Name this star: “It’s 5000 light years away, it’s a binary, it’s two old stars, one puffy and bloated, the other tiny and compressed, and one is eating the other while the other blows off a wind, and the tiny one periodically explodes, and forms a peanut-shaped soap bubbly nephroidal shell, which we can observe and model…”
RS Oph, of course, as excellently summed up by our friend the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait.
Some friends of mine started a pretty cool site. It’s what they call a donate button on steroids. It’s a great site for online fundraising, tip jars or other donations. It’s called FundingPix.
Why do I argue? Why do I try to convince?
Two reasons.
Reason One: I want to push the average American’s philosophy to the Left. I want to do this because I think some very liberal people vote Right because they don’t like liberals or what liberals stand for, divorced from the fact that the majority of their positions are more Left than Right. The Right has so successfully demonized the word “liberal” that cowards like John Kerry are too afraid to admit to it.
Reason Two: I think the philosophy of the Left is one of more potential for maintaining and improving our overall quality of life. I believe in the principles of the Left, I’m convinced by the huge benefit Liberalism has provided us in history and I’m emboldened by the huge potential for Liberalism to improve our future.
So I want to make people reexamine what the Left really stands for, because it is often incorrectly characterized by the Right.
So what is it? In a nutshell, in a phrase I’ve used repeatedly, I think the Liberal idea is expressed perfectly by Paul Wellstone in one sentence:
We all do better when we all do better.
We all do better when we all do better! The base conservative ideals of survival of the fittest, private ownership of everything, weak government, etc. are ideals of “haves” and “have nots”. They are ideals which great permanent divides. Walls.
The base liberal idea is that our own success is tightly coupled to the success of those around us. That we best insure our own survival by working effectively with those around us. Walls with doors.
Now I must emphasize that I am a capitalist and I think that ownership and markets are very important. But there is a role for socialist forces. Socialist, in this context, literally means “of the society”. It does not imply a state-owned world. It means that there is a role for forces which embody our shared will and protect our shared best interests.
I think the America was founded on the Liberal ideas I’m talking about here. Citizenship is not a one way street. You take and you give. This country was founded by intellectual liberals who were not happy with the status quo. They found an intelligent mix of personal and social responsibility.
The bottom line is that the philosophy of the Right is, when you strip everything away, the “haves” protecting their assets from the “have nots”. The philosophy of the Left is that we’re more likely to be “haves” if we work also for the success of the people around us and not focus solely on our own best interest.
In game theory, as depicted in A Beautiful Mind, this philosophy was proven mathematically! The Liberal philosophy is a mathematical fact. That’s why I argue.
Nice to see some blood sport in the comments recently. As usual, I’m gonna pull out a micadelic quote:
Sheesh. Can I at least get one of you guys to agree that the gov is extremely inefficient in spending taxpayer dollars and if government could run more efficiently, and not waste so much money, it just might help out a little bit and could help offset potential tax increases.
Can I also get one of you to say that maybe, just maybe the answer isn’t always to just raise taxes? Because that’s what you all sound like.
First of all, who says “Sheesh” anymore. The proper phrase would have been “Jesus Fucking Christ”. It is Easter, you know.
Yes, I can agree that there is room for improvement in terms of government waste. I have two problems with it as an argument in this debate, though. One, you can’t improve efficiency indefinitely and; Two, government is not necessarily any worse in regards to efficiency than other big businesses. People sometimes forget how large and complicated — necessarily — it is to run the freaking United States of America. It’s not a small undertaking. I’ll point out again that 1/2 of the budget goes to the military, so we run all the other activities of the federal budget with half or less money than it takes to run the military. If you want to go after inefficiencies, start with the military. Oh wait, that’s one of the many places Republicans throw fiscal discipline out the window.
A friend of mine who works at Best Buy recently told me “Best Buy can’t take a crap without wasting $100k”. Insurance companies, for example, are wildly inefficient and bureaucratic. On the other hand, I’ve heard that federal health care programs such as medicare are more efficient than their private counterparts.
The Right has brainwashed themselves into thinking that any discussion of taxes has to be countered with this government waste argument. Yes, I agree, let’s get rid of government waste, but it is a small part of the solution.
