The difference is that in there is no way for the mutation of correct article to gain a competitive advantage, it can be reverted to falsehood very simply.
not true. Maintain a complete audit trail. A person reading an article can look at the audit trail, and using basic reasoning and logic (and his or her own bias), can decide for themselves which view is correct.
Wikipedia can focus on presenting NPOV facts. The problem is, facts have to be presented in human language - and all words, in any human language, have emotional baggage. That's a fact. It may be impossible for any person, no matter how well-intentioned, to present ANY fact in an unbiased light.
This flies in the face of the basic tennants of the Enlightenment.
But the way the Enlightement approaches this problem, is to allow free and open debate on any and all subjects. Absolute freedom. Post both sides of the argument. Or all 3. Or all infinity. Let the person trying to glean some meaning from the article read all points of view, and decide for themselves. Basic logic and reasoning skills can weed out obvious BS.
Problem is; readers would have to be well schooled in basic logic and reasoning. This is NOT a subject which is required in American Public Education. I believe this is the source of all of the problems in the world today. But I digress.
You can tell when a person is biased when they conceal facts which are contrary to their view. If you're unaware of those facts, then you can't determine when a person is biased. That's why absolute freedom of information is so damned important.
(It's also precisely why the Founding Fathers thought that Liberty should be more important than Security).
My old company awarded stock options all the way down to the lowly shipping clerk.
Through varous mergers and splits, I was literally a millionaire. On paper. Of course, doing a same day sale meant getting assraped by the IRS. So I looked at it as potentially paying for my kids' college.
Some of our best engineers hung on until they were half-vested, and RETIRED. In their 30's.
Due to timing, etc. I wasn't positioned to retire. (people who were in one of the bought companies got a really sweet deal through splits).
Then I got nervous, and converted it to real-estate. (down payment for a house). I was very lucky, and overall, probably got about a half-million (pre-tax) out of the stock market before the collapse. Dotcom boom high = $240/shr. Post-Boom Low circa 2001 = $16/shr. Current price (after delisting/relisting due to accounting fraud problems) = $20-ish/shr.
Now, I'm struggling to make the payments on that house. But I'm glad I had that opportunity at the American Dream, that I'm pretty sure I'll never have again in my lifetime. But at least I have a house now. Maybe the housing bubble will take that equity away too when it pops, but at least I'll have a roof over my head, as long as I keep working.
And now, I realize just how pathetically little, a million dollars really is. I look at movies from the 1970's where the plot was someone pulling off a robbery, or murder, for like $10,000. Dude, $1 million won't change your life in a way that's measurable 5 years out. It's ongoing earning power that will change your life.
Gee, then I can't for the life of me understand why Bush showed NOFRN papers to a Saudi Ambassador. Or why some appointees in Doug Feith's office passed Classified docs to AIPAC, who then handed them off to Mossad. Or why some person or persons unknown, likely Bush appointees to the Pentagon, passed highly sensitive communications secrets to Ahmed Chalabi, the INC branch of the Bush administration, who promptly turned them over to Iranian Intelligence agents. Or why one of Dick Cheney's employees outed Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.
I mean, isn't George Bush like, super Patriotic, and don't these guys all have great Credit Ratings?
I've been around the whole dotcom phenomenon long enought to recognize this very typical tactic.
When a company divides into independent units, that means that they're prepping a division for sale or dismantlement. Typically, you'll see a geographical component to the division, so that ties can be severed cleanly, and there's more of a financial gain (facilities expense goes away, HR effort to maintain the separate health insurance, legal climante, tax burden, etc. goes away).
The function of whichever unit goes, will be outsourced.
If you're an employee of one of these units, start looking for the danger signs.
Is the cost of living in your region higher than others? Did the higher-up officers at your site relocate to some other site? Do they remodel other sites, but not yours? Do they fail to change the lightbulbs when they burn out? Did they close your site's cafeteria? Did they eliminate your onsite IT group in favor of "remote support"? Do officers visit less and less frequently to share corporate news or policy? Is there a hiring freeze at your location? When was the last time you got a new desktop machine? When was the last time you got training? Does your site have a security presence 24x7?
Funniest bit is when they retag all the assets. Then in future years, you know your site is next when you get all the assets from the first site they shut down, with their old asset tags.
This treaty doesn't hold India or China to the same levels that the USA and EU are held to.
I wish that critics of the US's position on this treaty would be more aware of this.
