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#451
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Why they hate us, was ( funny things to do on a bike)
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#452
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Why they hate us, was ( funny things to do on a bike)
Frank Krygowski wrote:
Mark Hickey wrote: 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? Here's the first one I found... http://www.suntimes.com/special_sect...hijackers.html Mark Hickey Habanero Cycles http://www.habcycles.com Home of the $695 ti frame |
#453
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Why they hate us, was ( funny things to do on a bike)
Tom Sherman wrote:
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. You need to do some more reading on the subject. The best data on the subject shows that there has been a net cooling trend - not a warming trend. If you are as old as I am, you should remember the hysteria that we were entering another ice age from a couple decades ago. Those pushing the global warming agenda tend to be those who are raking in lots of research dollars doing it. There are petitions signed by tens of thousands of scientists who believe the science and methods used to come to the conclusion that global warming is happening are flawed. But don't take my word for it - look up the NOAA data on temperature trends. Mark Hickey Habanero Cycles http://www.habcycles.com Home of the $695 ti frame |
#454
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Why they hate us, was ( funny things to do on a bike)
Mark Hickey wrote in message . ..
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. What act are you talking about? The rules you referenced were released as required under the existing Clean Air Act. Nothing new there, except for the rules that the Sierra Club forced the Bush administration to revise. 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). Probably not worth the effort- it would involve trying to pull news articles out of archives. My memory is that I read some things in the Washington Post (I'm a print subscriber) about the congressional politics of Clinton trying to string together the votes, but maybe Clinton just signed it for show, right? Bush *must* just be a more environmentally friendly president than Clinton. 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? For God's sake, that maybe the US Senate is not the last word on whether Kyoto "is a really, really bad idea". 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. Oh, brother. The only thing more costly than taking steps to slow global warming is not taking steps to slow global warming. 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. See Paul Krugman ins today's NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/opinion/25KRUG.html I posted figures - investment increased dramatically following the tax cuts. What figures? From where? You gotta start updating that "jobs lost" number downward. ;-) I already did. It takes into account the 900k gained since last August. Again, see Krugman. 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. It's a farce. It is severely underfunded because it does not do the fundamental thing that is needed to improve our public schools: provide money for teaching, as opposed to providing some (but not enough, even) money for testing students. You want the students to pass the tests, you gotta pay for the facilities and teachers they need to learn. (Or you could just cheat, like they do in Texas.) 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). The large number who don't pay federal income tax nevertheless pay Medicare and Social Security payroll tax. Their tax revenues are being used to cover part of the deficit created by the Bush taxcuts. In other words, those payroll taxes are being used as general tax revenue by the government. Why shouldn't they be entitled to a taxcut as 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. O'Neill did not write a book, he gave extensive interview; and he was already incredibly wealthy. It strains credulity to suggest that he criticized the policy-making process in the Bush White House for the money. Clarke, well, yes you're right. In reality, Bush, after being informed by his national security advisors that an attack on the US by terrorists was imminent, cancelled the remainder of his month-long vacation at Crawford and rushed back to Washington, where he brow beat the members of his cabinet into piecing together the intelligence they had that would anticipate the the 9/11 hijackings. Thanks to Bush's strong leadership, the terrible tragedy that would have taken place on 9/11 was avoided. Clarke is just a liar, out for a quick buck. 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? Give them a refund on their Social Security Tax. 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? They pay a lot more than 4% federal income taxes. Just because you refuse to admit that Social Security and Medicare taxes are income taxes does not mean that they are not. Social Security and Medicare taxes ARE federal income taxes. But I'm not even saying that they should pay less; I'm saying that the top 2% should pay more. Those people making a quarter of a million a year under the old tax rates were actually living pretty comfortably. I think they'll survive. Probably won't even have to cut back on their maid service. 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 has been a crisis for at least three decades. It gets attention every election. Remember Perot? 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. I have lived overseas in a couple of countries, and have a pretty global outlook myself. But let's be clear: the opportunity that is being created is at the expense of American workers. If I extrapolate this trend to its limit, I see an averaging of income and standards of living between US workers and the Third World. I would prefer to see opportunity created in Third World countries as a function of their improving standards of living, rather than as a function of the deterioration of ours. (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. There was not a significant bubble in 96. 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. This is not a media frenzy. It is people knowing what their wage growth is, and what their job mobility is, and how hard it would be to find another equivalent paying job if they lost the one they have. You can sit there and try to tell us different until hell freezes over, but it ain't gonna change what we know. 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). Oh, I guess if you insist hard enough that everything is all right, then it must be. I mean, you apply for a job in a place as miserable as Iraq is right now, and, even though you are very well qualified, you can't get hired. Yep, the job market's pretty tight, alright. JP |
#455
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Why they hate us, was ( funny things to do on a bike)
Mark Hickey wrote in message . ..
