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McCain Campaign Uses Spider/Diff Against Obama
Vote McCain in 2008! writes "McCain's campaign is doing everything it can to erase Obama's online advantage, this time they ambushed Obama by detecting edits to his website when he updated some of his policy positions. This isn't the first time the Republicans have shown up the Democrats with their web savvy — you may remember the previous reports about the Republican Web 2.0 Consultants and their online campaigning game. This just proves that old Republicans can learn new tricks." Assuming the spider adheres to robots.txt, this is clever and well done.
Okay, you can mod me OT if you want, but as the submitter chose to call himself Vote McCain in 2008! I'm taking license here. Apologies to those who still find it OT...
/soapbox rant
I hear one definition of insanity is repeating the same action while expecting a different result each time. How many times have we thrown our votes away on the major party candidates only to get the same old status quo, regardless of the promises made? It's high time we the people just say no to the corrupt two party system. It's time we got off our lazy asses and learn about the alternatives available outside the corporate-approved "choice" spoon-fed to us by Big Media. Oh sure, probably we'll get either McCain or Obama this time, but if enough people vote outside the box it will encourage others to do the same. Maybe we can even take back our government at some point. But it'll never happen by voting for one of the two "approved" candidates. We need a new meme -- don't throw your vote away. Don't waste your vote on the Republicrats!
Caveat Utilitor
So can we expect to see a video of Barney teaching Bush how to roll over?
Here are the goods from TFA:
The Friday, July 11 version of the page says:
"at great cost our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006."
The Monday, July 14 version spidered by Versionista says:
"Our troops have heroically helped reduce civilian casualties in Iraq to early 2006 levels. This is a testament to our military's hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics, and enormous sacrifice by our troops and military families."
is totally empty... how adhering to robots.txt is clever is beyond me...
-=/\- Jizzbug -/\=-
Can you say Watergate?
But if there is one, would you expect that to stop the McBush team from doing what they want to do?
I personally favor the Fingerlicans...
...although, the Tastycrats do make a good point about that titanium tax...
This just proves that old Republicans can learn new tricks.
Are you kidding? The Republicans have been embarrassingly behind the times when it comes to IT stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole spider/diff issue came from some college Intern with initiative, working on his own.
Normally I'd say something positive to balance my post out, but this election is look god-awful for both parties. I just don't give a damn.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Perhaps old Republicans should learn that Czechoslovakia hasn't existed since the early 1990s before we deem them worthy of learning new tricks?
McCain Camp:
So through the course of our research we've found that you've modified some of the sections on your policy positions...
*coughs (and that you have twenty times the traffic we do)
robots.txt is idiotic in this context, except to steer spiders away from forms that shouldn't be submitted or triggering infinite loops. Suppose you find something like:
Don't you think that's going to be the first place to look? Again, robots.txt is to avoiding causing site meltdowns or stupid behavior. It's not to hide information.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Am I the only one who doesn't see a big difference between the two passages? The second one is pretty much just a rewritten, more detailed version of the first one.
If anything, the changes simply reflect that Obama is just another politician.
Why should McCain adhere to the robots.txt? I will vote for Obama (likely) and definitely not McCain. But when dealing with an election, anything is fair game short of disruption of services.
If Obama puts up a "no crawler" policy, then screw him. What he puts up there is for public consumption, and knowing what changes he is making should be known by all.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
No doubt Mr. "Vote McCain in 2008!" is looking to score some points with this one.
I'm not saying everything posted here has to be neutral by any means, but geez, this is pretty transparent.
which clearly explains why McCain's campaign feels a need to raid his site for ideas... ... and why Senator McCain felt compelled to reverse his long-standing, long-stated "policy" in Afghanistan, in order to adopt Sen. Obama's.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
And how exactly doesn't this apply to every single politician to ever walk the Earth? You act as though Obama is the exception to the rule.
Why is changing what you have to say a bad thing? If you have a different set of facts or a change in thought, why is it bad to change your opinions?
And are the edits that the Obama campaign making really significant? I had a look at the differences highlighted in the linked Wired article, and they didn't really look like a significant change in substance.
So fucking what? Are we really this stupid in our politics that it's now a game of crying "flip-flopper" when you just say more or less the same thing, maybe with a different emphasis?
It's high time we the people just say no to the corrupt two party system. It's time we got off our lazy asses and learn about the alternatives available outside the corporate-approved "choice" spoon-fed to us by Big Media. Oh sure, probably we'll get either McCain or Obama this time, but if enough people vote outside the box it will encourage others to do the same.
Just three weeks ago I would have argued with you about this. Then Obama flip-flopped on FISA and voted for a bill containing telecom immunity. In so doing he lost my vote and my support. The only thing I would dispute is that the third parties really offer a better alternative. Consider:
Bob Barr: Witch-burning religious lunatic that led the impeachment of Bill Clinton and somehow gets to masquerade as a libertarian. Could they really do no better than this guy?
Ralph Nader: Left-wing crazy that thinks we should nationalize the energy industries (even I don't lean this far to the left) and expand the nanny state.
McKinney: Don't know a lot about her yet but the initial reading is not very promising. Seems to have a huge chip on her shoulder and is probably at least as far to the left as Nader is.
I won't be voting for Obama or McCain but I don't see how I can support any of these crazies either. I'll sign their petitions for ballot access if asked but I fear that my vote for POTUS may wind up being blank this year :( I'd love the chance to meet Bob Barr and ask him directly if he's changed his tune on wiccans/neo-pagans -- a satisfactory answer might get him my vote. The others don't stand a chance though.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Vote McCain in 2008! ???
I can't put my finger on it, but this guy has to have some sort of an angle.
Hello, where have you been the last 7 years ? Changing what you say makes you a flip-flopper. Real men stay the course.
Why is this not surprising?
Anyone with any sort of brain knows that Obama has no idea about anything; the only people voting for him are the ones too stupid to realize he is just saying whatever he needs to, to get elected.
Which is different from any other major candidate, how?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Barackobama.com doesn't even have a robots.txt file.
So let me get this straight, the two biggest issues people have with a candidate are:
A. He doesn't have enough experience.
B. He might change his mind.
(C. is of course, being a secret Muslim)
If he gets some experience and changes his mind, criticize him for B. If he doesn't get any experience, criticize him for A. Genius.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
At first I thought
"Dressing Obama up as an Islamic terrorist is one thing, but dangling a spider in front of the man when he's arachnophobic is just plain evil"
I've read it properly now so here are my real thoughts:
"Why bother creating a diff of Obama? He doesn't have a twin to apply a patch against"
Summation 2
...that someone spending almost all their time going across the country talking to people about different issues actually changed his mind about where he stands on certain topics. As Republicans, this is foreign to us, and upsetting to think about.
"The enemy knows the system" --Claude Shannon
The article concludes:
This is like comparing two drafts of James Joyce's Ulysses, noting that changes were made, and concluding, "If anything, the changes simply reflect that Joyce is just another writer." Keeping in mind that as it happens Obama is also a talented, best-selling author, we should be surprised that he prepares more than on draft, or releases more than one edition of his work?
In other news, the detection of edits in the latest kernel release prompted a clever Wired hack to print, "If nothing, the changes simply reflect that Torvalds is just another coder."
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Dang, why did I call the directory that? And on the public webserver too. Doh!!!
America, Home of the Brave.
The other candidate is less eloquent and not quite as good at saying whatever he needs to to get elected. Not that he's not trying really hard, though.
Why is this not surprising? Anyone with any sort of brain knows that Obama has no idea about anything; the only people voting for him are the ones too stupid to realize he is just saying whatever he needs to, to get elected.
Shhhh! It's not like they're actually paying attention, anyway....
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
"Please remember to change your underwear after you pee yourselves with impotent rage, you freakin' morons"
Wow, seems like the impotent rage is yours, moron.
This just proves that old Republicans can learn new tricks.
It's pretty stupid to think just because someone's old, they are less web saavy. It's also pretty stupid to assume that all Republicans must be collecting social security right now.
still car bombs are exploding regularly in iraq. anything works if you just reduce the patrols and avoid casualties.
Read radical news here
Ah, silly me - I've been trying not to breathe in teh Stupid that's washed over America.
I can't believe people waste their lives on stuff like this. Presumably it's done in order to convince undecided voters that one candidate is worse than the other because he flip-flops on some issue. But I would expect that undecided voters have better things to do than to read through web page comparisons, or watch hours of video comparisons.
Proverbs 21:19
Or to put it another way:
"I may be a fucking moron, but at least I'm consistantly a fucking moron".
... I could have been one of the idiots that voted for the guy I wanted to have a beer with. Twice. How'd that work out again?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yes, Obama is editing his web site and fine-tuning his message. BFD. That's what web sites are for. I don't see anything greatly inconsistent in what Obama is doing.
What is really going on is that McCain has a lousy record: he has been flip-flopping on positions and has a lot of history that he needs to hide from. This is a huge problem for the Republican party establishment, who probably would have preferred any candidate other than McCain.
So, what does McCain do? He tries to go on the offensive so that he can say "well, it's OK if I flip-flop because the other guy edits his web site, too".
Don't let McCain get away with this bullshit. McCain is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of both conservative Republicans and moderates in terms of his actual positions and record.
Most recent news.
Regarding the technological issue -- I think the spidering can be somewhat useful, but it's kind of like bringing a knife to a gunfight; it isn't going to make up for all the gaffes and flip-flopping on positions that McCain has stated publicly, versus something written on a website/weblog.
A youtube video comparing/contrasting McCain against himself -- of which there are many -- are far more damning than a diff of a website.
if you replaced obama with mccain this would have been moderated to five. if slashdot is one thing its consistent...
You act as though Obama is the exception to the rule.
No, Obama's supporters do. In fact, every 4 years the supporters of both candidates act that way.
Another objective story from the "we don't check usernames" department. Seriously guys, this is obviously a plant - note the lack of spelling and grammar mistakes! Also, this is the first time I have seen this story on Slashdot. Real news for nerds is submitted several times over a one week period, has some psuedoscience factoid that we can all slam and is tagged with "Ohnoitsroland."
Here's a better headline for the same story that we could sink our teeth into:
"McCain Campaign Uses Spider/Diff Against Obama... and checks his email with emacs on a PDP-11 BeOS port"
FLAME ON!
There is absolutly nothing wrong with changing one's policy. For example, I was going to vote for Obama. Then, after he carried out his FISA vote, I decided to not vote for anyone.
I don't consider him a flip-flopper, but then again I don't consider myself one either. Things change.
Leaving aside questions about whether or not it was the US troop escalation that lowered violence in Iraq (there's a convincing argument to be made that is not the most significant factor in the decrease in violence), the entire point of "the surge" was political reconciliation in the Iraqi government.
And this hasn't happened at all.
You only get to call it a success when it succeeds, and it hasnt.
So, has there been news out of Iraq in the past couple of weeks that indicate a bigger reduction in violence? Does this change reflect reality or not?
When it is Republicans that have had the vision to put the capital tools, trade agreements, and military forces in place to create a genuinely free trading global economy? No plan ever made by Democrats has lifted nearly all of Europe and then Asia out of poverty and into the modern world, but the Republican -decades- long commitment to free trade most definitely has. Ultimate, this does mean social change for everyone, but, it is a change in world that is much more peaceful than it has been in a long time, a world where there are increasingly more people that have than have not, a world where people with brains and ambition and want to work, are not held back by those who lack them.
All the Democrats offer, despite their supposed advantage in brains, is, largely reactionary. Obama's central campaign thrust is really "anti-Republican", and not anything really substantive as a view of life in and of itself. Obama argues -against- free trade, argues -against- American military expansion, and finally even seeks to argue -against- global wealth for everyone by demanding that the world accept a greater degree of poverty (thus rationalizing inefficient socialism), in the name of saving the environment.
Even the very idea of redistribution of wealth, is, in essence, a reactionary idea. Some people succeed, other people didn't, and so they invent a bunch of arguments that give their thugs a right to go and take that money, and even worse, demand that someone who is successful work more days per year to pay their taxes than someone who is not.
This is my sig.
Do you remember the last politician who was successfully elected to anything higher than the local school board on a campaign that didn't utilize that technique? Neither do I.
So fucking what? Are we really this stupid in our politics that it's now a game of crying "flip-flopper" when you just say more or less the same thing, maybe with a different emphasis?
Yes.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It is the D.O.O. (Disciples of Obama) that seem to think L.B.A. (Lord Barack Obama) is the exception. The grandparent is just trying to undo some of the Obama is god brainwashing.
maybe we get what we deserve, like the last 8 years.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So fucking what? Are we really this stupid in our politics that it's now a game of crying "flip-flopper" when you just say more or less the same thing, maybe with a different emphasis?
New words scare people. Just a couple weeks ago, Obama said in a press conference that he'd be willing to "refine" his Iraq policy during his visit there, and a combination of the media and the McCain campaign jumped all over him for "flip-flopping" on Iraq. They were pretending that he had said that he was going to change his stance on the war, and so he had to give a second press conference later that day to emphasize that he had said nothing of the sort.
The media is trying to have a repeat of 2004 by painting the Democrat as a flip-flopper, when he has only waffled, as all politicians do. Even Obama's worst flip-flop, on the FISA legislation, wasn't a complete reversal: though he voted the final bill, he still voted to strip the immunity provision. He said that he thought the bill had more good than bad in it, and while we might disagree, that's just a matter of priority, not of position.
Meanwhile, McCain directly contradicts himself time and time again, and he has so far gotten off scot-free. We don't have a liberal media or a conservative media, we have a sensationalist media that caters to the lowest common denominator by trying to place the candidates into a pre-defined mold that has existed for the better part of three decades.
Why is changing what you have to say a bad thing? If you have a different set of facts or a change in thought, why is it bad to change your opinions?
Hello, where have you been the last 7 years ? Changing what you say makes you a flip-flopper. Real men stay the course.
Straight onto the rocks.
Changing what you think based on new information is not bad. This type of change in thought occurs after receiving new factual information and taking a good amount of time to reach a new decision. This is good.
Flip-Flopping is changing what you say in a very short period of time for no reason (Except to get votes)
Flip-Flopping is saying that you strongly support public campaign financing during the primaries to get votes and then changing to say you want private financing after you receive those votes.
Flip-Flopping is saying multiple times that you think the ban on guns in D.C. is a good idea and then saying that guns should be allowed immediately after the supreme court says so.
Flip-Flopping is saying that Iran is tiny and pose no threat at all, and then 2 days later coming out and saying that Iran poses a great threat and needs to be taken seriously.
Flip-Flopping is saying one thing and changing your mind because you can't take the heat of your decision.
Someone else in this thread already mentioned Obama's change on the telecom vote.
Obama trumps himself as the candidate of change. The only change I have seen is him changing his mind in rapid succession. McCain is not the best either, but Obama clearly flip-flops all the time and it is getting ridiculous.
I'm not going to continue because I trust in your ability to decipher several other flip-flops.
I urge everybody to ignore every single thing that a candidate says for up to 1 year prior to the actual election. Go to www.vote-smart.org and look at the candidates voting records. Voting records don't lie. Go with the candidate who votes the way you like.
You must be tired after thrashing at all that straw. Just be careful about open flame - you might burn yourself up.
You're right about that. Anything negative about any conservative or republican gets a 5. Oh yea, if you trash christians too, that is also a free 5. gg
The most tragic thing I've seen in a long time was when Jesse Ventura announced the other night that he wouldn't be running for the Senate. He's truly the only third party candidate with reasonable positions that I can support that has ANY serious chance of ever winning the Presidency. Every day that he stays out of politics is another day being ruled by the 2-party system in this country.
Every other potential third-party candidate is either some cause-oriented nutjob (a wacko wanting to abolish taxes, a wacko environmentalist, or just a straight-up wacko) and/or someone who has shown no capacity to actually win a serious public office. Ventura isn't a nutball and has actually won serious public offices (leaving office with the highest approval rating of any governor in Minnesota history).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How about we just judge each individual on his/her own merits, rather than painting in broad strokes based on party affiliation? Look at the candidates' records. Look at the issues. I'd much rather have a president who is intelligent and thoughtful than one who has the appropriate affiliations, be they religious or political.
It reminds me of the FISA amendment to deny immunity until after an investigation. The senator debating against the amendment (a Republican) argued that Bush would veto the bill if it contained the amendment, and therefore the amendment shouldn't be passed. This senator obviously didn't care about the merits of the bill, and was just following Bush based on his party affiliation. Such are the dangers of not being an independent thinker.
Voting for a candidate just because they aren't a Republican or Democrat makes you no better than the conservatives who voted for Bush because he claims to be a Christian. Gee, he's a Christian so he couldn't be bad. How did that one turn out?
It's not a bad thing as long as your position is sincere, but I'm afraid in this case like many others it's politics at it's worst. He can say whatever he wants. I'm far more concerned about what he's going to actually DO. When I look at his voting record, and look at the things he said durring the debates in the primaries I can get somewhat of an idea of where he stands. Unfortunately we won't know for sure unless he's elected, and by then it will be too late. I guess I should also point out that it's not just Obama. It's all of them. They all lie. It's a prerequisite.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
It dosnt proove that the republicans are tech saavy, it just prooves that they can look in the phone book and hire someone who is.
Hey I don't like Obama because of his stance on the Space program and some other things. But I really do agree with you.
People should have a right to change their mind and to learn from experience. Is it so wrong to say hey I found out this was not such a great idea after all and now I have a better one?
Now if he is just saying things to get elected (gee imagine that) then that is a reason for some concern.
I have a lot more problem with a politician not telling me why they changed their point of view than one changing their point of view.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
John McCain has had his share of flip flops, as document in this Keith Olbermann clip. It's pretty hilarious because the clip ends by reading a statement from McCain that his viewpoints are evolving, and then noting that McCain was for evolution, and now against evolution. It is pretty well done.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Anyone with five minutes can learn how to use a blog to their advantage and learn how to operate one. In my opinion, this is not technological savviness. My grandmother can use e-mail; does that make her technologically savvy?
There are mountains to cross for those that are willing.
When you vote for president, you get far more than a president.
Behind the POTUS candidate comes a legion of people who will set the policy and tone of the nation for years to come. Supreme Court justices, Cabinet members, hundreds of others at every level of government.
Dont forget what happened at NASA, the EPA, the Justice Department, DHS, etc. All hit the headlines the last few years with major scandals brought on by POTUS-appointed bureaucrats.
Point being, presidential elections arent about single issues or a single candidate, but a change in national leadership for all issues at all levels. Sometimes you have to hold your nose and vote for the party most closely aligned with the future you desire. Any party will bring in some crazies, its unavoidable.
Yeah, I hate the way McCain flip-flopped on public financing - first he was for it and agreed to it, then decided to unilaterally withdraw (a move that the Republican appointed head of the FEC said was against the rules and is probably illegal) from it when it became convenient.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/21/mccain.fec.ap/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/21/AR2008022103141.html?hpid=topnews
That was terrible.
Or were you referring to Obama, who said that he'd work to come to an agreement with the McCain campaign on them both taking public financing, and that they subsequently didn't come to an agreement? Oh, wait - that's not a flip flop, that's just something not working out.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91703936
Ooh, here's a good quote from that one:
Huh. So, he said that he supports for public financing, but that it's broken as is, and that he'd participate in public financing if McCain did the same. Which McCain did at first, till he decided to withdraw, which the FEC chairman says he's not allowed to do.
I have no trust in your ability to do so, particularly given your fondness for bold assertions given no evidence.
I am genius when it comes to string parsing! Good thing too, I needed the ego boost.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Anyone who's in bed with the troofers qualifies as a nutjob to me.
I'm sorry, but if politicians can call me when I'm on the do not call list, then why should spiders adhere to the robots.txt file.
Thank you for putting this much more succinctly than I would have.
You know, I still don't get the huge deal with the telecom immunity. Yes the telecoms should be punished, at least as a preventative measure so that in the future companies think twice before following illegal government orders. And yet, the truly guilty party are the government officials who made those orders. Why are we so intend to lynch their stooges when the masterminds are getting away scot-free?
The lawsuits against the telco's weren't aimed at "lynching the stooges". They were aimed at discovering the extent of the illegal wiretapping that went on through the process of discovery. That's what the "huge deal" with telecom immunity was -- by passing immunity they have denied the American people their best chance at an honest accounting of what transpired.
Obama's response is that there will be an Inspectors General investigation of what happened and they will report to the American people through Congress. If he actually believes that will give us a full and honest accounting of what happened (recall how the parts of the 9/11 commission report on Saudi Arabia were classified and denied to the public) then at the very least he is hopelessly naive.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You don't even have the balls to mod me as "flamebait" or "troll?"
Ventura is a special case. From his pro-wrestling and acting, he has a lot of high-dollar contacts and name recognition. He was also a Navy SEAL, and so has proven himself to be a serious public servant, not just a showman. He has the background and contacts to get on with people on both the "left" (Hollywood) and the right (serious military service).
I'd vote for him.
Yeah, I know it has nothing to do with the war, or the torture, or whatnot, but McCain Can Astroturf Even the Web!!!
Actually, being pro-life, I'll probably just pencil in Keyes, unless for some reason Obama takes Keyes as VP running mate, in which case I'll vote Obama (my pro-life vote would be for Keyes for VP, then.)
It's not about a wasted vote. It is all about not being complicit in what I believe to be an unavoidable human rights disaster.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Then Obama flip-flopped on FISA and voted for a bill containing telecom immunity
Obama did not vote for the bill out of support of telecom immunity. He voted for the bill out of the fact that he supported most of the other parts of the bill. Keep in mind that senators don't have line-item veto powers; if a bill comes up they have only three choices. They can vote yes, vote no, or abstain from voting.
And when you consider that much of the rest of the bill was for counter-terrosism measures that are well accepted, he didn't really have much choice. A no vote (or a non-vote) would have naturally been spun by the conservative media as supporting (or at least being soft on) terrorism.
If you can find anything that actually shows Obama flip-flopping on telecom immunity, I'd like to see it. Had he not voted yes on this bill, he would have been throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"It dosnt proove that the republicans are tech saavy, it just prooves that they can look in the phone book and hire someone who is."
Just like the democrats, right?
Nothing like stopping in on you leftist geek obama lovings dorks and flaming your lame asses because you dont get it and never will.
Your tomorrows steel workers because you obvioulsy dont understand free market economics and how leftists, liberals and democrats are simply bad for business, never mind the security disaster, national and global, that these ass clowns will be.
Enjoy because soon Rajiv in Mumbai or Wen in China will soon have your job and mind you, that is a global trend beyond political party but Obama, the Ddemocrats and the socialist 5th column that are on the periphery will surely accelerate your collective demise
Enjoy the downslide
CmdrToco says, "Assuming the spider adheres to robots.txt, this is clever and well done." Query whether robots.txt can legally or morally be used, like a web End User License Agreement (EULA), to restrict the policitical conversation the McCain campaign is pursuing here. It is one thing to use a EULA to govern issues like privacy and legal liability. It would be another to employ it to limit free political speech. What do you think? --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-privacy-policy-terms-of-service.html
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
Jimmy Carter believed in UFO's. Clinton believed that Oswald didn't kill Kennedy. And George Bush believed Saddam was about to build a nuclear weapon (or claims he did). Every President gets one thing to be a little flaky on.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I'm pretty sure that federal revenue goes up when taxes are cut.
Changing your opinion on something in light of new facts that show your initial opinion was wrong or ill informed is a good thing. The problem is when, in light of new facts, you attempt to change said opinion in such a way that you can claim you always had your new opinion. For instance, if Hillary Clinton tried to claim she has always been against the war once popular opinion turned against it...
Obama's initial position was that the surge wasn't working and our troops were wasting their effort. That's an embarassing opinion to have when the surge starts to work. But instead of making a public statement that, in light of the surge showing signs of succeeding, he has changed his position his staff apparently just edits the section of the website containing his position on the surge so that it looks like he's been supporting it. That just looks bad.
To be honest, it's unlikely he had anything to do with this, as I doubt he gives much day-to-day thought about the contents of his web page. And to be fair, McCain is trying to create his own reality distortion field by claiming he's tough on border security after having been the primary author of the amnesty bill from last year...
We need to stop having Senators run for President. They're so used to selling their values out for support as part of "business as usual" negotiations on the Senate floor that they can't hold an opinion from one day to the next on the campaign trail.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Let's test that. Fuck Jesus' Bush!!!!
had help?
You have to click on the score to get the moderation history. It was moderated "underrated" and the poster has a karma bonus. Why "underrated" was an appropriate choice here and why it doesn't get listed next to the score, however, I can't answer.
The Obama supporters love to paint disliking Obama as being racist. Its not. Its supporting your freedoms and the constitution of your goddamn country.
Who came up with the Marshall Plan again
Democrats did, and here's the thing. Most of the "Reagan Republicans" and their intellectual descendants fondly remember when Democrats actually did embark on big visions and big crusade to try and make the world a place for free trade, free from tyranny. That old, old conservative isolationist wing of the Republican Party is basically a small minority.
What really happened is that Democrats completely lost their nerve after Viet Nam. Instead of looking at the war, and saying that they made some mistakes in its execution, and in fact, had actually started to turn things around once Westmoreland was replaced by Abrams, they have instead enshrined an ethic that lacks any sort of faith in the very government to do anything other than redistribute wealth.
I mean, Democrats are to be forever saluted for what they did from the 1940s through the 1960s. A lot of their ideas didn't work, but some did, and, we got the victory in World War II, built a national infrastructure that we've been living off of for 50 years, and put a man on the moon. They built a framework to stand against Soviet aggression and deftly avoided a world war without undermining American resolve. But, today's Democrats tend to reject a lot of that. Back in the 1960s, the Democrats who wanted NASA cut to pay for the poor were squelched, now they run the show. Today, the very idea of going to the moon, let alone mars, is considered to be just a handout, when it really, it is a project that harnesses the finest minds of the country towards a peaceful, momentus, national goal.
I would be willing to bet that if, in fact, a more muscular foreign policy candidate, one who really could articulate the American vision of free trade through Pax Americana, expansively, in the way that FDR and his ideological descendant, Reagan could, I would certainly support them, and, in fact, just about every Republican I know -would-. But instead today's Democratic party is consumed with identity politics and redistribution, sorta trying to divvying up the spoils but without the old Dems that still saw a need to get spoils to divvy.
Unfortunately though, through a catastrophe of party rules, Dems have a process that continually nominates the candidate who kowtows to a group of people that are in the minority. Republicans have a similar problem too, but, they at least have the sense to tend to set aside other policy differences so long as the free trade expansionist vision stands.
This is my sig.
The "surge" was intended to promote political reconciliation in Iraq, and that hasn't happened - things in the Iraqi government are as bad or worse now than they were at the beginning.
Leaving aside the fact that a very real argument can be made that the improvement in the security situation wasn't primarily driven by an escalation in US troop levels, the surge hasn't been a success because it hasn't achieved it's goal - a stable Iraqi government.