I wish that critics of the treaty would work to correct it's flaws, rather than use them as an excuse to throw the whole thing out (typical neoconservative treatment).
no abortions ever for any reason, no gays ever for any reason, capital punishment for more types of offenses, etc
For starters, fella, you need to go read the Texas Republican Party's platform. Then come back to me and tell me it's just a few harmless loonies on the fringes of the Right.
Santorum, (a US senator) has proposed capital punisment for Abortion doctors. Not just idle chit chat, as an actual bill.
Coburn (the senator from Oklahoma - just got elected) during his campaigning, was spreading rumors about a high school in his state where girls weren't permitted to go to the bathroom more than one at a time, because of the "rampant lesbianism". (As a doctor, he sterilized a lesbian patient against her will).
Don't fall for the BS that the Right in America is mild by any means of definition.
I, of course, do not define rightness and leftness by any arbitrary foreign scale. My definition deals with Constitutionality. If they want to violate church-state separation, or 4th Amendment rights, etc. Then they're right-wing wack-jobs. Period.
Their contempt for civil liberties, and hatred of the Bill of Rights, puts them firmly in the "Extremist" camp, in my book.
Having to take a "Loyalty Oath" to the president, to be allowed into a rally, frankly scares the crap out of me. That's not America.
and the "left" is much farther left than they are willing to admit (or maybe they don't realize it).
I think that left-leaning Centrists probably don't have a clue how far left the left-extremists are. After having debated the merits of vegetarianism here on this site, I can say that folks who advocate passage of laws that ban the consuming of animal flesh, are almost as terrifying as those on the right who think that the 4th Amendment is optional.
I don't know if America is ready for that kind of mature thinking.
I don'tknow. I've heard this issue discussed a LOT since the election. I think that we're FINALLY starting to "get it" - that we're being cynically divided by power hungry extremists at both ends of the political spectrum.
And people on the extreme fringes have always tried to attract more and more folks from the center to their side. And those are the once that can be attracted right back to the other side.
Is it any suprise that things like the "gay marriage amendment" are called "wedge issues"? They're intended to split large chunks of the center off from one side or another. That's because you're either FOR one issue or AGAINST it. And if that issue is sufficiently important to a person, they'll change their vote to the party that supports it.
It's the jerk offs at the extremes that are doing all the name-calling and scare tactics. I think it's time that those of us in the center start rejecting the extremists on both sides, calling THEM idiots, and telling them to love this country or leave it. I'm sick of divisive politics, and all I want to do is kick out the dividers.
A radio station devoted to leftwing propaganda, hosted by all the people who the Right love to hate, when they've already got a good chunk of the center convinced that the gays and the blacks are trying to take over the country, and make people accept gay marriage, etc. (suckers, buying into all that fearmongering) - but you see, Air America worked AGAINST their own cause, by galvanizing the Right even more.
What the Left (or really, the Center) in America needs, is simply a place to air the truth. Not leftwing propaganda, or anti-right hate. Just a place to call out facts, and very strongly backed-up facts (like the al QaQaa issue, etc. - - not the TANG story, because though it's very compelling, there's just plain not enough hard facts to conclude anything). The corporate-dominated media is weak right now. Not just on bias in story selection, but also in their utter lack of fact-checking. Air America could have gone a long way in making the truth obvious and apparent to Americans - but instead, they fell for Rove's divisive tactics, and just played the other side, attacking people for their beliefs, calling them stupid rednecks- and gawd, that one woman had to say something about being a Lesbian every single day. That's supposed to win-over voters in the center?
The Right of this country voted the way they did because they're scared. Frightened. Terrified.
They're scared of intellectuals. They're scared of science. They're scared of gays. They're scared of black people. They're scared of muslim terrorists.
Of course, the folks on the right are just as happy to call anyone who disagrees with them a commie, liberal, traitor. . etc. It's going to be nigh impossible to convince every centrist or leftist in this country to be civil with the right. Because the right has been so uncivil to them.
This is the strategy of the neocons. Get the right worked up and scared. Get the left worked up and scared. Drive wedges into the center with divisive issues like abortion, gun control, gay marriage, war/patriotism, etc. Then - - - pick the guy with good name recognition, who's got the most checkered past, the most annoying personality, with an evil looking smirk, average IQ, who claims to be divinely inspired, and run him as president.
The left will be so angry at this guy, that they'll focus all their time and effort trying to create another Nixon, that they'll ignore the real issues, ane subsequently, turn even more people on the right off.