(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). Arguing with you is wasting bandwidth, on that we *both* agree. You have more logical fallacies than our dear, demented Doctor over on alt.mountain-bike. It's obvious you want to argue just to get in typing practice. That's called "poisoning the well." I am amazed that you cannot make a four-line post without resorting to some sort of logical fallacy to try and make a point. Carry on, but without me, please. IOW, you know when you're beaten. That's a good thing, but let's just get to where I should have gone in the beginning. You and your other right-wingnuts have the look of the Three Monkeys when you are worshipping our very own Curious George. Any of you parents out there know all about Curious George - a chimpanzee who often gets in over his head, but somehow always manages to come out smelling like a rose. In no small part because of the behind the scenes work of Karl Rove, errr, the Man in the Yellow Hat. The Three Monkeys do something like this: See No Evil (nothing that Dumbya and his crowd do is wrong, ever, at all) Hear No Evil (the only voices that matter are the ones who echo Dumbya and Co.) Speak No Evil (criticizing Dumbya and Co. is "treason".) It's really terrible that otherwise intelligent folks are reduced to apes when it comes to politics. If Dumbya were at all to moderate his message, John Kerry wouldn't stand a chance. An ultraliberal from Taxachusetts? No way a sitting war president should have to worry at all. It should be like Pat Robertson running against Bill Clinton. Landslide. No, GWB is a lightweight - intellect, morals, vision, and even politically. The younger folks would call him a punk. Heck, what do you care? You're male, white and rich, living in the U.S. You got yours, screw everyone else. Time'll come, somebody's gonna want payback, and you're going to be in the group targetted. I trust you'll look back on these days with fondness - "those were the good ol' days!" See you at the next argument, Mark. I'll bring my logic quotes, and you can pretend to not see them again. ObBike: Hey, when are we all gonna talk about disk brake and wheel ejection again? -- Jonesy |
#456
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Why they hate us, was ( funny things to do on a bike)
Mark Hickey wrote:
You need to do some more reading on the subject. The best data on the subject shows that there has been a net cooling trend - not a warming trend. If you are as old as I am, you should remember the hysteria that we were entering another ice age from a couple decades ago. I probably am at least as old as you are. Here's what I remember from that time period. The worry was about "Nuclear Winter." Carl Sagan was one of the scientists prominently discussing this. At the time, between the US and the USSR, there were enough nuclear warheads to thoroughly destroy world civilization several times over. But Sagan and others pointed out that a similar effect could happen without literally exploding civilization away. They pointed out that nuclear explosions loft dust and soot into the upper atmosphere, and that the effect of a moderately large number of such explosions would be shading the earth from the sun's rays. Depending on the volume of dust and soot, this could cause anything from some disastrous harvests to severe climate changes to an ice age. For reference, something like this is now widely thought to have triggered a worldwide economic crash at the beginning of the Dark Ages. At that time, it was an earlier explosion of the volcano later known as Krakatoa that is thought to have been responsible. (Krakatoa erupted with much less force in the 1800s, but still caused significant turmoil.) People took the Nuclear Winter issue seriously, including people at the top of the relevant governments. The number of nuclear warheads has diminished greatly - although we probably still retain enough to trigger that sort of catastrophe. Massive nuclear war and the attendant nuclear winter never happened. But that's hardly jusification for saying that global warming isn't occurring. -- Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com. Substitute cc dot ysu dot edu] |
#457
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Why they hate us, was ( funny things to do on a bike)
Mark Hickey wrote:
Frank Krygowski wrote: Mark Hickey wrote: 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? Here's the first one I found... http://www.suntimes.com/special_sect...hijackers.html Wow. Almost all from Saudi Arabia. None from Iraq! What's up with that? Aren't we still buying lots of oil from Saudi Arabia? Isn't Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia frequently listed as one of the world's worst dictators? Did we attack the wrong country?? -- Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com. Substitute cc dot ysu dot edu] ------------ And now a word from our sponsor ------------------ Do your users want the best web-email gateway? Don't let your customers drift off to free webmail services install your own web gateway! -- See http://netwinsite.com/sponsor/sponsor_webmail.htm ---- |
#458
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Why they hate us, was ( funny things to do on a bike)
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#459
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Why they hate us, was ( funny things to do on a bike)
Frank Krygowski wrote:
Mark Hickey wrote: Frank Krygowski wrote: Mark Hickey wrote: 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? Here's the first one I found... http://www.suntimes.com/special_sect...hijackers.html Wow. Almost all from Saudi Arabia. None from Iraq! What's up with that? And that changes my (deleted) point exactly how? Mark Hickey Habanero Cycles http://www.habcycles.com Home of the $695 ti frame |
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