I second this. IMO, the only way to significantly put a dent in the budget would be to cut back on defense spending.
That's definitely not the only way. We have a 3 trillion dollar budget, and to say defense is the only place to cut money in a budget that big is laughable.
Personally, I would like to see us first cut spending by stopping all these ridiculous bailouts. It's been one right after another, to the point where our national deficit next year will likely be 1 TRILLION DOLLARS this year. All these companies and individuals weren't socializing their profits a couple years ago when they were raking in money hand over fist, so why should we socialize their losses?
Next we could start cutting social programs. Welfare could be cut back (rather than increased like the Democratic congress just did), Medicare should be reformed and scaled back, and Social Security should be restructured in a way that will phase it out. The ballooning costs of those programs will absolutely destroy our budget within a decade or two, and that's assuming we continue to have good economic growth. We should be working to phase them out now while we still have time to do it gradually, because the alternative is a massive, sudden slashing of benefits.
After those, you could start whacking a lot of the unconstitutional things the feds are involved with, such as the department of education. We already spend more money per capita on our students than anyone else, with not very good results. However, some states have been having success, so lets just turn the entire job back over to the states and let them experiment and try 50 different systems. And may the best one win and be adopted.
Following this, you could start whacking subsidies that we hand out to everything that moves. The farmers have had subsidies for almost 30 years, so it's time for them to find a way to become profitable or get out. And all the "green" subsidies should go away too. Market pressures will force them to become cost efficient, or they will be knocked out in favor of better technologies. Government subsidies don't provide incentives to drive out inefficiencies.
Next, let's start hammering away at pork barrel earmarks. Barack Obama says they "only" amount to 18 billion, but so what? Let's clean that up. When Minnesota's I-35 bridge collapsed last year, they asked the congress for an emergency 255 million for rebuilding, and the congress responded by passing the massive 8+ billion dollar Minnesota bridge repair bill. Minnesota only wanted 255 million, and they packed it with pork for a butterfly garden in North Dakota, a sports stadium somewhere else and all kinds of other junk. And of course you get garbage like the bridge to nowhere coming out of these earmarks.
Follow this up by cuts to foreign aid. Should we really be giving tons of money away when we can't even keep our government in the black at home? That's a recipe for disaster. Plus we keep giving money to failed terrorist states/entities, like the Palestinians, numerous African and Middle Eastern nations and Pakistan.
And for everything else in the budget, cut it by 10% but demand they provide the same level of service. I GUARANTEE you that could be done. In the private sector, companies are always having to drive out costs to remain competitive and profitable, especially in down times like this when their revenues drop. Why do we buy the line all these government workers give us when they say, "We can't have a budget cut! We'll have to close down! Reduce services!" Bull. The private sector goes through revenue reduction all the time. The problem we have is that government NEVER has a recession and NEVER takes a budget cut like all the rest of is. This means waste and inefficiencies aren't forced out of the system. After decades of nothing but budget increases, there has to be at least 10% waste in every single agency, and they will need a good sharp pay cut to have the incentive to get it under control.
It is the general assembly that is democratic and representative, the security council is a private club.
ROFL!! Boy are YOU ever the dupe. The majority of all the nations represented in the security council are tyrannies of one form or another. Most of the nations in Asia, most of the nations in Africa, and most of the nations in South America are either dictatorships or oligarchies, and that's just for starters. In the middle east everyone but Israel (and now Iraq) is, and in Europe you still find some undemocratic nations as well (Serbia, Bulgaria, Russia, etc). So the body you claim is "democratic" and "representative of world opinion" is actually a body largely controlled by the small subset of the world population that are dictators, and is only representative of their interests.
At least in the security council a larger proportion of the permanent council members are democratic regimes. Yes, you have China and Russia, but at least you have some veto wielding democracies in the mix to strike down all the tyranny friendly policies that originate in the rest of the UN. One of the reasons America as a nation is great is that all of our states are democracies, and they joined to form a regional democratic government that IS representative of us. In the farce that is the UN that is not the case, and it turns into a massively ineffectual body that tends to reward corruption and legitimize dictators.
I think if we learn anything from the UN, it is that a government made up of anything other than democratic states is worthless, and will fail completely.
It sounds like a wonderful plan, reducing energy consumption. After all, we really need to get a grasp on Co2 emissions with all the global warming and stuff.
Yeah, all that global warming stuff that we are all still so concerned about, when the latest evidence says it isn't happening. Like NASA having to retract all their numbers and their claim that this October was the warmest on record (it was actually the 70th warmest, or 44th coolest). Or NASA also having to admit that they screwed up on the whole 1998 was the warmest year on record thing, and having to retract that as well. The warmest year would be 1934. Or the fact that last year was an exceptionally cold winter in North America, Brazil had its latest snowfall ever, Tibet had it's worst blizzard on record, and North America appears to be starting another year of unusually cold weather. And ice in the arctic expanded last winter, and the rate of refreezing this winter is happening at a record pace.
It's time to face facts. The warming trend we had had nothing to do with CO2. It correlates very nicely with solar activity, which over the last 70 years was at an exceptional level. Now we have sunspot activity dropping off/becoming non-existent, and solar activity dropping. And our weather from the Northern hemisphere to the Southern hemisphere is suddenly following suit and getting colder. Many scientists are now predicting 30 years of a global cooling trend because of this.
Cutting IT spending for cost I can understand. Cutting it for a mythical theory about C02 that is being disproved right and left is ridiculous. Just go take a look at some graphs of sunspot activity starting with the "Maunder minimum" and look at what how high we have been in comparison to the last 900 years. Solar activity in the last century was at the highest level since astronomers started tracking it. Additionally, take a look at global climate events over the last 1000 years, such as Europe's little ice age, as well as some of the warming periods. See if they don't correlate nicely. This "CO2 caused" global warming stuff has a lot more to do with some environmental special interests trying to shut down human activity than it does with actual science. The data do clearly show a warming trend in the second half of the 20th century, but they never proved any link to C02. But repeat a lie often enough and loud enough...
As with all issues involving time, it's pretty bogus, anyway, so perhaps/. should just use CE (Common Era).
Nah, I think not. AD has been good enough for everyone for 1500 years (it was devised in AD 525), and I don't see any reason to give it up just for political correctness. There's enough politically correct garbage going on now as it is without adding dates to it.
