You are completely right. In many ways Osama has a fair point. Most of Osama's message really is not much to bother the Americans. Sure, he advocates a brutal type of government that Americans detest, but he argues for instating this governments in places that the US already dislikes. It was one thing if he was working to over throw the British, French, or Spanish governments. He would likely find the Americans to become as fanatically against him as they did against the USSR. He isn't arguing for those things though. He is arguing for a certain type of government in places that America doesn't really like to begin with. Yes, the argument could be brought up that these places ship the US oil, but there is nothing inherently conflicting about these places shipping oil while living under a brutal theocracy. Both sides could likely live by this if it were not for one thing.
Osama attacked the US. Right before 9/11, very few people knew what the fuck Al-Qaeda was. Sure, they were responsible for a few other bombings of US targets, but no on US soil. People generally didn't care. Other then the occasional cruise missile strike to knock over a few tents, the US too little active interest in crushing Al-Qaeda and American public simply had no opinion on the subject. Now, 9/11 comes along. If the goal of Al-Qaeda was to convince the Americans to leave them alone, they did exactly the wrong thing.
Look, the US is a nation of fanatics. Most Americans don't recognize themselves as fanatics, but they are. The American public is generally bull headed and stubborn beyond words. It is hard to get the American public to believe a single unifying message, but once it does you have better luck arguing with a cliff face. The way the US treated Communism was a prime example of this. Once it was worked into their collective consciences that communism was bad, the US was pretty much on a one way path to defy communism at all costs on all fronts, and the US never let up on that position until the USSR fell.
Now you have Osama. He made the mistake of getting himself labeled universally as a very bad guy in the American mind. He will never, ever, shake that mentality. The US will never ever agree with Osama on anything no matter how rational it is. The US, unlike Spain, would take a terrorist attack as a sign that they need to keep doing whatever it is they are doing because it is pissing off the bad guys. If terrorists blew up New York tomorrow, and Kerry said that maybe it is time to listen to the other side (which he would never do), Bush could eat a baby on TV and still win with 90% of the vote.
Personally, I think that the US and Islamic fundamentalism are locked in a death struggle. It ends when one of them is crushed. Personally, I think that Islam and the Middle East are fighting with the US in the wrong way. You can't beat the US through intimidation, which is why terrorism does nothing but get the US to gallivant around the world looking for things to blow up. You can beat the US using the media and pacifism. Nothing is more effective against the US then peaceful resistance. Fighting encourages the US militaristic urges. Pacifism utterly kills it. If tomorrow not a single American or Israeli was shot at ever again and people simply took the streets, Israel would be out of Palestine in a year or have the US pounding down its doors. If the people of Palestine simply went to the streets and marched up to settlements to be shot, the effect would be devastating for Israel. That is not to say that people don't already do this. The problem is that some other jack asses then go and blow themselves up and take out a few families.
It is too bad. I think all of this conflict would simply evaporate and the US would quietly go home if everyone was a Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Peaceful non-violent resistance trumps all other forms of conflict, especially when dealing with the US. It is too bad humans are so hell bent on violence that this will never happen.
A good friend of mine is 22 year old heterosexual. She is steral and will never have children. If she wants a child she is going to have to do it the same way a homosexual couple would. Are you suggesting she should not be allowed to get married because she is not capable of giving birth?
The story has two sources, the google catch and the live journal. Has anyone bothered to check to make sure this isn't a hoax? For fucks sake people, if you are going to post something like this, try to have a link to something other then a live journal.
2) It's impossible to help everybody in the world because there is so much poverty and we really don't have enough money or willpower. Even if we really wanted to give a 100% effort to help the destitute of the world we would be fought tooth and nail by the republicans.
The point you clearly miss is that while the US can't help the entire world, the US IS helping India. India is going through a massive economic boom right now. One of the poorest nations in the world is rapidly rising out of third world poverty. I don't understand why this brings such horror to Americans. God forbid any place other then Europe and America enjoy some of the wealth in the world. India is rapidly rising and the American economy continues to chug away despite 9/11 and the popped technology bubble. With a miniscule 5% unemployment is it suddenly time to throw up trade barriers and stamp out the historic growth of India? Are the people of India not worthy of being put on an equal footing when it comes to employment by American multinationals?
3) Charity begins at home. We really ought to tace care of our own problems first. We should devote MOST of our resources to making sure our own citizens are taken care of first.
That opinion is not only disgustingly selfish, but foolishly naïve. The US government will never solve its citizens' problems. The US government has failed to solve its own problems for the past 200 years. You think that John Kerry or George Bush if reelected will suddenly just solve these problems? I know American politicians have promised everything but the kitchen sink, but did it ever occur to you that they do this same thing every four years?
If the US is going to solve all of its problems before it helps the rest of the world, then they are never going to help the rest of the world. The rest of the world has thrown open its doors to US products allowing Americans to live at the high standards they enjoy today. Americans would not have such high incomes and high standards of living without the rest of the world. The least the Americans can do is allow the rest of the world to compete. If the only place India can compete are low end IT jobs, why in the hell should America complain? America doesn't need to save the world, just give the rest of the world a fair chance to compete.
If Kerry's attitude is that the US should selfishly protect a few low end jobs that could do wonders for other world economies, then I actually hope he loses.
Re:THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! OH, HAIL!
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Solar Shingles
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Solar still has a ways to go. Solar is still not terrible energy efficent. You always need to include the energy it takes to build a solar cell before you declare it energy efficent. Generally, price is a pretty good indication as to how much energy has to be dumped into these things before you have something you can throw on your roof. Right now, the simple fact of the matter is that they are still far too expensive. I would love to lower my eletric bills with bonus points for the environment, but if I had to build a house tomorrow, you can bet that I would balk at doubling the price of my roof. Sure, my energy bill might be lower, but how long until I get the money back for the extra tens of thousands of dollars pumped in the first place?
This stuff is great, and for the people who can afford it, awesome. They still have a ways to go though before it can compete with coal and other such power sources that we have had a hundred years to refine.
I think people dumb down Bush's effect on Middle Eastern politics too much to make a vision that suits their own political ideals. What Bush has done, if nothing else, stirred the pot. His affect (as far as the US is concerned) has really been both good and bad. The net effect of Bush has had really remains to be seen though.
The Good: What Bush has done that is inarguably good for the US is basically destroyed all terrorist safe havens. That is not to say that there are not places where terrorist can train with relative impunity, but they no longer get government sanctioned support. You can not find any place in the world today where Al-Qaeda has a building with its name on it. That was not always true. Bush has basically declared that anyone who harbors Al-Qaeda is an enemy and directly responsible for whatever they do. No nation, no matter how autocratic and US hating, wants to be responsible for a WMD going off in the US. The policy is pretty clear that if something like that gets traced back to a sovereign nation, that nation is, in so many words or less, fucked.
Bush has done horrible damage to the financial and material backing of these terrorist organizations. The loss of Afghanistan for these groups was really a devastating blow for their ability to train, operate, and communicate. The US has made communication extremely dangerous for these organizations. They operate more autonomously now which might make them more aggressive, but because they can no longer effectively communicate and offer material support, they are far less effective in how they operate. In particular, it is damn near impossible for Al-Qaeda to operate in the US these days due to this new reality. That isn't to say that they are not trying and that they might not succeed, but you can bet for ever 10 operations they try 9 of them never get off the ground.
