Self evident.  LBJ was a fucking socialist from hell and FDR was straight up communist.  The taxes couldn't go up any higher, the top rate was still sitting at 70% even after Kennedy, and the drop to there created higher revenue.  They had to cut something to piss away all that money on the New Deal and Great Society bullshit, the military is the first thing on the list as something that counters the progressive agenda.  Work ethic, moral fiber, a fourth of the budget, that sort of thing.

Burned!  I've been incinerated!

This isn't a surprising view, the education in this country is absolutely pathetic when it comes to history.  We get nonsense about the various peace movements in droves, but for the biggest wars in our history, squat...  My post was a counter to these two paragraphs.  He's not necessarily an idiot if he thinks we should have stayed out of WW1, and in hindsight, WW2 might not have been all it was cracked up to be either, it's been one seriously fucked up place since it ended in that manner.  It might have been a good idea, but it was definitely none of our business.  We baited them into agressive actions, then used the excuse to attack them.  Right or wrong, it's still interference.

Make no mistake about who started it either, we stuck our noses in first, both times.  Germany asked Mexico to aid them against us because they were expecting us to make the first move.  Firing on merchant ships happened because we were shipping arms to their enemies.  Pearl Harbor was attacked because we were blocking them from oil access and supplying the Chinese with fighters and pilots to go with them.

Is the above a sufficient answer?  You called him an idiot and noted the lack of reasons behind his statements.  I then gave reasons.

Indeed, we could go back and wage war in an intelligent manner, have them both wrapped up in a tenth of the time with a hundredth of the casualties, and go back home!  That almost sounds like you're agreeing with me, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're ignorant but sensitive and attempting to evoke remorse.

Both "World Wars" were handled absolutely horribly, and yes, the first one was indeed a joke.  Despite what you've been told, the first war was almost entirely in Europe, and, despite the truly impressive death toll, in danger of spreading nowhere.  Germany would have gone into a full scale revolt without us just fine, they nearly beat us to the punch as it was.  Russia had already surrendered gracefully and backed out of the affair themselves before it finished.  It was winding down, not winding up.  Hell, if they hadn't been utter retards, it would have ended a lot sooner.  You know the saying, never bring a knife to a gun fight?  They were still charging, bayonets against machine guns.  The glory of the charge...

It's a joke that 30 million people died over utter idiocy, a terrible joke, but still a joke.  It's a joke that they call it a World War, as if anything but the death toll was spectacular.  WW2 was full scale war on three continents.  WW1 was almost entirely in Europe, with only minor skirmishes outside it.  The Seven Years and French Revolutionary war were just as deserving of the title World War, they just lacked the body count from such a gross level of stupidity interacting with the water cooled machine gun emplacement.  The difference 120 years and no change in tactics makes.

My reason for living, oh no...

/wrists

For those of you that take the internet seriously, no, I didn't actually kill myself.

I guess the RMS Lusitania and Pearl Harbor weren't important?

I'm amazed at how much our own history is contantly being rewritten. I think the reason for entering both wars was fairly clear: We were attacked.

Maybe we were involved in the economics of the wars before we joined militarily, but I really don't care. That doesn't make us pathetic. What was really pathetic was other nations attacking our ships. I really don't care how much we "baited" them. If you attack somebody, yeah you should expect them to respond. Duh.

What would have made us pathetic would be ignoring the fact that our people were dying in a war that we weren't fighting. Once our people started dying, I think it was totally appropriate that we should have gotten involved.

Now that is unfortunate.

[/sarcasm]

-

Maybe it's because I am almost agreeing with you.  I'm not half as stupid and ignorant as you seem to think everyone is (at times even including yourself).  And for what it's worth, as much as you're attempting to shoot down everything I say, you're actually almost agreeing with me on WWII.

However, with roughly the same information, I come to a different conclusion: That on its own our involvement in WWI was largely inevitable, and that on its own our involvement in WWII was vastly more inevitable.  The effects that WWI had on WWII are irrelevant for my purposes, as I'm simply considering them separately.

Your points on death tolls and global involvement in wars that were not seen fit to be called world wars are valid, but I'm uncertain as to how they are relevant to the current discussion as I'm almost positive none of the ones you mentioned were due to Democrats being in office; additionally, I was under the impression we were only discussing wars that the US was actually involved in.

I understand you think everyone's an idiot-and most of the time that's correct-and I understand you don't believe anyone aside from yourself has any education with regards to anything, or in this instance history.  It seems, however, that you don't understand that just because someone has a different viewpoint than you, or comes to a different conclusion, doesn't necessarily mean they're uneducated swine and don't have the same information that you do.

For my part, I assumed oothal to be only marginally educated, and to simply be throwing wars out there in an attempt to support his argument so long as someone was in office he felt he could blame it on-but I see no reasoning such as you have attempted to provide in his post, and I would challenge you to find any.

-

EviliroN, I apologize, I was just confused as to what the purpose of your post was.  I thought my comment was sufficiently sarcastic that it would be seen as such.

