The Goat Pen

Bklyn wrote:Saddam kept Iran in check for decades...and definitely in the 90s. If he didn't try to blow up Bush 41's (GHWB) motorcade in Qatar back in the day, Bush 43 (Dubya) may not have had the quick hard-on wanting to take him down. Saddam, in a weird way, held a portion of that area together politically.

He also kept Al Qaeda out as they hated the idea of a dictatorship running the country.

"They started working on it in February, essentially finished it in August, but didn't get it passed (primarily because of games played by Reid) until October of 2012, 19 years after it was first proposed."

October 2012?

'11

yep. Correction, 2009 16 years after first proposed. Thanks for the heads up.

Well, the CBO is counting on savings from medical cost reductions. Forgive the taxpayers if we feel this calculation quite nebulous.

Also, it is not counting the burden thrown on states with the expansion of Medicaid by 30-40% through these state exchanges.

sardis wrote:Well, the CBO is counting on savings from medical cost reductions. Forgive the taxpayers if we feel this calculation quite nebulous.

Also, it is not counting the burden thrown on states with the expansion of Medicaid by 30-40% through these state exchanges.

First off, the state exchanges have nothing to do with the medicaid expansion. The medicaid expansion will be 100% paid by the feds for 3 years and thereafter 90% by the feds thereafter and are already calculated in the CBO accounting. The State exchanges are the choice of the states to set up or if they decline, the feds. They are essentially similar to HMO;s (which did save money). These are supposed to be the places for people who work for small businesses can get their insurance and are based on a competition model across state lines.

As for the accuracy of the CBO? They aren't. But as Bill Clinton admonished the Republicans about in one of his state of the union, they are non-partisan and have been closer to reality than anything else.

been engaged in another website discussing why I'm a traitor to psuedo conservatives because I don't see Romney making any difference in the country if he is elected and probably will vote Gary Johnson

The conversation is the usual horseshit but one guy chimed in and I really liked what he said in response to someone saying they laugh at the people who say there is no difference between a republican and a democrat....

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It's not that there's literally no difference between left and right: it's that the differences between left and right are the ones that don't matter.

Hitler and Stalin, for example. Stalin was far left, Hitler was far right. Does that mean Stalin was bad and Hitler was good? Does it mean Hitler was bad and Stalin was good? Of course not: they were both evil. You can crow all day about the immense right-left differences between Naziism and Communism, but when you get to the end of the day, in practical terms, there's not a dime's worth of difference between them: they both suck. (Yes, "Nazi" is short for "Nationalsozialismus," which claims to be a form of socialism, but in real-world terms it was actually a form of far-right fascism.)

So how about Mother Teresa? Where did she fall on the political spectrum? Far left, obviously, right in there with Josef Stalin; there can be no reasonable argument with that from anyone who's read the writings of both. So does that mean that Mother Teresa and Uncle Joe were essentially interchangeable? Of course not: there were vast and crucial moral differences between the two.

That axis--the Teresa-to-Stalin axis, whatever you want to call it--is the one where the important differences are. The right-left axis is just meaningless differences in rhetoric.

So, strictly speaking, you folks who claim to see differences between Obama and Romney could be correct. They could, in fact, be as different from one another as Stalin and Hitler. But the differences are meaningless: they're both at the same sordid, corrupt, flip-flopping point on the Teresa-to-Stalin axis. That's the "not a dime's worth of difference" that we see.

We're looking for somebody who's considerably further in the Teresa direction along the Teresa-to-Stalin axis than either Obama or Romney, and many of us don't see any point in voting until we get one.

Good one...won't get much traction, though. Hitler is Voldemort in non-net political discourse. You can't even loosely analogize him with any US political figure and not catch hell (with the argument/point itself taking a back seat).

eCat wrote:been engaged in another website discussing why I'm a traitor to psuedo conservatives because I don't see Romney making any difference in the country if he is elected and probably will vote Gary Johnson

The conversation is the usual horseshit but one guy chimed in and I really liked what he said in response to someone saying they laugh at the people who say there is no difference between a republican and a democrat....