The Bad: Bush has radicalized the Islamic world and made the life of moderate Islamic people rough. Before, people who pushed for a more liberal Islamic governments sited the US as the ideal to strive for. The kind of wealth and freedom that US citizens have compared to the people in many of these Islamic nations is very enviable and tempting. US operations against Islamic countries have made it extremely hard for these people to continue to site the US as an ideal nation due to the view that the US is anti-Islam. That is not to say that the plight of the moderate follower of Islam is not impossible, it is just a lot harder these days. I would say that it is misleading to blame the terrible losses that moderates it Iran suffered in the last election as having anything to do with the US. The reason for that can be squarely placed on the actions of conservatives in the country. The situation with the US might not have helped matters, but I think it is safe they would have taken terrible losses regardless if 9/11 and Bush had never happened.
Al-Qaeda today has gained a massive recruiting tool in the form of Bush. You can see the effects in Iraq when body count is more important then materials. Bush has really made Al-Qaeda poor on materials, but rich in warm bodies.
To Be Seen: The real judgment of Bush is not going to come until after he is out of the White House. Iraq is going to be how Bush is judged. If 10 or 20 years from now Iraq is a thriving Democracy with a good relationship with the US on par with Japan or Germany after World War II, I think history will give Bush a lot of credit, much in the same way Clinton got credit for fixing Serbia. You need to remember that when the US advocated going into Serbia it met with a lot of opposition both before and during the operation. It wasn't until after Clinton was out of office that we look back at what happened as being for the best. Bush is going to be judged in much the same way. The current day opinions of him really don't matter in the final judgment of things. The question is whether or not Iraq can reach stability and form something that we recognize as a Demo
And here's where you are wrong: less voters != more informed voters. In fact, all it really does is remove power from the masses (where it belongs) into the hands of special interest groups, Politicial Action Comittees (PACs), and professional politicians whose goals may or may not (in all likelihood, the latter) be in the best interest of us all.
Here is where I am confused. You are telling me that if more people voted because they were coerced to, the system would be less susceptible to being manipulated by special interest groups?
I would say that, on average, the current voting population is more informed about politics then the current non-voting population. If you are taking an active interest to vote, you are more likely to have an informed opinion. People who are interested in politics are more likely to vote then those who don't care and have no opinion. I would say that this is a very safe assumption to make. The fanaticism of the people who do getting out the vote campaigns are a testament to this.
Now, if you assume that the average person who votes is more informed in politics, then you can probably also safely assume that they are more inoculated to special interest propaganda. If you are a reasonably informed voter, you probably roll your eyes at half the crap that is blasted on TV. Again, this by no means that everyone who votes is inoculated to this or else you wouldn't see the massive spam of politic mindless politic advertising on TV. I am just suggesting that the current voting population is more inoculated then the non-voting population.
So, what happens when you coerce people who would not normally vote to vote? People who are less informed and less inoculated to the barrage of crap politicians sling are suddenly adding their input. People more likely to vote based upon propaganda and stuff put out by special interest groups suddenly have more sway in the voting.
What you are really doing is increasing the power of these special interest groups. By coercing a group of people who have no interest in voting to vote, you make an easy and stupid demographic to target for special interest groups. You give them more power by having people with no informed opinion add their input based upon the crap that they are forced to see when they watch TV.
Democracy is about making a decision. The most 'fair' way to do it is to have all the people that care decide things on what is more or less majority rule. It isn't that more people make the decision better. On the contrary, the more ignorant people you add to the process, the more misinformed the decision you are going to reach. If you were to poll all the people in Europe in 1400 if the world was flat or round, you would have found that most people though it was flat. Scientist had figured out thousands of years earlier that the world was round, and if one was to pull all the informed scientist of the day they would have given you the correct answer. The problem is that the peasant masses at the time were generally very ignorant. Their input into the question isn't helpful or useful.
The same is true with the American democracy today. There are plenty of people with excellent and informed opinions on all sides. There is also a legion of stupid followers that pander to whatever everyone else around them seems to believe. We don't need the legion of ignorant to grow any larger. As it is, political campaigns are 90% a marketing campaign and 10% substance. Throw in a few more ignorants and I bet you can swap out Coke commercials and political adds interchangeably.
Yeah why don't we just have someone appoint themself leader and make all the decisions for us. They would of coarse always look out for the interests of mankind, cause that's what appointed leaders do, right?
Cute sarcastic comment, but it has absolutely nothing to do with what is being discussed. I never suggested self appointed dictators. I suggested not trying to bribe the stupid masses to vote. That is a long way off from a dictatorship. If you want me to be cute, I can follow your argument to the logical extreme, which is mob rule that lynches people that look funny at random.
Democracy ain't perfect, but do you have a better idea? The semi-democracy model we're going with has given us... George W and John Kerry. A couple real winners there. More direct democracy is better.
Let me see if I understand your argument. The current system is bad and more direct democracy is better. Compelling argument, but I think you failed to explain how getting people with no informed opinion to vote leads to democracy being "better". I think people would be more likely to be swayed if your argument was better then "Nuh-uh! MY ways is better!"
My argument is that the more informed and educated the electorate is, the better decision they are going to make. Put better input into the machine and get better out put. You fail to show in any way why having people with no informed opinion would make the system any better.
Non-voters do nothing to harm the system. If half of the people who can vote don't vote, it doesn't harm me any. It does the opposite in fact. It helps me.
Let's say that half of the people that can vote do vote. Now, let's say we do something to make it so that nearly 100% of the people vote. This means that my vote is now half as effective as it used to be. That doesn't help me, it hurts me. That means that my informed opinion is half as effective.
I never ever understood this obsession with majority rule. Just because the majority of the people want something doesn't make it the best choice or the right choice. The system does not make better decisions when more people vote. The system makes better decisions when more informed people vote. On the contrary, uniformed people add random noise to the system. Uninformed people are far more likely to be swayed by stupid attack ads, rhetoric, and which candidate is tallest. I don't want the easily swayed masses voting. I want informed people voting.
Personally, I like how voter registration is done right now. Voter registration is very easy. It takes all of five minutes of your time to do. Anyone with even the slightest of motivation can get registered. Voting is even more painless. You just show up on the appointed day, give them your name, and pull a lever, touch a screen, or some other trivial activity. The bar is set very low. There is no intelligence test or proof of minimal competency. I don't see a need to drop the bar any lower. If someone truly doesn't want to vote, good. Let them.
Finally, the point you clearly miss is that some times not voting is as powerful of a statement as voting. If voter turn out rates are very low, it means that people are disenfranchised with the current system. It means people just don't give a shit. That is a vote in it of its self. Pointing a gun to someone's head and telling them to vote or die isn't going to make them feel any better about system.
Yes, because the FBI has great records on the legal and religious background of 50 million Mexican teenagers.
None of the 50 million Mexican teenagers are going to be plant bombs and be terrorist. The bigger worry are the 5 Jihadist that are able to get through the border because of the industry that has sprung up to allow the relativly harmless 50 million Mexican teenagers to work as janitors in the US. Mexicans are not the security problem. The illegal industry dedicated to getting the Mexicans here is the problem. Destroy that industry by making it so that people can cross the border freely after filling out a little paper work and just plugged the biggest security hole in the US.
