It doesn't matter, if it has to do with guns the ACLU won't touch it. Ballistic fingerprinting isn't only a 2nd Ammendment issue -- it's also objectionable on 4th, 5th, and 6th Ammendment grounds -- yet the ACLU has yet to file a suit against any of the states which require it. The ACLU was also without comment when the Democrats were insisting that DoJ turn over records of NICS check (required by law to be destroyed) to help find terrorists. Another clear violation of the 4th Ammendment, but since it only affects gun owners the ACLU couldn't care less.
If anyone can cite a single case in the last decade where the ACLU aided a gun owner on any related issue (doesn't have to be 2nd Amendment) I become a member today.
The ACLU is too busy insisting that anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional (anything two consenting adults do in private doesn't bother me, but there's nothing unconstitutional about the laws) and demanding protection for fictitious rights (like the right to privacy) to actually be useful.
Here's a DoD press release from 2000 citing 435 (113 on-duty) accidental deaths for the year which is actually more than one a day. They weren't all training accidents, but the accidental death rate for peacetime is over 30/100,000/year assigned troops.
Yes, it's an opinion piece by Saxby Chambliss -- a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- about the evidence of WMDs he has been shown, and why most of the media refuses to report on it.
Which one of those statments are you claiming was false?
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
Even without the qualifier this statement is true. David Kay found plenty of evidence to back it up.
The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda.
You probably don't disagree with the first sentence, but the second one is true too.
The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.
So, you don't think it would be dangerous if terrorists were to use WMDs against the US or another country?
We lose almost a soldier a day in training accidents when we aren't at war. Soldiers die, it's what they do. It's their contribution. Now that we know to expect the deaths of soldiers, do you just want to hear that they died, or what they've helped accomplish?
When some group or country thinks it's in the right while many outsiders are sure it's doing wrong, the correct response is to objectively look at and re-evaluate its position.
That's very interesting. And if there are no "moral truths" where do you start your objective evalutation?
What a great example of a strawman argument. I never said, 'morally absolutely wrong to kill another living soul', and I don't agree with it.
If you want to cry moral rules, look at the 7 deadly sins.
Why? Just another strawman. I never claimed that the 7 deadly sins were moral truths.
The issue is not what absolutes constitute good or evil, but that such absolutes exist. Attacking a specific set of moral absolutes does nothing to bolster the claim that there no valid absolutes.
I have news for you. The PNAC crowd have every intention of having the US develop these weapons, just as Israel is known to be working on such weapons.
Your statement is worthless if you can't prove it.
You think you are being open minded, but you aren't. You have closed you mind to the reality that there are moral absolutes.
Shit happens. Everyone - people and countries - make horrible mistakes. And making an honest mistake doesn't make them evil.
So, we should chalk up Saddam gasing to death thousands of Kurds to an "honest mistake?" The same for Hitler's "Final Solution," right? They weren't bad people, just misunderstood.
But to say that one side is "good" by definition, by someone's fiat, and the other side is "bad" - this is just blind arrogance and jingoism of the worst head-in-ass kind.
It isn't by fiat. It is by way of logical reasoning starting with the reality that there are moral truths. If you refuse to acknowledge that there is "good" and "bad" you will never be able to tell the difference. You have no moral compass and can't tell the difference between good and evil, so you've decided that there is no evil in the world, only shades of good. And you think I'm the one with my head up my ass?
In my book, whoever has nuclear weapons or other WMDs is just as dangerous.
So you'd feelequally threatened if Mother Teresa or Kim Jong Il had their finger on the trigger of a nuclear arsenal? Fah. Tell me another one.
Talk about out of context quoting. The sentence you quoted is from a section of the paper discussing predictions about the future of warfare, not the desires of PNAC. That sentence comes from a paragraph which in particular references the THREATS the US may face in the future.
Let's have a little more context, shall we?
Space itself will become a theater of war, as nations gain access to space capabilities and come to rely on them; further, the distinction between military and commercial space systems - combatants and noncombatants - will become blurred. Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces. And advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.
