Thursday, July 26, 2012
Miscellaneous 130
1) The most underrated hitter of my generation would probably have to be Al "Scoop" Oliver. The former Pirates, Rangers, Expos, Phillies, Dodgers, Blue Jays outfielder/first baseman/ DH finished his career as a .303 lifetime hitter with 2,743 hits, 526 doubles, 219 homers, 1,326 RBIs, and 1,126 runs scored. Had he not tailed off so precipitously at the end of his career, he just might be in the Hall of Fame already. Or at least in the Hall of the Very Good. Damn, that fellow could hit.............2) I agree with the Democrats that the top tax rates should probably go back to 39.6%. Yeah, I would more than likely raise the threshold to somewhere between $300,000 and a million but, in general, I'm saying. a) We need the revenue and b) I highly doubt that a minor tweaking like this would negatively effect the economy.............3) Where I think that I disagree with the Democrats (some, not all) is a belief that this one thing alone will somehow put us on a path to fiscal nirvana and that additional tough choices won't have to be made. I mean, I think that it's obvious that we're ALL going to have to make sacrifices and I totally commend brave Democrats such as Kent Conrad, Ron Wyden, Erskine Bowles, Alice Rivlin, Dick Durbin, Mark Warner, and Chris Van Hollen for being straight with the American public on this.............4) Let's see, what did President Bush do again? He deposed one of the top 5 mass murderers of the 20th Century (a strong case could have been made for toppling Hussein on humanitarian grounds alone - the dude was far worse than Gadaffi and that was the rationale for our actions in Libya) and arranged for free and fair public elections. Sorry, still not seeing the war criminality in that.............5) Now, one could absolutely be critical as to whether or not this was a wise decision by Bush. I personally still have problems with it (the instability that it created, our loss of a buffer against the Iranians, etc.). But to put it on a par with Pol Pot, Hussein, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Milosevic, Pinochet, etc. is something that generally doesn't come up in sane conversations.
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5) No, not in a sane conversation. Of course, anyone who equates Bush with those actual war criminals should have their sanity questioned.
Welcome to wd's world, HR. Caution, it's a very scary place.
I bet he was about to rant about Bush with a few dozen false accusations after he read the first line "The most underrated hitter of my generation would probably..."
....until he realized that the 4th word had two T's in the middle instead of "TL".
When was the last time that a technicality ever stopped him?
Or when has a fact ever stopped him?
Did you catch his recent thing where he said that supporting someone "presenting their views" is exactly the same as supporting "collective bargaining" ?
Will: Welcome to wd's world, HR. Caution, it's a very scary place.
What the hell are you talking about? I've never argued that bush's war crimes are on par with the other individuals you mention.
In my opinion your world is a very scary place. In Will's world US presidents can order mass murder via illegal and unnecessary wars... and it's OK so long as the total killed are less than the numbers racked up history's worst war criminals.
If it wasn't for the "US president" requirement we'd be able to excuse the murders ordered by Saddam Hussein too.
dmarks: Did you catch his recent thing where he said that supporting someone "presenting their views" is exactly the same as supporting "collective bargaining" ?
He didn't catch it because I didn't say it. I correctly pointed out that when FDR said, "organizations of government employees have a logical place in government affairs", and that "organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical"... he was referring to public sector unions and collective bargaining.
That dmarks would suggest that this isn't a statement in favor of public sector unions being able to collectively bargin shows that dmarks never lets facts stop him from illogically twisting someone's words to support his point of view.
Did you catch dmarks' recent thing where he said that bush directly contradicting him by referring to the Iraq war as "pre-emptive" and confirming that no WMD was found... is "nuance"?!
You'd be hard pressed to find anyone with views on the Iraq war that are crazier than dmarks'. The most frightening apspet of dmarks' instanity is that he believes his looney tunes views are "mainstream".
Bush never ordered mass murder. That is a lie (as opposed to FDR who did and you've never condemned him). And you said that you believed in evil and not gradations of it.
"Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government. All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters."......FDR 1937. He was against collective bargaining for municipal employees, wd. And so was George Meany. And so was Jimmy Carter. And so was Fiorella Laguardia.
Will: ...you said that you believed in evil and not gradations of it.