What you need is a paradigm shift, and nanobots and super AI are more then capable of producing it. For instance, imagine if the rich nations full fill the greatest wet dreams of nano-enthusiast. Namely, imagine if you don't need a body when a collection of nanites and circuits will do, you can communicate almost instantly vast amounts of information to other people nearly instantly, and you can use nanotechnology to build almost anything out of raw materials. I wouldn't worry about the poor in such a world. You are talking about a people so overwhelmingly powerful that it only takes a few philanthropist to have a dramatic effect upon the third world.
You also go ahead and assume that corporations could even survive such a drastically changed world, but in truth if the dreams of AI more powerful then humans and automation are realized, the capitalist system by definition will no longer function. In such a world human labor has no value. If a machine can do everything a human can better, then capitalism is destroyed. I don't think it is such a bad thing.
Personally, I don't worry much for the future. I don't think the world is going to hell in a hand basket. I think that capitalism will merrily breed the seeds of its own destruction through improved automation. Sure, that end point where capitalism breaks down might get a little ugly as we try and sort of what the hell to do next, but I think in the end will resolves itself pleasantly.
"Bush, in contrast, will eliminate illegal migrant workers by simply legalizing them. (If you can't beat em, legalize em) (How that idea co-exists with Homeland Security, he didn't say)"
If you don't understand, let me explain it to you. People who work are not a drag on the US economy. Further, if they are filling out paper work and providing identification information you can actually run a background check to see who they are. A documented worker is far less of a potential threat to 'homeland security' then an undocumented alien.
Personally, I am always amazed that Democrats agree with, or at least steal Bush's position. It is a damn good one if you believe in the concept of compassion, helping your neighbors, and increasing security. Mexico gets a massive boost to their economy from these workers, as these workers can send home part of their pay check to add to the Mexican economy. The last time I checked Mexicans were still humans, and I was generally under the impression that compassion should be extended to all humans, not just Americans. Further still, if you are documenting these people, then it lets you focus on illegal aliens that are a real threat. If your fear is terrorism, then letting these people freely cross the border in a documented manner is the best thing you can do to stamp out terrorism. Currently there is an entire system illegal industry set up along the US-Mexico border to sneak people across the border. If you eliminate the need for these people to sneak across the border, then that entire illegal industry dies. The country would be significantly safer if that industry was stamped out by offering people a way to cross legally.
There are a lot of good reasons to dislike Bush. I for one be voting for him in the upcoming elections. His stance on guest workers is not one of the reasons though why I won't be voting for him.
True, as a democrat I supposed you appreciate the subtle differences. As a Libertarian, I don't.
- Libertarians are always up for a tax cut. - Reduction of government programs is great, but Bush didn't do this. The size of the government drastically expanded under his watch. - Microsoft suit being killed? Good. Prosecute them if they violated any contracts or entered into illegal contracts. If the suit is that they just were not nice to the competition and were giving out too much imbedded software, I really don't care, especially considering that I am typing this out on a Xandros. Microsoft is already being pummeled, they don't need the governments help. Either way, it isn't high on my list of important topics. - Democrats and Republicans both merrily voted to authorize the war with almost no argument. If you vote to give the president power to conduct a war, don't suddenly act surprised when he goes off and conducts a war. - Yeah, see the above. Both of them voted merrily for the Patriot Act. If the war and the Patriot Act are your top two issues, I suggest just flipping a coin to decide who you vote for.
Democrats and Republicans both want a larger government with more control. The only difference is that one wants a larger government with more control over my social life, and the other wants a bigger government with more control over my economic life. Thanks but no. I'll vote libertarian.
I will vote libertarian this year. I will vote libertarian and hope that the libertarian vote costs Bush the election. Why? For the same reason why not all Democrats were unhappy when Gore lost to Bush. The idea is that if you make the next closest guy to your ideals lose, then next time around they will lean more your way. If the libertarian vote was to cost the Republicans the election, it might very well get them to put forward a candidate who isn't as eager to spend my money as any other democrat. As far as I can tell, Bush is a democrat who is pro life. That sure as shit isn't going to get my vote.
Look I don't buy shit from Abercrombie and Fitch and I go out of my way to avoid Starbucks. I am not a big fan of some companies and tend to vote that way with my dollar if nothing else. However, this stuff really gets boring, really fast. If I read one more book about a fucking evil company that runs around killing people or trying to take over the world, I am going to go sit my ass down at Starbucks and order a something-or-another-latte. No more corporate conspiracies, no more 'megacorps'.
And for the love OF FUCKING GOD, NEVER - EVER - EVER! name the evil company in your story 'OmniCorp'. For fucks sake, everyone has read that book already. We all know if that OmniCorp is evil. Science fiction is falling down the gutter these days. Jesus, I know everyone is terrified McDonalds is going to make them eat a pile of greasy fries at gun point, but could we tone it down a little?
The government should only touch space tourism if it presents a public danger. I have no problem with congress insisting that people don't drop rockets onto houses or spew radiation through the atmosphere. However, when it comes to the risks, congress should stay the hell away from the subject. If private individuals are willing to strap a rocket to their ass and pull the trigger, they should be able to so long as they are only (potentially) hurting themselves. People don't need protection from themselves. Why is congress trying to smack down our pioneers and explorers?
In society there are people who are willing push boundaries and take risks. We NEED these people. These are the people who are willing to push the limits of human expertise. These people drive innovation, some times at the cost of their lives. Congress's duty is not to weed these people out. Congress's only duty should be to ensure that the people who are not willing to risk their lives remain safe. If the explorers of our society are willing to strop a rocket to their ass with a 5% chance of exploding on the way up, that is their business.
I think you miss the point of voting for a third party. There are years (this is one of them) where if I could vote for 'none of the above' and force both parties to recall their canadates and give me new options, I would. I don't even remotely like either choice. I will vote libertarian because as far as I am concerned, both of the two major candidates are roughly equally bad.
Let me put this in words Democrats and Republicans will understand. I am voting 'Anyone But Bush' and 'Anyone But Kerry'. Call my vote a vote against both of them. Honestly, if I could only pick Bush or Kerry, I would simply not vote.
Voting is a method of getting your voice heard. If during an election it was clear that either Kerry or Bush was going win by a landslide, would you simply not vote if your guy was going to loose without a doubt? Of course not. You would vote regardless just so that your voice is heard. You would vote to keep the mandate to to the winner as small as possible. If Bush beats out Kerry 60% to 35%, Bush leaves with a mandate. If Bush beats out Kerry 44% to 43%, then it sends a strong signal that he doesn't have strong majority on his side.
When a Republican or Democrat sees that 10% of the population voted for none of the above, it sends a clear signal to them that people are disgusted. It tells them that they are so disliked that people will happily risk letting them loose just to prove a point.
As a Libertarian, when my two choices are a liberal who wants to enact socialist policies, and a 'conservative' who would take away a woman's right to choose and is one of the worst spenders in history, what how happy I am when I vote for none of the above. I don't want either of the bastards in the oval office, and to be honest, I can't rightly say which one I dislike the most. If the Republicans loose because of the Libertarian vote, good. It will send a very loud and very clear message.
"Get off your elitist high horse. If the majority of the people in the country want a good looking dolt as their leader, why shouldn't they get exactly that?"
So, let me see if I understand. I am an elitist because I don't want 'a good looking dolt' to be the most powerful man in the world? Yeah... that just reeks of elitism.
I suppose you would be for 51% of the population enslaving the other 49% if that is what the majority wanted, or would I be an elitist in calling that a bad idea too? More people voting does not result in a better decision, especially if you are encouraging idiots with no educated opinion to vote.