I think that it's time to form a new American Centrist party, one that rejects the shrill, hatemongering extremists on both ends of the spectrum. The extremists on the right can flock to the Libertarians, or the Buchanan Reform party, and the extremists on the Left can go whine to the Greens, and the rest of us can go back to running the country like it should be run, in peace.
Drafting troops, calling up new troops? It'd take at least a year.
Then so be it.
We need to do whatever it takes to stop Terror. Bush has shown that he's not up to that task.
Murder is worse than some idiots doing the equivalent of fraternity pranks
We go into this country, tell them that their civilization is backwards and violent, and that we're going to bring them forward to a bright future of Freedom and Democracy and Peace, and that they shouldn't listen to their religious leaders who tell them we are evil, immoral, corrupt, tools of Satan, how many converts do you think we'll get when we shoot them, bomb them, jail innocents, torture and humiliate them, and make them submit to really nasty sexual submission? Do you think that will convince them to flock to our side? That we're all about Freedom, and Moral Values, and that we want to bring the Peace and Prosperity?
Did you see F9/11? Did you see the scene where a US soldier had pulled an old crippled guy out of his house, accusing him of links to insurgents, with no evidence at all, then while the guy was tied up, laying down, hooded, the soldier made jokes about him, and touched his penis? Did you see that? Do you think that was staged? Do you think that was "just another one bad-apple"? or can you maybe accept that this is part of a larger pattern; A pattern of young boys, away from parental supervision for the first time in their lives, given guns, feeling vengeful for 9/11, pissed off, drunk with power?
Don't you think that someone higher up in the chain of command should have said something like: "We expect all of you to be on your best behavior, you are not representing just America, you are representing Freedom, the whole of Western Civilization, YOU are responsible for demonstrating to them by your behavior, that their mullahs are WRONG about us, that we are NOT the Great Satan, that we are the force of Good in this world. Anyone misbehaving in this fashion will face harsh punishment."
Nobody has sent this message. There are NO accounts of ANYONE in the chain of command, having attempted to send this message to the troops. As Sect. of Defense, I would DEFINATELY have made damn sure that each pair of boots in the field got this message. The stakes were too high. This was an opportunity to take the Moral High Ground in the War On Terror.
Do you think that the average Muslim American is ashamed as hell of what the 9/11 murderers did? Do you think they're ashamed of their religious leadership who offers tacit approval of terrorism and jihad? I am just as ashamed of what these soldiers are doing. But much more MORE ashamed that our leaders have not handled this situation.
I know there's a lot of anger directed at the "average muslim" *from* the "average american" - and this anger is what's saying; "collateral damage is okay. Abu Ghraib is okay. Because these filthy animals blew up the Pentagon and WTC." Do you want to cultivate the same kind of anger back at the "average american" from the "average muslim"? Is that really what you want? Because that's EXACTLY what Osama bin Laden wants. He wants a wide-scale Holy War between every single "Crusader" and every single muslim. I'm not thinking that any idea coming out of Osama bin Laden is a good one. I'm not going along with that plan. It's a dumb plan. A few thousand extremists out of a billion muslims declared war on us. killing a billion muslims just isn't my idea of "being a champion of Freedom and Democracy" - or "resisting the manipulation by a bunch of evil religious fanatics". If we waste our resources destroying eachother in this religious war, how in hell are we going to compete with the communists? Look at Russia after nearly a decade of war against Chechnya. Russia is NOT the picture of a prosperous superpower. It never was, but with it's size, and oil wealth, it should have been.
$2.57 for regular 87 octane gasoline, here on the Central California Coast. We pump the stuff up out of the ground here. Must be the transportation costs. Or maybe they just don't like us all that much.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this an article about Firefox?
Or Computer Geeks with Obsessive-Compulsive disorder?
(irrational exuberance, indeed)
The difference is that in there is no way for the mutation of correct article to gain a competitive advantage, it can be reverted to falsehood very simply.
not true. Maintain a complete audit trail. A person reading an article can look at the audit trail, and using basic reasoning and logic (and his or her own bias), can decide for themselves which view is correct.
Facts, it's all about facts.
Wikipedia can focus on presenting NPOV facts. The problem is, facts have to be presented in human language - and all words, in any human language, have emotional baggage. That's a fact. It may be impossible for any person, no matter how well-intentioned, to present ANY fact in an unbiased light.
This flies in the face of the basic tennants of the Enlightenment.
