TomAiello

Then by all means reply to those who drug it off topic by making snide remarks It's usually better not to. The replies are the whole reason they do that. If they can't get a rise out of you, they quickly lose interest. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

No parenthetical second line?

You're expecting a response from someone who hasn't logged in in 8 months? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I don't know. The largest groups I know of using real communism in practice are Israeli Kibbutzes (I'm sure I spelled that wrong). I've also seen some anthropological studies of Andean villages set up that way, and apparently functional. The most accessible example for a modern American audience is the traditional nuclear family. The family unit typically shares resources and makes decisions in a very communistic fashion, with a smaller group (the parents) making decisions in the best interest of the whole group (and the children). Sometimes it's dysfunctional, of course, but on the whole it seems to work pretty well. At least, so far my kids have failed in their efforts to reform the system through revolution. Basically, you need a small enough group that everyone knows everyone else, and a situation and/or cultural ethic that impresses the primary need for group survival/prosperity upon the people. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Should are you "Obi-Wan" or "Master Yoda"? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Dude, did you even comprehend what I wrote before clicking the reply button? Yep, and I made an assumption about where you were going with it. Was that an incorrect assumption? If so, I apologize. Where were you going with that? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Right. And I was hoping, I'll admit somewhat foolishly, for a response like "John McCain" or "Arnold Schwarzenegger" or some other names (or even organization names) that were actually part of the issue, rather than just being targets for your baiting. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

If I understood it correctly, the OP's contention was that in Hawaii there existed two different birth records, a "Certificate of Live Birth" and a "Birth Certificate". He argued that the former was available without proper proofs, and contained only minimal information, and that the latter was generated at the hospital and contained more detailed information. Several people had posted with the idea that their only birth record was a "Certificate of Live Birth". That's true for me, too. But when I checked mine, it looked a lot more like the thing he was calling a "Birth Certificate" than the "Certificate of Live Birth" that's been shown--it included a bunch of details. The fact that some of us possess a piece of paper with one title or the other at the top is not conclusive evidence, either way, about the underlying contention. Yet we're proposing it as if it is. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

How does it look when cash accounts of the federal government are taken into consideration? They must be considered if the Social Security trust fund is considered, as the revenue that goes into the trust fund are required by law to be invested in government bonds. Dude, are you seriously about to argue that the federal debt has not increased continuously since the 1970's? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

How do you know? Has pure anything ever actually been created and used? FWIW, I do think that pure communism works very well--in extremely small groups, like nuclear families. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I told you that in California the "certificate of live birth" is the only thing the people who born here got. And this is perfectly enough to get a passport. What kind of birth certificate do you possess? Just to do a bit of devil's advocation: I just checked and my "Certificate of Live Birth" which is from California, contains all kinds of details not recorded in Obama's Hawaii "Certificate of Live Birth." -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Actually, it's strong evidence that they think they will lose money if it passes. It has no relevance to the efficacy of the legislation in achieving it's goals. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Plus, if you do it enough, people are actually going to stop paying--either by just quitting their jobs or by moving to another country. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I don't think read him as being in favor of socialized medicine. It sounds to me more like he'd like to right-size the military, get the government out of healthcare, and try to get the country out of debt. It also sounds like he's saying that there's no way any of that is really going to happen. And I'm sad to say that I'm pretty much in agreement on that. It's going to take a catastrophic event (bankruptcy of the government, inability to sell further bonds, widespread emigration of taxpayers, all of the above) to actually change the (self-destructive) trajectory of this nation. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

He's not saying we "should". He's saying that it's going to happen even though we shouldn't, and realistically, there's very little you, he or I can do about it. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Perhaps. But that doesn't mean we need to maintain a huge standing army, waiting for it to happen. It should be hard, and painful, to the average American (and to the politicians) to go to war. War should look like World War II--total commitment for a very good reason (i.e. a foreign power using military forces to assault our territory). "War Light" is something that empires do, and something we've been doing ever since we failed to demobilize properly after the end of WW II (and again missed a demobilization opportunity at the end of the cold war). I don't want our country to be able to maintain a couple low grade wars in remote parts of the world without terribly discomforting the average citizen. War is terrible stuff. When we, the people, decide it's worth going, we should feel the full effect of how terrible it is. And the rest of the time, we shouldn't have to pay for a wartime military. ***A guerilla uprising in the event of a military like china's occupation? That would be scary. Damn right it'd be scary. And it would behoove us to avoid it if at all possible. Not making China into our landlord would be a good start. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Simple. We nuke them, reducing their industry to rubble and also greatly reducing their human carbon footprint. It's genius, really. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Oh, snap...my dream fu is weak today.

The original point (that it will transfer production to countries without it, bankrupting the relative clean industries and increasing the production of the relatively dirty ones--not to mention the transport costs) is very valid as well. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The government is doing such a great job of law enforcement. No wonder we trust them to take care of us. Hey, I've got an idea--let's put them in charge of healthcare, too! -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I'm ok with that. We should help people here, by letting them keep what they work for. Helping people elsewhere is a very tertiary concern. I'd argue that a republic never needs to mount an offensive. That's something for empires. I want to live in a republic, not an empire. I'd be willing to trade our huge military budget for a true defensive draft. Honestly, though, in truly defensive situations, you don't need a draft--you use state National Guard units and rely on a guerilla uprising in the event of a foreign occupation. I'd be very comfortable if we cut our defense spending by an order of magnitude, so that it's approximately the same as the spending of China or France (the next biggest spenders). With NATO spending totalling a much larger number, I don't really see a need for us to spend any more than that. Absolutely agreed. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Wall Street stands to make a lot of money, organizing a whole new commodity (carbon credits) to trade. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I actually read all that guys editorials, mostly because he seems to actually engage in critical thought, which is conspicuous by it's absence in most of the partisan hacks CNN finds to write that kind of stuff. For what it's worth, I also like Ruben Navarette, even though I disagree with both of those guys quite frequently. There really are people thinking real, original thoughts out there--it's just hard to find them. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Which Republicans? The one's who've watched polls in the past already understand that this tells us nothing. mnealtx and rushmc would seem to fit. Yawn. Were you discussing an issue, or trying to bait another poster? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Isn't everyone? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com