Except for example, that wrongly counts health spending on the VA as 'defence' spending
"Wrongly counts"? Military compensation and care for military personnel isn't defense spending, how does that make sense in any kind of cognitive framework? Six figure salaries for Blackwater mercenaries, defense contrators, do they not count either?
The VA, like the GI Bill, is a great program. But of course they're defense spending.
is an ideological position to come up with 39% of the interest payments.
Again, how do you figure. Look at defense spending from previous years, see how much it factored into previous deficits, and then figure out how much it makes up our current national debt.
Speaking as someone who didn't read the response to the AC, Daniel Eran Dilger of Roughly Drafted and AppleInsider counts as column two
That's an assertion, not an example.
No, I'm not going to give that to you in linky form. Use your copy and paste and Google-fu.
Does that work often for you? Lazily making assertions and expecting others to prove them for you, I mean.
1. So, where are all these Apple fanbois. 2. Everywhere!!! Just look around and you'll find them. 3. Great, you'll have no problems finding some examples then. 4. Crickets.
That's the flaw in your logic: the market is not an entity that can create jobs by itself. It takes people to recognize the demand and put their money down, to decide to take the risk, to create them.
The flaw in your storyline: there's nothing those people do for millions a year that they wouldn't do for a six figure salary. Absolutely nothing whatsoever.
Read this section from Atlas Shitragged
About you read up on how Rand took Social Security and Medicare instead of a shit novel attempting to give people a justification for being self-centered assholes?
Shorter version: customers (i.e. demand) and entrepreneurs create jobs. Not billionaires. There's nothing Larry Ellison does for $220 million a year that he wouldn't do for $2.2 million a year.
Whether you like it or think it stinks, big banks control the world's finances. If they had gone down, you'd have seen an Italy or a Greece but 20 times bigger.
Bullshit. It's depositors and the flow of money that matter, not the banks or bankers. If BOA and Citi had gone under and their executives gone to jail, depositors would still have their money and would still be able to get loans from other banks.
Furthermore, all the bailouts did was make the banks less willing to lend money at reasonable rates, as they sat on every dime in an effort to keep themselves solvent.
I don't consider it real progress that some companies come out in support of gay marriage, while others are against it. I go to Pride, but I wish we didn't have it. Real progress will be when it ceases to matter whether or not you're gay; When it's as natural as not being gay.
If you are actually gay, you know perfectly well that we're several generations away from that point. So shouting down any group (jews, blacks, gays) wanting to take pride in it's existence after recent or ongoing persecution makes less sense than finding Chewie on Endor.
No, it's not a straw man. It's called deflection, and it's just as dishonest when you're ignoring the LGBT activists that chained themselves to the White House fence for gay rights and got arrested for it.
The time for civil rights and equality is always "now". The time for putting them off to appease the tender sensibilities of bigoted fucksticks is "never".
Is it your view that when someone disagrees with your position he is a hate monger?
Don't be willfully obtuse. There's having a disagreement on the best film of all time, and having a disagreement where someone dehumanizes you based on who you are.
You wouldn't say the above nonsense about the Klan hating on blacks or jews, why say it for homophobic hate groups?
Nope, it looks like you did us the favor of proving that you were lying, thanks for sparing us the effort. Nowhere in Obama's quotes did you find anything stating that 'God would be angry with us for redefining marriage'.
Then there's the matter of Chic's donations to the National Organization of Marriage, a right wing homophobic hate group. Unless you can find similar donations from Obama to similar groups, your false equivalence is even more dishonest.
Actually, he took it step further and claimed that 9-11 was God's reaction to the sins of the country.
You're lying. Again. If you're trying to gain points through consistency, it's not working.
Err...you realize you're making a sweeping assertion based on a couple of anecdotes, right? Does the fact that Israel exists as a Jewish state today means that persecution of Jews was a historical rarity?
You know, the church that just denied an interracial marriage. Since you seem to engage in asshattery for the sake of asshattery, this would be right up your alley....
The same sex marriage debate is divisive and there are strong beliefs on both sides.
"Both sides"? As if they were of equal moral standing? How mainstream media of you. The day is coming where the homophobic views of Chic-Fil-A and NOM will be as acceptable in polite discourse as the Klan's views on interracial marriage.
The same sex marriage debate is divisive and there are strong beliefs on both sides.
Which is irrelevant in the long term, unless the fundies are willing to support the company en mass on a continuing basis.
