Not really. Online distribution is vastly cheaper than physical manufacturing & distribution, but none of the cost savings get passed onto either the customer or the artist. If prices were halved you'd really start to see the iTMS store put a hurt on CD sales for those who have iPods and/or computers.
Dems aren't ANY better than republicans when it comes to money!
Okay, out of the last four presidents, three had the largest defecits in history, while the fourth not only balanced the budget, but had a surplus. Care to guess their party affiliations?
I'll admit that I wasn't detailed enough in my post, but although Michael Powell is a Republican, his policy is more Libertarian in nature.
If he was Libertarian, the FCC wouldn't have gone ape shit over Janet Jackson or fined Howard Stern for reading a transcript of an Oprah show discussing "tossing the salad"...for which she of course was not fined. So he looks more like your typical big business, high horse riding moralist Republican.
What about trying to regulate the web via "Net Neutrality"?
I think you forgot the word "not" in there. As in "what about not trying to regulate the web via 'Net Neutrality'". Or do you work for a large cable company?
That's partially true, but one of their goals is to unite the Islamic world in a pan-Islamist state.
Desire yes, goal not so much. Their goals are to stop the U.S. and Europe from screwing around with the middle east, and end the U.S.'s blank check support for Israel. If spreading Islam was their primary goal, they wouldn't start with a country with a large Christian majority with enough weapons to kill the worlds population a couple of times over with conventional weaponry, with a few thousand nuclear weapons as backup.
This is a form of nationalism
Nope. Note the "nation" in "nationalism".
They most certainly are militaristic, however, and they do consider themselves to be an army... on that point I have to disagree with you.
Not an army. You might be able to call them a militia, but militias don't cut the mustard for facism purposes.
I don't think so...not in the eyes of many/most Americans I don't think.
Because you're judging them in relation to the GOP, which has been on a steady march to the right for decades. They keep redefining what used to be "center" as "liberal", thus dragging the "center" to the right and hiding their own extremism, and a lazy press and public have let them get away with it. This is how senators such as Lieberman and McCain keep getting labeled as "moderates" in the press, despite the fact that they are very conservative politicians. While they would certinally see eye to eye on executive power, Nixon's policies would just about making him a communist in today's GOP in comparison.
You're probably also running under false assumption that "not ultra-conservative" or "critical of Republicans" equals "liberal", which is simply not the case. The conservative Chuck Hagel, for example, was tagged as liberal for making comments crtical of Administration policies on PBS. Note how "liberal Republican" is an oxymoron these days.
Liberals believe that society should be as fair to those on the bottom of the ladder as to those on the top. They want things like nationalized health care, much more spending on education, more taxes on the wealthy, and stong worker and union protections. Not only would today's Democrats not touch those issues with a ten foot pole, the majority have supported the Patriot Act, invading Iraq, huge income tax cuts, defining marraige as between a man and a woman, outlawing flag burning, free trade, and telecom deregulation. So, with all the above...
Move-On.org
Not liberal.
Howard Dean
Conservative. Just check his fiscal record as govenor of Vermont.
Kerry
Conservative. Hell, Al Gore's campaign in 2000 was more conservative than Nixon's in 72.
Democrats are conservative, and Republicans ultra-conservative...before 911. After 911, they've dived head and shoulders into facism. To get some real balance back, we'd have to get the friends and family of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro to move to the United States and become politicians and news pundits.
I'm afraid they'll do something foolish and put Hillary
If you've been paying attention, you'll know that Hillary has run as hard-boiled conservative while in the Senate. The problem Hillary has is that Republicans still have an irrational hatred of her, making it nearly impossible for her to become president. Which is why some people are pushing for her to stay out of that race, and instead shoot for Senate Majority Leader.
which might give someone like McCain a fighting shot at the nomination....a person who I actually DO have a lot of respect and admiration for...
Why? Since 2000 he's done nothing but hug Jerry Fallwell, Bush and others who stabbed him in the back in his presidential run. He's gone from the "straight talk express" to "say or do anything to get the support of the ultra-right wing."
