"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action." Frank Herbert
your agenda is showing... you'll need to work harder to make that less obvious. Just fyi, paaal.:D
A socialist saying the solution to all problems is more socialism. Fucking shocking.
Solution to a problem with a general break down in inner city minority ghettos?... National healthcare for everyone.
Of course.
You're a clown. And an evil one at that because your agenda uses the suffering and misery of people but you don't actually care about them. You're a fucking parasite that feeds on the misfortune and despair of those around you.
You love it. Everyone is a victim. And the solution to everyone's problems is to give you more power. What could possibly go wrong with this little idea?
I mean, if all you want is round the clock blowjobs and cushy make work jobs for you to pretend you do anything useful while oppressing the rest of society... then sure. Mission Accomplished. But if you actually want to help anyone, then you'll focus on the problem and talk about the problem and try to address the problem.
Socializing the healthcare of cattle ranchers in South Dakota helps this situation how?
You say you just do that because you need the money? Why not just have the cities levy the tax sport. Its in their territory that all this is happening in the first place.
The Suburbs and Rural areaas don't have these issues at all. At all.
So tell you what... levy your tax there. Let new york put a 10 ten percent income tax on everyone that lives there and bingo. There's your money.
sure people might leave the city... but think of it this way... now you don't have all those congestion problems and you can start moving those people into nicer housing. Who knows... property values might fall which would be a good thing.
Short of any kind of focused response to a concentrated problem... your solutions smack of exploiting a problem to push a preexisting agenda.
I don't think you care about the poor. I don't think you care about minorities. I think you find them useful to use as a bludgeon against your rivals. And that hurts no one more than the people you presume to help. Because the last thing they're going to get with you doing that is effective attention. Anything directed at them will be misdirected and stolen by people like you to serve your desires.
Where did we use it recently to intervene for our own interests? Tell me more... I'd love to hear your ignorant babble on the issue.:)
As to Israel's powerful military... that relates to the weapons we both give, sell, and sell at a deep discount to them.
As to Ukraine, the only thing holding Russia back at this point is the US. Putin goes far enough to get something but no so far that the US will send troops.
Remove the US from the equation and the amount he can take before he gets a response increases to what it would take for France to go to war with Russia.
How much of Eastern Europe would have to fall before France got involved?
Exactly. You are on ignorant little monkey.
As to starting wars... which war do you think we started? Lay a few at our feet. I'm curious where you think the US started out as the aggressor. the only example I can think of off the top of my head in modern memory would be the second Iraq war and that only happened because of worries about nuclear containment.
Which is an issue so serious that it is baffling you people are ignorant of it.
As to what we should do... we're not your slaves. Tell you what... why don't we just leave... pull out EVERYWHERE. Leave NATO... Leave Israel to fend for themselves. Leave china to do whatever it wants. Just go home and let you morons eat each other.
Do you realize my nation is bordered on two sides by great oceans and all our American cousin nations are either harmless or friendly? We can pull back to our island and watch you idiots burn.
*gets extra big bucket of popcorn with extra butter*:-D
My grand father's generation went to war out of a sense of fear, horror, and rage.
My father's generation went to war out of a sense of honor, duty, and obligation.
My generation grew up listening to you ingrates and frankly we're increasingly happy to just go home and masturbate to the carnage on tv.
We're pushing Japan to rearm so they can take over. We're pushing for the middle east to take care of its own security situation. We're trying to get the eastern europeans ready to face off against the Russians man to man because god knows the western europeans are eunuchs.
And once that is in place... We're going bounce. You morons think we want to be the world police? You think we like this? We hate it.
Our grandfathers went in because they saw that left to their own devices the europeans would destroy themselves and were incompetent to take care of their strategic affairs.
Our fathers went in because we felt at the time that if we didn't do it than the world would fall to the soviets and that would be our fault as much as theirs.
My generation is tired of this... we're done with you. You hate us? Fine. Have fun with the various psychopaths of the world. And expect that without the US making military buildups pointless... powers you thought of as harmless will quickly have militaries that you can't handle.
Europe couldn't even handle Serbia by itself during the Kosovo war. Do you even begin to realize how pathetic that is? And more recently the combined forces of NATO without the US couldn't handle Libya.
I agree we spend too much and get too little. But unlike you, Davey my boy, I don't just take the average figure and lower it to some arbitrary goal like a complete and TOTAL fucktard. Instead, I want to go through the components of that cost and figure out WHY it costs more.
So apparently we pay our doctors TWICE what they're paid in England. I found that fairly easily.
I also talked about how there isn't cost transparency at hospitals or really any quality rankings of them.
how can a market operate if you don't know what a good or service costs and can't evaulate the quality?
I talked about how US drugs are more expensive than foreign drugs... basically arbitarily. And that is something we should look at... possibly getting US drug manufacturers to produce more. One idea I like is forbiding drug inventors to make the drugs themselves or to give exclusive licenses to anyone.
So if Drug company X comes up with a drug... they profit entirely by selling the license to manufacture the drug. Thus if there is high demand... any company can step in and produce the drug. This would likely control cost inflation better.
Another thing that needs to stop is that doctors of all kinds need to not get a kickback for proscribing drugs.
that is, if I proscribe a 1000 dollar a pill drug... I shouldn't get anything more than if I proscribed you NOTHING.
The prescription system also needs to be reformed to permit longer term proscriptions. If an old guy is on heart meds why is he going to the doctor four times a year to get his prescriptions renewed? That's dumb. At the very least give him a life time prescription.
You're not half as clever as you think you are Davey... and I'm not half as dumb. *wink*
Davey Davey Davey... what is up with all these unqualified posts here? You know when you do that it is impossible to prove you wrong... and also impossible for you to right... right?
You say these things... no basis... logically aduittable argument... no basis of information... just... insults.
one would think you were afraid of me, Davey? Think you'll get eaten alive so you'll just make non-falsifiable arguments that can't actually be disproven?
Davey... come on... You can be better than that. Don't post like one of the AC trolls. We're better than that, no?
Try again.
As to being full of myself... its true sadly... its very depressing... it comes from being surrounded by morons... I'm not a genius myself... but all things are relative. Its a little like that guy "not sure" in idiocracy. A genius... no... but he knew that you don't water plants with energy drinks.
I also love myself some starbucks... because they give handjobs.
And in some cases they're not even included in your statistics. Some countries don't count their slums at all. No stats even attempted. Murder rate, literacy rate, infant mortality... not recorded.
I don't know if anyone in europe does that but it is quite common in south america to not count problem areas at all.
Regardless... you have to concede that the problem is not general but is a result of averaging highly concentrated problem areas into general statistics.
Conflating those stats with the whole country is one of the reasons things never change. How can you fix a problem if you don't even admit what the problem is in the first place?
As to someone else's problem... I said nothing of the kind. I merely said that if you actually care, then you'll focus your efforts on where the problem is instead of wasting your time and energy reforming portions of the country that don't actually have a problem in the first place.
As to you bringing up the carrying for the baby thing... you have not connected it to my argument or used the reference to undermine my position. You're just saying things and then assuming the spaghetti to stick.
So we'll bypass that until you actually make a competent use of the reference.
As to women having sex with men leading to children... this is valid in a pre birth control environment which is relevant to our genetics because our genetics have not adapted to birth control. If they had, we wouldn't find causal sex as interesting because it isn't baby making sex anymore.
If we have birth control for long enough it will change the way human sexuality works. Sexual attraction is related to reproduction. If simply squirting semen into her vagina doesn't give you a chance at off spring then additional conditions will be added into human behavior by evolution. Those that successfully breed will pass on their tendencies and natures to their offspring. Over time that transference will become more complex and powerful. If we deal with birth control for 100 generations for example... that is going to have an influence on our genetics.
As to white feathers... ah, that was what you were referring to... example the same thing can be found in islamic culture, japanese culture, Polynesian culture, etc.
Giving soldiers brides, denying people that do not fight access to women, giving soldiers honors, denying people that do not fight honor... this is very common in human cultures. And it allows the government effectively to influence if not directly control who gets to breed and who does not based on their obedience and service to the state. Do women not love a man in uniform? Notice any single war heroes?
... as to breeding rights... Lets say a man makes something for his society and his society rewards him with a billion dollars... will this increase or decrease his breeding options?
