Indeed it is!
Sorry for the misspelling, but I commute 6 hrs (by train) for 8 hrs of gainful employment under the reign (and yoke) of King Bush’s domestic policies which have packed up all the jobs into nice little boxes for ease of disposal.
And, it’s way past my bed time. In fact, any time is way past my bed time! 
- Jinx
i had a bunch of links but my stupid comp froze before i posted so ill give u the google link and if any of you care that much you can look for yourselves here there are lots of places.
Of course, this comment is rather telling:
hey i was just giving the link to some sites for you guys bc some of you asked i read some of the articles and they are pretty convincing for kerry’s side i know
I read a couple of the stories from the links to the reputable sources, and failed to find anything anywhere close to what you claim. A more specific cite would be helpful. Otherwise, I remain doubtful.
Also, a Google search isn’t a cite. A link directly to a news story in a reputable media outlet would be. When you make a claim such as you did here, the burden is on you to provide evidence to support it, not on us to find that evidence for you.
Try here.
It’s nothing at all alike his story, but this seems to be the person to whom the links referred.
Actually, in reading that article, I didn’t find anything he (Gardner) said that made me question Kerry. He threated a guy with a courts marshal after he found they’d killed a child, and he went for medical attention when he believed his gunner was wounded.
THAT COWARDLY BASTARD!
1
all the way at the bottom of this one Gardner said yesterday that he wonders whether speaking critically about Kerry led to his losing his job as a home inspection field manager. The Brinkley story said Gardner “claims he works at Millennium Services.” Within hours of the publication of the article on Time’s website, Gardner said, he was fired from his job as a home inspection field manager.
it was also in the new york times online but i cant find it bc u have to pay for it and he was interviewed on hannity & colmes and the boston globe and if you think that all those sites and Mr. Gardner are all making it up then more power to you i guess
Your first two links are useless. Web sites dedicated to campaigning for Bush are not likely to be unbiased. A blog entry isn’t in the same ballpark as reliable evidence.
Your second link is better, but it’s the same story I’ve read a dozen times, and isn’t anything like your post which claimed:
Gardner’s claims are that Kerry avoided combat in general. In the one important incident he cites, Kerry left a combat area to seek medical help for Gardner, which Gardner claims was not necessary.
The animosity also seems to stem from Kerry chewing him out following a gun battle in which a child was killed, for which, Gardner claims, Kerry threatened him with a court martial.
Nowhere does Gardner state that he had to knock Kerry out to protect the swift boat crew. I find it difficult to believe that Gardner assaulted Kerry, yet didn’t face a court martial, and the incident was never mentioned by any other crew member.
[quote]
anyways from what i know kerry is trying to play himself off as a big war hero and id have to say he’s a big war pussy. someone took that story to the press and the day after it was published my uncle was fired because “we dont have a need for your position anymore” the uncle was an insurance adjuster. try having an insurance company w/o an adjuster and let me know how it works out
[quote]
According to Gardner, the press, specifically Brinkley, came to him, and he gave Brinkley the story. Gardner (was he your uncle, or your friend’s?) was a home inspection field manager, though it seems he did lose his job shortly after the story became public.
You’re conflating two separate things here. First, there are Gardner’s claims. Second, there is the media coverage of those claims. If the New York Times reports that Gardner made these claims, I can believe that the NYT is reporting accurately without putting much weight behind the claims themselves. So no, I don’t believe the Times or the Globe made up the story, but I do have serious doubts about Gardner’s motives and the accuracy of his stories, given the conflicting statements of many other men who served with Kerry.
You sure that your data backs you up? The numbers underlying the graph are:
Bil. of const.
