Slashdot Mirror

I previously replied to you. However, this morning I came across an article about how the Democrats on the committee investigating Operation Fast & Furious are introducing new gun control legislation "to keep powerful firearms out of the hands of...the Mexican drug cartels." Check these two links: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2011/07/14/democrats_to_introduce_gun_control_legislation_tomorrow http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2011/07/13/operation_fast_and_furious_designed_to_promote_gun_control

I previously replied to you. However, this morning I came across an article about how the Democrats on the committee investigating Operation Fast & Furious are introducing new gun control legislation "to keep powerful firearms out of the hands of...the Mexican drug cartels." Check these two links: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2011/07/14/democrats_to_introduce_gun_control_legislation_tomorrow http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2011/07/13/operation_fast_and_furious_designed_to_promote_gun_control

Yes, power tends to corrupt and it is the nature of all government to become tyrannical. That is not reason to give up but to remain vigilant.

Capitalism is not merely good in theory. Even approximations of capitalism usually fare better than other systems. In reality, economic freedom strongly correlates with overall prosperity.

http://ideasmatter.typepad.com/ideas-matter/2011/06/economic-freedom.html
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2010/01/20/haitis_avoidable_death_toll/page/full/

Yes... well... he also puts forth the following opinions:

http://townhall.com/cartoons/michaelramirez/2011/01/05/77169

http://townhall.com/cartoons/michaelramirez/2011/01/06/77218

So I'd be a little wary of putting his work forward as being particularly wise. Although your outlook / bias might be different.

Yes... well... he also puts forth the following opinions:

http://townhall.com/cartoons/michaelramirez/2011/01/05/77169

http://townhall.com/cartoons/michaelramirez/2011/01/06/77218

So I'd be a little wary of putting his work forward as being particularly wise. Although your outlook / bias might be different.

Pretty much nails it.

It's definitely not worth the money. For one thing, 9/11 changed the rules of plane hijackings: no longer can you expect that the terrorists will just land and ransom you if you just keep your head down. It was over on the same freakin' day, before the fourth plane ever reached its target.

It's always about costs vs. benefits, and it's about time we did some economic analysis of our security measures on top of the general effectiveness analysis we're also not doing enough of. Especially since all wars are economic: it doesn't matter what resource you cause your enemy to drain; if you can do it disproportionately, you can eventually win.

Government, not private industry, created the conditions for the scenario to happen. So yeah, when gov't screws up, private business has to fix it, and sometimes it takes awhile.

Why are we drilling in 5k of water in the first place? We go ultra deep in part because enviros have rendered the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic off-limits to oil production. In the safest of all places, on land, we've had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Similarly, Exxon Valdez was caused because gov't, caving to environmentalist pressure, decided to block construction of a pipeline across land, creating the possibility of more shipping disasters.

With all the gov't meddling, regulation, and bungling, it's amazing private business manages to get anything worthwhile accomplished.

The U.S. is one of the most charitable countries in the world. For the most part, however, we don't appreciate coercion.

It's quite simple. Government is not charity, it's legalized theft. If you don't understand the distinction, please read this excellent article.

It's not perfect. No bill is, but it IS an improvement over what we currently have, where people are outright denied any coverage at all.

Yes, people are denied insurance, but they are not denied medical care in life or death cases. Anybody can call for an ambulance to take them to the hospital. Neither the ambulance nor the hospital can deny treatment.

Actually that's in part why medical costs are high. Those who can not afford insurance wait until an emergency, when it will be expensive, before getting medical care. Because the law requires treatment the cost of the treatment is passed on to those who pay out of pocket and insurance.

The industry would also lose its exemption from federal antitrust restrictions on price fixing and market allocation which is a huge win for the consumer.

If true, I didn't know there was exemptions for antitrust restrictions in the health fields, removing them will help people. A 2000 page bill isn't needed to end the exemptions though. It takes less than a single page to do that.

As to the poor, the bill includes subsidies to help pay for their insurance when they cannot afford it.

