WIP

Actually they did! Way back during WWII, FDR and his advisers had already made the calculation that England would not be able to hold on to its empire after the War's end, and the U.S. would take over as the world power. And ever since then the U.S. has spent its way into insolvency on military expenses in order to maintain control of the empire.

Yes! Now remember that we're talking about Japan before the Earthquake....so after billions of dollars worth of damage and a ticking time bomb of a nuclear power station, all bets are off for Japan's future prosperity. Lead author - Richard Wilkinson explained in an interview on NPR, that Japan does not have high progressive income tax rates like Sweden, and other Scandinavian countries, but social convention prevented the exponential growth in CEO salaries that occurred in other developed nations over the last 30 years. Whether the smaller gap in incomes is caused by tax rates or social pressures, the net effect is the same: more equal societies perform better on the broad range of quality of life measures than low tax, limited government societies with greater disparities between rich and poor. Another example that consumption does not equal quality of life can be found in a story about two years ago which ranked Costa Rica highest on another quality of life index: Costa Rica comes top of the Happy Planet Index 2.0. Costa Ricans report the highest life satisfaction in the world, have the second-highest average life expectancy of the Americas (second only to Canada) and have an ecological footprint that means that the country only narrowly fails to achieve the goal of ‘one-planet living’: consuming its fair share of the Earth’s natural resources. http://www.happyplanetindex.org/news/archive/news-2.html The home page explains how the HPI is calculated: It shows the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens. The nations that top the Index aren’t the happiest places in the world, but the nations that score well show that achieving, long, happy lives without over-stretching the planet’s resources is possible. The HPI shows that around the world, high levels of resource consumption do not reliably produce high levels of well-being, and that it is possible to produce high well-being without excessive consumption of the Earth’s resources. It also reveals that there are different routes to achieving comparable levels of well-being. The model followed by the West can provide widespread longevity and variable life satisfaction, but it does so only at a vast and ultimately counter-productive cost in terms of resource consumption. Could you tell me why, once in power, conservatives here and in the U.S. let deficits go unchecked....so far, Harper is setting a Canadian debt record, and Dubya doubled the National Debt in the U.S. during his term in Office, and yet the right had nothing to say about deficits until a Democrat was in Office? My theory is that it just fits into the frame of "starving the beast" strategy of allowing spending to go unchecked, along with declining tax rates until rising debt service costs force government services and programs to be cut or dropped entirely.....except for military spending of course! I'd like to know if conservative Republicans in Alabama still feel the same way about destroying government services, now that so many of them have lost everything to a series of super-tornadoes. Easy to be a libertarian during good times!

Absolutely not! But, I consider the prospect of lifelong searching to be a challenge rather than a source of anxiety. I don't know how much you've paid attention to what I've actually written, but I am not an antitheist. We do not have objective or empirical evidence for why our universe exists and how we have come alive at this point in time, but we're here, and we have to decide how to make sense of the human condition in whatever ways make sense to us. The religion I criticize is the aspects of religion that are making society worse instead of a better place. I am enjoying the time I have left, and my anxieties are not about mortality, but the secular apocalypse that we are leaving future generations through our collective lack of action. The difference I see in the coming decades from those who see a 2nd Coming, is that I can see evidence of Great Tribulation, but I don't see any evidence of a divine escape clause being tossed to Planet Earth. I believe we are the source of our own salvation, and the survival of the human race will depend on what we do or fail to do.

I know you get a lot of crap and abuse on these forums for presenting an aboriginal perspective on many issues, but most people do not follow religious traditions out of some sort of logical, analytical process, so debunking only works with those who already have one foot out the door. Your experience with Christianity is likely coloured by the boarding schools and other attempts to impose European cultural values on native populations, and obliterate their own languages and culture. But that is not the takeaway of the average Christian, who may not even be aware of the history, or even if they are, will write it off as an aberation....like the Inquisition, or the Crusades, or support for the institution of slavery etc.

Yes, and I've spent some time over the last 10 years thinking over what is good and bad about religion and where religion can go from being a positive social force to a negative one. Exclusionary religion may not always surface as a source of conflict, but, like the example of the former Yugoslavia, when a society is starting to break down, religions that scorn the authenticity of other different religions can be the match that lights the fire. The conflict in Yugoslavia is mischaracterized as an ethnic conflict, since the people were all from the same general origins, but divided into ethnic groups over many generations because of adherence to three different religions that taught their people to scorn those of the rival religions.

