Red army to receive 250 new types of weaponry in 2006

Yes, but who's fault is it if they start spending more money once they get a raise? That's where personal responsibility comes in.
Also, you paint this picture of everyone working a drab corporate life, it certainly doesn't have to be that way. You can be a cop, a teacher, start your own business, be a pilot, a chef, a whatever....
Let me put it another way for you, what is your solution to all this terrible borrowing and spending that's going on? I for one see nothing wrong with having a mortgage or a car payment. People should watch their credit card purchases, but it's their own fault if they get in trouble and I don't want my tax dollars bailing them out.

I'd also like to know why you are living here, you never answered the question, the US sounds like a House of Horrors for you. Why not over to Europe or back to Jordan? Please don't duck the question, I feel it's relevant to the conversation.

the US isn't a house of horrors to me, it's a good place to be living in, people here are living better than much of the rest of the world, but there standard of living is lesser than the rest of the industrialized world. anyhow, i told i'm living here because of some family problems plus,i already have a house here, i sold my house over in jordan, all i have in jordan left is a piece of real estate worth about a million or two, now i'm not rich, the real estate was bought for only around 50k or 100k, buty that's irrelevant.

Originally posted by White Chapel
Also, you paint this picture of everyone working a drab corporate life, it certainly doesn't have to be that way. You can be a cop, a teacher, start your own business, be a pilot, a chef, a whatever....

ok if your a cop your working for the governement, so instead of working for the government from january to may to pay taxes, your also working full time for them, which isn't bad, of course being a cop is good. anyhow, if your a teacher your eaither a worker at a private school, or for the government, so your still working for either a company or a government. 3rd, being a pilot is working for the airlines corporations, and being a chef is either working for hotels, restaurants, or just plain fastr food restaurants, that's all working for a company. as for starting your own bussiness, well you still are working from january to may just to pay taxes unless you set up a corporations then you start liviing your finances like the rich, and that's the right way, but if you keep yourself a sole proprietorship or a partnership like most people are doing for some reason, maybe unrealizing that all a corporation is a piece of paper in a drawer, so they keep think you have to be a millionaire to have a corporation or just plain ignorance or laziness. but right now abouut 80% or so of newe bussinesses fail by year 2 or 3 max 4, and there aren't many new bussinesses springing up around the US right now relative to how many new bussinesses were being set up 20, 30, 40, years ago! so you see people are more and more of being a worker all the time for the government and the corporation, instead of the governemtn being the employer and the employee at the same time, which is supposed to happen in a democracy, at least from my point of view. capitalism is a great system, but is too harsh and would lead to having people who are too rich, and would start mkaing a puppet of the government, so the governemtn in order to first of all preserve it's democracy and second to preserve itself, has to keep it's hands in the basic needs of the individual and try to give back someway or another to th epeople, not in hand outs, but in pro-growth projects, anti-propaganda projects, basically anything that would help the population grow richer and more enlightened.

Who gets to decided what "too rich" is? It sounds like you want to set limits on what an individual can accomplish. "Be a success, but don't be too successful because it might come at the expense of someone else and it might hurt their feelings". I've lived a lot of different places and I just don't see the standard of living being lower than other industrialized nations, I really don't. Maybe about the same as some of them, but certainly no lower.
Man, your view on things is just depressing.


[edit on 22-7-2006 by White Chapel]

lol, look i'm not saying set limits, but don't let the rich people control the government, it's not thier rights, Roosevelt was a puppet to rockefeller for instant, and many of those who werea fter him were puppets of the rothschilds, i read this on ATS.

hahahahaha well if you read it on ATS it must be true!

i'm not saying it must be true, but look at this, Eisenhower warned about the Military-Industrial Complex, yet every president after him, went ahead and spent billions and billions of dollars on weapons and all, and now the US government is i think consumed by the Military-Industrial Complex that it's going to unnecessary wars, and spending way too much on the military and less and less on many other things like research, space exploration, NASA, science of any kind, health care, etc, etc...

I think you need to convince other countries/terror organizations (sometimes one and the same) if you want the US to stop spending on the military. There are many, many things we'd rather do with the money but our position dictates what we have to do. There's a lot of jealousy out there, and because of it we are forced to protect ourselves and it's not like that's something you should half-ass, you know? You should take this up with the rest of the world, get them to give up all the fussin and the fightin and then we can spend all our money of insuring every illegal alien has health care.

