HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: pjm@anegada.sps.mot.com (Patrick J. McGuinness)
Subject: Re: NAFTA
Organization: Motorola Inc., Austin TX
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 18:25:23 GMT

In article <1992Aug21.041452.27030@pony.Ingres.COM> garrett@Ingres.COM (QUOTE OF THE YEAR) writes:
>In article <1992Aug17.170312.9396@oakhill.sps.mot.com>, pjm@anegada.sps.mot.com (Patrick writes...
>>In article <Bt4r48.12C@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>
>>>  This was also an exceptionally booming persiod in the US economy and
>>>  that boom was fueled by massive private and corporate debt buildup
>>>  combined with a bizzare Republican form of Keynesianism: a huge defense
>>>  industry buildup.   These conditions were unsustainable.   
>> 
>>This claim about an increase in debt during the 80's is common,
>>but it is not valid. Private and corporate debt was, in proportion to
>>the economy, no larger in 1988 than in 1981. 
>
>I would like to see your sources for this (really). Because I saw an
>article from May that said Private and Corporate Debt from 81' to 91'
>increased by 71%.(I'll give you the source if you want it)

Perhaps. But the economy increased 40%, and business and private
net worth increased more than that (51% from '81 to '87).

Here my stats, from a book I've been repeatedly quoting w.r.t. taxes.
Lawrence Lindsay, "The Growth Experiment." All I can say is
read the book.
These are a little stale, since they're from '87, but they tell the
main story:

From 1981 to 1987 household liabilities rose by $1.3 trillion,
but assets rose more than $6 trillion.
In 1980, consumer credit amounted to $355 billion or 24% of
readily available  household assets (currency, svaings accounts, MM funds).
In 1987 consumer credit has grown to $697 billion, but ready cash had
also grown to $2.7 trillion. Consumer credit equaled only 25% of ready
cash.
In 1980 non-financial business corporations had $196 billion in liquid
assets covering nearly 24% of their $828 billion in credit market debt.
The prime interest rate was over 20%. At the end of 1987, these
businesses owed $1.6 billion in the credit markets but had $494 billion
in liquid assets. Their liquid assets covered 29% of debt, and the 
prime rate was only 8.75%.
	
The bottom line: Yes, debt increased, but so did the economy, and
so did assets.  The increased debt load was *not* borrowing from
the future. ( With the exception of S&Ls,  I guess :-( )

BTW, even when it comes to our national debt, some of the
rhetoric is overheated. Yes, the deficit and debt is too high, etc.,
but ...
The national debt of the U.S. is 58% of GDP.,
		 in Japan it is 63% of GDP,
		in Italy it is 105%.
---
Pat
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.bush
From: jmk@cbnews.cb.att.com (joseph.m.knapp)
Subject: Re: Call for transcripts Re: DATELINE: Bush fucks up!
Organization: AT&T
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 20:38:59 GMT

In article <4465@news.duke.edu> eyc@acpub.duke.edu (EMIL CHUCK) writes:
>                                   If anyone has any recent response by
>Jennifer Fitzgerald, please let us all know before the media get to her.
>:) Ms. Fitzgerald, however, unlike Gennifer Flowers, did not bring these
>charges up herself to the press. 

_Spy_ pointed out that Gennifer had a $20,000 job as an entertainer or
something before she sold out to the tabloid, while Jennifer is a
highly-paid and powerful Washington bureaucrat, unlikely to sell out even
if the story is true. There's a lesson for would-be presidents.

Remember the scene from _All the President's Men_ where Donald Segretti
(Nixon's Mary Matalin) is talking to Bernstein? When Bernstein charged
that Segretti cooked up a rumor about Hubert Humphrey using call girls,
Segretti said that if anything, the story helped HHH's image. Different
times, I guess.

It's only a movie. Where are the barf bags though? There are 80-some days
of this mudstorm left.
---
Joe Knapp    jmk@cbvox.att.com
From: matt@physics16.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Poll shows GOP convention giving Bush a bounce
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Date: 22 Aug 92 22:30:04
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics16.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: psg+@pitt.edu's message of 22 Aug 92 17:38:15 GMT

In article <5072@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP> psg+@pitt.edu (Paul S
Galvanek) writes that we should solve our political problems by
defeating incumbents in Congress, because Congress, not the President,
is the cause of our problems.