1996 dollars NASA Outlays
1962 6.642
1963 12.7374
1964 20.3175
1965 24.5831
1966 27.7244
1967 24.225
1968 20.8467
1969 17.3397
1970 14.402
1971 12.2416
1972 11.826
1973 10.3207
1974 9.6636
1975 9.033
1976 9.415
1977 9.557
1978 9.0522
1979 9.1917
1980 8.7032
1981 9.0432
1983 9.6296
1984 9.6816
1985 10.4032
1986 9.3023
1987 10.4936
1988 12.1329
1989 13.949
1990 14.78
1991 14.989
1992 15.172
1993 15.077
1994 13.7727
1995 13.9554
1996 14.0454
1997 14.1525
1998 14.4432
1999 13.0104
2000 estimate 13.3624
2001 estimate 11.7201
2002 estimate 11.8265
2003 estimate 11.9574
2004 estimate 12.1352
2005 estimate 12.3319
Doesn’t your data in fact show that NASA outlays dropped sharply under Bush II, and then slowly increased again? And that even with the additional “864 million” that you claim Bush II has requested, the annual outlays never even reach those under Clinton?
I couldn’t really give a rat’s ass either way, but it sure does look like you are deliberately misinterpreting the data.
You are looking at a table that appears to be at least four years old. The numbers for ‘Bush II’ are actually the numbers projected before Bush took office. And they actually make my point - those are the budget numbers that would have happened had Clinton’s policies continued. Sean O’Keefe has made that exact point. He said that without Bush’s new vision, NASA’s budget would have dropped by about a billion dollars a year for several years.
Your chart shows a constant-dollar 2005 estimate of just over 12 billion. The value now is just about 16 billion. That’s the difference between Bush and Clinton.
But the thing is, Sam, they aren’t my numbers, they’re your numbers. They come from the page that you cited as proving your case. They are in fact the very same numbers that you said proved your case.
As I’ve already pointed out, it’s actually your chart, not mine, and you are now trying to compare $12bn in 1996 dollars with $16bn in 2004 dollars.
I tend to agree with Hentor. The things you are saying are lies.
I had composed a long ass post with charts and everything, but it somehow got eaten, and I haven’t the energy on this topic to recompose it. I also don’t like continuing a highjack when people have another thread to get back to.
Desmostylus hit the nail on the head with one of Samwise’s tricksy ploys of comparing his own 1996 constant dollar figure to a real dollar 2004 figure to try to make Bush II look more favorable. Another is trying to compose an argument that extending outward from Clinton’s last budget figures would result in a loss of a billion dollars. First, as we have seen, Clinton fluctuated around 0% change, with increases and decreases along the way, suggesting that he would not have simply continued on a negative slide from some last point. Finally, Samwise continues to try to argue that Clinton’s NASA outlays relative to the economy of the time suggest he did not care about space exploration as much as Bush II. I have pointed out once already that by this standard, Bush II cares even less, since in any data set that Sam has presented yet, Bush’s NASA outlays relative to either total outlays or to the GDP are lower than any of Clinton’s, and trend downward, growing lower and lower in each and every year. This is just not a way that you can look at these numbers and find Bush II to be favorable to Clinton. At least, not without lying about it.
Look, I am not trying to twist any numbers, I am only trying to see what Sam said was there, and it just wasn’t the case. But the thing is, I am more than content if Clinton saw NASA funding of somewhat less of a priority than some of the other needs of our country, and kept their funding pretty much constant. I wish we had the money now that we were going to use for deficit reduction. I just have found that you cannot take the word of some conservatives for the way that things are (or are not). Usually if you look into the facts, you find out that they have, again, had an unfortunate tangle with the truth. As is the case here.
I would be very happy to trade the vote of the few people who would prefer to have NASA funding as priority number one for an explicit public statement by Bush in which he confirms that he would fund NASA before balancing the budget, paying down the debt, fixing Medicaid, improving health care, improving education, increasing law enforcement, paying for the war in Iraq, and so on. In fact, Tuckerfan, unless he says this explicitly, then your argument for your one-issue distinction between Kerry and Bush is a little misplaced, don’t you think? And if you do have a cite for Bush making such an explicit statement of his priorities, I would very much like to have it to pass around. Could you give me one, please?
try finding anything bad about kerry on a site dedicated to campaigning for Kerry and let me know how things turn out
[QUOTE=Number Six]
Your second link is better, but it’s the same story I’ve read a dozen times, and isn’t anything like your post which claimed:
Gardner’s claims are that Kerry avoided combat in general. In the one important incident he cites, Kerry left a combat area to seek medical help for Gardner, which Gardner claims was not necessary.
