I know intelligent, calm, educated people these days who would not blink or care if a meteor took out the heart of the US. They don't even consider you allies anymore, and easily imagine a day soon when you might be active enemies.
Allowing governments like that any control over the Internet on the international scale would be a disaster for free speech and a victory for dictators and autocrats that want complete control.
Amen, the UN is the dictators' frat house that puts such bastions of freedom as Syria, Libya and the Sudan on their human rights committee. The place that bred the Oil for Food scandal, probably the greatest single fraud ever perpetrated on the poor and downtrodden of the world. Nobody in history has ever stolen as much bread out of the mouths of starving children as the thieving bureaucrats of the UN.
I don't consider the UN to have any moral authority whatsoever. It does not represent the people of the world. It represents the viewpoint of the autocrats and dictators of the world, and a tiny, privileged, corrupt, Westernized elite within those dictator's countries. Fuck them. Kick them out of here, and start over, with an invitation-only club for democratic nations.
Oh right, I forgot. No Democrat ever took money from an oil or munitions lobbyist. Democratic politicians never fight battles in Congress to make sure new weapons systems are built in their districts. They never take bribes. They never cheat on Election Day. Democratic Presidents never start wars or pander to wealthy contributors. Only icky Republicans do that stuff.
Democrats have historically been more servile than Republicans to the entertainment industry moguls, despite their pious declarations of support for the interests of the little guy, and their campaign donations reflect this.
Resistance from the vending machine industry (machines would need to be retooled to accept a coin significantly different from the ones currently in use)
Shows how much you know. The vending machine companies are some of the biggest boosters of replacing the paper dollar with a dollar coin. They know it is psychologically much easier for people to part with their "chicken feed" than to spend folding money.
Or as someone with a poor grasp of social psychology recently said,
The perception by the great unwashed that coins aren't "real money"
Yup. That's what the vending machine owners are banking on.
This goes hand in hand with Americans' fanatical opposition to being educated. . . It's just another case of Americans' short-sightedness
Yeah, and we kick puppies and eat babies, too. Boo!
Thank you for the excellent and detailed reminder of why the impeachment of Clinton was entirely justified. I think one of the most disgusting spectacles of moral relativism I have ever seen was the willingness of the feminist Left to close their eyes to the aggressive sexual predations of Bill Clinton. Paula Jones and the other victims of this sociopathic rapist deserved their day in court, and for Clinton to lie under oath about it was easily an impeachable offense.
The other reason I supported his impeachment and removal from office was the appalling risk of blackmail he exposed himself to. If the Israeli or French secret services had been privy to the Monica situation, they would have had him dancing to their tune for the rest of his term.
His messy private life would have disqualified him from obtaining even the lowliest security clearance, had he been in the military or Federal civil service, and rightfully so. A man who cheats on his wife is unfit for any position of public trust, in my opinion, for this reason alone. Never mind the moral issues; this is entirely hard-nosed realism and pragmatism.
That's why it's just as stupid and evil to be a communist as it is to be a Nazi.
Hear, Hear.
That bears repeating.
it's just as stupid and evil to be a communist as it is to be a Nazi.
it's just as stupid and evil to be a communist as it is to be a Nazi.
it's just as stupid and evil to be a communist as it is to be a Nazi.
I would only add that the Nazis (the National Socialists) are just one more flavor of left-wing tyrants. The Nazi ideology is almost indistinguishable from the rantings of such despicable anti-Semitic "progressives" as George Galloway. Two sides of the same filthy coin.
You make it sound as if it's ridiculous, but given the kinds of things that happened in Ohio (i.e. Republicans lying to voters to get them to believe that they were supposed to vote on a different day, or that they had to go somewhere else, or that they had to show proof that they were elligible to vote rather than allowing them to cast a provisional ballot as they were supposed to) then it's not nearly as ridiculous. In fact it's downright criminal.
Do you have any proof that such things happened, or just partisan allegations and hearsay? Because I've heard things just as bad if not worse, like the black precincts in Philadelphia that had 125% voter turnout, or the armies of dead voters in Illinois and Louisiana, that the Democrats supposedly did. But as far as I can tell they are just rumor and speculation. I think the vast majority of your feverish accusations fall into the same category.
