The election will take place, terrorism notwithstanding. Remember that even during the civil war, there were elections. In general, for a group to win a coup, they have to have (at least complicit) support of around 30% of the people, and a lot of them have to be in control. Do you really think Bush could rally support of 30% of the generals, fighter pilots, marines, soldiers, etc? He is not a charismatic military leade, they are not going to follow him. Bush is a puppet; a coup could keep him or replace him with another. In fact, since his approval rating has been pushed into unprecedented lows, America would happily accept a new puppet. Bush was quasi-appointed after two elections with obvious voting irregularities. Like the old story about boiling a frog, the people don't make much of a fuss as long as it happens relatively slowly.
Look at it a different way: we are not living in a world where overtaking the government is even considered. A common parallel people have been making is to the Nazis: they were a democracy, voted the wrong people, and then became a dictatorship. Could it happen here? Remember the Germans had just barely left its monarchy behind. In the previous century, Chancellor Bismarck had actively looked for excuses to mass kill his political opponents. In a society like that, people learned that they should just go along if they didn't want to die. The first thing the Nazis did after gaining power was kill all their political opponents. People accepted it as normal. If you want to rest your mind more on the matter, study the details of some Latin-American dictators, or study 19th century France, begin to get an idea of what it takes to overthrow a government, and you will begin to feel that America is alright. Actually, Hitler was unable to win election; he was appointed Chancellor by his opponents in political maneuvering gone bad. And, the first thing they did was consolidate the power via mostly legal means. They manipulated the voting process and mass produced propaganda. They destroyed an important building and blamed it on terrorists, and used the fear and hysteria to pass laws suspending many basic rights (including habeas corpus). These laws were then used to suppress their political and idealogical opponents. When the party still failed to get an absolute majority in the elections, they circumvented the legislators altogether by passing unconstitutional laws that centralized all power into the executive. They were able to get this passed only because of their support by the Church. Does any of this sound even a little bit familiar?
It wasn't until after all this groundwork was in place that the Nazi party began an earnest program of violence against the remaining opposition. The Nazi dictatorship continued with the show of legitimacy and legality all the way, getting legislative renewal of the Enabling Act every four years.
Personally I was opposed to the war from the beginning, however, I am now grudgingly having to admit that there have been some good effects from the war as well. It can be argued that one of the main reasons Syria left Lebanon is because they were afraid they would be invaded by the US. Also, despite some horrible mistakes, the US really does look good compared to Al Qaeda in Iraq (compare Abu Ghraib to Al Qaeda, who tortured and killed people in horrible ways, raped girls, etc), and the rest of the middle east is starting to notice. There are even starting to be signs of divisions within the terrorists. It's hard to hate soldiers who are building schools and giving candy out to kids. I would love to hear on what grounds you opposed the war, given your lack of historical understanding and that now you feel the war may be okay after all. You believe that it was worth the lives of thousands of American soldiers, plus the psyches and souls of countless others, and the deaths of perhaps a million Iraqi civilians to get Syria out of Lebanon? Are you serious? You're noticing divisions withing the terrorists are you? This is so unlike pre-invasion when all the world's super evil terrorists were united against the Holy American Empire?
The war in Iraq has neither reduced prices at the gas pump nor profited American oil companies, if anything it has made the business tougher. How can someone who claims to invest in oil believe that oil companies haven't profited during the occupation of Iraq? The large oil companies have turned in record profits quarter after quarter for the past few years. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/02/01/national/a143757S63.DTL
"It seems that most scientists insist that *every* vaccine is safe for *every* child,"
Unless a child has an allergy to something in the vaccine, they are.
"I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that the large number of vaccines that are administered at once nowadays, along with other possible factors, are at the source."
Actually it is unreasonable.
All vaccines have some percentage of side effects, unrelated to any allergies, and some are worse than others. To deny otherwise is plain ignorance. A mitochondrial disorder (as blamed for Hannah Poling's autism) is not an allergy. Such disorders are uncommon in the population at large but more common in autistic individuals.
While your well-developed argument was initially convincing, I believe you may be wrong. Put simply, a vaccine works by causing the immune system to respond without the need for you to get a full-blown infection/disease. Many, if not most, commonly-used vaccines put a live virus in your body, albeit one that has been grown in a way to ensure they are weaker. Some use a closely-related but less dangerous strain. Regardless, the idea behind a vaccine is to elicit a response from your body's defense system, without causing a major reaction. That sounds a whole lot like what jedidiah said.
By allowing patents, we get people like him to divulge his or her information in exchange for protection of their patent, allowing them to make money off from it in a non-secretive fashion, helping society as a whole. Perhaps in theory. In practice, he divulges his information in exchange for being told that Merck already patented something that is written ambiguously enough to preclude him from selling his medicine. Or, he sells his rights to someone for $5,000, who then makes billions marketing it to the world. Meanwhile, the medicine now costs $300 and the villagers can no longer afford it.