I have laid out many reasons for alarm. We have entered a whole new era where human population is at unprecedented and unsustainable levels, Arctic sea ice has declined 40% since those Apollo 8 pictures were taken in 1968, and we still have thousands of nuclear warheads kicking around at a time when conflict and warfare is on the increase....but you still think a little tinkering around the edges with tax rates will solve all of our problems.

Are you enjoying the storms and increasingly volatile weather we are having over the last few years? The melting of Arctic sea ice has made the Jet Stream unstable and created more extreme changes in temperature; add that to the 7% more moisture that a one degree warmer global atmosphere contains, and future increase of 2 to 5% F will make going outside a real adventure in the coming years!

No surprise that that sonofabitch Terence Corcoran doesn't want climate or environment issues getting in the way of helping his rich friends and benefactors get even richer! The greed-is-good and climate change deniers may see this as good news, but for me it is further confirmation of my pessimistic outlook that the human race will not deal adequately with the global problems that threaten future generations.

Last night, there was a candidates meeting for the Hamilton Mountain candidates in the upcoming election, and sure enough, the hysteria created by the NDP late surge was the biggest part of the rhetoric of the Liberal and Conservative candidates. One thing that isn't a surprise to Hamiltonians who have usually supported the NDP beachhead here, is that Liberal and Conservatives seeking to knock off the local NDP MP raise the implied threat of:'you'll get nothing from Ottawa if you don't put our guy in Parliament!' It almost sounds like a threat every time I hear a candidate for a governing party throw that one up to either bribe or extort their way into office! Conservative candidate Terry Anderson, meantime, says Hamiltonians need to decide whether they want to elect an opposition member who will send out leaflets and criticisms, or elect someone who will have the Prime Minister's ear at the government table. As if backbench MP's have the Prime Minister's ear in any government! Maybe I'm a cynic, but MP's role besides helping locals with their tax issues or government services, is to serve as propagandist on behalf of the Prime Minister in the local riding. The advisers in the PMO have more power than all but a handful of cabinet ministers. We saw this when fellow Conservative - Diane Finley disappeared into the shadows when trouble erupted in Caledonia re: the Six Nations land dispute. The OPP, Provincial Government, and the local mayor were available to the media, but the PMO immediately took over the cautious, almost invisible Federal response to the dispute and she was no where to be found. No doubt she got orders from On High to step back and say nothing about Caledonia. Liberal candidate Dr. Marie Bountrogianni says the NDP know how to march, protest and vote against government, but don't know how to work with other parties and other levels of government to bring Hamilton results. http://www.900chml.com/Channels/Reg/NewsLocalGeneral/Story.aspx?ID=1408593 And, the former MPP for Hamilton Mountain apparently didn't work well enough with other parties, or other levels of government to keep her job in Queens Park a couple of election cycles ago! Wonder what's changed this time! Most Hamiltonians are going to buck whatever Conservative trend others see going on in Ontario. We have the continued debacle of the U.S. Steel lockout going on to remind us daily that NAFTA rules against domestic ownership led to the foreign ownership and gutting of the local steel industry here; and for that a lot of Hamiltonians have a grudge against both the Conservative and Liberal parties for allowing Canadian industry to wither away.

Yeah, keep on painting with a broad brush! Most of the ones who are attacking Easter celebration also attack Islam...so much for your egg shells....and those of us who don't attack Islam, also don't attack Christianity....just the unhealthy aspects of these religions, such as fundamentalist intolerance of other people's beliefs.

There is a natural instinct in every animal, to consume the limits of its natural environment. In nature, this is usually kept in check through disease and predation, but when animals swim to a new island with no predators, they will likely consume everything until they run out of food and mass starvation occurs. The blunt, disturbing messages coming to us from several different areas of environmental research are that the human animal is...so far...acting exactly like a small group of deer who've just swam across a lake to a new island, for example. The Earth is now our island, since we are a global civilization, and with all of our modern technology, we are free of the predator/prey cycle of nature. I'm not seeing a lot of encouraging signs that the dangers are being taken seriously by enough people to prevent a global catastrophe.

