Americans are lazy, stupid, and all around losers but somehow they are sitting on the top of the food chain. What does that say about everyone else? All I see are people jumping up and down while screaming "that's not fair!" and looking for "do overs" to compensate for some earlier idiotic decision they made that didn't quite work out the way they had planned. And for those who say it won't last you may be correct but remember how they got to the top in the first place. It wasn't by kow towing to the incoherent ramblings of the international community or minions of the "Progressive" political community. The international community spends so much time laying all the problems in the world on the US that they don't have anytime left to make any meaningful contribution to actually addressing and fixing the problems. It's more important for them to make sure the US is blamed for all the worlds problems so they can unburden themselves of any responsibility. As far as foreign policy goes I anxiously await the day when Americas foreign policy consists of nothing more than maintaining reasonable trade policies combined with a hearty "fuck off" whenever someone comes looking for a hand out or support of any kind.
No moron. Companies restrict all kinds of sites like porn, social networking sites, sites like ebay, sites that are identified by their intrusion detection software, and the known dodgy advertising domains. The hosts file or firewall filters are in place just for this purpose. Locking down the browser is also a common practice. Different companies have different rules but the effort is to reduce the amount of time their employees surf the web instead of working, perserve bandwidth for official business, and of course it help maintain security but allowing any web access raises security risks especially if the IT department is not diligent in securing their firewalls,servers, and desktops. It is not the OS that is causing many of the infections today it is the users or companies who do not stay current on service packs and users who fall for social engineering gimmicks.
"Can't access the Internet except selected sites that are deemed 'safe'??? "
What in the hell are you talking about? If you can only access selected sites it is your company firewall or you have entered sites manually in the Restricted Sites or Hosts file in the Internet security options.
The most effective and dangerous censorship is "self censorship". Most perople tend to limit themselves to information and opinions they happen to agree with and ignore any thing that might disrupt their current thinking. The current internet topology makes it very hard to censor information for long periods of time in countries with a robust internet and wireless communication networks. There are always ways to circumvent the blocks put in place by governments who seek to restrict information.
Because you believe the "government is full of liars, buggers, and thieves" you possess a strong bias against the government and will always let that bias dominate your decision making when looking at the government. This is similar to someone declaring "all Muslims are terrorists" and using that belief in all future discussions.
There are indeed liars, buggers, and thieves that work for the government but there are 14.6 million government employees. How many of those does it take to meet your definition of "full". Also keep in mind that the general public is also full of "liars, buggers, and thieves". According to your logic that makes the entire US just a bunch of liars, buggers, and thieves. And I am sure this trait holds true for the entire world. So by using wide ranging, all inclusive denunciations, and unsupported accusations you display all the signs of being one of those who feels they are much more intelligent than anyone else and thus it is up to you to make sure the rest of us know what the truth really is. This entire thread started with me questioning the story that alleged the government is hiding something but there is no offering of details to support the accusations in the story. You then took this to mean I always agree with government actions which I don't, not by a long shot. The unsupported story in this post is an example of how someone can post mis-information but still convince a lot of people that the story is true without even investigation of the accusations. But since you have already condemned the entire government you don't need to bother with any fact checking because you have all ready made up your mind. This is the same with any major story today. There are large numbers of people who believe anything they are told and since the web has now made it easy to rapidly spread dis-information across the world. Dis-information for the sole purpose of manipulating the masses. Even the well known Wikipedia online encyclopedia contributes to this problem. Just look up any controversial topic in Wikipedia and see how the "facts" are repeatedly "updated" everyday. I would start with looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The vast majority of Arabs have never even heard about the Arab countries attacking Israel in 1973 in force and and getting their assess handed to them. Or of Israel returning the Sinai to Egypt for a peace treaty. Most Arabs think Egypt won the war. In truth Israel beat back the surprise attack and proceeded to cut off and totally surround the Egyptian military. In return for peace Israel returned the soldiers and the land. The land Israel has occupied was a direct result of wars waged against them Instead the Arabs and their supporters think that Israel was the aggressor in each conflict for the sole purpose of stealing land. This dis-information has helped fuel a non-stop war for over the past 40 years. Acknowledging this information to everyone might lance the boil of hatred in the region and possibly create an opening for a peaceful resolution. There may be wrongs on both sides but if the problem is ever going to be solved it will take full disclosure of the facts with each side acknowledging their wrongs. It's a situation directly caused by dis-information.
