LOL

Dr Guy, are you familiar with the concept of a rhetorical question?  It doesn't change the meaning of what you are saying just because you stick a question mark on the end of it.  Unless, of course, you meant to say that teaching *is* does count as "doing something", even though most teachers are not billionaires.

(Actually, last time I checked, 99% of computer programmers, oil tycoons, wall street traders, home architects, and 4-star chefs are not billionaires, either.  I guess they need to get off their butts and become "doers".)



Did you see Vishmaw's list of Obama's legislative accomplishments?  Do those count?  Or are you going to shift the goalposts once again?



All the resumes I've seen list colleges under the "Education" heading, and if they *accomplished* anything at a college, they list them there (e.g. Dean's List for 8 semesters, or graduating Magna, or president of Law Review).  Then there's a separate heading for work history, where they list the jobs they've had, and, under each, list the accomplishments at each job.

Earlier in the conversation I listed some of the things Obama did as a community organizer.  Vishmaw lists a few of his legislative accomplishments.  I've repeatedly been listing his accomplishments while in school. 

I feel qualified to comment on this. Luck is certainly an element in any endeavor. But there was very little "luck" involved in Stardock's history. If anything, we've had more than our share of bad luck - the OS/2 market died, we've had distributors and resellers go under owing us >$1 million.  There haven't been very many "lucky breaks".

In my experience, successful people make their own luck. 

Successful businessmen rarely risk their whole companies on an endeavor. I certainly didn't.

I think you will find that most businesses that go out of business do so because of mistakes made by the entrepreneur in question that could have been avoided. Not a lack of intelligence but perhaps lacking in some certain area - budgeting, statistical analysis, market understanding, etc.

Many entrepreneurs are strong in a particular area like engineering but are weaker in other critical areas. If I were to talk about luck, I would say I was "lucky" in that my engineering background was tempered by the fact my mom was an accountant so I had been raised with a good understanding of budgeting and analysis.

I'm not sure what this has to do with Obama since there's no evidence he took any "chances". He got into Columbia thanks to race-based preferences but from there straightened out and worked hard and got good grades. He then went into politics in which he built up the appropriate resume to get support to make his way to the next higher office. Community organizer to state legislature to federal legislature to presidential candidate.

But next to his name in terms of actual tangible accomplishments - things you can point to and say thanks to Barack Obama, item X was created, the list is tiny to non-existent. Hence my quip that Obama is no more qualified in my opinion than a middle manager at Circuit City or whatever.

Obama, in all his life so far, has not actually created anything of substance other than two books about himself.

I am glad you are offended.  You should be!  Affirmative action is very offensive, not only to the ones left behind because they do not qualify based on race, color, or creed, but for all those who do qualify and do not need it!  For the very reason cited.

Frankly, you may be the most Qualified there is.  There is no question that Charles Drew was more qualified than 90+% of his contemporaries (and BTW not a Quota kid).  But how do YOU know the doctor that is going to treat you got to be a doctor because he was the best?  or a Minority?  Again, I said going in cold.  The answer is you do not.  And so yes,  "affirmative action" is a very insidious and degarding practice.  I am sure it was created for the best of intentions.  But the best of intentions only lead to disasterous results when not accompanied by hard cold facts, polices and procedures.

Actually most schools do.  WHy?  Asians are disproportionately represented in the harder fields.  Not because they are smarter, but because they work a hell of a lot harder.  It is unfortunate that in many areas, Asians are discriminated against because they are just accomplishing the american dream.

No, but you need to read my response closer.  I never said "Everyone" got special treatment.  I only said - HOW DO YOU KNOW which ones did and did not if they are qualified for special treatment.  So tell me, how do you know?  You know about yourself, but can you speak for every minority out there (and you can probably make a general statement about Asians about not being Quota kids for the reason stated previously - i.e. they dont get special treatment because enough qualify on their own merits.)

Not always, and the resumes I look at had better have the accomplishments listed separately.  Under the job, is a short job description, not your accomplishments.  Employers want to see that at a quick glance.  And then scan the jobs to make sure they include the necessary experience.  Education is just that, not accomplishments.

No one has listed any more than a couple of "accomplishments" for Obama since in reality he has no more than that.  And he is over 40?  My resume has to be weeded because of my accomplishments.  I no longer include what I did 20 years ago, so I can keep it short (another requirement of employers).

I found a great response over on Amazon.com that eloquently states the same thing I believe on the issue:

Would someone with Obama's stellar list of job titles resort to making stuff up? He seems to think he has to. In spite of the many impressive positions he's held, he's done almost nothing with them. If he wants to claim specific, relevant accomplishments, his only resort is to stretching the truth. 