If a man is a war hero... does that increase or decrease his breeding options?
If a man is a master at some skill... a musician or a painter or something... increase or decrease?
Now lets say someone is just as intelligent, brave, and skilled... but they use their skills to damage the society. Does this help or harm his breeding options?
you need to think like evolution for a moment. Step out side of your little monkey box and try to think in terms of the gods that made us what we are. Mother nature is a cruel mysterious cunt. If you want to understand her, then you're going to have to think like her for a moment. If you can't then you can't see it. The sail boat will be invisible to you...
No, I said they're not a better analogue. And really I have a hard time thinking of much those primates do that is relevant to humanity.
Frankly you're just clouding the issue. I wasn't talking about chimps or bonobos.
if you bring them up again, I'll ignore the argument entirely on the assumption that you're arguing in bad faith.
Let me pull that back a bit. You can make an argument about them if you like. But you don't get to say that my argument relied on that association. You do that and its strawmanning and I WILL either ignore or casually reject it and move on.
Address MY argument. Not the argument you WISH I had made instead.
No, I assume it costs about as much to make a space suit LOOK new.
Are you replacing all the things in the suit that have undergone chemical changes over the years that will ensure that hte suit is not safe to take pressure again?
No you're not.
So when you say "restore" you mean you're making it look good. You're cleaning it, you're filling in the cracks in the dried rubber, and you're blowing some new car smell into it.
What else could you possibly do? First off, large portions of the suit are chemically stable. The helmet, the visor, the back pack, the various metal fittings... I mean that stuff is likely good as new or could be made so for a song. What has gone the way of the mummies is the flexible bits. And that's mostly old nylon and rubber.
Nylon might have been a space age material in the 60s but in 2014 its quite passe. We have it everywhere and its not hardly anything mysterious to us.
I shopped around for someone that was selling whole new museme quality replicas of the suit and they were quoting about 10 grand for the whole thing. Functional?... no... able to take pressure? I wouldn't chance it. But the damn thing looks as good as anything you're going to have when all is said and done.
What is your restoration accomplishing?
Now I cited the oil painting thing because i wanted to show what detailed restoration of something very complex would cost. That is someone sitting there and billing you by the square inch for cleaning a very sensitive delicate surface.
I then inflated their costs by a factor of FIVE. The cost of the oil painting was about 34 thousand if the suit were an oil painting. They said it was about 500 dollars per 80 square inches. I inflated that to 2500 per 80 square inches just to make it clear that even if it is harder per INCH to restore old rubber and nylon than it is to restore an oil painting... the costs still don't add up.
As to no one knowing how to restore nylon and rubber... The textiles industry actually knows how to do the nylon very well... and rubber has been restored by people for over a century.
WHat other mysterious materials are you using in this suit? Unobtainium?
Cite the material. do I need to do all the research? Apparently I am the only one that know how to use a search engine. You people all too busy tell me how much you know to actually do any kind of research.
woven fiberglass coated in Teflon... I grant that's pretty unusual. I'd grant no one knows how to restore that given that apparently the stuff naturally tears itself apart unless the individual fibers are coated in the same stuff that keeps my eggs from sticking to the pan. that is besides the butter. Eggs.:)
... did you ignore the bit where I took that number... inflated it by a factor of 10... and it still didn't add up?
Are you saying the photos will cost 80 grand? because even at eighty grand we're barely to half the money being asked for here. And that was with me inflating the cost of the suit restoration by a factor of five assuming it was as hard to make LOOK good as an oil painting. If it were an oil painting... the entire surface area of the suit... inside and out cost about of fifth of the 173 thousand I cited for restoration assuming some comparability with oil painting restoration.
And while you might not find that comparable... how can the suit be harder to restore than a fucking oil painting? We're not talking about making it take pressure again though even that wouldn't cost that much. I shopped around for what the actual suit costs... that is the skin... and replacing that apparently is around 10 grand.
Same materials... same look... brand new.
The numbers don't add up, darling. Maybe I'm a penny pinching spoilsport... but then you're a credulous spend thrift.
I'm not fighting the foot of the elephant. That fucking animal sets its foot in an argument and I'm going for its eyes. I refuse to be predictable and I refuse to be contained. I will look at an argument I find specious... the entire thing... and I'll find the weak part of it and dig my sharp teeth into it and wrench my head backwards and forwards to slice off a chunk... swallow that and come back for more.
that is how you eat an elephant isn't it? One bite at a time.:)
As to the ACA being sabotaged... by its authors. Don't be a typical liberal and refuse to take responsibility for your own fuck ups. It is degenerate behavior. I'll accept responsibility for fuck ups by politicians I vote for... you be a dove and do the same. Otherwise we're talking fantasy where neither politician we back ever makes a mistake and its always the opposition's fault.
Do you want that? Dragons and unicorns? Because I can shift to that quite easily. I have zero patience for double standards. You want me to hold to a standard of ethics and honesty while you play fucking games with me? Not going to happen. You play... I play. And I'm good at the game... so good luck.
*pulls out the war paint*
You tell me... should I put it on and see which of us can slit the other's throat by starlight?
Fight in the Sun... with integrity.
The ACA failed because the people pushing it wanted the system to fail INTO a single payer system. The architect of it was on record admitting that ages before the stupid thing even was passed. And it was such a scandal that your slimy lot said you didn't know the man or that he was a minor player even though just a month previously you were openly praising him for being such a huge help.
Don't try to gaslight me. I have a very clear memory of what happened.
Most of the mandatory spending in that category is going to education subsidies.
So you want to cut those are did you accidentally blow your leg off by stepping on another rhetorical land mine?
Its a rhetorical question of course... you have no legs now. Adorable.
While there is pork spending in EVERY budget category it is important to remember that every segment of the budget is an umbrella of a lot of things. And just indiscriminately cutting anything is going to involve drownding a lot of kittens. Anyone that touches these things tends to be branded a bad bad man. Every time the republicans try to cut the budget... that is their general solution to budget problems... they're labeled monsters. The democrats like to address these issues with tax increases... You tell me which one you prefer...
Just know that you're either going to be labeled a monster that wants to hurt children a spendthrift. You tell me.
fellow said all the doctors go into private practice once they cut their teeth in the business. That implies a private sector medical business that as roughly the same size as the public one.
I asked why people go to the private doctors.
As to assumptions... you're the one assuming. I didn't say the english doctors were worse. You simply didn't know what to say to arguments and so tried to strawman me into an argument you feel you can fight. Why would I help you do that? Dishonest fucks can fuck themselves... no?
So why don't you ask me why I said something I actually said, ehm chump?
Your reasons for doubt are little more than your own belief that you KNOW me through a few internet posts. Forgive me if your opinions as to my nature are... dubious at best.
As to old welfare programs dating back to FDR... yes... most acknowledge old FDR make the depression deeper and longer.
Did you know we had an economic crash before the great crash... and that crash was just as bad but wasn't followed by a depression?
Do you know what the solution of the sitting president of the day was? I'll have you look that up. But you can of course guess it wasn't FDR's idea.
Some ideas have a track record of working and others have a track record of turning everything to shit.
The fact that you regard my belief that we should abandon policies with a proven track record of destruction and dysfunction doesn't undermine me but you. *wink*
As to congress sending their children to private schools... of course... Both parties do that. Because while someone seems to think the dirty unwashed masses shouldn't have choices they are damn well going to make sure they have choices.
You think this undermines me? You're giving evidence in my defense.
As to blaming the local school boards... etc... sure. Blame the whole thing. Why would you think a slash and burn policy would be antithetical to my position? I would go through the system and systematically sever all interconnections between the institutions so they couldn't put pressure on each other. Then I'd compartmentalize funding so that if a student leaves a school that school loses money.
Then I'd see that anyone could set up a school anywhere in the US and accept students there and collect the assigned vouchers. And before you say "what about standards etc"... by all means... make the teachers and the little voucher schools go through some sort of certification program. Test them using standardized methods or whatever else you like.
Test them to destruction if you want. Just apply the same tests to the establishment schools as well. I'd be very surprised if the establishment schools could jump through all those hoops on a limited budget any better than the voucher schools. And that will keep the whole thing honest. The blind lady's blade has to swing which ever way the scales tip. Guarantee that, and you can set whatever standards you like.
