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Weaponized PowerPoint is redundant. Powerpoint has been a weapon against clear thinking, preparing for a meeting, and keeping people interested in what you're saying for a long time.

And, of course, PowerPoint has already caused the space shuttle to crash. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Yes, I am sure that UPS and FedEx will defend my privacy with their lives. Are you aware of a competitor who is unlikely to provide my data to the government?

- they are not a government agency by default and they have to provide their clients with service that clients will appreciate, which means in many cases yes, defending your privacy sometimes with their freedom.

What would be the point of doing this? To get better mail rates as long as you live in one of the top-10 major cities?

- precisely. If you live on a farm somewhere you are not entitled to have your services subsidised by people who live in the cities. You shouldn't be subsidised regardless where you live, regardless for what the reasons are, regardless of who you are.

Ah, I see. You've never dealt with the IRS. Here's how it goes: we've taken all your stuff and thrown your ass in jail for criminal evasion - you owe us $80 million for the $100 million you hid in bitcoin. Prove otherwise if you want to pay less.

Few fellow slashdot readers seem to remember (or post) the Feb 2014 news that a " Supreme Court decision lets the government seize all your assets before trial". Your property or assets can be sold before the outcome of trail. This is not a dream. Its actual fact.

TiggertheMad, it seems to me that you are being TiggertheSensible. Your ideas are better than those in the Washington Post and Mashable.com articles.

The Washington Post is now owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, another man who often enormously over-estimates his own intelligence. Would you go into space in a vehicle owned by Jeff Bezos? The Amazon web site is an abusive mess! For example, a few days ago I selected "lowest price" for an item on Amazon, and several were listed for $1. The real price was $18. Why doesn't Jeff Bezos detect that he is already overloaded and not dealing with his overload well?

It's amazingly weird! Elon Musk can be the coordinator of a company that builds spacecraft successfully, but he can't detect when he has a REALLY crazy idea.

Elon Musk is not completely like Jenny McCarthy, I think. She never has good ideas. Or maybe she is just a model who has found a way of making herself more well-known among the ignorant people who consider her interesting.

Another article with video is in The Washington Post: Elon Musk: 'With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.'

Or, see the entire webcast. (The MIT web site is probably overloaded.)

re "Why didn't they have something like this already, after all these years of talking about bioterrorism?"
it really depends how the US talks about its bio spending. Most of that went into the science of getting around the international treaty outlawing biological warfare.
So a huge effort to ensure tests could be done to make products, test them and then try and find a cure without the international community asking too many questions.
That has nothing to do with basic US science or spending or what is for public release to treat sick people in Africa.
Beyond that is the grant system to work for academic fame on different projects in Biosafety level 2 labs and pull in massive amounts of federal funding with the correct bioterrorism grant wording.
Great news for your book chapter, lab funding, staff size, city and state university state fame, not much help for sick people in Africa.
The final bioterrorism cash flow was the US wide sale of kits, testing, suits, filters, products, new services, long term maintenance contracts. All ready to suit up select state and federal staff but not much help for sick people in Africa.
Lots of cash floating around at different mil, gov, state and federal levels but most of that is going on existing projects or as tax payers cash going for products and boondoggle services in place around the USA.
The only real interesting aspect the US really has in Africa is for what is/was Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and wants to keep that 'local' connection in place.
"U.S. expands secret intelligence operations in Africa" (June 13, 2012)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
To keep that intelligence flowing US teams will be put on the ground.
Lets hope they are all NBC experts with many years of training.

It seems like a few decades ago people knew how to get things done. Here's how Medicare rolled out. Now consider Obamacare and all the web-site follies in the various states. It's a bit early in the game, but so far the world of typewriters, carbon-paper and rotary phones is making us look stupid.

Also, people were quarantined all the time back then. It was effective and non-controversial.

I could access it this morning, but now it appears to be blocked. Weird. Here's another one on the story (actually a BETTER one)

Here's some reports of flashbang causing harm, damage & death - http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Yes, there is a Wikileaks investigation - one which has been declared all but impossible to charge Assange in. There are no charges. The GP is correct.