This isn't nitpicking - it's a significant issue. The problem the surge was intended to address is no better now than it was before. That's not success.
IIRC, robots.txt is about on par with "No Trespassing" signs. It won't keep people out, but it will make it easier to win in court if someone doesn't obey it.
I for one welcome our new geriatric overlords! LOL couldn't resist.
"This just proves that old Republicans can learn new tricks"
I think more likely it shows new Republican are in the ranks.
Because when a candidate constantly changes his/her position, it is difficult to know who or what you are voting for.
I find it interesting that everything involved with a politician is the politician. I'm very doubtful he writes the website himself and he might not really have much of a say on what happens on that web site.
An editor might have, probably have come along and saw "This looks bad, let's make it look better." and since it's not an image that was a little too big to fit right or formatting that just didn't fit with the page, it's seen as 'Obama said this' and not 'supporters glossing things over'.
I guess you can say that the kind of people who support someone else does reflect on what kind of person they are, but it's the same logical fallacy that happens over and over again.
Obama did what he did, and even though it went against his former statements to some degree, he didn't say "Oh, that? That was nothing.", he said exactly what he did and why he did it.
He didn't break any promises, he made a compromise he really seems to believe is important and he did make assurances that his fight for the interests is not over yet. He didn't undo anything, he just delayed (for that WHOLE SINGLE VOTE out of quite a majority) what's going to happen later.
He probably knew this would happen, too. If you try to make everyone happy, you end up making nobody happy.
I'm voting Obama, He's not the golden ticket to the perfect country but asking for a perfect person is always asking too much. His positions do involve change, but it's not such an incredible change that all the corporations will be out to stop him no matter what it takes.
We need universal healthcare, but we won't have it in 4 years. No nationwide change happens that fast (unless an explosion is involved). What we need now is to take the steps towards changing people's expectations in the system.
There's hundreds of issues we need to consider in three months, is it really so responsible to throw Obama away for one?
I mean, Christ, was everyone planning on voting for him in the first place because he was going to stick it to the telecom man?
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
God damn I hate republicans.
I hear one definition of insanity is repeating the same action while expecting a different result each time.
I just looked up "insanity" online, and didn't find that definition among the ones listed. I did, however, find a word that had a definition similar to the one you gave: "persistence"
Apparently, once upon a time, one politician wanted to say something about another politician that would imply that he was insane. He did this by making up his own definition of "insanity" and then harping on some policy point that was being applied persistently.
Trying again is a time-tested strategy for success. There is a threshold of course, but your little definition allows anyone to label "insane" any other person who is simply trying again.
Needless to say, I don't respect it. Nor do I respect those who thoughtlessly tout it. You weakened your ethos by throwing in that reference.
At least we know McCain didn't write the spider himself. The guy can't even use a web browser or email.
As a fellow Brit, it's almost ontopic to reply here :p
I wrote a JE a while back, asking people to vote third or fourth party, even if they could "make do" with one of the "main" parties. The interesting thing is that reasons to do so do not rely upon faith!
A number a years back, I did some campaigning for the Liberal Democrats; I no longer consider myself to be party political, but their campaign techniques were interesting. The most interesting was the "reverse squeeze". The way that that works is that the Lib Dems would go after either Labour or the Tories, whichever had the fewest votes in the seat. Once their support went down, the numbers voting for the other team would come down in roughly equal numbers.
In other words, one vote fewer for one of the main parties implies approximately one fewer votes for the other one. Because voters can sense the political equilibrium, your own decision to deny the main parties your vote for a better personal choice is essentially costless! Better still, your vote is amplified (although they might instead choose to vote for another small party).
Not only is your change of vote essentially costless, but also you get to send a signal both to voters and to your future representative. The voters get to see a change in the support of your chosen party which is bigger than the signal would have been if cast for one of the main ones. Your representive receives a signal as to how best to win your vote the next time around.
The only reasons not to vote for a smaller party are if you are better represented by one of the main parties, or else if you think that competition is a harmful force in politics, and would rather give a clearer "mandate" to the winner. American voters seem to act like this, with later voters preferring to strengthen the early vote, and it can even make a kind of sense if a "strong nation" is more important to you than democracy.
The flip side to the last observation is that if you're in the US, vote early. Others will then copy your vote, so in a sense, you get to "vote early, vote often".
Wikileaks, no DNS
Why is changing your mind considered normal for average people, absolutely vital for scientists, but a mortal sin for politicians?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Who cares, the idea that a single federal executive officer can be held to account for his positions changing ignores the many hands he has up his ass. Oboma may squirm more when he feels those fingers probing his anus but his vote for FISA belies any claim he is the felicitous champion of American or any other liberty. I think it is time to consider more executive positions being directly elected by the people. It is audacious to think that a single individual should be given such a wide latitude with enacting policies in the appointment of positions even in such an individual's own cabinet. Our democratic system has become mired by the limits inherent in its design and it may be time again to sit down and listen to those who may have more elegant designs for a democratic society. What must be done is an examination of the mechanisms both politically and economically that this country has
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
coming from the guy who admitted he doesnt know how to use a computer a month or so ago?
Everyone believes in UFOs, you nimrod. Anything in the sky you can't identify is a UFO.
About the only way to disbelieve in UFOs is to disbelieve that people might not know what they're seeing, that everyone has perfect knowledge of everything up there. Because otherwise it is clearly possible that people could see things in the sky they cannot identify.
Jimmy Carter does not, however, believe they are aliens. He's never suggested such, and in fact has very specifically stated he does not believe aliens have ever visited this planet. He believes it was a craft from a nearby military base.
I have no idea what you're talking about Clinton and Oswald. The only logical thing I can think of is that Clinton requested any documents from the Russians they had about the Kennedy assassination.
Which, if anything, demonstrates the opposite of what you said...that Clinton thought Oswald did it, working for the Russians. Or, alternately, he wanted to put the theory the Russians were involved to rest. Or, on the third hand, he just wanted to use the US's and Russia's new friendship to grab some documents for future historians. (There were a lot of such requests being made, in both directions, especially about pet conspiracy theories that the CIA or KGB had about their opposing organization's involvement in specific things.)
I can't imagine how you got 'He thinks Oswald didn't do it' out of that, but that's the only connection between him and Oswald I can even find.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Code your website in flash!!
Civilian casualties are an important measure, however they too are on a sharp decline.
In all measures things have gotten much better in Iraq, in fact crossing into pre-invasion figures at this point.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No Hairyass mcgee
He's a presidential candidate for a major political party. Why exactly should he be able to use robots.txt to exempt his policy pages from historical analysis???
And McCain would be at best an extension of the Bush years, and we frankly just don't need that.
Yes that's the meme you're being told to spread. But it simply isn't so where it counts - spending.
Both Republicans and Democrats have gone wild spending, and Bush has done nothing to reign them in. McCain swore off all earmarks last year and stuck to it. McCain is the only candidate right now who I feel has a shot at actually getting some earmark reduction in place, as he's been on a number of truly bi-partisan efforts before.
You want the war to end? Elect someone trying to save money instead of spend it. Can't save much money with a lot of troops in the field.
You don't want new wars to start? Electing someone fiscally prudent might just be a good plan. It's not like Obama isn't making noises about putting more troops into Afghanistan either you know, but he may go a little more crazy with it just to "prove himself".
If you want a change from Bush, take a REAL look at what CAN be changed and who is for it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why should McCain adhere to the robots.txt?
Well it tells us one thing for sure, McCain is not the final cylon.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm one of those who always describes my politics as libertarian with a lowercase "l". The original libertarian concept was individual liberty with personal responsibility. It seems a lot of current day Libertarians leave off the responsibility part.
Really sad because I see a lot of people who don't agree with the extremes of either major party. They want the (supposed) fiscal responsibility of the Republicans without the "Let's cram fundamentalist Christianity down everyone's throat." They want the respect for individual choice of the Democrats without the "We'll tax everyone else to pay for those who suffer due to their own lifestyle choices." You should get both from the Libertarian Party. Instead you get "Dude, we gotta legalize drugs so I can get stoned whenever I want."
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I suspect someone with the Slashdot handle "Vote McCain in 2008!" isn't the best person from which Seems hardly the person from whom to seek a reasonable and balanced opinion about Obama's positions and McCain's technological prowess. And the fact that CmdrTaco would post something with such an obvious McCain bias, which is obviously a ham-handed attempt to counter the widespread and correct perception that the McCain campaign - and the candidate himself - are way behind the curve when it comes to leveraging the Internet to raise money and spread their message, seriously makes me wonder about Mr. Taco's editorial judgment.
No, but I'd be damn wary of voting in somebody on his promises, when he's already shown little inclination to stick to said promises.
Remember, campaign promises are pretty much just words. What happens if Obama gets voted in as president and just becomes the next GWB?
Exactly. The FISA thing disappoints me, but, OTOH, I have to accept I was sorta projecting 'He will hold Bush accountable' onto Obama, when he's really said nothing of the sort.
Of course, just because he hasn't said that, and doesn't plan on doing that...simply appointing non-Bush-cronies to investigative positions would result in some accountability.
I was hoping that Obama would sweep and empty the trash of the Bush administration onto the street in view of everyone, but, frankly, he's still a much better choice than McCain even if he's not. And I have to wonder how many people suggesting otherwise are not actually McCain supporters.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It is simple, if he didn't vote for it, he won't be elected. He would be "soft on terrorism" and 0wn3d by the media. Simple as that. Perhaps he is the same, perhaps not.. Either way, if he wants to be elected, he has to vote for it in this climate.
If you doubt me, visit the midwest sometime.
This just proves that old Republicans can learn new tricks.
Or just spend some of their money on people that already know and can do these so called tricks for them.
The Long Now Foundation
Absolutely! Part of the genius of Franklin Roosevelt was his ability to try new things when the old things weren't working. There is nothing worse than trying more of the same when it is obvious that it isn't working.
Changing ones mind isn't bad, it indicates that you have an open mind which is good. The only thing is that you must have a good reason to change your mind. It can be a bad sign if you change your mind just because the way the political wind is blowing changed.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
You omitted what I consider the flakiest of the lot. Nancy Reagan consulted astrologers on matters of public policy, and Ronald went along with this.
W. is flaky about much more than WMD in Iraq. He actually spoke in favor of teaching "Intelligent Design" in public schools. He used to deny global warming was real and a problem, but now has flip-flopped on that one.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
This guy is hilarious! Check out his ravings with regard to torture. Here and here. He really seems to believe that he is beyond criticism. I don't think his, "You should build a statue in worship of me" thing is even half in jest.
-FL
Don't forget that we're almost as disparate a bunch as the republicans or democrats.
Unlike MBGMorden, I really don't like the democrat idea of social services. But my ideas on how to 'fix' various problems aren't what the republicans want either.
To Republicans: Stop trying to push your morality down my throat
To Democrats: Stop trying to ban my stuff and take my money
To both parties: Balance the budget(several states have done it!), stop the huge waste of money that is the drug war, legalize prostitution while you're at it*. Stop handing subsidies out left and right. Stop the tendency to control state governments by the circle of taking money from a state's citizens, then making the local government agencies(such as schools) apply to get their own people's money back.
*"I've never understood why prostitution is illegal. Selling is legal. Why isn't selling sex legal? Why should it be illegal to sell something that's legal to give away?" - George Carlin
I don't read AC A human right
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, but in a lot of cases and domains, the RL the conditions change so often, that essentially you're not even rolling the same kinds of dice twice. One time you roll D6, the next time you roll D20, and the next time they just explode in your face. So in fact expecting the same to happen again and again is the dumbest possible attitude.
One example is warfare. We have some thousands of years littered with the corpses of those who expected to win like in the previous war.
E.g., in the secession war, experience said that for a couple of hundred years armies had simply marched to a hundred yards of each other, stood tall, and shot volley after volley at each other. Tough luck. Now the armies were increasingly equipped with rifles, which had an effective range about 3 times longer than a musket's. Walking to 100m of a rifle squad was your death.
E.g., in the 100 years war, experience said that for more than 1000 years knights had dominated the battlefield and could just ride down archers with impunity. Dumbly enough, this time it was longbows and the armour-piercing Bodkin tip. Those mighty knights rode to their doom. Again and again, btw. It took the French about 100 years of doing what they had done before, and expecting the same result, before they finally learned.
E.g., a massed frontal assault against a weakly fortified (by previous wars' standard) position should have worked every time in WW1. Dumbly enough this time the defense was a good offense. Instead of walls and bunkers we mostly just had machineguns. Millions of soldiers on both sides died charging at machineguns.
Etc. That's just a quick random sample out of literally thousands.
Sometimes the crazy thing is quite the opposite of that quote. The crazy thing to expect that just because something worked once before, the exact same must happen again.
In reality a lot of actions have long lasting effects which change the problem completely. E.g., _because_ something worked well before, someone else will figure out a way to counter it. So doing it again might be the guaranteed way to fail.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
While Jesse is not running, Dean Barkley is. Him and Jesse see eye to eye on almost everything, which is why Jesse appointed him to the Senate after Welstone died. We would do our best to help him get elected in Jesse's absence.
This is a huge problem with the legislative system, in my opinion. An individual bill should address a single issue, not be loaded up with dozens of items. I wouldn't make a firewall rule that allowed http access at the cost of opening up remote desktop access, why do we allow our legislators to perform the equivalent action?
This entire process is a farce, and is the main reason our country is in the state that it's in.
