It probably also does not include university funding. I read somewhere (I can't find it now?) that the US spends overall about 5% of GDP on education. But I think that included state funding, and it for sure included education before college. Still, if you add up all the likely federal funding in your links it still looks like far more is spent on the military, which supports your original point.
"Hell, we haven't even attempted to take over Canada or Mexico"
Actually, we have. We've explicitly tried to conquer Canada (albeit before it was independent of Britain). And I'm sitting right now in what was once a huge chunk of the Mexico. We didn't, uh, buy California - you know that, right?
"Please enlighten me with examples of countries in which we have come as conquerors instead of liberators or protectors"
Well, no. Here's the thing, dude: we've almost always called ourselves liberators. A lot of times it's even been true. I'm not against wars of liberation at all. And that's not my point anyway. My point is that more than half of this fucking country was taken in war. War with Britain. War with Indians. War with Mexico. War with whatever was in our way. And yeah, fuck yeah, we have made a better country out of it than any of those people ever would have. Go us.
But that can't disguise the fact that we took this country with force.
And if you look up the thread, this is my response to "why does America keep spending money on ways to kill people"? You know why? Because it's a huge part of what got us here, and we're fucking good at it. We aren't going to stop thinking about killing people until we can't.
Agreed, if you are comparing martial prowess, you cannot rate the natives in America like a Chinese dynasty.
But if you are not comparing martial prowess, but instead territory usurped and lives taken, our expansion still stands out in history. The Mongols still beat us handily (which is of course good - you don't want to win a pissing contest with the Mongol horde). But not many others do.
I concede that my sweeping generalization was a sweeping generalization. But as a way of describing the psyche of our government over the last two centuries, I'll defend it as true for all intents and purposes. This country's expansion has been more rapid and more violent than almost anything else in the history of the world. To put us in to perspective, to find bigger, faster expansions you need to look to the *Mongols*. That's how far from the norm we are.
And second, yeah, there are isolationist tendencies in any country - so what? Out of 200 years you can point to a dozen or so when that's held sway here - and that only after losing a few hundred thousand men in the most horrible war in the history of mankind (and it wasn't even our war). That it takes a disaster of that scale to put our isolationists in charge for a little while is not evidence that we want to be left alone. It's evidence to the contrary.
Anyway, lest anyone think this is some kind of anti-american screed, what differentiates us from a lot of other expansionist powers is that ours has tended to result higher standards of living for our citizens and subjects alike (you can point to counter examples, but I can point to bigger counter-counter examples). The reason this happens is that - like most conquerers - we believe we know a better way of life than our opponents. But unlike most conquerers, we tend to be right.
"let him talk to ahmafruitcake, as if our current course is winning anything over there"
It's not doing much against Iran, but there's plenty of progress in Iraq. I tend to think the progress is happening in spite of Bush, rather than because of him, but there's room for doubt - another executive might have left when Iraq was at its worst, in 2005/6. It seems to me that to the extent you can blame Bush for everything that's gone wrong under his terms (and it's a long list), it's only fair to blame him for a few of the things have have gone right. Post-07-Iraq is one of those, by most metrics.
None of this should be read as an argument against voting Obama, though.
"All I wanted to say is that most of the money tends to go for military research."
Do you have a reference for that by chance? I read this claim all over but whenever I go looking for numbers I can't find them. My impression is military research gets more _direct_ funding, but by funding the US university system, the amount of non-military research indirectly funded is higher. But again, I can't find the numbers either way.
Also, I know you hear it a lot, but a lot of the technology that makes the modern world what it is has its roots in direct military funding. And that means it's not a priori a bad thing. You have to look at every case.
"What is it with the US and this obsession with devising new and more efficient ways to wage war?"
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's because the USA is a very war-like nation. And if you don't mind, I'm going to use this opportunity to preempt some responses by saying, hey guys? We've pretty much always been this way.
I know, it's not popular to admit it in some quarters, but look, you don't start out in a hovel in New England and end up running half a continent without a lot of war. And smallpox. We're actually among the most war-like nations in the history of the world guys. The whole "we just want to be left alone" thing hasn't really ever been true.
That's true too, and a real concern. Funny though, I ran across an article in one of those awful Women's fashion magazines last night at a friend's house, and it had an article on some 90-something year old lady who looked like she was 70 at most. Her name? Roberta McCain - his mom. 96 and still trucking. That's a good sign. Course, his dad only made it to 70. Eep.
But he is (as Republicans go) - if there were a D next to his name on the Ballot he wouldn't have picked her. But he needed somebody to speak to his party's loonies, and she's it.