What incentive does a patent offer some village shaman? Do you think he's going to setup a pharmaceutical lab in his home and export to the US and EU?
Yes, they make everything, but who buys their stuff? If no one buys their stuff, what happens to them? They lose trillions of dollars. If they stop making their stuff, what happens to us? In the short term, prices on eBay go up for goods Americans have that are out of stock, but in the long run, we build our own factories to fill the market needs, and that is actually good for Americans. And if the factories don't get built here, they go to India and Latin American countries, which are far more stable anyway.
By outsourcing to India and Latin American countries, America is actually cutting her own throat - she is personally building the economies that will allow the Chinese to stop propping up her failing economy. India followed only China in growth in recent years and is now considered in the top dozen economies of the world, while accounting for about 17% of the world's population (about four times more consumers than the US). Brazil has more than half the population of the US and a stronger economy than India. Don't forget about Russia, the third strongest growing economy who is aggressively pushing population growth and relations with China. China's dependence on the US consumer is a very time-limited reality.
I'm completely confused about your comment about India and Latin America being far more stable than China. The US has directly used economic and military pressure to keep Latin America unstable for better than half a century. There's almost always multiple civil wars in progress (or fights between terrorists and puppet dictators, if you like).
You say they have nuclear weapons. Well, we have more, and as China is a smaller nation in terms of land area, we have the advantage of having less square footage to wipe out. You say you can't see how we could hurt them, when we could actually wipe out their country many times over. And we have a least a partial missile shield, which of course wouldn't stop them, but is at least slightly better than the nothing they have. So there isn't going to be a nuclear engagement.
I can't speak for the parent poster, but I read his comment about nuclear weapons simply as a statement supporting his assessment of China's current superpower status. It is ludicrous to suggest, as you do, that a difference in land mass gives us some advantage in a nuclear war. To quote Joshua, the only winning move is not to play.
If we had a conventional weapons war, our conventional weapons are better. True, they have more people, but as more of our weaponry becomes automated that becomes less of an advantage for them, so long as we can mass produce our robots.
The recent wars undertaken by the US are but minor skirmishes compared to a military confrontation with China, yet the US military industry is supported primarily by loans from China. If the US economy were forced to bear the cost of Afghanistan and Iraq, the current economic woes would seem like the good old days. Now imagine the costs of a real war, then factor in that America would be fighting against the nation financing its current military operations. I see a relatively small window in which you can continue to mass produce your magic robots.
We also have higher technology than they do. We alone posess most of the technology for making the fastest computer chips, and that gives us an extraordinary advantage. They recently attempted to make their own home grown "Dragon" PC chip in an effort to not be dependent on us, and it turned out to be the equivalent of a very slow 486.
Your "stable" comment in your first point confused me. Now you've totally lost me. You think that all computer technology knowledge is locked away in a vault somewhere in the US? Perhaps you keep it in Fort Knox? I guess you aren't aware that Intel has production facilities in China, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Israel, Ireland, India, Philippines, and Russia? I don't suppose you realized that AMD's primary research and manufacturing
That is the IT Manager's fault. He/She should be selling the value of the department. In many smaller to mid-size organizations, the IT Manager has too little influence to make a difference. All too often, the IT Manager is younger (30 and under) and hired more for his/her technical skills than managerial capabilities. Even an amazing manager can't do much when he or she is expected to make stuff work and isn't really a part of the upper management team.
IT isn't valued as an integral part of the business. Eventually, you get a self-fulfilling prophesy as the IT team ends up composed of those unable or unmotivated enough to leave and they aren't a valuable part of the business.
Nonsense! Romney and Giuliani didn't have a chance in Hell of becoming President. We've managed to elect ONE Catholic President ever - we're not ready for a Mormon President. And Giuliani didn't collect enough money to make a reasonable campaign possible - a good sign that he was unelectable. Romney could have beaten Obama easily in a general election, but it wasn't his turn (and may never be). He was still very much in the race when he stepped aside for McCain. Giuliani was raising money like crazy and polling well early on. Then he stopped spending and publicly put all of his eggs into Florida's basket. He didn't show well and bowed out.
The way the Republicans manipulated the Evangelicals almost seems like one of those Trading Places one dollar bets. They managed to split the Evangelical Christian support between a Mormon and a cross-dressing social liberal, while ensuring that a Baptist preacher from Arkansas was left without any real support from this huge voting bloc.
Yah, if those two had stayed in the race, it likely would have made for a more lively Republican Convention, but that's about all. But they didn't stay because they were told to get out of the way early. With two closely related political parties and virtually no powerful factions within them, you get what they want to you get. That's why I find the Democratic primary so interesting this year - there is a power play going on inside the party and the outcome will shape the party for another election cycle or two at the least.
