Even more strangely, sometimes artists have control of OTHER artist's work. Every time you hear a Beatles tune used in a commercial, it's because Micheal Jackson owns the rights to it and licensed it to finance his amusement park ranch, not because Paul McCartney sold out.
My university actually offers a class called 'Economics and Rock-n-Roll' which discusses how artists routinely get mowed over financially. When I took it (as an econ student) half the class was artsy types who took it on a whim because of the title. Needless to say, it was a real eye-opener for them. Attention all aspiring artists: Take some business courses. Trust me, you need it. Even if you have some artsy notion that business is some terrible thing, you better understand how it works if you ever hope to make a living doing your art. From Mozart to van Gogh to Janis, artists who aren't good with finances end up penniless and the suits end up with nicer suits.
Studio? What studio? Evil Dead was privately financed. Raimi and Campbell raised the money from private investors in Detroit. It was a completely independent film.
Well, the day came, and for a few months you could tell the computer was fighting with limited data. Some weeks would be rediculously overstocked on a few items, others, the leading sellers in the store would have empty shelves. When it finally settled down after a year, it was worse than before the computer.
So I hope everyone realises the point of the above anecdote is that a badly programmed computer system is MUCH worse than no computer system. However, and that the average slashdotter can probably understand, what's just as important is that a properly programmed system can lead to tremendous benefits. See: Wal-Mart. Beware vendor sales reps claiming their product is your one-stop panacea! Sounds like that's what happened to this person's company!
"Remember, you can't spell ExploitAtion without EA."
You can spell "Sucky Comparison". Didn't EA start because independent programmers got together to pool resources? Just do the same thing again if you feel the company is no good!
Look at what the grandparent poster prefers to use now and then tell me that my suggestion he use something a little more technical is a bad idea. I don't have space or time in a/. comment to impart my BA degree in financial analysis; I'm just trying to steer him a better direction from where he is now.
My favorite way of looking at stocks (useless for decisions as I still don't grok it) is the correlation between the analyst recommendations and price/volume.
Using these two criteria is a strategy straight from the boom days. Please pay more attention to price/earnings. This is a (vague) measure of how long in years at the current price to recoup that price just in net earnings (not dividends). So AMD is currently just over 40. By next year, it is expected to go down to just under 30 as conditions improve. 40+ is a dotcom boom number. 30s are high for normal but not completely nuts. In the 20's is reasonable. In the 10's is a public utility. You can watch a stock price move from the low 20's to the 30's as some exuberance kicks in but it will then fall again to the 20's unless there is some REALLY strong evidence market improvements or serious innovation is going to make a huge change in the company's outlook. While this Dell idea is good news for AMD, it isn't enough to make up for a 40+ P/E, IMHO. I just sold AMD for Intel, which at 20 (among other things), makes it look better from an investment point of view. Now watch me get modded flamebait for saying something nice about Intel stock...
Re:This stuff is cool but...
on
Wi-Fi Toys
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Sarcasm over broadcast electricity; sheesh, what are they teaching kids in school these days? Tesla invented technology to do exactly this around 100 years ago. No, you don't get electrocuted. The down side is that modern electronic widgets would get their unshielded brains scrambled. And maybe migratory birds would fly in random directions. And maybe a few other things. But no, you don't get electrocuted. Anyway, Tesla had a flourecent light bulb with nothing attached to it that he could just carry around his lab because he had a mini electricity broadcaster rigged up. He had plans to set up gigantic versions (and actually build one in Colorado) to serve households but it fell through for funding reasons.
Whew, I just can't figure out why people need desktop searching; clean up your icons if you've got so many of the things you need a search engine! Sheesh!
Attention all: Just in case it STILL hasn't sunk in, and apparently it hasn't, everyone who works for a living needs to have a decent level of savings. This is especially important when there's a dependent family in the picture! The article says the family in question was RENTING a house not long ago. Here's a news flash kids: renting a house costs just as much as buying a house except that renting builds no equity value!!! There are federal government programs to help first time buyers so that you don't even need a downpayment! Instead of living in an apartment, which in the same area will cost less than renting an entire house, and saving up this family is now crammed in a motel room! A multi-room apartment would be complete luxury. So if you're living paycheck to paycheck thanks to luxuries like renting a house, a lease on a new car, etc, think about what the people in the story are doing and imagine yourself there. Americans save pitifully little, if at all, and this is what can happen when you don't.
