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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (111536)	2/19/2008 11:09:53 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

If they where true, they would be true for everyone, but neither one is true. Clinton wasn't a great president. Bush hasn't been one either, but only someone blinded by partisanship would call him the worst.

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (111536)	2/19/2008 2:34:26 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

The Debt Under Clinton Free Republic ^ \| Aug13, 2003 \| Jack Black Posted on 08/13/2003 9:49:37 PM PDT by Jack Black It is often claimed that Clinton "balanced the budget" and "reduced the debt". I've been trying to verify the truth in this, so I decided to "go to the source" and get the facts. Here is what the U.S. Treasury, Bereau of the Debt says on their web site about the debt. Based on these numbers it is clear the debt rose every year of Clinton's stay. Historical Debt Outstanding - Annual 1950 - 2000 * Rounded to Millions Includes legal tender notes, gold and silver certificates, etc. Date Amount 09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86 09/30/1999 5,656,270,901,615.43 09/30/1998 5,526,193,008,897.62 09/30/1997 5,413,146,011,397.34 09/30/1996 5,224,810,939,135.73 09/29/1995 4,973,982,900,709.39 09/30/1994 4,692,749,910,013.32 09/30/1993 4,411,488,883,139.38 09/30/1992 4,064,620,655,521.66 09/30/1991 3,665,303,351,697.03 09/28/1990 3,233,313,451,777.25 09/29/1989 2,857,430,960,187.32 09/30/1988 2,602,337,712,041.16 09/30/1987 2,350,276,890,953.00 09/30/1986 2,125,302,616,658.42 12/31/1985 1,945,941,616,459.88 12/31/1984 1,662,966,000,000.00 * 12/31/1983 1,410,702,000,000.00 * 12/31/1982 1,197,073,000,000.00 * 12/31/1981 1,028,729,000,000.00 * 12/31/1980 930,210,000,000.00 * 12/31/1979 845,116,000,000.00 * 12/29/1978 789,207,000,000.00 * 12/30/1977 718,943,000,000.00 * 12/31/1976 653,544,000,000.00 * 12/31/1975 576,649,000,000.00 * 12/31/1974 492,665,000,000.00 * 12/31/1973 469,898,039,554.70 12/29/1972 449,298,066,119.00 12/31/1971 424,130,961,959.95 12/31/1970 389,158,403,690.26 12/31/1969 368,225,581,254.41 12/31/1968 358,028,625,002.91 12/29/1967 344,663,009,745.18 12/30/1966 329,319,249,366.68 12/31/1965 320,904,110,042.04 12/31/1964 317,940,472,718.38 12/31/1963 309,346,845,059.17 12/31/1962 303,470,080,489.27 12/29/1961 296,168,761,214.92 12/30/1960 290,216,815,241.68 12/31/1959 290,797,771,717.63 12/31/1958 282,922,423,583.87 12/31/1957 274,897,784,290.72 12/31/1956 276,627,527,996.11 12/30/1955 280,768,553,188.96 12/31/1954 278,749,814,391.33 12/31/1953 275,168,120,129.39 06/30/1953 266,071,061,638.57 06/30/1952 259,105,178,785.43 06/29/1951 255,221,976,814.93 06/30/1950 257,357,352,351.04 Updated January 31, 2001 source: publicdebt.treas.gov it's a little easier to read there. So, lets all say it together. The Debt of the USA rose by about 2 trillion dollars during the Clinton era. This was a growth of about 54% in 8 years. OK, you say, but what is "the debt" Woz? Again, here is what the Bureau of the Debt says in their FAQ: What is the difference between the debt and the deficit? The deficit is the fiscal year difference between what the Government takes in from taxes and other revenues, called receipts, and the amount of money the Government spends, called outlays. The items included in the deficit are considered either on-budget or off-budget. (The off-budget items are typically comprised of the two Social Security trust funds, old-age and survivors insurance and disability insurance, and the Postal-Service fund.) Generally, on-budget outlays tend to exceed on-budget receipts, while off-budget receipts tend to exceed off-budget outlays. You can think of the total debt as accumulated deficits plus accumulated off-budget surpluses. The on-budget deficits require the Treasury to borrow money to raise cash needed to keep the Government operating. We borrow the money by selling Treasury securities like T-bills, notes, bonds and savings bonds to the public. Additionally, the Government Trust Funds are required by law to invest accumulated surpluses in Treasury securities. The Treasury securities issued to the public and to the Government Trust Funds (Intragovernmental Holdings) then become part of the total debt. * end of paste * OK, so there is some weird on-budget / off-budge hokey pokey that Clinton and his Wall Street genius buddies were able to manipulate, but the numbers above don't lie. Accumulated Deficits (everything we owe, including this year) + off budget (SSI) surplusses. = Debt. Clinton never budged this to change directions. I am happy to set the record straight. CLINTON INCREASED THE DEBT BY 54% or Two Trillion (!) Dollars. Or, for those of you financially inclined the CAGR of the Debt. under clinton was 5.6% . Ahh yes, that fiscal conservative. OK, but lets go see if we can find deficit numbers. Obviously as long as there IS a deficit (ie: you end the month with more bills than income, you use your credit card to pay the difference) your debt is going to go up. Now if you were using $500 a month of credit to pay bills and got it down to $100 of credit card charge to pay bills you would have reduced your personal monthly deficit (but not eliminated it) but your total debt would continue to grow, just by a smaller amount. Unless someone can explain why I claim that the constant, never reversed growth in debt displayed above is PROOF that there was always a budget deficit under Clinton. Maybe it happened for a month or a quarter that there was a surplus, or maybe they used funny accounting around the on the books / off the books stuff. But bank accounts don't lie. Looked at on a year by year basis you CAN NOT FIND A YEAR CLINTON DID NOT ADD TO THE DEBT!

