There you go again, being a gods-damned decent rhetorician. There's nothing more annoying when you want to ignore or dismiss an argument than hearing that argument include something you have to consider, even if just barely, as a given.

That said, democratic theory is quite roomy enough to include the notion that an idea as introduced in one generation might not necessarily be the way that same idea might (or should) be perpetuated in the practices of later generations.

Shit you're stupid.  The nuclear arms race has dick to do with total spending.  Team B being retarded has dick to do with total spending.  The only way you assume they weren't outspending us even just using their previous rates of investment is by going with the assinine theory that the USSR had one sixth the GDP of the USA.  They were outspending us at least two to one in the early eighties, period.  Even before Gorbachev it was typical to have 15% of gdp going straight into the military, the Ruskies like their armies.  If he actually didn't increase spending, all we did was catch up.

Your analogy is retarded as well.  Having one federal employee for every thirty farms was not intelligent, useful in any way, or deserving of anything but a complete and instant repeal of all farming subsidies and the dismissal of the useless idiots they had managing them, anyone old enough to remember all the "lost" grain shipments?  On top of being useless, they were even paying people not to farm and subsidizing a fourth of the farmers.  Paying some people not to farm while paying other people to farm, utter brilliance.   He wasn't asking for deep enough cuts, not by half.

The government has built thousands of houses for the homeless that have never been occupied, thousands more that have been trashed by their occupants within a few years.  They shut down flop houses because transients should have real homes, so the bums and drunks are on the streets to start with because the government put them there.  They created unemployment and social security to protect people that don't save for a rainy day and bankruptcy laws to protect against creditors, and are then mystified by the lack of savings and massive personal debt.  You yourself blame it on republicans, correlation perhaps?  Further more, we currently have a large population of perpetually unemployed people that bounce from one job to the next, working just long enough to collect, and waiting till it runs out before they move to the next.  They keep expanding unemployment benefits, much to their joy.

Even if the perpetual fuckup that is the federal government did not turn to shit everything it touches, it would still not be a bad idea for Reagan to have tried to slash domestic spending far beyond what he did.  Socialism is not a necessity, it's a security blanket for people that aren't naturally motivated without pain and suffering as their alternative.  People learn best through pain, failure is a necessary component to life.  If you don't suffer the consequences of your mistakes, you rarely learn from them, if ever.

We have laws for a reason, if you don't like them, change them.  The socialist programs aren't legal.  No, some asshole in a dress saying so doesn't make it so.  The justices who have are in violation of their oaths to uphold the constitution.  The constitution says flat out what the federal government is allowed to do.  They use the fucking commerce clause as an all purpose hammer, it's not even related to the shit.  Regulating international and interstate commerce has dick to do with telling a farmer he can't grow wheat because there are too many people growing wheat.  Commerce is trade, and they only have the power to regulate trade between states, not individuals.

Actually, some asshole in a dress saying it is so *has* made it so, since Nov 11th 1608 when the High Justice of the English Court (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Coke) faced down King James and established that the courts, not the king, were the final interpreters of the law, an interpretation that became English common law in the case of Dr. Bonham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Bonham%27s_Case), and expicitly accepted in the U.S. Constitution under Article III of the Constitution "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution" and enforced Marbury versus Madison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison).

So you're welcome to move to some country where the courts are *not* the final arbiters of the law, Pakistan, Iran, someplace like that, but here in the U.S. you are 400 years 10 days too late.

So sorry, but you *do* win the lifetime supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat . . .

Jonnan

As for the rest - Since to the best of my knowledge every attempt to claim the Soviets were vastly outspending us militarily is either made up out of nwhole cloth or tracks back to Team B, yeah, the fact that Team B was wrong on almost everything strikes ve a vaguely relevant to the conversation.

Frankly, given your penchant for asseting stuff without any references, there's no way to really tell if your making it up or it's another one of those vague "I heard this and it's been debunked for twenty years but I'm standing by it anyway!" assertions you tend to make, but the fact is that the Soviets didn't start ramping up their military production until after they thought they had a nutcase running things over here, and even THEN they weren't able to keep it up. - it crippled their economy.

And as for my retarded analogy - listen, did Reagan blame the deficit on the Democrats, Yes or No?

Do those CBO figures conclusively prove that in fact the increases in spending were in the Military Spending Reagan insisted on, while the spending cuts were actually done on the Domestic side, where Reagan was blaming the Democrats, Yes or No.

The historically verifiable answer to both of those is yes. Black and White - your opinion of whether it was wise, better policy, whatever is irrelevant. In that speech, Ronald Reagan lied to you, he knew he was lying to you, and it's really really easy to prove he lied to you.