I never said that. I, in fact, believe the exact opposite. bush ordered mass murder based on his lie that Iraq was not disarming (so he could get "political capital", become a "wartime president" and win a second term), and FDR ordered it to win the war (as you yourself said you believed).
What bush did was MUCH worse, as it was for his own aggrandizement, and he most certainly did order mass murder. That is NOT a lie.
Will: He was against collective bargaining for municipal employees...
You'e ignoring the "as usually understood" portion of the statement! "As usually understood" means he believed municipal employees COULD collectively bargain, just with some limitations. That limitation was that they could not strike.
Why say "as usually understood" if he thought they couldn't collectively bargain at all??
I asked you if Bush was as bad as those other guys and you wouldn't answer it. You said that there's only evil.............And how the hell do you know that that was the only limitation (that they couldn't strike)? Show me in FDR's writings in which he spelled out how municipal workers COULD collectively bargain.............Deposing a mass murderer and allowing for free and fair elections is MUCH worse than the intentional incinerating of hundreds of thousands of babies, the elderly, and refugees (a clear violation of the 1864 Geneva Conventions of 1864)? Wow.
Mass murder is the intentional killing of large numbers of individuals. Bush never ordered anything remotely of the sort. He thought that Iraq would be a cakewalk and it blew up in his face. How fucked up you are.
You deny the Lancet figures, but I believe you admitted that at least 100K people were killed. That ISN'T a large number? How fucked up you are for defending the murderer bush.
Will: I asked you if Bush was as bad as those other guys and you wouldn't answer it. You said that there's only evil.
That never happened.
And show me in FDR's writings where he spelled out how municipal workers COULDN'T collectively bargain. They did, did they not? Show me what legislation FDR signed/supported that disallowed public sector workers from collectively bargaining.
This probably explains why everyone you work with hates you so much. You think you're always right, and you insult people and call them losers if they don't agree with you.
"And show me in FDR's writings where he spelled out how municipal workers COULDN'T collectively bargain."
Yeah Will, prove a negative or WD is right.
See what I have to put up with, HR. FDR's quote is crystal clear that he doesn't approve of collective bargaining for municipal workers and wd tries to decipher something quite obtuse out of it.............Yes, wd, 100,000 is a large number. But President Bush did not MURDER those people. Do you simply not know what murder is? That's like saying that all of the people who died in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968 were murdered by LBJ. Bad policy isn't the same as murder. What Pol Pot did was murder. What Hitler did was murder. What Roberto D'Aubuisson did was murder. You really need to get a grip here, wd.
Will: You saw WD's escape route. He knew that FDR did not support collective bargaining. So he took something he did support, workers "presenting their views" (which has always been protected, as it is part of the First Amendment) and conjured up his imaginary thesaurus and said that 'presenting their views' is the SAME as 'collective bargaining'.
I guess it is the same imaginary thesaurus that he used to lie about Gore when he said that create meant nothing like invent.
But he didn't fool anyone.
And yes the Lancet figures are fake. The guy who came up with them has been barred from other studies by some due to his unethical methods.
As for the 100,000, a huge proportion of these were killed by the terrorists. The people were are fighting to stop. The people who's actions were limited (and thus less people died).due to the action of George W. Bush and allies.
Another large chunk were actual terrorists; killed while caught in the act of committing unjustified acts of aggression and terrorism.
The rest were killed by accident as part of unintended collateral damage, military accidents, and the success of Saddam and the rest of the terrorists in using civilians as human shields.
At the bottom you find the smallest group: those murdered by George W. Bush. It is small indeed: it is zero.
And even then, the death toll in Iraq after the 2003 invasion soon went down to below the average yearly level during the Saddam regime. Lives saved.
If not for Bush's justified action (and yes, I agree with Will that his Tariq Aziz idea would have been a good idea, perhaps better: but that would not change the final result). Iraq today would be in the same situation today that you keep insisting was "peace" just prior to 2003; Saddam killing tens of thousands of Iraqis a year while attacking other countries directly and through the international terrorist groups he funded.
Instead, the killings (as a direct result of Bush and allied actions) in Iraq are lower than they have been in decades, and approach something similar to what you have in bad urban areas of Los Angeles County.
Not the constant pre-2003 bloodbath that you prefer, WD.
Bush told the truth and saved lives. If we had done what Will had preferred, probably more lives would have been saved (he does make a good case for it). If we had done what WD wanted, many more lives would have been lost.
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