As to common core... My issue with that is less that there are national education standards than that the government were so specific about it. The precise method and theory of the education should not be specified. Let different schools teach differently. Your method might be better than some but there has to be something better still and how will you ever empirically find it if you don't let people try.
There are quite a few specialty schools that have learned some interesting things. There is an all boys private school for example that weighed in on some of the problems other schools were having educating boys. Were you aware of any of that? Doubt it. That sort of thing is happening all the time. Its ignored. Anything that doesn't service the narrative that supports the establishment gets memory holed. Imagine what that could do for the inner city students... mostly boys that are failing so horribly. Maybe shifting to the strategies this other school figured out would address the problem to some extent. You'll never know. No one is even allowed to try. Schools with 60 percent drop out rates and they can do nothing but suffer.
As to scandals with vouchers... a wash, dear one... the scandals in the existing system are legion. For every official incidence of fraud you can find with the vouchers you can find frauds so common and systemic that no one even talks about them anymore. They're like the inner city murder rates... they don't even make the newspapers most of the time. Bodies left to rot on the street every day. EVERY DAY. And where is that reported? It isn't because it isn't news. It's boring. And that's where the scandals in the establishment education system reside. They're trite. Its like saying the sun rose in the east and set in the west. Not worth mentioning.
As to no one wanting to fix the areas in the concentrated areas, that's not true. I do. Lots of other people do as well.
One of the first things you'd have to admit though is that business as usual ain't working. You can't just blame the political opposition either. Most of these places have had the party bigger and bigger subsidies and welfare programs for a generation.
That riot in Phili... Hard to blame the political opposition or some evil alien race. It was all in house and the tired old victim narrative doesn't wash.
IF people actually care. IF they actually want to make a difference. IF they want anything to change... then we need to change the way we're dealing with this issue. Because doubling down on failed programs is at best foolish and at worst the sacrifice of the futures of millions Americans for little more than short term political and monetary advantage. And that is monstrous.
You say "no one" cares... plenty of people care. Anyone that stands up and confronts this is ripped apart by the political machine.
Black families in DC petitioned for a school voucher system to bypass failed schools in DC that damn minority families in the inner city to substandard education.
Who shut that down? The black families didn't. They were very unhappy when the project was killed.
The Teacher's Unions killed it. And they killed it because vouchers have the ability to kill failed schools by letting families vote with their feet out of them.
And thus they demanded the voucher program be killed and their political allies obliged them in return for votes and campaign contributions in the future.
Which shows you exactly how much those people care about inner city families. Aka... less than they care about the sliver of union dues that goes to their campaigns and the reliable votes they get on election day so long as they shield the unions from any standards or accountability.
As to the JSF, yeah... that was actually an attempt to save money. back fired horribly.
As to the rest of the skunkworks... no... they do good work when they're not asked to build stupid shit. It isn't really their fault. I don't know how the project got so screwed up... it was sort of like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
As to the intel agencies... sure... so long as no one else spies or lies we don't need to have spy agencies.
Tell me when you've verified that and we'll terminate them.
what's your problem with the palidin... besides basically wanting the US to go to war with unsharpened sticks?
I don't get the problem with the Osprey either. It was expensive but it was also highly innovative.
As to the illegal domestic propaganda operations... no problem, make it illegal for politicians especially the white house to do that and you're solid.
If the white house can do it and the president is the commander of the military... then they can do that. There's your poison pill. Swallow it. You can't forbid the president to engage in that stuff only when he's pushing a pro war position but let him do it in any other circomstance. So you either cut off the president's ability to push propaganda which includes all the propaganda the government pushes for a host of programs you probably love... or your position is legally and ethically contradictory, hypocritical, and legally unsound.
Learn from your court failures and don't push legislation that contradicts itself.
As to free weapons for Israel... so you're cool with the jews getting genocided. I just want your signature on that death warrant... right here... and initial here.
As to Saudi arabia... who cares what the saudis have they don't do anything with it.
as to various other places, those deals are largely made for political and diplomatic influence. And they don't do anything with the hardware so I don't really care.
As to guarding pipelines... where do we do that outside of Iraq and Kuwait? And we only did that to stop saddam from blowing the shit up and ruining the local economy. You'd have us destroy Iraq's primary means of supporting itself? Why would we do that?
As to mercs... the companies have a right to protect themselves. If I think Americans have a right to arm themselves here then why would I tell a corp that it can't arm itself in the middle of a war zone? Your positions are largely irrational screes.
As to no bid contracts... I generally agree with you here. I can understand why a no bid contract would make sense in some cases. But it is over used. If I need something to be very reliable for example then i can understand them going for a no bid contract with a known quantity. If they're getting something sketchy then the contract should be bid out.
As to this idea about having our soldiers intentionally left vulnerable... Absolutely not. Put yourself in the place of that soldier. Would you want your country to send you to war with bullshit that was intentionally bullshit or would you like them to send to war with the best equipment they could come up with and afford?
I'll tell you what. *hands fellow box of rat poison*
You eat that and when you're dead we'll continue this conversation where you casually throw away lives to make a point.
You want to make a point by killing people. Kill yourself first.
As to the spanish option... I think most people don't realize it is an option. If they did, they'd do that. You already have people crossing the border a lot for medical care. Both ways. Houston of all places has a massive medical center that is largely that size because there are a lot of medical tourists that fly to the US from south america for medical treatment. Not hte poor south americans... the ones that can pay cash. They also get a lot of middle easterners there as well. They'll fly from saudi arabia to get a medical procedure and then leave.
Americans go south to mexico mostly for drugs... not just the recreational kind. The prescription kind as well. I think there was a similar thing going with people traveling to canada for that as well.
Anyway, the point is that if more Americans were made aware of that, they'd likely make those trips with more frequency.
Anyway, this discussion isn't going to be productive if your view on the whole matter is this narrow. You're not considering that people would very happily make these trips as is... they just don't realize it is a possibility.
The insurance companies should really encourage it. Some person needs a really expensive operation... insurance company says "if you get the operation in spain, we'll fly you out there, book an all expenses paid hotel for another family member, etc etc."
The people that use the most medical care are old people in any case. And they're perfect candidates to send on holiday for treatment.
The problem with insurance companies in the US is that they just PAY. They negotiate with the hospitals a little but the way insurance companies work is that when a claim is filed... they pay. They don't dick around or fight claims unless it is ridiculous. They just pay. And that means the hospitals can charge basically whatever they want and the insurance companies will just pass that on to the consumer in premiums.
It isn't the insurance companies jacking up costs. Its the hospitals. Its one of the reasons it is so sad to see private practices closing down because of the paper work generated by the ACA. The private practices are the cheapest medical options for most Americans. You private doctor gives you the treatment without all the overhead costs.
Just because you're gullible, it doesn't mean the price isn't extortionate.
As to restoration, I cited the cost of restoring an oil painting with the same surface area as that suit... and then multiplied that number by 5. Explain why restoring the LOOK of an old space suit is more expensive than that when you have original company that built the suit and that still builds space suits helping you?
I mean, are they saying they're going to restore it so it can take pressure again? Get real. they're just making it "look" new.
Which means what? Clean it... fill in the cracks in the plastic, rub some oils into it to keep all the bendy bits flexible, and then maybe splash some new paint on it.
Done.
What could possibly complicate that situation?
All they're going to do when they're done with all that is cram a dummy into the suit and stick it in a climate controlled exhibit. The Russians have more to worry about keeping Comrade Lenin looking pink and pretty and I really doubt they're dropping half a mill on that amusing cadaver.
As to repairing a building... the suit is quite a bit smaller... the skills and craftsmanship that went into the first suit is not lost and does not need to be relearned.... we still have all the original materials... And the suit doesn't have to be structurally sound. It doesn't have to take pressure for example. It just has to look okay.
Your house example is bigger, the craftsmanship that went into the house is often lost or uncommon requiring the hiring of specialists, and the house actually has to be structurally sound... aka not fall over and kill people.
This suit when NASA is done... would you feel safe climbing into it and having all the air sucked out from around it? I wouldn't. The fucking thing would almost certainly leak. Those suits undergo chemical changes over the years. Rubber at manufacture is not the same rubber after sitting on a shelf for decades. And you can't restore it. You have to replace it. And they're not going to replace it because then it might as well be a replica. The original means you've got the original rubber in there. And the original rubber after all these year is not safe.