To help pay but what if even with the subsidy a person still can afford insurance? Massachusetts already has a law like that, one than fines people for not buying insurance, but there are still people who can't afford insurance even with a subsidy. Some are finding it cheaper to pay the fine than to bu7y insurance.

If the Republican representatives were so repulsed by a 'government run health care system', then they would give up their own premium health care, which is run by the government I might add. Talk about the ultimate hypocrites. They already benefit from such a plan, and it's an excellent one at that. They also had many years of majority in both houses, and did absolutely nothing. They obviously had and still do not have the will to do what's needed.

Democrats are no different. Democrat representatives didn't offer the insurance taxpayers pay for congress. Try to get congress to offer everyone the same coverage they get and watch their reactions. The only people who have better coverage are the wealthy. Congress Keeps Gold-Plated Health Care... For Themselves

So why are we already spending tons on health care?

Because we don't have a free market in health care.

Higher than the supposedly expensive Canadian healthcare (which is at around 3K a person).

Yet we have Canadians who can afford to to come to the US to get health care, including surgery. Medical care in Canada is rationed.

The reason health, medical, care is so expensive in the US is because we do not have a free market in medicine.

You either accept that those with no insurance will be turn away and left to fend for them selves or you give basic coverage and reduce the paperwork and control the price inflation of health care.

Making the market in medicine freer will drive costs down. Then for those who still can not afford insurance have the policy issuers contribute to a fund that will cover them. A non-profit like Blue Cross and Blue Shield can run the fund. With a million people looking for private insurance policy issuers will be doing what they can to lower premium costs, as well as different types of policies. A family of four or a single person may only want catastrophic coverage but have Health Savings Accounts for ordinary medical expenses while others may want insurance that covers everything.

Falcon

So yes, if the news had got out the terrorists would have won. Literally.

Terrorists did win (a major propaganda score), when the photos of Abu Ghraib abuses were published. But New York Times and other news-papers published them in a heart-beat — either

• out of the journalistic principle of publishing everything noteworthy, and/or
• out of spite for G.W. Bush and wanting him to fail.

Whichever way you look at it, a large set of double- (and triple-) standards is perfectly obvious.

Plus, I personally have never heard of Amish drunk driving.

http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=6db7f947-3093-40b0-b99b-8198ab770d00&t=c

http://swartzamish.blogspot.com/2008/07/watsontown-police-amish-buggy-driver.html

Under what circumstances could 5 officers kicking the crap out of a suspect NOT be considered as "making the cops look bad" ?

The circumstances that make NECESSARY to kick the crap out of a suspect.

No, I'm quite aware that some people think that ID is a valid theory. The problem is, they're wrong. The "evidence" they base it on consists mainly of a mis-understanding of the idea of "information" (the genetic code is information, which they mistakenly think implies intelligence), and an appeal to credulity in the form of the concept of irreducible complexity. Both are severely flawed, and fail to provide a reasonable foundation for a scientific theory.

No, the 'evidence' ID is based on is such evidence as accepted in many other fields: forensic science, cryptography/information science, SETI, etc. These other fields make conclusions based on the same underlying theory. Why, in your view, does SETI exist at all if the activity of intelligence is not perceptible? Or, how does our legal system manage to convict and execute murderers where the criterion of proof is 'beyond a reasonable doubt'?

As for "Dawkins let the panspermia cat out of the bag", that's just nonsense. Panspermia has been suggested millions of times before, and what he said was nothing new.

You're absolutely right--it is not new (and I never said it was). In fact, panspermia is the same conclusion that Francis Crick came to upon discovering DNA double-helix and its complexity.

The 'cat' I was referring to was the implicit admission of the scientific status of ID inherent in Dawkins' response.

[Besides that, I do not personally need to prove that ID is 'scientific' but many of you materialists do require it. What you fail to see is that demarcating science is a futile effort. Any criteria you choose will at the same time exclude ID *and* evolution (at least the popular notion of it as taught in science class) or result in an inconsistent system of reason. I would recommend reading some philosophy of science if you do not accept this--philosophers of science long ago gave up demarcating science.]

