You dont think ANY of these programs ought to go?

Exchanges with Historic Whaling and Trading Partners

What the fuck is that and why is the federal government paying for it?

The Hubble breaks my heart, but thats a personal thing.

I wonder how much objective info is out there on some of these. Every program has a spiffy, important sounding name, but are these just not preforming, are they pork that somebody is finally cutting?

Stephen,

Again, look it up.

The Exchanges with Historic Whaling and Trading Partners funds museums and historic landmarks, as well as exchange programs between Alaskan natives, Hawaiian Natives and students from Massachusettes. It also funds Oceanography and Aquarium programs. Total US government appropriation 6.5 Million dollars for 2003. Bush seemed to like it because he increased it from his 2002 budget by over 1 Million dollars.

But more to point Cretin Boy, is the classic magic act that you and other facists always play - it's the "look over there" trick - pick on a potentially indefensible program and whine about pork while much more important programs (and on that list there are many - but you failed to mentioned those - because you are so massively ill-informed) go to the gallows.

It's the trick of bullies - who in turn, grow up to be facists - like you Stephen. Go away.

Ahhh yes, the ever hostile biederman. Go ahead, think up funny nicknames, call me a facist, thinking, like so many of your kind, that if you just repeat it enough, it will become true.

So yeah, lets spend 6.5 million dollars on that program, while at the SAME TIME, bitching about the national debt.

Your solution? Tax other people.

Correct me if I'm wrong here. Thats your solution. Tax other people? Because surely Mass. can't afford to fly its students to Alaska without everybody else in the country pitching in.

If I'm the facist, how come you want the government's hand in every little thing that goes on?

Why don't you stick to producing bad TV? You're so damn sure you know what everybody needs, surely you can come up with a hit.

Lactar! The point is this: Bush is killing all these programs and greatly reducing dozens more -- just so he doesn't have to touch his tax cuts for the uber-rich. Between the budget cuts, the tax cuts, SS privatization, and war spending, I honestly have NO FUCKING IDEA what this man is trying to do with our economy.

Gentlemen, Gentlemen! At the risk of getting in between you two again (LOL) Did you catch Pat Buchanan and Natan Sharansky on MTP? What a world! By Sharansky's definition a fascist tyranny is one who needs an enemy abroad to cow dissent at home. Placating same said fascist regime only allows it to grow stronger until it threatens all in its path. Now here is the interesting part PAT BUCHANAN says the reason for 9/11 is intervention in the internal business of other nations, not for friendship but our own selfish interests, that after 50 years came back on us. That Sharansky pupil and friend, Fratboy, will bring down on us endless war. In order to pay for giving the rest of the world what it has not ask for we will have to not take care of our own internal interests, thusly that budget. So Stephan in the interest of that tentative yet tense disarmament between us, I grew up in the foster system, of four children who went in I am the only one who came out in mostly one peice. I believe from the bottom of my heart that authority must be questioned like your life depends on it, because it absolutely does. What makes a flaming liberal is when you give a rat's ass about who elses life depends on it. I myself have a healthy distrust of government programs, the strings attached some at a very high price. In my case the funds meant to raise me and my brother and two sisters went into someone elses bank account. They went from not having a pot to piss in to being millionaire in 14 short years picking my fathers corpse clean and investing wisely. My school, my church, my community watched as we were beaten and molested beyond survival and did nothing, the foster system? Only saw them when my sister tried to kill herself after being molested a onth after my fathers death, they were screaming at us to quit running away and be grateful for the care and comfort in which they kept us. So you see I might just possibly have my panties twisted too, I try to play within the system, be nice and smile pretty for the "better" people. I also try to educate myself and work within the political system so that I can change what I find appalling. Problem? We live in a dog eat dog society, people don't really give a RA unless it affects them personally. You want to see something really pathetic, see the big dawg when a bigger dawg whips him like a whimpering pup. He gets to feeling all victimized. Then you have your rushs and Roves appeal to that so they get collectively stupider, and make no mistake guys, eggheads worry the average guy. They make them feel, well, imasculated if you will. If that egghead is a female (our girl Hillary) wah-hoo! Its witch burning time! I'm all for simplicity, I do not condescend to working people (hell, I am one) but they assume eggheads condescend so they fear, and then some self serving shit heel pushes those buttons and here we have fratboy and all that goes with it. So gents now that my morning rant is done have a beer, Sam Adams (buy blue!), shake hands, discuss, and come out swinging. You folks took this land from my ancestors kindly quit f**ing it up, she is a beauty, she gives so much, give back a little, eh? Pat Buchanon making reasonable points, making sense, what a world.