It's never fun to watch a good candidate bow to electoral reality. The good news is if he does win the election, you can expect him to veer away from the far right.
Who is your crowd? I'm an independent centrist. I vote mostly Democratic in higher level elections. To me this one looks like a godsend. Not one but TWO moderates running for president? I don't pray, but if I did, this would have answered mine.
Yeah, you've heard wrong, and probably from anti-government conspiracy people.
Amendment 16:
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am16
That's about as plain and explicit a declaration will ever get in a legal system. It has the right, and it has the right to enforce it. If you hear otherwise the person telling you is either (a) not sound of mind, (b) intellectually dishonest, or (c) is spreading hearsay.
"I don't see the point of thought helmets for the Army, if the Commander-in-Chief is still incapable of coherent thought."
I get irritated by this sort of thing, not because I think highly of Bush, but because people tend be myopic about him.
You guys understand, he's not the normal American president, right? Like, he's maybe the worst president we've ever elected, maybe even by a wide margin? If you could graph American presidents by how successful they were, you understand he'd be an incredible outlier?
And you understand, finally, he's going away in just a couple months, right?
Put those two ideas together, then, and start looking at the next president in that perspective. Not knowing which will win, you can at least say with some confidence "whichever it is, the odds he's be as dumb/incompetent/whatever (pick your favorite adjective) are astonishingly low".
Come on now, you can do it. Think about it in perspective.
All things being equal, I'd say the odds of the alternative being as bad or worse than possibly the worst president in the history of the United States of America are astonishingly low. I had few second thoughts about voting Kerry, given how far we've fallen already.
Morale is high because Iraq seems to be turning around. I know, I know, it's been said before.
But if "body counts" is your best metric then you have no choice but to rejoice, because they're nowhere near what they were in 2006. Iraqis have finally turned against the insurgency and started cooperating with US troops. The result has been a dramatic decrease in violence in Iraq, and now most of the country - including the former strongholds of the insurgency - is actually voluntarily under Iraqi control. The difference between the Iraq in the throws of insurgency and the Iraq of 2008 is enormous.
If you're a Marine who passed up college or came out of retirement to go to there, seeing it turn around is about the best thing in your whole world. It means you get to go home (or at least on to Afghanistan); perhaps with some shame, but ALSO with some pride. That's what's got your morale high.
Yeah, and their neighbors and children need to do what, exactly? Suck it up? Run away from home? Obviously it's their fault somebody else made a choice. Rape victims also should not have worn dresses, yes?
Other than showing that you're an asshole, your post shows you haven't thought about what it's like to live around guys with PTSD. They have families and neighbors who, you know, didn't volunteer to sign their lives away. Innocent bystanders, you might even call them. Programs that help treat direct sufferers - even if you don't think they deserve it - can make a huge difference in the lives of everyone around them.
The city I live in has a very large military presence, and I welcome every bit of assistance the government can provide in helping them return to society.
"Once again, the losses are being socialized while the titans of financial executive management just walk away."
This is true - and rage-inducing - to a certain extent. I'm a responsible person and so I don't buy houses I can't afford and don't get in pyramid schemes and save a good fraction of my modest income. I, and people like me, should be going insane right about now.
But the thing is there's a chance that if they *don't* bail the big players out, the entire post WWII financial system of the world will implode. In that event even responsible people like me are liable to get screwed. So as a rational guy I have to balance my rage at the unfairness of it all against the likelihood of catastrophe. Just how likely is it? Unknown. But the fact that the entire financial world is shitting its pants suggests it really may happen.
Personally I'll except the indignity of it all as long as the result is a better regulated financial system.
No no, you don't get it. Only one nation at any one time can be evil, and it must be absolutely so, and every other nation at that time must be its equal and absolute opposite. Duh!
Is it *really* that hard to believe that there are bad people in positions of power, even in the United States, *and* that they're competent enough to pull off 9/11 in secret?
Cause when you ask the question that way, you start to remember that while "rotten" can sometimes describe some of the members of the US government, "retarded" can *always* describe *a lot* of them.
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It probably also does not include university funding. I read somewhere (I can't find it now?) that the US spends overall about 5% of GDP on education. But I think that included state funding, and it for sure included education before college. Still, if you add up all the likely federal funding in your links it still looks like far more is spent on the military, which supports your original point.
Thanks for the links!
"Hell, we haven't even attempted to take over Canada or Mexico"
Actually, we have. We've explicitly tried to conquer Canada (albeit before it was independent of Britain). And I'm sitting right now in what was once a huge chunk of the Mexico. We didn't, uh, buy California - you know that, right?
