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GORE: Could I respond?

BRUNO: We have to go on. What I'm about to say doesn't apply to the debate tonight; it applies to the campaign that's been going on outside this auditorium. With 3 weeks to go, this campaign has at times been very ugly, with the tone being set by personal negative attacks.

As candidates, how does it look from your viewpoint? And are these tactics really necessary? Admiral Stockdale -- it's your turn to go first.

STOCKDALE: You know, I didn't have my hearing aid turned on. Tell me again.

Can you imagine the outcry if Republican strongholds were allowed to keep voting after the Democrat-leaning areas were closed and counted? Yet the reverse is exactly what happened in 2000. Frankly, I'm glad that there will be outside observers monitoring the Missouri elections, because that state can't manage to keep them straight on its own.

Of note, although Bush still won Missouri, that's the election where John Ashcroft lost to the deceased Mel Carnahan by 49% to 51%. It's widely speculated (and believed) that he would have won by a clear margin had St. Louis polls been closed at the same time as the rest of the state. Ironically, had he won, he'd probably still be a senator instead of Attorney General. Guess that one kind of backfired, huh?

In fact, there was not even a real investigation proving that fire caused the 9/11 collapse

Oh really? Then how did Nova manage to make an episode of it?

The problem is this: You can point the hubble in any direction, and get an equally old image. Further, if you take a deep enough image, you can (theoretically) take an image of the Big Bang itself (or X million years after it, whatever).

Check the date on that one. IIRC Bush changed how the government collects it's data by purposefully underfunding and cutting certain unemployment tracking programs.

Let's face it - the gang in power is just a bunch of "Cheap Labor Republicans." They are gunning for your job because it can be done cheaper somewhere else. These guys make money by keeping labor costs down, not by a a booming economy that benefits you or yours. Catch a clue.

Political Reality Redacted

Several months ago I watched Joe Hough, President of the Faculty and William E. Dodge Professor of Social Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary, speak on Bill Moyers "Now" and I was immediately impressed by both his passion as well as the following statement that he made:

HOUGH: The growing gap between the rich and the poor which has become almost obscene by anybody's standards, and the stated intentional policy of bankrupting the government so that in the future there'll be no money for anything the federal government would decide to do. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transc...print.ht ml

Now some of you may be thinking that the above statement is somewhat extreme, and I used to wonder about that myself. But the statement haunted me. The reality is that some of what our current government is doing only makes sense if you consider "bankrupting the government" their actual goal. Have they not reduced taxes for the top 1%? Have they not also run a record deficit? When is a tax cut not a tax cut? When you run a deficit.

The bottom line is that it seems to be okay to run a deficit paying off federal war contracts to Halliburton, but god forbid they should run a deficit supporting job creation programs. And you'll forgive me if I don't consider the expansion of our military "true" job creation.

So what are they really doing? Why are they doing it? You have to ask those questions because it would be a mistake to assume that anyone, esp. an apparent imbecile like Bush, acts without purpose. The appearance of the dolt just might be the mask of a sly con man.

So who has the answers? There's this one guy that has it completely nailed. His stuff is so savvy, so on point that it is frankly scary in it's simplicity and clarity. So don't hesitate - go read it. If you can't handle it all at once, pace yourself - but read it, all of it. It's just four pages: two long, two short. And the rest of the site is excellent too if you still need more.

"CHEAP-LABOR CONSERVATIVE" ISSUES GUIDE
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/blurbs.htm

CATALOGUE OF BOGUS CONSERVATIVE IDEAS
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/bogusideas.htm

"PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY" AND WAGES
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/wages...bility.h tm

THE WRATH OF THE MILLIONAIRE WANNABE'S
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/milli...nnabes.h tm

What's all this about in a few short sentences?

Labor is the true engine of any economy, wealth is not (it is the mere distribution of the results of labor). A boom economy benefits anyone that works for a living because labor is then scarce and labor is valued more highly. Those at the top require cheap labor to maximize their profits - so they hate boom economies. Everything our government is doing right now is intended to devalue labor. The unequal distribution of vast amounts of wealth into the hands of non-laborers makes democracy almost impossible (which is why the founders favored limits on almost everything that concentrated wealth into too few hands).

