuation and relief efforts.

Since that's obviously NOT the case, can we all agree menotellnames was blowing smoke?

[/quote]

Sorry dude...federal emergency much like federal crime and federal disaster means the feds have authority and jurisdiction.

It is not often that you get a second chance to get it right so soon.  Mr. Bush shall consider himself lucky.  Of course it is Texas and he has greater ties to Texas and Florida than to Lousiana or Mississippi.

[quote=menotellname][quote=mikebutler222]

With Rita coming the president (at the request of the governors involved) has declared a state of emergency in the areas Rita seems to be headed towards. It was metellnonames theory that THAT meant the Feds had taken over the evacuation and relief efforts.

Since that's obviously NOT the case, can we all agree menotellnames was blowing smoke?

[/quote]

Sorry dude...federal emergency much like federal crime and federal disaster means the feds have authority and jurisdiction.

[/quote]

Ask me if I'm surprised that you're still wrong. The Feds have NOT assumed control. Buy a newspaper. 

[quote=SonnyClips]Hypothetical conversation between me and Butler.

me- "Yet the feds are still able to help out?"

Butler- "I believe there has to be a (insert weenie bit of half understood minutiae here) before any federal assistance could be justfied under the ennumerated powers of the constitution and also in the 15~c-84b*1654^37@999 section under the department of transportation's origination document given the National Security Agencies prohibition of domestic engangement and the 15-64p0010-9 section of the National Mandate for Federal intervention."



me- "Oh you mean that they just can't go around helping people willy nilly."

butler- "Yes that is exactly what I mean."

me- "what about the Coast Guard."

Butler- "States don't have Coast Guards so this group of rules and laws lets them help."

me- "I thought it was the spirit as much as the letter of the law that was important how can intervening with the enourmous resources of the Federal Government in such a desperate situation be wrong, especially when the Coast Guard can do it? Oh and couldn't we find a way around any rule that stood in the way of helping people, kind of like how we found a way of waging war without actually declaring war as the Constitution requires?"

How's that for a Strawman?

[/quote]

That's better than a strawman, that's a completely fictional conversation.

You seemed to have missed the point of my last post on Katrina/Rita to your alter ego; which was to point out that his series of posts claiming the a presidential declaration of emergency means that the Feds have taken control of the situation from state and local officials was wildly inaccurate.

[quote=SonnyClips]I didn't miss it I think I was just trying to show you what runs through my mind when I read the posts. Do you see what I'm getting at all joking aside?

Best,
Jason[/quote]

Well, in all seriousness what I see is that you didn't notice the fact I was correcting menotellnames on his silly claims that the Feds take over after the president declares a state of emergency (an attempt to absolve every level of government of responsibility aside from Bush).<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

It also happens to me that you think it would "help" to have the Feds march in with limited local knowledge and take over from locals with or without their request or that you think it might "help" somehow to have the Feds move in and without speaking to anyone simply begin a search and rescue process. You seem to not have an appreciation for the confusion and duplication of effort that sort of approach would cause. The Feds job isn’t to get in the way of people who know the area best, it’s to give them whatever support they deem necessary.

Even if you want to completely ignore the law (and the Governor of Louisiana sure doesn’t, she’s STILL refused to put her National Guard units in a unified command with the Federal troops in her state) it’s one thing for the Coast Guard to continue to do their day to day mission of protecting life in water ways, etc, and to have the 82nd Airborne descend on New Orleans and begin to round up looters and force people to evacuate. In fact, after the storm the Mayor of New Orleans refused to have US troops involved in forced evaluations. Mayor and Governors have legal powers that can’t simply be taken from them for undue cause.

It just isn’t as simple an issue as you seem to think.

"If that would have happened under a better President, say Reagan, arms would have been twisted and consensus would have been made."

Sure, and your partisanship has nothing to do with the fact that you don't care what the facts are or what the law says, you simply blame Bush.

50% of the country hated BUSH in 2000. He won the election and they wanted Al Gore. So they hated him from the start. They blame him for Sept 11 (in office for 8 months), Katrina, unemployment 5%, jobs sent to China, high oil prices and the increase in terrorism around the world. One must forget that the freedom is running wild in Pakistan, Lybia, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Afganistan and IRAQ (Clinton was close in North Korea and Palestine :).

Of course the media does not help when they stated GORE won Florida before the election in Florida was complete. Then they have spent the last 5 years doing everything possible to slam BUSH. Remember Dan Rather he straight up lied.

Who here watched Farenhype 9-11 or Farenhype? If one were open minded they would watch both. I think they are examples of the current political situation.

Amazing Bush is not such a conservative. He is spending and not vetoing anything like the pork filled highway bill.

The fact is he is pumping a ton of money into the economy to keep it a float after 9-11. The fed cut the rates to keep us a float. Tax cuts, more power to the local government and the no tax on dividends is what the conservative approach is about. 

• September  21, 2005 | 11: 30 a.m. ET

Real world Vs. Bush's world (Mike Barnicle)

I am in aisle three of the supermarket, watching a woman choose between a box of store brand Frosted Flakes and the real deal sold by Kellogg. She is holding a child, maybe four years old, with one hand and a cereal box with her left.  And she is about to do something that Bush the president is either incapable of doing or figures isn’t necessary: make a budget decision based on common sense and economics.

The President clearly believes everything is possible. We can hemorrhage billions in Iraq, spend billions more to rebuild New Orleans and resurrect our very own Gulf, trim taxes and throw it all on a credit card someone else – our kids – will pay in the decades ahead. This guy, smiling in his rolled up shirtsleeves, has obviously never had to sweat while signing a check for college tuition, sneakers, groceries or to bail out a basement filled with water.

His fiftyish face is nearly wrinkle free because he has been blessed with a fortunate life and a “thanks dad” existence. He is charming and friendly, isolated and uncurious about the world that has come crashing down around him - not the political world. The real one; the universe filled with disasters large and small that ordinary folks navigate on a daily basis.

So, Katrina might be to George W. Bush what Tet was to the last president from Texas, Lyndon Johnson. In February 1968, the pictures from Vietnam resulted in LBJ’s administration joining the casualty list despite the fact that the North Vietnamese suffered a true military defeat. Yet it reality didn’t matter. Impressions won the day.

And the technology of television in the 21st Century brought something into living rooms that has long been ignored: poor people and bureaucratic incompetence. That combination, seen clearly on MSNBC and other venues, shocked and embarrassed Americans who have been fed a steady electronic diet of car chases and celebrity.

The TV shots were like a national MRI, exposing cultural symptoms – poverty, race and class – that have been pushed to our back pages by terrorism and affluence and the desire by both networks and newspapers alike to reach the home delivery, I-Pod listening, cable-ready, suburban living, disposable income spending set.

And the event itself – a hurricane – was something that not even Karl Rove could spin. The White House couldn’t dodge and weave behind information leaked from intelligence briefings because everyone is familiar with rain, wind and storm damage.

And anyone who works for a living, pays taxes, has kids, a mortgage or rent due at the end of each month knows with a solid certainty that a broken or bloated budget means potential family disaster. You don’t have to be Alan Greenspan to figure out that – in the real world where George W. Bush does not live – even the future can be foreclosed by a few wrong choices.

Maybe that’s why the woman in aisle three went for the store brand Frosted Flakes at a savings of .89 cents. It all adds up and choices have to be made.

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• September  20, 2005 | 8:30 a.m. ET

Bush:  Ideology and incompetence (Bob Shrum)

Pat and I both believe in the power of speeches because, after all, we’ve each written so many of them. But sometimes speeches are of little avail against the tide of events. In 1968, Lyndon Johnson couldn’t overcome the reality of a deepening quagmire in Vietnam no matter what he said or how well he said it; what were Americans going to believe – Lyndon Johnson’s words or what they were seeing with their own eyes every night on television? So it was with Richard Nixon and Watergate; we heard the tapes, and it didn’t matter that he said: “I’m not a crook.” (Pat, did you write that line?) No speech could undo the damage.