Theorizing about the implications of a hypothesis doesn't automatically give any credence to the hypothesis in question, despite your assertion. I can say "if unicorns existed, jousting matches in medieval times would have been very different" without admitting "scientific status" re the existence of unicorns.

Read this . Dinesh fairly well sums up my view on the 'Dawkins/Stein' video there (and his analysis is fairly straightforward to anyone who takes the video on face value instead of interpreting it through pre-conceived biases).

The religious right puts forward an omnipotent God that watches us everywhere we go and ultimately judges all of our actions and determines the state of our eternal soul. So they are already inherently conditioned to this big brother mentality.

Hogwash. Most religious conservatives view government warily. "Religious right" figures like Chuck Colson and Francis Schaeffer have argued that we must beware of "Big Brother" tendencies in government, which tend to squash religious freedom.

Believing in a good God who sees everything does not predispose me to wanting a government of flawed humans who see everything. A central tenant of Christianity is that humans have evil tendencies. The value of democracy is to prevent some people from having too much power of others.

This quote from C.S. Lewis, a very influential Christian thinker, sums it up:

It is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects -- military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden -- that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.

I'd argue that people who believe that Heaven will come after we die are less prone to trying to create it on earth. It's more often the atheists, who want their Utopia now, who try to make governments powerful enough to create it.

And so it begins...

Philly is a very strongly democratic city.

http://townhall.com/blog/g/cf47766b-5a6d-44ab-95e7-ce60631bcadc

here is a pretty good version of this argument.

Many people, regardless of their "party" or lack thereof, are fiscally conservative

Every time I hear someone say my fellow Americans are fiscally conservative I get a good laugh out of it. You must have missed out on the whole mortgage crisis and the fact that 43% of Americans spend more than they make thus continuing their slide into debt and eventual bankruptcy.

America is such a fiscally conservative country that we bailout banks to the tune of 25 billion dollars , repeatedly bailed out airlines for a couple of dozen billion every couple of decades, bailed out S&L associations costing the American taxpayer another 124 billion, subsidize the agricultural industry at 16 billion dollars a year.

I could make this even worse by mentioning the costs of needlessly invading Iraq in search of WMD or talk about all the wonderful pork projects and "terror funding" that gets wasted but there are people who have written books on the subject and detail this much better than I ever could.

We better hope there's no option to woo and marry men. It might destroy some conservatives, considering the last game to allow the option of homosexuality nearly caused them to riot

http://kevinmccullough.townhall.com/blog/g/ad4fece3-3a1e-42bd-8546-295599024191

You'll be able to take your mind off it with the time you invest in learning Spanish with all our kids. You didn't need your laws in English, right?

Why do you think minimum wage laws and unions were formed in the first place?

"The last year in which the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate in the United States was 1930. The next year, the first federal minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act, was passed. One of its sponsors explicitly stated that the purpose was to keep blacks from taking jobs from whites. No one says things like that any more - which is a shame, because the effect of a minimum wage law does not depend on what anybody says. Blacks in general, and younger blacks in particular, are the biggest losers from such laws, just as younger and minority workers are in Europe." -- Thomas Sowell

Actually I suspect labour rights in general tend to have this effect, that they priviege the 'in group' in society and hurt the 'out group'.

Consider a country with at will employment and no minimum wage. Immigrants will be able to take low pay insecure jobs and compete with the locals. The immigrants will tend to integrate too.

Now if you introduce the minmum wage and job security it makes employers think harder about hiring people. This will hit immigrants much harder than it hits people who are more established in the job market. This is not because recent immigrants are worse people, more that employers are less likely to trust them than someone they share a background with.

If you look at somewhere like France or Sweden, both of which have cultures which tend to make it very hard to fire someone and where employees have extensive rights, they both have very high unemployments rates amongst immigrants. The USA with its tradition that employees can be fired rather easily does much better - immigrants tend to find jobs and integrate.

It's rather ironic of course, since people in favour of labour rights tend to be in favour of rights for immigrants. But if you compare more socialist/social democratic countries to capitalist ones it is striking that the socialist countries are actually caste based society where the people in the secure jobs tend to be native born and the unemployed tend to be immigrants.

