Go back and re-read your own writing. In the consensus are the good guys, and outside are the bad guys. Outsiders have vested interests, insiders "are a bunch of scientists trying to do good science."
"As for population growth in the US, it is mostly due to immigration and higher birthrates among immigrant populations."
It's a combined effect - immigrants both increase the population on their arrival AND have more children per family. The birthrate among non hispanic whites is below replacement level. Specifically (from Wikipedia):
The American exception
While almost all of the developed world, and many other nations, have seen plummeting fertility rates over the last twenty years, the United States' rates have remained stable and even slightly increased. This is partly due to the high fertility rate among communities such as Hispanics, but it is also because the fertility rate among non-Hispanic whites in the US, after falling to about 1.6 in the 1970s and early 1980s, had increased and is now around 1.9, or slightly below replacement level, rather than collapsing to the 1.3-1.5 level common in Europe.
New England has a rate similar to most Western European countries, while the South, Midwest, and border states have fertility rates considerably higher than replacement. States where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a strong presence, most notably Utah, also have higher-than-replacement fertility rates, especially among the LDS population. Although the percentage of Hispanics plays a role, other important considerations include the cost of living and level of taxation in an area, which, when they are higher, tend to suppress non-Hispanic white fertility.
Some other developed countries are also experiencing the "American exception", including Australia and New Zealand (but not Canada), France, Ireland, and the Nordic countries. A few developed Western countries, including Argentina, Israel and Uruguay, for reasons which are as yet poorly understood. Argentina, for example, despite being populated mainly by Spanish and Italian stock, and having a GDP and population similar to Poland, has a fertility rate of 2.4, which is roughly twice that of its people's ancestral homelands."
Who said I was denying global warming? I'm simply pointing out that, as confident as you seem to be, you STILL MIGHT BE WRONG, and that villification of people who disagree with a theory is commonplace. There is nothing "special" about the situation surrounding Global Warming theory - the consensus is "A", some others say "B", and those people are treated poorly by the scientific community. All on the basis of "objectivity."
I'm not saying that current global warming theory is correct or incorrect. I am pointing out hat the level of smug exhibited by those on the consensus side is unseemly for people who should know better.
"No, that was GRIDS, the Gay Related Immunodeficiency Syndrome. Only after the virus was discovered was the relation to IV drug use made, and was then termed AIDS."
Nope. While GRIDS did exist prior to AIDS, scientists made the epidemiological connection between whatever was killing gay men and HIV drug users and Haitians, and then called it AIDS. The virus wasn't isolated until years later, and even then it was possible that HIV was simply an opportunistic infection. They didn't figure out the disease mechanism until after that.
You missed my initial post. NO, he wouldn't win a Nobel, at least not for may years. His theories would get no traction, he would be denounced as a crackpot, and would not get any funding.
I mentioned Continental Drift before; we did a case study in my Philosophy of Science class. From Wikipedia:
"The hypothesis that the continents once formed a single landmass, broke up, and drifted to their present locations was fully elaborated by Alfred Wegener in 1912. [2] Although Wegener's theory was formed independently and was more complete than those of his predecessors, Wegener would later credit a number of past authors with similar ideas: [3] [4] Franklin Coxworthy (between 1848 and 1890), [5] Roberto Mantovani (between 1889 and 1909), William Henry Pickering (1907) [6] and Frank Bursley Taylor (1908).... Wegener was the first to use the phrase "continental drift" (1912, 1915) [2] [3] (in German "die Verschiebung der Kontinente" - since Wegener presented and published in German, his ideas did not reach the majority of scientists until 1922, when his book was translated into English) and formally publish the hypothesis that the continents had somehow "drifted" apart. And although he presented much evidence for continental drift, he was unable to provide a convincing explanation for the physical processes which might have caused this drift. His suggestion that the continents had been pulled apart by the centrifugal pseudoforce of the Earth's rotation was considered unrealistic by the scientific community.[11]
[edit] Controversial years
Wegener's hypothesis received support through the controversial years from South African geologist Alexander Du Toit as well as from Arthur Holmes. However, the idea of continental drift did not become widely accepted even as theory until the late 1950s. By the 1960s, geological research conducted by Robert S. Dietz, Bruce Heezen, and Harry Hess, along with a rekindling of the theory including a mechanism by J. Tuzo Wilson led to widespread acceptance of the theory among geologists."
