What about this Ron Paul fellow??????

How much was the deficit in the last Clinton budget? How much is the deficit in the current Bush budget? Which two presidents in American history ran the largest deficits, adding the most to the national debt? (Hint: the answer to the last question is Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both neo-cons.)

 

Here's an article from the Christian Science Monitor explaining the term "neocon."

 

Actually, the term first referred to liberals who had started to drift away from the Democratic Party. It also included socialist.

From Wikpedia:

"The original neoconservatives were a band of liberal intellectuals who rebelled against the Democratic Party's leftward drift on defense issues in the 1970s. At first the neoconservatives clustered around Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat, but then they aligned themselves with Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, who promised to confront Soviet expansionism. The neoconservatives, in the famous formulation of one of their leaders, Irving Kristol, were "liberals mugged by reality."

The term has been used before, and its meaning has changed over time. Writing in The Contemporary Review (London) in 1883, Henry Dunckley uses the term to describe factions within the Conservative Party; James Bryce again uses it in his Modern Democracies (1921) to describe British political history of the 1880s. The German authoritarians Carl Schmitt who became professor at the University of Berlin in 1933, the same year that he entered the Nazi party (NSDAP) and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck were called "neo-conservatives".[7] In "The Future of Democratic Values" in Partisan Review, July-August 1943, Dwight MacDonald complained of "the neo-conservatives of our time [who] reject the propositions on materialism, Human Nature, and Progress." He cited as an example Jacques Barzun, who was "attempting to combine progressive values and conservative concepts."

In the early 1970s, Socialist Michael Harrington prominently used the term in a manner similar to the modern meaning. He characterized neoconservatives as former leftists -- whom he derided as "socialists for Nixon" -- who had moved significantly to the right. These people tended to remain supporters of social democracy, but distinguished themselves by allying with the Nixon administration over foreign policy, especially by their support for the Vietnam War and opposition to the Soviet Union. They still supported the "welfare state," but not necessarily in its contemporary form.

Critics take issue with neoconservatives' support for aggressive foreign policy; critics from the left especially take issue with what they characterize as unilateralism and lack of concern with international consensus through organizations such as the United Nations.[8][9][10] Neoconservatives respond by describing their shared view as a belief that national security is best attained by promoting freedom and democracy abroad through the support of pro-democracy movements, foreign aid and in certain cases military intervention. This is a departure from the traditional conservative tendency to support friendly regimes in matters of trade and anti-communism even at the expense of undermining existing democratic systems. Author Paul Berman in his book Terror and Liberalism describes it as, "Freedom for others means safety for ourselves. Let us be for freedom for others."

Irving Kristol remarked that a neoconservative is a "liberal mugged by reality," one who became more conservative after seeing the results of liberal policies. The term "neoconservative" also refers more often to institutions like the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), Commentary and The Weekly Standard than to the Heritage Foundation, Policy Review or National Review.

Some observers name political philosopher Leo Strauss as a major intellectual antecedent of neoconservativism. For example, some of his ideas entered the political mainstream through his pupil Allan Bloom's bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind."

Therefore, to call the current administration "neo-conservatives" would mean that they were at one time liberals or socialists. Neither is true, so KD's argument is obviously wrong. She has no idea what she is talking about and therefore her ideas are meaningless!

The term was first used in 1883 by writer Henry Dunckley to describe a change in the British political landscape. That makes it neither new nor American. That's three flaws to your argument. I suggest you check the meaning of phrases yourself instead of just blindly following the crowd. It makes you look idiotic and addled.

Which is exactly what I'm doing, according to you. Your lack of knowledge shows your inability to debate a topic intelligently, therefore rendering your arguments invalid. At least that's what you've said in the past.

If you are having a hard time digesting the long and multi-syllabic definition, I can attempt to find an article in "Weekly Reader". That appears to be more your speed.

 

Note the evolution of the term is clearly indicated, but not understtod by the poster. The closest reference he uses in definition of the term is clearly noted as only being similar to the modern meaning.

