You kind of miss the point. Take your average poor person in America. He DOES have clean water, food, and shelter. He might be slightly mal nourished and be eating a diet that is too high in fat, but he won't starve to death. His shelter might suck, but he won't get rained on. If you really dumped money into the federal government and exacted a high toll on the rest of society you could probably raise his standard of living further, but likely never break them into the middle class. You also deal with fact that as you make being not working more attractive, some people intentionally decide to simply not work and live off the state.
So, you can either strain the resources of your society trying to drag along a pile of unproductive citizens that are a net drain on everyone else, OR you can at least make an attempt get them to the point where they can support themselves. A massive part of bringing someone out of poverty, at least in the United States, is education. Poverty isn't the disease; it is just a symptom of poor education. Magically instil a poor person with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and they will have a job the next day. While a 100 dollar computer isn't a magic PhD, it is an avenue towards improved education. No, it probably will not change the world, but it might change the world for a few people, and that is worthy enough. Besides, if you really wanted to eliminate poverty in the US you wouldn't be making better AC or arable land. You would fix education in impoverished areas.
As to your bitching about why not make something more useful, I imagine it has something to do with the fact this was made by computer engineers who knows little or nothing about water purification, AC, and improving arable land. That is like bitching when someone makes a car that never crashes and some ass hat asks why he didn't cure cancer instead. This was a contribution to society. It might not have been the ultimate contribution to end all poverty in the world, but then again, what the hell exactly have you done today?
The US will not abandon elections any time soon. If you know ANYTHING of the US military, you know that if Bush's term came to an end and he didn't get his ass out of the office, the military would pick his ass up and kick it out of the military for him.
People often forget how important the military is for a functional civil society. A military that respects the rule of law and seeks to protect the state is extremely important. If your military does not feel like it is commanded by the civilian state and feels that its goal is not the protection of the civilian government, you tend to get overthrown governments. Popular uprisings that are not crushed are rare, but the militaries taking over civilian governments are a dime a dozen.
In this regards, the American democracy is one of the most secure in the world. The US military would NEVER take up arms against the civilian government unless a leader in the civilian government refused to get his ass out of office when his time was up. Further, even if the military did turn on the civilian government for the purpose of dragging Bush's ass out of office once his term was up, it would end its role there and go back to letting lawyers and politicians clean up the mess.
Fear Bush for whatever reasons you like, but don't fear him because he is going to use the military on the civilian government. In fact, if you recall, the US military refused to enter New Orleans and conduct any sort of peace keeping operations within the city because it is so strictly forbidden in the US constitutions. The only thing the military was allowed to do was provide logistical support and search and rescue operations. If a city getting wiped off the map is not disaster enough for the US military to bend the rules, I would say it is safe to say nothing is going to cause them to break them.
You need to wipe your fairytale land image of Cuba out of your head. China is ugly, but Cuba is worse. Cuba has absolutely no press outside the state run press and whatever the US blasts at them via the radio that isn't jammed. China is cruel to their disidents, but China in recent years has shown growing tolerance. There is absolutely no tolerance in Cuba.
Yes, Havan is pretty, but so is Pyongyang. Show cities are pretty par for the course for repressive authoritarian governments. Cuba is an ugly place, period. Florida has a population of Cubans to rival Cuba, and it isn't because the thousands of people that flee each year in bathtubs across the Atlantic think everything is dandy in Cuba.
Right... all the news is controlled by one evil corporation. I think you forgot a word in there.
"In America, we just have all TV news produced by a relatively small set of companies that are politically sympathetic to the ruling political power."
Type the following into google. Liberal News, Socialist News, Communist News, and Conservative News. Then merrily wander your way over to your favorite podcasting website and just pick through the various news types you can pick.
Besides, TV news (outside of Fox News) is not sympathetic to any 'ruling power'. The TV news is brain dead crap they stuff into a 30 minute (minus commercials) program. Reporting on the "runaway bride" and other lazy half assed reporting isn't evil, it is just fucking lazy.
There are plenty of alternatives. If you are reading this article, you have access to them.
Right. We clearly have no ability to make an area a complete no fly zone. That is just silly. How do you protect it from air planes? Circle the thing with missles and shoot down anything that comes close. Give it a nice big no fly zone so you have plenty of time to tell the income airplane to back the hell away. Besides, if you were to build one of these things, you would probably build it in the middle of the ocean on the equator, so it is not like you are making a 200 mile no fly zone in the middle of a nation.
It might be that it costs so much that it isn't economically fesible, yet. However, in the 1900 a watch was massivly expensive. A digital watch (if they had existed) would have sold for millions. Now you can get a watch that you throw away in a Happy Meal at McDonalds. My point? If the science is good, someone will find a way to make it cheaper eventually.
"How could you control their reproduction so that they don't clog your veins or saturate your organs?"
My advice would be to put the sci-fi book down and realize that nanotech does not equal grey goo of death. Nanotech could be as simple as slapping some RNA together into a form that pentrates only cancer cells and turns off their reproduction. It could be functionalizaing a carbon nanotube to pentrate only cancern cells and then heating them up a little and causing the cell to explode. Nanotechnology is NOT capable of reproducing machines any time in the near future. Hell, we can't even build machines that do anything yet, much less build ones that reproduce. If you find a nanostructure that kills cancer and doesn't harm the rest of the body, you just keep pumping it into the person until the cancer is gone. No need to pump grey goo of death into you.
Put down the Sci-fi books people, and read a nice science journal or technology website. If you want to read about some real nanotech cures on the way, take a peek at these.
Control population growth - why should there be infinite population growth on a finite planet? Sure you can increase the population when you terraform mars, but there should be a cap on earth's population, there is nothing morally good about having more people, it just means we all get a thinner slice of the pie. We passed six billion in 1999 we are almost at 6.5 billion in 2005, totally unsustainable rate of growth.
How exactly do you propose controlling the population? Take the Chinese approach and make it so that if you have a second child the family and that second child are economically screwed for the rest of his life due to systematic government discrimination? Mandatory monthly pregnancy testing along with forced abortions? Maybe you advocate mandatory birth control that can only be removed by government mandate. What exactly is it you advocate? Some authoritarian solution inflicted upon the already impoverished and repressed nations of the world?
The best solution is the one that has been proven to be 100% effective. Try and bring the rest of the world up to first world standards. All of Western Europe is currently experiencing population decline so sharp that it is threatening their social welfare programs (too many people using, not enough working). The US currently has negative population growth if you factor our immigration. Japan is in the same boat as Europe. When people are not impoverished and miserable, they stop cranking out kids. Fix poverty and the population will fix its self. As China has proven most effectively, authoritarian population control 'solutions' just leads to infanticide, massive imbalances in the population, greater human misery, corruption as to who is allowed to have children, and simply fail to solve the problem.