Even Mr. Conspiracy Theory, Assange himself, doesn't believe the "Stratfor endictment". Stratfor for the most part is just people BSing about what they read from things that are in the public record. The most hilarious example was when Wikileaks retweeted from one of their Stratfor docs, "New #Stratfor docs: US soldier stealing $22M from Iraq?" What was this amazing Stratfor doc? It was a Stratfor guy commenting on an email that he received:

Dear Friend,

My name is Sgt.Walter Evans, an American soldier; with Swiss Background, serving in the military of the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq with a very desperate need for Assistance. I and my partners moved one of the boxes containing funds which we believe is belonging to Saddam Hussein in March 2003, the total fund in this box is (TWENTY-TWO MILLION UNITED STATE DOLLARS), this fund had been moved via a safe Diplomatic Courier Service to a secured security company...

Basically since we are working for the American government we cannot keep these funds, we are Three (3) persons in involved. This means that you will take 25% percent and 75% will be for me / my partners.

Yes, that's a typical Nigerian-style spam email. Which Wikileaks retweeted as being a Stratfor-sourced scandal.

Maybe these fine folks can set you up. They seem to be very good at what they do

To way too many people "critical thinking" seems to just mean criticizing the establishment just because it's the establishment.

Here's one definition of critical thinking:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Critical thinking consists of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth. Then too, there are specific types of critical thinking that are characteristic of different subject matter: ThatÃ(TM)s what we mean when we refer to Ãoethinking like a scientistà or Ãoethinking like a historian.Ã

unbelievably this is actually true. in 2012 the texas republican party opposed teaching critical thinking skills to kids http://www.washingtonpost.com/.... right from the horse's mouth: "Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority." and texas sets the standards for public school books as they buy the most books and schools throughout the nation follow their lead to get lower costs. the republicans say they want to "create jobs" but fail in preparing our kids for jobs. schleprock

Well, whatever it is, if you want critical thinkers then you definitely don't want Texas Republicans. Or, at the very least, if you are considering hiring a Texas Republican you should ask them if they refudiate their party platform.

No, really! The Republican party had the opposition of "teaching of higher-order thinking skills, critical thinking skills and similar programs" in schools written in their platform document as one of their policy aims.

Wash post

If you think people aren't lying right now about where they've been, you clearly haven't been paying attention. You know nothing of the individual's incentives. Washington Compost:

Dallas County Prosecutor Considering Criminal Charges Against Ebola Patient in Texas

Funny, i don't see any of the guys so torqued up about the muslim community posting equally irate diatribes about the devout Christians who actually provide material aid to people who have murdered abortionists and are on the lam; food, clothing, etc. Public condemnation? "There is not this collective soul-searching on the part of our movement because we have been responsible and we have been nonviolent," said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition. There are "extremists in every movement... . I think that extremists opposed to abortion got frustrated, felt they were losing the battle and felt it was incumbent upon themselves to resort to violence." The Rev. Flip Benham, director of Operation Rescue, went further and accused "those in the abortion-providing industry" of committing most of the violence in an attempt to discredit the antiabortion movement. He said he would soon bring evidence to Washington that would undermine the government's statistics." http://www.washingtonpost.com/... Are you a Christian? Don't you feel the need to do something about these people?

Civil asset foreiture as well as eminent domain follow a legal process with appeals routes and so on.

Not true. The cops can pull you over and help themselves to you cash. There is no "legal process" involved whatsoever.

Sure there is! What the cops do is legal, and here's the process:
1) Stop motorist.
2) Take motorist's cash.
3) Profit!

Although I think the "legal process" the GP was referring to was the basic justification for forfeiture spelled out in law, and the appeals process you can go through after the seizure to reclaim your property. Now, the law is certainly abused, but there's something the cops can point to and claim "we're doing that." Not so with impersonating someone else on Facebook.

I wonder, could you charge the agent under the CFAA? Clearly, he's exceeding the level of access to a computer system to which he's authorized.

Civil asset foreiture as well as eminent domain follow a legal process with appeals routes and so on.

Not true. The cops can pull you over and help themselves to you cash. There is no "legal process" involved whatsoever.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

"It was a fraction of a second that no driver really noticed. But the difference between a 2.9 second yellow light and a 3.0 second yellow light meant about 77,000 tickets for Chicago motorists, and a $7.7 million windfall for the city’s coffers, according to the Chicago Tribune.:

Also, a shoutout to anybody who's interested in doing open data in Chicago to fight systems like this with data crunching: http://opengovhacknight.org/

There is a fascinating and unexpected inversion here: Corporations are now standing up against government to protect the rights of citizens. Of course, most of us expect that relationship to work the other way around.

It is not just Facebook. The first sentence of this article reads: "The FBI director has slammed Apple and Google for offering their customers encryption technology that protects users’ privacy."

Today, a product which includes protection from the government has added value. A prediction: In the future, corporate protection from government intrusion and persecution will become the product. Smart corporations such as Tesla (see Nevada tax deal) or Apple and Google (see double Irish Dutch sandwich) have special rights or have exempted themselves from government rules by using loopholes. Meanwhile, every day there is news of the federal government becoming increasingly insane. Like today. Increasingly, the government is engaging in unethical, illegal activities such as theft. As demand from protection from the federal government increases with the growing abuses, corporations will meet that demand by sheltering customers under their own umbrellas.

There is a fascinating and unexpected inversion here: Corporations are now standing up against government to protect the rights of citizens. Of course, most of us expect that relationship to work the other way around.

It is not just Facebook. The first sentence of this article reads: "The FBI director has slammed Apple and Google for offering their customers encryption technology that protects users’ privacy."

Today, a product which includes protection from the government has added value. A prediction: In the future, corporate protection from government intrusion and persecution will become the product. Smart corporations such as Tesla (see Nevada tax deal) or Apple and Google (see double Irish Dutch sandwich) have special rights or have exempted themselves from government rules by using loopholes. Meanwhile, every day there is news of the federal government becoming increasingly insane. Like today. Increasingly, the government is engaging in unethical, illegal activities such as theft. As demand from protection from the federal government increases with the growing abuses, corporations will meet that demand by sheltering customers under their own umbrellas.

And California's prisons are still overcrowded, despite the reduction. As are many other states

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/10/16/secret-sharing-app-whisper-to-the-guardian-you-published-a-pack-of-vicious-lies-about-us/

Whisper, darling child of the online anonymity surge, is going to war with the Guardian over a story saying the app tracks the identities and locations of some users.

Launched two years ago, Whisper says it’s the “safest place on the internet,” a social networking app that lets people anonymously share short messages — “whispers” — supposedly detached from any identifiable information.

But in a lengthy takedown published Thursday, the Guardian claims otherwise, saying Whisper uses a handful of tools to subvert its own claims of privacy and anonymity. Whisper, according to the Guardian report, tracks newsworthy users and uses roundabout methods of finding out the locations of users who decline to share it; the company then shares that information with third parties, including the U.S. government, the Guardian reported.

The outlet also said the app changed its privacy policy after it was made aware that the Guardian’s story would run.

All of these claims, Whisper officials said, are patently false.

Whisper’s editor-in-chief, Neetzan Zimmerman, went into attack mode immediately after the story was published, saying it was a “pack of vicious lies” and that “the Guardian made a mistake posting that story and they will regret it.”

Reached by phone, Zimmerman categorically denied the basis of the story, saying that while certain degrees of tracking (such as a city of location) are possible through simply connecting to the Internet, the methods the Guardian described are “either outright false or misguided or misinformed.”

“Clearly, their intention was for absolutely no reason to write a hit piece about us and try to scare away our users,” Zimmerman said, sounding irate at times.

The Guardian story describes techniques that Whisper allegedly uses to find “newsworthy” users, such as those who work at Yahoo and Disney, or on Capitol Hill. It also says there is a technical backdoor that allows Whisper to pinpoint the location of users who have declined to share their location with the app, and that Zimmerman and another executive had requested staff to exploit it.

But Zimmerman, fuming at the accusations, said such backdoors are “technically impossible.”

“That is false, that is 100 percent false,” he said. “That was never said by anyone. I have no idea where that quote came from. I have no idea what they’re talking about. I have never, ever, ever asked anybody in my life, and would never ask anybody, for information on a user who opted out of user location. That cannot be overemphasized. That is a 100 percent lie.”

