Richard Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism coordinator at the time, has revealed details of a meeting the day after the attacks during which officials considered the US response. Already, he said, they were certain al-Qa'ida was to blame and there was no hint of Iraqi involvement. "Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq," Mr Clarke said. "We all said, 'No, no, al-Qa'ida is in Afghanistan.'"
But Mr Clarke, who is expected to testify on Tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, said Mr Rumsfeld complained in the meeting that "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq." A spokesman for Mr Rumsfeld last night said he could not comment immediately.
I shall point out to you that you wrote your post in English. No need to thank my country or my ancestors for that, you're welcome! Or perhaps you are of the sort that would prefer the world to speak German?
Russia is probably owed as much for the defeat of the Nazis as the Americans.
I shall also point out that Islam seeks power and money, and that I am not sure one would find either in any of the "countries" you listed.
Islam seeks submission to God. That's what the word Islam means. People seek power and money. For instance, Saudi Arabia is a theocracy, but it's a US Ally, because it's leaders seek money and power. (Remember GW Bush holding hands with the Saudi Crown Prince?)
If you wanted to knock terrorism into last century, you'd have to do two things: leave Iraq and Afghanistan, and form a new Manhattan style project to harvest energy directly to the sun to end our oil addiction. Of course, those things are nearly impossible for the US to do, since it only seeks power and money.
And some of those are among the countries with the highest broadband speeds in the EU: http://www.bme.eu.com/news/uk-broadband-speed (lighter color = better) If you look at the breakdown by region on the same picture, Central and Eastern European countries on average are ahead of Western European countries when it comes to broadband speed. So what's your point?
You didn't read read your own source. Slovakia has a penetration of 40%. Bulgaria is 20%. Romania is 40%. We're not talking not about how fast internet is in select areas, but how fast the overall network is for last mile. Those countries don't even have a last mile.
The EU has recently accepted what are considered second and third world countries, many within the last 10 years, including Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, etc. Just let me know - and provide some data, if you don't mind - exactly which US states have that level of GDP, poverty, and infrastructure.
You might as well throw in Iraq and Afghanistan into the US numbers and see how the averages work out then. We haven't added a state to our union since 1959.
This will probably surprise you (it did me), but Japan's broadband network is almost nothing but DSL. It's because their phone lines are extremely short that they can offer 100 Mbit/s DSL plans. So I say we should just mimic what Japan did.
The reason it won't work for the rural US is because you can go for miles between homes, so it doesn't make sense to slap those DSLAMs (or whatever they're called) in for one or two homes. Just run fiber and be done with it - you can still go to copper just outside the house and save money there. Investing in fiber now is just like investing in electrification in the early 20th Century. If you don't have a fiber network in 2050, you're not going to have an economy worth speaking of either.
Just fwiw, you've just made as your argument one of the most classical and basic fallacies -- an appeal to authority.
Since not all arguments from expert opinion are fallacious, some authorities on logic have taken to labelling this fallacy as "appeal to inappropriate or irrelevant or questionable authority", rather than the traditional name "appeal to authority". For the same reason, I use the name "appeal to misleading authority" to distinguish fallacious from non-fallacious arguments from authority.
Did I say that? No. We were talking about China and their allegedly oh so philosophical government.
I said their government was an expression of their philosophy, but of course their government is philosophical. Every government carries a philosophy. Disagreeing with it doesn't make it disappear, and frankly, when you look at Saudi Arabia or Columbia or Iraq in the 80s, our allies have had much more repressive governments than China currently has. I was just pointing out than American exceptionalism in this case is a total crock of shit, as it usually is.
they don't just go off when they get dropped or smacked.
Yes they do. But I agree, it is extremely rare. More importantly, if you point a socket wrench at someone, or accidentally touch the trigger of a drill, there's virtually no chance that you or someone you love can immediately die.
A knife, a baseball bat, a crowbar all accomplish the same thing when she's asleep. The tool used has no bearing on intent.