"Please enlighten me with examples of countries in which we have come as conquerors instead of liberators or protectors"
Well, no. Here's the thing, dude: we've almost always called ourselves liberators. A lot of times it's even been true. I'm not against wars of liberation at all. And that's not my point anyway. My point is that more than half of this fucking country was taken in war. War with Britain. War with Indians. War with Mexico. War with whatever was in our way. And yeah, fuck yeah, we have made a better country out of it than any of those people ever would have. Go us.
But that can't disguise the fact that we took this country with force.
And if you look up the thread, this is my response to "why does America keep spending money on ways to kill people"? You know why? Because it's a huge part of what got us here, and we're fucking good at it. We aren't going to stop thinking about killing people until we can't.
Agreed, if you are comparing martial prowess, you cannot rate the natives in America like a Chinese dynasty.
But if you are not comparing martial prowess, but instead territory usurped and lives taken, our expansion still stands out in history. The Mongols still beat us handily (which is of course good - you don't want to win a pissing contest with the Mongol horde). But not many others do.
I concede that my sweeping generalization was a sweeping generalization. But as a way of describing the psyche of our government over the last two centuries, I'll defend it as true for all intents and purposes. This country's expansion has been more rapid and more violent than almost anything else in the history of the world. To put us in to perspective, to find bigger, faster expansions you need to look to the *Mongols*. That's how far from the norm we are.
And second, yeah, there are isolationist tendencies in any country - so what? Out of 200 years you can point to a dozen or so when that's held sway here - and that only after losing a few hundred thousand men in the most horrible war in the history of mankind (and it wasn't even our war). That it takes a disaster of that scale to put our isolationists in charge for a little while is not evidence that we want to be left alone. It's evidence to the contrary.
Anyway, lest anyone think this is some kind of anti-american screed, what differentiates us from a lot of other expansionist powers is that ours has tended to result higher standards of living for our citizens and subjects alike (you can point to counter examples, but I can point to bigger counter-counter examples). The reason this happens is that - like most conquerers - we believe we know a better way of life than our opponents. But unlike most conquerers, we tend to be right.
"let him talk to ahmafruitcake, as if our current course is winning anything over there"
It's not doing much against Iran, but there's plenty of progress in Iraq. I tend to think the progress is happening in spite of Bush, rather than because of him, but there's room for doubt - another executive might have left when Iraq was at its worst, in 2005/6. It seems to me that to the extent you can blame Bush for everything that's gone wrong under his terms (and it's a long list), it's only fair to blame him for a few of the things have have gone right. Post-07-Iraq is one of those, by most metrics.
None of this should be read as an argument against voting Obama, though.
"All I wanted to say is that most of the money tends to go for military research."
Do you have a reference for that by chance? I read this claim all over but whenever I go looking for numbers I can't find them. My impression is military research gets more _direct_ funding, but by funding the US university system, the amount of non-military research indirectly funded is higher. But again, I can't find the numbers either way.
Also, I know you hear it a lot, but a lot of the technology that makes the modern world what it is has its roots in direct military funding. And that means it's not a priori a bad thing. You have to look at every case.
"What is it with the US and this obsession with devising new and more efficient ways to wage war?"
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's because the USA is a very war-like nation. And if you don't mind, I'm going to use this opportunity to preempt some responses by saying, hey guys? We've pretty much always been this way.
I know, it's not popular to admit it in some quarters, but look, you don't start out in a hovel in New England and end up running half a continent without a lot of war. And smallpox. We're actually among the most war-like nations in the history of the world guys. The whole "we just want to be left alone" thing hasn't really ever been true.
That's true too, and a real concern. Funny though, I ran across an article in one of those awful Women's fashion magazines last night at a friend's house, and it had an article on some 90-something year old lady who looked like she was 70 at most. Her name? Roberta McCain - his mom. 96 and still trucking. That's a good sign. Course, his dad only made it to 70. Eep.
But he is (as Republicans go) - if there were a D next to his name on the Ballot he wouldn't have picked her. But he needed somebody to speak to his party's loonies, and she's it.
It's never fun to watch a good candidate bow to electoral reality. The good news is if he does win the election, you can expect him to veer away from the far right.
Who is your crowd? I'm an independent centrist. I vote mostly Democratic in higher level elections. To me this one looks like a godsend. Not one but TWO moderates running for president? I don't pray, but if I did, this would have answered mine.
Yeah, you've heard wrong, and probably from anti-government conspiracy people.