I should point out that a museum quality replica of the suit sells for about 10 grand. I don't think it is functional either but it gives you an idea of what a suit that looks like the original suit costs. The company I was looking at made these suits custom for museums.
1. I don't believe that it is impossible to find equal or superior care for those sorts of injuries outside the VA.
2. All you're saying here is that the military budget got cut and there were consequences people didn't anticipate. I agree. What is more, why don't you think the same thing would happen if we nationalized healthcare. Government cuts spending... and boom.
3. As to medical research, it would be more accurate to say that funding for research through the universities is appropriated through the VA budget.
As to segregation... Was New York city or Detroit segregated?
Yes you have a point or no you don't have a point?
As to slaves... Chinese immigrants to the US didn't start off as much better than slaves and yet they never had these problems.
I'm sorry, your narrative is reductive. You need to be more deductive.
Solve the mystery. Don't just think like creationists, start with your conclusion, and then look for evidence to support your preconcieved ideas of things. Stop and actually look at what happened.
As to slavery, even if I completely agreed that blacks were dropping out of high school in the 21st century because of slavery in the 1860s... that would still suggest the statistics should be broken down to account for that. Simply conflating everything into a single number and comparing it against other countries is not reasonable.
All the US stats are terrible in the inner city. Just awful. But the stats in pretty much any other part of the country and the country generally excluding the inner cities is quite good. Our testing scores are good. Our economic figures are between okay and excellent. Our health figures are comparable to anywhere else in the first world or better.
But those inner city stats are so fucking bad that they pull the national averages down. And that's fine. They're americans and we nee to see that those communities are helped. But be that as it may, you can't conflate those cases into the national averages without making clear what is going on.
I keep seeing suggestions that if the US only did X our numbers would pop up. And the X never addresses that the problem is highly concentrated and specific to certain areas. And that the rest of the nation is actually doing quite fine thank you very much.
Actually there is no such thing as a defense budget in the 21st century. You defend yourself with offensive power. The US doesn't build armor around the US and neither does any other credible military power. You defend yourself by having forces that can engage enemy forces near your territory... and ideally preempt them and strike them in their own lands.
As to attacking countries left and right... no we don't. We're pretty selective about it and there tends to reasons for it that seem good to us at the time. Much of the reason people like you don't understand that is that the education in such matters is generally very poor and the US serves as a convenient scapegoat for a lot of things because we don't take retribution for being blamed.
Blame other countries and they get really upset and will find ways to hurt you. Blame the US and we generally ignore it.
Its why every shit hole dictator blames the shittiness of the country on the US. Why does the dictator rape and murder everyone? Because the US.
And the fact that the Europeans have started puppeting that is frankly more of an insult against to their intelligence than anything. They should really be ashamed of themselves. That said, many europeans don't think that way. I have a lot of euro friends and they take some pains to distance themselves from the drug addled college students that know just enough to say some surprisingly stupid things but not enough to realize how stupid they are yet.
As you can see, the US is rated number 9 in the world. Not even in the top five. What you should know is that countries ranked highly on this list all have to take care of themselves. With no relevant exceptions, if the shit hits the fan... no one is coming to save any of these countries... they're on their own. And their spending reflects that.
You can't include first world countries in that ranking either except for the US because the US has treaty obligations to defend all first world countries. So naturally other first world countries spend less because we are obligated to protect them.
Its like would you build a pool in your backyard if your next door neighbor said you could use his anytime you wanted? Assuming that worked for you, then you'd just use his pool. Which is exactly what most first world countries do.
The only exception on the list might be Israel. The rest of the first world powers shamelessly mooch off the US.
Remember the recent Libya war. The French were much more gung ho about it than we were. We tried to stay out of it. But the europeans committed to it... and then they realized "oh wait, we don't have the logistics to support a military campaign even as close as north africa"... and that meant the US had to come to offer carriers, inflight refueling airplanes, and if we're doing all that we might as well just blow the shit out of Gadaffi's bullshit and end the whole farce as quickly as possible. The alternative was watching the Italians and French play with themselves.
Without the US, the combined forces of Europe could not take on so much as Serbia. Remember the Kosovo war? The combined forces of Europe could not breach Serbian airspace. Why? Because they had some old soviet AA missiles and the Serbs are tough fucking fighters. You want to defeat them... you need to do more than send strongly worded letters to them. And that required the US.
So what do you want here? You want the US to be as useless as the Europeans?
I mean... are you fucking kidding me? Fucking broomsticks. Let me tell you, in some shit hole third world country they'd not show up to training with fucking broomsticks. But in Germany in the 21st century... this is what we have to work with. And you suggest the US spend like them?
As to the world being different. Yes... it is different because it was changed. You're welcome.
Okay, as to why the US doesn't charge for the protection, the reasons were very much nested in the post WW2 world. We had just fought the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese. And then after the war, we were dealing with the Soviets that tried to exploit Europe being in ruins to basically make a huge land grab. And not only did Stalin do that but he tried to claim all sorts of stuff that he wasn't even close to and basically promised to convert the whole world to communism. And not the friendly academic pot head communism of "you know man, people should just like be awesome to each other"... but the USSR's version of communism.
Really there was nothing that could stop the soviets from expanding except the US. The british empire was trashed. The Germans were trashed. The Japanese were trashed. The world belonged to comrade Stalin and all that had to happen was the US do nothing.
Well, we came out of WW2 feeling like the mistake of WW1 was that the US isolated itself and didn't keep a hand in european affairs. That was just what we felt. So this was all to explain that we were going to do something.
As to why we didn't charge for it, the short answer is that we'd be paying ourselves if we charged anything at all. We were making big loans and gifts basically to the european countries at that time under the Marshall plan to rebuild Europe. And if we charged for the defense, they'd just take money out of that and send it back to us. What was the point.
So we gave it away for free on the notion that it would accelerate European recovery and that would over time net us trading partners that were worth a damn and they would be able to hold their own territory without us holding their hands.
Our policies since then have run very much on inertia. Arguments for why we do it today can be made but they're mostly reductive. It all boils down to "we do it this way because we do it this way." And we did it that way for the reason that the Europeans in particular could not pay at the time.
As to billing countries for passage... part of the problem there would be that it bore little difference from what was going on before. The north African pirates for example that we had to deal with shortly after the American revolution were prepared to allow US shipping through the Mediterranean in exchange for tribute. Pay the tribute and your shipping goes free through their zone of influence. Don't pay and they attack your shipping.
The British Empire's method of controlling things was to have monopolies. They dominated certain types of trade and forbid anyone from competing with them. And by exploiting that monopoly the naval operations were paid for effectively.
it wasn't as obvious as the tribute demanded by the Barbary pirates but it was there.
The US doesn't take a dime. If anything we get political clout from it. Which is sometimes worth a lot. We get free access to things, people consult us as to our opinions, and we can shut things down just by saying we don't like it. That is something that is bought with the US security apparatus. Absent that influence the US would be a less diplomatically relevant nation.
France says they like or don't like something... who gives a flying fuck... the US says they don't like it and it means something.
As to market distortions, you'd need to link that to US military activities which I don't think you can do. I think you're conflating a laundry list of things you don't like with US military spending. It does not appear to be a valid association. How does corporate profits or off shoring relate to US military spending? Many nations in Europe have off shoring and yet they have relatively insignificant militaries. You'd need to talk about something unique to the US since we uniquely have this power.
If you cite stuff that everyone does than it actually supports my position that we don't hoard the wealth for ourselves but rather share it arou
Well this is one of the charts I found with salaries and they all sort of agree with each other on pay scales: http://www.empire-locums.co.uk...
What is more, you're saying doctors go private. Why do people use private doctors in the UK if the public ones are provided at no additional cost. I mean if you go private you're basically paying twice. You paid once in your taxes and now you're paying again upfront.
Why do that?
Is it is quality? Are the private doctors better? Is it availability? The public doctors are all busy so you either have to wait until you die or see a private doctor?
Slashdot Mirror
"I find it amusing that you are so sure that the US system"
This was your strawman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action."
Frank Herbert
your agenda is showing... you'll need to work harder to make that less obvious. Just fyi, paaal. :D
A socialist saying the solution to all problems is more socialism. Fucking shocking.