lol, well i'm jordanian i have no sympathy for the israelis, for the hezbollah, for Al-qaeda, for any of those, actually i dislike and condemn terrorist organizations such as these, they are bad for bussiness, they have attacked my country, and they are plainly just lunatics, actually Hezbollag leader nasrallah actually used to have some sense, but now he obviously lost it, but anyway the israelis are also aren't free of guilt, they have destroyed many and many of the homes and neighbourhoods and the cities of Palestine, just imagine how they used to come up to a house saying to the palestinian that they need to evacuate so that an israeli can come live in it or they will destroy with a bulldozer or a tank or the like, they are putting the west bank, the gaza strip and south lebanon right now under collective punishment. so no side is free of guilt, just to make that point.

but anyhow, first of all, the USA was the one that supplied Al-qaeda in the Soviet-Afghan war, adn the USA was the one that made grow stronger along with Taliban, as for Saddam, the USA actually was the one that put him in power, but then he went against the USA and became a "terrorist" i'm not saying he's a hero, but the USA actually supplied him with chemical weapons and biological weapons to strike the Kurds when he was with the US, and they didn't call him a dictator back then, same thing in Turkey right now. as for Iran, the US was the one that toppled the one that was before khumeini, and put khumeini in place, and now they are tastomg the repercussions of there bad decisions. you see many of the so called "rogue states" were supplied and built up and actaully sometimes created by the USA in it's efforts to win the Cold war. for instance look at chechnya, i'll bet the US was supplying those terrorists, and yes they're terrorists, killing 400 people in a school is a terrorist act.

as you see many terrorists organizations and rogue states were created by the US, so the US is the one that has to fix them up. as for the 500billion military budget, it's barely building the US military, it is merely maintaining an already aging military, if the US would downsize a little and instead get a manageable military, that would minimize costs, maximize efficiency and force and effectiveness, rather than what it now ahs, which is a rather overstretched, over funded, -military-industrial complex controlled and irected military, which is definitly bad for the economy and the government long term.

Originally posted by White Chapel
I couldn't disagree more with your conclusions. I'd love to see a source on your opinions.

I do not have to source commonly known facts last i checked but if you want to start sourcing your 'facts' i will source mine .

One problem I think we are having is some people are associating "quality of life" strictly with income, as most of your post had to do with earning power.

30 million American wage earners work a full time jobs and can't get by , have no or very little health coverage and are mostly just getting further and further into debt to cover their basic living expensive

Life has not been getting worse for Americans, source please.

As far as i know i said their buying power have declined by about 20% on average since the late 70's. Stalin would say that ain't a bad thing but last i checked that was not what Americans expected.

I see absolutely no evidence that there has been a gradual trend downward for Americans.

Then you have done not even the basic type of research required for this type of discussion; please start.

Every generation of people in every time period ever always crow "Back in such and such a year, everything was so much better" there is no evidence that this is true.

Facts are facts but you will not discover them when you have already decided on your own personal truth. If this is not about researching and discovering reality for you then what is the point?

Do people work hard? Yes, but I have no objection to that. I like to work hard and don't mind it.

People in American work the longest hours in the industrialised world and their living standards are generally declining. Working ever harder and seeing no return for the added effort is not what the American dream was or should be. I am glad you like working hard but do you think you will still like to do so at 50 just to make ends meet as is the case for so many?

I'm not sure what your post about highways being sold has to do with toll roads?

'Toll road hysteria is nothing compared to the fact that American states are now selling thousands of miles of highways to foreigners; roads built with taxpayers money. If you do not understand why this is more significant than toll roads then we probably wont get along well.

I know firsthand for a fact that where I grew up (Nebraska) corn and soy farmers could not survive without subsidies.

Then it must be a very bad region to produce those in as people all round the world manage such crops with no subsidies at all. What you mean is that one could not produce those crops in Nebraska and compete with other American states as they would have been your main rivals.

I'm glad other countries can, good for them, maybe they can pick up our slack then if they are so happy and efficient with their super low cost of living.

American agri business dominated the world for many decades and put many hundreds of millions of peasant farmers out of business by flooding third world markets with cheap agri produce. Don't come crying to the rest of the world please.

Look, is America perfect?

Far far from it.

Of course not, nothing is, but to hear people wine on and on about how everything is so much better some place else is getting tiresome.

America could ( if it's citizens wanted to) be a place that no one could even dream about but they would rather work hard and waste their liberties on one pointless excess or another. Most things are not 'better' elsewhere but the fact that so many things are is what should get Americans out of their slumber and demanding what they could easily have WITHOUT additional labour or worry.

It's not, and I've lived a few places both around the country and on foreign soil in my life, and know first hand that if America isn't number one, it's at worst top 5.

Not according to a great many international organizations ; as if not being first is'nt bad enough....

Which isn't too bad given the melting pot of cultures and ideas we have, there's a lot of freedom we have here, freedom people take for granted when they know nothing else.