In particular, he writes:

> Clean the House!
  ...
> Arlen Specter '92

These two quotes show why this will never happen: like everyone else,
Mr. Galvanek thinks that "Congress," in the abstract, is a problem,
but wants to make an exception for the incumbent that he does
like---in his case,  Arlen Specter, the incumbent Senator from
Pennsylvania.

Me, I think that Arlen Specter is one incumbent whom we could very
nicely do without.  I, however, don't pretend that this is because of
any lofty anti-incumbent principle; I simply dislike his politics, and
I have a great deal of respect for his opponent, Lynn Yeakel.
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:39342 alt.politics.clinton:1812 alt.politics.bush:1367 alt.fan.rush-limbaugh:4420 alt.rush-limbaugh:3572
From: mpolen@gelato.mips.com (Michael Polen)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.bush,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: faxes and other terror tactics
Date: 13 Aug 92 16:11:29 GMT
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: gelato.mips.com

|> 
|> Let us not forget a couple of things...
|>   Mary whatshername's "bimbo eruptions" statement was a quote from a CLINTON
|>     campaign aid
|> 

This is a really important point.  And if someone in the Clinton campaign
said the next thing the republicans will do is call us rapists, then Mary would
be justified in calling them rapists?

The best part of Clinton's campaign is that the Bush campaign can't find
anything to say about Bush.
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: A Fallacy Peculiar to Liberals?
Date: 23 Aug 92 08:29:33 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

A lapse in reasoning (i.e., a fallacy) peculiar to American Liberals:
claiming that something or someone in the opposition is at the same
time  (a) silly, absurd, incompetent and (b) devious, machiavellian
and dangerous.

During the Cold War years this was often done with the U.S.
intelligence community; in their case, it played right into their
hands.

I notice this today especially in the treatment of Dan Quayle.  Come
on, guys, you can't have it both ways.  Anybody as dumb as Quayle is
supposed to be couldn't possibly be a threat to anyone.  There were no
newsletters keeping an eye on Spiro Agnew. -- 
********************************** +.............................+
*- Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>* :All opinions expressed herein:
*There is no privileged position.* :are my own and are not to be :
*	-God, Derrida, others    * : attributed to my employer   :
********************************** +.............................+

Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,ca.politics,ba.politics
From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: How representative are us Usenetters? (was Re: Religion In America: Hard Numbers)
Organization: LLNL
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 20:59:27 GMT

In article <727m8a_.phil@netcom.com> phil@netcom.com (Phil Ronzone) writes:
>In article <11764@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
@     @ ... It will become apparent that there is a large population
@     @ out there with whom the average USENETer has little or no
@     @ contact.

@ And I think this is a very large point that is all too often ignored
@ in these newsgroups.

@ Posters on the net are NOT in any shape or form representative of
@ the population at large.

@ Soc.motss posters are not in shape or form representative of the population
@ OR other net groups either.

	I don't see what's the point of that argument.

	I know that I will be accused of elitism, which as we all know
is _very_ Politically Incorrect, but I must point out that the Usenet
population tends to be more educated and more knowledgeable than the
usual run of people.

	And why is bowing to popular prejudice such a great thing,
anyway?

	Are we _supposed_ to believe that (for example) that early
people coexisted with dinosaurs, that it was Columbus who first
demonstrated that the Earth is shaped like a ball, etc. etc. etc.?

	And while we are on the subject of religion, there are some
convinced net.atheists (and net.pagans, also) who know a heck of a lot
more about the Bible than the large majority of those who profess to
believe in it.

	I recall that some Fundie-type publication did a poll in which
it discovered that about 80% of Americans professed to believe in the
Ten Commandments, while only 20% could name even five of them. It's a
pity that this publication did not ask about the teachings of the
Sermon on the Mount; I think that it would be fun to circulate it,
slightly rewritten, and see what people think of it. That same
experiment has been done with parts of the Bill of Rights, with many
people not even recognizing them, and even calling these
Constitutional amendments dangerously left-wing.


Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.elections,misc.education
From: emmett@kpc.com (Emmett Kilgariff)
Subject: Re: US Public Schools: Get Rid of All the Bureaucrats!
Organization: Kubota Pacific Computer Corporation, Santa Clara, CA
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 22:46:32 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.214325.15072@newshost.unh.edu> pas@kepler.unh.edu (Paul A Sand) writes:
>[Followup-to trimmed. Good grief!]
>
>
>Campaign rhetoric is a lousy place to find meaningful fact.  With the
>possible exception of the last sentence, this is all (at best)
>disputable, and probably just plain wrong. Here's a comparison of
>`public' monies spent in FY1989 on Pre-K through grade 12 for the
>school year beginning Fall 1988; one is by the fraction of GDP spent,
>the other a measure of dollars spent per-pupil:
>
>               %GNP       $/pupil
>US             3.64         3846
>Japan          2.92         2200
>West Germany   2.56         2168
>United Kingdom 3.43         2768
>France         3.53         2221
>Canada         3.99         3791
>
>Source: The Condition of Education 1992, published by the National
>Center for Education Statistics. 

	What does "Pre-K" mean? Is this the amount spend on all US
child care for children before they reach school age, or is it 
something meaningful?
From: sunder@altair.crhc.uiuc.edu (Srinivas Sunder)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: NAFTA (was Re: Bush's position on Bosnia)
Date: 15 Aug 1992 05:04:44 GMT
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: altair.crhc.uiuc.edu

In article <1253@esl.ESL.COM>, drm@esl.com (Don McGregor) writes:
|> 
|> NAFTA could well be the most important long-term economic
|> issue in the current election.  I'm disapointed that Clinton
|> is waffling and straddling the issue, after strong support for it
|> during the primaries.

Why the surprise? You didn't think they called him "Slick Willie"
for nothing, did you? 

Clinton, like Bush, will say just about anything to win votes. He
didn't know during the primaries that he'd get the UAW, AFL-CIO etc.
endorsements (Harkin and Brown were still around). Bush happens to be
a "free-trader" and the fact that conservatives are also free-traders
only cements Bush's commitment to "free-trade," or whatever limited
version of it is called for by NAFTA.

I'd guess that Clinton also has a general commitment to some sort of
free-trade, like Bush. But given that a major part of his base is
vehemently opposed to the agreement, he has to act like he disagrees
with the Bush-version of it so as not to lose too many of them.


|> Don McGregor | Life is like high school, only with money and guns. 
|> drm@esl.com  | 

-- 
Srinivas Sunder                                         sunder@crhc.uiuc.edu

If my employer shares these views, I'd be most surprised.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:40074 talk.abortion:32018 alt.politics.bush:1797
From: PA146008@utkvm1.utk.edu (David Veal)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.abortion,alt.politics.bush
Subject: Re: Another good reason not to vote for Bush
Date: 17 Aug 92 04:19:04 GMT
Organization: The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

In article <Bt08HD.DrB@news.cso.uiuc.edu>
tbuckley@s.psych.uiuc.edu (Tim Buckley) writes:

>
>In article <16h4a9INNoqa@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com> regard@sdd.hp.com (Adrienne Regard)writes:
>>
>>How can you tell?  Frankly, I think you are making this up.  I don't think
>>liberty and happiness are contingent on a right to life.   I don't think that
>>'most' people believe in this heirarchical notion of rights, or we'd wouldn't
>>have blood shortages regularly at blood banks.  Nor would we be having people
>>dying of failed kidneys, lungs, hearts, etc., since 'spare' parts come up
>>all the time, but aren't donated.
>
>Well I thought I had made this clear.  Let's try again.  Can you have
>happiness without life?   Can you have liberty without life?  Can you
>have life without liberty or happiness.

     Consider the ramifications and abuses possible with this reasoning.
Imagine the abuses possible from a government which is "just trying to
protect your right to life."  If your right to life is more important than,
say, your freedom of speech, couldn't the government decide to restrict you
from saying anything that might anger somebody else and thereby jepeardize
your life?
     Or create broad police powers allowing the government to search homes
and people at whim, on the basis that they are trying to "clean up the
streets" and "just make life safe" for you.

>Adrienne, if you don't think
>that this society has a hierarchy of rights how do you explain the
>differences in penalties for murder vis a vis violation of a human's
>civil rights?

     Because when all is said and done more damage has been done to someone
who has been murdered than someone who has been, say, denied their right to
vote.  That there is a disparity in damage does not mean that either right
is any more "important" than the other.  Both are rights, and must not be
violated.  It is not acceptable to violate one right in order to protect
another.
>
>>I think this is bogus.  It does not now, and hasn't in recent years.  What
>>term are you applying to your notion of 'society'?  We cannot and do not
>>force physical 'donation' to preserve life on this planet.
>
>Because that endangers the life of the donor.