Solution to a problem with a general break down in inner city minority ghettos?... National healthcare for everyone.
Of course.
You're a clown. And an evil one at that because your agenda uses the suffering and misery of people but you don't actually care about them. You're a fucking parasite that feeds on the misfortune and despair of those around you.
You love it. Everyone is a victim. And the solution to everyone's problems is to give you more power. What could possibly go wrong with this little idea?
I mean, if all you want is round the clock blowjobs and cushy make work jobs for you to pretend you do anything useful while oppressing the rest of society... then sure. Mission Accomplished. But if you actually want to help anyone, then you'll focus on the problem and talk about the problem and try to address the problem.
Socializing the healthcare of cattle ranchers in South Dakota helps this situation how?
You say you just do that because you need the money? Why not just have the cities levy the tax sport. Its in their territory that all this is happening in the first place.
The Suburbs and Rural areaas don't have these issues at all. At all.
So tell you what... levy your tax there. Let new york put a 10 ten percent income tax on everyone that lives there and bingo. There's your money.
sure people might leave the city... but think of it this way... now you don't have all those congestion problems and you can start moving those people into nicer housing. Who knows... property values might fall which would be a good thing.
Short of any kind of focused response to a concentrated problem... your solutions smack of exploiting a problem to push a preexisting agenda.
I don't think you care about the poor. I don't think you care about minorities. I think you find them useful to use as a bludgeon against your rivals. And that hurts no one more than the people you presume to help. Because the last thing they're going to get with you doing that is effective attention. Anything directed at them will be misdirected and stolen by people like you to serve your desires.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Where did we use it recently to intervene for our own interests? Tell me more... I'd love to hear your ignorant babble on the issue. :)
As to Israel's powerful military... that relates to the weapons we both give, sell, and sell at a deep discount to them.
As to Ukraine, the only thing holding Russia back at this point is the US. Putin goes far enough to get something but no so far that the US will send troops.
Remove the US from the equation and the amount he can take before he gets a response increases to what it would take for France to go to war with Russia.
How much of Eastern Europe would have to fall before France got involved?
Exactly. You are on ignorant little monkey.
As to starting wars... which war do you think we started? Lay a few at our feet. I'm curious where you think the US started out as the aggressor. the only example I can think of off the top of my head in modern memory would be the second Iraq war and that only happened because of worries about nuclear containment.
Which is an issue so serious that it is baffling you people are ignorant of it.
As to what we should do... we're not your slaves. Tell you what... why don't we just leave... pull out EVERYWHERE. Leave NATO... Leave Israel to fend for themselves. Leave china to do whatever it wants. Just go home and let you morons eat each other.
Do you realize my nation is bordered on two sides by great oceans and all our American cousin nations are either harmless or friendly? We can pull back to our island and watch you idiots burn.
*gets extra big bucket of popcorn with extra butter* :-D
My grand father's generation went to war out of a sense of fear, horror, and rage.
My father's generation went to war out of a sense of honor, duty, and obligation.
My generation grew up listening to you ingrates and frankly we're increasingly happy to just go home and masturbate to the carnage on tv.
We're pushing Japan to rearm so they can take over.
We're pushing for the middle east to take care of its own security situation.
We're trying to get the eastern europeans ready to face off against the Russians man to man because god knows the western europeans are eunuchs.
And once that is in place... We're going bounce. You morons think we want to be the world police? You think we like this? We hate it.
Our grandfathers went in because they saw that left to their own devices the europeans would destroy themselves and were incompetent to take care of their strategic affairs.
Our fathers went in because we felt at the time that if we didn't do it than the world would fall to the soviets and that would be our fault as much as theirs.
My generation is tired of this... we're done with you. You hate us? Fine. Have fun with the various psychopaths of the world. And expect that without the US making military buildups pointless... powers you thought of as harmless will quickly have militaries that you can't handle.
Europe couldn't even handle Serbia by itself during the Kosovo war. Do you even begin to realize how pathetic that is? And more recently the combined forces of NATO without the US couldn't handle Libya.
But it gets worse:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
Tell me more about how much money you're saving... :-D
You learned NOTHING from WW2. And your weakness proves it.
I agree we spend too much and get too little. But unlike you, Davey my boy, I don't just take the average figure and lower it to some arbitrary goal like a complete and TOTAL fucktard. Instead, I want to go through the components of that cost and figure out WHY it costs more.
So apparently we pay our doctors TWICE what they're paid in England. I found that fairly easily.
I also talked about how there isn't cost transparency at hospitals or really any quality rankings of them.
how can a market operate if you don't know what a good or service costs and can't evaulate the quality?
I talked about how US drugs are more expensive than foreign drugs... basically arbitarily. And that is something we should look at... possibly getting US drug manufacturers to produce more. One idea I like is forbiding drug inventors to make the drugs themselves or to give exclusive licenses to anyone.
So if Drug company X comes up with a drug... they profit entirely by selling the license to manufacture the drug. Thus if there is high demand... any company can step in and produce the drug. This would likely control cost inflation better.
Another thing that needs to stop is that doctors of all kinds need to not get a kickback for proscribing drugs.
that is, if I proscribe a 1000 dollar a pill drug... I shouldn't get anything more than if I proscribed you NOTHING.
The prescription system also needs to be reformed to permit longer term proscriptions. If an old guy is on heart meds why is he going to the doctor four times a year to get his prescriptions renewed? That's dumb. At the very least give him a life time prescription.
You're not half as clever as you think you are Davey... and I'm not half as dumb. *wink*
Davey Davey Davey... what is up with all these unqualified posts here? You know when you do that it is impossible to prove you wrong... and also impossible for you to right... right?
You say these things... no basis... logically aduittable argument... no basis of information... just... insults.
one would think you were afraid of me, Davey? Think you'll get eaten alive so you'll just make non-falsifiable arguments that can't actually be disproven?
Davey... come on... You can be better than that. Don't post like one of the AC trolls. We're better than that, no?
Try again.
As to being full of myself... its true sadly... its very depressing... it comes from being surrounded by morons... I'm not a genius myself... but all things are relative. Its a little like that guy "not sure" in idiocracy. A genius... no... but he knew that you don't water plants with energy drinks.
I also love myself some starbucks... because they give handjobs.
And in some cases they're not even included in your statistics. Some countries don't count their slums at all. No stats even attempted. Murder rate, literacy rate, infant mortality... not recorded.
I don't know if anyone in europe does that but it is quite common in south america to not count problem areas at all.
Regardless... you have to concede that the problem is not general but is a result of averaging highly concentrated problem areas into general statistics.
Conflating those stats with the whole country is one of the reasons things never change. How can you fix a problem if you don't even admit what the problem is in the first place?
As to someone else's problem... I said nothing of the kind. I merely said that if you actually care, then you'll focus your efforts on where the problem is instead of wasting your time and energy reforming portions of the country that don't actually have a problem in the first place.
As to you bringing up the carrying for the baby thing... you have not connected it to my argument or used the reference to undermine my position. You're just saying things and then assuming the spaghetti to stick.
So we'll bypass that until you actually make a competent use of the reference.
As to women having sex with men leading to children... this is valid in a pre birth control environment which is relevant to our genetics because our genetics have not adapted to birth control. If they had, we wouldn't find causal sex as interesting because it isn't baby making sex anymore.
If we have birth control for long enough it will change the way human sexuality works. Sexual attraction is related to reproduction. If simply squirting semen into her vagina doesn't give you a chance at off spring then additional conditions will be added into human behavior by evolution. Those that successfully breed will pass on their tendencies and natures to their offspring. Over time that transference will become more complex and powerful. If we deal with birth control for 100 generations for example... that is going to have an influence on our genetics.
As to white feathers... ah, that was what you were referring to... example the same thing can be found in islamic culture, japanese culture, Polynesian culture, etc.
Giving soldiers brides, denying people that do not fight access to women, giving soldiers honors, denying people that do not fight honor... this is very common in human cultures. And it allows the government effectively to influence if not directly control who gets to breed and who does not based on their obedience and service to the state. Do women not love a man in uniform? Notice any single war heroes?
You're an ignorant little cupcake.
... as to breeding rights... Lets say a man makes something for his society and his society rewards him with a billion dollars... will this increase or decrease his breeding options?
