Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 8, 2010 -> 01:02 PM) They'd proposed multiple times that they'd be willing to surrender and accept occupation if the U.S. were willing to accept some level of retention of the emperor. After the bombs were dropped, the U.S. accepted some level of retention of the emperor. Wasn't the issue that the Emperor was willing to accept defeat, but the Japanese military was not? I think at that point the military leaders held the power to end the war.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 07:47 PM) hahahaha keep pretending there isn't white male privilege, kap. Maybe it's that white man's burden that's putting us at a disadvantage! kap, jenks, have you guys ever read any sociology at all? Your arguments are completely blind to reality. i'm not whining about the white man being oppressed, i'm calling out a flaw in the arguments here. You can't say anti-discrimination laws are universal when clearly they're not.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 03:39 PM) The key flaw in your argument is that I can make the reverse equal protection case right now. If there were no affirmative action/diversity programs, I can go before a court with the numbers...white males will win a majority of contracts, get a majority of the jobs in most industries, and generally tend to overrepresent themselves based on the local population. Perhaps the best example of this effect is the gender discrimination effect, whereby on average, women get paid something like $.75 on the dollar for the same work that a male does. I can therefore argue that the discriminated minority, not getting the same job or same pay for the same work...is being put at an inherent disadvantage. If you fire back that it is all environmental factors or education factors...fine, but then you've just accepted that there is an equal protection case in terms of the education or environmental factors. That's why those sorts of programs get tolerated despite the equal protection clause; because the data show strongly that there is a built in bias against them already. Is it something that an ideal society would get rid of? Yes. But we're no where close to that point yet. That's exactly what O'Connor would say in her opinions on this issue. Admitting that it's absolutely against the policies she's trying to protect, but that hopefully one day we don't have to keep doing it. That's a BS argument IMO.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 03:39 PM) The key flaw in your argument is that I can make the reverse equal protection case right now. If there were no affirmative action/diversity programs, I can go before a court with the numbers...white males will win a majority of contracts, get a majority of the jobs in most industries, and generally tend to overrepresent themselves based on the local population. Perhaps the best example of this effect is the gender discrimination effect, whereby on average, women get paid something like $.75 on the dollar for the same work that a male does. I can therefore argue that the discriminated minority, not getting the same job or same pay for the same work...is being put at an inherent disadvantage. If you fire back that it is all environmental factors or education factors...fine, but then you've just accepted that there is an equal protection case in terms of the education or environmental factors. That's why those sorts of programs get tolerated despite the equal protection clause; because the data show strongly that there is a built in bias against them already. Is it something that an ideal society would get rid of? Yes. But we're no where close to that point yet. But that ignores the reality of the situation, which is that (1) minorities are a minority for a reason, so of course there's going to be a disparity in the percentage of contracts that get handed out (or scholarships, or admissions, or whatever the case may be), and (2) when a government looks at two bids, one from a minority owned company, and one from a white owned company, or two scholarships (one minority, one not), given the framework of "equal protection" and "government can't discriminate on the basis of race," it shouldn't sit back and say "well, based on previous numbers, we've given a lot of these things to whites, so despite the fact that these are equal bids/applications, or even despite the fact that the whites is better, purely for numbers sake we're going to go with the minority." What you're proposing isn't equal opportunity, it's equal results. So, basically to you equal opportunity means that for every bid or scholarship or whatever that gets sent out the public, the results have to match demographic information, otherwise it's not fair. And what's the built in bias? It's not like a minorities bid or application somehow gets lost in the sea of majority ones. They get (or should get under the law) equal consideration regardless of the numbers. That's my problem with AA programs and minority guarantees. We have the laws in place to ensure that employers/schools/government agencies give minorities and women equal footing from the start. The decision to accept/reject therefore isn't based on those criteria we deem important enough to protect. If it is, there's a claim that can be made. But making programs to make it more fair is ridiculous and achieves nothing. It just discriminates against the majority on the same basis that is supposedly wrong.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 01:11 PM) Minorities are at a systematic disadvantage. AA-type programs aren't perfect but they're not "reverse racism" or "reverse discrimination". The justification is that there's a lot of single mothers out there who can't afford health care for them or their children. It's not fair to punish children for their parents' lack of financial success and if that parent becomes too ill to work, they'll be screwed. But that kind of argument just defies logic really. Giving Black Plumber a contract over White Plumber, for no other reason than because he's black, is the definition of discrimination. And it does nothing to curb the "systematic disadvantage" of minorities. 99% of minorities aren't plumbers, or roofers, or builders, or whatever service that's being bid for. It serves no purpose other than to say "hey, white people get a lot of work, lets share the love." That's not a good enough reason to discriminate, just like saying gays molest children isn't a good reason to keep them from getting married. It's absolutely reverse discrimination, as is every AA policy. Two wrongs don't eventually make a right. And your point about mothers and kids makes sense, assuming you ignore the fact that there are also poor males out there with s***head/deadbeat wives. Sure they're not nearly as many, but it's still a blanket "right" we're giving one group but not another.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 12:05 PM) Kudos to the Sun Times for running the story about Anthony Davis being on the take. If there were more of these stories maybe cheating wouldn't be so rampant in college sports. http://www.suntimes.com/sports/preps/25715...cruit06.article lol, yeah. cuz the kid is the problem in this scenario.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 11:22 AM) Could you elaborate exactly what you mean by this sentence? What gay raper guys are you referring to exactly? Was making a joke. Someone referenced a report that apparently found gay men were more likely to molest children.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 10:43 AM) It's not. The issue is one of "Equal protection under the law" (14th amendment). In other words, if your state does grant such rights, the ruling says that you can't grant those rights to one group of people and deny them to another group. Your state could certainly choose to not recognize marriage whatsoever and allow it to be an entirely religious or private institution, but then the state would also not be able to collect information on marriages, use a tax code that recognizes marriage in any way, regulate divorce proceedings/property rights (which would be a gigantic mess), etc. In that case, it wouldn't matter if the marriage was homosexual or heterosexual, because there would still be equal protection under the law since no one would have their marriage enshrined and given benefits by the government. Except that this argument only gets played like this when it comes to these types of social issues. States grant all sorts of rights tailored towards a specific group while clearly discriminating against others. Think about things like minority contract requirements with cities. It's absolutely blatant discrimination, but no one cares because it benefits the little guy. The "benefits" of giving out the miniority owned business contracts aren't much better than the "benefit" of protecting children from all those gay raper guys out there. Or the other one that really gets me (though it will soon be moot) is the fact that women and children can get free health care in illinois, but a man can't. Apparently the justification is that protecting women and children's health is more important than a man's?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 11:00 AM) Took me forever to remember what that damn movement was called. No. It had nothing to do with the economics. It was all about restoring our country to its "original Christian values". 1500 people is hardly a "movement."