He added that no change was made to the app’s privacy policy as a response to the Guardian’s story. (Still, my colleague Brian Fung noted that any changes to a privacy policy may invite inquiry from the FTC.)

Whisper employees can, however, search for keywords (analogous to a Twitter search) to find users and their “whispers” that may be interesting to some of its media partners, including BuzzFeed, which publishes an ongoing series of posts that highlight interesting or newsworthy messages on the service.

A BuzzFeed spokesman told Valleywag on Thursday: “We’re taking a break from our partnership until Whisper clarifies to us and its users the policy on user location and privacy.”

Zimmerman also said the Guardian has had a months-long partnership with Whisper that used the very techniques the article decries.

“There are at least three Guardian stories written off Whisper, and two of which we

even if we were to go 100% solar tomorrow, we wouldn't have enough energy for this world. Period.

You're way off.

You are... http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Bill HB 5606 originally intended to offer added protection to franchised dealers and consumers from price gouging by carmakers, and was passed by the Michigan House in September without any anti-Tesla language. However, once it hit the Senate wording was changed that might imply the legality of a manufacturer-owned dealership was removed. The modified bill was passed unanimously by the Senate on October 2, and then sent back to the House that day where it passed with only a single dissenting vote.

It's probably worth mentioning that both houses of the Michigan legislature are controlled by Republicans, and the governor of Michigan is a Republican.

Who is the party of free markets and economic growth?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Really have you read the latest from the dumbfuck running the CDC? Would you consider the Washington Post a good source of information?

“We did send some expertise in infection control,” Thomas Frieden said during a news conference Tuesday. “But I think we could, in retrospect, with 20/20 hindsight, have sent a more robust hospital infection control team and been more hands-on with the hospital from day one about exactly how this should be managed.”

Inept and incompetent and I'm sorry but a mia culpa isn't going to cut it.

You don't know how to read management-speak.
What he said was, "We had no idea what a bunch of fuck-ups were over there in Texas. We should have been all over their asses the instant this shit went down."
Just because you don't understand what someone is saying does not mean that _they_ are the dumbfucks.

Really have you read the latest from the dumbfuck running the CDC? Would you consider the Washington Post a good source of information?

“We did send some expertise in infection control,” Thomas Frieden said during a news conference Tuesday. “But I think we could, in retrospect, with 20/20 hindsight, have sent a more robust hospital infection control team and been more hands-on with the hospital from day one about exactly how this should be managed.”

Inept and incompetent and I'm sorry but a mia culpa isn't going to cut it.

You do realize that this basically translates to "Yeah, we should have known those Texan hicks couldn't handle a case of the flu, let alone Ebola."

Really have you read the latest from the dumbfuck running the CDC? Would you consider the Washington Post a good source of information?

“We did send some expertise in infection control,” Thomas Frieden said during a news conference Tuesday. “But I think we could, in retrospect, with 20/20 hindsight, have sent a more robust hospital infection control team and been more hands-on with the hospital from day one about exactly how this should be managed.”

Inept and incompetent and I'm sorry but a mia culpa isn't going to cut it.

So, it is worth disenfranchising a sizeable population to stop 31 people from voter fraud? You seem to have your priorities misplaced.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

so go the bats

Wrong, *standards* don't matter, the actual fuel economy of U.S. vehicles has risen year after year in the last 30+ years.

Really? The facts say you are wrong. Average fuel economy barely budged between the early 1980s and 2007 when the new fuel economy standards were put in place. They started to creep up a bit in 2004 as fuel prices rose. After 2004 the average fuel economy has risen steadily due to a combination of higher fuel prices and increased mandated fuel standards. Now I'm no genius but I'm pretty sure that's a cause and effect relationship there. The fact that car companies are selling certain vehicles at a loss to ensure higher average fuel economy standards is proof positive that the standards are forcing the car companies to make more fuel efficient cars.

Obama's (actually Congress) new standards came from the auto industry, it is their roadmap.

