But do you honestly think somebody THAT bigoted won't drag that bigotry into the comic? And let us not forget these are the same arguments that were used against interracial marriage in the 50s, in fact replace gay with negro or jew and its the same old song and dance.
Wrong. The supporters of gay marriage want to frame it that way, but there are very important differences.
1. You will NEVER find someone who used to be black or used to have Jewish ancestry. You can find plenty of former homosexuals if you look for them. Actually, if you want to see bigotry and hate, check out how these people are treated by the gay community.
2. The purpose of marriage is to provide a stable environment for the raising of children. That is why at some times and places marriages were arranged. Virtually any child psychologist will tell you that children do best in a household with a husband and a wife.
3. The larger purpose of the gay marriage movement is to silence the other side with the government gun, see what is going on in Canada.
4. Most of what those in the gay movement claim as grievances are either non issues or problems that have other solutions. Living wills allow them hospital access to their partner if that is really such a problem. Health insurance is a problem created by the government, Health insurance should not be tied to the employer, but the individual, like car and homeowner insurance. It is right now because of the tax code. Social Security benefits? Well, SS probably isn't going to survive to see much past the end of the decade anyway.
Homosexuality, from what I have found looking into it, is a psychological condition brought on by a number of factors. Having feelings for a person of the same sex is perfectly natural. For example, I have deep emotional feelings for my brother. When his fiance, to whom he had proposed to, left him I was surprised at the emotional impact it had on me. I also have male friends to whom I have similar emotional attachments, though not to the same degree. That is perfectly natural and healthy. What is not natural and healthy is to make that relationship into a sexual one.
When I was a teenager I had my own set of physiological problems. I rejected. with great hostility, to friends and family who were trying to help me. I didn't want to change, but I eventually realized that I wasn't happy with who I was and where I was going. It took many years to change to the person I am now and it was not an easy thing to do, but I am a better person for it. I saw my cousin go through a similar event, from an alcoholic to a responsible father. I get it, these people don't want to change. If that was all they were doing then people wouldn't have such a problem, but they are trying to get their self-destructive lifestyle accepted as "normal" and that is simply not going to happen
The facts are very clear on this in terms of the health consequences of the homosexual lifestyle: Just one Canadian study found:
The life expectancy for gay and bisexual men is 20 years less than the average Canadian man;
GLB people commit suicide at rates ranging from twice as often to almost 14 times more than the general population; (Important to note that this doesn't change much when homosexuals live in an area where they are accepted.)
GLBs have smoking rates ranging from 1.3 to three times higher than average;
GLBs become alcoholics at a rate 1.4 to seven times higher than the general population;
GLBs use illicit drugs at a rate from 1.6 to 19 times higher than other Canadians;
GLBs experience depression at rates ranging from 1.8 to three times higher than average;
Homosexual men comprise 76% of AIDS cases and 45% of all new HIV infections;
GLB populations are at a higher risk of lung and liver cancer;
Homosexual and bisexual men suffer a higher rate of anal cancer than heterosexual men;
Lesbians report a higher rate of breast cancer;
That's a myth. Historically, countries that have had very little public funding of science have outpaced countries that do. For every dollar the government spends on science, it displaces about $1.25 in private science funding.
The question is not "Could they" the question is "Will they". In the US the answer is "YES!!!". In China, every indication is "No". Politically, the US is one of the riskiest countries to invest in. Combine that with regulations that take at least three times longer to get approved in the US than even in Canada and you have a country that isn't worth investing in vs the alternatives. I can get twice the dividends in Canada than in the US when buying equally sound companies. Add to that the Canadian dollar is going up against the US dollar.
One important note from history: The money leaves first, the people leave second. We have the first right now, if we stay on the current path we will soon have the second. The government knows this, which is why it now charges $450 for the form to renounce US citizenship, it used to be free. People in government know that soon the young will want to leave the country in search of opportunity that no longer exists in the US. In the global economy, a US citizenship is now a liability. Since the young have no wealth to tax, they have to make it as hard as possible to get rid of ones US citizenship. It is $450 now. If they can charge $450 for it then they can charge $5000. Much like the Warsaw Pact countries, the US government might get desperate to prevent the best and brightest from leaving, though it could just fall apart before that point when the dollar tanks.
The rest isn't directed at you, but is more just a general statement about taxes.
To be in the "Top 5%" one only needs to make more than $159,000, assuming my numbers are correct.
Where that can cause problems is that many small businesses are taxed as S corporations, which means the corporations taxes are paid via the owners income taxes. In the company I work for, bonuses come from after tax profits. Raising taxes on my boss means less money for me and my co-workers when it comes time for bonuses. It also means less money with which to re-invest to expand the company, it becomes harder to save for expansion, making small businesses more reliant on loans instead of their own savings. So one effect is to favor big businesses at the expense of smaller ones.
You also run into the problem known as "Hauser's law". For the past 50 years, no matter what the tax code and tax rates have been, total revenues have maxed out at about 20% of GDP. States across the country have tried repeatedly to raise taxes on the rich. When they did, revenues go down. Yet in the 80's when rates were cut, total revenues went up. The reasons are not hard to fathom, why bother making those long term investments when a large portion of the projected profits are going to be taken in taxes. Better to put the money elsewhere in less risky investments or lower tax investments.