How stupid do you have to be to not understand that?
In other words: the next person who can't even be bothered to tell what
symbols are involved and why they haven't asked whether those symbols
could instead be relaxed, automaticaly will go into my "flamers" filter,
and just stay there. Then you can complain as much as you like, and I'll
never see it.
The Republican leadership doesn't seem to want McCain but the rank and file have forced him upon them. I guess they're going to suck it up and start supporting him. I'm not sure who you think are the Republican leadership and rank and file, but McCain was anointed by those running the GOP and they've had serious trouble convincing the the rank and file who supported Bush. McCain has never been popular with the social conservatives or the Evangelical Christians. Without the support of the leadership, he didn't stand a chance. Without the sudden (orchestrated) disappearances from the race by the only serious contenders (Giuliani and Romney), McCain was in for a long and ugly fight. He's where he is because of the deals he made with the Republican leadership after his 2000 thrashing.
If she does manage to gain the nomination through seating banned delegates and other legalistic chicanery, I do believe this will split the party. It will be seen as a deliberate thwarting of the will of the people. "I hear what you are saying, I understand what you want, and the answer is 'fuck you, we're doing it my way.'" Actually, I'm increasingly convinced that what we're seeing now is a split in the party. I think we're witnessing a coup against the neocons who had taken control. I found it very strange when they gave Dean control of the DNC to abandon his 2004 run. This allowed the preselected loser and his neocon running mate to get the nod but also put an outspoken progressive in a powerful position in the party. I believe Hillary and her campaign greatly underestimated the power of those behind this rift and are now fighting for all they are worth to regain their footing. Hillary will not bow out gracefully because this contest is much bigger than who gets to lose to McCain - it is for control of the Democrat Party for the immediate future.
1. What's the difference between "actual science" and science For the purposes of my comment, I meant science as opposed to theology. I'll not rehash the lengthy and detailed explanations that have been offered throughout this thread; feel free to ask if you have specific questions. In this specific example, the parent post was arguing against evolution by claiming that we've not seen life spontaneously come into existence. This popular straw man is sometimes argued out of ignorance and sometimes from intentional deceit. I gave the poster the benefit of the doubt and assumed he or she was simply ignorant of what the theory of evolution claims to explain. For the record, the spontaneous generation of life is not part of it.
2. How can you argue (successfully) with the very simple logic supporting ID? Can you share some of this logic that can be examined scientifically? How can the ID argument can be proven wrong via research or experiments?
Non sequiturs do not count. Perhaps you could point me to my previous non sequiturs?
And telling your opponents that they are all stupid does not count. I didn't call anyone stupid. Ignorance can be fixed, which was my point.
Students in a science class should be taught the scientific method. Part of the scientific method is to challenge what is already thought to be known. All this bill does is allows teacher to challenge evolutionary theory. THAT is what the scientific method is all about. So, by saying that teachers should not be allowed to challenge evolution, you are proposing teaching non-science in science classes. Science starts with asking questions. Step 1 of the Scientific Method is Define the question. If you are not allowed to question evolution, you are stopping before you even start! This sounds wonderfully true on the surface, but there are a few problems. This bill is not driven by the desire to offer scientific criticisms, but to silence science with religious claims. Look at who is pushing the bill, who wrote the bill, and where the language for the bill originated. Further, what scientific challenges to evolution do they wish to present? None. They want to replace science with shallow theology. I agree with your underlying argument, but this bill does not represent that. This is about yet another attempt to circumvent science by diluting it with mythology and feeding it to children.
First, ID is not necessarily God. Sure, it could be, but saying a superior alien race was visiting Earth and someone sneezed seeding the planet is also ID. Some of the points you've tried to make in this thread are valid, but comments like this do not help your case. An alien race seeding the planet with a sneeze is in no way intelligent design. I hope your understanding of real science is better than this.
Just because someone says something you don't like doesn't make it flamebait. Agreed. Unlike many on this thread, the GP did not deserve be modded Troll or Flamebait. Unfortunately, Slashdot doesn't provide a negative mod for factually incorrect.
This post was pretty well-thought out. It was well written, but not well thought out. The author clearly has a good vocabulary and writing ability but displays ignorance of the subject matter and a weakness in critical thinking.
You also have not seen a computer be created by nothing from nothing, it was INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED.
Thank you for making the point so wonderfully. Ignorance such as you demonstrate is exactly why it is so important that actual science is taught in schools.
From the article:
There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise. God forbid that I question the veracity of unsourced Wikipedia claims, but the US money in my pocket all say "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE".