I'm sorry but I am not following your scenario, at least on how it applies to the original post. The discussion started off by me saying that elaborate conspiracy theories that cannot be verified with facts is damaging to society. I am not talking about one particular event I am taking a wider view of society as a whole. I am talking about the way truth is re-defined on the Internet. About people who post complete nonsense and accusations that end up going viral and distorting the facts because most people will not even attempt to verify the facts being presented in someones argument. About how political and antagonistic partners who only except the facts that support thier opinions and ignore any facts that might prove them wrong. This type of behavior is a major factor in generating the violence throughout the world today. Social web based media is the perfect platform for shaping the truth while spreading lies and propaganda to manipulate the public.
I am evidently talking above your comprehension level. I am not and have not said I believe everything the government says. I'm saying you cannot by default consider everything the government says and does is illegal or untrustworthy. Taking that hardline stance resolves nothing. Every government action deserves to be examined and judged based on the facts of the event. And yes precedents can be considered when reaching your determination but precedents are only one factor in the process of determining truth from fiction. You have taking the stance that the government is ALWAYS lying and then using your inability or unwillingness to find evidence to back up your pre-conceived notions as proof they are lying. You see no problems with this type of mindset? Your other points are so off the mark I don't even know how to refute them other than tell you to loosen up your tin foil hat a little and try to be a little more open minded if you ever expect anyone to give a shit what you think. You have labled a huge swath of people as liars and thieves will little or no evidence to back up your rightous indignation. The worst part is this type of attitude never results in resolving any problems. It creates vapid emotionalism, gross stereotyping, and heated animosity between people. It might be a good tactic when trying to hype up a crowd to man the barricades and fight the "man" but most the time it results only in distrust,chaos, and eventually violence.
So a lack of evidence automatically means someone is lying? I never said I took government statements at face value. I don't believe they are always lying but I also do not believe they always tell the truth. I need facts to make that determination. "They did it before! They will do it again!" is not a solid platform to be standing on when accusing people of wrong doing or does the concept of innocent until proven guilty escape your understanding? Precedence has it's place when analyzing an event but you can not rely on precedents alone. Precedence factors alone lead to pre-judgements and stereotypes.
It has been shown over and over that journalists, politicians, rabble rousers, malcontents, and your basic trouble makers will waste no time in releasing damaging information for profit, political power, or revenge passed off as some form of justice. But they need to be able to prove their assertions or suffer the fate of being branded as a liar or conspiracy nut. If the conclusion presented in the parent post is even close to being proven there would be people jumping up and down to promote their findings and reap their rewards. How many people can the CIA silence? Every time they try they increase the risk of further exposure and our government is pretty well versed in risk analysis. Just because they have the risk analysis does not mean they actually use the analysis properly. That's one reason I believe that the governments story concerning the killing of Osama. There is no way in hell this or any other President would step out on that limb. There are just to many people with factual knowledge of the operation. You assume the CIA is involved in drug trafficking but you have based your opinion on years of hearsay without any verifiable facts to support that charge. You issue a blanket unsupported statement that does nothing but ratchet up animosity of the CIA. I am not saying that the CIA hasn't taken advantage of the drug trade as a means of fulfilling their primary obligation which is to protect the US from similar organizations around the world. That's why the CIA has no jurisdiction in the US and is barred from operating directly in the US. I'm sure they have crossed the line somewhere along the line but those restrictions are in place because it is assumed they may step over the line know and then to fulfill their job requirements. Making them out to be principles in the drug trade without any supporting facts harms the organization. And yes, their operations can sometimes be on the far side of legal but any clandestine state security service practices the same methods in the real world. Idealists usually have no business in the security arena. An idealist would shun all forms of coercion and violence on the chance that everything might work out OK if we just come together. However there has not been a single international conflict solved without some degree of violence. We like to proclaim ourselves evolved but without our tech base we are the same as the people were 200 or more years ago. To pretend this is not true just postpones and increases the violence when it all comes apart. Once again I am not excusing them of possible wrong doing but proffering non-ending and non-verifiable charges against the organization creates enough background noise to obscure those times when they may have went to far. What I fear the most is seeing how the truth is being systematically re-written using the communication abilities of the Internet. There are governments and special interest groups and individuals who use multiple online identities and websites to refute or support anything related to them on the Internet. It is propaganda on steroids.
