> reminder to self: look up subsidies AT&T and others are getting for rural broadband
Because much of the US isn't profitable to wire at any price customers would likely pay. When AT&T was offered the absolute monopoly on phone service in the US back in the day they said no until the government agreed to exclude certain areas they simply would not accept. That is why those areas had a different phone company even back in the days of "Ma Bell." And it isn't any better now. Even being free to charge much higher prices and offer fewer services doesn't make those rural telephone companies profitable, it was the government largesse that did the trick. These days the government is throwing so much money at it that even AT&T has decided to compete for some of it.
The proper solution of course is to stop subsidising rural connectivity. There are many advantages to living outside the cities, but there are also disadvantages. So let those people who aren't paying much in property taxes and putting with the other expenses of city life spend the actual market rates for connectivity. These days it would mean most would be on a cell phone at probably double normal rates for having a home zip code in such an area and their data options would basically suck. Oh well.
In case anyone hasn't noticed yet, pretending reality doesn't exist is the root cause of our trillion dollar plus overspending every year for as far as OMB can produce estimates. The solution to insanity is to stop doing insane things. Ask yourself what would a sane person do? Do that. Spending money you don't have to give people something that isn't practical to own doesn't lead to good things. It didn't work for the housing market, it is destroying the telecom market by distorting the market. It certain't isn't doing good things for the economy in general, if for no other reason than the debt is depressing market.
> I'd still feel stupid holding the thing up to my ear...
Then don't. Either use it as a speakerphone, attach a wired headset or use it's bluetooth capabilities. It isn't a Kindle Fire ya know. The Nexus has both a microphone and bluetooth.
I have always thought it was stupid to have a product with a cell data only link when adding the ability to place and receive calls is just a software limitation imposed by the carriers.
The problem with VoIP is battery life. My phone can idle for days on the cell towers but launching a VoIP app forces the WiFi to stay up constantly to be able to receive a call and it will only last a day it I don't actually do anything with it. The Nexus has a much larger battery but I'd be interested in some real world info on what impact leaving the wireless hot all day has. Of course if you only need it for the occasional outbound call this would be a winner, doubly so because grabbing an earpiece when you are getting ready to make a call isn't a real problem.
Then I really don't want to know how you manage that feat. I have managed to go from excellent karma to terrible in one thread but I have never had a post deleted. Ever. I thought there was exactly one incident that resulted in an outright deletion here, due to the Co$ so even if your GNAA trolling/whatever is being deleted it would be notable.
To bad you are just an AC, otherwise I'd ask if managing to get a post deleted unlocks an achievement. I know an epic karma burn doesn't.:)
> Or - at least I damn well hope that ICANN doesn't answer to Saudi Arabia.
Not yet. But if we don't solve the problem (see above for my proposal) eventually the UN will get control of the Internet and remember, this is the same organization that thinks Libya, Iran, Cuba, etc. are just peachy pronouncing on Human Rights violations, etc. So yes, eventually the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) will be able to blok vote damned near any rule they want. So lets fix the problem while we still can have a say in it and not be outvoted by unfree hellholes.
But there is only one sane solution to these international problems. Put everything in the country specific tlds. Then the only international cooperation needed is to ensure we can all find the national roots and divide up the IP space. And IPv6 removes pretty much all controversy over a fight for addresses so problem solved. Yes it would mean a longterm migration of.com,.net,.org and.mil into the.us address space and probably mirroring them into most of the others, at least for a transition period since the sensible behavor for browsers would be to determine the local.cc and append it to everything. But over a decade we could end all this bickering AND the relentless push to turn control over the entire Internet to the U.N.
The idea of Saudi Arabia objecting to the existence of something in someone else's namespace would be laughed at. But if it is a shared namespace they really have as much right to object as the various other factions to support these goofy new top level names.
Who cares how well written it is, it is still content free. Nobody has leaked images yet so this guy's idle speculation isn't any better than some random/. user. But we have to have at least one Apple story per day it appears so this is it. Bah.
Oh well, won't last much longer. The iPod is almost a memory, the iPhone is fast retreating to the traditional 10% of the market where overpriced luxury goods normally dwell and with a little luck the iPad will also become something the 'rest of us' can safely quit worrrying about.
No, statecraft. He challenged the authority of the US government to hold secrets, something only a nation state actor is permitted to do by the Law of Nations, and that only by force of arms. So he should suffer the consequences of our counter assertion that he does NOT in fact have that power when the full might of our Rightous Anger falls smack on his sorry ass.
Remember that ALL State authority derives from it's claim on a monopoly on the use of force. Our laws on national secrets are no exception, they are predicated on an implied "or else we will do nasty things to you." If you are a Citizen the 'nasty things' are defined, if not our valid reactions are virtually unlimited, limited only by political expediency and the needs of statecraft instead of Law. Keep that principle in mind when proposing giving the State more power. It is a fearsome master.
> That's not a fair analysis of Wikileak's intentions.