How else could you solve so many problem with a 10 million dollar prize. If Burt Rutan was focused on a lightweight scalable wind turbine - My guess is we'd be there by now. Instead we've invented a private version of the vomit comet.
Let's see: Invention #1, if it can be invented, will provide cheap and unlimited energy to the world population. Profit value: Gajillions. Invention #2, if it can be invented, will provide trips to low Earth orbit for the lucky few who can afford it. Profit value: a few million a year.
Seems to me the key phrase here is "if it can be invented" and not "10 million dollar 'prize' for inventing it". There is a heck of a lot more of a prize in cash terms waiting for invention #1 without a group of hobby enthusiasts offering anything. Doesn't appear you thought before you ranted.
in journalism there's a tradition of printing retractions for mistakes made on page A1 on a future page A1 in order to give the takeback as much exposure as the mistake
Whoa there, this depends on what is being corrected. Corrections shedding a positive light on a politician the editorial board dislights are buried on page P-99, while the original incorrect story putting that politician in a bad light was the lead on A1 with "second coming" sized typeface.
No, my point in asking that is because a constitution is supposed to define the role and/or scope of government. A constitutional amendment is NOT the place to legislate how electricity is generated! The exact wording of the amendment orders a $2 rebate to household electric bills to offset the cost of higher generation. WTF is up with that? In 15 years, who the heck knows what inflation will turn $2 into??? Yet the state will have this as part of its constitution!!! This is the sort of thing that needs to be legislated so it can change from time to time. Some day when $2 is a worthless rebate it will require the amendment process to fix! Then there'll be an amendment to fix the amendment! Argh!!!
Yours is funny but on a serious note, I'm reasonably certain that planetary conjunctions are when they lined up in a row straight out from the sun. This seems to be a case of Venus *eclipsing* Jupiter, not conjuncting.
So, how exactly do you propose getting the solar generated electricity from the equator to the temperate zone population centers? By truck? Same with the wind at the poles. See, the problem is not that there are places where energy could be generated by non fossil fuel methods, the problem is that electricity poorly lends itself to long distance transmission.
Here in Colorado, a state constitution amendment was just passed on the ballot that mandates 10% of the state's electricity come from "renewable" sources. I propose we dam up the creek that runs through Boulder for hydro power. We have plenty of sunshine and plenty of wind but also some days when there's no sun or no wind. Not sure where the extra electricity will come from on those days....
Will someone please tell me how mandating how electricity is to be generated defines the role or scope of government?
My university also tries to limit p2p software but they've overlooked something in being too smart. The wireless network is on a DMZ that doesn't pass through the filter before getting to the wild internet. So while p2p on cable is dismally slow, 3-7KBps, I get 100kbps+ off good torrents while wireless. Sometimes I feel bad for everyone nearby trying to use the wireless for actual academic work when I want to get a large file.
Re:Do you welcome your Islamist overlord?
on
Election Day Discussion
·
· Score: 2, Informative
That list you quote is "from a list of guests" and is NOT a complete list.It is from the Washington Post and another Post article says "President Bush, insisting that Arafat take more decisive action to rein in Palestinian militants, has refused to invite him to the White House, where Arafat was a frequent guest during the Clinton administration."
From American Spectator:"Bill Clinton, for example, invited a terrorist to the White House who had conspired in the deaths of Americans, even letting him sleep and sate himself at taxpayer expense as an honored guest for weeks at a time. His name was Yasser Arafat, the Kato Kaelin of the Clinton years, bunking so frequently at the White House the press described him as a "constant guest." One of Arafat's terrorists, marveling at his White House residency, was able to brag to the press, "Arafat was a guest at the White House more often than Netanyahu was."
What a stunning example of the slashdot mod system that your partial list is 'insightful'...
Uncle Osama urges you to vote for Kerry if you know what's good for you:
Your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security.
Read the entire rant not just the select bits you hear on the news. Note especially how the person whose organization planned and executed mulitple terrorist attacks (African embassies, USS Cole, first WTC bombing) during the Clinton administration claims that 9/11 was because of Bush's policies concerning the Palestinians. Who was the #1 overnight guest in the Clinton White House? Arafat!
the rest of the world watches news - america watches fox
So the rest of the world watches highly liberal spun information from slef-proclaimed neutral presenters (not!) while Fox, who has admitted commentators who give conservative spin is not worthy?
