And when MS has paid? You think there are many people who'd take millions from MS and not from Sun? And not AOL/Netscape? And not from OSS developers? And not from Slashdot? And not from you?
People who will take money they dont deserve will take it from anyone. Just because they start with MS doesnt mean it will end there.
whereas Windows just puts a nice little warning on the screen and lets you go right ahead.
That is false. Windows is very easy to configure it so that you cannot *install* (ie, change any system settings) any new software as a standard user. I admin lots and lots of Windows 2k and XP boxes and my users cannot install anything I dont personally approve.
I do however let them run any executable they want, though I could restrict that as well if I wanted.
When Linux is on the desktop with everyone running root with RH or Lycoris or Lindows or what ever you will see similiar things: a big pile of bad nasty programs running when the user has no idea how they got there.
...the whole reason that the progressives in the US havent succedded wildly - even when democrats like Clinton and Carter are in office - is that when you are on the losing side you tend to fly off the deeply emotional side...
Examples just in your post:
corporate oligarchy
Exaggeration and hyberbole. Really. Yes, corporations are very powerful now. Yes, they probably need reform and governance changes. Most Americans - I am suring well about 75% agree with this. But as soon as you start complaining about the "corporate oligarchy" you see that number tumble well under majority status.
right-wingers who see the world in 1-bit color
You criticized the other poster for generalize several hundred million people, yet here you are willing to generalize just like that the ~35%-40% of Americans who consider themselves "right-wing" or "right-of-center".
the fascist neo-conservatives
There you go again. A lot of people are unhappy with the current government of the US. Probably about ~50%. But as soon as you go calling them fascist - "a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition" - you once again marginalize support and pigeonhole yourself in a group with violent anarchists, die hard soviet-style communists, and marxist's. The vast majority of people who dont like Bush don't believe he intends to sieze dictortorial powers and institute violent military suppression of the Democratic party.
I know its easier to loathe and seek the political destruction of those believed to be inhuman or malviolently disposed of, but at some point the progressives in this country should realize that you if you acknowledge that most right-wingers are neither inhuman or fundamentally evil then things will progress smoother.
The recent trend of the opposition drastically amazingly violently angry against the administration really has to tone down or the country literally won't be able to make it as a union. Clinton sparked something so strong in many right-wingers it's sick. Likewise, Bush pushes all those same buttons in left-wingers. It's getting beyond shrill, beyond angry, and gettting towards the tinderbox side.
My advice to you and fellow-progressives: take a breath, step back, and look at the situation. You disagree with Bushes policies and tactics. Fine. Work for his defeat. But try to refrain from suggesting he is going to effect a violent take over the the US government.
The President *can* effect the economy, I didnt say otherwise. Just not in the *immediate* term. If on the first day of office he passed certain laws and made some changes, those will probably cycle through the economy by the end of his term.
He cant flick a switch and then be done with it, which is what they and others claim.
As far as pork is concerned, you are incredibly wrong. Let me explain how pork works and why you are wrong about it getting tossed out under Clinton. Pork gets slipped into *popular* bills. Bills that are approved 400-10 in the house and and 90-10 in the Senate or better. In close bills pork is mostly eliminated by the majority faction.
The thing of it is that because of this, no one can vote against the popular bill to kill pork. When they do, it gets used against them in elections. Thats when you see someone get asked "Why did you vote against the Bill to Preserve all that is Good senator?". Of course that won't do. So an easy bill comes along - something routine - and the pork gets piled on. The most senior powerful party people get the most, and then the less powerful party people, and then the opposition party people. It's always been like that.
To suggest it didnt happen under Clinton is absurd - even if the congress was opposed pork crosses party lines like its water under a bridge. Its all part of a complex system of bartering and trading that trascends party lines.
First off, the Novak issue is in dispute. Its up in the air. We will see. What is in dispute now thanks to Novak is who called who. Novak has contradicted himself on this issue. The original posted claimed it was "agents", which is clearly untrue. This is one case.
But back to jobs. I agree that the government can take direct action to employ people and actively redistribute wealth. That is clear and straightforward. It doesn't happen often in the US often however, and Clinton did not do this directly and really not even indirectly. He did increase the size of certain government agencies, but not enough to drastically alter the employment rate (aka, not ala Germany in the 30's).
As to your Clinton points:
: Acted sane and responsible (economically), didn't screw things up.
That is nothing, and can't be counted. Objective things: laws, treaties, actions only please.
He opened up more free trade and balanced the budget.
Bush has opened up even more free trade and exapnded lots of market space in Asia and Europe and even South America that Clinton didnt have access to. Second, Clinton signed a balanced budget, he didnt balance it. Big difference. Deficits more than anything though is a valid difference, however, in the short term, they DO NOT affect employment levels.
Essentially what you are saying is that He was lucky to be president in the 1990s, and thats's exactly right. Clinton lucked out and got a boom economy. That's the bottom line.