Look at his record: he's now completed over half of a Senate term; yet, is there even one signature issue he has taken hold of, other than his own presidential run? Similarly, as the New York Times recently pointed out, Obama spent twelve years on the University of Chicago Law School faculty--singularly famous for its intellectual ferment and incubator of scholarship--and produced not even a single scholarly paper. He was President of Harvard Law Review, but wrote nothing himself. Even as a state legislator for seven years-or community organizer for three years, there is little that shows his imprint. OK, to be fair, he did write two books. About himself. 

For all his glowing job titles, Obama has never gotten much done. Is it any wonder that his spokesmen respond with sweeping generalities when asked what Obama has actually accomplished relevant to the presidency? 

Obama has held several serious positions from which a serious man could have made a serious impact. But Obama made none. He remains a man of proven charisma, but unproven skill--and not for lack of opportunity. He's treated his offices as if they were high school student council positions-fun to run for, fun to win, affirmations of popularity, heady recognition from superiors, good resume-builders for stepping up to the next position of power, and...well, that's about it-actual accomplishments are not expected; heavy lifting is never on the agenda. 

Obama's record of accomplishment is thin not because of lack of opportunity, but in spite of it. For twenty years, Obama has walked the floors of the most prestigious institutions in the nation, but has left no footprints other than those from his runs for whatever office came next. 

It's been said that some people want to be President so they can do something; and some want to be President so they can be something. Obama has accomplished nothing noteworthy despite the golden opportunities and positions he's had; why should we believe he'd be a different man in the White House?

No company would hire anyone with Obama's empty track record, pattern of underachievement and padded résumé to be CEO. Is America really ready to hire him as President?' 

The media created candidate, (AKA the cardboard Messiah) and the rest of his dreamy-eyed-frothing-at-the-mouth, radical gumball level fanatics are all enjoying a media sponsered 'Magical Mystery Tour'; hold hands, chant and watch the savior with the 'halo' promose to "free" them and create a leftist utopia..., what are they going to do when this ends?

Yes, you've completely misinterpreted the bible.

Asking others to give you money is not the Christian thing to do. Voluntarily giving to those less fortunate is.  

Moreover, advocating for the government to confiscate one person's property to give to the other, regardless of the reason, is definitely not the "Christian" thing to do.

Perhaps there's a passage in the New Testament where Jesus proposes that the Roman Empire start taking sheep and goats from the rich to distribute to the poor.

The liberal version of compassion is voting for politicians who will steal the earnings of other people to give to them and their friends.

You mean merits like academic achievement?  Which is the entire point.  Who cares that anyone got into college through affirmitive action if you know their accademic acheivements when they graduated?  Since you are talking about special favors, why don't you back up that their academic achievement is also tainted from aa?

If i had know you were this ignorant, i would not have even responded.  Well i sure don't judge the competency on their minority status in the same way i don't judge the white doctor's/lawyer's competency despite the posibility that they only got into college as a 'legacy' b/c one of their parents went to that college.  Have you really never heard of the 'legacy' tradition? 

theres plenty of conservatives on wall st. that do the same

Redsonia, if you are inferring that it is the Christian thing to do is to take from the rich and give to the poor I have no clue where you got that.  Jesus did say "give to Caesar what is Caesar's."

As Christians, we are to help those who going through hardtimes.  When the Tsunami happened governments excluded it was Christian Organization that came to the aid.  The American Government relied on Christian Missionaries to get the supplies to where it was suppose to go.

If voluntarily giving to those less fortunate is the christian thing to do then anyoneone who calls themself a christian (I'm roman catholic) should be in favour of a system of wealth redistribution that is not communist in its approach to this - i.e. if you work hard and earn a lot of money, then you get to feel the benefit of that, which is fair. 

Which was what I was actually talking about...

 

No, the point is accomplishments.

Oh my!  We have to resort to name calling now.  Gee, and I thought you had brains.

Well, mr cant hold a discussion, legacy gets you into undergrad. NOt grad school!  Grad school is a whole new ball game - except if you are getting a free ride with affirmative action.

Now dont you feel like a fool?

I was going to post this sometime ago in response to some guy who posted on here that "he talked to someone from Britain and that everything is great with Universal Health Care (UHC)"

Since most people talk about Canada's and England's UHC I will be using those as my example.  Some thoughts before discussion:  Where are we going to get the money for UHC?  How are we going to make the money for this?  This going to be a whole lot of dough.  The only way to do this is to raise taxes.  In our current economical situation we are in, raising taxes is the last and the worst thing we could do right now.  According to the book, FDR Folly, the "Depression was worsened and prolonged by doubling taxes, making it more expensive for employers to hire people, making it harder for entrepreneurs to raise capital, demonizing employers.....forcingup the cost of living, channeling welfare away from the poorest people and enacting labor laws."  This sounds like what is going on now.  We have way more people than both England and Canada.

Now onto UHC.  This will be very expensive program.  Both parties seem to have problems managing money and this will only give them more money to toss around and squander.