Let it sit with you a while and you will begin to realize that it explains everything from bad schools, pri

PS. Check out today's Cringely http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040923. html re why M$ is suddenly more interested in security. I think he's got a valid (and scary) point about how security can be misused.

This idea sounds similar to how the Hubble Space Telescope captured the famous "Pillars of Creation" photo. Check out the interactive flash animation to see how the Hubble cleaned up light-years-worth of cosmic radiation

This idea sounds similar to how the Hubble Space Telescope captured the famous "Pillars of Creation" photo. Check out the interactive flash animation to see how the Hubble cleaned up light-years-worth of cosmic radiation

This idea sounds similar to how the Hubble Space Telescope captured the famous "Pillars of Creation" photo. Check out the interactive flash animation to see how the Hubble cleaned up light-years-worth of cosmic radiation

I suspect that Carly got the job during the height of the Dot Com boom largely because the HP Board of Directors were jealous of the successes of the Dot Com companies that, at the time, were overvaluated by factors of hundreds to thousands.

Here was HP, a real technology company that had produced real hardware for generations, and these gimmicky newcomer Web sites (essentially just a bunch of pages with hyperlinks), founded by gangly 20 year olds, were worth billions of dollars. HP's board probably thought, "We have to get in on this action, even though it completely defies logic."

Back in the Dot-Con boom, a lot of companies soared in the market place using "romantic" press releases about their companies' histories. Some of these histories were fakes, or overly simplified tall-tales, but who cared about journalistic integrity in the days of Henry Blodgett (a financial "analyst" who rated highly the companies that his employer was taking IPO) and day traders? To get a sense of the era and the attitudes of the day, look at the Real Video segment reported by Paul Solman in February of 1999 on the PBS news program, "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cyberspace/jan-june 99/internet_2-4.html. In other words,

1. Create a "cool" story, which...
2. Attracts the press and media (always looking for good stories so that people will buy their rags or watch their financial "news" shows; more eyeballs means more advertising revenue), which...
3. writes exciting stories that capture the imagination of day traders and other amateur investors, causing them to invest (gamble) in the stock, which...
4. Causes the value of the stock to skyrocket, which...
5. Makes people want it more, which...
6. Goto 2. (Repeat infinitely until the world runs out of money. Or people wise up.)

Thus, Cisco Systems fabricated the story about its founders, Len Bosack and Sandra Lerner; according to the company history, Bosack and Lerner, who were married (how romantic!), wanted to find a way to communicate with each other across disparate networks so they could synchronize the feeding of their domestic cats (how cute!), and voila!, invented the routing technology that became Cisco. In fact, the technology had been started years earlier as part of a funded project before Bosack had arrived from the University of Pennsylvania -- but in the Dot Con boom, reality (and mundane histories) didn't mean anything. (See http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19981210. html)

Likewise, EBay's humble beginnings were also faked, as detailed in Adam Cohen's book "The Perfect Store: Inside EBay" . According to EBay's websites, Pierre Omidyar wanted to sell his fiancée's Pez candy-dispensers, and voila! created the auction web site to solve his problem. The geek and the fiancée(how romantic!), the selling of Pez candy-dispensers (how cute!). Cohen reveals that the story was completely phony, concocted by a PR person, but it helped to encourage press editors to run stories and press releases about EBay.

Even billionaire Larry Ellison recognized the value of the press in warping the logic of the financial world. He hired a CNET journalist , Gina Smith, to become CEO of his New Internet Computer Company (NIC) (http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/ stories/2003/04/21/story7.html?page=1). Who in their right mind would hire a journalist to become CEO of a technology company. NIC would tank after the Dot Con bubble collapsed. But it seemed logical during the era, didn't it? Who better than a journalist would be the master baite

I suspect that Carly got the job during the height of the Dot Com boom largely because the HP Board of Directors were jealous of the successes of the Dot Com companies that, at the time, were overvaluated by factors of hundreds to thousands.

Here was HP, a real technology company that had produced real hardware for generations, and these gimmicky newcomer Web sites (essentially just a bunch of pages with hyperlinks), founded by gangly 20 year olds, were worth billions of dollars. HP's board probably thought, "We have to get in on this action, even though it completely defies logic."