This is merely a glimpse of the possibilities inherent in the process of transformation, not a precise prediction. Whatever the shape and direction of this revolution in military affairs, the implications for continued American military preeminence will be profound.[emphasis added]
I would suggest that anyone who seeks to draw a conclusion from this actually read the paper for themselves.
Because I know the difference between good and bad. Do you? I can draw conclusions based on facts and I can defend those conclusions with evidence.
Righteousness is relative and in this age no one can argue in favour of "Might is the right".
Ah, so the regime of Kim Jong Il is just as "righteous" as the US government? Idi Amin and Tony Blair are morally equal? I don't think so. Righteousness is most certainly not relative. There are absolute truths of good and bad, right and wrong.
I see USA's view of "Although I can do these things freely, you can't" as a hypocrisy.
You can see it as whatever you like. The United States of America was founded on the principle that freedom is an inalienable right of ALL people. This belief gives us all the moral support we need to promote individual freedom (by force if neccesary) all over the world. The current government of North Korea is an enemy of individual freedom, so they do not have the moral support to engage in the same types of activity. It is not hypocritical of the US to engage in behaviors that we find unacceptable for others.
There's a problem with your equivalency argument. We are the good guys, and North Korea and Iran are the bad guys. If you don't accept that basic premise then you will simply spiral yourself down the falacious path of moral relativism.
Let's say you come over to my house with your new Hansen CD and want to make 10 thousand copies and I say, "Here, use this CD duplicator that I built." That would clearly be contributory infringement. If I tell you to go next door because Fred has a duplicating machine he'll let you use for 50 bucks, a jury might determine that was still a material contribution and thus contributory infringement.
In terms of individual accidents hydro-electric power is the LEAST safe form of generation and nuclear is the safest. Individual hydro-electric accidents, while rare, typically kill thousands. Long term, oil and natural gas are probably the least safe, but nuclear is still the safest (maybe solar is safer, but that doesn't really count). For some data, you might want to check out these tables. And don't forget that when considering the human hazards of coal and oil you must consider the deaths and injuries associated with mining and drilling/refining operations.
Nuclear power is cheaper, cleaner, and safer than the alternatives. It is also indefinately sustainable and produces much less waste when breeder reactors are used. I don't know what point you are trying to make about blowing up stars. The only reason that nuclear generated electricity is not cheap and plentiful is because of artificial constraints on the market.
They can also write underwater, through grease, and at very low temperatures. On Earth or in space they still have advantages over the ordinary ballpoint.
The next time something goes wrong no body wants to be the engineer who didn't warn management. Look far a lot more of these announcements of engineers predicting bad things, just in case.
And how the hell do you figure that corn oil (or ANY bio-Diesel) as an automotive fuel is inefficient?
There have been studies that have shown that it takes more energy to turn corn into fuel than oil or coal. As for recycling C02, you can't get more carbon out of the corn than it takes from the atmosphere, so at best it is a zero sum game, but you have to add in the carbon costs of farming the corn and turning it into fuel. If you get all your fuel for production from corn, it's no longer even close to zero sum due to production losses, and now you are looking at ever increasing corn fields and production facilities. The appeal of bio-diesel is not lack of pollution (it pollutes more in some cases), but renewability. It turns out that it isn't so renewable.
Electric cars are NOT more efficient than gasoline powered cars for two reasons. Current battery technology just isn't there. Storage and transportation losses for electricity are huge. And where does the electricity come from? Most of it comes from burning coal or natural gas. Due to these inefficiencies electric cars can actually be responsible for more carbon emissions than gasoline powered cars. This will only change when we start getting more power from nuclear.
France is doing great with nuclear power, but the biggest downside of nuclear is waste storage. Breeder reactors reduce this burden tremendously, but unfortunatly we can't build them in this country.
You've engineered a system that is capable of 0 planned or unplanned downtime? The idea of clusters and redundant systems is you can take any member offline (planned or unplanned) and not affect operations.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. By design there is far more discussion of violence on anti-self-defense websites than on ANY of the NRA sites, especially the NRA-ILA sites.
