Girl, retard.... what's the difference? Once you're killing the unborn and don't have a problem with it, the reason why you do it shouldn't matter at all. If I don't get a blond-hair, blue-eyed boy, then it's the glue factory fot that horse.
You realize that all of Southern society was based on the hierarchical structure that was underpinned by slavery? There's a very good reason why there was never the amount class-based animosity in the South that should accompany a society with such an enormous disparity between rich and poor... a society with zero middle class. Slavery! Every white man - no matter how poor he was - knew he was still good enough to own another human being (whether he had the means to or not), and that he was far superior to any white woman. Everything about Confederate society was held together by slavery... whether you owned them or not. So, yes, even a non slave owning poor man was fighting for the right he had to own another human being if he had the means.
Robert E Lee turned traitor to his country to support a society based on slave labor that held people like him up as feudal lords. He is as despicable an American as has even lived, no matter how pleasant his mannerisms. Lincoln freed the slaves in the Confederate states and not the border states because he had to enact a decision that could not be shot down by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger Taney. This was the same pro-slave man that authored the Dred Scott decision. As states in rebellion, Lincoln could use his war powers to constitutionally free the slaves in Confederate states without fear of it being overturned. Had you ever read anything about Lincoln, you'd know that he was a practical, pragmatic politician before anything else.
I'd recommend Alan Guelzo's "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation"
I guess it's too much trouble to actually read Krugman - or even know the facts.
How do these facts work:
"Consider, for example, the prediction Krugman made the day Obama signed the original stimulus bill into law: “I am still guessing that we peak out at around 9% [unemployment] and that would be late this year [2009]." Furthermore, Krugman declared that double-digit unemployment was “not the most likely event.” As Norquist and Lott note, unemployment hit 10.1% and remained above 9% two years after Krugman predicted it would peak.
Once it became clear that President Obama’s stimulus plan had failed to ignite the economic recovery he promised, Krugman and others began scrambling for excuses to explain why Obama’s spending spree hadn’t worked. One explanation Krugman offered was that right-wingers had erroneously claimed government spending had increased when it hadn’t:
"So as I said, the big government expansion everyone talks about never happened....And federal aid to state and local governments wasn’t enough to make up for plunging tax receipts in the face of the economic slump....[T]here’s a widespread perception that government spending has surged, when it hasn’t—is that there has been a disinformation campaign from the right, based on the usual combination of fact-free assertions and cooked numbers."
As Norquist and Lott reveal, Krugman’s claims rely on a slippery game of sleight of hand; Krugman cherry-picks the only year when total government spending dropped, which was from 2009 to 2010, “and even then, it was still much higher than just a couple of years earlier.” In point of fact, note the authors, government spending has grown 12 percent since 2008 and 20 percent since 2007. "
But you can sit their in your smug, self-righteous libertarianism and keep pretending Krugman is a hack who hasn't consistently made very accurate predictions and the Nobel prize in economics is a fraud
Krugman has consitently failed to predict anything since he helped lead Enron into an abyss about 14 years ago. Almost eveything he espouses has been proven to be bunk in the wake of Greece, Spain and Portugal in Europe, and his claims of "not enough spending" on the failed Obama stimulus plans is the type of overly general crap that mean nothing. Typical Keynesian... "no matter how much we spend, it's never enough." Further, he has more than once taken obvious disengenuous positions about a true Nobel laureate, Milton Friedman. Seeing as how his sheep-like readership has never actually read Freidman, they'll never know.
A whole lot of garbage here. 16 million... that's 16 million Americans fought in WWII (U.S. population was 135 million at the time). You were able to take them out of the normal workforce and put them into a the military service. Every one of them that died or became disabled was one that didn't go back into the workforce when the war was done. Let's add on to this that U.S. was the only major industrial economy that didn't have their land turned into a pile of rubble by WWII. In the immediate post WWII era U.S. GDP was 25% of world-wide GDP! That is what saved the U.S. economy, not Keynesian pipe dreams. Unless, of course, you're saying that Keynesian policy is actually meant to foment the death of millions upon millions of people world wide so that the country who impleaments it is the only one left standing at the end. I think I'll take Milton Friedman's view of liberty and prosperity instead.