Well, that and a complete lack of accountability for government and corporate entities.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
I'm not saying it's an appropriate choice here, but as I understand it, overrated and underrated aren't subject to metamoderation
Depends on the tax. Many taxes would allow a >100% tax rate. For instance a sales tax of 200% is easily doable mathematically (if not politically). For instance, you buy a $5.00 doodad, the clerk adds $10.00 sales tax, you pay $15.00 at check out. There you are -- a 200% tax.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now, if only the Republicans could learn to be anything other than evil, warmongering pieces of shit, we'd have something resembling a real society. . .maybe.
This law does not allow for "Greater government accountability!" It greatly diminishes accountability, while allowing for more abusive powers. I have no idea where you came up with your conclusion. You are correct in saying that they have to have paperwork filed within a week, but you fail to note that they can incorrectly file, or be denied, but appeal, reappeal, appeal again...dragging out the process for 4 months (I think that was the max of an "Emergency Tapping"). By that time, it won't matter what the court does, as their tapping will most likely be complete. It also allow for much more broad tapping, such as at a datacenter level, which is extremely invasive. Their tapping devices can also be configured to assist the FBI with investigations/curiosities over copyright violation, file sharing, illegal crap, etc...not just international terrorism bs. I'm not trying to incite an argument, I'm just saying that I don't think you, and others, fully understand the provisions in this law. Check out the EFF's take on it...it's not a good law, it's not for the people, and it does very little to increase security/track terrorists.
McCain is trolling Obama?!
Between Goatse and Rickroll I learned my lesson
For something like a political or news website, I think it's eminently fair for crawlers to make periodic snapshots to prevent candidates or journalists from being able to retcon themselves to present a false lack of hypocrisy.
It's only when it goes from 'periodic' to 'DoS' that it becomes dirty pool IMHO.
Ugh. No. You're so wrong I don't know where to start.
Slavery is anathema to libertarian ideology, because it allows one person to impinge on the rights of another. That's a fundamentally Bad Thing; in fact the whole point of libertarianism is the maximization of personal freedom, up to the point where your freedom to do something starts impinging on someone else's.
Basically you've constructed a straw man and then proceeded to tear it down; congratulations. It's a good argument except that it has nothing to do with any actual libertarians that I've ever met, nor the positions of either the Libertarian party or the other similar state-level parties.
If you want to criticize libertarian theory, that's fine -- there are many valid critiques of it. But saying that it advocates or legitimizes slavery is just false and stupid, and a great way of advertising your own ignorance.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It won't keep people out, but it will make it easier to win in court if someone doesn't obey it.
How? Good luck proving that someone didn't download robots.txt manually and decide to explore it in a browser.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Ok, so the Republicans are doing all kinds of web savvy stuff to make the other guy look worse than themselves, but how about using their skills to tell us what makes them a good choice in 2008? Because many people, myself included, are disenchanted with everything going on in Washington right now and with the choice of candidates in 2008, which means more disenchantment coming in the near future.
I don't care if it's Democratic, Republican, or Cartesian; what matters to me is that we get leaders who care about allowing you to keep as much of your own power (freedom) and your own money as possible, since that principle has proved successful in making America a great country for over 200 years. Unfortunately, in this election, I am suffering from electile dysfunction, failure to become aroused over either choice of candidate. Both McCain and Obama have flip-flopped numerous times, as evidenced by videos on YouTube showing both saying opposite things about the same topics within short time intervals (looking up the videos is left as an exercise for the reader, as I'm short on time, but those videos are there). I feel that neither candidate is the right person for the job, and that both candidates will cause significant damage to this country as president. Many people share these feelings. Web savviness is great, but come on people, tell us why you're good, not why the other dude is bad.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
Why are we so intend to lynch their stooges when the masterminds are getting away scot-free?
The masterminds are far more likely to get away scot-free with the immunity, because it blots out the discovery that would be involved in the telecom trials. There's a huge avenue to even find out *what actually happened* that's taken away because of the immunity.
Tweet, tweet.
You would certainly be able to indenture yourself, if you choose to — to anyone, who would want such a thing from you.
Serfdom (and the outright slavery) disappeared, not because of laws or regulations, but because it was inefficient. Re-read your Marx-volume. As the means of production evolve, the uninterested slaves' labor falls further and further behind in value — despite being cheaper — than that of motivated free workers.
So stop this "slavery" fear-mongering, and smears. For decades the country's policy-makers have been moving away from Libertarianism despite most Americans being in the Libertarian corner of the politics. The results, to name the most obvious are:
And all you can say against that is nonsense like: "Libertarians want to bring back slavery"?.. Pathetic...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
the Republicans have shown up the Democrats with their web savvy
Since when was 'savvy' a noun? It can be used as an adjective to mean someone who is well-informed and perceptive. It can also be a verb, meaning 'to understand'. However, it does not function as a noun.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
I think over- and underrated mods escape the metamoderation cycle.
Handy tool for boosting/bashing posts.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Thank GWB. Without the ongoing mistake that is/was his administration the American public would have never considered someone outside the "rich older white protestant male" demographic.
It's not just Obama that is a "fundamentally new kind of candidate". This time we had a Mormon, a black and a woman that were in either the #1 or #2 position in the nomination for President in both major parties. Add to this that Obama is both 46 years old and had an estimated net-worth FAR below the others (the $1.3M includes the house value of $1.9M).
The national situation has been SO screwed by the current leadership that many people are willing to forgo the 'traditional' view of who can be president.
Removing the assumed superficial restrictions allows more people to participate and, hopefully, offer more ideas. If the previously restricted offer nothing new, then that benefit to the whole is squandered. When you vote, it should be toward the person that would benefit the system or public. Voting for a candidate strictly for superficial reasons ONLY benefits the candidate.
Actually, I'd file it under "so what?"
The thing is, I want a candidate that can be flexible and adapt to new situations. We've had a rigid, inflexible idiot behind the NSW (National Steering Wheel) for eight years now, and look where that's gotten us. McCain's just more of the same.
blog |
I would hope that Obama and other candidates would update their issue positions and even change their positions entirely based on the best evidence available at the time. If he were a smart person, he'd keep the old pages in an archive to show how his positions have evolved over time due to the new information which informed him. Of course, in today's political climate, you can't change your political views ever for any reason. That's "flip-flopping". And that's why he won't keep an archive.
We don't live in the perfect world to which I alluded, so it's pretty obvious his edits are, generally speaking, walking back left-liberal positions required to win the primary but may be a liability in the general.
Yes, but then the wrong lizard might get in!:
http://wso.williams.edu/~rcarson/lizards.html
Hah! So Douglas Adams beat Icke to the lizard theory?
For skimmers, I'll re-iterate my main point:
One of the voters for the other lizard feels less threatened by your own lizard, and votes for yet another lizard^wparty representative, or perhaps even a human being!
Wikileaks, no DNS
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. – 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' – Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emerson
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Under/over rated are the chicken mod choice because they don't subject the moderator to potential punishment in meta moderation.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
McCain Flip Flops
National Security Policy
1. McCain thought Bush's warrantless wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.
2. McCain insisted that everyone, even "terrible killers," "the worst kind of scum of humanity," and detainees at Guantanamo Bay, "deserve to have some adjudication of their cases," even if that means "releasing some of them." McCain now believes the opposite.
3. He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."
4. In February, McCain reversed course on prohibiting waterboarding.
5. McCain favored closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay before he was against it.
6. When Barack Obama talked about going after terrorists in Pakistani mountains with Predators, McCain criticized him for it. He's since come to the opposite conclusion.
Foreign Policy
7. McCain was for kicking Russia out of the G8 before he was against it.
8. McCain supported moving "toward normalization of relations" with Cuba. Now he believes the opposite.
9. McCain believed the United States should engage in diplomacy with Hamas. Now he believes the opposite.
10. McCain believed the United States should engage in diplomacy with Syria. Now he believes the opposite.
11. McCain is both for and against a "rogue state rollback" as a focus of his foreign policy vision.
12. McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty's behalf before a Senate committee. Now he opposes it.
13. McCain was against divestment from South Africa before he was for it.
Military Policy
14. McCain recently claimed that he was the "greatest critic" of Rumsfeld's failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as "a mission accomplished." In March 2004, he said, "I'm confident we're on the right course." In December 2005, he said, "Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course."
15. McCain has changed his mind about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq on multiple occasions, concluding, on multiple occasions, that a Korea-like presence is both a good idea and a bad idea.
16. McCain said before the war in Iraq, "We will win this conflict. We will win it easily." Four years later, McCain said he knew all along that the war in Iraq war was "probably going to be long and hard and tough."
17. McCain has repeatedly said it's a dangerous mistake to tell the "enemy" when U.S. troops would be out of Iraq. In May, McCain announced that most American troops would be home from Iraq by 2013.
18. McCain was against expanding the GI Bill before he was for it.
Domestic Policy
19. McCain defended "privatizing" Social Security. Now he says he's against privatization (though he actually still supports it.)
20. McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn't.
21. McCain supported storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Now he believes the opposite.
22. He argued that the NRA should not have a role in the Republican Party's policy making. Now he believes the opposite.
23. In 1998, he championed raising cigarette taxes to fund programs to cut underage smoking, insisting that it would prevent illnesses and provide resources for public health programs. Now, McCain opposes a $0.61-per-pack tax increase, won't commit to supporting a regulation bill he's co-sponsoring, and has hired Philip Morris' former lobbyist as his senior campaign adviser.
24. McCain is both for and against earmarks for Arizona.
25. McCain's first mortgage plan was premised on the notion that homeowners facing foreclosure shouldn't be "rewarded" for acting "irresponsibly." His second mortgage plan took largely the opposite position.
26. McCain went from saying ga
Why is changing what you have to say a bad thing? If you have a different set of facts or a change in thought, why is it bad to change your opinions?
When honest people do it, it usually contains the phrase "I was wrong about [something]". Has Obama said that? No.
When politicians change their views to fit new situations, they pretend their current views are the only views they've ever held. The pretense is dishonest.
Moderators: Moderate all the elder siblings of this comment insightful. Or maybe underrated. Silly Slashdot.
Insightful?
This wingnut is talking Pax Americana! To, "try and make the world a place for free trade, free from tyranny."??
Any rational person who looks at the world will recognize that tyranny for profit (free trade?) is on the rise, and the 'strong vision' of the Republicans which brought us the Iraq fiasco and horror show currently wants to expand the nightmare to include war with Iran, which will almost certainly lead to nuclear exchanges. Free trade mouthed by Republicans is just another word for "Exploitation Slave Labor in Third World Countries." --Several countries of which have been forced into third world status by maneuvers by the world bank. Free trade is the wet dream of those agencies which brought us the infamous banana republics. It's horseshit. I doubt very much that JFK's version of Democratic leadership would do anything but roll his eyes at this fool. But that's also typical; to twist the vision of great men in delusional history re-writing so that it compliments the agenda of ever-expanding misery for the masses. Just on the fairy-tale level, look at what the Christian Right has done with their mascot, turning him into an icon and excuse for perpetual war and apocalyptic insanity.
Pax Americana is just the same. It's ego-driven insanity. Diverse countries and cultures, among their many strengths, act as a control measure to contain and combat problem nations. Imagine if Hitler had come to power in a system where there was a one world government; there would have been no other collective to have opposed him. Heck, imagine a world where a Pax Americana existed which Bush managed to rise to the top of. Can we really trust ourselves not to vote evil nitwits into power? I think we've proven that we cannot, so further erosion of individuality among nations and further extension of American imperialism is plainly a rotten idea. Checks and balances need to be in place because we KNOW that as a people, we are NOT perfect. --At least those properly realized humans among us recognize this.
This is not to say that democratic leadership today isn't a joke; Obama let everybody down with his FISA nonsense, (though I'd be surprised if this would pose a problem for the parent poster who thinks torture is such a great idea).
This guy is just looking for easy handouts and ego-perks to feed his, "you should build a statue to worship me" egomania, (yes, he said that); it's easy to pop on the 'wise and insightful' mask for a quick manipulation, but if you stop for a moment to research this loon, you'll see what you're actually dealing with. He never said, "I was wrong", but rather "What you said makes me even MORE right!" It's impossible for this brand of sick to admit anything other than personal perfection. Fascinating case, actually.
-FL
The "flip-flop" campaign against Kerry was remarkably effective, partly because he was a rather weak character, and partly because of his terrible campaign management and a generally unfavorable political climate (unseating a mid-term president is notoriously difficult).
The fact is, politicians flip-flop all the time. In fact, one could argue that it is their *job* to shift positions on policy, since, what we pay them for is to listen to the opinions of their constituents. A politician that doesn't shift policy is one that doesn't listen.
What *is* problematic is a politician that isn't serving the public, or that outright lies--who's votes don't match their rhetoric.
Dunno; has Obama substantively changed his position on an issue without acknowledging that change? Can you cite a specific example?
The two-party system and the weird political mappings it forces also seemed really weird to me until I thought about it. The "problem" is that the US does not have Proportional Representation. If the people are 15% Green, 20% Libertarian, 30% Democrat and 35% Republican, and everyone votes for their candidate as you suggest, the Republicans will win.
Voting for a 3rd party candidate in the US Political system can only result in:
1) The 3rd party wins, thus replacing one of the parties in the 2-party system. You have some change but are back to square one after a while.
2) The 3rd party loses, as well as the other party it "stole" the most voters from. The Opposition now has a solid lead.
3) The 3rd party affects change in the one or both of the major parties. (Which may be desirable).
The question now becomes: Does the US have the desire or the popular will to go to a Proportional Representation (PR) type of system? (This system comes with more choice, less stability, and coalitions galore).