If a man is a war hero... does that increase or decrease his breeding options?
If a man is a master at some skill... a musician or a painter or something... increase or decrease?
Now lets say someone is just as intelligent, brave, and skilled... but they use their skills to damage the society. Does this help or harm his breeding options?
you need to think like evolution for a moment. Step out side of your little monkey box and try to think in terms of the gods that made us what we are. Mother nature is a cruel mysterious cunt. If you want to understand her, then you're going to have to think like her for a moment. If you can't then you can't see it. The sail boat will be invisible to you...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
No, I said they're not a better analogue. And really I have a hard time thinking of much those primates do that is relevant to humanity.
Frankly you're just clouding the issue. I wasn't talking about chimps or bonobos.
if you bring them up again, I'll ignore the argument entirely on the assumption that you're arguing in bad faith.
Let me pull that back a bit. You can make an argument about them if you like. But you don't get to say that my argument relied on that association. You do that and its strawmanning and I WILL either ignore or casually reject it and move on.
Address MY argument. Not the argument you WISH I had made instead.
No, I assume it costs about as much to make a space suit LOOK new.
Are you replacing all the things in the suit that have undergone chemical changes over the years that will ensure that hte suit is not safe to take pressure again?
No you're not.
So when you say "restore" you mean you're making it look good. You're cleaning it, you're filling in the cracks in the dried rubber, and you're blowing some new car smell into it.
What else could you possibly do? First off, large portions of the suit are chemically stable. The helmet, the visor, the back pack, the various metal fittings... I mean that stuff is likely good as new or could be made so for a song. What has gone the way of the mummies is the flexible bits. And that's mostly old nylon and rubber.
Nylon might have been a space age material in the 60s but in 2014 its quite passe. We have it everywhere and its not hardly anything mysterious to us.
I shopped around for someone that was selling whole new museme quality replicas of the suit and they were quoting about 10 grand for the whole thing. Functional?... no... able to take pressure? I wouldn't chance it. But the damn thing looks as good as anything you're going to have when all is said and done.
What is your restoration accomplishing?
Now I cited the oil painting thing because i wanted to show what detailed restoration of something very complex would cost. That is someone sitting there and billing you by the square inch for cleaning a very sensitive delicate surface.
I then inflated their costs by a factor of FIVE. The cost of the oil painting was about 34 thousand if the suit were an oil painting. They said it was about 500 dollars per 80 square inches. I inflated that to 2500 per 80 square inches just to make it clear that even if it is harder per INCH to restore old rubber and nylon than it is to restore an oil painting... the costs still don't add up.
As to no one knowing how to restore nylon and rubber... The textiles industry actually knows how to do the nylon very well... and rubber has been restored by people for over a century.
WHat other mysterious materials are you using in this suit? Unobtainium?
Cite the material. do I need to do all the research? Apparently I am the only one that know how to use a search engine. You people all too busy tell me how much you know to actually do any kind of research.
Here's a fun one: Beta cloth...
I can buy it on ebay apparently
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Authen...
woven fiberglass coated in Teflon... I grant that's pretty unusual. I'd grant no one knows how to restore that given that apparently the stuff naturally tears itself apart unless the individual fibers are coated in the same stuff that keeps my eggs from sticking to the pan. that is besides the butter. Eggs. :)
... did you ignore the bit where I took that number... inflated it by a factor of 10... and it still didn't add up?
Are you saying the photos will cost 80 grand? because even at eighty grand we're barely to half the money being asked for here. And that was with me inflating the cost of the suit restoration by a factor of five assuming it was as hard to make LOOK good as an oil painting. If it were an oil painting... the entire surface area of the suit... inside and out cost about of fifth of the 173 thousand I cited for restoration assuming some comparability with oil painting restoration.
And while you might not find that comparable... how can the suit be harder to restore than a fucking oil painting? We're not talking about making it take pressure again though even that wouldn't cost that much. I shopped around for what the actual suit costs... that is the skin... and replacing that apparently is around 10 grand.
Same materials... same look... brand new.
The numbers don't add up, darling. Maybe I'm a penny pinching spoilsport... but then you're a credulous spend thrift.
I'm not fighting the foot of the elephant. That fucking animal sets its foot in an argument and I'm going for its eyes. I refuse to be predictable and I refuse to be contained. I will look at an argument I find specious... the entire thing... and I'll find the weak part of it and dig my sharp teeth into it and wrench my head backwards and forwards to slice off a chunk... swallow that and come back for more.
that is how you eat an elephant isn't it? One bite at a time. :)
As to the ACA being sabotaged... by its authors. Don't be a typical liberal and refuse to take responsibility for your own fuck ups. It is degenerate behavior. I'll accept responsibility for fuck ups by politicians I vote for... you be a dove and do the same. Otherwise we're talking fantasy where neither politician we back ever makes a mistake and its always the opposition's fault.
Do you want that? Dragons and unicorns? Because I can shift to that quite easily. I have zero patience for double standards. You want me to hold to a standard of ethics and honesty while you play fucking games with me? Not going to happen. You play... I play. And I'm good at the game... so good luck.
*pulls out the war paint*
You tell me... should I put it on and see which of us can slit the other's throat by starlight?
Fight in the Sun... with integrity.
The ACA failed because the people pushing it wanted the system to fail INTO a single payer system. The architect of it was on record admitting that ages before the stupid thing even was passed. And it was such a scandal that your slimy lot said you didn't know the man or that he was a minor player even though just a month previously you were openly praising him for being such a huge help.
Don't try to gaslight me. I have a very clear memory of what happened.
Most of the mandatory spending in that category is going to education subsidies.
So you want to cut those are did you accidentally blow your leg off by stepping on another rhetorical land mine?
Its a rhetorical question of course... you have no legs now. Adorable.
While there is pork spending in EVERY budget category it is important to remember that every segment of the budget is an umbrella of a lot of things. And just indiscriminately cutting anything is going to involve drownding a lot of kittens. Anyone that touches these things tends to be branded a bad bad man. Every time the republicans try to cut the budget... that is their general solution to budget problems... they're labeled monsters. The democrats like to address these issues with tax increases... You tell me which one you prefer...
Just know that you're either going to be labeled a monster that wants to hurt children a spendthrift. You tell me.
fellow said all the doctors go into private practice once they cut their teeth in the business. That implies a private sector medical business that as roughly the same size as the public one.
I asked why people go to the private doctors.
As to assumptions... you're the one assuming. I didn't say the english doctors were worse. You simply didn't know what to say to arguments and so tried to strawman me into an argument you feel you can fight. Why would I help you do that? Dishonest fucks can fuck themselves... no?
So why don't you ask me why I said something I actually said, ehm chump?
Your reasons for doubt are little more than your own belief that you KNOW me through a few internet posts. Forgive me if your opinions as to my nature are... dubious at best.
As to old welfare programs dating back to FDR... yes... most acknowledge old FDR make the depression deeper and longer.
Did you know we had an economic crash before the great crash... and that crash was just as bad but wasn't followed by a depression?
Do you know what the solution of the sitting president of the day was? I'll have you look that up. But you can of course guess it wasn't FDR's idea.
Some ideas have a track record of working and others have a track record of turning everything to shit.
The fact that you regard my belief that we should abandon policies with a proven track record of destruction and dysfunction doesn't undermine me but you. *wink*
As to congress sending their children to private schools... of course... Both parties do that. Because while someone seems to think the dirty unwashed masses shouldn't have choices they are damn well going to make sure they have choices.
You think this undermines me? You're giving evidence in my defense.
As to blaming the local school boards... etc... sure. Blame the whole thing. Why would you think a slash and burn policy would be antithetical to my position? I would go through the system and systematically sever all interconnections between the institutions so they couldn't put pressure on each other. Then I'd compartmentalize funding so that if a student leaves a school that school loses money.
Then I'd see that anyone could set up a school anywhere in the US and accept students there and collect the assigned vouchers. And before you say "what about standards etc"... by all means... make the teachers and the little voucher schools go through some sort of certification program. Test them using standardized methods or whatever else you like.
Test them to destruction if you want. Just apply the same tests to the establishment schools as well. I'd be very surprised if the establishment schools could jump through all those hoops on a limited budget any better than the voucher schools. And that will keep the whole thing honest. The blind lady's blade has to swing which ever way the scales tip. Guarantee that, and you can set whatever standards you like.