It's all subjective, but I'm definitely right when I say that Quake 3 perfected the original FPS formula.
The weapons were balanced well against eachother, but not against the players health. It was difficult to get a one-shot one kill, moreso with the bonus starting health. Your run speed was glacial, as was the speed of the rocket launcher.
Contrast that to UT, which had far more weapons, almost all of which could be used for one-shot-one-kills, and along with faster run speed make for much faster gameplay - the whole point of deathmatch.
Q3: better engine. UT: far better balance and weapons.
Congress did give the President all wartime powers on September 18th 2001 when they authorized him to use "all necessary force... in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States" The 2001 AUMF specifically grants the President war powers dictated by section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution.
Irrelevant. Congress can pass a law saying Bush is dictator for life, but it doens't mean a thing until the Constitution is amended. And for Constitution-supsending purposes, a war isn't a War until Congress delcares one, which they haven't. Even SCOTUS, which has been rubber-stamping law enforcement tactics for decades, ruled that the AUMF was *not* a blank check for the president to do as he pleased in their Hamdan decision.
That is some twisted logic.
No, it's not. This "war on terror" will be every bit as successful as the "war on drugs" - i.e. not at all. In fact, so far they've only managed to destabalize countries and produce *more* terrorists and terrorism. What would be far more practical and make far more sense would be to go back to what many people were talking about in the immediate aftermath of 911 - that the U.S. would make no distinction between terrorists and the governments that sheltered them. It's a clear, well defined approach so we wont "always be at war with Oceana".
The war in Iraq is a critical part on the war of terror because you can't fight terrorism while ignoring one of the largest state sponsors of terror.
NO, THE WAR IN IRAQ HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE WAR ON TERROR. NOTHING How many hijackers were from Iraq? Zero. How much did Saddam have to do with Al Qaeda or their attacks? Zero. How much of a threat was Saddam to the United States? Zero. Calling Iraq "part of the war on terror" is a lie.
What protections are being thrown out? The judicial branch is reviewing these programs, and the legislative branch is voting on new legal provisions for or against them. This is exactly how the founding fathers designed our Government to work.
If our government worked the way they intended, Bush would have been forced to resign when it turned out that no, Iraq did not have any WMD's, and was not an imminent threat to the United States so grave that we had no choice but to take him out immediatly. If our government worked the way the founders intended, Bush would have been impeached for his indefinete detentions of American citizens and his blatantly un-Constitutional domestic spying.
Surely you aren't so blind as to think this is a republicrat vs. demopublican issue. They both approved the war, they both approved the patriot act. There's no real dissent, except for a handful of folks -- like Ron Paul
Horsehockey. You speak as if those were the only two issues on the table - but they aren't and you know it. Torture, indefinite detentions w/o trial, indefinite troop deployments, domestic spying, unitary executive, braying about security while cutting domestic security budgets, demonizing anyone who questions you as unpatriotic and unAmerican...there is only one party doing these things.
Claiming that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans was bull back when Nader was making the claim in 2000, and the following years have proven him as wrong as a person could possibly be. Making that claim today is just batshit crazy.
You'll have just as many problems with corruption, gridlock, partisanship, and special interests if you have 2 parties or 50. Multiple parties, like term limits, are snake oil. That and the government wastes a great deal more time building "coalitions" between different groups. This can be a good thing when the government should keep its nose out of peoples business (violent video game bans, Patriot Act) but bad when prompt action is needed (Katrina).
Don't give me any malarky about voting for the "lesser of two evils". If you do that, you are VOTING FOR EVIL, and you deserve this broken government.
Uh huh. Why don't you go ask Ralph Nader if he honestly still believes that the country would still be the same if Gore had gone to the Oval Office instead of Bush.
But they are just as bad as the republicans when it comes to throwing out our freedoms to appear tough on crime or terrorism.