Back in the Dot-Con boom, a lot of companies soared in the market place using "romantic" press releases about their companies' histories. Some of these histories were fakes, or overly simplified tall-tales, but who cared about journalistic integrity in the days of Henry Blodgett (a financial "analyst" who rated highly the companies that his employer was taking IPO) and day traders? To get a sense of the era and the attitudes of the day, look at the Real Video segment reported by Paul Solman in February of 1999 on the PBS news program, "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cyberspace/jan-june 99/internet_2-4.html. In other words,

1. Create a "cool" story, which...
2. Attracts the press and media (always looking for good stories so that people will buy their rags or watch their financial "news" shows; more eyeballs means more advertising revenue), which...
3. writes exciting stories that capture the imagination of day traders and other amateur investors, causing them to invest (gamble) in the stock, which...
4. Causes the value of the stock to skyrocket, which...
5. Makes people want it more, which...
6. Goto 2. (Repeat infinitely until the world runs out of money. Or people wise up.)

Thus, Cisco Systems fabricated the story about its founders, Len Bosack and Sandra Lerner; according to the company history, Bosack and Lerner, who were married (how romantic!), wanted to find a way to communicate with each other across disparate networks so they could synchronize the feeding of their domestic cats (how cute!), and voila!, invented the routing technology that became Cisco. In fact, the technology had been started years earlier as part of a funded project before Bosack had arrived from the University of Pennsylvania -- but in the Dot Con boom, reality (and mundane histories) didn't mean anything. (See http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19981210. html)

Likewise, EBay's humble beginnings were also faked, as detailed in Adam Cohen's book "The Perfect Store: Inside EBay" . According to EBay's websites, Pierre Omidyar wanted to sell his fiancée's Pez candy-dispensers, and voila! created the auction web site to solve his problem. The geek and the fiancée(how romantic!), the selling of Pez candy-dispensers (how cute!). Cohen reveals that the story was completely phony, concocted by a PR person, but it helped to encourage press editors to run stories and press releases about EBay.

Even billionaire Larry Ellison recognized the value of the press in warping the logic of the financial world. He hired a CNET journalist , Gina Smith, to become CEO of his New Internet Computer Company (NIC) (http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/ stories/2003/04/21/story7.html?page=1). Who in their right mind would hire a journalist to become CEO of a technology company. NIC would tank after the Dot Con bubble collapsed. But it seemed logical during the era, didn't it? Who better than a journalist would be the master baite

But since someone brought it up... I remember Greenspan playing a key role in helping that bubble burst. You know, Mr. Irrational Exuberance himself. The guy raising interest rates with the stated purpose of 'slowing down the overheating economy.'

He also stood by and watched Clinton sign away depression era laws in 1999 that had been on the books for decades. Yeah, that's him on the far left. These laws separated banks, securities firms, and insurance companies for a reason. Imagine a bank invested in the stock market. Not only is this a risky investment for a bank holding *YOUR* money, but suppose it provides a conflict of interest. The bank is also dispensing investment advice. Banks might mislead investors in order to bail themselves out of a bad investment, no? Well guess what happens next...

• In 2002, Accounting firm Arthur Andersen was convicted of a single charge stemming from its lackluster auditing of Enron. That action forced Andersen, one of the largest and most respected auditors in the world, to go out of business.

• There was plenty of blame to go around. Corporate executives had cooked books while lining their pockets. Analysts at investment banks had recommended stocks they knew were dogs in a quid pro quo that ensured banking business from those same firms.

Which brings us back around to the real reason for our failing economy. Gross mismanagement of tax laws, banking regulations, and the federal budget by congress and the president. And not just this congress and not just this president. You don't get a 7.4 Trillion dollar national debt overnight. That, friend, you cannot blame on me or the terrorists.

Are you suggesting that every state in the US use an election model that has been tested in Louisiana?

No thanks. You might as well be suggesting it come from Chicago.

That sounds about right. A recent Newsweek poll had the military vote going to Bush by 58%. I don't remember what Kerry got but there was still a decent "undecided" number as well so as I said before you are talking a pretty solid Republican demographic.

I think there is a strong conservative bent even among enlisted personnel, it's just obscured by the countervailing influence of being disproportionately minority. Any group that is 46% minority (according to an NPR report I saw) but that ends up voting the roughly same as the general population is showing a strong conservative bent.

Actually, PBS has been ahead of the curve on digital broadcasting here in the U.S. It was the first network to do a national broadcast of a program fully produced and aired in hi-def. It was also the first to offer a 24/7 network of HD programming. In addition, it has worked to develop applications for interactive TV, and has worked to build various advanced broadcasting technologies. PBS.org is the most-visited .org Web domain in the world. So in a nutshell you're, like, wrong. PBS has decades of leadership in broadcast technology. But I know everyone loves to knock it, so go right ahead.

That's because you have a selective tax applied as a use fee. In the US, our PBS gets $670M:y from taxes, which is only about $2.25:person. But that's about $6.50:taxpayer. Still small, but that's because we spread the load across all taxpayers. The BBC taxes $3.9B on 24.1M people, for about $160:taxpayer. Still 6x the US tax rate on the taxpayers, but the BBC runs 8 channels, 44 radio stations, and broadcasts globally. In the US, PBS operates at most one channel in the cities in which it broadcasts, although some regions overlap, especially on cable. So the cost per channel per taxpayer (ignoring radio) is actually lower for the BBC, despite PBS tightening its belt under Republican pressure. And the BBC produces much more original programming (some of which PBS syndicates), as well as those radio stations. So the BBC is actually a better deal for its ratepayers, with a more fair fee basis based on consumption. And it also manages to advance global "television" technology, which PBS hasn't since the rubber Big Bird suit.

The story about the nicaraguan deaf children, and this tuberculosis story were both covered thouroughly in the PBS documentary series Evolution. Portions of the relevant segments are available online on the PBS website:

Deaf Children Video
Tuberculosis Video

The story about the nicaraguan deaf children, and this tuberculosis story were both covered thouroughly in the PBS documentary series Evolution. Portions of the relevant segments are available online on the PBS website:

Deaf Children Video
Tuberculosis Video

The story about the nicaraguan deaf children, and this tuberculosis story were both covered thouroughly in the PBS documentary series Evolution. Portions of the relevant segments are available online on the PBS website:

Deaf Children Video
Tuberculosis Video

PS: Did anyone happen to look at who IRI is?

RI's board of directors is chaired by U.S. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and includes former Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, current members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, and individuals from the private sector with backgrounds in international relations, business and government.

Yeah, this is ENTIRELY independent. Mind you, at least one member of the board has some independent ideas.

Q - I thought President Bush said in his speech that, "Either you're for us or against us....anyone who harbors terrorists, or fosters their activity," and he meant terrorists in general. Doesn't Saddam qualify?

A - We've got to be looking at priorities here. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have one thing in common, and that is they both hate the United States. Otherwise, they have very little in common.

As a matter of fact, my guess is, if it weren't for the United States, Osama bin Laden would turn on Saddam Hussein. Why? Because Saddam Hussein is the head of a Ba'athist party -- a secular, socialist party. He is anathema to the kind of world that Osama bin Laden wants to reinstall So he's part of the problem; he's not part of the solution. That doesn't mean they can't cooperate, and might not cooperate. But what I'm saying is we need to get our priorities straight, and we've got them straight right now. We're going after number one target.

Iraq could turn out to be number two, but there are a lot of other candidates. Hezbollah, for example, is a global terrorist network, which has attacked the United States and U.S. interests before. How about that? ...We need to be skillful about this. We need to use scalpels, not sledgehammers.

"Jordan" is a film major at UCLA. He met the rest of the cast there.

...prefering to try to fix the child's deafness...

This is yet another potential flame inducer, but it illustrates that the general public has no idea that deaf population does not speak with one voice on the issue of communication and disability.

If you are interested in the debate over oral (often with a cochlear implant) and sign you should check out the critically acclaimed documentary Sound and Fury. The linked website also has all sorts of related information.

We're still losing manufactuaring jobs:

From this PBS NewsHour article: Of the 2.5 million net jobs lost since the recession officially began in march 2001, fully two million of them have been in manufacturing.

Or from this CNN article: While things may be tougher for white-collar workers, it's still the men and women in manufacturing jobs who are most affected by structural change. Of the 2.9 million private-sector jobs that have been lost since 1991, a full 2.56 million are from manufacturing.