As to common core... My issue with that is less that there are national education standards than that the government were so specific about it. The precise method and theory of the education should not be specified. Let different schools teach differently. Your method might be better than some but there has to be something better still and how will you ever empirically find it if you don't let people try.
There are quite a few specialty schools that have learned some interesting things. There is an all boys private school for example that weighed in on some of the problems other schools were having educating boys. Were you aware of any of that? Doubt it. That sort of thing is happening all the time. Its ignored. Anything that doesn't service the narrative that supports the establishment gets memory holed. Imagine what that could do for the inner city students... mostly boys that are failing so horribly. Maybe shifting to the strategies this other school figured out would address the problem to some extent. You'll never know. No one is even allowed to try. Schools with 60 percent drop out rates and they can do nothing but suffer.
As to scandals with vouchers... a wash, dear one... the scandals in the existing system are legion. For every official incidence of fraud you can find with the vouchers you can find frauds so common and systemic that no one even talks about them anymore. They're like the inner city murder rates... they don't even make the newspapers most of the time. Bodies left to rot on the street every day. EVERY DAY. And where is that reported? It isn't because it isn't news. It's boring. And that's where the scandals in the establishment education system reside. They're trite. Its like saying the sun rose in the east and set in the west. Not worth mentioning.
As to no one wanting to fix the areas in the concentrated areas, that's not true. I do. Lots of other people do as well.
One of the first things you'd have to admit though is that business as usual ain't working. You can't just blame the political opposition either. Most of these places have had the party bigger and bigger subsidies and welfare programs for a generation.
That riot in Phili... Hard to blame the political opposition or some evil alien race. It was all in house and the tired old victim narrative doesn't wash.
IF people actually care. IF they actually want to make a difference. IF they want anything to change... then we need to change the way we're dealing with this issue. Because doubling down on failed programs is at best foolish and at worst the sacrifice of the futures of millions Americans for little more than short term political and monetary advantage. And that is monstrous.
You say "no one" cares... plenty of people care. Anyone that stands up and confronts this is ripped apart by the political machine.
Black families in DC petitioned for a school voucher system to bypass failed schools in DC that damn minority families in the inner city to substandard education.
Who shut that down? The black families didn't. They were very unhappy when the project was killed.
The Teacher's Unions killed it. And they killed it because vouchers have the ability to kill failed schools by letting families vote with their feet out of them.
And thus they demanded the voucher program be killed and their political allies obliged them in return for votes and campaign contributions in the future.
Which shows you exactly how much those people care about inner city families. Aka... less than they care about the sliver of union dues that goes to their campaigns and the reliable votes they get on election day so long as they shield the unions from any standards or accountability.
As to the JSF, yeah... that was actually an attempt to save money. back fired horribly.
As to the rest of the skunkworks... no... they do good work when they're not asked to build stupid shit. It isn't really their fault. I don't know how the project got so screwed up... it was sort of like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
As to the intel agencies... sure... so long as no one else spies or lies we don't need to have spy agencies.
Tell me when you've verified that and we'll terminate them.
what's your problem with the palidin... besides basically wanting the US to go to war with unsharpened sticks?
I don't get the problem with the Osprey either. It was expensive but it was also highly innovative.
As to the illegal domestic propaganda operations... no problem, make it illegal for politicians especially the white house to do that and you're solid.
If the white house can do it and the president is the commander of the military... then they can do that. There's your poison pill. Swallow it. You can't forbid the president to engage in that stuff only when he's pushing a pro war position but let him do it in any other circomstance. So you either cut off the president's ability to push propaganda which includes all the propaganda the government pushes for a host of programs you probably love... or your position is legally and ethically contradictory, hypocritical, and legally unsound.
Learn from your court failures and don't push legislation that contradicts itself.
As to free weapons for Israel... so you're cool with the jews getting genocided. I just want your signature on that death warrant... right here... and initial here.
As to Saudi arabia... who cares what the saudis have they don't do anything with it.
as to various other places, those deals are largely made for political and diplomatic influence. And they don't do anything with the hardware so I don't really care.
As to guarding pipelines... where do we do that outside of Iraq and Kuwait? And we only did that to stop saddam from blowing the shit up and ruining the local economy. You'd have us destroy Iraq's primary means of supporting itself? Why would we do that?
As to mercs... the companies have a right to protect themselves. If I think Americans have a right to arm themselves here then why would I tell a corp that it can't arm itself in the middle of a war zone? Your positions are largely irrational screes.
As to no bid contracts... I generally agree with you here. I can understand why a no bid contract would make sense in some cases. But it is over used. If I need something to be very reliable for example then i can understand them going for a no bid contract with a known quantity. If they're getting something sketchy then the contract should be bid out.
As to this idea about having our soldiers intentionally left vulnerable... Absolutely not. Put yourself in the place of that soldier. Would you want your country to send you to war with bullshit that was intentionally bullshit or would you like them to send to war with the best equipment they could come up with and afford?
I'll tell you what. *hands fellow box of rat poison*
You eat that and when you're dead we'll continue this conversation where you casually throw away lives to make a point.
You want to make a point by killing people. Kill yourself first.
As to the spanish option... I think most people don't realize it is an option. If they did, they'd do that. You already have people crossing the border a lot for medical care. Both ways. Houston of all places has a massive medical center that is largely that size because there are a lot of medical tourists that fly to the US from south america for medical treatment. Not hte poor south americans... the ones that can pay cash. They also get a lot of middle easterners there as well. They'll fly from saudi arabia to get a medical procedure and then leave.
Americans go south to mexico mostly for drugs... not just the recreational kind. The prescription kind as well. I think there was a similar thing going with people traveling to canada for that as well.
Anyway, the point is that if more Americans were made aware of that, they'd likely make those trips with more frequency.
Anyway, this discussion isn't going to be productive if your view on the whole matter is this narrow. You're not considering that people would very happily make these trips as is... they just don't realize it is a possibility.
The insurance companies should really encourage it. Some person needs a really expensive operation... insurance company says "if you get the operation in spain, we'll fly you out there, book an all expenses paid hotel for another family member, etc etc."
The people that use the most medical care are old people in any case. And they're perfect candidates to send on holiday for treatment.
The problem with insurance companies in the US is that they just PAY. They negotiate with the hospitals a little but the way insurance companies work is that when a claim is filed... they pay. They don't dick around or fight claims unless it is ridiculous. They just pay. And that means the hospitals can charge basically whatever they want and the insurance companies will just pass that on to the consumer in premiums.
It isn't the insurance companies jacking up costs. Its the hospitals. Its one of the reasons it is so sad to see private practices closing down because of the paper work generated by the ACA. The private practices are the cheapest medical options for most Americans. You private doctor gives you the treatment without all the overhead costs.
Just because you're gullible, it doesn't mean the price isn't extortionate.
As to restoration, I cited the cost of restoring an oil painting with the same surface area as that suit... and then multiplied that number by 5. Explain why restoring the LOOK of an old space suit is more expensive than that when you have original company that built the suit and that still builds space suits helping you?
I mean, are they saying they're going to restore it so it can take pressure again? Get real. they're just making it "look" new.
Which means what? Clean it... fill in the cracks in the plastic, rub some oils into it to keep all the bendy bits flexible, and then maybe splash some new paint on it.
Done.
What could possibly complicate that situation?
All they're going to do when they're done with all that is cram a dummy into the suit and stick it in a climate controlled exhibit. The Russians have more to worry about keeping Comrade Lenin looking pink and pretty and I really doubt they're dropping half a mill on that amusing cadaver.
As to repairing a building... the suit is quite a bit smaller... the skills and craftsmanship that went into the first suit is not lost and does not need to be relearned.... we still have all the original materials... And the suit doesn't have to be structurally sound. It doesn't have to take pressure for example. It just has to look okay.
Your house example is bigger, the craftsmanship that went into the house is often lost or uncommon requiring the hiring of specialists, and the house actually has to be structurally sound... aka not fall over and kill people.
This suit when NASA is done... would you feel safe climbing into it and having all the air sucked out from around it? I wouldn't. The fucking thing would almost certainly leak. Those suits undergo chemical changes over the years. Rubber at manufacture is not the same rubber after sitting on a shelf for decades. And you can't restore it. You have to replace it. And they're not going to replace it because then it might as well be a replica. The original means you've got the original rubber in there. And the original rubber after all these year is not safe.