So it is with George W. Bush now.  What Pat in effect describes as “not a great speech” but an adequate one, was eerily lit by White House Advance men who got their giant generators to New Orleans far faster than FEMA delivered food, water and rescue to those trapped in the disaster. The Bush tableau couldn’t erase or make up for the images – and the reality—that shocked the nation and the world. Katrina blew away the facade of compassionate conservatism and the false front of the Bush Administration’s competence.

First in Iraq and now in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast, the Bushies have manifested a lethal combination of ideology and incompetence. Ideology led them to fight the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Incompetence led to failures in diplomacy, planning, and provision for our troops that have left us stuck chin deep in the big muddy of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Ideology led the Bush Administration to downgrade FEMA and turn it into a parking lot for political hacks.

The President was right, but not in the way he meant it, when he said, in a line that will probably make it into the next edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: “Brownie, you’re doing a  heck of a job.” The truth is it was a hell of a job, bungled on a historic scale, proving that those who are ideologically anti-government don’t do very well at running government.  Look at the unforgettable images, day after day, of the carnage in New Orleans, much of it due to the incompetence of our own government. The Bush Administration promised to bring democracy to Baghdad and succeeded in bringing Baghdad to the United States.

The President offered a solution in his night-time sermonette –massive federal spending
He also gave people in need a hotline number to call; when they dialed it, it was jammed. The Bush Administration couldn’t even answer the phone. A lot of the spending Bush wants reflects an impulse to use Katrina as an excuse to advance right-wing rostrums like school vouchers. But they’ll spend on public works on a scale we haven’t seen since the New Deal. George W. Bush is desperate to salvage something, not just of New Orleans but of his water-logged Presidency; even with Karl Rove overseeing the effort (what has he ever run but campaigns?), public relations won’t be enough. In desperation, the Administration has been driven to big, federal programs and investment in infrastructure –previously reserved for Iraq.

Ironically, under George W. Bush, the era of small government is over.

What Pat obviously hopes to salvage is a Supreme Court that will roll back fundamental rights and overturn Roe v. Wade. If that happens, red states will turn blue and the era of Republican competitiveness in national politics will be over.

Compounding Bush’s problems, as Pat acknowledges, is that other area of ideology and incompetence – Iraq. It could, as he admits, destroy this Presidency and generate a Category 5 defeat for the Republicans in the 2006 election. So Pat, isn’t it time for George W. Bush to do what he finally and grudgingly did after Katrina: admit he was wrong, take responsibility, and change course?

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And if Bush did make the true budgetary correct corporate decisions, we would not pour billions of dollars into a doomed and sinking New Orleans. We would turn it into an industrial park and adult Disneyland for Mardi Gras and forget it being a residential city every again.  Just let him try to do that and watch the cries of racism fly!!!  He is in a damned if you do and damned if you don't position in almost every decision he tries to make.  If you stick to the rules that people who CHOSE not to buy flood insurance get coverage anyway, we are discriminating against the poor/read racism again.  If you cover everyone's losses we are bankrupting the country and future generations will be yoked to this plow forever.  Which way do you want it to be.  It can't be both. You have to choose.  Money now for all this bull##t and pay later. Or be tough and make the hard choices now and hear the never never ending whining from the left.  I like the latter.