More particularly, do you have any proof that such things happened any more in Republican precincts than in Democratic precincts? Do you think such tricks have never been pulled on Republican voters by Democratic partisans? If so, are you implying that Democratic voters are more stupid than Republicans? (After the adventure of the Democrat-designed butterfly ballot in Florida, I'd have to agree.)
If we start looking into what's "downright criminal" in voting irregularities, neither party is going to come out looking good.
think 50,000 poor people buying TVs, DVD players, name brand clothes, common "luxury" goods vs. 500 rich people buying yachts
Clothes and electronics come from overseas sweatshops. Yachts are built right here by high-paid workmen, in places like Rhode Island and Florida and North Carolina.
We have already seen what happens when the noisy leftist levellers punish the rich for their yacht-buying habits. In 1990, a stiff luxury tax on yachts costing more than $100,000 was instituted at the urging of pinko poltroons like Ted Kennedy. It not only did not raise the projected revenue, but caused thousands of boat builders to lose their jobs and go on unemployment, making the tax a net loss to the government.
The tax was ignominiously repealed in 1993, and recently Ted Kennedy's idiot nephew Patrick, a Rhode Island congressman, promoted a new subsidy for yacht buyers. Democrats are such economic retards....
companies working for the government to rebuild in New Orleans won't need to pay prevailing wages (not minimum wages, these are the wages everyone else pays for a given amount of work).
"Prevailing wages" is a term from the Davis-Bacon Act. It really means "union wages." A bureaucrat in the US Department of Labor sets them. It's mere pork for Big Labor, to ensure that government projects use only union workers. But there are not enough union workers to do a job this big.
If we allowed a government commissar to set Davis-Bacon "prevailing wages" by fiat, it would take ten times as long to recover from the disaster, because no rational business owner is going to hire people for more than the true value of their labor. That value is bound to be higher than minimum wage, but not as high as Big Labor would like the government to decree.
Union men do tend to be more skilled than the average, and nominally faster, when they are not featherbedding or striking or bitching to their stewards about work rules. However, to force employers to pay every unskilled laborer in a disaster zone as if they were an experienced union journeyman is economic ignorance of the highest degree.
Bush understands this. Leftist ignoramuses like you do not, unless you are the kind of cynical pseudo-leftist who cares only about the well-being of union members, with no regard for the disaster victims they are supposed to be helping.
Predominately Democratic districts like those in inner city Cleveland and Columbus had too few polling places with people often forced to stand in line for six hours or more.
So what? I stood in line for four hours in my heavily Republican district in 2000. I made my kids stand in line too, as a lesson in civic responsibility. In the whole four hours, I only saw one person leave the line. We are broken-glass Republicans around here.
If these districts you mention are heavily Democratic areas, then someone needs to take the issue up with the presumably Democratic local election officials. Just like in Florida during the 2000 elections, when most of the alleged vote tampering for Bush took place in localities that were run by Democrats from top to bottom.
And I have no sympathy for any Democrat who finds a quart of malt liquor and a Jerry Springer Show rerun more appealing than taking a few hours every four years to exercise their right to vote. Fuck 'em, they don't deserve representation.
I supposed, then, news media, police, postal service employees, ink manufacturers, computer screen manufacturers, etc., etc., etc. should be prohibited from voting because they have a "conflict of interests."
You forgot the most obvious and relevant example: Lawyers.
Of course, some are doing a good job of cheating without hacking a single voting machine
That's for sure. I have to laugh at the Democrats. They blow off concerns about dead voters, illegal-alien voters, and repeat voters as just so much unavoidable noise and friction in the system, or at worst, a chance for the "disadvantaged" to level the playing field a bit.
But if anyone proposes a requirement for a picture ID, or cutting back on lax absentee voting rules, or weeding the rolls of dead people, or God forbid a white policeman should pull over a non-white driver on Election Day, and oh my god it's Voter Intimidation and back to the days of Jim Crow.
One is the flip side of the other. Adding an invalid vote for one candidate has exactly the same effect as suppressing a valid vote for his opponent, all else being equal. If one is immoral, so is the other.
I suspect it has to do with the Harry Potter books. Dark wizards often hold house-elves in magical bondage, and frequently kick and otherwise abuse them.