But the way the Enlightement approaches this problem, is to allow free and open debate on any and all subjects. Absolute freedom. Post both sides of the argument. Or all 3. Or all infinity. Let the person trying to glean some meaning from the article read all points of view, and decide for themselves. Basic logic and reasoning skills can weed out obvious BS.
Problem is; readers would have to be well schooled in basic logic and reasoning. This is NOT a subject which is required in American Public Education. I believe this is the source of all of the problems in the world today. But I digress.
You can tell when a person is biased when they conceal facts which are contrary to their view. If you're unaware of those facts, then you can't determine when a person is biased. That's why absolute freedom of information is so damned important.
(It's also precisely why the Founding Fathers thought that Liberty should be more important than Security).
Can I mod this post up;
+1 Hell Yeah! Fuckin-A!!
6000 Constitution-rending detentions.
Not. One. Single. Conviction.
This is what happens when you appoint cronies based on ideology instead of competence.
My old company awarded stock options all the way down to the lowly shipping clerk.
Through varous mergers and splits, I was literally a millionaire. On paper. Of course, doing a same day sale meant getting assraped by the IRS. So I looked at it as potentially paying for my kids' college.
Some of our best engineers hung on until they were half-vested, and RETIRED. In their 30's.
Due to timing, etc. I wasn't positioned to retire. (people who were in one of the bought companies got a really sweet deal through splits).
Then I got nervous, and converted it to real-estate. (down payment for a house).
I was very lucky, and overall, probably got about a half-million (pre-tax) out of the stock market before the collapse. Dotcom boom high = $240/shr. Post-Boom Low circa 2001 = $16/shr. Current price (after delisting/relisting due to accounting fraud problems) = $20-ish/shr.
Now, I'm struggling to make the payments on that house. But I'm glad I had that opportunity at the American Dream, that I'm pretty sure I'll never have again in my lifetime. But at least I have a house now. Maybe the housing bubble will take that equity away too when it pops, but at least I'll have a roof over my head, as long as I keep working.
And now, I realize just how pathetically little, a million dollars really is. I look at movies from the 1970's where the plot was someone pulling off a robbery, or murder, for like $10,000. Dude, $1 million won't change your life in a way that's measurable 5 years out. It's ongoing earning power that will change your life.
John Ashcroft judges us all the time. He's PERFECT.
We're lucky we have Health Insurance.
I think that's just how we're meant to feel, too.
Gee, then I can't for the life of me understand why Bush showed NOFRN papers to a Saudi Ambassador.
Or why some appointees in Doug Feith's office passed Classified docs to AIPAC, who then handed them off to Mossad.
Or why some person or persons unknown, likely Bush appointees to the Pentagon, passed highly sensitive communications secrets to Ahmed Chalabi, the INC branch of the Bush administration, who promptly turned them over to Iranian Intelligence agents.
Or why one of Dick Cheney's employees outed Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.
I mean, isn't George Bush like, super Patriotic, and don't these guys all have great Credit Ratings?
Agreed.
Zillions of startups died because they had crappy/fraudulent business plans.
But many ALSO died due to the dominance of the industry by monopolists.
Where's my FUCKING CHEESE god-dammit!
(I hate that damn book).
I've been around the whole dotcom phenomenon long enought to recognize this very typical tactic.
When a company divides into independent units, that means that they're prepping a division for sale or dismantlement.
Typically, you'll see a geographical component to the division, so that ties can be severed cleanly, and there's more of a financial gain (facilities expense goes away, HR effort to maintain the separate health insurance, legal climante, tax burden, etc. goes away).
The function of whichever unit goes, will be outsourced.
If you're an employee of one of these units, start looking for the danger signs.
Is the cost of living in your region higher than others?
Did the higher-up officers at your site relocate to some other site?
Do they remodel other sites, but not yours?
Do they fail to change the lightbulbs when they burn out?
Did they close your site's cafeteria?
Did they eliminate your onsite IT group in favor of "remote support"?
Do officers visit less and less frequently to share corporate news or policy?
Is there a hiring freeze at your location?
When was the last time you got a new desktop machine?
When was the last time you got training?
Does your site have a security presence 24x7?
Funniest bit is when they retag all the assets. Then in future years, you know your site is next when you get all the assets from the first site they shut down, with their old asset tags.
This treaty doesn't hold India or China to the same levels that the USA and EU are held to.
I wish that critics of the US's position on this treaty would be more aware of this.