I believe the answer is no. But if the answer is "yes" and you want more choice, the thing to do is to lobby your congressman for PR. You can still vote for a 3rd party (and I even might), but I doubt you'll achieve anything other than what's outlined above.
is rather confusing for us Europeans, certainly me, since the U.S seems to use it as a label for both sides of the fence. While on the surface, the arguments appear to circle around the wagon train of self interest, personal freedom and a smaller government both sides seem able to imagine a society without government. This comes from the common belief found in western thought where the state is considered fundamentally evil. Clearly an idea that puts the cart well ahead of the horse.
I have probably re-hashed this post a few times over the years but I shall repeat it. Military power is a side effect of trade and the state, a product of laws, is the side effect of military power. These organisations are intended to produce stability and stability is always followed by society which cannot exist alone.
It may not come as a surprise, but the military organisation is not one well suited to difficult decisions. Their purpose is to break stuff and kill people, a rather black and white process and, once the heat of battle is over, history is repleat with examples of how they screwed it up. To make difficult decisions required a reasonable degree of consensus and simple trading entities are equally incapable of this. What was required is the law and this is the foundation of society. Laws can and have come and gone over the past 2000 years of recorded history but wherever you found them they did not exist in a vacum devoid of state or military.
The purpose of all these elements of society is to exert control over each other to avoid chaos and bloodshed. As states grew in history we can observe how their power waxes and wains and we can observe how the disenfranchised strove to absorb advances to create a greater balance amongst them (the inevitable creation of the United States of America is a perfect example of this). The apparent disparity in a variety of social metrics around the world is nowhere near where it was 100 hundred years ago, which is why we will never see an empire the size of the British Empire (on whom, the sun never set) again.
For this reason, anyone can hold any political opinion they wish, believe in any creed or cult or ethnic minority, but in the absence of the state there is only one single political idea, self interest and self interest is completely incapable of building even a small house, never mind a road network and the infrastructure of society.
European libertarian thought was more communist or anarcho-syndicalist - obsessing about who owned the mechanisms of the state and what they should be and more importantly why. The topic under discussion here is more in line with interpretations of what liberalism is (again, a loaded term in the U.S.) and how our society should or should not be modified by it. Sadly a great deal of the debate is just that, debate, an idle pastime of the priviliged (I include myself here, otherwise how would I have time to idle away here on Slashdot).
Someone, Karl Marx in fact (whom even I bridle at mentioning on slashdot), was quite plain about the true course of action when he said (possibly with a tad of input from Engels - someone of immense idle privilege) "philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point is to change it." While this discussion is certainly an entertaining distraction from the hum drum of our existence, perhaps, just perhaps, whether it's support for concepts like OLPC, concern for the welfare of our fellows, action to improve reading standards and education, freedom to pursue the political party of our conscience or just providing everyone with drinking water, perhaps, just perhaps quite a lot of us could be part of change that, together, we can make for ourselves without the involvement of either faith or belief.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
Republicans need to be learning new tricks. They don't have the media at their back.
For example, Dan Quayle once said, "I love California- I used to live in Phoenix." At least that's what was reported. What he DID say was more like "I love California, I live in Phoenix and have driven there many times, etc". But no: Republicans, the one-time home of Conservatism, doesn't get the benefit of the media. One channel on _cable_ or _satellite_, not wider coverage like CBS/NBC/ABC etc.
Young people everywhere hated John Ashcroft because it was reported that a soldier asked, "What happened to the armored HumVee's?" and he was quoted to have said, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the one you want." though his answer went on about three minutes. A member of the media posed the question of a soldier to make it look authentic. I've actually MET people who have hated Ashcroft for this reason- it's weird, and sad.
For having (almost) one, non-broadcast television channel and a handful of newspapers nationwide, I think they're doing pretty well. The Democrats have every Hollywood movie that comes out. Every show on Oxygen, Lifetime, Discovery, HUNDREDS of shows on HUNDREDS of channels to make their case and laugh at things like lower taxes and self-reliance. It's an uphill fight.
But it's our fault we're unhappy, now.
Democrats post "empty suit" candidates like "I voted for it, before I voted against it" Kerry, or "Soon the world will be on fire" Al Gore, or "I've been to all 57 states" Obama. Honestly: can you trust these people to park your CAR so you can find it again? These are puppets, clearly. From the people who used to bring you candidates like Truman and Roosevelt. Now, only mindless playboys seems to be in line.
The Republican side has problems, too: Semi-Conservatives. George Bush, Junior and Senior, are semi-Conservatives. Say they want smaller government, then sign-in prescription programs that no one really wants. Worse yet, McCain is a fighter pilot, chosen for our side by the media. He's gonna do whatever it takes to fulfill his goals, even if that means setting fire to the Republican party. Using "Global Warming(TM)" as a political tool, he's clearly a Liberal who wants to build government, not shrinking it.
What we all need are _Conservatives_. It's simple: smaller government for lower taxes and less intrusion.
This is Conservatism, and it wins because every time. Regan was a Conservative who followed an Liberal in the mold of AlGore/Kerry/Obama, taxing the rich so there are no jobs, taxing us 'cause there's no income to the government, and then wondering what's wrong. His election was a landslide, but that makes sense, life SUCKED economically, kinda like it does in the larger, Liberally-driven cities where people are now leaving in droves. But what's interesting is that his *re-election* was a landslide, too. That's unheard-of.
Why do you think Rush Limbaugh has an audience of 20 MILLION on (mostly) AM radio for the last two decades? Why do you think they could justify his $400M contract? It's so popular, the Left is trying to outlaw it, since their own message doesn't sell.
People _hunger_ for the life that we used to have. Now we have so much self-analysis and political correctness: a fascism of theoretical kindness. We don't need hate crimes tuned to ethnic groups- we need equal protection under the law. We don't need messing with our Freedom of Speech (Google: McCain Feingold) or Imminent Domain (see: http://www.ij.org/Private_property/connecticut) . Most people don't even know about these two incursions have taken place, thanks to the media.
Smaller government. Lower taxes. Enforce _existing_ laws. Stay _blind_ to color/race/ethnicity, protect a person's choice of religion, and all the other enumerated promises of the Constitution. No babysitting, no protecting speculators from losing money in various markets. If you rely on government instead of yourself, you'll be
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Which is better, someone who can change their mind about policies, for better or for worse... Or someone who will ride their sinking ship down to the bottoms of the deepest depths, while the country falls apart around them, and make no attempts at righting a wrong.
Some people might not believe it, but Slashdot changed over the last two years also! I miss the old eBay home page of 2000, I wish these dern sites would just leave well enough alone!
I'm amazed -- how many posts, how many blogs on this issue so far, yet no one ever seems to point out the worst part, in black and white:
Obama said, clearly and unambiguously, that he would filibuster any legislation which provides retroactive immunity to telecoms. He not only didn't filibuster, he voted for it -- and I have yet to hear anything from him or his campaign to justify this.
Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.
I like someone who can change their mind. That's a good thing. But this is blatant dishonesty -- he said one thing, and then did another.
Are we so jaded to corrupt politicians that no one cares? Or that it's assumed that this is just how it works, and that we must choose the lesser of two evils?
Obama asked us to hope... I suppose that's the most disappointing part. I allowed myself a bit of naive hope, and he's already let me down. Not as a leader, but as a human being.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Simple way to defuse this tactic: maintain your own changelog on the Web site, and record in it when you change things and why. So when McCain comes up with "But did you know that Obama edited his site to change his position on A from X to Y?", Obama can respond "Well, yes, you should have known. It's right there on the "What's New" page: altered position page to reflect changes in my position as a result of studies on A by Doctors M and T. Do you have a reason why I shouldn't be taking their studies seriously?".
Qwest's legal problems predate the NSA's circulating access requests to the telcos in the Fall of 2001.
The insider case that Nacchio, Qwest's CEO, claims he's being punished for, goes back to the dot-com bust when Qwest execs realized they weren't going to hit revenue projections. They started dumping stock and fraudulently shifting revenue to cover up the shortfall. Again, this all happened prior to the NSA asking for data.
The company has a history of engaging in illegal activity. In 2001, they paid an additional $350,000 fine on top of the June, 2000 $1.5 million fine they paid the FCC for slamming users. The slamming complaints started in the 90's.
Nacchio's blowing smoke by playing the role of NSA's victim.
"The late, great Steve Kangas takes that myth on with statistics"
The late, great, Mark Twain said there are three kinds of lies.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
> Translation of this story: "Hey, let's laugh at that mentally ill person!"
The original headline was "McCain Campaign Ambushes Obama With Spider"--no mention of "diff" at all.
We don't have a liberal media or a conservative media, we have a sensationalist media that caters to the lowest common denominator by trying to place the candidates into a pre-defined mold that has existed for the better part of three decades.
Actually, I think it's simpler than that. You have a media that needs something to report on, and so they want this election to be a horse race. Problem is, prior to the recent FISA vote, Obama was basically wiping the floor with McCain (since then, my understanding is that the polling has narrowed, though I don't believe there's enough data to say if it's the FISA vote, specifically, that has caused the change). So of course the media attack Obama and give McCain a pass... unless they do that, the election will be decidedly boring, and that makes for an uninteresting news cycle.
This just proves that old Republicans can learn new tricks.
I just wish the Republicans would stick to their old tricks, like reduced spending and limited government.
If your fed up with two-party system, you can effectively protest against it in following way: ... no, not profit, but situation, when winner wins only because of Random Choice.
1) Unite with people who thinks similar and willing to vote in protest, not for particular result.
2) Choose random event which will happen at the day of vote. From this event every randomer will figure out how to vote (only Rep/Dem puppets should be chosen, other alternatives just weaken effect)
3)
Even professional poker player wins by skill, not at random. If system is completely random, only crazy lunatics will become politicians (you may argue we already there, but I mean real fsckin' crazy lunatics). System will rot faster and as a result will sooner be replaced with something working for people.
Isn't it a valid criticism that if you're free to "voluntarily" indenture yourself, you're also open to being coerced? If someone says "be my slave and tell everyone it's voluntary, or I'll kill your family," what will you do?
Whereas currently, if the government sees that you're not getting proper wages for your work, it's taken out of your hands. You don't have the right to give up your rights - they're "inalienable."
Sometimes taking away certain freedoms actually protect others. If I travel abroad with an aid organization, and they have a policy to never negotiate with terrorists, and I'm kidnapped, my supervisors don't have the freedom to negotiate. On the other hand, this policy will probably prevent many kidnappings, increasing the actual freedom of life and limb for our staff.
As you say, proving that the defendant used a bot and proving that the defendant didn't have autorization to access the page through a bot are two different things that each have to be proven. Without a robots.txt the defendant could argue that he had implied authorization. With robots.txt that defense goes out the window.
As to proving that the defendant used a bot, well if there are 1000 HTTP requests from the same IP address you could probably conclude that the defendant is using a bot. I'm sure there are other ways to prove that a bot was used.
Of course this is all speculation and fuzzy memories of things I've been told, so if someone could find case law on this matter, that would be most illuminating.
Politics is not a left\right arugment. As usual we are bound to 2D thinking.
There are 3 dimensions of politics, much like a gobbstopper.
The X axis is "Level of Social Control"
The Y axis is "Level of Economic Control"
The Z axis is "Acceptance of Change"
The rules is simple:
Rule 1: "The rebellion becomes the establishment that we rebel against"
Rule 2: There is a cycle of 4 generations:
Those that sow (WWII)
Those that harvest (BABY BOOMERS)
Those that expect (GEN-X)
Those that suffer (GEN-Y)
The first generation lays a foundation for success
The second enjoys what the 1st generation protected them from
The third generation, far removed from the 1st generation's hard work take what they have for granted not realizing that the harvest generation did not prepare a harvest for them.
The fouth generation suffers the ignorance of the 2nd and third but are the ones that raise the new geneartion of those who will sow the seed.
If you want to take democrats and republicans as examples of the 3D system you get (on a scale of 1 to 10 for ease with 0 in the center and 10 at the outer most point)
Democrats: :20 :10 :20 :30
X:5 Y:5 Z:10
Total
Republicans
X:5 Y:0 Z:5
Total
Communism
X:10 Y:10 Z:0
Total
Socialism
X:10 Y:10 Z:10
Total
Libertarian
X:0 Y:0 Z:10
Anarchist
X:0 Y:0 Z:0
The individual stands at the center. When X,Y,Z are all at 0 you are on your own. Pure freedom. You also have no cushion... you live and die on your own.
The higher the score, the less important an individual is in an organization. The lower, the more involved.
Each person has their personal comfort zone. Most are in the center, a.k.a 15 (on a scale of 1-10 for each.)
Now this is a vast simplification of this idea, you would build a personal profile of what weight certain topics have and build out your scale from there but we need to move into a 3D thought process if we are to get away from the idea of a two party system.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
"It's not "idiotic" but some of the more rapid free-market types repeat it as though it is a physical law of the universe."
Look, I'll be the first to agree that Economics, like all social sciences, is a "squishy" science... sometimes more art than actual science, because too much of it depends on human behavior, which isn't always rational or even uniform. But there are certain behaviors that are repeatedly observed in economics. So while "laws of economics" aren't in the same statosphere as say, Newton's laws of physics, their general principles are reliable. Taxes go up, and people spend less. Taxes go down, and people spend more.
If you want to argue that it's a morally superior position to insist on more of our incomes going to the government, you can do that. If you want to insist that people having more of the money they make is a bad thing, then you can do that as well. But these people claiming that cutting taxes doesn't stimulate economies are just daft. Everyone knows that it does, at least everyone attuned to reality. JFK campaigned on it ("a rising tide lifts all boats"). These people plugging fingers in their ears going "Does Not! Does Not!" might as well claim the Sun rises in the North.