No kidding! To my dismay, I discovered that Toshiba's proprietary implementation of the GeForce2Go chip is unsupported by NVidia's stock Linux drivers. So there's no way to get Linux support better than unaccellerated 800x600x8 on my laptop. I could put up with it, I suppose, but it's no fun.
Re:Well, since I can't get to the article...
on
Verified Voting
·
· Score: 1
1. "War of Choice" is loaded language from a predetermined point of view. Of course I ignore it; it's just grandstanding. 2. re: armor. See explaination of apropriation process. 3. It seems there are people complaining there are not enough and others (including the commander on the scene, Tommy Franks) who say it is enough. Franks was on one of the majors yesterday (ABC?) stating exactly this. 4&5. Just goes to show that there are people complaining and people think things are going well. I like the way: there are local elections and the first representative government bodies in 35 years, more schools for children are open now than before the war, girls are allowed in those schools, and women are allowed to go to work if they choose. Those last two should be the final word for any women; how can you protest 1/2 of the population finally being allowed these basic freedoms? 6. A local talk radio guy who is retired from the Marines called someone he knows in the Navy and asked about this. The Navy guy said that for family morale, most ships have a self-congradulatory message on a banner when pulling into port. The one during the Bush photo-op was put up early since they were still well out to sea, but it is typical of what ships do just before pulling in after a combat mission. 7. Casual? Hardly: "OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda". Please see: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp 10: Look at that link you've provided. There's a guy with a crew cut (not even a helmet) wearing a plain tan shirt (no flack jacket, no equipment) looking at a wooden box labeled "Explosives" in English. All the crates are neatly labelled in English. Umm, last I checked, they speak, read, and write in Arabic. Please see: http://www.settlement.org/cp/english/iraq/commun.h tml
Color me suspicious for the time being. Furthermore, there are supposed to be hundreds of tons of explosives and it states ominously that were several guys in a pickup truck acted suspiciously. How many trips in a beater pickup do you have to make to haul off a hundred tons? Please, that article and its pictures stink of CBS memo. While we're on this topic, please see: http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins20041 0270816.asp So which is it??? There's no WMD nuclear bomb materiel and the whole thing is a bunch of lies OR were there hundreds of tons of ignition explosives whose only design purpose is starting nuclear explosions? You can't complain these explosives are missing and at the same time say there was no WMD reason for the war!!!
This brings us to a discussion of terrorism in general. First, what is terrorism? It is a political tool, but not the one most people initially think. IMO, its primary purpose is not actually to attack and do damage to the percieved enemy. Instead, it is a political tool used by dictatorships to direct hostility outward. Think about what the living conditions are like in these mideast countries. A small group controlls most of the wealth, and a great deal of wealth it is. To protect this wealth, they very greatly restrict rights. See me above: for the first time, "girls are allowed in those schools, and women are allowed to go to work if they choose". The guys fare only marginally better. Unemployment is rampant (30, 40, even over 50%) mostly due to severe restrictions on private enterprise. So what are all these unemployed young guys to do? Well, they obviously feel marginalized, impotent, and extremely frustrated. They can either turn that frustration into overthrowing the current government OR they can be taught from an early age that the big bad enemy (USA in particular and westerners in ge
Re:Well, since I can't get to the article...
on
Verified Voting
·
· Score: 1
Let's address this list from thenation.com:
#1. Simply states a dollar amount.
#2. This is a common Democrat sniping point. Hummvees are jeeps. They are not armored vehicles. Armor for the undersides was added later when Iraqi insurgents started putting mines in the roads. Why did it take time to get this added? Perhaps you recall the much hyped (and much spun) stories of military contract overspending from the 1980s. The budget controls subsequently put in place by Congress with many, many levels of oversight make it take 9 months or more for even the simplest appropriation. The president, of any party, is unable to wave a magic wand and make equipment appear. It ALL has to go through the appropriations process, even if there is a war looming and/or underway.
#3. Other generals have other opinions. It's nice that you can find someone to disagree. Furthermore, more troops would mean even more money. If point #1 is complaining about money, don't complain that more was not spent already.
#6: Every ship that comes back from a war theatre runs such a banner; it was not there for GWB. Since the Iraqi army/navy/air force was no longer fighting back, that means "major combat operations are over". The enemy army defeated does not mean there is not significant policing left to do, but yes, it DOES mean that major operations are over.
7: The 9/11 commission found that Hussein's government had a lot of casual relations with a lot of terrorist networks. Are you unaware that official checks drawn on Iraq's central bank, payable in $25,000 US dollars were paid to the families of Hamas suicide bombers? Which part of central bank checks is not direct involvement in terror activities? Notice there's been hardly any suicide bombers in the last year in Isreal?
#8: Pardon my skepticism of a reporter's take on a story. See here for an in-depth analysis of the aluminum tubes issue: http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/alumi numtubes.html
#9: I don't understand this one. Number 1 might complain about the cost, yet here there is a complaint that not all the money has been spent immediately. ???
#10. Where did the trucks (observed by satellite the week before the invasion) take all the explosives that Kerry has been blaring the army "lost"? And that's another one. The inspectors say the explosives were there the month before invasion, the reports embedded with the troops say they weren't there on the first day of occupation, and Kerry is running his mouth that GWB personally lost these explosives and making it sound like last week.
Anyway, it goes on and on, all of the 100 points are spin at best and partial or misrepresented information at best.
So about the Democrats on the terror issue... 1: Why did they bomb the Trade Center when Clinton was president when the #1 most frequent overnight guest in the Clinton White House was Arafat? 2: Why did the terrorists blow up the USS Cole while the American military was defending Albanian muslims from genocide at the hands of Christian Serbs? 3: Why did they blow up the embassies in Africa during this same time period?
Terrorism is NOT a result of GWB's policies. They do NOT want to be left alone in their corner of the world! They want to come here and kill you because you are not a member of their branch of Islam. You can pick a presidential candidate who thinks this is an annoyance and they will still come to kill you or you can pick a presidential candidate who will send the army to try to kill them first.
Slashdot Mirror
Even more strangely, sometimes artists have control of OTHER artist's work. Every time you hear a Beatles tune used in a commercial, it's because Micheal Jackson owns the rights to it and licensed it to finance his amusement park ranch, not because Paul McCartney sold out.
My university actually offers a class called 'Economics and Rock-n-Roll' which discusses how artists routinely get mowed over financially. When I took it (as an econ student) half the class was artsy types who took it on a whim because of the title. Needless to say, it was a real eye-opener for them. Attention all aspiring artists: Take some business courses. Trust me, you need it. Even if you have some artsy notion that business is some terrible thing, you better understand how it works if you ever hope to make a living doing your art. From Mozart to van Gogh to Janis, artists who aren't good with finances end up penniless and the suits end up with nicer suits.
but had done Evil Dead with a different studio
Studio? What studio? Evil Dead was privately financed. Raimi and Campbell raised the money from private investors in Detroit. It was a completely independent film.
The phrase in development is 'cheaper, faster, better: pick two' can be modified for the topic at hand: 'secure, useable, cheaper, faster: pick two'
Well, the day came, and for a few months you could tell the computer was fighting with limited data. Some weeks would be rediculously overstocked on a few items, others, the leading sellers in the store would have empty shelves. When it finally settled down after a year, it was worse than before the computer.
So I hope everyone realises the point of the above anecdote is that a badly programmed computer system is MUCH worse than no computer system. However, and that the average slashdotter can probably understand, what's just as important is that a properly programmed system can lead to tremendous benefits. See: Wal-Mart. Beware vendor sales reps claiming their product is your one-stop panacea! Sounds like that's what happened to this person's company!
France, from what I understand, merely didn't have an actual government in power at the time
They had a French made government in power; oh, wait, you're on to something...
"Remember, you can't spell ExploitAtion without EA."
You can spell "Sucky Comparison". Didn't EA start because independent programmers got together to pool resources? Just do the same thing again if you feel the company is no good!
Look at what the grandparent poster prefers to use now and then tell me that my suggestion he use something a little more technical is a bad idea. I don't have space or time in a /. comment to impart my BA degree in financial analysis; I'm just trying to steer him a better direction from where he is now.
My favorite way of looking at stocks (useless for decisions as I still don't grok it) is the correlation between the analyst recommendations and price/volume.