By truth I mean verifiable facts of an event without including any predispostions or bias in the verification of the facts. I don't believe everything the government says but I do leave room for a stray truth now and then. Truth is being defined on the internet by people that do not even pretend to be unbiased in their pronouncements. A good conspiracy theory can offer up the means to attack or discredit those who think differently. The situation is muddled further by the sheer volumn of hearsay and conspiracy theories posted on the Internet. It doesn't matter if the theories are legitimate. Just by throwing out theory after theory can generate uncertainty and confusion for those who do not take the time to truly investigate the situation before forming an opinion. And investigation does not include participating in partisan echo chamber web forums.
You willl get modded down because your assertions are not grounded in reality and are proferred in a context free environment. And stop with the fucking war crimes BS. War is killing and breaking things. The rules of war are nonsense because in the end there is not a single armed force on the planet that would allow any so called rules of war to stand in the way of them winning the war. Purposely targeting civilians is probably the only justifiable complaint in war so until you are willing to hold Syria, Libya, and pretty much every other country in the middle east to the same standard you complaints are just backgrouund noise. By the way what action would you recommend for punishing Saddam for gassing his citizens? Send the police in to arrest him? Apply the dreaded UN sanctions? Give him a good talking to? How about just ignoring him and complain about the US for being mean? What is your recommendation for dealing with the asshats in Syria who are busy shelling subdivisions and conducting mass arrests? I am really interested in how you would handle this problem.
How many kooks would that be? Where is the proof of any of the allegations and suppositions mentioned in the screed published. Conspiricy morons are rapidly ursuping the truth with wild unsupported reasoning and theories. The internet allows these type of stories to go viral. Once that happens there are sites that support and post the fictional stories and then link to others in the same support group. Thse groups then use each other as their "proof" that the story is true when in reality the story still has not been verified with any facts. Although I could be wrong. Maybe you are gifted with so much intellegience and foresight that only YOU are capable of recognizing the real truth but I doubt it. Unless you can prove it?
Someone wasted a lot of time putting together this BS. And I'm wasting time responding. If everything in this missive is true why is it not on the front page of news papers around the world? Surely at least one or two journalist reading this would take the time to verify everything mentioned here and waste no time releasing the findings. The US government is not competent enough to successfully keep secrets of this magnitude. In this case and the 9/11 case there are just too many people involved to cover up incidents of this involved. There is a limit on how many people the government can pay off or threaten to keep their mouths shut.The President would not have announced this action the way he did if there was even the slightest chance that someone can could provide contrary information.
If the US falls it will take the rest of the world with it. Britain was powerful in it's day and is still a respectable country today however the world is still trying to recover from their actions all across the planet. After all it was their inspiring and enlightened rulers who divided up the middle east territories.
Seeing as I wrote this post yesterday I couldn't have seen the story posted today now could I? However, it's the extraction method from shale causing the pollution not the natural gas itself. There are plenty of other sources of natural gas that don't require processing shale. Extracting natural gas or oil from shale should be the fallback worse case scenerio option. To maintain environmental safety increases the extraction cost which makes it more expensive then other sources.
Distribution is one of the main factors standing in in way of implementing alternative energy because the technology is still defining itself and if you start creating new distribution methods you need to know what the dominate source will be. It will probably take 20+ years for alternative energy to make appreciable gains against our current energy supply.
