"You are basically arguing that Bush is totally amoral in this and acting purely for his own benefit. That is a very strong charge, and IMHO offensive. Furthermore, it is ironic in that the previous president was the one who sent cruise missiles and bombers to distract people from his own political problems!"
On the campaign trail, Bush has consistently asked people to vote for him based on their own self-interest -- read "money".
To extrapolate that he does things for his own self-interest is elementary.
As for that old lie about Clinton, I believe he was going after al-Queda when he launched that attack. The "wag the doggers" like Trent Lott said explicitly that they would support the troops, but not the President, during that fight. Today, Bush/Rove/Ashcroft/Cheny would call such an attitude treason.
By constantly mocking Clinton's attempt to rein in al Queda, Lott -- all the rightwing "Wag the Doggers" -- were hindering our leader's attempt to stop a threat which he and his advisors saw clearly, with superior abilty and prescience.
Bush, whom you take offense for, didn't care about the al Queda threat, dissed and ignored the men from Clinton's admin who begged him to pay attention to our most threatening enemy, and paved the way for the attack on the WTC.
Bush has "wagged the dog" expertly for over 15 months now. He has marketed a war against Iraq which will net his familly and friends hundreds of billions in contracts, and HAS NOT CAPTURED BIN LADEN OR ANY OF THE DAMNED PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY ATTACKED US.
I am offended and FURIOUS that you and the other... traitors? constantly excoriate Clinton for actually trying to attack al Queda, while he whom you defend has manipulated the situation to make money for his buds, steal trillions in oil, and failed to even capture one stinking man who actually killed over 3,000 Americans.
Clinton saw the future and tried to stop it. Bush failed to heed Clinton's warnings, based on pure political hatred, and killed 3,000.
Where is bin Laden?
What the hell is Bush doing attacking Iraq when his friends in Saudi Arabia are shielding the real money and connections?
OIL. OIL. OIL.
Clinton was a brilliant man who almost saved us. Bush is a fool who didn't heed urgent advice and got our people killed.
I am offended that people like you keep propogating hate and lies about a president who gave usa surplus, kept us at peace, and actually spared us from attack. And fought bin Laden while Bush was bankrupting Texas.
1. There has been no indication of this project anywhere I've seen. It would stick out! The NERVA/Zeus project was thirty years ago. The engineers are long gone, and there are no new ones.
2. The U.S. has no nuclear (nook-you-ler, if you're a C-grade fratboy from Texas) rocket program.
3. Nook-you-ler rockets are illegal under current treaties -- I think. Not that that would stop Bush -- treaties are for the evil, not the good.
4. 8 years is not enough time. The U.S. doesn't have the infrastructure to mount a mission.
5. The U.S. is going into debt at the rate of 1.3 billion dollars a day. We're spending ourselves utterly broke while cutting taxes. I don't think even the current regime is stupid enough to go to Mars when schools are setting up two daily shifts to save money. Or are they?
6. Politically impossible -- tho I qualify this in saying that this is the first marketing-driven administration in U.S. history. They've sold us on the idea that Saddam mounted the 9-11 attacks. I may be underestimating their maniuplative abilities.
7. This story is based on the world of one, count 'em, ONE "NASA administrator". The threshold used to be at least two believeable sources. The collapse of standards in the '90's set us up for any clown to float a story now -- bubonic plague vials on the loose! News at 11!
8. As an old space junkie, I wish the story was true -- sort of. I'd have preferred an ion drive, which is easier to maintain, ulimately faster, and doesn't carry the nuke label for marketing reasons.
9. If the story is true, why do I sense that the speculative capitalists that are now in charge of the guvmint (as opposed to businessmen -- the difference between Enronomics and the local Chamber of Commerce) would be trying to wring even more tax money out of us all? That would be on top of the 100-200 billion that the current contracts to attack/rebuild Iraq are going to cost the U.S. We are getting robbed here. NASA did the moon landings on the cheap -- I don't think the prvate equity managers will be as motivated to keep costs down.
Well, actually his main point is easily verifiiable. Bush did withhold criticism from Lott for many days. Initially, he backed Lott's apology.
Even C-SPAN live coverage wasn't enough for major media to cover the story -- it took the internet talkers to keep it alive. Since it didn't die, Bush (read: Karl Rove) decided to use the issue to cut the old Dixiecrat ties that had previously helped Bush get into office. Those ties are liabilities for the next election; so Lott got knifed.
The beauty part is that the Democrats licked Lott's boots publicly before Lott was axed. They lost so much testosterone that they couldn't even bring themselves to oppose the Republican Senate leader even when he was waxing nostalgic for segregation ON LIVE TV! Rove decided Lott was to be publicly humiliated. He gave Bush the script to read, and thereafter, leaked info to the press to smear Lott. The press consistently credited "democrats" for the Lott historical info (which was already freely available to anyone who cared to, well, do reporting), but it was Rove who started the machine.
Rove is a master of this after all... remember the "Clinton stole the White House furniture" BS story he flogged for months? Even Bush had to later retract the story -- but not until months after the smear campaign succeeded in making a lie Truth. Yet another piece of "Clinton Truth" that won't die. Courtesy of the Mayberry Machiavelli, Rove.
(And for all the Limbaughnauts that are going to pile on at this point -- NO, Clinton didn't steal furniture, NO the offices weren't wrecked. No, it didn't happen, NO. No. NO. Did I say "no" enough times? I hear brains refusing to accept input here. Bush himself stated puplicly that the story was in error, that Clinton and his people did NOT do the things that Bush's own people had insisted were done. It was a lie, a scam, bullshit, and a vague shadow of the lie machine that we are listening to every day now. )
After Bush signalled the change, the 'publicans piled on. And the Demos crawled in, pathetically echoing the trained pack, making asses of themselves by denouncing Lott days after they had said nothing. In Daschle's case, he actually had previously made excuses for Lott.
They should have been FIRST in Lott's denunciation. They now do not politically exist.
So, Lott was whipped, then fired. Frist, a Bush family buddy and W clone, was installed by Rove and Bush as a puppet, so Bush now controls the Senate. Frist gets the possiblity of being President some day as a gift. Bush gets a wink from the old Dixiecrats, but gets public brownie points for denouncing Lott. Except for only two brave exceptions, the Democrats look like opinionless jellyfish. Bush gets a sliver more of the black vote, and gets more moderates (sane people) to think him acceptable. Win-win all around for Bush.
Geeks are cool? I don't think that is a situation that will long obtain. When the salaries start dropping, the coolness of being PC-bound will abate, sadly.
True, but with a Democrat you have some chance of denying a moneyboy what he wants. With the lineup in the 3 branches today, all Republican, there is NO chance of opposition. None. It's utterly against the robber-baron no-regulation mentality. The business of America is business, and all that. Death to unions, tax rebates to corps that don't pay taxes, offshore tax havens. It's a far-right neo-con agenda, and we are ficked as consumers.
