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Hatch Pushes INDUCE Act
An anonymous reader writes "According to CNET the Senate is leaning strongly in favor of the INDUCE Act sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch. It looks like the RIAA is making significant progress manipulating the marionette strings in Congress. MP3newswire.net states that if such laws were to pass, the record industry would become the new AMTRAK. 'Bloated and inefficient as always, but now a drain on taxpayers wallets and liberty as well'." Infoworld has a story as well. Reader CryptoEngineer writes: "Marybeth Peters, of the US Copyright Office
testified recently before the Senate Judiciary committee in support of the INDUCE Act, which has been discussed
here
before. In summary, she thinks its not strong enough. Among other things, she proposed scrapping the Betamax decision, which makes it legal to timeshift TV shows with a VCR. Analysis here."
I agree in theory, but in practice a vote libertarian is a vote for Bush. Just ask anybody who voted for Nader in 2000.
The good news is that the courts ruled that vote swapping sites were legal. I hope people remember them and renew their sites for this years election.
For those who forgot or didn't know, here is an example: I live in a region that will most likely vote Bush (midwest). That means if I were to vote for a 3rd party, it would be a "wasted" vote. A swap site allows me to trade my vote with someone else who lives in an area where Bush will most likely lose. I vote Democrat for them, and they vote my 3rd party for me. If this happens on a large scale the national vote can suddenly swing with little prediction.
The Democrats who whould have been a close 2nd in my area get more votes than they otherwise would have, hopefully making this a Democratic state; and the other state where the Dems were going to win anyway get a boost in 3rd party votes. Maybe if we can get the 3rd party votes high enough (I think it's 5% overall) they will get benifits like Perot did the first time he ran (but not the second time).
He's against it, on moral grounds, because life 'begins' at conception and the research will 'destroy' the precious life of those poor defenseless Embryos... (Even though the Embryos in question would likely be destroyed anyway, but could be put to good use, possibly finding cures for terminal illnesses and increase the quality of life for people with nervous system disorders and the like.)
So, how come he isn't going after the Invitro Fertilization Clinics?
Those places Destroy THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of Embryos every year. Why not outlaw those factories of genocide? (Because it would be political suicide, otherwise infertile people want babies, that's more important then the several dozen of their embryos that are lost/destroyed in the process.)
Where's the balance to that equation?
The real answer is that there is no balance to any equation that involves a politician, at least the two political parties that run this nation. It seems that the only rational people that base decisions upon balance are those that aren't in either political party.
I just wish it wasn't so.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
If you have sigs turned off, you won't see my link. If you don't visit my link, you won't see the various addresses I've included, which would let you stop by for a chat at the various places I hang out on the net. If you don't chat, then I couldn't explain how there is all that much to install, to do the non-internet chatting thing. See where I'm going with this?
Kuwait is not the same as ALL of Europe. Not by mass, population or any other measure. Plenty of dictators have invaded non-hostile countries and the US didn't much care.
Easy answer, Hitler killed more people and took extra lengths to dehumanize them for years before the final solution. After the first war, Iraq's minority groups enjoyed many freedoms and were largely self-governing. We did not step in to stop Stalin's purges, or Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, or any of the other human rights violations that involved more people than Saddam's killings. Saving the Iraqi people was not a sales point until the WMD threat was revealed to be bullshit.
I know exactly what democracy is. It was born in ancient Greece where all native males had an equal voice in their governing. America is not a true democracy. As I said earlier, money is power. So either makes a few constitutional amendments to remove money from politics, or tax the hell out of the (usually greedy) ultra-rich who otherwise really don't give a shit about people born into and dying in poverty. I think one of our historical documents had the phrase "To provide for the well being". The truth is that most of the 1% don't earn their money, they are born into it. It's easy to not give a damn about others, everyone is born conservative. It takes heart and education care about fellow man. If the 1% are too greedy to realize the can live opulently and do good with the majority of their money then it should be governments role to step in and say you are a bad citizen.
Again you completely ignored the point about the wealthy using their power (aka money) to make their say in government more meaningful than mine. We are supposed to be living in a country where everyone is equal, but in truth we are not.
It should teach us that if we make such a big move (like invading a country for the first time in our history) to think it out first and base it on facts, not fear or intelligence warped to fit a predetermined agenda. And what are you talking defending? Defending us from Saddam? That's laughable. He was no more a threat to us than Castro. Have you read the 9/11 report saying that Iran, not Iraq, had a role in the attacks? Why are we not invading Iran right now? Iraq = no role... Iran = a role. Was the President bullshitting us to attack Iraq for ulterior motives? Because using his same Pre-invasion logic, we should be headed to Iran right now.
So now we went to war over ideology? I thought it was because Saddam as attacking us every day with unseen forces or had WMD's that could reach us. I don't want to tell the families of fallen soldiers that we went to war over people talking shit about America. The truth is America was sold on the war based on a credible threat. As time progressed and that threat never materialized the story switched to liberating the Iraqi's. That a noble objective, but that's not how it was sold to us. Basically
Germany never attacked us- should we have waited to go to war with them? Oh, and Iraq did attack us almost every day between 1991 and 2002.
I assume you're referring to them firing on our airplanes in the no-fly zone (if not, please correct me, but I'm aware of no other attack by Iraq on us since the end of GWI). Certainly that's true, but I think the point is that he wasn't a threat to U.S. soil, particularly in comparison to the ones who actually did attack us, al Qaeda.
Everybody that pays taxes got a tax cut. The only reason the rich got a "massive" tax cut is because they pay a massive amount of taxes.
Mmm, well, that's true, but what matters is percentages. The tax cuts favor the rich in that they get more of the tax cuts than their proportion of the total taxed income. That, as you say, their share of the income is already so massive just makes the situation insulting.
The liberation of Iraq has been one of the most stunningly successful military compaigns ever. I was going to ask what possible motivations you could have to call it a quagmire, but I think we both know the answer to that...
Are you on drugs, or have you simply been in a news blackout since "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"? Even then, you'd have to be completely ignorant of how Rumsfeld's attempt to launch a Blitzkrieg failed when our supplies lines became too spread out and they were attacked from the sides, slowing the rush to Bagdad to a multi-week crawl. Then there was what was supposed to be the crux of the war, the Battle of Baghdad -- which never happened. Two Republican Guard divisions simply disappeared, or so Bush and everyone cheering for him figured. Any idiot except those we elected could have figured out what really happened -- they went home, put on their civie clothes, and started wiring up roadside bombs. Entire cities are out of our control, our troops are embattled with local militias. Targeted killings and roadside bombs are so common few will leave the "green zone" in Baghdad without a military escort. al Qaeda, our real enemies didn't have a foothold there before the war but are now there in force. Recently, the administration has been asking for more troops, floating the idea of the draft. Some of our allies have bailed on us. This is your idea of the most stunningly successful military campaign ever? How is this not a quagmire?
The enemies of Democracy are