The answer to these little problems is simple - don't listen to speeches just cause the guy seems like a nice old man - actually check.

Jonnan

You really don't grasp it do you?

There is a difference between the Constitution, and federal, state and local statutes.

You claim the Constitution a living document subject to the will of the Supreme Court by referencing a case where the Supreme Court rules that the Constitution is itself supreme, and as the statute conflicted with it, was null.  Marshall didn't even refer to the Constitution as law in his opinion.  He kept them seperate while mentioning his duty to rule on the law.  Marbury v Madison is ironclad proof that you're wrong.

Perhaps one of these days, you'll get a clue.  Maybe you'll even figure out that the lack of balls to cut military spending in return for their domestic hikes is their own fault.  Along with intelligence, they lacked the honesty to admit they knew it was a good idea after all the fuckups that had happened over the previous decade.

It's ok, one of these days you'll figure out how to comprehend what you read.  For those of us that can, it's self evident.  General welfare is specific to the nation, not individuals.  The sentence lacks the semicolon present in the second amendment, one of the other ones a bunch of dumb fuckers can't seem to read.  It says, flat out, that Congress has the power to raise funds in explicitly listed methods no less, for the common defense and general welfare of the nation.  It does not specifically lay out the details, no more than telling you to go to the store and pick up something tells you whether to use cash, credit or debit to pay for it, what size bills to use, how to get there, which route to take.

For someone so well read, you have the understanding of a gnat.

Out of curiosity, do you blindly post the dribblings of Randolph or do you actually know his history beyond the writings you treasure as proof of your idiotic views?  He refused to sign the final draft of the Constitution because it lacked the very things you claim it gives.

The modern concept of welfare did not even exist in the 18th century. It is disingenuous at best to use the general welfare phrase as evidence that out current welfare system falls within the bounds of the intents of the founders.

oothal, do you truly believe the U.S. could have indefinitely stayed out of either WWI or WWII?  There's a reason they were called world wars.  It wouldn't have mattered much who was in office, or what party they represented.

I'm not here to argue, but you're making yourself look like an idiot.  It's possible you've actually used examples in your post that support your argument, but the first half of it certainly doesn't look like it, and really, your post is too tl;dr.

For what it's worth, you are correct on the "landslide term".  It was an electoral landslide only, which really doesn't mean much.

Then what are you quoting me for?  I'm shooting down all his justifications for it.  Context is wonderful, use it.

Sole Soul, WW1 was a joke.  The Europeans had already ground themselves into hamburger, we had no business getting involved.  They'd all but stalemated and would have eventually gotten around to quitting if Germany didn't surrender.  All we did was make it end faster and more decisively.  It was one hell of a bloody war, but there was no threat to us, and it was not an actual world war.  Our involvement directly contributed to WW2 by giving France the power to bury them with revenge for a war they themselves were more at fault for causing.

WW2 we did need to get involved in I think, it was probably the only thing the scumbag did right.  FDR truly was the right man for the job, rotten to the core, lied, cheated and stole without remorse, and a fucking communist to top it all off.  No one else would have given two shits about Russia, or supplied allied forces with arms and pilots when it was both illegal and unpopular.

I say think because the Soviet influence far surpassed Hitler in the mass murder areas.  Aside from the whole Japanese are people and everyone else are dogs issue, we might shoulda helped them out against Russia instead.  Getting involved with other people's shit is never a simple issue, and it was other people's shit.  You take it too lightly to assume that just because, it was inevitable regardless.  If, God forbid, Ron Paul light had been president, we wouldn't even have a standing military today.  We'd either be a peace crazed isolationist hippy society, or a subject of whoever came out on top and decided we were next.

@psychoak

I didn't ask you what you thought was right, I asked oothal what he thought was possible.  You are by no means prohibited from answering the same question, but do try to stay ontopic.

I'm glad you think WWI was a joke-I'm sure the few surviving veterans of it will be happy to hear that-and would actually agree with most though not all of your characterization of it-but I do not believe that any of the things you mentioned would have made it any less inevitable on our part to actually do something.

Too bad we don't have a time machine, huh?

I'm actually somewhat disappointed in you, psychoak-I merely pointed out a severe occurrence of idiocy in the thread, and rather than agree, you almost defended him.

EviliroN, I can't tell if you're arguing against me, against Jonnan, against oothal, or against God (though the last one is admittedly less likely since he has yet to make a stand in this thread).

The entire point I was attempting to make is that oothal's theory that Democrats are responsible for more casualties is flawed if he's using the Civil War and the two World Wars to support it.