It would have happened eventually with the Dems, but that is frankly because they are turning into '80's Republicans -- while the main Repubs are now a coalition of neo-con tax cutters, end-of-worlders, guvmint haters -- the farthest of the right wing.
What was far left no longer exists. Left is now considered radical, moderates are now lefties, conservatives are now moderates, far-right wings are considered moderate-to-conservative, and the looniest fringe nutjobs are now amiable "right-wing" with their own TV networks (Fox, MS-NBC, CNN).
The Dems would have at least slowed down the corporatization of the world. The Repubs love it, live it, they by and large ARE the corporations that are taking over the four branches of our democratic guvmint.
I remember vivdly Kornbluth and Pohl's "Space Merchants" novella of 1950. They showed a U.S. Senate comprised of Senators from U.S.Steel, G.M, etc. There were no people's reps, only corporate ones.
So there are no Human Rights. There are just American Rights. If you are not American, you have no rights whatsoever.
Ashcroft and Bush agree with you. Apparently this is what passes for an intellectual meme on the far right wing.
If there are no "human" rights, guaranteed to all who deal with us, just "rights" for our own selves, then we are THE terrorist nation in the world. We would be the single most frightening nation on the planet. We would have absolutely no morals whatsoever, just laws. For ourselves. Everything comes down to what pleases us.
Social Darwinism, parochialism, xenotrophism.
You seem obsessed with the hatred and "slagging" of Americans abroad, with no trace of irony. Maybe they hate us, or people who think like you (no such thing as human rights, only American internal rights), because you are so obsessed with all these "people not in the U.S." who think they have any say in what we do, especially to their own peoples. Did you know that in recent months in California, we've taken in hundreds more unpeople into uncustody who duly registered at the request of the Bush admin? They've been unpeopled. They have no rights.
"The reason why they hate us is because we don't know why they hate us."
We are causing the slagging with our own actions.
You have a choice: either 1) The entire world has gone insane and is calling us on becoming a police state which doesn't understand its own heritage, when we are innocent of such heinous crimes, or 2) WE'VE gone crackers because we can't see what brutal bullies and cowards we've become. There is nothing so dangerous as the righteous bully.
At the very least, the accused should have a trial. We've time; there's no "war" going on -- we're not teetering on the brink of collapse. We're fat and happy.
Bush and Ashcroft have long shown over the years their contempt for the judicial system of the U.S. (and most certainly for the press). Bush wants a nice streamlined system where he decides who's guilty. Period. And he's got it. He can:
1. Sign a death warrant for anyone in the world *he* decides should die -- even a U.S. citizen. 2. Imprison in secret any foreigner *he* decides is a security risk. Their is no notification to kin. No lawyers. No judges. No trial. The uncitizen can be held indefinitely at the pleasure of Bush, or of course appointed deputies. 3. Declare war on any foreign nation he decides coddles terrorists, on the basis of evidence that he does not need to reveal. 4. Confiscate whatever assets on foreign soil he desires, if it is a spoil of war. 5. (Bush Sr.) He can invade any nation he desires, for whatever reason, and kidnap the head of state. Civilians can be killed in the thousands as a byblow. 6. This year: he openly celebrated an attempted coup against an elected government in Venezuela. One of his spokesman made a crack: sometimes a democratically elected government is not necessarily valid. And apparently we are funding a strike in Venezuela right now. The demand of the strikers? The government step down. This is in the face of the fact that our government employees have been stripped of the right to strike in our country!
I mention these easily verifiable facts to illustrate *why* we are being "slagged". Since thecurrent admin seems to believe that rights only apply to Americans, they are stomping on people all over the world. And they rightly find us sanctimonius hypocrites.
Oh, and BTW, my posting is factually correct. Bush did have sole authority to order the military to fire on an airliner. He did nothing, on tape, for most of a half hour he could have used to order the shootdown. He did flee to a safe location while Cheney remained at the White House. The "White House was under threat" story was later dismissed by the White House. And if Clinton had done what Bush had done, he would have been impeached. Especially since Bush and Rice, et al, canned the anti-Bin Laden program upon reaching office. When Clinton fired at Laden, it was "wag the dog" for months... when Bush called off the dogs, bin Laden fired and killed thousands. But Bush is a hero, Clinton despised. There is madness here.
The only person with the authority to give the order to shoot down a civilian airliner is the President, who was sitting in a classroom like a stunned sloth for a half hour instead of being a President. The military was competent. Bush was not.
If he had gotten up and actually acted, the planes would have been followed by fighter planes, and given authorization, shot down before they got close enough to take out the towers.
It wasn't the military's fault. Hell, I think they took out the flight over Pennsylvania -- the blast debris was too widely scattered for a crash.
Bush sat like a deer frozen in headlights instead of giving the order to shoot if necessary. Without his OK, there could be no shootdown.
Then he ran away. The story about the White House being under threat was later dismissed by the White House, to the utter disinterest of reporters.
If Clinton had failed to get out of that chair, and those planes had hit the buildings... if he had fled to Louisiana... he'd have impeached the next week. Trent Lott and all the other patriots who gave Bush their fawning support would have personally shot Clinton, if he had shown the stupidity and cowardice displayed by Bush.
Had to be said. The planes hit because the order was never give to shoot. The order wasn't given because Bush just sat there, listening to some children.
Re:This is still about fighting "terrorists"
on
DOD vs. 802.11b
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Osama bin Laden does not use beepers, landlines, telephones, cell phones, WiFi, the Internet, laser comm, satellite phones, carrier pigeons, or the U.S. mail.
He communicates via trusted lieutenants, face to face.
The idea of terrorists using the Internet and WiFi in particular is not only speculative, it's just plain wrong. A professional guerilla warrior does not use traceable tech, not if they want to succeed.
This is FUD. And a prelude to a marketing campaign against free networks. Or, it just illustrates the really bad thinking coming from the White House's Nixon retreads right now -- not Bush. Bush doesn't know WiFi from HiFi. This is coming from the army of Marching Morons that are running the Executive Branch and the DoD right now, to the dismay of the intelligent professionals who have been shoved aside and told to shut up.
You're right - because we all know that heading off problems before they happen is a bad idea. Exactly what is wrong with a state agency issuing a statement that there is the potential for interference and that further investigation is warranted?
Because they have no evidence of any such interference, or theoretical possiblity of such, and there are political and commercial objectives in suppressing WiFi, what they are doing is FUD -- intentional spreading of misinformation and leading questions to an advantageous end -- for them.
As for the kiddies -- here's the thing. If the military and commercial forces keep their hands off of consumer-grade self-built 802.11x networks, the only people using it will be civilian enthusiasts. If a script kiddy brings down a segment, no big woof. Why should this be a government matter? Other than the fact that some in the big guv, and in corporations (same thing, really)want control of theses networks handed over to them, right now.