To Bush:
Cut taxes on the rich instead of implementing a real stimulus packageCut taxes on the rich instead of implementing a real stimulus package
A "real stimulus" package doesn't exisit short of the drastic direct action - and remember those don't always work. Short of hiring people to make roads that dont need building, littel cna be done in the short term to cause employment to pick up. In fact, short of the government hiring massive amounts of unemployed (1+ M) effecting even a 1% change in employment in less than 4 years is legislatively impossible. As far as taxes on the rich, over 90% of the tax package Bush passed hasn't taken effect yet, and probably never will (it will most likely be repealed before it takes effect). Its a dirty little secret but the tax cuts Bush put in take effect over 10 years. We are in year 1 of those cuts. There is no physical way this could have effected employment one way or another yet. Bush did lie by implication saying it would immediately create jobs. It wouldn't. The only thing that might help is direct cash to individuals - $400 and then $800. But that mostly too small to make a dent.
Brought back deficits as far as the eye can see.
Wrong answer same as before. Deficits don't affect short-term employment. Additionally, FYI, the GAO didnt predicit any of the last 3 surpluses more than 18 months before they happened. Essentially they can't predict - no one can - the complex effect of the economy and tax code on each other. All they can do is report.
Failed to go after his buddies who rip off investors (think Enron)
The damage was done before Bush got to office. I hear this a lot. The false returns and crimes of Enron were comitted throughout the 90's - during Bush I and Clinton's terms.
The fundamental thing to remember is that the build-up of the 90's - aka the Clinton economy - was built on the fraud of Enron, WorldCom, and the tech bubble.
Ok, that's only 4, but I have to go now. The first one is the really important one, and should be enough anyway. With a proper stimulus package, the recovery would probably be over and the economy would be back on track after what was really a relatively mild recession
No, its not. There is not stimulus package that can turn around a recession in 6, 12, or even 18 months short of a massive government effort (aka, hiring unemployed people to do manual labor). Changes passed by Congress take months, and
These admittedly aren't the strongest points but they are at least valid, and this is off the top of my head....
Those are very weak. Those five issues are why the economy and employment tanked? Underfunding of the IRS? SEC regulation laxness even though accounting problems had started in the 90's (remember, most of the bad stuff corrected during the Bush term *happenend* during Clintons term - the illicit actions were only revealed during the Bush term)? It doesnt add up.
The point I was making which you confirm is that the President can barely - marginally if at all - determine the course of the "economy" and specifically unemployment.
The things you throw out are minor and very subjective. "Congressional buddies get a rubber stamp" - I mean really, are we so naive to believe the Clintons buddies (and Bush, Reagan, Carter, etc) didn't get a rubber stamp on thier pork? Of course not.
The bottom line is that President's do not control the economy.
It is racist if the reason we should take care of our citizens is because of their race and not their national origin. Its a fine line for sure. We pump billions into aid to places where white people live. Why not billions to Iraq? In the last decade we've sent billions - over $200 billion at last count - to Russia and the former USSR. We've spent billions on Africa, and billions on Asia. And billions of Israel. But when it comes to Muslims/Arabs, the poster is unwillinging to spend the or lesser billions. I think the reason is race as well as national origin (meaning its not just race - its both nation and race; we support Muslims in other countries namely the US and other mid-east countries like Israel but not Arab Muslime countries in the Mid-East). It is both racist, nationalist and intensely selfish.
That's why I pointed it out. The original poster was crying about what bastards non-democrats are yet at heart he is contradicting the stand of his own party with his blatant nationalism and racism.
Okay, that's fine. As long as that is the case. You are racist plus a nationalist. I am all for nationlism but not racism. Just checking what your position is.
The original posted was also suggesting that he is a liberal. I am pointing out the flaw in his belief system. An inherent belief of modern liberalism is that nationalism and racism are both objectively wrong.
If it's no big deal, then why is the CIA going after the administration?
Because information was leaked. And that deserves an investigation. The original quote was referring to "agents". This is one case. Not multiple. The CIA is also covering its ass, because Novak contacted them - confirmed the person in question was an employee - and didn't ask him not to print the name. They are just as much at fault. Novak stumbled upon information that he had no idea was even illicit. On top of that, as I pointed out, Wilson himself to Novak outed his own wife by confirming she worked for the CIA. The quote you provide from the CIA analyst from PBS Newshour says he couldnt dilvulge to anyone except his wife that he even worked for the CIA. Yet Wilson divulged to Novak that he was sent to Niger at the suggestion of his wife who worked at the CIA.
The timeline is like this:
1. Novak looks into "yellow-cake" incident.
2. Novak wonders why a Clinton-appointee was sent on a highly sensitive mission.
3. Novak contacts Wilson and asks him why he was chosen.
4. Wilson says he was sent because of the influence of his wife - who is a WMD expert analyst for the CIA.
5. Novak - now knowing that the wife is an employee of the CIA contacts administration officals to verify Wilsons story.
6. Administration officals believing that Novak already knew that the wife was a CIA Agent (he did) and that she was "covered" as part of another government agency (he didn't know that yet) confirmed Wilson's story that he was sent to Niger due to the influence of his wife - a long time CIA employee.