It kind of makes you wonder, though...if the Democrats are always the ones to start the wars, why are they the first ones to want to cut military spending?

Self evident.  LBJ was a fucking socialist from hell and FDR was straight up communist.  The taxes couldn't go up any higher, the top rate was still sitting at 70% even after Kennedy, and the drop to there created higher revenue.  They had to cut something to piss away all that money on the New Deal and Great Society bullshit, the military is the first thing on the list as something that counters the progressive agenda.  Work ethic, moral fiber, a fourth of the budget, that sort of thing.

Burned!  I've been incinerated!

This isn't a surprising view, the education in this country is absolutely pathetic when it comes to history.  We get nonsense about the various peace movements in droves, but for the biggest wars in our history, squat...  My post was a counter to these two paragraphs.  He's not necessarily an idiot if he thinks we should have stayed out of WW1, and in hindsight, WW2 might not have been all it was cracked up to be either, it's been one seriously fucked up place since it ended in that manner.  It might have been a good idea, but it was definitely none of our business.  We baited them into agressive actions, then used the excuse to attack them.  Right or wrong, it's still interference.

Make no mistake about who started it either, we stuck our noses in first, both times.  Germany asked Mexico to aid them against us because they were expecting us to make the first move.  Firing on merchant ships happened because we were shipping arms to their enemies.  Pearl Harbor was attacked because we were blocking them from oil access and supplying the Chinese with fighters and pilots to go with them.

Is the above a sufficient answer?  You called him an idiot and noted the lack of reasons behind his statements.  I then gave reasons.

Indeed, we could go back and wage war in an intelligent manner, have them both wrapped up in a tenth of the time with a hundredth of the casualties, and go back home!  That almost sounds like you're agreeing with me, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're ignorant but sensitive and attempting to evoke remorse.

Both "World Wars" were handled absolutely horribly, and yes, the first one was indeed a joke.  Despite what you've been told, the first war was almost entirely in Europe, and, despite the truly impressive death toll, in danger of spreading nowhere.  Germany would have gone into a full scale revolt without us just fine, they nearly beat us to the punch as it was.  Russia had already surrendered gracefully and backed out of the affair themselves before it finished.  It was winding down, not winding up.  Hell, if they hadn't been utter retards, it would have ended a lot sooner.  You know the saying, never bring a knife to a gun fight?  They were still charging, bayonets against machine guns.  The glory of the charge...

It's a joke that 30 million people died over utter idiocy, a terrible joke, but still a joke.  It's a joke that they call it a World War, as if anything but the death toll was spectacular.  WW2 was full scale war on three continents.  WW1 was almost entirely in Europe, with only minor skirmishes outside it.  The Seven Years and French Revolutionary war were just as deserving of the title World War, they just lacked the body count from such a gross level of stupidity interacting with the water cooled machine gun emplacement.  The difference 120 years and no change in tactics makes.

My reason for living, oh no...

/wrists

For those of you that take the internet seriously, no, I didn't actually kill myself.

Now that is unfortunate.

[/sarcasm]

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Maybe it's because I am almost agreeing with you.  I'm not half as stupid and ignorant as you seem to think everyone is (at times even including yourself).  And for what it's worth, as much as you're attempting to shoot down everything I say, you're actually almost agreeing with me on WWII.

However, with roughly the same information, I come to a different conclusion: That on its own our involvement in WWI was largely inevitable, and that on its own our involvement in WWII was vastly more inevitable.  The effects that WWI had on WWII are irrelevant for my purposes, as I'm simply considering them separately.

Your points on death tolls and global involvement in wars that were not seen fit to be called world wars are valid, but I'm uncertain as to how they are relevant to the current discussion as I'm almost positive none of the ones you mentioned were due to Democrats being in office; additionally, I was under the impression we were only discussing wars that the US was actually involved in.

I understand you think everyone's an idiot-and most of the time that's correct-and I understand you don't believe anyone aside from yourself has any education with regards to anything, or in this instance history.  It seems, however, that you don't understand that just because someone has a different viewpoint than you, or comes to a different conclusion, doesn't necessarily mean they're uneducated swine and don't have the same information that you do.

For my part, I assumed oothal to be only marginally educated, and to simply be throwing wars out there in an attempt to support his argument so long as someone was in office he felt he could blame it on-but I see no reasoning such as you have attempted to provide in his post, and I would challenge you to find any.

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EviliroN, I apologize, I was just confused as to what the purpose of your post was.  I thought my comment was sufficiently sarcastic that it would be seen as such.

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Carry on.