The problem today is spending. While I agree the military budget needs to be drastically cut, 50% cut just for starters, even cutting defense to zero would not balance the budget. The welfare state is in the beginning stages of collapse. Had the problem been addressed 20-30 years ago there could have been a smooth transition, but it is too late for that now. There's going to be wrenching changes within the decade, even the CBO projects interest on the debt will be $1 trillion per year by 2020 assuming rates don't rise, and it will fall to individuals to try and help those hurt most.
I haven't bothered getting a flu shot in several years. Whenever I got it I felt like crap for several weeks and tended to get a lot of colds. Several years I got the Flu anyway. With several years of no vaccine, any cases I have gotten I have gotten over with in a few daysand the number of colds I get seems to have gone way down.
Granted, I do most of my work in jails across several states where the primary concern is Tuberculosis.
The major problem I find with the flu shot is it gives vaccines a bad name, since it's so ineffective for such a large portion of the population, and people see this ineffectiveness, it can make the arguments of the anti-vaccination people seem credible.
As I said before, I never bother getting a flu shot anymore, but you bet your ass I got my Tetnus shot 10 years after I got my last one. Even better, the newer Tdap vaccine covers tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis. Woo Hoo.
Not exactly sure which one you're talking about either as there are several that fit that description. Wheeled vehicles have their place, but tracks are the way to go in urban environments because you can climb over obstacles that stop wheeled vehicles..
As for an improved M113, you'd want to take a look at the MTLV sometimes known as the M113A4. A longer chassis gives greater troop and cargo capacity. I'm not quite sold on the diesel electric drive, but at least they're trying something that has a reasonable chance of working.
As for the floor armor on a M113, it's an inch and an eighth of 5086 ballistic grade aluminum. It stood up to mines just fine. Ordinarily the M113 has ground pressure too low to set off heavier AT mines, you don't want infantry setting them off, but command detonated IEDs were a big problem in Vietnam. (Yet the "leaders" act all surprised when we ran into them in Iraq and Afghanistan.) It was for protection against the larger IEDs that the troops sandbagged the floor, sand does a very good job of stopping shrapnel. They were also easy to remove if the vehicle did become stuck and could be used to build defensive positions.
The advantage of the M113 is that it provides a good base with which you can tailor to the environment, since it's basically a giant aluminum box. Need mobility over protection? Standard M113 works fine. REALLY need mobility? Slap in a souped up engine and drivetrain. Need more armor? At least half a dozen kits available, everything from basic aluminum plates, to bar armor, to ERA. Need to land troops on rough surf? Slap on a Arisgator kit. Need a stabilized weapons platform and are willing to sacrifice troop capacity? Add a sharpshooter turret. Want heavy firepower, but you also want to carry 11 troops? ASP-30 30mm autocannon mounts to anything that can mount a 50 caliber M2.
The M113 is like the AK-47 of APCs, yea the basic design is old, but it's cheap and does its job so well there's not much you can do to improve it. Anything you do to it is simply customization to fit your unique need.
Ontos was such a wonderful concept. For a first try it was remarkably capable, further development could have improved it.. Sad that it was trashed after Vietnam because the military was only interested in stuff that would bust tanks at 2 miles.
I believe a 3 round autoloader for the M40 was developed, but never adopted.
Another option is to simply mount 70mm Hydra rockets in place of the TOW on the Brady and on the M113 (Though ditching the Bradly would be a great thing too.) Or perhaps built an Ontos like vehicle that uses the Hydra rockets instead of the M40. You could completely develop such a vehicle for a fraction of the cost of the uber-planes they keep trying to build.
Heck, you can mount rocket pods on just about anything that can physically carry them. Some ultralight aircraft could manage to carry a few if you really wanted to. Slap some rocket pods on a light aircraft and you'll have a functional light duty attack aircraft at fraction of the cost. Fabric covering makes repairs easy and minimizes the radar signature.
Even on ground stuff we have troops using TOW rockets at $20,000 each instead of $250 106mm HE shell from a M40 recoiless rifle. Yea Yea, the sustained rate of fire is only 1 round per minute, but it can do 5 rounds per minute for the first minute, which is faster than a TOW can be fired. Not to mention you can have several M40's for the price of one TOW, even more when you consider ammo. There have been several instances where the heavy weapons of an outpost, like the TOW were taken out early in a battle. having several M40's gives redundancy.
Of course another problem is the Russian Shtora system is making the TOW obsolete. From what I can find, the Shtora countermeasure system has somewhere between a 95-98% chance of jamming the guidance system of a SACLOS missile like the TOW. That tech is going to get better and smaller. Javelin is too expensive and too dammed heavy for soldiers to actually carry it and not be slowed down so much that the insurgents can outmaneuver them or simply run away. It also apparently has problems locking on if the enemy has taken even basic attempts to IR camouflage their vehicle, it gets lost in the background clutter.
We should be issuing our troops M3 Carl Gustav recoiless rifles like Arabs issue RPG-7s. (OK perhaps not THAT much, but you get the idea.) How many times do I need to see shaky cam of US solders firing at someone hiding in a clay hut that 5.56 can't punch through? A single 84mm round would instantly solve the problem, yet we see troops firing a $75,000 missile at that person, if they even bothered to drag it along.
As nice as the warthog is, they are obsolete. Modern SPAAGs are designed to blow planes like the A-10 out of the sky and their cannons out-range the GAU-8. It is only useful against opponents that have no modern AA weapons.
