military spending, clarified

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IOW you say "this is the way we've always done it, i see nothing wrong with maintaining the status quo forever." and "common sense" is just the body of accumulated ignorance that governs the decision-making of people who have not spiritually grown since high school. common sense is merely the beginning of wisdom, not the be-all-and-end-all.



so you believe there is not one cent which could be pared from the [roughly] 700+ billion defence budget? even gates says there is waste that could be trimmed. if shrub hadn't have irresponsibly cut taxes on the rich while at the same time made that moneypit called "the department of homeland security" we would not be in this same kind of mess as we are in now. if the watchdogs [during shrub's watch] had done their job in policing wall street, this particular economic wreck would not have happened. the budget surplus under clinton was deliberately transformed into a budget disaster under shrub, for the purpose of "starving the beast" according to one of your heroes, grover norquist. if social security were ran like the social insurance departments of the lions' share of other western nations, [means-testing, broader funding] it would be doing fine. but the tea partiers are saying "hands off my social security" while the repubs just laugh up their sleeves at the dem's predicament, offering no actual useful alternatives of their own, just riding along with the tea partier's mob on wheels.



tell that to people struggling to survive on the margins. when you are old and poor i am going to laugh my ass off at your failed youthful arrogance. proverbs 17:5 says "whoever mocks the poor shows contempt for their maker; whoever gloats over disaster will not go unpunished." you are a lot braver than me, to be mocking god's creation.



whatever.



not to dismiss your father's efforts, but that has nothing to do with your bad attitude towards those you consider inferior to you.



how is saying baldly that i have the hots for rush limburger NOT a disparaging remark? if i said you had the hots for that ugly freak ann coulter you would take umbrage for sure.



a non-sequitur, again. the topic is military overspending/overreach, and nothing else.



even a clueless sci-fi nonfan like me understands that statement indicates your imputing bad ethics on my part. why do you look at the speck of sawdust in my eye but pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?



only until they are old enough to vote. i worked around those types for decades, i have seen the damage they do, interpersonally as well as at the ballot box. i have never met a democratic bully.



and you are NOT highly partisan? one again, "east is east, west is west and never the twain shall meet." you live your life in the best way you know how, and so do i. may your way work well for you. it certainly would not work for me, and perhaps vice-versa.



coulda fooled me about not deciding to be my enemy. a friend would not say the things you say to people who have done you absolutely no harm to speak-of.



no, YOU said it. you are correct that i believe right wingers are evil, and that they are the enemies of those disimilar to themselves, via punitive social and governmental regimes they would impose on anybody outside of their group. but i never said i supported the terrorists. so stop putting words in my mouth. besides, terrorism is its own topic and is not germaine to the discussion of the status-quo of our military spending and usage. why can't you stick to the topic at hand?



i have seen enough of it to know that i find it to be obnoxiously mean-spirited and not condusive to a spirit of national dialogue. a televised version of u.s. news and world report would be better, or at least grayer and calmer. and whatever keith's real motivation, at least he was speaking my concerns. the enemy of my enemy is my friend. i take friends wherever i may find them.



and nothing rush or ann coulter says is hateful or disrespectful of anybody else? "i don't hate you," says the mugger beating me up for my lunch money.



i don't mean to disrespect one whose opinions you value, but all he said was basically "stick with american traditional morality - don't be progressive like europeans."

You should have said 'margarine' not margins!

you're right. damn it
i'm less clever than a bucket of transfats.

Don't worry, I'll let it slide this time

There is a difference between idealism and being suicidal, I will not join you in a suicide pact.



There may be waste, but quite frankly I don't trust this current administration or as Rush aptly calls it "the regime," screwing with our National Defense. I would like someone like John McCain going through what is being spent on what whom actually cares about our people in uniform.



The economy was going south after Enron and the attack on 9/11, Bush cut taxes and got the economy going again. Homeland security was put in place so our various parts of law enforcement would actually talk with each other.