Honestly, if you don't have the desire to vote, do everyone a favor and don't let your uneducated opinion be heard. More is not better. I would rather have one surgeon performing open heart surgery on me then 100 farms.
People are under the deluded impression that Democracy is just. It isn't. It is just more likely to be just then other forms of government. However, it is perfectly within a democracies ability for 51% of the population to put the other 49% into slavery. The very reason why this nation has a bill of rights is because the founding fathers recognized that Democracy is less then perfect.
Just because 51% of the people say something is right, does not make them right. It just means more people believe one thing over another. Pick your favorite philosopher or political figure. No matter how accepted that person might be right now, at one point they articulated an opinion which the vast majority disagreed with. That didn't make that person wrong, just in disagreement with the rest of the world.
To be perfectly honest, I -don't- want more people to vote. I want less people to vote. As it is now, too many stupid people vote. Too many people vote based upon who has the prettier words, looks the best, or just fills them with a warmer feeling. I don't care if it is the stupid southern house wife you just doesn't trust any liberal because, well, no one in her family ever has since the civil war, or if it is a stupid stoner college student who really has no fucking opinion of his own, but is pretty sure everyone else hates Bush and so he should too. I don't want these people to vote. There input into the system isn't helpful. It is just noise. When they vote, I don't feel any sense of pride that two uneducated idiots made their decision based upon something that has absolutely nothing to do with reality.
Voting is a mechanism to reach a consensus as to who should rule. When you rule, you have the authority to pass laws that will result in violence on the population. I don't care if you pass a law to stop gumball theft. You just authorized violence against your population. Laws don't work without the threat of someone taking either your property or you freedom and sending you to jail.
So, when the decision is coming around as to who gets this power, take it fucking seriously. Don't tell idiots to add their input. If they don't want to vote, good, don't encourage them. The fewer idiots that vote, the more that my vote counts, and the more that non-idiots votes count.
I propose a different solution. Tell your friends not to vote. If they are stupid enough to do as you say, then you are doing the world a favor by keeping them from voting.
Good example. Guess what? If I had a choice to live in an Iraqi battle ground or the culdren of human suffering and death that is North Korea, I would take my chances in Iraq. North Korea might be 'cleaner' because no one is shooting each other, but the whole sale genocide that is happening in North Korea makes Iraq look like merry walk through London.
So, if you want to feel good about yourself, fine take the North Korea rout. If you want to minimize human suffering and death, then the war was a hundred times more humane that what is happening in North Korea.
There are three reasons why the US was convinced there were weapons their when they were not actually there.
First, Saddam wanted the US to think he had weapons. More specifically, he wanted the rest of the Arab world to believe that he had WMDs and that he was holding out against the Americans. You need to realize that Saddam's goal has always been to unite the Arab nations into a single state. He saw his fight with the US as a way to try and unite them. Saddam honestly believed that the US would not invade, and he believed that even if they did he could hold them off long enough to get a negotiated peace like what he got in 1990 while being seen as an Arab hero.
Second, Saddam did give the order to destroy his WMDs after the first gulf war. Unfortunately for him, his orders were executed while his state was in disarray and the normally meticulous Iraqi bureaucracy failed to record properly the destruction of the WMDs. This always confused the hell out of inspectors because as far as they had known Iraq had always been excellent about keeping documents. Now, when they tried to find out where the WMDs were they were confronted with the fact that there was no paperwork and no one who know what they had done with the weapons. A lot of people simply assumed that Saddam was yanking everyone's cord again. It isn't like the words of a fascist (and make no mistake, his regime was a fascist regime) murder who made it a regular habit to lie about WMDs were going to be taken at face value.
Third, the US intelligence agencies truly and honestly were convinced that he was holding out. They were dead set positive that if they could just find any excuse to get in there and do a real search of the country they would find his weapons. So, whenever they looked at data and intelligence they looked at it with the expectation of finding something. Anything that might have pointed towards there being weapons was stacked up much higher then evidence that Saddam had actually carried through with the destruction of his WMDs. The US intelligence agencies were truly and honestly surprised when not only did Saddam not use WMDs on American and allied forces, but were completely surprised to find that it looks like he actually didn't have any weapons. He had the infrastructure to build them, but he wasn't actually perusing anything while the world was staring down in his back yard.
In the end, I don't think it maters. One less fascist regime in the world and the whole sale killing of Iraq civilians through sanctions has stopped. As ugly as the war is, it is a hell of a lot better then what there used to have been. The world either needed to let Saddam go on his merry way and end sanctions, or crushed his government and end sanctions. Either way, the real genocide was when the world imposed sanctions on that nation.
For some reason people seem to find war uglier then sanctions, when the truth is war produces pocket change in terms of causalities compared to sanctions. What is happening in North Korea right now makes Iraq look like utopia. The difference is that we don't see the massive death and human suffering in North Korea because the local government won't let such images escape the border. On the other hand, the images of death and destruction in Iraq are more then prevalent. Believe me, Iraq is by no means a human tragedy compared to the likes of other less visible places in the world. I would rather live in an Iraq battle ground then the wasteland that is North Korea.
I don't think you realize how bad Bush has been for the Islamic fundamentalist movement. I honestly think that if Osama could take back 9/11, he would. It is true that the US has polarized the Islamic world, but look HOW it has been polarized. There used to be a nation that followed the ideals that of the Islamic fundamentalist movement. The Taliban is exactly what they wanted and they had it. He had a nation that sponsored his movement and a safe place to train his men. Now he has absolutely no safe harbor. Absolutely no nation is willing to harbor these people any more because they US has made it very clear that they will not think twice to crush any nation that harbors and supports these terrorist.
Osama has certainly made the best out of a shitty situation, but a nation that would support that likes of Bin Laden is now an utter impossibility. Islamic fundamentalist have been driven from power in the places that they once held. At this point the only thing they can hope to do is to take as many Americans and their supports down with them.
The simple fact of the matter is that if the US doesn't want you to have a sovereign state and you are not China or Russia, you are not going to have one. They very best you can hope for is to deny US soldiers the ability to operate on the ground while keeping the American public sympathetic enough where the military can't take off the gloves and use the full force of the US military. If the best you can hope for is a perpetual state of anarchy, no national government, and an existence comparable to medieval living, you have already lost.
"Does anyone else find it distasteful when a draft dodger calls into question the medals of a war hero?"
Bush never called into question the medals Kerry got. Kerry sure as hell has no problem swinging them around and mentioning them every thirty seconds though. As far as draft dodging, who gives a shit? I would have dodged the Vietnam draft and used every resource in my disposal to get out of service in that killing field. Bush joined the reserves and left the reserves to dodge the draft. Kerry joined the Navy and tried and failed to join a non-combative unit. Who cares? They both tried to dodge going into combat.
It is completely beyond me as to how people could possibly care about how two BOYS (and that is all they were when they served) tried to escape getting shot at.
Please. Vote how you truly want to vote. The vast majority of voters votes will not matter. I live in mass. It doesn't matter who I vote for, Kerry will win. If you live in Texas, no matter how you vote Bush will win. Perhaps if you live in a battle ground state you should vote to make someone loose, but for the vast majority of America, you will do a lot more to get your voice heard if you vote for who you truly believe in.
If you want to "waste" your vote, vote for a guy who isn't your first choice in a non-battle ground state.
