Paying teachers more and putting more money into our crumbling infrastructure is not going to cut it. The American empire and its culture are rotting from the inside out and if you can't see it, you surely must be able to smell it.
You know what? I disagree with Obama, what he stands for, and I think his followers are mostly dopes duped by a demagogue whose done nothing more than rehash old liberal ideas that won't work. However, with that said, the vast majority of liberals in the United States, just like conservatives, believe in the promise of a free land and a free people, and our differences are only the extent of what those freedoms are, not, whether we should have them at all.
The best days for the USA are ahead of it, not behind it. Americans remain an industrious and inventive people. Regardless of political persuasion, if you put a bunch of American engineers on a problem, they will come up with something cool. We have been doing it for 200 years and we will keep on doing it. Americans like to build and are going to keep on building, and, quite honestly, the whole backstory about global warming has as much support about an American desire to upgrade its infrastructure, regardless of the profitability of doing so, as it does about saving the planet. There's a lot of generators, that have been running for 50 years, that our engineers, builders, and designers, that would simply like to upgrade because we can.
The free market will come through for America, and the promise of getting stinking rich is going to motivate someone to come up with the needed energy products. And, American government will work for Americans. Our electoral process remains second to none, our democracy is responsive, and we have produced candidates that connect with their people. There are some people that really love Obama. Can you get that in many other countries? I don't think so.
In the private sector, we have American car companies working on leading the way to building newer, more fuel efficient vehicles, American bio companies working on more biofuels, American construction firms designing new nuclear reactors, American scientists leading on exotic new energy sources. American companies are building ever more powerful computers, faster aircraft, and are doing this in a time of war.
Let's not forget, that, as much as we bemoan the failures in Iraq, that there are quite a few successes. It is only by the American standards of perfection that we judge Iraq to be a failure. Alexander the Great or Napolean would be jealous of George Bush. We easily overthrew Saddam, we captured him and his henchmen and put them to death, we have killed numerous Al Qaeda, we have put in a new government and we have averted a national civil war. Iraqis now have more electricity, more cell phones, air conditioners, computers, and a greater share of their nation's oil revenues and political processes than they have ever had in their lives. To some extent, in this "defeat", of all people, Obama asked the ultimate question: "What more do we need to do to prove we've won." And that, our own military people can't answer. We've killed just about all the bad guys that there are to kill.
The USA has been down before and through worse before. The outcome of our country's birth was in doubt in the revolution, we destroyed ourselves in the civil war, we disrupted our society with industrialization, we weren't prepared for the Nazi onslaught, lost the space race to Soviets, yet, at the end, conservative vs liberal, social turmoil or not, the USA kicked the British out, created an industrial superpower, rebuilt after the civil war, beat the Nazis and then put a man on the moon. So, somehow, after every country on this planet counts the USA out, we American morons somehow manage to keep on winning.
So what's before us today? We have what, climate change? A change in the commodities economy? Man, the USA has been through worse than that and has come out on top. While the rest of the world has
I know a handful of excellent teachers who were willing to work for the low pay
A lot of people seem to go and say that "this or that" teacher they know is "excellent", but, how do you really know? Do you have some empirical way of determining whether or not the children learned anything better than someone else? Or is it just, really, that you know a lot of people that impress you, that seem like they should be good teachers.
He supports universal file/data formats ("we will put government data online in universally accessible formats");
And stupider still.
and he understands the inherent risks to privacy created by our new technology
So he wants to regulate it. Gotcha.
And if Obama advocates reducing the NASA budget
He does. Obama cuts NASA budget So by by shuttle, shuttle replacement, and hubble, so some poor kids in cities that chased away all their jobs can get a few crumbs..
Furthermore, Barack Obama's policy regarding technology reflects a thorough and deep understanding of the underlying issues pertinent to technology and information. John McCain will never have any personal involvement in creating a technology policy promulgated by his administration; instead he will rely on his staff,
More spin. John McCain graduated with an engineering degree. Obama is a lawyer. Did Obama ever take an integral? Doubt it. But McCain flew jet aircraft for the US Navy.
Finally, to conclude from the fact that Barack Obama has accepted money from the most consistently-Democratic industrial block in the US that he will necessarily back its most outrageous demands is logically spurious.
Obama is supported by everyone major studio head and the head of every major media company. On his web site he has said, that HE WOULD WORK TO ENSURE AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE PROTECTED AROUND THE GLOBE. Period. So, if he's willing to go after the Chinese because they pirate DVDs of software, what do you think he's going to feel about RIAA?
All those rich white kids should pay for music, that's what he's going to say.
Um, more facts. Bush increased discretionary spending on every major program more than any President since LBJ. So, as far as budgeting goes, he's the most liberal president this country has had in many people's lifetime. Just compare Bush 2006 budget to Bush 2000, versus Clinton 1992 versus Clinton 2000, and you'll see that Clinton was a tightfist, but Bush had no problem expanding government spending.
We are 9 trillion in the hole thanks to the Shrub.
More so, old people. A ton of baby boomers moving into Medicare and Medicaid. These two programs are growing at 7-9% a year and its simply unsustainable to pay this much.
which makes him one of the most pro-human-rights republicans in the Senate. I wish he was just a bit stronger.
I think we need to stop defining other parties in terms of our own definitions of what human rights are.
I mean, what if, instead of arguing over Democratic visions of human rights - redistribution of wealth, freedom of the press, and rights for minorities, and combined that with the Republican view of rights for entreprenuers, rights to keep and bear and arms, dispose of ones land as one sees fit, and so forth?
It seems to me that if we had a society where some folks could, gasp, put up with a manger and an xmas tree in a public square, and others could gasp, accept gay marriages, then, jeez, we might have a country where people respect each other more. Hell, we might even be all "growed up and stuff".
So I put in the word for slashdot at my secret neocon command in the bowels of Mt. Doom at GOP's secret conspiracy bunker. As I am only a low level functionary in the vast plan to corporatize the world for massive profits, I cannot guarantee success, but, let's see what happens.
I think it's a smart move: get moderate Hillary supporters to believe that McCain wants their vote more than Obama does
This election has come down to race, sex, and oil.
Obama won the nomination because he won every state that had a large black population, and they overwhelmingly voted for him, and then, he split the white vote with Hillary. So now, McCain is reaching out to those white voters and po'd women that probably won't for Obama.
The PO'd women is a huge factor. If McCain picked a woman as his VP - say, Kay Hutchinson, then, that would be a smart move on his part, as, every time Obama attacked McCain on his age, it would serve to remind Hillary supporters that if McCain dies, a woman becomes president.
All McCain has to do now is flip flop a bit on drilling ANWR and off the coasts, and he can attack the Dems on supply. Let Obama defend not drilling for oil, or not supporting coal to liquids, when the price of gasoline hits $5/gal this November, and when diesel hits $6/gal. He'll make the AGW proponents happy, but no one else, and that's not enough to win an election.
Obama is getting money in torrents from IP people from Hollywood to Silicon Valley precisely because he is a strong proponent of doing everything with intellectual property that many slashdotters would virulently oppose. Ultimately, this issue trumps, economically, every issue that influences humanity more than even the war in Iraq or even global warming. Then, to top it all off, he wants to chop NASA's budget. Do the people on slashdot who support him actually read his "Issues" section on his web site, or do they just stop at "Yes we can."
Yet, he wouldnt sign on to legislation limiting interrogation techniques to those found in the Army field manual. Again, all talk, no action. Just like his so called "reformer" cred, which seems to be nothing but PR spin since the S&L scandals.
It's not a needed legislation. He's running for the Commander in Chief.
What do you want to produce without raw materials, or rather, raw materials you can't afford because your currency is so weak that it looks like Dali painted it
Our currency is NOT that weak. Last time I checked, the USA is a continental nation with rich deposits of iron and vast forests, with plenty of food to sell. So, there's always some intrinsic bottom value to the currency. It's just declined enough to put an end to our subsidy of the European welfare state.
Right... So, you maintain that Guantanamo Bay is a prisoner of war camp, eh? If that's the case, the united states is bound by the geneva convention
No, that's not the case. If Al Qaeda signed the geneva convention, then, the US would be bound by it, but oh, they didn't. so, screw their prisoners. It's entirely legal under international law.
I know that yeah, its too cold for that happen on Mars, but, maybe there's something or some chemistry that acts like a wetting agent. Thus, once the soil filled up the beaker, it had lost the effects of the wetting agent that had "glued it together" - just like mud can be sticky before it possibly powders up as it dries. So, really, the whole experiment is botched and the lander blew it, again.
