We saw what happened when we negotiated with North Korea regarding their nuclear program. They extracted promises from us in return for not proceeding, and after they got what they wanted they went ahead just as if we'd never spoken to them.
As is usually the case, the following equation applies: take the wingnut position, flip it 180 degrees, and you have reality. And the reality is that Clinton's negotiations delayed North Korea's nuclear program, and once the Bush Administration stopped fucking around and actually tried talking to them, we robbed them blind. They blew up their nuclear equipment in return for a pittance.
I saw Iraqi television right before the war started. It was being carried on C-SPAN. About every ten minutes, the "news" carried the major story of how 137 (I forget the precise number) US cities had passed resolutions against the war
And I wouldn't be surprised, because there were massive anti-war protests in the U.S. before the invasion. But if a major protest happens and the pro-war media doesn't cover it, did it really happen?
I was alive and watching world events when when the terrorists in Iran abducted our citizens.
Were you also alive and watching when the CIA overthrew the peaceful, democratically elected but (gasp!) somewhat socialist government of Iran? Some of which was probably organized through the embassy that those Iranian "terrorists" seized when they overthrew the Shah?
I watched in awe as James Earl Carter launced a hopelessy bad attempt at getting them back, and then went into "diplomacy" mode.
Yes, because it was Carter's fault that the helicopters crashed. And the "diplomacy" mode that you disparage is what got the Americans released.
and it was almost universally acknowledged that the election of Ronald Regan was the reason they gave up.
Universally acknowledged by delusional wingnuts, you mean. Know what Reagan's Administration did do? Sell the Iranians weapons.
It is neither hate nor ignorance to acknowledge what has worked and what has not worked in dealing with fundamentalist terrorists in the past. Talk does not work. If talk worked, the world would be at peace because Jimmy Carter was the master of talk. Remember Camp David? All the "peace accords"? A nobel peace prize?
Um, yeah? Carter got Egypt to recognize and leave peacefully with Israel. Carter, not Reagan, got the Americans released from the embassy in Iran. Carter recently got Hamas to also recognize Israel after...talking to them. But yeah, I can see why you'd prefer to to spend trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives on a total failure like Iraq.
All that happens when we talk is the other side asks for concessions, and we give them. In World War II, it was called appeasement. Notice how well that worked. You don't even need to have been alive then, I think the outcome is pretty well known. The same thing happens today.
Iraw never funded terrorism? Saddam publicly admitted to giving money to the PLO/hammas. Of course maybe you do not consider blowing up isrealy discos as a bad thing( the music does suck)!
Somebody had to do something in response to the $3 billion in military and economic aid given to Zionist terrorists and occupiers of Palestinian land.
Then that 550 metric tons http://www.nysun.com/editorials/iraqs-yellowcake/81328/ of yellowcake uranium that was taken out of Iraq and sold to a company in Canada was, ummm, just yellow-colored flour Saddam intended to use to bake bread for all the starving Iraqi children?
Yawn. Aside from the fact Saddam never had the capacity to refine it, that yellowcake was known about since the first Gulf War. But then, you wingnuts have never let facts interfere with a good storyline, now have you?
What about the chemical rockets that made the news about 7 days into the war, and then dissappeared from the media altogether? They didn't fit the lie that Saddam had no WMD, so we stopped hearing about them. "Hey, we found chemical rockets! Wait, he doesn't have WMD, so he can't have chemical rockets. What chemical rockets?"
Chemical weapons decay. That mustard gas warhead that might have killed you with a few drops when it was made in 1985 miiight give you a bad rash in 2008. It's not a Weapon of Mass Destruction when it's completely incapable of causing Mass Destruction. Chemical weapons stocks have to be renewed - Saddam didn't.
And, of course, tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds died from mass hallucination and nothing at all to do with chemical weapons.
And, of course, Saddam was our good buddy at the time. Maybe you've seen the photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with the man in the 80's?