I had a feeling you wouldn't see this as good news! I grew up in the kind of religion that you preach, and the dogma of exclusive salvation was the biggest reason why I started questioning what I had been taught. If even the largest religious sect in the world preaching an exclusive path to salvation, has it right, that means the vast majority of people are damned for having wrong beliefs. The truth is that there are no such things as souls and spirits in the first place; so people who stress about whether they are going to heaven or hell, or will live on forever after death... and make sacrifices and cause conflicts in this world for their imagined paradise to come, would be better served by coming to terms with the reality of our existence, and realizing that our conscious minds are not immaterial souls trapped in material bodies, but instead, our sense of self is an illusion created by complex brain function, which enables us to function in the world, and have an interest in self-preservation. That need for protecting our physical being is achieved through emotion as fear of death.... which for a creature that learns that it will eventually die, creates a plan for some sort of eternal life after bodily death....but remains insecure about the reality of eternal life, and makes personal sacrifices in a desperate attempt to improve the odds of attaining immortality.

So, if progressive taxation....or forcible redistribution as you call it, makes the rich feel cheated, and the poor feel humiliated, why doesn't reality reflect your social libertarian theory? We can go through a whole list of social issues from physical and mental health, drug abuse, violence, incarceration, social mobility, teen pregnancy, social cohesion, and find that the more equal societies...regardless of what method they achieve relative equality, do better than the less equal societies. http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence

The same race to the bottom that has driven wages down on an international level in the new era of Globalization, has been going on for decades by businesses who pit one state or city against another to see who will offer the most goodies: sales tax holidays, tax loopholes, zero interest loans, corporate tax breaks, and union-busting so-called right-to-work laws. And what has it achieved, except to turn states like Michigan....one of the wealthiest states back when my uncles were working at the GM and Cadillac plants, into something on par with Mexico. Now, maybe this is why Snyder's grovelling is being criticized by some: Business Leaders for Michigan President Doug Rothwell told the Detroit News that swapping the MBT for a 6 percent corporate income tax would put Michigan “in the top 15 states in terms of lowest business taxes.” But the Michigan Manufacturers Association said many of its members could be hit with a tax increase under Snyder’s plan to reform business taxes. That’s because the corporate income tax would eliminate a 35 percent credit against the personal property tax in the MBT, which raises about $1 billion a year for local communities. http://michigantruthsquad.com/snyders-proposed-budget-analysis/#21 So what kind of business is Snyder trying to reward with his tax plan? Obviously not manufacturing, which would be the kind of business that would provide the best spin-off effects for surrounding business. http://michigantruthsquad.com/snyders-proposed-budget-analysis/#8 Other highlights mentioned in the analysis of the State Budget include 18% cuts to the state's public universities, and a $470 cut per student in K through 12 public school funding. Any business that is thinking about relocating to Michigan, will not be lured in lured in with the expectation of finding a highly educated workforce! Michigan will just be full of sweatshops if anything.

I'm focusing on the conservative economic ideas...which I believe have failed when applied, and as mentioned to B.C., the appeal to conservative social issues has motivated many people to vote against their economic interests...the book "What's The Matter With Kansas" comes to mind, as a good analysis of the problem. Also, when people learn more about the sociological implications of rising disparities in income, they will see how every social issue, from crime rates and incarceration, physical and mental health, education level and upward mobility, are much better in more equal societies such as Japan, Sweden or Norway; and much worse in the less equal societies - US, the UK, Portugal, and New Zealand. Increasing economic growth does not improve these social indexes if the gaps in income remain or get worse. And, it's not important what the method is for achieving equality -- it can be done through higher progressive tax rates as in Sweden; or the same effects have been achieved in Japan, where income taxes are lower, but has less disparity in pay scales. The Equality Trust collated by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Perhaps many Americans don't even realize that their country has become as unequal as many third world nations, even though the rich all live now behind high walls of gated communities.

Now, once again...tell me why your conservative America wants income distributions similar to Sweden? Could it be that the average American is more socialist than they realize?