So... under this system, what happens if me and a few friends want to pool together our money and run a few adds declaring our senator (which would be the fat Kennedy here in Mass.) to be a shit head on TV. Is this allowed in your system?
What if me and a few friends are deeply concerned about fiscal responsibility and gay rights, so we form People For Fiscal Sanity And Equal Rights For All (PFFSAERFA doesn't spell anything cool, we might work on the name). We take donations from other like minded individuals and then run ads, print flyers, and try and spread awareness about how Bush spends money like the spirit of a raging socialist has possessed him and how much of a bigot he is. What happens if my organization decides to endorse a candidate because we feel she is fiscally responsible and a non-bigot? Is that allowed?
Under your system, do I need to give the American Nazi party, American Communist party, and the Socialist Party money via my tax dollars?
Government financed elections are not all peachy and keen. I am not saying that the US has found a solution to this issue, as it sure as shit hasn't. I am saying that drastically curtailing free speech until it is in the hands of a few crusty old politicians who might be more then a little motivated keep the rules set up to protect incumbents is a terrible idea. I do not want the guys running the government and the guys who decide how much money the people running the government can spend on their elections to be the same.
I think you miss the parents point. Yes, the government DOES get you to do things with the threat of violence. If you don't pay your taxes, the IRS will try and confiscate your property. If you refuse to let them take your property, they will throw you in jail. If you refuse to go to jail, guns come out and they drag you to jail. A government IS that legalized use of violence. All power of the government stems from the fact that if you refuse to follow its mandates, a few guys with guns will show up at your house and do something unpleasant.
The same thing goes with getting a speeding ticket. If I am cruising down a flat empty country highway and all of a sudden a police car shows up behind me, the only thing that keeps me from utterly ignoring him enforcing a stupid law for a wide open flat highway is the fact that if I just keep driving, he is going to use violence against me. The threat of violence is what makes people obediently pull over for speeding tickets, not some sense of civil obligation.
Now, the government's use of violence isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think it is good that if someone murders my mother, guys empowered to use violence by the government (police) go after the murder. That said, it is important to realize that a government solution to any problem is inherently revolves around the authorization of violence. That is where all power of the government stems from. Once you recognize that, you should pause before advocating any government solution. Ask yourself if the problem you are trying to solve really justifies the use of the threat of violence or use of violence upon your fellow humans. Ask yourself if you truly believe that coercion using the threat of violence is worthwhile in this instance.
I am not saying that we need to abolish taxes, the federal government, or anything of that nature. I am saying that before we merrily swing the government around like a sledge hammer trying to solve problems that we consider fully what it is you propose.
36 million Americans live in poverty by the American definition of poverty. That certainly is a problem. I am not arguing that poverty is fixed by any stretch of the imagination in the United States. My point was that the American definition of poverty is so horribly askew as to what poverty is in other nations that figures like the one you just cited are meaningless when talking about the relative well being of a population. If you have ever been to a third world country you would find poverty that can't even be compared to American poverty. I went on a trip to South Africa years back. The first thing I noticed was that impoverished people in the third world are THIN in ways you probably have never seen. Further, it wasn't just one or two thin people, it was everyone. I lived in New York and Detroit long enough to see plenty of America's underbelly, and even at its worst, Americans are not hard pressed for food. Americans are not thin people, and impoverished Americans are no exception. Americans don't die of starvation unless they are severely mentally handicapped, anorexic, or it happens through child neglect. Poor Americans are thousands of times more likely to die of obesity then starvation.
My point isn't that everything is great and wonderful. Poor Americans have mediocre nutrition at best, shitty health care, high unemployment, high crime rates, and all manner of social ills. My point is that the problems facing an impoverished American are entirely different from those facing an impoverished South African that deals with a type of poverty that isn't even comparable. As an American or western European your view of the world is slanted by first world standards.
I am not saying people shouldn't bitch about the problems we have. I am saying that if someone posts an article about an attempt to over come oppression or poverty, that isn't a cue for all the American centric Americans to jump in screaming that they need their poverty and oppression solved too. It is like a rich and spoiled kid complaining about how he needs financial help because he has to suffer riding around in an ugly used car his parents bought him and how his allowance is too small, all the while others are discussing ways of giving healthcare to poor 18 year old single mothers on their own working two jobs without even a HS diploma.
When someone talks about brutal political beatings and imprisonment in other countries because they posted on their blog about how they would like a democratic government, that is NOT your cue to jump and say "We Americans are repressed too! Fox news came with my 150 channel cable package! OPPRESSION!"
"How about freedom of press and free speech for bloggers right here in the US??"
The best part about freedom of speech in the US is that politicians and regulatory bodies are only one layer of protection. It isn't exclusively the job of the president or the congress to protect your speech. That isn't to say that they shouldn't be watching out for your freedom of speech, but simply that they are not the only line of defense. There are other layers of protection of freedom of speech that exist.
This law is a PERFECT example of how free speech is protected in the US. I would bet my life that the first time someone tries to enforce this law the other mechanisms that defend freedom of speech will kick in with a vengence. Namely, the judiciary will without a doubt get involved. Civil organizations like the ACLU and the EFF will certainly get involved, along with a pig pile of other free speech and free press advocacy groups. There is a mountain being held up by a thread over this law. The second someone tries to use it, it is going to come crashing down on it very hard.
What is happening is an example of the system working in the United States, not of a failure. The fact that the system has to kick on from time to time is a sign of stupidity in our politicians perhaps, but not a sign of a faulty system in general. Multilayered systems are the only way to go when it comes to protecting fundamental rights, and when it comes to freedom of the speech, the US has more layers of protection then vast majority of other nations in this world.
"We need to start demanding more from our journalists, and stop allowing people like Bill O'Idiot of Fox News to have air time."
I personally would much rather have MORE Bill O' Idiots on. Bill is in fact a shit head and more then a little dull. That said (at least when I used to watch his show) he asked people very pointed questions. Sure he was clearly slanted, but I would take slanted and willing to ask real questions and press people when they start spewing PR speak over 'objective' and lobbing softballs.
Personally, I think the biggest reason why the press sucks these days is not because they are trying to influence our opinions (err, minus FOX news, which cleary does have an agenda) or have a secret agenda. I personally think the problem with the press is that they are just fucking lazy. Covering a 'runaway bride' story takes a quick phone call to a local affiliate, sitting in on one police briefing, few minutes of editing, and one idiot who can blather on for hours about two small pieces of information.
Getting a guy with a camera inside of Iraq, North Korea, Uzbekistan, China, or Sudan and filming something that the local governments don't want us to see is a hell of a lot harder, more expensive, and risky. Spend 20 minutes on run away brides and other inane shit for pennies on the dollar or make a substantial investment in money and possibly live to cover real news outside of the nation. If the stupid masses will watch a run away bridge story and not turn off the fucking TV like they should, guess what the news is going to spew at us day in and out. No evil conspiracy, just a bunch of fucking lazy reporters providing the bare minimum news to lazy fucking Americans. Bah.