7. Novak prints a story with information he believes is open-sourced and which is clearly cross checked and verified.
The claims coming from some are clear: Bush admin people - namely Karl Rove - purposely outed the wife to punish Wilson. The information that Novak and others provide does not support this possibility. Novak contacted Wilson, Wilson told Novak about his wife being an employee of the CIA. Novak contacted the White House for confirmation of Wilsons story, which is when the administration people gave out information that is proscribed. Clearly the law was broken by the White House people giving out information that is protected. However, there is not yet a single shred of evidence - investigation pending - that this was deliberately leaked. All signs indicate that it was Novak investigating Wilson's story that lead to the information being let out. Additionally, under the law as written the crime is mitigated if the information is no longer secret - meaning that this conversation we are having isn't a violation of the law. If anyone can prove that this information was pubic knowledge before the Novak article the crime is completely mitigated.
Regardless of any of that though - it is very clear that the claims of deliberate retilation by the White House are unfounded at this time. There isn't anything to suggest it other than it would be conveinent for the White House and that it was physically possible. The quote from the PBS person does nothing to further the case except to confirm that the wife was in fact a CIA employee (which is now confirmed through the CIA) and that a leak did happen (which Novak said in his follow-up article).
Bottom line? Two admin officals probably broke the law, and will likely get slapped on the wrist. In terms of who is actually responsible it is Wilson himself.
Back to the President and jobs. There is a big difference between 4.8 million jobs and 400,000 jobs as originally claimed. A freaking huge difference. In terms of raw unemployment there is not a huge nationwide problem. Uemployment is higher than it has been in the past 15 years, but not certainly record breaking. Additionally, it has been trending downwards. On top of that economic recovery experts will gladly tell you how jobs are the last thing to recover from a recession or downturn.
I am not suggesting that we give the President a
We're hemorrhaging 400k jobs a month,
No, not exactly. The most recent month statistics shows a net loss of 93,000 jobs. Check it out yourself here.
consumer confidence is going down
In the link above, you'll notice that one month of stastics shows a decline. The trend was upwards all summer long. Essentially things trended upwards over the summer, and are starting to trend downward. One month or two months or even three months is a very small trend. It is *NOT* considered a big economic indicator to have a month of declined consumer confidence.
we're spending more on social services in Iraq then in the U.S
That's patently absurd. The entire budget for the war, social services, rebuilding and operational expenses for the next 12 months does not exceed the cost of one month of social services in the US. Second, are you somehow suggesting that the social welfare of minorities like the Iraqis and muslims is somewhat less valuable than an unemployed person in the US? Which is worth more? Is one okay to be unemployed and the other not? Why? One the surface your statement belies a latent racism/nationalism that is offensive at best and abhorrent at worse.
top administration officials are leaking the names of covert CIA agents
One agent is in question. It is two "senior officals" in question. The persons status has not been necessarily declared to be covert. Not every analyst in the Operations Directorate is a spy. It is likely the husband of the outed agent tipped Novak off himself. Wilson told Novak that he went to Niger at the suggestion of his wife. Novak called around to confirm the story. Additionally, before Novak broke the story it was common knowledge that Plame worked for the CIA. Read Novak's defense of the situation and you'll probably change your mind on the situation.
we have a humongous deficit and an administration that doesn't give a rats ass
Deficts are a long-term problem, not a short-term problem. What you seem to forget is that the world economy and the US economy specifically are cyclical. Boom-bust-boom-bust etc. Look at over time and you'll see essentially its a 9-10 year cycle. I do not agree with the spending patterns of Bush or even of the last administration (or any in the last 40 years really), however, to suggest that the current administration cares not for deficits is false. To solve current deficits would require drastic short term action that is not justified by the severity of the problem. A deficit of 5% of the budget is not a serious long-term concern.
Next November you're going to be enjoying a democratic president back in the white house
Of course, that is possible. Anything is at this point time. But it is speculation, just FYI.
I know, the freepers and little green footballers and NRO and all you guys will attempt to smear the shit out of anyone who shows up but I don't think it will matter
Thats an odd statement, but I dont quite follow. NRO (I assume you mean the NRA?) is as far as organizations go blisteringly forthright about how it selects to endorse candidates. They rate candidates based on issues determined by the executive board and membership at large. They assign points on a 100-point scale and then give out a grade-letter. Are you suggesting that somehow the NRA doesn't have the right to lobby citizens to vote for candidates they support? Are the 1 Million + memberso the NRA not allowed to express their collective political opinions?
Kiss president fucktard good bye.
Bush may well be voted out of office in favor of a democrat. But the bigger issue here is why yourself and the author of the article puts so much weight on the office of President of the US.
It isnt a big issue for "always up" servers, but for desktops that real users use - in offices and at home - people feel like its going back to "Windows 98". Its a minor issue, but RedHat 9 on a certain machine I've supported takes about 6 minutes to get to a graphical login prompt (and then of course the user logins and everything else loads etc) compared with 45 seconds on XP. If they use the hibernate feature instead of fully powering the machine off that time is reduced almost in half to about 25 seconds.