So the idea had been kicking around for a century, Wegener published it in English in 1922, and it still took 30 YEARS until the theory was accepted.
Science is about skepticism, but it is also about consensus. And that consensus can be VERY powerful, overriding the existence of data that doesn't fit the accepted model. "That peg can't be square - the hole is round, therefore the peg must be round. You must have measured it incorrectly/it's an optical illusion/all we need to do is redefine "roundness" to include objects with 4 corners and equal sides and angles." (notice how "Global Warming" became "Global Climate Change"?)
Scientific history is FULL of people ignoring data because it doesn't fit into their theory, and they simply CANNOT abandon that theory. Look at Peter Duesberg, the current poster child for crackpot scientists because he maintains that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. The thing is, when the viral theory of AIDS was first proposed, the mechanisms were so unlike any other disease that Duesberg rejected the theory based on established theories of viral infection. Now, 20 years later, the mechanisms are better understood and virologists understand how HIV works, but Duesberg won't give up. And there are still "square pegs" in the HIV model of AIDS - why don't some get infected? Why is the latency period all over the map? Haitians? (BTW, this was my final paper in that class)
Science is NOT what they taught us in grade school.
I was actually referring to the influence of advertising, the consumer culture, and the sense of entitlement given to the boomers by their well meaning but indulgent parents, and then transferred to THEIR kids.
Here's an example: my carpool partner is in the middle of a nasty divorce, mainly over money. His (soon to be) ex wife's attitude is that she has reached the age (40) where she deserves the finer things in life, so she buys stuff regardless of whether she can afford it. And when I say stuff, I mean HOUSES and CARS. She is then shocked when these items get foreclosed/repossessed, and it's always someone else's fault. She didn't like her job? She quit, with no job to go to. She worked as a 1099 for a year and didn't pay taxes, and could not comprehend that the government wanted near 40% of her wages, right now thankyouverymuch.
Her parents were very indulgent, and basically gave her whatever she wanted, and unfortunately her husband abetted this before he wised up. Is it their fault? possibly. Is she still responsible? Oh HELL yes - she enjoys the privileges of being an adult, she needs to take the responsibilities.
You are arguing the point with the wrong person. My phrase "The argument being made is that it HAS been proven, as far as one can prove anything in such indeterministic systems" was playing devil's advocate - it is the argument used in favor of political action regarding Global Climate Change.
I then gave examples where such "proof" turned out to be illusory, and finished with a caution about dismissing skeptics. I'm not suer how you got the impression that I am a proponent of political action to address Global Climate Change.
Nope - I'm a man. And the lazy part wasn't about the fact that she didn't get a job, but by the fact that she DIDN'T clean the house, or even really raise her kids. It's a personality trait, but that didn't keep her from working - when she needed money, she worked full time jobs - just not enough to save anything.
My problem is with her lack of planning. Having had a husband leave her relatively early should have been a wake up call to take care of herself. But she didn't take the call.
"Social security is supposed to be the bare minimum income to subsist post retirement. By definition, anything less than that means you're can't survive."
No - that's what Social Security was SUPPOSED to be. It was originally and anti-poverty program, not a government pension program. But 2 things happened:
1) The government used a flawed measure of inflation, overestimating it substantially and therefore increasing the amount of benefits in excess of that required to keep up with the REAL rate of inflation. This had the effect of turning SS payments from a last ditch backstop to a substantial portion of retirement income over time.
2) Having been inadvertently (or purposefully) been given such largess, the elderly have made it quite clear that they intend to keep on getting it, and since they are retired they have nothing better to do on Tuesdays in November so they may as well vote. So now SS is the "third rail" in Congress - can't touch it, or it will kill you.
The ONLY thing that has kept this Ponzi scheme from collapsing is the large slug of baby boomers filling the coffers for a small number of retirees, thinned out by WWII, a lifetime of factory labor, and smoking. But now it is reversed - the boomers are retiring AND living longer, and there is a much smaller pool of workers to support them - the "baby bust".