Intentions mean nothing. People died. And the point is that isn't Julian Assange that gets to decide whether a US secret should or should not be leaked. That path leads to madness. We are either in a war and should put our big boy undies on and start fighting it like one or decide we ain't and bring our soldiers home before our indecisive 'leaders' get more of them killed.
In WWII it would have been a no brainer what to do if some asshole in a neutral country started publishing war secrets. First off the country he was operating from wouldn't have allowed it, knowing the sure reaction they could have expected. Second we WOULD have killed the idiot with our intelligence assets at the first whiff that something like that was possible.
> Spying is a strange endeavour, borderline illegal
Yea, it is nasty business but nobody can run a country for long without an intelligence service.
> then shouldn't other countries be allowed to do the same on U.S. soil?
It goes without saying, really. Spies operate in secret after all. Almost a certainty it has happened and will happen again. If we are on one side in a conflict our intelligence services probably do counter intel to protect irregulars operating from here. Spy vs spy. And, for example, back when the Brits were having a spot of trouble in Ireland it is a veritable certainty that we either turned a blind eye to British Intelligence when they did what they had to do or, depending on the Administration at the moment, assisted. Probably even in the assassination of American Citizens. Again, statecraft isn't for the squeamish. Messy stuff best left to the professionals and the Truth never truly comes out, all wheels within wheels. Turtles all the way down.
> Wikileaks serves as an important check.
No. Congress and the American People serve as the check on our government. ANd ultimately the rest of the world's nation states does. But nobody elected Wikileaks. There is no balance of power against Wikileaks, I didn't vote on em and can't vote em out. Even our own Press has the check that they are at least subject to US laws if they get too far out.
Um, Assange is leaking military secrets intended to kill US servicemen in a war authorized by our Congress. Strange definition of 'ally' you have there if said 'ally' wouldn't be willing to deal with a Taliban irregular within their borders. I'd be perfectly happy if some EU nation or his native Austrailia put a bullet in the f*cker and saved us the bother, otherwise they should have to hand his ass over to us or suffer the consequences of taking the other side in a war from the US. Unlike the Taliban, those countries ARE signatories to the Geneva Conventions and are subject to the customary rules, in this case the rules regarding neutrality. Allowing irregular combatants to operate notoriously from within your territory is forbidden by the laws of war. Providing material support to a warring faction, as would be the case for a hosting company accepting wikileaks as a customer, is also subject to very specific international laws. Not only could we blow the specific hosting facility to hell we could seize every asset within the reach of our law.
But even better still would be for us to have dealt with the situation long before it hit the front page of the NYT. Don't we have any goddamned spies anymore? We should have stuck a shiv in his worthless ass after he explained in loving detail exactly where he got the documents, where every known copy was etc in exchange for a fast death instead of a long slow one, all quiet and off the public radar.
> there would be a Domino Effect that would turn all of Asia Communist
Usually stated as SOUTHEAST Asia would fall. As in Cambodia and Laos, etc. And guess what, they did. Burma is also a hell on earth. Your team gets Pol Pot's body count added to the list of your crimes against humanity as a bonus. Thailand and Malaysia survived. There was never real doubt about South Korea or Japan after all. All in all a debacle of biblical proportion resulting in millions and millions in mass graves and more dead fleeing in overloaded leaky boats. Call that a happy ending if you can sleep at night after doing do, I won't.
Not exactly. If you are a citizen and leak secret documents you are a traitor. If you aren't you are an enemy. The correct response to Mr. Assange should have been a phone call to the country he was in at the time demanding they surrender him over to us and for the hosting center to instantly disconnect his systems. Refusal should have been swiftly followed by a Hellfire missle or three. The problem would have ended and would have been very unlikely to repeat.
Datacenters are very pricy things, the thought of a missle barrage would be sufficient to convince most admins that they really don't need to pull the sort of all nighters required to stay up and running through that. DDoS attacks are bad enough, shrapnel in the racks is quite another.
> But then most protesters didn't. Your claims about "bulk anti-war left marching under the VC flag" is a flat out lie.
Rare was the big 'anti-war' protest without a few VC flags around. So riddle me this, why was that allowed? Now for a harder question, I know you won't answer honest but anyone else reading this will know it is the killing stroke against the argument you will make that "a couple of knuckleheads doesn't mean the movement was tainted."
Can you, with a straight face, tell me that the same 'a few knuckleheads' argument would have worked if the Tea Party protests of late had featured regular appearances by anything nearly so repellent; with NO denunciation from any of the leaders of the movement? Lets say a few rogue progressives like Nazis or the Klan or their more knuckledragging White Power associates. Oh wait, we KNOW how that worked out. It didn't happen as a general rule and the couple of times some idiot (usually tracable back to plants from lefty orgs) tried something like that the rest of the organization quickly dealt with the clowns. But the media and the progs (but I repeat myself) declared they were all racists anyway. So I'm pulling a page from Saul Alinsky and making you bastards live up to your own book of rules.
