They do a lot worse all the time. I'd like you to list one reaction even remotely similar to the staged protests over the Mohammed photos in the Jyllandsposten. Just one.
You wont find similar reactions because there haven't been comparible incidents for wingnut Christians to get up in arms about. Convince a French magazine to draw Christ as a bomb toting terrorist and we'll see.
But in any case, wingnut Christians are perfectly capable of being bat-shit crazy right here in the U.S. See the boycott of Disney by the Southern Baptists. Or for a more recent example, Bill O'Reilly's invented "war on Christmas".
So, at what point in the checkout process did you not see the full Ticketmaster price? I bought some tickets recently, and quit out when I saw the ludicrous "fees".
Because that is false advertizing, and false advertizing is lying.
There's your choice. Go or don't go. Obviously, the people putting the event on are happy to use them, even if you are not. You don't need to go and see a major sports game, any more than I need fine burgundy. There are plenty of ways to be entertained.
No. Taxpayers should be able to go to an event at a venue that their tax dollars built for the advertized ticket price, not the advertized price +50% in "fees" to a middleman. This wouldn't be a problem if they were forced to include all fees in the ticket price, or if Ticketmaster was not a monopoly, but that's not the case.
Really? You were there, in person? If so, you might have missed conservatives celebrating the invasion of Iraq, blowing off any civilian casualties, denying responsiblity of any kind, and wingnuts like Ann Coulter advocating that the U.S. "should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity".
It does sound like editorializing, but that statement is arguably factually correct.
Beneath the facade of 'ethical foreign policies'
Bush promised the end of "torture and rape rooms", but then we found out about Abu Gharib.
western colonial arrogance
The entire administration, many GOP members of Congress, some Democrats, and of course all the right-wing media.
and sheer inhumanity
Rummsfield failing to stop the chaos following the invasion because he insisted on a light force, phosphorus shells, killing civilians, Abu Gharib again.
It's about being able to watch a two-hour movie without a bathroom break (small soda) or blowing your bladder out on the way to the restroom (large soda).:P
Heh. I know a couple of guys who got jumpo pops when they saw Fellowship of the Ring, and they knew how long it was. Didn't go to the bathroom till the end of the movie, the idiots.
Privileged, overfed and sheltered children of developed nations may forget this, but at one time in their not-to-distant past, their nation used to be filled with jobs just like the ones in the sweatshop. And eventually, wealth grew and working conditions got better.
Because workers unionized and forced employeers to offer better wages and working conditions. Kinda contradicts your whole "sweatshops are good" shtick.
Next thing you'll be demanding fillet steak for the same price as rump.
If you're going to be a tool, at least get an argument that isn't stupid. What I don't want to do is come in and buy a rump roast steak at the advertized rump roast price and walk out having paid fillet prices, and then some. Especially when I get charged a fee to do Ticketmaster the favor of printing my own ticket and saving them all of their printing and labor costs.
Really, don't like 'em, don't shop there. Personally, Ticketmaster events don't appeal to me very often, and when I've gone through and got the fees up, I've once been so disgusted, and it tipped what I was willing to pay, so that I abandoned the sale. Whilst the fees aren't up front, you see them during the ordering process. You have that choice.
No, you DON'T have a choice. If you want to go to just about any concert in any sized arena, or just about any sports game, you have no choice but to use Ticketmaster. At an venue that was likely paid for using your tax dollars. Ticketmaster is a monopoly that engages in blatantly false advertizing. If a concert ticket is advertized $45, it had better be $45 plus sales tax, not $45 plus another $15 in "fees".
Just when I think Ticketmaster has hit rock bottom in corporate greed, they find a new way to put the screws to consumers. Their last invention was ticketFast, which would let you print off tickets at home...for a price. According to the NY Times article, it would cost you between $1.75 and $2.50 to do Ticketmaster the favor of using your own printer, paper and ink to print off tickets so they woudln't have to. You can go buy a ticket and have to pay over $16 in fees these days.
One reason why we need regime change here in the U.S. is so we can get a DOJ that doesn't look at anti-trust laws with distain. Ticketmaster should either be broken up or forced to include all fees in the advertized ticket price.
And what amount of your income is expropriated from you at gun-point by the government
In any country with even a moderate population density, you have to have government services and pay for them with taxes. If you live in the country and aren't paying taxes, you are freeloading.