I'm not sure what is going to happen over the next 20 years, but I know it won't be pretty.
You need to look at history, not present day. It's not that the boomers didn't have kids - they *delayed* having kids, and had fewer of them. There is a significant dip in the number of births in the late 60's (i was born in '68). I noticed when I was a kid that there seemed to be a lot fewer kids in my grade than the higher and lower grades; their response was that, when I was born, it was very "unfashionable" to have children.
So now the boomers are starting to retire, and their kids are in their 20's, maybe early 30's - not peak earning years. the bulk of the taxes comes from those later in their careers, and there are a lot FEWER of them than there needs to be. So, IF we can get through the next 20 years without bankrupting the system, the boomer's kids will be supporting me. I'm not holding my breath.
As for population growth in the US, it is mostly due to immigration and higher birthrates among immigrant populations. Xenophobia aside, this is a GOOD thing - Japan and Europe are about freaking out right now because they are simply not reproducing enough to support their aging population, but they won't accept immigrants into their society in any meaningful way. Americans are going to have to deal with their caregivers probably speaking a foreign language and having different color skin, but they will deal. Japan is placing their hopes in robots - anything but outsiders. And Europe is placing their faith in...?
"There we go, asking people to prove negatives again. Why don't you start by proving that it IS man-made?"
The argument being made is that it HAS been proven, as far as one can prove anything in such indeterministic systems.
Of course, we had proof for years that ulcers were caused by stress. Nope - bacteria.
Proof that the continents were immobile in their positions. Well, not so much proof as that it was just so totally OBVIOUS that continents couldn't move, and that "continental drift" was a crackpot theory. Until it wasn't.
AIDS was a breakdown of the immune system because of IV drug use, exposure to multiple venereal diseases, and the generally unhealth lifestyle of the gay community. Until they isolated a virus.
The reality is that scientific "proof" consists of general agreement among communities of people about the interpretation of observed phenomena, and that agreement can be driven by MANY factors, not just how well the data fits. One CANNOT get to the level of mathematical proof. So there will always be a role for skeptics, and those that just won't accept that, if you have a square peg and a round hole, you just pretend the peg's squareness doesn't exist, because it MUST fit into the round hole.
Yeah, my grandmother was in that situation until relatively recently. She kept working until she was about 75 and ill health forced her to stop working - note, not "retire".
The reason for this? She is a lazy bitch who never worked a real job in her life and relied on whatever man she was with to provide for her. Her first husband (my grandfather) left her. Her second was a great old guy who finally died of Parkinson's and left her a wad of cash. the third guy was a bum and a hustler and took that money when he ran to Mexico - literally.
She never really saved any money, never invested herself in a job with future, and never planned. She doesn't have a pension because she never had a career. Social Security is keeping her afloat, and the fact that she scammed her way into a religiously affiliated care facility. And when that runs out, my Dad will take care of her, because as neglectful as she was, she is still family.
Yes, there are plenty of people who had bad luck, and perhaps don't "deserve" what they are dealing with in their old age. But that does not negate the fact that there are also those who squandered their good luck, and are now asking others to pay the price.
The point isn't that he broke the law - technically, he did. The point is that, in a modern society, these kinds of minor transgressions happen ALL THE TIME. It would be literally impossible for the police to enforce all of the laws on the books 100% of the time - everyone would be in jail or broke from fines.
So we as a society have developed a certain tolerance of minor transgressions of the law as the price of living in a society where if there is a truly dangerous crime occurring, the police will have the resources to deal with it. So reasonable people give others the benefit of the doubt, and do NOT call the police the very day a car is parked illegally. They have this tolerance both as a measure of charity toward ones fellow man, and as a self defense mechanism - if I rat out my neighbor on his lawn I then need to measure mine with a micrometer, 'cause sure as shit he's going to want to catch me as the hypocrite I am.
Did he break the law? Yes. Was his neighbor an asshole? Hell yes. And I'd rather live in a society where we cut each other a break on a routine basis than be surrounded by assholes. (Back to wearing my overly large black helmet)
You are whistling in the wind. Even your own candidate has backed his people off the attacks on her. If the Obama campaign doesn't revise their playbook after this, they are in deep shit. And the fact that you are so frantically trying to convince me of how stupid I am is a sure sign that YOU KNOW IT.