     Then I can be compelled to give blood, which posses no real risk to
me, but I can't be required to donate a kidney?  Will it become acceptable
to require the donation of kidneys if medical science allows them to be
extracted without significant danger to the person?

========================================================================
| David Veal  PA146008@utkvm1.utk.edu                                  |
|             University of Tennessee Division of Continuing Education |
========================================================================
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:40224 ca.politics:6877 ba.politics:4588
From: slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com (Mark Slagle)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,ca.politics,ba.politics
Subject: Re: A Retraction
Date: 15 Aug 92 05:08:04 GMT
Reply-To: slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Organization: You wouldn't ask this if you'd seen my desk.
In-reply-to: rchilder@us.oracle.com's message of 13 Aug 92 18:55:36 GMT

In article <1992Aug13.185536.16628@oracle.us.oracle.com>, rchilder@us.oracle.com (Richard Childers) writes:

> PS : I'm solidly ensconced in set [1].

Just curious, but why are you telling us this?  
Who asked?  Who cares?
--
----
Mark E. Slagle                                 PO Box 61059
slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com                       Sunnyvale, CA   94088
408-756-0895                                   USA
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.bush
From: jmk@cbnews.cb.att.com (joseph.m.knapp)
Subject: Re: Call for transcripts Re: DATELINE: Bush fucks up!
Organization: AT&T
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 14:35:28 GMT

lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard) writes:
>Bush has fallen on his own sword (so to speak) he and the republican
>party have gone on the family values crusade and now its coming
>home to roost. Even if Clinton did have an affair it would be much
>less serious than is Bush did simply because Bush is running on the
>family values platform, which makes him a hypocrit as well as an
>adulterer.


    SNIVELING HYPOCRITICAL REPUBLICANS, SIT DOWN AND KEEP IT ZIPPED

Yes, after months of his surrogates directly smearing Clinton and months of
Oily Georgie and his attack-puppy Dan-boy smirking about "family values" and
"character" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), His Wimpitude is suddenly righteously
indignant:

    Aides said that the president ``was really fuming'' over the
    questions and was particularly unhappy that members of his large family,
    including his wife, his ailing mother Dorothy Bush, his daughter Doro
    and some of his older grandchildren were on hand to hear the question
    put to him at the news conference.

Oh they love their mothers, boy do they love their mothers.

I'm sure the mother of all sleaze-kings understands the adage "what goes 
around comes around" and will take the sleaze for what it's worth. After 
giving her bad boy a good spanking, hopefully.

Clinton's mom, of course, deserves no sympathy because she murders people
in their hospital beds.

---
Joe Knapp      jmk@cbvox.att.com
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.abortion,alt.politics.bush
From: c60a-zg@volga.Berkeley.EDU (Martin Guerrero-LabA)
Subject: Re: Abstinence is the only answer
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 18:41:56 GMT

Note: part of this note is misattributed to me:

However, I put some of my comments towards the end.
In article <1992Aug20.230945.1622@nevada.edu> tierney@nevada.edu (TIM TIERNEY) writes:
>In article <l97ftfINN2un@spim.mips.com> mpolen@gelato.mips.com (Michael Polen) writes:
>>Martin Guerrero-LabA) writes:
>>
>>So we are left with the following alternatives:
>>
>>1	The only purpose of sex is reproduction.
>
>   No.  Sex is fine between consenting adults, but it should be *responsible*
>   sex where measures are taken by the man or the woman, or preferably
>   both to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.  Something like 90% (can't remember
>   the exact figure) of aborted pregnancies are the result of "unprotected"
>   sex.
>
>>
>>2.	Sex is a pleasure "reserved" for married couples. 
>
>   No.  Same answer as in reply to #1.
>
>>
>>3.	Sex is a sin, for which the penalty is pregnancy.  Sure puts an
>>	interesting slant on the wonderfulness of parenting and the meaning
>>	of "family values."
>   
>   No.  Again, see answer to point #1.  The *sin* is all the people out
>   there that take sex with such a cavalier attitude.  There is nothing
>   wrong with with sex between consenting adults, married or not, nor

Is it okay for Woody Allen to have sex with Mia Farrow?  Is it okay
for Woody Allen to have sex with the Korean adopted child when they both
consent?

