JohnSmith2007

Yes it is pocket change. So what? It's a budget cut. You guys like budget cuts, yes or no?

You guys? So you want more spending? You like the deficits? Are you coming down on the side of increasing the budget? Is that what you are saying?

It's not about the dollar amount.

Republicans wanted cuts. Cuts mean shelving projects around the country. Everyone understands this except for Senator Graham and you.

And you know that $50K is pocket change in this budget. You used selective editing to make a political statement and you got caught. Everyone understands that but you.

Gary,

Lot of projects nationwide can not move forward without federal money.

Lots of those projects have been shelved due to these budget cuts, which the GOP wanted.

You got what you asked for. Try not to be such a little b#### about it.

Arjit,

You know that the $50K isn't the issue here. You just tried to make the senator look petty over $50K and you got caught. Try not to be such a little b#### about it.

Yes, if the state could pay the $50K then it wouldn't be subject to a cut in the federal budget. Duh?

Why don't you come out and admit you're all for budget cuts except when they affect red state projects?

Reading comprehension problems today?

For critics who said the state should come up with its own funds for the Army Corp of Engineers' study to deepen the port, Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said such an easy solution is actually impossible under federal law.

The South Carolina State Ports Authority, which is responsible for operations of the Charleston Port, is ready to write the check for the state's share of the the study, but federal law requires Congress to cough up funds to enable the Army Corp of Engineers to move forward with the study. It would be the second step in the process; a first study already determined a federal interest in deepening the harbor.

But you already know it and are just trying to make light of your distortions. You got caught, admit it.

Typical Republican-Democrat regimer - arguing over $50000 when the country is facing a $1600000000000 deficit (8 more zeroes).

Na, in this case it is just the troll being the troll. He knows what he did and he also knows he got caught.

She needs to grow up and just deal with. If South Carolina can't afford it, they can't have it.

SC can't pay for it on their own until this $50k is spent by the feds. I have a feeling if it were a matter of the state paying the $50k it wouldn't be an issue at all.

What are you on about? South Carolina can't move forward with this project because of a cut in the budget. Republicans wanted these cuts. And now they're whining about it.

If the cut affected a project in New York y'all would be cheering it no matter how much NY needed it.

Sure man, good job. Keep it up.

You people wanted budget cuts but when a cut affects a red state suddenly OHNOWTFBBQ!

I guess all the cuts should be limited to NY and Cali to keep you people happy.

You got called on an obvious distortion. Take it like a man.

SC Can't pay for it even if they wanted to without this $50K. The port is important to the state and I understand why Graham is upset. But don't let me stop you from your misleading edits. Carry on.

Right and that federal share got cut from the budget.

When you ask for budget cuts, that sort of thing happens.

Sure man, I got you all wrong there!

What's the different story? Republicans wanted cuts but apparently not when the cut affects one of their own projects.

Uh huh, sure man. Same story.

You left out this little tidbit.

The South Carolina State Ports Authority, which is responsible for operations of the Charleston Port, is ready to write the check for the state's share of the the study, but federal law requires Congress to cough up funds to enable the Army Corp of Engineers to move forward with the study. It would be the second step in the process; a first study already determined a federal interest in deepening the harbor.

lets just post the whole story without the altered title and the selective editing. A whole different story emerges when you do.

Graham Vows To 'Tie Senate In Knots' Over $50K Left Out Of Budget Deal

Susan Crabtree | April 13, 2011, 9:08AM1781

Update: Sen. Lindsey Graham's (R-SC) office issued a detailed defense of his threats to "tie the Senate in knots" and block all of Obama nominations over $50,000 left out of last week's 11th-hour budget deal for a study on deepening the Port of Charleston.

For critics who said the state should come up with its own funds for the Army Corp of Engineers' study to deepen the port, Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said such an easy solution is actually impossible under federal law.

The South Carolina State Ports Authority, which is responsible for operations of the Charleston Port, is ready to write the check for the state's share of the the study, but federal law requires Congress to cough up funds to enable the Army Corp of Engineers to move forward with the study. It would be the second step in the process; a first study already determined a federal interest in deepening the harbor.

