Comments by BobbyI (page 6)

And before anyone asks read up on Lenin's notion of a "vanguard party" to see the difference between the USSR and socialism/communism/marxism.

how: "they went bankrupt because socialism always fails." MG: "Not exactly...they went bankrupt, in part, because we greatly outspent them in 'defense' spending and their trying to keep up ended very badly for them. " MG is partially right. However, how's point (likely) was that if "socialism" was so great the USSR would have been able to keep up (and even top) the US's spending. If "socialism" was so great a spending war would have led to... The US's economic collapse not the other way around. Unfortunately it's all a complete straw man. The USSR was neither socialist, nor communist, nor Marxist. Lenin and later Stalin made some significant departures from these ideologies such that it was closest to fascism minus private ownership of property. The system was a bit unique in this respect, so I just like to call it by its proper name: Bolshevism and not confuse it with anything else.

BobbyI: "Even right wing lunatic blogs can make true claims" MG: "Not as far as I can tell." I don't think you're trying very hard, MG. I took a look some more at that "independent view" blog. I agree that there are lots of factually inaccurate claims, and just general lonniness. However, I did find the following statement (posted Aug 23, 2008): "Bush has only a few months left as president..." Surely you don't disagree with that? Hence my claim that even right wing blogs can make true statements, and hence saying a statment is from a source you don't like is not suffecient to prove it false. MG: "Instead, have a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Troll " I did. Guess what? All I saw was a page containing the words "MisterGay + parodyman--> True Love.". (I leave the conclusion to the reader... ;-) ) MG: "Since when has giving HUGE tax giveaways to the rich ended up 'in a substantial increase in most everyone's living standard'?? Supply-side economic policies are dead, period. " I think you missed the point here, MG. It was a hypothetical question, because I wanted to see what your real concern here is. If your real concern is that you think it would detrimental to society overall then you should say that. If your problem is that it would not be detrimental overall but you just don't think its fair that the rich should get bigger breaks, then you should say that. (In the former case you should present your historical or theoretical evidence. I would be very intersted.) In fact from your statement ">>>> all <<<< a flat tax does is give a HUGE giveaway to the rich, >>>>> period <<<<." as it is written means that you don't think things would be worse, the rich would just get bigger breaks. period. If that were true then who gives a hoot? If some gets more money but it doesn't hurt me, what do I care? I actually am anti-flat tax as well (but not religious about. Suffecient evidence could change my mind): My intuition on the matter is that it would indeed be a huge tax break for the rich. I also think this is bad overall, b.c. as the rich get richer, it gets even easier for them to richer at the expense of everyone else. On its own concentration of wealth accelerates and without government intervention it all collapses into feudalism, and very rapidly. I think a flat tax would be a huge step in that direction.

The USSR went broke b/c Reagan outspent them. Part of this involved starting to run up huge government debts again. I suppose that defeating the USSR justified this, but then people forgot why they did it in the first place, and the party has continued to this day. It certainly wasn't the terrorists who sent America broke this time. It was America that sent America broke. (I think the closest argument you could make it that the war on terrorism was a distraction. Without the attention should or would have been on the pending collapse). In any case, from what I'm reading it looks like even though the US is the key culprit in this crisis, the world financial system is engineered in such a way that the rest of world will end up suffering more, and contribute more than their fare share to the bailout.

Actually the distinction MG pointed out (thanks again!) between % of total income tax and % of total tax shows that both how and MG could be right in some sense. It's possible that the rich are paying more in % of total income tax (how's claim) but less % of total tax (MG's claim). What would account for the difference? It could be that businesses are paying a larger % of total tax. how has stated his ideal. A flat tax with no deductions. I am curious what MG's ideal is.

Thanks for clarifying the income versus total tax thing MG! clubber is, of course, right when he says "A FACT is a FACT, no matter the source". That's just the law of identity. clubber was pointing our your tendancy to engage in ad hominem logical fallacies in these discussion. That is, you will frequently fail to address a claim by your opponents, by simply saying something like "that omes from a right wing lunatic blog therefore it is wrong". Even right wing lunatic blogs can make true claims, MG. Therefore just saying it's from a source you disagree with is not enough to disprove the assertion. Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem and try to avoid that logical fallacy in your discussions here, MG. MG: "a flat tax does is give a HUGE giveaway to the rich" This may be true, but it could very well be a red herring. If a flat tax results in a substantial increase in most everyone's living standard would you care that it was a HUGE giveaway to the rich? Do you like the current tax structure, MG, or how would you like to see it changed?

Maybe the seeming contradiction I pointed out earlier is due to the ambiguity between whether "top 1%" means income earners or is in terms of net wealth? It would be interesting to know the methodology the Federal Reserve used to determine people's "net worth" worth. With income taxes you are required to report your income, not your net worth.

There are no muslim candidates for president. We are discussing the US election here, TUSCL: Try and keep up.

It's truly amazing the sense of entitlement these girls have. You might want to play with it, though. Tell ms whiny you'll do business with here again but only if she starts letting you cum on her face OTC, or similar. What the heck? She might agree to it, and if not you've got the fall back plan and you know you've got rid of ms. whiny for sure.