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (111536)	2/20/2008 8:39:00 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

Scientists Develop Breathalyzer for Disease Just Breathe Into a Tube to See Whether You Have Cancer, Scientists Say By LEE DYE Feb. 19, 2008 — It may one day be possible to walk into your doctor's office and breathe into a small device that will tell you if you are in the earliest stage of a wide range of diseases from lung cancer to asthma to kidney failure. Early detection is the key to survival when it comes to many medical problems, and the first place some diseases show up is in the breath. Scientists have just revealed that they have produced a machine that can identify single molecules that are associated with specific diseases, and all that's required is a little breath. "It's very noninvasive," said physicist Jun Ye, leader of the research team that is working on the technology. "There's nothing to be scared of. No blood test, just a breath test." Ye is a research fellow at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Ye and research assistant Michael Thorpe, doctoral student Matthew Kirchner and former graduate student David Balslev-Clausen described their work in the Feb. 18 online edition of Optics Express, published by the Optical Society of America. It has been well established that people exhale a complex mixture of gases, including oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and others, Ye told ABCNEWS.com. In fact, more than 1,000 different compounds are contained in human breath. But along with those common gases and compounds, people also exhale certain molecules that are considered "biomarkers" indicating specific conditions, such as diseases. "If you go to the medical literature you will see tons of studies that correlate certain diseases with particular molecules found in the breath," he said. "One common example is nitrous oxide, which is associated with asthma." Recognizing that fact, scientists for some time now have been trying to develop the technology to identify those molecules in the breath, thus detecting a disease that may not show up anyplace else. Several techniques have been advanced, but Ye said they all fall short because of the old needle-in-the-haystack problem. Normal breath consists of trillions of molecules, only a few of which are actual biomarkers. And finding just one isn't enough. There needs to be a pattern consisting of several different types of biomarkers that are all associated with a particular medical problem. What's necessary, he said, is to create a device that will find a few molecules in a sea of background noise consisting of trillions of harmless molecules. He calls it "seeing the forest all at once, but also seeing individual trees extremely clearly." And that, he said, is exactly what his team has accomplished. The technology builds on the device that won a Nobel Prize in 2005, called optical frequency comb. Ye and his group applied the technology to spectroscopy, which is used to identify distinct molecules by their emission and absorption of light. The heart of Ye's machine, which is about the size of a microwave oven, is a cavity between two curved mirrors. Laser pulses are shot into the cavity and reflect back and forth between the mirrors tens of thousands of times, bombarding any molecules in their way, before finally escaping. To test the device, the researchers recruited several students and had them breathe into the cavity. The bouncing laser beam interacted with the billions of exhaled molecules, identifying the entire composition of the breath. The findings were very precise, Ye said. One of the participants was a smoker, and his test revealed five times the normal level of carbon monoxide. The beauty of the system, Ye said, is the fact that it sees the entire spectrum, not just a few specific molecules. And that's important because a single molecule would mean little. "If you have asthma, your breath will have nitrous oxide, but nitrous oxide does not necessarily mean you have asthma," he said. "But if you see several different molecules all at once, and they are associated with asthma, then you have found a real fingerprint of a certain disease." The technology is still in its infancy, and for now it appears to be limited to diseases that somehow involve the lungs. But Ye thinks that could change, and the applications could broaden, as the technology develops further. The device can also differentiate between different isotopes, like carbon 12 and carbon 13, and oxygen 16 and oxygen 17, and changes in those ratios could also indicate the presence of a disease. The idea, Ye said, is to build a system that will allow the earliest possible detection in the least invasive manner at a price that everyone can afford. The technology can now identify a single molecule among billions. The next goal will be to find a single molecule among trillions. That would broaden its application even further. The researchers built their machine at their institute, located on the University of Colorado campus, at an estimated cost of $50,000. That, of course, does not include the millions spent on earlier research, or the cost of their time. "Once it's mass produced, the cost could be quite low," Ye said. "It could be put into every doctor's clinic so people could walk in and do painless breath tests and then walk away. They would get results in a day or so." Of course, all of this is based on lab research, and an experiment with a few college students. The technology has not been tested yet in the medical field. But Ye's office phones were ringing constantly during the interview, and some of the calls were from companies interested in moving the technology from the laboratory to the marketplace. Lee Dye is a former science writer for the Los Angeles Times. He now lives in Juneau, Alaska. Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures