Sam, you’re doing it right now.
What I accused of doing was choosing one point to focus on, blithely ignoring everything else, and hammering on it until you declare victory. I predicted you’d pick out Hentor’s comment, but am not the least surprised that you’re trying a jujitsu about something I posted instead.
But hey, a I’m turing machine, remember? We’re soulless pieces of software, and can’t make “nasty” attacks on anyone’s character.
You should really lighten up.
:rolleyes:
You might want to do even a tiny bit of thinking or research before shooting your mouth off. This error is new. This is not the data Hentor used five years ago. In fact, I just went to Wikipedia to see when it was screwed up, and it started when a user tried to convert to 2008 constant dollars in April of 2008. Then later someone converted it back, and missed a term or something.
Really, just go have a beer and watch TV or read a book. You’re trying way too hard.
I said I don’t hold grudges. That doesn’t mean I won’t call you out when you behave like an ass.
I’m trying to hard? Sheesh, pal, you’re the one pouring over spreadsheets of NASAs budget from the last 30 years. I can’t even be bothered to go back a couple of pages and double check when Hentor published his list.
Of course, the idea that you don’t hold grudges is also laughable, but again, you’ve made this into a debate not about what I’ve actually said, but only about the stuff you want to respond to.
I was just doing due diligence, and decided to run the numbers as fairly as possible, using standard sources, and post them so that we can put this silly argument to bed.
Okay, let’s all be nice and fair and reasonable. Do me a favor: Click on the link to the graphic I put up, and tell me if you think it fairly represents this statement:
“Under Bush 1 and Bush 2, NASA saw budget increases, and under Clinton it suffered constant budget erosion.”
No.
Here are the claims at issue:
The claim that Bush I and II increased the budget of NASA has never been under dispute.
Nor would I ever trust a spreadsheet you’ve set up just to “to run the numbers as fairly as possible”; somehow these “fair” numbers you use always seem to have errors in your favor, when they are analyzed.
That’s why I provided the spreadsheet and links to the source data. If anyone thinks I’m making this up, they’re welcome to check it.
This is simply not true. As I’ve repeatedly quoted, your claim was this:
Everyone, please take note of what Sam Stone has done here. He has continued to try to pretend he made a different assertion than he did (by pretending he was just talking about Clinton and the Bushes, and he has kindly given you data going back only to 1989.
Using the data Sam has provided in his last post, and this constant dollar conversion tool, I’ve gone back to look at the numbers for Carter and Reagan. Carter’s NASA budgets did decline in terms of 1996 constant dollars. Reagan’s however (inconveniently for Sam) did not:
Year…Nominal .......1996 Constant …Difference…Percent Change
1981…5,537…9,557
1988…9,902…12,059…+2,502…26%
Now, 26 is still greater than 14 and 12, right?
And Sam, yeah you still have a little error there in the difference score for Bush, although the percentage change for the figures you have given is correct.
Your assertion that looking back over 30 years you’d see two larger than average increases is false. Reagan’s increase, using your methodology here is still higher. I don’t know how many years it will take for you to admit you are simply not correct about this, regardless of which methodology one uses, but it’s kind of a morbid curiosity to find out.
Speaking of morbid curiosity, unless I’ve missed it, I don’t think I’ve read a post by Sam on how he feels now about all that wildly misguided* backing (and that’s putting it mildly) he gave Bush on his Murderous Capitalistic Crusade.
*Assuming he now realizes it was just that, misguided on his part. Which I am willing to do if only because I’ve been slowly waking from the eight year nightmare and my outrage supply is near empty. Which where I’d like to keep it. Never mind reading 12 page threads on fucking aluminum tubes. Speaking of which…
Say hey, Big Svin! Great to see you chilling-out, quite literally, once more.
No shit, my man. I have a memory of trying to hunt down information on whether rivers on the Cambodian border would have been navigable by swift boats. I don’t recall if that claim was one of Sam Stone’s or not - they kind of blend together looking back.
Seems a waste, but I like to think that although the person I was talking with was never, ever going to drop the false claim, others might benefit. I know I got a hell of a lot out of Mr. Svinlesha’s work, and PatriotX and other folks who put a lot of time into this kind of fact checking.
Hey Red! Nice to see you again as well, as always. Hope you’re keeping nice and warn down there in the Bahamas, you bastard.
