From Phil:

First folks, I wouldn’t classify myself as liberal. Moderate would be closer, but then, to a neocon, I’m way far left. Calling me a hippie is pretty funny, too, though that was (partially) in jest.

Then from CafeenMan:

Neocons whine about the government wasting money and then provide examples like school lunches, “handouts” to the poor and destitute, social security, education and science.

Actually, not so much lazy thinking, rather just ill-thought out abuse. Whatever his other merits, our host and CafeenMan use “neocon” much like large chunks of the far left do – as a term of base abuse, without any meaning.

Neoconservatives in actualitie actually tend to be much more socially liberal and comfortable with the welfare state than libertarians or paleoconservatives (see for example, the writings of Max Boot). In fact, many neoconservatives are indistiguishable from Scoop-Jackson Democrats.

Not that this matters, as there is no one of the neoconservative tendancy in power in the US (and in fact, Tony Blair for example, was and is more “neoconservative” than Bush or Cheney, for example), and even at the supposed height of its powers, PNAC, for example, had a grand total of….four employees and an annual operating budget of less than $100,000..

Anyway, time to get back to my new draft of the supernova FAQ. Phil, by all means continue posting on politics, but apply the same standard of rigour to that as you to do science…

Bill, on an hourly basis, the War on Poverty costs 8.5 times as much as the war in Iraq. One day the war in Iraq will be over and the troops will come home – and when they do, those troops will still get paid for garrison duty.

The War on Poverty has been going on for decades with no end in sight, and negative progress (imagine – paying people to stay out of the workforce results in them… staying out of the workforce!).

Tacitus: “Well, if you mean I assumed he was a Republican and not a Libertarian then you have a point. ”

Tacitus, I am neither a Republican nor a Libertarian. It’s worse than that; I’m Canadian.

Sheep.

Now are you really saying we shouldn’t have the same standard for companies that are paid in our tax dollars??

Anyone who says anything about “welfare” – do you realize how much this war has cost us?

So spend all our money in Iraq, give billions to crony contractors even though they don’t complete work are still paid in full, and ehh who cares about improving student loans, or pell grants… those are for poor people.

John McCain, by his own comment, voted against the bill because he said it would encourage soldiers to pursue an education instead of re-enlisting. Look it up, it’s available anywhere….

The sad fact, is that you simply parroted what you hear on right wing radio…
There is nothing at all true about it. Showing the salary of those who receive government contracts? I agree! If someone makes an excessive salary for a project that is never completed…there should be accountability, not just a give away, like there is in Iraq. In Iraq, more than 50 percent of the projects haven’t been completed, yet they have been fully paid for. If you understand contracting, you are paid on progression not in lump sums. Which basically means they were paid even though no work was being completed. Guess what – it was your money that paid them billions of dollars to not complete work.

As for the tax increase, it only affects those at 500k and above. It doesn’t even replace the tax that was in place on the upper echelon of incomes that W. Bust repealed. Do you ever wonder why the rate of foreclosure, and jobless continues to increase yet, the market stays high? The wealth has become increasingly centralized.

And btw…there has never in history been a tax cut, and a war at the same time. It’s unpatriotic.