If you measure societies' ability to integrate immigrants socialist countries actually do much worse than capitalist ones. The problem is made worse actually by the idea that immigrants have a right to come to these countries as asylum seekers which socialist countries tend to regard as something only racists question. Letting in large numbers of people who have no chance of integrating is dangerous, I think it caused the riots in Paris. Plausibly somewhere like Malmo in Sweden could have the same problem.

Why do you think minimum wage laws and unions were formed in the first place?

Sentiment summed up nicely here.

When it hits $5 I figure one of the campaigns will back perpetual motion instead.

You're still asking people to pledge their belief in a deity by saying the oath -- or to lie about said belief. That's dishonorable and relegates non-religious folks to the status of second-class citizens within the organization. I should also point out that the text of the Oath is only one facet of the deep problems of discrimination within the BSA.

The current Pledge of Allegiance is a another issue, but it is overdue for a change back to its pre-1950s text, wherein the offending "under god" line was originally absent before the Knights of Columbus lobbied Congress to insert religious imagery into it. Much like the Scout's Oath, the current Pledge asks children to pay lip service to the Judeo-Christian worldview. However, unlike the Scout's Oath, the Pledge is imposed on kids the country over in public schools, making the situation even worse.

It's easy to dismiss this as inconsequential if you've never walked in the shoes of a non-religious American (or, indeed, any minority); but consider that this exclusionary wording has been used as a bullet point to argue for even greater degrees of religious discrimination, and I think you'll begin to see how much of a problem even the slightest crack in the wall of separation between church and state can be.

It's funny you mention that, I read recently that the 70-74 age group has the highest average wealth of any group in the country.

That's wealth, not taxable income or earned income, which aren't a really accurate measure of the wealth of a retired person. You'll always hear those inaccurate numbers quoted to make it seem like old folks are destitute, however, which justifies massive government spending to buy their extremely reliable votes.

You can read more about it here:

Thomas Sowell income confusion article.

While I'm sure that there are poor old people, on average, they're better off than most, since they own their homes, cars, and have some amount of income from retirement accounts and social security.

Of course, even if you have machine guns with armor piercing bullets, you are probably still out of luck if you try to fight them.

With civilian weapons? Forget about it.

A .223 bullet from my Mini 14 is just the same as a .223 from a U.S. Army-issue M16. Yes, I can't get the same rate of fire, but it's enough to put up a significant resistance. Like all security, it's not about perfection, it's about raising the cost of an attack.

Those who think firearms in civilian hands are irrelevant need to review the history of the civil rights movement - not the shiny happy official story of how MLK's nonviolent resistance was all that mattered, but the real deal involving the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, and many other armed black men who stood up to intimidation and brutality with rifles in their hands to win equality under the law. (Not to cut on MLK at all. But there's an obvious bias in the mainstream historical account.)

You also ought to consider how American private gun ownership dissuaded the Japanese from thoughts of invasion during WWII. There is a quote attributed to Admiral Yamamoto: "You cannot invade the mainland United States; there would be a rifle behind each blade of grass."

It was a survey from Rasmussen Reports back in May. You can find the full results from places like this as well as many other place on the internet.

There are so many problems with this way of thinking. You neglect that despite tax cuts, goverment revenue and government spending on transportation and everything else has EXPLODED.

Alternatively, how to do you explain the absolute failure of school systems with massive spending in cities that are run by Democrats - and they sucked even when Dems controlled all three parts of the Federal government. Witness DC - 12k a month per student and 2/3ds of public school teachers with children send their kids to private schools.

That just blows everything you have to say to hell. The best response to your line of thinking is a recent column by Thomas Sowell - bridges are too important to be left to government.

The New York Times is the same newspaper that, two years ago, released a very long, very fact-barren cover story, and later ADMITTED that everything in the article was a blatant lie.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JaniceShawCrous e/2007/01/04/ny_times_admits_to_a_blatant_lie

Neither US political party has much to brag about on tax an spend issues. They both are quite greedy.