Here's an interesting study out today which puts the crisis of human over-consumption into focus: Warning: Human's Devouring 40% of All Land and Sea Life Humans are devouring 40 percent of the life that Earth's land produces and "take a similar proportion of what the coastal seas produce. For one midsized creature that collectively weighs just half a percent of the animal mass on Earth, that is a staggering proportion. It redefines 'dominion.' We dominate." As the UN estimates Earth's human population will exceed 9 billion people by mid-century, Safina sees trouble ahead sustaining a growth equivalent to "two more Chinas." He explains, "We'd still probably have to expand agriculture onto new land, and that means using more water" when water supplies are drying up. "Since all growth depends on what plants make using sunlight, continuous growth of the human enterprise for more than a few decades may not be possible." " By mid-century it would take about two planet Earths to provide enough to meet projected demand (add another half-Earth if everyone wants to live like Americans.") While Americans comprise just five per cent of the world's population, they use roughly 30 percent of the world's nonrenewable energy and minerals. Safina warns, "We're pumping freshwater faster than rain falls, catching fish faster than they spawn. Roughly 40 percent of tropical coral reefs are rapidly deteriorating; none are considered safe. Forests are shrinking by about an acre per second." Compared to the era of America's founding, ozone is thinner and carbon dioxide denser by a third; synthetic fertilizers have doubled the global nitrogen flow to living systems, washing down rivers and, since the 1970s, "creating hundreds of oxygen-starved seafloor 'dead zones.'" " We've learned that we can eliminate the most abundant herds and birds, and the fishes of even the deepest haunts; take groundwater out faster than it goes in; change the composition of the atmosphere and the chemistry of the ocean," Safina writes. " As a new force of nature, humans are changing the world at rates and scales previously matched mainly by geological and cosmic forces like volcanoes, ice-age cycles, and comet strikes. That's why everything from aardvarks to zooplankton are feeling their world shifting. As are many people, who don't always know why." As humanity pushes the planet toward destruction, it is incredible that half of all the taxes collected from the American people---who are principal players in this rush---are used for warfare rather than to rebuild and rejuvenate the planet they are ravaging Okay, now are some of you who still think the Earth is a giant candy store getting the picture? It's not mentioned here, but other studies claim that humans now represent the largest animal biomass on the planet. This is a big part of the reason why more and more plant and animal species are being driven to extinction. There are too many people, consuming resources exponentially for faint hopes and wishful thinking that some new-fangled technology will fix everything. Continued ignorance will lead to a peak mass extinction that likely includes our descendents....and that's reality, not alarmist rhetoric!

How about taking tax rates back to what they were during the Eisenhower years? He was a Republican too; but if all we have to go on is the constant drone of rightwing propaganda, you'd think that it's only been Democrats raising taxes. And Bush's tax cuts did not fuel economic growth. All they did was speed up income inequality and allow U.S. business to expand job creation IN CHINA! Sounds like you're referring here to social issues....and it's a shame that so many Americans have voted against their own economic interests with tax cuts for the rich, and anti-labour legislation, all for the purpose of defending them against abortion and gay marriage!

A new U.S. study commissioned by Barna confirms a number of previous studies: most people, even those who belong to fundamentalist religions are universalist regarding that "narrow path" to heaven: Twenty-five percent of born-again Christians said all people are eventually saved or accepted by God. A similar proportion, 26 percent, said a person’s religion does not matter because all faiths teach the same lessons. And an even higher proportion, 40 percent, of born-again Christians said they believe Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Barna defined universalism as the belief that all human beings will eventually be saved after death. The California-based research and polling firm defines born-again Christians as people who have made “a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today, and who believe they will go to heaven after death because they confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. According to the Barna analysis, 43 percent of Americans in general agreed with the statement “It doesn’t matter what religious faith you follow because they all teach the same lessons,” while 54 percent disagreed. http://www.christianpost.com/news/many-born-again-christians-hold-universalist-views-barna-finds-49883/ Okay...not everyone who describes themselves as "born again" is evangelical fundamentalist, but odds are that they are far more likely to be biblical literalists on most issues than mainline protestants or the average Catholic. This is important....and I believe positive news, because it tells us that people living in cosmopolitan societies feel some unease about condemning people they know of other religions, or no religions, to hell. One of the fundie preachers near the end of the article makes note of this when he complains about his flock feeling the pressure from the "culture" to be universal.....damn, why can't they just look forward to watching the damned burning in hell like I do?....Well, he didn't actually say that part, but that's the frustration of a lot of fundamentalists who want revenge against those who have different beliefs. About five years ago, Barna released a study across many denominations that found a shockingly high percentage of Christians even want to extend the promise of heaven to atheists and animals...especially pets! Over 20% of Catholics believed that their favourite pets would accompany them in heaven. This result would represent a growing awareness of animal rights and interests, which is also a good thing, since even the most fundamentalist religions will liberalize their teachings on issues when general attitudes change. This happened in the past re: slavery, and is even happening today with environment issues and gay rights...since young evangelicals are far more likely to accept gay rights and the realities of human caused climate change. Progress moves as slow as an iceberg among those who think they have the absolute truth, but as long as society can continue to make progress, the fungelicals will join as well....and claim it was there idea all along! Also, the survey results on what religious adherents actually believe should serve as a caution and warning against those who like judging religions and adherents by what their scriptural texts say, since these books have to be interpreted and understood in terms of life today, not 2000 years ago. Long story short, this makes Sam Harris's claim from "Letter To A Christian Nation" that 44% of Americans are looking forward to a nuclear holocaust because they believe in end-time prophecy (or claim to) a superficial misrepresentation of what they actually believe about the future.