The value of the dollar is not falling against to yuan. The currency of our largest trading partner is not allowed to fluctuate, so things can't even out like they should.
The Chinese can't hold that peg, because it is causing rampant inflation in their own land, AND, the Chinese have to buy oil in USD and then sell it below market to their own people because they subsidize it.
Don't underestimate the importance of a strong Dollar for the US. With the USD losing value by the hour now, a lot of countries are pondering aloud whether they should accept other currencies in international trade.
Let them. Let the price of European and Japanese goods rise so high that they do not export to the USA any more. I've got ten million US manufacturing workers ready to go back to work, and the unions to back them.
Do you have a faint idea what it would mean for the USD if oil (or any internationally traded commodity that you have to import) was suddenly handled in EUR instead? Or what this would mean for the US economy? I doubt Ford can prop up that disaster!
If worse comes to worse, the USA has 150,000 men sitting on top of 200 billion barrels of oil in Iraq. Do you really think it prudent that they leave at this time?
But, be that as it may, its US corn and US wheat and US coal that are really driving exports right now. If the asian countries do not want to accept US dollars, than, certainly, we can demand that they pay for food in gold.
As the value of the dollar falls, it makes it better for those Americans who work in fields that export to other countries. So, as Ford retools its truck lines to make cars for export to Europe, would you tell them that Obama will raise the dollar so that that enterprise is unaffordable?
Similarly, you can complain about the high price of commodities, but what do you offer someone that works IN commodities. If you are a miner, an oilman, a farmer, you are making out pretty darned good in the Bush economy and you made out pretty poorly in the Dem economy under Clinton. So, what do you tell someone that works for Exxon?
# umber of people killed in Iraq # Number of WMDs found in Iraq
All will be trumped by, number of barrels of oil pumped from Iraq.
Number of houses lost to predatory lenders - this is what deregulation is all about
Versus, how many people had their homes double in value and sold at the right time?
I must say I'm honestly surprised that more linux reliant companies don't contribute to the X.org development team.
Well, the thing is, lets say that Linux is completely successful, and the world of software for sales as a model goes away and is replaced by a world of shared software as the basis of consulting. Then, we'll need to have some sort of a service tax to pay for this development... probably a license fee for professional developers and the money would get disbursed to various module systems organizations. Granted, its a politicized, socialized crappy kind of process, but, so long as its not exclusive of proprietary development, then the two can coexist and in the grand scheme of things, the market will still decide which is best. But somewhere, Linux is going to need a permanent, steady source of public funding.
People aren't going to work on X because a lot of developers want to make new stuff, not fix up someone's old junk. So, the only way to get them to do it is to pay them. There's not enough money for that. Bounties are nice and all, but you really need to have a foundation with big money coming in to get the people to actually work on this stuff.
Vote for Obama. Nobody can reform the country, but he is the closest thing to a breath of fresh air we will get.
See, there's the rub. If I work for Exxon, in the Clinton era, I was screwed. Under Bush, I'm making out pretty good. When Obama comes in, I'm going to get screwed again. So, if I work for an oil company, a gold company, or an American farm, or, for an American export manufacturing company, why should I vote for Obama, in strictly economic terms. All of his policies are going to screw me, and I want Bush economics to continue.
Paradoxically, Bush is probably doing more for the environment than any Democratic law ever could. Democrats railed about the puacity of transit ridership and the SUV, but, under Bush, the SUV is dead, mass transit is up, gasoline consumption is down, and the USA in one year of high prices has already significantly reduced its carbon dioxide production.
The dirty secret of the environmental movement of this... is that, if you really want to save planet earth, you want another 8 years of Bushonomics, because, when gasoline is $10/gallon, nobody is going to drive, and we'll easily hit the 80% reduction in greenhouses gasses.
It depends on which economy you are talking about. In American politics, it is always city vs industry. Clinton was about the city, Bush is about the industry.
Under Bush, the dollar is devalued, and this, coupled with global demand, is driving commodities prices through the roof. This means that American resource extraction companies and manufacturing export companies are making tons of money. So, oil companies, coal companies, gold companies, farms of all kinds, are all doing really well under Bush. However, the falling dollar is bad for investment and so Wall Street in particular and the services sector in general, are taking a beating. The mortgage and other banking crises are ultimately a consequence of this.