Also, you may want to look at what the Republicans are actually doing this time around. The Governor was mobilizing the National Guard while Nagin was still partying in Denver, Bush and Cheney are staying in Washington, and McCain and Palin have actually been to Louisiana. They may yet fuck it up, but it won't be from lack of attention.
Take it to Kos - you just sound like a blithering idiot here.
The more you yell, and the more you repeat the same ad hominem attacks and defending the same bankrupt positions, the happier I get. There is nothing more effective in a contest than getting one's opponent into a frothing fit.
Thank you - I was worried about McCain losing, but after reading your trenchant analysis, I'm confident the election is in the bag.
"So if Steve Jobs suddenly dies from cancer, Apple could replace him with a manager of a Burger King, since the latter has managed a business and Apple would be just fine. Because the latter has management experience."
If the alternative was a school teacher, then yes. "Experience" is a loser for Dems this time around - they can't argue how little experience the VP candidate has when their PRESIDENTIAL candidate has even less. They would be best to simply dodge it, but since the Party operators can't really control DailyKos and MoveOn, I can't see that happening.
Have you tried some of the tricks? First, lubricant. If that doesnt work, one trick I hear was to take a spool of thread and start wrapping the thread around your finger, starting above the knuckle and moving toward the ring. This compresses your skin evenly. When you get close to the ring, cut off the thread and feed it under the ring. Now start unwinding the thread. The unwinding thread will push the ring up over your wrapped knuckle very slowly.
Oooooh, touched a nerve, have we? You seem a bit defensive.
I didn't say Palin had the experience to be President. I said that, in comparison, she has more of a particular type of experience - executive branch in a government, than her opponents combined. If she doesn't have enough experience, can you really argue that Obama or Biden do?
As for Obama's accomplishments, they involve: academia, life, and getting elected. The first qualifies him to be a college professor. If paying off one's student loans counts as an accomplishment, then *I* am probably more qualified than him. And he got elected - that's an accomplishment, I suppose, but she also got elected. I was refering to accomplishments while IN OFFICE - there are a lot of pieces of legislation with Biden's name on them, and Palin has been challenging her own party on corruption. What has Obama done in the senate? (besides voting for telecom immunity?)
As for who is saying what, you haven't been paying attention - the Democrats have gone apeshit regarding her "lack of experience". It's understandable - after McCain has been beating on him, it's good to get a little of one's own back. But for independents and undecideds, it keeps the issue of experience in play, and the longer it is in play, the more Obama has to lose. Remember, HE's running for President, she's running for VP. He WILL be applying whatever experience he has come January; she MAY need to apply whatever experience she has at some indeterminate point in time.
If the attitude in the Obama camp reflects yours, I'm popping the champagne corks now. Palin is a game changer. McCain may still lose, but only if the Dems recognize that fact and adjust accordingly. Obama knows it too - he's already repudiated some of the comments coming out of his campaign.
"He just destroyed the "Obama doesn't have the experience to lead" meme. "
Sure of that? Because she has 2 years of experience in the Executive branch of a government. Obama and Biden COMBINED have zero.
I addition, Obama's senatorial career was solely taken up by preparation to run for President. Palin has some actual accomplishments on her resume.
Palin was a risky choice, where Biden was a safe choice. But the main reason that experience isn't a risk to the McCain/Palin ticket is that the more "experience" gets talked about, the worse Obama looks, even if it's the Dems doing the talking.
Hear, hear. At my last job I terminated my own access by sending an email to the TERMINATED@myoldcompany.com address. I also scrubbed my laptop of anything that wasn't on it when I got it, and generally made it clear that I was leaving with clean hands.
Slashdot Mirror
Go back and re-read your own writing. In the consensus are the good guys, and outside are the bad guys. Outsiders have vested interests, insiders "are a bunch of scientists trying to do good science."
Very neat.
Very clean.
Shockingly naive.
Not so fast - look at what I said:
"As for population growth in the US, it is mostly due to immigration and higher birthrates among immigrant populations."