The solution is far cheaper aircraft in greater numbers. A turboprop gives far better efficiency below Mach.6. There was supposedly a 3 barrel version of the GAU-8 for such an aircraft, but it was canceled. The slower speed allows the aircraft to operate from very small airfields and also allows them to fly at lower altitudes, hugging the terrain. Something lik e a EMB 314 Super Tucano would work great, but they cost a lot, the AT-6B Texan II may be far more cost effective and just as versatile..
Sorry, not good of me to expect everyone be in the loop about the stuff they are doing to diesel engines. The new EPA regs require a rube goldberg emissions system for diesel engines that involves dumping urea (which they get from harvesting sheep pee) into the exhaust to supposedly reduce emissions. The EPA revs Diesel regulations almost as often as Linus revs the Linux kernel. Is it any wonder why we can't get decent smaller diesel vehicles here in the US? Where except perhaps LA is crap like that even needed?
Can't have diesel, they say it causes cancer so now we now have to dump sheep pee in the exhaust. Which is of course stupid because EVERYTHING in some form or another causes cancer. Hell, Oxygen causes cancer.
There are FAR larger things we need to worry about in terms of environmental protection than diesel exhaust and so much of the other stuff being proposed. Like how about making it easier for companies to build newer and safer nuclear power plants so we don't need to burn as much coal and keep older nuclear plants online past their design life. How about restarting the reprocessing of nuclear waste back into usable fuel. If you reprocess, 98% of that waste becomes nuclear fuel and the remaining 2% is stuff with short half lives that's only dangerous for a few hundred years.
Any sane person who looks at the evidence should be able to see that we went way past what is reasonable and went full pants-on-head-retarded quite awhile back in the West when it came to the environment. Why? Because the genuine environmentalists were successful. People started agreeing with them about the need to take basic reasonable measures to protect the environment. In order to stay relevant they had to get more extreme.
Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace left because he says that the organisation got taken over by communists who used green language to further their red ideology. Thus why they are sometimes revered to as "Watermelons".
Are humans having an impact on the environment? Almost certainly, but to believe that we have such an impact to turn the Earth in Venus in pure hubris. A basic thought experiment shows the absurdness of it all. Earth has been around for billions of years with nobody at the helm managing the climate and yet it has more-or-less remained a life permitting climate, even after getting hit repeatedly by comets and asteroids. That right there should tell you that the climate system has built in negative feedback loops that prevent things from getting too far out of whack. Yet so many of these models and predictions assume positive feedback loops. When your theory doesn't match reality, it's time for a new theory.
To add insult to injury, there's been, on average, no warming over the last 10 years while CO2 kept increasing. The warmers need to explain how CO2 is such a large climate driver, yet is so easily overpowered by other factors.
Not breaking userspace doesn't mean jack when he breaks everything else.
The market doesn't like don't like his rule and guess what? That's why Linux is stuck at 1% market share.
Nobody is going to freeze the kernel and ABI for PC use because you can't make money on that work. Thanks to the GPL any work they do will simply be stolen by the leeches. Had there been a "free for non-profit use" pay to redistribute" clause then you bet your ass the Kernel would have been forked a good decade ago.
The fact that no one has done so, including Red Hat, IBM or Dell, should tell you that it really isn't important enough to anyone that matters.
It doesn't matter to anyone ON THE SERVER MARKET. Servers have both extremely limited hardware variation and full time staff paid to put up with Torvalds's monkey code. Linux would be wiped from the server room in a week if MS priced Server CALS reasonably.
On the desktop? Microsoft and Apple spend hundreds of millions on maintaining the ABI of their operating systems. Guess what? Both have way more market share than Linux does. So for CONSUMERS, you bet your ass it matters.
It's not that I LIKE Microsoft, It's that your product can't even compete with Windows freaking 98 in terms of reliability. Linux today MIGHT give Windows 95 a run for it's money, as drivers there were kind of a crapshoot still, but that's about the best it could do.
What really pisses me off about the whole thing is that having a properly designed ABI makes development EASIER, not harder. An ABI allows you to completely gut and replace subsystems with it having no effect on anything else. Once you have one system working you NEVER have to touch it again.
Let me give an example from work. The Inmate telephone systems we run have 3 basic components, the PBX, the recorder, and the line controller. The ABI between them is a telephone circuit with DTMF in band signalling.
We have used at least five different makes/models of PBX, three different types of recorders, and three types of line controllers. However, since all of these interface though one standard ABI we can mix and match them with no problem whatsoever. Converting a Samsung i100 KPBXwith a Kaltech recorder on a Defender 2000 controller to a newer Teleserver recorder? No problem. Just change a couple parameters in the programming of the PBX and line controller and you're back in business. These parameters are also the exact same for every site, only difference is the number of phones and outbound lines.
Just this week I went in and gutted one system, replaced the decade old PBX and recorder with a brand new system. Did the line controller crap itself and die because of these changes? No, we simply changed the inmate PIN numbers in the database and it went on like nothing happened.
The only reason I can see for Linus NOT to use an ABI is because he is too lazy to do so or he doesn't have a clue how to do it.
Another example I just thought of. Firearm cartridges. In this case you have a list of physical dimensions and max pressure as the ABI. Gun makers then have a base from which they can design a gun around. A 22 Long Rifle revolver made in 1890 will chamber and fire ammunition made yesterday and a gun made yesterday willfire wiht amunitoin made in 1880. These sorts of standards do not restrict gun designers, it liberates them because they can design their gun for one specific standardized cartridge and know that it will work 100 years from now.