Some good points, but you're forgetting the beneficially technological offshoots of the space program. If Kennedy hadn't pushed us to the Moon in the 1960s, we wouldn't have gotten the offshoot technologies that we did as soon as we did, Further, don't just pass off the PR benefits like they are nothing. Astronauts were childhood heroes to many people in the US, and the space program was a dream. That sort of national sentiment is important... if not quantifiable.
...as if the United States (or any other nation to first successfully colonize the moon) would pay one bit of attention to it. Now, if a successful colonization mission took the form of a joint venture, or even a corporate venture, issues of sovereignty will doubtlessly come to the fore. Frankly, I can't see one good reason that a nation that made it to the moon 40+ years ago cannot colonize it today.
Many millions of poor people around the world will be displaced, die of lack of nutrition/water and maybe we'll have wars over resources.
How is that any different than today?
I'm not poor and I don't live in a poor country. Why should I care? One need only look to Amsterdam to see how intelligent, resourceful people will handle any and all problems climate change will bring. Too bad, so sad, Africa.
I'd think a good place to start is to look at which party has funded science institutions historically. For instance, under George W. Bush, the budgets for the following went up significantly: National Institute of Health - tripled in fact; National Science Foundation; NASA (after it was reduced under Clinton).
You may find this counterintuitive, but it’s true and on the record. Funding for science organizations has historically been higher under Republicans than Democrats.
Neil Tyson (host of NOVA) explains this quite well.
http://youtu.be/x7Q8UvJ1wvk
I'll bet most anyone can tell you who is winning the Republican horserace for NH based on polls, but I'd wager much more that almost no one could tell you anything about Mitt Romney's 59-point economic plan. This is not simply because Americans are dumb and lazy, it is a direct result of the garbage that is known as American media. Whether it is a sympathetic media outlet for Republicans like Fox News, a virulently opposed one like the NY Times, a neutral one like CNN, or a totally disinterested one like BBC America the media that serves the American people has made a collective decision that issues do not matter nearly so much as poll results. Horserace coverage makes for better ratings than in-depth analysis I guess.
Well, this stands to reason as both American political parties are descendents of European Liberalism as created by David Hume, John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith. Why should they represent ideals of Marxism that have no place in American history and represent no strain of the American experience?
If we need to choose between a billion dollars spent establishing a colony on a celestial body or spent on developing sustaining methods of producing food in impoverished nations, the production of food must take precedence.
I fail to see why the food needs of impoverished nations is more significant an issue for wealthy nations than the establishment of a permanent colony on another celestial body. The long-term viability of our species is far better served by expanding than trying to feed every child in the Sudan.
Why are you comparing a power plant to differing means of transportation? I would think it would be much better to compare nuke plants to coal plants, oil platforms, natural gas plants etc...
..it is (relatively speaking) incredibly easy to trasfer highly sensitve items to recipients that should never have them. Where there's a will (in this case profit motive) there's always a way.
Well, it is all well and good to bring in so called "expertise and nuance" into government so that legislators can make informed decisions. So can I assume that you would be OK with eliminating campaign contributions from these so called experts? Because if not, what you wrote is a bunch of BS and just a convenient excuse for buying off politicians.
That is certainly an option (not one I would choose, but a resonable option nonetheless), but then you have eliminate all campaign contributions from all groups/people/PACs/etc... If you're going to go fascist and depreive one group of their freedom of speech, then you have to deprive them all.
Individual natural persons have rights. Corporations are legal constructs, which means that the concept of corporations having rights makes no sense.
I would refer you to Dartmouth College v. Woodward 1819. The U.S. was built on corporations having rights. It's one of several factors that made us the most powerful nation in history.
Just because it is technically legal doesn't mean it isn't corrupt. There is such a thing as rigging the system to legally profit from selling influence. That is pretty much what lobbying has become. Sure, if we all had the same amount of money to throw around at politicians maybe it would work for everyone. But since a very small percentage of US citizens hold most of the money, that influence is unevenly distributed.