The animosity also seems to stem from Kerry chewing him out following a gun battle in which a child was killed, for which, Gardner claims, Kerry threatened him with a court martial.
Nowhere does Gardner state that he had to knock Kerry out to protect the swift boat crew. I find it difficult to believe that Gardner assaulted Kerry, yet didn’t face a court martial, and the incident was never mentioned by any other crew member.
[quote]
anyways from what i know kerry is trying to play himself off as a big war hero and id have to say he’s a big war pussy. someone took that story to the press and the day after it was published my uncle was fired because “we dont have a need for your position anymore” the uncle was an insurance adjuster. try having an insurance company w/o an adjuster and let me know how it works out
the story i told you was from the actual interview this is a story from a newpaper not the actual interview in case that hadnt dawned on you yet you can find the actual interview on foxnews.com if they still have it i dont know if they keep access on their site to old access clips
Contrast that with the Kerry quote you posted on page 3 of this thread
Now, I ask you, which sounds like the more positive declaration? If Kerry had said, “Given the Bush budget deficit, it is imperative that we balance funding for a continued presence in Iraq against critical domestic needs as well, such as education and health care.” Would you think that Kerry was going to be in favor of a continued US presence in Iraq, or that he was looking for any justification he could find to yank our troops out of there?
Oh, cut it out. I didn’t use those numbers to ‘prove my case’. That chart came as an afterthought, because I was trying to be even more forthright and provide data in constant dollars - something Hector didn’t do. I never even looked at the underlying numbers. In fact, I never even noticed the blip down on the chart.
In any event, since the chart was old, and the correct numbers are totally different and make my case even more strongly, this is nitpicking in the extreme.
I said “about 16 billion”. The reason I said that is because there is very llittle difference between 1996 constant dollars and 2004 dollars. In case you haven’t noticed, inflation has been almost zero for a number of years now. So maybe it’s 15 billion in 1996 dollars, or 15.5, or 16. In ANY CASE, it’s a lot bigger than the 12 billion in the original link, which was my point.
Here, I just went and look up the conversion factor from here. The conversion from 1996 to 2004 constant dollars is 1.164. So 12 billion 1996 dollars would be 13.98 billion. The number under Bush is over 16 billion. The difference is the increase directly due to Bush’s policies. A significant increase over a couple of years.
Once again, nothing you’ve posted changes the claim I made earlier one iota, which is that NASA funding went up under Reagan, up under Bush I, down under Clinton, and up again under Bush II.
Piss off. I’m getting sick and tired of the abusive rhetoric around here. Hentor has been doing twists and flips with the numbers, and has made several flat-out wrong claims, such as Reagan ‘slashing’ NASA’s budget, and that the budget has been ‘roughly the same since the early 1990’s’ as a refutation of my claim that Bush II has been better for NASA than Clinton. I posted actual numbers in real dollars, constant dollars, and as a percentage of overall government spending. They back up the claim I’ve made all along.
Then YOU come along and start nitpicking data to try and ‘prove’ something by being disingenous, and along the way I get called a liar, twice. That’s a serious charge, and I’m not taking it from the likes of you, especially when you two are the ones trying to play games with statistics.
Feel free to start a new thread.
First of all, you can drop the “Samwise” moniker. It’s obnoxious behaviour. Besides, making up funny little names for people you don’t like is something you should have dropped in grade school.
Second, there is very little difference between 1996 dollars and 2004 dollars, as I posted above. Changing to constant dollars in no way changes the conclusion of my post. And in fact, -I- am the one who brought up constant dollars in an attempt to be fair. You certainly didn’t mention it.
