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Here is the printable version ... as noted at the bottom, this this is an excerpt from an upcoming book The Pentagon: a History by Stephan Vogel. Newspapers tend to do these reprints over 3-day weekends since not a lotta news happening - here's something ... uhhhhh ... exciting happening today ... ;-)

Maybe they will. But they would be terribly counterproductive. Most of Europe runs a large trade deficit with the US. And emerging economies are ready to take up the slack. They have more to lose. Besides the US cut CO2 emissions by 1.3%. Nothing but economic suicide would fully placate them.

when will the US finally step up and take something other than short-term, economic driven decisions concerning the environment?

When will Europe finally step up and admit they have failed badly WRT the Kyoto Protocol? (some countries have done great. But nowhere all or enough)
When will the world step up and bring China and India into the emission reduction mindset?
When will the rest of the world finally admit that the US is making significant efforts in emissions reductions, just not within the exact same rules as you'd like? (Individual states, and even Bush's latest proposal)
When will the rest of the world realize that 'carbon credit trading' is nothing more than money transfer/extortion, not anything to do with actual carbon emission reduction. As evidenced by none other than Al Gore.

Does the US need to do more to reduce its (carbon) emissions? Hell yes. But so does everyone else.
Make it simple. Everyone...reduce your individual countries emissions by x% in y years. No breaks, no 'trading', no excuses. X%.

Any treaty that affects all the planet, yet exempts almost 1/2 the planet, is badly flawed from the start.

Read about the case here, and here, and here. I'm sure you can find the case itself, given the dates and so forth; I'm not familiar with findlaw. I just pay attention to the rumblings in the news, particularly when there appears to be someone shitting on the constitution, and particularly when that someone is the supreme court.

The racist comments have been debunked. Most were written by a staffer that was later fired; other quotes were taken out of context. You can get more info here: http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=41 822

Besides, if he was a racist why would Ron Paul have suggested a black man as a possible running mate in this interview? The racist remarks expose is simply a smear tactic.

If you really want to know his thoughts on racism, read them in his column.
Excerpt: "Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.

The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity. "

Warnings of Chaos Ignored

I know you were probably only referring to Bush's poor reputation Stateside and his anemic approval rating when you said "fight just enough to piss people off" but you have the whole rest of the world to consider pissing off as well. I love the questions the reporters asked our President.

I remember reading they have codes for which customers they will help and which ones they just want to get out their store based on nothing but appearances.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/16/AR2005081601906.html

I don't want to have to dress up in a suit just to get some help from a dork in a blue shirt.

Now it looks like they may give different prices too.

Don't forget Iraq. Or is it just "collateral damage?" This states the estimate of 655,000 casualties, around the same as Rwanda and much more than Darfur. The sad thing is, some of you will probably think "Is this a troll or not?" while accepting the other ones without question.

...in 13 of 48 shots, lethal armor-piercing rounds either shattered the discs that make up the armor, or completely penetrated the vest.

...the armor failed to endure required temperatures shifts _ from minus 20 degrees to 120 above zero _ which weakened the adhesive holding the discs together.

Say something indiscreet in public? Mysteriously you'd lose your job and no matter how hard you tried you just couldn't get past an interview for even the most unskilled job.

That's already happening with the no-fly list. A Princeton professor who gave a televised speech criticizing Bush's constitutional overreach found himself on the no-fly list afterwards. A guy who wrote a book called "Bush's Brain" about Karl Rove found himself on the no-fly list afterwards. 20 Wisconsin peace activists suddenly found themselves on the no-fly list .

The no-fly list is even being used to harass opposition political party members. Senator Ted Kennedy suddenly found himself on the no-fly list and had a lot of trouble getting himself off the list. The head of the TSA had to call him personally and promise to take him off the list before his troubles ended. In the same article, it talks about employees of the ACLU also ending up on the list.

Giving the government more secret and anonymous "lists" to deny people rights is not an invitation to abuse, it's a guarantee of it. The fact that systems like this from previous fascist governments are being implemented in modern-day America is one reason that people are arguing that America is on a well-planned transition to fascism.

Unfortunately, that may not be enough to keep you out of the CIA's clutches. For instance, there were these guys. Even assisting MI5 with counter terrorism may not help.

But the price of white corn, which is used to make tortillas, is indexed in Mexico to the international price of yellow corn.

Remember Enron? Remember the power going out in California for no other reason than economic fuckery? This is the exact same thing.

Ridiculous article yestersay in the Wash. Post about a large outer-suburban MacMansion-style development that is stuck in a 75-year contract for internet/phone/cable. Some years ago it seemed like a good deal since the company ran fiver optic to each house. Now it's a ripoff monopoly. Hard to feel sorry for the MacMansionites, who are busy violating their own association rules by sprouting satellite dishes, and should have known what a contract meant.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/05/20/AR2007052001724.html
If you don't know about these U.S. developments, almost all the "affluent" growth goes into outer suburbs, while the inner ones, not really built to last, start to peel and crack. Many or most new developments are private entities, with "association" rules and regulations layered on or replacing normal local law.
So if you're looking for virgin territory for high-speed internet service, that's where it is. Or was.

By most accounts, and I've talked with curators at the Smithosonian about this, Small was a terrible leader of the organization. He apparently did bring a lot of money into the organization, but you didn't see any evidence of this behind the scenes at the museum. Instead, he had almost $50,000 spent on furniture for his office, $15,000 spent on the doors at his house, spent $160,000 spent on renovating his office at the Smithsonian castle building, and by using his house to host a few Smithsonian functions, was given $1.15 million dollars in housing allowances. All your tax dollars. Not to mention, his total salary for 2007 was supposed to be $915,000- nearly a million dollars, more than the president and vice president combined. Meanwhile, science seems to have taken a back seat at the Smithsonian, and I suspect the scientists threw a party when he finally resigned. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/03/18/AR2007031801369.html

But Small is just one symptom of a much larger problem, which is appointing incompetent hacks to important government positions, and pushing politics over facts. This is what happened at FEMA with Heckuvajob Brownie. This is what happened in Iraq, when the White House sent over people who had the proper Republican Party credentials, but not the credentials to do the job; it's one of the major reasons the occupation there has been such a disaster. The problem has been summed up pretty well by the phrase, "the triumph of the hacks over the wonks". See, the wonks are the policy guys, the analytical guys who can analyze the facts and tell you what you need to do in order to achieve a desired outcome. They are the political equivalent of a computer geek, except they write policy instead of code. The hacks are the political guys, the guys who don't give a shit what the facts are, they are only there to push their party agenda. And this administration has favored the hacks over the wonks, so the result is that facts get shoved aside by politics, whether it's climate change, or the debatable effectiveness of "abstinence-only" education, or the infamous case of General Shinseki getting sacked by Rumsfeld after he said we would need several hundred thousand troops to effectively occupy Iraq.

You're abit confused. The things your upset about aren't liberal/conservative things but republican/democrat things. There are more sides to the political compas than left and right. What you're worried about is a result of our slow descent into fascism, which both of the major parties are guilty of.

But since you asked so nicely. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/09/28/AR2006092800824_pf.html12 Democrats voted for the torture bill;
over 48 million warantless death sentences of non-enemy non-combatants without a trial or even consulting a judge.http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortions tats.html
Here's a couple things from my state of oregon. 4 months after voters in lane county rejected a tax increase, the county commisioners enacted an even larger income tax against the will of the voters which the voters then had to petition to remove.http://www.registerguard.com/news/2007/05/1 3/ed.col.kutcher.0513.p1.php?section=opinion

A few months after voters statewide petitioned to have a bill voted on and then passed defining marriage as beween a man a woman, The senate passed a bill allowing for civil unions for gays with all the same rights as marriage except that it won't be recognized in other states.http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar ticle?AID=/20070422/OPINION/704220333/-1/OPINION01 02


oh and lest we forget the recent firings of shock jocks for being raciall incensitivity; While Opie and anthony blissfully return to the airwaves after just saying they were sorry for having an entire segment on raping laura bush and condoleeza rice.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18631899/ Sorry for all the references, but from the sounds of it you get all your information by listening to the guy with the bullhorn while you walk past city hall in the middle of a work day.

Well, couple this with the REALID Act. And with the fact that the government is already monitoring financial transactions. The only real difference is that using this system, your REALID becomes a key in their existing databases tracking all of your purchases.

So, you're correct. This really doesn't give the government any more data than they are looking at already. In the short term it just makes it easier for them to use the data they already have. But, in the long term I could see this as additional motivation to say, mandate contact-less REALID readers into the card processing infrastructure. Now that could give them information which they currently find difficult to gather, and they can shift much the cost of building their surveillance infrastructure onto private businesses. A widely distributed network of wireless readers would also add a lot of value to the RFIDs they're putting in the money and will be putting in the REALIDs.

This Russia-related discussion forum at "The Washington Post" is unusual because the forum has an obssessed, anonymous person who has tirelessly collected and posted Russia-related information from reputable Western sources across the Web. This anonymous person calls herself "Atheist", and none of the Russian KGB agents has been able to locate her and to "terminate" her.

This Russia-related discussion forum at "The Washington Post" is unusual because the forum has an obssessed, anonymous person who has tirelessly collected and posted Russia-related information from reputable Western sources across the Web. This anonymous person calls herself "Atheist", and none of the Russian KGB agents has been able to locate her and to "terminate" her.

Any link available for the story about the FAA manager and the missing tapes?

Google is your friend. But then, I suppose, so am I.

--MarkusQ

What evidence do you have that Democrats have committed voter fraud? Even Bush appointed prosecutors weren't able to find a pithy of voter fraud. When they didn't deliver on the supposed wide spread voter fraud they were fired.

I can appreciate the sentiment. It was while reading about this, in particular a detail not covered well in that specific article, which is that Ashcroft had said he wouldn't sign off on the legality of the NSA wiretap program, that I almost found myself saying "I miss John Ashcroft".

For a second I was very scared, as though the universe was about to implode.

I can not understand why the Democrats have not started the impeachment proceedings by now.

Actually, they have.

However, they didn't get very far with them.

AOL stopped pursuing new subscribers quite some time back:

Operating income for AOL...rose 27 percent during the three months ended March 31, but the firm continued to lose subscribers as it makes the transition to a business model based on advertising revenue from one based on selling subscriptions.
AOL's advertising revenue rose 35 percent during the quarter. AOL's operating income...nearly tripled, to $1.2 billion in the first quarter, which included the sale of a German unit. Excluding one-time adjustments, operating income rose 27 percent, to $542 million, boosted by growth in online advertising. The Internet company lost 1.2 million subscribers during the quarter. Revenue fell to $1.5 billion, from $2 billion. Time Warner executives said AOL's Web e-mail, now free, has become a lucrative way to serve up online ads. More than 40 percent of the ad revenue for the quarter stemmed from e-mail.
AOL Ad Growth Brightens Poor Time Warner Quarter [May 3, 2207]

Also, Brian Krebs' blog has an informative post on the phenomenon.

What about NASA missing the moon tapes? Personally, I find that more alarming. Surely those Apollo broadcasts were sent over the airwaves at some point, right? I say we build a temporal feedback warp bubble and redirect the radio broadcast waves back to earth, storing them on Blu-ray this time.

As for the missing emails? I salvaged a dead hard drive once by putting it in the freezer. Maybe we should put some politicians on cold ice for a spell. Maybe that will unjar a few memories.

like maiming and crippling a person for petty crime, which was common in several societies during the middle ages.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename= article&node=&contentId=A49478-2001Dec15

That ruling was stayed by the appeals court and it is considered overwhelmingly likely to be overturned.

What about Tipping Points?

Things might really suck for us!

Doesn't anyone remember when everyone was extolling Google for being SO pious by not giving information to the US government about users when asked? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/01/19/AR2006011903331.html

And even then it was only to do the research to develop a proper child/porn/censorship act. We wonder why lawmakers think the internet is "tubes" and vote treacherously on internet copyright issues and digital management etc. and then we deny them the kind of information that can be used to be effective at all.

So does anyone else find it ironic that Google has no problems bending to the will of the Chinese government's demands to censor itself, but the US government ASKS for some anonymous data and it's all "Don't tread on me!"

Wonder what the Borg's real agenda is.

No, the Democratic party is trying to stop the current "my primary is going to happen before your primary" insanity. Florida moved its primary to January 29th just so that it would a week ahead of the Feb 5th date that 22 other states had set for their primaries. At some point, the madness has to stop. I don't often agree with David Broder, but this time he's right

Is laid out pretty well in Broder's piece today in the Washington Post.

The Post also ran a much longer, more in-depth piece looking at the process of passing freeze legislation in Delaware, easily the most banking- and business-friendly state in the union. That piece is here

One highlight, which looks at the role of the Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA), the lobbyist group that works for the data broker industry and the credit bureaus:

"Goldberg, who has worked with advocates in more than a dozen states to enact freeze legislation, said that in 2005 the CDIA and the credit-reporting agencies shifted their strategy. They no longer were outright opposed to credit-freeze laws; instead, they worked to convince states to allow the bureaus to charge as much as possible when consumers place, lift or remove credit freezes. "The credit reporting agencies clearly want consumers to pay more for the security freeze than we certainly think they should," Goldberg said. "But given that those same agencies collect all of this sensitive financial data about consumers and then turn around and sell it, we think they should also have the obligation to protect the consumer, and that's where the security freeze comes in.

Oh yeah, because everyone knows there are no civilian casualties in Iraq from US military actions. Civilian casualties are civilian casualties, be it from terrorism, military invasion, ethnic cleansing, whatever. The innocent are just as dead.

You're not supposed (at least according to that pesky Constitution) to be required to show ID everywhere you go within the US. But, that has largely been trampled upon since 9/11.

The right to remain anonymous died in 2004 in the Supreme Court case, Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada. All we're haggling about now is what kind of ID they can force us to show.

Copyright is not an unjust law. It exists to spur creation and innovation,

and for a lot of artists, it's the only thing that allows them to afford to create the content you unjustly enjoy.

The concept of a creator being able to exert some control over their creation so that they can profit from it and prevent its adulteration to a certain extent is not wrong.

And without copyright, anyone could take a GPL'ed project, incorporate it into closed source products, and no one could say boo to them.

while you might argue that the "true artists" would create anyway... how much less would they create when the only reward was personal satisfaction?

You're a fringe ideologue who probably creates nothing and is only looking for an excuse to commit intellectual gluttony on someone else's dime.

Well, at least I have an option to learn accurate science. Hey, they'll probably explain the basics on TV shows like Dateline. With FDA, I am forced to take guidance of people who believe earth is 6000 years old. Hey, if human body is perfectly designed, why do we need drugs in the first place?

a) He is a lawyer.

b) You suggest that if he were a lawyer, there would be a contridiction [sic] in terms by him being a man of integrity. The implication is that lawyers have no integrity. A person can have or lack integrity in the things they do or in the ways they do them. Since you are presumably not a lawyer, you don't have the background necessary to begin to know the ways in which lawyers do things, the tools at their disposal, and so on. So I'm presuming that you find integrity inherently lacking in the positions they argue. However, even if you found EVERY single lawsuit and prosecution to be frivolous and unjust, in our adversarial system, lawyers (almost always) exist on both sides, so even then you could criticize no more than approximately 50% of lawyers for advocating immoral positions.

Are you really going to say that the people defending IBM against SCO's suit -- and the people helping IBM at Novell -- lack integrity for what they're doing?

Anti-lawyer rhetoric is dangerous. They're the last bulwark against an oppressive government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/11/13/AR2005111301061.html

Bill Gates recently testified before Congress saying that there were enough open tech jobs in the country to justify "unlimited" H-1B workers! The Washington Post even says that there's a bounty being paid by some companies (SRA International, Inc., in the article). (Both articles accessed May 04, 2007.) With IBM freeing up all these tech workers for other jobs, surely we won't need a relaxed H-1B program in the U.S.

Yes, mod me insightful or troll. It's sort of both.

/. should allow you to delete your own posts... ;)

How about:

Rather than restricting it...like pulling out of the debates sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, and Fox?

um....

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/about/vict ories


And here's a good article about a recent achievement.

It's worth noting that one of the founders of Greenpeace has since come out in support of nuclear power.

First, the article is nothing new. It basically says the same thing as before, "some 22-year old got out of college and worked at Kaiser for 6 months only to find out that, hey, big IT is not perfect." I can't figure out why anyone cares what some dumbass kid is blabbering about. It would be completely different if it was the CIO saying this.

Second, it is true that the medical health system they're implementing is super-complicated but name one that isn't that does what everyone wants. The FBI spent $100m+ on a total failure of a virtual case file system which is far less complicated than an integrated medical health system. Kaiser themselves spent $1B trying to make their own system which was also a failure.

The current implementation is a big-ass system with 8.5 million patients and over 12,000 doctors and a hundred thousand other employees. Frankly, it's a miracle that any system works at all there let alone at 99.2% uptime. Think of all the moving parts! And, yes, I echo someone else's comment that I believe Citrix bears a portion of the blame for the uptime figure -- they kind of suck.

MrNovember

I'd love to hear which protest you were involved in that supposedly had 300k people walking 2 miles from the Washington Monument to the Whitehouse, which is about a half a mile away. (See google map here, sorry you'll have to zoom in for yourself: http://www.google.com/maps?q=Washington,+DC,+USA&s a=X&oi=map&ct=image [google.com] )

I recall an anti-war protest recently that had about 70k protestors followed the next day by a pro-war "protest" that had maybe half as many people... but nothing the size you described. Both were covered by the media in both print and via television, though coverage of both was cursory at best. Care to offer any sites for your data?