It is FUD, as a means to an end: control.
When you use WiFi, you are riding with...
on
DOD vs. 802.11b
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
When you use WiFi, you are riding with Saddam, Osama, evil European Unionists (circa 2025), communists, liberals, [insert necessary enemy here].
Once more an illustration of how fear generated by 9/11 is being fanned by clever boys who want control of... everything, I guess.
WiFi, with future network enhancements, could possibly be the next Internet -- the real one, with real anonymity. This is not a pleasing prospect to various interests and obsessives who want control of our records, our communications, our money, who knows what. The list of people who want to lock us down, and of the various causes and reasons for doing so, is enormous.
The War Against Being Afraid is not a war. It's an idea. There is no ending point, and no defined enemy (unless one is decided upon de jour). Last year it's Osama bin Laden, then, after a brief marketing campaign, we're salivating for Saddam.
Point is, The War Against Being Afraid is a tool, not a project. They are using it like a geopolitical sonic screwdriver, a unitool, capable of rationalizing any objective they like under guise of war. Since it can never end, the tool will never wear out. Sanity is the only defense against TWABA, but polls seem to be about 4:1 in favor of insanity. What can you do.
I think the main reason a lot of criminals get caught committing crimes is because they commit crimes. Yes, they also fail to cover their tracks, but if your tracks are clean, there's nothing to cover.
An act can be retroactively be declared criminal. For instance, the put-evil-hackers-away-for-life law that was passed this year declared not only that there is no statute of limitations on "hacking" as a crime, the new "crimes" are now infinitely retroactive! That is to say, if you used a Captain Crunch whistle in 1977 to get yourself a free long distance call, you can be prosecuted today as a felon with a prison term up to life.
So don't say "you're clean if you don't commit crimes". Something you do today can be declared illegal and heinous ten years from now. It depends on the evil men are capable of... and I guess the profitablity of prisons, combined with that wonder free labor for business created by that large incarecerated population.
Or just drive. Why does everyone assume all attacks concern flight on airlines?
And everyone, please remember that the terrorists bought their tickets right out in the open. There is no way to catch a sleeper agent -- they act like everyone else.
No tattoos: embedded chips, probably. Something microscopic and embedded.
First, it'll be for "pedophiles". Then, it'll be for The Safety of Our Children. Then, it'll be for anyone who goes to or leaves prison. Then, it'll be a requirement for employment in sensitive jobs. Then, it'll be a requirement, like immunizations, for joining the armed forces. And there'll be a reinstituted draft soon, if I read the sneaky 'pubs right lately. So everyone 18 and over gets chipped. Then, it'll become an expected part of getting a job in a corporate environment, even if you're a paint mixer at a Benjamin Moore store. Then, it'll become a requirement for going to a state university. Or just attending school of any sort.
Sounds silly? Think of drug testing, and how we drop our pants on command without even questioning why we are doing it. America will swallow chipping if it's done slowly, over years.
Ten, fifteen years from now, my objections to chipping will sound to the Americans of that time like I do to the Americans of this time when I refuse to take a drug test. A damned liberal hippy, probably a criminal.
The point is this: armed civilians are, *nowadays*, irrelevant to modern military and police forces.
As Heinlein said, if a gun makes you feel ten feet tall and covered with hair, don't go armed. Guns and rifles don't win wars, armies do.
Americans have a history of wanting to feel ten feet tall and covered with hair. It's endearing, but not relevant to a real conflict. A rifle WAS the weapon to drive out the Redcoats and Hessians. Imagine, however, the Iraqis trying to stop our Scheduled Invasion(C) with brave militias crouching behind cars. Not going to happen. They may or may not have the right to bear arms. Irrelevant. They will die, when and if we choose to kill them.
And with the new Homeland Security (did they INTENTIONALLY recall Nazi memes with that hideous name?), the most rabid amongst us will be monitoring our movements and activities. Curious fact tho: Ashcroft is dead set against ANY intrusion on gun ownership, even in the face of a rainbow warning. Are we serious about a police state, or are we just fooling around? How can we have a decent police state if the guv doesn't even have a window on who owns the guns? I mean, if I were a terrorist, I'd be dancing through gun shows! Geez, if we're going to become Safe from Terror, we should at least keep track of where the guns are.
Guns were useful agaisnt the Nazis, but think about it. Could the SS and the gas ovens been stopped by brave French equipped with hunting rifles?
Nope. It took diplomats. Generals. Bombs, planes, tanks, ships, codebreakers, balloons, radar, submarines, atomic bombs.
Guns were an expression of resistance, but they would not have won WWII against a German or Japanese empire. It took the intelligent cooperation of tens of millions of soldiers with all the resources of dozens of nations to stomp out a few determinted, self-righteous, God-appointed we're-doing-it-for-self-defense looney bin countries that convinced themselves they were only doing the right thing by attacking everyone else preemptively.
No gun in the hands of a citizen, or a million citizens, can "defend freedom". They can fire a few rounds off before the tanks and armored soldiers roll over their families and houses, or before they see a cruise missle go down their chimney, or a tailored virus is released into their water supplies. The era of the brave lone warriors never existed. It doesn't exist now. It's a fantasy.
If the U.S. government goes rogue under some pretext (such as the terrorist one), and they start doing things like, oh, detaining people in the dark of night, or executing citizens without trial, and everyone goes "Yay! We are safe!", no pile of Uzis under our beds will buy us freedom.
Oh, um. If everyone carries a gun, or has one in the house, the first order of business for any robber or attacker is to kill the victim on sight. The attacker almost always wins if they have the gun out and hit you by surprise. I've heard in many cases that muggers, for instance, in highly armed neighborhoods will shoot the victim first off, because it's almost a certainty the victim is carrying blade or gun.
Do *I* want guns banned? I don't think they can be banned. It'd be worse than Prohibition, and at least booze drinkers weren't drinking a killing machine when the police broke in.
But I don't think the guns are going to save us from the bad man, or a government gone insane. Only careful monitoring of our guvmint can save us from the latter -- and we're not monitoring -- and as for the bad men, they will always be with us.
Re:solution for one of the problems..
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The New IT Crisis
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· Score: 4, Insightful
As a guy who got his first start programming on an IBM mainframe, I just want to break down in hysterical laughter.
Early nineties: everything was to be decentralized. Get rid of that antique iron! Go Intel/Microsoft! Can the tech Luddites, bring in the Bright Yunguns, who will show us the way.
Mind you, I was one of those calling for the company to modernize on a client-server model.
But I've watched for, what, 20 years since this all started. I watched the expensive mainframes go into the landfill, and the new servers take their place.
I've watched those servers get more expensive. I've seen the communications hardware become massively expensive. I've watched the new Data Priesthood come into being. I've watched companies being wiped out converting to, and maintaining, the new paradigm.
Not that it would have been good to stay on the old iron. BUT...
