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SUV buyers tend to be "insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities."

Why should anyone care? Well, because if you own a car, you get shafted. Traditionally car owners pay more in insurance premiums.
"He also proposes that the insurance industry stop shifting the high costs of the SUV dangers onto car owners by raising premium prices for SUVs to reflect the amount of damage they cause."

-Daniel

Here's Ted's own recent editorial.

Excerpt:

When CNN reported to me, if we needed more money for Kosovo or Baghdad, we'd find it. If we had to bust the budget, we busted the budget. We put journalism first, and that's how we built CNN into something the world wanted to watch. I had the power to make these budget decisions because they were my companies. I was an independent entrepreneur who controlled the majority of the votes and could run my company for the long term. Top managers in these huge media conglomerates run their companies for the short term. After we sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner, we came under such earnings pressure that we had to cut our promotion budget every year at CNN to make our numbers. Media mega-mergers inevitably lead to an overemphasis on short-term earnings.

Step one: for each of the misperceptions, come up with something sort of related that is strictly true. In each of these cases, you just laid out what the Bush administration laid out to mislead people into thinking the misperception.

Most of the world opposed the war in terms of people. But, you can say that a large number of countries supported the war, it is merely an attempt to imply that much of the world supported the war in the general sense. But you had to rely on this very specific wording in order to get that implication. Many countries supported the war, yes, but most of them are tiny countries supporting it in name only and contributing little or nothing. You say that 30 countries "sent troops", but for some reason neglect to mention that very few of these sent more than a handful, and in terms of percentage the number was miniscule. The reason anyone plays any of these rhetorical games is that they want to try to make it look like most of the world supported the war when it did not.

Step two: define the something that is sort of related are true in the "more general sense", whatever that means. In order to support this, you always tried to assert that something more specific is true and simply called it more general.

The example of not "literally" unilateral is not "more generally true". This is a definition you've teased out to have the lowest possible bar of truth. It is not more general.

Further, that Iraq supported some international terrorism at some point is the "more important" general truth is also contradicted by the study itself, which found that most Bush supporters said, that if Iraq did not have "substantial" Al Qaeda support or WMD than the US should not have invaded. The questions that asked this used the very same terms as were used when it was asked whether the respondent thought the two things were true or not.

Why, I might ask, did you use the careful wording of Iraq's support for Zarqawi? Iraq gave "safe refuge" to Zarqawi, but he had always been operating in the north of Iraq, which was always under US/Kurdish control, outside of the control of the Iraqi government. Again, this is the same "fact" that is used for no purpose other than to imply that the Iraqi government supported Zarqawi. There were, in fact, plans to get him before the war started, but they were scrapped because then it couldn't be used to mislead people into the larger war. Again, why did you feel you had to use the careful wording here, if it was the "more general truth"?

Step three: declare, in the absense of evidence, that Kerry voters must not have believed in this more specific truth that you've derived. Again, there is no reason to buy this, since you're just pulling it out of thin air.

Had you actually read the PDF version of the questionnaire itself, you would have seen that many of your assertions are false. Most Kerry supporters thought that Iraq had "limited activities" that could be used to help a WMD program. Most did not think that he did not ever have weapons at all, which you would have known had you read the study. Obviously you did not because you asserted the opposite apparently solely on the basis that it sounded plausible to you.

In short: excellent spin. You should be doing this professionally if you're not already. I hear there are going to be some opportunities opening up at the State Department sometime soon.

Every president deceives. But each has his own style of deceit. Ronald Reagan was a master of baseless stories -- trees cause more pollution than cars -- that captured his vision of how the world should be. George H.W. Bush, generally conceded to be a decent fellow, tended to lie only in two circumstances: When running for president, or to save his own skin, as in Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton famously lied about embarrassing details of his private life, and his smooth, slippery rhetorical style made some people suspect he was lying even when he was telling the truth.

...

Read the rest here.

That chart is a fake (despite its subjective explanatory power). There is no way that IQ could vary so much from average with such large sample sizes (ie, the population of a state).