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You are completely right. In many ways Osama has a fair point. Most of Osama's message really is not much to bother the Americans. Sure, he advocates a brutal type of government that Americans detest, but he argues for instating this governments in places that the US already dislikes. It was one thing if he was working to over throw the British, French, or Spanish governments. He would likely find the Americans to become as fanatically against him as they did against the USSR. He isn't arguing for those things though. He is arguing for a certain type of government in places that America doesn't really like to begin with. Yes, the argument could be brought up that these places ship the US oil, but there is nothing inherently conflicting about these places shipping oil while living under a brutal theocracy. Both sides could likely live by this if it were not for one thing.
Osama attacked the US. Right before 9/11, very few people knew what the fuck Al-Qaeda was. Sure, they were responsible for a few other bombings of US targets, but no on US soil. People generally didn't care. Other then the occasional cruise missile strike to knock over a few tents, the US too little active interest in crushing Al-Qaeda and American public simply had no opinion on the subject. Now, 9/11 comes along. If the goal of Al-Qaeda was to convince the Americans to leave them alone, they did exactly the wrong thing.
Look, the US is a nation of fanatics. Most Americans don't recognize themselves as fanatics, but they are. The American public is generally bull headed and stubborn beyond words. It is hard to get the American public to believe a single unifying message, but once it does you have better luck arguing with a cliff face. The way the US treated Communism was a prime example of this. Once it was worked into their collective consciences that communism was bad, the US was pretty much on a one way path to defy communism at all costs on all fronts, and the US never let up on that position until the USSR fell.
Now you have Osama. He made the mistake of getting himself labeled universally as a very bad guy in the American mind. He will never, ever, shake that mentality. The US will never ever agree with Osama on anything no matter how rational it is. The US, unlike Spain, would take a terrorist attack as a sign that they need to keep doing whatever it is they are doing because it is pissing off the bad guys. If terrorists blew up New York tomorrow, and Kerry said that maybe it is time to listen to the other side (which he would never do), Bush could eat a baby on TV and still win with 90% of the vote.
Personally, I think that the US and Islamic fundamentalism are locked in a death struggle. It ends when one of them is crushed. Personally, I think that Islam and the Middle East are fighting with the US in the wrong way. You can't beat the US through intimidation, which is why terrorism does nothing but get the US to gallivant around the world looking for things to blow up. You can beat the US using the media and pacifism. Nothing is more effective against the US then peaceful resistance. Fighting encourages the US militaristic urges. Pacifism utterly kills it. If tomorrow not a single American or Israeli was shot at ever again and people simply took the streets, Israel would be out of Palestine in a year or have the US pounding down its doors. If the people of Palestine simply went to the streets and marched up to settlements to be shot, the effect would be devastating for Israel. That is not to say that people don't already do this. The problem is that some other jack asses then go and blow themselves up and take out a few families.
It is too bad. I think all of this conflict would simply evaporate and the US would quietly go home if everyone was a Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Peaceful non-violent resistance trumps all other forms of conflict, especially when dealing with the US. It is too bad humans are so hell bent on violence that this will never happen.
A good friend of mine is 22 year old heterosexual. She is steral and will never have children. If she wants a child she is going to have to do it the same way a homosexual couple would. Are you suggesting she should not be allowed to get married because she is not capable of giving birth?
The story has two sources, the google catch and the live journal. Has anyone bothered to check to make sure this isn't a hoax? For fucks sake people, if you are going to post something like this, try to have a link to something other then a live journal.
2) It's impossible to help everybody in the world because there is so much poverty and we really don't have enough money or willpower. Even if we really wanted to give a 100% effort to help the destitute of the world we would be fought tooth and nail by the republicans.
The point you clearly miss is that while the US can't help the entire world, the US IS helping India. India is going through a massive economic boom right now. One of the poorest nations in the world is rapidly rising out of third world poverty. I don't understand why this brings such horror to Americans. God forbid any place other then Europe and America enjoy some of the wealth in the world. India is rapidly rising and the American economy continues to chug away despite 9/11 and the popped technology bubble. With a miniscule 5% unemployment is it suddenly time to throw up trade barriers and stamp out the historic growth of India? Are the people of India not worthy of being put on an equal footing when it comes to employment by American multinationals?
3) Charity begins at home. We really ought to tace care of our own problems first. We should devote MOST of our resources to making sure our own citizens are taken care of first.
That opinion is not only disgustingly selfish, but foolishly naïve. The US government will never solve its citizens' problems. The US government has failed to solve its own problems for the past 200 years. You think that John Kerry or George Bush if reelected will suddenly just solve these problems? I know American politicians have promised everything but the kitchen sink, but did it ever occur to you that they do this same thing every four years?
If the US is going to solve all of its problems before it helps the rest of the world, then they are never going to help the rest of the world. The rest of the world has thrown open its doors to US products allowing Americans to live at the high standards they enjoy today. Americans would not have such high incomes and high standards of living without the rest of the world. The least the Americans can do is allow the rest of the world to compete. If the only place India can compete are low end IT jobs, why in the hell should America complain? America doesn't need to save the world, just give the rest of the world a fair chance to compete.
If Kerry's attitude is that the US should selfishly protect a few low end jobs that could do wonders for other world economies, then I actually hope he loses.
Solar still has a ways to go. Solar is still not terrible energy efficent. You always need to include the energy it takes to build a solar cell before you declare it energy efficent. Generally, price is a pretty good indication as to how much energy has to be dumped into these things before you have something you can throw on your roof. Right now, the simple fact of the matter is that they are still far too expensive. I would love to lower my eletric bills with bonus points for the environment, but if I had to build a house tomorrow, you can bet that I would balk at doubling the price of my roof. Sure, my energy bill might be lower, but how long until I get the money back for the extra tens of thousands of dollars pumped in the first place?
This stuff is great, and for the people who can afford it, awesome. They still have a ways to go though before it can compete with coal and other such power sources that we have had a hundred years to refine.
I think people dumb down Bush's effect on Middle Eastern politics too much to make a vision that suits their own political ideals. What Bush has done, if nothing else, stirred the pot. His affect (as far as the US is concerned) has really been both good and bad. The net effect of Bush has had really remains to be seen though.
The Good:
What Bush has done that is inarguably good for the US is basically destroyed all terrorist safe havens. That is not to say that there are not places where terrorist can train with relative impunity, but they no longer get government sanctioned support. You can not find any place in the world today where Al-Qaeda has a building with its name on it. That was not always true. Bush has basically declared that anyone who harbors Al-Qaeda is an enemy and directly responsible for whatever they do. No nation, no matter how autocratic and US hating, wants to be responsible for a WMD going off in the US. The policy is pretty clear that if something like that gets traced back to a sovereign nation, that nation is, in so many words or less, fucked.
Bush has done horrible damage to the financial and material backing of these terrorist organizations. The loss of Afghanistan for these groups was really a devastating blow for their ability to train, operate, and communicate. The US has made communication extremely dangerous for these organizations. They operate more autonomously now which might make them more aggressive, but because they can no longer effectively communicate and offer material support, they are far less effective in how they operate. In particular, it is damn near impossible for Al-Qaeda to operate in the US these days due to this new reality. That isn't to say that they are not trying and that they might not succeed, but you can bet for ever 10 operations they try 9 of them never get off the ground.