If the Republicans insist on small government (as we should) and cut the budget to the bare bones, they are starving the cheeeelreeen and are cold heartless bastards.  If the Republicans decide to promote a prescription plan for Medicare they are giving away the store.  If they cut Medicare fraud by tightening the eligiblity they are dooming Ma and Pa Fricket to an early death.  If we try to make it mandatory that children, oops excuse me, the cheeeeldreeen, actually learn something in schools before becoming usless drags on society, then the Repbulicans are destroying the Teacher's Union, bankrupting school districts and forcing the teachers to "teach to the test". (As if they didn't always do that. Remember when the teacher would say......take notes this is going to be on the test?).  If we don't fix the schools then the Republicans are not interested in the inner city poor who are mostly ethnic minorities and are again racist. If we propose vouchers so parents can use their own tax money to decide where to send their kids to school, then we are ruining the "so called" separation of governement and religion.

Sheesh. You just can't win.

Very well said, Looney.  And to think that we recently had Ted Kennedy questioning John Roberts’ character.  And, once again, how come we are hearing so little about people who really lost something of value from these horrible hurricanes?  A group of Mailboxes, Etc. stores, a tire store, a service station, whatever.  I’m so damn tired of hearing from people who lived in public housing and collected a welfare check for the last decade complaining how they lost “everything.”  “Everything” can be a real relative word.

Did menotellnames REALLY quote Bob Shrum as a source? Does he even know who Bob Shrum IS?

[quote=SonnyClips]I think the Republican Jimmy Carter is a bunch worse than the original. [/quote]

It's probably only because you're not old enough to remember the first one. 

[quote=babbling looney]

 He is in a damned if you do and damned if you don't position in almost every decision he tries to make.  [/quote]

Yep, it's true. It's because of the we-have-nothing-to-offer-but-Bush-hatred party of weakness.

BTW, for those like sonny and menotell, still deeply confused about how disaster recovery works and who's responsible when, I offer;

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050927-121122-3262r.ht m

By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 27, 2005

President Bush yesterday sought to federalize hurricane-relief efforts, removing governors from the decision-making process. 
    "It wouldn't be necessary to get a request from the governor or take other action," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday.
    "This would be," he added, "more of an automatic trigger."

  Mr. McClellan was referring to a new, direct line of authority that would allow the president to place the Pentagon in charge of responding to natural disasters, terrorist attacks and outbreaks of disease.
    "It may require change of law," Mr. Bush said yesterday. "It's very important for us as we look at the lessons of Katrina to think about other scenarios that might require a well-planned, significant federal response -- right off the bat -- to provide stability."

If you recall, menotell was claiming it already WAS an automatic trigger as soon as the president (at the Governbor's requiest, btw) declared a state of emergency.

And, just as Babbling Loony pointed out, as soon as Bush said this who would come along to criticize it but the usual suspects.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) accused Mr. Bush of attempting a power grab in the wake of fierce criticism that he responded too slowly to Hurricane Katrina a month ago.
    "Using the military in domestic law enforcement is generally a very bad idea," said Timothy Edgar, national security policy counsel for the ACLU. "I'm afraid that it will have unforeseen consequences for civil liberties."

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour declined the president's offer to federalize the state's National Guard troops in the aftermath of Katrina. So Mr. Bush wants Congress to consider empowering the Pentagon with automatic control.

The ACLU cautioned against such a change of law.
    "The Posse Comitatus Act is sometimes criticized as some sort of obscure, centuries-old law," Mr. Edgar said. "But you know, most of our liberties are centuries old. So that would be like saying the Bill of Rights is obscure and old.
    "Our strict separation between military and civilian power is one of the things that separates us from Latin America, for example," he added. "Changing that would put us on a huge slippery slope."

Can we bury this topic- geeeeez!!!

[quote=SonnyClips]Lets just say I wish I wasn't old enough to remember either of them. [/quote]

How about we say that if you were old enough to remmber anything about the first one (misery index, Iran hostages, Desert 1, sweaters, 78% aircondition, 22% prime rate, malaise, killer bunny, gas lines, being taken for a ride by North Korea VS sub-5% unemployment, low interest rates, record minority home ownership, free elections in Iraq and Afghanistan, progress in six party talks w/ NK) you wouldn't suggest they have anything in common.