Take a look at the CATO Institutes 2006 report card on state governors:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa581/reportcard_tabl e.html

In case you are too blinded by ideology to even look, I'll post the scores of the governors above and below Washington :

Bob Riley (R) -- Alabama, 47, F
Christine Gregoire (D) -- Washington, 47, F
Mike Huckabee (R) -- Arkansas, 46, F

The full report, with analysis and discussion:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa581.pdf

BTW, John Stossel had an interesting report on 20/20 last night about Senator Tom Coburn, who is fighting federal pork-- and taking on heavy fire from both sides.

He wrote about the story last year:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?Url Title=secrets_in_the_senate&ns=JohnStossel&dt=09/1 3/2006&page=full&comments=true

I find it so fascinating how you put that--you made put your statement in a moral form: "those laws, and every other law that legislates morality, is wrong."

As for me being "alone" in this regard (these are just a few off the first page a a google search for "legislating morality"):
http://www.midwestoutreach.org/journals/legislatin g.html
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MikeSAdams/2006 /10/12/legislating_morality
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/duke/040914

Rodney King , caught speeding, probably high on PCP; resisted arrest, tried to attack a policeman, and had to be beaten into submission; and somehow people still mention this scumbag as an example of a victim of police brutality?!

I think the reason that there is so much anti-depressant use these days is because, as our economy slowly swirls the drain

Our economy isn't swirling down the drain. It's growing very healthily. In fact, our economy has continued to grow throughout the Bush administration, despite his completely asinine way of running things. On top of that, unemployment is hitting all-time lows. (Richmond, VA, where I live, is so low that we are on the cusp of entering a labor shortage.) And for those skeptics, it's not just "low-end" jobs that don't pay well--this is across the board, from corporations to gas stations.

I realize a lot of slashdotters are well-educated and many of them have decent jobs. It seems to me that this is a child-like view of "Things are going well for me; if anyone else is having a problem, they are just not working hard enough."

I agree with you in that the viewpoint you mentioned is childish, but things *really* aren't that bad over here. We're still growing, every year. Sometimes we grow less, but we always grow. Since 1970, the U.S. has created 57 million new jobs. In that same time period, Europe has only created 4 million. (See here for details.) And judging from my time abroad in Japan and Iran, I'm convinced that the issues with management are universal: very few people know how to successfully manage others. Just look in the job market: you will be shocked at how well a company with decidedly average management can compete. The guys that are actually good at management? They make millions, every time. It's a bona-fide skill, one that takes plenty of experience and a generous helping of talent, too.

The best advice here has already been given, I think: work hard and have confidence in your own abilities. I worked for the state right out of college and after 9 months I'd had it. I worked my ass off, scored excellent evals across the board, worked overtime and hauled ass to get deadlines met and respond to technical emergencies, and come my review, I got a whopping 3% raise. I told my boss on numerous occasions that I loved my job (and I did) but that the money was absolutely not enough for what they were asking me to do. She sympathized for me but was unwilling, ultimately, to go to bat for me and get me more money. So I started putting my resume out there, and within a few months I had an offer for--literally--double the salary. I took it. The most important thing any worker can understand about him/herself is that you constantly have to stick up for yourself. Make yourself difficult or impossible to replace, and demand the proper compensation for the work you do. If you don't get it, move on. Too many people stick around in shit jobs because they think their chance will come. Poor managers rely on that type of thinking. A good manager will see talent and will reward it, because talented people make money for everyone. If you're consistently exceeding goals and not getting some of it pushed back your way, get into your manager's office and demand compensation! And if you don't get it in a timely manner, get out, get out, get out. You are worth more than that.

Richard Nixon as President was the Republican party. He was the head honcho, the main man. A pardon for him was also a pardon for the party, as I already explained.

No it wasn't. The pardon was very unpopular politically. As a result, the Republicans got pounded in the midterm elections, losing 49 seats. That is far worse than they did in the last election.

Hardly. He did what was best for the only man who elected him to the position, Richard Nixon, and their political party, the Republicans.