We've come full circle. The hounds are baying for simpler solutions, and most importantly, for the elimination of the new mainframers, the admins.
I predicted it over ten years ago. The PC's will cluster into data centers, pseudo-dumb clients will spread onto everyone's desks and laps, the services will automate, and the present IT industry will convulse. A shakeout is coming. Time to get that teaching career started.
As a sidebar: in my experience, far more money was spent on executive games and perks than was ever lost on IT spending. Cost accounting is applied where management wants application.
It's the slim slot running along the top of the faceplate, methinks.
This is truly cool. Car use? You can pop it out when you park and put it in your backpack. Take it home, network it to your main box and load up them MP3s and Divx files.
It wouldn't take much to hook up a teensy LCD screen to this. Fold out a mini keyboard from the bottom of the unit, flip up the screen from the top, and you have a nano PC.
Our population doubles every 30 years or so. No matter how well you parcel up the land, people will cover inch of the planet in a few hundred years. Exponential growth is a bitch. No matter how smart a cancer cell is, infinite growth is not an option.
To get everyone on earth into an efficient supercity would require an impossible dictatorship.
Population growth will cause war and disasters long before actual physical crowding occurs. People will fight for optimum land. And they will have numbers to back them up. In a sense, our population growth is spurring us, for instance, to take over Iraq for the optimal oil reserves under its land.
The current terrorism problem is a mere taste of what the angry poor masses of the world are going to be up to in the next hundred years. This is a war of too many people growing too fast against those they are jealous of. No hydroponics will beat Maslow's hierarchy -- the majority of the earth's numbers are poor, hyper-religious, half-educated, and are developing excuses to attack those with better resources. Welcome to Malthus' world... Asimov was so depressed as he grew older, because what is happening was inevitable.
Why is it that the private schools in California can do so much more (higher test scores, higher college attendence, etc.) than the public schools for less than half the money per student
Simple answer:
Cherry picking students. Don't take in foreign language speakers. Don't take in the poor. Don't take in those who do not meet a minimum test score. Don't take in the autistic, the hyperactive, the troublemakers, the emotionally crippled, the illegal immigrants, the hard-to-educate of all kinds. $Profit! Public schools serve every comer. Private schools don't have to. Therefore, they don't have to spend nearly as much as a public school per student. It's a false comparison.
Our military budget only accounts for 15% of the U.S. budget.
Then the interest on the national debt, 13-17% of all spending, outstrips our military spending. You're making an argument for me here.
Secondly, our military works. Only our military could have crushed the Taliban like it did in Afghanistan. Can you say Russia in 1980's?
A couple of points - let's take the last first.
The Russians actually invaded a hostile country. We have NOT done so. Afghanistan by and large hated the Taliban, almost as much as they hated the warlords which preceded them, and nowhere near as much as they hated the secular Soviets. The people of Afghanistan are not opposing our invasion.
As for taking out the Taliban -- um, you are aware they were almost totally unarmed in a modern sense? The country is a bloody wreck. Being proud of blowing up fish with dynamite is dangerous. The fish weren't any danger to ya.
And one other thing -- the Taliban weren't at war with us. We declared war on them because Al Queda was hiding there -- and the government demanded proof of their complicity in the attack to turn him over. Bush declared he had to do no such thing, and blew them up.
Not that Al Queda was in Afghanistan. They got away. And the whole reason for invading Afghanistan, capturing bin Laden, has been proved silly. They all left via Pakistan, which we conveniently aren't invading.
Summing up: we haven't fought an enemy yet, so let's not get cocky. Capturing Al Queda is a police action, not a military one, no matter how unsatisfying that sounds. It's also a matter of winning the hearts and minds of people in the region who are susceptible to his message through ignorance. We've failed miserably. Claiming the righteousness of God to crush the other guy's righteousness of God doesn't work well.
Dude, Boy Scouts could have take the Taliban.
Now, back to the main point: I agree totally in a superior, overwhelming military force. I agree 15% of our revenues is chicken feed to insure this.
What I don't believe in is tax cuts that build up a debt which has a service charge greater than the bloody military budget, if your 15% figure is correct! I am a true conservative; I believe in paying for what we spend in hard, cold cash, and no weasel deficit financing to make everyone think that spending more than one takes in is fiscal sanity.
Lastly, we can't wait for a crisis and then start to build a military. When we need one it has to be ready.
We spend far more on our boys in guns than most of the combined military budgets of the western world. We are ready, ready, ready. We also have 100,000 nuclear warheads, and rockets to fire them. Our military forces are not in disarray.
Our real problem as I see it is that we are becoming too arrogant. Is it possible to have too large a military, if all we can think about is building gas pipelines and conquering oil fields, while the fanatic who bombed us is still free? What else are we going to find necessary to do with all the power we have, and what is the rest of the helpless world going to think of what we do? We are not presenting logical reasons for our actions.
It is redistribution if the taxes are cut and then money is borrowed to cover the shortfall, over and over, year after year... and the interest paid on that debt to finance the tax cut (and it is financing) goes to the same people who got the lion's share of the cut. "it's not the government's money" is sophistry. It was money that we were to raise to pay for our services. We cut it out of the budget, and then borrowed, for the most part, to make up for the deficit. The money was spent. It was suppposed to be covered by tax revenues. The revenues weren't there because they were chopped. And the wealthiest got the biggest slice by far of the pie.
"Wealthy" doesn't mean Joe Rich down the street. It is foreign investors, money markets,corporations, retirement funds of all sorts, small investors... they get the interest from all that money borrowed because the cuts were made. A government running a deficit is sweet music to the investors -- it is guaranteed income for decades.
The fundamental inability of people of means to distiguish that tax cuts ARE spending has led to a 6.3 TRILLION dollar debt, with hundreds of billions of dollars wasted every year to cover the vigorish. Think of the the tax cut we could have if that debt wasn't there -- 17%!!
We are being dragged down by the tax cuts. You can look at the 6.3 trillion figure, and deny this? It's like ignoring an elephant shittin' in your dining room. Chutzpah. Altho I've seen written, often, that this "debt" doesn't matter... altho 17% of our national budget is swallowed just keeping the debt from being called in. This is fiscal conservatism? Nope. It's self-interested madness, spurred by the enormous wealth it has created.
But the poorest schmucks pay the bills. A poor man will spend 20% of his income in federal and FICA; a rich man, because of tax breaks, will pay far less, or he is a fool. Or his business can relocate outside the country, and pay no taxes.
This IS a war of the rich against the poor, and the rich have won. Semantic games don't work; we cut taxes, ran a debt, and now we pay for the wealthy's good luck. they get enormously richer, and eventually we will have to raise taxes again, or cut everything, or keep running a deficit. This is not brain surgery.