No, they aren't. Yes, most Democrats were spineless cowards who voted for the Patriot Act - but that doesn't mean they support torture, indefinite imprisonment w/o trial, warrantless spying, etc etc. This brings to mind Nader's claim in 2000 that the country wouldn't be any different under Bush than it would under Gore, and history has proven him to be the most wrong person on the planet.
Both bloody parties are OWNED by the powers that be now.
Some people are trying to change that. David Siorta is trying to get Democratic leaders to cut off access to any lobbyist who goes bragging about his influence in the party, and any Democrat who whores him or herself out to lobbyists gets thrown off comitties.
I think they'd seriously threaten both sides, and force the Dems to come back from SOOO far to the left
Please, the Democratic party is very conservative these days. Which should tell you where the GOP is...
The whole theory that multiple parties will somehow reduce partisanship or corruption or any of our other problems needs to check out Britian or Israel. It's not a matter of third party represenation, but if there are room for multiple veiwpoints within the parties.
According to the pollsters themselves it appears methodology and political ideology seem to be the main culprits. In the last election there was admitted problems with the methodology used, sometimes due to lack of training and some times due to the law (minimum distances from polling stations). As distance between the pollster and the actual polling station increases the reliability of the results decreases as it becomes more of a matter of the voter seeking out a pollster which greatly skews the results. For whatever reason, according to the polling companies themselves, Republicans are less likely to volunteer to take part in an exit poll so would logically therefore be even less likely to make an actually effort to seek out an pollster.
Timing also plays a major factor. For example women, who vote predominantly Democrat, tend to vote earlier and therefore make up a larger percentage of exit poll results than their actual numbers would dictate.
I keep hearing this, and I'm a few years from Political Science, but huh? I'm not flaming, I seriously want to be educated. Islam, including radical Islam, is the opposite of fascism?
My local asshat newspaper had an editorial supporting Bush's use of the term "Islamofacist", listing some definitions for "facist". The problem was that their list didn't match up with Al Qaeda at all, but did fit the Republican party very nicely. Two of the more important parts of facism is fanatical support of your nation and it's military. Al Qaeda is independant of any country, and has no military.
The terrorists who attacked us on Sept. 11th want to establish a global caliphate ruled by Islamic law
No, they want the U.S. to get the fuck out of the middle east and stop giving blank-check support to Israel. If they wanted to spread Islamic theoracracy, they sure as hell wouldn't start with a country with a Christian majority on the other side of the planet, one surrounded by two huge oceans and a friendly nation to the north and the south.
It's not "thou shalt not search without a warrant", period, full stop.
With very few exceptions (customs, life or death situations), yes, it does.
I think you'll find that the President is Commander in Chief 24x7x365 and part of that job is keeping the country safe which means gathering intelligence.
And saying he needs warrantless wiretaps in order to do so is a bald-faced lie. In the decades that the FISA court has been around, they've aproved thousands of warrants...and denied four.
I'm curious as to how the Fourth Ammendment protects you from having your international phone conversation tapped by agents from the other country you are talking to.
If one end of the call is coming from the U.S., it's also a domestic call, and to tap it you need a warrant. End of story.
It is no secret that major universities are basically immersed in left-wing culture both at the official level
Nothing like the smell of GOP propoganda in the morning. The above is merely part of the right-wing's attempt to continually redefine what used to be the "center" as "left" and what used to be "right-wing" as "center". A press fearfull of the "biased liberal media" charge has never called them on this tactic, allowing them to drag the "center" father and farther to the right while hiding their own increasingly extremist views. This is why conservative politicians like McCain and Lieberman are referred to as "moderates" in the press. Nixon would be a flameing liberal hippie in today's Republican Party.
Slashdot Mirror
which pretty much says it's a bunch of crap.
Nope, Manjoo (author of your linked article) has been proven to be the one full of crap here.
The linked article goes through a bunch of Kennedy's claims and casts them into doubt.
Sure does, until you read the rebuttal that puts the smackdown on Manjoo.
Oh but it does.
Not really. Online distribution is vastly cheaper than physical manufacturing & distribution, but none of the cost savings get passed onto either the customer or the artist. If prices were halved you'd really start to see the iTMS store put a hurt on CD sales for those who have iPods and/or computers.
Dems aren't ANY better than republicans when it comes to money!
Okay, out of the last four presidents, three had the largest defecits in history, while the fourth not only balanced the budget, but had a surplus. Care to guess their party affiliations?
I'll admit that I wasn't detailed enough in my post, but although Michael Powell is a Republican, his policy is more Libertarian in nature.
If he was Libertarian, the FCC wouldn't have gone ape shit over Janet Jackson or fined Howard Stern for reading a transcript of an Oprah show discussing "tossing the salad"...for which she of course was not fined. So he looks more like your typical big business, high horse riding moralist Republican.
What about trying to regulate the web via "Net Neutrality"?
I think you forgot the word "not" in there. As in "what about not trying to regulate the web via 'Net Neutrality'". Or do you work for a large cable company?
That's partially true, but one of their goals is to unite the Islamic world in a pan-Islamist state.
Desire yes, goal not so much. Their goals are to stop the U.S. and Europe from screwing around with the middle east, and end the U.S.'s blank check support for Israel. If spreading Islam was their primary goal, they wouldn't start with a country with a large Christian majority with enough weapons to kill the worlds population a couple of times over with conventional weaponry, with a few thousand nuclear weapons as backup.
This is a form of nationalism
Nope. Note the "nation" in "nationalism".
They most certainly are militaristic, however, and they do consider themselves to be an army... on that point I have to disagree with you.
Not an army. You might be able to call them a militia, but militias don't cut the mustard for facism purposes.
I don't think so...not in the eyes of many/most Americans I don't think.
Because you're judging them in relation to the GOP, which has been on a steady march to the right for decades. They keep redefining what used to be "center" as "liberal", thus dragging the "center" to the right and hiding their own extremism, and a lazy press and public have let them get away with it. This is how senators such as Lieberman and McCain keep getting labeled as "moderates" in the press, despite the fact that they are very conservative politicians. While they would certinally see eye to eye on executive power, Nixon's policies would just about making him a communist in today's GOP in comparison.
You're probably also running under false assumption that "not ultra-conservative" or "critical of Republicans" equals "liberal", which is simply not the case. The conservative Chuck Hagel, for example, was tagged as liberal for making comments crtical of Administration policies on PBS. Note how "liberal Republican" is an oxymoron these days.
Liberals believe that society should be as fair to those on the bottom of the ladder as to those on the top. They want things like nationalized health care, much more spending on education, more taxes on the wealthy, and stong worker and union protections. Not only would today's Democrats not touch those issues with a ten foot pole, the majority have supported the Patriot Act, invading Iraq, huge income tax cuts, defining marraige as between a man and a woman, outlawing flag burning, free trade, and telecom deregulation. So, with all the above...
Move-On.org
Not liberal.
Howard Dean
Conservative. Just check his fiscal record as govenor of Vermont.
Kerry
Conservative. Hell, Al Gore's campaign in 2000 was more conservative than Nixon's in 72.
Democrats are conservative, and Republicans ultra-conservative...before 911. After 911, they've dived head and shoulders into facism. To get some real balance back, we'd have to get the friends and family of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro to move to the United States and become politicians and news pundits.
I'm afraid they'll do something foolish and put Hillary
If you've been paying attention, you'll know that Hillary has run as hard-boiled conservative while in the Senate. The problem Hillary has is that Republicans still have an irrational hatred of her, making it nearly impossible for her to become president. Which is why some people are pushing for her to stay out of that race, and instead shoot for Senate Majority Leader.
which might give someone like McCain a fighting shot at the nomination....a person who I actually DO have a lot of respect and admiration for...
Why? Since 2000 he's done nothing but hug Jerry Fallwell, Bush and others who stabbed him in the back in his presidential run. He's gone from the "straight talk express" to "say or do anything to get the support of the ultra-right wing."
