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Like a proper little Darwin

Of course, speaking of the Boomers, I fear that my generation (I'm 28) might be one of those unlucky historical examples of one which didn't get to do jack shit because they were so busy catering to the needs of their wealthy elders while trying to patch up the disasterous debts they left us. By the time they start to croak en masse it'll be too late to do anything all that interesting -- we'll be too old and too unimaginative, left only with the shadow of the dreams we once entertained.

I used to think the same thing (I'm 42). I remember double digit infation, and things looked pretty bleak. Only recently have I begun to look back at how life has changed since then, and how change is (usually) a gradual process. Most of the big changes that have occurred were unexpected, so the place to look for the future is not the present.

(BTW) The August issue of IEEE Spectrum has a interesting article on space elevators, which could really sidestep the shuttle debate and render it mute.

I'm aware of them enough to draw my conclusions. These 25 points of the NSDAP you present were written in 1920. As you know, the nazi-party came into power through democratic elections. The NSDAP presented themselves as the party that would take the best care of the German citizens, hence also the "socialist" in their name. Hitler exploited the social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living.

Once in power, some of these points were quickly abandoned. The Nazis abolished trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike. Remember also that Hitler had a deep resentment of communism.

These things are explained more elaborately at http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-hitler.htm

I'm aware of them enough to draw my conclusions. These 25 points of the NSDAP you present were written in 1920. As you know, the nazi-party came into power through democratic elections. The NSDAP presented themselves as the party that would take the best care of the German citizens, hence also the "socialist" in their name. Hitler exploited the social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living.

Once in power, some of these points were quickly abandoned. The Nazis abolished trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike. Remember also that Hitler had a deep resentment of communism.

These things are explained more elaborately at http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-hitler.htm

Actually, this must be conclusive evidence that general relativity is completely wrong: Einstein: Why Socialism"

Let me get this straight... so the objective of the society is to have 1% of population own more then the remaining 90% and have 15% of citizens under poverty level, 40% without medical coverage and the majority getting poorer and a tiny minority richer everyday astronomically? Am I missing something?

Average CEO's pay as a multiple of an average
worker's pay:

United States 17.5
United Kingdom 12.4
Japan 11.6
Canada 9.6
Germany 6.5

Size of Middle Class:

Japan 90.0%
Germany 70.1
Canada 58.5
United Kingdom 58.5
United States 53.7

Armed robbery (per 100,000 people)

United States 221
Canada 94
United Kingdom 63
Germany 47
Japan 1

From my reading of the situation, the entire line of questioning was improper - the whole ken starr investigation was a giant fishing expedition (link). The only thing that Ken dug up was a sexual dalliance which, according to the definition provided by the judge, was not sex. Further, the grand jury is supposed to meet in secret, not release tapes to the public. Yes, it looks bad, but it's hard to look good when somebody spends $40M to smear you.

The policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission that became known as the "Fairness Doctrine" is an attempt to ensure that all coverage of controversial issues by a broadcast station be

balanced and fair. The FCC took the view, in 1949, that station licensees were "public trustees," and as such had an obligation to afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of contrasting points of view on controversial issues of public importance. The Commission later held that stations were also obligated to actively seek out issues of importance to their community and air programming that addressed those issues. With the deregulation sweep of the Reagan Administration during the 1980s, the Republican-controlled Commission dissolved the fairness doctrine.

The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine harkened a new age in media and journalism. News outlets were no longer forced to adopt middle ground positions when covering issues; editorial no longer need be confined to narrow areas, and the airwaves exploded with thousands of heavily polarized pundits broadcasting 24 hours a day their agendas, without any concern for fairness or covering alternative viewpoints.

Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and thousands of other partisian pundits were free to spew their slanted take on the world without ever considering the need to offer anything but a wholly one-sided tale of the issues. Left un-regulated and therefore un-challeneged, their hubris expanded to epic preportions as evidenced in statements like, "Fair and Balanced, "No Spin Zone", etc.

And thus began the modern propaganda wars. Unfortunately it's more of a massacre than a real war.

