I have personally known one family of four who spent years living off of welfare despite there being two healthy adults, both of whom were capable of working but wouldn't. They got enough money from the state to rent a decent house, feed the family, get a nice home entertainment system (better than mine, and mine isn't too shabby), and sit around and be lazy. The guy did take a job once in the three years that I knew him - he quit two weeks later. This is not the only example I've known, but the worst.
On the other hand, I know a guy who has severe cerebral palsy and is just barely getting enough money to pay for his small apartment. Friends help out more than the state does. I'm not advocating eliminating the welfare system altogether, but let's make sure that people like this get their fair share and make sure that lazy people as described above don't take it.
If you are not a woman, you have no right to say what they should and shoudn't do.
Sorry, but I have to reply to this. No, I am not a woman, but I was a child. This is not just a women's issue - it affects every single person who has been born (and even moreso those who have been conceived but not born).
As for your other points, I think they've been mostly covered in my response to another poster in this thread.
By the way, quoting Maynard to make a point may be foolish. He's notorious for writing lyrics that everyone thinks mean one thing when he really meant something quite different.
Note that I said "I don't like a lot of the social spending". I know that was vague and that's bad form in any kind of debate, but going into more detail was beyond that particular post.
For the record, when you talk about spending to allow the next generation to participate, that's spending that I'm far more likely to support than many other programs. And yes, a case can be made for just about any program out there, but our government needs to learn to prioritize spending. Public safety and infrastructure should be the priorities of the federal government, and things like education and work programs should be more localized (some support from the federal government won't hurt, but when they cram one-size-fits-all rules on every education system in order to get the support, that's no help at all).
Some of the spending that I'd like to see cut is the money I've seen spent on welfare recipients who are perfectly capable of working but choose not to. I've known plenty of these people - people who will walk right by "now hiring" signs and keep collecting their state check. Ironically, most of them get more from the state than people who actually can't work for some reason or another.
Again, I'm stopping without going into huge amounts of detail because I could be typing all day if I didn't and I have work to do now that lunch is over...
I don't like a lot of the social spending, but not because I want people to work cheap - because I want people to earn waht they get (I have to, why shouldn't you?)
I don't like minimum wage hikes because typical minimum wage jobs are not intended for wage earners but for high-school kids earning spending money. I could get unskilled labor jobs earning $10+ per hour, and I live in Maine - where good paying jobs are "scarce".
I don't like NAFTA etc, so I don't fit your profile there.
I oppose a woman's right to choose because I feel that a child's right to live supercedes that. Besides, the unwanted children can go to good families if we cut all the beurocracy dealing with adoption. If we're opposing abortion as a supposed way to save money, that's just plain stupid. That would just be more mouths to feed on the welfare roles.
I don't like (some) unions because they have a tendancy to be overzealous and corrupt. They have a purpose, but they over-step their bounds.
I think morality, virtue, hard work, etc are important. If you don't work hard, why do you think you deserve compensation?
I don't support racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc, and with the unfortunate exception of homophobia neither do the other conservatives that I know. Your argument about this distracting the wage earners is downright rediculous though.
Fortunately ID theft only works if you know how to find and use the ID (like referencing the message ID when you clearly meant to use the user id was kind of silly)
The parent post didn't say that he was the first to allow stem cell research - just that he was the first to allow federal funding for stem cell research.
I know of no non-religious person that thinks a clump of cells has moral status.
Well, consider me the first I guess.
To call this "Bush's Ban" is somewhat misleading - what you call "republican talking points" are actually quite true. Bush opened up funding for the research, and I disagree with him for doing so. Interestingly enough, countries like France and Germany have opened up funding in the same way - after Bush did. Before that, they didn't fund embryonic stem cell research either.
Also, you might want to quote numbers from responsible sources if you're going to say that these objections are "certainly not held by a majority of the population." I haven't seen (or looked for admittedly) numbers to substantiate that.
Because most people don't care that he's trying to make a buck since it doesn't hurt them. Most of us saw the headline on Slashdot (a site that we visited because the topics here interest us), thought that the story sounded cool, and checked it out. If it hadn't been interesting, we'd never have checked it out and wouldn't have known about the referrer link. No harm, no foul. In addition, using a referral link does not hurt me in any way, shape, or form. Again - no harm, no foul.
Better question - if Amazon allows people to advertise to willing people (you came here voluntarilly - therefore it's not spam), why not make a buck while you're doing it?
A phone is a physical entitity that has manufacturing and raw materials costs associated with it. The equivilent of software is almost negligible (CD-R's go for like $0.25 ea. these days) so I can't see how you can make this claim.
You've covered the raw materials in that $0.25, but what about the manufacturing costs? It costs money to develop code. Plus you neglected to mention profit on both sides.
High-school is nothing more than a popularity contest/fashion show.
I've got news for you - the rest of life isn't a whole lot different. I'll use my line of work (software engineering) for an example. Some people write great code and some people write mediocre code. Some people have great people skills and some don't. Say you've got two levels of Software Engineer - one mainly designs and writes code while the other deals more with clients. And say you have two employees. One dresses neatly and is comfortable dealing with people (you know - that thing that makes you "popular") while the other is disheveled and "nerdy" but writes better code. Which one do you give the job that deals with clients? And which job pays more? I'll give you a hint: the person that is popular will get more money. Is it fair? Regardless of fair, is it the way things are?
(For the record, I say it is fair because people skills are more in demand.)
The company I worked for outsourced an app to Connecticut with the same results (it doesn't have to go outside the country to run into this). The difference is that as I and two others ripped into the code to re-write over 80% of it, we told our boss, our boss's boss, right up to the CIO of the company. Now we're going through it with a different contractor, and hopefully they'll learn that it wasn't a one-time incident and that we need to find some criteria to reliably pick contractors.
While the wait between theatrical and extended is annoying, it's also necessary. I don't know the particulars of this one, but I know on the first two there were new shots done, much editing, and the entire score was reworked so it would be continuous over the new edits. This all takes time.
I'm not a christian (I was brought up Roman Catholic, and that was enough to turn me off from the religion and others assosicated with it), but I'm still pro-life. My "superstition" doesn't tell me that abortion is wrong. The same part of me that tells me that murder is wrong does.
It boils down to personal responsibility. If you screw around and get pregnant with a baby you don't want, in my view the mother should live out the nine months, the father should stay with her the nine months and support her, and then the child should be given to an adoption agency. (Adoption law needs drastic chagnes also).
On the other hand, I don't agree with a lot of the pro-life legislation that has been proposed over the years. I know it's a bit of cognitive dissonance, but even though I consider abortion murder I believe rape victims and mothers who's lives are in jeopardy because of the pregnancy should have the option.
Point taken. It's a sad thing that I have to admit that the attacks on September 11th overshadowed these so much in my mind that I'd forgotten about them.
No, the one that started in October of 2000 (OK - december we had slight growth, so January 2001 was technically the first of the three months of decline that mark a recession). He took office in late January.
The US got hit, I believe, three times during Clinton's years. The 1993 WTC bombing, an Embassy bombing, and the USS Cole.
I can't believe Cheney's latest statements, to the effect of: vote for Kerry and we'll be attacked; we've made the world safer, as we haven't been attacked since 9/11 due to our response.
Yeah - that was probably the stupidest thing I've heard out of either camp in this campaign to date...
if we were hit, would you change your vote?
That would depend on the evidence we knew about before an attack and the response to the attack. My previous comment was based on the fact that the US has turned away some attacks since 9/11, and none have gotten through yet. If a terrorist attack occurred this afternoon and it came out that the Bush administration had plenty of evidence and did nothing, it sure as shit would change my vote (though to Badnarik, not Kerry, though Badnarik does stand for a few things that I disagree with too). However if the evidence wasn't there, and a quick and effective response was made, I would still vote for Bush.
We get hit with one terrorist attack, and because we tighten our defenses so no others get through you're against the President. Conversely, if we'd let our defenses slack and been attacked over and over you wouldn't have this reason to vote against him?
The difference is that there has been evidence of planned attacks which have been thwarted. Would Kerry's administration do a worse job? I don't know (though I believe they would), but the Bush administration has done a decent job in my eyes of dealing with these threats.
Slashdot Mirror
At Linuxworld Boston this year I did see one presentation done on Windows XP. Man, wasn't the presenter embarassed when it blue-screened.
I have personally known one family of four who spent years living off of welfare despite there being two healthy adults, both of whom were capable of working but wouldn't. They got enough money from the state to rent a decent house, feed the family, get a nice home entertainment system (better than mine, and mine isn't too shabby), and sit around and be lazy. The guy did take a job once in the three years that I knew him - he quit two weeks later. This is not the only example I've known, but the worst.