It doesn't matter, if it has to do with guns the ACLU won't touch it. Ballistic fingerprinting isn't only a 2nd Ammendment issue -- it's also objectionable on 4th, 5th, and 6th Ammendment grounds -- yet the ACLU has yet to file a suit against any of the states which require it. The ACLU was also without comment when the Democrats were insisting that DoJ turn over records of NICS check (required by law to be destroyed) to help find terrorists. Another clear violation of the 4th Ammendment, but since it only affects gun owners the ACLU couldn't care less.
If anyone can cite a single case in the last decade where the ACLU aided a gun owner on any related issue (doesn't have to be 2nd Amendment) I become a member today.
The ACLU is too busy insisting that anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional (anything two consenting adults do in private doesn't bother me, but there's nothing unconstitutional about the laws) and demanding protection for fictitious rights (like the right to privacy) to actually be useful.
Sites that are "anti-gun" oriented generally do NOT have much to do with actual guns and their usage
That's actually quite true. I wonder how Symantec classifies these sites, fantasy? None of them contain any semblance of reality.
Here's a DoD press release from 2000 citing 435 (113 on-duty) accidental deaths for the year
which is actually more than one a day. They weren't all training accidents, but the accidental death rate for peacetime is over 30/100,000/year assigned troops.
Yes, it's an opinion piece by Saxby Chambliss -- a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- about the evidence of WMDs he has been shown, and why most of the media refuses to report on it.
Which one of those statments are you claiming was false?
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
Even without the qualifier this statement is true. David Kay found plenty of evidence to back it up.
The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda.
You probably don't disagree with the first sentence, but the second one is true too.
The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.
So, you don't think it would be dangerous if terrorists were to use WMDs against the US or another country?
We lose almost a soldier a day in training accidents when we aren't at war. Soldiers die, it's what they do. It's their contribution. Now that we know to expect the deaths of soldiers, do you just want to hear that they died, or what they've helped accomplish?
When some group or country thinks it's in the right while many outsiders are sure it's doing wrong, the correct response is to objectively look at and re-evaluate its position.
That's very interesting. And if there are no "moral truths" where do you start your objective evalutation?
What a great example of a strawman argument. I never said, 'morally absolutely wrong to kill another living soul', and I don't agree with it.
If you want to cry moral rules, look at the 7 deadly sins.
Why? Just another strawman. I never claimed that the 7 deadly sins were moral truths.
The issue is not what absolutes constitute good or evil, but that such absolutes exist. Attacking a specific set of moral absolutes does nothing to bolster the claim that there no valid absolutes.
I have news for you. The PNAC crowd have every intention of having the US develop these weapons, just as Israel is known to be working on such weapons.
Your statement is worthless if you can't prove it.
Actually, moral relativism is rejected by pretty much everyone serious about philosophy.
We can disagree on what constitues good and evil, but to claim that there is no distinction is just silly.
I do not think many people argue with stopping genocide in progress,
cf. Rwanda
or defending from known terrorists
cf. The ACLU
when we attack a country for no good reason except for frustration and grudges and then write the rules as we go,
Evil is real.
You think you are being open minded, but you aren't. You have closed you mind to the reality that there are moral absolutes.
Shit happens. Everyone - people and countries - make horrible mistakes. And making an honest mistake doesn't make them evil.
So, we should chalk up Saddam gasing to death thousands of Kurds to an "honest mistake?" The same for Hitler's "Final Solution," right? They weren't bad people, just misunderstood.
But to say that one side is "good" by definition, by someone's fiat, and the other side is "bad" - this is just blind arrogance and jingoism of the worst head-in-ass kind.
It isn't by fiat. It is by way of logical reasoning starting with the reality that there are moral truths. If you refuse to acknowledge that there is "good" and "bad" you will never be able to tell the difference. You have no moral compass and can't tell the difference between good and evil, so you've decided that there is no evil in the world, only shades of good. And you think I'm the one with my head up my ass?
In my book, whoever has nuclear weapons or other WMDs is just as dangerous.
So you'd feelequally threatened if Mother Teresa or Kim Jong Il had their finger on the trigger of a nuclear arsenal? Fah. Tell me another one.