And most of them have died at the hands of the terrorists who blow up police stations and mosques and women and children and use force and terror to try to keep people from working with their own government.
And who's responsible for destabilizing Iraq and spinning it into civil war? It aint Saddam my friend.
"Generally ordinary people" don't load the buick with a few hundred pounds of explosive and then detonate it in an outdoor market filled with women and children, or in front of a church.
Sure they do, when they are hungry and scared and feel that their future has been robbed from them. You should check out some of the rantings by the likes of Jerry Falwell and John Hagee - they're right up their with Osama bin Laddin. The only difference between them is Falwell and Hagee are in a wealthy, stable country and militant Muslims have had their countries destroyed.
My advice to you is to listen to the facts
Yes, that is good advice. Maybe you should try it sometime.
Extremists were attacking the West long before the war in Iraq; it is a fallacy to assume they would just revert to killing each other, and leave the West alone.
Problem: Western imperialism is what created these extremists in the first place. Like when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected but (gasp!) socialist government of Iran in the 50's.
Iran is case-in-point: The goal of the leadership in Iran has nothing to do with diplomacy; they want their nuclear toys, period, and will risk war to get them.
Amazing how this hand-wringing and fear mongering wasn't present when Israel, who actually has launched aggressive wars against it's neighbors, as opposed to Iran, which has attacked nobody.
The thought of a peaceful Middle East with a nuclear-armed Iran stretches just that little bit past the bounds of reality.
Sure, because you're a kool aid drinker who has no idea what he's talking about. Iran wants nuclear weapons for the same reason that any nation wants nuclear weapons: so other countries don't fuck with them. Do you seriously think Iran is going to a first strike on Israel with nuclear weapons, knowing that it would face immiediate and harsh retribution from Israel (with 200+ nukes of it's own) and the United States?
If it makes no sense for Iran to use atomic weapons, why do you think they want them?
So Israel, who is alleged to posses 200 nuclear weapons, doesn't attack Iran like it attacked Iraq in the 80's or their recent attack on Syria. Obviously.
You mean like when Jimmy Carter went and talked to Hamas all by himself, and got them to accept the existence of Israel in a couple of days? No, you're right, let's invade Iran and lose addition trillions and thousands of American lives.
All your rationalizing does nothing to explain the fact that 2% of the world's population produces 25% of the world's CO2. Or the fact that it is asinine to expect developing nations who's per-capita emission levels are far below ours to take the first steps before the richest country on the planet.
There is a high probability Kennedy stole the 1960 election from Nixon.
Allegedly, yes. But Nixon was also alledgedly trying to steal the election, something that isn't mentioned for...some...reason.
It is very much open to debate if the 2000 presidential election was stolen in Florida.
Not so much, for reasons you even listed. 70,000 people were disenfranchised with Harris's bogus felon list alone. More to the point, a press recount proved that Gore would have won with a statewide recount. The 2000 election was definitely stolen.
No, it doesn't, and citing one blog post by one person as indicative of all American culture is a joke. Remember going through a checkout and seeing tabloid photos of stick-thin celebrities like Nicole Ritchie and Calista Flockhart? It's not because Americans find those photos attractive, it's because they find them repulsive.
Or, as Martin Luther King, Jr., would have said, we judge him not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.
Well, duh. That does nothing to change the fact that it's nice that this country is finally ready to have a black man be President. Did you know Obama is only the third black American to be elected to the U.S. Senate?
There's this idiotic attitude that is starting to pervade our society, where people figure that because a group of people was oppressed in the past, now they should get special regard.
No, there's this idiotic attitude that affirmative action is about providing "special regard". It's not. It's trying to make up for centuries of oppression without paying reparations. It's about trying to get minorities to where they would be if we hadn't had slavery and Jim Crow. And before anyone whines about how poor white people living in Appalachia don't go to college either, it's about race and class. White people in rural Kentucky are unlikely to go to college, but they've never been told they can't go to college because of their race.