It's all subjective, but I'm definitely right when I say that Quake 3 perfected the original FPS formula.
The weapons were balanced well against eachother, but not against the players health. It was difficult to get a one-shot one kill, moreso with the bonus starting health. Your run speed was glacial, as was the speed of the rocket launcher.
Contrast that to UT, which had far more weapons, almost all of which could be used for one-shot-one-kills, and along with faster run speed make for much faster gameplay - the whole point of deathmatch.
Q3: better engine.
UT: far better balance and weapons.
Well, first of all, I said that Iraq was one of the largest state sponsors of terror
However, there are still concrete links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Stop lying. Please.
Congress did give the President all wartime powers on September 18th 2001 when they authorized him to use "all necessary force ... in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States" The 2001 AUMF specifically grants the President war powers dictated by section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution.
Irrelevant. Congress can pass a law saying Bush is dictator for life, but it doens't mean a thing until the Constitution is amended. And for Constitution-supsending purposes, a war isn't a War until Congress delcares one, which they haven't. Even SCOTUS, which has been rubber-stamping law enforcement tactics for decades, ruled that the AUMF was *not* a blank check for the president to do as he pleased in their Hamdan decision.
That is some twisted logic.
No, it's not. This "war on terror" will be every bit as successful as the "war on drugs" - i.e. not at all. In fact, so far they've only managed to destabalize countries and produce *more* terrorists and terrorism. What would be far more practical and make far more sense would be to go back to what many people were talking about in the immediate aftermath of 911 - that the U.S. would make no distinction between terrorists and the governments that sheltered them. It's a clear, well defined approach so we wont "always be at war with Oceana".
The war in Iraq is a critical part on the war of terror because you can't fight terrorism while ignoring one of the largest state sponsors of terror.
NO, THE WAR IN IRAQ HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE WAR ON TERROR. NOTHING How many hijackers were from Iraq? Zero. How much did Saddam have to do with Al Qaeda or their attacks? Zero. How much of a threat was Saddam to the United States? Zero. Calling Iraq "part of the war on terror" is a lie.
What protections are being thrown out? The judicial branch is reviewing these programs, and the legislative branch is voting on new legal provisions for or against them. This is exactly how the founding fathers designed our Government to work.
If our government worked the way they intended, Bush would have been forced to resign when it turned out that no, Iraq did not have any WMD's, and was not an imminent threat to the United States so grave that we had no choice but to take him out immediatly. If our government worked the way the founders intended, Bush would have been impeached for his indefinete detentions of American citizens and his blatantly un-Constitutional domestic spying.
You are confusing a state of war with a declaration of war.
No, he's not. A war isn't a War until Congress declares it, especially for Constitution-supsending purposes.
Surely you aren't so blind as to think this is a republicrat vs. demopublican issue. They both approved the war, they both approved the patriot act. There's no real dissent, except for a handful of folks -- like Ron Paul
Horsehockey. You speak as if those were the only two issues on the table - but they aren't and you know it. Torture, indefinite detentions w/o trial, indefinite troop deployments, domestic spying, unitary executive, braying about security while cutting domestic security budgets, demonizing anyone who questions you as unpatriotic and unAmerican...there is only one party doing these things.
Claiming that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans was bull back when Nader was making the claim in 2000, and the following years have proven him as wrong as a person could possibly be. Making that claim today is just batshit crazy.
You'll have just as many problems with corruption, gridlock, partisanship, and special interests if you have 2 parties or 50. Multiple parties, like term limits, are snake oil. That and the government wastes a great deal more time building "coalitions" between different groups. This can be a good thing when the government should keep its nose out of peoples business (violent video game bans, Patriot Act) but bad when prompt action is needed (Katrina).
Don't give me any malarky about voting for the "lesser of two evils". If you do that, you are VOTING FOR EVIL, and you deserve this broken government.
Uh huh. Why don't you go ask Ralph Nader if he honestly still believes that the country would still be the same if Gore had gone to the Oval Office instead of Bush.