If people are going to argue about tax cuts, then they should argue on the merits... should government have more of our money and "spend it for us" on public projects? Or are we better off spending more of it ourselves.
"How can we send our sons and daughters off to war while asking for no sacrifices from the civilian population?"
On that I agree with you. As far as personal wants and needs go, to the American public, the terror wars have largely been sacrifice free. No meatless Tuesdays. No rubber rationing. Even for domestic security, it's been a cakewalk. For all the people that bitch about FISA, did you know that in WW II the government censored all mail? Listened in on all phone calls? We truly haven't sacrificed squat. We have liberties undreamed of to the WW II generation.
" Can you imagine FDR responding to Pearl Harbor by asking people to go to the shopping mall and refusing to increase taxes to help pay for the war?"
Well, did encourage spending on some things... he knew we couldn't go completely bone-dry in our wants and needs.
What I wish we would replicate from WW II is War Bonds drives. It would help pay for the war, while encouraging long term investment from the general public, to boot.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
sounds like liberal bias to me.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
After reading both the "before" and "after" versions of Obama's web site concerning the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq I'd say they both look a lot more sane than McCain's "bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb, bomb Iran" war mongering. So was this really a covert campaign to get votes for Obama? Obama's domestic policies are what I can't stand, not his foreign policy.
What are they up to these days, again?
Lots of places have. Unfortunately it seems to have cut off oxygen to their brains.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Why is changing what you have to say a bad thing? If you have a different set of facts or a change in thought, why is it bad to change your opinions?
One of Obama's major selling points during the primaries was that he was against the war from the start, whereas most of his opponents only gradually came to adopt a more anti-(Iraq)-war position.
If it's better to change your views over time, that would have tended to argue for Clinton rather than Obama.
Everyone had the same intelligence information we did. We heard the same information on WMD from Bill Clinton, John sKerry, and the other Dempublicans. Bush had the same CIA director as Clinton. No one intentionally misled anyone, except Sadaam Hussein, who wanted the appearance of WMDs so that Iran wouldn't kick his ass. Get off this "bush lied" bullshit folks. Its getting old.
I liked the concept behind Ventura, but the actual execution demonstrates several key problems that Ventura-like candidates have.
Specific to Ventura, he's just not that bright of a guy. While this does add some everyman quality to him, his lack of formal education and lack of political savvy hurt him, even if the hurt was largely from a "he's a nutjob" public relations perspective, he still was forced to rely heavily on more seasoned pols who have a long-term career (and loyalty!) investment in the existing system.
More generally, when a party of Ventura's small size gains executive office, the major parties undermine him as much as possible in the legislature. And his lack of legislative standing often forces him to either ally with or work with a major party to accomplish anything, spoiling much of the promise of a third-party victory. In some situations you can work both sides to your benefit, but real-world experience shows that generally the parties will react to the threat to their power.
And given the fairly broad ideological umbrellas of both major parties, even third party candidates tend to be caught in the gravitational pull of at least one of them. Ventura was accused by many of being a closet Democrat and was fairly closely linked with a number of Democrats.
"Congratulations, you have just outlined very concisely why fascism worked. Because everyone made that calculations for themselves, came up with the answer that compliance is the only rational choice, and complied with a system they knew to be evil."
Comparing things like FISA or even Gitmo to Fascism is just silly at best, and stupid at worst. Either the President has gotten Congressional authority for measures, or Federal Court authority. And he's been overruled several times by the courts, and complied every time. That's not Fascism. That's a Democratic Republic at work. A Fascist leader would have shot the Congress and the Judges, not obeyed the court rulings. For God's sake, we just gave Habeus Corpus rights to non-uniformed enemy combatants. And the government is complying. That's not the way it works in Fascism.
You don't like the government's policies? Fine and good. Win an election and change things. But to call our government "Fascist" is just stupid.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Every single word that Obama or McCain says right now is in hopes of them getting elected.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Where opinions change as fast as a dollar goes in their pockets....
move along, nothing to see here, just another corrupt political circus...
It doesn't take much to make Obama lose votes- just explain to Democrats how he capituated on the recent "Bush Immunity" bill.
I wont be voting against Obusha, but there's no way in hell I'll vote for him after that travesty.
OBUSHA '08: Capitulation You Can Rely On!
"Because he was complicit in misleading the public into the Iraq war."
Powell was going on what intelligence agencies provided for him. Every major intelligence agency in the world thought Saddam had WMD programs going, including agencies from France and Germany, two nations that were cold to us going into Iraq. So it's kind of silly to fault Powell on that. Part of his job is listening to what intel professionals tell him.
Saddam wanted Iran to seriously think he had WMD's. Ironically, while preventing one aggressor, he got himself an invasion over his bluff.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
This isn't the first time the Republicans have shown up the Democrats with their web savvy.
How soon they forget...
Several readers let us know about a little problem with presidential hopeful John McCain's MySpace page. Looks as though some staffer didn't read the fine print of the "credit" clause when selecting a template for the page. The template author and CEO of Newsvine, Mike Davidson, noticed this and didn't care too much. But the McCain page was pulling an image from Davidson's site, costing him bandwidth every time someone visited the candidate's MySpace page. So Davidson changed the image in question to read: "Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage... particularly marriage between two passionate females." Here is Davidson's account of the "immaculate hack".
From: http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/28/0236232
Bear in mind that Clinton still isn't able to acknowledge that her war vote was a mistake.
For a screwup like that, when you change positions, you do have to say "yeah, that was a bad decision and i learned a lesson."
We don't have a liberal media or a conservative media, we have a sensationalist media that caters to the lowest common denominator by trying to place the candidates into a pre-defined mold that has existed for the better part of three decades.
And more to the point, Obama & McCain need to be neck & neck until November 4th, otherwise there's no story. In fact, if they continued to be "neck & neck" until December sometime, that would make pretty good copy as well. Media is not news, it's entertainment -- content used to target you with advertising.
I won't pretend this is the LP party line, but it's how I feel about the topic:
Firstly, I do not feel it is the governments role to force people to be charitable. Forcibly taking my money away from me to aid, as they see fit, a person or persons I do not know.. I dunno like it. .. ya ya hold on though.. there's more..
Secondly; I do believe it's an individuals duty as a member of the human race to support your fellow people.. however.. you should do it as you see fit.. I help others by generally being a nice person and helping them with information about various topics. I'm Pro-Education and I have no problems teaching other people trade skills that I already know. I have no problem giving people I feel I can trust temporary shelter or fiscal loans to help them get on their feet.. I've done it many times in the past, and I will likely do it again in the future.
"Would I rather see you dead from disease".. no.. but if you are to unwilling to make an attempt to try and provide for yourself, I have little sympathy for you. If you continue to make the same poor decisions over and over again without learning from them; again.. little sympathy.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
From Versionista's EULA:
...you may not use Software Product to illegally or unethically take advantage of others' labors. ... YOU MAY ONLY USE "SEED DOCUMENTS" WHOSE COPYRIGHTS YOU EITHER OWN OR HAVE PERMISSION TO USE. ... YOU AGREE THAT YOU WILL USE SOFTWARE PRODUCT ETHICALLY. YOU WILL NOT USE SOFTWARE PRODUCT TO DECEPTIVELY ADVERTISE ...
Of course its not entirely clear whether the usage violated the EULA or not, it depends entirely on one's interpretation of "USE SOFTWARE PRODUCT ETHICALLY".
I believe the M3 report stopped being published because it did not provide enough additional information about inflation to justify the cost of its production.*
That is to say: most of what you're worried about can be analyzed from the M2 reports.
(btw this is just something I heard on the radio; don't mind being corrected)
*An actual cost-benefit analysis in the govt! Film at 11
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
This guy is just looking for easy handouts and ego-perks to feed his,"you should build a statue to worship me" egomania, (yes, he said that);
Hey, speaking of statue, where is my statue you were supposed to be making of me? How are you making out on that? I'm very disappointed in your progress.
Your economic analysis, by the way, is completely wrong. Seems to me that all the third world countries the USA trades with have a sudden tendency to get rich if they invest wisely their profits. Japan and Germany rebuilt themselves through trade after WWII, China is now a first world nation, as is South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Phillipines.. and now India is on the way. Yep, those people are all being exploited, terribly, as they shift from starving to death to being able to afford cars, cell phones and computers. If the USA is such a terrible empire, as you say, why is the world getting so much richer?
I think you'd best stay out of sound bite economic analysis, and get back to building your statue of me. I think it should be 50 feet high, and be very dramatic looking, like, I'm your great leader or something.
This is my sig.
"To us, it seems you're voting on what cartel is to rule the US."
Close; it's more like: we're voting on whether the cartel's mean old white guy or their nice young African-American guy will rule the US
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Great link! That was just forwarded out to all my friends. But my question is, wouldn't a flip flop mean that you changed your view, and then changed them back? I think people are just flipping their views...not so much flopping!
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The absurdity of your position is lauding the very man who brought about the destruction of America's position of leadership in the world: Ronald Reagan, and his ideological descendant, George W. Bush.
And yours is that you have no facts. The fact of the matter is that Medicare and Social Security are the single biggest reason that so many other programs are being dropped. When Medicare was first enacted, it was barely a line item on the budget and Democrats promised that it would stay that way. However, they lied and now we have a monster that has basically gobbled up every ounce of additional revenue in the budget. Had it not been for Reagan's supply side economics, there would have been no growth, and no medicare at all, and your prized social safety net would have been terrible.
Government is the enemy of innovation. The argument that Reagan made was to say that people shouldn't look to government as a friend to bale them out, but as an obstacle to their success, and waves of Democratic regulations certainly turned that into a reality. Just look at how all the goofy regulations of the Democrats in the late 1960s and early 1970s just killed the US economy. You think today's recession is bad? You should have a look at what Dems did to us in the 1970s.
You can keep talking about taxes on "rich" all you want, but the fact of the matter is, since the beginning of time, the argument is really about so-called progressive taxation. Republicans argue that everyone should have to work the same number of days per year to pay their taxes, whereas, Democrats argue that poor people shouldn't have to work at all, and rich people should work all of their lives -just- to pay taxes. They just cover up this little lie by spelling it as a higher percentage of income and arguing that's what's left. But, at the end, when Democrats really held sway, taxes on upper class people were such that someone had to work until December 10th JUST TO PAY THEIR TAXES.
This is my sig.
but that was considered unacceptable for the American version. Douglas Adams rewrote it be
and added some business expressing Arthur Dent's confusion about why people were getting all worked up about the name of a small inoffensive country, which by a staggering coincidence was a word unmentionable in polite Galactic society (much like "cricket"). I read the fordt as a teen but lost my copy somewhere before I moved to America. When I bought a replacement US version, I just about bust a gut at the change - the edited version is much funnier.
He really seems to believe that he is beyond criticism.
Well, when you are as godlike brilliant as I am, I would think that criticism of me would be a proof of one's foolishness. It's certainly the case with you!
By the way, is my statue done yet? You have to hurry that up, because, when you get done with that, you need to also build a church to my genius. I might let you slide a bit on the deadline if you name a couple of your kids after me or, better still, George Bush.
This is my sig.
The insider case that Nacchio, Qwest's CEO, claims he's being punished for, goes back to the dot-com bust when Qwest execs realized they weren't going to hit revenue projections.
That's not the whole of it though. I believe he is guilty of insider trading. I'm think there are thousands of top-level execs who are guilty of it. The problem is that it's very difficult to prove. The real question is whether Qwest lost government contracts because it refused to follow illegal orders. That's the question that I want the answer to.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Why is it not okay for a candidate to change their position? I'd prefer a candidate that when we put a man on the moon changes his position on which celestial bodies revolve around the others even if he flip flops on the issue. It took the Catholics almost 400 years (~1610-1992) to accept that the earth was not the center of the universe. I hope the current Republican theocracy can extract head from anus more quickly. The first candidate that says, "I don't know" or "I was wrong" has my vote.
Good/Bad (they'll assign one of those to Republican or Democrat, and the other to the left over party)
Maybe I'm just one of those simplistic morons... but what if one of the parties actually is evil?
While you're considering that, consider this:
What if BOTH of those parties actually are evil?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't live in the US. I live in Europe. From our point of view, you have two parties that are so similar we can't even really tell the difference.
It's easy to tell the difference.
Both parties attract and are ALMOST completely full of, psychopaths.
The Democratic party attracts the poorly compensated, I'm an "overman", anything-goes, megalomaniac kind of psychopath. (As LBJ said: "Politics is the art of the possible." For which you can read "... what you can get away with.")
The Republican party attracts psychopaths who have compensated by becoming rule-bound in an effort to be good. These can be at least as dangerous: They believe they're being good. But they tend to believe that their particular code defines what "good" is. So if you behave outside the code in any way you must be a "bad" guy, a suitable target for whatever punishments their particular code requires.
Fortunately, there are some rulesets that define "bad" very simply, leave lots of room for individual choice. And some of the best define interfering with individual choice (even when the individual choses to be not-good) as "bad" - at least as long as the other person doesn't force his/her choices on someone else.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Has proven himself to be a serious public servant"
You don't/didn't live in Minnesota do you?
His tenure as governor was an embarrassment.
Didn't mean to offend you. I'm just trying to point out that in order for me to have a right that nobody can take away, it may be necessary to prevent me from giving that right away. If I can give it away "of my own free will," someone can also coerce me into giving it away and gag me so I can't tell everyone what happened.
If it's illegal for me to sell my kidneys, I can't be pressured (as easily) to do it. Freedom FROM that pressure seems pretty crucial to me.
The original poster's name is "Vote McCain in 2008!". Someone tell me this post isn't really part of his political effort to elect McSame.