Having an ABI liberates software developers because they never have to worry about their software breaking under that ABI. Now, maintaining that ABI may be difficult for someone like Linus, but guess what? IT"S YOUR JOB to maintain that ABI compatibility. If Torvalds operated an ammunition plant his ass would be in prison for the sort of things he does to his software. Hell, if Torvalds operated ANY business other than open source he would be living under a bridge for such shoddy workmanship. Now that I think about it, Microsoft could put Linus out of work instantly if they actually priced Server CALs reasonably.
I went and did some actual research and here is what I found.
According to whois, RonPaul.com was registered in 2000 while RonPaul.org was registered in 1999. The current owner of RonPaul.org is DN Capital Inc, a company based in Panama, while RonPaul.com is owned by WKF Corp, another company based in Panama.
This right here is sending up red flags. A "fan site" whose domain name is owned by some corporation in Panama? This isn't some Hary Alderson in Vermont who owns the domain name, as one might expect from a fan site. It is some company in Panama who, for all we know, may or may not be a shell company.
Second, Ron Paul DID NOT go to "The UN" for this, he went to the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, whose JOB it is to settle disputes like this. There is nothing hypocritical about this. WIPO would exist absent the UN for this purpose. He may not LIKE the UN, but he is working within the system as it currently exists even though he would like that system changed. I don't like the city government where I live and wish it were set up differently, but you bet your butt I go to them when I have a problem or need something taken care of under their jurisdiction.
RP wanted only the domain name, yet the "owners" of the site wanted to sell him the whole thing for a huge chunk of cash? That's not "Fan site", that's "trying to hit up a public figure for money and cash out". Wanting to sell the whole nine yards so eagerly, and for so much, doesn't sound like any "fan site" I've ever heard of.
Sorry, the owners of ronpaul.com are looking awfully shady. Say what you want about Dr. Paul, the owners of the domain are not looking so innocent and it is looking that Dr, Paul may have a decent case for cybersquatting. We simply don't have enough information to be 100% sure. Considering Dr. Paul's past, I'm tending toward giving him the benefit of the doubt for now, but I would certainly like more information before definitively siding one way or the other on this. There is probably a lot of details that we don't know about.
Using your own logic, it is also not possible for the dollar to function as currency because there isn't enough dollars in the world to pay for one years production either. (M1 is at about 1.6 trillion.)
The flaw in your thinking is twofold.
1. You don't get to use the gold only once. It cycles again and again just like dollars do today.
2. The market price of gold would adjust to its market equilibrium.
Actually 12, though not necessarily base 12, was very common in past civilizations because you can count to 12 on one hand. How? Count the number of segments in your fingers, using your thumb to keep track. 3 segments per finger with 4 fingers equals 12. Pinky finger, segment nearest your palm, is 1 and the tip of your index finger is 12. (At least that is the way I have always seen it done.) You can also count to 120 in base 10 with it by using your other hand to keep track of the tens place.
This method of counting has been used at least since the Egyptians 4,000+ years ago. Once I learned that method I never count on individual fingers anymore. 12 was also used because it is easily divisible without going into fractions, 10 gets messy REALLY quick.
They have been receiving fiat money, not good money. We do not export enough to "pay" for our import, so those countries are stuck with paper. Eventually those countries are going to cut their losses and stop accepting paper.
Actually the government PAID for crops and livestock to be destroyed, under the misguided view that it would help farmers by raising the price of farm produce.
This was not very popular with those who didn't live on a farm and were borderline starving, so the government eventually want to the equally stupid practice of paying farmers not to grow. This threw millions of farm-workers out of work and only added to the unemployment problems of the 30's.
That whole decade was the result of government meddling in the economy. We are seeing the same thing today, a decade of asset bubbles and economic stagnation. Bush was our Hoover, someone who paid lip service to free market, but who massively increased government involvement in the economy. Obama is our FDR, expanding those policies and ensuring continual high unemployment and economic stagnation. Only after those policies were abandoned did we see recovery in 1946. Today we are going to have to have a massive recession to clean up the decade of malinvestment that the government has sown. Better to have it be sharp and quick than deep and drawn out. We can either do it voluntarily now or be forced into it when the bond bubble pops and defect spending is not longer possible.
Note that they used the number 99.9%. Not 100%. Not to mention that they are probably referring to the federal government. State governments are perfectly capable of figuring out that arsenic rich drinking water is bad.
I only buy non-ethanol gas for all my vehicles. Especially important for my moped engines. Thankfully non-ethanol gas is relatively easy to find in North Dakota.
At least I follow you because I was looking for an explanation as to why Linux continues to suck so much on the desktop and ran across you. Of course I sometimes post against you on other subjects that we disagree on, if I have the time and feel like it, but the whole point for ME following you at least is your thoughts on PCs and operating systems, thoughts that I find myself in agreement with you on most of the time.
Slashdot Mirror
But do you honestly think somebody THAT bigoted won't drag that bigotry into the comic? And let us not forget these are the same arguments that were used against interracial marriage in the 50s, in fact replace gay with negro or jew and its the same old song and dance.
Wrong. The supporters of gay marriage want to frame it that way, but there are very important differences.