Ford's White House had charge of the President's papers, formerly Nixon's, now his. His staff was spending 1/4 of their time just dealing with all of the legal mess from Watergate, and he was spending large amounts of his energy. That doesn't include what was going on in Congress and elsewhere. Much of the country was fixated on it. That could have lasted for years. Ford cleared it away with his pardon power: Shazam! - Instant 25% more time to spend on little things like the energy crunch, Middle East war & peace (a big deal after the massive Yom Kippur war in 1973), South East Asia, Europe, China, the Soviet Union, global cooling, and other matters. Having 25% more time to spend on issues that are important to the current business of the nation sounds best to me.

Not unlike what happened to Clinton during his 4-5 year, $50 million investigation which only determined that like a vast majority of Americans, he lied about sex.

Actually there were a series of determinations made about various issues, and new ones just keep popping up: Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, the Lewinski affair, Vince Foster's death, and so on. If the white House would have cooperated instead of fighting tooth and nail, and various records hadn't mysteriously gone missing and then magically appeared years later, it might have gone quicker. And, just to be clear about it, Clinton lied about sex in a case in which his sexual behavior was an issue. It cost him an $850,000 settlement, his law license, and any reimbursement for legal expenses. Other people have gone to jail for what he did. Also, the answers were only clear after the investigations, not before.

Yes, that's called justice. It's not pretty and it can take time.

Weren't you just complaining about that in President Clinton's case? Why is it different for President Nixon?

Instead what we got was a mockery of justice that only proves well connected dirty Republicans are above the law.

Whew! I was worried, for a moment I thought it was only well connected dirty Democrats, Libertarians, and the occasional independents who get off lightly. Thank goodness we have equal justice. On second thought, if well connected dirty Republicans are above the law, how did Chuck Colson, Gordon Liddy, and various others of the White House "plumbers" go to jail, and Spiro Agnew get socked for tax evasion and bribery? Why did Nixon have to resign?

As far as I'm concerned, Ford is an accomplice to Nixon's crimes by letting him go free.

Somehow I doubt that what you are really after is justice for Nixon's part in the obstruction of justice in the Watergate affair. You do realize that Cambodia, the Christmas bombing, Kent State, Vietnam, and all of the rest, would not have played any part in the trial, or any possible punishment, don't you? Even if they would have prosecuted and convicted Nixon for obstruction of justice, I doubt that you would have found that an adequate proxy for whatever real punishment you think he really deserved.

Ford does not deserve my sympathy nor respect. If there is a hell, he is certainly burning in it.

You display a remarkable generosity of spirit.

In the US it takes up to six years to fire a government teacher.

Union bosses get in the way of common sense

Er, no. "1999 war games foresaw problems in Iraq".

"The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue."

Washington is routinely criticized for not contributing enough to support the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, if private donations are included in this analysis, the United States is among the most generous donor countries in the world.

The traditional basis for measuring aid transfers may understate U.S. contributions, because it omits donations that come from individuals, foundations, religious organizations and other private sources...

-- The U.S. government is frequently maligned for contributing only about 0.16% of its gross national income to development assistance--usually the most parsimonious figure among DAC members. However, U.S. private agency grants tallied by the DAC represent 2.1 cents per capita, ranking the generosity of U.S. citizens below only the people of Norway, Ireland and Switzerland....

U.S. private donations abroad are strikingly high relative to other wealthy nations. Several cultural factors may account for this discrepancy:

-- The Japan Foundation for Global Partnership concluded that Americans provide about eight times as much per capita in charitable donations, noting that Japanese avoid seeking personal credit for charitable giving.

-- Europeans largely view social problems as the responsibility of government, a factor that may limit direct private contributions but also explains the greater degree of support for official assistance. Many U.S. citizens view "big government" sceptically and prefer to provide aid with their own funds.