This assumes, incorrectly, that all lobbyists are of the same opinion and work on the same side of the isle. Other than unions (which donate over 95% of their funds to the DNC), political lobbies have a fairly even distribution of funds across political isles. In the case of this issue, you have huge corporations with vast sums of money working on both sides of the issue. There is no corruption inherent in this process as you seem to imply.
No, corruption is when you can determine that definite “pay to play” or vote buying has happened. That is nothing at all like lobbying. The entertainment industry has every right to convince people of their opinion and support those candidates that support their causes. What you’re advocating for seems to be some archaic form of government where no expert opinions can be brought to bear on politicians. Are you actually espousing that congressional representatives already have some innate expertise on every issue that would preclude their being informed by expert lobbyists? By that logic, I can simply go outside of my house and feel what the weather is like to get a bearing for my opinion of climate change. Why should I, or any representative, fall into the trap of listening to highly trained climate scientists who use government funds and promote a message that requires more and more government funds be funneled their way?
Lobbying is an efficient and effective way of bringing expertise and nuance into the government’s sphere that otherwise wouldn’t be there.
Lobbying is not now, nor has it ever been, corruption. It is simply a form of communication.. i.e. speech. We have an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that protects that sort of thing.
The entertainment industry is allowed to lobby for their causes just like every other industry. It's fair, it's legal and it has worked pretty damn well for over 200 years in this country.
I frankly don't see how any of this will lead to shutting down user-generated-content based sites like YouTube. YouTube's parent (Google) has plenty of money and is just as capable of lobbying Congress as is anyone else.
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Girl, retard.... what's the difference? Once you're killing the unborn and don't have a problem with it, the reason why you do it shouldn't matter at all. If I don't get a blond-hair, blue-eyed boy, then it's the glue factory fot that horse.
Can't be, this 1% actually exists and works in concert for concrete goals.
You realize that all of Southern society was based on the hierarchical structure that was underpinned by slavery? There's a very good reason why there was never the amount class-based animosity in the South that should accompany a society with such an enormous disparity between rich and poor... a society with zero middle class. Slavery! Every white man - no matter how poor he was - knew he was still good enough to own another human being (whether he had the means to or not), and that he was far superior to any white woman. Everything about Confederate society was held together by slavery... whether you owned them or not. So, yes, even a non slave owning poor man was fighting for the right he had to own another human being if he had the means.
Robert E Lee turned traitor to his country to support a society based on slave labor that held people like him up as feudal lords. He is as despicable an American as has even lived, no matter how pleasant his mannerisms. Lincoln freed the slaves in the Confederate states and not the border states because he had to enact a decision that could not be shot down by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger Taney. This was the same pro-slave man that authored the Dred Scott decision. As states in rebellion, Lincoln could use his war powers to constitutionally free the slaves in Confederate states without fear of it being overturned. Had you ever read anything about Lincoln, you'd know that he was a practical, pragmatic politician before anything else.
I'd recommend Alan Guelzo's "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation"
Good lord, I see we have a Lost Cause adherent here. Try reading the records from the seccession conventions of any of the Southern states. How about Alexander Stevens' Cornerstone Speech? State's rights was a myth made up by ex-Confederates AFTER the war was over. Men like Jubal Early, P.G.T. Beauregard, Alexander Stevens and Jefferson Davis made it their duty after the war to totally obscure slavery's role what the confederacy stood for. Literally, hundreds of historians have destroyed the foolish notion of the war for state's rights. http://www.amazon.com/What-This-Cruel-War-Over/dp/0307277321/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334149324&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Race-Reunion-Civil-American-Memory/dp/0674008197/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334149363&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Causes-Won-Lost-Forgotten-Hollywood/dp/0807832065/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334149385&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Lost-Cause-Civil-History/dp/0253222664/ref=pd_sim_b_1 Any of these books will enlighten you.
I guess it's too much trouble to actually read Krugman - or even know the facts.
How do these facts work:
"Consider, for example, the prediction Krugman made the day Obama signed the original stimulus bill into law: “I am still guessing that we peak out at around 9% [unemployment] and that would be late this year [2009]." Furthermore, Krugman declared that double-digit unemployment was “not the most likely event.” As Norquist and Lott note, unemployment hit 10.1% and remained above 9% two years after Krugman predicted it would peak.