1. You will NEVER find someone who used to be black or used to have Jewish ancestry. You can find plenty of former homosexuals if you look for them. Actually, if you want to see bigotry and hate, check out how these people are treated by the gay community.
2. The purpose of marriage is to provide a stable environment for the raising of children. That is why at some times and places marriages were arranged. Virtually any child psychologist will tell you that children do best in a household with a husband and a wife.
3. The larger purpose of the gay marriage movement is to silence the other side with the government gun, see what is going on in Canada.
4. Most of what those in the gay movement claim as grievances are either non issues or problems that have other solutions. Living wills allow them hospital access to their partner if that is really such a problem. Health insurance is a problem created by the government, Health insurance should not be tied to the employer, but the individual, like car and homeowner insurance. It is right now because of the tax code. Social Security benefits? Well, SS probably isn't going to survive to see much past the end of the decade anyway.
Homosexuality, from what I have found looking into it, is a psychological condition brought on by a number of factors. Having feelings for a person of the same sex is perfectly natural. For example, I have deep emotional feelings for my brother. When his fiance, to whom he had proposed to, left him I was surprised at the emotional impact it had on me. I also have male friends to whom I have similar emotional attachments, though not to the same degree. That is perfectly natural and healthy. What is not natural and healthy is to make that relationship into a sexual one.
When I was a teenager I had my own set of physiological problems. I rejected. with great hostility, to friends and family who were trying to help me. I didn't want to change, but I eventually realized that I wasn't happy with who I was and where I was going. It took many years to change to the person I am now and it was not an easy thing to do, but I am a better person for it. I saw my cousin go through a similar event, from an alcoholic to a responsible father. I get it, these people don't want to change. If that was all they were doing then people wouldn't have such a problem, but they are trying to get their self-destructive lifestyle accepted as "normal" and that is simply not going to happen
The facts are very clear on this in terms of the health consequences of the homosexual lifestyle: Just one Canadian study found:
The life expectancy for gay and bisexual men is 20 years less than the average Canadian man;
GLB people commit suicide at rates ranging from twice as often to almost 14 times more than the general population; (Important to note that this doesn't change much when homosexuals live in an area where they are accepted.)
GLBs have smoking rates ranging from 1.3 to three times higher than average;
GLBs become alcoholics at a rate 1.4 to seven times higher than the general population;
GLBs use illicit drugs at a rate from 1.6 to 19 times higher than other Canadians;
GLBs experience depression at rates ranging from 1.8 to three times higher than average;
Homosexual men comprise 76% of AIDS cases and 45% of all new HIV infections;
GLB populations are at a higher risk of lung and liver cancer;
Homosexual and bisexual men suffer a higher rate of anal cancer than heterosexual men;
Lesbians report a higher rate of breast cancer;
Sorry, but encouraging suc
That's a myth. Historically, countries that have had very little public funding of science have outpaced countries that do. For every dollar the government spends on science, it displaces about $1.25 in private science funding.
The Myth of Science as a Public Good (by Terence Kealey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_PVI6V6o-4
The question is not "Could they" the question is "Will they". In the US the answer is "YES!!!". In China, every indication is "No". Politically, the US is one of the riskiest countries to invest in. Combine that with regulations that take at least three times longer to get approved in the US than even in Canada and you have a country that isn't worth investing in vs the alternatives. I can get twice the dividends in Canada than in the US when buying equally sound companies. Add to that the Canadian dollar is going up against the US dollar.
One important note from history: The money leaves first, the people leave second. We have the first right now, if we stay on the current path we will soon have the second. The government knows this, which is why it now charges $450 for the form to renounce US citizenship, it used to be free. People in government know that soon the young will want to leave the country in search of opportunity that no longer exists in the US. In the global economy, a US citizenship is now a liability. Since the young have no wealth to tax, they have to make it as hard as possible to get rid of ones US citizenship. It is $450 now. If they can charge $450 for it then they can charge $5000. Much like the Warsaw Pact countries, the US government might get desperate to prevent the best and brightest from leaving, though it could just fall apart before that point when the dollar tanks.
Not sure exactly what direction you were taking the last portion of your post, but you DO realize that the top 5% already pay 50% of all income taxes?
http://www.financialsamurai.com/2011/04/12/how-much-money-do-the-top-income-earners-make-percent/
The rest isn't directed at you, but is more just a general statement about taxes.
To be in the "Top 5%" one only needs to make more than $159,000, assuming my numbers are correct.
Where that can cause problems is that many small businesses are taxed as S corporations, which means the corporations taxes are paid via the owners income taxes. In the company I work for, bonuses come from after tax profits. Raising taxes on my boss means less money for me and my co-workers when it comes time for bonuses. It also means less money with which to re-invest to expand the company, it becomes harder to save for expansion, making small businesses more reliant on loans instead of their own savings. So one effect is to favor big businesses at the expense of smaller ones.
You also run into the problem known as "Hauser's law". For the past 50 years, no matter what the tax code and tax rates have been, total revenues have maxed out at about 20% of GDP. States across the country have tried repeatedly to raise taxes on the rich. When they did, revenues go down. Yet in the 80's when rates were cut, total revenues went up. The reasons are not hard to fathom, why bother making those long term investments when a large portion of the projected profits are going to be taken in taxes. Better to put the money elsewhere in less risky investments or lower tax investments.
The problem today is spending. While I agree the military budget needs to be drastically cut, 50% cut just for starters, even cutting defense to zero would not balance the budget. The welfare state is in the beginning stages of collapse. Had the problem been addressed 20-30 years ago there could have been a smooth transition, but it is too late for that now. There's going to be wrenching changes within the decade, even the CBO projects interest on the debt will be $1 trillion per year by 2020 assuming rates don't rise, and it will fall to individuals to try and help those hurt most.
I haven't bothered getting a flu shot in several years. Whenever I got it I felt like crap for several weeks and tended to get a lot of colds. Several years I got the Flu anyway. With several years of no vaccine, any cases I have gotten I have gotten over with in a few daysand the number of colds I get seems to have gone way down.
Granted, I do most of my work in jails across several states where the primary concern is Tuberculosis.
The major problem I find with the flu shot is it gives vaccines a bad name, since it's so ineffective for such a large portion of the population, and people see this ineffectiveness, it can make the arguments of the anti-vaccination people seem credible.
As I said before, I never bother getting a flu shot anymore, but you bet your ass I got my Tetnus shot 10 years after I got my last one. Even better, the newer Tdap vaccine covers tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis. Woo Hoo.
Not exactly sure which one you're talking about either as there are several that fit that description. Wheeled vehicles have their place, but tracks are the way to go in urban environments because you can climb over obstacles that stop wheeled vehicles..
As for an improved M113, you'd want to take a look at the MTLV sometimes known as the M113A4. A longer chassis gives greater troop and cargo capacity. I'm not quite sold on the diesel electric drive, but at least they're trying something that has a reasonable chance of working.
As for the floor armor on a M113, it's an inch and an eighth of 5086 ballistic grade aluminum. It stood up to mines just fine. Ordinarily the M113 has ground pressure too low to set off heavier AT mines, you don't want infantry setting them off, but command detonated IEDs were a big problem in Vietnam. (Yet the "leaders" act all surprised when we ran into them in Iraq and Afghanistan.) It was for protection against the larger IEDs that the troops sandbagged the floor, sand does a very good job of stopping shrapnel. They were also easy to remove if the vehicle did become stuck and could be used to build defensive positions.
The advantage of the M113 is that it provides a good base with which you can tailor to the environment, since it's basically a giant aluminum box. Need mobility over protection? Standard M113 works fine. REALLY need mobility? Slap in a souped up engine and drivetrain. Need more armor? At least half a dozen kits available, everything from basic aluminum plates, to bar armor, to ERA. Need to land troops on rough surf? Slap on a Arisgator kit. Need a stabilized weapons platform and are willing to sacrifice troop capacity? Add a sharpshooter turret. Want heavy firepower, but you also want to carry 11 troops? ASP-30 30mm autocannon mounts to anything that can mount a 50 caliber M2.
The M113 is like the AK-47 of APCs, yea the basic design is old, but it's cheap and does its job so well there's not much you can do to improve it. Anything you do to it is simply customization to fit your unique need.
Ontos was such a wonderful concept. For a first try it was remarkably capable, further development could have improved it.. Sad that it was trashed after Vietnam because the military was only interested in stuff that would bust tanks at 2 miles.
I believe a 3 round autoloader for the M40 was developed, but never adopted.
Another option is to simply mount 70mm Hydra rockets in place of the TOW on the Brady and on the M113 (Though ditching the Bradly would be a great thing too.) Or perhaps built an Ontos like vehicle that uses the Hydra rockets instead of the M40. You could completely develop such a vehicle for a fraction of the cost of the uber-planes they keep trying to build.
Heck, you can mount rocket pods on just about anything that can physically carry them. Some ultralight aircraft could manage to carry a few if you really wanted to. Slap some rocket pods on a light aircraft and you'll have a functional light duty attack aircraft at fraction of the cost. Fabric covering makes repairs easy and minimizes the radar signature.
Even on ground stuff we have troops using TOW rockets at $20,000 each instead of $250 106mm HE shell from a M40 recoiless rifle. Yea Yea, the sustained rate of fire is only 1 round per minute, but it can do 5 rounds per minute for the first minute, which is faster than a TOW can be fired. Not to mention you can have several M40's for the price of one TOW, even more when you consider ammo. There have been several instances where the heavy weapons of an outpost, like the TOW were taken out early in a battle. having several M40's gives redundancy.
Of course another problem is the Russian Shtora system is making the TOW obsolete. From what I can find, the Shtora countermeasure system has somewhere between a 95-98% chance of jamming the guidance system of a SACLOS missile like the TOW. That tech is going to get better and smaller. Javelin is too expensive and too dammed heavy for soldiers to actually carry it and not be slowed down so much that the insurgents can outmaneuver them or simply run away. It also apparently has problems locking on if the enemy has taken even basic attempts to IR camouflage their vehicle, it gets lost in the background clutter.
We should be issuing our troops M3 Carl Gustav recoiless rifles like Arabs issue RPG-7s. (OK perhaps not THAT much, but you get the idea.) How many times do I need to see shaky cam of US solders firing at someone hiding in a clay hut that 5.56 can't punch through? A single 84mm round would instantly solve the problem, yet we see troops firing a $75,000 missile at that person, if they even bothered to drag it along.
As nice as the warthog is, they are obsolete. Modern SPAAGs are designed to blow planes like the A-10 out of the sky and their cannons out-range the GAU-8. It is only useful against opponents that have no modern AA weapons.