We’ve got rain and snow up here, cold and gray skies, with more snow on the way.
Why oh why couldn’t she have been Jamaican?
Hentor:
Well, he decided to go after me again anyway. I should have made my comment in a private message to you, and we could have then observed his behavior and run a falsification test on my observation statement. Oh well.
You have at least seen how adroitly he has simply ignored all the other charges directed at him; changed his original assertion and held fast to it despite numerous posters explaining to him that the issue isn’t, and never was, a Clinton vs. Bush thing; feigned outrage at the tiniest slight towards him, all while displaying utter contempt for his debating opponents; and so on, the whole bag usual Sam Stone shenanigans.
I too would like to see Sam publicly recant on his pre-war claims. He promised he would. He promised he would admit he had been “duped” if David Kay’s smile ever turned upside down. Which it did. (In the context of that promise, it was clear he meant duped by the Bush administration.) Instead, he lay low, kept quite, and when the time was right, began a slimy, hateful attack on the character of John Kerry. Even granting Kerry had been untruthful about his medals, such lies pale in comparison to the lies promulgated by the Bush administration.
But that’s the way it is with these war-cheerleaders. They’ll spend hours and hours researching minutia to support the notion that the US must go to war, and that anyone who disagrees with that is unhinged, unpatriotic, and so on…but once it turns out they’re wrong, well, you don’t have to waste any time researching that. Nor do you have to draw any conclusions from the your errors. No no…just pretend like you were right the whole time and hopefully the matter will eventually disappear. People have such short memories, after all…
But that’s exactly what it is. Does an old Vietnam protester really need to be reminded?
“Reasonable and needful” can only be assessed in terms of what the cost and effects are, no? The costs are, primarily, lives, no? Theirs and ours both. So is a cause “reasonable or needful” if it costs or risks lives? Whose lives? How valuable are they?
I don’t see how you can arrive at a truly responsible conclusion unless you consider if your own life is worth it, not just those of strangers. Not even if they’re strangers who have taken an oath to you, even if you haven’t taken an oath to them in return.
Simply, if it isn’t worth your own life or your own family’s, how can you say it’s worth anybody else’s instead? That’s where the “chicken” part comes in. Yes, it’s at the very heart of the question when you’re considering “a course of military action”, as you so daintily put it.
I think the chickenhawk thing is a tough call. I certainly agree that people should not be prohibited from thinking or arguing that using military force is necessary if they’ve not been in the military.
But the level of fomenting that we were exposed to, and the chestbeating for war, the calling out as cowards of those who opposed the war, that is a different kettle of fish in my opinion. Nearly all of the right-wing intelligensia fell into that category. Here’s how Glenn Greenwald described the “chicken hawk” label.
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-makes-someone-chicken-hawk.htm
I’ve got no problem with using the term in that fashion. It’s perfectly apt. I also recommend, once again, Great American Hypocrites.
You guys must be getting some pretty sore arms by now from patting each other on the back so much.
I know mine are, but everyone else apparently gave me a happy ending (according to Sinaijon), so their wrists and forearms are probably pretty fatigued too.
Thanks for your concern, though, and your important contribution to the thread.
By the way, in case my earlier snark about Sam being frequently wrong was misinterpreted -
I have disagreed with him strongly on a number of subjects and think his conclusions on them were dead wrong. The fact remains, though, that a lot of posters (maybe even me :eek:) are frequently wrong about something or other (let us not parse the meaning of “frequently” too overintensely) and still have something valuable to contribute, even if it’s just a viewpoint that is seldom heard and which gives the gallery marksmanship practice.
I want to hear challenges to my accepted beliefs. Sam’s presence adds to the value of the board and I would be sorry to see him go. (Not that I will let up on him when he posts something that’s, well, wrong. :D)
He has his moments, regrettably, they are moments. For instance, his argument that exporting Canadian “beer” was morally acceptable if the product is clearly labeled as an industrial solvent.
That’s a LIE! I said it could also be used as a fire retardant.
Are you suggesting there’s actually a practical use for Labatt’s Blue?
Cite?
Sam, I’m surprised you’re back without a response. Do you see how, even using your suggested methodology, Reagan’s funding of NASA renders your original assertion incorrect?