I don't know how many times, especially since Obama was elected President, that I've heard the constant refrain:"America is a center-right nation" or some similar drivel. This homily is not only preached at Foxnews and right wing radio, it is also frequently drummed in to everyone's heads at CNN, during the Sunday morning news shows, and the so called "liberal" newspapers like the New York Times. But is it really true? It's a belief that business leaders would prefer, but it is likely based on surveys that ask people how they identify themselves: conservative or liberal, without delving a little further into what the common people understand as "conservative" or "liberal." The last, being especially crucial, because the word "liberal" has been so relentlessly demonized over the last 30 years in American rightwing politics and media. So, let's take a closer look about how conservative Americans are about wealth distribution. The following study finds that the majority of Americans would prefer a more equal wealth distribution of nations such as Sweden, compared to what they have now -- growing poverty, disappearing middle class, and a top ruling class that has doubled, or tripled their wealth over the last 20 years. Americans generally underestimate the degree of income inequality in the United States, and if given a choice, would distribute wealth in a similar way to the social democracies of Scandinavia, a new study finds.................. According to research (PDF) carried out by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, and flagged by Paul Kedrosky at the Infectious Greed blog, 92 percent of Americans would choose to live in a society with far less income disparity than the US, choosing Sweden's model over that of the US. What's more, the study's authors say that this applies to people of all income levels and all political leanings: The poor and the rich, Democrats and Republicans are all equally likely to choose the Swedish model...................... Recent analyses have shown that income inequality in the US has grown steadily for the past three decades and reached its highest level on record, exceeding even the large disparities seen in the 1920s, before the Great Depression. Norton and Ariely estimate that the one percent wealthiest Americans hold nearly 50 percent of the country's wealth, while the richest 20 percent hold 84 percent of the wealth. But in their study, the authors found Americans generally underestimate the income disparity. When asked to estimate, respondents on average estimated that the top 20 percent have 59 percent of the wealth (as opposed to the real number, 84 percent). And when asked to choose how much the top 20 percent should have, on average respondents said 32 percent -- a number similar to the wealth distribution seen in Sweden. "What is most striking" about the results, argue the authors, is that they show "more consensus than disagreement among ... different demographic groups. All groups – even the wealthiest respondents – desired a more equal distribution of wealth than what they estimated the current United States level to be, while all groups also desired some inequality – even the poorest respondents." The authors suggest the reason that American voters have not made more of an issue of the growing income gap is that they may simply not be aware of it. "Second, just as people have erroneous beliefs about the actual level of wealth inequality, they may also hold overly optimistic beliefs about opportunities for social mobility in the United States, beliefs which in turn may drive support for unequal distributions of wealth," they write. http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/569425/study:_most_americans_want_wealth_distribution_similar_to_sweden?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet So, now the problem is to break through the wall of disinformation, propaganda, and outright lies perpetrated by the corporate media every day, and inform the public of why taxes on upper income levels, and corporate and estate taxes need to be increased, as well as a pushback against the anti-union legislation of the last 30 years that has destroyed the private sector labour movement, and is now making their final attack on the remaining public sector unions! I should add that numbers on Canadian wealth distribution and growing inequality in recent years, pretty much mirrors the results in the U.S., so the average Canadian (especially idiots who support Conservative plans to lower corporate tax rates) are in a similar situation of ignorance of our growing inequality.