The Bad:
Bush has radicalized the Islamic world and made the life of moderate Islamic people rough. Before, people who pushed for a more liberal Islamic governments sited the US as the ideal to strive for. The kind of wealth and freedom that US citizens have compared to the people in many of these Islamic nations is very enviable and tempting. US operations against Islamic countries have made it extremely hard for these people to continue to site the US as an ideal nation due to the view that the US is anti-Islam. That is not to say that the plight of the moderate follower of Islam is not impossible, it is just a lot harder these days. I would say that it is misleading to blame the terrible losses that moderates it Iran suffered in the last election as having anything to do with the US. The reason for that can be squarely placed on the actions of conservatives in the country. The situation with the US might not have helped matters, but I think it is safe they would have taken terrible losses regardless if 9/11 and Bush had never happened.
Al-Qaeda today has gained a massive recruiting tool in the form of Bush. You can see the effects in Iraq when body count is more important then materials. Bush has really made Al-Qaeda poor on materials, but rich in warm bodies.
To Be Seen:
The real judgment of Bush is not going to come until after he is out of the White House. Iraq is going to be how Bush is judged. If 10 or 20 years from now Iraq is a thriving Democracy with a good relationship with the US on par with Japan or Germany after World War II, I think history will give Bush a lot of credit, much in the same way Clinton got credit for fixing Serbia. You need to remember that when the US advocated going into Serbia it met with a lot of opposition both before and during the operation. It wasn't until after Clinton was out of office that we look back at what happened as being for the best. Bush is going to be judged in much the same way. The current day opinions of him really don't matter in the final judgment of things. The question is whether or not Iraq can reach stability and form something that we recognize as a Demo
And here's where you are wrong: less voters != more informed voters. In fact, all it really does is remove power from the masses (where it belongs) into the hands of special interest groups, Politicial Action Comittees (PACs), and professional politicians whose goals may or may not (in all likelihood, the latter) be in the best interest of us all.
Here is where I am confused. You are telling me that if more people voted because they were coerced to, the system would be less susceptible to being manipulated by special interest groups?
I would say that, on average, the current voting population is more informed about politics then the current non-voting population. If you are taking an active interest to vote, you are more likely to have an informed opinion. People who are interested in politics are more likely to vote then those who don't care and have no opinion. I would say that this is a very safe assumption to make. The fanaticism of the people who do getting out the vote campaigns are a testament to this.
Now, if you assume that the average person who votes is more informed in politics, then you can probably also safely assume that they are more inoculated to special interest propaganda. If you are a reasonably informed voter, you probably roll your eyes at half the crap that is blasted on TV. Again, this by no means that everyone who votes is inoculated to this or else you wouldn't see the massive spam of politic mindless politic advertising on TV. I am just suggesting that the current voting population is more inoculated then the non-voting population.
So, what happens when you coerce people who would not normally vote to vote? People who are less informed and less inoculated to the barrage of crap politicians sling are suddenly adding their input. People more likely to vote based upon propaganda and stuff put out by special interest groups suddenly have more sway in the voting.
What you are really doing is increasing the power of these special interest groups. By coercing a group of people who have no interest in voting to vote, you make an easy and stupid demographic to target for special interest groups. You give them more power by having people with no informed opinion add their input based upon the crap that they are forced to see when they watch TV.
Democracy is about making a decision. The most 'fair' way to do it is to have all the people that care decide things on what is more or less majority rule. It isn't that more people make the decision better. On the contrary, the more ignorant people you add to the process, the more misinformed the decision you are going to reach. If you were to poll all the people in Europe in 1400 if the world was flat or round, you would have found that most people though it was flat. Scientist had figured out thousands of years earlier that the world was round, and if one was to pull all the informed scientist of the day they would have given you the correct answer. The problem is that the peasant masses at the time were generally very ignorant. Their input into the question isn't helpful or useful.
The same is true with the American democracy today. There are plenty of people with excellent and informed opinions on all sides. There is also a legion of stupid followers that pander to whatever everyone else around them seems to believe. We don't need the legion of ignorant to grow any larger. As it is, political campaigns are 90% a marketing campaign and 10% substance. Throw in a few more ignorants and I bet you can swap out Coke commercials and political adds interchangeably.
Yeah why don't we just have someone appoint themself leader and make all the decisions for us. They would of coarse always look out for the interests of mankind, cause that's what appointed leaders do, right?
Cute sarcastic comment, but it has absolutely nothing to do with what is being discussed. I never suggested self appointed dictators. I suggested not trying to bribe the stupid masses to vote. That is a long way off from a dictatorship. If you want me to be cute, I can follow your argument to the logical extreme, which is mob rule that lynches people that look funny at random.
Democracy ain't perfect, but do you have a better idea? The semi-democracy model we're going with has given us... George W and John Kerry. A couple real winners there. More direct democracy is better.
Let me see if I understand your argument. The current system is bad and more direct democracy is better. Compelling argument, but I think you failed to explain how getting people with no informed opinion to vote leads to democracy being "better". I think people would be more likely to be swayed if your argument was better then "Nuh-uh! MY ways is better!"
My argument is that the more informed and educated the electorate is, the better decision they are going to make. Put better input into the machine and get better out put. You fail to show in any way why having people with no informed opinion would make the system any better.
Non-voters do nothing to harm the system. If half of the people who can vote don't vote, it doesn't harm me any. It does the opposite in fact. It helps me.
Let's say that half of the people that can vote do vote. Now, let's say we do something to make it so that nearly 100% of the people vote. This means that my vote is now half as effective as it used to be. That doesn't help me, it hurts me. That means that my informed opinion is half as effective.
I never ever understood this obsession with majority rule. Just because the majority of the people want something doesn't make it the best choice or the right choice. The system does not make better decisions when more people vote. The system makes better decisions when more informed people vote. On the contrary, uniformed people add random noise to the system. Uninformed people are far more likely to be swayed by stupid attack ads, rhetoric, and which candidate is tallest. I don't want the easily swayed masses voting. I want informed people voting.
Personally, I like how voter registration is done right now. Voter registration is very easy. It takes all of five minutes of your time to do. Anyone with even the slightest of motivation can get registered. Voting is even more painless. You just show up on the appointed day, give them your name, and pull a lever, touch a screen, or some other trivial activity. The bar is set very low. There is no intelligence test or proof of minimal competency. I don't see a need to drop the bar any lower. If someone truly doesn't want to vote, good. Let them.
Finally, the point you clearly miss is that some times not voting is as powerful of a statement as voting. If voter turn out rates are very low, it means that people are disenfranchised with the current system. It means people just don't give a shit. That is a vote in it of its self. Pointing a gun to someone's head and telling them to vote or die isn't going to make them feel any better about system.
Yes, because the FBI has great records on the legal and religious background of 50 million Mexican teenagers.
None of the 50 million Mexican teenagers are going to be plant bombs and be terrorist. The bigger worry are the 5 Jihadist that are able to get through the border because of the industry that has sprung up to allow the relativly harmless 50 million Mexican teenagers to work as janitors in the US. Mexicans are not the security problem. The illegal industry dedicated to getting the Mexicans here is the problem. Destroy that industry by making it so that people can cross the border freely after filling out a little paper work and just plugged the biggest security hole in the US.