.6. There was supposedly a 3 barrel version of the GAU-8 for such an aircraft, but it was canceled. The slower speed allows the aircraft to operate from very small airfields and also allows them to fly at lower altitudes, hugging the terrain. Something lik e a EMB 314 Super Tucano would work great, but they cost a lot, the AT-6B Texan II may be far more cost effective and just as versatile..
The solution is far cheaper aircraft in greater numbers. A turboprop gives far better efficiency below Mach
Sorry, not good of me to expect everyone be in the loop about the stuff they are doing to diesel engines. The new EPA regs require a rube goldberg emissions system for diesel engines that involves dumping urea (which they get from harvesting sheep pee) into the exhaust to supposedly reduce emissions. The EPA revs Diesel regulations almost as often as Linus revs the Linux kernel. Is it any wonder why we can't get decent smaller diesel vehicles here in the US? Where except perhaps LA is crap like that even needed?
You're wrong..............my moped gets 160 mpg. :P
Can't have diesel, they say it causes cancer so now we now have to dump sheep pee in the exhaust. Which is of course stupid because EVERYTHING in some form or another causes cancer. Hell, Oxygen causes cancer.
There are FAR larger things we need to worry about in terms of environmental protection than diesel exhaust and so much of the other stuff being proposed. Like how about making it easier for companies to build newer and safer nuclear power plants so we don't need to burn as much coal and keep older nuclear plants online past their design life. How about restarting the reprocessing of nuclear waste back into usable fuel. If you reprocess, 98% of that waste becomes nuclear fuel and the remaining 2% is stuff with short half lives that's only dangerous for a few hundred years.
Any sane person who looks at the evidence should be able to see that we went way past what is reasonable and went full pants-on-head-retarded quite awhile back in the West when it came to the environment. Why? Because the genuine environmentalists were successful. People started agreeing with them about the need to take basic reasonable measures to protect the environment. In order to stay relevant they had to get more extreme.
Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace left because he says that the organisation got taken over by communists who used green language to further their red ideology. Thus why they are sometimes revered to as "Watermelons".
Are humans having an impact on the environment? Almost certainly, but to believe that we have such an impact to turn the Earth in Venus in pure hubris. A basic thought experiment shows the absurdness of it all. Earth has been around for billions of years with nobody at the helm managing the climate and yet it has more-or-less remained a life permitting climate, even after getting hit repeatedly by comets and asteroids. That right there should tell you that the climate system has built in negative feedback loops that prevent things from getting too far out of whack. Yet so many of these models and predictions assume positive feedback loops. When your theory doesn't match reality, it's time for a new theory.
To add insult to injury, there's been, on average, no warming over the last 10 years while CO2 kept increasing. The warmers need to explain how CO2 is such a large climate driver, yet is so easily overpowered by other factors.
The market doesn't like don't like his rule and guess what? That's why Linux is stuck at 1% market share.
Nobody is going to freeze the kernel and ABI for PC use because you can't make money on that work. Thanks to the GPL any work they do will simply be stolen by the leeches. Had there been a "free for non-profit use" pay to redistribute" clause then you bet your ass the Kernel would have been forked a good decade ago.
The fact that no one has done so, including Red Hat, IBM or Dell, should tell you that it really isn't important enough to anyone that matters.
It doesn't matter to anyone ON THE SERVER MARKET. Servers have both extremely limited hardware variation and full time staff paid to put up with Torvalds's monkey code. Linux would be wiped from the server room in a week if MS priced Server CALS reasonably.
On the desktop? Microsoft and Apple spend hundreds of millions on maintaining the ABI of their operating systems. Guess what? Both have way more market share than Linux does. So for CONSUMERS, you bet your ass it matters.
It's not that I LIKE Microsoft, It's that your product can't even compete with Windows freaking 98 in terms of reliability. Linux today MIGHT give Windows 95 a run for it's money, as drivers there were kind of a crapshoot still, but that's about the best it could do.
What really pisses me off about the whole thing is that having a properly designed ABI makes development EASIER, not harder. An ABI allows you to completely gut and replace subsystems with it having no effect on anything else. Once you have one system working you NEVER have to touch it again.
Let me give an example from work. The Inmate telephone systems we run have 3 basic components, the PBX, the recorder, and the line controller. The ABI between them is a telephone circuit with DTMF in band signalling.
We have used at least five different makes/models of PBX, three different types of recorders, and three types of line controllers. However, since all of these interface though one standard ABI we can mix and match them with no problem whatsoever. Converting a Samsung i100 KPBXwith a Kaltech recorder on a Defender 2000 controller to a newer Teleserver recorder? No problem. Just change a couple parameters in the programming of the PBX and line controller and you're back in business. These parameters are also the exact same for every site, only difference is the number of phones and outbound lines.
Just this week I went in and gutted one system, replaced the decade old PBX and recorder with a brand new system. Did the line controller crap itself and die because of these changes? No, we simply changed the inmate PIN numbers in the database and it went on like nothing happened.
The only reason I can see for Linus NOT to use an ABI is because he is too lazy to do so or he doesn't have a clue how to do it.
Another example I just thought of. Firearm cartridges. In this case you have a list of physical dimensions and max pressure as the ABI. Gun makers then have a base from which they can design a gun around. A 22 Long Rifle revolver made in 1890 will chamber and fire ammunition made yesterday and a gun made yesterday willfire wiht amunitoin made in 1880. These sorts of standards do not restrict gun designers, it liberates them because they can design their gun for one specific standardized cartridge and know that it will work 100 years from now.