The bottom line is that for a user who boots the machine 7 times a week they will save nearly 30 minutes of waiting time during that week. Its a small thing but its the reason I get calls from my Linux users asking why "their PCs are way slower than the other users machines".
Windows does exactly that for its "hibernate" feature. Essentially hardware is returned to a safe state (write operation suspended, etc) and the contents of memory written sequentially to a block of disk space. On boot, a small stub is loaded, which copies the data from disk to memory. Execution resumes at that point. The last thing that Windows does before hibernating is to schedule hardware re-initilization in a short period of time - essentially ensuring that things like sound cards, video cards, USB devices, etc get a "soft" reset when out of the hibernation period.
On a decent reasonable recent PC this takes a few seconds. On my fast AMD box I hit the power button and about 2 seconds later the box is off. Hit the power button again and its back on in about 4 seconds exactly where I left off. If I lost my DHCP lease in the interim it takes another 3-4 seconds for network connections to resume.
But whats best about the changes MS made to Windows XP is the multi-threaded boot process. Other than the kernel load the userland stuff is mostly all multi-threaded even on boot. This means services and whatnot are starting concurrently without waiting for other things to finish. Its somewhat less safe - a failed service could potentially cause others to hang and lock the system and/or cause a reset - however, I've yet to see that problem in the field. The net result is that on a typical AMD/P4 Windows XP box you can get to a login prompt/welcome screen in under 30 seconds, often under 20.
Users I've switched from XP to various Linuxes have all complained about the boot times - Red Hat 8 on similiar hardware takes eons to get a graphical login prompt. SuSE is just as bad. Mandrake is somewhat better, but all are in the minutes not seconds metric.
Except here common knowledge is against the 1024 non-standard. Ask a thousand random people how many things are in a kilothing and see what response you get.
90% or more would answer "1000".
Common knowledge is on the side of the drive people, not the geeky people.
Not only that, but they do disclose, so anyone who knows enough to be bothered by a ~2.5% difference in drive capacity can easily check the fine print.
I cant find any cases of people winning a civil liability case because they were infected with a disease that the other person should have known about. In fact, it is rare case that the person is even on the hook if they intentionally infect another person through consensual sex. The number of cases I can find relating to that are really insignificant.
are
The general legal principle is that if you are a willing participant the burden is on you to ensure that you are not infected with any disease, that you can live with the consequences, and that you are in fact able to make such decision.
The same principle should apply to connecting to the Internet. You assume risk, you assume the responsibility, and you must ensure that you are educated enough to make the decision to be connected.
Your theory falls down. MS has patched the legitimate problems behind each and every virus you listed in plenty of advance of the problem. They have re-engineered Windows to make it HARD for you to run unpatched software. Parsons acted maliciously with the intent of causing harm. MS has not. Bill Gates has not.
That's absurd. Instead of releasing Service Packs Linux distros just release a new version of the distro - hence why RH, MDK, and whatnot release two or three new point versions of their distro for every one version of Windows.
Service Packs for Linux woudl be a nice way to ensure things are at a "standard version" without requiring you to run a cron job for regular updates.
Try to convince your boss that you should ditch the number #1 OS in the world with the #1 office suite in the world for a product called "GNU/Linux" that runs a desktop called "KDE" and an office suite called "KOffice" with tools like "KWord", "KPresenter", etc etc.
It gets silly when they ask what the things stand for. "KDE" stands for "Kool Desktop Environment". "GNU" stands for "GNU is Not Unix". Seriously. I've been made to look like a retard because of these silly names.
Say what you will about MS, but their names are at least bland and corporate friendly.
Not only that, but in real terms, you have to go out of your way to not install the fix. Windows by default now downloads and asks you to install the patch. What more do you want? I mean, christ, let's get real. You have to try not to fix the problem.
Ohh come off it with the $14B. We all - ALL - know that those numbers of lost money are a big fat joke. Its a fake number made up to sound scary and its all bogus. BOGUS.
Every MS virus, worm, and what not does not cause BILLIONS in lost dollars. There are I am sure some cases of actual lost real money, but if they totalled billions I'd be surprised.
MS is doing everything they can to keep people using updated software. Literally they make you go out of your way to run out-ot-date unpatched software. At some point the blame has to shift from MS to the end-user.
And a final word, Jamie. The fake numbers about dollars lost work both ways. That number includes "brand loss", productivity, and all slew of non-scientific estimations. It's a joke. You wouldn't like it very much if they determined falsely that some Apache flaw was the cause of billions of damage.
Slashdot Mirror
And when MS has paid? You think there are many people who'd take millions from MS and not from Sun? And not AOL/Netscape? And not from OSS developers? And not from Slashdot? And not from you?
People who will take money they dont deserve will take it from anyone. Just because they start with MS doesnt mean it will end there.
Or we could just beat the hard-disk manufacturers with a stick until they understand that most people expect 1 kilobyte to be 1024 bytes :P
You are out of touch. If you conducted a scientific survey of 100 random adults who own PCs and asked them:
"How many bytes are in a kilobyte?" you really think that more than 50 would answer "1024"?