------------------

It's not that there's literally no difference between left and right: it's that the differences between left and right are the ones that don't matter.

Hitler and Stalin, for example. Stalin was far left, Hitler was far right. Does that mean Stalin was bad and Hitler was good? Does it mean Hitler was bad and Stalin was good? Of course not: they were both evil. You can crow all day about the immense right-left differences between Naziism and Communism, but when you get to the end of the day, in practical terms, there's not a dime's worth of difference between them: they both suck. (Yes, "Nazi" is short for "Nationalsozialismus," which claims to be a form of socialism, but in real-world terms it was actually a form of far-right fascism.)

So how about Mother Teresa? Where did she fall on the political spectrum? Far left, obviously, right in there with Josef Stalin; there can be no reasonable argument with that from anyone who's read the writings of both. So does that mean that Mother Teresa and Uncle Joe were essentially interchangeable? Of course not: there were vast and crucial moral differences between the two.

That axis--the Teresa-to-Stalin axis, whatever you want to call it--is the one where the important differences are. The right-left axis is just meaningless differences in rhetoric.

So, strictly speaking, you folks who claim to see differences between Obama and Romney could be correct. They could, in fact, be as different from one another as Stalin and Hitler. But the differences are meaningless: they're both at the same sordid, corrupt, flip-flopping point on the Teresa-to-Stalin axis. That's the "not a dime's worth of difference" that we see.

We're looking for somebody who's considerably further in the Teresa direction along the Teresa-to-Stalin axis than either Obama or Romney, and many of us don't see any point in voting until we get one.

Heh. excellent post and a LOT of truth in that. Just another example of why we need to get out of the war business. We do the WWII thing to stop the ruthless Nazis...but was Uncle Joe's "worker's paradise" any better? Did they murder less people? No. We're they forced to rape Poland? No. Oh, a guy could go on forever.

The main point very well made is they're both a lying POS and there's no hope with either. Just like Clinton & Bush.....indeed not a dime's worth of difference (kudos to Wallace). All sub-human puppets who jump at their master's call.

May Freedom open her vasty jaws for all of ye; though dissimulators, dissenters, and dumbasses ye all be, I salute you on this American Independence Day....

Bklyn wrote:You can't even loosely analogize him [Hitler] with any US political figure and not catch hell (with the argument/point itself taking a back seat).

Pat Robertson has a similar hate-filled ideology.

Fortunately Hitler did not inherit political power in a military and economic hyperpower.

Carlissimo!

Gator by God's Grace wrote:Carlissimo!

We wait on the Second Coming!

Our Mayor is cool

So my colleague is interviewed about the SCOTUS health care decision and from a 20 minute interview, the TV station uses a 20 second quote. I am invited on 2 different radio programs to talk about the decision and on one of them, halfway through the program (20 minutes long), he sees in my bio that I was in North Carolina and he starts talking to me about Andy Griffith and Mayberry.

fresh trial court precedent in Florida for rejection of Stand-Your-Ground could be a bad sign for Zimmelito:

"Simply put, the court finds the defendant brought a gun to a fist fight," Ficarotta wrote, echoing an argument made in court during a hearing last month by Assistant State Attorney Matthew Smith. "Defendant responded, with deadly force, to a fight between his brother and the victim."

Ficarotta wrote in his 17-page opinion that there was no evidence the victim had a gun that night or threatened to use one.

"Although there was conflicting testimony about who hit whom first, or whether M. Cruz ever actually did hit J. Revear, all testimony indicates that only fists were used between M. Cruz and J. Revear," the judge wrote.

link to article:

http://www2.tbo.com/news/news/2012/jul/ ... ar-428921/

or maybe a different standard was applied since defendant Cruz is a hispanic-hispanic and not, you know, a white-hispanic...

That one gun to a fist fight line spells doom for Big Money George.

Maybe. George says that after he stalked him he lost him and was heading back to his car when he was attacked. Different from grabbing a gun off your nightstand and going next door to bitch about the constant Bobby Brown music.