Right, because the Gestapo is going to kick down my door if I say something mean about Bush.
BUSH IS A CUM GUZZLING FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT. HIS IS A FUCKING TERRORIST SHIT FUCKER. BUSH, AND BY BUSH I MEAN THAT BIG FUCKING RANK ASS VAGINA THAT WE CALL MR FUCK-HEAD-PRESIDENT, IS RUINING THE GOVERNMENT AND THIS ENTIRE GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCING NATION. JESUS FUCKING THE SWEET VIRGIN MERRY IN HER TIGHT LITTLE VIRGIN ASS DO I FUCKING HATE BUSH! FOR THE REVOLUTION!...waits for his door to be broken down...
Oh wait, it didn't come. For fucks sake people, I hate Bush, I hate the PATRIOT Act, I don't really like our foreign policies or our domestic policies. That said, chill. The world is not over yet. I was down in DC during the height of the anti-war protests where people were wandering around with signs that make the above look down right pleasant. I was in Boston for the big protest in the commons. Free speech is alive and well. No one is going to throw you in jail for talking shit about Jesus. Hell, I fucking hate Jesus and no police have ever given me shit about it. I mean, I have a fucking bumper sticker that says "Jesus hates you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole" on my car, yet the only time I have been pulled over is when I was doing 20+ over the speed limit.
Get out of your narrow little American world view and realize that there are places in the world that make "Jesusland" look like a fucking utopia. Hell, the US has even more liberal free speech laws compared to even Europe, and Europe is pretty damn liberal. Try wearing a swastika in Germany or France and see how long it takes for the police to drag you off the streets.
Nothing is more irritating then stupid Americans whose world view doesn't go any farther then 48 states. There is a lot to complain about when it comes to the US. I could make a laundry list of domestic and foreign policy issues I have with out incompetent leaders. Free speech oppression doesn't fall on that list. You think you live in Gestapo land? Try traveling a little bit and see what REAL poverty and oppression looks like. You have never seen poverty and you sure as shit have never seen oppression.
You miss the point. The summary made it pretty clear what the editors thought of the interview. The 'answers' speak for themselves. They say that this company couldn't be bothered to respond and so kicked it off the PR department to spew at us. The summary makes it pretty clear, even for the dull witted, that this is nothing but mindless PR speak. That in it of itself is telling. If Blizzard doesn't like how they were portrayed, THEY can resubmit their answers.
Even shitty answers provide information. No need to hide it.
I think that you could make suicide runs into space, but it will never be NASA that does it. I think that there are people out there that would merrily sign up for a one way mission, but that the government would never allow such a thing. The simple alternative is for a private venture to do it. Blast off from some place other then the US if the government tries to stop you.
What would the public think? I am certain that some people would find it reprehensible, but I think that a lot of people would admire it. Imagine if a private venture built a ship that goes one way to Mars. Now imagine if we stuff a dozen or so people into this ship. Have a nice Spartan habitat waiting for them on Mars with enough supplies to last a year or two. Now place cameras everywhere and televise the whole thing. Would people watch it, know names of every person in that ship and consider them heroes? Hell yes. Would we find a way to send supplies to these people stranded on Mars to keep them alive? Absolutely. Hell, the sequel to this show writes itself. Once the public starts to loose interest, televise the mission to bring them home.
A private venture is going to take a big risk one of these days. They are going to gamble with human lives, and I bet they will televise every second of it. And you know what? I they will have no shortage of volunteers or eager eyeballs. I bet money that one of these days NASA is eclipsed over night by a ballsy private business more then happy to send willing humans on suicide missions. Score one for humanity.
"Yes, but why require insurance for each vehicle when there is only one driver? Assuming of course it isn't for car loan purposes."
Because the driver is only a part of the equation in determining how likely you are to hurt you or someone else with your vehicle. The reason why insurance on a motorcycle is so high is because if you are cruising around in that thing, your chances of suffering serious injury just went up dramatically. It isn't just me who think motorcycles are suicide machines... so does your insurance company, hence why you are charged so much to rid around on a machine that is probably worth only a fraction of the cost of a car. Sure, if your crash your motorcycle your material damages for repair might be low, but your hospital bill might not be. Damages on a vehicle have a cap. They are never going to have to pay out more then the vehicle is worth. The human body on the other hand is massively expensive to repair, hence why they charge a high premium to insure you risk it.
"Why? Why can't we as a society just accept the risk of loss."
There are three reasons.
The first reason is that it is a simple matter of justice. If you ram your car into my car, and I need my car to get to work, you better believe I am going to make you pay for the damages. It is the same way where if you break down my door and trash my house, I am going to have you arrested and I will collect the damages you inflict upon me. The problem is that most people can't afford the damage they can do with a car. If you wreck your car into my 20,000 dollar car, then snap one of my arms, you just inflicted a solid 30,000+ dollars worth of damage. Do you have 30,000 dollars you can drop if I decide to sue you for the damages you inflicted upon me? Most people don't, so they buy insurance so that when they do inflict damages, someone can pay.
Second, someone HAS to pay for the sake of the livelihood of many people. If you wreck my car, I can't get to work. I NEED to go to work, but I can't afford a new car. Someone needs to buy me a new one or else I am shit out of luck. The same goes if I break my arm and need to have it fixed. Someone needs to pay to have it fixed, and I might not have the money to pay for it. If you broke my arm, and neither you nor I have the money to get it fixed, and I just shit out of luck?
Third, it is deterrent to recklessness, gets shitty drivers off the road, and distributes the cost bad driving to bad drivers. If you have a habit of crashing your car into people, you will find that your insurance rates quickly sky rocket. If you crash enough, you eventually will not be able to afford insurance at all. If it was the government that paid every time someone crashed a car, people wouldn't car if they crashed their car. The biggest deterrent to not driving like an asshole is that if you are found to be at fault in an accident, your insurance company will jack your rates up. Crash enough, and they jack your rates up so high you can't afford to drive any more. Good riddance.
People don't buy motorcycles because they are suicide machines. I love Mother Nature and all, but not more then I love my organs located securely inside my body. There is a damn good reason why insurance on motorcycles cost so much, and it isn't because insurance companies hate to cover the repair cost on vehicles that cost pennies next to a car.
As to the cost of owning multiple vehicles, say a small (but not a suicidal contraption) car and an SUV, insurance is a fact of life. If cars crash, someone needs to be able to pay. If you can't afford insurance, you can't afford to crash. As to the actual cost of insurance on cars, there is not much you can do to bring it down other then make cars safer and less destructible. Unfortunately, those tend to be competing goals. If your cars is a steel box, it will be damn hard to break the car. While your steal frame might not mind coming to a dead halt after hitting a wall at 60 mpg, the human contents generally do. If the car is built so strong that it doesn't crumple, the humans inside take all of the energy of the stop and die. If on the other hand you design your car to crumple (as modern cars do), then an accident at 60 mph means that the car is completely totaled, but the energy spend to crush the car flat is what keeps the humans inside alive.