Unless you have included the modern usage definition this is clearly faulty logic.

By referencing outdated definitions? How is that an intelligent debate? It seems the lack of comprehension of logic, debate, and even definitions is hampering your ability to render an arguement even resembling an intelligent debate.

Since you do not seem to be able to follow your own advice, maybe you should find an article in the Weekly Reader on the subject and we will explain it to you.

 

History will judge that to be a fallacy. What was going on in the economy during that time? That was before the dot com burst and everyone was enjoying record revenues! (can we say Enron et al.) A true judge would be to look at the amount of spending that the last Clinton budget contained. Unfortunately politicians on both sides have handicapped us so that we will be paying off debt for a long time. We have to reduce spending and the size of government no matter what party affiliation is in charge.

 

Note the poor spelling of a common, everyday word which clearly indicates the low I.Q. of the poster. It clearly shows that he has no idea of how to spell simple words, rendering his point invalid and senseless.

I suggest you find a spelling lesson in "Weekly Reader" and study it.

 

Actually it indicates a typing error, but why deal with facts when you can make wild assumptions, right?

No, that would be yet another logical fallacy on your part. Can you llook it up or do you need me to do it for you?

I will just after I explain it to you again.

 

You say it is poor typing, but your next sentence shows otherwise:

No need to look it up. You obviously have a low I.Q. and lack the ability. Your repeated spelling mistakes have proven that you are a mindless dolt. All past, present, and future posts are invalid and meaningless.

 

The figures on the subject (note 2003 was the ONLY year with lower income than 1999 and there was no year with as little spent as in 1999)


http://www.cbo.gov/budget/historical.pdf

Spent 1999 1,702.0 Income 1,827.6
2000 1,789.2 2,025.5
2001 1,863.2 1,991.4
2002 2,011.2 1,853.4
2003 2,160.1 1,782.5
2004 2,293.0 1,880.3
2005 2,472.2 2,153.9
2006 2,407.3 2,655.4

in Billions of dollars

 

Making a similar typing error disproves it was poor typing in what manner?

Given your repeated use of logical fallacies, I do not think you should be casting stones at anyone.

If you have trouble understanding these and how they apply to your last posts you need to find a more simple debate forum or take some remedial classes in logic.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

Description of Ad Hominem
Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person."

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form:


Person A makes claim X.
Person B makes an attack on person A.
Therefore A's claim is false.
The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).

Example of Ad Hominem

Bill: "I believe that abortion is morally wrong."
Dave: "Of course you would say that, you're a priest."
Bill: "What about the arguments I gave to support my position?"
Dave: "Those don't count. Like I said, you're a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can't believe what you say."
Also Known as: Fallacy of Insufficient Statistics, Fallacy of Insufficient Sample, Leaping to A Conclusion, Hasty Induction.

Description of Hasty Generalization
This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on a sample that is not large enough. It has the following form:


Sample S, which is too small, is taken from population P.
Conclusion C is drawn about Population P based on S.
The person committing the fallacy is misusing the following type of reasoning, which is known variously as Inductive Generalization, Generalization, and Statistical Generalization:


X% of all observed A's are B''s.
Therefore X% of all A's are Bs.
The fallacy is committed when not enough A's are observed to warrant the conclusion. If enough A's are observed then the reasoning is not fallacious.

Small samples will tend to be unrepresentative. As a blatant case, asking one person what she thinks about gun control would clearly not provide an adequate sized sample for determing what Canadians in general think about the issue. The general idea is that small samples are less likely to contain numbers proportional to the whole population. For example, if a bucket contains blue, red, green and orange marbles, then a sample of three marbles cannot possible be representative of the whole population of marbles. As the sample size of marbles increases the more likely it becomes that marbles of each color will be selected in proprtion to their numbers in the whole population. The same holds true for things others than marbles, such as people and their political views.