I wish that critics of the treaty would work to correct it's flaws, rather than use them as an excuse to throw the whole thing out (typical neoconservative treatment).
If we can't secure ADDITION, then what can we secure?!
It's not just not being able to secure addition. It's being able to secure addition ON A CLOSED, CONTROLLED HARDWARE PLATFORM!
no abortions ever for any reason, no gays ever for any reason, capital punishment for more types of offenses, etc
For starters, fella, you need to go read the Texas Republican Party's platform. Then come back to me and tell me it's just a few harmless loonies on the fringes of the Right.
Santorum, (a US senator) has proposed capital punisment for Abortion doctors. Not just idle chit chat, as an actual bill.
Coburn (the senator from Oklahoma - just got elected) during his campaigning, was spreading rumors about a high school in his state where girls weren't permitted to go to the bathroom more than one at a time, because of the "rampant lesbianism". (As a doctor, he sterilized a lesbian patient against her will).
Don't fall for the BS that the Right in America is mild by any means of definition.
I, of course, do not define rightness and leftness by any arbitrary foreign scale. My definition deals with Constitutionality. If they want to violate church-state separation, or 4th Amendment rights, etc. Then they're right-wing wack-jobs. Period.
The "right" isn't as far right as you think,
Their contempt for civil liberties, and hatred of the Bill of Rights, puts them firmly in the "Extremist" camp, in my book.
Having to take a "Loyalty Oath" to the president, to be allowed into a rally, frankly scares the crap out of me. That's not America.
and the "left" is much farther left than they are willing to admit (or maybe they don't realize it).
I think that left-leaning Centrists probably don't have a clue how far left the left-extremists are. After having debated the merits of vegetarianism here on this site, I can say that folks who advocate passage of laws that ban the consuming of animal flesh, are almost as terrifying as those on the right who think that the 4th Amendment is optional.
Nixon "had a plan" - and he won.
I don't know if America is ready for that kind of mature thinking.
I don'tknow. I've heard this issue discussed a LOT since the election. I think that we're FINALLY starting to "get it" - that we're being cynically divided by power hungry extremists at both ends of the political spectrum.
The fact is, there's a CENTER.
And people on the extreme fringes have always tried to attract more and more folks from the center to their side. And those are the once that can be attracted right back to the other side.
Is it any suprise that things like the "gay marriage amendment" are called "wedge issues"? They're intended to split large chunks of the center off from one side or another. That's because you're either FOR one issue or AGAINST it. And if that issue is sufficiently important to a person, they'll change their vote to the party that supports it.
It's the jerk offs at the extremes that are doing all the name-calling and scare tactics. I think it's time that those of us in the center start rejecting the extremists on both sides, calling THEM idiots, and telling them to love this country or leave it. I'm sick of divisive politics, and all I want to do is kick out the dividers.
Air America was a BAD idea.
A radio station devoted to leftwing propaganda, hosted by all the people who the Right love to hate, when they've already got a good chunk of the center convinced that the gays and the blacks are trying to take over the country, and make people accept gay marriage, etc. (suckers, buying into all that fearmongering) - but you see, Air America worked AGAINST their own cause, by galvanizing the Right even more.
What the Left (or really, the Center) in America needs, is simply a place to air the truth. Not leftwing propaganda, or anti-right hate. Just a place to call out facts, and very strongly backed-up facts (like the al QaQaa issue, etc. - - not the TANG story, because though it's very compelling, there's just plain not enough hard facts to conclude anything). The corporate-dominated media is weak right now. Not just on bias in story selection, but also in their utter lack of fact-checking. Air America could have gone a long way in making the truth obvious and apparent to Americans - but instead, they fell for Rove's divisive tactics, and just played the other side, attacking people for their beliefs, calling them stupid rednecks- and gawd, that one woman had to say something about being a Lesbian every single day. That's supposed to win-over voters in the center?
The Right of this country voted the way they did because they're scared. Frightened. Terrified.
They're scared of intellectuals. They're scared of science. They're scared of gays. They're scared of black people. They're scared of muslim terrorists.
Of course, the folks on the right are just as happy to call anyone who disagrees with them a commie, liberal, traitor. . etc. It's going to be nigh impossible to convince every centrist or leftist in this country to be civil with the right. Because the right has been so uncivil to them.
This is the strategy of the neocons. Get the right worked up and scared. Get the left worked up and scared. Drive wedges into the center with divisive issues like abortion, gun control, gay marriage, war/patriotism, etc. Then - - - pick the guy with good name recognition, who's got the most checkered past, the most annoying personality, with an evil looking smirk, average IQ, who claims to be divinely inspired, and run him as president.