Sorry to throw a hissy this morning, just came in from walking meditation (five miles)/attending church were God lives/basking in places that carry names given by my ancestors to commit a pre-emptive strike against a certain friend of ours who will no doubt request that the liberal, female, flake take her boo-hoo and go away. Got another tale to tell, try not to be long winded, please bear with me. My best friend of thirty years is a lilly white 6'3" second generation lapsed catholic (I am irish/cherokee). On his mom's side he had two 6'4" uncles. Two gentlemen who went to WW2 when they were way too young, came back, married, worked in factories, loved their wives and children, took care of them and paid their taxes without complaint. They both died within the last two or three years shortly followed by their wives, two of the happiest married women I ever met. I never met grandma and grandpa, I just listened to tales told by my husband and his uncles. Grandpa was a tool and die maker who had a rare, darn good job during the depression. A supervisor who thought he could bend Charlie's honor because jobs were scarce found out the hard way you could not bend Charlies honor. After he left the job he took his wife and family and went back to the farm. Grandma was five foot tall if that and kept her boys in line with her broom (read granny clampett). When she became afflicted with Alzheimer's and no longer knew Charlie he died of a broken heart before she did. From the depression to now these are the kind of people who made this country what it is. These are the people "our President" (who if I may be so bold is not fit to lick their work boots) is hurting an the life they built that he is destroying. My best friend is not unlike Charlie or his uncles. He is a gentle man who married for life, worked hard, and loves his children. He plays dollies on the floor with his two year old granddaughter. He reads every history book of every country and civilization he can lay his hands on;he is not a political activist because he believes all civilizations have their ebb and flow, the ones who survive do not lust for power and territory. He thinks junior is taking us back to McKinley when the robber barons ruled and we had a two class society not unlike modern day Mexico. His great comfort is music. You have to be a damn computer programmer to play with his stereo and his CD player interchanges like a hundred CD,s. You listen to Johny Cash, Mozart, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis and John Coltrane,the Beatles, and the Monkees. Twenty three years ago he worked in a factory with lead and other heavy metals in the air. He was sticken with cancer and beat it the first time back then. I worked, we raised our family, and then I went back to school. We made sure our kids went, so I still worked. I drove myself to collapse and then quit work and school. He was terribly upset. He thought he married Pocohontas, and at five foot three he always said I reminded him of Grandma (BTW real Pocohontas nothing like Disney princess), he pushed my butt to go back, he believes I cannot be beaten. He was layed off back in the Bush I recession. Cried like a little girl because what kind of man can't take care of his family? Six weeks later he was hired on at the biggest and best job in this area. This area is very conservative you would think the perfect place for people like us. He never wanted a brick ranch in the burbs, neither of us ever wanted a country club, he doesn't want to golf with the "right" people. We did not want our kids to hang with the "right" kids because they are not accountable for anything they do and if the child of a factory worker hangs with them and shit happens, guess who takes the fall? BTW shit frequently happens with kids who are not accountable for their own behavior (W). Youthful indiscretions end at diapers for the poor, mid-teens for the middle class, and may never end for those who can afford to game the system. At my husbands job they play Bible Jeapordy, they live in really nice houses and drive really nice cars cause thats how Jesus rewards you for right thinking, they can't believe he's married to a Cherokee because arn't they all dead, we had to kill them cause they wouldn't hear the work of Christ. There are three diseases that afflict people on his job-physical deterioration (carpal tunnel, shoulder elbow, knee) from the body being asked to do what it is not meant to do, alcoholism, and adultry. Very high divorce rate. My friend started drinking heavily after three years and it lasted fifteen years. Something soul crushing about being told your going to hell by someone who cheats on their wife, doesn't do right by their kids, and tells you yours isn't a human for being one of them. So Lactar/Stephen I hopped on my broom and told my friend if I had to live without him I could spare myself of watching his living death. He sought help for it a while back, the people who were suppose to help him told me to leave him before he hit bottom and took me with him. (FU very much I guess thats the last of his health insurance you'll see) Thats called mental health care in this country. Ever here of a heavy metal, Caladium I think? One of the ones at his old job. You guessed it, he married for life, when I couldn't take it any more he quit drinking only to have his cancer return a few months later. The "health care" professinals treat him like a dog, he can lay in the bed he made for himself. Funny, thats how I feel about tort reform. The only person who tried to help him is an overworked, stressed out sweet heart of a family doc. Kind of different around here because he's from a quaker/mennonite sect. These good conservatives and Bible thumpers around here give those people a rash of shit. Their community is collective and caring not unlike the native way of life BE (before europeans). The man and his family are the most humble and God loving people I have ever met. I am blown away by them. Any way I have hi-jacked the sight, many apologies. Lactar I/we have not ran to a lawyer to sue anyone. I blame the heavy metals for my husbands cancer, I contribute to Sierra Club because they have the money, the lawyers, and the dreamers to fight enviromental poison of the physical variety. At a recent protest in our capitol I attended I stood on the statehouse lawn and looked over at the towering building of the Bank that took money from the corpses of my mother and father and invested it for people who stole the souls of my sibling and left their bodies alive for your contempt, they made millions, and I beat my brains out up against brick walls. Don't sell me W sweetie, ain't gonna happen.

Stephen,

Am I hostile? Yes I am hostile. I am hostile at people like you who don't even realize that they are gun loving fascists; who don't realize how you are destroying this country with your fat headed arrogance and selfishness. Who, through an amazing lack of historical knowledge don't even realize what radical thoughts (which you would most likely be shocked by) built this country.

And I will not settle down until you are quieted, until you are shamed, until you are marginalized as the reactionary that you are.

Gun loving? No. Guns are tools. I do love my freedoms though, , and while you fight for your right to kill your children, I fight for the right to protect mine.

Oh, and thank God for Cindy, who at least has some fucking perspective, and some reasons for the things she believes in, who donsn't need to blurt out a talking point and start firing off insults. She calls them "rants", I rather liked her posts, though try to imagine what names you'd have called her if she didnt draw the same end result as you?

"...and while you fight for your right to kill your children, I fight for the right to protect mine."

Huh? Against who?

Check your local sex offender registry. Read up on any one of the governments that slaughtered their own people. Hell, why the fuck do you think people love Amber Alert so much? Because nobody ever hurts a child? I resigned from the "It can't/won't happen to me" club a long time ago.
You know what's sad? I have a harder time coming up with names of female friends that HAVENT been assualted/raped than I do coming up with ones that have.
I don't think everybody should keep/carry a gun. I personally do not own a handgun, nor do I feel I have a use for one. That said, disarming law abiding folks does nothing to protect me from violent criminals, and everything to empower them, and to empower a power structure that already has more of our rights under it's boots than it can handle.
I'm not a hunter either, though I do think about taking it up, because there are good programs that let you donate the meat and fur to the homeless, and a deers worth of meat and fur is of far more value than I can afford to write a check for, and at the cost of some time in the woods lugging around a bow or shotgun, I can help feed somebody.
I'm not an NRA member either. I don't donate money to them, either. There are far better uses for that money.
I do support gun rights, and if that makes me a fascist, then I'll wear the fucking T-shirt.
Funny you should wish to "quiet" me. I always thought that silencing those who dont agree with you was the surest way to reveal the weakness in your own points. Seems that quieting, shaming, and marginalzing people is the sort of thing you'd accuse the Repubs of doing.

Fear is good.

A little bit of fear is healthy, sometimes. Otherwise, we'd all be chain-smoking, drunk driving regulars at the local Russian roulette table.
Tell me something, do you have a fire alarm? I should hope not, because then you'd just be letting the evil First Alert company cash in on your fear of buring alive. Really, your home burning down is about the least likely bad thing to happen anymore, in most areas, but for 19.99, why not have the peace of mind?

Better afraid than unprepared. Best of all is to be unafraid because you ARE prepared.

Stephen,

Not sure where you're getting your "fire" statistics (you've pointed it out before, and it was unsubstantiated then). I believe the statistic is that someone dies in a fire-related death every 3 minutes. But, I guess that's not a lot to you. Having a fire alarm saves lives. Saying that having a gun in the house makes you safer than having a fire alarm is the strangest logic I've ever heard...

Of course you are aware of the numbers (or maybe not) that show that most gun-related shootings and subsequent deaths are either, accidents, suicide, or domestic violence. Not one of those is some burglar or gang banger waiting to rape your daughter. Be prepared, indeed.

As always, Stephen, your logic is horribly flawed, thus your conclusions are as well. Learn something, please!

Guys! Didn't mean to start a war! Guess my point above as it applies to the thread that it is the business of governmant to be a steward to the common good of ALL of ITS people. This administration plays an extremely dangerous game as your discussion represents very well. They play this smoke and mirrors game of division on hot button issues so well that the imperialism they are committing abroad (which will bite us in the ass on the level to make 9/11 a day in the park) but we are so polarized internally and so at each others throats that we are not paying attention to the man behind the curtain. We may well tear ourselves up before the Muslims get a chance at us. This last election cycle was won on gay bashing for the love of God. Since what CONSENTING ADULTS do in they privacy of their bedrooms is none of my business (or incidentally the governments) I wouldn't know a gay if one bit me in the behind. I just feel that having personally been persecuted for being something I was born to be, having what I was born to be hidden from me in shame as a necessity to not just survival, but the ability to move within society and make a living, and then finding out why it is that I think so different from "normal" people. I celebrate what I am, but I swear to God some of the truly frighteningly stupid things I have heard people say when they don't know a native is standing right in front of them. I guess that is why I truly feel for gays. When they try to adopt children in foster care and give them a chance at a loving home, they are up front considered unfit. I took a razor strap across my back more times than I care to remember because when I was twelve and went to church I believed what I heard about Jesus. He said children would suffer when the adults in their lives were idiots, an suffer they do. Then my church turned around and told me to be obediant, keep my head down and my mouth shut because I had no economic status. Where in that bible does it say a persons human worth equates to material worth? Lactar of all those women you know that have been assaulted how many of the criminals have seen jail time? One reason natives think so differantly is that when western europeans burned people at the stake for learning to read and write natives burned people for molesting children. And you all want to call us heathens! The man who destroyed my sister, tried his damndest to destroy me still goes to the same church, lives in the same community and never done a day of jail. The worst he ever got was he still feels the heat of my hatred over 30 years and sixty miles. Sexual repression is NOT morality, it creates deviance. Sexuality is a biological function, the voodoo you all want to rap it up in creates the distortion. The worst thing a native could do was not take care of their family. They did not have swear words but they did not call children denigrating names because the adults in their lives were again, idiots. And I am supposed to be ashamed of this??!! You all had Dr. Freud poison the well a few hundrrd years ago and you base your understanding on a guy that was an intellectual whore. Which back to the point of our thread here, a bunch of intellectual whores and a man who had the absolute best this wonderful country can offer and can accomplish nothing except the screwing up and destruction of everything he touches is doing just that not just to this country but to the whole planet! He will covet, he will kill, people will be asked to dishonor their fathers and mothers and you want to feed me on he's the second coming of Jesus. I can take an ass beating (though a sweet and gentle man has spoiled me terribly for thirty years) but I will NEVER buy into this.

First off, I never told you to repress your sexuality, and I personally would like nothing more than for this nation to adopt the 9mm cure for pedophelia. I have nothing aganist gays, though I'm not one to say that all opposed to gay marriage are evil hatemongers. Personally, I think it's swell if they adopt kids, and if you've read anything I've put out on the issue, which I dont expect you to, you'd know that I'm of the position that when there is a heterosexual couple ready to adopt every kid without a home THEN they can bitch about gays adopting, and when the heterosexual divorce rate isnt hovering at about 50 percent, THEN they can bitch about the gays damaging the sanctity of marriage.
Second, terrorism won this one more than gay issues (not that the gay thing wasnt a close 2nd, but it was the fear of the "turrests" that clinched it.
Third, since I'm not suicidal, and Im not a domestic abuser (which would prohibit me from legaly owning a gun, thus putting me well outside the "law-abiding" catagory), and I've taken the time to learn how to actually handle one safely, I doubt that if I went and bought a gun, having it about would make me any less safe. Oh, and your oft quoted statistics are full of shit. Usually, when those numbers are taken, the gun in the home is blamed for any firearm related death, no matter if it was that gun or not. If you die from a gunshot wound, and there is a gun in your house, it's added to the statistic.
I do like how you complain my shit isnt backed up, but then fail to back yours up either. Its ok though, we both know what you're talking about, and it's not that accurate. This is pretty far off topic though. If you'd like to debate gun control policy, I'd be happy to go toe to toe with you on that any day, with or without the footnotes.