Let's have a little more context, shall we?
I would suggest that anyone who seeks to draw a conclusion from this actually read the paper for themselves.
How do you know you are the good guys?
Because I know the difference between good and bad. Do you? I can draw conclusions based on facts and I can defend those conclusions with evidence.
Righteousness is relative and in this age no one can argue in favour of "Might is the right".
Ah, so the regime of Kim Jong Il is just as "righteous" as the US government? Idi Amin and Tony Blair are morally equal? I don't think so. Righteousness is most certainly not relative. There are absolute truths of good and bad, right and wrong.
I see USA's view of "Although I can do these things freely, you can't" as a hypocrisy.
You can see it as whatever you like. The United States of America was founded on the principle that freedom is an inalienable right of ALL people. This belief gives us all the moral support we need to promote individual freedom (by force if neccesary) all over the world. The current government of North Korea is an enemy of individual freedom, so they do not have the moral support to engage in the same types of activity. It is not hypocritical of the US to engage in behaviors that we find unacceptable for others.
There's a problem with your equivalency argument. We are the good guys, and North Korea and Iran are the bad guys. If you don't accept that basic premise then you will simply spiral yourself down the falacious path of moral relativism.
Maybe, but that's a stupid analogy.
Let's say you come over to my house with your new Hansen CD and want to make 10 thousand copies and I say, "Here, use this CD duplicator that I built." That would clearly be contributory infringement. If I tell you to go next door because Fred has a duplicating machine he'll let you use for 50 bucks, a jury might determine that was still a material contribution and thus contributory infringement.
That's because you left off the http:// in your tag.
In terms of individual accidents hydro-electric power is the LEAST safe form of generation and nuclear is the safest. Individual hydro-electric accidents, while rare, typically kill thousands. Long term, oil and natural gas are probably the least safe, but nuclear is still the safest (maybe solar is safer, but that doesn't really count). For some data, you might want to check out these tables.
And don't forget that when considering the human hazards of coal and oil you must consider the deaths and injuries associated with mining and drilling/refining operations.
Nuclear power is cheaper, cleaner, and safer than the alternatives. It is also indefinately sustainable and produces much less waste when breeder reactors are used. I don't know what point you are trying to make about blowing up stars. The only reason that nuclear generated electricity is not cheap and plentiful is because of artificial constraints on the market.
Yes, someday tens of thousands of years from now. Unless the environmentatlists let us start building nuclear powerplants again.
They can also write underwater, through grease, and at very low temperatures. On Earth or in space they still have advantages over the ordinary ballpoint.
The next time something goes wrong no body wants to be the engineer who didn't warn management. Look far a lot more of these announcements of engineers predicting bad things, just in case.
And how the hell do you figure that corn oil (or ANY bio-Diesel) as an automotive fuel is inefficient?
There have been studies that have shown that it takes more energy to turn corn into fuel than oil or coal. As for recycling C02, you can't get more carbon out of the corn than it takes from the atmosphere, so at best it is a zero sum game, but you have to add in the carbon costs of farming the corn and turning it into fuel. If you get all your fuel for production from corn, it's no longer even close to zero sum due to production losses, and now you are looking at ever increasing corn fields and production facilities. The appeal of bio-diesel is not lack of pollution (it pollutes more in some cases), but renewability. It turns out that it isn't so renewable.
Electric cars are NOT more efficient than gasoline powered cars for two reasons. Current battery technology just isn't there. Storage and transportation losses for electricity are huge. And where does the electricity come from? Most of it comes from burning coal or natural gas. Due to these inefficiencies electric cars can actually be responsible for more carbon emissions than gasoline powered cars. This will only change when we start getting more power from nuclear.
France is doing great with nuclear power, but the biggest downside of nuclear is waste storage. Breeder reactors reduce this burden tremendously, but unfortunatly we can't build them in this country.
You've engineered a system that is capable of 0 planned or unplanned downtime? The idea of clusters and redundant systems is you can take any member offline (planned or unplanned) and not affect operations.