Good stuff -- they interview record execs and former/current/hopeful musicians and explain the sorts of problems the industry is facing. While people stealing music online is a factor, lesser-known factors are also discussed including the fact that sales figures may be sinking because people are finished replacing their record collections with CDs.

By removing the N from the mouse that Spellbinder had turned into a nouse, and replacing it with an 'H', Letterman turns the nouse into a house!

A google search for "President bush denomination" reveals some interesting information, most of it from the 2000 election. These three links where the first to jump out to me as interesting.
Bush was raised in Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches which are certainly not on the born again side of the christian theological spectrum. He had a conversion experience in 1985 when he quit drinking and has been an active United Methodist ever since. The term born-again Christian is more often associated with Baptist and non-denominational Baptist like groups than it is with United Methodist who tend to use the term conversion. President Bush is in disagreement with the official position of the United Methodists Church on many issues including but not limited to the death penalty, abortion, gays in the military, affirmitive action, and the 2nd amendment right to bear arms. The United Methodist Church allows and encourages a person's own consceince to determine what is right and thus has a membership with diverse views often in disagreement with the clergey and/or official heirarchy. They are not the sort of denomination that excumminicates or kicks people out for that sort of thing.
Politics make strange bedfellows, and President Bush finds himself agreeing with the Baptist position on public policy issues more often than he does his own church and certainly uses Baptist rhetoric and speaking style. This however probably has more to due with the Bush's being Texan than being Christian. I am a Catholic Texan myself and many if not most of the United Methodist I know would probably agree with Bush on most of these positions. See for instance Hank Hill from King of the Hill who is also a United Methodist. I realize he is a cartoon, but he is a cartoon written by an actual Texan not someone from the "outside." The stereotypes and preconceived notions we have about ourselves, say a lot more about us and have a lot more truth to them than the stereotypes of outsiders, see excentric Texan oil barron billionare with big cowboy hat from the Simpsons who says things like "In Texas we got rid of the envirionment. Nobody seems to have missed it," and in the end does not beleive in protecting the environment as Lisa does but stops destroying it because he likes her character, style, actions, or some such thing, just as an excentric Texas oil-man billionare found in so many movies, shows, etc. would. Not that we find that particular stereotype to be negative, insulting, or the like, but it has no particular basis in reality or maybe it does and I just do not know many (read any), Texas oil-men billionares.
As a fairly devout Catholic I know I should believe that capital punishment is wrong in a modern society that has the ability to easily imprison people who are a danger to society for the rest of their natural life, but as a Texan I really want those bastards to be killed. In the end fiscal conservitism wins out, and I decide we can imprison one murderer and two rapist or child molesters for life instead of sticking a needle in one murders arm. Drug users are rehabilitable and we should all take a page from of all places Alabama's book and sentence them to mandatory treatment. Their reoffender rate is quite low.

But where you have doubts, I have facts.

Vietnam is irrelevant.

But character is relevant.

Kerry approved the current war, and continues to approve it.

Although I thought it was a mistake to get into the war in Iraq in the first place (as Bush Sr. has so eloquently argued against regime change in the past), there are arguments to go in backed up by the correct way to wage it I can respect. The way the current administration executed it has been an absolute circus. What was called "Operation Iraqi Freedom" can be more accurately described as "Operation Al Qaeda Recruitment Program."

Like the administration you support, you are blindly assuming that the course in Iraq was the correct one without considering other arguments. And now we have to live with the results.

The fact that this means more consolidation of media in the hands of fewer and fewer companies, however, is very, very distressing. http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/mediaconsol.html

Crap like this wouldn't happen under a Democratic President.

Crap like this wouldn't happen under a Democratic President.

ANDY JACOBS, Former Representative (D-IN): In 1983, we did the Social Security bailout. We said everybody is going to have to give a little; workers are going to pay a little more, recipients are going to have to get a little less, and we said, "while we're at it, let's even tax a little bit more than that and build up a surplus to meet the baby boomers when they retire." That is what that was all about. [1]

From [note: beware of slashdot induced spaces]:
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/innovators/h kelleher.html

I bet it took you more time to write the warning, than it would have to make the link clickable.