The presence of weapons are known to increase the danger of aggressive behavior. I thought I had read an article, but I can't find it, so just call this a hunch: it takes a hell of a lot more commitment to pick up a crowbar and beat someone to death with it than it takes to pull a trigger.
The gun, however, is an easy scapegoat for a more serious problem in society that would lead a young child to kill their parental figures.
The gun, the handgun especially, is probably the only tool that would allow a child to kill their parents. They can try to set a fire, or stab them, but a gun is far more likely to get the job done.
Correction - guns are designed to move a projectile. Their use can be either to destroy life, or protect life. The choice rests with the individual.
Most guns, especially handguns, have no other purpose than to kill human beings.
The problem with regulation, is that only law abiding citizens obey. Marijuana, cocaine, and many other drugs are all regulated. Doesn't stop their spread.
Oh really?
America's level of gun violence cannot be attributed to urbanization alone as international comparisons show. Singapore has the second highest population density in the world (almost 6,814 people per square kilometer, or about 50% more densely populated than Chicago, Illinois) but has the lowest level of gun violence of all the countries in the table above. Its rate of gun violence is 99 times lower than that of the United States which is 200 times less densely populated. The only way for a civilian to own a firearm in Singapore is to acquire an Arm & Explosives license. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence
So knowing that,
Which is false...
why would you suggest we regulate a tool that is the most effective device known to man to protect life? I would not want to defend myself with merely a kitchen knife if my assailant was wielding a gun. Regardless of the fact that its illegal in every state to commit a crime while carrying a gun. Obviously my attacker didn't read that law, otherwise he would have not carried a gun while he was attacking me in my kitchen.
It's probably too late to ban handguns in America - there are tens of millions of them by now. But the easier you make it to obtain a handgun, the more likely someone is going to shoot you. If living in the wild west where everyone is armed to the teeth, constantly pulling out their handguns, and in the process, killin each other and anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby, might I recommend taking up residence in Venezuela or Colombia? They're just as fanatical about their guns as you seem to be.
The real issue I have with the NRA is that no one is suggesting that we legalize driving for twelve year olds. The practical difference between that and pushing for youth gun ownership is no different. We have licensing restrictions, learning permits, and DUI laws because cars are extremely dangerous, even though they are not designed for the purpose of killing someone.
I didn't say I agreed with philosophy. And if you look at what I just posted, I hope you'll join me in stating that government use of violence is almost never justified - even if it's the American government committing acts of violence, and even if they claim it's for self defense.
Puritan ideas? The Puritans didn't believe anything from the waist up was off-limits. The nipple thing is not an outgrowth of puritanism.
The anti-sex attitude of the Puritans is also described by historian John Demos. He reports that throughout the seventeenth century, the Puritans in Plymouth Colony had "a steady succession of trials and convictions for sexual offenses involving single persons. 'Fornication,' in particular, was a familiar problem." Demos says the punishment for fornication was "a fine of ten pounds or a public whipping - and applied equally to both parties."
Although the Puritans had serious and even pathological hang-ups about pleasure, they were into violence. Calvin's Geneva beheaded adulterers. Religious dissenters were hanged, decapitated, or burned at the stake. Christopher Hitchens describes Calvin as "a sadist and torturer and killer, who burned Servetus (one of the great thinkers and questioners of the day) while the man was still alive."
Apparently you have also forgotten about the Civil War. Whether the crisis (or the injustice of slavery) could have been solved without the military, who knows. But America has shown it's willingness to kill it's citizens in order to keep the Union together.
Now, what's even more revealing, is that American investment in China went up after the Tiananmen Square incident because it proved that China could keep it's population in line. Not long after they murdered their citizens in the streets, we were lining up for their cheap communist labor. So much for our value system.
America has many more freedoms than China, but every state has a will to survive that is larger than the value of a few of its citizen's lives. America just has much better PR about that fact.