Under Clinton, on the other hand, you couldn't make a dime in any of the commodities or farming sectors, and those people took a beating. Manufacturers went out of business in droves in favor of offshore production, whereas under Bush, manufacturing is actually doing rather well as a whole - exports have surged to a record 15% of US GDP. However, services people made out like bandits, as a strong dollar is good for investment.
Just look at the stock market, and you can see what companies are pro-Bush and Republican and which ones are Democrats. Banks right now are donating big to Democrats because they like a strong dollar and don't care about the consequences to American manufacturing and resource extraction, and they are supporting Obama in droves. On the other hand, Exxon Mobil is getting hauled before congress but, their shareholders (Republicans), are making out extremely well.
The problem is that, we're at the extreme end of both approaches. Clinton's strong dollar gutted American manufacturing, and Bush's weak dollar gutted American wallets. An excellent government would peg the dollar to world currencies so that it is stable at a level protective to American manufacturing, but also not falling so much that banks are screwed and investors are hiding in commodities. You would have some environmental deregulation - we should be drilling for oil in anwr and off the coasts, simple to take the money in an era of rising demand. Unfortunately, neither of what Obama or McCain propose are sane. Obama wants to have a strong dollar but guard against the effects of it by restricting imports, which, is silly, because, lower prices of imports are a benefit of the strong dollar and it will only trigger a trade war. And, on the other hand, McCain wants to keep the weak dollar but attacks the only sectors (commodities), that are actually making money right now. So we have two idiots running for President.
Compared to the fates of millions of commodities workers versus millions of service sector employees, really, Bush's supposed reputation abroad, or even Clinton's, don't matter one bit.
Even in the case of Europe, most European leaders could care less about Bush invading Iraq, than they do about access to American markets, and Obama does threaten that stability. For example, Germans don't like the war, but if Germans have to lay off 500,000 steel and car workers because of American protectionist legislation, they will miss George Bush... but they will still miss Clnton more because Clinton had that nice strong dollar. On the other hand, McCain might well go and invade Iran or do something else crazy, which will upset the Germans to no end, but... if he keeps the present open nature of American trading in place, they will live with American moral failings and take the profits the same way they take them from the Chinese.
To get you started, dig up your immunization records. And notice the "Hepatitis" shots you had. And how you don't have it today. And then go back and look at how it's in your post.
Immunization is not a cure, its a prevention.
There's nothing that refutes my original point of my post - there's a sufficient number of uncured new diseases, coupled with a rising number of previously "cured" diseases made ever more deadly by drug-resistant strains, to make some people lose faith in science and turn to religion.
Does that mean people are going to give up on physics and chemistry and go back to worshiping the sun? No, but it does mean that science can't and won't ever have enough answers to guarantee even saving a life, so that, if your child is in the hospital with an extreme fever, more often than not, you should know that whatever antibiotic they give him might not work, and in the future, probably won't work, and so a lot of people are going to choose to pray.
You fail. HIV/AIDS is not untreatable. It is incurable, but that is not because of on-going and continual mutation.
If HIV/AIDS was so treatable, then why are there so many dead people? Obviously, "treatment", is not good enough.
The same for Hepatitis and TB, except they do not continually mutate
Ah, the problem of dead people. Immunoresistant TB is now a scourge, and THAT IS MUTATION. In fact, just about every infectious disease there is evolving a drug resistant strain, and drugs aren't keeping up.
The flu and the common cold (which is actually several bacteria and viruses) do continually mutate, but that does not stop anyone from treating and curing them.
There is no cure for the cold or the flu. All the present remedies do is manage the symptoms to give the body time to mount its own defenses.
Ongoing and continual mutations in virii and bacteria will continue to render every major infection untreatable, including AIDS, Hepatitis, the Flu, TB, and the cold. This leads into an uptick in the adoption of religion, largely because science is of no help.
Slashdot Mirror
Paying teachers more and putting more money into our crumbling infrastructure is not going to cut it. The American empire and its culture are rotting from the inside out and if you can't see it, you surely must be able to smell it.