What you need is a paradigm shift, and nanobots and super AI are more then capable of producing it. For instance, imagine if the rich nations full fill the greatest wet dreams of nano-enthusiast. Namely, imagine if you don't need a body when a collection of nanites and circuits will do, you can communicate almost instantly vast amounts of information to other people nearly instantly, and you can use nanotechnology to build almost anything out of raw materials. I wouldn't worry about the poor in such a world. You are talking about a people so overwhelmingly powerful that it only takes a few philanthropist to have a dramatic effect upon the third world.
You also go ahead and assume that corporations could even survive such a drastically changed world, but in truth if the dreams of AI more powerful then humans and automation are realized, the capitalist system by definition will no longer function. In such a world human labor has no value. If a machine can do everything a human can better, then capitalism is destroyed. I don't think it is such a bad thing.
Personally, I don't worry much for the future. I don't think the world is going to hell in a hand basket. I think that capitalism will merrily breed the seeds of its own destruction through improved automation. Sure, that end point where capitalism breaks down might get a little ugly as we try and sort of what the hell to do next, but I think in the end will resolves itself pleasantly.
"Bush, in contrast, will eliminate illegal migrant workers by simply legalizing them. (If you can't beat em, legalize em) (How that idea co-exists with Homeland Security, he didn't say)"
If you don't understand, let me explain it to you. People who work are not a drag on the US economy. Further, if they are filling out paper work and providing identification information you can actually run a background check to see who they are. A documented worker is far less of a potential threat to 'homeland security' then an undocumented alien.
Personally, I am always amazed that Democrats agree with, or at least steal Bush's position. It is a damn good one if you believe in the concept of compassion, helping your neighbors, and increasing security. Mexico gets a massive boost to their economy from these workers, as these workers can send home part of their pay check to add to the Mexican economy. The last time I checked Mexicans were still humans, and I was generally under the impression that compassion should be extended to all humans, not just Americans. Further still, if you are documenting these people, then it lets you focus on illegal aliens that are a real threat. If your fear is terrorism, then letting these people freely cross the border in a documented manner is the best thing you can do to stamp out terrorism. Currently there is an entire system illegal industry set up along the US-Mexico border to sneak people across the border. If you eliminate the need for these people to sneak across the border, then that entire illegal industry dies. The country would be significantly safer if that industry was stamped out by offering people a way to cross legally.
There are a lot of good reasons to dislike Bush. I for one be voting for him in the upcoming elections. His stance on guest workers is not one of the reasons though why I won't be voting for him.
True, as a democrat I supposed you appreciate the subtle differences. As a Libertarian, I don't.
- Libertarians are always up for a tax cut.
- Reduction of government programs is great, but Bush didn't do this. The size of the government drastically expanded under his watch.
- Microsoft suit being killed? Good. Prosecute them if they violated any contracts or entered into illegal contracts. If the suit is that they just were not nice to the competition and were giving out too much imbedded software, I really don't care, especially considering that I am typing this out on a Xandros. Microsoft is already being pummeled, they don't need the governments help. Either way, it isn't high on my list of important topics.
- Democrats and Republicans both merrily voted to authorize the war with almost no argument. If you vote to give the president power to conduct a war, don't suddenly act surprised when he goes off and conducts a war.
- Yeah, see the above. Both of them voted merrily for the Patriot Act. If the war and the Patriot Act are your top two issues, I suggest just flipping a coin to decide who you vote for.
Democrats and Republicans both want a larger government with more control. The only difference is that one wants a larger government with more control over my social life, and the other wants a bigger government with more control over my economic life. Thanks but no. I'll vote libertarian.
I will vote libertarian this year. I will vote libertarian and hope that the libertarian vote costs Bush the election. Why? For the same reason why not all Democrats were unhappy when Gore lost to Bush. The idea is that if you make the next closest guy to your ideals lose, then next time around they will lean more your way. If the libertarian vote was to cost the Republicans the election, it might very well get them to put forward a candidate who isn't as eager to spend my money as any other democrat. As far as I can tell, Bush is a democrat who is pro life. That sure as shit isn't going to get my vote.
Look I don't buy shit from Abercrombie and Fitch and I go out of my way to avoid Starbucks. I am not a big fan of some companies and tend to vote that way with my dollar if nothing else. However, this stuff really gets boring, really fast. If I read one more book about a fucking evil company that runs around killing people or trying to take over the world, I am going to go sit my ass down at Starbucks and order a something-or-another-latte. No more corporate conspiracies, no more 'megacorps'.
And for the love OF FUCKING GOD, NEVER - EVER - EVER! name the evil company in your story 'OmniCorp'. For fucks sake, everyone has read that book already. We all know if that OmniCorp is evil. Science fiction is falling down the gutter these days. Jesus, I know everyone is terrified McDonalds is going to make them eat a pile of greasy fries at gun point, but could we tone it down a little?
The government should only touch space tourism if it presents a public danger. I have no problem with congress insisting that people don't drop rockets onto houses or spew radiation through the atmosphere. However, when it comes to the risks, congress should stay the hell away from the subject. If private individuals are willing to strap a rocket to their ass and pull the trigger, they should be able to so long as they are only (potentially) hurting themselves. People don't need protection from themselves. Why is congress trying to smack down our pioneers and explorers?
In society there are people who are willing push boundaries and take risks. We NEED these people. These are the people who are willing to push the limits of human expertise. These people drive innovation, some times at the cost of their lives. Congress's duty is not to weed these people out. Congress's only duty should be to ensure that the people who are not willing to risk their lives remain safe. If the explorers of our society are willing to strop a rocket to their ass with a 5% chance of exploding on the way up, that is their business.
I think you miss the point of voting for a third party. There are years (this is one of them) where if I could vote for 'none of the above' and force both parties to recall their canadates and give me new options, I would. I don't even remotely like either choice. I will vote libertarian because as far as I am concerned, both of the two major candidates are roughly equally bad.
Let me put this in words Democrats and Republicans will understand. I am voting 'Anyone But Bush' and 'Anyone But Kerry'. Call my vote a vote against both of them. Honestly, if I could only pick Bush or Kerry, I would simply not vote.
Voting is a method of getting your voice heard. If during an election it was clear that either Kerry or Bush was going win by a landslide, would you simply not vote if your guy was going to loose without a doubt? Of course not. You would vote regardless just so that your voice is heard. You would vote to keep the mandate to to the winner as small as possible. If Bush beats out Kerry 60% to 35%, Bush leaves with a mandate. If Bush beats out Kerry 44% to 43%, then it sends a strong signal that he doesn't have strong majority on his side.
When a Republican or Democrat sees that 10% of the population voted for none of the above, it sends a clear signal to them that people are disgusted. It tells them that they are so disliked that people will happily risk letting them loose just to prove a point.
As a Libertarian, when my two choices are a liberal who wants to enact socialist policies, and a 'conservative' who would take away a woman's right to choose and is one of the worst spenders in history, what how happy I am when I vote for none of the above. I don't want either of the bastards in the oval office, and to be honest, I can't rightly say which one I dislike the most. If the Republicans loose because of the Libertarian vote, good. It will send a very loud and very clear message.
"Get off your elitist high horse. If the majority of the people in the country want a good looking dolt as their leader, why shouldn't they get exactly that?"
So, let me see if I understand. I am an elitist because I don't want 'a good looking dolt' to be the most powerful man in the world? Yeah... that just reeks of elitism.
I suppose you would be for 51% of the population enslaving the other 49% if that is what the majority wanted, or would I be an elitist in calling that a bad idea too? More people voting does not result in a better decision, especially if you are encouraging idiots with no educated opinion to vote.
