Who's the bigger offender: Conservatives or Liberals?

excellent, dwise!

Another positive of food stamps is that improved nutrition leads to improved health, so food stamp recipients are better able to work and provide for their families. Poverty and poor health often go together because the cheapest foods provide a great deal of calories but not much in the way of nutrition.We all, liberals, conservatives and the entire spectrum in between, want our nation to be strong and prosperous, which requires that the individuals making up our nation also be strong and prosperous. Wishing some portion of our citizens ill only makes the nation as a whole weaker.--Percy

On the other hand there's the James Carville philosophy that the only thing in the middle of the road is yellow lines and dead armadillos.There's something to that: thinking that there's some sort of ideal "third way" somehow splitting the difference between opposing ideas often runs into gridlock (or worse). Imagine Abraham Lincoln "compromising" with Jefferson Davis, or Lyndon Johnson "compromising" with Ho Chi Minh or Ronald Reagan "compromising" with Mikhail Gorbachev or Joe Biden "compromising" with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

If the armadillos stayed on the yellow line, they'd still be alive.

Too often, there is the right way and the compromise way. Wisdom is knowing which is which.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

If we had been honest and abided by the free elections held in Vietnam and cooperated with Ho tens of thousands of lives would have been saved, Vietnam would have prospered and become the major trading partner it is today decades earlier.

This is one of the occurrences I was referring to. In this case, and not just in hindsight, the honest position would have been so much better.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

The big takeaway is that had we cooperated with Castro back in the late 50s and Ho around the same time the benefits in terms of lives saved and suffering averted would have been even greater.And imagine what it would have been like if we as defenders of democracy had accepted the results of the free elections in Iran instead of putting a puppet Shah in place or accepted the free elections in Nicaragua or Brazil or ...Edited by jar, : hit wrong key

Are you trying to say we are rather poor (or some other epithet) in our national decision making?

AZPaul speculates: oh yes, We are.

Leaving Mossadegh in power would have been a good idea, too.

If we had diverted only a small percentage of what we spent in utterly stupid wars since WWII (including the stupid War on Drugs and War on Terror) into productive foreign aid; roads, health care, infrastructure; we and the whole world would have benefited.

That's the misconception from the movie The Program that got some real people killed Not Like the Movie: A Dare Leads to Death - The New York Times

True

There are several movies called "The Program". You'll have to be more specific.And your link "Not Like the Movie: A Dare Leads to Death (Published 1993)" won't let me in.Would it kill you to put some effort into your posts?