On the other hand, I know a guy who has severe cerebral palsy and is just barely getting enough money to pay for his small apartment. Friends help out more than the state does. I'm not advocating eliminating the welfare system altogether, but let's make sure that people like this get their fair share and make sure that lazy people as described above don't take it.
If you are not a woman, you have no right to say what they should and shoudn't do.
Sorry, but I have to reply to this. No, I am not a woman, but I was a child. This is not just a women's issue - it affects every single person who has been born (and even moreso those who have been conceived but not born).
As for your other points, I think they've been mostly covered in my response to another poster in this thread.
By the way, quoting Maynard to make a point may be foolish. He's notorious for writing lyrics that everyone thinks mean one thing when he really meant something quite different.
Note that I said "I don't like a lot of the social spending". I know that was vague and that's bad form in any kind of debate, but going into more detail was beyond that particular post.
For the record, when you talk about spending to allow the next generation to participate, that's spending that I'm far more likely to support than many other programs. And yes, a case can be made for just about any program out there, but our government needs to learn to prioritize spending. Public safety and infrastructure should be the priorities of the federal government, and things like education and work programs should be more localized (some support from the federal government won't hurt, but when they cram one-size-fits-all rules on every education system in order to get the support, that's no help at all).
Some of the spending that I'd like to see cut is the money I've seen spent on welfare recipients who are perfectly capable of working but choose not to. I've known plenty of these people - people who will walk right by "now hiring" signs and keep collecting their state check. Ironically, most of them get more from the state than people who actually can't work for some reason or another.
Again, I'm stopping without going into huge amounts of detail because I could be typing all day if I didn't and I have work to do now that lunch is over...
So, am I a "cheap-labor conservative"?
I don't like a lot of the social spending, but not because I want people to work cheap - because I want people to earn waht they get (I have to, why shouldn't you?)
I don't like minimum wage hikes because typical minimum wage jobs are not intended for wage earners but for high-school kids earning spending money. I could get unskilled labor jobs earning $10+ per hour, and I live in Maine - where good paying jobs are "scarce".
I don't like NAFTA etc, so I don't fit your profile there.
I oppose a woman's right to choose because I feel that a child's right to live supercedes that. Besides, the unwanted children can go to good families if we cut all the beurocracy dealing with adoption. If we're opposing abortion as a supposed way to save money, that's just plain stupid. That would just be more mouths to feed on the welfare roles.
I don't like (some) unions because they have a tendancy to be overzealous and corrupt. They have a purpose, but they over-step their bounds.
I think morality, virtue, hard work, etc are important. If you don't work hard, why do you think you deserve compensation?
I don't support racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc, and with the unfortunate exception of homophobia neither do the other conservatives that I know. Your argument about this distracting the wage earners is downright rediculous though.
Fortunately ID theft only works if you know how to find and use the ID (like referencing the message ID when you clearly meant to use the user id was kind of silly)
Agnostic.
Trust me on this one.
Coming from someone I don't know - ON SLASHDOT. Hmmm. That's funny. Do you have evidence?
The parent post didn't say that he was the first to allow stem cell research - just that he was the first to allow federal funding for stem cell research.
I know of no non-religious person that thinks a clump of cells has moral status.
Well, consider me the first I guess.
To call this "Bush's Ban" is somewhat misleading - what you call "republican talking points" are actually quite true. Bush opened up funding for the research, and I disagree with him for doing so. Interestingly enough, countries like France and Germany have opened up funding in the same way - after Bush did. Before that, they didn't fund embryonic stem cell research either.
Also, you might want to quote numbers from responsible sources if you're going to say that these objections are "certainly not held by a majority of the population." I haven't seen (or looked for admittedly) numbers to substantiate that.
Because most people don't care that he's trying to make a buck since it doesn't hurt them. Most of us saw the headline on Slashdot (a site that we visited because the topics here interest us), thought that the story sounded cool, and checked it out. If it hadn't been interesting, we'd never have checked it out and wouldn't have known about the referrer link. No harm, no foul. In addition, using a referral link does not hurt me in any way, shape, or form. Again - no harm, no foul.
Better question - if Amazon allows people to advertise to willing people (you came here voluntarilly - therefore it's not spam), why not make a buck while you're doing it?