Slashdot Mirror
"You are basically arguing that Bush is totally amoral in this and acting purely for his own benefit. That is a very strong charge, and IMHO offensive. Furthermore, it is ironic in that the previous president was the one who sent cruise missiles and bombers to distract people from his own political problems!"
... traitors? constantly excoriate Clinton for actually trying to attack al Queda, while he whom you defend has manipulated the situation to make money for his buds, steal trillions in oil, and failed to even capture one stinking man who actually killed over 3,000 Americans.
On the campaign trail, Bush has consistently asked people to vote for him based on their own self-interest -- read "money".
To extrapolate that he does things for his own self-interest is elementary.
As for that old lie about Clinton, I believe he was going after al-Queda when he launched that attack. The "wag the doggers" like Trent Lott said explicitly that they would support the troops, but not the President, during that fight. Today, Bush/Rove/Ashcroft/Cheny would call such an attitude treason.
By constantly mocking Clinton's attempt to rein in al Queda, Lott -- all the rightwing "Wag the Doggers" -- were hindering our leader's attempt to stop a threat which he and his advisors saw clearly, with superior abilty and prescience.
Bush, whom you take offense for, didn't care about the al Queda threat, dissed and ignored the men from Clinton's admin who begged him to pay attention to our most threatening enemy, and paved the way for the attack on the WTC.
Bush has "wagged the dog" expertly for over 15 months now. He has marketed a war against Iraq which will net his familly and friends hundreds of billions in contracts, and HAS NOT CAPTURED BIN LADEN OR ANY OF THE DAMNED PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY ATTACKED US.
I am offended and FURIOUS that you and the other
Clinton saw the future and tried to stop it. Bush failed to heed Clinton's warnings, based on pure political hatred, and killed 3,000.
Where is bin Laden?
What the hell is Bush doing attacking Iraq when his friends in Saudi Arabia are shielding the real money and connections?
OIL. OIL. OIL.
Clinton was a brilliant man who almost saved us. Bush is a fool who didn't heed urgent advice and got our people killed.
I am offended that people like you keep propogating hate and lies about a president who gave usa surplus, kept us at peace, and actually spared us from attack. And fought bin Laden while Bush was bankrupting Texas.
1. There has been no indication of this project anywhere I've seen. It would stick out! The NERVA/Zeus project was thirty years ago. The engineers are long gone, and there are no new ones.
2. The U.S. has no nuclear (nook-you-ler, if you're a C-grade fratboy from Texas) rocket program.
3. Nook-you-ler rockets are illegal under current treaties -- I think. Not that that would stop Bush -- treaties are for the evil, not the good.
4. 8 years is not enough time. The U.S. doesn't have the infrastructure to mount a mission.
5. The U.S. is going into debt at the rate of 1.3 billion dollars a day. We're spending ourselves utterly broke while cutting taxes. I don't think even the current regime is stupid enough to go to Mars when schools are setting up two daily shifts to save money. Or are they?
6. Politically impossible -- tho I qualify this in saying that this is the first marketing-driven administration in U.S. history. They've sold us on the idea that Saddam mounted the 9-11 attacks. I may be underestimating their maniuplative abilities.
7. This story is based on the world of one, count 'em, ONE "NASA administrator". The threshold used to be at least two believeable sources. The collapse of standards in the '90's set us up for any clown to float a story now -- bubonic plague vials on the loose! News at 11!
8. As an old space junkie, I wish the story was true -- sort of. I'd have preferred an ion drive, which is easier to maintain, ulimately faster, and doesn't carry the nuke label for marketing reasons.
9. If the story is true, why do I sense that the speculative capitalists that are now in charge of the guvmint (as opposed to businessmen -- the difference between Enronomics and the local Chamber of Commerce) would be trying to wring even more tax money out of us all? That would be on top of the 100-200 billion that the current contracts to attack/rebuild Iraq are going to cost the U.S. We are getting robbed here. NASA did the moon landings on the cheap -- I don't think the prvate equity managers will be as motivated to keep costs down.
Gee, the good guys are just winning way too often and we have to do something about all this peace and prosperity. We need balance, damnit!
Bush was appointed President. Peace and prosperity has been eliminated. Balance restored, Padawan.
(Couldn't resist)
I see he's been modded as "troll".
Well, actually his main point is easily verifiiable. Bush did withhold criticism from Lott for many days. Initially, he backed Lott's apology.
Even C-SPAN live coverage wasn't enough for major media to cover the story -- it took the internet talkers to keep it alive. Since it didn't die, Bush (read: Karl Rove) decided to use the issue to cut the old Dixiecrat ties that had previously helped Bush get into office. Those ties are liabilities for the next election; so Lott got knifed.
The beauty part is that the Democrats licked Lott's boots publicly before Lott was axed. They lost so much testosterone that they couldn't even bring themselves to oppose the Republican Senate leader even when he was waxing nostalgic for segregation ON LIVE TV! Rove decided Lott was to be publicly humiliated. He gave Bush the script to read, and thereafter, leaked info to the press to smear Lott. The press consistently credited "democrats" for the Lott historical info (which was already freely available to anyone who cared to, well, do reporting), but it was Rove who started the machine.
Rove is a master of this after all... remember the "Clinton stole the White House furniture" BS story he flogged for months? Even Bush had to later retract the story -- but not until months after the smear campaign succeeded in making a lie Truth. Yet another piece of "Clinton Truth" that won't die. Courtesy of the Mayberry Machiavelli, Rove.
(And for all the Limbaughnauts that are going to pile on at this point -- NO, Clinton didn't steal furniture, NO the offices weren't wrecked. No, it didn't happen, NO. No. NO. Did I say "no" enough times? I hear brains refusing to accept input here. Bush himself stated puplicly that the story was in error, that Clinton and his people did NOT do the things that Bush's own people had insisted were done. It was a lie, a scam, bullshit, and a vague shadow of the lie machine that we are listening to every day now. )
After Bush signalled the change, the 'publicans piled on. And the Demos crawled in, pathetically echoing the trained pack, making asses of themselves by denouncing Lott days after they had said nothing. In Daschle's case, he actually had previously made excuses for Lott.
They should have been FIRST in Lott's denunciation. They now do not politically exist.
So, Lott was whipped, then fired. Frist, a Bush family buddy and W clone, was installed by Rove and Bush as a puppet, so Bush now controls the Senate. Frist gets the possiblity of being President some day as a gift. Bush gets a wink from the old Dixiecrats, but gets public brownie points for denouncing Lott. Except for only two brave exceptions, the Democrats look like opinionless jellyfish. Bush gets a sliver more of the black vote, and gets more moderates (sane people) to think him acceptable. Win-win all around for Bush.
Geeks are cool? I don't think that is a situation that will long obtain. When the salaries start dropping, the coolness of being PC-bound will abate, sadly.