What if you run a business? Important things to consider when rating a government.
Indeed. It is important that the government actually give a damn about the welfare of it's people, rather than the only priority being the raw income earning potential of the top 5% of the selfish, self-centered, shortsighted, elisits.
It is my understanding that not only does the president have this power, he has very recently executed it.
What this president claims he can do, and does, seldom have any bearing on what is legal and constitutional. He hasn't been smacked down yet because lower courts pass issues up to higher courts packed with conservative appointees, and Congress is controlled by the GOP and refuses to investigate even the most grevious violations of the Constitution (NSA spying).
And no, Bush can't just wave his hand and announce that information has been declassified. First it needs to be analyzed for accuracy and for relevancy, to see if the information should remain classified. So revealing Valerie Wilson's CIA status was a leak even if Bush made it himself. And either the administration leaked portions of national security documents to bolster the case for invading Iraq, or they didn't do their job analyzing said documents, which wood have revealed that many of their justifications for war had already been debunked. So either the administration is guilty of leaking or is guilty of being incompetent.
The problem with this administration is that everything is "secret" to them, from the number of people we're holding in prisons like Guantanamo to which oil executives made up Cheney's energy taskforce. And so far, the courts have been reticent to smack them down, and of course the GOP Congress wouldn't investigate Bush if videotapes were released showing he shot JFK, John Lennon, and MLK jr.
Next time you have one of these conversations with her, ask her if she would be supporting Bill Clinton if he were still in office and doing the same actions with the same justifications. Or if she would be happy if Hillary get's elected prez in two years and keeps all the power that Bush has grabbed for the presidency.
My understanding is that the first virus ever in the wild was for apple computers.
It's a little short on details, but it sounds more like that site is confusing trojans with viruses:
Apple Viruses 1, 2, and 3 are some of the first viruses "in the wild," or in the public domain. Found on the Apple II operating system, the viruses spread through Texas A&M via pirated computer games.
They're taking some strain now but nowhere near dangerous levels, and the potential (and becoming more likely) benefits are huge.
Not dangerous? Huge benefits? I think you overestimate their chances. To repeat myself:
DVD was a giant leap over VHS in both quality and usability. But even if you had a small, old TV set and couldn't tell the difference, quality wise, between VHS and DVD, you could still take advantage of menus, chapter skipping, alternate languages, and fast forwarding without degrading the media. Blu Ray doesn't bring anything new to the table here.
What is does bring is increased storage and video quality, but you have to make a serious investment in an HDTV or projector to take advantage of it. The number of people who can pop $2500 for an HDTV & PS3 is dwarfed by the number of people who can buy a Wii for $200 - $300 and hook it up to their exisitng CRT TV. Furthermore, when the PS2 was released, DVD was already a well established standard with thousands of titles available. However, there are going to be a handfull of Blu Ray titles (in comparison) at the time of the PS3's release, so even if you DO have money burning a hole in your pocket, there isn't much reason to upgrade.
And remember that Blu Ray was supposed to be the trojan horse that brought millions of Blu Ray players into people's homes, so once they did buy a TV capable of taking advantage of 1080i, they would already have a high definition player - Sony's. But with consumers able to buy a 360 AND a Wii AND some games (if MS cuts the 360's price and the Wii lanches at $250) for the price of the high end PS3, that's not going to happen.
Sure, Sony will sell out their initial stock, but their price announcment is going to kill their pre-orders - gamers who would order months in advance and wait for their PS3 to come in rather than going with Microsoft or Nintendo.
In summary: Sony slit their own throats at E3. For both the PS3 AND Blu Ray. They are either going to do some frantic PR spinning along with a large price cut to regain what they've lost, or promise a blowjob with the purchase of each PS3.
Check out the building full of unfireable teachers in new york, who just go there to chill all day because the firing process is so expensive and litigation-prone that the city can't afford to worry about it.