Microsoft, for all their faults, tends to try to do things the right way, at least in terms of computer science, if not morality, whereas Apple just tries to get it done.
OSI : Does things the right way, at least in terms of computer science.
TCP/IP : Just tries to get it done.
There's something to be said for just getting things done, I think.
Of course, the same industrial and financial firms who wished to maintain their status quo by resisting change and financing PR fake science will shift gears in the new warm world and find massive profit in the meltdown. It's all the same to them.
Of course they will. If they can provide goods and services which mitigate human suffering or discomfort or inconvenience during periods of climate change, they deserve to profit from it. If they fail to do so, they will go out of business.
That's the greatest thing about capitalism. Even the wealthiest captain of industry has no power over you, except by persuasion. You buy his products, or do not buy.
This is in contradistinction to government, which can send armed men to your house and force you to do their bidding.
I trust Big Business far more than I trust government at any level.
The lawyers have created a legalist state with needless complication to re-enforce their niche and to entrench their power. Many of your senators and presidents in the past have been lawyers. They are one of the leats trusted professions so why do you let them run/ruin your country?
That is a very good question. I am sick and tired of the stranglehold these greedy vermin hold over the country. I think it is a conflict of interest for a lawyer to serve in any legislature, writing impenetrable laws to help his crooked cronies extort money from honest citizens.
In addition to thorough tort reform, putting a large percentage of lawyers out of business, I'd also make it illegal for them to sit in the Federal or state legislature.
We also need to sweep away the accumulated detritus of the legal code. Every law that a person needs to know ought to fit in a 50-page pamphlet studied in the senior year of high school. If it doesn't fit, abolish it.
I would remove about 95% of our current legal system, just tear it to pieces and throw it in the trash and make all the blood sucking attorneys find decent honest work. They have been a plague on mankind since the time of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
"Some day, somebody will say 'I am going to create a headline and write a virus for Mac'," said Borrie.
Yeah, whatever. It reminds me of the people who say Osama already has suitcase nukes he got from the Russian Mafia. If he did, he would have used them already.
Every hacker has known for a long time that the sure ticket to fame would be to write a successful virus or worm for OS X. I have no doubt they have been trying for years, to no avail. BSD is solid as a rock.
When predominantly white areas are affected by hurricanes, FEMA is much quicker to respond.
Got any proof of that, or are you just parroting the anti-Bush talking points?
The Feds always take two or three days to show up, and five to seven days to reach full strength. Local authorities are ALWAYS responsible for the first 72-96 hours of a disaster, that's how all the plans are made, and it's primarily because of the dithering incompetence of the local Democratic pols and the collapse of the New Orleans police department that so many people could not be rescued this time.
The military won't put people and equipment directly into the path of a hurricane, lest they become victims themselves and lose their airlift capability. But shortly after the storm passes, they pour in.
Military air, sea, and land operations began on Aug. 30, and in fact, there were more than twice as many soldiers on duty by day 5 of Katrina than on day 5 of Andrew in 1992. And that's after moving them in over a much larger area than Andrew affected. You can't wave a magic wand and move people and machines in an instant, but that seems to be what some of the ignorant anti-Bush ranters are expecting.
Unless you have invented a Star trek transporter beam, just can the ill-informed bitching and do what you can to help, OK?
That also puts repairs well into the terms of both Reagan and Bush Sr.
No shit Sherlock, that's exactly what I said:
Bill Clinton had a chance to fix this, as did every Republican and Democratic president of modern times.
Try reading the post a little more carefully before you respond.
Angry leftist malcontents are desperate for something to hammer Bush with. So bitter and desperate that they are out there pointing to this disaster as proof that Bush deliberately cut funding for the levees, specifically to punish the Democratic-voting blacks of New Orleans, whom he supposedly hates.
But if this is true, the question must be asked, why did Clinton not reward the same Democratic-voting black people of New Orleans when he had a chance, during a time of peace and prosperity that Bush never enjoyed? I'm not trying to hang the entire failure around Clinton's neck, only to show that the vile anti-Bush accusations from the likes of Michael Moore and Kanye West are not founded in reality.
The levees were owned, operated and maintained by the US Army Corp of Engineers, a FEDERAL agency.