The fact checker (it was either the Washington Post or Politifact) claimed he was off by miles, but that was because the person doing the fact checking knew nothing about how Congress makes budgets. For example, the Department of Veteran's Affairs is a separate budget item from the Department of Defense, but to claim that this is really a separate cost from 'defense spending' is ignorant
^^^^^This. The "official" number bandied about is ~600 billion dollars, but the real number is more than twice that much. They make it look smaller by, as you point out, excluding things like the VA from defense spending. Ditto for the GI Bill, interest on past military spending, Fatherland Security, military aid to countries like Israel, the Department of Energy managing our nuclear weapons, etc etc.....
Another group is the true Apple fanbois. They are the ones who have given tribal loyalty to a corporation, and celebrate things like Apple's profit margin, root for Apple to successfully use its patents to eliminate possible competitors, et cetera.
People in group one are perfectly reasonable. People in group two are frothing cultists who have a tendency to, for example, jump into Android forums and spew flame.
Periodically I'll ask a poster on Slashdot to name someone from "group two", the "frothing cultists". No one has been able to give me an answer. It usually goes like this:
1. So, where are all these Apple fanbois. 2. Everywhere!!! Just look around and you'll find them. 3. Great, you'll have no problems finding some examples then. 4. Crickets.
No, I'm talking about right now, where the hailing of breeder reactors as the second coming of nuclear power is all hype and no cattle. If they were half as great as the fanboys claim, the nuclear power industry would be in a rush to build them and start using all that spent fuel.
I get a bit cynical when I see people grumbling about old nuclear technology.
Even though it's all going to be old at some point? The new roof you put on last summer might be a lot better than the 1965 original, but you're still subject to the same fundamental problems. But at least your new roof wont have a powerful lobby asking to have it's life extended in another 30 years, because it means more profit for them.
And that's the fundamental problem with nuclear power: the profit motive.
Hmm, yeah, if only we could invent reactors that could re-use the spent fuel. I'd call them "breeder reactors" as it sounds catchy. Or perhaps we could design something totally different, and call it a "traveling wave reactor" or something cool sounding like that.
And perhaps they'll be something more than vaporware. Someday.
Stop and think: it was needed a full, cataclysmic tsunami to make Fukushima colapses. This is not small shit.
Yeah, a once in a thousand year event. But how many places on the planet experience a "one in a thousand years" event in a given year? How about after hundreds of new reactors are built around to world to meet increasing power needs and as replacements for old reactors?
All term limits accomplish is make the politician look forward to his next job. And what's going to land him the better-paying job: serving the public's interest or selling out the public to monied interests?
The profit motive. As long as for-profit companies are running nuclear power plants, pennies will be pinched and corners will be cut. It's a question of when, not if.
Cases in point: the location of the Fukishima reactor, U.S. plants turning off earthquake sensors to save money, U.S. plants wanting to stop evacuation drills, and the top U.S. regulator being forced out because he (gasp) wanted to focus on safety. Which costs money.
New technology is great, but we need to get the profit motive out of nuclear power if we're going to have it be safe and sustainable.
Slashdot Mirror
"Wrongly counts"? Military compensation and care for military personnel isn't defense spending, how does that make sense in any kind of cognitive framework? Six figure salaries for Blackwater mercenaries, defense contrators, do they not count either?
The VA, like the GI Bill, is a great program. But of course they're defense spending.
Again, how do you figure. Look at defense spending from previous years, see how much it factored into previous deficits, and then figure out how much it makes up our current national debt.
It's not ideology. It's math.
That's an assertion, not an example.
Does that work often for you? Lazily making assertions and expecting others to prove them for you, I mean.
1. So, where are all these Apple fanbois.
2. Everywhere!!! Just look around and you'll find them.
3. Great, you'll have no problems finding some examples then.
4. Crickets.
Self respect isn't being a wage slave for robber barons.
Ethics isn't making you workers work for a few thousand years to make what you do in one.
The flaw in your storyline: there's nothing those people do for millions a year that they wouldn't do for a six figure salary. Absolutely nothing whatsoever.
About you read up on how Rand took Social Security and Medicare instead of a shit novel attempting to give people a justification for being self-centered assholes?
Shorter version: customers (i.e. demand) and entrepreneurs create jobs. Not billionaires. There's nothing Larry Ellison does for $220 million a year that he wouldn't do for $2.2 million a year.