The first increase in 2007 came under the Bush administration we've seen a steady increase in fuel economy since. In 2011 the Obama administration along with the major auto manufacturers came up with new CAFE standards that will take effect in 2017 and beyond.

Got any more unsupported "facts" you'd like to make up?

If it were "easy" to contain, you sure as hell wouldn't have those kinds of insanely expensive precautions being taken to store it in a jar.

We recently saw evidence of protocols being breached when pathogens way worse than Ebola were found in freezers and open labs that weren't properly stored. No one was infected by these pathogens for the decades (in some cases) they were stored this way. I am not saying that this was a good thing, nor that it wasn't just lucky, but the point is the protocols are almost always double or triple overkill simply to make sure that if a mishandling happens the chances of the pathogen escaping are mitigated.

And I sure as hell hope you're not eating those "easy to contain" words 6 months from now.

And the head of the CDC is like any other elected official. They are not there to start a panic during a crisis, so regardless of the seriousness of it, they are going to downplay it to a level just below widespread speculation and panic, even if the concerns are actually far greater.

The head of the CDC is NOT an elected official and has no reason to lie to the public in order to get reappointed to his job. I am getting sick of people spouting this lie! Most heads are distinguished researchers on sebatical during their appointment and would give nothing more than to return to their research and not have to be head of the CDC and deal with idiotic public panics like we're seeing with Ebola. Stop clutching your pearls and unclench your ass cheeks. You currently have a higher statistical chance of being hit by a vehicle while crossing a street than catching Ebola in the U.S. That ain't gonna change much between now and the end of January.

If you meet anybody from India ask him "What Is Your Caste?" If he answers it, then you're doomed. Because he has already injected Cancer into your Country. Caste is like Cancer. It cannot be Cured. It has to be Cut-Off. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

If you meet anybody from India ask him "What Is Your Caste?".
Google "Map Shows Most Racist People On Earth".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Would you rather have another reality show about an ugly woman and her abusive husband who both have an IQ of 98?

Or Sex Box. Because "Naked Dating" was such a smash hit.

Because you pay for it whether they die in the streets, default on treatment they can't afford, or get free healthcare.

Disposing of a corpse found on a street would cost less than a thousand dollars — even with a modicum of dignity due a total stranger. Curing him is likely to cost tens, if not hundreds of thousands.

It's cheaper for everyone to pay a little bit of money to get healthcare and ensure everyone's covered.

That's a rather questionable assertion. The second a consumer of services becomes distinct from the payer, costs rise and fraud flourishes.

Imagine government deciding, having a cell phone is "a basic human right" (hardly far-fetched — some counties have already declared Internet access to be such a right, to loud approvals by your kind). With tax-payers paying for new phones, would anyone eligible for such subsidy settle for less than the latest and most loaded model? Would the manufacturers even make the lower-speced devices without having to compete (for some buyers) on the price?

But stipulating for a second, that you are right and it is cheaper, that is not what I asked about. I didn't ask, whether or not it is economically beneficial — the conversation was about such forced charity being a marking of a "civil society". Or not...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/... greenwow please stop voting. You and the idiots like you are doing great damage to this country.

The conservatives seem to want to turtle and ban all travel from those nations ... which would, of course, be a death knell for any aide workers traveling there to help out. They seem to think that will prevent it from spreading when, in fact, that's just increasing the odds that ebola spreads more rapidly inside Africa and ensures that it becomes a global catastrophe. But that's pretty typical of conservative ideals. I'm still waiting on those 'trickle down' economics to get to me. Some of the conservatives in the South are real dirtbags. It's really quite ridiculous.

The conservatives seem to want to turtle and ban all travel from those nations ... which would, of course, be a death knell for any aide workers traveling there to help out..

Yeah, true. Because it's not like America has a freaking huge Air Force which can fly in and out those who actually have a good reason to go there.

LOL! I hate to break it to you but from what I've seen coming out of Fox News and dipshit O'Reilly's mouth, there's no "except for health workers" clause in their absolute ban on travel from ebola outbreak countries to the United States. USAF capabilities or not. Please provide a citation next time you post.

The conservatives seem to want to turtle and ban all travel from those nations ... which would, of course, be a death knell for any aide workers traveling there to help out..