I really don't get why people are so reluctant to consider that burning 80 million barrels of oil each day does not affect the climate.
And I personally don't understand why you think an oderless, colorless gas is somehow equivalent to "the Earth putting on a sweater", to borrow the popular analogy. I'm really not sure why you are so quick to accept that a random gas is more likely to be the cause of the warming than, say, the sun, considering that solar activity and sunspot activity have a stronger correlation to temperature trends. Additionally, the sun has been in a period of exceptional activity for the last 70 years or so, which just happens to correspond to our planetary warming trends. And now, when sunspot activity suddenly drops off, we had one of the coldest winters on record in North America last year (and look to be heading for another), Arctic sea ice actually expanded during the winter, and in the Southern hemisphere, Brazil recorded one of the latest snowfalls it has ever had.
Why should we just accept your "burning oil" theory and not consider at other alternatives? Why should we simply assume that burning 80 million barrels of oil a day has more effect on our climate than solar activity, considering the sun is the biggest furnace within lightyears, and without which this planet would be a couple hundred degrees below freezing no matter what the C02 content of the air is? If the sun suddenly went out, our atmosphere could be 100 percent C02 (or methane) and wouldn't retain its heat any longer. It is a completely negligible force in comparison to what effect solar output can have on our climate. In fact, I'd more quickly believe that our own exothermic reactions from burning oil (and the ambient heat they generate) are slowly heating the atmosphere than I would believe that a gas, by itself, is somehow responsible for climate change.
Now all the tinkering is just done in labs that have access to "controlled" substances. It has the same effect.
Except that in one situation you still have freedom, and in the other you don't. Why do we have to have this "nanny state" watching out for us everywhere? Why can't the government leave us alone to build and create? Saying people can just go to a lab is not the same thing at all. It substitutes true individual freedom with institutionalism, and puts you to some degree under the control of the institution. And the odds that you can find any lab that will hire you and then just let you tinker or work on whatever project you want are exceptionally low.
There are news outlets with known liberal biases (MSNBC) and conservative biases (Fox), but for the most part, they all fall somewhere around the center and try to keep it there.
I think you are wrong on this. Most news organizations slant liberal. It's not just MSNBC, but also NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN. Four years ago during the election coverage Wolf Blitzer looked like he was freaking out and about to cry as other networks started calling Ohio for Bush. And don't forget the Dan Rather meltdown on another network.
The problem we have isn't that some news organizations are a little left, and some a little right. The problem is that almost all of our news organizations are far left (MSNBC) to left, and you have very few, like Fox News, that are actually close to the center. The only way you can call Fox News right wing is if you arbitrarily define "center" to be "the average of the positions taken by the other networks." There are plenty of liberal voices on Fox (Geraldo Rivera, Alan Colmes, Dick Morris, etc), and I never fail to hear both sides of the issue. It only appears conservative when compared to networks like NBC. Anyone watch their post presidential debate coverage? It was some of the worst spin I've ever seen from a mainstream network. They would do their "truth check" afterwords and immediately, without interruption, tick off three or four major things McCain said, and then pick one or two minor things Obama said and tack them on at the end. They didn't even bother to alternate mis-statments. They just hammered McCain hard several times in a row, and at the end would throw on a couple statements (less than they found for McCain) from Obama that weren't as big. It was pretty much "bash McCain, and throw in a little nick for Obama at the end to appear fair."
The real danger for the country is that internal polling reveals that over 90% of journalists these days hold a liberal political persuasion, and the faculty of journalism programs are almost universally leftists. And that situation won't change, because the faculty decides who gets tenure, and of course conservatives aren't likely to get it. This creates a system that continues to produce only liberal journalists. It's true no one can report the news in a completely unbiased way, but when over 90% of journalists have a liberal bias, then upwards of 90% of the bias creeping into stories is going to be liberal. I don't expect completely unbiased reporting, but with a pool that homogeneous in their thinking, whether right or left, we are in trouble.
The Bush administration, other members of the government and most rednecks feel it is important to protect our interests even when it means invading other nations, killing people and destabilizing the world in the process. (Here's the acid test to ask yourself if this is okay or not: ask yourself if you would be okay with it if some other nation did that to you? If the answer is "hell no!" then you have your answer.)
While that rant was way off topic, let me respond anyway.
How about we use a more valid analogy. If my country was full of wild eyed lunatics who kept running across the border and blowing up bystanders in other countries, as well as blowing up citizens at home for talking to the wrong person, worshiping the wrong God or wearing the wrong article of clothing, would it be OK for someone to invade us? Yes, and I'd probably welcome it. That's the correct analogy that you should have use when talking about Afghanistan.
And a valid analogy for Iraq would be this: If my country was full of lunatics who also would kill people for the wrong beliefs, if my country was governed by a brutal dictator who put protesters through plastic shredders, launched unprovoked wars on neighbors Canada and Mexico and used chemical weapons of mass destruction on them (this equates to Iraq attacking Iran and Kuwait), and if that dictator further used chemical weapons in an attempt to wipe out all the black people and the Amish (equatable to Saddam's genocidal reprisals against Kurds, an ethnic group, and Shiites, a religious group), and if that dictator appeared to have a continuing desire to get more WMDs and never showed anyone he destroyed the ones he had, would it be ok for someone to invade us? Umm... yes! And again, I'd be out welcoming it!!
While I don't know your particular political orientation, I can guess that you are probably liberal. So here's a question for you to try out: why was it wrong for Bush to go into Iraq, but right for liberal President Bill Clinton to go invade Bosnia and Kosovo? If you claim we have no valid security interest in Iraq (I think everyone knows we had one in Afghanistan), than we sure as heck didn't have one in Kosovo! That was nothing but a pure nation building/police exercise which, if it was handled at all, should have been handled by the Europeans, since it was at best a minor regional squabble in their backyard and didn't involve either attacks on us (Afghanistan) or repeated invasion of other countries and allies (Iraq). But liberals never complained about that. They only complain about Bush and Iraq because it is the fashionable thing to do, and he's in the wrong party. Try using your brain for a bit, and make sure you use some more valid analogies in the future.