Uh huh. A certain percentage of humans are lazy slackers. Some of these slackers will go on to work for corporations, and others go on to work for unions. I find it courious, however, that said laziness is only an inditement against unions, but not buisnesses. Same with other injustices: anyone who's worked in any large, medium or even small businesses have seen hard working, well qualified people passed up for a promotion because Slacker Joe, who was awarded the position, was the managers frat brother in college. Or an incompetent supervisor who hasn't been demoted/fired because he's the cousin of the CEO. But again, no one takes these actions to mean that corporations have failed as institutions. Same thing again with Enron, Worldcom, United, Union Carbide: these are treated as failures of individuals, not failures of capitalism. But because someone saw union X do undisireable action B in 1987, it means that unions are failed institutions that no longer serve any useful purpose.
There wouldn't be chaos in a free market health care system.
There doesn't have to be chaos for it to still be extremely expensive. Sure there would still be certifications, but much like tech school accreditation, it can be difficult to figure out how much that certificate on the wall actually means. In a small town, word would get around fast if a doctor is a hack. But if you live in a large city or were traveling, it wouldn't necessarily be so easy.
In fact, the NRA spends considerable resources on training and safety programs. This fact isn't particularly newsworthy, however, at least not compared to their political lobbying. So one hears about political efforts much more often than safety training.
Oh, they do a a good deal of training that is quite valuable. Aside from youth education and women's self defense (tangent: why do we have women's self defense classes all over the place when men are far and away the #1 victims of violent crime?), they do a good deal of training of law enforcement officers. But when I pick up a paper and read a story dealing with the NRA, it's never about a training program or noted enthusiasts discussing the awsome responsibilities of gun ownership. It's only about how they are fighting for the right to own anti-tank rifles or pouring thousands of dollars into a congressional race to get some Republicans elected. And this isn't about what stories the media decides to report, but rather how the NRA decides to spend their money.
If the government wanted to ensure adequate food for the troops, they could have done what they do now: buy it at market prices.
Right, because the government had money to spare, coming out of a decade of record growth. Oh wait, I might have my decades mixed up here. If anything, government money was an even more scarce resource, as it also had to pay for tanks, bombs, guns and training our armed forces in addition to food. Paying full market prices for food would have meant less money for said tanks, bombs, guns and troops.
Unless you want to go the full route and move to a 100% Marxist pure socialist economy
Straw man. But as far as socialist countries go, most weren't allowed to try and succeed because the CIA would destabalize them, sometimes aiding military coups resulting in dicatorships. Even if the socalist leadership of said country was democratically elected.
Get a basic economics text and start reading.
Why don't you stop making foolish assumptions before you make an ass out of you and me. Speaking of books, you might pick up some more economics books yourself, only make sure the authors didn't come out of the CATO institute or were funded by Richard Mellon Scaife.
The controversy surrounding abortion is about whether or not the unborn things are humans or not, and therefore, whether abortion is murder or not.
Not for the feminists, it's not. For them, it has always been "my body, my choice". As for the pro-lifers, one of their annoying habits is advocating state support of fetuses, but only until the moment of birth. After that, they don't give a shit.
And no, despite what people on either side keep on shouting in their rallies, the matter is not obvious either way. If the ball of cells is not human, then when does it become a human - and is the division line sharp?
Ah yes, the falacy of a false choice. We can't draw a single arbitrary line where a blob of cells becomes a human being, because we don't know on exactly which day out of that 9 months that action occurs. So you draw two arbitrary lines, one where it is obviously still a blob of cells and another where it is obviously a human being capapble of surviving outside of the womb. The two obvious places would be at the end of the first trimester and at the beginning of the third.
Polls show that most Americans believe that abortion should be legal, but that it should be more restricted towards the end of a pregnancy, which is also what I believe. We should have a Great Compromise on the subject of abortion: during the first trimester, any woman can get an abortion for any reason, without any of these BS waiting periods. The third trimester should be off-limits to any abortion except in the case of severe birth defects or if the mothers health is at risk. Unfortunatly, the right wing of the GOP is dead set against this, so don't expect any such compromise until the Dems regain a majority. Yes, there are hard core feminists who believe that abortion should be legal even late in a pregnancy, but there are currently 100 Jerry Falwells or Rick Santorums for every Gloria Steinem.