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 6, 2010 -> 08:07 AM) Let's put a concrete example on that. Brown V. Board of education is a 14th amendment/equal protection under the law decision. If a bunch of racists got together and migrated to South Carolina (I pick that state because they actually tried to do that like 5 years ago) and decided to reinstitute Jim Crow laws...Kap, the Federal government doesn't often take to enforcing things like local property disputes, small time thefts, etc. Either I'm going to force you into a position here where you're going to defend Jim Crow laws on state's rights grounds, or you need to tell me how the Federal government desegregating a private/state school or private business is ok, but the federal government stepping in on marriage is not. Hell, go for the exact parallel...if a state banned inter-racial marriage...could the Federal Government step in on an equal protection case, or is that fully within a state's rights to do? Wasn't there a rational argument for this, not based on the "all white people from the South are horrible racists" liberal view? I seem to recall (and this might not be the case here) that when a state recently tried to do this it was because a lot of cities were paying an arm and a leg to ship students to different districts to meet the diversity requirements. It made economic sense, in some cases, to allow that to happen.

I'm saying that the laws of marriage are created by states, not the federal government. California should be able to decide the requirements of marriage, as it defines it, however it wants. How is this a fail?

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 5, 2010 -> 10:04 AM) california ?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 5, 2010 -> 09:28 AM) I feel like they could have made more of a legal "this is not the case under the law" argument if they'd wanted to. I'm not sure they really tried. Yeah, like the fact that marriage is in the jurisdiction of states and not the federal government.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 3, 2010 -> 04:15 PM) Oh, and here's the WH rebuttal, saying that these guys are full of it and have a track record of being called out for being full of it on these reports. oh, well if the white house says so, it must be true. cuz they're never wrong or misleading...