Honestly, if you don't have the desire to vote, do everyone a favor and don't let your uneducated opinion be heard. More is not better. I would rather have one surgeon performing open heart surgery on me then 100 farms.
People are under the deluded impression that Democracy is just. It isn't. It is just more likely to be just then other forms of government. However, it is perfectly within a democracies ability for 51% of the population to put the other 49% into slavery. The very reason why this nation has a bill of rights is because the founding fathers recognized that Democracy is less then perfect.
Just because 51% of the people say something is right, does not make them right. It just means more people believe one thing over another. Pick your favorite philosopher or political figure. No matter how accepted that person might be right now, at one point they articulated an opinion which the vast majority disagreed with. That didn't make that person wrong, just in disagreement with the rest of the world.
To be perfectly honest, I -don't- want more people to vote. I want less people to vote. As it is now, too many stupid people vote. Too many people vote based upon who has the prettier words, looks the best, or just fills them with a warmer feeling. I don't care if it is the stupid southern house wife you just doesn't trust any liberal because, well, no one in her family ever has since the civil war, or if it is a stupid stoner college student who really has no fucking opinion of his own, but is pretty sure everyone else hates Bush and so he should too. I don't want these people to vote. There input into the system isn't helpful. It is just noise. When they vote, I don't feel any sense of pride that two uneducated idiots made their decision based upon something that has absolutely nothing to do with reality.
Voting is a mechanism to reach a consensus as to who should rule. When you rule, you have the authority to pass laws that will result in violence on the population. I don't care if you pass a law to stop gumball theft. You just authorized violence against your population. Laws don't work without the threat of someone taking either your property or you freedom and sending you to jail.
So, when the decision is coming around as to who gets this power, take it fucking seriously. Don't tell idiots to add their input. If they don't want to vote, good, don't encourage them. The fewer idiots that vote, the more that my vote counts, and the more that non-idiots votes count.
I propose a different solution. Tell your friends not to vote. If they are stupid enough to do as you say, then you are doing the world a favor by keeping them from voting.
I think in order for that question to be valid everyone has to agree the world is going to end in 'the near future'.
Good example. Guess what? If I had a choice to live in an Iraqi battle ground or the culdren of human suffering and death that is North Korea, I would take my chances in Iraq. North Korea might be 'cleaner' because no one is shooting each other, but the whole sale genocide that is happening in North Korea makes Iraq look like merry walk through London.
So, if you want to feel good about yourself, fine take the North Korea rout. If you want to minimize human suffering and death, then the war was a hundred times more humane that what is happening in North Korea.
There are three reasons why the US was convinced there were weapons their when they were not actually there.
First, Saddam wanted the US to think he had weapons. More specifically, he wanted the rest of the Arab world to believe that he had WMDs and that he was holding out against the Americans. You need to realize that Saddam's goal has always been to unite the Arab nations into a single state. He saw his fight with the US as a way to try and unite them. Saddam honestly believed that the US would not invade, and he believed that even if they did he could hold them off long enough to get a negotiated peace like what he got in 1990 while being seen as an Arab hero.
Second, Saddam did give the order to destroy his WMDs after the first gulf war. Unfortunately for him, his orders were executed while his state was in disarray and the normally meticulous Iraqi bureaucracy failed to record properly the destruction of the WMDs. This always confused the hell out of inspectors because as far as they had known Iraq had always been excellent about keeping documents. Now, when they tried to find out where the WMDs were they were confronted with the fact that there was no paperwork and no one who know what they had done with the weapons. A lot of people simply assumed that Saddam was yanking everyone's cord again. It isn't like the words of a fascist (and make no mistake, his regime was a fascist regime) murder who made it a regular habit to lie about WMDs were going to be taken at face value.
Third, the US intelligence agencies truly and honestly were convinced that he was holding out. They were dead set positive that if they could just find any excuse to get in there and do a real search of the country they would find his weapons. So, whenever they looked at data and intelligence they looked at it with the expectation of finding something. Anything that might have pointed towards there being weapons was stacked up much higher then evidence that Saddam had actually carried through with the destruction of his WMDs. The US intelligence agencies were truly and honestly surprised when not only did Saddam not use WMDs on American and allied forces, but were completely surprised to find that it looks like he actually didn't have any weapons. He had the infrastructure to build them, but he wasn't actually perusing anything while the world was staring down in his back yard.
In the end, I don't think it maters. One less fascist regime in the world and the whole sale killing of Iraq civilians through sanctions has stopped. As ugly as the war is, it is a hell of a lot better then what there used to have been. The world either needed to let Saddam go on his merry way and end sanctions, or crushed his government and end sanctions. Either way, the real genocide was when the world imposed sanctions on that nation.
For some reason people seem to find war uglier then sanctions, when the truth is war produces pocket change in terms of causalities compared to sanctions. What is happening in North Korea right now makes Iraq look like utopia. The difference is that we don't see the massive death and human suffering in North Korea because the local government won't let such images escape the border. On the other hand, the images of death and destruction in Iraq are more then prevalent. Believe me, Iraq is by no means a human tragedy compared to the likes of other less visible places in the world. I would rather live in an Iraq battle ground then the wasteland that is North Korea.
I don't think you realize how bad Bush has been for the Islamic fundamentalist movement. I honestly think that if Osama could take back 9/11, he would. It is true that the US has polarized the Islamic world, but look HOW it has been polarized. There used to be a nation that followed the ideals that of the Islamic fundamentalist movement. The Taliban is exactly what they wanted and they had it. He had a nation that sponsored his movement and a safe place to train his men. Now he has absolutely no safe harbor. Absolutely no nation is willing to harbor these people any more because they US has made it very clear that they will not think twice to crush any nation that harbors and supports these terrorist.
Osama has certainly made the best out of a shitty situation, but a nation that would support that likes of Bin Laden is now an utter impossibility. Islamic fundamentalist have been driven from power in the places that they once held. At this point the only thing they can hope to do is to take as many Americans and their supports down with them.
The simple fact of the matter is that if the US doesn't want you to have a sovereign state and you are not China or Russia, you are not going to have one. They very best you can hope for is to deny US soldiers the ability to operate on the ground while keeping the American public sympathetic enough where the military can't take off the gloves and use the full force of the US military. If the best you can hope for is a perpetual state of anarchy, no national government, and an existence comparable to medieval living, you have already lost.
"Does anyone else find it distasteful when a draft dodger calls into question the medals of a war hero?"
Bush never called into question the medals Kerry got. Kerry sure as hell has no problem swinging them around and mentioning them every thirty seconds though. As far as draft dodging, who gives a shit? I would have dodged the Vietnam draft and used every resource in my disposal to get out of service in that killing field. Bush joined the reserves and left the reserves to dodge the draft. Kerry joined the Navy and tried and failed to join a non-combative unit. Who cares? They both tried to dodge going into combat.
It is completely beyond me as to how people could possibly care about how two BOYS (and that is all they were when they served) tried to escape getting shot at.
Please. Vote how you truly want to vote. The vast majority of voters votes will not matter. I live in mass. It doesn't matter who I vote for, Kerry will win. If you live in Texas, no matter how you vote Bush will win. Perhaps if you live in a battle ground state you should vote to make someone loose, but for the vast majority of America, you will do a lot more to get your voice heard if you vote for who you truly believe in.
If you want to "waste" your vote, vote for a guy who isn't your first choice in a non-battle ground state.