I also take the position, politically popular with neither end of the aboriton debate, that fathers should have exactly the same rights to terminate their parental responsiblities that mothers do. If a woman has a day, a week, three months or nine months to have an abortion, a man should also have a day, a week, three months or nine months to sever his parental responsibilities. To which the feminists first responce is: you made a choice to have sex, now deal with the consequences. So why doesn't that same rule apply to women that choose to have sex and become pregant? To which their second responce is: we have to carry the baby for nine months - our bodies, our choice. To which my responce is - you don't think my body and health will be on the line, toiling to make child support payments for a kid I didn't want? And 18 years of my life is rather more important than 9 months of yours, sorry.
Wow. I was with you up until this. Speaking of straw man arguments.
I belive the term you are looking for is "ad hominem": attaking the messenger rather than the message. But it's not and ad hominem if it's true.
Instead of pretending that gun-rights advocates are right-wing nutjobs
Certinally, not all members of the NRA or other gun-rights advocates or are nutjobs, but the public, political face of the NRA is pure nutjobbery. Rather than spending vast amounts of money on politics and fighting all forms of gun control, they should spend that cash talking about the responsiblities of gun ownership and the importance of getting training in the storage, maintainance and use of firearms. This would make gun ownership safer. It would make gun possesion more effective in defence of homes and families. Not only would gun owners (and the public) be better off, but it would also reinforce the NRA's positions that gun ownership is beneficial and the fundamental right to own a firearm is there for a reason.
If you go to their site, you can find information on youth education and women's self defence, but they take most of their millions of dollars into partisan races and treat firearms as magical talismans that will ward off evil-doers. Nutjobs. And considering the fact that Bush announced support for all existing gun control laws, government sponsored trigger locks, background checks at gun shows, and resigning the assault weapons ban without so much as a peep from the NRA, they are hypocritcal nutjobs as well.
Elementary, my dear Watson. DVD was a giant leap over VHS in both quality and usability. But even if you had a small, old TV set and couldn't tell the difference, quality wise, between VHS and DVD, you could still take advantage of menus, chapter skipping, alternate languages, and fast forwarding without degrading the media. Blu Ray doesn't bring anything new to the table here.
What is does bring is increased storage and video quality, but you have to make a serious investment in an HDTV or projector to take advantage of it. The number of people who can pop $2500 for an HDTV & PS3 is dwarfed by the number of people who can buy a Wii for $200 - $300 and hook it up to their exisitng CRT TV. Furthermore, when the PS2 was released, DVD was already a well established standard with thousands of titles available. However, there are going to be a handfull of Blu Ray titles (in comparison) at the time of the PS3's release, so even if you DO have money burning a hole in your pocket, there isn't much reason to upgrade.
And remember that Blu Ray was supposed to be the trojan horse that brought millions of Blu Ray players into people's homes, so once they did buy a TV capable of taking advantage of 1080i, they would already have a high definition player - Sony's. But with consumers able to buy a 360 AND a Wii AND some games (if MS cuts the 360's price and the Wii lanches at $250) for the price of the high end PS3, that's not going to happen.
Sure, Sony will sell out their initial stock, but their price announcment is going to kill their pre-orders - gamers who would order months in advance and wait for their PS3 to come in rather than going with Microsoft or Nintendo.
In summary: Sony slit their own throats at E3. For both the PS3 AND Blu Ray. They are either going to do some frantic PR spinning along with a large price cut to regain what they've lost, or promise a blowjob with the purchase of each PS3.
Everything I've heard on the HD-DVD and Blue-Ray is that these players are going to start at about $600-800 by themselves and not drop that fast.
Nope. One manufacturer has already announced one for $500.
The 15" came with a 2.0 ghz processor and a 100 gig hard drive for $2500. The 17" was released with a 2.16 ghz processor and a 120 gig hard drive for $2800. You could upgrade the 15" to have the same size hard drive and processor speed, but it would actually cost more than the 17" with those same too specs. This made the 15" a real ripoff, as the 17" had a larger screen, Firewire 800, and a much better DVD drive.
Now the 15" comes with a 2.16 ghz processor, so upgrading the hard drive to 120 gigs is still $200 less than the stock 17" Macbook Pro. The DVD drive is still a lesser one, but that's because no one yet makes a dual layer drive to fit in that size of a case.
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They do a lot worse all the time. I'd like you to list one reaction even remotely similar to the staged protests over the Mohammed photos in the Jyllandsposten. Just one.
