funny things to do on a bike

JP wrote:

Everyone knows that Kyoto is flawed, but as an alternative to the Bush
plan, pretending that global warming doesn't exist and therefore doing
NOTHING, it's got a lot to recommend it.

http://www.sitewave.net/PPROJECT/s33p36.htm


It's just gotten a lot of added interest during the
political silly season

The reason it's gotten a lot of interest is that it's now happening to
white collar jobs.

Nonsense. It has always gotten a lot of attention.

When an accountant's job is off-shored, what should
they be retrained for?

For wherever the new jobs are.

http://tinyurl.com/29j32
http://tinyurl.com/yseny


Perhaps as a "food service worker"?

I suppose, if that's all they can find, or want to do.

http://slate.msn.com/id/1916/

Mark Hickey wrote:

Tom Sherman wrote:


Mark Hickey wrote:


...
Right... (what's your point?). The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts mean there
are 4 million more people who pay no taxes at all....

Really? So these people pay no sales, payroll, property (directly or
indirectly through rent payments), excise and other taxes? News to me.


You KNOW I meant "federal income taxes".

I know nothing of the sort. I have observed that it is often not wise to
try to guess what was in the mind of Usenet posters.

--
Tom Sherman – Quad City Area

Tom Ace wrote:

Mark Hickey wrote:

The issue (that you seem to be constantly missing) is that no one in
the administration has suggested that (and I'll use your words to
prevent any further confusion) "Saddam was involved in 9/11".

I'm not the person Mark had been responding to, but--

Bush chose wordings that would plant the idea, while avoiding
making an explicit connection. He was crafty about it. Examples:

"Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that
Saddam Hussein could be contained." 01-28-03
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...030128-19.html

When you look at the context (at the end of a long list of largely UN
weapons inspection report information about Iraq's WMD programs), and
the context directly after that statement - I think it's clear that a
reasonable person would not make a connection between 9-11 and Iraq.
In fact, his last sentence below makes it clear that Saddam directly
involved with US terrorism would be a *change* from the 9/11 attack.

"Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam
Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and
shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those
19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed
by Saddam Hussein."

"He's [i.e. Hussein is] a threat because he is dealing
with al Qaeda." 11-07-02
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0021107-7.html

There was a considerable amount of info available to suggest that at
that time - though much of it has proven to be false. Still, dealing
with Al Qaeda and directly participating in 9/11 are two different
things.

"Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and
to support terror." 01-29-02
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...020129-11.html

This was absolutely true.

for more, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3119676.stm

This is the "cream of the crop" of quotes (spanning many in the Bush
cabinet), and there's not a single quote there that would lead a
reasonable person to believe there is a connection between Iraq and
9/11, beyond references to the altered reality of the post-9/11 world.

The Christian Science Monitor reported:

Polling data show that right after Sept. 11, 2001, when Americans
were asked open-ended questions about who was behind the attacks,
only 3 percent mentioned Iraq or Hussein. But by January of this
year [2003], attitudes had been transformed. In a Knight Ridder
poll, 44 percent of Americans reported that either "most" or "some"
of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. The answer is zero.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.html

A question for you, Mark: do you think Bush's statements
helped cause that shift in Americans' beliefs?

I've seen no Bush quotes that would lead a reasonable person to
believe that Iraq was directly involved with the 9/11 attacks. In the
total absence of any quotes, I have to conclude that a) Americans
aren't all that up on Middle/Near East geography, and b) they don't
make distinctions between different terrorist groups. As we all
learned more about the hijackers, we learned that they were from
several different countries - I assume that a number of people made
the connection not because of what Bush said (or didn't say), but on
the premise that (if guessing), the terrorists were more likely to
come from countries that were most anti-US.

I suspect you could ask the rank and file American questions about
Iran, Libya, Israel, Palestine, and the accuracy of the replies
wouldn't be any better - or worse - than that ascribed to the Iraq /
9/11 connection.

And it doesn't take any real stretch of the imagination for someone to
reach the independent conclusion that Saddam wouldn't have balked at
helping any enemy of the US. Conspiracy theories are one of the
favorite hobbies in the US after all... ;-)

Tom Ace

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $695 ti frame

(Jonesy) wrote:

A really long post my reader didn't download (I have a limit of 300
lines - any post longer than that is wasting bandwidth).

It's obvious you want to argue just to get in typing practice.

Carry on, but without me, please.

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $695 ti frame

Mark Hickey wrote:

... I have to conclude that a) Americans
aren't all that up on Middle/Near East geography, and b) they don't
make distinctions between different terrorist groups.

I think that the administration concluded that long ago (it's a fairly
easy conclusion) and used it skillfully to gain approval for this little
adventure.

As we all
learned more about the hijackers, we learned that they were from
several different countries

Do you have that list of countries? And how many hijackers were from
each of them? Can you post it?

Please?


--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Mark Hickey wrote:

(Jonesy) wrote:

A really long post my reader didn't download (I have a limit of 300
lines - any post longer than that is wasting bandwidth).