Shiner wrote in 1999, "Americans look even better compared to other leading nations. According to recent surveys, 73 percent of Americans made a charitable contribution in the previous 12 months, as compared to 44 percent of Germans, and 43 percent of French citizens. The average sum of donations over 12 months was $851 for Americans, $120 for Germans, and $96 for the French. In addition, 49 percent of Americans volunteered over the previous 12 months, as compared to 13 percent of Germans and 19 percent of the French." America the stingy

Just a week ago, a stunned world watched televised footage of U.S. helicopter pilots plucking grateful survivors from the devastated Indonesian island of Sumatra and dropping off food and medicine to desperate victims unreachable by road.

In recent days, however, a political blow-back has ensued, with the government of Indonesia - the world's most populous Muslim country - getting antsy about perceptions of a mounting U.S. military presence.

I hate these America = bad, and Europe = good arguments. The reality is that Europe and North America have divorces. http://www.divorcereform.org/gul.html. At the link you will find the real trends. But before you say, "But wait in Europe there are less divorces", you have to remember in Europe less people get married http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MaggieGallagher /2006/02/28/europes_marriage_crisis. Thus when they split they don't need a divorce.

The United States has not built a nuclear warhead since 1991. The government spends about $5 billion a year maintaining the weapons, and engineers have patched problems by opening up warheads that were never meant to be opened. The accumulation of tiny engineering changes meant the bombs moved incrementally away from their original designs, with unknown effects.

OK, I see how you mis-interpreted my original point. Allow me to rephrase.

A capitalist can only become rich in proportion to the people he sells too.

My phrasing "as rich as" implied that there was a 1:1 ratio between the wealth of the capitalist and of the people he was selling too. This is, of course, false, and now I understand your counterexample regarding the lexus vs. the candy. This misunderstanding was my mistake for poor communication. The point I was originally trying (ineptly) to make is this: it's in a capitalists best interest for the people he sells too to have more wealth since that's where he gets his wealth.

I would guess that "good" capitalists (who want the best for everyone, instead of the most for themselves) are about as rare as "good" communists (who want the best for everyone, instead of taking everything away from everyone). Human nature (mainly "short term thinking" and "self interest") stands in the way of either kind of utopia.

The problems with capitalism vs. communism are not about intent. Both have good intentions. The problem is systematic. In capitalism you are rewarded for re-investment. As you reinvest, your capacity to produce increases. As the population in general produces more, there is greater wealth. This is why in capitalist nations you may have huge disparities between rich and poor but: a. the poor are not stuck in poverty (see evidence for this claim here: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams /2006/01/04/the_poverty_hype) and b. even the poor tend to be better off over time (e.g. people in America below the poverty line have higher standards of living than average people in, say, Eastern Europe).

Even short-sighed and greedy capitalists will at least become more efficient. When they get too much power, gov't regulation is required to prevent them from abusing their power. But I think gov't regulation should be restricted as much as possible to let greedy bastards be greedy bastards as long as they're not actually overpowering and hurting vulnerable people.

Capitalism and communism are not just two imperfect but equal doctrines. Capitalism is superior in terms of wealth generation. As long as you're willing to trade economic disparity for higher standard of living (and I am) it's the choice to go with. I'd rather be "dirt poor" in America then "middle class" in China. And this is leaving out the political freedom that is required for capitalism and not for communism...

-stormin

The record isn't actually way they talked about...

...it's what they want you to THINK they talked about.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/200 6/05/31/myths_and_lies_on_the_record

If you go back in American history and read period documents, you will find people who always thought that the world was ending and the USA was being taken over by a dictator. If it weren't for these people ranting about everything, the general population would be much more receptive to actual threats. TFA does not describe us becoming a totalitarian state, although most /. posts in the Politics section seem to hint that we are. Like the other response to your post says, this is just a case of police following their SOP (standard operating proceedure) because they have to. When detectives are on a case they carefully look for anything that is out of place or odd. From the actions of one overzealous manager in Vegas to "a CNN summary of a [biased] Time cover story", /. is not the right place for political news. For biased politics, give me National Review Townhall.com or the aforementioned The Nation.

NGOs that take sides ... Enjoying what is know as the "halo effect," few if any journalists or diplomats bother to check the details, biases or credibility of NGO claims.

The perversity of today's international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides. ... Lebanese innocents must also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians.