There is plenty of more objective (ie, not made up) evidence that Bush voters are less informed, not necessarily less intelligent. Clicky one and two and see.

That chart is a fake (despite its subjective explanatory power). There is no way that IQ could vary so much from average with such large sample sizes (ie, the population of a state).

There is plenty of more objective (ie, not made up) evidence that Bush voters are less informed, not necessarily less intelligent. Clicky one and two and see.

Slashdot readers tend to work in scientific or technical fields, are well educated and well read, secular, and take an interest in social and economic matters. There are also a lot of people here with the hacker ethic: make just as much money as you need, and put the rest back into the pool. On all those counts, Bush has scored terribly, by politicising science screwing up the economy, and by blurring the line between church and state. This is a man who goes on instinct rather than reason, is devoid of intellectual curiousity, and fights for the interests of the rich and powerful. When told that someone wrote a book while attending Yale, he quipped "I read a book at Yale." His is the epitome of what Steve Allen called Dumbth.

And you're suprised that the majority of Slashdotters can't stand Bush? I'm amazed that anyone here would support him.

Increases in non-defense discretionary spending over the past six administrations:

Nixon/Ford: 6.8% per year

Carter: 2.0% per year

Reagan: -1.3% per year

Bush 1: 4.0% per year

Clinton: 2.5% per year

Bush Jr: 8.2% per year

Source
And here is a nice graph.

I appreciate your eloquent insights, but perhaps you should read up on Kerry's history in the Senate and his approach to fighting terrorism. Foreign policy is about more than just "defense". I don't agree with every aspect of the Kerry approach, but your generalizations are uninformed:

How John Kerry busted the terrorists' favorite bank describes how Senator Kerry dealt a huge blow to terrorist financing in the 1990s.

Kerry Would Fight Terrorism Better delineates the approach Kerry would take to try and not only fight terrorists but stop them from sprouting up in the first place.

Kerry Faces the World discusses how Kerry's foreign policy approach is very similar to that of the first President Bush.

On the one hand (and on the other) gives The Economist's view of Kerry's foreign policy approach.

Bluster and determination are not enough to fight terrorists. You have to be smarter and more flexible than they are. And you have to believe that a free and open society is inherently stronger than a society run by a closed, secretive government. In my opinion Bush believes that only by severely curtailing the very freedoms we are fighting to preserve and insisting on blind obedience can we beat terrorists. To me, that is playing right into their hands.

You are wrong. Ted Turner (founder of CNN) who should know what he is talking about, is against the current situation where a few dominating media giants dominate the market. Yes, he is/was a media mogul himself, but he sees the problem nevertheless.

He writes:

"At this late stage, media companies have grown so large and powerful, and their dominance has become so detrimental to the survival of small, emerging companies, that there remains only one alternative: bust up the big conglomerates."

The whole article is
here

Arguably he discusses television, not radio but many of the companies involved are the same, the "product" sold to advertisers (John Q. Public) is the same, and a part of what is aired (music, news) is the same too.

Maybe you could start your own radio station, but who will listen to it and why would anyone advertise with you, with your tiny marketshare? The other companies are just too big, so they will very easily undercut you while you are trying to build your business.

You should read this article by Ted Turner. Public Access channels are of vital importance because there are so few vehicles for us to get our content out there.

Just like the web, the problem with any media is that just because you create it, doesn't meant they will come. You need to market your content to get eyeballs. Look at Viacom. Look at AOL/Time Warner. They suceed becuase they own the media chain from start to finish. They heavily market their own stuff. Why is there great programing on the History, Discovery, NASA, A&E channels, (I can keep going) and yet it aren't all that popular? Because no one knows about it. If I own ABC, I don't want to let other networks advertise on my air time. I would be cutting off my nose to spite my face, taking in a small pitance to lose eyeballs.

The web DOES have good content, but many use AOL landing pages, Yahoo landing pages, MSN landing pages to find content, which means that just like music and the record labels, you only see what they want you to see. I have trouble veering outside my typical 10 or 20 web pages for lack of thinking of new and random stuff that I would like (somebody build the application that will change the way people surf - again).