-

Carry on.

Well, "technicaly," we were smuggling war supplies to Britain on the Lusitania, so the Germans "technically" had a right to sink it.

As far as I know, there are no more vetrans of WW1 who are still alive. Keep in mind that it was in 1914, so you'd have to be born around 1895 or so, and not many people, to my knowledge, live to be 113 years old....

Um, all of the wars/conflicts he mentioned, the US (in one form or another) fought in them.

Oh, btw, Clinton started this whole economic meltdown  crap by ordering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to grant more loans to people who probably wouln't be able to pay of their loans because "everyone must  be equal." I also found it interesting that even though Obama promissed "change," more than half of his cabinet is from Clinton's....

Anubis, there are some.  Notice how I said "few survivors"-honestly, I wouldn't expect it to be more than double digits at this point, but on the other hand I'm also assuming the existence of at least one.

Oh hey.

Wait, wait, wait.  The US fought in the Seven Years War and the French Revolution?  That's news to me.  I mean, shit, the Seven Years War happened before the US was even technically a country.  I thought we called that portion the French and Indian war?

But still...what politicians can we blame for that one?

I wasn't questioning our involvement in oothal's wars, I was questioning psychoak's other-war-ldly references.

I called our education pathetic, not our involvement...

Incorrect!  Frank buckles is 107 years old.  1917 bud.  You go by the end of the war recruits, not the beginning.  The US wasn't even involved in 1914.  Of course, he also lied about his age to get in, but whatever.

You noticed all the self deprecation!  Occasionally I get called an elitist instead, stupid people provide endless entertainment.  I just find your calling him an idiot because WW1 and 2 were unavoidable regardless of party to be unfair.  Agreement is irrelevant to the fact that there are rational, factually backed reasons why it's not something beyond the pale.

WW1 probably would have not been entered into had someone honest been in office, WW2 was all but guaranteed to be a no show.  Both wars were entered into with massive public resistance only after they finally took the bait the dishonest presidents offered them.

In WW1, the Germans attacked our merchants because we were supplying arms to their enemies during a war.  They even ceased after we demanded it until later when it was going badly and they simply had no choice besides surrender.  We were killing them from the very start by keeping them well supplied with hot lead.  They looked for aid against us because it was obvious that Wilson, having won reelection, no longer needed to worry about his career and was just looking for an excuse to go back in.  An honest president wouldn't have allowed the underhanded supply of one side and not the other while claiming neutrality.  No Wilson, maybe no war.

In WW2, we took it much farther.  We blocked Japan's access to oil reserves, sent men and warplanes into China and Britain.  This country had switched domestic production to war time production specifically to supply the enemy with everything from bullets to bombers.  FDR practically begged for a declaration of war because it was the only chance in hell he had of getting involved.  Congress had already outlawed the aid to avoid it and he went and supplied them anyway.  To the people, it was disgraceful that they were behaving like animals.  They'd just been through the bloodiest war in the history of the world a scant generation earlier.  If the first thirty million weren't enough why bother helping a second time around?  The protest against Vietnam wouldn't have held a candle to what would have happened if Congress had declared war on the Axis powers before being attacked.  No FDR, no war.  Maybe a Reagan could have gotten us into it, but I doubt it.

I called the first one a joke in the context that it wasn't a world war.  I was challenged on my statement, so I provided others that were equally deserving.  As an aside, we were sorta involved in that first one.  The colonies saw fighting with the French.

Since you consider them both unavoidable, you must be lacking in education.

That makes you a swine not.  You are a product of the phenominally fucked up school system and press core like damn near everyone else.  When someone is taught wrong, it usually takes, this is easily observed in wackjob cults, military training, middle management at the local store, any structure where ideas are drilled into people.  If they drill the wrong ones in first, only the brightest break out of their box.

I didn't need to be bright.  I was blessed with having an absolutely horrific kindergarten teacher, she swore in class and hated children, and a mother that didn't hold her tounge often enough.  Being a skeptic from a young age insulated me against being taught wrong, because I've never actually trusted my teachers.  Ending up a paranoid freak of nature that assumes he's being lied to from the start and works from there has it's benefits, not having to worry about falling for a pretty girl on the internet for instance.  Since you're all eighty year old perverts I don't have to worry.

I do consider people in general to be idiots, but then everyone would if they paid attention.  Detach from your self interest and look back on today, just today  I'd bet you did some really stupid shit today without even realizing it.  If you count irrelevant and petty actions with no point to life, just posting here proves that you're an idiot.  I know you can't have gone out in public without having seen idiocy in copious amounts, we have entire industries devoted to it.

I didn't either, why do you think I supplied some?

Edit: To my knowledge the US had no military involvement in the French Revolutionary Wars.  The Napolionic Wars yes, but those are a seperate list.  Yet again, we were supplying one side in a war that didn't concern us and got our butts scorched for it.