What you have to understand about China is that their government is an expression of their religious philosophies. They believe that social order is a moral expression, and something worth dying for:
In Confucianism, human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavour especially including self-cultivation and self-creation. A main idea of Confucianism is the cultivation of virtue and the development of moral perfection. Confucianism holds that one should give up one's life, if necessary, either passively or actively, for the sake of upholding the cardinal moral values of ren and yi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism
In America, we have a culture that values liberty, which has become quite distorted in modern times. We've also retained some very puritan ideas, which is why nipples are somehow more offensive than gun violence. More recently, our only main moral metric has become profit.
This instance illustrates the point perfectly. Mose Chinese, if begrudgingly, accept the government's right to censor their speech so that the social order is maintained. Most Americans accept the government's right to censor free speech in the interest of profit.
So, if you want to stop the march to DRM and the loss of basic rights in the face of corporate rights to profit, you're going to have to convince fellow Americans that profit isn't the only thing that matters. Good luck with that.
A drill or a socket wrench cannot kill you if you drop it, or if you think it's unloaded, or if you get angry with your pregnant stepmother and decide to kill her while she sleeps.
Guns are designed to destroy life. They make it too easy to turn short term emotion into permanent tragedy. Throw in accidents, carelessness, sociopaths, and the primate violence found in all human societies, and there's no reason not to regulate it just like we regulate explosives or dangerous chemicals.
Having said that, I am aware that it's far more dangerous to own a pool than it is to own a gun, if you're worried about kids dying. And driving is probably up there in a similar risk pool. But the reason that guns should be regulated is because they make it very easy to take someone else's life by choice as well as by accident.
Hey, you just inherited a business that's racked up too much debt, and your income is down by 30%. You have two choices: borrow to restructure your business, or fire most of your staff, sell off your assets, and pray you don't have to declare bankruptcy.
In the business world, most people are going for option one. When you're a government, and option 2 includes sending millions of people into poverty, it's a pretty bad option.
Bottom line, Bush cut taxes for the wealthy and started two wars, and we're going to suffer for it for a long time. Even McCain said back in 2000 that tax cuts for the wealthy didn't make sense when we had to make sure that we kept our promise to the greatest generation and made sure social security was solvent. And he said again around 2003 that keeping the tax cuts was unwise when we didn't know the cost of reconstruction.
By the way, the cost of those two wars just tipped over 1 trillion dollars.
In all fairness, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the federal deficit, the bank bailout, the lack of oversight in the oil industry, and the phenomenon of waxy buildup are all recent developments under the Obama Administration. And, as everyone knows, 9/11 happened because Clinton didn't take national security seriously. If Bush had been in office just a few months longer, he would have found a way to stop it.
See, when a Democrat is the president, the recession can be his fault even before he's inaugurated. When a Republican is president, I'm not even sure any blame can be assigned to him, especially when he had no information to go on. I have been assured that this viewpoint is entirely rational.
the island will gradually be turned into whatever they're recycling the plastic into
You're assuming humans stop throwing away plastic. There are already four million tons of plastic there, and it's growing larger every day.
And, as the people involved in the project are interested in sustainability, something tells me they'll adjust their capacity so they don't accidentally destroy the platform they recycle on.
I never read anything on it, but I assume it goes something like this: some chicken-like animal ancestor is being killed while they are carrying their offspring. Therefore, the animals that randomly develop methods to allow earlier separation - in the case, hardened eggs - developed harder and harder eggs, that can earlier and earlier be left on their own for longer periods of time.
The reason I bothered is because if people accept Peter Schiff's solutions, then things will get much worse. The American Empire is on the decline, but the only thing more dangerous than our hegemony is a massive power vacuum.
His opinion is unalterable by facts. In order to address the unemployment issue, he would never accept massive public works programs because it's against his orthodox economic belief system. It's like arguing with a bible thumping christian about evolution. Peter Schiff, like every other Austrian school economist, believes in praxeology, which is basically just a priori arguments that they believe are true. They have zero tolerance for empirical data. And what can I say about anyone who has no faith in the scientific method?