Amendment 16:
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am16
That's about as plain and explicit a declaration will ever get in a legal system. It has the right, and it has the right to enforce it. If you hear otherwise the person telling you is either (a) not sound of mind, (b) intellectually dishonest, or (c) is spreading hearsay.
"I don't see the point of thought helmets for the Army, if the Commander-in-Chief is still incapable of coherent thought."
I get irritated by this sort of thing, not because I think highly of Bush, but because people tend be myopic about him.
You guys understand, he's not the normal American president, right? Like, he's maybe the worst president we've ever elected, maybe even by a wide margin? If you could graph American presidents by how successful they were, you understand he'd be an incredible outlier?
And you understand, finally, he's going away in just a couple months, right?
Put those two ideas together, then, and start looking at the next president in that perspective. Not knowing which will win, you can at least say with some confidence "whichever it is, the odds he's be as dumb/incompetent/whatever (pick your favorite adjective) are astonishingly low".
Come on now, you can do it. Think about it in perspective.
Yeah, relax. Any project of its scale is going to have issues. They'll sort it out with time.
Anybody have a link handy to that study showing Republicans donate more?
I don't remember reading that only rich republicans donate. But I could be wrong.
"Inconspicous. Republicans give to make themselves look good because they fear the masses rising up and killing them for their conspicous hoarding."
This is inconsistent with the fact that poor people identify themselves as Republican in large numbers.
All things being equal, I'd say the odds of the alternative being as bad or worse than possibly the worst president in the history of the United States of America are astonishingly low. I had few second thoughts about voting Kerry, given how far we've fallen already.
Morale is high because Iraq seems to be turning around. I know, I know, it's been said before.
But if "body counts" is your best metric then you have no choice but to rejoice, because they're nowhere near what they were in 2006. Iraqis have finally turned against the insurgency and started cooperating with US troops. The result has been a dramatic decrease in violence in Iraq, and now most of the country - including the former strongholds of the insurgency - is actually voluntarily under Iraqi control. The difference between the Iraq in the throws of insurgency and the Iraq of 2008 is enormous.
If you're a Marine who passed up college or came out of retirement to go to there, seeing it turn around is about the best thing in your whole world. It means you get to go home (or at least on to Afghanistan); perhaps with some shame, but ALSO with some pride. That's what's got your morale high.
Yeah, and their neighbors and children need to do what, exactly? Suck it up? Run away from home? Obviously it's their fault somebody else made a choice. Rape victims also should not have worn dresses, yes?
Other than showing that you're an asshole, your post shows you haven't thought about what it's like to live around guys with PTSD. They have families and neighbors who, you know, didn't volunteer to sign their lives away. Innocent bystanders, you might even call them. Programs that help treat direct sufferers - even if you don't think they deserve it - can make a huge difference in the lives of everyone around them.
The city I live in has a very large military presence, and I welcome every bit of assistance the government can provide in helping them return to society.
Think harder.
"accept". I'll *accept" the indignity of it all. I know the difference!
"Once again, the losses are being socialized while the titans of financial executive management just walk away."
This is true - and rage-inducing - to a certain extent. I'm a responsible person and so I don't buy houses I can't afford and don't get in pyramid schemes and save a good fraction of my modest income. I, and people like me, should be going insane right about now.
But the thing is there's a chance that if they *don't* bail the big players out, the entire post WWII financial system of the world will implode. In that event even responsible people like me are liable to get screwed. So as a rational guy I have to balance my rage at the unfairness of it all against the likelihood of catastrophe. Just how likely is it? Unknown. But the fact that the entire financial world is shitting its pants suggests it really may happen.
Personally I'll except the indignity of it all as long as the result is a better regulated financial system.
Most of us did too, unfortunately. The re-election is truly unforgivable. Anybody can be wrong once, but to vote Bush twice... yeah.
To be fair, some of the causes of this crisis go back decades. You can't pin quite everything on Bush - just a lot of it.
Here's hoping we'll make ourselves an energy policy and get working on that current accounts deficit finally.
No no, you don't get it. Only one nation at any one time can be evil, and it must be absolutely so, and every other nation at that time must be its equal and absolute opposite. Duh!
No. Still stupid. Go call a Canadian an American. You'll get corrected.
Is it *really* that hard to believe that there are bad people in positions of power, even in the United States, *and* that they're competent enough to pull off 9/11 in secret?
Cause when you ask the question that way, you start to remember that while "rotten" can sometimes describe some of the members of the US government, "retarded" can *always* describe *a lot* of them.