I'd be surprised if more than 10 did, personally.
100% of the non-geek population equates kilo with base 10, not base 2.
That's just untrue and false.
"IE crashes it takes the whole system down with it". What a joke.
Did you just make that up or what?
whereas Windows just puts a nice little warning on the screen and lets you go right ahead.
That is false. Windows is very easy to configure it so that you cannot *install* (ie, change any system settings) any new software as a standard user. I admin lots and lots of Windows 2k and XP boxes and my users cannot install anything I dont personally approve.
I do however let them run any executable they want, though I could restrict that as well if I wanted.
When Linux is on the desktop with everyone running root with RH or Lycoris or Lindows or what ever you will see similiar things: a big pile of bad nasty programs running when the user has no idea how they got there.
What about it? What makes you think politicans really want pork to stop? At all.. in any way... its a win win for all of them..
I have to comment on your post...
...the whole reason that the progressives in the US havent succedded wildly - even when democrats like Clinton and Carter are in office - is that when you are on the losing side you tend to fly off the deeply emotional side...
Examples just in your post:
corporate oligarchy
Exaggeration and hyberbole. Really. Yes, corporations are very powerful now. Yes, they probably need reform and governance changes. Most Americans - I am suring well about 75% agree with this. But as soon as you start complaining about the "corporate oligarchy" you see that number tumble well under majority status.
right-wingers who see the world in 1-bit color
You criticized the other poster for generalize several hundred million people, yet here you are willing to generalize just like that the ~35%-40% of Americans who consider themselves "right-wing" or "right-of-center".
the fascist neo-conservatives
There you go again. A lot of people are unhappy with the current government of the US. Probably about ~50%. But as soon as you go calling them fascist - "a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition" - you once again marginalize support and pigeonhole yourself in a group with violent anarchists, die hard soviet-style communists, and marxist's. The vast majority of people who dont like Bush don't believe he intends to sieze dictortorial powers and institute violent military suppression of the Democratic party.
I know its easier to loathe and seek the political destruction of those believed to be inhuman or malviolently disposed of, but at some point the progressives in this country should realize that you if you acknowledge that most right-wingers are neither inhuman or fundamentally evil then things will progress smoother.
The recent trend of the opposition drastically amazingly violently angry against the administration really has to tone down or the country literally won't be able to make it as a union. Clinton sparked something so strong in many right-wingers it's sick. Likewise, Bush pushes all those same buttons in left-wingers. It's getting beyond shrill, beyond angry, and gettting towards the tinderbox side.
My advice to you and fellow-progressives: take a breath, step back, and look at the situation. You disagree with Bushes policies and tactics. Fine. Work for his defeat. But try to refrain from suggesting he is going to effect a violent take over the the US government.
The President *can* effect the economy, I didnt say otherwise. Just not in the *immediate* term. If on the first day of office he passed certain laws and made some changes, those will probably cycle through the economy by the end of his term.
He cant flick a switch and then be done with it, which is what they and others claim.
As far as pork is concerned, you are incredibly wrong. Let me explain how pork works and why you are wrong about it getting tossed out under Clinton. Pork gets slipped into *popular* bills. Bills that are approved 400-10 in the house and and 90-10 in the Senate or better. In close bills pork is mostly eliminated by the majority faction.
The thing of it is that because of this, no one can vote against the popular bill to kill pork. When they do, it gets used against them in elections. Thats when you see someone get asked "Why did you vote against the Bill to Preserve all that is Good senator?". Of course that won't do. So an easy bill comes along - something routine - and the pork gets piled on. The most senior powerful party people get the most, and then the less powerful party people, and then the opposition party people. It's always been like that.
To suggest it didnt happen under Clinton is absurd - even if the congress was opposed pork crosses party lines like its water under a bridge. Its all part of a complex system of bartering and trading that trascends party lines.
First off, the Novak issue is in dispute. Its up in the air. We will see. What is in dispute now thanks to Novak is who called who. Novak has contradicted himself on this issue. The original posted claimed it was "agents", which is clearly untrue. This is one case.
But back to jobs. I agree that the government can take direct action to employ people and actively redistribute wealth. That is clear and straightforward. It doesn't happen often in the US often however, and Clinton did not do this directly and really not even indirectly. He did increase the size of certain government agencies, but not enough to drastically alter the employment rate (aka, not ala Germany in the 30's).
As to your Clinton points:
: Acted sane and responsible (economically), didn't screw things up.
That is nothing, and can't be counted. Objective things: laws, treaties, actions only please.
He opened up more free trade and balanced the budget.
Bush has opened up even more free trade and exapnded lots of market space in Asia and Europe and even South America that Clinton didnt have access to. Second, Clinton signed a balanced budget, he didnt balance it. Big difference. Deficits more than anything though is a valid difference, however, in the short term, they DO NOT affect employment levels.
Essentially what you are saying is that He was lucky to be president in the 1990s, and thats's exactly right. Clinton lucked out and got a boom economy. That's the bottom line.