If you can't make the cost of a crash cheaper, and you agree that you do in fact need a way to cover damages when two cars crash without bankrupting working mothers, the only other option left is have the government provide the insurance. This certainly is an option, but the only thing you have done is pass the cost off to everyone and created a system that will likely be more expensive overall.
Besides, the real cost of owning two vehicles for most people is not the insurance... it is the cost of buying two vehicles and keeping them both in working order.
No offense, but you are either stupid or a neocon. The second the UN tries to pass a tax law is the same second that the US and pile of other countries pull out of the UN and effectivly destroy it. There is not a sane president in the world that would give an orginization where fucking CHINA and RUSSIA have veto power the ability to tax the US. Who would advocate something so utterly foolish? Either a neocon trying to destroy the UN, or a complete and utter idiot. I have a feeling you are not the former.
I am not going to go point by point, but we have a fundamental disagreement. You think North Korea is run by sane leadership. The biggest problem with North Korea is that it is NOT under sane leadership. Sane opponents are easy to deal with, especially if we both have the ability to inflict grievous harm against each other. China and the US will not go to war any time soon simply because China is not run by a single potentially insane individual. It is ruled by a massive authoritarian bureaucracy that, while not exactly pleasant, is sane. Get enough people involved with government, and even an authoritarian government like China will generally avoid taking irrational actions.
North Korea is an entirely different story. North Korea is run by a cult of personality who, by all accounts, is insane. North Korea is a massively unstable nation whose economy IS the military and nothing else. The instability of North Korea is bad enough that even China eyes North Korea wearily.
When dealing with North Korea you have two competing interests. On one hand, you want that miserable nation to collapse so that the people there can stop dying in the millions due to government ineptitude. Currently most PRIVATE charities won't send food to North Korea because it has been proven time and time again that the food never makes it to the people, the government is that bad. You simply could not pick a more miserable place to live in the world worse then North Korea, and the sooner that government is ousted and replaced by one that represents the interests of its people, the better. On the other hand, you have to worry that a collapsing North Korea, a nation controlled by the military, will do something insane like attack South Korea
This is a very real threat. As the Soviet Union was collapsing, a nation far more stable and sane compared to North Korea, there were some within that government and in the military that wanted to assault the West for the resources they needed to continue rather then admit defeat. This is the real fear associated with North Korea. It only takes one particularly ugly disaster (natural or otherwise) to push North Korea over the edge into collapse. A collapsing North Korea is a very dangerous thing. If in a collapsing North Korea a faction got nukes / chemical weapon artillery and it was going to take out Seoul or Tokyo, consequences be damned, I absolutely could see the US preempting the launch site with a weapon that ensures everything in the area is destroyed.
I think you miss the intent. If the US has to pull out of Iraq, the US isn't going to nuke Iraq. The "we will nuke to win" policy is pretty much reserved for defending the US or staunch US allies like South Korea, Japan, and maybe even Taiwan. This has pretty much always been the policy of the US and it shouldn't come as a great surprise. The US had plans to use nukes in Germany if World War III ever occurred and the Russians came pouring over. While there is no credible threat, you can bet your ass that the US would nuke an invader and scorch its own earth before it was allowed an invader to take over the US.
The other piece of this nuke policy is the implicit threat against 'rogue' nations. If a terrorist organization gets a nuke and hits a US city, and the US tracks that nuke back to Iran, Iran is going to have a few less cities.
Honestly, this policy is not new, it is what kept the peace during the USSR. Neither side was willing to risk pissing the other off enough that one side might start lobbing nukes. Both sides realized that the other might start lobbing nukes in retaliation for non-nuclear threats. There is a damn good reason why the USSR and the Americans never directly fought, and why the proxy wars they did fight were limited in scope. Neither side was willing to do anything that might provoke the other into nuking it.
North Korea IS a threat. One nuke in LA would, at the very least crush the economy and cost countless lives. That said, LA isn't the real issue. North Korea is poor and likely will never be able to get enough nukes to wipe out the US (much less deliver them). What North Korean CAN do is wipe out two of the US's closest allies. Namely, North Korea can wipe out South Korea and Japan. You need to remember that North Korea can hit Seoul artillery... more specifically; they can hit Seoul with chemical weapons loaded in artillery shells. By all scenarios, in a war that involves North Korea, everyone in Seoul dies. Throw in nukes, they can hit Japan too.
If the US knew that North Korea was going to hit South Korea or Japan with their massive stockpile of WMDs, I personally would hope that the US would do everything in its power to wipe North Korea off the face of the planet. Even if the terrible cost in lives those free societies would pay in an attack by North Korea is not enough to move you, the economic damage to the world economy (and thus the US economy) should.
That said, I think everyone is blowing this out of proportion. The only thing the new policy does is state what we ambiguously have suggested since we got nukes. Namely, the US won't blink at glassing over a nation if it truly feels threatened. This is just a deterrent to keep other nations from thinking that they US will stand by and take a first strike. Any sane president will merrily start pushing big red buttons before letting another nation slip in a nuclear first strike.
I think if people could play Halo 2 on consoles against people playing Halo 2 on PCs... people wouldn't ever play Halo 2 on consoles again after the brutal AWSD and mouse beating they would get. There is a reason why no FPS let PCs and consoles play together, and it isn't because no one can figure out way get the two to work together. It is because it would become crystal clear that console controls simply suck. Period. End of story.
I don't think it matters at this point. After killing TechTV and replacing TechTV programming with that shitty, shitty, awful G4 line up... nothing can bring that station back. What bugs me worst about the G4 line up are the fucking stupid people they manage to drag onto these shows. You watch X-Play and you see true gamers having fun and doing their thing. You watch any of their shitty shoes and it is pretty apparent that they have pretty looking women who couldn't get a job anywhere else staring at a teleprompter with such cues as "laugh cute". Then they filled their channel with the must mind numbing crap they could find. "Cheat!" !? For fucks sake, anyone who doesn't know how to use the Internet to find cheat codes to their video games is a fucking idiot. Then you have the stupid fucking car shows. Yeah, I got it. Cars and Asian chicks that look like they have been drugged into a permanent state of mental retardation. Gee, you found my nerd fantasy. After that sort of crap "Video Game Vixens" some how manages to further lower the bar, which is a feat in it of its self.
I just can't believe that sort of crap replace ScreenSavers, Body Hits, and all the other awesome programming that TechTV had. Gah. I hope G4 goes bankrupt. The only thing worthwhile about G4 is that if I am bored, I can be sure that they have an X-play rerun. G4, you fucking suck. Grow up.