True, but with a Democrat you have some chance of denying a moneyboy what he wants. With the lineup in the 3 branches today, all Republican, there is NO chance of opposition. None. It's utterly against the robber-baron no-regulation mentality. The business of America is business, and all that. Death to unions, tax rebates to corps that don't pay taxes, offshore tax havens. It's a far-right neo-con agenda, and we are ficked as consumers.
It would have happened eventually with the Dems, but that is frankly because they are turning into '80's Republicans -- while the main Repubs are now a coalition of neo-con tax cutters, end-of-worlders, guvmint haters -- the farthest of the right wing.
What was far left no longer exists. Left is now considered radical, moderates are now lefties, conservatives are now moderates, far-right wings are considered moderate-to-conservative, and the looniest fringe nutjobs are now amiable "right-wing" with their own TV networks (Fox, MS-NBC, CNN).
The Dems would have at least slowed down the corporatization of the world. The Repubs love it, live it, they by and large ARE the corporations that are taking over the four branches of our democratic guvmint.
I remember vivdly Kornbluth and Pohl's "Space Merchants" novella of 1950. They showed a U.S. Senate comprised of Senators from U.S.Steel, G.M, etc. There were no people's reps, only corporate ones.
It's happening de facto.
Cheney is the president.
We're going to have 16 years of Cheney -- the man in the bunker.
America Uber Alles.
So there are no Human Rights. There are just American Rights. If you are not American, you have no rights whatsoever.
Ashcroft and Bush agree with you. Apparently this is what passes for an intellectual meme on the far right wing.
If there are no "human" rights, guaranteed to all who deal with us, just "rights" for our own selves, then we are THE terrorist nation in the world. We would be the single most frightening nation on the planet. We would have absolutely no morals whatsoever, just laws. For ourselves. Everything comes down to what pleases us.
Social Darwinism, parochialism, xenotrophism.
You seem obsessed with the hatred and "slagging" of Americans abroad, with no trace of irony. Maybe they hate us, or people who think like you (no such thing as human rights, only American internal rights), because you are so obsessed with all these "people not in the U.S." who think they have any say in what we do, especially to their own peoples. Did you know that in recent months in California, we've taken in hundreds more unpeople into uncustody who duly registered at the request of the Bush admin? They've been unpeopled. They have no rights.
"The reason why they hate us is because we don't know why they hate us."
We are causing the slagging with our own actions.
You have a choice: either 1) The entire world has gone insane and is calling us on becoming a police state which doesn't understand its own heritage, when we are innocent of such heinous crimes, or 2) WE'VE gone crackers because we can't see what brutal bullies and cowards we've become. There is nothing so dangerous as the righteous bully.
At the very least, the accused should have a trial. We've time; there's no "war" going on -- we're not teetering on the brink of collapse. We're fat and happy.
Bush and Ashcroft have long shown over the years their contempt for the judicial system of the U.S. (and most certainly for the press). Bush wants a nice streamlined system where he decides who's guilty. Period. And he's got it. He can:
1. Sign a death warrant for anyone in the world *he* decides should die -- even a U.S. citizen.
2. Imprison in secret any foreigner *he* decides is a security risk. Their is no notification to kin. No lawyers. No judges. No trial. The uncitizen can be held indefinitely at the pleasure of Bush, or of course appointed deputies.
3. Declare war on any foreign nation he decides coddles terrorists, on the basis of evidence that he does not need to reveal.
4. Confiscate whatever assets on foreign soil he desires, if it is a spoil of war.
5. (Bush Sr.) He can invade any nation he desires, for whatever reason, and kidnap the head of state. Civilians can be killed in the thousands as a byblow.
6. This year: he openly celebrated an attempted coup against an elected government in Venezuela. One of his spokesman made a crack: sometimes a democratically elected government is not necessarily valid. And apparently we are funding a strike in Venezuela right now. The demand of the strikers? The government step down. This is in the face of the fact that our government employees have been stripped of the right to strike in our country!
I mention these easily verifiable facts to illustrate *why* we are being "slagged". Since thecurrent admin seems to believe that rights only apply to Americans, they are stomping on people all over the world. And they rightly find us sanctimonius hypocrites.
Oh, and BTW, my posting is factually correct. Bush did have sole authority to order the military to fire on an airliner. He did nothing, on tape, for most of a half hour he could have used to order the shootdown. He did flee to a safe location while Cheney remained at the White House. The "White House was under threat" story was later dismissed by the White House. And if Clinton had done what Bush had done, he would have been impeached. Especially since Bush and Rice, et al, canned the anti-Bin Laden program upon reaching office. When Clinton fired at Laden, it was "wag the dog" for months... when Bush called off the dogs, bin Laden fired and killed thousands. But Bush is a hero, Clinton despised. There is madness here.
A lot of Bushies amongst the moderators this week.
The only person with the authority to give the order to shoot down a civilian airliner is the President, who was sitting in a classroom like a stunned sloth for a half hour instead of being a President. The military was competent. Bush was not.
If he had gotten up and actually acted, the planes would have been followed by fighter planes, and given authorization, shot down before they got close enough to take out the towers.
It wasn't the military's fault. Hell, I think they took out the flight over Pennsylvania -- the blast debris was too widely scattered for a crash.
Bush sat like a deer frozen in headlights instead of giving the order to shoot if necessary. Without his OK, there could be no shootdown.
Then he ran away. The story about the White House being under threat was later dismissed by the White House, to the utter disinterest of reporters.
If Clinton had failed to get out of that chair, and those planes had hit the buildings... if he had fled to Louisiana... he'd have impeached the next week. Trent Lott and all the other patriots who gave Bush their fawning support would have personally shot Clinton, if he had shown the stupidity and cowardice displayed by Bush.
Had to be said. The planes hit because the order was never give to shoot. The order wasn't given because Bush just sat there, listening to some children.
Osama bin Laden does not use beepers, landlines, telephones, cell phones, WiFi, the Internet, laser comm, satellite phones, carrier pigeons, or the U.S. mail.
He communicates via trusted lieutenants, face to face.
The idea of terrorists using the Internet and WiFi in particular is not only speculative, it's just plain wrong. A professional guerilla warrior does not use traceable tech, not if they want to succeed.
This is FUD. And a prelude to a marketing campaign against free networks. Or, it just illustrates the really bad thinking coming from the White House's Nixon retreads right now -- not Bush. Bush doesn't know WiFi from HiFi. This is coming from the army of Marching Morons that are running the Executive Branch and the DoD right now, to the dismay of the intelligent professionals who have been shoved aside and told to shut up.
You're right - because we all know that heading off problems before they happen is a bad idea. Exactly what is wrong with a state agency issuing a statement that there is the potential for interference and that further investigation is warranted?
Because they have no evidence of any such interference, or theoretical possiblity of such, and there are political and commercial objectives in suppressing WiFi, what they are doing is FUD -- intentional spreading of misinformation and leading questions to an advantageous end -- for them.