I would disagree with the thread's premise that we've avoided the issues of 2000 and 2004. These issues are still going on, this time in Minnesota. Senator Norm Coleman was ahead of Al Franken by over 700 votes when all the votes were counted on the 4th, and EVERY DAY his lead is getting eroded, and the recount hasn't even started yet. Somehow Minnesota precincts keep finding "missed ballots" for Franken, and the current lead has now shrunk to 288 votes. Every single "lost vote" found so far has gone to Franken, and not one to Coleman. That is exceedingly suspicious, especially given the fact that they use optical scanners in that state, and bad ballots are instantly rejected when the voter tries to cast them, giving the voter a chance to do a new one correctly. This isn't hanging chad Florida, but it is very likely fraud.
Additionally, you have widespread reports of people getting to vote without being asked to show any identification, you have black panthers with nightsticks patrolling Philedelphia polling places... voting really is an absolute joke these days.
I do believe Obama actually won the presidential election based on the huge margins, but most races are much closer than that, and it's really impossible to have any confidence in any close races anymore. And with black panthers in the polling places, I worry that eventually we won't even be able to trust the big wins either.
The topic said to discuss education, and voting for either one of the candidates is a vote for an unconstitutional expansion of powers in this area. The federal government should have absolutely nothing to do with education. It is not an enumerated power given to the government by the constitution, and therefore, according to the 10th amendment, is reserved for the states and the people.
Federal aid to education should be abolished immediately, and the states should be allowed to structure their systems as they see fit. And to those who would argue otherwise, let me state this: we spend more money per student on education than ANY other nation, yet our K-12 systems do poorly. So besides the fact that this system isn't even constitutional, it is also a bad system that doesn't work anyway, no matter how much money the federal government throws at it. There should be no reason at all not to dismantle the federal system and let the states have a crack at it.
So what? Windows XP also outperforms Windows Vista. Windows 7 will ALSO likely outperform Windows Vista. Just about EVERYTHING outperforms Windows Vista.
What really would have made this news is if Ubuntu had performed worse than Windows Vista.
From reading the article, it didn't sound like they could even do upgrades, even if they wanted to (although I suppose they probably could salvage the mirror and build a new system around it). That actually surprises me a bit, since they knew this would be a long running mission and it is within range to be worked on. I know these days as a computer engineer, my bosses are always telling me to design for the future with upgrades in mind, but maybe that wasn't as big a priority back then (perhaps because each doubling of computer power is so much more massive now, and makes more of a difference than it did back then).
I wish I had mod points. There is simply no way to arrive at any meaningful number based on what we know right now (which is very little). Until we can accurately understand how life even began HERE, there is no way to know how common or uncommon this occurrence is across the galaxy.
I'm actually a creationist, so my personal view is that we didn't evolve. That said, if we say for the sake of argument that life here evolved, your statement doesn't quite work. Knowing how it evolved here isn't necessarily the key to determining how common an occurrence this is. What would be more helpful is know how many places like here exist in the galaxy. Obviously we have life here, but not on any other rocky bodies in the Solar System like Mars or Venus, so if we did evolve, it is likely that these conditions are necessary. And that's why the most important thing is to find out how many class M planets there are if we want to make guesses....
The last few years have been pretty clear to me that democracy doesn't produce government that works in the people's best interest.
I think that has much more to do with the fact that people get the government they deserve, rather than failings in democracy per se. Most Americans no longer know, or have any desire to know, economics, civics, how their government works, or even their own history. They then run out and vote like the uneducated idiots they are, voting for whoever "looks most presedential" or "has promised them x" (pretty much whoever schmoozes best or promises most). Americans have been lazy and lately have not placed much priority on these basic educational building blocks, and are now getting the government they deserve. We, as Americans, are largely idiots en masse, so is it any wonder our leaders are all idiots en masse as well? One could argue that our democracy is working exactly as it should be, as it is supposed to be a representative form of government, and it is uncomfortably representative at the moment. In America, when our government starts to suck, we should really turn inward and examine ourselves, because our government is a pretty good mirror reflecting our own failings as individuals.
And as for the whole application of force thing, anarchy will be government by force. Whoever is strongest will come along and either kill you or control you. To use the linux analogy, you will be like a process that voluntarilly used the nice command on itself, and is trying to get along and give other processes their fair share priority. And other not so nice processes will take the CPU, and will choose not to let you run again.
This is why the nice command does nothing in modern unix OS's: if you count on the processes to work together and get organized, some greedy process will come along and spoil it for everyone. Therefore, we now have a scheduler that ignores niceness and uses force to give every process its basic rights.
Force trying to take away rights is always with us. If you don't overcome it with a stronger force that gives rights, you will become its slave.
Especially true if you put some investor guy like George Soros at the helm.
Look, let's be clear about these kind of men (Warren Buffett, George Soros, etc). They are very good at making money. I applaud them for that, and say good for them, in general.
But to say they are some kind of wise, beneficial, impartial observers is ridiculous. They'll use the government to make a buck in a heartbeat. Look at Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett is practically getting sweatheart deals from the Democrats even now. He constantly endorses democrats and gives them huge scads of money to get elected. They, in return, fight to keep things like the estate tax alive, and estate tax insurance and planning is a huge part of Warren Buffett's company business.
And perhaps even worse is this example. A few weeks ago 90% of the American people cried out to their representatives to not vote in a massive 700 billion dollar debt/bailout package. Buffett, however, endorsed it and pushed democrats and other government leaders very hard the opposite way (against the American people), and then right before it went through bought up billions of dollars in Goldman Sachs, an investmant bank that, if the bailout passed, would then get billions of dollars from the government through the bailout package. And now the Democrats have suggested more bailouts, more stimulus packages and wealth redistributions, and Buffet is pouring even more money into their coffers. And who will be well positioned to benefit from these redistributions and other policies? That's right, Warren Buffett and the other liberal billionaire investors.
Of course, I can hear some of you saying, "Well, it's at best just a wash for him, because his taxes will go up under the Obama plan to tax the rich." Actually, they probably won't, and I doubt he's worried about it. Guess who really gets hurt by these "tax increases for the rich?" It actually isn't Buffett. Buffett's wealth is tied up in stock, which grows without being taxed (it only gets taxed if he cashes out, in which case he pays capital gains tax). His actual income, especially given his thriftiness (which is a commendable trait), isn't all that massive, believe it or not. And this isn't a tax on wealth, so his stocks are safe. No, this is a tax on income, and the people who get whacked the most with that are small businesses and entreprenuers who are just getting started, because they don't tend to have massive stock holdings that appreciate over time like Buffett or Berkshire. Instead, they are growing year to year based on the profits they make on what they produce, which come in as, you guessed it, income. And income, not wealth and assets, are what the democrats are pushing to tax.