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You kind of miss the point. Take your average poor person in America. He DOES have clean water, food, and shelter. He might be slightly mal nourished and be eating a diet that is too high in fat, but he won't starve to death. His shelter might suck, but he won't get rained on. If you really dumped money into the federal government and exacted a high toll on the rest of society you could probably raise his standard of living further, but likely never break them into the middle class. You also deal with fact that as you make being not working more attractive, some people intentionally decide to simply not work and live off the state.
So, you can either strain the resources of your society trying to drag along a pile of unproductive citizens that are a net drain on everyone else, OR you can at least make an attempt get them to the point where they can support themselves. A massive part of bringing someone out of poverty, at least in the United States, is education. Poverty isn't the disease; it is just a symptom of poor education. Magically instil a poor person with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and they will have a job the next day. While a 100 dollar computer isn't a magic PhD, it is an avenue towards improved education. No, it probably will not change the world, but it might change the world for a few people, and that is worthy enough. Besides, if you really wanted to eliminate poverty in the US you wouldn't be making better AC or arable land. You would fix education in impoverished areas.
As to your bitching about why not make something more useful, I imagine it has something to do with the fact this was made by computer engineers who knows little or nothing about water purification, AC, and improving arable land. That is like bitching when someone makes a car that never crashes and some ass hat asks why he didn't cure cancer instead. This was a contribution to society. It might not have been the ultimate contribution to end all poverty in the world, but then again, what the hell exactly have you done today?
The US will not abandon elections any time soon. If you know ANYTHING of the US military, you know that if Bush's term came to an end and he didn't get his ass out of the office, the military would pick his ass up and kick it out of the military for him.
People often forget how important the military is for a functional civil society. A military that respects the rule of law and seeks to protect the state is extremely important. If your military does not feel like it is commanded by the civilian state and feels that its goal is not the protection of the civilian government, you tend to get overthrown governments. Popular uprisings that are not crushed are rare, but the militaries taking over civilian governments are a dime a dozen.
In this regards, the American democracy is one of the most secure in the world. The US military would NEVER take up arms against the civilian government unless a leader in the civilian government refused to get his ass out of office when his time was up. Further, even if the military did turn on the civilian government for the purpose of dragging Bush's ass out of office once his term was up, it would end its role there and go back to letting lawyers and politicians clean up the mess.
Fear Bush for whatever reasons you like, but don't fear him because he is going to use the military on the civilian government. In fact, if you recall, the US military refused to enter New Orleans and conduct any sort of peace keeping operations within the city because it is so strictly forbidden in the US constitutions. The only thing the military was allowed to do was provide logistical support and search and rescue operations. If a city getting wiped off the map is not disaster enough for the US military to bend the rules, I would say it is safe to say nothing is going to cause them to break them.
You need to wipe your fairytale land image of Cuba out of your head. China is ugly, but Cuba is worse. Cuba has absolutely no press outside the state run press and whatever the US blasts at them via the radio that isn't jammed. China is cruel to their disidents, but China in recent years has shown growing tolerance. There is absolutely no tolerance in Cuba.
Yes, Havan is pretty, but so is Pyongyang. Show cities are pretty par for the course for repressive authoritarian governments. Cuba is an ugly place, period. Florida has a population of Cubans to rival Cuba, and it isn't because the thousands of people that flee each year in bathtubs across the Atlantic think everything is dandy in Cuba.
Right... all the news is controlled by one evil corporation. I think you forgot a word in there.
"In America, we just have all TV news produced by a relatively small set of companies that are politically sympathetic to the ruling political power."
Type the following into google. Liberal News, Socialist News, Communist News, and Conservative News. Then merrily wander your way over to your favorite podcasting website and just pick through the various news types you can pick.
Besides, TV news (outside of Fox News) is not sympathetic to any 'ruling power'. The TV news is brain dead crap they stuff into a 30 minute (minus commercials) program. Reporting on the "runaway bride" and other lazy half assed reporting isn't evil, it is just fucking lazy.
There are plenty of alternatives. If you are reading this article, you have access to them.
Right. We clearly have no ability to make an area a complete no fly zone. That is just silly. How do you protect it from air planes? Circle the thing with missles and shoot down anything that comes close. Give it a nice big no fly zone so you have plenty of time to tell the income airplane to back the hell away. Besides, if you were to build one of these things, you would probably build it in the middle of the ocean on the equator, so it is not like you are making a 200 mile no fly zone in the middle of a nation.
It might be that it costs so much that it isn't economically fesible, yet. However, in the 1900 a watch was massivly expensive. A digital watch (if they had existed) would have sold for millions. Now you can get a watch that you throw away in a Happy Meal at McDonalds. My point? If the science is good, someone will find a way to make it cheaper eventually.
"How could you control their reproduction so that they don't clog your veins or saturate your organs?"
0 05/08/12/Diversions/The-Vice.Geek.Presents.carbon. Nanotubes.And.Us.The.Curing.Cancer.Edition-967818. shtml
My advice would be to put the sci-fi book down and realize that nanotech does not equal grey goo of death. Nanotech could be as simple as slapping some RNA together into a form that pentrates only cancer cells and turns off their reproduction. It could be functionalizaing a carbon nanotube to pentrate only cancern cells and then heating them up a little and causing the cell to explode. Nanotechnology is NOT capable of reproducing machines any time in the near future. Hell, we can't even build machines that do anything yet, much less build ones that reproduce. If you find a nanostructure that kills cancer and doesn't harm the rest of the body, you just keep pumping it into the person until the cancer is gone. No need to pump grey goo of death into you.
Put down the Sci-fi books people, and read a nice science journal or technology website. If you want to read about some real nanotech cures on the way, take a peek at these.
http://www.dastoronline.com/media/paper330/news/2
http://www.physorg.com/news6474.html
Control population growth - why should there be infinite population growth on a finite planet? Sure you can increase the population when you terraform mars, but there should be a cap on earth's population, there is nothing morally good about having more people, it just means we all get a thinner slice of the pie. We passed six billion in 1999 we are almost at 6.5 billion in 2005, totally unsustainable rate of growth.
How exactly do you propose controlling the population? Take the Chinese approach and make it so that if you have a second child the family and that second child are economically screwed for the rest of his life due to systematic government discrimination? Mandatory monthly pregnancy testing along with forced abortions? Maybe you advocate mandatory birth control that can only be removed by government mandate. What exactly is it you advocate? Some authoritarian solution inflicted upon the already impoverished and repressed nations of the world?
The best solution is the one that has been proven to be 100% effective. Try and bring the rest of the world up to first world standards. All of Western Europe is currently experiencing population decline so sharp that it is threatening their social welfare programs (too many people using, not enough working). The US currently has negative population growth if you factor our immigration. Japan is in the same boat as Europe. When people are not impoverished and miserable, they stop cranking out kids. Fix poverty and the population will fix its self. As China has proven most effectively, authoritarian population control 'solutions' just leads to infanticide, massive imbalances in the population, greater human misery, corruption as to who is allowed to have children, and simply fail to solve the problem.