Once it became clear that President Obama’s stimulus plan had failed to ignite the economic recovery he promised, Krugman and others began scrambling for excuses to explain why Obama’s spending spree hadn’t worked. One explanation Krugman offered was that right-wingers had erroneously claimed government spending had increased when it hadn’t:
"So as I said, the big government expansion everyone talks about never happened....And federal aid to state and local governments wasn’t enough to make up for plunging tax receipts in the face of the economic slump....[T]here’s a widespread perception that government spending has surged, when it hasn’t—is that there has been a disinformation campaign from the right, based on the usual combination of fact-free assertions and cooked numbers."
As Norquist and Lott reveal, Krugman’s claims rely on a slippery game of sleight of hand; Krugman cherry-picks the only year when total government spending dropped, which was from 2009 to 2010, “and even then, it was still much higher than just a couple of years earlier.” In point of fact, note the authors, government spending has grown 12 percent since 2008 and 20 percent since 2007. "
But you can sit their in your smug, self-righteous libertarianism and keep pretending Krugman is a hack who hasn't consistently made very accurate predictions and the Nobel prize in economics is a fraud
Krugman has consitently failed to predict anything since he helped lead Enron into an abyss about 14 years ago. Almost eveything he espouses has been proven to be bunk in the wake of Greece, Spain and Portugal in Europe, and his claims of "not enough spending" on the failed Obama stimulus plans is the type of overly general crap that mean nothing. Typical Keynesian... "no matter how much we spend, it's never enough." Further, he has more than once taken obvious disengenuous positions about a true Nobel laureate, Milton Friedman. Seeing as how his sheep-like readership has never actually read Freidman, they'll never know.
A whole lot of garbage here. 16 million... that's 16 million Americans fought in WWII (U.S. population was 135 million at the time). You were able to take them out of the normal workforce and put them into a the military service. Every one of them that died or became disabled was one that didn't go back into the workforce when the war was done. Let's add on to this that U.S. was the only major industrial economy that didn't have their land turned into a pile of rubble by WWII. In the immediate post WWII era U.S. GDP was 25% of world-wide GDP! That is what saved the U.S. economy, not Keynesian pipe dreams. Unless, of course, you're saying that Keynesian policy is actually meant to foment the death of millions upon millions of people world wide so that the country who impleaments it is the only one left standing at the end. I think I'll take Milton Friedman's view of liberty and prosperity instead.
...and after Israel bombs them, they'll move the clock to midnight. They're so brilliant. Color me unimpressed.
Some good points, but you're forgetting the beneficially technological offshoots of the space program. If Kennedy hadn't pushed us to the Moon in the 1960s, we wouldn't have gotten the offshoot technologies that we did as soon as we did, Further, don't just pass off the PR benefits like they are nothing. Astronauts were childhood heroes to many people in the US, and the space program was a dream. That sort of national sentiment is important... if not quantifiable.
...as if the United States (or any other nation to first successfully colonize the moon) would pay one bit of attention to it. Now, if a successful colonization mission took the form of a joint venture, or even a corporate venture, issues of sovereignty will doubtlessly come to the fore. Frankly, I can't see one good reason that a nation that made it to the moon 40+ years ago cannot colonize it today.
Many millions of poor people around the world will be displaced, die of lack of nutrition/water and maybe we'll have wars over resources. How is that any different than today? I'm not poor and I don't live in a poor country. Why should I care? One need only look to Amsterdam to see how intelligent, resourceful people will handle any and all problems climate change will bring. Too bad, so sad, Africa.
I'd think a good place to start is to look at which party has funded science institutions historically. For instance, under George W. Bush, the budgets for the following went up significantly: National Institute of Health - tripled in fact; National Science Foundation; NASA (after it was reduced under Clinton). You may find this counterintuitive, but it’s true and on the record. Funding for science organizations has historically been higher under Republicans than Democrats. Neil Tyson (host of NOVA) explains this quite well. http://youtu.be/x7Q8UvJ1wvk
I'll bet most anyone can tell you who is winning the Republican horserace for NH based on polls, but I'd wager much more that almost no one could tell you anything about Mitt Romney's 59-point economic plan. This is not simply because Americans are dumb and lazy, it is a direct result of the garbage that is known as American media. Whether it is a sympathetic media outlet for Republicans like Fox News, a virulently opposed one like the NY Times, a neutral one like CNN, or a totally disinterested one like BBC America the media that serves the American people has made a collective decision that issues do not matter nearly so much as poll results. Horserace coverage makes for better ratings than in-depth analysis I guess.