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 3, 2010 -> 03:21 PM) Nothing was spent, so you mean they canceled the program? Then why is there any complaint? The school and businesses in Africa got the majority of that money. It wasn't spent in the economic pool that would be beneficial. That's my point.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 3, 2010 -> 03:04 PM) First of all, it continued funding on a research program into ant biology. Now, just like "pig farts" may sound funny but can actually be a serious problem if you live near a hog processing plant, ants have enormous impacts on the environment and on man. They have the ability to destroy crops, they have the ability to harm people (fire ants), they can spread parasites, and there are uses for them in genetic research through understanding microbes that live in them and their short lifespan. A full taxonomic representation of ants would be incredibly useful publicly in the, frankly, likely event that a new species appears on our shore due to importation from Africa. I have a new ant in this prime agricultural area...do I spend $20 million in public funds to eradicate it, or do I let it be and think that it's not harmless? Finally...a big part of the goal of any actual "Stimulus" is to push fiscal policy hard once monetary policy hits the zero bound (i.e. the Fed drops rates to zero). We're already bordering on a prolonged deflation, which is the exact opposite of what you folks said would happen if the feds started printing money, and basically dropping dollars from a balloon and hoping they get spent is the single solution to that. This was about CREATING jobs and kickstarting the economy again, not advancing scientific research. While the scientific advancement into ant biology might be necessary, it's not right now, when everyone is hurting for money. That money would have been better served employing a bunch of people at minimum wage jobs. As to the last point, nothing was spent. That's the problem. I would have preferred they handed out 2 million to people with the requirement that they spend it. At least that would have done some economic good.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 3, 2010 -> 02:40 PM) "Something called 'volcano monitoring'..." reminds me of this: "Hey, I have no idea what validity this may have, but it sure sounds stupid! Let's cut more science funding! YEAH!" How many jobs did that 2 million create? What was the benefit to the economy? That was the point of the stimulus.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 3, 2010 -> 01:56 PM) Yay! Another list of projects that sound funny so we'll call them waste! Come on man. Try and defend some of those. They might not ALL be waste, but a lot of them are. You don't think that money could have gone to better use elsewhere? How many jobs were created with those projects? Or are you going to make up numbers to sound good? "Oh we didn't CREATE any jobs, but we SAVED 25 million!" GMAFB. Love that 4 years ago if Bush didn't blink the right amount of times in a minute you were on him for it, but man, Obama Christ must really be perfect huh?

Government saves! It's so efficient! *rolls eyes*

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 30, 2010 -> 10:16 AM) The only people who don't pay anything in taxes are people with no/very very small incomes. You're not even correct in saying they pay no "income tax". They pay no "Federal income tax". Which is what people were talking about prior to my comment. Even still, 25% pay little to no income tax, credits or no credits. I get the point that people with higher incomes recieve greater benefits from tax credits (by a few percent), but they're also incurring much more debt to get those credits, making it more difficult to pay the income taxes they owe.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 30, 2010 -> 09:56 AM) Not what I was saying. Was saying that the thing you define as "paying nothing in taxes" is equal to "paying 20-25% of their income in taxes that i don't want to count because it undermines my entire point" I don't understand your point.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 29, 2010 -> 10:09 PM) Yahoo commenters are some of the stupidest on the internet though... both on sports and on regular news. To get worse you'd have to go to Youtube. No worse than any other at the big sites.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 30, 2010 -> 09:51 AM) Again, Nothing =20-25%. Which equates to how many tens of millions of people? You don't think a quarter of the country's income recieving population is significant?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 30, 2010 -> 09:31 AM) Right, and that's why FEMA is criticized over incidents like Katrina -- it's their job to respond to emergency situations that need rapid action. The EPA's job is to regulate and enforce regulations. While you can say a superfund site is an "environmental emergency", you cannot compare it to FEMA's role in actual emergencies without equivocating definitions. They are not comparable organizations. And, again, it was the MMS's job to regulate the drilling, not the EPA's. I don't think I'd want the EPA in charge of such a large operation, anyway. What sort of operating experience do they have with something like capping massively-damaged oil wells and deploying boom across hundreds of miles? Seems like more of a job for the Coast Guard. The EPA should be stepping up for the environmental protection now that the flow of oil is slowed/ stopped. then why are they involved in the michigan spill?

To me the credits are benefits for applying more of your income to the economic pool. They're incentives to get people to have children (a good thing, if they can be afforded), owning a home (a good thing, if it can be afforded), education (a good thing), etc. And SS, I agree, but i'm still paying more for my "share" of those services than the person that doesn't pay anything towards them. And that doesn't account for services that i'll never benefit from, including things like public health, public housing, food stamps, etc. I just think it's a f***ed up system where a huge chunk of every day people who make an average living are still "responsible" for taxes that account for a decent percent of their income, despite the fact that 47% of the country pays "nothing."