Using these two criteria is a strategy straight from the boom days. Please pay more attention to price/earnings. This is a (vague) measure of how long in years at the current price to recoup that price just in net earnings (not dividends). So AMD is currently just over 40. By next year, it is expected to go down to just under 30 as conditions improve. 40+ is a dotcom boom number. 30s are high for normal but not completely nuts. In the 20's is reasonable. In the 10's is a public utility. You can watch a stock price move from the low 20's to the 30's as some exuberance kicks in but it will then fall again to the 20's unless there is some REALLY strong evidence market improvements or serious innovation is going to make a huge change in the company's outlook. While this Dell idea is good news for AMD, it isn't enough to make up for a 40+ P/E, IMHO. I just sold AMD for Intel, which at 20 (among other things), makes it look better from an investment point of view. Now watch me get modded flamebait for saying something nice about Intel stock...
Sarcasm over broadcast electricity; sheesh, what are they teaching kids in school these days? Tesla invented technology to do exactly this around 100 years ago. No, you don't get electrocuted. The down side is that modern electronic widgets would get their unshielded brains scrambled. And maybe migratory birds would fly in random directions. And maybe a few other things. But no, you don't get electrocuted. Anyway, Tesla had a flourecent light bulb with nothing attached to it that he could just carry around his lab because he had a mini electricity broadcaster rigged up. He had plans to set up gigantic versions (and actually build one in Colorado) to serve households but it fell through for funding reasons.
Desktop Search is a must-have for me
Whew, I just can't figure out why people need desktop searching; clean up your icons if you've got so many of the things you need a search engine! Sheesh!
Attention all: Just in case it STILL hasn't sunk in, and apparently it hasn't, everyone who works for a living needs to have a decent level of savings. This is especially important when there's a dependent family in the picture! The article says the family in question was RENTING a house not long ago. Here's a news flash kids: renting a house costs just as much as buying a house except that renting builds no equity value!!! There are federal government programs to help first time buyers so that you don't even need a downpayment! Instead of living in an apartment, which in the same area will cost less than renting an entire house, and saving up this family is now crammed in a motel room! A multi-room apartment would be complete luxury. So if you're living paycheck to paycheck thanks to luxuries like renting a house, a lease on a new car, etc, think about what the people in the story are doing and imagine yourself there. Americans save pitifully little, if at all, and this is what can happen when you don't.
How else could you solve so many problem with a 10 million dollar prize. If Burt Rutan was focused on a lightweight scalable wind turbine - My guess is we'd be there by now. Instead we've invented a private version of the vomit comet.
Let's see:
Invention #1, if it can be invented, will provide cheap and unlimited energy to the world population. Profit value: Gajillions.
Invention #2, if it can be invented, will provide trips to low Earth orbit for the lucky few who can afford it. Profit value: a few million a year.
Seems to me the key phrase here is "if it can be invented" and not "10 million dollar 'prize' for inventing it". There is a heck of a lot more of a prize in cash terms waiting for invention #1 without a group of hobby enthusiasts offering anything. Doesn't appear you thought before you ranted.
in journalism there's a tradition of printing retractions for mistakes made on page A1 on a future page A1 in order to give the takeback as much exposure as the mistake
Whoa there, this depends on what is being corrected. Corrections shedding a positive light on a politician the editorial board dislights are buried on page P-99, while the original incorrect story putting that politician in a bad light was the lead on A1 with "second coming" sized typeface.
if this technology falls into the "wrong hands"
Dude, it's *psychic* technology... it's in everyone's head already.
No, my point in asking that is because a constitution is supposed to define the role and/or scope of government. A constitutional amendment is NOT the place to legislate how electricity is generated! The exact wording of the amendment orders a $2 rebate to household electric bills to offset the cost of higher generation. WTF is up with that? In 15 years, who the heck knows what inflation will turn $2 into??? Yet the state will have this as part of its constitution!!! This is the sort of thing that needs to be legislated so it can change from time to time. Some day when $2 is a worthless rebate it will require the amendment process to fix! Then there'll be an amendment to fix the amendment! Argh!!!
Yours is funny but on a serious note, I'm reasonably certain that planetary conjunctions are when they lined up in a row straight out from the sun. This seems to be a case of Venus *eclipsing* Jupiter, not conjuncting.
buy our electricity from the french
This is a great idea; salt water conducts electricity so we won't even need to lay cables.
