A Cycling & bikes forum. CycleBanter.com

Go Back   Home » CycleBanter.com forum » rec.bicycles » General
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

funny things to do on a bike



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #451  
Old May 25th 04, 01:29 PM
David Kerber
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Why they hate us, was ( funny things to do on a bike)

In article , says...
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.


ROTFL!


--
Remove the ns_ from if replying by e-mail (but keep posts in the
newsgroups if possible).
Ads
  #452  
Old May 25th 04, 03:07 PM
Mark Hickey
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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  
Old May 25th 04, 03:12 PM
Mark Hickey
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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  
Old May 25th 04, 05:54 PM
JP
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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  
Old May 25th 04, 06:49 PM
Jonesy
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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  
Old May 25th 04, 07:11 PM
Frank Krygowski
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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  
Old May 25th 04, 07:23 PM
Frank Krygowski
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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 ----
  #459  
Old May 25th 04, 09:28 PM
Mark Hickey
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default 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
 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
buying my first road bike Tanya Quinn General 28 June 17th 10 10:42 AM
True Cost of a Supermarket Bike Elisa Francesca Roselli General 41 January 25th 04 05:18 AM
Secure Bike Parking.? M. Barbee General 14 January 6th 04 03:00 AM
my new bike Marian Rosenberg General 5 October 19th 03 03:00 PM
Best Way to Travel with a Bike on an Airplane F1 General 5 August 14th 03 10:39 PM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 10:02 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 CycleBanter.com.
The comments are property of their posters.