So yeah, I'm exceedingly opposed to letting anyone like Buffett or Soros run anything in the government. They already manipulate it now to their benefit and get rich off tax and bailout bills, so the last thing they need is to be made a "benevolent dictator".
Although Dark Market was thought to have been administered by a criminal going by the name Master Splyntr, German Public Radio reported on Monday that the FBI had been running a sting operation on the site since late 2006, and that Master Splyntr was actually an FBI agent named J. Keith Mularski."
I'm surprised anyone trusted him. Had I been a scammer, I would have only done business with Shredder or Krang. Everyone knows Master Splynter is one of the good guys! With this guy, I'd have been afraid four mutant turtles would show up and club me themselves!
The world is a complicated place, you know. It is entirely possible that both violent protesters and overzealous police exist. Both you and the OP make vast oversimplifications.
Are you not aware that protest is a protected form of speech that is essential to democracy?
And are you not aware that only peaceful protest is a constitutional right essential to democracy? Allow me to quote the first amendment (emphasis mine).
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I was very clear in my post that I was talking about violent rioters, not saying people shouldn't be allowed to assemble peacefully. Only peaceful protest is essential to democracy, and in fact, it can even be extended to say that only peaceful protest is compatible with democracy. Violent protest (like what this was in Minneapolis) is clearly anti-democratic, because it is all about suppressing the democratic rights of others.
We could actually make a game out of this. I can spot several different things in the constitution the violent rioters were trampling on. How many more can others add? So far my list includes at least two from the first amendment they supposedly support: the right to peacefully assemble and the right to free speech, because they attacked other protesters they didn't agree with, as well as delegates who were peacefully assembling with views different than theirs. Clearly, while peaceful protests benefit democracy and add to our rights, violent "protests" take away everyone's rights.
Mods: shame on you.
Shame on you for not grasping the difference between a peaceful protest and an anarchic riot, and somehow equating the two.
It's not that parents aren't involved... It's not that teachers don't get paid enough... It's not the burden of standardized tests. It's that our nation's schools are run by a bunch of bozos who pay teachers on the basis of seniority instead of performance, bozos who disparage being elite academically, but celebrate athletic elitism, and frankly that among the ranks of our teachers are some of the dumbest people in our society.
That's also why I don't like teachers unions. After all, if teachers are competent, they aren't going to get fired. There are few enough of them as it is. So why do they need a union?
I am a salaried worker at a union plant, and I get very sad sometimes seeing what the seniority system does to people. Often the people with the most talent have very small influence, and they won't get more until 20 years from now whenever the guys in front of them retire. Rewarding people for time in the job rather than what they accomplish in the job is always a bad idea (though I can see why plants, at least, might need unions to prevent some forms of abuses that have occurred in the past).
Countries like the USA, you mean? Seriously, did you ever try to protest at an RNC, for instance? I did, and I can tell you that it sure makes you wonder exactly which nation you're in, anyway.
Right, and those of us from Minnesota know ALL ABOUT your protests at the RNC. Let's see, at this year's RNC in Minneapolis we had mass rioting, bricks thrown through windows of business and destruction of property, an attempted bus-jacking, fires, attacking of delegates from multiple states, throwing feces and urine on delegates, attacking police officers and a vast number of other crimes.
In the pre-RNC raid by the Ramsey County Sherriff's department of the "RNC Welcoming Committee" apartments, police found molotov cocktails, nail bombs, gasoline tanks and other explosives, buckets of urine and all variety of other ordnance. Despite these raids, numerous people were still injured by these people during the riots. Even the liberal mayor of St. Paul applauded the actions of law enforcement and the excellent job they did it keeping the carnage from getting worse.
So, the only thing that makes me wonder what country I'm in is that fact that depraved idiots like you are running around lose. People like you are lower than low, defending these tactics and smearing the law enforcement officers. These were not "peace protesters". These were terrorists and anarchists by anyone's definition, and no quarter should be given to them. And frankly, no quarter will be given to you either. You, luckily for you, are given the right of free speech by the rest of us true American citizens, but I will not stand by and let you spew your garbage and hate without reminding others what really happened in Minneapolis at the RNC. People like you are truly evil and immensely twisted and warped if you can defend any of the violent activities the went on during the "protests" (read: riots). And if you were a participant, you deserve to be thrown in jail, or better yet, exiled to a place like Pakistan, Iran, or Syria. Your kind have no place in a free and peaceful democracy.
It's too bad these positions will, most definitely, be filled by military personnel.
That is a shame. However, it's not the saddest part of this story. The saddest part of this story is the boneheaded way the Air Force fills positions... it will probably make this a command not worth working in, and not as effective as it could be. The real problem is that the Air Force, and other branches of the military, tend to treat people as interchangeable, identical cogs, rather than individuals with aptitudes, skills, and backgrounds that vary widely.
Backstory: I actually did try to apply for this command. My background is this: I have two bachelor's degrees, one in computer science, and one in computer engineering, both with distinction. During college, I specialized in information security and showed a great deal of aptitude for it. I was offered jobs by both the NSA and CIA, and was OKed for the highest level of clearance.
So I hear about this thing with the Air Force, and I thought, "Man, that sounds interesting, and I know I can do it." So I talked to one of the recruiters online and told him I'd be happy to serve my country and be happy to join the Air Force, but I told him I had some unique abilities I could give them and asked him if I could enlist into that command.
And he told me no. He told me I would be placed according to the needs of the Air Force, basically wherever they felt like it. They would not take any look at my background at all. The likelihood that I would be just a laborer loading missiles (I use missile loading as an example) onto a jet was higher than me being put in the Cyber Command, despite my advanced background. And it was also just as likely that they would grab some random missile loader and stick him in the command, assuming they can "train him into it" just like they train someone to operate a radio.
So needless to say, I passed on that opportunity. If our country were being attacked and missile loaders were the thing we most needed, I would be happy to serve, so don't get me wrong. But given how things are today, I'm not going to join the Air Force and let them squander my skills. That's not good for either me or them, because they don't get all of my skilled potential, and I don't get to contribute everything I can. So they can go find some other grunt to load missiles, and someday, if they actually acknowledge that some people are better suited for a job than others, I'll be around. But if they insist on being blind to the differences between individuals and wasting much of the talent in their organization, then I won't ever serve with them (except perhaps in critical wartime).