Oh, and Alinsky was a pro VC sort. Bill Ayers certainly was. And had he have been old enough it is a veritable certainty that Mr. "Gotta be sure to be seen with the campus Marxists lest I be thought a sellout" Obama would have been one.
Google gave me these in a matter of two tries, it ain't hard to find. It was the rare protest that didn't feature a VC flag. It was about as trendy as a Che t-shirt today, another celebration of a mass murdering communist thug. It never ends.
> You really missed the whole point, didn't you? It wasn't our fight!
No, it is you who are mistaken... about a great many things. "It isn't our fight." was one of the arguments against the war, one I admit can and was argued by people of good faith. It is a real question that you can have an honest debate over. I wasn't old enough to have been in that fight and hindsight is always 20/20 so redebating that one probably isn't much use now. However that wasn't the argument the bulk of the professional 'anti-war' left were engaging in. They weren't against war, they weren't even against that specific war, they were pro VC. They didn't just want US forces out they were very vocal in declaring their love of the VC and their hope the VC would defeat us.
When you march under the VC flag, it is hard to then argue you weren't on their side. When Hanoi Jane goes and entertains the enemy's troops and isn't denounced by any notable 'anti-war' leaders or even famous rank and file, you cannot then argue that that whole movement was not in fact on the VC side.
So I say again to all the hippies who were on that side; Are you still happy to have been on that side? Is killing bloggers who oppose the State something you only support when they do it over there or are you waiting for your King Putt to bring the practice home to here?
This goes out to all those hippies who flew Viet Cong flags and were oh so sure that if the Evil Wicked Americans would just lose the Vietnam War that the peaceful VC would make a wonderful People's Republic and everything would be rainbow shitting unicorns... OK ASSHOLES, you got your wish. It has been a generation now, where is the paradise? Or you you ready to admit you were just traitors yet and that it wasn't even in a good cause? Eh? I can't hear you.
Sounds good. In fact I have been guilty of saying it in the past. No longer, I have more knowledge of how progs work. Put on your killer DM hat and think on how you could abuse that rule and you will probably agree it is a bad idea.
Give the government the power to forbid the franchise to large groups of people IT defines as too dependent. In other words, let the State pick who it wants voting. No thanks, far too abusable.
I get really tired of this frame of stories that assume Apple is the alpha and the omega.
Who cares about a possible iPad Mini that isn't drinking the Kool-Aid already? Just another iOS device, they already come with a range of displays, connectivity, etc. If you have already bought into the iOS ecosystem you might want one, otherwise not so much. What other OEM adding a new screen size would be a major story on/.? Newsflash! Dell adds new display option to their laptop line, discuss.
And for that matter, I don't really care about the Amazon or Nook tablets because they are trying to run the same Apple game plan, poorly. I don't want to semi-buy a tethered device that is more a tethered window into it's owner's cloud than a computer that [I] control. And to a great extent I toss the new Google Nexus 7 (by Asus) into the same pile.
Look around and you can buy tablets in any size, build quality and price that can be unlocked, accept removable media, even boot from that external media. Want one with a keyboard? Yup. Good cameras, sensors, etc. How much ya willing to pay? In other words, tablet computers instead of iPad clones. You can keep your subsidized[1] media players; I'm a nerd and I buy computers.
Just don't expect to buy a computer from a media company and get anything useful. Which is what B&N and Amazon are, Apple is in the process of becoming and Google is greatly desiring to be.
[1] Well not subsidized from Apple of course, there you pay more for the chains... but they are just so stylish!
> The Republican platform is now "Vote for us, or else we will become Greece."
Consider why that strategy is one you are afraid will work. It is a combination of two factors, remove either one and it wouldn't work. One you can argue isn't under your control/isn't Obama's fault/blah blah but the other certainly is.
One, the economy is in the crapper and most Americans think it is more likely to get worse than to get better. Worse they think, by a large margain, that we are on the wrong course.
Second, the D team is offering no plan at all to deal with the elephant in the room. The ginormous deficit and rampant spending. Obama promised to cut the deficit in half and instead doubled it. Congress didn't even try to pass a budget in 2010 and the Senate refuses to even start debate on one for the third year in a row. Obama's last two budgets were forced to a vote by the Republicans and went down in flames by his own party. In short, the entire Democrat machine is totally AWOL, ceding the most important issue to the voters to the Republicans.
Ok, you don't like Ryan's budgets. You aren't supposed to, that is why we have two parties. But you won't beat something with nothing. Right now Ryan looks like the adult in the room while you guys are banging your spoons on the high chair. Get you ass in the game and tell us what you are for, we know what you are against. We are spending a trillion a year we don't have and the cutrrent plan is to do that until things go kaboom. What is your plan, other than kaboom. We can see Greece and hell, we can see California; we know how this story ends and it isn't somewhere we want to go.