I don't know where you are in the world but I can almost guarantee that an overnight collapse of the dollar would hurt you much more than you think.
And trust me, most of my arguments are not positive for the future of America. We have a shitload of problems to deal with, but Schiff and the rest of his ilk aren't helping.
Peter Schiff is trying to convince you that America is last place in the world economy, and the rest of the world has no incentive to prevent us from collapsing. He's wrong, and you're credulous. QED.
that's why you are the genius who predicted all of those economic calamities, having your own investment management company, managing at least 2Billion dollars and not Schiff. Wait, or is that the other way around? This is confusing, who is who here again?
Now you are getting incoherent. I'm not denying that Schiff is a smart guy, but I am saying this is one thing he doesn't get. I guess you can get your kicks mocking me for not being a hedge fund manager, but those things really don't interest me. The pursuit of wealth is a diversion from living.
Anyway, Schiff predicted the world would "decouple" from the American economy - as it seems you believe - and he has been hugely wrong. Many places are doing worse than the United States, like the UK and Japan, when you look at the growth of their economies and the level of their national debt to GDP. That's why his investors lost 40-70% in 2008 because they were bet hugely against the dollar.
Before the USA even existed the rest of the world had its economy and once USA economy goes down the drain, the rest of the world will help it to build a new one, maybe a more sane one.
Just before the founding of America, medical science was based on "the four humours," slavery and misogyny were past-times of the well-to-do, and James Watt had just made the steam engine viable. Economists like Adam Smith did not even dream of trading with China on certain goods, because there was no feasible way to move the product before it parished, and transportation was very, very expensive.
The world economy is radically different from what it was then, even from just 100 or even 50 years ago. But one thing hasn't changed since 1900: the principles of the Austrian School, of which Schiff is a devout follower. You're free to follow him off of a cliff, and as long as he's promising punishment for America, I'm sure you'll be glad to follow.
The US falls to AA, while Britain and France slither down to AA-. Belgium, Spain, Italy are ranked at A- along with Malaysia.
I'm as bullish on China as the next guy, but this destroys your argument. China, as the largest holder of US debt (which is apparently the most credit worthy consumer of their electronics) is in no rush to devalue the dollar. All they would be doing is reducing their own assets. Many people believe their growth is based on "currency mercantilism," which is using their artificially low currency to sell goods to the US, and then use all of the dollars to buy treasuries in order to keep interest rates low for the consumer buying all of their products.
Again, the political realities are just as important as the economics. The world is much more interconnected than Schiff or you understand. If the American economy falls apart, so does the rest of the world. China has unpegged the yuan from the dollar (finally) in order to prepare itself to start consuming it's own goods, but the US still accounts for 8-10% of the Chinese GDP, and Europe accounts for about 3% of their GDP.
Go ahead, start a war where it actually matters and see how fast the rest of the world stops financing you and stops sending you all that crap you want to own. You actually think you can SHIP energy, like Oil/Gas from one continent to another while being a warmonger that pisses off the rest of the world? Good luck with that.
I completely despise American foreign policy, but the facts remain: that's exactly what we've been doing, along with the British, since 1917.
Slashdot Mirror
Here you go.
Richard Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism coordinator at the time, has revealed details of a meeting the day after the attacks during which officials considered the US response. Already, he said, they were certain al-Qa'ida was to blame and there was no hint of Iraqi involvement. "Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq," Mr Clarke said. "We all said, 'No, no, al-Qa'ida is in Afghanistan.'"
But Mr Clarke, who is expected to testify on Tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, said Mr Rumsfeld complained in the meeting that "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq." A spokesman for Mr Rumsfeld last night said he could not comment immediately.
I shall point out to you that you wrote your post in English. No need to thank my country or my ancestors for that, you're welcome! Or perhaps you are of the sort that would prefer the world to speak German?
Russia is probably owed as much for the defeat of the Nazis as the Americans.
I shall also point out that Islam seeks power and money, and that I am not sure one would find either in any of the "countries" you listed.
Islam seeks submission to God. That's what the word Islam means. People seek power and money. For instance, Saudi Arabia is a theocracy, but it's a US Ally, because it's leaders seek money and power. (Remember GW Bush holding hands with the Saudi Crown Prince?)
If you wanted to knock terrorism into last century, you'd have to do two things: leave Iraq and Afghanistan, and form a new Manhattan style project to harvest energy directly to the sun to end our oil addiction. Of course, those things are nearly impossible for the US to do, since it only seeks power and money.
And some of those are among the countries with the highest broadband speeds in the EU: http://www.bme.eu.com/news/uk-broadband-speed (lighter color = better) If you look at the breakdown by region on the same picture, Central and Eastern European countries on average are ahead of Western European countries when it comes to broadband speed. So what's your point?
You didn't read read your own source. Slovakia has a penetration of 40%. Bulgaria is 20%. Romania is 40%. We're not talking not about how fast internet is in select areas, but how fast the overall network is for last mile. Those countries don't even have a last mile.
You just wanted to cherry pick your data.
The EU has recently accepted what are considered second and third world countries, many within the last 10 years, including Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, etc. Just let me know - and provide some data, if you don't mind - exactly which US states have that level of GDP, poverty, and infrastructure.
You might as well throw in Iraq and Afghanistan into the US numbers and see how the averages work out then. We haven't added a state to our union since 1959.
This will probably surprise you (it did me), but Japan's broadband network is almost nothing but DSL. It's because their phone lines are extremely short that they can offer 100 Mbit/s DSL plans. So I say we should just mimic what Japan did.
The reason it won't work for the rural US is because you can go for miles between homes, so it doesn't make sense to slap those DSLAMs (or whatever they're called) in for one or two homes. Just run fiber and be done with it - you can still go to copper just outside the house and save money there. Investing in fiber now is just like investing in electrification in the early 20th Century. If you don't have a fiber network in 2050, you're not going to have an economy worth speaking of either.
Just fwiw, you've just made as your argument one of the most classical and basic fallacies -- an appeal to authority.
Since not all arguments from expert opinion are fallacious, some authorities on logic have taken to labelling this fallacy as "appeal to inappropriate or irrelevant or questionable authority", rather than the traditional name "appeal to authority". For the same reason, I use the name "appeal to misleading authority" to distinguish fallacious from non-fallacious arguments from authority.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html
Just because you appeal to an authority doesn't make it a fallacy.
United States homicide rate: 2.97 per 100,000
England homicide rate: 0.12 per 100,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence
That's true, but we can only try to mitigate this disaster as best we can, or sit back and complain about those who are trying to fix it. Your choice.
This is slashdot. Brace yourself.
Did I say that? No. We were talking about China and their allegedly oh so philosophical government.
I said their government was an expression of their philosophy, but of course their government is philosophical. Every government carries a philosophy. Disagreeing with it doesn't make it disappear, and frankly, when you look at Saudi Arabia or Columbia or Iraq in the 80s, our allies have had much more repressive governments than China currently has. I was just pointing out than American exceptionalism in this case is a total crock of shit, as it usually is.
they don't just go off when they get dropped or smacked.
Yes they do. But I agree, it is extremely rare. More importantly, if you point a socket wrench at someone, or accidentally touch the trigger of a drill, there's virtually no chance that you or someone you love can immediately die.
A knife, a baseball bat, a crowbar all accomplish the same thing when she's asleep. The tool used has no bearing on intent.
http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/300979125-Weapons
The presence of weapons are known to increase the danger of aggressive behavior. I thought I had read an article, but I can't find it, so just call this a hunch: it takes a hell of a lot more commitment to pick up a crowbar and beat someone to death with it than it takes to pull a trigger.
The gun, however, is an easy scapegoat for a more serious problem in society that would lead a young child to kill their parental figures.
The gun, the handgun especially, is probably the only tool that would allow a child to kill their parents. They can try to set a fire, or stab them, but a gun is far more likely to get the job done.
Correction - guns are designed to move a projectile. Their use can be either to destroy life, or protect life. The choice rests with the individual.
Most guns, especially handguns, have no other purpose than to kill human beings.
The problem with regulation, is that only law abiding citizens obey. Marijuana, cocaine, and many other drugs are all regulated. Doesn't stop their spread.
Oh really?
America's level of gun violence cannot be attributed to urbanization alone as international comparisons show. Singapore has the second highest population density in the world (almost 6,814 people per square kilometer, or about 50% more densely populated than Chicago, Illinois) but has the lowest level of gun violence of all the countries in the table above. Its rate of gun violence is 99 times lower than that of the United States which is 200 times less densely populated. The only way for a civilian to own a firearm in Singapore is to acquire an Arm & Explosives license.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence
So knowing that,
Which is false...
why would you suggest we regulate a tool that is the most effective device known to man to protect life? I would not want to defend myself with merely a kitchen knife if my assailant was wielding a gun. Regardless of the fact that its illegal in every state to commit a crime while carrying a gun. Obviously my attacker didn't read that law, otherwise he would have not carried a gun while he was attacking me in my kitchen.
It's probably too late to ban handguns in America - there are tens of millions of them by now. But the easier you make it to obtain a handgun, the more likely someone is going to shoot you. If living in the wild west where everyone is armed to the teeth, constantly pulling out their handguns, and in the process, killin each other and anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby, might I recommend taking up residence in Venezuela or Colombia? They're just as fanatical about their guns as you seem to be.
The real issue I have with the NRA is that no one is suggesting that we legalize driving for twelve year olds. The practical difference between that and pushing for youth gun ownership is no different. We have licensing restrictions, learning permits, and DUI laws because cars are extremely dangerous, even though they are not designed for the purpose of killing someone.
Shit.
What other value system do you think governs the vast majority of our actions? Feel free to give examples.
I didn't say I agreed with philosophy. And if you look at what I just posted, I hope you'll join me in stating that government use of violence is almost never justified - even if it's the American government committing acts of violence, and even if they claim it's for self defense.
Puritan ideas? The Puritans didn't believe anything from the waist up was off-limits. The nipple thing is not an outgrowth of puritanism.
The anti-sex attitude of the Puritans is also described by historian John Demos. He reports that throughout the seventeenth century, the Puritans in Plymouth Colony had "a steady succession of trials and convictions for sexual offenses involving single persons. 'Fornication,' in particular, was a familiar problem." Demos says the punishment for fornication was "a fine of ten pounds or a public whipping - and applied equally to both parties."
Although the Puritans had serious and even pathological hang-ups about pleasure, they were into violence. Calvin's Geneva beheaded adulterers. Religious dissenters were hanged, decapitated, or burned at the stake. Christopher Hitchens describes Calvin as "a sadist and torturer and killer, who burned Servetus (one of the great thinkers and questioners of the day) while the man was still alive."
http://www.humanismbyjoe.com/Puritans_dark_Side.htm
Obviously, we haven't kept all the Puritan ideals. But anti-sex and pro-violence attitudes remain.
And saying our main moral metric is profit is blatantly flaming. It's absurd.
What other value system do you governs the vast majority of our actions? Feel free to give examples.
So, you think America doesn't call in the troops to maintain order. I think you're flatly wrong.
WWI Vets protesting during the Great Depression? Call in the troops! Miners striking for better wages? Call in the national guard! College kids causing a ruckus over the Vietnam War? Keep your finger on the trigger. Got some colored people demanding rights? Send in the secret police to take them out.
Apparently you have also forgotten about the Civil War. Whether the crisis (or the injustice of slavery) could have been solved without the military, who knows. But America has shown it's willingness to kill it's citizens in order to keep the Union together.
Now, what's even more revealing, is that American investment in China went up after the Tiananmen Square incident because it proved that China could keep it's population in line. Not long after they murdered their citizens in the streets, we were lining up for their cheap communist labor. So much for our value system.
America has many more freedoms than China, but every state has a will to survive that is larger than the value of a few of its citizen's lives. America just has much better PR about that fact.
What you have to understand about China is that their government is an expression of their religious philosophies. They believe that social order is a moral expression, and something worth dying for:
In Confucianism, human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavour especially including self-cultivation and self-creation. A main idea of Confucianism is the cultivation of virtue and the development of moral perfection. Confucianism holds that one should give up one's life, if necessary, either passively or actively, for the sake of upholding the cardinal moral values of ren and yi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism
In America, we have a culture that values liberty, which has become quite distorted in modern times. We've also retained some very puritan ideas, which is why nipples are somehow more offensive than gun violence. More recently, our only main moral metric has become profit.
This instance illustrates the point perfectly. Mose Chinese, if begrudgingly, accept the government's right to censor their speech so that the social order is maintained. Most Americans accept the government's right to censor free speech in the interest of profit.
So, if you want to stop the march to DRM and the loss of basic rights in the face of corporate rights to profit, you're going to have to convince fellow Americans that profit isn't the only thing that matters. Good luck with that.
A drill or a socket wrench cannot kill you if you drop it, or if you think it's unloaded, or if you get angry with your pregnant stepmother and decide to kill her while she sleeps.
Guns are designed to destroy life. They make it too easy to turn short term emotion into permanent tragedy. Throw in accidents, carelessness, sociopaths, and the primate violence found in all human societies, and there's no reason not to regulate it just like we regulate explosives or dangerous chemicals.
Having said that, I am aware that it's far more dangerous to own a pool than it is to own a gun, if you're worried about kids dying. And driving is probably up there in a similar risk pool. But the reason that guns should be regulated is because they make it very easy to take someone else's life by choice as well as by accident.
Hey, you just inherited a business that's racked up too much debt, and your income is down by 30%. You have two choices: borrow to restructure your business, or fire most of your staff, sell off your assets, and pray you don't have to declare bankruptcy.
In the business world, most people are going for option one. When you're a government, and option 2 includes sending millions of people into poverty, it's a pretty bad option.
Bottom line, Bush cut taxes for the wealthy and started two wars, and we're going to suffer for it for a long time. Even McCain said back in 2000 that tax cuts for the wealthy didn't make sense when we had to make sure that we kept our promise to the greatest generation and made sure social security was solvent. And he said again around 2003 that keeping the tax cuts was unwise when we didn't know the cost of reconstruction.
By the way, the cost of those two wars just tipped over 1 trillion dollars.
http://costofwar.com/
In all fairness, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the federal deficit, the bank bailout, the lack of oversight in the oil industry, and the phenomenon of waxy buildup are all recent developments under the Obama Administration. And, as everyone knows, 9/11 happened because Clinton didn't take national security seriously. If Bush had been in office just a few months longer, he would have found a way to stop it.
See, when a Democrat is the president, the recession can be his fault even before he's inaugurated. When a Republican is president, I'm not even sure any blame can be assigned to him, especially when he had no information to go on. I have been assured that this viewpoint is entirely rational.
Cheers. Posts like that are why I still read slant point.
the island will gradually be turned into whatever they're recycling the plastic into
You're assuming humans stop throwing away plastic. There are already four million tons of plastic there, and it's growing larger every day.
And, as the people involved in the project are interested in sustainability, something tells me they'll adjust their capacity so they don't accidentally destroy the platform they recycle on.
I never read anything on it, but I assume it goes something like this: some chicken-like animal ancestor is being killed while they are carrying their offspring. Therefore, the animals that randomly develop methods to allow earlier separation - in the case, hardened eggs - developed harder and harder eggs, that can earlier and earlier be left on their own for longer periods of time.
The reason I bothered is because if people accept Peter Schiff's solutions, then things will get much worse. The American Empire is on the decline, but the only thing more dangerous than our hegemony is a massive power vacuum.
