Because of the controversy around DADT, it took an inordinate amount of time an effort to pass. The results aren't worth that time and effort. That time and effort should have been put into more important things.
In one case we are holding people without trial 'indefinitely.' People who were tortured by the previous administration. In the other case a few soldiers can't reveal their sexuality without being discharged. How the hell is that the same category? People don't necessarily have a right to discuss their sexuality at work.
Here's a simple test: would you rather not be allowed to talk about your sexuality at work or be tortured and held in a prison indefinitely without any hope for a trial, let alone a fair one?
Soldiers are expected to sacrifice some of the rights normal citizens have. I don't see DADT as a violation of anyone's rights. It may be a questionable policy, but it's certainly not a civil rights issue. People act like DADT disallows gays from serving in the military. That's not true, it just means they can't talk about it. If someone is so undisciplined they can't refrain from talking about their sex life when they know it's in violation of the rules, they don't belong in the military.
Holding those prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is blatantly criminal and unethical. It's incomparable to DADT.
Whether you agree with DADT or not, it's hard to argue that it's a priority. Shut down Guantanamo Bay, get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and do something about the economy and deficit. Then I won't view this debate as an utter waste of congress' time. In the meantime, this is just a wedge issue that Republicans can use to gain midwestern support, much like gay marriage was for Bush in '04. I doubt Obama even personally cares about this issue -- he just cares about the money he gets from the homosexual interest groups. This hardly changes anything. Now gay service members can talk about being gay. Whoop-di-do. I'd rather they be safe at home and not be allowed to talk about their sexuality than serving in hostile territory allowed to talk about it. It just doesn't matter if DADT is right or wrong, it's nowhere near as wrong as putting these soldiers in harm's way unnecessarily. Obama pretended to be outraged by these wars and Guantanamo Bay on the campaign trail, what happened to that?
Private companies don't want to invest in basic research because the time 'till return is "too long" for them (5-20 years out).
I presume you've never heard of Bell Labs? (Just one example of many.)
Where are they now?
On August 28, 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was pulling out of basic science, material physics, and semiconductor research, and it will instead focus on more immediately marketable areas including networking, high-speed electronics, wireless networks, nanotechnology and software
Exactly. They use analyzing soccer players in computer models as an example of wasteful government spending. But maybe that research will contribute to advances in A.I. that will open up an entire new field of research, or a new product that will be developed by American companies. I'd like to hear from the researchers, hear what their motivations for requesting the grant in the first place were instead of one-line zingers intended to make their research seem frivolous.
Even if it's something as basic as making EA's soccer video game better than Konami's, there's the possibility to benefit the economy to make it worth the $750,000 or whatever it was worth it. It's a drop in the bucket, cutting it isn't going to solve our budget crisis. Raising taxes will.
I told him to cut defense spending and replace medicare with socialized medicine. I brought up the point that every congressman knows: the only forms of government spending which account for enough to make a difference are Social Security, Medicare, and Defense. Cutting anything else is insignificant to the big picture.
Exactly. I can't believe people want a non-intrusive banner asking for donations that actually fits in with the site replaced with Flash advertisements that take over the whole screen whenever your cursor happens to glide over them. Wikipedia is the largest aggregate of human knowledge ever compiled. Whatever minor issues people have with the way it's run or the way they ask for donations doesn't justify abandoning its current structure. Nothing has been more successful at providing more information to more people than Wikipedia.
Remember when the Person/Man of the Year was actually the most influential person that year? I don't, I was a small child back then. If Vladmir Putin hadn't won it in 2007 it would seem that being American is a new prerequisite.
Even if you can argue that Facebook has a greater impact on the world than Wikileaks, the issue is which had a greater impact in 2010. Facebook is not new and hasn't done anything significant this year compared to years past. Almost every news outlet has a special section dedicated to Wikileaks right now and Assange has governments around the world shaking in their boots. Wikileaks has a major effect on everyone throughout the world, whether they realize it or not, because it has the potential to reshape policy and uncover corruption. Facebook only affects those who use it.
So you have it backwards. Wikileaks has a broad influence whereas Facebook has a specific influence. Wikileaks affects people whether they want it to or not. The only way Facebook affects me is that I have to hear my co-workers talk about Farmville, which barely affects me b/c I ignore them.
I'm a nutbag anarcho-capitalist, and I donate to Wikileaks.
And Ron Paul supports Wikileaks as well. Good old Wikileaks, bringing the nutbag socialists (myself) and nutbag libertarians into agreement. But really, why should government transparency be a right-wing/left-wing issue? The ones who paint it as a liberal/conservative issue are just trying to demonize their opponents. A sad effect of the two-party system in the U.S.