There also exists a welfare state. Far too many people are getting more in cash and direct cash equivalents from the government than they pay in taxes of all form. Being able to vote to make someone else give you their stuff is unstable. Even more unstable is a popular culture that celebrates the sort of envy and covetousness that makes that sort of thing socially acceptable.
Ok, now dispute anything I wrote. For example you might point to a political figure with similar political views to Obama where the media has actually reported them accurately or the figure actually talks it up themself, who has been elected to a statewide office. The guy would be one of the most left among the Congressional Progressive Caucus so, for example you might point to one of their number who has been a serious candidate for statewide or national office.
As to the qualification question, all that requires is to realize the birther thing (which came from the Clinton camp after it was clear she had lost. Do the math.) was that it was designed to distract from the obvious problem with eligibility. Anyone with basic reading comprehension can figure out that someone with Kenyan/British/Indonesian/American citizenship was exactly the divided loyalty situation the Natural Born Citizen clause was designed to prevent.
> The big argument that I heard against Condi was that she was Pro-Choice.
Dunno, I kinda liked Condi when she was doing the NSC thing. Then Bush sent her to State and she failed. Instead of beating State into shape she went native and represented their positions to the administration instead of the reverse. Probably makes me a bigot or something, but I judge people on their performance; screwing up get ya major demerits with me.
Since she hasn't suceeded in anything since to cancel out her horrible State Dept run I wouldn't support her.
> Apparently you feel that making the very poor pay more in taxes is a good thing.
Yes, everyone should pay something. I didn't have much use for Bachman but she was dead right to push that line of argument. As thiungs stand now half teh country pays nothing and the top ten percent pay the lion's share of taxes. That isn't sustainable. Lets vote to raise taxes on other people! hasn't worked long anywhere else in history.
Oh, and on a related subject; will somebody define the phrase "pay their fair share" I hear it all the time but nobody who uses it will ever define it.
> If the tea party wasn't so dead stuck on tax cuts for the wealthy
And if YOU could get away from the Soros/Think Progress/CAP/Kos talking points you might realize we aren't for 'tax cuts for the wealthy' we are for either keeping rates WHERE THEY ARE AND HAVE BEEN FOR A DECADE or for a major overhaul of the tax code to reduce rates across the board in exchange for eliminating deductions, carveouts and loopholes such that it is revenue neutral on the static CBO scoring but will actually produce MORE revenue to the treasury, almost all from the 'wealkthy', from a growing economy.
> but when you want to cut medicare/medicaid, funding for schools and teachers
We are spending over a trillion more than we are taking in and Obama plans to do that into the forcastable future. That isn't a sustainable plan. And most of the spending growth is in the welfare state. Taxes at all levels (fed, state, local) are almost certainly on the side of the laffer curve where raising rates won't bring in more actual revenue and my team isn't into 'redistributive justice' so why in the name of hell would we want to raise tax rates? So that leaves cutting spending untl it matches revenues or making the tax base grow until it can support the spending. So lets hear YOUR plan. What do you want to cut? Or do you want to try inflating our way out? Or what? There aren't many choices available so please stop bitching about our choices and pick something to be for.
And screw the teachers. We have more than doubled per pupil spending in the last generation and test scores have went down. The best thing we could do for the students is fire the lot of em and sell off the infrastructure to private entities. At least some of them would succeed.
But I really don't think any of those names would survive even if they were hard core pro-lifers. We in the Party ranks are already swallowing hard to choke down another shit sandich forced on us by the establishment. A double RINO ticket would make it an easy decision for a lot of the base to stay just home. Seriously, we oppose Obamacare; so we are fired up for they guy who pushed the prototype?
And no, Ryan is loved by the base for taking on the budget problem. Other than being a 'businessman' what has Romney actually done on the budget problem? What has he even really said on it? Ryan has passed two actual budgets that show where he is wanting to lead. And we have seen it and saw that it is good. Pretty safe bet there is general satisfaction today out in the Republican base. Maybe not the sort of 'yee hah!' reaction from four years ago, but they should be ready to mobilize now.
> Oh, and Ryan is Roman Catholic, not Jewish.
You are right. I try to keep up with this stuff but there is just too much trivia to remember. Should use Google more. Oh well, still a 'minority' pick in that I don't think we have had one of them since JFK. Not that I particularly care about the personal trivia like that, I care more about their ideas and position than their biography or religion... unless they are the sort who make a big public thing about that sort of thing.
> You would be better off to be apathetic than to support politics by engagement.
Yes, please light up, drop out and stay away from the ballot box. Leave that to people who care enough to actually get involved and change the system.
The Tea Party is already making a difference in the political arena. Meanwhile the Occupoopers only accomplished being an embaressment to their arguments. The apathetic types wont even be a bad example though. So they are a self correcting problem.