It's obvious you want to argue just to get in typing practice.

Carry on, but without me, please.

You know, Mark, I was thinking that Jonesy gave some very instructive
information in there. Although I know most of what's in
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
I think it's an excellent source, and I think he used it effectively to
illustrate where your thinking has gone wrong in several ways.

Perhaps you should go to Google groups, or some other source, to
overcome your newsreader's limitations, so you can learn from that post.


--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

(JP) wrote:

Mark Hickey wrote in message . ..
(JP) wrote:

Mark Hickey wrote in message . ..

Did you show me anything to convince me that any legislation or
rulemaking by the Bush administration will do anything positive for
the environment?
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress...9?OpenDocument

Did you show me anything to convince me that any legislation or
rulemaking by the Bush administration will do anything positive for
the environment?

The Sierra Club sued the EPA in February of 2003 for failing to update
its Clean Air standards as required by the Clean Air Act. After being
forced into a consent decree, the EPA released these rules. Gosh, did
you not know this? Very impressive.

Gosh, did you not know they sued Clinton first (and will probably sue
every other president eventually)?

But it's interesting you don't find the biggest air pollution
reduction act in over a decade significant. Go figure.

Mea culpa - you're right... I had forgotten that Clinton signed the
thing. In any event, it was a symbolic action since he knew it would
never clear the Senate - and in fact he did absolutely nothing to try
to get it through the Senate.

Not true, but he didn't have the votes and he knew that once it was
rejected it was all over.

I think you just said exactly the same thing I did. If you can show
me proof he made any real effort to push the thing through the Senate,
I'll be surprised (I didn't find any evidence).

Rightfully so, IMHO. So seldom can you
get a unanimous decision out of the Senate that there should be no
doubt that Kyoto is a really, really bad idea.

The EU, Russia and Japan don't agree with you.

What's your point?

Everyone knows that Kyoto is flawed, but as an alternative to the Bush
plan, pretending that global warming doesn't exist and therefore doing
NOTHING, it's got a lot to recommend it.

Here's a clue... global warming doesn't exist. There's been a net
cooling trend for decades, and the effect of the Kyoto accord would be
at best a small fraction of 1 degree centigrade over the next century
(at a truly horrendous cost to the US economy). But let's not go over
that well-plowed land again.

I'm sure there are people out there even more qualified than me, and I
am sure one (actually more than one) of them got the job(s). I'm well
aware of the work locations, and it would involve a lot of time in
Iraq (literally living in "military" style for periods of time
supporting the communications equipment used by the folks in the
field).

Could be that the security situation has deteriorated so badly that
the project has been put on hold. This has happened to reconstruction
projects all over Iraq, according to the news. But at least you were
willing to do it, over-the-top gesture or not.

It wasn't a reconstruction effort, but one supporting the military (I
don't think THAT one's been put on hold). ;-)

I agree that was part of the equation (mortgage recasting).

The economy is not roaring.

I'd disagree - and from the looks of the leading indicators, it's
going to do nothing but continue to improve.

Investment can't be ignored as one of the elements of getting the
economy roaring again.

What type of investment are you talking about? There has been very
little capital investement over the last three years; much of what
there was, was related to downsizing, outsourcing and off-shoring. Let
me repeat it: low interest rates and available capital (available
capital is what you get more of when you give taxcuts to people who
will not spend the proceeds on consumer goods) is going to be of very
limited effectiveness in stimultating the economy if there is already
considerable excess capacity, as there has been.

I posted figures - investment increased dramatically following the tax
cuts.

At any rate, it's all working, and the economy
is in a LOT better shape than it was before the tax cuts.

Only if you are willing to disregard the half trillion dollar annual
federal deficit and net two million jobs lost.

You gotta start updating that "jobs lost" number downward. ;-)

In some ways - but you're right in others. Most of the spending
increases are in social programs (which probably sounds like heresy to
the information sheltered). For example, Department of Education
outlays are up by 60%, Health and Human services by 21.6%, HUD by 6%.

Those percentages and where they are targeted are pratically of no
value in stimulating the economy when the actual dollar value is
compared to the size of the US economy. My favorite, though, is
Education, whose increase reflects the No Child Left Behind Act. It is
severely underfunded and does not offer even enough money to the
states to implement the program itself, let along provide improvements
to education, all this at a time when the states are themselves
squeezed by revenue shortfalls.

Funny thing - the alternative Democrat budget didn't have any more
funding for NCLB. But it's still the most expensive education act in
history (and not "severely underfunded" IMHO - just not funded to the
limits set up, as is the case with most bills). The NCLB, like most
other things in this country - has become a politicized issue meaning
that you're going to get mass hysteria from both sides. In the end,
it's the only thing I've seen that's likely to actually improve the
horrendously bad performance of our public schools.

If I have to be a "True Believer" to think that massive tax cuts
stimulate the economy, then I'll be one (the alternative being in
permanent denial).