Since Hasty Generalization is committed when the sample (the observed instances) is too small, it is important to have samples that are large enough when making a generalization. The most reliable way to do this is to take as large a sample as is practical. There are no fixed numbers as to what counts as being large enough. If the population in question is not very diverse (a population of cloned mice, for example) then a very small sample would suffice. If the population is very diverse (people, for example) then a fairly large sample would be needed. The size of the sample also depends on the size of the population. Obviously, a very small population will not support a huge sample. Finally, the required size will depend on the purpose of the sample. If Bill wants to know what Joe and Jane think about gun control, then a sample consisting of Bill and Jane would (obviously) be large enough. If Bill wants to know what most Australians think about gun control, then a sample consisting of Bill and Jane would be far too small.

People often commit Hasty Generalizations because of bias or prejudice. For example, someone who is a sexist might conclude that all women are unfit to fly jet fighters because one woman crashed one. People also commonly commit Hasty Generalizations because of laziness or sloppiness. It is very easy to simply leap to a conclusion and much harder to gather an adequate sample and draw a justified conclusion. Thus, avoiding this fallacy requires minimizing the influence of bias and taking care to select a sample that is large enough.

One final point: a Hasty Generalization, like any fallacy, might have a true conclusion. However, as long as the reasoning is fallacious there is no reason to accept the conclusion based on that reasoning.

Examples of Hasty Generalization

Smith, who is from England, decides to attend graduate school at Ohio State University. He has never been to the US before. The day after he arrives, he is walking back from an orientation session and sees two white (albino) squirrels chasing each other around a tree. In his next letter home, he tells his family that American squirrels are white.

Sam is riding her bike in her home town in Maine, minding her own business. A station wagon comes up behind her and the driver starts beeping his horn and then tries to force her off the road. As he goes by, the driver yells "get on the sidewalk where you belong!" Sam sees that the car has Ohio plates and concludes that all Ohio drivers are jerks.

Bill: "You know, those feminists all hate men."
Joe: "Really?"
Bill: "Yeah. I was in my philosophy class the other day and that Rachel chick gave a presentation."
Joe: "Which Rachel?"
Bill: "You know her. She's the one that runs that feminist group over at the Women's Center. She said that men are all sexist pigs. I asked her why she believed this and she said that her last few boyfriends were real sexist pigs. "
Joe: "That doesn't sound like a good reason to believe that all of us are pigs."
Bill: "That was what I said."
Joe: "What did she say?"
Bill: "She said that she had seen enough of men to know we are all pigs. She obviously hates all men."
Joe: "So you think all feminists are like her?"
Bill: "Sure. They all hate men."
Also Known as: Ad Hominem Abusive.

Description of Personal Attack
A personal attack is committed when a person substitutes abusive remarks for evidence when attacking another person's claim or claims. This line of "reasoning" is fallacious because the attack is directed at the person making the claim and not the claim itself. The truth value of a claim is independent of the person making the claim. After all, no matter how repugnant an individual might be, he or she can still make true claims.

Not all ad Hominems are fallacious. In some cases, an individual's characteristics can have a bearing on the question of the veracity of her claims. For example, if someone is shown to be a pathological liar, then what he says can be considered to be unreliable. However, such attacks are weak, since even pathological liars might speak the truth on occasion.

In general, it is best to focus one's attention on the content of the claim and not on who made the claim. It is the content that determines the truth of the claim and not the characteristics of the person making the claim.

Examples of Personal Attack

In a school debate, Bill claims that the President's economic plan is unrealistic. His opponent, a professor, retorts by saying "the freshman has his facts wrong."

"This theory about a potential cure for cancer has been introduced by a doctor who is a known lesbian feminist. I don't see why we should extend an invitation for her to speak at the World Conference on Cancer."

"Bill says that we should give tax breaks to companies. But he is untrustworthy, so it must be wrong to do that."

"That claim cannot be true. Dave believes it, and we know how morally repulsive he is."

"Bill claims that Jane would be a good treasurer. However I find Bill's behavior offensive, so I'm not going to vote for Jill."

"Jane says that drug use is morally wrong, but she is just a goody-two shoes Christian, so we don't have to listen to her."

