Obama's Evolving Stance On NASA
mknewman writes "The Houston Chronicle is reporting a change in Obama's stance on NASA, saying his position on space exploration continued to evolve Sunday as the Illinois Democrat endorsed a congressional plan to add $2 billion to NASA's budget and agreed to back at least one more space shuttle mission."
Let's Put our Astronauts in Shuttles that don't use fuel and go green!
The exhaust of the main engines of the space shuttle is water.
He finds ways to justify all sorts of unconstitutional, unnecessary spending of the American tax payer's dollar (like his proposed $80B/year for international poverty), so why not NASA?
And how much has Bush spent on his initiatives for Africa, like AIDS reduction?
Fighting global poverty doesn't seem to be limited to Democratic Administrations and for that we can be thankful -- for all his other faults, GWB has actually done a few good things with his Africa policies.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
OPEC supplies 53.8% of our oil imports (a little over 5.25 million barrels per day out of a little over 20 million barrels per day used).
The rest of our imports (the other 5 or so million barrels per day) come from countries like Mexico and Canada.
If people bothered to look up the numbers instead of just ASSUMING every damn thing, they would see that it isn't that difficult to fathom that in 10 years, if we cared to try, we could replace a QUARTER (not the 100% naysayers seem to want to believe) of our Oil with alternatives.
Such as T. Boone Pickens plan which ould eventually replace 38% of current oil consumption with Natural Gas.
That would be more than enough to NEVER have to buy another barrel of Oil from OPEC.
OPEC being the countries that, generally, may not have our best interests at heart.
Obama's plan is a hell of a lot better than McCain's that basically wants to drill off shore to MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER, but won't actually help things at all (at most, 200,000 barrels a day, versus replacing 5 MILLION BARRELS a day with Obama.)
People, it's simple math.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/04/us-imports-of-o.html
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
The argument is that a wealthy person can afford to pay a greater share, since their basic needs can be met with a much smaller slice of their income than a poor person.
If a person makes 100,000 dollars a year, and is taxed at a rate of 25%, then they still have 75,000 dollars to support their lifestyle, whereas a person making 10,000 dollars would have only 7,500 dollars left if taxed at the same rate.
In short, it's a much bigger deal when you have less money. Every bit is important.
The argument isn't that rich people use more or less services, but that the burden should be shared equally, and a flat tax puts a heavier weight on people who make less.
There is also the argument that it is better to tax the poor less, because that is more efficient than having to provide government programs to support them...It's the same argument that we use for making people who don't have children pay taxes to support public schools. Even though they're getting no direct benefit from supporting the schools, they're reaping indirect benefits from a more educated population.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
In fact, if the ENTIRE COUNTRY did these LITTLE things, we could WITHOUT A DOUBT save the same amount of Oil McCain's 'Day Dream' of offshore drilling MIGHT produce 10 YEARS from now.
Please provide STATISTICS to prove your POSITION.
http://fueleconomy.gov/feg/maintain.shtml
Again, it's simple math.
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
When your tax rates get so high you're starting to cause your most productive workers to leave the country?
That's a red herring and you know it. The fact is, the absolute tax rate matters not a whit. What matters is America's relative tax rate as compared with the rest of the industrialized world. And, as far as I can tell, America still has the lowest overall tax rates in the West.
If I'm a worker, and I think America's tax rates are too much, where am I going to emigrate to?
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it