You wont find similar reactions because there haven't been comparible incidents for wingnut Christians to get up in arms about. Convince a French magazine to draw Christ as a bomb toting terrorist and we'll see.
But in any case, wingnut Christians are perfectly capable of being bat-shit crazy right here in the U.S. See the boycott of Disney by the Southern Baptists. Or for a more recent example, Bill O'Reilly's invented "war on Christmas".
So, at what point in the checkout process did you not see the full Ticketmaster price? I bought some tickets recently, and quit out when I saw the ludicrous "fees".
Because that is false advertizing, and false advertizing is lying.
There's your choice. Go or don't go. Obviously, the people putting the event on are happy to use them, even if you are not. You don't need to go and see a major sports game, any more than I need fine burgundy. There are plenty of ways to be entertained.
No. Taxpayers should be able to go to an event at a venue that their tax dollars built for the advertized ticket price, not the advertized price +50% in "fees" to a middleman. This wouldn't be a problem if they were forced to include all fees in the ticket price, or if Ticketmaster was not a monopoly, but that's not the case.
Really? You were there, in person? If so, you might have missed conservatives celebrating the invasion of Iraq, blowing off any civilian casualties, denying responsiblity of any kind, and wingnuts like Ann Coulter advocating that the U.S. "should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity".
You = hypocritical jackass.
It does sound like editorializing, but that statement is arguably factually correct.
Beneath the facade of 'ethical foreign policies'
Bush promised the end of "torture and rape rooms", but then we found out about Abu Gharib.
western colonial arrogance
The entire administration, many GOP members of Congress, some Democrats, and of course all the right-wing media.
and sheer inhumanity
Rummsfield failing to stop the chaos following the invasion because he insisted on a light force, phosphorus shells, killing civilians, Abu Gharib again.
It's about being able to watch a two-hour movie without a bathroom break (small soda) or blowing your bladder out on the way to the restroom (large soda). :P
Heh. I know a couple of guys who got jumpo pops when they saw Fellowship of the Ring, and they knew how long it was. Didn't go to the bathroom till the end of the movie, the idiots.
Privileged, overfed and sheltered children of developed nations may forget this, but at one time in their not-to-distant past, their nation used to be filled with jobs just like the ones in the sweatshop. And eventually, wealth grew and working conditions got better.
Because workers unionized and forced employeers to offer better wages and working conditions. Kinda contradicts your whole "sweatshops are good" shtick.
Next thing you'll be demanding fillet steak for the same price as rump.
If you're going to be a tool, at least get an argument that isn't stupid. What I don't want to do is come in and buy a rump roast steak at the advertized rump roast price and walk out having paid fillet prices, and then some. Especially when I get charged a fee to do Ticketmaster the favor of printing my own ticket and saving them all of their printing and labor costs.
Really, don't like 'em, don't shop there. Personally, Ticketmaster events don't appeal to me very often, and when I've gone through and got the fees up, I've once been so disgusted, and it tipped what I was willing to pay, so that I abandoned the sale. Whilst the fees aren't up front, you see them during the ordering process. You have that choice.
No, you DON'T have a choice. If you want to go to just about any concert in any sized arena, or just about any sports game, you have no choice but to use Ticketmaster. At an venue that was likely paid for using your tax dollars. Ticketmaster is a monopoly that engages in blatantly false advertizing. If a concert ticket is advertized $45, it had better be $45 plus sales tax, not $45 plus another $15 in "fees".
Just when I think Ticketmaster has hit rock bottom in corporate greed, they find a new way to put the screws to consumers. Their last invention was ticketFast, which would let you print off tickets at home...for a price. According to the NY Times article, it would cost you between $1.75 and $2.50 to do Ticketmaster the favor of using your own printer, paper and ink to print off tickets so they woudln't have to. You can go buy a ticket and have to pay over $16 in fees these days.
One reason why we need regime change here in the U.S. is so we can get a DOJ that doesn't look at anti-trust laws with distain. Ticketmaster should either be broken up or forced to include all fees in the advertized ticket price.
And what amount of your income is expropriated from you at gun-point by the government
In any country with even a moderate population density, you have to have government services and pay for them with taxes. If you live in the country and aren't paying taxes, you are freeloading.
What if you run a business? Important things to consider when rating a government.