Pffttt.... I live in South Africa and after decades of being part of a white minority i am now getting treated better by the self same oppressed black majority ( who now hold the reigns) than you are in your country. I am sorry but you should be expecting more while i spending my time generally being thankful....

Why does the 'melting put' always come up when Americans defend the worse aspects of their country? Are they what gave America the greatness it achieved or not? Make up your mind.....

I'm always reminded of an old saying when discussions like this take place "the grass is always greener...."

Bah. The reason i am here is to tell you that Americans are losing their freedoms ever faster while destroying the freedoms of billions of others in the process. If you guys were properly defending your own freedoms the rest of the world citizens might not have such a hard time fighting oppression.

Stellar

StellarX, you live in South America, so you don't even live in the US and you have all these beefs? Sheesh, what a waste of time this conversation was.
As an economics and finance professor in Chicago, I can tell you for a fact that quality of life is not declining. 30 million people are not working for nothing, and earning power isn't, in general, declining. Year to year there is fluctuation, but there is no downward trend.

Originally posted by INc2006
lol, well i'm jordanian i have no sympathy for the israelis, for the hezbollah, for Al-qaeda, for any of those, actually i dislike and condemn terrorist organizations such as these, they are bad for bussiness, they have attacked my country, and they are plainly just lunatics, actually Hezbollag leader nasrallah actually used to have some sense, but now he obviously lost it, but anyway the israelis are also aren't free of guilt, they have destroyed many and many of the homes and neighbourhoods and the cities of Palestine, just imagine how they used to come up to a house saying to the palestinian that they need to evacuate so that an israeli can come live in it or they will destroy with a bulldozer or a tank or the like, they are putting the west bank, the gaza strip and south lebanon right now under collective punishment. so no side is free of guilt, just to make that point.

but anyhow, first of all, the USA was the one that supplied Al-qaeda in the Soviet-Afghan war, adn the USA was the one that made grow stronger along with Taliban, as for Saddam, the USA actually was the one that put him in power, but then he went against the USA and became a "terrorist" i'm not saying he's a hero, but the USA actually supplied him with chemical weapons and biological weapons to strike the Kurds when he was with the US, and they didn't call him a dictator back then, same thing in Turkey right now. as for Iran, the US was the one that toppled the one that was before khumeini, and put khumeini in place, and now they are tastomg the repercussions of there bad decisions. you see many of the so called "rogue states" were supplied and built up and actaully sometimes created by the USA in it's efforts to win the Cold war. for instance look at chechnya, i'll bet the US was supplying those terrorists, and yes they're terrorists, killing 400 people in a school is a terrorist act.

as you see many terrorists organizations and rogue states were created by the US, so the US is the one that has to fix them up. as for the 500billion military budget, it's barely building the US military, it is merely maintaining an already aging military, if the US would downsize a little and instead get a manageable military, that would minimize costs, maximize efficiency and force and effectiveness, rather than what it now ahs, which is a rather overstretched, over funded, -military-industrial complex controlled and irected military, which is definitly bad for the economy and the government long term.

Of course, politics makes strange bedfellows. The US isn't the first country (nor will it be the last) that is friends with someone one day, and enemies the next. And your assertion that terrorists and rogue states were created by the US implies that the US created every one of them out there, and that's simply not true. Even if the US supplied Saddam with chemical weapons, they didn't pull the trigger on him using them on his own people so don't try to lay that blame at the US's feet. The same with the chechyn rebels, even IF (and by the way, I doubt they supplied them) they did supply them, they didn't make them take over a school house and kill 400 kids. Those groups are solely responsible for their own actions, regardless of where they actually purchased the weapons.
Your claims of our aging military almost sound like wishful thinking, I wouldn't get too proud in your ivory tower, the US military is going to be alive and kicking for quite some time.

Originally posted by White Chapel
StellarX, you live in South America,

South -AFRICA.

so you don't even live in the US and you have all these beefs?

While you guys operate nuclear missiles and a dozen CBG's it's my 'beef' however weird that might seem to someone as uninformed on this matter as yourself.

Sheesh, what a waste of time this conversation was.

'Conversation' is making more off it than it was; especially your 'contribution'.

As an economics and finance professor in Chicago, I can tell you for a fact that quality of life is not declining.

Your either getting paid very well to be this ignorant of reality or you are giving people VERY bad advice.

30 million people are not working for nothing,

They are not working for 'nothing' as much as they barely make ends meet ( pay the bills) at the best of times.

and earning power isn't, in general, declining. Year to year there is fluctuation, but there is no downward trend.

Ugh.

www.brookings.edu...

www.americaneconomicalert.org...

www.epinet.org...

And that is just the start of your education if you persist in peddling your particular brand of uninformed arrogance.