To Bush: Cut taxes on the rich instead of implementing a real stimulus packageCut taxes on the rich instead of implementing a real stimulus package
A "real stimulus" package doesn't exisit short of the drastic direct action - and remember those don't always work. Short of hiring people to make roads that dont need building, littel cna be done in the short term to cause employment to pick up. In fact, short of the government hiring massive amounts of unemployed (1+ M) effecting even a 1% change in employment in less than 4 years is legislatively impossible. As far as taxes on the rich, over 90% of the tax package Bush passed hasn't taken effect yet, and probably never will (it will most likely be repealed before it takes effect). Its a dirty little secret but the tax cuts Bush put in take effect over 10 years. We are in year 1 of those cuts. There is no physical way this could have effected employment one way or another yet. Bush did lie by implication saying it would immediately create jobs. It wouldn't. The only thing that might help is direct cash to individuals - $400 and then $800. But that mostly too small to make a dent.
Brought back deficits as far as the eye can see.
Wrong answer same as before. Deficits don't affect short-term employment. Additionally, FYI, the GAO didnt predicit any of the last 3 surpluses more than 18 months before they happened. Essentially they can't predict - no one can - the complex effect of the economy and tax code on each other. All they can do is report.
Failed to go after his buddies who rip off investors (think Enron)
The damage was done before Bush got to office. I hear this a lot. The false returns and crimes of Enron were comitted throughout the 90's - during Bush I and Clinton's terms.
The fundamental thing to remember is that the build-up of the 90's - aka the Clinton economy - was built on the fraud of Enron, WorldCom, and the tech bubble.
Ok, that's only 4, but I have to go now. The first one is the really important one, and should be enough anyway. With a proper stimulus package, the recovery would probably be over and the economy would be back on track after what was really a relatively mild recession
No, its not. There is not stimulus package that can turn around a recession in 6, 12, or even 18 months short of a massive government effort (aka, hiring unemployed people to do manual labor). Changes passed by Congress take months, and
These admittedly aren't the strongest points but they are at least valid, and this is off the top of my head....
Those are very weak. Those five issues are why the economy and employment tanked? Underfunding of the IRS? SEC regulation laxness even though accounting problems had started in the 90's (remember, most of the bad stuff corrected during the Bush term *happenend* during Clintons term - the illicit actions were only revealed during the Bush term)? It doesnt add up.
The point I was making which you confirm is that the President can barely - marginally if at all - determine the course of the "economy" and specifically unemployment.
The things you throw out are minor and very subjective. "Congressional buddies get a rubber stamp" - I mean really, are we so naive to believe the Clintons buddies (and Bush, Reagan, Carter, etc) didn't get a rubber stamp on thier pork? Of course not.
The bottom line is that President's do not control the economy.
It is racist if the reason we should take care of our citizens is because of their race and not their national origin. Its a fine line for sure. We pump billions into aid to places where white people live. Why not billions to Iraq? In the last decade we've sent billions - over $200 billion at last count - to Russia and the former USSR. We've spent billions on Africa, and billions on Asia. And billions of Israel. But when it comes to Muslims/Arabs, the poster is unwillinging to spend the or lesser billions. I think the reason is race as well as national origin (meaning its not just race - its both nation and race; we support Muslims in other countries namely the US and other mid-east countries like Israel but not Arab Muslime countries in the Mid-East). It is both racist, nationalist and intensely selfish.
That's why I pointed it out. The original poster was crying about what bastards non-democrats are yet at heart he is contradicting the stand of his own party with his blatant nationalism and racism.
Okay, that's fine. As long as that is the case. You are racist plus a nationalist. I am all for nationlism but not racism. Just checking what your position is.
The original posted was also suggesting that he is a liberal. I am pointing out the flaw in his belief system. An inherent belief of modern liberalism is that nationalism and racism are both objectively wrong.
If it's no big deal, then why is the CIA going after the administration?
Because information was leaked. And that deserves an investigation. The original quote was referring to "agents". This is one case. Not multiple. The CIA is also covering its ass, because Novak contacted them - confirmed the person in question was an employee - and didn't ask him not to print the name. They are just as much at fault. Novak stumbled upon information that he had no idea was even illicit. On top of that, as I pointed out, Wilson himself to Novak outed his own wife by confirming she worked for the CIA. The quote you provide from the CIA analyst from PBS Newshour says he couldnt dilvulge to anyone except his wife that he even worked for the CIA. Yet Wilson divulged to Novak that he was sent to Niger at the suggestion of his wife who worked at the CIA.
The timeline is like this:
1. Novak looks into "yellow-cake" incident.
2. Novak wonders why a Clinton-appointee was sent on a highly sensitive mission.
3. Novak contacts Wilson and asks him why he was chosen.
4. Wilson says he was sent because of the influence of his wife - who is a WMD expert analyst for the CIA.
5. Novak - now knowing that the wife is an employee of the CIA contacts administration officals to verify Wilsons story.
6. Administration officals believing that Novak already knew that the wife was a CIA Agent (he did) and that she was "covered" as part of another government agency (he didn't know that yet) confirmed Wilson's story that he was sent to Niger due to the influence of his wife - a long time CIA employee.