I'd rather a politician who can recognize when he's in the wrong, and restate his position, than a politician that is continually wrong, and won't budge.
W. And McSame are those politicians.
Besides, hooray that Republicans can use web diff tools. Whoopie-fuckin'-doo. Can they get us out of this Iraq war? John McCain said we could be there 100 years!
Later he said 10 years.. and later 5 more years. Can't HE make up his mind already?
Either way, get this political crap out of here. Next someone will be telling me that Republicans figured out how to send email.
40% of americans vote democratic 40% of americans vote republican the 20% left are running the country perhaps the republicans' tech saavy will change that. you'd think that all parties would have someone in charge of technology and use the web to their advantage. apparently the technology is limited to emails begging for money and websites that flash, dance, and tell you what you want to read.
It's not demoncats or repugnicans, it is the worthless, pampered, greedy and self-centered Baby Boomers.
Worst. Generation. Ever.
I used to worry that they would destroy the US but they are so incompetent that I sleep fine now. We just have to out live them and then maybe we can start solving problems and stop being victims.
Obama did not vote for the bill out of support of telecom immunity. He voted for the bill out of the fact that he supported most of the other parts of the bill.
Then he should immediately submit a bill repealing the telecom immunity provisions.
He should also be on record in the intermediate votes on amendments related to telecom immunity. Is he? (And did he speak against it on the Senate floor?)
However: The proper thing to do would have been to vote against the bill (with a short speech explaining why) and do his best to make it fail as-is, then pass a new one without the provisions he (and others) allegedly oppose. Passing a bill (that the president will sign) is pretty much final for the provisions in it. Killing it is not - they can (and usually are) just brought up again, or attached to some other bill as an amendment.
To really oppose a bad hunk of legislation you have to slap it down every time it rears its head until it goes away, and refuse to knuckle under to those who would hold other stuff hostage to obtain its passage.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Spider/Diff, Spider/Diff,
Does whatever a Spider/Diff does."
-- Boycott Shell
His shuffling on positions hardly exonerates Obama from having done the same thing.
Are you stupid or something? Obama has NOT done the same thing.
Not really. It's moreso simply a party centered on freedom. Put in enough basic laws to keep society running at a reasonable level (ie, theft, rape, murder are illegal) and besides that have the government butt the hell out of our lives.
Both the Republicans and the Democrats want to enforce their morals on us. Changing the party just changes the moral code.
For the Republicans, it's "immoral" to do drugs, engage in prostitution, generally speak against the Bible or do anything non-Christian, etc.
For the Democrats, it's "immoral" to own a gun, or to not open your wallet and support every other person in the country financially.
It's actually kinda ironic that you'd call me a "selfish republican", because the Democrat idea of social services IS one of the mroe tolerable ideas I have - the Republicans are far more annoying with their holier than thou attitude. That said, the Democrats still are generally anti-gun, and still tend to rear their ugly heads when it comes to things like banning video games and such (that spans both parties, but that just means both are guilty rather than canceling anything out).
Speaking as a left-leaning Democrat, I assure you that the Democratic Party is much more open to differing ideas on the subject of gun control than Republicans, and it is in fact there are a spectrum of opinions in the Democratic Party. Aside from the fact that the Supreme Court has forcefully upheld the 2nd Amendment and Americans' right to own a gun, most Americans, not just Democrats, do favor some form of gun control (lets at least agree to keep them out of the hands of psychologically unstable people that are likely to go on a college-killing rampage).
Your use of the term, "anti-gun" is pejorative and open to interpretation. For instance, am I anti-gun even though I believe psychologically stable Americans who have obtained a gun license (e.g., by completing a test or training course, much like what is necessary in order to obtain a drivers' license) should have the right to own a gun? For the record, I don't own a gun, but I do value the fact that I have a right to go out and get one to protect myself if I feel threatened.
I intended it to make a sarcastic statement about where I expect the economy to go under McCain (e.g. we'll all be working McJobs).
I'm surprised no one noticed this back when I used "Vote McCain in 2000!" and chose the phrase "effluent with praise" to be ironic, yet technically correct.
But it seems that MyLongNickName finally figured it out. Oops!
How many times has it been already, uhm?
In the 1990ies Clinton's campaign wore the patience of some supporters with talking about "Change" too much... "Clinton/Gore. For people, for a change." . He took office promising more change, only to strongly disappoint its most vociferous supporters immediately after.
And today's Democratic candidates? One's very motto is "The change we can believe in"... And the other selling herself as "an agent of change". And you keep falling for it...
And, oh, look — the boy-wonder from Chicago, whose first profession was "community organizer" (whatever the heck that means) — is all but nominated by your party. With "change" — the emptiest promise — being his "inspiring" slogan. Eeww...
Even ancient historians describing earlier events have noticed, that plebs leans to change for the sake of change — however useless or outright dangerous the proposed change may be... "One more time," — you said? Yeah, right...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The noodle world order!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
They technically have control of congress, but their control of the senate is only by one vote:
Joe Lieberman - who is currently campaigning for mccain, angling for the vice presidential slot on the republican ticket.
So in reality democrats don't have a filibuster proof majority in the senate and they cant override a presidential veto in the senate. They could introduce articles of impeachment in the house, but they would never be able to get the majority they need in the senate. So they could impeach bush, but there is very little hope of actually removing him from power.
But I am as disappointed as anyone that impeachment hasn't been "on the table" and that congressmen who are willing to hold this administration accountable are in the minority, but it is better than the republican controlled congress of 2000-2006.
We have the best government that money can buy.
With respect to the original article, it is a piece of crap written by a journalist who has no political knowledge whatsoever.
The changes to the Obama Web site are hardly dramatic or noteworthy. The facts changed so they updated the Web site so that it was accurate. But the facts didn't change by much. The invasion of Iraq was a stupid idea and the continued occupation of Iraq was unsustainable. The situation this month is not quite as bad as it was some months ago but the continued occupation of Iraq is just as stupid as ever.
The reason that Iraq is quieter now has nothing to do with the surge: The insurgents are waiting for the US election. There is no point in the Sadrists or the Sunnis getting shot up trying to force the US out of Iraq if the US is willing to leave of its own accord. But if McCain is elected they know that his two policy objectives are to 'bomb bomb Iran' and stay in Iraq for 'a hundred years'.
As far as McCain is concerned the objective of the occupation is clearly to control Iraq's oil and establish a base for US control of the region. As far as the Iraqi government and the folks with the guns are concerned, that is unacceptable which is why they have refused to agree to any status of forces agreement that does not include a timetable for full withdrawal.
The McCain camp here is guilty of perpetrating the same type of idiotic journalism that Tim Russert used to engage in: accuse any politician who ever changes his mind of being a flip-flop.
The real problem with flip-floppers is not that they change their mind, its that they change their mind according to what is politically convenient. Like McCain, for example, who used to be a 'maverick' but decided to become a hard right wingnut to get the nomination and is now pretending to be a maverick again. McCain flip flopped so many times on immigration that he ended up voting against his own immigration bill. In other words it pandering and breaking campaign pledges that are the real problem, not updating a Web site to note that the facts changed slightly in the past month.
Bottom line: either things in Iraq are completely peachy in which case the US can withdraw or they are still foo-bar in which there is no point in staying any longer. There is no possible set of facts that lead to the conclusion that the US needs to establish permanent bases in Iraq at an ongoing cost of over a trillion dollars a year.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Hey Todd, I recommend you take a vacation, relax, and stop listening to right wing radio. Its all crap anyway, and repeating this stuff makes you look like an idiot.
Your economic analysis, by the way, is completely wrong.
Oh, stop! You're making my side hurt!
Cuz you know, the banana republics were a GREAT idea, (and because they did not rise to become self-realized economic powers has nothing to do with repressive American military actions), child labor in foreign factories is a good thing because that blood money might be invested 'wisely' so that the host nations can also become robust right wing economies with bright futures featuring the kind of catastrophic collapses we've been seeing under Republican rule lately. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac multi-billion dollar home loan mortgage fiasco just this week being the latest, with a federal bail out to pay for the result of corruption, (and no arrests; funny that). --Right on the heels of the Bear Sterns crisis, also with a federal bail out, and again no arrests. That's the Right Wing buddy system at work with billions in tax dollars. Yeah, unregulated banking and free trade is wonderfully healthy. Not to mention unregulated free trade allowing gas prices to soar to ridiculous levels; cuz, hey, it's supply and demand, right? Even though supply isn't actually a problem so much as a quietly manipulated feature. But yeah, unregulated trade is great!
Japan and Germany rebuilt themselves through trade after WWII, China is now a first world nation, as is South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Phillipines.. and now India is on the way. Yep, those people are all being exploited, terribly, as they shift from starving to death to being able to afford cars, cell phones and computers. If the USA is such a terrible empire, as you say, why is the world getting so much richer?
Duh. Yes, trade makes money. And life will generally find a way. But you're arguing that successful countries have found success as a result of Machiavellian, greed-inspired and conscienceless American-based tactics, which in turn justifies those tactics. That's just OUT there! It's in spite of such approaches that survival happens. The rest is just shark food which should be minimized, not glamorized and promoted, but you can't even begin to grasp why, can you? It's just not within your ability to compute.
And South Korea is an especially funny example. Get this; North Korea, with it's failed economy resulting in part from trade ties with the fallen Soviet Union, is touted with having one of the worst human rights records on the planet, whereas the glowing Tiger, South Korea lives under a wonderful democracy and powerhouse economy. The only problem being that you tell us that torture is a great idea! So. . . So what the heck is your message again? "World trade free of tyranny, --but with torture!"? So what now? South Korea should emulate North Korea and its ultra right-wing ideals? Holy Toledo, Brainman! Your wires are unbelievably crossed. But that doesn't matter, because really none of this has anything to do with right or wrong; it's all just an elaborate series of dumb excuses to trick people into debasing the value of human life. All arguments which are, (of course), fundamentally broken in the most ridiculously obvious of ways.
Also, you'll note that this guy is attempting to side-step the leak of a fundamentally pathological ego through his little "Statue of worship" thing by trying to retroactively make more of a joke of it than was originally intended. Typical bully behavior; when the attack goes too far or threatens to reveal him, the bully's first and favorite ploy is to pretend that it was all just a joke. "What? I was just joking? Can't you take a joke?" A simple variation. I mean, yeah, this guy is pretty garden variety, but he's still funny. But go back and read those other links. The egomaniacal rage is barely contained. Hang around a bit here and you'll probably get to see him pop again. Just watch. This guy is now quite beyond the ability to resist posting with more of his insanity. All contest to his 'perfectness' must be me
Okay, I'm not an American and I've never been to the USA and I haven't spent a lot of time studying this. But my understanding of the Libetarians, at least on the Federal level, was that they're specifically interested in reducing the size and bureacracy of the Federal government. Doing this would free up space for individual US States to have more control over how they want to legislate their own locations.
This is why I don't think a libertarian government would work as well in my own country (New Zealand), because with a much smaller population of a bit over 4 million, there's not a lot of potential for governing structure left once you minimise the national government... apart from 4-5 significantly sized population centres, there's a lot of relatively empty space. At the size that it is, though, I'm personally quite happy with the way our government and system is structured, how transparent it is and how much easier it seems to be to get things done than in a lot of other places I've seen. (There are always some people who think otherwise, of course.)
Given that many US states are about the same population as many other countries anyway, I wouldn't have thought it'd be much beyond a state to govern itself. The feds would just stick around to make sure that no state started infringing certain guarantees (such as constitutional freedoms), and maybe provide central services for things like inter-state law enforcement where it makes sense.
So what am I missing about the US Libertarian ideas?
"Spider/Diff, Spider/Diff, :)
Doing the things that Spider/Diff can;
What's he like? It's not important...
Spider/Diff."
You are great player! Present you with points!
Imagine how their campaign will take off once McCain learns to use email and the intarweb
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac multi-billion dollar home loan mortgage fiasco just this week being the latest, with a federal bail out to pay for the result of corruption, (and no arrests; funny that). --Right on the heels of the Bear Sterns crisis, also with a federal bail out, and again no arrests. That's the Right Wing buddy system at work with billions in tax dollars. Yeah, unregulated banking and free trade
You contradict yourself. The bailouts are as a result of regulations. Had the true free marketers gotten what they wanted, Bear would have collapsed, there would not be a Fannie Mae. So... why are you complaining about the institutions that you liberals created?
Duh. Yes, trade makes money. And life will generally find a way. But you're arguing that successful countries have found success as a result of Machiavellian, greed-inspired and conscienceless American-based tactics
American tactics are not nearly what you say they were. You only say that because you are a loser, and you are bitter.
should emulate North Korea and its ultra right-wing ideals
North Korea is left wing, not right wing. I seem to recall that private property rights are a hallmark of the right wing, whereas your buddies in North Korea would prefer they do not, as you don't.
it's all just an elaborate series of dumb excuses to trick people into debasing the value of human life.
>You still have no answer to the fundamental point: waterboarding the network guy for 15 minutes to extract the passwords he stole is better for the network guy and his victim than your solution of life in prison. You argue to throw people in prison for the tiniest of offenses, and I fail to see how that improves the value of human life. Sounds rather North Korean to me.
Also, you'll note that this guy is attempting to side-step the leak of a fundamentally pathological ego through his little "Statue of worship"
I'm not trying to sidestep anything. I do have a pathological ego, and you would too, if you were as good as I am. So, why don't you get back to your statue?
I'm laughing in your face, and you know it
I really don't care what you are doing, any more than I would be concerned about a rabid dog that needs to be shot. But my original post to you, when you went off on your rabid anti-torture, posited the argument that liberal such as you are mentally ill, and diseased, and my goal has been to engage you long enough for you to prove it. After you cool off, you'll be wishing you could undo your posts.