In all measures things have gotten much better in Iraq
No, they haven't. Our troops are still getting killed, there is still fighting in the streets, the government is no more functional nor stable than it was a year ago, and even Shiite militias are fighting eachother, so you can lay off your talking points.
The courts have set an arbitrary age and said that anyone below this age is a child. Then they hit a magic number and are adults.
It's messier than that, since a "child" can be tried as an "adult" if he or she commits a violent crime, which is quite frankly a load of horseshit. You have to be 16 to drive, 18 to smoke and vote, 21 to drink, yet can be charged as an adult as young as 11 in some states? Buuuullshit.
...because that tends to happen with kids from authoritarian parents. They turn 19, go off to college and screw up because they don't know how to handle freedom or make their own choices.
No questions asked and no they don't get a choice...They both aren't ever allowed a single moment of privacy. *gasp* Nope.
And you naturally abide by the same rules, right, so you aren't the biggest hypocrite on the face of the planet? If they have to carry GPS tracking phones, so do you. If they have to use the computer in the living room, so do you. If you can search their rooms at any time for any reason, they can search yours at any time for any reason. Otherwise you're as full of it as a parent that smokes 2 packs a day, drinks heavily, and brings home women picked up at seedy bars yet insists his kids never drink, smoke, or have sex until they're 25 and married. And your kids will know this.
But, it only works that way for people who know better (AKA, the culture of Slashdot)
But if you know what the problem is, you'll probably have a better idea of how to fix it. Say you buy a new PC, and naturally it comes with Vista. You start using it and the sound is flaky - you've probably heard about driver issues with Vista and will look for a fix. Whereas a novice would still notice the sound problems but would just stay mad, since he wouldn't know where to start.
Like the relatively few number of women portrayed in those jobs in movies and television.
Like Scully on X-Files? Or Rush on Cold Case? Or the women on just about any crime/medical drama you could possibly mention? Feminist math strikes again...
My experience with Apple's service is: 1) box is delivered by Airbourne on a Tuesday 2) I put my laptop/iPod in the box and send it off 3) repaired/replaced unit arrives on Thursday.
But all anecdotes aside, Apple has routinely been at the top of customer satisfaction and repair surveys for years, with the one notable exception being the crappy iBook logic boards.
If by "not a whole lot" you mean "two and half pounds heavier", I guess so, but that's almost a 17" Macbook Pro and a Macbook Air for the same weight as the 17" FX.
Of course, a do-it-yourself computer with descent is going to be cheaper than buying a system from Apple. But the same is true for Dell, HP, or any other OEM.
As a result, they're expectations are already geared towards, "This is going to be a good experience." As a result, they are more likely to have a good experience.
...which of course only makes then more annoyed when something goes wrong. Which is why if half a dozen people have a problem with the quality of an Apple product, you'll probably hear about it on Slashdot, like the iPod battery guys. Whereas it takes a Dell laptop literally exploding and starting on fire for it to be mentioned here.
Face it - Apple products are expensive.
No, they're not. Apple's products are competitive with similar machines from other OEM's. What they don't do is make cheap POS models from supplier-of-the-week like Dell or HP.
Slashdot Mirror
We saw what happened when we negotiated with North Korea regarding their nuclear program. They extracted promises from us in return for not proceeding, and after they got what they wanted they went ahead just as if we'd never spoken to them.
As is usually the case, the following equation applies: take the wingnut position, flip it 180 degrees, and you have reality. And the reality is that Clinton's negotiations delayed North Korea's nuclear program, and once the Bush Administration stopped fucking around and actually tried talking to them, we robbed them blind. They blew up their nuclear equipment in return for a pittance.
I saw Iraqi television right before the war started. It was being carried on C-SPAN. About every ten minutes, the "news" carried the major story of how 137 (I forget the precise number) US cities had passed resolutions against the war
And I wouldn't be surprised, because there were massive anti-war protests in the U.S. before the invasion. But if a major protest happens and the pro-war media doesn't cover it, did it really happen?
I was alive and watching world events when when the terrorists in Iran abducted our citizens.
Were you also alive and watching when the CIA overthrew the peaceful, democratically elected but (gasp!) somewhat socialist government of Iran? Some of which was probably organized through the embassy that those Iranian "terrorists" seized when they overthrew the Shah?
I watched in awe as James Earl Carter launced a hopelessy bad attempt at getting them back, and then went into "diplomacy" mode.
Yes, because it was Carter's fault that the helicopters crashed. And the "diplomacy" mode that you disparage is what got the Americans released.
and it was almost universally acknowledged that the election of Ronald Regan was the reason they gave up.
Universally acknowledged by delusional wingnuts, you mean. Know what Reagan's Administration did do? Sell the Iranians weapons.
It is neither hate nor ignorance to acknowledge what has worked and what has not worked in dealing with fundamentalist terrorists in the past. Talk does not work. If talk worked, the world would be at peace because Jimmy Carter was the master of talk. Remember Camp David? All the "peace accords"? A nobel peace prize?
Um, yeah? Carter got Egypt to recognize and leave peacefully with Israel. Carter, not Reagan, got the Americans released from the embassy in Iran. Carter recently got Hamas to also recognize Israel after...talking to them. But yeah, I can see why you'd prefer to to spend trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives on a total failure like Iraq.
All that happens when we talk is the other side asks for concessions, and we give them. In World War II, it was called appeasement. Notice how well that worked. You don't even need to have been alive then, I think the outcome is pretty well known. The same thing happens today.
Kevin James, is that you?
My post is based on historical evidence and precedent.
No, just a bunch of tired crap that was debunked a loooong time ago.
Iraw never funded terrorism? Saddam publicly admitted to giving money to the PLO/hammas. Of course maybe you do not consider blowing up isrealy discos as a bad thing( the music does suck)!
Somebody had to do something in response to the $3 billion in military and economic aid given to Zionist terrorists and occupiers of Palestinian land.
Then that 550 metric tons http://www.nysun.com/editorials/iraqs-yellowcake/81328/ of yellowcake uranium that was taken out of Iraq and sold to a company in Canada was, ummm, just yellow-colored flour Saddam intended to use to bake bread for all the starving Iraqi children?
Yawn. Aside from the fact Saddam never had the capacity to refine it, that yellowcake was known about since the first Gulf War. But then, you wingnuts have never let facts interfere with a good storyline, now have you?
What about the chemical rockets that made the news about 7 days into the war, and then dissappeared from the media altogether? They didn't fit the lie that Saddam had no WMD, so we stopped hearing about them. "Hey, we found chemical rockets! Wait, he doesn't have WMD, so he can't have chemical rockets. What chemical rockets?"
Chemical weapons decay. That mustard gas warhead that might have killed you with a few drops when it was made in 1985 miiight give you a bad rash in 2008. It's not a Weapon of Mass Destruction when it's completely incapable of causing Mass Destruction. Chemical weapons stocks have to be renewed - Saddam didn't.
And, of course, tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds died from mass hallucination and nothing at all to do with chemical weapons.
And, of course, Saddam was our good buddy at the time. Maybe you've seen the photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with the man in the 80's?
And most of them have died at the hands of the terrorists who blow up police stations and mosques and women and children and use force and terror to try to keep people from working with their own government.
And who's responsible for destabilizing Iraq and spinning it into civil war? It aint Saddam my friend.
"Generally ordinary people" don't load the buick with a few hundred pounds of explosive and then detonate it in an outdoor market filled with women and children, or in front of a church.
Sure they do, when they are hungry and scared and feel that their future has been robbed from them. You should check out some of the rantings by the likes of Jerry Falwell and John Hagee - they're right up their with Osama bin Laddin. The only difference between them is Falwell and Hagee are in a wealthy, stable country and militant Muslims have had their countries destroyed.
My advice to you is to listen to the facts
Yes, that is good advice. Maybe you should try it sometime.
Extremists were attacking the West long before the war in Iraq; it is a fallacy to assume they would just revert to killing each other, and leave the West alone.
Problem: Western imperialism is what created these extremists in the first place. Like when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected but (gasp!) socialist government of Iran in the 50's.
Iran is case-in-point: The goal of the leadership in Iran has nothing to do with diplomacy; they want their nuclear toys, period, and will risk war to get them.
Amazing how this hand-wringing and fear mongering wasn't present when Israel, who actually has launched aggressive wars against it's neighbors, as opposed to Iran, which has attacked nobody.
The thought of a peaceful Middle East with a nuclear-armed Iran stretches just that little bit past the bounds of reality.
Sure, because you're a kool aid drinker who has no idea what he's talking about. Iran wants nuclear weapons for the same reason that any nation wants nuclear weapons: so other countries don't fuck with them. Do you seriously think Iran is going to a first strike on Israel with nuclear weapons, knowing that it would face immiediate and harsh retribution from Israel (with 200+ nukes of it's own) and the United States?
If it makes no sense for Iran to use atomic weapons, why do you think they want them?
So Israel, who is alleged to posses 200 nuclear weapons, doesn't attack Iran like it attacked Iraq in the 80's or their recent attack on Syria. Obviously.
You mean like when Jimmy Carter went and talked to Hamas all by himself, and got them to accept the existence of Israel in a couple of days? No, you're right, let's invade Iran and lose addition trillions and thousands of American lives.
All your rationalizing does nothing to explain the fact that 2% of the world's population produces 25% of the world's CO2. Or the fact that it is asinine to expect developing nations who's per-capita emission levels are far below ours to take the first steps before the richest country on the planet.
There is a high probability Kennedy stole the 1960 election from Nixon.
Allegedly, yes. But Nixon was also alledgedly trying to steal the election, something that isn't mentioned for...some...reason.
It is very much open to debate if the 2000 presidential election was stolen in Florida.
Not so much, for reasons you even listed. 70,000 people were disenfranchised with Harris's bogus felon list alone. More to the point, a press recount proved that Gore would have won with a statewide recount. The 2000 election was definitely stolen.
Before the liberals got all bent out of shape about hanging chads and demanding that (for better or for worse) Change Happen?
Hey jackass, you forget which party controlled Florida's government, Congress, and the presidency at the time?
Yeah, bashing Karl Rove will really get you modded down on Slashdot.
Yes, it would. Remember that there are a whole lot of Kool Aid drinking idiot wingnuts here. One of them's even an editor.
Why not threaten to sue their asses into the ground, or at least file complaints with your state AG and local regulatory bodies?
No, it doesn't, and citing one blog post by one person as indicative of all American culture is a joke. Remember going through a checkout and seeing tabloid photos of stick-thin celebrities like Nicole Ritchie and Calista Flockhart? It's not because Americans find those photos attractive, it's because they find them repulsive.
Or, as Martin Luther King, Jr., would have said, we judge him not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.
Well, duh. That does nothing to change the fact that it's nice that this country is finally ready to have a black man be President. Did you know Obama is only the third black American to be elected to the U.S. Senate?
There's this idiotic attitude that is starting to pervade our society, where people figure that because a group of people was oppressed in the past, now they should get special regard.
No, there's this idiotic attitude that affirmative action is about providing "special regard". It's not. It's trying to make up for centuries of oppression without paying reparations. It's about trying to get minorities to where they would be if we hadn't had slavery and Jim Crow. And before anyone whines about how poor white people living in Appalachia don't go to college either, it's about race and class. White people in rural Kentucky are unlikely to go to college, but they've never been told they can't go to college because of their race.
In all measures things have gotten much better in Iraq
No, they haven't. Our troops are still getting killed, there is still fighting in the streets, the government is no more functional nor stable than it was a year ago, and even Shiite militias are fighting eachother, so you can lay off your talking points.
The courts have set an arbitrary age and said that anyone below this age is a child. Then they hit a magic number and are adults.
It's messier than that, since a "child" can be tried as an "adult" if he or she commits a violent crime, which is quite frankly a load of horseshit. You have to be 16 to drive, 18 to smoke and vote, 21 to drink, yet can be charged as an adult as young as 11 in some states? Buuuullshit.
#3 Finally, a couple of hundred years ago, girls were married off like cattle and sold into marriages.
So were boys. Yawn. But girls did have one liiiiitle perk: being exempt from the draft, as opposed to millions of young men.
Because if I ever have a girl and I smell someone like you around her, I will beat the crap out of him.
I'll take the guy who retrains himself over the guy who beats people up because of what they think.
From what I can tell from your posts, your main reason to stay away from fucking underage girls is the cost to you.
Liar.
And (US) popular culture demands that 'attractive' woman must be thin, shaved, and as young as possible.
No, it doesn't.
...because that tends to happen with kids from authoritarian parents. They turn 19, go off to college and screw up because they don't know how to handle freedom or make their own choices.
No questions asked and no they don't get a choice...They both aren't ever allowed a single moment of privacy. *gasp* Nope.
And you naturally abide by the same rules, right, so you aren't the biggest hypocrite on the face of the planet? If they have to carry GPS tracking phones, so do you. If they have to use the computer in the living room, so do you. If you can search their rooms at any time for any reason, they can search yours at any time for any reason. Otherwise you're as full of it as a parent that smokes 2 packs a day, drinks heavily, and brings home women picked up at seedy bars yet insists his kids never drink, smoke, or have sex until they're 25 and married. And your kids will know this.
But, it only works that way for people who know better (AKA, the culture of Slashdot)
But if you know what the problem is, you'll probably have a better idea of how to fix it. Say you buy a new PC, and naturally it comes with Vista. You start using it and the sound is flaky - you've probably heard about driver issues with Vista and will look for a fix. Whereas a novice would still notice the sound problems but would just stay mad, since he wouldn't know where to start.
Like the relatively few number of women portrayed in those jobs in movies and television.
Like Scully on X-Files? Or Rush on Cold Case? Or the women on just about any crime/medical drama you could possibly mention? Feminist math strikes again...
don't know GP from a hole in the wall, but I have rather limited trust in Consumer Reports compared to acutal "real life" corporate use/experience.
Let me guess: you're a Republican?
My experience with Apple's service is: 1) box is delivered by Airbourne on a Tuesday 2) I put my laptop/iPod in the box and send it off 3) repaired/replaced unit arrives on Thursday.
But all anecdotes aside, Apple has routinely been at the top of customer satisfaction and repair surveys for years, with the one notable exception being the crappy iBook logic boards.
and doesn't weigh a whole lot more.
If by "not a whole lot" you mean "two and half pounds heavier", I guess so, but that's almost a 17" Macbook Pro and a Macbook Air for the same weight as the 17" FX.
Of course, a do-it-yourself computer with descent is going to be cheaper than buying a system from Apple. But the same is true for Dell, HP, or any other OEM.
As a result, they're expectations are already geared towards, "This is going to be a good experience." As a result, they are more likely to have a good experience.
...which of course only makes then more annoyed when something goes wrong. Which is why if half a dozen people have a problem with the quality of an Apple product, you'll probably hear about it on Slashdot, like the iPod battery guys. Whereas it takes a Dell laptop literally exploding and starting on fire for it to be mentioned here.
Face it - Apple products are expensive.
No, they're not. Apple's products are competitive with similar machines from other OEM's. What they don't do is make cheap POS models from supplier-of-the-week like Dell or HP.