A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:


After all, nations (including the
entirely of Europe) who owe the US commonly default on repayment of their
debts.

Name one country in Europe that has defaulted on a loan to the US since WWII.

All of them. (Nice try at setting a starting date, but it won't work.)


Or, maybe we'll call in
all those WWI and WWII debts that Europe owes us, with interest.

When did those countries sign up for a loan? It was a gift.

Nope. It was called "Lend-Lease."


You make this stuff up as you go along and you expect us to take
you seriously?

I don't expect you to be able to tie your own shoes.



Do you think that either Japan or China is willing to engage in nuclear war
with the US in order to try to collect those debts? I think not.

If they call in the loans and the US defaults, the economy goes down the
toilet.

Whose economy? Not ours.

Since you live on debt, you'll be broke

Don't be silly. Who gets shafted in a bankruptcy? Not the bankruptee, but
the creditors. Worst-case we just repudiate the debts (as so many others
have done to us) and tell China and Japan they can pound sand, then we go on
with what we were doing without their imports, which we can easily do if we
need to.

and since you import more than you
export, you have little useful collateral.

Which (if true, which it's not) makes it all the harder for China to
collect.

The fact that we import a lot does not mean that we *have* to import a lot.
The vast majority of those imports are luxury goods, not necessities or
staples. We can get along without them just fine.

The Euro is stronger than the
US dollar and is backed by more people.

And it's that way because the US created the economic engine that drives the
Euro by spending trillions of US dollars over decades to provide for the
defense of Europe against Soviet aggression. I'd say that moves the balance
point rather radically our way.


Start thinking more globally and
stop thinking so insularly.

First we protect our own interests, then we might think about yours.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Welfare is a drain on the system consisting
of money given to people who produce nothing in return.

Like the military-industrial complex.

Which produces many products the government uses, and provides us with peace
through superior firepower, something the EU can be thankful for, given how
much of our military technology they use.


it places our nation at
strategic risk for us to be dependent on other nations for our basic food
supplies.

But not oil. Bizarre contradiction.

Oil is a concern because we don't have sufficient domestic supplies to meet
our needs. So, we secure our external oil supplies other ways.


Government protection of agriculture merely
ensures that American farmers don't go out of business because of low crop
prices.

Even if it means that the products are simply stored and never consumed?

Oh, it usually gets consumed, eventually. There's nothing wrong with
stockpiling food, and if it isn't needed, we usually export it or turn it
into something else we can use.

That's not support, that's corporate welfare.

Wrong.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Tinkerntom wrote:


Michael Daly wrote:
Snip...

There is no National Guard in this country.

Nothing to guard maybe, that anyone would invade to take from you. And
if they did, you could always fall back on Nato or UN to intervene.


It's a US thing.

Maybe lots to guard that many would love to have. And Luckily for you,
your neighbor to the south is content to have you as the neighbor to
the north. That's a US thing also!

Yeah. What's he going to do when the US decides to annex Canada? Throw river
sandals?
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 15:22:54 -0700, Scott Weiser
wrote:

Again, you make the erroneous presumption that the theory of evolution is
"the truth."

If it is, care to explain why sharks are still sharks 400 million years
later? It only took 2 million years or so for man to evolve from monkey,
according to evolutionary theory, so why haven't sharks changed appreciably
in 400 million years. If evolution is "the truth," then the world should be
being run by incredibly intelligent sharks, who ought to have evolved far
beyond what they are today. They haven't.

Interesting conundrum, isn't it?

Not really. Sharks may well be more intelligent than man. They may have
such great intelligence that they thought about running the world, rejected
the idea, and then stayed in the sea, masking their far superior
intelligence from creatures like man. It's kind of easy to score highly on
"intelligence tests" that you make up the questions for, grade, referee,
etc.

Galen Hekhuis NpD, JFR, GWA
Illiterate? Write for FREE help

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

If you twits would quit letting terrorists in, we might not have to.

None of the Sept 11 terrorists came from Canada. The claim that
Canada lets in terrorists is absurd.

Hardly. It's one of our major concerns. Your lefty-liberal "open border" and
"political refugee" policies are very scary, and it's been proven several
times that terrorists and other criminals have entered North America via
Canada. The 9-11 terrorists are hardly the only concerns here.


We may not have utterly unguarded borders with Canada or
Mexico, but not only CAN you travel freely from state to state in the US,
you have an absolute constitutional right to do so, regardless of what any
particular state may say.

You don't seem to know the difference between countries and states. Bizarre.

Well, let's see...the "countries" in the EU are now pretty much "states"
like those in the US, aren't they? You do know that an alternative term for
an independent nation is "state," don't you? Where do you think the EU got
the idea? From us.


Which is fine, except that socialized medicine has been proven to be a death
sentence for the seriously ill because underpaid, overworked doctors have no
reason to extend themselves and because health care is free, people with
minor complaints feel free to clog the system with petty complaints.

Total bull****, seen from my position as a person living in a country with
government provided health care.

Uh huh. Do you have heart disease? Diabetes? Cancer?



fund public transit.

So do we.

What Americans call public transit is a joke in the rest of the world.

It's a big country, and we like cars. Big deal.


When you give subsidies to companies to help them succeed, excel and become
larger, the immediate return is more jobs that the poor can take, thus
becoming productive and self-sufficient members of society rather than
leeches.

But the inevitable outcome is actually a transfer of wealth from the poor
to the rich.

True. So what? If the poor want to buy consumer products, why shouldn't the
producer of those products make a profit? That's why he produces the
products.


Corporate subsidies prop up ineffective and obsolete companies.

Sometimes. It's true that the programs have to be carefully assessed and
monitored, but the occasional abuse of the programs doesn't impeach the
overall benefits.