Someone on here posted that more people die here of cancer than in England, I don't feel like looking back to found out who.  I'm not sure where they got that tidbit of info.  According to James Bartholomew of the Spectator, a British magazine, "among women with breast cancer there is a 46% chance of dying from it in Britain vs a 25% chance in the U.S.  Britain has one of the worst survival rates in the advanced world," writes Bartholomew, "and the America has the best."

Bartholomew explains: "That is why those who are rich enough often go to America, leaving behind even private British healthcare."  The reason isn't because our medical schools are better.  "In America, you are more likely to be treated," states Bartholomew "and going back a stage further, you are more likely to get the diagnostic tests which lead to better treatment."

"More specifically" he writes "3/4 of Americans who've had a heart attack are give beta-blocker drugs, compared to fewer than a third in Britain.  SImilarly, American patients are more likely than British patients to have a heart condition diagnosed with an angiogram, more likely to have an artery widened with angioplasty, and more likely to get back on their feet by way of a by-pass."

An audit done by the World Health Organization, for instance, found that over half of Britain's x-ray machines were past their recommended safe time limit, and more than half the machines in an esthesiology required replacing.  Even the majority of operating tables were over 20 years old - double their life span. Robert R. Reiland, a professor of free enterprise at Robert Morris University writes "Taken as a whole, Britain's UHC system has evolved into a ramshackle structure where tests are underperformed, equipment is undersupplied, operations are underdone, and medical personnel are overworked, underpaid and overly tied down in red tape.  In other words, your chances of coming out of the America medical system alive are dramatically better than in Britain."

Here is the  opinioin of Professor Lord Robert Winston, the consultant and advocate of the NHS on the movie Sicko and UHC. When asked on BBC Radio 4 whether he recoginised the NHS as portrayed in the film, Winston replied: "No, I didn't.  Most it was filmed at my hospital (the Hammersmith in west London), which is a very good hospital but doesn't represent what the NHS is like."

Minette Marrin writing about Sicko in the Sunday Times had this to say : "I didn't recognize it either , from years of visiting NHS hospitals.  Moore painted a rosy tainted vision of spotless wards, impeccable treatment, happy patients who laugh away any suggestion of waiting in casualty and glamorous young GP who combines his devotion to his patients with a salary of 100000 pounds, a house worth 1mil, and 2 cars. You would never guess from Sicko that THE NHS IS IN DEEP TROUBLE, MIRED IN SCANDAL, and INCOMPETENCE, despite the injection of billions of pounds of taxpayers' money.  All this, and for free.  I wonder whether that grotesquely fat film maker is aware of the delicious irony that in our state run system, the government and the NHS have been having serious public discussion about the necessity of refusing to treat people who are extremely obese."  Obesity when it is advanced is very expensive to treat medically and also brings with a whole slew of other medical complications.

According to the Sunday Times: Around 11% of British purchase private health insurance.  They can't opt out of the National Health Service and still pay for it.  They then pay extra to purchase health insurance mainly because of the long waiting periods for state care.  But, when it comes to people who know the NHC system the best, the percentage with private insurance increases dramatically.  The Sunday Times reported that 55% of SENIOR DOCTORS PAY FOR MEDICAL INSURANCE" and TURN TO PRIVATE MEDICAL TREATMENT INSTEAD OF USING THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE."

The chairman of the British Medical Associatiion, Jonathan Fielden, said "When consultant do with their own health care is very much a personal matter.  Consultants will try to minimze the time they are away from work in order to maximize their ability to care for patients."

That little interesting tidbit brings to light one aspect of NHC that is often ignored.  Fielden is saying that doctors who become ill seek private care to reduce the time they are away from work.  Fair enough.  That benefits patients who otherwise wouldn't be treated.  The lesson here is that had these physicians been treated within the NHS they would spend less time working and more time waiting.  The waiting lines for care in the NS are infamous and well documented.  What I find interesting is the aspect of the time they spend away from work.  This is a cost of NHC that is literally off the books.  When socialist care is deemed more efficient, waiting costs are not included in the total.

Yes, the states does need adequate health care coverage.  But even if every citizen is "fully covered" the delivery of that care will still remain a problem.  In the U.S. we don't have enough preventive care treatments.  UHC is just a band-aid effect again I do think our system does need revisions.  By the time people get diagnosed with something it's already in the latter stages.  With most diseases/illnesses if you can catch them early it's will almost be cheaper.

Canada will be coming soon.  I've just typed so much and need to actually do some stuff.

Hypocrisy at it its finest. Its difficult for me to discredit one candidate on grounds of affirmative action when the opponent got a free ride as well.

re steal:

There are? People wre forced to give them money?

Last time I checked, if I don't pay taxes, men with guns will come to my house and take me to jail. 

I don't see a scenario where men from wall street will seize me if I don't give them what I worked for.