The left will be so angry at this guy, that they'll focus all their time and effort trying to create another Nixon, that they'll ignore the real issues, ane subsequently, turn even more people on the right off.
I think that it's time to form a new American Centrist party, one that rejects the shrill, hatemongering extremists on both ends of the spectrum. The extremists on the right can flock to the Libertarians, or the Buchanan Reform party, and the extremists on the Left can go whine to the Greens, and the rest of us can go back to running the country like it should be run, in peace.
Drafting troops, calling up new troops? It'd take at least a year.
Then so be it.
We need to do whatever it takes to stop Terror. Bush has shown that he's not up to that task.
Murder is worse than some idiots doing the equivalent of fraternity pranks
We go into this country, tell them that their civilization is backwards and violent, and that we're going to bring them forward to a bright future of Freedom and Democracy and Peace, and that they shouldn't listen to their religious leaders who tell them we are evil, immoral, corrupt, tools of Satan, how many converts do you think we'll get when we shoot them, bomb them, jail innocents, torture and humiliate them, and make them submit to really nasty sexual submission?
Do you think that will convince them to flock to our side? That we're all about Freedom, and Moral Values, and that we want to bring the Peace and Prosperity?
Did you see F9/11? Did you see the scene where a US soldier had pulled an old crippled guy out of his house, accusing him of links to insurgents, with no evidence at all, then while the guy was tied up, laying down, hooded, the soldier made jokes about him, and touched his penis? Did you see that? Do you think that was staged? Do you think that was "just another one bad-apple"? or can you maybe accept that this is part of a larger pattern;
A pattern of young boys, away from parental supervision for the first time in their lives, given guns, feeling vengeful for 9/11, pissed off, drunk with power?
Don't you think that someone higher up in the chain of command should have said something like: "We expect all of you to be on your best behavior, you are not representing just America, you are representing Freedom, the whole of Western Civilization, YOU are responsible for demonstrating to them by your behavior, that their mullahs are WRONG about us, that we are NOT the Great Satan, that we are the force of Good in this world. Anyone misbehaving in this fashion will face harsh punishment."
Nobody has sent this message. There are NO accounts of ANYONE in the chain of command, having attempted to send this message to the troops. As Sect. of Defense, I would DEFINATELY have made damn sure that each pair of boots in the field got this message. The stakes were too high. This was an opportunity to take the Moral High Ground in the War On Terror.
Do you think that the average Muslim American is ashamed as hell of what the 9/11 murderers did? Do you think they're ashamed of their religious leadership who offers tacit approval of terrorism and jihad? I am just as ashamed of what these soldiers are doing. But much more MORE ashamed that our leaders have not handled this situation.
I know there's a lot of anger directed at the "average muslim" *from* the "average american" - and this anger is what's saying; "collateral damage is okay. Abu Ghraib is okay. Because these filthy animals blew up the Pentagon and WTC." Do you want to cultivate the same kind of anger back at the "average american" from the "average muslim"? Is that really what you want? Because that's EXACTLY what Osama bin Laden wants. He wants a wide-scale Holy War between every single "Crusader" and every single muslim. I'm not thinking that any idea coming out of Osama bin Laden is a good one. I'm not going along with that plan. It's a dumb plan. A few thousand extremists out of a billion muslims declared war on us. killing a billion muslims just isn't my idea of "being a champion of Freedom and Democracy" - or "resisting the manipulation by a bunch of evil religious fanatics". If we waste our resources destroying eachother in this religious war, how in hell are we going to compete with the communists? Look at Russia after nearly a decade of war against Chechnya. Russia is NOT the picture of a prosperous superpower. It never was, but with it's size, and oil wealth, it should have been.
Can the population of L.A. drink this biodiesel after you cut off their water supply?
diverting a few million acre feet of water every 12 months or so from the Colorado River won't affect anyone's drinking water supply.
There are other ample supplies, and I think this stuff can even be adapted to seawater.
$2.57 for regular 87 octane gasoline, here on the Central California Coast. We pump the stuff up out of the ground here. Must be the transportation costs. Or maybe they just don't like us all that much.
. . . but high interest rates are GOOD for people who have lots of money. . .
wow. You don't know the first thing about war profiteering, do you?
The first thing about war profiteers is:
They don't give a flying fuck about YOU and your Chevy Avalanche.