A phone is a physical entitity that has manufacturing and raw materials costs associated with it. The equivilent of software is almost negligible (CD-R's go for like $0.25 ea. these days) so I can't see how you can make this claim.
You've covered the raw materials in that $0.25, but what about the manufacturing costs? It costs money to develop code. Plus you neglected to mention profit on both sides.
High-school is nothing more than a popularity contest/fashion show.
I've got news for you - the rest of life isn't a whole lot different. I'll use my line of work (software engineering) for an example. Some people write great code and some people write mediocre code. Some people have great people skills and some don't. Say you've got two levels of Software Engineer - one mainly designs and writes code while the other deals more with clients. And say you have two employees. One dresses neatly and is comfortable dealing with people (you know - that thing that makes you "popular") while the other is disheveled and "nerdy" but writes better code. Which one do you give the job that deals with clients? And which job pays more? I'll give you a hint: the person that is popular will get more money. Is it fair? Regardless of fair, is it the way things are?
(For the record, I say it is fair because people skills are more in demand.)
The company I worked for outsourced an app to Connecticut with the same results (it doesn't have to go outside the country to run into this). The difference is that as I and two others ripped into the code to re-write over 80% of it, we told our boss, our boss's boss, right up to the CIO of the company. Now we're going through it with a different contractor, and hopefully they'll learn that it wasn't a one-time incident and that we need to find some criteria to reliably pick contractors.
No. They didn't (as has been discussed extensively on Slashdot, but I'm to lazy to look up references).
While the wait between theatrical and extended is annoying, it's also necessary. I don't know the particulars of this one, but I know on the first two there were new shots done, much editing, and the entire score was reworked so it would be continuous over the new edits. This all takes time.
20% + whatever the state tax is. I believe I pay 46% total.
Terrorism is an ideology. Those who define that ideology are the true terrorists.
Is that a definition of terrorism?
Lucky me - my company blocked the site, so now the Feds won't be looking for me. Oh hey - what's this pink piece of paper on my desk?
I'm not a christian (I was brought up Roman Catholic, and that was enough to turn me off from the religion and others assosicated with it), but I'm still pro-life. My "superstition" doesn't tell me that abortion is wrong. The same part of me that tells me that murder is wrong does.
It boils down to personal responsibility. If you screw around and get pregnant with a baby you don't want, in my view the mother should live out the nine months, the father should stay with her the nine months and support her, and then the child should be given to an adoption agency. (Adoption law needs drastic chagnes also).
On the other hand, I don't agree with a lot of the pro-life legislation that has been proposed over the years. I know it's a bit of cognitive dissonance, but even though I consider abortion murder I believe rape victims and mothers who's lives are in jeopardy because of the pregnancy should have the option.
Point taken. It's a sad thing that I have to admit that the attacks on September 11th overshadowed these so much in my mind that I'd forgotten about them.
No, the one that started in October of 2000 (OK - december we had slight growth, so January 2001 was technically the first of the three months of decline that mark a recession). He took office in late January.
The US got hit, I believe, three times during Clinton's years. The 1993 WTC bombing, an Embassy bombing, and the USS Cole.
I can't believe Cheney's latest statements, to the effect of: vote for Kerry and we'll be attacked; we've made the world safer, as we haven't been attacked since 9/11 due to our response.
Yeah - that was probably the stupidest thing I've heard out of either camp in this campaign to date...
if we were hit, would you change your vote?
That would depend on the evidence we knew about before an attack and the response to the attack. My previous comment was based on the fact that the US has turned away some attacks since 9/11, and none have gotten through yet. If a terrorist attack occurred this afternoon and it came out that the Bush administration had plenty of evidence and did nothing, it sure as shit would change my vote (though to Badnarik, not Kerry, though Badnarik does stand for a few things that I disagree with too). However if the evidence wasn't there, and a quick and effective response was made, I would still vote for Bush.
Let's see if I follow your argument.
We get hit with one terrorist attack, and because we tighten our defenses so no others get through you're against the President. Conversely, if we'd let our defenses slack and been attacked over and over you wouldn't have this reason to vote against him?
Makes perfect sense to me!
The difference is that there has been evidence of planned attacks which have been thwarted. Would Kerry's administration do a worse job? I don't know (though I believe they would), but the Bush administration has done a decent job in my eyes of dealing with these threats.