As for the kiddies -- here's the thing. If the military and commercial forces keep their hands off of consumer-grade self-built 802.11x networks, the only people using it will be civilian enthusiasts. If a script kiddy brings down a segment, no big woof. Why should this be a government matter? Other than the fact that some in the big guv, and in corporations (same thing, really)want control of theses networks handed over to them, right now.
It is FUD, as a means to an end: control.
When you use WiFi, you are riding with Saddam, Osama, evil European Unionists (circa 2025), communists, liberals, [insert necessary enemy here].
Once more an illustration of how fear generated by 9/11 is being fanned by clever boys who want control of... everything, I guess.
WiFi, with future network enhancements, could possibly be the next Internet -- the real one, with real anonymity. This is not a pleasing prospect to various interests and obsessives who want control of our records, our communications, our money, who knows what. The list of people who want to lock us down, and of the various causes and reasons for doing so, is enormous.
The War Against Being Afraid is not a war. It's an idea. There is no ending point, and no defined enemy (unless one is decided upon de jour). Last year it's Osama bin Laden, then, after a brief marketing campaign, we're salivating for Saddam.
Point is, The War Against Being Afraid is a tool, not a project. They are using it like a geopolitical sonic screwdriver, a unitool, capable of rationalizing any objective they like under guise of war. Since it can never end, the tool will never wear out. Sanity is the only defense against TWABA, but polls seem to be about 4:1 in favor of insanity. What can you do.
I think the main reason a lot of criminals get caught committing
crimes is because they commit crimes. Yes, they also fail to
cover their tracks, but if your tracks are clean, there's nothing
to cover.
An act can be retroactively be declared criminal. For instance, the put-evil-hackers-away-for-life law that was passed this year declared not only that there is no statute of limitations on "hacking" as a crime, the new "crimes" are now infinitely retroactive! That is to say, if you used a Captain Crunch whistle in 1977 to get yourself a free long distance call, you can be prosecuted today as a felon with a prison term up to life.
So don't say "you're clean if you don't commit crimes". Something you do today can be declared illegal and heinous ten years from now. It depends on the evil men are capable of... and I guess the profitablity of prisons, combined with that wonder free labor for business created by that large incarecerated population.
Or just drive. Why does everyone assume all attacks concern flight on airlines?
And everyone, please remember that the terrorists bought their tickets right out in the open. There is no way to catch a sleeper agent -- they act like everyone else.
No tattoos: embedded chips, probably. Something microscopic and embedded.
First, it'll be for "pedophiles".
Then, it'll be for The Safety of Our Children.
Then, it'll be for anyone who goes to or leaves prison.
Then, it'll be a requirement for employment in sensitive jobs.
Then, it'll be a requirement, like immunizations, for joining the armed forces. And there'll be a reinstituted draft soon, if I read the sneaky 'pubs right lately. So everyone 18 and over gets chipped.
Then, it'll become an expected part of getting a job in a corporate environment, even if you're a paint mixer at a Benjamin Moore store.
Then, it'll become a requirement for going to a state university. Or just attending school of any sort.
Sounds silly? Think of drug testing, and how we drop our pants on command without even questioning why we are doing it. America will swallow chipping if it's done slowly, over years.
Ten, fifteen years from now, my objections to chipping will sound to the Americans of that time like I do to the Americans of this time when I refuse to take a drug test. A damned liberal hippy, probably a criminal.
I hate being right.
The point is this: armed civilians are, *nowadays*, irrelevant to modern military and police forces.
As Heinlein said, if a gun makes you feel ten feet tall and covered with hair, don't go armed. Guns and rifles don't win wars, armies do.
Americans have a history of wanting to feel ten feet tall and covered with hair. It's endearing, but not relevant to a real conflict. A rifle WAS the weapon to drive out the Redcoats and Hessians. Imagine, however, the Iraqis trying to stop our Scheduled Invasion(C) with brave militias crouching behind cars. Not going to happen. They may or may not have the right to bear arms. Irrelevant. They will die, when and if we choose to kill them.
And with the new Homeland Security (did they INTENTIONALLY recall Nazi memes with that hideous name?), the most rabid amongst us will be monitoring our movements and activities. Curious fact tho: Ashcroft is dead set against ANY intrusion on gun ownership, even in the face of a rainbow warning. Are we serious about a police state, or are we just fooling around? How can we have a decent police state if the guv doesn't even have a window on who owns the guns? I mean, if I were a terrorist, I'd be dancing through gun shows! Geez, if we're going to become Safe from Terror, we should at least keep track of where the guns are.
Guns were useful agaisnt the Nazis, but think about it. Could the SS and the gas ovens been stopped by brave French equipped with hunting rifles?
Nope. It took diplomats. Generals. Bombs, planes, tanks, ships, codebreakers, balloons, radar, submarines, atomic bombs.
Guns were an expression of resistance, but they would not have won WWII against a German or Japanese empire. It took the intelligent cooperation of tens of millions of soldiers with all the resources of dozens of nations to stomp out a few determinted, self-righteous, God-appointed we're-doing-it-for-self-defense looney bin countries that convinced themselves they were only doing the right thing by attacking everyone else preemptively.
No gun in the hands of a citizen, or a million citizens, can "defend freedom". They can fire a few rounds off before the tanks and armored soldiers roll over their families and houses, or before they see a cruise missle go down their chimney, or a tailored virus is released into their water supplies. The era of the brave lone warriors never existed. It doesn't exist now. It's a fantasy.
If the U.S. government goes rogue under some pretext (such as the terrorist one), and they start doing things like, oh, detaining people in the dark of night, or executing citizens without trial, and everyone goes "Yay! We are safe!", no pile of Uzis under our beds will buy us freedom.
Oh, um. If everyone carries a gun, or has one in the house, the first order of business for any robber or attacker is to kill the victim on sight. The attacker almost always wins if they have the gun out and hit you by surprise. I've heard in many cases that muggers, for instance, in highly armed neighborhoods will shoot the victim first off, because it's almost a certainty the victim is carrying blade or gun.
Do *I* want guns banned? I don't think they can be banned. It'd be worse than Prohibition, and at least booze drinkers weren't drinking a killing machine when the police broke in.
But I don't think the guns are going to save us from the bad man, or a government gone insane. Only careful monitoring of our guvmint can save us from the latter -- and we're not monitoring -- and as for the bad men, they will always be with us.
As a guy who got his first start programming on an IBM mainframe, I just want to break down in hysterical laughter.
Early nineties: everything was to be decentralized. Get rid of that antique iron! Go Intel/Microsoft! Can the tech Luddites, bring in the Bright Yunguns, who will show us the way.
Mind you, I was one of those calling for the company to modernize on a client-server model.
But I've watched for, what, 20 years since this all started. I watched the expensive mainframes go into the landfill, and the new servers take their place.
I've watched those servers get more expensive. I've seen the communications hardware become massively expensive. I've watched the new Data Priesthood come into being. I've watched companies being wiped out converting to, and maintaining, the new paradigm.