His opinion is unalterable by facts. In order to address the unemployment issue, he would never accept massive public works programs because it's against his orthodox economic belief system. It's like arguing with a bible thumping christian about evolution. Peter Schiff, like every other Austrian school economist, believes in praxeology, which is basically just a priori arguments that they believe are true. They have zero tolerance for empirical data. And what can I say about anyone who has no faith in the scientific method?
I don't know where you are in the world but I can almost guarantee that an overnight collapse of the dollar would hurt you much more than you think.
And trust me, most of my arguments are not positive for the future of America. We have a shitload of problems to deal with, but Schiff and the rest of his ilk aren't helping.
Apparently you don't know the numbers:
by allowing the country and people to save again
The personal savings rate has already returned to 1995 levels.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/PSAVERT.txt
by getting rid of the insurmountable debt
America is in the middle of the pack for debt per GDP.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_deb_ext_pergdp-economy-debt-external-per-gdp
by increasing production capabilities of the country.
Again, the US is in the middle of the pack for value added manufacturing per GDP (and still #1 in the world in raw dollars). We're #13 for per capita manufacturing, and China is #64.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ind_man_val_add_cur_us_pergdp-added-current-us-per-gdp
Peter Schiff is trying to convince you that America is last place in the world economy, and the rest of the world has no incentive to prevent us from collapsing. He's wrong, and you're credulous. QED.
that's why you are the genius who predicted all of those economic calamities, having your own investment management company, managing at least 2Billion dollars and not Schiff. Wait, or is that the other way around? This is confusing, who is who here again?
Now you are getting incoherent. I'm not denying that Schiff is a smart guy, but I am saying this is one thing he doesn't get. I guess you can get your kicks mocking me for not being a hedge fund manager, but those things really don't interest me. The pursuit of wealth is a diversion from living.
Anyway, Schiff predicted the world would "decouple" from the American economy - as it seems you believe - and he has been hugely wrong. Many places are doing worse than the United States, like the UK and Japan, when you look at the growth of their economies and the level of their national debt to GDP. That's why his investors lost 40-70% in 2008 because they were bet hugely against the dollar.
Before the USA even existed the rest of the world had its economy and once USA economy goes down the drain, the rest of the world will help it to build a new one, maybe a more sane one.
Just before the founding of America, medical science was based on "the four humours," slavery and misogyny were past-times of the well-to-do, and James Watt had just made the steam engine viable. Economists like Adam Smith did not even dream of trading with China on certain goods, because there was no feasible way to move the product before it parished, and transportation was very, very expensive.
The world economy is radically different from what it was then, even from just 100 or even 50 years ago. But one thing hasn't changed since 1900: the principles of the Austrian School, of which Schiff is a devout follower. You're free to follow him off of a cliff, and as long as he's promising punishment for America, I'm sure you'll be glad to follow.
The US falls to AA, while Britain and France slither down to AA-. Belgium, Spain, Italy are ranked at A- along with Malaysia.
I'm as bullish on China as the next guy, but this destroys your argument. China, as the largest holder of US debt (which is apparently the most credit worthy consumer of their electronics) is in no rush to devalue the dollar. All they would be doing is reducing their own assets. Many people believe their growth is based on "currency mercantilism," which is using their artificially low currency to sell goods to the US, and then use all of the dollars to buy treasuries in order to keep interest rates low for the consumer buying all of their products.
Again, the political realities are just as important as the economics. The world is much more interconnected than Schiff or you understand. If the American economy falls apart, so does the rest of the world. China has unpegged the yuan from the dollar (finally) in order to prepare itself to start consuming it's own goods, but the US still accounts for 8-10% of the Chinese GDP, and Europe accounts for about 3% of their GDP.
Go ahead, start a war where it actually matters and see how fast the rest of the world stops financing you and stops sending you all that crap you want to own. You actually think you can SHIP energy, like Oil/Gas from one continent to another while being a warmonger that pisses off the rest of the world? Good luck with that.
I completely despise American foreign policy, but the facts remain: that's exactly what we've been doing, along with the British, since 1917.