It's a combined effect - immigrants both increase the population on their arrival AND have more children per family. The birthrate among non hispanic whites is below replacement level. Specifically (from Wikipedia):
The American exception
While almost all of the developed world, and many other nations, have seen plummeting fertility rates over the last twenty years, the United States' rates have remained stable and even slightly increased. This is partly due to the high fertility rate among communities such as Hispanics, but it is also because the fertility rate among non-Hispanic whites in the US, after falling to about 1.6 in the 1970s and early 1980s, had increased and is now around 1.9, or slightly below replacement level, rather than collapsing to the 1.3-1.5 level common in Europe.
New England has a rate similar to most Western European countries, while the South, Midwest, and border states have fertility rates considerably higher than replacement. States where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a strong presence, most notably Utah, also have higher-than-replacement fertility rates, especially among the LDS population. Although the percentage of Hispanics plays a role, other important considerations include the cost of living and level of taxation in an area, which, when they are higher, tend to suppress non-Hispanic white fertility.
Some other developed countries are also experiencing the "American exception", including Australia and New Zealand (but not Canada), France, Ireland, and the Nordic countries. A few developed Western countries, including Argentina, Israel and Uruguay, for reasons which are as yet poorly understood. Argentina, for example, despite being populated mainly by Spanish and Italian stock, and having a GDP and population similar to Poland, has a fertility rate of 2.4, which is roughly twice that of its people's ancestral homelands."
Who said I was denying global warming? I'm simply pointing out that, as confident as you seem to be, you STILL MIGHT BE WRONG, and that villification of people who disagree with a theory is commonplace. There is nothing "special" about the situation surrounding Global Warming theory - the consensus is "A", some others say "B", and those people are treated poorly by the scientific community. All on the basis of "objectivity."
I'm not saying that current global warming theory is correct or incorrect. I am pointing out hat the level of smug exhibited by those on the consensus side is unseemly for people who should know better.
"No, that was GRIDS, the Gay Related Immunodeficiency Syndrome. Only after the virus was discovered was the relation to IV drug use made, and was then termed AIDS."
Nope. While GRIDS did exist prior to AIDS, scientists made the epidemiological connection between whatever was killing gay men and HIV drug users and Haitians, and then called it AIDS. The virus wasn't isolated until years later, and even then it was possible that HIV was simply an opportunistic infection. They didn't figure out the disease mechanism until after that.
You missed my initial post. NO, he wouldn't win a Nobel, at least not for may years. His theories would get no traction, he would be denounced as a crackpot, and would not get any funding.
I mentioned Continental Drift before; we did a case study in my Philosophy of Science class. From Wikipedia:
"The hypothesis that the continents once formed a single landmass, broke up, and drifted to their present locations was fully elaborated by Alfred Wegener in 1912. [2] Although Wegener's theory was formed independently and was more complete than those of his predecessors, Wegener would later credit a number of past authors with similar ideas: [3] [4] Franklin Coxworthy (between 1848 and 1890), [5] Roberto Mantovani (between 1889 and 1909), William Henry Pickering (1907) [6] and Frank Bursley Taylor (1908). ...
Wegener was the first to use the phrase "continental drift" (1912, 1915) [2] [3] (in German "die Verschiebung der Kontinente" - since Wegener presented and published in German, his ideas did not reach the majority of scientists until 1922, when his book was translated into English) and formally publish the hypothesis that the continents had somehow "drifted" apart. And although he presented much evidence for continental drift, he was unable to provide a convincing explanation for the physical processes which might have caused this drift. His suggestion that the continents had been pulled apart by the centrifugal pseudoforce of the Earth's rotation was considered unrealistic by the scientific community.[11]
[edit] Controversial years
Wegener's hypothesis received support through the controversial years from South African geologist Alexander Du Toit as well as from Arthur Holmes. However, the idea of continental drift did not become widely accepted even as theory until the late 1950s. By the 1960s, geological research conducted by Robert S. Dietz, Bruce Heezen, and Harry Hess, along with a rekindling of the theory including a mechanism by J. Tuzo Wilson led to widespread acceptance of the theory among geologists."