You don't know what you're talking about.
The levees in the state of Louisiana are owned, operated, and maintained by a byzantine hodgepodge of local levee boards.
Of course, their purpose is only secondarily to keep the levees in good order. They exist primarily to slosh around Federal tax monies to the idiot nephews and shiftless brothers-in-law of corrupt Democratic politicians, and to provide funds at election time to make sure the same corrupt Democratic politicians get re-elected time and time again.
The Corps of Engineers provides money, manpower, and advice, but the local politicians are the ones ultimately in charge. The Corps can't turn a shovelful of dirt without the say-so of the local levee board.
I would also like to remind everyone that the Democratic politicians of Louisiana felt that it was more important to hand $200 million of tax dollars to the owner of their football team, than to spend about one-fifth of that amount bringing the levees up to snuff.
BTW, do you have concrete information that the levees were in bad shape under Clinton or do you just assume that if they were neglected now they must have also been neglected then?
You cannot be serious. The flood control down there has been inadequate for at least half a century. Some of the pumping stations that are still in use were built a hundred years ago. They have screw pumps made of wood which are now national historic landmarks. Very advanced for the time but hopelessly antiquated now.
Bill Clinton had a chance to fix this, as did every Republican and Democratic president of modern times. It's ludicrous to hang it all on Bush.
Slashdot Mirror
Same back atcha.
-ccm
Amen, the UN is the dictators' frat house that puts such bastions of freedom as Syria, Libya and the Sudan on their human rights committee. The place that bred the Oil for Food scandal, probably the greatest single fraud ever perpetrated on the poor and downtrodden of the world. Nobody in history has ever stolen as much bread out of the mouths of starving children as the thieving bureaucrats of the UN.
I don't consider the UN to have any moral authority whatsoever. It does not represent the people of the world. It represents the viewpoint of the autocrats and dictators of the world, and a tiny, privileged, corrupt, Westernized elite within those dictator's countries. Fuck them. Kick them out of here, and start over, with an invitation-only club for democratic nations.
-ccm
Thanks for straightening me out.
-ccm
No shit, Sherlock. That's because she's a Senator, not a Representative.
Be assured that she is firmly in the pocket of the Hollywood fat cats on this. In fact, she co-sponsored the bill in the Senate.
Democrats have historically been more servile than Republicans to the entertainment industry moguls, despite their pious declarations of support for the interests of the little guy, and their campaign donations reflect this.
-ccm
Never. Go to hell.
-ccm
Shows how much you know. The vending machine companies are some of the biggest boosters of replacing the paper dollar with a dollar coin. They know it is psychologically much easier for people to part with their "chicken feed" than to spend folding money.
Or as someone with a poor grasp of social psychology recently said,
The perception by the great unwashed that coins aren't "real money"
Yup. That's what the vending machine owners are banking on.
This goes hand in hand with Americans' fanatical opposition to being educated. . . It's just another case of Americans' short-sightedness
Yeah, and we kick puppies and eat babies, too. Boo!
-ccm
The other reason I supported his impeachment and removal from office was the appalling risk of blackmail he exposed himself to. If the Israeli or French secret services had been privy to the Monica situation, they would have had him dancing to their tune for the rest of his term.
His messy private life would have disqualified him from obtaining even the lowliest security clearance, had he been in the military or Federal civil service, and rightfully so. A man who cheats on his wife is unfit for any position of public trust, in my opinion, for this reason alone. Never mind the moral issues; this is entirely hard-nosed realism and pragmatism.
-ccm
Hear, Hear.
That bears repeating.
it's just as stupid and evil to be a communist as it is to be a Nazi.
it's just as stupid and evil to be a communist as it is to be a Nazi.
it's just as stupid and evil to be a communist as it is to be a Nazi.
I would only add that the Nazis (the National Socialists) are just one more flavor of left-wing tyrants. The Nazi ideology is almost indistinguishable from the rantings of such despicable anti-Semitic "progressives" as George Galloway. Two sides of the same filthy coin.
--ccm
Do you have any proof that such things happened, or just partisan allegations and hearsay? Because I've heard things just as bad if not worse, like the black precincts in Philadelphia that had 125% voter turnout, or the armies of dead voters in Illinois and Louisiana, that the Democrats supposedly did. But as far as I can tell they are just rumor and speculation. I think the vast majority of your feverish accusations fall into the same category.
