Sam Stone - in your humble opinion

[Sam_Stone]

@Hentor_the_Barbarian

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?

This is a case of you seriously moving the goal posts, Hentor. That thread was NOT about Reagan. In fact, in your first response to me you claimed that Reagan slashed the budget. Later you corrected your error. Then the debate becomes almost completely about Clinton compared to the Bush’s. Reagan never entered into it again.

In fact, in my second post in that thread, I said this:

@Sam Stone

Some good charts of NASA funding here. The chart in constant dollars shows modest increases under Reagan, a huge boost under Bush I, a decline under Clinton, and a smaller increase under Bush II.

Note the precedence: A modest increase under Reagan, an even bigger one under Bush I, a decline under Clinton, and a smaller increase under Bush II. That’s EXACTLY what the data shows, if you consider increases over time.

After that, you again called me a liar, and you said my morals were somewhat dubious.

I think posted this:

@Sam Stone

It all depends on how you look at it. If you use constant dollars, then NASA DID see steady erosions under Clinton. If the budget stayed roughly the same in absolute dollars, then it decreased each year by the rate of inflation.

Of course, using constant dollars also makes Reagan’s increases much smaller, because inflation was higher then. That was why I also provided a chart in constant dollars, which shows (drum roll) an increase under Reagan, a big increase under Bush, an erosion under Clinton, and then more increases under Bush II. Just as I said.

Which is EXACTLY correct.

You then responded:

@Hentor

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.

Somehow, you landed again on nominal dollars to show that Clinton ‘fluctuated around 0%’. Because using constant dollars, which is much more fair, shows a completely different picture.

Then you threw this in:

@Hentor

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.

Now you’re comparing outlays to GDP - a completely different standard. Then you say that there’s NO WAY you can look at the numbers and conclude that Bush II was better for NASA than Clinton. Unless of course, you just look at the numbers. Again… Look at my graph, which is a simple graph of NASA expenditures, in constant dollars, on NASA. Are you going to tell me that you can look at that and say that Clinton was as good for NASA as either Bush?

You then say things like ‘Clinton kept funding pretty constant’. Earlier in that thread, (after you had corrected your mistake about Reagan slashing budgets, you said “he truth being that there was a consistent level of funding of NASA over Clinton’s term.” Which is flat-out wrong.

Later on, I repeated myself:

@Sam Stone

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.

Again, I’m conceding in that thread that funding went up under Reagan as well.

And now, after five years, you’re trying to make the claim that the real argument was whether or not Reagan increased funding for NASA even more than Bush? That was a trivial side point, and I acknowledged Reagan’s funding in that very thread, several times. The whole thread was about the Bushes compared to Clinton, and you know it.

And by the way, you need to correct for the fact that Bush I was only in office for 4 years, which makes even that claim of yours is wrong. Reagan increased NASA’s budget by $316 billion per year in constant 1996 dollars. Bush I increased it by $477 billion per year. In total, Reagan increased NASA’s budget by 2.53 billion over 8 years, Bush I by 1.910 billion over four years, and it DECLINED by 2.64 billion over 8 years under Clinton. So Clinton’s decline was larger than Reagan’s increase.

How does that fit with your claim that Reagan was the biggest funder of NASA, but under Clinton it remained ‘about the same’?

You just keep looking worse and worse the more we dig into these numbers.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

Real simple, Sam Stone.

@Sam Stone

And this is not just electioneering on Bush’s part. The Bush family has always been nuts about space. Bush and his Dad are both pilots. Jeb governs Florida, home to the Cape. Go back and look at NASA funding in the last 30 years. If you do, you’ll notice two times when it received larger than average budget increases - during the first Bush administration, and during the second. Bush I tried to kick off an ambitious program to go to Mars. He failed. Now the son is taking a whack at re-invigorating NASA. And the word is that in the new budget, every agency in the government is being held to rate-of-inflation growth - except NASA, which is getting the full injection of funds that Bush promised.

Are these your words? Are they accurate?

It’s really just that simple. Can you answer?

[Sam_Stone]

If you consider the absolute increase under all Presidents, it is not accurate. Reagan’s was slightly higher than Bush’s. I’ll give you that. In terms of increases per year, Bush I was much better than Reagan. So I guess it depends on your yardstick. Had Bush been elected for 2 terms, is there any doubt that he would have increased funding to NASA more than Reagan did, given that his funding over 4 years was almost as high as Reagan’s over 8?

Now, would you to admit that this wasn’t the focus of that thread, and that you only made it the focus now, five years later? And would you also like to admit that you were completely wrong in just about every other assertion you made in that thread? For example, that NASA’s funding stayed ‘pretty much constant’ through Clinton’s years?