For the record, the unsourced Wikipedia claim was plagiarized directly from http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.html, and while it isn't very clear either, it certainly implies that the important difference is whether you are buying a good or service versus paying off a debt. I don't know that I buy the GP's claim that his tuition bill is a debt, but it seems that the Coinage Act of 1965 requires acceptance of US dollars and coins for any debt, public or private.
I will confess that in my haste to reply I confused the two of you.
See how easy that was! I feel like we've made progress already:)
I hope I'm not being perceived that way. The only thing I take issue with is the rapid group of (primarily online) Ron Paul supporters that refuse to accept the fact that people might have legitimate reasons for deciding not to vote for him. I take issue with their methods and not with the fact that they are Ron Paul supporters. It seems like I've run into a disproportionate number of such people over the last few weeks and that probably spilled over into my response to you.
You certainly came off that way throughout this thread, but I understand your frustration. Unfortunately, some of the more outspoken folks on any issue also happen to be assholes. On the other hand, most of my family and friends with whom I discuss politics have either not heard of Ron Paul at all, or they have nothing more than a few untrue statements from Sean Hannity or Wolf Blitzer. Of course, I also have to explain to them that Obama isn't a Muslim and that he did take his oath of office on a Bible. After so many times of refuting the same arguments made from pure ignorance, it can be easy to assume that everyone sharing that position does it for the same reason (or lack thereof).
I think the schedule was designed with that idea in mind -- but saying that the whole primary process was designed that way was probably not my best choice of words.
Fair enough, although I would still disagree with your revised argument. I've seen nothing in over 200 years of our political parties to say that any part of the process was designed with the intent of decreasing their control. I will agree that the current arrangement is relatively friendly in the early going to candidates who aren't part of the system, but a good early showing by a candidate not backed by the party does not lead to success in later events (see McCain 2000 and Dean 2004). The parties want a few well-defined early caucuses followed by a few big rounds of primaries/caucuses, so that they can establish better control on the early events (this is hard to do if every state is jockeying for those all-important early slots, so the national parties are trying desperately to put a stop to this trend) and then quickly weed out the small fries in early multistate events.
I just don't think that tells the whole story of Ron Paul though. I won't rehash all my reasons for thinking this -- I've outlined them pretty clearly above -- but I would hope that you would agree with the basic theory that it's not all the fault of the media -- some of Paul's ideas are going to have a hard time finding acceptance regardless of the media environment.
Absolutely. As I said, regardless of what I might think about his positions, Paul didn't have a chance at winning. Part of my assessment was the fact that the party and the media would not let his candidacy to take off, but a large segment of the US simply is not receptive to his ideas. Some people have legitimate policy disagreements, but the average voter is more concerned about American Idol than constitutional arguments. The average voter will never understand, nor want to understand, the positions of Paul, Gravel, Kucinich, etc.
I think it also demonstrates the arrogance of the Clinton campaign. They assumed that they could wipe him out on Super Tuesday and made no plans for anything after that date. I also think some of the tactics they used blew up in their faces -- which actually gives me hope for my country.
The failures have been quite surprising to me. They first tried to play nice (for a very surprisingly long time) but found that Obama was gaining ground. So, they brought Bill out of retirement, but they let him get too negative too fast. Polling showed that this didn't go over well, so now they've gone to the Rove school of underhanded dirty campaigning. T
I still take issue with supporters of Ron Paul claiming that it was solely the media that disenfranchised him. That was the original thing that got this whole conversation started. After reading back through this thread again, I'm guessing that either you confused me with kiddailey or you just assumed that anyone commenting on this thread must be a Ron Paul nut. Either way, I am interested by your refusal to admit either, as well as your need to continue with your attacks on Ron Paul supporters. Would you feel better if I just took the other side and argued with you on that topic?:)
*shrug* and I think it does give them a shot by virtue of allowing the small states to go first. But that isn't what you said. You said it was designed that way, implying that it was intentional. This is demonstrably false.
It certainly offers the best chance an outsider candidate has of unseating the establishment/incumbent candidate. What would you do differently? A national same-day primary will eliminate the ability to go into small states and connect with individual voters. It would favor the establishment candidate at the expense of everybody else. It would cost so much money that no candidate without the backing of the party would be able to compete. Unfortunately, I can't say that I have better answer within the current political framework. The current system allows a candidate to get his or her message out early in the cycle, but party control still assures that they do not go far. Whether or not you want to admit it, the major media outlets have significant control over the general population's perception of political candidates and are active players in the process. Paul had no chance, whether running as a Republican, Libertarian, or Independent, but he was intentionally marginalized by the media while they promoted Giuliani and Thompson. This while Paul raised more money, showed better in polls, and garnered more votes.