You know what? I disagree with Obama, what he stands for, and I think his followers are mostly dopes duped by a demagogue whose done nothing more than rehash old liberal ideas that won't work. However, with that said, the vast majority of liberals in the United States, just like conservatives, believe in the promise of a free land and a free people, and our differences are only the extent of what those freedoms are, not, whether we should have them at all.
The best days for the USA are ahead of it, not behind it. Americans remain an industrious and inventive people. Regardless of political persuasion, if you put a bunch of American engineers on a problem, they will come up with something cool. We have been doing it for 200 years and we will keep on doing it. Americans like to build and are going to keep on building, and, quite honestly, the whole backstory about global warming has as much support about an American desire to upgrade its infrastructure, regardless of the profitability of doing so, as it does about saving the planet. There's a lot of generators, that have been running for 50 years, that our engineers, builders, and designers, that would simply like to upgrade because we can.
The free market will come through for America, and the promise of getting stinking rich is going to motivate someone to come up with the needed energy products. And, American government will work for Americans. Our electoral process remains second to none, our democracy is responsive, and we have produced candidates that connect with their people. There are some people that really love Obama. Can you get that in many other countries? I don't think so.
In the private sector, we have American car companies working on leading the way to building newer, more fuel efficient vehicles, American bio companies working on more biofuels, American construction firms designing new nuclear reactors, American scientists leading on exotic new energy sources. American companies are building ever more powerful computers, faster aircraft, and are doing this in a time of war.
Let's not forget, that, as much as we bemoan the failures in Iraq, that there are quite a few successes. It is only by the American standards of perfection that we judge Iraq to be a failure. Alexander the Great or Napolean would be jealous of George Bush. We easily overthrew Saddam, we captured him and his henchmen and put them to death, we have killed numerous Al Qaeda, we have put in a new government and we have averted a national civil war. Iraqis now have more electricity, more cell phones, air conditioners, computers, and a greater share of their nation's oil revenues and political processes than they have ever had in their lives. To some extent, in this "defeat", of all people, Obama asked the ultimate question: "What more do we need to do to prove we've won." And that, our own military people can't answer. We've killed just about all the bad guys that there are to kill.
The USA has been down before and through worse before. The outcome of our country's birth was in doubt in the revolution, we destroyed ourselves in the civil war, we disrupted our society with industrialization, we weren't prepared for the Nazi onslaught, lost the space race to Soviets, yet, at the end, conservative vs liberal, social turmoil or not, the USA kicked the British out, created an industrial superpower, rebuilt after the civil war, beat the Nazis and then put a man on the moon. So, somehow, after every country on this planet counts the USA out, we American morons somehow manage to keep on winning.
So what's before us today? We have what, climate change? A change in the commodities economy? Man, the USA has been through worse than that and has come out on top. While the rest of the world has
I know a handful of excellent teachers who were willing to work for the low pay
A lot of people seem to go and say that "this or that" teacher they know is "excellent", but, how do you really know? Do you have some empirical way of determining whether or not the children learned anything better than someone else? Or is it just, really, that you know a lot of people that impress you, that seem like they should be good teachers.
So, where exactly is the secret conspiracy bunker? In Vegas, "disguised" as a brothel, perhaps?
Vegas. No, the Democrats got that one. Organized crime and all. Ours is actually in Colorado.
i>Barack Obama explicitly supports Net Neutrality
Ok.
media decentralization,
Which is stupid.
and universal broadband access.
And stupider.
He supports universal file/data formats ("we will put government data online in universally accessible formats");
And stupider still.
and he understands the inherent risks to privacy created by our new technology
So he wants to regulate it. Gotcha.
And if Obama advocates reducing the NASA budget
He does. Obama cuts NASA budget So by by shuttle, shuttle replacement, and hubble, so some poor kids in cities that chased away all their jobs can get a few crumbs..
Furthermore, Barack Obama's policy regarding technology reflects a thorough and deep understanding of the underlying issues pertinent to technology and information. John McCain will never have any personal involvement in creating a technology policy promulgated by his administration; instead he will rely on his staff,
More spin. John McCain graduated with an engineering degree. Obama is a lawyer. Did Obama ever take an integral? Doubt it. But McCain flew jet aircraft for the US Navy.
Finally, to conclude from the fact that Barack Obama has accepted money from the most consistently-Democratic industrial block in the US that he will necessarily back its most outrageous demands is logically spurious.