But they are just as bad as the republicans when it comes to throwing out our freedoms to appear tough on crime or terrorism.
No, they aren't. Yes, most Democrats were spineless cowards who voted for the Patriot Act - but that doesn't mean they support torture, indefinite imprisonment w/o trial, warrantless spying, etc etc. This brings to mind Nader's claim in 2000 that the country wouldn't be any different under Bush than it would under Gore, and history has proven him to be the most wrong person on the planet.
Both bloody parties are OWNED by the powers that be now.
Some people are trying to change that. David Siorta is trying to get Democratic leaders to cut off access to any lobbyist who goes bragging about his influence in the party, and any Democrat who whores him or herself out to lobbyists gets thrown off comitties.
I think they'd seriously threaten both sides, and force the Dems to come back from SOOO far to the left
Please, the Democratic party is very conservative these days. Which should tell you where the GOP is...
The whole theory that multiple parties will somehow reduce partisanship or corruption or any of our other problems needs to check out Britian or Israel. It's not a matter of third party represenation, but if there are room for multiple veiwpoints within the parties.
According to the pollsters themselves it appears methodology and political ideology seem to be the main culprits. In the last election there was admitted problems with the methodology used, sometimes due to lack of training and some times due to the law (minimum distances from polling stations). As distance between the pollster and the actual polling station increases the reliability of the results decreases as it becomes more of a matter of the voter seeking out a pollster which greatly skews the results. For whatever reason, according to the polling companies themselves, Republicans are less likely to volunteer to take part in an exit poll so would logically therefore be even less likely to make an actually effort to seek out an pollster.
Timing also plays a major factor. For example women, who vote predominantly Democrat, tend to vote earlier and therefore make up a larger percentage of exit poll results than their actual numbers would dictate.
All GOP myths, I'm afraid.
I keep hearing this, and I'm a few years from Political Science, but huh? I'm not flaming, I seriously want to be educated. Islam, including radical Islam, is the opposite of fascism?
My local asshat newspaper had an editorial supporting Bush's use of the term "Islamofacist", listing some definitions for "facist". The problem was that their list didn't match up with Al Qaeda at all, but did fit the Republican party very nicely. Two of the more important parts of facism is fanatical support of your nation and it's military. Al Qaeda is independant of any country, and has no military.
The terrorists who attacked us on Sept. 11th want to establish a global caliphate ruled by Islamic law
No, they want the U.S. to get the fuck out of the middle east and stop giving blank-check support to Israel. If they wanted to spread Islamic theoracracy, they sure as hell wouldn't start with a country with a Christian majority on the other side of the planet, one surrounded by two huge oceans and a friendly nation to the north and the south.
It's not "thou shalt not search without a warrant", period, full stop.
With very few exceptions (customs, life or death situations), yes, it does.
I think you'll find that the President is Commander in Chief 24x7x365 and part of that job is keeping the country safe which means gathering intelligence.
And saying he needs warrantless wiretaps in order to do so is a bald-faced lie. In the decades that the FISA court has been around, they've aproved thousands of warrants...and denied four.
does not mean what you think it does.
Speak for yourself, buddy.
I'm curious as to how the Fourth Ammendment protects you from having your international phone conversation tapped by agents from the other country you are talking to.
If one end of the call is coming from the U.S., it's also a domestic call, and to tap it you need a warrant. End of story.
Checking the online store, there doesn't seem to be a student discount for iPods anymore. Bummer.
It is no secret that major universities are basically immersed in left-wing culture both at the official level
Nothing like the smell of GOP propoganda in the morning. The above is merely part of the right-wing's attempt to continually redefine what used to be the "center" as "left" and what used to be "right-wing" as "center". A press fearfull of the "biased liberal media" charge has never called them on this tactic, allowing them to drag the "center" father and farther to the right while hiding their own increasingly extremist views. This is why conservative politicians like McCain and Lieberman are referred to as "moderates" in the press. Nixon would be a flameing liberal hippie in today's Republican Party.