And while I am pleasantly surprised at the strong Obama campaign, he has gotten a nearly free pass by the mainstream media for months. Interestingly, that is changing. It has been intriguing to see the number of anti-Obama stories hitting the media the last few days. The fact that he's been able to garner so much support, run a generally positive campaign, and offer serious contention to Hillary demonstrates the seriousness of the rift within the Democratic party. There are more people than I suspected fighting to keep the Democrats from being taken over by the neocons who control the current Republican party. The Hillary/Lieberman/DLC wing of the party are being pushed out from within. The surprising appointment of Howard Dean to the DNC (as a reward for getting out of the way in 2004) was a sign of how high in the party this rift goes. I only hope that the Republicans can do the same sooner than later.
I read it. It did nothing to change my opinion that Ron Paul had as much of a shot as anybody else going into Iowa and New Hampshire...Blaming the media only goes so far. I'm having trouble understanding how you claim to have read my post and yet you continue rambling about Ron Paul supporters and the media. I said absolutely nothing about Ron Paul. I said absolutely nothing about the media (I did use the word television once). I simply took issue with your assertion that the primary process is designed to give a shot to fringe candidates.
This whole primary process is designed to give a voice to the outsider candidates. While I have issues with some of your other comments, I find this one to be perhaps the clearest demonstration of how much you just don't get it.
The whole primary process is and has been designed to make sure the parties can select who they want. Since the advent of political parties in the US over 200 years ago, the parties used political power and influence to guide the selection of their candidates. Initially the party leaders met informally with the Congressmen in their party. This eventually grew into formal conventions as the US expanded and politicians in the western states demanded more involvement. State political bosses hand-picked their representatives to the convention and directly controlled how they voted.
The early twentieth century saw increasing pressure from factions within the parties which led to public primaries in many states. However, this dilution of party power was short lived - within twenty years party leaders convinced all but a dozen or so states to abolish primary elections in favor of absolute party control. This pendulum again swung away from the party bosses after WWII as the US entered a new era of prosperity and growth, although the growth of television was perhaps as responsible for these changes as anything else.
We are now again in the midst of a shift away from empowering voters, as witnessed by the national parties disenfranchising entire states and pushing more states to move to caucuses instead of primaries. For example, WV this year held a Republican caucus for the first time. The party did a terrible job of letting people know about this change. Participating required the completion of paperwork, payment of a filing fee ($25, I believe), and missing a day of work. Interestingly, there was zero coverage of the caucus in the local media until after the filing date had passed. Even then, the coverage was so inadequate that on caucus day hundreds or thousands of Republican voters showed up at polling places. The end result was a caucus that excluded most Republican voters; was composed mostly of state, county, and city Republican office holders; and tied up over half of the state's delegates in a winner-take-all event. Does that really sound like a system designed to give a voice to outside candidates?
You got a link to back this up? Or should I just file it under baseless accusation? I haven't bothered to Google it, if that's what you mean. Feel free to do so yourself.
To those who grew up in these fiefdoms, a link to a Wikipedia article isn't necessary. I'm sure you can find articles about Lincoln County's Assessor of 25 years recently going to federal prison for his involvement in the long-standing county-wide voting buying programs. This corruption was well-known to locals for decades but you wouldn't have found an online news report about it before last year. A coal company also took Webster County all the way to the US Supreme Court over the county's refusal to assess many coal holdings at anywhere near the level of the those of a few owners.
That requires some equipment investment. And these are not small 8.5x11 sheets that typical copying equipment can serve. I've been to one of these offices in a West Virginia county, before, and these are on the order of 3x2 feet in size for the original paper copy. To some extent, the concern may be to protect that investment in reproduction equipment that could go underutilized if the maps go online. Perhaps some offices make available the larger maps, but I've gotten copies of tax maps from several WV counties and they don't give me a large copy nor do they even use the original large maps any longer. They provide an 8.5x11 or 8.5x14 printout from their digital source, just like I can get from Seneca's online site.
But the world is changing. I should be able to click on "tax map" on my GPS equipped phone and have it automatically pull up the map of where I am standing, and overlay that with a satellite/aerial photo view, with names and addresses from the phone book, etc. I should not have to make a trip down to the county tax assessor just so they can pay off an antiquated copy machine due to their inability to assess the pace of technology development.
These maps are not accurate in terms of exact positioning. The assessment information is official, but the land shape and position is merely for identification purposes, only. Ironically, however, this very technology could also help make such maps much more accurate. Integrated with standardized survey data and low level aerial photos, and the assessments can be much more accurate in terms of things like valuation.
And now you've hit on why the county is fighting this move. Some county maps are so in accurate that they are almost useless while other counties have taken the time to create nice maps. For example, Lincoln county, WV, where county offices such as the Assessor were treated as lifetime appointments from the local political bosses, the maps are terrible and this will suddenly be obvious to everyone. And, because Seneca wants to combine the maps with other public data such as ownership and assessment data, many people at the courthouses will find themselves with even less to do. Most importantly, and most frightening to the local powerbrokers, this will allow everyone to see how the local assessment process is used to grant millions of dollars to the owners of huge swaths of timber and mineral rights, who often are significantly and intentionally undertaxed for decades.