So, how exactly do you propose getting the solar generated electricity from the equator to the temperate zone population centers? By truck? Same with the wind at the poles. See, the problem is not that there are places where energy could be generated by non fossil fuel methods, the problem is that electricity poorly lends itself to long distance transmission.
Here in Colorado, a state constitution amendment was just passed on the ballot that mandates 10% of the state's electricity come from "renewable" sources. I propose we dam up the creek that runs through Boulder for hydro power. We have plenty of sunshine and plenty of wind but also some days when there's no sun or no wind. Not sure where the extra electricity will come from on those days....
Will someone please tell me how mandating how electricity is to be generated defines the role or scope of government?
My university also tries to limit p2p software but they've overlooked something in being too smart. The wireless network is on a DMZ that doesn't pass through the filter before getting to the wild internet. So while p2p on cable is dismally slow, 3-7KBps, I get 100kbps+ off good torrents while wireless. Sometimes I feel bad for everyone nearby trying to use the wireless for actual academic work when I want to get a large file.
That list you quote is "from a list of guests" and is NOT a complete list.It is from the Washington Post and another Post article says "President Bush, insisting that Arafat take more decisive action to rein in Palestinian militants, has refused to invite him to the White House, where Arafat was a frequent guest during the Clinton administration."
From American Spectator:"Bill Clinton, for example, invited a terrorist to the White House who had conspired in the deaths of Americans, even letting him sleep and sate himself at taxpayer expense as an honored guest for weeks at a time. His name was Yasser Arafat, the Kato Kaelin of the Clinton years, bunking so frequently at the White House the press described him as a "constant guest." One of Arafat's terrorists, marveling at his White House residency, was able to brag to the press, "Arafat was a guest at the White House more often than Netanyahu was."
What a stunning example of the slashdot mod system that your partial list is 'insightful'...
Uncle Osama urges you to vote for Kerry if you know what's good for you:
Your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security.
Read the entire rant not just the select bits you hear on the news. Note especially how the person whose organization planned and executed mulitple terrorist attacks (African embassies, USS Cole, first WTC bombing) during the Clinton administration claims that 9/11 was because of Bush's policies concerning the Palestinians. Who was the #1 overnight guest in the Clinton White House? Arafat!
the rest of the world watches news - america watches fox
So the rest of the world watches highly liberal spun information from slef-proclaimed neutral presenters (not!) while Fox, who has admitted commentators who give conservative spin is not worthy?
No kidding! To my dismay, I discovered that Toshiba's proprietary implementation of the GeForce2Go chip is unsupported by NVidia's stock Linux drivers. So there's no way to get Linux support better than unaccellerated 800x600x8 on my laptop. I could put up with it, I suppose, but it's no fun.
1. "War of Choice" is loaded language from a predetermined point of view. Of course I ignore it; it's just grandstanding.
2. re: armor. See explaination of apropriation process.
3. It seems there are people complaining there are not enough and others (including the commander on the scene, Tommy Franks) who say it is enough. Franks was on one of the majors yesterday (ABC?) stating exactly this.
4&5. Just goes to show that there are people complaining and people think things are going well. I like the way: there are local elections and the first representative government bodies in 35 years, more schools for children are open now than before the war, girls are allowed in those schools, and women are allowed to go to work if they choose. Those last two should be the final word for any women; how can you protest 1/2 of the population finally being allowed these basic freedoms?
6. A local talk radio guy who is retired from the Marines called someone he knows in the Navy and asked about this. The Navy guy said that for family morale, most ships have a self-congradulatory message on a banner when pulling into port. The one during the Bush photo-op was put up early since they were still well out to sea, but it is typical of what ships do just before pulling in after a combat mission.
7. Casual? Hardly: "OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda". Please see: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp
10: Look at that link you've provided. There's a guy with a crew cut (not even a helmet) wearing a plain tan shirt (no flack jacket, no equipment) looking at a wooden box labeled "Explosives" in English. All the crates are neatly labelled in English. Umm, last I checked, they speak, read, and write in Arabic. Please see: http://www.settlement.org/cp/english/iraq/commun.h tml
Color me suspicious for the time being.