"The Corps requires virtually all ports around the country to shoulder some of the costs of feasibility studies, engineering, and design on harbor deepening," Bishop said. "South Carolina is ready to go. Now we're waiting on the feds to kick in their share. Without that green light, our state is stuck in neutral and cannot proceed."

Not all Republicans were celebrating Tuesday about the fine print of the $38.5 billion in cuts House Republicans managed to wrangle in last week's 11th-hour budget showdown. Tea Party loyalists who wanted tens of billions more cut from this year's spending were shaking their heads, and at least one senator was lamenting a budget omission he said would hit his state's economy hard.

In fact, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was down right incensed over the decision not to include a mere $50,000 for an Army Corps of Engineers study on deepening the Port of Charleston in his home state and vowed to "tie the Senate in knots" by holding up Obama administration nominations.

Graham started a string of angry tweets about the omission early Tuesday. By the end of the day, he had held a press conference on the issue in Charleston, S.C., and was blaming the Obama administration for failing to include the funding in its budget proposal released in February, arguing that 260,000 jobs are tied to the port.

"Obama Admin made a bad mistake not putting money for CHS port in their budget proposal," he wrote.

"No nominations go forward in Senate until we address CHS port," he tweeted, noting that the provision was not an earmark and applied to a dozen ports across the U.S.

Ah, selective editing.

For critics who said the state should come up with its own funds for the Army Corp of Engineers' study to deepen the port, Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said such an easy solution is actually impossible under federal law.

The South Carolina State Ports Authority, which is responsible for operations of the Charleston Port, is ready to write the check for the state's share of the the study, but federal law requires Congress to cough up funds to enable the Army Corp of Engineers to move forward with the study. It would be the second step in the process; a first study already determined a federal interest in deepening the harbor.

When I was going to community college back in 2003 tuition was around $800 for 3 or 4 classes not including books.

Now in 2011 I pay $1700 per class excluding books (although this is for a Master's Degree). I only take 2 classes a semester but not just because of $ reasons, I don't want to be studying all day.

Just a guess but I'd imagine it is pretty rare for a college student in today's day and age to be paying for their own schooling without student loans.

I did it by joining the military and using the tuition programs and later the GI bill. It was what it took for me to make it. There are other paths that result in the same outcome. If it is important enough for a person then they will find a way.

I also used student loans. It took me 10 years to pay them off but the education was well worth the effort.

I am only in the top 50% but would be quite shocked if I didn't move up to top 15% within 5 years....

BTW...I am coming across major multiple definitions of top X% from different sources (some sources said top 1% was $1,000,000 or more per year...others said $250,000).....the one I am using is from here:

Based on the Internal Revenue Service’s 2010 database below, here’s how much the top Americans make:

Top 1%: $380,354

Top 5%: $159,619

Top 10%: $113,799

Top 25%: $67,280

Top 50%: >$33,048

Ok, if you include my wifes wages we are in the top 10%. I like my life. I like it even more because I did it all by myself with the gifts that this country has to offer, that being: anyone can be anything they want to be. All they need to do is put forth the effort. It is all I ever asked from life, to be left alone and alowed to rise to the level I was willing to work for.

First of all, I just want to say that I'm not super rich or anything. I am in the top 1%, let's leave it at that.

It was mostly hard work (those who know me will tell you that I work ALL the time.)

I've never taken any handouts, not even unemployment insurance.

Just as I suspected, you won lifes lottery.

I am in the top 15%. I started from flat bottom (homeless and uneducated). The last time I had any government assistance was UI back in 1981. I decided I didn't want to be poor any more and I worked, made good choices and saved. I didn't do anything that is not available to ANY American. I stand by my statement that the difference between rich and poor is the ambition to not be poor. Both of us are examples. Now I am sure we can't expand that to every poor person in America but you could to most of them.

Up from the middle. My parents are as middle class as they come.

IYO, was it luck, hard work and good choices or someone giving it to you from another rich person that made you what you are?

And could anyone do the same thing you did?

I want a perfect body. The question is, am I willing to work out 5 hours a day, every day of the week?

Or is working out one hour a day good enough?

Question Mark, were you always well off or did you have to work your way up from the bottom?

The poor. All of them. That simple? Understand?

We've been down this road before. Absolutes are bad examples of sound logic.