Bullshit. It's depositors and the flow of money that matter, not the banks or bankers. If BOA and Citi had gone under and their executives gone to jail, depositors would still have their money and would still be able to get loans from other banks.
Furthermore, all the bailouts did was make the banks less willing to lend money at reasonable rates, as they sat on every dime in an effort to keep themselves solvent.
If you are actually gay, you know perfectly well that we're several generations away from that point. So shouting down any group (jews, blacks, gays) wanting to take pride in it's existence after recent or ongoing persecution makes less sense than finding Chewie on Endor.
Observation is accurate until you get around to answering the AC's point.
No, it's not a straw man. It's called deflection, and it's just as dishonest when you're ignoring the LGBT activists that chained themselves to the White House fence for gay rights and got arrested for it.
The time for civil rights and equality is always "now". The time for putting them off to appease the tender sensibilities of bigoted fucksticks is "never".
Distinction without a difference.
Don't be willfully obtuse. There's having a disagreement on the best film of all time, and having a disagreement where someone dehumanizes you based on who you are.
You wouldn't say the above nonsense about the Klan hating on blacks or jews, why say it for homophobic hate groups?
Nope, it looks like you did us the favor of proving that you were lying, thanks for sparing us the effort. Nowhere in Obama's quotes did you find anything stating that 'God would be angry with us for redefining marriage'.
Then there's the matter of Chic's donations to the National Organization of Marriage, a right wing homophobic hate group. Unless you can find similar donations from Obama to similar groups, your false equivalence is even more dishonest.
You're lying. Again. If you're trying to gain points through consistency, it's not working.
Err...you realize you're making a sweeping assertion based on a couple of anecdotes, right? Does the fact that Israel exists as a Jewish state today means that persecution of Jews was a historical rarity?
You know, the church that just denied an interracial marriage. Since you seem to engage in asshattery for the sake of asshattery, this would be right up your alley....
"Both sides"? As if they were of equal moral standing? How mainstream media of you. The day is coming where the homophobic views of Chic-Fil-A and NOM will be as acceptable in polite discourse as the Klan's views on interracial marriage.
Which is irrelevant in the long term, unless the fundies are willing to support the company en mass on a continuing basis.
^^^^^This. The "official" number bandied about is ~600 billion dollars, but the real number is more than twice that much. They make it look smaller by, as you point out, excluding things like the VA from defense spending. Ditto for the GI Bill, interest on past military spending, Fatherland Security, military aid to countries like Israel, the Department of Energy managing our nuclear weapons, etc etc.....
The Real US National Security Budget: 1.2 Trillion
That's an assertion, not an example. a href=.........
Periodically I'll ask a poster on Slashdot to name someone from "group two", the "frothing cultists". No one has been able to give me an answer. It usually goes like this:
1. So, where are all these Apple fanbois.
2. Everywhere!!! Just look around and you'll find them.
3. Great, you'll have no problems finding some examples then.
4. Crickets.
No, I'm talking about right now, where the hailing of breeder reactors as the second coming of nuclear power is all hype and no cattle. If they were half as great as the fanboys claim, the nuclear power industry would be in a rush to build them and start using all that spent fuel.
Even though it's all going to be old at some point? The new roof you put on last summer might be a lot better than the 1965 original, but you're still subject to the same fundamental problems. But at least your new roof wont have a powerful lobby asking to have it's life extended in another 30 years, because it means more profit for them.
And that's the fundamental problem with nuclear power: the profit motive.
And perhaps they'll be something more than vaporware. Someday.
Yeah, a once in a thousand year event. But how many places on the planet experience a "one in a thousand years" event in a given year? How about after hundreds of new reactors are built around to world to meet increasing power needs and as replacements for old reactors?
All term limits accomplish is make the politician look forward to his next job. And what's going to land him the better-paying job: serving the public's interest or selling out the public to monied interests?
See: revolving door, regulatory capture.
The profit motive. As long as for-profit companies are running nuclear power plants, pennies will be pinched and corners will be cut. It's a question of when, not if.
Cases in point: the location of the Fukishima reactor, U.S. plants turning off earthquake sensors to save money, U.S. plants wanting to stop evacuation drills, and the top U.S. regulator being forced out because he (gasp) wanted to focus on safety. Which costs money.
New technology is great, but we need to get the profit motive out of nuclear power if we're going to have it be safe and sustainable.