The problem is that these days, the indi folks learn how to shoot and edit and try to produce content. What really needs to happen is a concerted effort to work with others who are absolutely necessary to create content that can rival big media. Set designers, makeup artists, actors, script writers, lighting people are all needed in addition to editors and videographers. Don't forget the lack of marketers, pr people, and the inability to take in revenue/advertising dollars that further keeps independant media in a placec that makes the average joe like you think that public access is a load of crap.

I am biased. I work for an aducational tv studio based out of a high school. We graduate students that have more skills than any college student I have seen working in video. We have univerisites coming to see how we have our studio and editing lab setup, taking notes so they know how they are supposed to do it. We broadcast out locally over 2 cable channels and are currently converting all of our content for web. We are lucky that bandwidth isnt really a problem, a luxury that few other independant content creators have.

On a side note, anyone know how to write an application that will act as a local client to download and cache video content for on demand viewing? I might be able to make you famous.

You have good intuition to have picked up on. All the signs are there, yet very few have noticed the trend--except one If the thought of the Republican party imploding makes you wet your pants with glee, and you really want to brighten your day, I commend this article to you.

That's the whole point of the exercise. They're supposed to be doing what NASA has already done in the way that NASA_hasn't_, cheaply and easily. Advancing technology is supposed to make things like this easier and cheaper. However despite the claims made back when the Shuttles were being developed back in the 70s, NASA has if anything made spaceflight harder and more expensive.

The reason for this is that NASA is a huge beuracracy which must answer to the US government. The space shuttle was designed by government committee to fulfill a lot of "needs" that the shuttle wasn't well equiped to handle. Trying to meet those government mandates made the shuttle more complicated, more fragile, and above all, more expensive. The shuttle was prevented from taking full advantage of the advanced technology of the times, and NASA has done very little about coming up with a replacement using today's technology.

So yes, they're doing what NASA has already done, but they're doing it better and cheaper. The hope is that the private organizations can keep to that track record while trying for orbital fligts and other achievements.

What's bemusing to a European eye is that it seems to be the places which are most likely to be devastated by global warming that are most likely to vote for Bush.

What's also interesting is that those least likely to be the victim of a terrorist attack are most likely to vote for Bush. That is, the best predictor of being a victim of a terrorist attack is population density, and this is also the best predictor of voting for Kerry. At the moment, Kerry is leading in Washington, DC at 78-11. That's an impressive 67 point lead. (Nader, at 9%, is only 2 points behind Bush.) Similar numbers for NYC.

It's been pointed out before that states receiving comparatively less and paying more for federal benefits are more likely to be in favor of them.

I don't know, I had just been thinking about this when I came across the above post. Some explanations are simple but I think there's gotta be another variable behind this somewhere.

If you skip it, you lose flight status.

An annual physical is not something you just "skip" because you don't feel you need to have flight status. The government spent over a million bucks training him, he doesn't just get to say he isn't interested any more.

Bush has never denied... dropping out of flight status for his last 18 months in the Guard.

Actually, that's not true. In his "autobiography," A Charge to Keep, he claims just that. "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years." The truth is he stopped after less than two years.

First, the memos were trotted out as proof that Bush pulled strings to get his spot in the Guard, allegations that were floated and debunked in 1994, 1998 and 1999.

Debunked? No. First, just look at the prima facie evidence: Bush got in in front of thousands of others after scoring a 25% on his aptitude test, the lowest grade accepted, and he was sworn in on the day he applied. That is far from standard operating procedure. So the question isn't if strings were pulled, but who pulled them. It is very possible that neither Bush had anything to do with it and it was a family friend working on his own initiative, so you can argue that Bush didn't pull any strings, but strings were pulled and he was the benefactor.

[N]or has he ever denied transferring to Alabama.

A transfer would imply that he showed up in Alabama, but the records show he was simply gone for five months. There are no credible witnesses that can recall him ever showing up in Alabama.

The Whitehouse has succeeded in making this a confusing issue by lying about it, repeatedly claiming to have released all of Bush's service records and then releasing more, and trying to turn it into a he-said/she-said issue despite the facts. This is a pretty good summary of what we know at this point.

Frankly, I would be more than happy to have the whole thing dropped if Bush would simply acknowledge what the record shows: he didn't faithfully fulfill his obligation to the National Guard. It is as simple as that.

Here's a sampling of the best I've found:

Vodkapundit. Stephen Green's blog. Probably the best match for my own political views. Hawkish libertarian and consumer of fine ethanol-based beverages.

Instapundit Glenn Reynold's blog. Another decent match for my own viewpoint. Glenn's more of a linker than a commentator, but he's one of the best about linking to all sides of the blogosphere. When he does extended bits (such as at his MSNBC site or his TCS columns), he's quite cogent. Has a lot of outside interests (electronic music, space policy, nano-tech, constitutional law) that dovetail into my own and make his site more interesting than the politics-only blogs. Frequently mentions Slashdot and links to relevant discussions.

Reason's Hit and Run Another libertarian blog, run by Reason magazine. Much more in tune to the Libertarian Party than the above.

Virginia Postrel YALB (Yet Another Libertarian Blog). Postrel is a former editor of Reason. More of a social commentator these days and has written some fascinating books recently. Seems to have become ever-so-slightly more hawkish since 9/11.

The Corner National Review's blog. Conservative and largely Catholic, it's best feature is Jonah Goldberg (the token non-Catholic), who has a pleasantly snarky, pop-cultural laden view of current events. Least pleasant on the blog in John Derbyshire, who is quite the math geek but is way out there on the borderline-racist right (quite pleasant in email, though).

Andrew Sullivan. Classical liberal, Oakeshott conservative. A very incisive and passionate writer, he has an infuriating habit of demonizing the opposition. Originally very pro-war (and spent much time fulminating against the "fifth columnist" element on the left), he's now got a new enemy (those opposed to gay marriage/gay rights), so all those who were the enemy last year (the Democrats/John Kerry) are friends, and all those who were friends last year (the Republicans/George Bush) are enemies who can now do no right. When his emotions are not ruling his thinking, though, he's very, very good.

Mickey Kaus Slate's resident blogger, Mickey is a DLC "New" Democrat. He's one of the more honest of the bloggers (zings his own side often, recognizes good arguments on the other side) and a good source of insider media stuff.

Josh Marshall Establishment Democrat. I found his stuff to be really good a few years back, but recently he's spending more time rooting for the team (DNC/Kerry) than being objective. Also, darkly hints at constant "breaking soon" scoops that either never appear or completely underwhelm. Very bright guy, though, and insightful when not attempting to spin too obviously.

Kevin Drum Another Establishment Democrat. Kevin tends to be more self-reflective than Josh, which stands him in good stead. Great place to capture the mood of the DNC political types.

New Republic They have a couple of blogs (&c. and Campaign Journal). &c. is by far the better of the two. Skews left, but a sort of rationalist left (understands that while America may suck at times, other places suck more).

Tapped This used to be a great blog back in the

Atrios/Eschaton
Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo
Billmon's Whiskey Bar
Matthew Yglesias
Eric Alterman
Kevin Drum
Brad DeLong
Daily Kos
Digby
Mark Kleiman
Hesiod's Counterspin
Bob Somerby's incomparable Daily Howler

and the inimitable Bartcop
(and Fafblog)

Contrast that to Kevin Drum's really informative post on the same topic a few days earlier.

Look at the other posts on that page. "Daryn *Hearts* Rush: Ewww". Insightful?

This guy looks familiar. Insightful?

I don't think it matters whether the documents were cut-and-pasted, or even made up entirely. Kevin Drum explains why here.

• Daily Kos
• Eschaton (Atrios)
• Political Animal
• Pandagon
• Hulaballoo (Digby)
• First Draft
• Joe Conason (kinda a blog, it's hosted by Salon.com)

Washington Monthly (by Kevin Drum)

Talking Points Memo (Josh Marshall)

Atrios

Matthew Yglesias

Digby's Blog

Oh, it's hard to narrow it down to a small list.