US steel
companies are a perfect example. They saw the competition as the offshore
companies and got government support.

Steel is a strategic resource. It's what caused Japan to go to war with us.

Instead of modernizing and competing,
the share holders got rich from the subsidies and the companies wallowed in
inefficiency.

Yup, many old-school steel mills did just that, then went out of business.
Some steel producers, however, adopted the efficiencies of automated
steel-making and excelled, becoming great companies.


Now it turns out that those American steel companies that
were not subsidized are the real threat to the subsidized ones.

Indeed. Capitalistic innovation triumphs.

BUt the
old companies still can't compete because they are more obsolete than
ever. Full analysis in The Economist (www.economist.com) 'coupla years ago.

Very true. And many of the old-line steel companies no longer exist because
the subsidies were not enough to compensate for the technical innovation of
companies like Nucor.

Still, the fact that subsidies could not overcome the burden of inefficient
technology (and bad management-- read "Good to Great by Jim Collins" for a
discussion of the steel mill issue.) does not mean that protectionist
subsidies are not necessary or useful. Fortunately, Nucor decided that by
adopting Japanese steel-mill technology, and then improving it (they
pioneered continuous thin slab casting) they could undercut imports because
of the costs of transportation.

What government should be doing is paying subsidies to US steel companies
for the purposes of upgrading their technology to the current Nucor model.
Once accomplished, the companies would be extremely competitive and the
subsidies could be eliminated, while building a necessary strategic resource
capacity.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

I argue that the very best way to destroy myths is
to hold them up to the withering light of reason.

The schools are not holding them up to the light. They are
presenting them as a valid theory.

It is a valid theory. As I said, if evolution is "the truth," why are sharks
still sharks 400 million years later?

Creationism (or at least Intelligent Design) has not been disproven by any
stretch of the imagination. It's merely discarded by anti-religious zealots
because it conflicts with their preferred secularist dogma.

People of intelligence with broad minds recognize that there are few, if any
absolute truths in the Universe, and welcome diverse opinion and debate as
the best way to find what truths do exist.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

Weiser said:
==========
Not EU-wide. That
didn't happen till recently.
=========

yes it was eu-wide... germany, the benelux, france spain, italy etc...
the entire eu in 1972!

frtzw906

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

get the offenders to fix the problem
themselves

But they're only offenders in your eyes. Extraterritorial enforcement
of laws is against international law.

No it's not. It's usually called "diplomacy."



If Canada decriminalizes pot possession, it has no direct effect on the
US.

As long as that remains true, no problem.

However, they keep getting cranky and threatening every time the
topic comes up.

We have a perfect right to get "cranky and threatening" if you Canadians are
doing something we don't like. Moreover, we have a perfect right to impose
economic sanctions against any nation that we perceive as a threat to us,
for whatever reason. Neither Canada nor any other nation on the face of the
earth has any inherent right to trade with us or enjoy the economic or
technological benefits this country provides. If you want to be partners in
prosperity with us, then you have to keep us happy. When you **** us off,
we're perfectly free to take our ball and go home.

Most countries treat drug addiction as a medical problem;

That's why they have a rampant drug problems that cost their citizens
enormous amounts of money to deal with.

the US holds to obsolete ideas about it being a criminal problem.

It's both. At the user level, I agree it's mostly a medical and behavioral
problem. At the distribution level, it's most certainly a criminal problem,
and we should be taking much more pro-active measures to prevent the
cultivation and import of drugs from foreign nations...like shooting down
smuggler's aircraft without warning and securing our borders.

Fix
it in your own country and stop trying to export your backward problems.

Stop sucking at the US teat then. Let's close the Canadian border entirely
and see how long you last without imports from the US, not to mention our
tourist money.


--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

Weiser, referring to Danes says:
==========
Unless you happen to be a working stiff who has to fork over half your
income to pay for free drugs and healthcare for addlepated zombies and
useless leeches.
============

Isn't it strange then, that hundreds of thousands of hard-working Danes
aren't clamoring to get into the free-market haven (albeit with huge
subsidies - corporate welfare -- for shareholders who don't require
them) that you claim is USA?

frtzw906

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

TnT says:
=========
Maybe, though the typical Christian School educated student scores way
above average on SAT. It is the public schools sector that teaches all
this enlightened scientific stuff to the exclusion of the Christian
perspective, that drags down the test results! You do the math. TnT
=========

No, you do the math. most private schools (christian included) feel no
need to enroll the seriously disadvantaged (physical or mental). those
students are left to the public schools.

Liar.


the meager tax dollars allocated to the public schools must serve to
educate the entire spectrum of students. you're the entrepreneur: you
do the math.

Who do we have to blame for the "meager" amount of money given to public
schools? Why, the voters of the district, of course. If that's what they
want, that's what they should have.


btw, please check the math and science score of most christian schools:
they are atrocious!

This is a baldfaced, blatant lie.

You do realize that most of the most famous and prestigious Universities in
the US are "christian" (specifically Catholic) schools, don't you? The
Catholic church has been vigorously promoting extremely high levels of
scholarship for literally thousands of years. The Jesuits have been teaching
critical thinking since before civilization recovered from the Dark Ages. In
fact, the Catholic church, through the Jesuit order is largely responsible
for dragging the world out of the Dark Ages.


historical sidebar: so long as the catholic church had a stranglehold
of the curricula of irish schools, ireland scored among the poorest of
all western nations in math and science. the irish are now (perhaps
because they've seen the light through membership in the EU) somewhat
less enamoured with the catholic church. Hallelujah, their math and
science score are just fine, thank you very much!

Care to prove these remarkably idiotic assertions?

Ireland wouldn't have had ANY schools if it weren't for the Catholic church.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser