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Yeah, that's pretty awesome of him to admit

Zombie Milton Friedman says: "Who'da thunk it?"

Japan was a fun place to visit, but I don't think I'd ever want to live there...

Sweden or France seem like my kind of place, although the language barrier and cultural acceptance may be a problem, especially with the latter. Possibly Amsterdam? New Zealand? Canada?

It's my understanding that open rotor aircraft differ from both turboprops and turbofans, and are best compared to a propfan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propfan Here's an article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/20/travelandtransport-rollsroyce Here's a snippet comparing open rotors to turbofans: Here's a cutaway:

One of the most interesting things to compare is their followers: Obama: 105,450 McCain: 3,921 That speaks volumes to me

I have not seen it, but am not a big fan of conspiracy theories. Unless it's the one about Courtney Love killing Kurt Cobain.

If you'd like to learn Python better, you might try the Python Challenge

Joe was whining about progressive taxation. Was Joe ever talking about refundable tax credits? You apparently want to collude this with refundable tax credits/welfare/whatever. These happen regardless of how tax brackets are structured. Therefore your argument is a non-sequitur.

I only avoid it because you're desperately trying to change the subject and have kept me perpetually confused as to what the subject you're trying to change to is. I will gladly state for the record that saying an argument is wrong because of who is saying it is clearly a logical fallacy, an ad hominem, however I didn't do that, nor have you stated which arguments Joe was making which I should care about here. However, this is a thread about Joe. The guy clearly isn't credible. I was just pointing that out. It's certainly on topic. Okay, so now the subject has gone from Joe to progressive taxation to refundable tax credits. So apparently your problem, again, isn't with progressive taxation, but with refundable tax credits. So to reiterate, again, it's not progressive taxation that redistributes wealth.

Well, let me put it in a different light: right now our government is running record budget deficits, and at the same time our economy is in the crapper. Perhaps it's not such a bad idea to try to get the deficit down by raising taxes on Americans who can afford to have their taxes raised, as that won't have as much of a negative impact on the economy. "Wealth distribution" has nothing to do with the taxation structure. If you don't like wealth distribution you should be complaining about welfare. The tax structure affects how we fund the government, which during the past 8 years our government has done an abominally miserable job of, and in the process the wealth of every American has been redistributed into the aether.

Only time will tell if the standard model will "crash" as well. In fact, we already know it will, like in the center of a black hole. Let's stop trusting it. Those silly physicists. They act all snooty like they know what they're talking about, then the next day kabam, everything we know is wrong!

A demonstrable success record, as opposed to a demonstrable failure record?

The Obama and McCain campaigns both have Twitter feeds: http://twitter.com/BarackObama http://twitter.com/JohnMcCain Obama primarily posts the rallies he's attending. McCain primarily seems to be posting negative comments about Biden, negative responses to his coverage he's been receiving in the press, or his latest attack ads.

Yeah, it's a cool process, until you realize that in pretty much all cases the recommendation is to retain the judge. I voted against retaining this judge, though:

What's wrong with socialism: there's no profit motive, and therefore no competition, so the solutions they provide may be suboptimal in many areas What's right with socialism: there's no profit motive, therefore state-owned entities can focus on things other than profit, like maximizing the well-being of the population as a whole I don't think I'd want government-produced consumer electronics or cars, but I'd sure likes myself some socialized medicine

Okay, now I'm really confused. What questions did Joe ask that you feel are worth repeating, and how were Obama's answers unsatisfactory?

Wow, it's a new SkepticLance argument against climate science: the scientists are just cargo culting. They don't really understand what's going on with the climate system. They just fiddle around with their models making changes capriciously without understanding them until they magically reconstruct the historical climate.

What about a successful reconstruction of the historical climate?

Voting not to retain judges out of ignorance is not a particularly good policy either. For all you know, the judge you're voting out agrees with you completely, and the judge waiting to replace him you'd hate. The best methodology I've found for making determinations about judges is finding a policy organization or institute with many local chapters who's able to give recommendations for your state/county. If their reasoning is sound, go with it, otherwise don't vote. I'm looking for judges with a sound respect for the civil liberties granted to us by the Constitution. In order to determine that, you really need a civil libertarian with a sound knowledge of Constitutional Law to review their case history and make a recommendation.

Okay ParanoiA. I'm confused. Can you answer some questions for me? What answers from Obama are you referring to explicitly? It's hard to answer you when you're referring to something vague. What does the tax structure have to do with redistribution of wealth? What does the tax structure have to do with socialism? (or for that matter, what does redistribution of wealth have to do with socialism? wealth is redistributed under feudalism too) Finally, this thread is about Joe, hence me pointing out things specific to Joe. If you'd like to talk about something other than Joe, perhaps you could start another thread and give it the proper context.

Well, among other things, he's whining about how, hypothetically, if he were to make over $250,000, and if he were to actually pay income tax, that his taxes would go up approximately $800. Oh noes, the government is "punishing" him for being rich by upping his tax rate by 0.3%. Clearly you don't like progressive taxation. Great! I happen to like it. But it's not tantamount to socialism. And you're certainly not going to convince me something is bad by labeling it "socialism".

Please excuse me if I don't take a tax dodger's opinion on taxes at face value I find wealth redistribution much better to the neocon alternative: wealth evaporation.

So what? Well, given your long history of criticizing me and others for "spin" I thought you were against that sort of thing. Remind me to respond "so what?" the next time you accuse me of spin.

Open rotor designs are being pushed as a more energy efficient alternative to jet engines. The design uses two counterrotating propellers which push the aircraft along. What do you think about this approach?