For the second part, all people, everyone, everywhere, would rather pay less in taxes. To me the absolute goal, which has been forsaken by Bush & Co., is to run a balanced budget. Clinton ran a surplus budget. Bush has driven up the debt and the deficit. Why don’t we have a surplus budget if cutting taxes is the key to more revenue? Bush got his way on taxes and spending and, while the economy is pretty good, the deficit and debt have both increased.
And, obviously, there comes a point where cutting taxes does not increase revenue. That’s the whole debate of degree thing I mentioned earlier. It is possible, and in fact it happens all the time around the world, where underinvestment in government undermines your economy. I would venture to say that the countries with the highest standards of living are invariably those with the highest tax rates. Quality government costs money.
It’s not that I want to pay more taxes, it is that I am willing to, unlike, apparently, you.
51% of the federal budget, or around 0.5 TRILLION dollars per YEAR is spent on the US military. (Ref: Wikipedia)
Isn’t it funny that the same rich bastards who fight against every tax and constantly complain about how we are over-taxed are the same people who are pro-war and pro-military? They want to grow military spending every year and yet they constantly whing about how our government spends too much!
The only way you can reconcile that is by being totally divorced from reality.
Pro-military means pro-tax. Deal with it.
So micadelic brings up the same Right wing argument about taxes:
Voting to raise taxes is ill-advised, ignorant and short-sighted.
Working to reduce government waste and spending takes courage and brains.
First of all, neither of these sentences make sense when taken to extremes. Should we have NO taxes? Should we reduce government to ZERO? Obviously, taken to extremes, these are both completely retarded. So, as I often like to point out, this is a debate of degree: what is the right balance between the tax burden and the size of government. No one except the most deluded libertarians think we should have no taxes and no government.
So I can’t really agree with the above quoted two sentences. I think Pawlenty was a moron to take new taxes off the table. I think all people, left and right, should be concerned about revealing and eliminating government waste. But we can’t get there just by watching the expense side; every responsible business person needs to be concerned about the income side, too. Government is no different.
The other thing that bugs the hell out of me is when people talk about taxes being “too high” without talking about what they are buying with that money. Go live in Mississippi if you want to live in a low-tax hell hole. Their education sucks and their infrastructure sucks because they can’t get their retarded citizenry to agree to pay taxes. Here in Minnesota we have a great environment for business, an educated work force, wonderful natural resources, great infrastructure. Paying more in taxes is the best decision Minnesotans have ever made.
It’s like if I said “Hey, a bought something for $10k” and you said “You got ripped off” BEFORE YOU KNEW WHAT I BOUGHT! The Right always talks about taxes being too high without recognizing how important that money is in making our state so great. What if I got a new BMW for $10k? Did I get ripped off?
And like I said in the previous post, the rich pay less of their income in taxes than anyone else because many taxes and fees are regressive. It is not stealing to raise taxes on the rich, it is fairness. People capable of paying more should pay more HAPPILY.
We need to raise taxes in this state to ease the property tax burden and get more money into schools. Fucking Pawlenty’s “no new taxes” pledge did not in any way make the problems go away, they made them worse.
Pay your fucking tax bill and be proud of it.
The Republicans in Minnesota are whinging again because the Democrats want to raise taxes on the rich. By “rich” they mean couples with incomes above $400k and individuals with incomes above $220k.
They want to do this because the failed “no new taxes” policy of Gov. Pawlenty has driven property taxes through the roof. As you may recall, property taxes are largely regressive in that lower income people pay a larger percentage of their income towards them. They want to raise income tax on the rich so they can lower property taxes on the rest of us.
The Republican doofus who was on MPR this morning brought out the same old tired rhetoric. “We’re taking money out of one pocket and putting it in another” and “Rich people are the drivers of are economy and we don’t want to drive them away”.
What a load of bullshit. If the rich don’t like paying a disproportionate tax burden then they should give away all their money so they can be part of the “lucky” majority that are not rich. No one would make that trade. They also have no problem taking money from one pocket to another so long as it goes into their pocket.
Taxes should be as low as possible but no lower! The rich should pay more in taxes. When I’m rich, God willing, I will not bitch about taxes. Incidentally, I’m not rich and I still don’t bitch about taxes.
lolife 