We have often marveled at the extraordinary discoveries and pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. However, a panel of the House Appropriations Committee Science has moved to cut the successor to Hubble — the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It is part of a $1.6 billion cut into NASA — an agency already slashed deeply in prior budgets.
The Webb telescope is designed look deeper into space than the Hubble. Its launch is now delayed. It is 75 percent complete, but could now be scrapped.
House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said “given this time of fiscal crisis, it is also important that Congress make tough decisions to cut programs where necessary to give priority to programs with broad national reach that have the most benefit to the American people.”
I understand that sentiment but why not make the tough decision to cut funding for our three wars? The Obama Administration has just burned over $1 billion on our latest war. We are literally burning away our scientific and educational foundations to pay for these wars.
Source: The Hill
@GeneH, believe me, nothing you say could possibly offend me.
Thanks for admitting you were making an ad hominem attack. Your understanding as to what constitutes a fallacious ad hominem however continues to be confused.
Calling someone a liar, even when based on some alleged history, is always an ad hominem, unless the person’s credentials are in issue or the person has made a personal observation, when you link it up to a claim that the lying invalidates the person’s arguments. This is because even a liar, with a history of lying, can still make true statement and have accurate opinions. Thus, it is still incumbent upon you to rebut the argument and not rely on the ad hominem. The same applies to the rest of your accusations as well.
Not that I care what I think, But I don’t want you to be even more confused every time I call you on your ad hominems. Though I do understand why you’d go the ad hominem route instead of making substantive arguments based on your history of making poor arguments. Now tell me, am I lying?
But now that you mentioned it.
“We now believe that [the solar cycle] accounts for 50 per cent of the variability from year to year,” says Scaife. With solar physicists predicting a long-term reduction in the intensity of the solar cycle – and possibly its complete disappearance for a few decades, as happened during the so-called Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715 – this could be an ominous signal for icy winters ahead, despite global warming.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/35145bee-9d38-11e0-997d-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1RacNghPj
Bdaman:
where have you been hiding out? Chasing global warming cons?
Down in St Augustine for the fourth and was hoping to get the chance to see the last shuttle launch but it was covered up by them pesky clouds.
kderosa,
I see once again that you don’t understand the words you read. I didn’t say I wasn’t making an ad hominem attack. I said you didn’t understand what one was as in just because it is an argument to a person that does not automatically make it an invalid argument or fallacy. Given the circumstances such as your having a history of making up terminology to suit your needs on this blog and let’s say a rather colorful interpretation of world history that does not comport with facts is proof that your veracity is questionable at best. Since you want people to believe what you say is true, your veracity is relevant.
Ad hominem attacks are only a fallacy if they are untrue or doesn’t go to personal conduct, character and motive. The ad hominem argument against taking you seriously goes directly to your personal conduct and character. Since your history (personal conduct) both indicate that you fabricate both history and vocabulary, the attack is not a fallacy but goes to your veracity. While an ad hominem attack, it is a valid argument supported by evidence of your personal conduct as to why you should not be taken seriously.
You make things up. You make up history. You make up vocabulary. You make up rules to logic that don’t exist.
No one should take someone who does that seriously.
I take people as seriously as their record for truthfulness indicates that I should. You have a terrible record here in that regard. Consequently that is why I don’t take what you say seriously.
If that offends you because I don’t think liars should be taken seriously, then I’m completely unconcerned.
You have no one to blame but yourself, although I’m sure you’ll try to blame people’s reaction to your past actions upon others.
Bdaman:
where have you been hiding out? Chasing global warming cons?
@GeneH
Wikipedia gives a good description of what an ad hominem is. Here are the relevant sections that apply to your behavior (and that of many of your comrades):
As a preliminary matter, since I haven’t put my credentials in issue (unlike, say, Elaine) or made a personal observation, my character is not at issue, so comments directed at my character do not fall within the exception to the rule that an ad hominem is a logical fallacy.
So,all we need to do is to find 1. a claim to a negative characteristic or belief of the person and 2. a link to the truth of claim, i.e., to attack on or an attempt to invalidate a claim or an argument.
Whether the negative characteristic is true or false is irrelevant. (Abusive ad hominem … can also involve pointing out factual but apparent character flaws or actions that are irrelevant to the opponent’s argument.)
So when you say things like “history of lying,” “history of making up things,” “history of being wrong,” “history of inserting premises,” etc. and then dismiss the argument, such as “not taking you seriously,” either implicitly or explicity, based upon the negative characteristic, you’ve committed a classic ad hominem.
I won’t even address the issue of the veracity of these claims as to personal characteristics since they are entirely nonsensical.
Oh and get rid of that no good propagandist Hansen.
The problem at least the way that I see it is where the money is allocated between NOAA and NASA. Money should be diverted from NOAA and given to NASA giving NOAA a Tomahawk chop to their budget instead.
Hope everyone enjoyed the 4th Holiday. Just got home to the Ponderosa
My view is clouded by actually having an empirically fact based education to the extent it is clouded at all.