I like Moore's passion as well, we could do with more people who were passionate about their values. But the man is definitely no logical mastermind. He consistently lets his emotions get the best of him and most of his arguments are appeals to emotion. I like his documentaries, where everything is well thought out, researched, and critiqued; but I wish he would stay away from the media. He has Joe Biden foot-in-mouth syndrome. Plus, he's downright polarizing. You can make a point without calling your opponents malicious idiots.
Yeah, in Inception what was more impressive was how they were able to make all these special effects believable. It wasn't a weak-sause plot that seemed to be an excuse for crazy special effects, it was just an amazing plot that wouldn't have been very manageable without them. Of course, now we can expect a bunch of weak-sause movies that will find any excuse to explore the dream world.
That's the attitude that got George W. Bush elected. "This Gore guy really sounds like he knows what he's talking about, and this Bush guy looks confused, but Gore keeps sighing and being an asshole and berating poor Bush. I'm not voting for Gore, I'd never sit down and drink a beer with him!"
Why is it more important to be likable than credible?
"Warren Buffett. ..[i]n 2006, he says, he earned $46 million but paid only 18 percent of it in federal tax, whereas the average rate paid by his employees, whose salaries range from $60,000 to $750,000, was 33 percent. Buffett is convinced that this is no statistical fluke. In fact, he is willing to bet $1 million that the average tax rate (income and payroll) paid by the four hundred wealthiest people in the country is lower than that paid by their secretaries and receptionists."
"Since 1979 the average income of the top 1 percent of American households has doubled and has now hit a postwar record, surpassing the highs reached in the 1990s bull market. These fortunate souls now receive more pretax income than do the bottom 40 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled. This is part of a trend since 1980 toward an increasinly unequal distribution of national income in the United States, with those who are already very well-off—the top fifth of the country—now getting a larger slice of the pie than before. ..The flip side, of course, is that the bottom 80 percent now receives less."
"From World War II to the 1970s, the inflation-adjusted income of the median family doubled. But it rose only 18 percent between 1970 and 2003, and much of the gain was due to wives entering the labor force or people working longer hours. ..In fact, adjusted for inflation, wages for men remain below their 1973 peak, with young men in their thirties now earning 12 percent less than they did thirty years ago."
"The United States leads the world in executive pay. Japan's CEOs, for example, earn a salary of only $300,000 to $500,000 a year, with far fewer bonuses and stock options than their American counterparts. Since 2000, average pay for the American CEOs has declined slightly because stock prices are lower. Nevertheless, since 1980 the compensation of CEOs has grown from 42 times that of the average person working under them to 369 times greater. The median weekly salary for all workers is $659. If the average CEO works 60 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, then he or she earns that much every twenty minutes. Since 1990, CEO pay has gone up 571 percent. In comparison, corporate profits have grown by a relatively modest 114 percent, and the average worker's pay by a mere 37 percent (which is just above inflation at 32 percent). A schoolteacher who made $31,000 in 1990 would now make $177,000 if teachers' salaries had grown at the same rate of CEO pay."
SOURCE: Moral Issues in Business by William H. Shaw and Vincent Barry, pgs. 113-114
Kurt Vonnegut exposed this scam years before the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation existed: if you move a large portion of your money to a charity organization, it no longer gets taxed, and you make more in the long run. Also, when you die and you transfer control of the foundation to your heirs, it doesn't get hit with the inheritance tax.
If Zuckerberg and Gates cared about helping people, they would give money away anonymously. If they cared about helping people, they would use their power and money to expose corrupt politicians and support non-corrupt ones. But no, both of these guys and their corporations give the maximum campaign donations to the most corrupt politicians in Washington as bribes. This cocksuckers aren't changing anything, they're just trying to buy a positive public opinion.
Why is it that the Bill & Melinda foundation gives away Windows PCs to "support education?" How does having a computer that costs money to upgrade in the future help education, especially in third world countries? All schools in all countries should run Linux or Unix. If these guys were trying to change the world economically by empowering all classes, then I wouldn't be so cynical. But they're not trying to help anyone, they're just offering table scraps to keep the dogs loyal.
Slashdot Mirror
Because of the controversy around DADT, it took an inordinate amount of time an effort to pass. The results aren't worth that time and effort. That time and effort should have been put into more important things.
In one case we are holding people without trial 'indefinitely.' People who were tortured by the previous administration. In the other case a few soldiers can't reveal their sexuality without being discharged. How the hell is that the same category? People don't necessarily have a right to discuss their sexuality at work.
Here's a simple test: would you rather not be allowed to talk about your sexuality at work or be tortured and held in a prison indefinitely without any hope for a trial, let alone a fair one?
Soldiers are expected to sacrifice some of the rights normal citizens have. I don't see DADT as a violation of anyone's rights. It may be a questionable policy, but it's certainly not a civil rights issue. People act like DADT disallows gays from serving in the military. That's not true, it just means they can't talk about it. If someone is so undisciplined they can't refrain from talking about their sex life when they know it's in violation of the rules, they don't belong in the military.
Holding those prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is blatantly criminal and unethical. It's incomparable to DADT.
Whether you agree with DADT or not, it's hard to argue that it's a priority. Shut down Guantanamo Bay, get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and do something about the economy and deficit. Then I won't view this debate as an utter waste of congress' time. In the meantime, this is just a wedge issue that Republicans can use to gain midwestern support, much like gay marriage was for Bush in '04. I doubt Obama even personally cares about this issue -- he just cares about the money he gets from the homosexual interest groups. This hardly changes anything. Now gay service members can talk about being gay. Whoop-di-do. I'd rather they be safe at home and not be allowed to talk about their sexuality than serving in hostile territory allowed to talk about it. It just doesn't matter if DADT is right or wrong, it's nowhere near as wrong as putting these soldiers in harm's way unnecessarily. Obama pretended to be outraged by these wars and Guantanamo Bay on the campaign trail, what happened to that?
Exactly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-18_Hornet
Private companies don't want to invest in basic research because the time 'till return is "too long" for them (5-20 years out).
I presume you've never heard of Bell Labs? (Just one example of many.)
Where are they now?
On August 28, 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was pulling out of basic science, material physics, and semiconductor research, and it will instead focus on more immediately marketable areas including networking, high-speed electronics, wireless networks, nanotechnology and software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs
Exactly. They use analyzing soccer players in computer models as an example of wasteful government spending. But maybe that research will contribute to advances in A.I. that will open up an entire new field of research, or a new product that will be developed by American companies. I'd like to hear from the researchers, hear what their motivations for requesting the grant in the first place were instead of one-line zingers intended to make their research seem frivolous.
Even if it's something as basic as making EA's soccer video game better than Konami's, there's the possibility to benefit the economy to make it worth the $750,000 or whatever it was worth it. It's a drop in the bucket, cutting it isn't going to solve our budget crisis. Raising taxes will.
I told him to cut defense spending and replace medicare with socialized medicine. I brought up the point that every congressman knows: the only forms of government spending which account for enough to make a difference are Social Security, Medicare, and Defense. Cutting anything else is insignificant to the big picture.
Exactly. I can't believe people want a non-intrusive banner asking for donations that actually fits in with the site replaced with Flash advertisements that take over the whole screen whenever your cursor happens to glide over them. Wikipedia is the largest aggregate of human knowledge ever compiled. Whatever minor issues people have with the way it's run or the way they ask for donations doesn't justify abandoning its current structure. Nothing has been more successful at providing more information to more people than Wikipedia.
You'd be funny if you didn't confuse acid for pot. Just b/c you're a geek doesn't mean you have to be a square.
If you don't like Facebook, don't use it.
I had to install a browser plug in to prevent my computer from using it against my will. When did NOT doing something become an active process?
Remember when the Person/Man of the Year was actually the most influential person that year? I don't, I was a small child back then. If Vladmir Putin hadn't won it in 2007 it would seem that being American is a new prerequisite.
Next week's headline: Time-Warner and Facebook merge.
Even if you can argue that Facebook has a greater impact on the world than Wikileaks, the issue is which had a greater impact in 2010. Facebook is not new and hasn't done anything significant this year compared to years past. Almost every news outlet has a special section dedicated to Wikileaks right now and Assange has governments around the world shaking in their boots. Wikileaks has a major effect on everyone throughout the world, whether they realize it or not, because it has the potential to reshape policy and uncover corruption. Facebook only affects those who use it.
So you have it backwards. Wikileaks has a broad influence whereas Facebook has a specific influence. Wikileaks affects people whether they want it to or not. The only way Facebook affects me is that I have to hear my co-workers talk about Farmville, which barely affects me b/c I ignore them.
Sell cocaine. There is literally no way you can fail.
But you can definitely fail figuratively.
Bush is a calculating politician who knew how to play on his strengths to win the office twice.
I think you've got Bush mixed up with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.
I'm a nutbag anarcho-capitalist, and I donate to Wikileaks.
And Ron Paul supports Wikileaks as well. Good old Wikileaks, bringing the nutbag socialists (myself) and nutbag libertarians into agreement. But really, why should government transparency be a right-wing/left-wing issue? The ones who paint it as a liberal/conservative issue are just trying to demonize their opponents. A sad effect of the two-party system in the U.S.