More particularly, do you have any proof that such things happened any more in Republican precincts than in Democratic precincts? Do you think such tricks have never been pulled on Republican voters by Democratic partisans? If so, are you implying that Democratic voters are more stupid than Republicans? (After the adventure of the Democrat-designed butterfly ballot in Florida, I'd have to agree.)
If we start looking into what's "downright criminal" in voting irregularities, neither party is going to come out looking good.
-ccm
Clothes and electronics come from overseas sweatshops. Yachts are built right here by high-paid workmen, in places like Rhode Island and Florida and North Carolina.
We have already seen what happens when the noisy leftist levellers punish the rich for their yacht-buying habits. In 1990, a stiff luxury tax on yachts costing more than $100,000 was instituted at the urging of pinko poltroons like Ted Kennedy. It not only did not raise the projected revenue, but caused thousands of boat builders to lose their jobs and go on unemployment, making the tax a net loss to the government.
The tax was ignominiously repealed in 1993, and recently Ted Kennedy's idiot nephew Patrick, a Rhode Island congressman, promoted a new subsidy for yacht buyers. Democrats are such economic retards....
-ccm
"Prevailing wages" is a term from the Davis-Bacon Act. It really means "union wages." A bureaucrat in the US Department of Labor sets them. It's mere pork for Big Labor, to ensure that government projects use only union workers. But there are not enough union workers to do a job this big.
If we allowed a government commissar to set Davis-Bacon "prevailing wages" by fiat, it would take ten times as long to recover from the disaster, because no rational business owner is going to hire people for more than the true value of their labor. That value is bound to be higher than minimum wage, but not as high as Big Labor would like the government to decree.
Union men do tend to be more skilled than the average, and nominally faster, when they are not featherbedding or striking or bitching to their stewards about work rules. However, to force employers to pay every unskilled laborer in a disaster zone as if they were an experienced union journeyman is economic ignorance of the highest degree.
Bush understands this. Leftist ignoramuses like you do not, unless you are the kind of cynical pseudo-leftist who cares only about the well-being of union members, with no regard for the disaster victims they are supposed to be helping.
-ccm
So what? I stood in line for four hours in my heavily Republican district in 2000. I made my kids stand in line too, as a lesson in civic responsibility. In the whole four hours, I only saw one person leave the line. We are broken-glass Republicans around here.
If these districts you mention are heavily Democratic areas, then someone needs to take the issue up with the presumably Democratic local election officials. Just like in Florida during the 2000 elections, when most of the alleged vote tampering for Bush took place in localities that were run by Democrats from top to bottom.
And I have no sympathy for any Democrat who finds a quart of malt liquor and a Jerry Springer Show rerun more appealing than taking a few hours every four years to exercise their right to vote. Fuck 'em, they don't deserve representation.
-ccm
You forgot the most obvious and relevant example: Lawyers.
-ccm
That's for sure. I have to laugh at the Democrats. They blow off concerns about dead voters, illegal-alien voters, and repeat voters as just so much unavoidable noise and friction in the system, or at worst, a chance for the "disadvantaged" to level the playing field a bit.
But if anyone proposes a requirement for a picture ID, or cutting back on lax absentee voting rules, or weeding the rolls of dead people, or God forbid a white policeman should pull over a non-white driver on Election Day, and oh my god it's Voter Intimidation and back to the days of Jim Crow.
One is the flip side of the other. Adding an invalid vote for one candidate has exactly the same effect as suppressing a valid vote for his opponent, all else being equal. If one is immoral, so is the other.
-ccm
I suspect it has to do with the Harry Potter books. Dark wizards often hold house-elves in magical bondage, and frequently kick and otherwise abuse them.
-ccm
OSI : Does things the right way, at least in terms of computer science.
TCP/IP : Just tries to get it done.
There's something to be said for just getting things done, I think.
-ccm
Of course they will. If they can provide goods and services which mitigate human suffering or discomfort or inconvenience during periods of climate change, they deserve to profit from it. If they fail to do so, they will go out of business.