Let’s recall the entire purpose of the discussion - to determine if Clinton was worse for NASA than the Bush’s, and by extension Kerry was likely to be worse for NASA than Bush II. That was what we are arguing. It seems to me that you are now focusing on a slight mistake on my part in an early post, which I corrected in that very thread in the next post I made, because the vast bulk of what you were attempting to argue in that thread was completely wrong.

So I’ll give you the nitpick point if you’ll admit that you didn’t have a frickin’ clue what you were talking about, and were rude and obnoxious to boot, questioning my morals, repeatedly calling me a liar, and violating board policy to do so.

[Mr.Svinlesha]

So I’ll give you the nitpick point if you’ll admit that you didn’t have a frickin’ clue what you were talking about, and were rude and obnoxious to boot, questioning my morals, repeatedly calling me a liar, and violating board policy to do so.

This reply, Sam, is really under all critique; but at least you have finally, after five frickin’ years, admitted you were wrong.

Hentor, I salute you. I never thought I’d see the day.

[elucidator]

Well, not quite, it is conditional, after all. Sam will admit to a trivial and insignificant error if Hentor admits to being a scoundrel, a blackguard, a poltroon, and a bugger of wombats.

Some progress, I suppose.

[Sam_Stone]

@Mr.Svinlesha

This reply, Sam, is really under all critique; but at least you have finally, after five frickin’ years, admitted you were wrong.

Hentor, I salute you. I never thought I’d see the day.

Would you give it a rest, already? This nonsense about Reagan was NOT what this whole issue was about. This is a new invention - an attempt to nitpick some small side detail as a way of deflecting the fact that in that entire discussion my basic points about the Bushes and Clinton were the ones that were right, and Hentor’s arguments were completely wrong.

As for taking five years, I acknowledged Reagan’s increases in my second or third post in that old thread.

Hentor was wrong about Clinton. He made the initial error regarding Reagan. He selectively chose constant dollars and real dollars, to make whatever point he was trying to make. He tried to backpedal by changing his argument to be vague statements about funding remaining ‘about the same’ to hide the fact that it did in fact go down under Clinton.

From my second message in that thread until the end, I kept making the same assertion that I made now - that funding went up under Bush I, down under Clinton, and then up under Bush II. Hentor has never acknowledged that.

And yet it’s my accuracy that’s in question. What’s more, I think you know this. I think you’re engaging in sophistry and ‘gotcha’ tactics at this point. But I did what I wanted to do - I made the raw data available for anyone to look at, and there’s a link to the original thread so people other than you and the handful trying to paint me as a liar can read for themselves. So now I truly am done with this.

[Mr.Svinlesha]

Would you give it a rest, already? This nonsense about Reagan was NOT what this whole issue was about. This is a new invention - an attempt to nitpick some small side detail as a way of deflecting the fact that in that entire discussion my basic points about the Bushes and Clinton were the ones that were right, and Hentor’s arguments were completely wrong.

:shakes head:

Anyone reviewing that thread can see the statements above are absolute and total crap. It’s abundantly clear from the quote taken directly from your first post in that thread as well, which has been reposted here about 50 times already. You set the terms of the debate yourself, you nitwit.

From my second message in that thread until the end, I kept making the same assertion that I made now - that funding went up under Bush I, down under Clinton, and then up under Bush II. Hentor has never acknowledged that.

You’re a fucking idiot. Hentor has conceded that point several times in this thread alone. He’s even conceded that one could classify the Clinton budget as a “steady erosion,” depending on how one parsed the meaning of that phrase.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Sam_Stone

Let’s recall the entire purpose of the discussion - to determine if Clinton was worse for NASA than the Bush’s, and by extension Kerry was likely to be worse for NASA than Bush II. That was what we are arguing. It seems to me that you are now focusing on a slight mistake on my part in an early post, which I corrected in that very thread in the next post I made, because the vast bulk of what you were attempting to argue in that thread was completely wrong.

So I’ll give you the nitpick point if you’ll admit that you didn’t have a frickin’ clue what you were talking about, and were rude and obnoxious to boot, questioning my morals, repeatedly calling me a liar, and violating board policy to do so.

Thank you for at long last admitting that your claim was indeed wrong. But the context was a thread about why people would vote for John Kerry. You didn’t want them to vote for Kerry, but people were talking about Bush’s “Mars, bitches” plan as a boondoggle. You were tired of hearing that, you said. You wanted people to see that he really meant it. Your point was that the Bushes are “nuts” about space. They were both pilots after all!