I like Moore's passion as well, we could do with more people who were passionate about their values. But the man is definitely no logical mastermind. He consistently lets his emotions get the best of him and most of his arguments are appeals to emotion. I like his documentaries, where everything is well thought out, researched, and critiqued; but I wish he would stay away from the media. He has Joe Biden foot-in-mouth syndrome. Plus, he's downright polarizing. You can make a point without calling your opponents malicious idiots.
Yeah, in Inception what was more impressive was how they were able to make all these special effects believable. It wasn't a weak-sause plot that seemed to be an excuse for crazy special effects, it was just an amazing plot that wouldn't have been very manageable without them. Of course, now we can expect a bunch of weak-sause movies that will find any excuse to explore the dream world.
It's a wiki of leaks. Get it?
Basically, who else has the balls to do what Assange has done? Other arrogant pricks. Or, as I see it, people with moral conviction.
That's the attitude that got George W. Bush elected. "This Gore guy really sounds like he knows what he's talking about, and this Bush guy looks confused, but Gore keeps sighing and being an asshole and berating poor Bush. I'm not voting for Gore, I'd never sit down and drink a beer with him!"
Why is it more important to be likable than credible?
Ensuring that schools in the United States run Windows PCs is not "improving high school education in the United States."
"Warren Buffett. . .[i]n 2006, he says, he earned $46 million but paid only 18 percent of it in federal tax, whereas the average rate paid by his employees, whose salaries range from $60,000 to $750,000, was 33 percent. Buffett is convinced that this is no statistical fluke. In fact, he is willing to bet $1 million that the average tax rate (income and payroll) paid by the four hundred wealthiest people in the country is lower than that paid by their secretaries and receptionists."
"Since 1979 the average income of the top 1 percent of American households has doubled and has now hit a postwar record, surpassing the highs reached in the 1990s bull market. These fortunate souls now receive more pretax income than do the bottom 40 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled. This is part of a trend since 1980 toward an increasinly unequal distribution of national income in the United States, with those who are already very well-off—the top fifth of the country—now getting a larger slice of the pie than before. . .The flip side, of course, is that the bottom 80 percent now receives less."
"From World War II to the 1970s, the inflation-adjusted income of the median family doubled. But it rose only 18 percent between 1970 and 2003, and much of the gain was due to wives entering the labor force or people working longer hours. . .In fact, adjusted for inflation, wages for men remain below their 1973 peak, with young men in their thirties now earning 12 percent less than they did thirty years ago."
"The United States leads the world in executive pay. Japan's CEOs, for example, earn a salary of only $300,000 to $500,000 a year, with far fewer bonuses and stock options than their American counterparts. Since 2000, average pay for the American CEOs has declined slightly because stock prices are lower. Nevertheless, since 1980 the compensation of CEOs has grown from 42 times that of the average person working under them to 369 times greater. The median weekly salary for all workers is $659. If the average CEO works 60 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, then he or she earns that much every twenty minutes. Since 1990, CEO pay has gone up 571 percent. In comparison, corporate profits have grown by a relatively modest 114 percent, and the average worker's pay by a mere 37 percent (which is just above inflation at 32 percent). A schoolteacher who made $31,000 in 1990 would now make $177,000 if teachers' salaries had grown at the same rate of CEO pay."
SOURCE: Moral Issues in Business by William H. Shaw and Vincent Barry, pgs. 113-114
A Dicken's novel? Pretty much.
When you transfer your money to a charity organization you bypass the inheritance, or, should I say, "death tax."
Kurt Vonnegut exposed this scam years before the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation existed: if you move a large portion of your money to a charity organization, it no longer gets taxed, and you make more in the long run. Also, when you die and you transfer control of the foundation to your heirs, it doesn't get hit with the inheritance tax.
If Zuckerberg and Gates cared about helping people, they would give money away anonymously. If they cared about helping people, they would use their power and money to expose corrupt politicians and support non-corrupt ones. But no, both of these guys and their corporations give the maximum campaign donations to the most corrupt politicians in Washington as bribes. This cocksuckers aren't changing anything, they're just trying to buy a positive public opinion.
Why is it that the Bill & Melinda foundation gives away Windows PCs to "support education?" How does having a computer that costs money to upgrade in the future help education, especially in third world countries? All schools in all countries should run Linux or Unix. If these guys were trying to change the world economically by empowering all classes, then I wouldn't be so cynical. But they're not trying to help anyone, they're just offering table scraps to keep the dogs loyal.