And eight years of being reminded of that sad fact can take a toll on a man's soul that can't be quantified.
While I don't necessarily share every sentiment in the parent's post, it does make a good point: We have all known for eight years now that Florida was the closest big state in 2000, and had that number of votes switched, we would have had President Gore. Similarly, we all knew that in 2004 Ohio was the close state and we knew how many people would need to switch there. How are these results in any way surprising, and why is this news? As the parent said, the media has been reminding us of this for eight years... and if the media figured it out, advanced programming is not required. I could have (and did at the time) the math manually on a hand calculator and was done in less than a minute.
So what's the alternative now for finding good groups to talk about OS's, security, code, etc? One of the great things about usenet was that everything was centralized in a way... you could go to usenet and find the topic you were interested in. These days, you just have crappy forums scattered about the web, and it's hard to find a good spot for a discussion on any topic (especially since most forums are full of ads and hard to read layouts, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
That's definitely not the only way. We have a 3 trillion dollar budget, and to say defense is the only place to cut money in a budget that big is laughable.
Personally, I would like to see us first cut spending by stopping all these ridiculous bailouts. It's been one right after another, to the point where our national deficit next year will likely be 1 TRILLION DOLLARS this year. All these companies and individuals weren't socializing their profits a couple years ago when they were raking in money hand over fist, so why should we socialize their losses?
Next we could start cutting social programs. Welfare could be cut back (rather than increased like the Democratic congress just did), Medicare should be reformed and scaled back, and Social Security should be restructured in a way that will phase it out. The ballooning costs of those programs will absolutely destroy our budget within a decade or two, and that's assuming we continue to have good economic growth. We should be working to phase them out now while we still have time to do it gradually, because the alternative is a massive, sudden slashing of benefits.
After those, you could start whacking a lot of the unconstitutional things the feds are involved with, such as the department of education. We already spend more money per capita on our students than anyone else, with not very good results. However, some states have been having success, so lets just turn the entire job back over to the states and let them experiment and try 50 different systems. And may the best one win and be adopted.
Following this, you could start whacking subsidies that we hand out to everything that moves. The farmers have had subsidies for almost 30 years, so it's time for them to find a way to become profitable or get out. And all the "green" subsidies should go away too. Market pressures will force them to become cost efficient, or they will be knocked out in favor of better technologies. Government subsidies don't provide incentives to drive out inefficiencies.
Next, let's start hammering away at pork barrel earmarks. Barack Obama says they "only" amount to 18 billion, but so what? Let's clean that up. When Minnesota's I-35 bridge collapsed last year, they asked the congress for an emergency 255 million for rebuilding, and the congress responded by passing the massive 8+ billion dollar Minnesota bridge repair bill. Minnesota only wanted 255 million, and they packed it with pork for a butterfly garden in North Dakota, a sports stadium somewhere else and all kinds of other junk. And of course you get garbage like the bridge to nowhere coming out of these earmarks.
Follow this up by cuts to foreign aid. Should we really be giving tons of money away when we can't even keep our government in the black at home? That's a recipe for disaster. Plus we keep giving money to failed terrorist states/entities, like the Palestinians, numerous African and Middle Eastern nations and Pakistan.
And for everything else in the budget, cut it by 10% but demand they provide the same level of service. I GUARANTEE you that could be done. In the private sector, companies are always having to drive out costs to remain competitive and profitable, especially in down times like this when their revenues drop. Why do we buy the line all these government workers give us when they say, "We can't have a budget cut! We'll have to close down! Reduce services!" Bull. The private sector goes through revenue reduction all the time. The problem we have is that government NEVER has a recession and NEVER takes a budget cut like all the rest of is. This means waste and inefficiencies aren't forced out of the system. After decades of nothing but budget increases, there has to be at least 10% waste in every single agency, and they will need a good sharp pay cut to have the incentive to get it under control.
That would be
ROFL!! Boy are YOU ever the dupe. The majority of all the nations represented in the security council are tyrannies of one form or another. Most of the nations in Asia, most of the nations in Africa, and most of the nations in South America are either dictatorships or oligarchies, and that's just for starters. In the middle east everyone but Israel (and now Iraq) is, and in Europe you still find some undemocratic nations as well (Serbia, Bulgaria, Russia, etc). So the body you claim is "democratic" and "representative of world opinion" is actually a body largely controlled by the small subset of the world population that are dictators, and is only representative of their interests.
At least in the security council a larger proportion of the permanent council members are democratic regimes. Yes, you have China and Russia, but at least you have some veto wielding democracies in the mix to strike down all the tyranny friendly policies that originate in the rest of the UN. One of the reasons America as a nation is great is that all of our states are democracies, and they joined to form a regional democratic government that IS representative of us. In the farce that is the UN that is not the case, and it turns into a massively ineffectual body that tends to reward corruption and legitimize dictators.
I think if we learn anything from the UN, it is that a government made up of anything other than democratic states is worthless, and will fail completely.
Yeah, all that global warming stuff that we are all still so concerned about, when the latest evidence says it isn't happening. Like NASA having to retract all their numbers and their claim that this October was the warmest on record (it was actually the 70th warmest, or 44th coolest). Or NASA also having to admit that they screwed up on the whole 1998 was the warmest year on record thing, and having to retract that as well. The warmest year would be 1934. Or the fact that last year was an exceptionally cold winter in North America, Brazil had its latest snowfall ever, Tibet had it's worst blizzard on record, and North America appears to be starting another year of unusually cold weather. And ice in the arctic expanded last winter, and the rate of refreezing this winter is happening at a record pace.
It's time to face facts. The warming trend we had had nothing to do with CO2. It correlates very nicely with solar activity, which over the last 70 years was at an exceptional level. Now we have sunspot activity dropping off/becoming non-existent, and solar activity dropping. And our weather from the Northern hemisphere to the Southern hemisphere is suddenly following suit and getting colder. Many scientists are now predicting 30 years of a global cooling trend because of this.