My sexuality is doing just fine in a private sort of way, thank you! My point is that stranger molestation is a fairly small percentage. It is more likely to happen in the home or the church. The toll taken on society is incredible. You pay for it every day weather you recognize it or not. It is one of those unspoken of evils that exist because it does not get confronted and the particularly heinous nature of it is that it spreads like a cancer, it destroys lives yet leaves the bodies alive. We build prisons as fast as we can, we're a little more stingy on the mental health facilities but we do not address the problem at its root source. You do seem hung up on the gun thing. I'm sorry I don't see how that has any cost/benefit argument in a substantive way to benefitting the common good of all this nations people. Gun ownership is a personal lifestyle thing. I hope you don't think that keeps your wife and kids, or for that matter you safe. Nothing is a hundred percent and I don't honestly believe there is any such thing. Mutual respect and wimpy hippie BS like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; quality of life stuff like justice for all and a seat at a table you helped pay for. As for terrorism,well I do occasionally read a thing or two, interesting point: do you know that arabic countries do not have the level of social problems that a wealthy, free society like ours does although they most definately have that draconian legal code, and most of their attitudes toward women are a little closer to the stone age than the year 2005. Why I wonder do they consider us such lethal scum that they must get us before we get them. Abrams, Cheney, and Rummy committed some atrocious acts in South America (shockingly against democratically elected governments)you know arms peddling to the Arabic nations they want to take them back from now, drug peddling to pay for secret wars, training select "freedom fighters" to kill nuns at the Univercity of the Americas (stuff I'd really rather not pay for) and think of all those families and yet they do not come here and blow the hell out of us. This all leads me back to the Sharansky/Buchanon discussion. That golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" if PAT BUCHANON (surreal life-Paris who-uh, that is Paris isn't it?) when Pat notices that maybe we should mind our own business and take care of our own problems and pay our own way today, WOW what a concept!! Reminds me of the country I grew up and love in spite of the occasional blemish.

The gun hangup is not so much about guns, as it is the rights, and it just irks me that the same people who dont trust the government to know what books they read at the library, want to give them control of Health Care and disarm everybody so we would be at their mercy.
As for personal saftey, its just that, personal. I believe that if you feel you need one, and you take the time to learn to use it properly, and safely, then, it can make you safer (why do you think cops carry theirs, because in bad situations with dangerous people, a weapon is sometimes required). If you feel that your circumstances are likely to put you in that position, and you choose to arm yourself, thats fine. Im not saying everybody would be better off with one, I know thats not the case, but I'm not about to believe that a gun always makes everybody more dangerous or likely to hurt somebody. At the end of the day, it's just a tool, a thing, and all that matters is how you use it. Most gun owners are very saftey concious, law abiding folks, and thats fine. I just dont like seeing that right threatened, like any others, and I feel that people tend to ignore it because guns make them uncomfortable personally. Its really a rights issue more than guns.
As for invasions like Iraq, I never really liked the idea. I hope it goes well....I doubt it will, but I hope it does.
Pat is an honest man. His views might be shitty, but at the very least, he is honest, and he has always had an isolationist bent. This is nothing new.
Child abuse's root source is really that some people are assholes in the 5th degree. Think about it. Theft, sometimes murder, drug use, these can often all be explained by social conditions. You have no food so you steal. You live in poverty so you get hooked on smack. Another gang-banger tries to kill you so you kill him. Fine. But what causes you to rape a ten year old kid and bury him in your basement. I'm sorry, there is no justification, no explanation for that that says they deserve to live. I don't care if you were born attracted to little kids, you dont act on that. EVER. Do you rape every person you are sexually attracted to? Would you ever rape ANYBODY? People who violate little kids should be shot once in the back of the head with the cheapest ammo available.
I cant tell you the shame and horror I felt as a Catholic when the Boston thing came out. I can understand that priests have no greater percentage of pedophiles than any other job, and that pedophiles often take jobs that let them be near kids, but for the higher ups to cover it up, for the parents to LET it be covered up. If I'd been pope, I'd have recalled them to the Vatican and brought back some 15th century punishments.
There is no excuse for victimizing a child.

Stephen,

There is a huge difference between a domestic abuser and domestic violence. The terms are not really even related. One is extremely specific, the other refers to an entire form of violence, as Cindy aptly pointed out. Not sure how you jumped from one to the other in your earlier post. It is misleading on your part.

As far as my statistics being full of shit - my fire statistics are from government records. Are you referring to the gun statistics? I'll find them if that's the case. But more importantly, where are yours?