Is it okay for two adults, a brother and sister, both consenting to have
sex and possibly produce children?  How about a grandfather and his 
adult son or daughter when they are both consenting?  How about a 
prostitute and a currently married man with children?

>   should anyone, regardless of their religious convictions, try to tell
>   you that there is.  There is, or should be, a *moral* obligation for
>   those engaging in the acts to ensure that they do whatever they can to
>   prevent those unwanted pregnancies.
>
>Tim Tierney
>tierney@nevada.edu


Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.abortion,alt.politics.bush
From: mpolen@gelato.mips.com (Michael Polen)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,ca.politics,ba.politics
Subject: Re: Levi Strauss & The Boy Scouts
Date: 13 Aug 92 16:33:53 GMT
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: gelato.mips.com

In article <11715@optilink.UUCP>, cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
|> In article <Bstn0D.6v5@apollo.hp.com>, nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
|> > In article <1992Aug10.201246.2874@BofA.com> dan@BofA.com (Dan Brockman) writes:
|> # #|# Because subscribers to the Judeo-Christian ethic are about 80%
|> # #|# of the population, and homosexuals are at MOST 3-6%?
|> # #
|> # #Methinks you overestimated the number of Judeo-Christians.
|> # #Who do you include in the count?
|> # 
|> #   Methinks the original poster also fails to appreciate how
|> #   amorphous a concept "Judeo-Christian" is.   If he thinks
|> #   being gay and subscribing to Judeo-Christian culture are 
|> #   mutually exclusive then he hasn't studied fuzzy set theory.
|> # 
|> # ---peter
|> 
|> There are people who purport to follow Judaism or Christianity,
|> yet are homosexual.  Not many, though.  In any case, both
|> Judaism and Christianity have pretty clear prohibitions on
|> homosexuality.  To say that you subscribe to either religion,
|> while engaging in homosexuality, is rather like claiming to be
|> a Marxist, while capitalizing a company.
|> 
Or to claim you are a Christian and not fight against discrimination
against Jews, Blacks, etc.
From: mpolen@gelato.mips.com (Michael Polen)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Libertarianism vs. government
Date: 13 Aug 1992 16:31:56 GMT
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: gelato.mips.com

In article <BswAs8.13D@well.sf.ca.us>, rab@well.sf.ca.us (Bob Bickford) writes:
|> In article <l8inekINNots@spim.mips.com>,
|>  mpolen@gelato.mips.com (Michael Polen) writes:
|> 
|>    [quoted comments and analogies deleted -- rab]
|> 
|> >
|> >Amputation is used when traditional therapy doesn't work.  We haven't
|> >begun to try traditional therapy on fixing the schools.
|> 
|> Actually, we've been using "traditional therapy" on the government
|> schools for a coupla *decades* now.  I refer, of course, to the
|> time-honored practice of throwing money at a problem in the hopes that
|> it will go away or at least get better.
|> --
Actually, continuing what caused the problem is not therapy, it is
abandonment.  We have not begun to try to fix the problem on a major 
scale, only complain about it.

Based upon your .sig, abandonment and complaint seem to be you long suit.

|>   Robert Bickford        /-------------------------------------\
|>   rab@well.sf.ca.us      | Don't Blame Me: I Voted Libertarian |
|>                          \-------------------------------------/
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.abortion,alt.politics.bush
From: dsh@odin.ece.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger)
Subject: Re: Another good reason to vote for Bush
Followup-To: talk.abortion
Organization: North Carolina State University
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 23:30:07 GMT

In article <l8lqguINNrs2@spim.mips.com> 
mpolen@gelato.mips.com (Michael Polen) writes:

> But those who are "pro-life" believe that their position is a mandate from 
> God to go out and save the heathens, not to mention the children.  

Your statement is a gross mischaracterization of those people who  
call themselves pro-life.  Many religious people do offer reasoned 
arguments about abortion which are not based upon the existence of
God.  In addition, there are many non-religious people who oppose  
abortion. 


Doug Holtsinger

 "Whatever else the abortion adversaries believe, most of them would also
  agree that there are entirely too many abortions in this country."
    --- New York Governor Mario M. Cuomo

Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.abortion,alt.politics.bush