Yes, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine also gave liberal entities the same freedom. The problem is the platforms for these pundits were mostly commercial radio stations, and the conservatives took the role of spokespeople for the agenda of corporate America, unarguably the true political power in the nation. Liberals, representing the moderate voice of the mainstream didn't have the resources that mouthpieces for big-pharma, insurance, finance, oil and defense contractors, and as a result, found themselves literally drowning in a sea of pro-big-business propaganda, with no way to get equal airtime and thus, no comparable method

Low gun crime rate in Switzerland? Myth.
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-switzerland.htm

Murders committed with handguns annually:

United States 8,915
Switzerland 53
Sweden 19
Canada 8
United Kingdom 7

Murder rate (per 100,000 people):

United States 8.40
Canada 5.45
Germany 4.20
United Kingdom 1.97
Japan 1.20
Finland 0.70

Murder rate for males age 15-24 (per 100,000 people):

United States 24.4
Canada 2.6
Norway 2.3
United Kingdom 2.0
Germany 0.9
Japan 0.5

Rape (per 100,000 people):

United States 37.20
Sweden 15.70
Germany 8.60
United Kingdom 7.26
Japan 1.40

Armed robbery (per 100,000 people)

United States 221
Canada 94
United Kingdom 63
Germany 47
Norway 22
Japan 1

Sorry, but there's still a leftist slant in the general media.

The media is pro-corporate rather than liberal or conservative. Their pro-corporate viewpoints are often in line with conservative viewpoints, and so the media is often seen as conservatively biased, when in fact their bias is pro-corporate.

A good start: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-liberalmedia.htm

This from FAIR: http://www.fair.org/reports/journalist-survey.html

And of course this, although I have not read it: http://www.whatliberalmedia.com/

People were saying these things and freaking out just like this when Reagan passed his tax cuts and less than ten years later the debt was gone, grown out of by the huge economic boom they inspired.

What?????!!!!! *Boggle*

No wonder people voted for Reagan and Bush Jr. believing shit like that.

The debt has constantly grown for at least a century and practically tripled under Reagan. The deficit has mostly grown as well, except for the years under Clinton where it finally went down and was just about to become a surplus before Bush passed his tax cuts.

See:
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
http://www.littlepiggy.net/deficit/index.php
http://members.tripod.com/~zzpat/graphs.htm
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/5Debt.htm

I found this that disputes my original claim. Hehe.

The only problem I have is that they go off on the "England, Japan, etc." have lower gun murder rates but they never delve into total murder rates. It's just as easy to kill someone with a knife (or glass as they like to do in England) as a gun, especially if the other person doesn't have a gun. Violence in England is pretty rampant. I would say worse than the US.

But, to be fair, a whopping 2% of Canadians think the US has a better health care system (reference, 2/3 down). Over half a million people can't all be wrong!

Kyoto hid under the cloak of global warming which is really just a political thing. Sure, people can affect the environment to some extent but thinking we are destroying the environment is not only scientifically invalid, it's almost unspeakably arrogant and naive.

You dont know what you are talking about. Human pollution is causing havoc planet wide, from habitat destruction for shopping-mall chochkies, ddt, asbestos, teflon, nuclear waste etc etc etc etc etc.

Global warming is just one problem, and honestly not even the tip of the iceburg.

The Kyoto accord was NOT ratified by the non-U.S. countries who tried to get the U.S. to commit to follow it....How, exactly, would moving production from the U.S. to areas which were to be exempt from environmental limitations contribute to a cleaner environment?

You dont understand the accord.

Oh, btw, China understands global warming. And is acting....in 2005 its car-fleet efficiency standards will be greater than the USA.

Without busting your bubble, you really need to get some perspective and understand that Kyoto is in the best interest of the Planet -- that is why reasonable (read: not plutocratic) governments signed it... the dellusions of seathing masses intending to destroy the Good Ol' USA(TM) is really jingoist nonsense.

You mean House of Representatives and Senate. The two together comprise the Congress. You may have gotten confused because the media likes to call Representatives "Congressmen" and memebers of the Senate "Senators", as if one was a part of Congress and one was not, but that's a false impression.

This is similar to a parliament in that it's a legislative body. But that's not what is meant by "parliamentary system."

That it has a different name in the USA and that the way it is elected is slightly different is an implementation issue, it doesnt make it an entirely different system.