This is on every Pix ever made. What is the point of any firewall if it does not block all then let some through. In the quote you included from TFA, Tippett is talking about routers. Also, a PIX does not deny outbound by default, only inbound.
Peter Tippett thinks it's time for security professionals to wake up and stop wasting their energy. In a presentation here yesterday, Tippett -- who is vice president of risk intelligence for Verizon Business, chief scientist at ICSA Labs, and the inventor of the program that became Norton Antivirus... Peter Tippett invented the computer condom? You just know that his resume also lists a job somewhere in penetration testing.
Slashdot Mirror
It wasn't until after all this groundwork was in place that the Nazi party began an earnest program of violence against the remaining opposition. The Nazi dictatorship continued with the show of legitimacy and legality all the way, getting legislative renewal of the Enabling Act every four years.
Personally I was opposed to the war from the beginning, however, I am now grudgingly having to admit that there have been some good effects from the war as well. It can be argued that one of the main reasons Syria left Lebanon is because they were afraid they would be invaded by the US. Also, despite some horrible mistakes, the US really does look good compared to Al Qaeda in Iraq (compare Abu Ghraib to Al Qaeda, who tortured and killed people in horrible ways, raped girls, etc), and the rest of the middle east is starting to notice. There are even starting to be signs of divisions within the terrorists. It's hard to hate soldiers who are building schools and giving candy out to kids. I would love to hear on what grounds you opposed the war, given your lack of historical understanding and that now you feel the war may be okay after all. You believe that it was worth the lives of thousands of American soldiers, plus the psyches and souls of countless others, and the deaths of perhaps a million Iraqi civilians to get Syria out of Lebanon? Are you serious? You're noticing divisions withing the terrorists are you? This is so unlike pre-invasion when all the world's super evil terrorists were united against the Holy American Empire?Unless a child has an allergy to something in the vaccine, they are.
"I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that the large number of vaccines that are administered at once nowadays, along with other possible factors, are at the source."
Actually it is unreasonable.
All vaccines have some percentage of side effects, unrelated to any allergies, and some are worse than others. To deny otherwise is plain ignorance. A mitochondrial disorder (as blamed for Hannah Poling's autism) is not an allergy. Such disorders are uncommon in the population at large but more common in autistic individuals.GAHHHHHH! WRONG.
While your well-developed argument was initially convincing, I believe you may be wrong. Put simply, a vaccine works by causing the immune system to respond without the need for you to get a full-blown infection/disease. Many, if not most, commonly-used vaccines put a live virus in your body, albeit one that has been grown in a way to ensure they are weaker. Some use a closely-related but less dangerous strain. Regardless, the idea behind a vaccine is to elicit a response from your body's defense system, without causing a major reaction. That sounds a whole lot like what jedidiah said.What incentive does a patent offer some village shaman? Do you think he's going to setup a pharmaceutical lab in his home and export to the US and EU?
Yes, they make everything, but who buys their stuff? If no one buys their stuff, what happens to them? They lose trillions of dollars. If they stop making their stuff, what happens to us? In the short term, prices on eBay go up for goods Americans have that are out of stock, but in the long run, we build our own factories to fill the market needs, and that is actually good for Americans. And if the factories don't get built here, they go to India and Latin American countries, which are far more stable anyway.
By outsourcing to India and Latin American countries, America is actually cutting her own throat - she is personally building the economies that will allow the Chinese to stop propping up her failing economy. India followed only China in growth in recent years and is now considered in the top dozen economies of the world, while accounting for about 17% of the world's population (about four times more consumers than the US). Brazil has more than half the population of the US and a stronger economy than India. Don't forget about Russia, the third strongest growing economy who is aggressively pushing population growth and relations with China. China's dependence on the US consumer is a very time-limited reality.
I'm completely confused about your comment about India and Latin America being far more stable than China. The US has directly used economic and military pressure to keep Latin America unstable for better than half a century. There's almost always multiple civil wars in progress (or fights between terrorists and puppet dictators, if you like).
You say they have nuclear weapons. Well, we have more, and as China is a smaller nation in terms of land area, we have the advantage of having less square footage to wipe out. You say you can't see how we could hurt them, when we could actually wipe out their country many times over. And we have a least a partial missile shield, which of course wouldn't stop them, but is at least slightly better than the nothing they have. So there isn't going to be a nuclear engagement.
I can't speak for the parent poster, but I read his comment about nuclear weapons simply as a statement supporting his assessment of China's current superpower status. It is ludicrous to suggest, as you do, that a difference in land mass gives us some advantage in a nuclear war. To quote Joshua, the only winning move is not to play.