Carry on pushing the thread beyond its intended point- as I stated before.

Jeez, so because I am saying that the poor are poor because they lack the ambition to become rich I have suddenly applied that to each and every poor person? You are the one going to crazy absolutes now. I take that as a sign you have run out of logic and have turned to hyperbole.

It shows. [/sarcasm]

Your logic defies reality. So many poor wanting to stay poor then. Yep, its that simple.

My logic is sound. The poor may not want to stay poor but they are unwilling to do what it takes to get out of poverty to be sure. It is that simple. What, do you think that someone is actively stopping the poor from getting out of poverty? How do you explain how two people that grew up together in poverty where one makes it out and the other does not? The only difference is the ambition to no longer be poor.

It is or it isn't. In this case, its not that simple. Read the thread, or at least read the first line of the OP, just before the actual article.

As to speaking to the ambition of the poor man to become rich, well, that is obvious only in the case that the ambition is executed and matched by results- sometimes luck, sometimes being 'discovered', sometimes other things that result in advancement. This is always not the case and should be painfully obvious. Read what mawilson has stated on that particular aspect of the discussion here.

What, you think I just walked into the last page of the thread and started posting? I did read the thread, every single post. And I stand by my comment. The only difference between a rich man and a poor man is the ambition to become rich. That is as black and white as it gets. Just because the first thing someone tries to do to get rich fails the truly ambitious try something else rather than give up. It is the ambition to become rich that makes rich people, plain and simple.

And poor people being poor due to a lack of ambition... the black and white reason for everything makes an appearance in the thread. If reality were so simple...

You love that old fall back don't you, "its not as simple as you make it out". Just another way of getting out of an argument without arguing. It's a little fishdude like if you ask me.

It is as simple as that zero. The difference between a self made rich man and a self made poor man is ambition to be rich. Not ambition in general mind you, but ambition to be rich.

No need for conspiracies, although if you've kept up with the thread, you'd realize that money is concentrated and those that have too much of it will do what they can to keep it- even though giving a little bit of it for the common good would in no way harm their top-tier status- old or new. And for that they do exercise quite openly a drive to retain the ability to make more and more- usually at the expense of those that actually are working hard.

So for the "common good" you want to take from the rich and give to the poor? Where have I heard that line before?

And just what do you think we have been doing since the "great society"? We have transferd trillions of dollars to the poor and guess what, we still have poor!!!

I am not sure of the point of the OP. Do you want to make more poor people rich or more rich people poor? Just how would you go about either one? Poor people are poor mainly because they lack the ambition to become rich. There isn't some sinister plot by rich people to keep the poor from "joining the club". People get rich the same way they always did - hard work, risk taking and good choices. Very few rich these days is old money.

Science is based on modelling to explain what has been observed. The models work until something comes along that doesn't fit the model, and then it is time to construct a more complete model, add a fudge factor, or disregard the observation as some sort of heretical hallucination.

But, sometimes they get it pretty close. Didn't Ptolemy determine the circumference of the Earth with a few mirrors and a bit of geometry?

I thought he used shadows that obelisk cast? He paid someone to pace off some long distance and compared the angles of the shadows.

I understand about red shifts and the relationships to distance. I also understand about gravitational lensing. Both albeit from a laymans perspective. I have a question though. If you are looking at a distant object that has been lensed and are trying to measure its red shift, wouldn't the red shift be changed by the lensing? The light would be traveling further than it really is due to the bending of the light. That would make the apparent redshift longer than reality, no?

Aye. Actually, we had a commission that, I think, on the balance came up with a decent blueprint. And the CBO listed about 100 suggestions on how to deal with the deficit. There's a lot of adult stuff out there - and I'm not talking about the porn - that can be used as a road map to fiscal sanity.

Yep, a lot of it was duplicate spending that could have been cut without any cutting of services. Even that couldn't get passed. Yes, we should stop lobbies from both industry and labor. We should also return politics to what it was originally imagined to be. Regular people giving a few years for their country rather than politicians spending 50 years getting rich in Washington. I would like to see a few things. A balanced budget law or ammendment. Term limits on any national office of two per office with a maximum of 20 years total in public office. Get the career politicians and the lobbies out of the mix and we may have a chance.