The Glade 4.0

Not if it's one of a large laundry list of things, though. My laundry list is pretty big, so I don't feel tacking on this one is fraudulent.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Stopping foreign aid is a starting point, not the end of the issue. Thats just to get enough breathing room financially to begin to tackle the actual issues. Plus it's would be a sign of good intent by the government to fix its issues rather then continue to kick the can down the road.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

RD:

Your counter argument is illogical in its entirety.

"Cutting small programs aren't worth it," is essentially stating that any reduction in marginal cost cannot amount to significant change over time.

100 calories a day is something like 10 pounds a year, but 100 calories is relatively marginal.

Combining trips to the grocery may not save more than a gallon or two of gas each week for the average family, a marginal savings; but the aggregate is significant.

Should we all drink that extra can of Coke, spend that dollar a day playing the Pick 3, and take multiple trips to the grocery? Or are you willing to concede that marginal changes taken in aggregate make a difference?

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

There's nothing illogical about my point, DFK. You're simply not understanding it. I'm not disputing the fact that incremental changes can add up. What I'm saying is that when a person facing a huge problem chooses to focus their ire on some small cause while ignoring or outright defending the large causes, that person is not credible on the matter, because their focus indicates they're very unlikely to ever make the additional changes required. That goes double if the small sacrifice they're advocating is one that would be made by someone else (e.g. foreign aid) and the large sacrifice they're ignoring is one that would have to be made by themselves or their constituents (e.g. medicare). Focusing on a small part of the problem while ignoring the large parts is not generally the first step towards incremental change; it's a distraction/delusion that allows people to pat themselves on the back while not actually dealing with the problem in any meaningful way.

At what point has anyone here, or any specific example you can think of, said the only change needed was this one, and not examination of the budget in general?

I believe that is the disconnect, as everyone arguing with you RD is not saying this is the only, or even the biggest fix. Its just one, but you come back implying anyone saying such things is a fool.

Mm, yeah I can see the disconnect. In writing my posts, it wasn't Gladers I had in mind, it was the politicians and pundits who make political hay off this sort of thing but won't touch social security, medicare, or defense with a ten foot pole. I think John Boehner is full of sh*t when he claims to care deeply about deficit reduction but is only willing to commit to cuts in things like foreign aid and "government waste". That doesn't mean I think folks here are full of it though, since I know most think we should make the big cuts too. Sorry I didn't make the distinction clear. That said, I do wish people who genuinely care about the deficit would react to the b.s. by rolling their eyes and calling it out instead of cheering it on as a first step, knowing full-well that there's never going to be a second step.

This is the part that is illogical. You want people in favor of reductions to decry efforts at reductions. That's just.... silly, frankly.


Now, you can argue that subsequent steps may not come, or that the initial efforts are too small, and those are fair points. Arguing that we should **** on people for trying to eliminate something like this because it isn't the same size cutting defense spending in half is like arguing that we should **** on people who only donate an hour a month to Habitat for Humanity because that amount of time will never get a house built.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Also, RD -- we can cheer the first step, and then vote the bastards out when they balk at the second. That doesn't mean I'm going to vote the guy out before he can take his first step, especially when his opponent is a guy who doesn't even want to make the first step.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The last part of RD's quote is the important part, for the reading comprehension impared.

The issue is that it's not a first step. Everyone know's it's not a first step. It's a bullshit political ploy, just like most of the others, because real true reform is going to be too painful for the soft American hippocrit to handle.

We have no one to blame but ourselves on that matter.

(note: the ourselves here really is the majority of the US population. For all that the posters here disagree on the way to balance the budget, I believe we are all sincere about our desire for it to happen and willing to deal with the various consequences of the routes that we advocate to do it.)

This is the important part of Kaffis' quote, for the reading comprehension impaired:

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Right. I don't care if it's a cheap political ploy. If it gets something necessary done, ploy away. Then, I'll call you on it when you fail to follow through.

The issue here isn't that the cheap political ploy is the problem. The issue is that the American public is too uneducated, myopic, delusional, stupid, apathetic, distracted, or placated (take your pick, feel free to mix and match!) to care about the problem that does need to be solved, whether by ploy or sincerity.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Fixed.

Defense, despite being one of the largest areas of expenditure for this country, is not an area that can be meaningfully cut to fix the problem. Disregarding how much defense we need, the fact is that we could cut 100% of all defense spending and we would still not have addressed the problem because it would merely be an excuse to use the so-called "dividend" would simply be used as an excuse to not cut social security, medicare, medicaid, etc. In fact it might actually cause their spending to worsen, which in the long run would simply mean we had unsustainable social spending and no defense with which to protect the economic interests that allow us to have an economy that is supposed to pay for this stuff.

Many European countries are going down this road; their militaries have shrunk continuously for almost 20 years and they are still cutting every time a budget issue appears. One wonders what they will do when there is no more military to cut - either to fund their lavish entitlements or when someone realizes that it won't take the Red Army to invade Europe because Europe has abrogated any responsibility to defend itself and the only thing protecting it are 2 U.S. light and medium brigades (since we're looking at pulling 2 of the 4 there back to cut costs ourselves) and the French and American nuclear arsenals.

Don't get me wrong, there is spending to be cut from the defense budget, especially war funding as we draw down from OIF and OEF, as well as fat and extravagence such as the Joint Forces Command I cited in a recent thread. The reason is simply as a matter of being in debt and in pursuit of general fiscal responsibility. We are not going to fix the problem created by entitlements, bailouts, stimulus and the like with any amount of defense cuts. In fact, we would exacerbate it as we put people out of work - not jsut troops, but employees at large corporations of which defense contracting is only a part of their overall buisness.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Feel free to contribute to the conversation sometime.

My post relates specifically to what RD said. All of what he said, for the ability to use English and logic impaired. I know, let's listen to you, we'll just plan all our lives around **** that might happen (or might not) any time in the future, and live insular, boring, and terrified lives because we don't know what the future holds.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine