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It allready has been done, unfortunately not in a healthy or sustainable manner. Here's a random link. I was hoping to find some of the more disturbing pictures of the pollution computer waste causes. There are whole villages buried in the stuff in China, and the heavy metals they are extracting is a severe health hazard. I think this kind of thing is why such recycling schemes are being proposed.

Now, it would be tremendously useful if Gladwell had figured out some general rules of thumb for when to rely on your instantaneous hunches and when not to.

But as far as I can tell, his book reduces to two messages:

1. Go with your gut reactions, but only when they are right
2. And even when your gut reactions are factually correct, ignore them when they are politically incorrect.

Gladwell does make a genuinely useful point about how when people try to put their ideas into words, they often distort them into meaninglessness or falsehood.

Ironically, this happens to Gladwell every time he writes about race.

Because there were already plenty of books on the market advising corporate workers in tiresome detail how to look before they leap, the sales potential of a book telling them, "Wotthehell, just go ahead and leap," was clear.

Unfortunately for Gladwell, the best-known examples of thinking without thinking are racial and gender prejudices. But, then, you've forgotten Rule #2--Readers despise logic and consistency. So Gladwell just assumes that his otherwise beloved "rapid cognition" is 100% wrong whenever it's based on race or gender stereotypes.

(And that's why he makes a $1 million annually and I don't.)

The most intriguing aspect of Gladwell's book is that its hopeless confusion and mind-melting political correctness stem from the author's own racial background. Although mostly white, Gladwell is partly of African descent (his mother was black, Scottish, and Jewish). But he doesn't look noticeably black in most of his pictures.

The origin of Blink, he writes on his website, came when, "on a whim," he let his hair grow long into a loose but large Afro.

As you can see in this picture of Gladwell with his Afro, he wound up with more of a Napoleon Dynamite Mormon 'fro than the genuine kinky kind that ABA basketball players espoused back in the 1970s. Still, it does finally make him look marginally black.

As soon as Gladwell grew his Afro, he claims, he started getting hassled by The Man: highway patrolmen wrote him speeding tickets, airport security gave him the evil eye, and the NYPD questioned him for 20 minutes because they were looking for a rapist with an Afro.

"That episode on the street got me th

"I want to disabuse anybody of any notion that somehow the books were cooked," Mayer told the Times. But he said "certain things are scripted" in any large war game. "You have to execute in a certain way or you'll never be able to bring it all together," he said.

Mayer said that in some parts of the exercise Van Riper was constrained "in order to facilitate the conduct of the experiment."

The Lancet article was a peer-reviewed estimate of Iraqi civilian casualties since the invasion as around 100,000 as of the fall of last year. Based on the statistics, the true number could be between 5,000 and 200,000, but the highest probability was around 100,000.

The methodology was to compare the rate of deaths before the war and the deaths after the war. If someone dies because Bechtel can't manage to get sewage treatment back on line, that counts as a death related to the US invasion just as surely as a cluster bomb dropped on a house full of civilians.

Note that the WaPo article gets the other casualty count sources wrong - Iraq Body Count is tracking confirmed casualties in the Western media. They acknowledge that they are definitely undercounting, simply because the Western media is not present at all locations where bodies are found.

A sizeable chunk of Iraqis would actually prefer life under Saddam to the current lawless situation. Not all, not even most, but more than you'd like.

The choice between what Bush is doing and Saddam is a false dichotomy. Last year, a majority of Iraqis wanted the Americans to leave immediately - even those who felt that it would increase violence. Apparently, the Bush administration knew better.

Whether or not the initial invasion's benefits outweighed its costs (for the US or the Iraqis), the question about the current occupation is entirely separate.

Given the extremely high turnout for last weekend's elections, I'd say that the question has been rather eloquently answered, don't you?

Not really; the turnout was less than in South Vietnam in 1967. Anyway, how many of those Iraqis went to the polls to vote the Americans out?

Pity about those Iraqi Christians who couldn't vote.

Can't outlaw burritos

In some area's, DWUB (Driving While Under the influence of a Burrito) is already illegal.

Whoa - how is this insightful? Not to nitpick too much, but to say "Defense is excluded" isn't entirely accurate. A quick google search of 'budget cuts defense department' returns this Washington Post article as the *first* hit. The short of it - $55 billion in cuts over 6 years (same timeframe as the $300 billion in cuts the parent mentions), including $5 billion from missile defense.

That might not be a huge chunk of the $300 billion, but during time of war I'd say that's definately more than "excluding" the DoD.

Actually, he presented actual proof of no such thing. There was no meeting in Malaysia, at least not one that proves anything the troll above is claiming. The Bush admin has admitted that this claim was a mistake based on confusion over names they thought sounded similar. The poster above - or his blogger friend - likely is well aware of this, but continues to spread this falsity because it helps his argument, even though he knows it is false. Check out his blatant lie about riverbend (the Iraqi blogger) at the end of this post. This guy is a troll, which explains the moderation.

the email tax has already been banned (thanks snopes forums)

thanks google

a) Public schools are generally run by local governments, which are under state control. The First Amendment to the federal constitution does not apply to state governments.

Wrong. Federal laws supercede state laws, and state laws in turn supercede local/municipal laws.

Constitutional laws -- such as the 1st Amendment -- supercede Federal law. We are, after all, a "Constitutional Republic."

Hence, the 1st Amendment applies to all levels of government, from the Federal level on down.

This is basic Civics/Government stuff...

b) Even if it did, the guarentee of freedom of speech does not mean that the government has to sponsor that speech.

Correct.

Indeed, any sponsorship of the government necessarily means that taxpayer money is used to promote the speech, and although such sponsorship happens regularly enough (such as in California, where a the state pension plan agency was working to oppose President Bush's attempts to partially privatize Social Security, or the recent scandal surrounding the promoter of the "No Child Left Behind Act", or various works put out by the ONDCP), it's almost invariably condemned as a waste of taxpayer money and a sign of overbearing government abuse of power (as if governments abusing their power were uncommon).

c) Even if it did, minors do not have the full range of legal rights, just as they don't have the full range of legal responsibility.

Incorrect. 2 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the First Amendment rights of minors, saying in the majority opinion "minors enjoy the protection of the First Amendment"

Uh...they *should* be able to copy from Apple.

After all, they invested $150M in Apple in 1997. This served a dual purpose: invest in a company so that later they could 'borrow' concepts, and also to prop up an injured foe so that the international courts couldn't see just how bad MSFT was. If Apple had died in 1997/1998, I really think the IE/monopoly ruling would have turned out differently.

How quickly we forget.

Hell, Apple should be THANKING Microsoft.

Glad to see you paid attention in civics class. Now pay attention to the real world: the President pushed hard for the PATRIOT ACT, and as the most powerful Republican in government, he has a great deal of influence over the Republicans in Congress. Congressmen who don't go along with the President and other party leaders tend to have a difficult time getting committee assignments. That makes it more difficult for them to get their own agenda enacted, or to bring home the bacon to their constituents. This means more trouble getting reelected.

Not to mention, the Patriot Act was drafted partially by the Justice Dept. You may also have noticed Ashcroft touring the country campaigning for PATRIOT, and the President mentioning it in campaign speeches. The executive branch has also taken the lead in applying PATRIOT to non-terrorist offenses, contrary to the stated intent of Congress when they voted for the thing. Finally, according to some of the Congressmen themselves, this act that was written by the executive was pushed through Congress before most members had time to read this 300-page act they were voting for. Ron Paul and a few other members complained bitterly about this.

Here's a detailed history of the passage of PATRIOT. Note this quote (my emphasis): "Within days, Ashcroft held a press conference and called on Congress to approve the Justice Department's legislative plan in a week's time."

I mean, that worked so well for Clinton- letting Al Qaeda attack the WTC and then not capturing them, not going to war, not increasing security.

Clinton was the worst president we ever had 4 years ago. Bush let al Qaeda attack the WTC and then didn't go out and capture them. Where's Osama? Bush did go to war but in the wrong country. Bush has done nothing to increase security... read the 9/11 Commission report if you disagree. The White House's own reports say terrorism has increased since 9/11.

Then again it's hard to change people's minds no matter how many "facts" you have. Right?

There's no actual consensus on 'global warming' is in fact happening, and if it is, whether or not human activity has anything to do with it. Remember, 25 years ago these same folks were howling about 'global cooling', that should tell you something.

Insteead, there seems to be largely a grab for grant money and political power, as opposed to real science - this article for an example of the phenomenon.

We just don't know, and instead of concentrating on actual science, political agendas and feeding at the public trough have become the priorities. This is far too important an issue to rush to judgment on, IMHO.

Maybe the UK will pass new terror laws banning suspected terrorists indefinitely from the internet and cell phones without trial. Maybe even putting said suspects indefinitely under house arrest without trial.

Sound out there? It's not.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename= article&node=&contentId=A52241-2002Dec29&notFound= true

Its not surprising that Hussein didn't go out of his way to notify his enemies that he was a toothless tiger.

What is surprising is that so many US citizens refuse to accept that their government does not always act ethically.

1. It was Korea and not Vietnam that was referred to as a "police action". Go and read the Pentagon Papers if you want to know why the US was involved in Vietnam.
2. The US never declared war on Vietnam because the Gulf of Tonkin resolution gave the President the power to attack Vietnam without declaring war. But I dare you to tell a Vietnamese man who lost his parents to American carpet bombing and his children to birth defects caused by American exfoliants that it wasn't actually a war.

Anyway, seems the Americans are getting pretty good at fighting wars, and not actually having anyone die.

Reputable, independent sources estimate that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the current war. Nobody contests that more than 15,000 have died.

Here is a Washington Post piece on the Bush administration's efforts to suppress this kind of report, at the EPA no less, though I wager unless its coming from Fox news you will probably consider it left wing propaganda since I imagine you are a card carrying member of the American Gestapo(a.k.a the New Repulican Party). You probably shouldn't refer to yourself as incompetent, its not a sign of the strength you need in your line of work :)

Is he worth hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives? Because that's how many his men have killed since he was in power.

And guess what? We killed ten of thousands ourselves "liberating" them, and now the civilian death rate is worse than it was under Saddam.

And they didn't just die from bombings, we're talking rape and torture. And no, not the kind of torture where people have sex in front of you and make you undress, but the kind where things are shoved up your ass that don't belong in your ass, where you are slowly killed, you know, real torture.

You mean like the Iraqi teenager who was seen in Abu Ghraib, lying on the floor with his anus bleeding while US troops discussed sodomizing him with metal objects? I guess that story didn't get reported on FOX News, huh?

Being a former Republican, I figured out the communist/Islamunist connection fairly quickly. Actually if anything, they aren't fascist or communist, but theocrats. Communists, generally, are scared of religion. Fascists parade religion around like a crown, but generally base the laws of the land on corporate worship, not religious worship. Religious laws in a fascist society seem more to quell the would be theocrats and keep them in lockstep with the party.

Again, you are sticking words in my mouth. I didn't say it was from the top down in my posts. But, ok, you asked for it. Our esteemed executive defines torture as:

"...physical torture 'must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.'"

So, according to our executive, basically anything short of being drawn and quartered, disembowled, and killed, is legal. So raping is fine. Beating the living crap out of people is fine (as long as they don't die). Breaking bones, mutilating flesh, and removing parts of the body, so as long as they do not result in "impairment of bodily function" is fine.

So, you are right about one thing, although I never said you where wrong: Murdering prisoners is not officially sanctioned. Well, at least publically, I'm not privy to classified info and it's hard to prove an absolute negative in this case.

The memo in question

Oh, and yes, the military has shown a great interest in investigating what has been going on. However, the civilian leadership has shown more of an interest in making sure it is harder for investigations to find evidence.

"This in contrast of course to the Insurgents/Terrorists who advertise daily that they will kill, mutilate, rape, and execute any and all civilians they can get their hands on."

I also never said the "insurgents" wheren't killing/executing people. In fact, I acknowledged it in the previous post when you implied I was either excusing or ignoring their crimes the first time.

Those rebels/guerrillas do kill and execute civilians, as well as military personel, and government officials. I doubt it's as indescriminate as you insinuate. And now it's my turn, please post some proof that they have been raping people. I haven't seen proof of mutilation outside of the act of murder or post-mortem, but I wouldn't doubt it since mutilation is a big part of the criminal punishment system of many of the countries over there, like Saudi Arabia.

"The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges." - Senator Lindsay Graham(R)

...an Iraqi woman in her 70s had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib and another coalition detention centre after being arrested last July.
http://www.awakenedwoman.com/abu_ghraib.htm

The nightmarish images showed American soldiers at Abu Ghraib Prison forcing Iraqis to masturbate. American soldiers sexually assaulting Iraqis with chemical light sticks. American soldiers laughing over dead Iraqis whose bodies had been abused and mutilated
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4989422/site/newsweek/

The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4999734/site/newsweek/

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fa ct

...the practice shown in that photo is an arcane torture method known only to veterans of the interrogation trade. "Was that something that [an MP] dreamed up by herself? Think again," says Darius Rejali, an expert on the use of torture by democracies. "That's a standard torture. It's called 'the Vietnam.' But it's not common knowledge. Ordinary American soldiers did this, but someone taught them."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4989422/site/newsweek/

Most of the prisoners, however--by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers--were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fa ct

...prisoners being ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve their food from toilets.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A437 83-2004May20.html

...Army translator having sex with a boy at the prison. He said the boy was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Hilas said he heard the boy's screams and climbed a door to get a better look. Hilas said he watched the assault and told investigators that it was documented by a female soldier taking pictures.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5030097/

Apparently, they arrested the 'anonymous' tipster who told them about the four chinese illegals entering the country. Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinones was detained by Mexican authorities, and the FBI wants to extradite him. Why? Because he informed the 'good guys' about a plot to smuggle Chinese illegals into the country. Illegals he said planned to set off a dirty bomb made of nuclear oxides.

Chinese illegals are being deported after being forced down in the plane smuggling them through Texas. Guess who co-owns the plane? Afzal Hameed, president of a flight school that caters to Saudi Arabian flight students. You can read about some of their clientele here. However, no dirty bombs were found.

(More details available over at Michelle Malkin's blog.)

The moral of the story? Unless you're the President of the United States, you're in deep shit if they don't find the WMDs... But I'm not saying anything, because I don't know about any terrorist activity.

The US Government requires a specific license to provide any goods or services to anyone in iran.

Violations can draw 10 years in jail ..
It's illegal to help Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi publish her book(s) in the US:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A564 24-2004Dec10.html/

but then, everyone knows the WP is a leftie extremist, terrorist supporting rag, right?

( That should be the Norwegian committee in the article, not the Stockholm one. All the other Nobels are awarded in Sweden ...)

"We already make much more food than we need due to advancing agricultural technology." I agree we make more pop-tarts (tm) and big macs (tm) than we need, but the US is becoming a net importer of food, although only in dollar terms, so your statement is not disproven in caloric terms:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A115 40-2004Nov25.html

(use google if you get a reg page)

Being self sufficient means you can buy what you need. NYC could. Could Alabama? Those "red states", supposedly so big on family values, morals and limited government, are a bunch of welfare queens living on the dole paid for by all us amoral heathen big-city high rollers.

....

You want a pretend cowboy for a president? Fine. Wanna ransack random countries? Fine. Ban consensual behaviour, research, and teach your children lies? Whatever, that's your business. Just don't do it in my name with my money, and make me live with the consequences.

Who mods this crap "Insightful"??? How about "Outright Lie" or "Woefully Misinformed"?

where did you get 80%?

Even the Bush whitehouse is downplaying the importance of the elections these days. Things really are "That Horrible", as you say:

The administration continues to say publicly that it expects a significant Sunni turnout, citing an International Republican Institute poll in early December showing 20 percent of Sunnis intend to vote and 35 percent intend "somewhat" to vote. But in light of the insurgents' growing attacks on election and government officials since that survey, U.S. officials fear last-minute attacks on polling stations, candidates and voters will produce a much smaller turnout among the minority group that once dominated Iraq. One unofficial estimate already predicts a vote as low as 10 percent in some areas.

Sunnis represent about 30% of the total population of Iraq, BTW.

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A506 5-2005Jan12.html

Not all the money was private; DC had to spend $17 million on the inaugural. Historically, these costs have been reimbursed by Congress through a special appropriation; this time, however, the Bushies have told DC to use their Homeland Security funds; after all, it's not like DC's a likely terrorist target.

Bush is a bad president because all of this fru-fru pomp and circumstance is inappropriate when the country is at war. Life should not go on like normal for the people responsible for sending the military out to risk life and limb. Celebrate when the killing is over.

Don't worry: you can just force the city of Washington, DC to pay for it

This guy was never qualified for the job; and if it weren't that Dubya needed a black guy in his cabnet to go along with the black girl who's running the country now; Colin wouldn't have been there and therefore neither would Michael.

It reminds me of fox news suing the fox channel for alledgedly slandering them in an episode of the simpsons. It was eventually stopped by rupert murdock himself, he quite sensibly decided it was silly for two companies he owns to sue each other. conglomerates.

Here's the problem many people overlook: many states have specific laws making it illegal to divulge information from someone where it can be reasonably known or assumed that a binding confidentiality agreement was breached. (Don't like the law(s)? That's another discussion altogether and has nothing to do with the first amendment.)

What remains to be seen is what, if any, of these laws apply, and whether or not the laws of Massachusetts, California, federal, etc., can be applied to this case.

And, as many people have said, they don't really care about Nick Ciarelli (yes, for those who don't know, he's 19 year old Harvard student). They care about finding out who within the company (or contractor, etc.) is continually leaking this extremely accurate information to Think Secret. And no, it's not "known" elsewhere. He's got a very reliable mole, or a set of them, and Apple wants to know who they are. Hint: yes, these are people who definitely have binding confidentiality agreements with Apple.

Regardless of whether or not Apple "should" or "shouldn't" be doing this, whether it's good PR or not, etc., if you can't see that it's wrong, legally and ethically, for these people to be leaking this information, then, well, we have nothing further to discuss. Further, whether or not Nick should be publishing it is a subject of further debate, but he's the one person who knows who these people are. Is it journalism and free speech when you violate laws (the one I spoke of in the first paragraph) to obtain information? Ignorance of the law is no excuse...

And remember, whether or not you fundamentally *agree* with the law is irrelevant. It's either illegal, or not. (Yes, yes, sure, there's gray areas, but that's not the point I'm making. And sure, maybe Nick "fighting it" in this way is one mechanism to examine the validity of these laws, and further, the role of an online journalist and his information gathering mechanisms, what can be construed as soliciting known confidential information, what constitutes a violation of these laws in this context, etc.)

Just some things to think about.

Story that the figures are from. Forgot to include it in the parent.

"Once a traveler has been added to the reported list for a flight, subsequent reporting of a traveler with the same name and date of birth for the same flight will be discarded. Corrections and/or additions to a traveler's data cannot be made after the initial report."

The problem comes when they compare the pax list with their databases. In the US even US citizens don't have the right to correct their data, and the FBI has no obligation to ensure their data about you is correct. Already we've seen how good the TSA's system is, putting every Carlos Garcia, John Lewis and David Nelson on theirs Watch-List as it, doing repeated time-consuming checks on all 10 thousand of them each time they fly rather than doing the actual random checks that keep us safer. And now their database is going to have this data for all travel and travelers around the world (because the gov'ts share this info). They'll be so swamped by the millions of false positives that it'll be far more likely that the extraordinarily rare false negative won't be noticed. Makes me feel safer already: cue theme music to Brazil.

Again the "Its a Warning not a Guidebook" Best Essay Ever...on privacy: "The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life.

"[Example of typical gov't database, filled with errors] That was only a research database, so its inaccuracies probably would have remained relatively benign even if it had not been dismantled.

"But if our privacy becomes ever more systematically invaded by the state for purposes of assessing our behavior and making judgments about us, wrong information and misinterpretations will have potential consequences.

"If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm."

I should also have included some relevant links to Internet based news sources bookmarked in Safari:

Slashdot of course.
CNN of course.
NYTimes for the writing and quality of reporting.
BBC for the big mainstream non American news perspective.
Kevin Sites for on the ground reporting in Iraq.
Dan Gillmor for news grassroots news.
CBS for financial info.
CNET for tech news.
Global Security for political defense news.
Google for a good news accumulator.
Cryptome because John manages to pull some pretty damned interesting articles out.
NPR of course. Don't forget to donate.
Reuters because they have the news.
Washington Post for beltway news.
Wall St. Journal for more financial news.
NPR Marketplace for more financial news.
CBS for mainstream US news.
Technocrat for real science oriented geek news, like Slashdot only with less noise.
Oh, yeah and
Macsurfer for a Macintosh community oriented news accumulator.

You see, that pesky little organization that actually thinks about issues like global terrorism and the impacts of US policy on such activities, the CIA, has this to say about dumbasses little escapade into Iraq. Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists...

Not exactly what dumbass had in mind, but I guess when your brain works with binary logic (black:white) you can't see that the world is morass of nasty fucking gray that takes more than 1 step of logic to contemplate.

I hope that the Idiot in Chief at least can figure out that since he's a 2nd-termer, he should pull our troops the fuck outta that shit hole once the civil war begins in earnest...and that should begin in about 15 or so days after the killing event also know as the January 30th "election".

Your points about public universities are right on.

Now M$ is trying to sell it.

Slate was sold to the Washington Post in December of '04. --M

Columnist denying it.

USA Today nailing him on it.

Washington Post doing the same.

FCC investigation into Armstrong Williams payola.

Seriously, this is not a conspiracy; it happened. You can argue whether (as USA Today states) he was contractually obligated to be favorable towards vouchers, but he definitely took money to run ads on them... and immediately afterward, wrote columns favorable of the Bush administration's position on the issue. This would be *incredibly* questionable, in and of itself. If he took the money with an additional obligation of running those columns, it is quite possibly illegal.

It's true that popular media accounts of the holocaust tend to include some apocryphal material -- the soap story, the lampshades, sometimes lumping all the camps together as if they were run the same way. It's also true that the weight of the evidence has convinced every credible historian on the planet of the fact that the holocaust occurred. No one smoking gun is going to demonstrate conclusively that it did, and it's possible that any given fact might be questioned -- but the big story is there and cannot be wished away.

I think there's a danger, when we start laying into vague targets like "the media," that we'll confuse the quality of the messenger with the truth of the message. And that ain't always inadvertent; holocaust deniers consciously manipulate the slightly-off pop news stories to question the whole history.

I'd agree completely with your basic mutterings about, oh, newspapers, and the 10:00 local news, and to some extent magazines like Discover. But behind Discover's "Top 100 Science Stories of 2004" article, which chose global warming as its number 1 story by the way, there is a truth: the overwhelming majority of scientists today are convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that global warming is now occurring. Get just a nudge away from the low pop sources -- to Scientific American, which is a little more highbrow among the pop stuff, or then to Nature -- and you'll see that, loud and clear, with less boneheaded news manner to the narrative. The evidence is so overwhelming that even the Bush administration, laden with energy industry biases as it clearly is, has conceded that the warming's happening.

For anyone to wish the actual phenomenon away with a "this is a big complicated phenomenon, and the pop media's suggesting it has simple explanations" would be an exercise in wishful thinking. It'd be on that level of silliness we're bemoaning in "the media," wouldn't it? At that point we're talking tortuous self-deception at the level of creationism -- speaking (indirectly) of another overwhelming truth that people try to dispel by "debating" at a pop-cultural level...

The Article

If you're going to compare to the EU, let's go all the way. The EU has a declining birthrate and a large number of people on the verge of retirement. Their socialist systems will implode under their own weight.

The same is being said about our Social Security system, which btw, is the largest socialist program that is not identified as a socialist program. Socialism in the US?! Never!!

Let's also mention military might. The EU spends about $0.35/year on their military budget, and that's why when some asshole in Absurdistan starts massacring people, the EU sends a platoon of potato peelers and the US sends 20 battallions of armed and trained Marines.

I'd rather we followed the prime directive. We don't. But despite spending almost as much as the rest of the world does on military, we don't have a stellar record of policing the world.

I don't remember any of our marines showing up when Pol Pot butchered a million (give or take a few hundred thousand) Cambodians. Or when Idi Amin "Dada" wiped out half a million of his subjects. Where exactly where our marines when Juvénal Habyarimana was waging a genocidal war against the Tutsis? (Of course, after his death another 800,000 were slaughtered, so can't directly credit him with every death.) BTW, it was the French who stepped in to bring a fragile "peace" (a little too late for all the dead), but our marines were quite conspicuous by their absence during all this turmoil. Did our marines show up when Augusto Pinochet was busy imprisoning, torturing and executing 30,000 Chileans?

So yes, we send our Marines only to the Absurdistans that happen to have oil. See how our marines took care of the "Butcher of Baghdad"; but let us not dampen our euphoria by also mentioning the 17,500 to 100,000 we have managed to wipe out in the process of deposing Saddam Hussein.

BTW, it is not as if the EU is stingy when it comes to spending money on their military. France, Germany, the UK, and Italy are 4 of the top 7 countries when it comes to the military expenditures. France, Norway, Greece, UK, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Finland, all make it to the top 25 Military Expenditures per capita.

The EU socialist-lite system works because it depends on the charity of the American military.

For all the money we are pouring into the military complex, we'd better believe that we are doing it for charity, or we'll have to start asking some really disturbing questions. The EU may or may not collapse under the weight of their socialist systems. But one thing is certain - if current levels of military expenditures continue and 'boomers start to retire in 2010, then by 2015 the US budget will have little else to spend on other than the Defence, Soc. Sec, and medicare. No wriggle room.

By 2025 the proverbial shit will hit the fan. Don't take my or anyone else's word for it (such as the NYTimes, WashingtonPost or for that matter

so, we ignored North Korea, and attacked Iraq?

What gave you the silly idea that we are ignoring North Korea?

not even through this mysterious "attempt on ghwb's life"

Its not that mysterious

Iraq has never been a threat. Never.

Tell that to Iran. Or Kuwait. Or Israel. Or Saudi Arabia. Or the Kurds. Or the Iraqi people. Or Russian intelligence.

In fact, I bet you wouldn't recognize a threat even if it hijacked your planes and flew them into your buildings...

The justification for invading was that Iraq presented a threat.

Correct- "grave and gathering threat", IIRC.

Not finding WMD or any programs proves that the invasion was unnecessary for dealing with the threat.

Whoa there. Have you read any of the ISG report? We did not find the WMD stockpiles that we were expecting- instead we found infrastructure, materials, and documentation to restart mass production of WMD as soon as we turned our back. We found over a dozen WMD programs that the UN had no idea existed. The inspections WERE NOT WORKING.

No intelligence organization actually believed Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the US or it's allies.

Oh really?

Your attempt to equivocate Saddam's future intentions with the evidence is part of the intellectual dishonesty and weakness that got us into this mess.

Let's look at Saddam's history. He has attempted to illegally invade 2 of his neighbors (Iran and Kuwait), one of which led to the 3rd most deadly war this century (Iran). He launched unprovoked attacks against two other nations (Israel and Saudi Arabia). He launched chemical weapons attacks on multiple occasions- even attacking his own people. He was in violation of 17 unanimous UN Security Council resolutions. He fired on US aircraft almost daily for several years. He directly supported and collaborated with numerous terrorist groups, including several that target US interests (this earned him a spot on the US State Department list of State sponsors of Terrorism as far back as 1979). He tried to assassinate a former US president. He commissioned several direct terrorist attacks on the US during the 1990s that we were able to foil, including an attack on the US run Radio Free Europe. Intelligence (both from us and from our allies) indicated that he was trying to attack us more. He had successfully concealed over a dozen WMD programs from the UN for 12 years, and clearly had no intention of living up to his cease-fire agreements.

You claim that this is not a threat. Who is being more dishonest?

Personally, I dislike George Bush, because I hate tyranny and totalitarianism.

Guess what? George Bush dislikes tyranny and totalitarianism. So do "neocons" and Republicans. My bet is that you made up your mind years ago that you hated him, and ever since you are stubbornly trying to justify that hatred.

1. That charge has nothing to do with the Defense industry or any "Defense bigwig"
2. That charge has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
3. That allegation was dropped for lack of evidence, smart guy.

Unfortunately, I can see why you would suspect defense industry political corruption. It hits very close to home, doesn't it?

Please don't accuse Israeli politicians of behaving like US politicians.

Any more links, or can I assume you're through?

No, the story was also corroborated by Ben Barnes, then Republican Texas Lieutenant Governor.

Er, no. Barnes became Tx Lt. Governor in 1969, a year after Bush started his training with the TANG in 1968. Now, in 1968 Barnes was Speaker for the House in Texas, and was friends with the head of the TANG, James Rose. Supposedly, a family friend named Sidney Adger asked Barnes to do a favor for the Bush's and Barnes talked to Rose. Rose and Adger are both dead, so no corroboration or denial, but it doesn't really matter since Barnes wasn't the Lt. Governor then anyways and couldn't sign Bush into the TANG if he had wanted to. Neither could Rose, that wasn't his job.

It's all pretty well laid out in this WaPo article here.

--trb

From here: And Oral Suer, the former chief executive of the...

What sort of a name is "Oral". And "Oral Suer" at that. I don't mean to point out "nya nya you have a funny name" but this one's pretty wacky.

• clearance
• TS/SI
• Top Secret

If you're an anti-terrorism agent of some kind, and you're sent to investigate green lasers pointing at airplanes, which mode of thinking will make you feel better?

• "Terrorism is dangerous and an act of terrorism could kill many people. My very important job is to prevent that, and I want to spend as much time as possible working on the important stuff. We've spent days tracking down a father who was showing his kid how nifty lasers can be. He's been embarrassed in the news for being an idiot and in for some community service, but, boy, I'm not going to get those hours back, what a waste of time." or
• "...We've spent days tracking down a father who was showing his kid how nifty lasers can be. This has to be very important, else I wouldn't have spent all those hours working on this. I caught you and you are going down, mr. terrorist hiding as a techie guy. Oh, you're not a terrorist? Well, I caught you and you are going down, mr. example-to-terrorists hiding as a techie guy."

And so specifically if legislative bodies threw in DOS attacks, taking pictures of bridges, paying train tix with cash, or failing to know all the lyrics to 'God Bless the USA' into the PATRIOT Act, it *must* be because those are all related to terrorism, not because the FBI hornswoggled them into shoehorning 20 years worth of Xmas wish-lists into the Act during a month of extreme grief and emotion. Nope.

And so if the TSA puts every every Carlos Garcia, John Lewis and David Nelson on the Watch-List it *must* be worth doing, those repeated time-consuming checks on all 10 thousand of them each time they fly rather than doing the actual random checks that keep us safer.