Yeah, true. Because it's not like America has a freaking huge Air Force which can fly in and out those who actually have a good reason to go there.

Which is offset by the fact that it's not contributing to huge corporate profits

Citation — comparing the profits of American vs. Swede's ISPs — needed.

doesn't help pay for ridiculous executive bonuses

Citation comparing executive bonuses needed likewise.

And the government run one might actually spend money on maintaining their infrastructure

Like the bridges, sewers, and other government-run infrastructure are maintained in the US?

Take the parasites out of the equation, and the economics changes a lot.

Please, cite numbers. Rough estimates would do...

Because the for-profit model says "you'll get what we give you, when we feel like giving it to you, and we'll raise your prices any time we wish in order to keep profits up".

No, that's only true about monopolies. Governments ought to ensure, there is competition in every market — but that does not mean, they should be entering the market themselves. That would be the worst outcome, for government is itself a monopoly.

The conservatives seem to want to turtle and ban all travel from those nations ... which would, of course, be a death knell for any aide workers traveling there to help out. They seem to think that will prevent it from spreading when, in fact, that's just increasing the odds that ebola spreads more rapidly inside Africa and ensures that it becomes a global catastrophe. But that's pretty typical of conservative ideals. I'm still waiting on those 'trickle down' economics to get to me.

Some of the conservatives in the South are real dirtbags. It's really quite ridiculous.

> the Overton window...

The Washington Post didn't like it.

Sorry to interrupt your masturbatory political fantasy, but Iraq stabilization and reconstruction was so incredibly screwed up by Bush and his incompetent neo-con thugs that the current Middle East clusterfuck, or is equivalent, was inevitable. It's like the python infestation in Florida. Once those suckers get out and start breeding, there's no way in hell to clean up the mess.

After the collapse of the Hussein regime, the Bush administration had no effective plan to deal with the aftermath. That's why we're screwed right now. Some examples, with references.

The 12 Billion in cash that was airlifted into Iraq and pretty much disappeared into thin air

The memorandum concludes: "Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste ... thousands of 'ghost employees' were receiving pay cheques from Iraqi ministries under the CPA's control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States."

The team that the Bush administration sent for Iraq reconstrction was riddled with incompetence and cronyism.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

Then there was the case of General Shinseki who was right about the troop levels needed to occupy Iraq, and was publicly shot down for expressing his correct opinion.

Shinseki publicly clashed with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the planning of the war in Iraq over how many troops the United States would need to keep in Iraq for the postwar occupation of that country. As Army Chief of Staff, General Shinseki testified to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for postwar Iraq. This was an estimate far higher than the figure being proposed by Secretary Rumsfeld in his invasion plan, and it was rejected in strong language by both Rumsfeld and his Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, who was another chief planner of the invasion and occupation. From then on, Shinseki's influence on the Joint Chiefs of Staff reportedly waned. Critics of the Bush Administration alleged that Shinseki was forced into early retirement as Army Chief of Staff because of his comments on troop levels; however, his retirement was announced nearly a year before those comments.

When the insurgency took hold in postwar Iraq, Shinseki's comments and their public rejection by the civilian leadership were often cited by those who felt the Bush administration deployed too few troops to Iraq. On November 15, 2006, in testimony before Congress, CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid said that General Shinseki had been correct that more troops were needed.

Over here in the real world, we are still living with the horrible consequences of invading the wrong country

Policy results have correlation with public opinion that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. See this article for the details.

Thanks for the links. The Washington post article is correct. The Koch Brothers corrupt the political system as an investment to further enrich themselves. George Soros is a philanthropist, giving his money away to help others less fortunate. There is no equivalence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

The second link shows how gullible you are. The vast majority of Koch funding is indirect by design. Many of the lobbyists they fund not publicly revealing who their donors are. New avenues of Koch funding of conservative politics are dug up on a regular basis. They are by far the biggest corrupters of the US political system by their donations.

What you mean is this: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/a... Good informal advice too. A look at the mechanism at work is provided here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

But after the Apple Maps fiasco

You mean the greatest Hatorade orgy until Bendghazi? All navigation services have errors, but you didn't see people crying at Google.