Well, this stands to reason as both American political parties are descendents of European Liberalism as created by David Hume, John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith. Why should they represent ideals of Marxism that have no place in American history and represent no strain of the American experience?
If we need to choose between a billion dollars spent establishing a colony on a celestial body or spent on developing sustaining methods of producing food in impoverished nations, the production of food must take precedence.
I fail to see why the food needs of impoverished nations is more significant an issue for wealthy nations than the establishment of a permanent colony on another celestial body. The long-term viability of our species is far better served by expanding than trying to feed every child in the Sudan.
Why are you comparing a power plant to differing means of transportation? I would think it would be much better to compare nuke plants to coal plants, oil platforms, natural gas plants etc...
Do post hoc government reports ever not condemn agencies/corprations etc?
..it is (relatively speaking) incredibly easy to trasfer highly sensitve items to recipients that should never have them. Where there's a will (in this case profit motive) there's always a way.
Trading money for votes may be legal, but it is neither fair nor ethical. Stop being a shill.
No one has been identified as trading money for votes, and lobbying is clearly not such. Stop being deceitful and obtuse.
Well, it is all well and good to bring in so called "expertise and nuance" into government so that legislators can make informed decisions. So can I assume that you would be OK with eliminating campaign contributions from these so called experts? Because if not, what you wrote is a bunch of BS and just a convenient excuse for buying off politicians.
That is certainly an option (not one I would choose, but a resonable option nonetheless), but then you have eliminate all campaign contributions from all groups/people/PACs/etc... If you're going to go fascist and depreive one group of their freedom of speech, then you have to deprive them all.
Individual natural persons have rights. Corporations are legal constructs, which means that the concept of corporations having rights makes no sense.
I would refer you to Dartmouth College v. Woodward 1819. The U.S. was built on corporations having rights. It's one of several factors that made us the most powerful nation in history.
Just because it is technically legal doesn't mean it isn't corrupt. There is such a thing as rigging the system to legally profit from selling influence. That is pretty much what lobbying has become. Sure, if we all had the same amount of money to throw around at politicians maybe it would work for everyone. But since a very small percentage of US citizens hold most of the money, that influence is unevenly distributed.
This assumes, incorrectly, that all lobbyists are of the same opinion and work on the same side of the isle. Other than unions (which donate over 95% of their funds to the DNC), political lobbies have a fairly even distribution of funds across political isles. In the case of this issue, you have huge corporations with vast sums of money working on both sides of the issue. There is no corruption inherent in this process as you seem to imply.
No, corruption is when you can determine that definite “pay to play” or vote buying has happened. That is nothing at all like lobbying. The entertainment industry has every right to convince people of their opinion and support those candidates that support their causes. What you’re advocating for seems to be some archaic form of government where no expert opinions can be brought to bear on politicians. Are you actually espousing that congressional representatives already have some innate expertise on every issue that would preclude their being informed by expert lobbyists? By that logic, I can simply go outside of my house and feel what the weather is like to get a bearing for my opinion of climate change. Why should I, or any representative, fall into the trap of listening to highly trained climate scientists who use government funds and promote a message that requires more and more government funds be funneled their way? Lobbying is an efficient and effective way of bringing expertise and nuance into the government’s sphere that otherwise wouldn’t be there.
Lobbying is not now, nor has it ever been, corruption. It is simply a form of communication.. i.e. speech. We have an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that protects that sort of thing.
The entertainment industry is allowed to lobby for their causes just like every other industry. It's fair, it's legal and it has worked pretty damn well for over 200 years in this country. I frankly don't see how any of this will lead to shutting down user-generated-content based sites like YouTube. YouTube's parent (Google) has plenty of money and is just as capable of lobbying Congress as is anyone else.