I'm sorry, but it does. You mentioned a "coalition government." There's no such thing in the US system; there can't be. The government isn't dependent for its existence on one party or another having a majority in Congress. Yes, the Constitution provides that the President must choose his Cabinet "with the advice and consent of the Senate", so there's always a bit of compromise involved, but he's under no compulsion to appoint members of the other party to his Cabinet even if that party happens to control the Senate. Bush is unusual in that he seems to have considered ability and agreement with himself for the issues under their respective baliwicks over and above party affiliation when appointing his Cabinet, and we therefore have a Democrat Transportation Secretary in an otherwise Republican administration. But Bush is extremely unusual in that respect. The salient point here is that the majority party in the Congress, even if that party happens to control both houses (which happens only rarely) cannot dictate policy. That's the President's job. In a parliamentary system it would be the Prime Minister's job, with the PM being appointed by the majority party in the legislature. A parliamentary system therefore essentially lacks an Executive branch in the government. There's a good definition here. This is far more than a superficial difference.

just remember one simple fact: Hitler was elected.

That is categorically untrue. Read Steve Kangas' discussion of this common misconception at http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-hitlerdemo.htm

I disagree, NPR can be very biased in which facts they choose to talk about.

As I and others have said before: name one source of media that is consistently less biased than NPR. Put up or shut up.

I've listened to some of thier discussions on guns and they are quite mis-informed almost to the point of outright lieing.

Ah, I see. They must be biased because they don't share your bias?

Yes, I'm talking about being asked if he had sexual relations with her and he said no. Seing that it was relevent

Since you missed it the first time: whatever happened between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton is irrelevant to what happened to what happened between Bill Clinton and Paula Jones. Monica and Paula never met, never worked in the same office, and so on. Ir-frikkin-relevant.

was perjury and was thus disbarred

Bzzzt, wrong. Since it wasn't relevant, it can't be perjury even if he lied through his teeth, but its impossible to prove that he lied rather than misunderstanding the courts definition of exactly what "sexual relations" amounted to. Here's a nice article debunking the various right wing poppycock on the subject.

As for your links, notice that neither one even mentioned perjury, not even the one with the animated elephant on the page. The Arkansas Supreme Court disbarred him for misleading testimony, which is very weak considering that this was a witch hunt. Clinton had plenty of grounds to challenge it, but he made an agreement to get the whole situation over and done with.

While Clinton continually calimed it to not be perjury most other judges and lawyers said it was.

Obviously you need to talk to some smarter lawyers and judges.

Most people call getting a blow job sexual ralations and saying "I didn't" to mean, well you didn't. I think there is ample proof that he ejaculated by her ministrations - once more what the vast majority of people consider sexual relations (to put it another way, would you consider your signifigant other being orally stimulated by other people to be ok and not sexual relations? I bet not).

Which is why the lawyers argued over the definition for some time. Which is why its easy for Clinton to say he misunderstood the courts definition (and its even arguable that receiving a BJ fit said definition). Which is why its impossible to prove that he lied. Remember that lawyers can split hairs with the best of them, and Clinton was a lawyer for 25 years.

sorry i got it wrong again :P stupid tab key is screwing me over:
Fox News Report
justthefacts.com
huppi.com
Google Search for Statistics in Europe
Sorry again

I don't see how you can make the argument that "NAFTA has been bad for... all three countries.... US unemployment hit historic lows throughout most of the 90's

Well, my main point was about Local, State and National sovereignty, that Corporations should not be above the law. What I was basing the "bad for... all three countries" was that supposedly median income went down, and overtime and people working more than one job went up after NAFTA.

So I did some searching on the web trying to find some hard data. This site had some interesting statistics on median income. Adjusted for inflation the income for Men in general: 1994:36,215 1995:36,387 1996:36,439 1997:36,678 and for Women in general: 1994:26,424 1995:26,197 1996:26,400 1997:26,974

So according to that website income did actually increase slightly in the 3 years after NAFTA was implemented.

This site only has data up to 1994 for not very useful in terms of data when discussing NAFTA. However, it does seem to have good explainations of the many issues involved when these issues.

I can't seem to find any sites that document hours of overtime, or people working multiple jobs. (When doing searches all it would come up with was statistics on overtime pay and not hours worked.)