7. Novak prints a story with information he believes is open-sourced and which is clearly cross checked and verified.
The claims coming from some are clear: Bush admin people - namely Karl Rove - purposely outed the wife to punish Wilson. The information that Novak and others provide does not support this possibility. Novak contacted Wilson, Wilson told Novak about his wife being an employee of the CIA. Novak contacted the White House for confirmation of Wilsons story, which is when the administration people gave out information that is proscribed. Clearly the law was broken by the White House people giving out information that is protected. However, there is not yet a single shred of evidence - investigation pending - that this was deliberately leaked. All signs indicate that it was Novak investigating Wilson's story that lead to the information being let out. Additionally, under the law as written the crime is mitigated if the information is no longer secret - meaning that this conversation we are having isn't a violation of the law. If anyone can prove that this information was pubic knowledge before the Novak article the crime is completely mitigated.
Regardless of any of that though - it is very clear that the claims of deliberate retilation by the White House are unfounded at this time. There isn't anything to suggest it other than it would be conveinent for the White House and that it was physically possible. The quote from the PBS person does nothing to further the case except to confirm that the wife was in fact a CIA employee (which is now confirmed through the CIA) and that a leak did happen (which Novak said in his follow-up article).
Bottom line? Two admin officals probably broke the law, and will likely get slapped on the wrist. In terms of who is actually responsible it is Wilson himself.
Back to the President and jobs. There is a big difference between 4.8 million jobs and 400,000 jobs as originally claimed. A freaking huge difference. In terms of raw unemployment there is not a huge nationwide problem. Uemployment is higher than it has been in the past 15 years, but not certainly record breaking. Additionally, it has been trending downwards. On top of that economic recovery experts will gladly tell you how jobs are the last thing to recover from a recession or downturn.
I am not suggesting that we give the President a
A few points:
We're hemorrhaging 400k jobs a month,
No, not exactly. The most recent month statistics shows a net loss of 93,000 jobs. Check it out yourself here.
consumer confidence is going down
In the link above, you'll notice that one month of stastics shows a decline. The trend was upwards all summer long. Essentially things trended upwards over the summer, and are starting to trend downward. One month or two months or even three months is a very small trend. It is *NOT* considered a big economic indicator to have a month of declined consumer confidence.
we're spending more on social services in Iraq then in the U.S
That's patently absurd. The entire budget for the war, social services, rebuilding and operational expenses for the next 12 months does not exceed the cost of one month of social services in the US. Second, are you somehow suggesting that the social welfare of minorities like the Iraqis and muslims is somewhat less valuable than an unemployed person in the US? Which is worth more? Is one okay to be unemployed and the other not? Why? One the surface your statement belies a latent racism/nationalism that is offensive at best and abhorrent at worse.
top administration officials are leaking the names of covert CIA agents
One agent is in question. It is two "senior officals" in question. The persons status has not been necessarily declared to be covert. Not every analyst in the Operations Directorate is a spy. It is likely the husband of the outed agent tipped Novak off himself. Wilson told Novak that he went to Niger at the suggestion of his wife. Novak called around to confirm the story. Additionally, before Novak broke the story it was common knowledge that Plame worked for the CIA. Read Novak's defense of the situation and you'll probably change your mind on the situation.
we have a humongous deficit and an administration that doesn't give a rats ass
Deficts are a long-term problem, not a short-term problem. What you seem to forget is that the world economy and the US economy specifically are cyclical. Boom-bust-boom-bust etc. Look at over time and you'll see essentially its a 9-10 year cycle. I do not agree with the spending patterns of Bush or even of the last administration (or any in the last 40 years really), however, to suggest that the current administration cares not for deficits is false. To solve current deficits would require drastic short term action that is not justified by the severity of the problem. A deficit of 5% of the budget is not a serious long-term concern.
Next November you're going to be enjoying a democratic president back in the white house
Of course, that is possible. Anything is at this point time. But it is speculation, just FYI.
I know, the freepers and little green footballers and NRO and all you guys will attempt to smear the shit out of anyone who shows up but I don't think it will matter
Thats an odd statement, but I dont quite follow. NRO (I assume you mean the NRA?) is as far as organizations go blisteringly forthright about how it selects to endorse candidates. They rate candidates based on issues determined by the executive board and membership at large. They assign points on a 100-point scale and then give out a grade-letter. Are you suggesting that somehow the NRA doesn't have the right to lobby citizens to vote for candidates they support? Are the 1 Million + memberso the NRA not allowed to express their collective political opinions?
Kiss president fucktard good bye.
Bush may well be voted out of office in favor of a democrat. But the bigger issue here is why yourself and the author of the article puts so much weight on the office of President of the US.