Cutting IT spending for cost I can understand. Cutting it for a mythical theory about C02 that is being disproved right and left is ridiculous. Just go take a look at some graphs of sunspot activity starting with the "Maunder minimum" and look at what how high we have been in comparison to the last 900 years. Solar activity in the last century was at the highest level since astronomers started tracking it. Additionally, take a look at global climate events over the last 1000 years, such as Europe's little ice age, as well as some of the warming periods. See if they don't correlate nicely. This "CO2 caused" global warming stuff has a lot more to do with some environmental special interests trying to shut down human activity than it does with actual science. The data do clearly show a warming trend in the second half of the 20th century, but they never proved any link to C02. But repeat a lie often enough and loud enough...
Nah, I think not. AD has been good enough for everyone for 1500 years (it was devised in AD 525), and I don't see any reason to give it up just for political correctness. There's enough politically correct garbage going on now as it is without adding dates to it.
And I personally don't understand why you think an oderless, colorless gas is somehow equivalent to "the Earth putting on a sweater", to borrow the popular analogy. I'm really not sure why you are so quick to accept that a random gas is more likely to be the cause of the warming than, say, the sun, considering that solar activity and sunspot activity have a stronger correlation to temperature trends. Additionally, the sun has been in a period of exceptional activity for the last 70 years or so, which just happens to correspond to our planetary warming trends. And now, when sunspot activity suddenly drops off, we had one of the coldest winters on record in North America last year (and look to be heading for another), Arctic sea ice actually expanded during the winter, and in the Southern hemisphere, Brazil recorded one of the latest snowfalls it has ever had.
Why should we just accept your "burning oil" theory and not consider at other alternatives? Why should we simply assume that burning 80 million barrels of oil a day has more effect on our climate than solar activity, considering the sun is the biggest furnace within lightyears, and without which this planet would be a couple hundred degrees below freezing no matter what the C02 content of the air is? If the sun suddenly went out, our atmosphere could be 100 percent C02 (or methane) and wouldn't retain its heat any longer. It is a completely negligible force in comparison to what effect solar output can have on our climate. In fact, I'd more quickly believe that our own exothermic reactions from burning oil (and the ambient heat they generate) are slowly heating the atmosphere than I would believe that a gas, by itself, is somehow responsible for climate change.
Except that in one situation you still have freedom, and in the other you don't. Why do we have to have this "nanny state" watching out for us everywhere? Why can't the government leave us alone to build and create? Saying people can just go to a lab is not the same thing at all. It substitutes true individual freedom with institutionalism, and puts you to some degree under the control of the institution. And the odds that you can find any lab that will hire you and then just let you tinker or work on whatever project you want are exceptionally low.
I think you are wrong on this. Most news organizations slant liberal. It's not just MSNBC, but also NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN. Four years ago during the election coverage Wolf Blitzer looked like he was freaking out and about to cry as other networks started calling Ohio for Bush. And don't forget the Dan Rather meltdown on another network.
The problem we have isn't that some news organizations are a little left, and some a little right. The problem is that almost all of our news organizations are far left (MSNBC) to left, and you have very few, like Fox News, that are actually close to the center. The only way you can call Fox News right wing is if you arbitrarily define "center" to be "the average of the positions taken by the other networks." There are plenty of liberal voices on Fox (Geraldo Rivera, Alan Colmes, Dick Morris, etc), and I never fail to hear both sides of the issue. It only appears conservative when compared to networks like NBC. Anyone watch their post presidential debate coverage? It was some of the worst spin I've ever seen from a mainstream network. They would do their "truth check" afterwords and immediately, without interruption, tick off three or four major things McCain said, and then pick one or two minor things Obama said and tack them on at the end. They didn't even bother to alternate mis-statments. They just hammered McCain hard several times in a row, and at the end would throw on a couple statements (less than they found for McCain) from Obama that weren't as big. It was pretty much "bash McCain, and throw in a little nick for Obama at the end to appear fair."
The real danger for the country is that internal polling reveals that over 90% of journalists these days hold a liberal political persuasion, and the faculty of journalism programs are almost universally leftists. And that situation won't change, because the faculty decides who gets tenure, and of course conservatives aren't likely to get it. This creates a system that continues to produce only liberal journalists. It's true no one can report the news in a completely unbiased way, but when over 90% of journalists have a liberal bias, then upwards of 90% of the bias creeping into stories is going to be liberal. I don't expect completely unbiased reporting, but with a pool that homogeneous in their thinking, whether right or left, we are in trouble.
While that rant was way off topic, let me respond anyway.
How about we use a more valid analogy. If my country was full of wild eyed lunatics who kept running across the border and blowing up bystanders in other countries, as well as blowing up citizens at home for talking to the wrong person, worshiping the wrong God or wearing the wrong article of clothing, would it be OK for someone to invade us? Yes, and I'd probably welcome it. That's the correct analogy that you should have use when talking about Afghanistan.
And a valid analogy for Iraq would be this: If my country was full of lunatics who also would kill people for the wrong beliefs, if my country was governed by a brutal dictator who put protesters through plastic shredders, launched unprovoked wars on neighbors Canada and Mexico and used chemical weapons of mass destruction on them (this equates to Iraq attacking Iran and Kuwait), and if that dictator further used chemical weapons in an attempt to wipe out all the black people and the Amish (equatable to Saddam's genocidal reprisals against Kurds, an ethnic group, and Shiites, a religious group), and if that dictator appeared to have a continuing desire to get more WMDs and never showed anyone he destroyed the ones he had, would it be ok for someone to invade us? Umm... yes! And again, I'd be out welcoming it!!
While I don't know your particular political orientation, I can guess that you are probably liberal. So here's a question for you to try out: why was it wrong for Bush to go into Iraq, but right for liberal President Bill Clinton to go invade Bosnia and Kosovo? If you claim we have no valid security interest in Iraq (I think everyone knows we had one in Afghanistan), than we sure as heck didn't have one in Kosovo! That was nothing but a pure nation building/police exercise which, if it was handled at all, should have been handled by the Europeans, since it was at best a minor regional squabble in their backyard and didn't involve either attacks on us (Afghanistan) or repeated invasion of other countries and allies (Iraq). But liberals never complained about that. They only complain about Bush and Iraq because it is the fashionable thing to do, and he's in the wrong party. Try using your brain for a bit, and make sure you use some more valid analogies in the future.
