America Loves Big Brother?

[dmaddox]

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]dmaddox wrote:
Ryan is all over the interwebz. I did a google search and he has forums all over the place.[/quote]

Like a cow with the shits ambling over the hill and dale everywhere spreading the cowpies of socialism/marxism?[/quote]

Never thought of it that way. lol, I just thought he was cheating on us T-Nation folk.

[Ryan_P_McCarter]

[quote]MaximusB wrote:
Disrespectful mother fucker. [/quote]

Just sayin’, I’m not sure where you’re attempting to do.

[Ryan_P_McCarter]

Scuba19 wrote:Wow, so now you’re lumping the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, and others in with the military. However, more importantly, tell me how will the Democrats’ health care reform actually lower costs? Anyways, without the entitlements, there would be no entitlement spending.

I’m lumping all defense-related spending in together, yes. By your logic, if you complained about entitlements, I could say “Well, Medicare only spent such-and-such an amount last year,” and you would quite rightly say “Yes, but Medicare is not the only entitlement.” However, this is exactly what you’re trying to do. “Wait a second, there’s Homeland Security and other stuff in here!” Yes, but the Pentagon’s budget is not the only defense-related item in the budget.

And the bill lowers costs in a couple different ways. It would create insurance exchanges to increase competition, creates a Medicare oversight board to review compensation rates, and I believe it makes quite large cuts in Medicare and Medicaid over time, which you should be in favor of, I’m assuming.

What the Democrats want will do nothing to lower costs but will in fact increase costs.

First of all, it’s puzzling to me that you apparently don’t know what’s in the bill, yet you are certain that it would increase costs.

Second, the CBO disagrees with you. From Wednesday’s New York Times:

"Initially, the bill relies on accounting gimmicks to cover these costs.

[…]

Over time, however, the cost savings are likely to rise more quickly than the spending, more than making up for the gimmicks.[…] In the second decade, the Congressional Budget Office projects the bill would cut about $1 trillion from the deficit.

Critics have said, correctly, that this prediction might not come true. If the budget office took account of the uncertainty and the gimmicks, the $1 trillion savings might well shrink. But to suggest that the most likely outcome is only marginal cost savings, or even cost increases, requires a selective reading of the evidence.

Over its history, the Congressional Budget Office has tended to underestimate the effect of cost-reduction efforts in Medicare.

[…]

The Financial Times has said that the bill, ‘though flawed, is in fact a great step forward.’"

Find the whole article here:

Health Care’s Obstacle: No Will to Cut (Published 2010)

Afghanistan was not defensive? Granted, Bush did “drop the ball” in regards to it.

No, it was not.

What parts of our military endeavors do you believe are unconstitutional? I’m sure there are places that we can cut back, but remember that the reason people don’t fuck with us is because they know that they have no chance. If someone thought they had a good chance at destroying us, they would surely try.

Well, there’s the Iraq War, to state the obvious, Vietnam was illegal, and the associated spillover into Cambodia, to name just a couple. If you really want to read about them, here is an excellent site to visit: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/

Incidentally, perhaps not pissing everyone off would be a good, cheaper way to prevent terrorism? This is one area where Ron Paul is exactly right.

Of course, most of the illegal interventions you don’t see: numerous coups and assassinations. Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and especially William Blum do a good job of documenting these.

Entitlements are unconstitutional. How is taking my money and giving it to someone else because they had three kids by the age of 20 constitutional? I thought I had the right to the fruit of my labors?

Well, I’m not trying to be a jerk, but that right is nowhere in the Constitution, to my knowledge. I asked why entitlements were unconstitutional, not ethically questionable (by the way, “the fruit of you labor?” you sound like a socialist!).

So, you’re saying that 56% of our budget had no effect on the build-up in deficits? You can’t pick and choose what parts of the budget you think cause deficits and what don’t- they all do.

No, that’s not what I’m saying. I mean that the number you gave me is not even close to the total amount of defense spending in the budget, as I pointed out above. In fact, to find out how much money we’re really spending, take the always highly-publicized baseline number, double it, and then back it off a little bit. Actual spending is usually about twice the published amount. This says nothing of the interest on previous deficits, a significant portion of which is due to past military budgets we couldn’t afford.

It’s actually a lot like a car commercial. You see some gorgeous sports car whipping around curves, and all these impressive features and luxurious amenities, and then at the end of the commercial, they tell you “Only $24,999” (or whatever), and you think “Hey! That’s not that bad!”. But then you read the fine print, and you find out that’s for the stripped-down basic model, whereas the one you saw in the commercial had $10,000-$15,000 of extras on it.

[quote]Obviously, if we didn’t spend so damn much, we wouldn’t need so much damn tax revenue.
[/quote]

True. I know where we can start cutting!

[thefederalist]

the air force isn’t constitutional. give me back the money you spent on those drones. this is stupid. Move to Somalia or you’re bluffing.

[Beauzo]

[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
What are you even talking about? Big Brother left office last year.[/quote]

Give me a break.