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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (482242)	5/19/2009 10:01:52 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573927

Since WW II, our military budget has grown INTO being the largest.......it didn't start out that way. It didn't start out that way at the beginning of the country, or even the begining of WWII or our entry in to it in 1941. But in 1944 and most years since (maybe every year since, but its possible that the USSR may have spent more for some of the years in between WWII and Korea) Its after WWII that the military defense complex that employs you and others grew by leaps and bounds. No it was DURING WWII when it grew by leaps and bounds. At the time the whole country was focused on the military with over 35% of our economy going to military spending, and with an army that had 25 times as many people as today's army despite American's population being less than half of what it is today. To put it another way an American was about 50 times as likely to be in the army back then (and also much more likely in most of the years since then). Re: Universal Health care Not having one suggests a rightwing slant. Not at all, and even if it did "a rightwing slant" is not "a move to the right". Every effort to get universal health care has been thwarted by the right. Again even if we accept your premises they don't lead to the conclusion of a strong move to the right. "I notice a trend here. You seem to be confusing "is less socialist/liberal/progressive" than Europe" with "has moved to the right". But really they are two entirely different concepts." No they are not. A progressive society has higher CAFE standards because its good for the community on a lot of different levels. Again your conflating or confusing different ideas. Not only is "less socialist/liberal/progressive than Europe" different from "has moved to the right", but even if for the sake of argument I agreed (with the false statement) that a high CAFE is good for the community, "good for the community" is a different idea than "moved to the right". These describes your argument pattern en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org The Bush administration rolled back a number of environmental laws while in office. For an example, drilling and mining in national parks are now allowed. Snow mobiles are now allowed in national parks. There is a long list. Drilling NEAR national parks is now allowed. Overall there are more environmental regulations and restrictions now than in the past. And not just some cherry picked moment in the past, but than 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000... They are indication of where this country sits on the the political spectrum. Not really. Being behind in some area of research is not 100% do to politics let alone the specific political idea of "where the country sits on the political spectrum" But more importantly even if we assume they are a perfect measure of "where we sit on the political spectrum", that's a separate idea than how a country has moved. If other countries have moved left and we moved left to a lesser extent than we would be further right "on the spectrum" of countries, but we would be further left non the less. you can play semantics all you want but you know damn well what I am saying. Your saying we've moved to the right, and then your making a bunch of points to back up that idea, most of which are wrong or at least debatable and almost all of which are irrelevant to your claim.