That's the greatest thing about capitalism. Even the wealthiest captain of industry has no power over you, except by persuasion. You buy his products, or do not buy.
This is in contradistinction to government, which can send armed men to your house and force you to do their bidding.
I trust Big Business far more than I trust government at any level.
-ccm
Remember that Bill Clinton and 95 Senators also told the world to take Kyoto and shove it up their ass?
-ccm
That is a very good question. I am sick and tired of the stranglehold these greedy vermin hold over the country. I think it is a conflict of interest for a lawyer to serve in any legislature, writing impenetrable laws to help his crooked cronies extort money from honest citizens.
In addition to thorough tort reform, putting a large percentage of lawyers out of business, I'd also make it illegal for them to sit in the Federal or state legislature.
We also need to sweep away the accumulated detritus of the legal code. Every law that a person needs to know ought to fit in a 50-page pamphlet studied in the senior year of high school. If it doesn't fit, abolish it. I would remove about 95% of our current legal system, just tear it to pieces and throw it in the trash and make all the blood sucking attorneys find decent honest work. They have been a plague on mankind since the time of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
-ccm
Yeah, whatever. It reminds me of the people who say Osama already has suitcase nukes he got from the Russian Mafia. If he did, he would have used them already.
Every hacker has known for a long time that the sure ticket to fame would be to write a successful virus or worm for OS X. I have no doubt they have been trying for years, to no avail. BSD is solid as a rock.
-ccm
Got any proof of that, or are you just parroting the anti-Bush talking points?
The Feds always take two or three days to show up, and five to seven days to reach full strength. Local authorities are ALWAYS responsible for the first 72-96 hours of a disaster, that's how all the plans are made, and it's primarily because of the dithering incompetence of the local Democratic pols and the collapse of the New Orleans police department that so many people could not be rescued this time.
The military won't put people and equipment directly into the path of a hurricane, lest they become victims themselves and lose their airlift capability. But shortly after the storm passes, they pour in.
Military air, sea, and land operations began on Aug. 30, and in fact, there were more than twice as many soldiers on duty by day 5 of Katrina than on day 5 of Andrew in 1992. And that's after moving them in over a much larger area than Andrew affected. You can't wave a magic wand and move people and machines in an instant, but that seems to be what some of the ignorant anti-Bush ranters are expecting.
Unless you have invented a Star trek transporter beam, just can the ill-informed bitching and do what you can to help, OK?
-ccm
No shit Sherlock, that's exactly what I said:
Bill Clinton had a chance to fix this, as did every Republican and Democratic president of modern times.
Try reading the post a little more carefully before you respond.
Angry leftist malcontents are desperate for something to hammer Bush with. So bitter and desperate that they are out there pointing to this disaster as proof that Bush deliberately cut funding for the levees, specifically to punish the Democratic-voting blacks of New Orleans, whom he supposedly hates.
But if this is true, the question must be asked, why did Clinton not reward the same Democratic-voting black people of New Orleans when he had a chance, during a time of peace and prosperity that Bush never enjoyed? I'm not trying to hang the entire failure around Clinton's neck, only to show that the vile anti-Bush accusations from the likes of Michael Moore and Kanye West are not founded in reality.
-ccm
You don't know what you're talking about.
The levees in the state of Louisiana are owned, operated, and maintained by a byzantine hodgepodge of local levee boards.
Of course, their purpose is only secondarily to keep the levees in good order. They exist primarily to slosh around Federal tax monies to the idiot nephews and shiftless brothers-in-law of corrupt Democratic politicians, and to provide funds at election time to make sure the same corrupt Democratic politicians get re-elected time and time again.
The Corps of Engineers provides money, manpower, and advice, but the local politicians are the ones ultimately in charge. The Corps can't turn a shovelful of dirt without the say-so of the local levee board.
-ccm
Bread and circuses.
-ccm
You cannot be serious. The flood control down there has been inadequate for at least half a century. Some of the pumping stations that are still in use were built a hundred years ago. They have screw pumps made of wood which are now national historic landmarks. Very advanced for the time but hopelessly antiquated now.
Bill Clinton had a chance to fix this, as did every Republican and Democratic president of modern times. It's ludicrous to hang it all on Bush.
-ccm