You really don't seem to have much capacity for the subtleties of an
issue, do you? Despite everything I've said, all you can get out of it
is that "massive taxcuts stimulate the economy". Nothing about how
much, what kind or for who, just "massive taxcuts stimulate the
economy". It's a pretty interesting form of self delusion (or you are
trying to delude us?), really, because what you said is, of course,
true, but it skips any analysis of whether *Bush's* taxcuts themselves
have been particularly effective at stimulating the economy or
creating jobs. And that's the really important issue.

I think we covered that pretty well. It was a broad based tax cut -
top to bottom... what portion of the US taxpayers did it miss (other
than - obviously - the large number who already didn't pay US federal
income tax).

As for Paul O'Neill's opinion... oh well.

Amazing to what degree the Bush administration depends on character
assisnation to defend its policies.

Right... exposing the fallacies presented in O'Neill's and Clarke's
books is "character assassination". Both of these guys were demoted
of fired under the Bush presidency. Both made a lot of money writing
a Bush-bashing book.

Everyone agrees that you stimulate the economy out of a recession with
taxcuts, but they have to go to people that will spend the money.

Right... (what's your point?). The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts mean there
are 4 million more people who pay no taxes at all. A single parent of
two making $20,000 a year is $750 ahead,

Only if they were already paying $750 in taxes, which they probably
weren't.

How else are they going to get $750 ahead via the tax cut?

Those 4 million people you're talking about are still paying
taxes- Medicare and Social Security, and their taxes are going to pay
for payments to current retirees and they're going to cover the
federal deficit so that Bush can give out his big taxcuts to the
ultrawealthy and still pretend that the deficit is *only* half a
trillion.

What's your point? The bottom 50% of taxpayers pay only around 4% of
the total US federal income taxes. How much less can they pay?

Heh. So when Bush gives businesses a tax cut, he's cozying up to his
cronies. But when your guy does the same thing, he's a patriot trying
to protect the American worker.

Exactly. Otherwise Kerry would be a Republican.

Heh.

The "flow of jobs" out of the US has remained relatively constant for
many, many years.

And it's been a problem for many, many years. It has caused
fundamental, negative changes in US society.

I'm not so convinced that's it's quite the crisis it's "grown into"
during the current political silly season.

It's just gotten a lot of added interest during the
political silly season

The reason it's gotten a lot of interest is that it's now happening to
white collar jobs. When an accountant's job is off-shored, what should
they be retrained for? Perhaps as a "food service worker"?

I'm a bit more global in my outlook than most I suppose (having lived
overseas in several countries). Ultimately creating opportunity in
other countries isn't a bad thing.

(much as a 5.7% unemployment rate was a shining
indicator example of Clinton's economy in 1996 but an indicator of a
total disaster for the American worker in 2004).

There is no comparison between the economic conditions in 1996 and
now. At that time employment was improving- it had been adding jobs
for most of the last three years, the economy had been growing for
three years and the deficit was trending toward a surplus in the near
future. Those were the days.

Please don't try to tell us that things are as good now as they were
in '96. We know better, and it makes you look like a liar.

Those were the days all right - but they were being artificially
bolstered by the dot-com bubble. The market was priced beyond all
reason, and it had to come to an end because there was simply nothing
to back up the capitalization. The bubble popped and we were in a
full-blown recession by the third month of the GWB presidency (which
is really just a continuation of the trend from the previous year).

The bottom line is - 5.7% unemployment is NOT a historically high
figure. If you buy into the media frenzy - that's your choice. It's
just that a dispassionate examination of the reality shows that it's
lower than the average of the past several decades (and it's
decreasing from that level).

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $695 ti frame

Frank Krygowski

wrote:

I doubt the EPA would look more kindly on DU bullets. In fact, I think
they'd be even more strict. Would you agree?


No I wouldn't. Would they view it similiarly? Yes. As a more serious threat?
No. The science simply isn't there to support taking a stronger stand. It is
*depleted* uranium after all.

Regards,
Bob Hunt

Frank Krygowski

wrote:

OK. Attempted conquest.


If you truly believe that invading a country with the express goal of removing
a dictator from power, returning that country to its citizens, and then
*leaving* them to run their own country as soon as possible constitutes a
"conquest" you have a very odd definition of that word.

Regards,
Bob Hunt

Mark Hickey wrote:

...
Here's a clue... global warming doesn't exist. There's been a net
cooling trend for decades, and the effect of the Kyoto accord would be
at best a small fraction of 1 degree centigrade over the next century
(at a truly horrendous cost to the US economy). But let's not go over
that well-plowed land again....

No climatologists believe the above except those on the payrolls (or
funded by) the hydrocarbon extraction industry. The consensus is that
global warming is taking place, but the US corporate media pays undue
attention to the few climatoligists that disagree. Even that hotbed of
left-wing radicals, the US Department of Defense now believes that
global warming is a significant threat to US security.

--
Tom Sherman – Quad City Area