'Civilian Casualty'? It Depends

This is going to get modded to oblivion, isn't it? The anti-slashbot POV.

Get over yourself. There's a strong libertarian streak, but there's also plenty of "america sucks, capitalism is evil" types running around.

Two points.

1. My original point was simply this: I don't think you have a right to force someone else to invest in a safety net. Period. I'm well aware that a social security net would benefit both, but if you notice the sig I was replying to stated something to the effect of "if you don't want a net you can splatter on the ground, but I want my social security". Since social security is an everybody-in or everybody-out proposition, the sig in question is just assinine. THAT was my point.

2. You write: I have a feeling that most people who are against it have never been down and out, or poor, or rendered incapable of work.

You're wrong, in my case anyway. I have been poor. I'd say 5 kids in a double-wide trailer with barely enough money to keep food on the table day in and day out is poor by American standards. Social security did squat. My mother-in-law recently had to quit her job to continue her 18-year battle with breast cancer. She gets social security. It's such a pathetic amount it's an insult. It does squat for her.

Studies have shown that increasing the value of food stamps x% can increase poverty by 3 or 4 times as much (in %).

And finally studies also show that the vast majority of Americans who are poor manage to work themselves out of it. I'm not quoting all my "studies show", and I apologize for that, but I'll at least link you on this one: http://townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/2 006/02/08/185448.html

So what's my point? Social security is ineffective and largely unnecessary. It's more impotant to have a vital economy that creates jobs than to have a handout that can't even pay the rent.

People extend as much effort as they think they have to - no more. The more paternalistic (or nannyish, take your pick) the gov't becomes, the more people will 'need' that support.

I say let's operate on a minimalist approach to gov't welfare. Private organizastions tend to do a much better job of it anyway. The gov't should be the last resort - not a full-service stop for people who are either genuinely in-need or just lazy or somewhere in between.

-stormin

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/us/24aclu.html?e x=1306123200&en=cd9a5fd9f6948a5d&ei=5088&partner=r ssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/johnleo/20 06/05/30/199207.html
And especially this one...
http://thewideawakes.org/archives/2006/06/18/pulli ng-the-plug-on-free-speech/

Let the BDS posts begin:
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/11/lets-discuss- bush-derangement-syndrome.html
http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry= 9173
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Derangement_Synd rome
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/charleskra uthammer/2003/12/05/160406.html

You guys really need to grow up and start thinking.

waiting for the flamebait mod from a lib...
-john

Yay! Insults are fun!

She's more consistant than most conservative politicians.

"Consistant" does not mean "unequivocal". She has not doubts about what she says today, but she doesn't care if it's different than what she said yesterday.

Most mature people don't have to share a point of view with someone to read what they have to say, and maybe get a laugh out of it.

Most people I disagree with I can learn from and see where they're coming from. Someone that says that "There is no plausible explanation for the Democrats' behavior other than that they long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle." and "These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors." is flipping nuts. And every educated Republican I know personally does their best to distant themselves from her. I do get a laugh out of her, she's the only person that makes Cal Thomas seem sane by comparison.

I think you have a poor sense of history if you think advocating the screening of muslims at American airports is the same as putting Jews into ovens.

I think you have a poor sense of what she advocates if you think the screening of muslims at American airports is the worst she's ever advocated. I mean "Coulter has stated that women are "not as bright" as men[31], "have no capacity to understand how money is earned"[32], and "shouldn't be in the military."[33]." and "I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo."

Up until now, getting phone records does not require a warrant.

No doubt that last is the provision the Administration found ... inconvenient ... and it's easy to find sympathy for the initial transgression. I can still do that: cut them a break, ok?

But my sympathy and what they're doing now is exactly why we have a Constitution: the good guys might "need" it to start with, but it never stops there, and the crimes it permits are far worse than the crimes it prevents.

And no, I haven't forgotten. I saw the towers fall too. They're going after people who say things they don't like, and now you can't hide. These are men who'll try to hurt you if you do that. If they can't find a way to wreck your career, they'll go after your family.