Bill: "I don't think it is a good idea to cut social programs."
Jill: "Why not?"
Bill: "Well, many people do not get a fair start in life and hence need some help. After all, some people have wealthy parents and have it fairly easy. Others are born into poverty and..."
Jill: "You just say that stuff because you have a soft heart and an equally soft head."

 

Wayne, going to your link, it appears the figures are reversed for 2006. The OMB shows revenue for 2006 at 2.407.3 and outlays at 2655.4, for a total on-budget deficit of 434.5, offset by a Social Security surplus of 185.2 and a Postal Service surplus of 1.1 billions.

It is clear to me that the reason for the huge deficits during the Reagan and Bush years can be traced to the neo-cons faith in tax cuts combined with their belief in spending virtually without limit for the military. Somebody has to pay for that, and it looks like it will be our grandchildren.

 

Income 1992 1,091.3 Spent 1,381.6
1993 1,154.5 1,409.5
1994 1,258.7 1,461.9
1995 1,351.9 1,515.9
1996 1,453.2 1,560.6
1997 1,579.4 1,601.3
1998 1,722.0 1,652.7
1999 1,827.6 1,702.0
2000 2,025.5 1,789.2
2001 1,991.4 1,863.2
in billions of Dollars

Let us not get distracted by the partisan debate. I do not consider either party getting the job done. The American public is disenfranchised with the current system from the president to the current do nothing congress.The real thing this country needs is leadership
I invite you to see Congressman Paul's position on The Federal Budget and Spending

 

You are correct, I did transpose the two figures when I typed them. It must be due to my poor spelling abilities ... :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

Not a partisan debate, just pointing out that the dot com bust had no real effect on the deficit as was stated.

I have read enough of Mr. Paul's positions over the years to be truly afraid of them when extended to the country. He has been a Libertarian model for some time and when I debated the Libertarians on a regular basis concerning Constitutional Law he was always being discussed.

 

the fact that revenues were higher before the bust than after has no relevance? The fact that our current form of government almost legislates that once you spend money you can never decrease it means that the deficit would grow when revenues fall.

Common sense and a return to our founders intentions scares you? What should we do continue to spend our selves to bankruptcy and revolution?

 

Revenues fell after 2000, not only in actual dollars, but as a percent of GDP, according to the second page of the document from OMB. GDP continued to increase throughout those years, with the exception of a brief period in 2001.

Tax cuts are very nice, but they are also irresponsible unless accompanied by real reductions in spending. The way deficits were brought under control in the late 90's to 2000 was through a bi-partisan agreement called "pay as you go." That meant any legislation requiring funding had to show where the funds would come from, and any tax cuts would have to show where that revenue would be made up - either in other revenues or reduced spending. That agreement was abandoned in favor of massive tax cuts and massive increases in military spending, resulting in massive deficits. People who claim to support the war should at least be willing to support it with their tax dollars, but I don't see that happening.

 

Wish they would have a bi-partisan agreement to justify spending. How much more do they expect people to give to the government? Personally I think they should cut spending by 75% across the board and give at least 30% back to the taxpayer.

 

Perhaps this article will shed some light on your obvious problems with spelling:

Spelling Help: Help for Spelling Problems

In this article spelling help for schoolchildren of all ages is explored. The ability to spell correctly is one of the fundamentals that will never cease to be important. Not only can spelling problems cause problems at school, but the ability to spell is nearly essential for adult employment.

The advantage of a good spelling ability in the work place was indicated by a survey of 1500 employers and employees, recently conducted by Office Angels, UK’s leading secretarial and office support recruitment consultancy. This survey revealed that a full 84% of employers believe that the value of even the most excellent work can be debased by sloppy spelling and grammar. It further showed that 77% of employers regard a high degree of literacy as an essential skill, and that employees who demonstrate attention to detail are more likely to be on the fast track to promotion. Work peppered with sloppy spelling and grammar left 20% of employers fuming, while 53% perceived the employee as lazy and unprofessional. The same percentage of managers — 53% — admitted that they would not read any further once they had spotted literacy errors.