So the idea had been kicking around for a century, Wegener published it in English in 1922, and it still took 30 YEARS until the theory was accepted.
Science is about skepticism, but it is also about consensus. And that consensus can be VERY powerful, overriding the existence of data that doesn't fit the accepted model. "That peg can't be square - the hole is round, therefore the peg must be round. You must have measured it incorrectly/it's an optical illusion/all we need to do is redefine "roundness" to include objects with 4 corners and equal sides and angles." (notice how "Global Warming" became "Global Climate Change"?)
Scientific history is FULL of people ignoring data because it doesn't fit into their theory, and they simply CANNOT abandon that theory. Look at Peter Duesberg, the current poster child for crackpot scientists because he maintains that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. The thing is, when the viral theory of AIDS was first proposed, the mechanisms were so unlike any other disease that Duesberg rejected the theory based on established theories of viral infection. Now, 20 years later, the mechanisms are better understood and virologists understand how HIV works, but Duesberg won't give up. And there are still "square pegs" in the HIV model of AIDS - why don't some get infected? Why is the latency period all over the map? Haitians? (BTW, this was my final paper in that class)
Science is NOT what they taught us in grade school.
I was actually referring to the influence of advertising, the consumer culture, and the sense of entitlement given to the boomers by their well meaning but indulgent parents, and then transferred to THEIR kids.
Here's an example: my carpool partner is in the middle of a nasty divorce, mainly over money. His (soon to be) ex wife's attitude is that she has reached the age (40) where she deserves the finer things in life, so she buys stuff regardless of whether she can afford it. And when I say stuff, I mean HOUSES and CARS. She is then shocked when these items get foreclosed/repossessed, and it's always someone else's fault. She didn't like her job? She quit, with no job to go to. She worked as a 1099 for a year and didn't pay taxes, and could not comprehend that the government wanted near 40% of her wages, right now thankyouverymuch.
Her parents were very indulgent, and basically gave her whatever she wanted, and unfortunately her husband abetted this before he wised up. Is it their fault? possibly. Is she still responsible? Oh HELL yes - she enjoys the privileges of being an adult, she needs to take the responsibilities.
I believe you have made my point for me.
"Continental drift theory still hasn't actually been conclusively proven either."
You are either slyly reinforcing my point or it went right over your head, and I really can't tell which. Well played, sir!
You are arguing the point with the wrong person. My phrase "The argument being made is that it HAS been proven, as far as one can prove anything in such indeterministic systems" was playing devil's advocate - it is the argument used in favor of political action regarding Global Climate Change.
I then gave examples where such "proof" turned out to be illusory, and finished with a caution about dismissing skeptics. I'm not suer how you got the impression that I am a proponent of political action to address Global Climate Change.
Nope - I'm a man. And the lazy part wasn't about the fact that she didn't get a job, but by the fact that she DIDN'T clean the house, or even really raise her kids. It's a personality trait, but that didn't keep her from working - when she needed money, she worked full time jobs - just not enough to save anything.
My problem is with her lack of planning. Having had a husband leave her relatively early should have been a wake up call to take care of herself. But she didn't take the call.
"Social security is supposed to be the bare minimum income to subsist post retirement. By definition, anything less than that means you're can't survive."
No - that's what Social Security was SUPPOSED to be. It was originally and anti-poverty program, not a government pension program. But 2 things happened:
1) The government used a flawed measure of inflation, overestimating it substantially and therefore increasing the amount of benefits in excess of that required to keep up with the REAL rate of inflation. This had the effect of turning SS payments from a last ditch backstop to a substantial portion of retirement income over time.
2) Having been inadvertently (or purposefully) been given such largess, the elderly have made it quite clear that they intend to keep on getting it, and since they are retired they have nothing better to do on Tuesdays in November so they may as well vote. So now SS is the "third rail" in Congress - can't touch it, or it will kill you.
The ONLY thing that has kept this Ponzi scheme from collapsing is the large slug of baby boomers filling the coffers for a small number of retirees, thinned out by WWII, a lifetime of factory labor, and smoking. But now it is reversed - the boomers are retiring AND living longer, and there is a much smaller pool of workers to support them - the "baby bust".