Having an ABI liberates software developers because they never have to worry about their software breaking under that ABI. Now, maintaining that ABI may be difficult for someone like Linus, but guess what? IT"S YOUR JOB to maintain that ABI compatibility. If Torvalds operated an ammunition plant his ass would be in prison for the sort of things he does to his software. Hell, if Torvalds operated ANY business other than open source he would be living under a bridge for such shoddy workmanship. Now that I think about it, Microsoft could put Linus out of work instantly if they actually priced Server CALs reasonably.
I went and did some actual research and here is what I found.
According to whois, RonPaul.com was registered in 2000 while RonPaul.org was registered in 1999. The current owner of RonPaul.org is DN Capital Inc, a company based in Panama, while RonPaul.com is owned by WKF Corp, another company based in Panama.
This right here is sending up red flags. A "fan site" whose domain name is owned by some corporation in Panama? This isn't some Hary Alderson in Vermont who owns the domain name, as one might expect from a fan site. It is some company in Panama who, for all we know, may or may not be a shell company.
Second, Ron Paul DID NOT go to "The UN" for this, he went to the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, whose JOB it is to settle disputes like this. There is nothing hypocritical about this. WIPO would exist absent the UN for this purpose. He may not LIKE the UN, but he is working within the system as it currently exists even though he would like that system changed. I don't like the city government where I live and wish it were set up differently, but you bet your butt I go to them when I have a problem or need something taken care of under their jurisdiction.
RP wanted only the domain name, yet the "owners" of the site wanted to sell him the whole thing for a huge chunk of cash? That's not "Fan site", that's "trying to hit up a public figure for money and cash out". Wanting to sell the whole nine yards so eagerly, and for so much, doesn't sound like any "fan site" I've ever heard of.
Sorry, the owners of ronpaul.com are looking awfully shady. Say what you want about Dr. Paul, the owners of the domain are not looking so innocent and it is looking that Dr, Paul may have a decent case for cybersquatting. We simply don't have enough information to be 100% sure. Considering Dr. Paul's past, I'm tending toward giving him the benefit of the doubt for now, but I would certainly like more information before definitively siding one way or the other on this. There is probably a lot of details that we don't know about.
Using your own logic, it is also not possible for the dollar to function as currency because there isn't enough dollars in the world to pay for one years production either. (M1 is at about 1.6 trillion.)
The flaw in your thinking is twofold.
1. You don't get to use the gold only once. It cycles again and again just like dollars do today.
2. The market price of gold would adjust to its market equilibrium.
Such as?
Compare that with fiat currencies, which have a 100% record of failure. Every single one has eventually been debased to the point of collapse.
Actually 12, though not necessarily base 12, was very common in past civilizations because you can count to 12 on one hand. How? Count the number of segments in your fingers, using your thumb to keep track. 3 segments per finger with 4 fingers equals 12. Pinky finger, segment nearest your palm, is 1 and the tip of your index finger is 12. (At least that is the way I have always seen it done.) You can also count to 120 in base 10 with it by using your other hand to keep track of the tens place.
This method of counting has been used at least since the Egyptians 4,000+ years ago. Once I learned that method I never count on individual fingers anymore. 12 was also used because it is easily divisible without going into fractions, 10 gets messy REALLY quick.
Where I live that price difference is only 5 cents.
They have been receiving fiat money, not good money. We do not export enough to "pay" for our import, so those countries are stuck with paper. Eventually those countries are going to cut their losses and stop accepting paper.
Actually the government PAID for crops and livestock to be destroyed, under the misguided view that it would help farmers by raising the price of farm produce.
This was not very popular with those who didn't live on a farm and were borderline starving, so the government eventually want to the equally stupid practice of paying farmers not to grow. This threw millions of farm-workers out of work and only added to the unemployment problems of the 30's.
That whole decade was the result of government meddling in the economy. We are seeing the same thing today, a decade of asset bubbles and economic stagnation. Bush was our Hoover, someone who paid lip service to free market, but who massively increased government involvement in the economy. Obama is our FDR, expanding those policies and ensuring continual high unemployment and economic stagnation. Only after those policies were abandoned did we see recovery in 1946. Today we are going to have to have a massive recession to clean up the decade of malinvestment that the government has sown. Better to have it be sharp and quick than deep and drawn out. We can either do it voluntarily now or be forced into it when the bond bubble pops and defect spending is not longer possible.
Note that they used the number 99.9%. Not 100%. Not to mention that they are probably referring to the federal government. State governments are perfectly capable of figuring out that arsenic rich drinking water is bad.
Use this site to find ethanol free gasoline.
http://pure-gas.org/
I only buy non-ethanol gas for all my vehicles. Especially important for my moped engines. Thankfully non-ethanol gas is relatively easy to find in North Dakota.
At least I follow you because I was looking for an explanation as to why Linux continues to suck so much on the desktop and ran across you. Of course I sometimes post against you on other subjects that we disagree on, if I have the time and feel like it, but the whole point for ME following you at least is your thoughts on PCs and operating systems, thoughts that I find myself in agreement with you on most of the time.
Must irritate them to no end when I use my mod points to mod you back up. (At least when the discussion is on something we agree about.)