So... under this system, what happens if me and a few friends want to pool together our money and run a few adds declaring our senator (which would be the fat Kennedy here in Mass.) to be a shit head on TV. Is this allowed in your system?
What if me and a few friends are deeply concerned about fiscal responsibility and gay rights, so we form People For Fiscal Sanity And Equal Rights For All (PFFSAERFA doesn't spell anything cool, we might work on the name). We take donations from other like minded individuals and then run ads, print flyers, and try and spread awareness about how Bush spends money like the spirit of a raging socialist has possessed him and how much of a bigot he is. What happens if my organization decides to endorse a candidate because we feel she is fiscally responsible and a non-bigot? Is that allowed?
Under your system, do I need to give the American Nazi party, American Communist party, and the Socialist Party money via my tax dollars?
Government financed elections are not all peachy and keen. I am not saying that the US has found a solution to this issue, as it sure as shit hasn't. I am saying that drastically curtailing free speech until it is in the hands of a few crusty old politicians who might be more then a little motivated keep the rules set up to protect incumbents is a terrible idea. I do not want the guys running the government and the guys who decide how much money the people running the government can spend on their elections to be the same.
I think you miss the parents point. Yes, the government DOES get you to do things with the threat of violence. If you don't pay your taxes, the IRS will try and confiscate your property. If you refuse to let them take your property, they will throw you in jail. If you refuse to go to jail, guns come out and they drag you to jail. A government IS that legalized use of violence. All power of the government stems from the fact that if you refuse to follow its mandates, a few guys with guns will show up at your house and do something unpleasant.
The same thing goes with getting a speeding ticket. If I am cruising down a flat empty country highway and all of a sudden a police car shows up behind me, the only thing that keeps me from utterly ignoring him enforcing a stupid law for a wide open flat highway is the fact that if I just keep driving, he is going to use violence against me. The threat of violence is what makes people obediently pull over for speeding tickets, not some sense of civil obligation.
Now, the government's use of violence isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think it is good that if someone murders my mother, guys empowered to use violence by the government (police) go after the murder. That said, it is important to realize that a government solution to any problem is inherently revolves around the authorization of violence. That is where all power of the government stems from. Once you recognize that, you should pause before advocating any government solution. Ask yourself if the problem you are trying to solve really justifies the use of the threat of violence or use of violence upon your fellow humans. Ask yourself if you truly believe that coercion using the threat of violence is worthwhile in this instance.
I am not saying that we need to abolish taxes, the federal government, or anything of that nature. I am saying that before we merrily swing the government around like a sledge hammer trying to solve problems that we consider fully what it is you propose.
36 million Americans live in poverty by the American definition of poverty. That certainly is a problem. I am not arguing that poverty is fixed by any stretch of the imagination in the United States. My point was that the American definition of poverty is so horribly askew as to what poverty is in other nations that figures like the one you just cited are meaningless when talking about the relative well being of a population. If you have ever been to a third world country you would find poverty that can't even be compared to American poverty. I went on a trip to South Africa years back. The first thing I noticed was that impoverished people in the third world are THIN in ways you probably have never seen. Further, it wasn't just one or two thin people, it was everyone. I lived in New York and Detroit long enough to see plenty of America's underbelly, and even at its worst, Americans are not hard pressed for food. Americans are not thin people, and impoverished Americans are no exception. Americans don't die of starvation unless they are severely mentally handicapped, anorexic, or it happens through child neglect. Poor Americans are thousands of times more likely to die of obesity then starvation.
My point isn't that everything is great and wonderful. Poor Americans have mediocre nutrition at best, shitty health care, high unemployment, high crime rates, and all manner of social ills. My point is that the problems facing an impoverished American are entirely different from those facing an impoverished South African that deals with a type of poverty that isn't even comparable. As an American or western European your view of the world is slanted by first world standards.
I am not saying people shouldn't bitch about the problems we have. I am saying that if someone posts an article about an attempt to over come oppression or poverty, that isn't a cue for all the American centric Americans to jump in screaming that they need their poverty and oppression solved too. It is like a rich and spoiled kid complaining about how he needs financial help because he has to suffer riding around in an ugly used car his parents bought him and how his allowance is too small, all the while others are discussing ways of giving healthcare to poor 18 year old single mothers on their own working two jobs without even a HS diploma.
When someone talks about brutal political beatings and imprisonment in other countries because they posted on their blog about how they would like a democratic government, that is NOT your cue to jump and say "We Americans are repressed too! Fox news came with my 150 channel cable package! OPPRESSION!"
"How about freedom of press and free speech for bloggers right here in the US??"
The best part about freedom of speech in the US is that politicians and regulatory bodies are only one layer of protection. It isn't exclusively the job of the president or the congress to protect your speech. That isn't to say that they shouldn't be watching out for your freedom of speech, but simply that they are not the only line of defense. There are other layers of protection of freedom of speech that exist.
This law is a PERFECT example of how free speech is protected in the US. I would bet my life that the first time someone tries to enforce this law the other mechanisms that defend freedom of speech will kick in with a vengence. Namely, the judiciary will without a doubt get involved. Civil organizations like the ACLU and the EFF will certainly get involved, along with a pig pile of other free speech and free press advocacy groups. There is a mountain being held up by a thread over this law. The second someone tries to use it, it is going to come crashing down on it very hard.
What is happening is an example of the system working in the United States, not of a failure. The fact that the system has to kick on from time to time is a sign of stupidity in our politicians perhaps, but not a sign of a faulty system in general. Multilayered systems are the only way to go when it comes to protecting fundamental rights, and when it comes to freedom of the speech, the US has more layers of protection then vast majority of other nations in this world.
"We need to start demanding more from our journalists, and stop allowing people like Bill O'Idiot of Fox News to have air time."
I personally would much rather have MORE Bill O' Idiots on. Bill is in fact a shit head and more then a little dull. That said (at least when I used to watch his show) he asked people very pointed questions. Sure he was clearly slanted, but I would take slanted and willing to ask real questions and press people when they start spewing PR speak over 'objective' and lobbing softballs.
Personally, I think the biggest reason why the press sucks these days is not because they are trying to influence our opinions (err, minus FOX news, which cleary does have an agenda) or have a secret agenda. I personally think the problem with the press is that they are just fucking lazy. Covering a 'runaway bride' story takes a quick phone call to a local affiliate, sitting in on one police briefing, few minutes of editing, and one idiot who can blather on for hours about two small pieces of information.
Getting a guy with a camera inside of Iraq, North Korea, Uzbekistan, China, or Sudan and filming something that the local governments don't want us to see is a hell of a lot harder, more expensive, and risky. Spend 20 minutes on run away brides and other inane shit for pennies on the dollar or make a substantial investment in money and possibly live to cover real news outside of the nation. If the stupid masses will watch a run away bridge story and not turn off the fucking TV like they should, guess what the news is going to spew at us day in and out. No evil conspiracy, just a bunch of fucking lazy reporters providing the bare minimum news to lazy fucking Americans. Bah.