The previously mentioned Talking Points Memo is quite good.

Also see:

Washington Monthly (Kevin Drum, formerly of Calpundit)
Altercation (what liberal media?)
Daily Howler
Columbia Journalism Review de-spins the media.
Juan Cole (very insightful Iraq commentary from this professor of history)
White House Briefing (political round-up)

The Daily Kos (Scoop software)

The Washington Monthly (Movable Type)

Chomsky's Turning the Tide (pay to play: ironic? no, he's just to busy to respond to anonymous comments)

The Washington Note (MT; by a good friend of Josh Marshall)

Ed Fitzgerald's Unfutz (MT maybe; has the best poll aggregations)

> If these are forged, why did the White House release them?

The answer is here
See the section "UPDATE: I now have copies of the memos the White House released"

A-HA! The WH released memos that CBS News faxed them. The WH never had originals at all.

Kevin Drum (blogging from the Left) looked into this.

> Why should I believe him then when he says he'll [Kerry] be tough on terrorism?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/040 9.sirota.html

Do NOT, i repeat, DO NOT look to journalists. what you want now is an economists.

the media has been relegated to a game of he said she said; back and forth. the media never bothers to find out of a candidate is actually lying. they simply report what each candidate says.

the job of a journalist is to make stories.
the job of a ECONOMIST is to understand fiscal policies, markets, and (growingly important:) social costs.

if you want to understand your government, find an economist who can tack points to the bottom line ($) and reduce it to something you can understand.

Nick Confessore has a nice article talking about hte rise of economist as a source of information, and in particular the Paul Krugman phenomena. I highly recommend these read, parituclarly in conjunction with some Paul Krugman himself for reference.

you can either figure out what a candidate is REALLY supporting, or you can be just another single issue voter.

The Washington Monthly

The Daily Kos

The Columbia Journalism Review Campaign Desk

The Center for American Progress

Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall

Tom Toles political cartoons

Ben Sargent cartoons

Pat Oliphant cartoons

Jamie Zawinski's freinds

Ed Fitzgerald's blog

more to follow-up...

There are two ways to bring a matter to the floor: One is to convince six state delegations to support the motion for a floor debate--a virtual impossibility, Tancredo realized; the other is to get 19 members of the platform committee to support bringing a matter to the floor. This latter route seemed doable to Tancredo, save for one problem: The congressman couldn't find out who, exactly, was on the platform committee. Running the platform process with all the discipline and secrecy that's come to be expected from the Bush White House, the RNC, citing security concerns, refused to divulge the identities of the handpicked delegates who served on the platform committee--even, in some cases, to other members of the platform committee. link

A better article is the (indirectly-linked to) "Independence Way" by Sam Jaffe. It discusses cellulosic ethanol and ethanol reconstituters. Promising stuff.

And you miss the point. Here's the article obscured in one of the links:

ethanol and fuel cells

One major point of the article is that is inefficient to carry around hydrogen as a gas, so carry it around as ethanol, which can yield 4 or 5 hydrogen molecules per molecule of ethanol. Its also easier to transport and store than gaseous hydrogen.

Now, producing that ethanol has been a net negative fuel using corn. However, the newer technology is to use the waste products and not the corn fruit. This is celluloid ethanol and is easier to produce, is cheaper, and can be produced using crops grown in the desert (switch grass).

Now, couple cheaper ethanol with a new (and very cheap) converter to strip off the hydrogen and we're talking about some power. True, it still produces carbon, but its less than fossil fuels and its all produced from plant-materials, so its not pulling carbon out of the ground.

Stargate SG1: Spinoff of a pretty good movie
Stargate Atlantis: Spinoff of a spinoff
BS: Galactica: Remake
Andromeda (LBX): Bought from syndication
Scare Tactics: science FICTION channel REALITY series.

They have a couple other "original" series that I have not seen so I do not feel comfortable talking about. Good for them that there seem to still be a few original shows. See here for their seriously weakened lineup when compared to a few years ago: http://www.scifi.com/onair/shows/

Apparently original ideas are no longer acceptable on SciFi channel. ;)

Why else cancel the amazing show that is Farscape? Farscape takes science fiction to a new level, and a lot of people are picking up on it after the huge fan response to the cancellation.

(Okay actually SciFi didn't "approve" of Farscape because they didn't own it top to bottom. The Farscape game, the little action figures, everything, was under Henson's control. Under the surface the Farscape cancellation is about media consolidation; SciFi Channel doesn't like what they can't own completely.) See this Ted Turner article about this general trend in the industry: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/040 7.turner.html

A lot of people still haven't seen Farscape, so I invite you to watch it Monday through Friday, 9AM-4PM, from Friday, Oct. 1, through Friday, Oct. 15. SciFi channel is airing all 4 seasons so people can catch up.

I beg of you; spread the word about this amazing show.

p.s. I do not wish to offend on Stargate fans or Andromeda fans. Im just extremely passionate about Farscape, I hope you will not be turned off by my enthusiasm.

Where the media is failing is in getting a diverse opinion of the facts presented above. Almost all of the mainstream news outlets covered McBride's presentation of events, "IBM orchestrating an attack on SCO", while McBride proudly thumped on the results of his own media manipulation. How pathetic is that? Turner is right, the wintel press and most media are little more than a big choir all singing the same song.

I'm too lazy to link it now, but it came up after Reagan's death last month. Many people think that Reagan cut taxes. He did. However, many of the cuts were either reversed or simply offset through increases in other ways. For example, when you change the thresholds for exemptions and other tax code minutea, you can have the effect of making more people pay taxes. Reagan called this "Tax Reform" whenever he spoke about it in public. This isn't raising taxes, per se, but merely making the tax affect more people. It is an effective tax raise on a personal level, but politicians can point to the tax rate and say "Nope, didn't go up!" As we've seen from the election and possible re-election of Bush, people in this country are easily fooled.

I got unlazy, and here is one column that discusses this (among Reagan's many other non-conservative actions).

"[TechCentral Station] doesn't just act like a lobbying shop. It's actually published by one--the DCI Group, a prominent Washington "public affairs" firm specializing in P.R., lobbying, and so-called "Astroturf" organizing, generally on behalf of corporations, GOP politicians, and the occasional Third-World despot. The two organizations share most of the same owners, some staff, and even the same suite of offices in downtown Washington, a block off K Street..."

Michael Moore's career as a rabble-rousing populist has been marked by a frequent pattern of dissembling and factual inaccuracy. He distorted the chronology of his first movie, "Roger & Me"; repeatedly peddled the myth that the Bush administration gave $43 million to the Taliban; published two books, Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country? , that were riddled with factual errors and distortions; and won an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine," a documentary based on a confused and often contradictory argument that features altered footage of a Bush-Quayle campaign ad, a misleading presentation of a speech by National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston, and other factual distortions.

With his new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the prestigious Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was #1 at the US box office last week, Moore has surged to new prominence -- and come under increasing scrutiny. His staff has made much of elaborate fact-checking that was reportedly conducted on the film. And fortunately, it appears to be free of the silly and obvious errors that have plagued Moore's past work, such as the claim in Stupid White Men that the Pentagon planned to spend $250 billion on the Joint Strike Fighter in 2001, a sum that represented over 80 percent of the total defense budget request for the year.

However, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is filled with a series of deceptive half-truths and carefully phrased insinuations that Moore does not adequately back up. As Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum and others have noted, the irony is that these are the same tactics frequently used by the target of the film, George W. Bush. Moore and his chief antagonist have more in common than viewers might think.

The 2000 Florida recount

Reviewing the 2000 election during the opening of the film, Moore uses a quote from CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin to make a deeply misleading suggestion about the results of the media recounts conducted in Florida:

Moore: And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes --

Toobin: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.

Moore: -- it won't matter just as long as all your daddy's friends on the Supreme Court vote the right way.