I would disagree with the thread's premise that we've avoided the issues of 2000 and 2004. These issues are still going on, this time in Minnesota. Senator Norm Coleman was ahead of Al Franken by over 700 votes when all the votes were counted on the 4th, and EVERY DAY his lead is getting eroded, and the recount hasn't even started yet. Somehow Minnesota precincts keep finding "missed ballots" for Franken, and the current lead has now shrunk to 288 votes. Every single "lost vote" found so far has gone to Franken, and not one to Coleman. That is exceedingly suspicious, especially given the fact that they use optical scanners in that state, and bad ballots are instantly rejected when the voter tries to cast them, giving the voter a chance to do a new one correctly. This isn't hanging chad Florida, but it is very likely fraud.
Additionally, you have widespread reports of people getting to vote without being asked to show any identification, you have black panthers with nightsticks patrolling Philedelphia polling places... voting really is an absolute joke these days.
I do believe Obama actually won the presidential election based on the huge margins, but most races are much closer than that, and it's really impossible to have any confidence in any close races anymore. And with black panthers in the polling places, I worry that eventually we won't even be able to trust the big wins either.
The topic said to discuss education, and voting for either one of the candidates is a vote for an unconstitutional expansion of powers in this area. The federal government should have absolutely nothing to do with education. It is not an enumerated power given to the government by the constitution, and therefore, according to the 10th amendment, is reserved for the states and the people.
Federal aid to education should be abolished immediately, and the states should be allowed to structure their systems as they see fit. And to those who would argue otherwise, let me state this: we spend more money per student on education than ANY other nation, yet our K-12 systems do poorly. So besides the fact that this system isn't even constitutional, it is also a bad system that doesn't work anyway, no matter how much money the federal government throws at it. There should be no reason at all not to dismantle the federal system and let the states have a crack at it.
So what? Windows XP also outperforms Windows Vista. Windows 7 will ALSO likely outperform Windows Vista. Just about EVERYTHING outperforms Windows Vista.
What really would have made this news is if Ubuntu had performed worse than Windows Vista.
From reading the article, it didn't sound like they could even do upgrades, even if they wanted to (although I suppose they probably could salvage the mirror and build a new system around it). That actually surprises me a bit, since they knew this would be a long running mission and it is within range to be worked on. I know these days as a computer engineer, my bosses are always telling me to design for the future with upgrades in mind, but maybe that wasn't as big a priority back then (perhaps because each doubling of computer power is so much more massive now, and makes more of a difference than it did back then).
I'm actually a creationist, so my personal view is that we didn't evolve. That said, if we say for the sake of argument that life here evolved, your statement doesn't quite work. Knowing how it evolved here isn't necessarily the key to determining how common an occurrence this is. What would be more helpful is know how many places like here exist in the galaxy. Obviously we have life here, but not on any other rocky bodies in the Solar System like Mars or Venus, so if we did evolve, it is likely that these conditions are necessary. And that's why the most important thing is to find out how many class M planets there are if we want to make guesses....
I think that has much more to do with the fact that people get the government they deserve, rather than failings in democracy per se. Most Americans no longer know, or have any desire to know, economics, civics, how their government works, or even their own history. They then run out and vote like the uneducated idiots they are, voting for whoever "looks most presedential" or "has promised them x" (pretty much whoever schmoozes best or promises most). Americans have been lazy and lately have not placed much priority on these basic educational building blocks, and are now getting the government they deserve. We, as Americans, are largely idiots en masse, so is it any wonder our leaders are all idiots en masse as well? One could argue that our democracy is working exactly as it should be, as it is supposed to be a representative form of government, and it is uncomfortably representative at the moment. In America, when our government starts to suck, we should really turn inward and examine ourselves, because our government is a pretty good mirror reflecting our own failings as individuals.
And as for the whole application of force thing, anarchy will be government by force. Whoever is strongest will come along and either kill you or control you. To use the linux analogy, you will be like a process that voluntarilly used the nice command on itself, and is trying to get along and give other processes their fair share priority. And other not so nice processes will take the CPU, and will choose not to let you run again.
This is why the nice command does nothing in modern unix OS's: if you count on the processes to work together and get organized, some greedy process will come along and spoil it for everyone. Therefore, we now have a scheduler that ignores niceness and uses force to give every process its basic rights.
Force trying to take away rights is always with us. If you don't overcome it with a stronger force that gives rights, you will become its slave.
Especially true if you put some investor guy like George Soros at the helm.
Look, let's be clear about these kind of men (Warren Buffett, George Soros, etc). They are very good at making money. I applaud them for that, and say good for them, in general.
But to say they are some kind of wise, beneficial, impartial observers is ridiculous. They'll use the government to make a buck in a heartbeat. Look at Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett is practically getting sweatheart deals from the Democrats even now. He constantly endorses democrats and gives them huge scads of money to get elected. They, in return, fight to keep things like the estate tax alive, and estate tax insurance and planning is a huge part of Warren Buffett's company business.
And perhaps even worse is this example. A few weeks ago 90% of the American people cried out to their representatives to not vote in a massive 700 billion dollar debt/bailout package. Buffett, however, endorsed it and pushed democrats and other government leaders very hard the opposite way (against the American people), and then right before it went through bought up billions of dollars in Goldman Sachs, an investmant bank that, if the bailout passed, would then get billions of dollars from the government through the bailout package. And now the Democrats have suggested more bailouts, more stimulus packages and wealth redistributions, and Buffet is pouring even more money into their coffers. And who will be well positioned to benefit from these redistributions and other policies? That's right, Warren Buffett and the other liberal billionaire investors.
Of course, I can hear some of you saying, "Well, it's at best just a wash for him, because his taxes will go up under the Obama plan to tax the rich." Actually, they probably won't, and I doubt he's worried about it. Guess who really gets hurt by these "tax increases for the rich?" It actually isn't Buffett. Buffett's wealth is tied up in stock, which grows without being taxed (it only gets taxed if he cashes out, in which case he pays capital gains tax). His actual income, especially given his thriftiness (which is a commendable trait), isn't all that massive, believe it or not. And this isn't a tax on wealth, so his stocks are safe. No, this is a tax on income, and the people who get whacked the most with that are small businesses and entreprenuers who are just getting started, because they don't tend to have massive stock holdings that appreciate over time like Buffett or Berkshire. Instead, they are growing year to year based on the profits they make on what they produce, which come in as, you guessed it, income. And income, not wealth and assets, are what the democrats are pushing to tax.