Indeed. It is important that the government actually give a damn about the welfare of it's people, rather than the only priority being the raw income earning potential of the top 5% of the selfish, self-centered, shortsighted, elisits.
It is my understanding that not only does the president have this power, he has very recently executed it.
What this president claims he can do, and does, seldom have any bearing on what is legal and constitutional. He hasn't been smacked down yet because lower courts pass issues up to higher courts packed with conservative appointees, and Congress is controlled by the GOP and refuses to investigate even the most grevious violations of the Constitution (NSA spying).
And no, Bush can't just wave his hand and announce that information has been declassified. First it needs to be analyzed for accuracy and for relevancy, to see if the information should remain classified. So revealing Valerie Wilson's CIA status was a leak even if Bush made it himself. And either the administration leaked portions of national security documents to bolster the case for invading Iraq, or they didn't do their job analyzing said documents, which wood have revealed that many of their justifications for war had already been debunked. So either the administration is guilty of leaking or is guilty of being incompetent.
The problem with this administration is that everything is "secret" to them, from the number of people we're holding in prisons like Guantanamo to which oil executives made up Cheney's energy taskforce. And so far, the courts have been reticent to smack them down, and of course the GOP Congress wouldn't investigate Bush if videotapes were released showing he shot JFK, John Lennon, and MLK jr.
Plus, this way when I'm impressing people with my mad sabre skills, I can also drop the Macbook on a couch or something and hear R2D2's scream. :)
Sounds more like you miss the old days when any troll post bashing Apple would get you a +5 Informative.
Next time you have one of these conversations with her, ask her if she would be supporting Bill Clinton if he were still in office and doing the same actions with the same justifications. Or if she would be happy if Hillary get's elected prez in two years and keeps all the power that Bush has grabbed for the presidency.
My understanding is that the first virus ever in the wild was for apple computers.
It's a little short on details, but it sounds more like that site is confusing trojans with viruses:
Apple Viruses 1, 2, and 3 are some of the first viruses "in the wild," or in the public domain. Found on the Apple II operating system, the viruses spread through Texas A&M via pirated computer games.
They're taking some strain now but nowhere near dangerous levels, and the potential (and becoming more likely) benefits are huge.
Not dangerous? Huge benefits? I think you overestimate their chances. To repeat myself:
DVD was a giant leap over VHS in both quality and usability. But even if you had a small, old TV set and couldn't tell the difference, quality wise, between VHS and DVD, you could still take advantage of menus, chapter skipping, alternate languages, and fast forwarding without degrading the media. Blu Ray doesn't bring anything new to the table here.
What is does bring is increased storage and video quality, but you have to make a serious investment in an HDTV or projector to take advantage of it. The number of people who can pop $2500 for an HDTV & PS3 is dwarfed by the number of people who can buy a Wii for $200 - $300 and hook it up to their exisitng CRT TV. Furthermore, when the PS2 was released, DVD was already a well established standard with thousands of titles available. However, there are going to be a handfull of Blu Ray titles (in comparison) at the time of the PS3's release, so even if you DO have money burning a hole in your pocket, there isn't much reason to upgrade.
And remember that Blu Ray was supposed to be the trojan horse that brought millions of Blu Ray players into people's homes, so once they did buy a TV capable of taking advantage of 1080i, they would already have a high definition player - Sony's. But with consumers able to buy a 360 AND a Wii AND some games (if MS cuts the 360's price and the Wii lanches at $250) for the price of the high end PS3, that's not going to happen.
Sure, Sony will sell out their initial stock, but their price announcment is going to kill their pre-orders - gamers who would order months in advance and wait for their PS3 to come in rather than going with Microsoft or Nintendo.
In summary: Sony slit their own throats at E3. For both the PS3 AND Blu Ray. They are either going to do some frantic PR spinning along with a large price cut to regain what they've lost, or promise a blowjob with the purchase of each PS3.
Check out the building full of unfireable teachers in new york, who just go there to chill all day because the firing process is so expensive and litigation-prone that the city can't afford to worry about it.