I did come across this interesting site at AARP. It says that between 1989 and 1997 the poverty rate for the general population went up by 0.2% Ah Hah! um... no wait, it isn't statistically significant.

So I guess the gist of it is that I can't really say that NAFTA affected jobs, income and overtimepay. And even if I had found statistics to support my statement, it is not like the economy occures in a bubble where NAFTA is the only change. The dotcom era certainly affected the economy for instance, and that is something that was quite unique. I suppose if I we were able to find statistics that concentraited on jobs affected by trade that would be more telling. (Times like these I wish I had the time to read the WSJ.)

Anyone out there know how to lookup statistics like these?

America's privatized health care has created the world's leading health care industry. Why do you think every foreigner who can afford to, comes to US clinics for surgeries or treatments?

That's a common misperception.Ex. 1 Ex. 2 Ex. 3 Among many, I'll let you do the Googling.

Contrary to your claim, free-market privatization has proven to be the biggest asset of every American endeavor it has been a part of.

This somewhat true, however, it is not free-market. This is total corporate welfare/subsidies on a mass scale. Take, for example, the Marshal Plan. After WWII, there was plenty of money in Europe for the reconstruction, but U.S. planners preferred that wealthy Europeans put their money in U.S. banks, while American companies reconstructed Europe. Who paid for the reconstruction? U.S. tax payers. So U.S. tax payers paid for the reconstruction of Europe and American construction companies made tons of money. And so did U.S. banks, who benefited from the huge influx of European money. That is not "free-market" by any stretch.

If you want a really well-constructed picture of all this, check out Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky.

Ok, troll, I'll bite. Check this one out: It's a FAQ, if your dittohead mind can get around it...

For what it's worth, when I visited some relatives in Germany about 8 years ago (?), my uncle mentioned a couple of laws that I found absolutely astounding. First, it was illegal to leave your car (and house? Can't remember) unlocked for any period of time. If you are making multiple trips, you are required to lock the car between each trip. That's just the law (don't know if it was local or what).

I live in Germany and I must say that these laws are something like US sex laws, laws that maybe really exist but nobody cares about them.

I've been to Europe a couple of times in a number of countries. There is no question that Europe is a great place to visit, but there's no way I would ever live there. They have absolutely no concept of freedom.

People get much more freedom in most european countries. Look at the Human Freedom Index by the UN. Other Source here.

Not to mention that it has by far the best highway system in the world.

Never heard about the German Autobahn ? The german highway system where you can drive your car without a speed limit ?

If you want to complain about frivilous lawsuits, remember, lawyers don't sue people, plaintifs sue people.

Now where have I seen logic like that before that before?

Let us know when [France's] unemployment rate drops below 10%, willya?
It is below 10%: you can find the official figures here (provided you can read French, of course). Remember, incidentally, that the European definition of "unemployed" is broader than the American one so that comparison is biased.

Along that line I could ask you to let "us" know when your poverty level (percentage of population whose income is less than half the national median) drops below 10%, but I frankly don't care. If you want to see an interesting comparison of the US with other rich world countries, see e.g. this page, it's very instructive and you'll learn that several countries can "keep up with the US" as you put it. But this is widely off topic.

A little more to the point, you say you think that they [European countries] became less socialistic. There is no doubt that Eastern European countries did (though in some countries, e.g. Russia, economic disaster has brought the communists back in popularity), but as far as Western European countries go, well, I have some news for you: the United Kingdom has a labor government; Germany is governed by a socialist / ecologist coalition; the socialist party heads the government in France, and there are several communist ministers; Portugal has a socialist government; Italy is governed by a coalition that is moderately left wing; and, you may believe it or not, but we have free elections even East of the Atlantic, and these various governments were freely chosen by the people. The European Parliament, on the other hand, has a comfortable right-wing majority. Also freely chosen.

The plain fact is not that socialism is good or bad; the plain fact is that you do not have a clue what socialism is.

Did you all know that Einstein was a socialist? A socialist Jew in Germany, no wonder he had to leave!
Here is his essay, "Why Socialism". It starts off a bit dry but gets better. He also mentions the fact that a planned economy (e.g. USSR - but he doesn't say this), is not what he considers socialism.
Happy holidays