I'm not sure what is going to happen over the next 20 years, but I know it won't be pretty.
"If only people could afford too and maintain the lifestyle they have been told they deserve"
Corrected.
You need to look at history, not present day. It's not that the boomers didn't have kids - they *delayed* having kids, and had fewer of them. There is a significant dip in the number of births in the late 60's (i was born in '68). I noticed when I was a kid that there seemed to be a lot fewer kids in my grade than the higher and lower grades; their response was that, when I was born, it was very "unfashionable" to have children.
So now the boomers are starting to retire, and their kids are in their 20's, maybe early 30's - not peak earning years. the bulk of the taxes comes from those later in their careers, and there are a lot FEWER of them than there needs to be. So, IF we can get through the next 20 years without bankrupting the system, the boomer's kids will be supporting me. I'm not holding my breath.
As for population growth in the US, it is mostly due to immigration and higher birthrates among immigrant populations. Xenophobia aside, this is a GOOD thing - Japan and Europe are about freaking out right now because they are simply not reproducing enough to support their aging population, but they won't accept immigrants into their society in any meaningful way. Americans are going to have to deal with their caregivers probably speaking a foreign language and having different color skin, but they will deal. Japan is placing their hopes in robots - anything but outsiders. And Europe is placing their faith in...?
"There we go, asking people to prove negatives again. Why don't you start by proving that it IS man-made?"
The argument being made is that it HAS been proven, as far as one can prove anything in such indeterministic systems.
Of course, we had proof for years that ulcers were caused by stress. Nope - bacteria.
Proof that the continents were immobile in their positions. Well, not so much proof as that it was just so totally OBVIOUS that continents couldn't move, and that "continental drift" was a crackpot theory. Until it wasn't.
AIDS was a breakdown of the immune system because of IV drug use, exposure to multiple venereal diseases, and the generally unhealth lifestyle of the gay community. Until they isolated a virus.
The reality is that scientific "proof" consists of general agreement among communities of people about the interpretation of observed phenomena, and that agreement can be driven by MANY factors, not just how well the data fits. One CANNOT get to the level of mathematical proof. So there will always be a role for skeptics, and those that just won't accept that, if you have a square peg and a round hole, you just pretend the peg's squareness doesn't exist, because it MUST fit into the round hole.
I keep telling her those unsightly blemishes will clear up in time - now I have proof!
Yeah, my grandmother was in that situation until relatively recently. She kept working until she was about 75 and ill health forced her to stop working - note, not "retire".
The reason for this? She is a lazy bitch who never worked a real job in her life and relied on whatever man she was with to provide for her. Her first husband (my grandfather) left her. Her second was a great old guy who finally died of Parkinson's and left her a wad of cash. the third guy was a bum and a hustler and took that money when he ran to Mexico - literally.
She never really saved any money, never invested herself in a job with future, and never planned. She doesn't have a pension because she never had a career. Social Security is keeping her afloat, and the fact that she scammed her way into a religiously affiliated care facility. And when that runs out, my Dad will take care of her, because as neglectful as she was, she is still family.
Yes, there are plenty of people who had bad luck, and perhaps don't "deserve" what they are dealing with in their old age. But that does not negate the fact that there are also those who squandered their good luck, and are now asking others to pay the price.
The point isn't that he broke the law - technically, he did. The point is that, in a modern society, these kinds of minor transgressions happen ALL THE TIME. It would be literally impossible for the police to enforce all of the laws on the books 100% of the time - everyone would be in jail or broke from fines.
So we as a society have developed a certain tolerance of minor transgressions of the law as the price of living in a society where if there is a truly dangerous crime occurring, the police will have the resources to deal with it. So reasonable people give others the benefit of the doubt, and do NOT call the police the very day a car is parked illegally. They have this tolerance both as a measure of charity toward ones fellow man, and as a self defense mechanism - if I rat out my neighbor on his lawn I then need to measure mine with a micrometer, 'cause sure as shit he's going to want to catch me as the hypocrite I am.
Did he break the law? Yes.
Was his neighbor an asshole? Hell yes.