Uh huh. A certain percentage of humans are lazy slackers. Some of these slackers will go on to work for corporations, and others go on to work for unions. I find it courious, however, that said laziness is only an inditement against unions, but not buisnesses. Same with other injustices: anyone who's worked in any large, medium or even small businesses have seen hard working, well qualified people passed up for a promotion because Slacker Joe, who was awarded the position, was the managers frat brother in college. Or an incompetent supervisor who hasn't been demoted/fired because he's the cousin of the CEO. But again, no one takes these actions to mean that corporations have failed as institutions. Same thing again with Enron, Worldcom, United, Union Carbide: these are treated as failures of individuals, not failures of capitalism. But because someone saw union X do undisireable action B in 1987, it means that unions are failed institutions that no longer serve any useful purpose.
There wouldn't be chaos in a free market health care system.
There doesn't have to be chaos for it to still be extremely expensive. Sure there would still be certifications, but much like tech school accreditation, it can be difficult to figure out how much that certificate on the wall actually means. In a small town, word would get around fast if a doctor is a hack. But if you live in a large city or were traveling, it wouldn't necessarily be so easy.
In fact, the NRA spends considerable resources on training and safety programs. This fact isn't particularly newsworthy, however, at least not compared to their political lobbying. So one hears about political efforts much more often than safety training.
Oh, they do a a good deal of training that is quite valuable. Aside from youth education and women's self defense (tangent: why do we have women's self defense classes all over the place when men are far and away the #1 victims of violent crime?), they do a good deal of training of law enforcement officers. But when I pick up a paper and read a story dealing with the NRA, it's never about a training program or noted enthusiasts discussing the awsome responsibilities of gun ownership. It's only about how they are fighting for the right to own anti-tank rifles or pouring thousands of dollars into a congressional race to get some Republicans elected. And this isn't about what stories the media decides to report, but rather how the NRA decides to spend their money.
If the government wanted to ensure adequate food for the troops, they could have done what they do now: buy it at market prices.
Right, because the government had money to spare, coming out of a decade of record growth. Oh wait, I might have my decades mixed up here. If anything, government money was an even more scarce resource, as it also had to pay for tanks, bombs, guns and training our armed forces in addition to food. Paying full market prices for food would have meant less money for said tanks, bombs, guns and troops.
Unless you want to go the full route and move to a 100% Marxist pure socialist economy
Straw man. But as far as socialist countries go, most weren't allowed to try and succeed because the CIA would destabalize them, sometimes aiding military coups resulting in dicatorships. Even if the socalist leadership of said country was democratically elected.
Get a basic economics text and start reading.
Why don't you stop making foolish assumptions before you make an ass out of you and me. Speaking of books, you might pick up some more economics books yourself, only make sure the authors didn't come out of the CATO institute or were funded by Richard Mellon Scaife.
The controversy surrounding abortion is about whether or not the unborn things are humans or not, and therefore, whether abortion is murder or not.
Not for the feminists, it's not. For them, it has always been "my body, my choice". As for the pro-lifers, one of their annoying habits is advocating state support of fetuses, but only until the moment of birth. After that, they don't give a shit.
And no, despite what people on either side keep on shouting in their rallies, the matter is not obvious either way. If the ball of cells is not human, then when does it become a human - and is the division line sharp?
Ah yes, the falacy of a false choice. We can't draw a single arbitrary line where a blob of cells becomes a human being, because we don't know on exactly which day out of that 9 months that action occurs. So you draw two arbitrary lines, one where it is obviously still a blob of cells and another where it is obviously a human being capapble of surviving outside of the womb. The two obvious places would be at the end of the first trimester and at the beginning of the third.
Polls show that most Americans believe that abortion should be legal, but that it should be more restricted towards the end of a pregnancy, which is also what I believe. We should have a Great Compromise on the subject of abortion: during the first trimester, any woman can get an abortion for any reason, without any of these BS waiting periods. The third trimester should be off-limits to any abortion except in the case of severe birth defects or if the mothers health is at risk. Unfortunatly, the right wing of the GOP is dead set against this, so don't expect any such compromise until the Dems regain a majority. Yes, there are hard core feminists who believe that abortion should be legal even late in a pregnancy, but there are currently 100 Jerry Falwells or Rick Santorums for every Gloria Steinem.