If we had a conventional weapons war, our conventional weapons are better. True, they have more people, but as more of our weaponry becomes automated that becomes less of an advantage for them, so long as we can mass produce our robots.
The recent wars undertaken by the US are but minor skirmishes compared to a military confrontation with China, yet the US military industry is supported primarily by loans from China. If the US economy were forced to bear the cost of Afghanistan and Iraq, the current economic woes would seem like the good old days. Now imagine the costs of a real war, then factor in that America would be fighting against the nation financing its current military operations. I see a relatively small window in which you can continue to mass produce your magic robots.
We also have higher technology than they do. We alone posess most of the technology for making the fastest computer chips, and that gives us an extraordinary advantage. They recently attempted to make their own home grown "Dragon" PC chip in an effort to not be dependent on us, and it turned out to be the equivalent of a very slow 486.
Your "stable" comment in your first point confused me. Now you've totally lost me. You think that all computer technology knowledge is locked away in a vault somewhere in the US? Perhaps you keep it in Fort Knox? I guess you aren't aware that Intel has production facilities in China, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Israel, Ireland, India, Philippines, and Russia? I don't suppose you realized that AMD's primary research and manufacturing
IT isn't valued as an integral part of the business. Eventually, you get a self-fulfilling prophesy as the IT team ends up composed of those unable or unmotivated enough to leave and they aren't a valuable part of the business.
The way the Republicans manipulated the Evangelicals almost seems like one of those Trading Places one dollar bets. They managed to split the Evangelical Christian support between a Mormon and a cross-dressing social liberal, while ensuring that a Baptist preacher from Arkansas was left without any real support from this huge voting bloc.
Yah, if those two had stayed in the race, it likely would have made for a more lively Republican Convention, but that's about all. But they didn't stay because they were told to get out of the way early. With two closely related political parties and virtually no powerful factions within them, you get what they want to you get. That's why I find the Democratic primary so interesting this year - there is a power play going on inside the party and the outcome will shape the party for another election cycle or two at the least.
.. and it doesn't export GPLONLY modules to them.How stupid do you have to be to not understand that?
In other words: the next person who can't even be bothered to tell what symbols are involved and why they haven't asked whether those symbols could instead be relaxed, automaticaly will go into my "flamers" filter, and just stay there. Then you can complain as much as you like, and I'll never see it.You also have not seen a computer be created by nothing from nothing, it was INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED.
Thank you for making the point so wonderfully. Ignorance such as you demonstrate is exactly why it is so important that actual science is taught in schools.For the record, the unsourced Wikipedia claim was plagiarized directly from http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.html, and while it isn't very clear either, it certainly implies that the important difference is whether you are buying a good or service versus paying off a debt. I don't know that I buy the GP's claim that his tuition bill is a debt, but it seems that the Coinage Act of 1965 requires acceptance of US dollars and coins for any debt, public or private.
I will confess that in my haste to reply I confused the two of you.
See how easy that was! I feel like we've made progress already :)
I hope I'm not being perceived that way. The only thing I take issue with is the rapid group of (primarily online) Ron Paul supporters that refuse to accept the fact that people might have legitimate reasons for deciding not to vote for him. I take issue with their methods and not with the fact that they are Ron Paul supporters. It seems like I've run into a disproportionate number of such people over the last few weeks and that probably spilled over into my response to you.
You certainly came off that way throughout this thread, but I understand your frustration. Unfortunately, some of the more outspoken folks on any issue also happen to be assholes. On the other hand, most of my family and friends with whom I discuss politics have either not heard of Ron Paul at all, or they have nothing more than a few untrue statements from Sean Hannity or Wolf Blitzer. Of course, I also have to explain to them that Obama isn't a Muslim and that he did take his oath of office on a Bible. After so many times of refuting the same arguments made from pure ignorance, it can be easy to assume that everyone sharing that position does it for the same reason (or lack thereof).
I think the schedule was designed with that idea in mind -- but saying that the whole primary process was designed that way was probably not my best choice of words.
Fair enough, although I would still disagree with your revised argument. I've seen nothing in over 200 years of our political parties to say that any part of the process was designed with the intent of decreasing their control. I will agree that the current arrangement is relatively friendly in the early going to candidates who aren't part of the system, but a good early showing by a candidate not backed by the party does not lead to success in later events (see McCain 2000 and Dean 2004). The parties want a few well-defined early caucuses followed by a few big rounds of primaries/caucuses, so that they can establish better control on the early events (this is hard to do if every state is jockeying for those all-important early slots, so the national parties are trying desperately to put a stop to this trend) and then quickly weed out the small fries in early multistate events.
I just don't think that tells the whole story of Ron Paul though. I won't rehash all my reasons for thinking this -- I've outlined them pretty clearly above -- but I would hope that you would agree with the basic theory that it's not all the fault of the media -- some of Paul's ideas are going to have a hard time finding acceptance regardless of the media environment.
Absolutely. As I said, regardless of what I might think about his positions, Paul didn't have a chance at winning. Part of my assessment was the fact that the party and the media would not let his candidacy to take off, but a large segment of the US simply is not receptive to his ideas. Some people have legitimate policy disagreements, but the average voter is more concerned about American Idol than constitutional arguments. The average voter will never understand, nor want to understand, the positions of Paul, Gravel, Kucinich, etc.
I think it also demonstrates the arrogance of the Clinton campaign. They assumed that they could wipe him out on Super Tuesday and made no plans for anything after that date. I also think some of the tactics they used blew up in their faces -- which actually gives me hope for my country.
The failures have been quite surprising to me. They first tried to play nice (for a very surprisingly long time) but found that Obama was gaining ground. So, they brought Bill out of retirement, but they let him get too negative too fast. Polling showed that this didn't go over well, so now they've gone to the Rove school of underhanded dirty campaigning. T
And while I am pleasantly surprised at the strong Obama campaign, he has gotten a nearly free pass by the mainstream media for months. Interestingly, that is changing. It has been intriguing to see the number of anti-Obama stories hitting the media the last few days. The fact that he's been able to garner so much support, run a generally positive campaign, and offer serious contention to Hillary demonstrates the seriousness of the rift within the Democratic party. There are more people than I suspected fighting to keep the Democrats from being taken over by the neocons who control the current Republican party. The Hillary/Lieberman/DLC wing of the party are being pushed out from within. The surprising appointment of Howard Dean to the DNC (as a reward for getting out of the way in 2004) was a sign of how high in the party this rift goes. I only hope that the Republicans can do the same sooner than later.
I can't decide if you didn't bother to read my response or simply replied to the wrong post.
The whole primary process is and has been designed to make sure the parties can select who they want. Since the advent of political parties in the US over 200 years ago, the parties used political power and influence to guide the selection of their candidates. Initially the party leaders met informally with the Congressmen in their party. This eventually grew into formal conventions as the US expanded and politicians in the western states demanded more involvement. State political bosses hand-picked their representatives to the convention and directly controlled how they voted.
The early twentieth century saw increasing pressure from factions within the parties which led to public primaries in many states. However, this dilution of party power was short lived - within twenty years party leaders convinced all but a dozen or so states to abolish primary elections in favor of absolute party control. This pendulum again swung away from the party bosses after WWII as the US entered a new era of prosperity and growth, although the growth of television was perhaps as responsible for these changes as anything else.
We are now again in the midst of a shift away from empowering voters, as witnessed by the national parties disenfranchising entire states and pushing more states to move to caucuses instead of primaries. For example, WV this year held a Republican caucus for the first time. The party did a terrible job of letting people know about this change. Participating required the completion of paperwork, payment of a filing fee ($25, I believe), and missing a day of work. Interestingly, there was zero coverage of the caucus in the local media until after the filing date had passed. Even then, the coverage was so inadequate that on caucus day hundreds or thousands of Republican voters showed up at polling places. The end result was a caucus that excluded most Republican voters; was composed mostly of state, county, and city Republican office holders; and tied up over half of the state's delegates in a winner-take-all event. Does that really sound like a system designed to give a voice to outside candidates?
To those who grew up in these fiefdoms, a link to a Wikipedia article isn't necessary. I'm sure you can find articles about Lincoln County's Assessor of 25 years recently going to federal prison for his involvement in the long-standing county-wide voting buying programs. This corruption was well-known to locals for decades but you wouldn't have found an online news report about it before last year. A coal company also took Webster County all the way to the US Supreme Court over the county's refusal to assess many coal holdings at anywhere near the level of the those of a few owners.
These maps are not accurate in terms of exact positioning. The assessment information is official, but the land shape and position is merely for identification purposes, only. Ironically, however, this very technology could also help make such maps much more accurate. Integrated with standardized survey data and low level aerial photos, and the assessments can be much more accurate in terms of things like valuation.
And now you've hit on why the county is fighting this move. Some county maps are so in accurate that they are almost useless while other counties have taken the time to create nice maps. For example, Lincoln county, WV, where county offices such as the Assessor were treated as lifetime appointments from the local political bosses, the maps are terrible and this will suddenly be obvious to everyone. And, because Seneca wants to combine the maps with other public data such as ownership and assessment data, many people at the courthouses will find themselves with even less to do. Most importantly, and most frightening to the local powerbrokers, this will allow everyone to see how the local assessment process is used to grant millions of dollars to the owners of huge swaths of timber and mineral rights, who often are significantly and intentionally undertaxed for decades.