vincible

18. I'm suprised to be seen as that moderate. My opinion of myself is that I'm very socially liberal, fiscally all over the place (I think *some* government programs should be axed, others cut, and still others greatly expanded--but generally I believe government can be a force for good), and center-right on foreign policy. I usually vote Democrat. <TABLE cellpadding=8 width="95%" align=center bgColor=#FFF394 class="mb-Body-Quote-Tabl

greyscale or even colors Why, that's tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show talk. /end joke

Hey! You're either FOR the PATRIOT Act, or AGAINST it. Got that, commie?

The Wall Street Journal says: "These numbers represent only people who have a positive adjusted gross income. In 1999, there were 127 million tax filers, 94.5 million of whom showed an income tax liability. That is, 26% had no liability at all. The actual number of people filing without paying comes to 16 million (after subtracting those getting earned income tax credits and thus, presumably, still somewhat sensitive to tax rates). So almost 1

One of the original points in the thread, which has been lost in the ensuing name-calling, is that "welfare" and non-entitlement social programs are *not* a major portion of government spending. If you want to reduce the deficit in a big way, you have to do some combination of: 1) Raise taxes 2) Cut military 3) Cut popular entitlements (Social S

Wait... if the argument is that the war is to personally enrich Bush, then isn't all this stuff about oil exports versus cost of war completely irrelevant? Bush isn't personally paying for the war.

*sigh* The war was partially sold on inflated estimates of Iraq's potential pumping capacity. Note: POTENTIAL pumping capacity. Since no one really knew the state of Iraq's oil fields and infrastructure, and Iraq's production for the past decade has not been subject to market conditions (due to the oil-for-food program), this is NOT something you can just look up on google. It was also sold by underestimating the cost (SOP for the Bus

This really points to the divisions in the Republican party. You've got neocons versus realists, libertarians versus theoconservatives, budget balancers versus tax-cutters, etc. The only thing all Republicans have in common is disliking Democrats.

It's a well-accepted scientific theory. "Global warming" is a misleading name. Scientists prefer "climate change." Basically what happens is that climate change hurts the *transport* of heat upward from the equator. So the poles see net cooling (so glaciers advance), and the equator sees net warming. There's pretty good evidence that this happened in the past. *However* it wouldn't happen overnight like it did in the movie.

heat of the moment I'd agree, but Cheney has said he doesn't regret it at all.

It does seem kind of silly, but I don't see where all the outrage is coming from here. What's the big deal? Smartaz's point about importing bullets is well taken.

Then when you consider the fact that there was a chance of having another Clinton-esque Democrat in the WHite House in 2005, the odds of sactions outliving Hussein were nil Funny, since Clinton was the one who kept those sanctions in place. Another Democrat,

So what about Europe's Jews? The Muslims of the Balkans? Not European? More importantly (in terms of numbers), what about European atheists? There are a whole *lot* of them, far more than Jews or Muslims.

We account for almost 50 percent of the worlds GDP Actually around a quarter. I don't understand why Americans bash Canada so much. Sure it's got a weak military, but for crying out loud, it's got tenth of the US's population. There's no reason for it to have a military comparable to ours.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Darkhawke: do you seriously think that if America had put the time, effort, resources, and money into reforming sanctions that he ultimately ended up putting into the war, that it couldn't have been done? We're spending over $100 billion in Iraq, and we've barely been there a year. I'm sure we could have bribed r!Russia and friends with a small fraction of that. <TABLE cellpadding=8 width="95%" align=center bgColor=#FFF394 class="mb-Body-Quote

Yes. This is something that many people on both sides like to ignore. Hawks like to pretend that America's choices were between war and letting Hussein do whatever he wanted. Doves like to pretend that the choice was a simple "war or no war." Both like to ignore the issue of sanctions, which we now know were successfully containing Hussein. Many hawks like to ignore it because it meant there was a credible alternative to war that would have been effect