Slashdot Mirror
> reminder to self: look up subsidies AT&T and others are getting for rural broadband
Because much of the US isn't profitable to wire at any price customers would likely pay. When AT&T was offered the absolute monopoly on phone service in the US back in the day they said no until the government agreed to exclude certain areas they simply would not accept. That is why those areas had a different phone company even back in the days of "Ma Bell." And it isn't any better now. Even being free to charge much higher prices and offer fewer services doesn't make those rural telephone companies profitable, it was the government largesse that did the trick. These days the government is throwing so much money at it that even AT&T has decided to compete for some of it.
The proper solution of course is to stop subsidising rural connectivity. There are many advantages to living outside the cities, but there are also disadvantages. So let those people who aren't paying much in property taxes and putting with the other expenses of city life spend the actual market rates for connectivity. These days it would mean most would be on a cell phone at probably double normal rates for having a home zip code in such an area and their data options would basically suck. Oh well.
In case anyone hasn't noticed yet, pretending reality doesn't exist is the root cause of our trillion dollar plus overspending every year for as far as OMB can produce estimates. The solution to insanity is to stop doing insane things. Ask yourself what would a sane person do? Do that. Spending money you don't have to give people something that isn't practical to own doesn't lead to good things. It didn't work for the housing market, it is destroying the telecom market by distorting the market. It certain't isn't doing good things for the economy in general, if for no other reason than the debt is depressing market.
> I'd still feel stupid holding the thing up to my ear...
Then don't. Either use it as a speakerphone, attach a wired headset or use it's bluetooth capabilities. It isn't a Kindle Fire ya know. The Nexus has both a microphone and bluetooth.
I have always thought it was stupid to have a product with a cell data only link when adding the ability to place and receive calls is just a software limitation imposed by the carriers.
The problem with VoIP is battery life. My phone can idle for days on the cell towers but launching a VoIP app forces the WiFi to stay up constantly to be able to receive a call and it will only last a day it I don't actually do anything with it. The Nexus has a much larger battery but I'd be interested in some real world info on what impact leaving the wireless hot all day has. Of course if you only need it for the occasional outbound call this would be a winner, doubly so because grabbing an earpiece when you are getting ready to make a call isn't a real problem.
Then I really don't want to know how you manage that feat. I have managed to go from excellent karma to terrible in one thread but I have never had a post deleted. Ever. I thought there was exactly one incident that resulted in an outright deletion here, due to the Co$ so even if your GNAA trolling/whatever is being deleted it would be notable.
To bad you are just an AC, otherwise I'd ask if managing to get a post deleted unlocks an achievement. I know an epic karma burn doesn't. :)
Eh? .com is a US centric domain. So exactly what are you bitching about again?
> Or - at least I damn well hope that ICANN doesn't answer to Saudi Arabia.
Not yet. But if we don't solve the problem (see above for my proposal) eventually the UN will get control of the Internet and remember, this is the same organization that thinks Libya, Iran, Cuba, etc. are just peachy pronouncing on Human Rights violations, etc. So yes, eventually the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) will be able to blok vote damned near any rule they want. So lets fix the problem while we still can have a say in it and not be outvoted by unfree hellholes.
ICANN wants the money too badly to admit failure.
But there is only one sane solution to these international problems. Put everything in the country specific tlds. Then the only international cooperation needed is to ensure we can all find the national roots and divide up the IP space. And IPv6 removes pretty much all controversy over a fight for addresses so problem solved. Yes it would mean a longterm migration of .com, .net, .org and .mil into the .us address space and probably mirroring them into most of the others, at least for a transition period since the sensible behavor for browsers would be to determine the local .cc and append it to everything. But over a decade we could end all this bickering AND the relentless push to turn control over the entire Internet to the U.N.
The idea of Saudi Arabia objecting to the existence of something in someone else's namespace would be laughed at. But if it is a shared namespace they really have as much right to object as the various other factions to support these goofy new top level names.
Who cares how well written it is, it is still content free. Nobody has leaked images yet so this guy's idle speculation isn't any better than some random /. user. But we have to have at least one Apple story per day it appears so this is it. Bah.
Oh well, won't last much longer. The iPod is almost a memory, the iPhone is fast retreating to the traditional 10% of the market where overpriced luxury goods normally dwell and with a little luck the iPad will also become something the 'rest of us' can safely quit worrrying about.
> that's murder.
No, statecraft. He challenged the authority of the US government to hold secrets, something only a nation state actor is permitted to do by the Law of Nations, and that only by force of arms. So he should suffer the consequences of our counter assertion that he does NOT in fact have that power when the full might of our Rightous Anger falls smack on his sorry ass.
Remember that ALL State authority derives from it's claim on a monopoly on the use of force. Our laws on national secrets are no exception, they are predicated on an implied "or else we will do nasty things to you." If you are a Citizen the 'nasty things' are defined, if not our valid reactions are virtually unlimited, limited only by political expediency and the needs of statecraft instead of Law. Keep that principle in mind when proposing giving the State more power. It is a fearsome master.
> That's not a fair analysis of Wikileak's intentions.