Clinton signed into law the deregulation of Fannie and Freddie, which helped ensure the housing bubble. Bush actually tried to fix the problem all the way back in 2003, but was stonewalled by Democrats including Barnie Frank. Seriously, the only thing Bush can be blamed for on this point is that he didn't take to the bully pulpit and lay out in detail to the American public the situation.



9/11 happened, stop trying to blame Bush for everything you are looking like you're just simply deranged.



Both political parties are responsible for screwing up Social Security long before Bush even took office.



Actually, Paul Ryan I believe has offered up some solutions, Republicans are actually just worried that Democrats will just demonize them if they offer up any meaningful reforms.



I am not mocking the poor, I'm trying to point out to you just how wrong you are on this issue.



Wow in one ear and out the other.



I don't consider people that work in the Restaurant business to be inferior to me. They're people that hold a job.



I would just laugh it off and go on my way.



No, it is not a non-sequitur.



You were trying to paint yourself as the objective individual which quite frankly is disingenious on your part. You said you had the big ears like a Vulcan, so I just though of the first Star Trek reference that fit with big ears and thought of Ferengi, would you rather me call you a Romulan.



I have.



Compared to you I am not partisan, I know I am partisan just not nearly to the extent you are.



Actually yeah, I have said things to friends before when I thought they were going down the wrong road, and my friends know I will be completely honest with them.



Because, the other parts I'm dragging in are relevant to the topic at hand, thanks for proving that you are more partisan than I am btw.



You would think everyone that disagrees with you is obnoxious and mean-spirited.



Rush Limbaugh is disrespectful, but not hateful, same with Ann Coulter. I have yet to hear Rush wish someone dead.



Why do I get the feeling either you didn't watch it or didn't pay attention to it.

It's weird that you mention that story, cuz that was actually the point I was making about you; you can dish it out but you can't take it. This hypocrisy is ridiculous. You accuse me of being intolerant towards dissenting views, yet you have the attitude that an enemy of an enemy is a friend. My social life isn't even like that, so it makes no sense for me to have that attitude when it comes politics. So assuming you practice what you preach, maybe you should spray some windex on your mirror if you look at it all the time and don't see a hypocrite. Oh, and that comment about Inuyasha killing you with stress is taking victim mentality to a whole new level. He isn't responsible for how you react to his posts.

I tried looking for it but I haven't found it. Could you quote it?

i won't try to get your meaning with that impenetrable statement.



so the truth is you are still enraged over mccain losing? i will not do like you, and disrespect your man the way you disrespect my man. you should not expect me to vote for him, however. and somebody who actually cares about the GIs would BRING THEM HOME from unwise foreign entanglements.



and they still don't talk to each other. taxcuts for the wealthy do NOT trickle down to the rest of us at the bottom- at best, only the upper middle class see any real benefit. the economy has stunk at the bottom still, what with unaffordable health care and gouging rents, etc.



it happened on his watch, so he gets the blame, for good or ill.



"the plank in your own eye" again.



"solutions" that would have left millions of seniors totally wiped out had such been the law back in 2008. there is just no useful substitute for government-backed insurance in this regard.



again, the mugger says "i'm not mocking you" as he does his dirt. you support official policies that would only hurt people in your social class. why don't you want better for you and yours?



you like pissing contests? or you'd rather i just sat back and let you pinkle all over me and thank you for the privilege?



then why do you support policies that would stack the deck against them?



you have not so far.



incongruous statement: a statement that appears unrelated to a statement that it follows
unwarranted conclusion: a conclusion that does not follow from its premises
your responses to me make sense to you but not to me, so your communication has failed in its objective, if communication was your objective instead of automatic gainsaying and ego-tripping.



now who is the one being disingenuous? you are the knowledgeable sci-fi fan, not i. i know nothing of romulans, or lots of other things but that is another subject. i only know what concerns me, and that is morally superior strong-armers who are trying to take my lunch money while telling me it is for my own good, IOW pinkling on my leg then telling me it is only raining.