Obama is supported by everyone major studio head and the head of every major media company. On his web site he has said, that HE WOULD WORK TO ENSURE AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE PROTECTED AROUND THE GLOBE. Period. So, if he's willing to go after the Chinese because they pirate DVDs of software, what do you think he's going to feel about RIAA?
All those rich white kids should pay for music, that's what he's going to say.
After 25 years of shrinking gov't programs
Um, more facts. Bush increased discretionary spending on every major program more than any President since LBJ. So, as far as budgeting goes, he's the most liberal president this country has had in many people's lifetime. Just compare Bush 2006 budget to Bush 2000, versus Clinton 1992 versus Clinton 2000, and you'll see that Clinton was a tightfist, but Bush had no problem expanding government spending.
http://www.facingup.org/image/entitlements-spending
Have a look at the chart comparing 1970 to today. Look at how much entitlements have consumed the federal budget.
We are 9 trillion in the hole thanks to the Shrub.
More so, old people. A ton of baby boomers moving into Medicare and Medicaid. These two programs are growing at 7-9% a year and its simply unsustainable to pay this much.
which makes him one of the most pro-human-rights republicans in the Senate. I wish he was just a bit stronger.
I think we need to stop defining other parties in terms of our own definitions of what human rights are.
I mean, what if, instead of arguing over Democratic visions of human rights - redistribution of wealth, freedom of the press, and rights for minorities, and combined that with the Republican view of rights for entreprenuers, rights to keep and bear and arms, dispose of ones land as one sees fit, and so forth?
It seems to me that if we had a society where some folks could, gasp, put up with a manger and an xmas tree in a public square, and others could gasp, accept gay marriages, then, jeez, we might have a country where people respect each other more. Hell, we might even be all "growed up and stuff".
So I put in the word for slashdot at my secret neocon command in the bowels of Mt. Doom at GOP's secret conspiracy bunker. As I am only a low level functionary in the vast plan to corporatize the world for massive profits, I cannot guarantee success, but, let's see what happens.
Fingers crossed.
I think it's a smart move: get moderate Hillary supporters to believe that McCain wants their vote more than Obama does
This election has come down to race, sex, and oil.
Obama won the nomination because he won every state that had a large black population, and they overwhelmingly voted for him, and then, he split the white vote with Hillary. So now, McCain is reaching out to those white voters and po'd women that probably won't for Obama.
The PO'd women is a huge factor. If McCain picked a woman as his VP - say, Kay Hutchinson, then, that would be a smart move on his part, as, every time Obama attacked McCain on his age, it would serve to remind Hillary supporters that if McCain dies, a woman becomes president.
All McCain has to do now is flip flop a bit on drilling ANWR and off the coasts, and he can attack the Dems on supply. Let Obama defend not drilling for oil, or not supporting coal to liquids, when the price of gasoline hits $5/gal this November, and when diesel hits $6/gal. He'll make the AGW proponents happy, but no one else, and that's not enough to win an election.
McCain wins easily, carrying 40+ states.
On tech issues, he's entirely wrong?
Obama is getting money in torrents from IP people from Hollywood to Silicon Valley precisely because he is a strong proponent of doing everything with intellectual property that many slashdotters would virulently oppose. Ultimately, this issue trumps, economically, every issue that influences humanity more than even the war in Iraq or even global warming. Then, to top it all off, he wants to chop NASA's budget. Do the people on slashdot who support him actually read his "Issues" section on his web site, or do they just stop at "Yes we can."
Yet, he wouldnt sign on to legislation limiting interrogation techniques to those found in the Army field manual. Again, all talk, no action. Just like his so called "reformer" cred, which seems to be nothing but PR spin since the S&L scandals.
It's not a needed legislation. He's running for the Commander in Chief.
What do you want to produce without raw materials, or rather, raw materials you can't afford because your currency is so weak that it looks like Dali painted it
Our currency is NOT that weak. Last time I checked, the USA is a continental nation with rich deposits of iron and vast forests, with plenty of food to sell. So, there's always some intrinsic bottom value to the currency. It's just declined enough to put an end to our subsidy of the European welfare state.
Right... So, you maintain that Guantanamo Bay is a prisoner of war camp, eh? If that's the case, the united states is bound by the geneva convention
No, that's not the case. If Al Qaeda signed the geneva convention, then, the US would be bound by it, but oh, they didn't. so, screw their prisoners. It's entirely legal under international law.