Not that it would have been good to stay on the old iron. BUT...
We've come full circle. The hounds are baying for simpler solutions, and most importantly, for the elimination of the new mainframers, the admins.
I predicted it over ten years ago. The PC's will cluster into data centers, pseudo-dumb clients will spread onto everyone's desks and laps, the services will automate, and the present IT industry will convulse. A shakeout is coming. Time to get that teaching career started.
As a sidebar: in my experience, far more money was spent on executive games and perks than was ever lost on IT spending. Cost accounting is applied where management wants application.
It's the slim slot running along the top of the faceplate, methinks.
This is truly cool. Car use? You can pop it out when you park and put it in your backpack. Take it home, network it to your main box and load up them MP3s and Divx files.
It wouldn't take much to hook up a teensy LCD screen to this. Fold out a mini keyboard from the bottom of the unit, flip up the screen from the top, and you have a nano PC.
Our population doubles every 30 years or so. No matter how well you parcel up the land, people will cover inch of the planet in a few hundred years. Exponential growth is a bitch. No matter how smart a cancer cell is, infinite growth is not an option.
To get everyone on earth into an efficient supercity would require an impossible dictatorship.
Population growth will cause war and disasters long before actual physical crowding occurs. People will fight for optimum land. And they will have numbers to back them up. In a sense, our population growth is spurring us, for instance, to take over Iraq for the optimal oil reserves under its land.
The current terrorism problem is a mere taste of what the angry poor masses of the world are going to be up to in the next hundred years. This is a war of too many people growing too fast against those they are jealous of. No hydroponics will beat Maslow's hierarchy -- the majority of the earth's numbers are poor, hyper-religious, half-educated, and are developing excuses to attack those with better resources. Welcome to Malthus' world... Asimov was so depressed as he grew older, because what is happening was inevitable.
Why is it that the private schools in California can do so much more (higher test scores, higher college attendence, etc.) than the public schools for less than half the money per student
Simple answer:
Cherry picking students.
Don't take in foreign language speakers. Don't take in the poor. Don't take in those who do not meet a minimum test score. Don't take in the autistic, the hyperactive, the troublemakers, the emotionally crippled, the illegal immigrants, the hard-to-educate of all kinds.
$Profit!
Public schools serve every comer. Private schools don't have to. Therefore, they don't have to spend nearly as much as a public school per student.
It's a false comparison.
Our military budget only accounts for 15% of the U.S. budget.
Then the interest on the national debt, 13-17% of all spending, outstrips our military spending. You're making an argument for me here.
Secondly, our military works. Only our military could have crushed the Taliban like it did in Afghanistan. Can you say Russia in 1980's?
A couple of points - let's take the last first.
The Russians actually invaded a hostile country. We have NOT done so. Afghanistan by and large hated the Taliban, almost as much as they hated the warlords which preceded them, and nowhere near as much as they hated the secular Soviets. The people of Afghanistan are not opposing our invasion.
As for taking out the Taliban -- um, you are aware they were almost totally unarmed in a modern sense? The country is a bloody wreck. Being proud of blowing up fish with dynamite is dangerous. The fish weren't any danger to ya.
And one other thing -- the Taliban weren't at war with us. We declared war on them because Al Queda was hiding there -- and the government demanded proof of their complicity in the attack to turn him over. Bush declared he had to do no such thing, and blew them up.
Not that Al Queda was in Afghanistan. They got away. And the whole reason for invading Afghanistan, capturing bin Laden, has been proved silly. They all left via Pakistan, which we conveniently aren't invading.
Summing up: we haven't fought an enemy yet, so let's not get cocky. Capturing Al Queda is a police action, not a military one, no matter how unsatisfying that sounds. It's also a matter of winning the hearts and minds of people in the region who are susceptible to his message through ignorance. We've failed miserably. Claiming the righteousness of God to crush the other guy's righteousness of God doesn't work well.
Dude, Boy Scouts could have take the Taliban.
Now, back to the main point: I agree totally in a superior, overwhelming military force. I agree 15% of our revenues is chicken feed to insure this.
What I don't believe in is tax cuts that build up a debt which has a service charge greater than the bloody military budget, if your 15% figure is correct! I am a true conservative; I believe in paying for what we spend in hard, cold cash, and no weasel deficit financing to make everyone think that spending more than one takes in is fiscal sanity.
Lastly, we can't wait for a crisis and then start to build a military. When we need one it has to be ready.
We spend far more on our boys in guns than most of the combined military budgets of the western world. We are ready, ready, ready. We also have 100,000 nuclear warheads, and rockets to fire them. Our military forces are not in disarray.
Our real problem as I see it is that we are becoming too arrogant. Is it possible to have too large a military, if all we can think about is building gas pipelines and conquering oil fields, while the fanatic who bombed us is still free? What else are we going to find necessary to do with all the power we have, and what is the rest of the helpless world going to think of what we do? We are not presenting logical reasons for our actions.
It is redistribution if the taxes are cut and then money is borrowed to cover the shortfall, over and over, year after year... and the interest paid on that debt to finance the tax cut (and it is financing) goes to the same people who got the lion's share of the cut.
"it's not the government's money" is sophistry. It was money that we were to raise to pay for our services. We cut it out of the budget, and then borrowed, for the most part, to make up for the deficit. The money was spent. It was suppposed to be covered by tax revenues. The revenues weren't there because they were chopped. And the wealthiest got the biggest slice by far of the pie.
"Wealthy" doesn't mean Joe Rich down the street. It is foreign investors, money markets,corporations, retirement funds of all sorts, small investors... they get the interest from all that money borrowed because the cuts were made. A government running a deficit is sweet music to the investors -- it is guaranteed income for decades.
The fundamental inability of people of means to distiguish that tax cuts ARE spending has led to a 6.3 TRILLION dollar debt, with hundreds of billions of dollars wasted every year to cover the vigorish. Think of the the tax cut we could have if that debt wasn't there -- 17%!!
We are being dragged down by the tax cuts. You can look at the 6.3 trillion figure, and deny this? It's like ignoring an elephant shittin' in your dining room. Chutzpah. Altho I've seen written, often, that this "debt" doesn't matter... altho 17% of our national budget is swallowed just keeping the debt from being called in. This is fiscal conservatism? Nope. It's self-interested madness, spurred by the enormous wealth it has created.
But the poorest schmucks pay the bills. A poor man will spend 20% of his income in federal and FICA; a rich man, because of tax breaks, will pay far less, or he is a fool. Or his business can relocate outside the country, and pay no taxes.
This IS a war of the rich against the poor, and the rich have won. Semantic games don't work; we cut taxes, ran a debt, and now we pay for the wealthy's good luck. they get enormously richer, and eventually we will have to raise taxes again, or cut everything, or keep running a deficit. This is not brain surgery.