I also take the position, politically popular with neither end of the aboriton debate, that fathers should have exactly the same rights to terminate their parental responsiblities that mothers do. If a woman has a day, a week, three months or nine months to have an abortion, a man should also have a day, a week, three months or nine months to sever his parental responsibilities. To which the feminists first responce is: you made a choice to have sex, now deal with the consequences. So why doesn't that same rule apply to women that choose to have sex and become pregant? To which their second responce is: we have to carry the baby for nine months - our bodies, our choice. To which my responce is - you don't think my body and health will be on the line, toiling to make child support payments for a kid I didn't want? And 18 years of my life is rather more important than 9 months of yours, sorry.
Wow. I was with you up until this. Speaking of straw man arguments.
I belive the term you are looking for is "ad hominem": attaking the messenger rather than the message. But it's not and ad hominem if it's true.
Instead of pretending that gun-rights advocates are right-wing nutjobs
Certinally, not all members of the NRA or other gun-rights advocates or are nutjobs, but the public, political face of the NRA is pure nutjobbery. Rather than spending vast amounts of money on politics and fighting all forms of gun control, they should spend that cash talking about the responsiblities of gun ownership and the importance of getting training in the storage, maintainance and use of firearms. This would make gun ownership safer. It would make gun possesion more effective in defence of homes and families. Not only would gun owners (and the public) be better off, but it would also reinforce the NRA's positions that gun ownership is beneficial and the fundamental right to own a firearm is there for a reason.
If you go to their site, you can find information on youth education and women's self defence, but they take most of their millions of dollars into partisan races and treat firearms as magical talismans that will ward off evil-doers. Nutjobs. And considering the fact that Bush announced support for all existing gun control laws, government sponsored trigger locks, background checks at gun shows, and resigning the assault weapons ban without so much as a peep from the NRA, they are hypocritcal nutjobs as well.
Really? What makes you say that?
Elementary, my dear Watson. DVD was a giant leap over VHS in both quality and usability. But even if you had a small, old TV set and couldn't tell the difference, quality wise, between VHS and DVD, you could still take advantage of menus, chapter skipping, alternate languages, and fast forwarding without degrading the media. Blu Ray doesn't bring anything new to the table here.
What is does bring is increased storage and video quality, but you have to make a serious investment in an HDTV or projector to take advantage of it. The number of people who can pop $2500 for an HDTV & PS3 is dwarfed by the number of people who can buy a Wii for $200 - $300 and hook it up to their exisitng CRT TV. Furthermore, when the PS2 was released, DVD was already a well established standard with thousands of titles available. However, there are going to be a handfull of Blu Ray titles (in comparison) at the time of the PS3's release, so even if you DO have money burning a hole in your pocket, there isn't much reason to upgrade.
And remember that Blu Ray was supposed to be the trojan horse that brought millions of Blu Ray players into people's homes, so once they did buy a TV capable of taking advantage of 1080i, they would already have a high definition player - Sony's. But with consumers able to buy a 360 AND a Wii AND some games (if MS cuts the 360's price and the Wii lanches at $250) for the price of the high end PS3, that's not going to happen.
Sure, Sony will sell out their initial stock, but their price announcment is going to kill their pre-orders - gamers who would order months in advance and wait for their PS3 to come in rather than going with Microsoft or Nintendo.
In summary: Sony slit their own throats at E3. For both the PS3 AND Blu Ray. They are either going to do some frantic PR spinning along with a large price cut to regain what they've lost, or promise a blowjob with the purchase of each PS3.
Everything I've heard on the HD-DVD and Blue-Ray is that these players are going to start at about $600-800 by themselves and not drop that fast.
Nope. One manufacturer has already announced one for $500.
The 15" came with a 2.0 ghz processor and a 100 gig hard drive for $2500. The 17" was released with a 2.16 ghz processor and a 120 gig hard drive for $2800. You could upgrade the 15" to have the same size hard drive and processor speed, but it would actually cost more than the 17" with those same too specs. This made the 15" a real ripoff, as the 17" had a larger screen, Firewire 800, and a much better DVD drive.
Now the 15" comes with a 2.16 ghz processor, so upgrading the hard drive to 120 gigs is still $200 less than the stock 17" Macbook Pro. The DVD drive is still a lesser one, but that's because no one yet makes a dual layer drive to fit in that size of a case.
Because they have Radeon Mobility chips on an AGP bus, as opposed to an integrated graphics chip from Intel.