I know that yeah, its too cold for that happen on Mars, but, maybe there's something or some chemistry that acts like a wetting agent. Thus, once the soil filled up the beaker, it had lost the effects of the wetting agent that had "glued it together" - just like mud can be sticky before it possibly powders up as it dries. So, really, the whole experiment is botched and the lander blew it, again.
The value of the dollar is not falling against to yuan. The currency of our largest trading partner is not allowed to fluctuate, so things can't even out like they should.
The Chinese can't hold that peg, because it is causing rampant inflation in their own land, AND, the Chinese have to buy oil in USD and then sell it below market to their own people because they subsidize it.
Don't underestimate the importance of a strong Dollar for the US. With the USD losing value by the hour now, a lot of countries are pondering aloud whether they should accept other currencies in international trade.
Let them. Let the price of European and Japanese goods rise so high that they do not export to the USA any more. I've got ten million US manufacturing workers ready to go back to work, and the unions to back them.
Do you have a faint idea what it would mean for the USD if oil (or any internationally traded commodity that you have to import) was suddenly handled in EUR instead? Or what this would mean for the US economy? I doubt Ford can prop up that disaster!
If worse comes to worse, the USA has 150,000 men sitting on top of 200 billion barrels of oil in Iraq. Do you really think it prudent that they leave at this time?
But, be that as it may, its US corn and US wheat and US coal that are really driving exports right now. If the asian countries do not want to accept US dollars, than, certainly, we can demand that they pay for food in gold.
Value of the Dollar
As the value of the dollar falls, it makes it better for those Americans who work in fields that export to other countries. So, as Ford retools its truck lines to make cars for export to Europe, would you tell them that Obama will raise the dollar so that that enterprise is unaffordable?
Similarly, you can complain about the high price of commodities, but what do you offer someone that works IN commodities. If you are a miner, an oilman, a farmer, you are making out pretty darned good in the Bush economy and you made out pretty poorly in the Dem economy under Clinton. So, what do you tell someone that works for Exxon?
# umber of people killed in Iraq
# Number of WMDs found in Iraq
All will be trumped by, number of barrels of oil pumped from Iraq.
Number of houses lost to predatory lenders - this is what deregulation is all about
Versus, how many people had their homes double in value and sold at the right time?
I must say I'm honestly surprised that more linux reliant companies don't contribute to the X.org development team.
Well, the thing is, lets say that Linux is completely successful, and the world of software for sales as a model goes away and is replaced by a world of shared software as the basis of consulting. Then, we'll need to have some sort of a service tax to pay for this development... probably a license fee for professional developers and the money would get disbursed to various module systems organizations. Granted, its a politicized, socialized crappy kind of process, but, so long as its not exclusive of proprietary development, then the two can coexist and in the grand scheme of things, the market will still decide which is best. But somewhere, Linux is going to need a permanent, steady source of public funding.
People aren't going to work on X because a lot of developers want to make new stuff, not fix up someone's old junk. So, the only way to get them to do it is to pay them. There's not enough money for that. Bounties are nice and all, but you really need to have a foundation with big money coming in to get the people to actually work on this stuff.
Vote for Obama. Nobody can reform the country, but he is the closest thing to a breath of fresh air we will get.
See, there's the rub. If I work for Exxon, in the Clinton era, I was screwed. Under Bush, I'm making out pretty good. When Obama comes in, I'm going to get screwed again. So, if I work for an oil company, a gold company, or an American farm, or, for an American export manufacturing company, why should I vote for Obama, in strictly economic terms. All of his policies are going to screw me, and I want Bush economics to continue.
Paradoxically, Bush is probably doing more for the environment than any Democratic law ever could. Democrats railed about the puacity of transit ridership and the SUV, but, under Bush, the SUV is dead, mass transit is up, gasoline consumption is down, and the USA in one year of high prices has already significantly reduced its carbon dioxide production.
The dirty secret of the environmental movement of this... is that, if you really want to save planet earth, you want another 8 years of Bushonomics, because, when gasoline is $10/gallon, nobody is going to drive, and we'll easily hit the 80% reduction in greenhouses gasses.
Bill Clinton boosted the economy
It depends on which economy you are talking about. In American politics, it is always city vs industry. Clinton was about the city, Bush is about the industry.