But the recount conducted by a consortium of media organizations found something quite different, as Newsday recently pointed out. If the statewide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had gone ahead, the consortium found that Bush would have won the election under two different scenarios: counting only "undervotes," or taking into account the reported intentions of some county electoral officials to include "overvotes" as well. During the CNN appearance from which Moore

Libya's a quick one: Kadafi paid millions to families of Lockerbie sabotage victims in exchange for release from the oil embargo. He gave up his incomplete nuclear program when his supplier, Pakistan's AQ Khan, was outed and neutralized, despite the Bush coddling of Pakistan's nuclear terror industry. He didn't actually accept any responsibility for terror, or his ongoing plans including assassination of Saudi royals. So Bush gets no credit for "normalization" of relations with the unreformed Kadafi, but must take blame for failing to complete the operation safely during his adminsitration.

You're the one waxing nostalgic over Hussein's regime. Of course I'm glad he's gone - the way he would have been if Schwartzkopf and Powell had final say in 1991, rather than Cheney and Bush Sr. I'm even more unhappy that we've created a chaotic power vacuum, while discrediting our entire country with murder, torture, profiteering, lying about WMD and Al Qaeda.

Rather than just complain (my right as a private American in a business other than nationbuilding), I'll point out an alternate history. 1991-3 military support of the Kurds, contingent on an American plan ratified by the UN, creates an integrated, federal Iraq within its 20th Century borders, with Kurd, Sunni and other states. Ba'ath party members are tried, sentenced, and jailed/ostracized, while the new Iraq establishes stable trade with its neighbors, through border states with whom they share ethnic and cultural identities. Within the Iraqi federal system, the Iraqis negotiate middle grounds between their competing neighbors, offering a base of democracy and social capitalism governed by the people. Their model: the American people who backed them in their struggle for democracy.

Think of France and the American Revolution. Think of the mutual growth of domestic democracy in each country, and the ongoing mutual interest in alliance through the centuries. Think of the spread of democracy and capitalism through the region. Freedom is always a DIY affair, as any honest descendent of American slaves will tell you.

Now that we've both had our chance to fantasize about a 1990s that never happened, let's look at your evidence that Iraq financed Al Qaeda. In the court decision you offer, the court decided that Iraq/Hussein was guilty by default - Hussein ignored demands that he appear before a US court in early 2003, among other demands, mostly for his head. The evidence permitted by that court was acknowledged to be inadmissible for many US statutory reasons, but they ignored those. The evidence actually used was the "hearsay" testimony of CIA directly Woolsey, not even reputably "honest" among the ranks of publicly, and patently, duplicitous holders of his office. Woolsey said "we think a state must have helped the planebombers, so that means Iraq". And then there's Mylroie, noted neocon hack, currently on payroll at the neocon farm league American Enterprise Institute. No hard evidence. That flimsy case for Iraq / Al Qaeda collaboration wasn't enough for the 9/11 Commission, which said, in their June 17 report, " We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.", which seems clear to me.

Amnsesty International's take on the 4/23/99 bombing of Serbia's state broadcaster doesn't qualify as "bombing the crap out of the Serbian people". NATO shouldn't have killed those "civilians" - nobody should be killed in war. The 16 killed "civilians" were publishing the propaganda and military communications that Serbians were using to organize the genocide of their neighbors, which NATO stopped. I know that the people killed were not really civillians, because I was in communication with the actual civilian broadcast staff at the time in Belgrade, who were kicked out by Milosevic's new troops, and started a pirate Internet "radio" stream which broadcast my friend's album, for which I did some engineering. Compare that murky

Excellent point. As explained here, the US spends more per capita covering the health needs of its citizens than Canada does, and covers less people.

These two accounts are in the same vein.

This is an interesting article that address a whole lot of issues, but does in part talk about the changing world and why "outsourcing to India" isn't necessarily a bad thing: Creative Class War by Richard Florida.

This is why we're losing jobs to India. Indians don't have to worry about looking like dorks because they're interested in science.