<url:http://www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/innov ators/hkelleher.html> becomes http://www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/innovators/h kelleher.html

They can always link to the googles very own cache. :-)

Well, actually they might be on to something as I said in a comment on a post some months ago (Why can't I peruse all my comments? (sans subscription)) and also, I noted that a p2p encrypted backup technology would be a good idea, which was then taken off and written about

I said, it'll be peer to peer everything. (in this case, p2p raid, for redundancy, not performance) using certs.

The Xincom TwinWAN, model number XC-DPG402.

I haven't used it, but Cringely uses one and seems to like it.

~Philly

This is called the "sleeper effect" -- people remember messages better than the source, so if a source of a message is discredited, over time the message increases in credibility as people forgot who said it.

Also, negative ads REALLY DO work. That is, after all, why they use them. For whatever reason, people have a "negativity" bias according to which they pay more attention to negative information, and remember it better later. It has shown that the primary effect is not winning votes for one side, but to dissuade the other side's would-be voters from showing up at the polls at all.

Also, check out PBS's The 30 Second Candidate.

PBD:Frontline coverage of Iraqi scud missile variants

Not elected? Get real. Two points that will kill your assertion:

1) It was actually the Gore campaign that brought in the lawyers. They threw it into the courts. The Republicans simply took it to the next level (the Supremes) and won there. That happens to be the highest court in the land, and in the game of lawyers and courts, that wins, in case you hadn't noticed. The Democrats picked the playing field, they just lost.

2) Had there actually been a recount, Bush would actually have won anyway. See the reports here and here.

They might as well have 30,000 channels - it won't make a single bit of a difference. 90% of the existing channels are ... well, crap. To have more of it is not going to make anything better.

Whenever in doubt go with PBS.

Unionization is the first class ticket to non-competitiveness. Literally all unionized industries in the US have become obsolete. Companies that are forced to accept unions are on the verge of bankruptcy. Lets look at some of the industries shall we...

What a fucking bunch of crock that post is.

Telecommunications - Unions have pretty much locked us into a system that is totally obsolete. While Japan and other countries are implementing state-of-the-art telecommunications systems, our system is relegated to 1940's technology.

Never mind that the Bell System was gutted when it was exploded to satisfy a whimsical theory that monopolies cannot be good, even though that Theodore Vail managed to build what would become the best telephone network through the judicious use of a enlightened monopoly, that is, enlightened in order to assure universal service .The resulting pieces eventually fell prey to a bunch of self-satisfied entrepreneur who gluttonly fed upon their equity while raising local phone rates and aggressively cutting back employment so that the service reached a nadir that is only equalled in the most squalid turd-world countries, thanks to a diseffected workforce who no matter how hard they bust their arses, get shafted in the long run.Whatever capital that could have been available to raise the technology above 1940's levels was instead squandered in dubious ventures and quest Well, thanks to global trade agreements that give free entry to substandard goods produced by slave-labour. Again, you're putting the blame on the workforce where the clear culprit is distributors and stores whose only interest is the fattest bottom-line.

Automotive - The UAW has pretty much killed the industry that America invented.

Have you actually seen the utter CRAP that was built by the US automotive industry in the 1970s??? Oversized, gas-guzzling cars who broke down in a blink built by an industrial complex that was so sure of the superiority it assumed thanks to incredibly fat bottom-lines, yet was, like a dinosaur, too stupid to notice the swifter-moving oriental car manufacturers who produced exactly what the sacro-sanct market wanted: economic cars that did not break down every two weeks. It is not the automotive workers who decided to build what the public did not want, but the executives.

Airline - The pilots union has caused many of a carrier to declare bankruptcy. Even now, 3 major US carries are about to go down this path.

Bullshit again. When the aviation industry was deregulated 25 years ago, the USA airlines had together the youngest airliner fleet of the earth. After 25 years of senseless cut-throat competition (and quiet cartels), the USA have the oldest airliner fleet of the earth, thanks to money spent on buying other companies instead of newer airplanes.

Oh, so sorry, I'm stupid. It's the pilots unions (and let's not forget the machinists, too) and not management who decided NOT to buy better airplanes instead of other airline companies.

Teachers - The teachers union has been the sole reason why the K-12 schools in the US are so bad. Where the teachers union doesn't have any influence (universities), US schools are a cut above the rest.

