NHK is broadcasting the inaugural address live, with a simultaneous translation.
Watching live from Tokyo, even though it's nearly 2 in the morning.
Wouldn't miss this for the world.
Speaking of the problem with Scunthorpe, Wikipedia's on it.
Er, Wikipedia HAS a mechanism to push for greater quality, namely the Featured Article process and its attendant criteria, as well as the less-bureaucratic Good Article process. And yes, if an article so promoted decays in quality, it is liable to lose its ranking.
Not the greatest system, but it's not as if Teresa has uncovered a problem no one has noticed before.
I failed, because I couldn't think of what the hell color an ermine was supposed to be.
Twenty points here, which I find disturbingly low for someone like
me who likes looking at typefaces and has since high school. Even worse
is retaking the test and getting a LOWER score.
Nowhere have I ever said that there's no difference between the Democrats and Republicans.
And yet your purported future vote treats them that way.
Yes, I'm a horrible person for not supporting your candidate.
No, you're a horrible person for supporting the collective and demonstrated incompetence, greed, ignorance, viciousness, and arguable evilness that makes up the current controlling political party, the Republicans. The rhetorical fallacies are only a bonus.
I mean, I could have said back in 2003, "Hey, what with that crazy Saddam having his nuke program and all, I gotta oppose, in principle, having a nuke/WMD/crazed weasel infestation dropped on me by him." I mean, digging into deep details wouldn't have altered that basic principle, wouldn't it? I mean, unless you were just BEGGING to have a nuke/WMD/crazed weasel infestation dropped on you. How could you possibly oppose that principle?
Or is it possible to oppose something on principle, without needing to dig into deep details about it?
Sure, in the same way you can oppose Cadillac-driving welfare mothers or Communists sapping our precious bodily fluids. Or to use something more closely related to your example, oppose Saddam Hussein's imminent nuclear weapon/WMD program.
#182 albatross
Valuethinker makes the points I was just about to make, and probably* much more coherently. I'd add that given the chain of logic I'm seeing, "vague idea" and "no idea whatsoever" are essentially interchangable here. I'd also add that the notion that the budget is a zero-sum game makes no sense in the real world, and that money not allocated for foreign aid/development is not going to automagically be allocated to Worthy Causes domestically.
So we should be spending taxpayer money on aid to help US oil companies get better contracts?
Strawman Alert!
*The "probably" concerns how much more coherent, not the certainty that it would be.
Meanwhile, geez, Google Ads always seem to surprise me. On my page right now:
Mormon Underwear
Find - Mormon Underwear. Mormon Underwear Guide.
TheguidetoMormons.com
albatross, 162:
In other words, you have absolutely no idea how much it is, but whatever it is, it's too much?
The rest of your post is a lot of rather vague handwaving, though one bit is probably worth highlighting:
"I don't think foreign aid is doing much for the well being of the American people, which is the only really good reason for the government to be doing it"
Charity must benefit the giver directly? That's what you seem to be saying.
P J Evans, #145: Whoops, missed that. That'll teach me to be too eager to post.
Keith, #147: Yeah, my friend means well but she isn't too plugged into politics. The part that really worries me is the natural resistance to changing one's initial snap judgment, no matter how bogus or ill-founded that snap judgment was. Multiple that thousands -- not to mention the attempted pushback by the tireless Ronbots -- and it could snowball.
Er, please replace
"but she has if not drunk the Kool-Aid has at least sniffed the glass"
with
"and while she has not drunk the Kool-Aid has at least sniffed the glass"
That'll teach me to reach for the cheesy metaphors.
And yeah, I might as well throw in my 2 cents as to why Ron Paul worries me, which is essentially anecdotal.
A long-time friend of mine is making serious noises about supporting Paul. So what? Well, it's that she's a fairly liberal, cooperative-supporting, Berkeley-educated, Birkenstocks-wearing person basing her possible support -- essentially or wholly -- on Paul's opposition to the Iraq War.
Pretty much every other important view of the guy is something she would oppose or outright loathe, but she has if not drunk the Kool-Aid has at least sniffed the glass, and doesn't understand -- or, God help me, is disposed to disbelieve -- all of Paul's horrible negatives that go against everything she believes in.
While it's just a single datapoint*, the possibility that it's not just the hardcore internet-savvy Libertarians, but otherwise sensible people who, sick and frustrated by Bush's idiotic and immoral war (and the Democratic Party's squishy and seemingly ineffective response) would focus on that single issue, and, in their zeal, ignore everything else.
#93: "Radically downsizing our foreign aid, as part of getting us out of that business."
This particular bit crops up frequently -- and frequently wrong-headed, that I guess I have to ask a couple of calibrating questions for albatross:
1) How much of the US federal budget, do you think, goes towards foreign aid?
2) How much of the US federal budget, do you think, SHOULD go towards foreign aid?
Don't look it up: I want to see what your assumptions are, here.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 3 |
| 2008 | 5 |
| 2007 | 9 |
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