The US won't go down the tubes because of outsourcing. It'll go down the tubes because we're becoming uninteresting to smart people.

see Gregg Easterbrook's shuttle series for these words written by someone much smarter than all of us.

This one was written around 1979

this one was the cover of time after the columbia blew up, but it is now only available as a copyright infringement.

Wasn't techcentralstation.com already denounced as a tool for lobbyists?

I think here.

Sorry, but modern feminism seems to spend 90% of its time advocating for abortion to the exclusion of everything else. You see, while there's still a long way to go for equal rights, enough advances have been made that (most) American women appear to be generally happy with their lives and future prospects, so there isn't a good stimulus for rapid change. Groups like NOW can't survive without a health dose of oppression, so they try to convince women that "JOHN ASHCROFT WANTS TO OWN YOUR UTERUS" in order to keep the donations flowing, and reject any restrictions on abortion out of hand, no matter how minor or abuse-proof. (Example here.)

I don't have much sympathy for this type of behavior. I firmly believe in equal rights - I'd vote for the ERA if it came up again - and I'm sick of being told that I'm "anti-woman" because I think abortion is wrong. And I'm still disturbed by how quickly so-called feminists forgave Bill Clinton. Real feminists are out earning engineering degrees, serving in the military, or helping educate girls in lower-class communities, not whining to legislators.

The reason for the recesion is clear. Clinton/Gore kept pumping and pumping the bubble. Where were they when Enron / Worldcom / Wall Street were up to their shenanigans? That's right hitting, up the ChiComs for campaign donations and hitting up interns for BJ's.

Clear to only the hard-line Clinton haters. Do you really think any significant regulation of Wall Street would have made it out of the Republican majority Congress? You can blame Clinton all you want, but hardly anybody outside of Alan "irrational exuberance" Greenspan and Warren Buffett was saying much during the bubble. It was most assuredly a bipartisan bubble.

And James K. Glassman, the author of Dow 36,000, one of the most notorious of the pro-bubble books, is now a "well-respected" fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and making big bucks on the corporate lecture circuit. Your claim about Clinton/Gore causing the bubble is disingenuous at best.

And it seems you right-wingers are just obsessed over this BJ thing. As the advocacy group group said, censure and Move On.

Bush's approval rating is at 61%

As was mentioned in the same article that you quoted, it was a 5 point rise (61-5=56) from the previous poll taken four days before Thanksgiving, and it was probably caused by the pictures from his Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad.

And as an added bonus, he's now got new pictures to use on the campaign to replace those discredited "mission accomplished" flight suit photos.

We know what (the Democratic Agenda) is. 1. Raise taxes. 2. Surreder to Hussein.

Ann Coulter? Is that you?

Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.

TechCentralStation mistakenly believes that this applies to music sharing. This position has already been rebutted in other articles, because the files that you are sharing (the MP3's) are NOT the originals. They are copies taken from the owner's CD. Therefore the owner has made the copy, not you. Also, you're making a copy of a copy, which is not permitted under Section VIII of the Copyright Act.

Since you're disputing TechCentralStation, I figured I'd point everyone to this article which has been floating around recently. It seems that TechCentralStation is actually an astroturfing service of sorts, so it makes perfect sense to hear that they've been publishing false or misleading editorials.

I think games like this would be a nice change of pace from the standard "one-man army" type of games we've been seeing for a while

What about the US Army's An Army Of One slogan? Besides, if it's not the one man army thing, then you end up directing stuff, tanks, fighters, supply stuff, etc. Then it's a strategy game. If you want that, try Starcraft.

Fine. If Atrios is going to get taken to court, then it'll happen, but let him throw a PayPal button up and his defense fund'll get taken care of in short order. But if that's gonna happen, then fair's fair. Then, by the name of all that is good and holy, I hope someone yanks this bitch into court, too, for far worse. Getting a little bit tired of conservatives getting away with advocating the execution of those they disagree with ... :/

I'm dropping awefully late in the conversation, but this link is more relevant than ever. It's a good article from 1980 about the why's of a shuttle over a rocket.