You're talking out of your arse. It's not the teachers unions who have deciced to cut back school funding so the big fat arses who send their offspring to private schools not only pay less taxes, but don't see their children out-competed by children of poorer families. After all, the p

The deal with Israel is described here by a USAF officer. It's led to an ongoing US effort to avoid the "proliferation" of satellite imaging technology.

This seems to have more to do with avoiding embarassment of Israel than any strategic purpose.

I say F9/11 in the Metreon in downtown San Francisco in June. I saw cheers and tears and anger in the crowd. That might sound like propoganda to you, but what I saw on the screen was everything I had seen before.

Not from some astro-turfing, strawman-fighting internet neocon apologist, but from one of Canada's most trusted sources of news and public affairs documentaries - The Fifth Estate.

Try looking here for a series of stories that ran in October of 2003. Almost all of the more contraversial facts that Michael Moore presents are corroborated there, months before F 9/11 was even heard of.

I was not surprised by what I saw in the movie as I had seen and heard it all before - we seem to get a less filtered view of your government's actions up here - on the nightly news.

Moore's only crime was to make a purposely provocative documentary in a style that would make it enjoyable to watch and easy to remember. In that sense, he is guilty as charged. But make no mistake, it presents facts and it IS a documentary. Many of those same facts can be corroborated here if you think Canadian sources are somehow suspect.

F 9/11 has been out for 3 months now. Now, if it were full of lies and inaccuracies as some people say it is, don't you think somebody allegedy slandered in the film would have sued Moore by now? If not, why? Perhaps because truth is a defence in slander and libel and those involved know that they would loose in court and Moore would be vindicated. I'm sure GWB doesn't want that right now.

Michael Moore to the US populace: "The Emperor Has No Clothes!"

Just because you don't want to believe him, doesn't mean he's not right.

You may have a point, but when Bush's people point out that he's been drug-free since 1974, it's certainly tempting to speculate that he was not drug-free prior to that year. It seems rather similar.

Gotta love how the nuclear storage containers at Hanford in Washington State still work today...

hanford leaks

And cleanup of the waste is not cheap...
cleanup

Corporations don't pay any taxes these days

I saw this show on PBS that describes how corporations use tax shelters using the tax law loopholes. If they really paid actual taxes, every citizen in USA would be paying about 15% less tax. You can watch the full show online here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/ view/

That's why we're having this discussion. If it weren't authoritative, we wouldn't be sitting here arguing about it.

The question is: should it be authoritative?

(And I think: Hell yes. It's done great, and will do even better. The Internet is primitive right now, and it's growing stronger. Wikipedia will follow suit.)

The nostalgia downloads section has some wallpaper and buddy icons of suprisingly good quality if anyone cares.

They've mentioned Street Fighter 2, go here and click the 1991 tab. They also mentioned the first RTS game, Dune II, rather than Command and Conquer.

This was an excellent show on the issue of why Americans fear it. I highly recommend it.

And, I agree with your premise. This will give China a huge leg up on the US. While we're pissing away time trying to suck more oil out of remote places on earth (and possibly going to war with them), they'll be humming along with enough juice to run a powerhouse economy.

"[One of three potential sites being studied] will, in effect, become the stocking center for the nation and the local people may find that unacceptable. If protesters organize, they can block shipments on the roads and rail. The situation could quickly get out of hand."

Natural U3O8 has been between $9 and $12 per pound for the last ten years - but now that I look there has been a spike to $18.50/lb in June.

From PBS Frontline:

With regard to uranium, the study was right on the mark in flagging the common misconception about uranium supplies but again was overly cautious. In two decades there have been no shortages of uranium and no increase in cost. In fact, there is such an over supply of uranium that the cost today (about $12 per pound) is only fifty per cent greater than it was 25 years ago before the energy of the early seventies. Thus, considering the 200 per cent inflation rate that has accrued during this period, the real cost of uranium today is less than half the price at that time and less than one tenth the cost at the time of the study. It is dffficult to identify any other basic material whose real cost has declined so precipitously. At present many uranium mines have closed because they cannot compete at current prices and there is a worldwide excess capacity of enrichment facilities to produce low enriched uranium for standard light water reactors. In short, there is no economic reason to pay subsidies that would be required to operate a plutonium fuel cycle.