I just posted what the chart showed. And NASA’s own budget documents show the same thing. I point you to this PDF document. Go to page 10, and look at the chart, “Facing Major Cuts Without the New Vision”, and the following one “Budget with approved exploration vision”, which shows 12 billion dollars in additional NASA funding through FY09 directly due to Bush’s plan.
Your argument that NASA wouldn’t have been cut because Clinton hadn’t really cut it is disingenous because A) if we’re talking constant dollars, like you apparently want to, Clinton cut NASA’s budget severely. For NASA to receive the same funding in constant dollars in 2001 as it had in 1993, it should have been about 16.5 billion. NASA’s budget was almost the same in absolute dollars, which means it received a cut equal to the annual rate of inflation compounded over 8 years. You can’t have it both ways, my disingenous friend. If you want to attack Bush’s numbers based on constant dollars, you no longer get to claim that Clinton kept NASA’s budget ‘about the same’.
And you’re missing another factor - NASA’s budget was going to be cut for the simple reason that the ISS and shuttle budgets were going to be cut due to reduced commitments.
Wow. Any more games you want to play with the numbers? Now you’re using the NASA funding as percentage of GDP to prove your case? I guess the absolute and constant dollars arguments both failed. But you’d better be careful if you’re using those same pre-Bush projections on that four-year-old chart, because it fails to account for A) the drop in GDP growth after 2000, and B) the increases under Bush. Before I run the numbers for you, would you like to retract this statement?
This is not true at all First you used absolute dollars to make your case, claiming that Reagan ‘slashed’ NASA, and after Bush I increased it it stayed the same from then on until now. This was nonsense on all fronts - Reagan and both Bush’s increased spending, and Clinton reduced it slightly. Then you tried to claim that I was lying because I wasn’t using constant dollars, when it was you that posted the absolute dollars in the first place. So then I provided the constant-dollar conversion, and it wound up showing an even bigger decrease until Clinton, and roughly the same increases under Bush, because there has been no inflation over Bush’s term. Now you’re on to percentages of GDP. And you’re not playing games with the numbers?
I suggest you drop this whole argument. You’re going to lose, because the facts are not on your side.
Except that he didn’t. In constant dollars, he cut NASA by about 2 billion dollars a year by the end of his term.
Here is a New York Times article that presents a considerably less rosy picture of what is going on at NASA than our friend Sam Stone has been presenting, even Republican Congressman Sherwood Boehlert, head of the House Science Committee is worried:
To be fair, not everyone is sure it is a complete disaster, as you can read in the article. But, people are worried. All in all, it sounds considerably less wonderful than the picture that has been painted in this thread so far. Here is how physicist Bob Park summed it up in his weekly column on the American Physical Society Website:
Jshore: You know, when you restructure an agency as big as NASA, there are always going to be winners and losers. So if you want to paint a negative picture, just listen to the losers. Of course, if you want nothing but a rosy scenario, listen to the winners. Bob Park, for instance, has a vested interest in robotic exploration, and is vehemently opposed to manned spaceflight. So it’s no surprise that you can trot out disparaging comments from him. Needless to say, there are tons of people who will give you the rosy scenario, too.
Sam: Well, I will grant you the fact that Bob Park is strongly opinionated on this subject. However, I don’t think he has a “vested interest” in anything. I think that he has arrived at this opinion because he is very strongly interested in advancing science and not using the space program so much for other things like very expensive public relations for science and technology, or to satisfy science fiction enthusiasts dreams, or to provide lots of money to the aerospace industry, or to provide some very expensive scientific and technological spin-offs.
I’d be curious what evidence you have of rosy scenerios coming from really good scientists, as opposed to some of these other folks that are interested in the space program but aren’t specifically scientists. I guess there are probably a few. But, my impression was that the scientific community is ambivalent at best.