The United States is not a central
It isnt a big issue for "always up" servers, but for desktops that real users use - in offices and at home - people feel like its going back to "Windows 98". Its a minor issue, but RedHat 9 on a certain machine I've supported takes about 6 minutes to get to a graphical login prompt (and then of course the user logins and everything else loads etc) compared with 45 seconds on XP. If they use the hibernate feature instead of fully powering the machine off that time is reduced almost in half to about 25 seconds.
The bottom line is that for a user who boots the machine 7 times a week they will save nearly 30 minutes of waiting time during that week. Its a small thing but its the reason I get calls from my Linux users asking why "their PCs are way slower than the other users machines".
Windows does exactly that for its "hibernate" feature. Essentially hardware is returned to a safe state (write operation suspended, etc) and the contents of memory written sequentially to a block of disk space. On boot, a small stub is loaded, which copies the data from disk to memory. Execution resumes at that point. The last thing that Windows does before hibernating is to schedule hardware re-initilization in a short period of time - essentially ensuring that things like sound cards, video cards, USB devices, etc get a "soft" reset when out of the hibernation period.
On a decent reasonable recent PC this takes a few seconds. On my fast AMD box I hit the power button and about 2 seconds later the box is off. Hit the power button again and its back on in about 4 seconds exactly where I left off. If I lost my DHCP lease in the interim it takes another 3-4 seconds for network connections to resume.
But whats best about the changes MS made to Windows XP is the multi-threaded boot process. Other than the kernel load the userland stuff is mostly all multi-threaded even on boot. This means services and whatnot are starting concurrently without waiting for other things to finish. Its somewhat less safe - a failed service could potentially cause others to hang and lock the system and/or cause a reset - however, I've yet to see that problem in the field. The net result is that on a typical AMD/P4 Windows XP box you can get to a login prompt/welcome screen in under 30 seconds, often under 20.
Users I've switched from XP to various Linuxes have all complained about the boot times - Red Hat 8 on similiar hardware takes eons to get a graphical login prompt. SuSE is just as bad. Mandrake is somewhat better, but all are in the minutes not seconds metric.
Geeks would say "1024". Your average educated person would say "1000".
Except here common knowledge is against the 1024 non-standard. Ask a thousand random people how many things are in a kilothing and see what response you get.
90% or more would answer "1000".
Common knowledge is on the side of the drive people, not the geeky people.
Not only that, but they do disclose, so anyone who knows enough to be bothered by a ~2.5% difference in drive capacity can easily check the fine print.
I cant find any cases of people winning a civil liability case because they were infected with a disease that the other person should have known about. In fact, it is rare case that the person is even on the hook if they intentionally infect another person through consensual sex. The number of cases I can find relating to that are really insignificant.
are The general legal principle is that if you are a willing participant the burden is on you to ensure that you are not infected with any disease, that you can live with the consequences, and that you are in fact able to make such decision.
The same principle should apply to connecting to the Internet. You assume risk, you assume the responsibility, and you must ensure that you are educated enough to make the decision to be connected.
Your theory falls down. MS has patched the legitimate problems behind each and every virus you listed in plenty of advance of the problem. They have re-engineered Windows to make it HARD for you to run unpatched software. Parsons acted maliciously with the intent of causing harm. MS has not. Bill Gates has not.
That's absurd. Instead of releasing Service Packs Linux distros just release a new version of the distro - hence why RH, MDK, and whatnot release two or three new point versions of their distro for every one version of Windows.
Service Packs for Linux woudl be a nice way to ensure things are at a "standard version" without requiring you to run a cron job for regular updates.
Thank you.. thats a really good point.
Try to convince your boss that you should ditch the number #1 OS in the world with the #1 office suite in the world for a product called "GNU/Linux" that runs a desktop called "KDE" and an office suite called "KOffice" with tools like "KWord", "KPresenter", etc etc.
It gets silly when they ask what the things stand for. "KDE" stands for "Kool Desktop Environment". "GNU" stands for "GNU is Not Unix". Seriously. I've been made to look like a retard because of these silly names.
Say what you will about MS, but their names are at least bland and corporate friendly.
Not only that, but in real terms, you have to go out of your way to not install the fix. Windows by default now downloads and asks you to install the patch. What more do you want? I mean, christ, let's get real. You have to try not to fix the problem.
Ohh come off it with the $14B. We all - ALL - know that those numbers of lost money are a big fat joke. Its a fake number made up to sound scary and its all bogus. BOGUS.
Every MS virus, worm, and what not does not cause BILLIONS in lost dollars. There are I am sure some cases of actual lost real money, but if they totalled billions I'd be surprised.
MS is doing everything they can to keep people using updated software. Literally they make you go out of your way to run out-ot-date unpatched software. At some point the blame has to shift from MS to the end-user.
And a final word, Jamie. The fake numbers about dollars lost work both ways. That number includes "brand loss", productivity, and all slew of non-scientific estimations. It's a joke. You wouldn't like it very much if they determined falsely that some Apache flaw was the cause of billions of damage.
I think you should grow up.
Dude, I like women with lips that aren't serpentine.
I dont know on what planet everything is fine when you end up Angeline Jolie. Eww. That is the furtherest thing from fine if you ask me.