Intentions mean nothing. People died. And the point is that isn't Julian Assange that gets to decide whether a US secret should or should not be leaked. That path leads to madness. We are either in a war and should put our big boy undies on and start fighting it like one or decide we ain't and bring our soldiers home before our indecisive 'leaders' get more of them killed.
In WWII it would have been a no brainer what to do if some asshole in a neutral country started publishing war secrets. First off the country he was operating from wouldn't have allowed it, knowing the sure reaction they could have expected. Second we WOULD have killed the idiot with our intelligence assets at the first whiff that something like that was possible.
> Spying is a strange endeavour, borderline illegal
Yea, it is nasty business but nobody can run a country for long without an intelligence service.
> then shouldn't other countries be allowed to do the same on U.S. soil?
It goes without saying, really. Spies operate in secret after all. Almost a certainty it has happened and will happen again. If we are on one side in a conflict our intelligence services probably do counter intel to protect irregulars operating from here. Spy vs spy. And, for example, back when the Brits were having a spot of trouble in Ireland it is a veritable certainty that we either turned a blind eye to British Intelligence when they did what they had to do or, depending on the Administration at the moment, assisted. Probably even in the assassination of American Citizens. Again, statecraft isn't for the squeamish. Messy stuff best left to the professionals and the Truth never truly comes out, all wheels within wheels. Turtles all the way down.
> Wikileaks serves as an important check.
No. Congress and the American People serve as the check on our government. ANd ultimately the rest of the world's nation states does. But nobody elected Wikileaks. There is no balance of power against Wikileaks, I didn't vote on em and can't vote em out. Even our own Press has the check that they are at least subject to US laws if they get too far out.
Um, Assange is leaking military secrets intended to kill US servicemen in a war authorized by our Congress. Strange definition of 'ally' you have there if said 'ally' wouldn't be willing to deal with a Taliban irregular within their borders. I'd be perfectly happy if some EU nation or his native Austrailia put a bullet in the f*cker and saved us the bother, otherwise they should have to hand his ass over to us or suffer the consequences of taking the other side in a war from the US. Unlike the Taliban, those countries ARE signatories to the Geneva Conventions and are subject to the customary rules, in this case the rules regarding neutrality. Allowing irregular combatants to operate notoriously from within your territory is forbidden by the laws of war. Providing material support to a warring faction, as would be the case for a hosting company accepting wikileaks as a customer, is also subject to very specific international laws. Not only could we blow the specific hosting facility to hell we could seize every asset within the reach of our law.
But even better still would be for us to have dealt with the situation long before it hit the front page of the NYT. Don't we have any goddamned spies anymore? We should have stuck a shiv in his worthless ass after he explained in loving detail exactly where he got the documents, where every known copy was etc in exchange for a fast death instead of a long slow one, all quiet and off the public radar.
> there would be a Domino Effect that would turn all of Asia Communist
Usually stated as SOUTHEAST Asia would fall. As in Cambodia and Laos, etc. And guess what, they did. Burma is also a hell on earth. Your team gets Pol Pot's body count added to the list of your crimes against humanity as a bonus. Thailand and Malaysia survived. There was never real doubt about South Korea or Japan after all. All in all a debacle of biblical proportion resulting in millions and millions in mass graves and more dead fleeing in overloaded leaky boats. Call that a happy ending if you can sleep at night after doing do, I won't.
Not exactly. If you are a citizen and leak secret documents you are a traitor. If you aren't you are an enemy. The correct response to Mr. Assange should have been a phone call to the country he was in at the time demanding they surrender him over to us and for the hosting center to instantly disconnect his systems. Refusal should have been swiftly followed by a Hellfire missle or three. The problem would have ended and would have been very unlikely to repeat.
Datacenters are very pricy things, the thought of a missle barrage would be sufficient to convince most admins that they really don't need to pull the sort of all nighters required to stay up and running through that. DDoS attacks are bad enough, shrapnel in the racks is quite another.
> But then most protesters didn't. Your claims about "bulk anti-war left marching under the VC flag" is a flat out lie.
Rare was the big 'anti-war' protest without a few VC flags around. So riddle me this, why was that allowed? Now for a harder question, I know you won't answer honest but anyone else reading this will know it is the killing stroke against the argument you will make that "a couple of knuckleheads doesn't mean the movement was tainted."
Can you, with a straight face, tell me that the same 'a few knuckleheads' argument would have worked if the Tea Party protests of late had featured regular appearances by anything nearly so repellent; with NO denunciation from any of the leaders of the movement? Lets say a few rogue progressives like Nazis or the Klan or their more knuckledragging White Power associates. Oh wait, we KNOW how that worked out. It didn't happen as a general rule and the couple of times some idiot (usually tracable back to plants from lefty orgs) tried something like that the rest of the organization quickly dealt with the clowns. But the media and the progs (but I repeat myself) declared they were all racists anyway. So I'm pulling a page from Saul Alinsky and making you bastards live up to your own book of rules.