Furthermore, there are supposed to be hundreds of tons of explosives and it states ominously that were several guys in a pickup truck acted suspiciously. How many trips in a beater pickup do you have to make to haul off a hundred tons? Please, that article and its pictures stink of CBS memo.
While we're on this topic, please see: http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins20041 0270816.asp
So which is it??? There's no WMD nuclear bomb materiel and the whole thing is a bunch of lies OR were there hundreds of tons of ignition explosives whose only design purpose is starting nuclear explosions? You can't complain these explosives are missing and at the same time say there was no WMD reason for the war!!!
This brings us to a discussion of terrorism in general. First, what is terrorism? It is a political tool, but not the one most people initially think. IMO, its primary purpose is not actually to attack and do damage to the percieved enemy. Instead, it is a political tool used by dictatorships to direct hostility outward. Think about what the living conditions are like in these mideast countries. A small group controlls most of the wealth, and a great deal of wealth it is. To protect this wealth, they very greatly restrict rights. See me above: for the first time, "girls are allowed in those schools, and women are allowed to go to work if they choose". The guys fare only marginally better. Unemployment is rampant (30, 40, even over 50%) mostly due to severe restrictions on private enterprise. So what are all these unemployed young guys to do? Well, they obviously feel marginalized, impotent, and extremely frustrated. They can either turn that frustration into overthrowing the current government OR they can be taught from an early age that the big bad enemy (USA in particular and westerners in ge
Let's address this list from thenation.com:
_ abo.html
i numtubes.html
#1. Simply states a dollar amount.
#2. This is a common Democrat sniping point. Hummvees are jeeps. They are not armored vehicles. Armor for the undersides was added later when Iraqi insurgents started putting mines in the roads. Why did it take time to get this added? Perhaps you recall the much hyped (and much spun) stories of military contract overspending from the 1980s. The budget controls subsequently put in place by Congress with many, many levels of oversight make it take 9 months or more for even the simplest appropriation. The president, of any party, is unable to wave a magic wand and make equipment appear. It ALL has to go through the appropriations process, even if there is a war looming and/or underway.
#3. Other generals have other opinions. It's nice that you can find someone to disagree. Furthermore, more troops would mean even more money. If point #1 is complaining about money, don't complain that more was not spent already.
#4, #5: http://www.blackfive.net/main/2004/08/this_war_is
#6: Every ship that comes back from a war theatre runs such a banner; it was not there for GWB. Since the Iraqi army/navy/air force was no longer fighting back, that means "major combat operations are over". The enemy army defeated does not mean there is not significant policing left to do, but yes, it DOES mean that major operations are over.
7: The 9/11 commission found that Hussein's government had a lot of casual relations with a lot of terrorist networks. Are you unaware that official checks drawn on Iraq's central bank, payable in $25,000 US dollars were paid to the families of Hamas suicide bombers? Which part of central bank checks is not direct involvement in terror activities? Notice there's been hardly any suicide bombers in the last year in Isreal?
#8: Pardon my skepticism of a reporter's take on a story. See here for an in-depth analysis of the aluminum tubes issue: http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/alum
#9: I don't understand this one. Number 1 might complain about the cost, yet here there is a complaint that not all the money has been spent immediately. ???
#10. Where did the trucks (observed by satellite the week before the invasion) take all the explosives that Kerry has been blaring the army "lost"? And that's another one. The inspectors say the explosives were there the month before invasion, the reports embedded with the troops say they weren't there on the first day of occupation, and Kerry is running his mouth that GWB personally lost these explosives and making it sound like last week.
Anyway, it goes on and on, all of the 100 points are spin at best and partial or misrepresented information at best.
So about the Democrats on the terror issue... 1: Why did they bomb the Trade Center when Clinton was president when the #1 most frequent overnight guest in the Clinton White House was Arafat? 2: Why did the terrorists blow up the USS Cole while the American military was defending Albanian muslims from genocide at the hands of Christian Serbs? 3: Why did they blow up the embassies in Africa during this same time period?
Terrorism is NOT a result of GWB's policies. They do NOT want to be left alone in their corner of the world! They want to come here and kill you because you are not a member of their branch of Islam. You can pick a presidential candidate who thinks this is an annoyance and they will still come to kill you or you can pick a presidential candidate who will send the army to try to kill them first.