Actually, you slightly changed your position, how. Your initial claim was that the rich paid more (%-wise) under Bush than under Clinton. Now your claim is that the rich are paying more %-wise with the Bush tax cuts than they would have without them. The second claims "almost" implies the first but not quit. Some variables are being ignored. OTOH, I would be very surprised if society had changed so much under Bush that the 2nd claim was true but not the first. Thanks for providing the link to the Obama interview. I agree that his statements are very interesting, and imply some socialistic beliefs. However, the extent that he would go to implement his ideals is not clear. Also there is the fact that that interview is from 2001, and it's now 7 years later. I've certainly drifted right in that time. Maybe he has too? That being said, I think if one has a bit of "red" in them it never completely leaves them. In any case, I say "bring it!" Couldn't be worse than what we have now.

how: "it may spark the next American Revolution" Nah. Even if he is a socialist that won't happen. As jablake correctly points out, people will just be like "yeah, whatever". I don't know if there could be a revolution these days. Providing the "evil dictator" wannabes are patient enough to slow cook it it seems they can get away with anything. Look at the Bush/Cheney power grab for presidential powers at the cost of civil liberties (the Patriot Act, etc). If people were willing to stomach that without an uprising, I'm not too hopeful. OTOH, people seem to ultimately care about money the most. If the economy tanks and stays down, here might be some breeding ground for revolution there. But I'm sure things won't get so bad that people won't still have their microwave chicken pot pies to eat. That'll be enough to keep them passive.

I think we should discuss the political ramifications of licensing strip clubs to serve food.

MG: "The CBO study [...] found that the [...] top 1 percent, earning $1.1 million, saw their share fall to 20.1 percent of the total, from 22.2 percent" Then a little later MG: "According the U.S. Federal Reserve [...] the top 1% pay 36.9% of federal tax (wealth 32.7%)" Contradiction? Care to explain, MG?

It's not that complicated: parodyman--> was born a faggot. parodyman--> is a faggot. parodyman--> will always be a faggot.

Sorry about that. Wrong thread.

It's not that complicated: parodyman--> was born a faggot. parodyman--> is a faggot. parodyman--> will always be a faggot.

MisterGay: "Too bad that's NOT what happened troll." Red herring. MisterGay, our point was to show that your attempt to disprove how's statement by merely quoting tax rates proved nothing, since he was talking about percentage of total tax revenue. I don't if his claim is true or not. However by merely citing tax rates and not overall income, you did not disprove it, as the example demonstrates. Perhaps he is right when you put in real numbers, perhaps he is wrong, but your disproof was a joke, and demonstrates (once again) how weak your mathematical and logical abilites are.

how: If you post a link to the public radio discussion I'll read it. Thanks!

how: "Now, as for the response you gave about tax rates. My claim was "the 'rich' pay more of the overall taxes into the federal revenue under Bush than they did under Clinton." My claim is 100% accurate, although your stats on the rates are uncontested. The relevant facts are that revenues increased following the Bush tax cuts, and that the percentage of those revenues that came from "the rich" increased. " I noticed that RED HERRING of MisterGay's myself and was going to gently point it out to him but you beat me to it! (Guess MisterGay likes to project his propensity to throw out red herring onto others. LOL!) MisterGay doesn't have much of a logic or mathematical mind as you can see. At the same time he won't back down when you demonstrate this. Same thing with facts. So just get him to take the bait in one of these areas and you can have fun bashing him for ages! Ok... Simplified explanation for MisterGay (hypothetical numbers so you can get the gist of the underlying math): What if the rich, on average made twice what they did under Clinton, the poor stayed the same, and the number of rich and poor people stayed the same? Can you see that the rich would be paying a bigger percentage of the total amount of tax revenue? Or is your math so bad you can't even grok that one? Hahaha! MISTEGAY LOSES AGAIN! (BIG TIME!)

I think "faggotman" describes parody the best.

So now MisterGay is back to saying that I don't go to strip clubs? But then (in the same post!) he says that I do, but for "non-sane" reasons (b/c I enjoyed fucking hot chicks is "insane". I wonder what his "sane" reasons, by contrast are?) So MisterGay. Which is it? Do you believe that I go to strip clubs or not? You can't answer that one can you? If you say I do go, then it was a lie when you said I didn't. If you say I don't go, then it was a lie when you said I do it but for the wrong reasons. Either way, MisterGay is a liar, and, you guessed it. MisterGay loses again!

Physically, no b/c in casual sex your dick goes inside of her. Emotionally, it might be a bit like it for the customer, but she is very likely not into the customer.

That's what a strawman is MisterGay. If the imagined enemy was real it would be revel ant. So no red herring. But keep tangling yourself up, rather than just admitting you are wrong. Same pattern as always, faggot. Quite comical.

Wrong again, MisterGay. A red herring would be something irrelevant to the discussion. For example, e.g. "Well Obama has some Kenya descent, so what can he know about fixing this economic mess?" would be a text book example of a red herring. By contrast, whether or not Obama is a socialist or Marxist or commie is very relevant to whether or not he can be entrusted to fix this mess, and more importantly be entrusted with he does with his powers after that if he can. So that is definitely not a red herring. Now, it's pretty clear to me that Obama is no socialist, and saying he is just an attempt to defeat an imagined enemy that everyone knows how to debate, rather than attacking the man for what he really is. Hence "straw man". Get it right MisterGay, or continue to look like the clown that you are. (And since you will never admit you are wrong no matter how over whelming the evidence, I know that will just tangle yourself up more and more over this one...)

I won't bother arguing with MisterGay, how. MisterGay never lets facts trouble him, or admit errors in his arguments no matter how blatant. The fact that MisterGay won't take up the bet with you speaks the loudest. And here's what it says... MISTERGAY LOSES AGAIN!