If you're doing important anti-terrorism work then it just isn't possible that you'll get side-tracked. (which is why, had the PATRIOT Act existed in the 20th century, Tesla, the "October Sky" rocketeer, and pretty much every member of pyrotechnics guilds and model rocket clubs would have ended up with SSSS's on their plane tix and plenty of long, recorded talks with the local constabulary. Especially Tesla- scaring the neighbors like that, potentially taking down the grid, born in a foreign country. How'd he even get in? Thank goodness now we're keeping out all those foreign engineering grad students: maybe our science and economy will suffer, but we'll feel safer.)

One of your country's oldest allies is hestitant about giving you carte blanche to invade other sovereign states and all of a sudden it's open season on France?

Which country's foreign minister poses as champion of international law, yet is really a degenerate Napoleonic power worshipper who still thinks warfare is glorious- as long as it's France that's kicking butts?

Which country was actually going to participate in the invasion of Iraq, thinking it would be a good military training excerise for its troops?

Which country flies into senseless, destructive tantrums every time its national "honor" is threatened, yet has no shame in turning around and begging the help of anti-Western, Izlamic terrorist grous like Hezbollah, pointing out that France is the Izlamicists' most useful dhimmi stooge?

France- always eager to abase itself before power, always ready with a knife in the back for friends.

WRONG

First, IANAL but I link to a lawyer's blog below.

Second I am a Navy Veteran (FTN & PAPERCLIP awards) whose skin crawled when Kerry gave his lifer "reporting for duty salute" ... something is not right with this dude ... thank you SwiftVets and POWS for Truth for confirming my gut feelings as a Navy Veteran about Kerry

BULLET POINTS: Kerry Lies -vs- SwiftVets Factual Data

why no Kerry libel/slander suit? Because Kerry has no grounds to sue - everything SwiftVets has said/published about Kerry is TRUE. Kerry is terrified of the discovery process that would occur during such a trial ... Kerry's full and complete military service record (except medical records) would be released to the general public.

Swift Vets & POW For Truth have ALL their Tar Baby ducks in a row ... they were and are ready to go to court.

There is a book Unfit For Command referencing:
(1) Kerry's own authorized biography
(2) limited official Navy Records
(3) the Congressional Record
(4) sworn affidavits signed by people who served with Kerry in Vietnam
... documenting Kerry's exaggerations, distortions, and lies regarding his Vietnam-era SwiftBoat naval service and his postwar activities with the enemy

There are now five (5) mini-documentaries, explaining the minutia of the various Kerry combat engagements. Animations, maps and eye-witness voice overs are utilized. These are very useful for explaining to non-Navy types the ins&outs of what was going on during various SwiftBoat naval engagements. Basically Kerry was/is a serial exagerater who "lied while good men died"

please note John Kerry NOT released his naval records to the general public via a signed SF-180. What was published on the Kerry website was a subset of his official records.

CONFIRMED BY WASHINGTON POST

Although Kerry campaign officials insist that they have published Kerry's full military records on their Web site (with the exception of medical records shown briefly to reporters earlier this year), they have not permitted independent access to his original Navy records. A Freedom of Information Act request by The Post for Kerry's records produced six pages of information. A spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command, Mike McClellan, said he was not authorized to release the full file, which consists of at least a hundred pages.From the Washington Post article Swift Boat Accounts Incomplete: Critics Fail to Disprove Kerry's Version of Vietnam War Episode by By Michael Dobbs, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A01

There is a photograph showing Kerry with 19 of his fellow Swift boat OICs (Officers In Charge) in Coastal Division 11. Only three of Kerry's 23 fellow OICs from Coastal Division 11 support Kerry ... why so few support Kerry ... maybe Kerry has a problem? Perhaps we should pay some attention to these OICs who do not support Kerry? Maybe they kno

Sunday's Washington Post had an article on another Ham Radio operator (link - probably requires registration - sorry). A real life, very public example of why ham radio is important.

They should have held up one or two exemplary examples of blogging done right - good content and timley information (and a lack of words like "dat", "ur", "OMG", "LOL", and "ROFLMAO")

You mean, like, instead of holding up our buddy Howard "YEEEEEEEEEAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!" Dean (who, according to Dave Barry, is most famous for "making a sound like a hog being castrated with a fondue fork"), they could have mentioned, oh, I dunno...

The people who broke Rathergate, maybe? A marketing guy in DC who dug up a forensics document expert or Charles Johnson and his famous reproduction of the faked memos?

How about Glenn Reynolds? Or Moulitsas Zúniga? Who really rallied the troops this election season?

Howard Dean??

What about some of the many Iraqi blogs - written by, you know, people on the ground, as it were? How about Spirit of America's Arabic blogging tool, and the bloggers who took the the challenge to raise money for it?

There's a lot more going on out there than ABC is reporting.