Oh, and Alinsky was a pro VC sort. Bill Ayers certainly was. And had he have been old enough it is a veritable certainty that Mr. "Gotta be sure to be seen with the campus Marxists lest I be thought a sellout" Obama would have been one.
Google gave me these in a matter of two tries, it ain't hard to find. It was the rare protest that didn't feature a VC flag. It was about as trendy as a Che t-shirt today, another celebration of a mass murdering communist thug. It never ends.
1. http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist//BHC_ITN/1965/12/01/X01126501/#popUpCenter
2. http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/WL001929/antiwar-protester-raising-a-vietcong-flag
> You really missed the whole point, didn't you? It wasn't our fight!
No, it is you who are mistaken... about a great many things. "It isn't our fight." was one of the arguments against the war, one I admit can and was argued by people of good faith. It is a real question that you can have an honest debate over. I wasn't old enough to have been in that fight and hindsight is always 20/20 so redebating that one probably isn't much use now. However that wasn't the argument the bulk of the professional 'anti-war' left were engaging in. They weren't against war, they weren't even against that specific war, they were pro VC. They didn't just want US forces out they were very vocal in declaring their love of the VC and their hope the VC would defeat us.
When you march under the VC flag, it is hard to then argue you weren't on their side. When Hanoi Jane goes and entertains the enemy's troops and isn't denounced by any notable 'anti-war' leaders or even famous rank and file, you cannot then argue that that whole movement was not in fact on the VC side.
So I say again to all the hippies who were on that side; Are you still happy to have been on that side? Is killing bloggers who oppose the State something you only support when they do it over there or are you waiting for your King Putt to bring the practice home to here?
This goes out to all those hippies who flew Viet Cong flags and were oh so sure that if the Evil Wicked Americans would just lose the Vietnam War that the peaceful VC would make a wonderful People's Republic and everything would be rainbow shitting unicorns... OK ASSHOLES, you got your wish. It has been a generation now, where is the paradise? Or you you ready to admit you were just traitors yet and that it wasn't even in a good cause? Eh? I can't hear you.
Sounds good. In fact I have been guilty of saying it in the past. No longer, I have more knowledge of how progs work. Put on your killer DM hat and think on how you could abuse that rule and you will probably agree it is a bad idea.
Give the government the power to forbid the franchise to large groups of people IT defines as too dependent. In other words, let the State pick who it wants voting. No thanks, far too abusable.
I get really tired of this frame of stories that assume Apple is the alpha and the omega.
Who cares about a possible iPad Mini that isn't drinking the Kool-Aid already? Just another iOS device, they already come with a range of displays, connectivity, etc. If you have already bought into the iOS ecosystem you might want one, otherwise not so much. What other OEM adding a new screen size would be a major story on /.? Newsflash! Dell adds new display option to their laptop line, discuss.
And for that matter, I don't really care about the Amazon or Nook tablets because they are trying to run the same Apple game plan, poorly. I don't want to semi-buy a tethered device that is more a tethered window into it's owner's cloud than a computer that [I] control. And to a great extent I toss the new Google Nexus 7 (by Asus) into the same pile.
Look around and you can buy tablets in any size, build quality and price that can be unlocked, accept removable media, even boot from that external media. Want one with a keyboard? Yup. Good cameras, sensors, etc. How much ya willing to pay? In other words, tablet computers instead of iPad clones. You can keep your subsidized[1] media players; I'm a nerd and I buy computers.
Just don't expect to buy a computer from a media company and get anything useful. Which is what B&N and Amazon are, Apple is in the process of becoming and Google is greatly desiring to be.
[1] Well not subsidized from Apple of course, there you pay more for the chains... but they are just so stylish!
> The Republican platform is now "Vote for us, or else we will become Greece."
Consider why that strategy is one you are afraid will work. It is a combination of two factors, remove either one and it wouldn't work. One you can argue isn't under your control/isn't Obama's fault/blah blah but the other certainly is.
One, the economy is in the crapper and most Americans think it is more likely to get worse than to get better. Worse they think, by a large margain, that we are on the wrong course.
Second, the D team is offering no plan at all to deal with the elephant in the room. The ginormous deficit and rampant spending. Obama promised to cut the deficit in half and instead doubled it. Congress didn't even try to pass a budget in 2010 and the Senate refuses to even start debate on one for the third year in a row. Obama's last two budgets were forced to a vote by the Republicans and went down in flames by his own party. In short, the entire Democrat machine is totally AWOL, ceding the most important issue to the voters to the Republicans.
Ok, you don't like Ryan's budgets. You aren't supposed to, that is why we have two parties. But you won't beat something with nothing. Right now Ryan looks like the adult in the room while you guys are banging your spoons on the high chair. Get you ass in the game and tell us what you are for, we know what you are against. We are spending a trillion a year we don't have and the cutrrent plan is to do that until things go kaboom. What is your plan, other than kaboom. We can see Greece and hell, we can see California; we know how this story ends and it isn't somewhere we want to go.