Stellar

[edit on 24-7-2006 by StellarX]

Originally posted by White Chapel
I think you need to convince other countries/terror organizations (sometimes one and the same) if you want the US to stop spending on the military.

The two issues are not related and claims that they are = ignorance of not only history but current events.

There are many, many things we'd rather do with the money but our position dictates what we have to do.

Not supported by any kind of evidence in evidence. The American government can , and has never tried , not fight terror with carrier battlegroups or nuclear missiles , tanks or a half a dozen thousand aircraft. It would be completely insane to even try had such a strategy even been feasible in a technical or economic sense.

There's a lot of jealousy out there, and because of it we are forced to protect ourselves

What America has done for the last century is actively hunt down and destroy 'freedom' all around the world. Few powers threatened American security in the last century and those that did were allowed to do so.

and it's not like that's something you should half-ass, you know? You should take this up with the rest of the world, get them to give up all the fussin and the fightin and then we can spend all our money of insuring every illegal alien has health care.

Most of the fighting and terror is in some way IMPOSED on the world by America and it's allies/alliance so they would only stop spending resources once their goals ( the destruction of freedom) have been achieved. As is evident by American spending they have not yet accomplished said goal.

Stellar

that's a burn whitechapel, i mean stellar seems like he really knows what he's talking about, i mean no insult, but i simpl;y agree with everything he said.

Originally posted by INc2006
that's a burn whitechapel, i mean stellar seems like he really knows what he's talking about, i mean no insult, but i simpl;y agree with everything he said.

Well than, with all apologies, you are as clueless as he. Even the articles he referenced don't back up his claim but mearly reinforce that living standard GROWTH has slowed, but living standards are not in decline, which is a HUGGGEEEE difference. Plus, one of them appears to be from 1986, hardly relevant today given the huge changes in global economy.

I am sorry about getting his country wrong, I was grading papers, oddly enough, about south american trade policies and having just finished had that on my mind. My apologies for that. I can't stand the armchair quarterbacking from people on other continents. It's so easy to take biased newsources and draw your own conclusions, or make huge assumptions based on general stereotypes read in those news sources or heard on tv or from friends of a region. It's infuriating and you'd think people on a web site such as this would have a much clearer understanding of relevant issues they choose to post on...I guess I was mistaken.

Originally posted by StellarX


What America has done for the last century is actively hunt down and destroy 'freedom' all around the world. Few powers threatened American security in the last century and those that did were allowed to do so.


Stellar

This is all I need to know, this guy has an axe to grind and is clearly dillusional. I'm certainly not in favor of everything the US has ever done, but to make such a blanket statement when so many of our own people (including members of my own family) and resources have been lost defending countries and people who can't defend themselves is wayyy out of line, not to mention even more inaccurate than his previous posts. In fact, it's beyond innacurate and is bordering on insulting. When you're the big dog though, I guess you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

This is all I need to know, this guy has an axe to grind and is clearly dillusional. I'm certainly not in favor of everything the US has ever done, but to make such a blanket statement when so many of our own people (including members of my own family) and resources have been lost defending countries and people who can't defend themselves is wayyy out of line, not to mention even more inaccurate than his previous posts.

Not at all. Actually, statistically US has traditionally supported tyrannical, totalitarian and sectarian regimes over democratic regimes, in order to combat the communist movement.

As far as StellarXs posts, they also have been statistically right on the money, and Stellar presents not his personal opinion, but facts which are easily verifiable.

In fact, it's beyond innacurate and is bordering on insulting. When you're the big dog though, I guess you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

And here we are. As usual when I encounter such obvious attempts of PO manipulation, I encourage everyone to visit fallacyfiles.org... a wonderful resource that clearly describes the technique and the origin of such blatant brain washing attempts.

Originally posted by iskander

This is all I need to know, this guy has an axe to grind and is clearly dillusional. I'm certainly not in favor of everything the US has ever done, but to make such a blanket statement when so many of our own people (including members of my own family) and resources have been lost defending countries and people who can't defend themselves is wayyy out of line, not to mention even more inaccurate than his previous posts.

Not at all. Actually, statistically US has traditionally supported tyrannical, totalitarian and sectarian regimes over democratic regimes, in order to combat the communist movement.

As far as StellarXs posts, they also have been statistically right on the money, and Stellar presents not his personal opinion, but facts which are easily verifiable.

In fact, it's beyond innacurate and is bordering on insulting. When you're the big dog though, I guess you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

And here we are. As usual when I encounter such obvious attempts of PO manipulation, I encourage everyone to visit fallacyfiles.org... a wonderful resource that clearly describes the technique and the origin of such blatant brain washing attempts.

I guess you didn't read his sources since they didn't support his argument at all...but whatever....some people are blinded by their own prejudice I suppose.