You might find it relaxing, to be working on your statue to me.
This is my sig.
You do know that Viet Nam was started by none other then Democrat JFK, right? Your very first statement is an atrocious lie, and nothing in following, uneducated rant was redeeming (well gee whiz, the Apollo program cost money, that must mean that all government spending is good).
It is a valid criticism, though not always the overpowering concern. Plenty of libertarians, myself included, would not allow people to indenture themselves, while still allowing people to contract more ways than are currently available. I would note that we allow actors to contract to a tv series for a large number of years, and we don't think the possibility of coercion is an overriding consideration, even though this bears some similarity to indentured servitude.
The problem with your analogy between minimum wage laws that prevent certain negotiations between the parties in a labor contract and your aid organization's policy of not negotiating with terrorists is that the aid organization's policy simply increases freedom while the minimum wage law transfers freedom, helping some and hurting others.
A minimum wage law tends to cause a certain subset of people, often those who already have existing jobs, to receive higher wages, but it comes at the cost of pricing some people out of the labor market. Some people will gain freedom through increased wealth, but others will go from having an "improper" wage to having no wage, and will lose freedom through decreased wealth and opportunities. Now, maybe you think that is a good trade-off, but that's a moral question without an obvious values-neutral answer.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
posting in epic thread
I think it was on the daily show earlier (could be o brien or leno, I forgot..) John McCain needs help browsing websites.
Serfs had a plot of land to work for their own and which they could even be taxed on.
However they were forced to work on their lord's land, at numbers of days that usually made it harder to live off their own plot.
And they weren't free to move.
The modern equivalent is peoonage. In theory you are free to move, but you owe your employer so you can't. This can be "training" or "job finding" fees, accomodation expenses etc
... Republican Web 2.0 Consultants and their online campaigning game. This just proves that old Republicans can learn new tricks
New tricks - or more money, better spent? As you mention, they have a staff of "Web 2.0 Consultants" - ie. this is not so much "republicans being web-savvy" as it is "republicans investing advertising money on computer consultants" - who can, for all we know, be from anywhere in the political spectrum. Money is money, and you'd have to be very idealistic in today's America to say no to an income simply for political reasons.
Bad things never happen to bad people?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
And a doo bee doo bee do!
Around and around it goes. Logic? Nowhere to be seen, but once again, logic plays no part in the world view of the self-proclaimed pathological ego. It cannot; being right is paramount, and since nobody is always right, the sociopath needs to spin words as fast as necessary to plug the holes. That is, Right Answers are not the point. Twisting nonsense to convince oneself of one's superiority is.
So let's shoot down some houses of cards, shall we? Not for the psycho's benefit, naturally. He's not worth anything but the creepy side-show value since he'll only ever be able to get a sheet of static from that quadrant of his brain, but for the sake of being complete. . .
You contradict yourself. The bailouts are as a result of regulations. Had the true free marketers gotten what they wanted, Bear would have collapsed, there would not be a Fannie Mae. So... why are you complaining about the institutions that you liberals created?
BZZZT!
Does everybody see the problem with that nonsense argument? That's right! It's all about Intent. --That is, if there was real regulation, the problems would not have reached such monumental proportions in the first place. In fact, they reached those proportions exactly because government controls were deliberately relaxed, (by guess who?). And in the case of Bear Sterns, the bailout was basically a tax funded corporate take-over. Look it up; it was actually quite a brilliant scheme for the predators at the top of that heap. So no, when I speak of regulation, it is with the intent of serving society as a whole, not the already massively wealthy. Yes, I know, it's a subtle difference, but anybody with a fully functioning brain would recognize that subtlety from a mile away. Sadly, in the sociopath, the necessary grey matter, usually in the frontal lobe, is simply smaller and malformed, and thus this guy's ability to 'get it' simply isn't there. Next!
American tactics are not nearly what you say they were. You only say that because you are a loser, and you are bitter.
Oooh! Not even an attempt at logic this time. Just a vitriolic statement with no fact content and thus zero value. "You're wrong and you're a loser!" Yes, thank-you Little Billy, we'll take that under advisement. Next!
North Korea is left wing, not right wing. I seem to recall that private property rights are a hallmark of the right wing, whereas your buddies in North Korea would prefer they do not, as you don't.
Ooops! Got mixed up in the whole 'Intent' thing again, did you? (Because, you see, by strict definition in some almanacs, North Korea is 'communist'. Well, actually it's not even that, but it hardly matters what the fake reality is. Let's skip to real reality, shall we? (Yes, that's the place where everybody with fully functioning brains live). North Korea's government system is what is commonly called a 'Dictatorship'. To be very clear, a Dictatorship, and a highly repressive one at that, is about as far away from Leftist values as you can get. --And just to be very very clear, since our pet psycho is literally incapable of differentiating between intended concepts and totally wrong concepts which happen to use the same words, I'm talking about modern American Leftist values; i.e., those of the people supporting what they hoped Obama would be all about, (until the FISA thing, anyway). But again, these are subtle differences which only those with properly functioning brains can recognize. Next!
>You still have no answer to the fundamental point: waterboarding the network guy for 15 minutes to extract the passwords he stole is better for the network guy and his victim than your solution of life in prison. You argue to throw people in prison for the tiniest of offenses, and I fail to see how that improves the value of human life. Sounds rather North Korean to me.
Nope, you're wrong again. I explained it a couple of times in a manner whic
Civilian casualties are an important measure, however they too are on a sharp decline.
someone just killed 4-10 people only yesterday. every 1 to 2 weeks an explosion or a car bomb or a roadside bomb.
Read radical news here
i live in turkey. we are living next to the mess that is iraq. i dont know what fox and other fucked up channels are feeding you there, but i can say that killings are as often as they used to be. just 2 days ago around 10 people were killed by someone, and every 1-2 weeks a roadside bomb or a car bomb explodes.
i cant believe how many of you americans havent quit believing those fucktard republican/conservative aligned shitholes that pose as news channels, like fox.
what i say is probably going to 'offend' some of you and eventually one of you will mod this down, not out of righteous decision, but out of hooligan-like party supporting. well you better get offended. its your dogged stubbornness to see whats going on is causing many countries and people to suffer, including yours.
Read radical news here
Huh? Did I ever mention one candidate or the other when I was talking about flip-flopping on public financing? Flip flopping happens with everybody, I just listed a few examples without names. Why do you immediately jump to the conclusion that I was talking about only Obama for the public financing? I wasn't. If in your mind you reached the conclusion I was talking about only Obama for the public financing one, then I think you need to examine why you came to that conclusion.
Candidates everywhere flip-flop, which is why I say at the end to ignore everything they BOTH say and to look at their voting records.
I was, however, talking about Obama about flip-flopping about his view on the D.C. gun ban and about his view of Iran. Those flips happened only days apart.
You didn't need to show me links for McCain flipflops. I know they are there too.
I don't know why you got so worked up? Don't you think flip-flopping is bad, no matter who does it?
I don't know who I am going to vote for yet. The problem I have with Obama is that I have absolutely no clue what his stance on issues are because he is constantly saying different things. I have other problems with McCain.
Hey Todd, I recommend you take a vacation, relax, and stop listening to right wing radio. Its all crap anyway, and repeating this stuff makes you look like an idiot.
Well, there's a lot of people posting left wing blog talking points, that need a vacation, need to relax, and it is all crap anyway that makes them look like idiots, and well, I figured I'd just join them! :-)
If people want to stay focused on the issues, and discuss those, instead of ideology, I'd rather have that.
This is my sig.
You've never seen any, and will never even make an honest attempt at citing any.
Sounds like a good idea, but it should be applied to both candidates. Obviously McCain will highlight only the parts that interest him, while doing the same on his site.
Maybe someone could hire this Versionista site to do the same for both candidates, and publish all results.
Or maybe the site could do it on its own, as a promotion for its services. With a Creative Commons non-commercial/attribution licence it would find itself quoted in all the political blogs. A huge boost for the site, and also a huge market for commercial paid use by the mainstream media. Oh, and it would help the democratic process a lot too.
It's mostly futurama/simpsons jokes.
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
I'm talking about modern American Leftist values; i.e., those of the people supporting what they hoped Obama would be all about, (until the FISA thing, anyway).
North Korea is communist. They are communist and have a dictatorship because under communism and even socialism, the government, acting as the agent of the people, ultimately decides what property should be disposed of and in what way. This is entirely what you believe and that you choose to ignore the consequence of your own failed ideology only proves how mind boggingly ignorant you really are. You know why Obama flipped on FISA, why Democrats don't -really- do anything to try and stop all of this government wiretapping you are so appalled by? It's because the core believers in that party want all the power for themselves and they want to end private property and to use the government to steal it, just like all good godless commies do. You really, really believe, that liberal leaders push the environment because they care about nature? They are doing it because its just another excuse to get their hands on more loot. That's why you see carbon taxes, government inspections, all on the plate - it's all about gathering up more power for themselves, and they've got sheeple like you believing that, if you give them power, you'll somehow get something back...
and, what is it that you've gotten back, in all of these years of supporting the American Left, what has anyone in the left wing gotten back in 1960? That's the most amazing part - year after year, african americans pull the lever for the left wing and to this day, all of the major african american population centers in the USA are ghettos, and will be ghettos, until they adopt Republican values of investment, capitalism, freedom and individual responsibility.
Nope, you're wrong again. I explained it a couple of times in a manner whic
Your explanation is worthless. Again, the guy steals the passwords, and you send in the police ruin his life, and make the victims suffer more. I send in a couple of goons, waterboard the guy, get the password, he walks, and the victims are up in rolling in a matter of minutes. You can't argue that my solution isn't worse, so you set up an easily refuted strawman of a slippery slope argument which flounders even in self contradiction before you even finish your own posts.
This is my sig.
I thought McCain's favorite movie is Mama Mia. Why is he using spidey on Obama's site? On a serious note. This goes to show how desperate the McCain campaign has become over the last two weeks.
Yeah, they did some really crappy stuff.
But, what about all the other companies that have done some pretty bad stuff, and get off with a wrist-slapping?
It's a pretty big coincidence that the only ones who stood up to the warrentless wiretaps was Quest, and that they only company to be punished for illegal activities after that was Quest. Especially considering that the Department of Justice is so heavily Bush-controlled, and that it has specifically targeted its opponents in the past. (See Don Siegelman.)
No, I'm not wrong. You just want me to be. :-)
Whups! Thought this mental case had run away and I didn't bother checking to see if he'd responded.
First off, I must say that he's really bad at it. I've countered more of his broken arguments than I can count, but that doesn't stop him! He just picks out the few crumbs where he thinks he can make some headway and continues pounding despite all his previous errors, (as though they don't add up to illustrate a damning picture!)
North Korea is communist. They are communist and have a dictatorship because under communism and even socialism, the government, acting as the agent of the people, ultimately decides what property should be disposed of and in what way. This is entirely what you believe and that you choose to ignore the consequence of your own failed ideology only proves how mind boggingly ignorant you really are.
Blah, blah, blah. Look, when I say Right wing, am talking about a general concept of disrespect for life and those forces which pull in the direction of dictatorial powers of state. Do you really believe that the Neocons with their torture and insane wars and their withdrawal from constitutional oversight represent anything different from North Korea? (Of course you do.) You talk about property rights as though it is the bright redeeming point in your argument, and if that's all you've got, then you've got nothing. (And the only reason you think you've got that is due to my having not yet addressed it, which I will now. . .)
Take a look at the collapse of the mortgage market. Millions are losing their homes. Do you think that collapse was an accident. It wasn't. It was the direct result of greed-based actions sanctioned and promoted by Right Wing policies. Who ends up owning that property? The corporate and private banks, which are linked at the hip with Right Wing political figures, who are really just their puppets anyway. Indeed, people can have their stuff seized should they mysteriously become enemy combatants on the whim of a presidential decree. So in fact, the people do NOT really have control over their own property, not unless they go along with the Right Wing system. And how is that any different than a dictatorial state? Saddam rewarded his supporters lavishly, as well. --A rose by any other name is still a rose. Sheesh! Didn't anybody ever teach you that?
And you're calling me ignorant? BZZT! No, because you see, I am not a coward, (ie, I am able to admit when I am wrong), I am able to witness and accept reality for what it is. This results in the collection of knowledge which is the antidote to ignorance. You on the other hand, with your belief that you are perfect, (when it is impossible to be perfect), are a coward unable to deal with or even admit to your flaws, and thus you cannot look reality in the face. This means that the primary function of your mind, the top rule in the flow chart, is to only collect knowledge which demonstrates your perfection, which means that both true and false facts are acceptable. --So yeah, an actual real fact or two are great now and again, if they happen to support your position, but any facts which disagree must be ignored and replaced with lies because of that primary rule; "You Must Be Right!!!!" --Because you are too cowardly to admit to personal flaws. (Oooooh, poor baby! It HURTS so MUCH when you are wrong!) Now, as the lies build up, your system of denial grows and it becomes less and less likely that any facts will be able to agree with your increasingly false perception of yourself, and thus advances the process of decay. I've seen it before several times and the process doesn't take very many years; I've witnessed once prowling intelligences descend into pulp stupidity; people who cannot even construct logical sentences anymore. That's your path. But hey, because that's not a warm, fuzzy thought, I'm sure you'll file it along with all the others which you find disagreeable. But you have now been warned. Coward.
So, igno
I think John McCain needs get moving. http://www.redtractor-usa.com/John_McCain_Vietnam.htm