There also exists a welfare state. Far too many people are getting more in cash and direct cash equivalents from the government than they pay in taxes of all form. Being able to vote to make someone else give you their stuff is unstable. Even more unstable is a popular culture that celebrates the sort of envy and covetousness that makes that sort of thing socially acceptable.
Ok, now dispute anything I wrote. For example you might point to a political figure with similar political views to Obama where the media has actually reported them accurately or the figure actually talks it up themself, who has been elected to a statewide office. The guy would be one of the most left among the Congressional Progressive Caucus so, for example you might point to one of their number who has been a serious candidate for statewide or national office.
As to the qualification question, all that requires is to realize the birther thing (which came from the Clinton camp after it was clear she had lost. Do the math.) was that it was designed to distract from the obvious problem with eligibility. Anyone with basic reading comprehension can figure out that someone with Kenyan/British/Indonesian/American citizenship was exactly the divided loyalty situation the Natural Born Citizen clause was designed to prevent.
> The big argument that I heard against Condi was that she was Pro-Choice.
Dunno, I kinda liked Condi when she was doing the NSC thing. Then Bush sent her to State and she failed. Instead of beating State into shape she went native and represented their positions to the administration instead of the reverse. Probably makes me a bigot or something, but I judge people on their performance; screwing up get ya major demerits with me.
Since she hasn't suceeded in anything since to cancel out her horrible State Dept run I wouldn't support her.
> Apparently you feel that making the very poor pay more in taxes is a good thing.
Yes, everyone should pay something. I didn't have much use for Bachman but she was dead right to push that line of argument. As thiungs stand now half teh country pays nothing and the top ten percent pay the lion's share of taxes. That isn't sustainable. Lets vote to raise taxes on other people! hasn't worked long anywhere else in history.
Oh, and on a related subject; will somebody define the phrase "pay their fair share" I hear it all the time but nobody who uses it will ever define it.
> If the tea party wasn't so dead stuck on tax cuts for the wealthy
And if YOU could get away from the Soros/Think Progress/CAP/Kos talking points you might realize we aren't for 'tax cuts for the wealthy' we are for either keeping rates WHERE THEY ARE AND HAVE BEEN FOR A DECADE or for a major overhaul of the tax code to reduce rates across the board in exchange for eliminating deductions, carveouts and loopholes such that it is revenue neutral on the static CBO scoring but will actually produce MORE revenue to the treasury, almost all from the 'wealkthy', from a growing economy.
> but when you want to cut medicare/medicaid, funding for schools and teachers
We are spending over a trillion more than we are taking in and Obama plans to do that into the forcastable future. That isn't a sustainable plan. And most of the spending growth is in the welfare state. Taxes at all levels (fed, state, local) are almost certainly on the side of the laffer curve where raising rates won't bring in more actual revenue and my team isn't into 'redistributive justice' so why in the name of hell would we want to raise tax rates? So that leaves cutting spending untl it matches revenues or making the tax base grow until it can support the spending. So lets hear YOUR plan. What do you want to cut? Or do you want to try inflating our way out? Or what? There aren't many choices available so please stop bitching about our choices and pick something to be for.
And screw the teachers. We have more than doubled per pupil spending in the last generation and test scores have went down. The best thing we could do for the students is fire the lot of em and sell off the infrastructure to private entities. At least some of them would succeed.
But I really don't think any of those names would survive even if they were hard core pro-lifers. We in the Party ranks are already swallowing hard to choke down another shit sandich forced on us by the establishment. A double RINO ticket would make it an easy decision for a lot of the base to stay just home. Seriously, we oppose Obamacare; so we are fired up for they guy who pushed the prototype?
And no, Ryan is loved by the base for taking on the budget problem. Other than being a 'businessman' what has Romney actually done on the budget problem? What has he even really said on it? Ryan has passed two actual budgets that show where he is wanting to lead. And we have seen it and saw that it is good. Pretty safe bet there is general satisfaction today out in the Republican base. Maybe not the sort of 'yee hah!' reaction from four years ago, but they should be ready to mobilize now.
> Oh, and Ryan is Roman Catholic, not Jewish.
You are right. I try to keep up with this stuff but there is just too much trivia to remember. Should use Google more. Oh well, still a 'minority' pick in that I don't think we have had one of them since JFK. Not that I particularly care about the personal trivia like that, I care more about their ideas and position than their biography or religion... unless they are the sort who make a big public thing about that sort of thing.
> You would be better off to be apathetic than to support politics by engagement.
Yes, please light up, drop out and stay away from the ballot box. Leave that to people who care enough to actually get involved and change the system.
The Tea Party is already making a difference in the political arena. Meanwhile the Occupoopers only accomplished being an embaressment to their arguments. The apathetic types wont even be a bad example though. So they are a self correcting problem.