And I'd rather live in a society where we cut each other a break on a routine basis than be surrounded by assholes.
(Back to wearing my overly large black helmet)
You are whistling in the wind. Even your own candidate has backed his people off the attacks on her. If the Obama campaign doesn't revise their playbook after this, they are in deep shit. And the fact that you are so frantically trying to convince me of how stupid I am is a sure sign that YOU KNOW IT.
Also, you may want to look at what the Republicans are actually doing this time around. The Governor was mobilizing the National Guard while Nagin was still partying in Denver, Bush and Cheney are staying in Washington, and McCain and Palin have actually been to Louisiana. They may yet fuck it up, but it won't be from lack of attention.
Take it to Kos - you just sound like a blithering idiot here.
The more you yell, and the more you repeat the same ad hominem attacks and defending the same bankrupt positions, the happier I get. There is nothing more effective in a contest than getting one's opponent into a frothing fit.
Thank you - I was worried about McCain losing, but after reading your trenchant analysis, I'm confident the election is in the bag.
"So if Steve Jobs suddenly dies from cancer, Apple could replace him with a manager of a Burger King, since the latter has managed a business and Apple would be just fine. Because the latter has management experience."
If the alternative was a school teacher, then yes. "Experience" is a loser for Dems this time around - they can't argue how little experience the VP candidate has when their PRESIDENTIAL candidate has even less. They would be best to simply dodge it, but since the Party operators can't really control DailyKos and MoveOn, I can't see that happening.
Have you tried some of the tricks? First, lubricant. If that doesnt work, one trick I hear was to take a spool of thread and start wrapping the thread around your finger, starting above the knuckle and moving toward the ring. This compresses your skin evenly. When you get close to the ring, cut off the thread and feed it under the ring. Now start unwinding the thread. The unwinding thread will push the ring up over your wrapped knuckle very slowly.
Or just cut the SOB off.
Oooooh, touched a nerve, have we? You seem a bit defensive.
I didn't say Palin had the experience to be President. I said that, in comparison, she has more of a particular type of experience - executive branch in a government, than her opponents combined. If she doesn't have enough experience, can you really argue that Obama or Biden do?
As for Obama's accomplishments, they involve: academia, life, and getting elected. The first qualifies him to be a college professor. If paying off one's student loans counts as an accomplishment, then *I* am probably more qualified than him. And he got elected - that's an accomplishment, I suppose, but she also got elected. I was refering to accomplishments while IN OFFICE - there are a lot of pieces of legislation with Biden's name on them, and Palin has been challenging her own party on corruption. What has Obama done in the senate? (besides voting for telecom immunity?)
As for who is saying what, you haven't been paying attention - the Democrats have gone apeshit regarding her "lack of experience". It's understandable - after McCain has been beating on him, it's good to get a little of one's own back. But for independents and undecideds, it keeps the issue of experience in play, and the longer it is in play, the more Obama has to lose. Remember, HE's running for President, she's running for VP. He WILL be applying whatever experience he has come January; she MAY need to apply whatever experience she has at some indeterminate point in time.
If the attitude in the Obama camp reflects yours, I'm popping the champagne corks now. Palin is a game changer. McCain may still lose, but only if the Dems recognize that fact and adjust accordingly. Obama knows it too - he's already repudiated some of the comments coming out of his campaign.
At least this election won't be boring anymore.
"He just destroyed the "Obama doesn't have the experience to lead" meme. "
Sure of that? Because she has 2 years of experience in the Executive branch of a government. Obama and Biden COMBINED have zero.
I addition, Obama's senatorial career was solely taken up by preparation to run for President. Palin has some actual accomplishments on her resume.
Palin was a risky choice, where Biden was a safe choice. But the main reason that experience isn't a risk to the McCain/Palin ticket is that the more "experience" gets talked about, the worse Obama looks, even if it's the Dems doing the talking.
Hear, hear. At my last job I terminated my own access by sending an email to the TERMINATED@myoldcompany.com address. I also scrubbed my laptop of anything that wasn't on it when I got it, and generally made it clear that I was leaving with clean hands.
Didn't say I wasn't going to vote - there are other offices at stake this November besides the Presidency.