Actually, economically, it's the exact opposite - the inability for a tax to move the price point is *most* effective in the (mythical, but fairly well simulated in actual markets) commodity/free market with perfect buyer/seller information - in that market of course, while you can undercut your competition the demand curve is perfectly elastic and that simply mean you get bought out at your discounted price, then your competition get's bought out at the optimal price, resulting in their making more money for the same service. The optimal price is set by the curves, and although a tax can *indirectly* affect the optimal price (ex. Lower profit margins may move the supply curve to the left as less people are interested in producing the service, which in turn raises the optimal price point where supply meets demand), or actually render it unprofitable (taxe exceeds profits), those are not 'typical' taxes - unless the tax is sufficiently high to dry up the supply by making it unfeasible to stay in that market, it's actually not going to affect the optimal price at all.

Now the further we are from that idealized commoditized free market, the more interplay there is between prices and taxation, but that interplay only becomes particularly strong at low elasticities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand) - very non-substitutable necessities which in turn implies a monopoly or cartel of some sort (Not necessarily an 'evil' monopoly per se - for instance an antibiotic whose patent is still enforced and is the only effective antibiotic for a drug resistant infection.). Obviously that kind of situation is obviously not entirely divorced from day to day reality, but it is a very specific kind of unbalanced market, not a mainstream issue.

Jonnan

Which is why when arguing profit and taxes, you never ever equate dollar increases in taxes with dollar increases in prices, they aren't related anyway.

Adjectives.

Largely inevitable

Vastly more inevitable.

Reading comprehension?

I grant that you have points, but my view is that even considering all of the things you have brought up, it would have been extremely difficult (albeit not impossible) to stay out of WWI, and that it would have taken a miracle (note: a Republican wouldn't be enough) to stay out of WWII.

I didn't just flag them as unavoidable-I did ask his view on it, which I don't believe he responded to.

You continue to consider me uneducated simply because I do not come to the same conclusions that you do.  You also seem to be under the impression that this is so because I do not, or did not, have access to the same information.  It is not necessarily the case that there is only one valid conclusion to be drawn from a given set of data.

I've corrected enough of my teachers in my life to process their words without taking them as fact, and, to quote someone rather (in)famous (who you might know of), I've never let my schooling get in the way of my education.

For what it's worth, I didn't actually call him an idiot-I was somewhat polite about it.  I simply said that he made himself look like an idiot.  Although my second post used the term "idiocy", it should be obvious I was referring only to what he said.

Look, ma, no edits!

I don't just recognize that you perceive everyone to be an idiot-I understand it.

I suppose your corrections to oothal's post appeared to be more defensive of it simply because there were gaps of whole sentences in between swearing.

Also, my response above was with regards to Anubis-I was under the impression he thought I was questioning whether the US was indeed involved in any of the wars oothal listed, which as far as I'm concerned is not even up for discussion.

Either you're even more distrusting of people in politics than I am, or you're retarded, not sure which.  Oh well, can't figure out everything in life.

What's a ten letter word for liar?

Politician.

Just in the neither here nor there, although Fannie/Freddie made some mistakes, the GOP 'they caused this meltdown' theory has been pretty thoroughly debunked  - I'm running a three person shift myself at the moment, so I'm just going to link to a good reference point that goes over it in detail (Hooray I hear you cry!).

As an aside - given the fannie/freddie policies that the GOP has tried to insist caused this date back to the 70's, I have the vague thought that if they were going to cause humongous meltdowns, someone might have noticed before now.

See: Economist's View: Once Again, It Wasn't Fannie and Freddie

Jonnan

Try reading up on housing prices.

Real estate has been on a thirty year climb, since... the S&L meltdown!  Wow, that's weird, a decade after the original, mild implementation was implemented, the shit hit the fan!  A decade after the current, vastly more risky update, the whole real estate market collapses and takes major banks with it?  Can't possibly be a correlation there...  Oh right, a hot economy cooled off as oil prices rose!

When you create a boom by increasing demand, you experience a bust when supply catches up.  The subprime market only works when the house is worth more after they buy it.  That way they just sell it to someone else instead of defaulting.  When it's worth less, you get the spike shod anal probing version of introductory economics.

So, lets be clear on this, assuming you're responding to my post (On the one hand, it's the only post it looks like you *could* be responding to, on the other, you have no references or quotes, thus no context) - you're actually drawing a line, for some reason, between a sub-prime loan crisis that was precipitated by a lack of regulation, through some errors made by Fannie/Freddie which are really not at all related, and to the S&L crisis caused by deregulation over twenty years ago?

I've gotten used to the weird faux-histories of conservativism over the years, but the fact that prices rose is *not* the indication of a bubble - increasing demand/diminishing supply does that. There *are* a number of factors that *do* indicate bubbles that people like Paul Krugman were talking about six years ago (Fortunately, since listening to him helped keep me from taking a bath in the housing market myself), but if there's a line to be drawn from the sub-prime to fannie/freddie to the S&L's to the 70's regulations that made housing easier for people to get for 40 years, it depends on some historical assumptions buried in conservative mythology, not in any real life histories.

You're going to have to state and defend your assumptions here.

Jonnan