I should point out that a museum quality replica of the suit sells for about 10 grand. I don't think it is functional either but it gives you an idea of what a suit that looks like the original suit costs. The company I was looking at made these suits custom for museums.
1. I don't believe that it is impossible to find equal or superior care for those sorts of injuries outside the VA.
2. All you're saying here is that the military budget got cut and there were consequences people didn't anticipate. I agree. What is more, why don't you think the same thing would happen if we nationalized healthcare. Government cuts spending... and boom.
3. As to medical research, it would be more accurate to say that funding for research through the universities is appropriated through the VA budget.
As to segregation... Was New York city or Detroit segregated?
Yes you have a point or no you don't have a point?
As to slaves... Chinese immigrants to the US didn't start off as much better than slaves and yet they never had these problems.
I'm sorry, your narrative is reductive. You need to be more deductive.
Solve the mystery. Don't just think like creationists, start with your conclusion, and then look for evidence to support your preconcieved ideas of things. Stop and actually look at what happened.
As to slavery, even if I completely agreed that blacks were dropping out of high school in the 21st century because of slavery in the 1860s... that would still suggest the statistics should be broken down to account for that. Simply conflating everything into a single number and comparing it against other countries is not reasonable.
All the US stats are terrible in the inner city. Just awful. But the stats in pretty much any other part of the country and the country generally excluding the inner cities is quite good. Our testing scores are good. Our economic figures are between okay and excellent. Our health figures are comparable to anywhere else in the first world or better.
But those inner city stats are so fucking bad that they pull the national averages down. And that's fine. They're americans and we nee to see that those communities are helped. But be that as it may, you can't conflate those cases into the national averages without making clear what is going on.
I keep seeing suggestions that if the US only did X our numbers would pop up. And the X never addresses that the problem is highly concentrated and specific to certain areas. And that the rest of the nation is actually doing quite fine thank you very much.
Actually there is no such thing as a defense budget in the 21st century. You defend yourself with offensive power. The US doesn't build armor around the US and neither does any other credible military power. You defend yourself by having forces that can engage enemy forces near your territory... and ideally preempt them and strike them in their own lands.
As to attacking countries left and right... no we don't. We're pretty selective about it and there tends to reasons for it that seem good to us at the time. Much of the reason people like you don't understand that is that the education in such matters is generally very poor and the US serves as a convenient scapegoat for a lot of things because we don't take retribution for being blamed.
Blame other countries and they get really upset and will find ways to hurt you. Blame the US and we generally ignore it.
Its why every shit hole dictator blames the shittiness of the country on the US. Why does the dictator rape and murder everyone? Because the US.
And the fact that the Europeans have started puppeting that is frankly more of an insult against to their intelligence than anything. They should really be ashamed of themselves. That said, many europeans don't think that way. I have a lot of euro friends and they take some pains to distance themselves from the drug addled college students that know just enough to say some surprisingly stupid things but not enough to realize how stupid they are yet.
First this is a better ranking:
https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...
As you can see, the US is rated number 9 in the world. Not even in the top five. What you should know is that countries ranked highly on this list all have to take care of themselves. With no relevant exceptions, if the shit hits the fan... no one is coming to save any of these countries... they're on their own. And their spending reflects that.
You can't include first world countries in that ranking either except for the US because the US has treaty obligations to defend all first world countries. So naturally other first world countries spend less because we are obligated to protect them.
Its like would you build a pool in your backyard if your next door neighbor said you could use his anytime you wanted? Assuming that worked for you, then you'd just use his pool. Which is exactly what most first world countries do.
The only exception on the list might be Israel. The rest of the first world powers shamelessly mooch off the US.
Remember the recent Libya war. The French were much more gung ho about it than we were. We tried to stay out of it. But the europeans committed to it... and then they realized "oh wait, we don't have the logistics to support a military campaign even as close as north africa"... and that meant the US had to come to offer carriers, inflight refueling airplanes, and if we're doing all that we might as well just blow the shit out of Gadaffi's bullshit and end the whole farce as quickly as possible. The alternative was watching the Italians and French play with themselves.
Without the US, the combined forces of Europe could not take on so much as Serbia. Remember the Kosovo war? The combined forces of Europe could not breach Serbian airspace. Why? Because they had some old soviet AA missiles and the Serbs are tough fucking fighters. You want to defeat them... you need to do more than send strongly worded letters to them. And that required the US.
So what do you want here? You want the US to be as useless as the Europeans?
Look at this shit:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
I mean... are you fucking kidding me? Fucking broomsticks. Let me tell you, in some shit hole third world country they'd not show up to training with fucking broomsticks. But in Germany in the 21st century... this is what we have to work with. And you suggest the US spend like them?
Your entire argument is wall to wall foolishness.
As to the world being different. Yes... it is different because it was changed. You're welcome.
Okay, as to why the US doesn't charge for the protection, the reasons were very much nested in the post WW2 world. We had just fought the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese. And then after the war, we were dealing with the Soviets that tried to exploit Europe being in ruins to basically make a huge land grab. And not only did Stalin do that but he tried to claim all sorts of stuff that he wasn't even close to and basically promised to convert the whole world to communism. And not the friendly academic pot head communism of "you know man, people should just like be awesome to each other"... but the USSR's version of communism.
Really there was nothing that could stop the soviets from expanding except the US. The british empire was trashed. The Germans were trashed. The Japanese were trashed. The world belonged to comrade Stalin and all that had to happen was the US do nothing.
Well, we came out of WW2 feeling like the mistake of WW1 was that the US isolated itself and didn't keep a hand in european affairs. That was just what we felt. So this was all to explain that we were going to do something.
As to why we didn't charge for it, the short answer is that we'd be paying ourselves if we charged anything at all. We were making big loans and gifts basically to the european countries at that time under the Marshall plan to rebuild Europe. And if we charged for the defense, they'd just take money out of that and send it back to us. What was the point.
So we gave it away for free on the notion that it would accelerate European recovery and that would over time net us trading partners that were worth a damn and they would be able to hold their own territory without us holding their hands.
Our policies since then have run very much on inertia. Arguments for why we do it today can be made but they're mostly reductive. It all boils down to "we do it this way because we do it this way." And we did it that way for the reason that the Europeans in particular could not pay at the time.
As to billing countries for passage... part of the problem there would be that it bore little difference from what was going on before. The north African pirates for example that we had to deal with shortly after the American revolution were prepared to allow US shipping through the Mediterranean in exchange for tribute. Pay the tribute and your shipping goes free through their zone of influence. Don't pay and they attack your shipping.
The British Empire's method of controlling things was to have monopolies. They dominated certain types of trade and forbid anyone from competing with them. And by exploiting that monopoly the naval operations were paid for effectively.
it wasn't as obvious as the tribute demanded by the Barbary pirates but it was there.
The US doesn't take a dime. If anything we get political clout from it. Which is sometimes worth a lot. We get free access to things, people consult us as to our opinions, and we can shut things down just by saying we don't like it. That is something that is bought with the US security apparatus. Absent that influence the US would be a less diplomatically relevant nation.
France says they like or don't like something... who gives a flying fuck... the US says they don't like it and it means something.
As to market distortions, you'd need to link that to US military activities which I don't think you can do. I think you're conflating a laundry list of things you don't like with US military spending. It does not appear to be a valid association. How does corporate profits or off shoring relate to US military spending? Many nations in Europe have off shoring and yet they have relatively insignificant militaries. You'd need to talk about something unique to the US since we uniquely have this power.
If you cite stuff that everyone does than it actually supports my position that we don't hoard the wealth for ourselves but rather share it arou
Well this is one of the charts I found with salaries and they all sort of agree with each other on pay scales:
http://www.empire-locums.co.uk...
What is more, you're saying doctors go private. Why do people use private doctors in the UK if the public ones are provided at no additional cost. I mean if you go private you're basically paying twice. You paid once in your taxes and now you're paying again upfront.
Why do that?
Is it is quality? Are the private doctors better?
Is it availability? The public doctors are all busy so you either have to wait until you die or see a private doctor?
Why do people go to private doctors in the UK?