Right, because the Gestapo is going to kick down my door if I say something mean about Bush.
...waits for his door to be broken down...
BUSH IS A CUM GUZZLING FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT. HIS IS A FUCKING TERRORIST SHIT FUCKER. BUSH, AND BY BUSH I MEAN THAT BIG FUCKING RANK ASS VAGINA THAT WE CALL MR FUCK-HEAD-PRESIDENT, IS RUINING THE GOVERNMENT AND THIS ENTIRE GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCING NATION. JESUS FUCKING THE SWEET VIRGIN MERRY IN HER TIGHT LITTLE VIRGIN ASS DO I FUCKING HATE BUSH! FOR THE REVOLUTION!
Oh wait, it didn't come. For fucks sake people, I hate Bush, I hate the PATRIOT Act, I don't really like our foreign policies or our domestic policies. That said, chill. The world is not over yet. I was down in DC during the height of the anti-war protests where people were wandering around with signs that make the above look down right pleasant. I was in Boston for the big protest in the commons. Free speech is alive and well. No one is going to throw you in jail for talking shit about Jesus. Hell, I fucking hate Jesus and no police have ever given me shit about it. I mean, I have a fucking bumper sticker that says "Jesus hates you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole" on my car, yet the only time I have been pulled over is when I was doing 20+ over the speed limit.
Get out of your narrow little American world view and realize that there are places in the world that make "Jesusland" look like a fucking utopia. Hell, the US has even more liberal free speech laws compared to even Europe, and Europe is pretty damn liberal. Try wearing a swastika in Germany or France and see how long it takes for the police to drag you off the streets.
Nothing is more irritating then stupid Americans whose world view doesn't go any farther then 48 states. There is a lot to complain about when it comes to the US. I could make a laundry list of domestic and foreign policy issues I have with out incompetent leaders. Free speech oppression doesn't fall on that list. You think you live in Gestapo land? Try traveling a little bit and see what REAL poverty and oppression looks like. You have never seen poverty and you sure as shit have never seen oppression.
You miss the point. The summary made it pretty clear what the editors thought of the interview. The 'answers' speak for themselves. They say that this company couldn't be bothered to respond and so kicked it off the PR department to spew at us. The summary makes it pretty clear, even for the dull witted, that this is nothing but mindless PR speak. That in it of itself is telling. If Blizzard doesn't like how they were portrayed, THEY can resubmit their answers.
Even shitty answers provide information. No need to hide it.
I think that you could make suicide runs into space, but it will never be NASA that does it. I think that there are people out there that would merrily sign up for a one way mission, but that the government would never allow such a thing. The simple alternative is for a private venture to do it. Blast off from some place other then the US if the government tries to stop you.
What would the public think? I am certain that some people would find it reprehensible, but I think that a lot of people would admire it. Imagine if a private venture built a ship that goes one way to Mars. Now imagine if we stuff a dozen or so people into this ship. Have a nice Spartan habitat waiting for them on Mars with enough supplies to last a year or two. Now place cameras everywhere and televise the whole thing. Would people watch it, know names of every person in that ship and consider them heroes? Hell yes. Would we find a way to send supplies to these people stranded on Mars to keep them alive? Absolutely. Hell, the sequel to this show writes itself. Once the public starts to loose interest, televise the mission to bring them home.
A private venture is going to take a big risk one of these days. They are going to gamble with human lives, and I bet they will televise every second of it. And you know what? I they will have no shortage of volunteers or eager eyeballs. I bet money that one of these days NASA is eclipsed over night by a ballsy private business more then happy to send willing humans on suicide missions. Score one for humanity.
"Earth first! We can strip mine the other planets later."
Karma is for the weak.
"Yes, but why require insurance for each vehicle when there is only one driver? Assuming of course it isn't for car loan purposes."
Because the driver is only a part of the equation in determining how likely you are to hurt you or someone else with your vehicle. The reason why insurance on a motorcycle is so high is because if you are cruising around in that thing, your chances of suffering serious injury just went up dramatically. It isn't just me who think motorcycles are suicide machines... so does your insurance company, hence why you are charged so much to rid around on a machine that is probably worth only a fraction of the cost of a car. Sure, if your crash your motorcycle your material damages for repair might be low, but your hospital bill might not be. Damages on a vehicle have a cap. They are never going to have to pay out more then the vehicle is worth. The human body on the other hand is massively expensive to repair, hence why they charge a high premium to insure you risk it.
"Why? Why can't we as a society just accept the risk of loss."
There are three reasons.
The first reason is that it is a simple matter of justice. If you ram your car into my car, and I need my car to get to work, you better believe I am going to make you pay for the damages. It is the same way where if you break down my door and trash my house, I am going to have you arrested and I will collect the damages you inflict upon me. The problem is that most people can't afford the damage they can do with a car. If you wreck your car into my 20,000 dollar car, then snap one of my arms, you just inflicted a solid 30,000+ dollars worth of damage. Do you have 30,000 dollars you can drop if I decide to sue you for the damages you inflicted upon me? Most people don't, so they buy insurance so that when they do inflict damages, someone can pay.
Second, someone HAS to pay for the sake of the livelihood of many people. If you wreck my car, I can't get to work. I NEED to go to work, but I can't afford a new car. Someone needs to buy me a new one or else I am shit out of luck. The same goes if I break my arm and need to have it fixed. Someone needs to pay to have it fixed, and I might not have the money to pay for it. If you broke my arm, and neither you nor I have the money to get it fixed, and I just shit out of luck?
Third, it is deterrent to recklessness, gets shitty drivers off the road, and distributes the cost bad driving to bad drivers. If you have a habit of crashing your car into people, you will find that your insurance rates quickly sky rocket. If you crash enough, you eventually will not be able to afford insurance at all. If it was the government that paid every time someone crashed a car, people wouldn't car if they crashed their car. The biggest deterrent to not driving like an asshole is that if you are found to be at fault in an accident, your insurance company will jack your rates up. Crash enough, and they jack your rates up so high you can't afford to drive any more. Good riddance.
People don't buy motorcycles because they are suicide machines. I love Mother Nature and all, but not more then I love my organs located securely inside my body. There is a damn good reason why insurance on motorcycles cost so much, and it isn't because insurance companies hate to cover the repair cost on vehicles that cost pennies next to a car.
As to the cost of owning multiple vehicles, say a small (but not a suicidal contraption) car and an SUV, insurance is a fact of life. If cars crash, someone needs to be able to pay. If you can't afford insurance, you can't afford to crash. As to the actual cost of insurance on cars, there is not much you can do to bring it down other then make cars safer and less destructible. Unfortunately, those tend to be competing goals. If your cars is a steel box, it will be damn hard to break the car. While your steal frame might not mind coming to a dead halt after hitting a wall at 60 mpg, the human contents generally do. If the car is built so strong that it doesn't crumple, the humans inside take all of the energy of the stop and die. If on the other hand you design your car to crumple (as modern cars do), then an accident at 60 mph means that the car is completely totaled, but the energy spend to crush the car flat is what keeps the humans inside alive.