So yeah, I'm exceedingly opposed to letting anyone like Buffett or Soros run anything in the government. They already manipulate it now to their benefit and get rich off tax and bailout bills, so the last thing they need is to be made a "benevolent dictator".
I'm surprised anyone trusted him. Had I been a scammer, I would have only done business with Shredder or Krang. Everyone knows Master Splynter is one of the good guys! With this guy, I'd have been afraid four mutant turtles would show up and club me themselves!
And are you not aware that only peaceful protest is a constitutional right essential to democracy? Allow me to quote the first amendment (emphasis mine).
I was very clear in my post that I was talking about violent rioters, not saying people shouldn't be allowed to assemble peacefully. Only peaceful protest is essential to democracy, and in fact, it can even be extended to say that only peaceful protest is compatible with democracy. Violent protest (like what this was in Minneapolis) is clearly anti-democratic, because it is all about suppressing the democratic rights of others.
We could actually make a game out of this. I can spot several different things in the constitution the violent rioters were trampling on. How many more can others add? So far my list includes at least two from the first amendment they supposedly support: the right to peacefully assemble and the right to free speech, because they attacked other protesters they didn't agree with, as well as delegates who were peacefully assembling with views different than theirs. Clearly, while peaceful protests benefit democracy and add to our rights, violent "protests" take away everyone's rights.
Shame on you for not grasping the difference between a peaceful protest and an anarchic riot, and somehow equating the two.
Three vendors? You must be new here; everyone else on this board only sees two! :D
That's also why I don't like teachers unions. After all, if teachers are competent, they aren't going to get fired. There are few enough of them as it is. So why do they need a union?
I am a salaried worker at a union plant, and I get very sad sometimes seeing what the seniority system does to people. Often the people with the most talent have very small influence, and they won't get more until 20 years from now whenever the guys in front of them retire. Rewarding people for time in the job rather than what they accomplish in the job is always a bad idea (though I can see why plants, at least, might need unions to prevent some forms of abuses that have occurred in the past).
Right, and those of us from Minnesota know ALL ABOUT your protests at the RNC. Let's see, at this year's RNC in Minneapolis we had mass rioting, bricks thrown through windows of business and destruction of property, an attempted bus-jacking, fires, attacking of delegates from multiple states, throwing feces and urine on delegates, attacking police officers and a vast number of other crimes.
In the pre-RNC raid by the Ramsey County Sherriff's department of the "RNC Welcoming Committee" apartments, police found molotov cocktails, nail bombs, gasoline tanks and other explosives, buckets of urine and all variety of other ordnance. Despite these raids, numerous people were still injured by these people during the riots. Even the liberal mayor of St. Paul applauded the actions of law enforcement and the excellent job they did it keeping the carnage from getting worse.
So, the only thing that makes me wonder what country I'm in is that fact that depraved idiots like you are running around lose. People like you are lower than low, defending these tactics and smearing the law enforcement officers. These were not "peace protesters". These were terrorists and anarchists by anyone's definition, and no quarter should be given to them. And frankly, no quarter will be given to you either. You, luckily for you, are given the right of free speech by the rest of us true American citizens, but I will not stand by and let you spew your garbage and hate without reminding others what really happened in Minneapolis at the RNC. People like you are truly evil and immensely twisted and warped if you can defend any of the violent activities the went on during the "protests" (read: riots). And if you were a participant, you deserve to be thrown in jail, or better yet, exiled to a place like Pakistan, Iran, or Syria. Your kind have no place in a free and peaceful democracy.
That is a shame. However, it's not the saddest part of this story. The saddest part of this story is the boneheaded way the Air Force fills positions... it will probably make this a command not worth working in, and not as effective as it could be. The real problem is that the Air Force, and other branches of the military, tend to treat people as interchangeable, identical cogs, rather than individuals with aptitudes, skills, and backgrounds that vary widely.
Backstory: I actually did try to apply for this command. My background is this: I have two bachelor's degrees, one in computer science, and one in computer engineering, both with distinction. During college, I specialized in information security and showed a great deal of aptitude for it. I was offered jobs by both the NSA and CIA, and was OKed for the highest level of clearance.
So I hear about this thing with the Air Force, and I thought, "Man, that sounds interesting, and I know I can do it." So I talked to one of the recruiters online and told him I'd be happy to serve my country and be happy to join the Air Force, but I told him I had some unique abilities I could give them and asked him if I could enlist into that command.
And he told me no. He told me I would be placed according to the needs of the Air Force, basically wherever they felt like it. They would not take any look at my background at all. The likelihood that I would be just a laborer loading missiles (I use missile loading as an example) onto a jet was higher than me being put in the Cyber Command, despite my advanced background. And it was also just as likely that they would grab some random missile loader and stick him in the command, assuming they can "train him into it" just like they train someone to operate a radio.
So needless to say, I passed on that opportunity. If our country were being attacked and missile loaders were the thing we most needed, I would be happy to serve, so don't get me wrong. But given how things are today, I'm not going to join the Air Force and let them squander my skills. That's not good for either me or them, because they don't get all of my skilled potential, and I don't get to contribute everything I can. So they can go find some other grunt to load missiles, and someday, if they actually acknowledge that some people are better suited for a job than others, I'll be around. But if they insist on being blind to the differences between individuals and wasting much of the talent in their organization, then I won't ever serve with them (except perhaps in critical wartime).
So did anyone find the non-fakes? ROFL, post link please if you did.
While I don't necessarily share every sentiment in the parent's post, it does make a good point: We have all known for eight years now that Florida was the closest big state in 2000, and had that number of votes switched, we would have had President Gore. Similarly, we all knew that in 2004 Ohio was the close state and we knew how many people would need to switch there. How are these results in any way surprising, and why is this news? As the parent said, the media has been reminding us of this for eight years... and if the media figured it out, advanced programming is not required. I could have (and did at the time) the math manually on a hand calculator and was done in less than a minute.
Is Solaris one of those Unix OS's that has the "lp0 on fire" error still in its code, just in case it is necessary?
I was thinking about trying it out, but I demand five star safety ratings in all of my operating systems. Fire alarms are a must of course :).
So what's the alternative now for finding good groups to talk about OS's, security, code, etc? One of the great things about usenet was that everything was centralized in a way... you could go to usenet and find the topic you were interested in. These days, you just have crappy forums scattered about the web, and it's hard to find a good spot for a discussion on any topic (especially since most forums are full of ads and hard to read layouts, etc).