A couple of comments have already shined the light of common sense on your complaint re: riding populations, but I'll add that inequality and unfairness in our parliamentary system is inevitable, since our Senate is patronage warehouse...currently occupied by Harper, instead of what it should be -- a governing body that represents regional interests, rather than the population distribution...which is what the House of Commons is supposed to be! That's why I was a Reform Party supporter when Preston Manning first hit the scene -- I didn't agree with his concept of using provinces as the equivalent of states in the U.S. system, but something similar, to represent the regions equally could have freed the Commons to become a representative body where every vote is truly equal! Under the present system, whether you like it or not, the House has to protect smaller regions, especially those that are in economic decline and losing population. But, as we are all aware, the media in central Canada -- including your rightwing media like the Toronto and Ottawa Sun papers and the National Post -- flat-out opposed any sort of triple-E Senate strategy and forced Manning and later Reform...Canadian Alliance leaders to drop what had been the reason for forming the Party in the first place. If this part is selling out the West, I'm pitching in to help the sale! How about if we start shutting down the tar sands projects, instead of expanding them? Right now, too many people are motivated by short term economic gain, instead of taking a forward-thinking approach promoting energy conservation and alternative renewable energy, instead of making this toxic, carbon-intensive bile that's so acidic, it even burns holes through most oil pipelines? I'll agree that the East should stop collecting dirty profits from this poison, so that Canada can once again take a leading role in reducing carbon emissions, and Northern Alberta doesn't turn into the world's largest toxic waste dump.

Which is not something I do....I don't even spend a lot of time on this forum, unlike some people who seem to be here 24/7 and post 50 or 60 comments a day! I'm too old to care about trends these days....which you know very well is not something that young people, especially teenagers, can escape from! The advertising they get bombarded with tells them they don't look right, don't have the right clothes, or can't afford their own car. Most people today are like hamsters running on their spinning wheel, never getting enough of what they think they need....and that's the magic fuel of our consumer-driven economy!

A progressive blogger that I check in on regularly at election time - Dr. Dawg, has a good post up reminding us of Harper's theocracy clowns like Ken Epps (the attempted bill C-484), and asks the pertinent question for all non-Conservatives: will a Harper majority government have to start throwing some bones to their religious right foot soldiers to keep them happy and well motivated Conservative ground troops? There are a lot of dedicated anti-abortionists in Parliament, and they have to keep their people happy if they get their majority! After winning his minority in the 2008 election, Harper hastened to reassure the country: the abortion debate, he said would not be re-opened by his government. “Throughout his political career, the prime minister has been clear on this issue,” Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for the prime minister, told the National Post. “We will not introduce or support legislation on abortion.” But this weasel-wording doesn’t—and didn’t—prevent a Conservative from introducing a private member’s bill to accomplish similar aims. Bill C-484 was supported by all but four of the ruling Conservatives (and enough Liberals to get the thing through second reading).

When I was growing up, I never had my own bedroom, something that is expected even by first time home buyers today...hell, they even expect a small bathroom with each bedroom....which is understandable if you're paying $300,000+ for a place to live. I lost a lot of my old documents and links when my desktop crashed a month ago, and one I can't find now was from a psychology journal that showed self-perceived happiness and personal satisfaction has been in decline since the 1950's. All the while, we've been designing bigger homes, new cars and consumer products, especially home electronics that weren't even conceived of 50 or 60 years ago, and yet people are less satisfied and feel more anxiety with life! Part of the reason is that we are, on average, more isolated than half a century ago...people have fewer friends, and most people work longer hours to buy the things they think they need. All good indications that materialism is a poor standard for measuring quality of life. The central problem is that personal status needs are determined by how we believe we measure up with our peers. When I lived in a new suburb, there were a lot of things that I thought I needed because of what most of my neighbours had. After moving back into an old neighbourhood, all of a sudden having a new Lexus would have been a bad investment...an invitation for car thieves or burglars, expecting other expensive stuff at home.

No! Not even the gamblers; so if you're looking at putting some money on Jake Shields, don't bet any more than you can easily afford to waste. Some of the grappling experts think that Shield's unusual ground game might be a challenge for GSP, but since he has no standup, this might be one fight where GSP decides to use his take-down defense to stay up and hammer away with stiff jabs...similar to the Koscheck fight.