you support only the far-right [GOP/tea-party/birther] whereas i support the broad middle out to the far left [democrats and greens/naderites], so you are more specifically partisan than i am. you cannot say factually that the GOP supports the broad middle, especially after all the moderates hit the road.



with "friends" like you, who needs enemies?



relevant only so far as the english language is relevant to the topic of wasteful military expenditures and activities.



no, only the ones that want to make my life harder with their preferred punitive socially darwinistic social order imposed on me against my will. if the shoe fits, wear it and stop beating people up with it.



but both of those folk like to make other people wish they were dead. they murder people in spirit. that is hateful AFAIC. the bully simply doesn't comprehend that his victims never deserve the pain and general disrespect inflicted on them. the main difference between their ilk and everybody else, is that they see kindness as just another weakness to be exploited for personal gain. that is a major disrespect.

and you would not be responsible for somebody's bloody nose after you punched them? pinkle on my leg then tell me it's only raining.



unified forces
i merely mentioned that if this country did as canada [among other nations at various times] did in 1968, and unified their services under one bureaucratic umbrella, there would be major economies of scale enabled, and by now that would have added up to real money. unfortunately, it appears that canada has backpedaled in this respect, with bureaucratic creep, a result we don't have to duplicate, in that we can have a unified american military force with no individual fiefdoms and more streamlined operations, if we leave the politicking out of it. in the absense of any official impetus, some local bases [such as ft. lewis and mcchord AFB], have unified under one command, [as JBFLM-joint base ft. lewis/mcchord] but it is still too early to quantify the financial results, and it is not clear that they have followed through with the full bureaucratic streamlining of middle management. the real savings would mainly come from the top-down.

america's defence budget [$696,268,000,000.00 circa fy2008] is nearly 12 times bigger than that of china, 47 times more than that of israel. we have 57 nuclear-powered attack and cruise-missile submarines, more than the rest of the world combined. my question is why are we doing the lions' share of the heavy lifting? why isn't the rest of the civilized world doing more? what is the UN for, if this situation persists? these are not unreasonable questions, and american taxpayers deserve a good answer to them.

Tbh, the UN is part of the problem, see: Oil for Food Scam.

The UN should be abolished. It is typical bureaucratic BS.

@ auntblabby: Canada's military is one of the best trained in the world but they are underfunded and lacking in the technology department. The sea, air, and land aspect of any military are best left to be specialized rather than made monolithic. All it leads to is corner cutting. The 23 billion budget that we have for the military is a joke. I agree that the rest of the world shouldn't expect the US to act like the world police and do their part to fight corruption as well rather than just laying on the sidelines and letting the US do all the fighting for em. The states still needs a strong national defense though as it is the world's biggest super power.

UN is quite ineffective now, though if abolished I suspect it would be succeeded by a few rival regional blocs. They'll probably have to create a new organization eventually... we'll call it, the 'Congress of the World" or something typically ambiguous. Give it 30-50 years and the same s**t will happen again, so the next logical step is the "World Court Organization".... etc

I wish our military had more funding, though if I'm not mistaken they have been increasing it. I am curious what their plans are for the next decade or so. I think making them Joint Forces was a good choice financially and bureaucratically.

Wasn't the Canadian military held hostage by a shipping company once because they didn't pay their freight bill?

Not that I know of

auntblabby wrote:

New developments: according to auntblabby:

1. I’m now enraged and furious.
2. I’m now a Satanist.
3. You’ve admitted to being gay (big surprise there…………lol)


Shove you back in your locker? Someone needs to shove you back in the closet and throw in a few handfuls of xxxxxxxx.

Last edited by Raptor on 20 Mar 2011, 7:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah it did.

http://www.marinelink.com/news/article/ ... 19869.aspx

Not sure if the company ever did get paid.