Under Bush, the dollar is devalued, and this, coupled with global demand, is driving commodities prices through the roof. This means that American resource extraction companies and manufacturing export companies are making tons of money. So, oil companies, coal companies, gold companies, farms of all kinds, are all doing really well under Bush. However, the falling dollar is bad for investment and so Wall Street in particular and the services sector in general, are taking a beating. The mortgage and other banking crises are ultimately a consequence of this.
Under Clinton, on the other hand, you couldn't make a dime in any of the commodities or farming sectors, and those people took a beating. Manufacturers went out of business in droves in favor of offshore production, whereas under Bush, manufacturing is actually doing rather well as a whole - exports have surged to a record 15% of US GDP. However, services people made out like bandits, as a strong dollar is good for investment.
Just look at the stock market, and you can see what companies are pro-Bush and Republican and which ones are Democrats. Banks right now are donating big to Democrats because they like a strong dollar and don't care about the consequences to American manufacturing and resource extraction, and they are supporting Obama in droves. On the other hand, Exxon Mobil is getting hauled before congress but, their shareholders (Republicans), are making out extremely well.
The problem is that, we're at the extreme end of both approaches. Clinton's strong dollar gutted American manufacturing, and Bush's weak dollar gutted American wallets. An excellent government would peg the dollar to world currencies so that it is stable at a level protective to American manufacturing, but also not falling so much that banks are screwed and investors are hiding in commodities. You would have some environmental deregulation - we should be drilling for oil in anwr and off the coasts, simple to take the money in an era of rising demand. Unfortunately, neither of what Obama or McCain propose are sane. Obama wants to have a strong dollar but guard against the effects of it by restricting imports, which, is silly, because, lower prices of imports are a benefit of the strong dollar and it will only trigger a trade war. And, on the other hand, McCain wants to keep the weak dollar but attacks the only sectors (commodities), that are actually making money right now. So we have two idiots running for President.
Compared to the fates of millions of commodities workers versus millions of service sector employees, really, Bush's supposed reputation abroad, or even Clinton's, don't matter one bit.
Even in the case of Europe, most European leaders could care less about Bush invading Iraq, than they do about access to American markets, and Obama does threaten that stability. For example, Germans don't like the war, but if Germans have to lay off 500,000 steel and car workers because of American protectionist legislation, they will miss George Bush... but they will still miss Clnton more because Clinton had that nice strong dollar. On the other hand, McCain might well go and invade Iran or do something else crazy, which will upset the Germans to no end, but... if he keeps the present open nature of American trading in place, they will live with American moral failings and take the profits the same way they take them from the Chinese.
To get you started, dig up your immunization records. And notice the "Hepatitis" shots you had. And how you don't have it today. And then go back and look at how it's in your post.
Immunization is not a cure, its a prevention.
There's nothing that refutes my original point of my post - there's a sufficient number of uncured new diseases, coupled with a rising number of previously "cured" diseases made ever more deadly by drug-resistant strains, to make some people lose faith in science and turn to religion.
Does that mean people are going to give up on physics and chemistry and go back to worshiping the sun? No, but it does mean that science can't and won't ever have enough answers to guarantee even saving a life, so that, if your child is in the hospital with an extreme fever, more often than not, you should know that whatever antibiotic they give him might not work, and in the future, probably won't work, and so a lot of people are going to choose to pray.
You fail.
HIV/AIDS is not untreatable. It is incurable, but that is not because of on-going and continual mutation.
If HIV/AIDS was so treatable, then why are there so many dead people? Obviously, "treatment", is not good enough.
The same for Hepatitis and TB, except they do not continually mutate
Ah, the problem of dead people. Immunoresistant TB is now a scourge, and THAT IS MUTATION. In fact, just about every infectious disease there is evolving a drug resistant strain, and drugs aren't keeping up.
The flu and the common cold (which is actually several bacteria and viruses) do continually mutate, but that does not stop anyone from treating and curing them.
There is no cure for the cold or the flu. All the present remedies do is manage the symptoms to give the body time to mount its own defenses.
Ongoing and continual mutations in virii and bacteria will continue to render every major infection untreatable, including AIDS, Hepatitis, the Flu, TB, and the cold. This leads into an uptick in the adoption of religion, largely because science is of no help.