HOW TO IDENTIFY SPELLING PROBLEMS

The signs or symptoms below indicate that a child has a spelling problem and therefore needs help:

*

One of the most obvious — and a common — telltale signs is reversals. Children with this kind of problem often confuse letters like b and d, or they sometimes write words like rat for tar, or won for now.
*

Another sure sign, which needs no confirmation by means of any form of testing, is elisions, that is when a child writes cat when the word is actually cart.
*

He may write the letters of a word in the wrong order, like left for felt, or the syllables in the wrong order, like emeny for enemy.
*

He may spell words as they sound, for example rite for right.
*

He may spell bizarrely, for example substance spelled ‘sepedns’, last spelled ‘lenaka’, about spelled ‘chehat’, may spelled ‘mook’, did spelled ‘don’, or to spelled ‘anianiwe’. These words bear little, if any, relation to the sounds in the words.

FIND THE CAUSE TO FIND A CURE

Successful intervention is dependent on finding the cause or causes of a problem. Most problems can only be solved if one knows their causes. A disease such as scurvy claimed the lives of thousands of seamen during their long sea voyages. The disease was cured fairly quickly once the cause was discovered, viz. a Vitamin C deficiency. A viable point of departure in this case would thus be to ask the question, “What causes spelling problems?”

To fully understand the cause of spelling problems it is important to take note of the fact that there is nothing that any human being knows, or can do, that he has not learned. If you dump a little puppy into the water, it will swim. Do the same with a human child, and it will drown. The child must learn to swim.

There is yet another, equally important fact, which is also a sine qua non towards the understanding of spelling problems, and which has also so far been overlooked, viz. that learning is a stratified process. This is a self-evident fact, yet its significance in the situation of the child with a spelling problem has apparently never been fully comprehended. Throughout the world in all educational systems it is commonly accepted that a child must start at the lower levels of education and then gradually progress to the higher levels. If human learning had not been a stratified process, if it had taken place on a single level, this would have been unnecessary. It would then not have been important to start a child in first grade. It would have been possible for the child to enter school at any level and to complete the school years in any order.

A simpler example to illustrate the stratified nature of learning is the fact that one has to learn to count before it becomes possible to learn to add and subtract. Suppose one tried to teach a child, who had not learned to count yet, to add and subtract. This would be quite impossible and no amount of effort would ever succeed in teaching the child these skills. In the same way, there are also certain skills and knowledge that a child must have acquired first, before it becomes possible for him to benefit from a course in spelling.

I would also suggest that you check out this website for some information on your affliction:

http://www.ldonline.org/

Good luck and come back and see us when you can pass the 7th grade EOG!

 

Do you really believe there is that much waste in government? I realize your view of what the government can/should spend money on is much narrower than mine, but really, the budget needs to be looked at item by item to determine what can reasonably be cut.

The pay as you go plan started with the status quo at the time, and required justification for any increases in spending. Of course, if we were to start over now, we'd have to begin with the current status quo. But the idea at least makes room for negotiation. If I want to increase spending in this area, I have to either justify increasing taxes specifically to cover that or find another place to cut the budget to make the funds available. When every tax increase is linked to a specific program, you won't get many of them, for the simple reason that it's such an obvious way to attack a candidate for re-election.

Tax cuts also need to be justified by something other than voodoo economics. Reagan, Bush, and Bush have all told us cutting taxes will increase revenue, but as good as that sounds, it did not exactly work out that way in any of their administrations. They all gave us bigger deficits and increased the national debt. By the way, your share of that today is [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]$29,206.22. And your wife's share, and your kid's share, and my share, and each of my grandchildren's shares.
[/FONT]

 

The bigger deficits were a result of increased spending, not a decrease in revenue. Revenue has increased since the tax cuts, but spending has increased as well. The deficit has actually been shrinking the past couple of years. I will find the links later (on my way to work now), but there have been quite a few news articles just this year about the deficit shrinking and tax revenue increasing.