Shouldn’t that be NOT CLOUDED at all.
Not sure what you meant because my mind is a little clotted ATM 🙂
Roco count me as one of your buddies
Roco,
My view is clouded by actually having an empirically fact based education to the extent it is clouded at all. That you resent anyone with an actual education and insist on presenting arguments from ignorance is your failing. The only disservice I’ve seen demonstrated on this blog related to education is the disservice that you and your buddy’s lack of education – progressive, conservative or otherwise – provides. If you want to cheerlead each others historical inaccuracies and fictional definitions, I have no issue with that. It only further illustrates why neither of you should be taken seriously.
GeneH:
I find kderosa to be truthful, I have yet to find an intentional lie or for that matter an unintentional misstatement of fact.
Your view is clouded by your progressive education, you only know what you were taught in school and filter all of your opinions through the intellectual lens of your progressive instructors. When either kderosa or I make a statement which is an actual fact of history, you and others call it a lie. At first I thought it was out of meanness but after awhile I came to understand it is out of ignorance.
Your education has truly done you a disservice.
kderosa,
If you take statements of fact, such as you “have a history of making up terminology to suit your needs on this blog” as an ad hominem attack, perhaps you don’t understand what an ad hominem attack actually is. An ad hominem attack is only a fallacious argument when it is not true or irrelevant. You were once again making up terms to suit your needs. The Founders were progressive thinkers born of the Enlightenment. Political progressivism is advocating changes or reform through governmental action. Changes and reforms such as severing your colonial relationship with a monarchy to form your own democratic government. The founders were in fact progressive in every sense of the word.
An ad hominem attack is a valid argument when it is made because questions of personal conduct, character and motive are relevant to the issue at hand. Since made up definitions are not the equivalent of true definitions, the issue of you having a demonstrated history of making up all kinds of terminology here (and being corrected on it by others) is not an invalid argument even though it goes to your person. It is in fact valid because it goes to your veracity. If you don’t want to be seen as someone who says untrue things, and using a false definition for a term is using an untruth, then don’t say untrue things and stop making up the meanings to words to suit your needs when they actually mean something else.
In simpler words, if you don’t like being called a liar, don’t be one by fabricating definitions or in any other way.
Since your truthfulness is relevant to whether or not you should be taken seriously and your untruthfulness is evidenced by the history of your postings, what I said may be to your person, but it is not an invalid argument.
GeneH:
you really do not understand the genesis of the commerce clause if you think it means that and you do not understand the original intent of the clause.
In fact you don’t understand the Constitution as written by the founders at all. You understand the Constitution as rewritten by progressives over the last 100 plus years and that is what you learned in your law school classes if you are a lawyer.
For example the notion of interstate highways funded by the federal government was first brought to the convention by Franklin in the form of the federal government paying for construction of canals. It was rejected as a general burden with a local benefit. I am not saying that our federal highway program is a bad idea but the founders were very careful to try and protect individual rights. In other words they didn’t think it right for a person in Georgia to pay for a canal in New York.
Quite frankly I don’t benefit much from the interstate highway system, I can use the local highways to get just about everywhere I go in my state.
@GeneH, what part of “I don’t care what personal atatcks you throw against me to avoid responding to my arguments” didn’t register?
By the way, here is the argument over what exactly the Commerce Clause was intended to cover. Hint: it wasn’t all manner of business.
Roco,
Either the Commerce Clause gives government the right to regulate business or it doesn’t. You can’t have it both ways. Since the wording is plain and you don’t disagree with it, then by default you are agreeing that government has a right to regulate business. That you constantly rail against government regulation of business seems to imply a political agenda on your part that is at odds with the Constitutional facts or indicate that you’re either confused or perhaps hypocritical in your assertions at odds with the facts.
kderosa,
Is there some part of “I take nothing you say seriously” that isn’t registering?
It’s not like you don’t have a history of making up terminology to suit your needs on this blog. Call the Founders hasenfeffer for all I care. That does not change the fact that they came from the progressive ideals embodied by the Enlightenment as a response to the tyrannies of traditionalist England. If you simply want to disparage liberals or progressives, man up and do so without trying to change history or make up meanings to words which you do on a regular basis judging by your posts.
It’s that kind of behavior on your part that makes me not take anything you say seriously.
GeneH:
I am not saying that the commerce clause does not say what you say it says. What I am saying is that commerce had a more particular meaning when the Constitution was written.
I think you are the one who is being disingenuous.
@GeneH, the founders were not Progressives in any sense of the word. We can’t even call them liberals anymore, because you ruined the maeaning of that word as well, Now we have to rely on the retronym “classical liberals” to described them.
Roco,
Sorry, but I don’t have to answer disingenuously framed questions nor will I. The plain wording of the Commerce Clause gives government the power to “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States.” If you have a problem with that as being “progressive”, I suggest you take up with those old progressives the Founding Fathers.