StrangeSox

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 08:54 AM) At least in my head, I connected that much more to Nietzsche and indirectly to the concepts of Eugenics. See my edit. Rand very clearly had a lot of Neitzsche in her philosophy. I realize that some other Germans used it too, but that honestly didn't cross my mind here.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 08:50 AM) Really? That's your choice of words here? It's a shot at Rand, though I guess I really don't know ss2k5's opinion of her. eta: Rand ripped a good chunk of her philosophy from Nietzsche, even if she only ever recognized Aristotle (A=A!!!). Atlas Shrugged is more a less a description of her envisioned Übermensch, John Galt.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 08:43 AM) The thing I find jaw-dropping is that you're posting an article about how bad it is that states have to rely literally on the fortunes of less than a thousand people for their income because they so totally skew the nations' income distributions, but your conclusion is "those people should be taxed less and everyone else should be taxed more. That way their incomes go even higher". Well, it fits with the idea of giving ADM more subsidies and cutting food stamps is a better way to feed the poor...

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 08:34 AM) The more you depend on "spreading the wealth around" aka making people's existence entirely dependent on a narrowing amount of successful people, the worse recessions get and the harder hit those now government/rich dependent classes will be. Not to mention the idea that taxes are going to create a middle class somehow is just insane. We've been doing this for like 75 years now, and all we have done is created a much larger dependent lower class instead of a functioning independent middle class. People don't move up the ladder from "spreading the wealth around". That is a myth. You've got reality backwards here. We do have a narrowing amount of "successful" people because our current system does a fantastic job of redistributing wealth to a very, very small handful of people in the country. Should I post the graph again showing average workers' earnings only going up 4.3% over the last 20 years? Or the graphs showing how all of the wealth generated in this country in the past several decades has been funneled to a few hundred/ thousand people while pretty much everyone else has been stagnant? The idea isn't to confiscate wealth from the Übermenschen producers and give it to the looters. The idea is to stop the huge income and wealth disparity from continuing to widen in this country as we see those at the very tippy top take an incredibly disproportionate share of the wealth.

The MSM was cheerleading the Iraq war through at least 2003.

HAMP hasn't been working as well as hoped, but it's not like they're proposing a better replacement.

Rick Santorum blames "abortion culture" for problems with Social Security

House Republicans voted to kill HAMP Of course, they haven't really proposed anything to replace it.

Sharia Law, the Real New Atheism!

I don't know where else to post this. It's not pro-lib/dem or anti-rep/cons, not even political really. It's just something that is helping to crush my faith in humanity a little more, and I'd thought I'd share. Parents picket girl with peanut allergy, ask her to withdraw from school (more detailed article specifying 504 plan accommodations) Now, maybe the child's parents should consider homeschooling their child for safety concerns unrelated to 'inconveniencing' these other parents or their children by having them do such horrible things as washing their hands or brushing their teeth. And the dog seems a little over-the-top but still, is is really that bad? Does that warrant other parents issuing what amount to death threats against a six year old child?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 02:02 PM) The Guardian is now running with a statement saying that one of the reactor cores has completely melted down and flowed out of its containment vessel. Sloppy wording, should be reactor vessel. Everything is still inside the containment building.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 24, 2011 -> 06:11 PM) This is kinda a scary graph. QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 08:56 AM) Along these lines: Unpaid Jobs: The New Normal? Of course, the problem remains that we tax the rich too much! If only we didn't tax them, they would be ever so happy to pay these people! The "best" part of the article: Yes, it's rather unfortunate that it's generally illegal to pay people nothing for their labor.

Because there was a UN resolution passed explicitly authorizing international action, which is a lot different from the unilateral action implied in your post. As for your similarities to Iraq, again, the scale isn't nearly the same here. The justification for relatively limited military action has always been and is still humanitarian intervention to stop Gaddafi from brutal retaliation against the rebellion. That hasn't changed and isn't at all similar to the numerous weak/fabricated justifications for a full-scale invasion and occupation of Iraq. Saying that our exact scope isn't clear is a meaningless comparison to Iraq because it applies to every single war ever fought by anyone. Saying we really have no way of knowing how long we'll be there fails on the same front mentioned above as well as the fact that the scale and scope is nowhere near Iraq and we're not invading pretty much unilaterally to overthrow Gaddafi and occupying the country until a stable government appears. I'm not ignoring the similarities that you've presented, I've pointed out why they're so flawed.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 11:04 AM) Oh bulls***. No one is claiming it's Iraq 2. But continue to ignore the obvious similarities. Please, explain. Anything you've tried so far has failed badly. What are you talking about?

from the comments section:

ld is Hifter!

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 01:19 PM) That's actually impressive. They wrote a whole article about how high-income earners are affecting state's revenue situation without ever acknowledging that having all of your income growth concentrated in the top 1%, while the remaining 99% stagnate or get worse, might be a bad thing. Yeah, job well done. The problem isn't the stagnant or shrinking middle class and lower wages for the poor, it's taxes on the rich!

It's not comparable to Iraq because the size, scope, reasons, costs, lives lost, or any other possible quantitative measure shows that it's a s*** comparison that people who were gullible enough to support the Iraq war are trying to use to bolster their failed positions.

I dunno, I would have struggled to make a caricature that said something that asinine. A secular-atheist country dominated by radical Islamists

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Mar 28, 2011 -> 07:13 PM) Todd Bertuzzi gonna be suspended for the rest of the regular season. That was dirty and he has a track record of being a dirty player. I still remember him ambushing a player from behind back in 2004

Gingrich fears the US could become "“a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists" wtf

They got UHC?

From a discussion elsewhere, thought it was worthwhile to repost:

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 28, 2011 -> 02:20 PM) Unfortunately there are people who are actually using that line of argument. Those are just the people who still have a mountain of crow to eat after their rabid support of invading Iraq. It's a convenient way to defend supporting Iraq and attack Obama.