If you can't make the cost of a crash cheaper, and you agree that you do in fact need a way to cover damages when two cars crash without bankrupting working mothers, the only other option left is have the government provide the insurance. This certainly is an option, but the only thing you have done is pass the cost off to everyone and created a system that will likely be more expensive overall.
Besides, the real cost of owning two vehicles for most people is not the insurance... it is the cost of buying two vehicles and keeping them both in working order.
No offense, but you are either stupid or a neocon. The second the UN tries to pass a tax law is the same second that the US and pile of other countries pull out of the UN and effectivly destroy it. There is not a sane president in the world that would give an orginization where fucking CHINA and RUSSIA have veto power the ability to tax the US. Who would advocate something so utterly foolish? Either a neocon trying to destroy the UN, or a complete and utter idiot. I have a feeling you are not the former.
I am not going to go point by point, but we have a fundamental disagreement. You think North Korea is run by sane leadership. The biggest problem with North Korea is that it is NOT under sane leadership. Sane opponents are easy to deal with, especially if we both have the ability to inflict grievous harm against each other. China and the US will not go to war any time soon simply because China is not run by a single potentially insane individual. It is ruled by a massive authoritarian bureaucracy that, while not exactly pleasant, is sane. Get enough people involved with government, and even an authoritarian government like China will generally avoid taking irrational actions.
North Korea is an entirely different story. North Korea is run by a cult of personality who, by all accounts, is insane. North Korea is a massively unstable nation whose economy IS the military and nothing else. The instability of North Korea is bad enough that even China eyes North Korea wearily.
When dealing with North Korea you have two competing interests. On one hand, you want that miserable nation to collapse so that the people there can stop dying in the millions due to government ineptitude. Currently most PRIVATE charities won't send food to North Korea because it has been proven time and time again that the food never makes it to the people, the government is that bad. You simply could not pick a more miserable place to live in the world worse then North Korea, and the sooner that government is ousted and replaced by one that represents the interests of its people, the better. On the other hand, you have to worry that a collapsing North Korea, a nation controlled by the military, will do something insane like attack South Korea
This is a very real threat. As the Soviet Union was collapsing, a nation far more stable and sane compared to North Korea, there were some within that government and in the military that wanted to assault the West for the resources they needed to continue rather then admit defeat. This is the real fear associated with North Korea. It only takes one particularly ugly disaster (natural or otherwise) to push North Korea over the edge into collapse. A collapsing North Korea is a very dangerous thing. If in a collapsing North Korea a faction got nukes / chemical weapon artillery and it was going to take out Seoul or Tokyo, consequences be damned, I absolutely could see the US preempting the launch site with a weapon that ensures everything in the area is destroyed.
I think you miss the intent. If the US has to pull out of Iraq, the US isn't going to nuke Iraq. The "we will nuke to win" policy is pretty much reserved for defending the US or staunch US allies like South Korea, Japan, and maybe even Taiwan. This has pretty much always been the policy of the US and it shouldn't come as a great surprise. The US had plans to use nukes in Germany if World War III ever occurred and the Russians came pouring over. While there is no credible threat, you can bet your ass that the US would nuke an invader and scorch its own earth before it was allowed an invader to take over the US.
The other piece of this nuke policy is the implicit threat against 'rogue' nations. If a terrorist organization gets a nuke and hits a US city, and the US tracks that nuke back to Iran, Iran is going to have a few less cities.
Honestly, this policy is not new, it is what kept the peace during the USSR. Neither side was willing to risk pissing the other off enough that one side might start lobbing nukes. Both sides realized that the other might start lobbing nukes in retaliation for non-nuclear threats. There is a damn good reason why the USSR and the Americans never directly fought, and why the proxy wars they did fight were limited in scope. Neither side was willing to do anything that might provoke the other into nuking it.
North Korea IS a threat. One nuke in LA would, at the very least crush the economy and cost countless lives. That said, LA isn't the real issue. North Korea is poor and likely will never be able to get enough nukes to wipe out the US (much less deliver them). What North Korean CAN do is wipe out two of the US's closest allies. Namely, North Korea can wipe out South Korea and Japan. You need to remember that North Korea can hit Seoul artillery... more specifically; they can hit Seoul with chemical weapons loaded in artillery shells. By all scenarios, in a war that involves North Korea, everyone in Seoul dies. Throw in nukes, they can hit Japan too.
If the US knew that North Korea was going to hit South Korea or Japan with their massive stockpile of WMDs, I personally would hope that the US would do everything in its power to wipe North Korea off the face of the planet. Even if the terrible cost in lives those free societies would pay in an attack by North Korea is not enough to move you, the economic damage to the world economy (and thus the US economy) should.
That said, I think everyone is blowing this out of proportion. The only thing the new policy does is state what we ambiguously have suggested since we got nukes. Namely, the US won't blink at glassing over a nation if it truly feels threatened. This is just a deterrent to keep other nations from thinking that they US will stand by and take a first strike. Any sane president will merrily start pushing big red buttons before letting another nation slip in a nuclear first strike.
I think if people could play Halo 2 on consoles against people playing Halo 2 on PCs... people wouldn't ever play Halo 2 on consoles again after the brutal AWSD and mouse beating they would get. There is a reason why no FPS let PCs and consoles play together, and it isn't because no one can figure out way get the two to work together. It is because it would become crystal clear that console controls simply suck. Period. End of story.
I don't think it matters at this point. After killing TechTV and replacing TechTV programming with that shitty, shitty, awful G4 line up... nothing can bring that station back. What bugs me worst about the G4 line up are the fucking stupid people they manage to drag onto these shows. You watch X-Play and you see true gamers having fun and doing their thing. You watch any of their shitty shoes and it is pretty apparent that they have pretty looking women who couldn't get a job anywhere else staring at a teleprompter with such cues as "laugh cute". Then they filled their channel with the must mind numbing crap they could find. "Cheat!" !? For fucks sake, anyone who doesn't know how to use the Internet to find cheat codes to their video games is a fucking idiot. Then you have the stupid fucking car shows. Yeah, I got it. Cars and Asian chicks that look like they have been drugged into a permanent state of mental retardation. Gee, you found my nerd fantasy. After that sort of crap "Video Game Vixens" some how manages to further lower the bar, which is a feat in it of its self.
I just can't believe that sort of crap replace ScreenSavers, Body Hits, and all the other awesome programming that TechTV had. Gah. I hope G4 goes bankrupt. The only thing worthwhile about G4 is that if I am bored, I can be sure that they have an X-play rerun. G4, you fucking suck. Grow up.