The electric car supply chain is already in action, granted it is small but the manufacturers are tooling up their plants and parts suppliers to support electric car manufacturing and the technology behind electric and battery life is moving forward. However, the biggest contributor to global warming is electricity generation not autos. Natural Gas is becoming a more viable and is cleaner option. As one example, there are already big cities using natural gas powered buses. The technology centered around solar and wind is also moving forward. People would not be investing in this technology if they didn't think it will payoff big in the future. I also doubt this development is being done to combat global warming. It sounds good in the companies press releases but it is the potential to make a lot of money that is driving these changes. The next Exxon could end up being a company that supplies the alternative energy market instead of petroleum market. We are lucky that the countries supplying 80% of the oil today are unreliable, erratic, and unstable to inject some urgency into to speeding up the introduction of alternatives. I also think it is safe to say that in the future alternative energy solutions will be cheaper.
How about the excuse of having to pay for the rebuilding of your infrastructure as well as providing protection it for 50 years to make sure you didn't destroy yourself for a 3rd time.
Your moral equivilency reasoning is the biggest reason why terrorists have no compunction in killing civilians. Your statement is all a Jihadist needs to justify their actions to themselves. Terrorism is effective today because people are willing to make excuses for it and blame the victims instead of the perpetrators.
So you create a fictional scenerio based on "hearsay" which you then declare you don't really believe and then you proceed to throw out your definition of inexcusable based on this situation. It's reasoning like this that helps to conceal the truth while at the same time highlighting your moral bankruptcy.
The earlier post definitively stated that the US had the lowest tax rate which was incorrect. If you look at the link I provided you would see the tax figures was the combination of both Fed and State taxes.
The war machine is only taking 4% of the yearly GDP and that ranks 28th on the list of countries comparing GDP against military expenditures. I'm not saying that is a good or bad thing I just think you need to look at the big picture now and then.
You have to admit that "open source" evangelists sometimes get a little carried away when singing the praises of open source projects. Like the some of the previous posts mentioned hunting for bugs by reading the source code rarely produces any results. Having an "open mind" is much more valuable than just using "open source". In 25 years of development the one thing I have learned above anything else is you should always chose the right tool for right job when building systems. Closed Source, Open Source, Linux , and Windows all have their places.
"The US has some of the lowest corporate taxes in the world."
No that statement is unsupported. The US corporation taxes are ranked #1 in the world. Currently, the average combined federal and state corporate tax rate in the U.S. is 39.3 percent
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/22917.html
One of the advances in oil shale recovery is in situ extraction. Drill a shaft, lower a heating element down the shaft, apply heat, pump up the liquefied shale and take it to the refinery. Over simplified but you get the basic idea. This method is easier on the environment because strip mining and huge amounts of water are not required. I certainly don't expect large scale shale oil operations until the price becomes cheaper than importing. Oil shale reserves are a safety net in case oil imports become to expensive or the current producers become unreliable.
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Americans are lazy, stupid, and all around losers but somehow they are sitting on the top of the food chain. What does that say about everyone else? All I see are people jumping up and down while screaming "that's not fair!" and looking for "do overs" to compensate for some earlier idiotic decision they made that didn't quite work out the way they had planned. And for those who say it won't last you may be correct but remember how they got to the top in the first place. It wasn't by kow towing to the incoherent ramblings of the international community or minions of the "Progressive" political community. The international community spends so much time laying all the problems in the world on the US that they don't have anytime left to make any meaningful contribution to actually addressing and fixing the problems. It's more important for them to make sure the US is blamed for all the worlds problems so they can unburden themselves of any responsibility. As far as foreign policy goes I anxiously await the day when Americas foreign policy consists of nothing more than maintaining reasonable trade policies combined with a hearty "fuck off" whenever someone comes looking for a hand out or support of any kind.
No moron. Companies restrict all kinds of sites like porn, social networking sites, sites like ebay, sites that are identified by their intrusion detection software, and the known dodgy advertising domains. The hosts file or firewall filters are in place just for this purpose. Locking down the browser is also a common practice. Different companies have different rules but the effort is to reduce the amount of time their employees surf the web instead of working, perserve bandwidth for official business, and of course it help maintain security but allowing any web access raises security risks especially if the IT department is not diligent in securing their firewalls,servers, and desktops. It is not the OS that is causing many of the infections today it is the users or companies who do not stay current on service packs and users who fall for social engineering gimmicks.
"Can't access the Internet except selected sites that are deemed 'safe'??? " What in the hell are you talking about? If you can only access selected sites it is your company firewall or you have entered sites manually in the Restricted Sites or Hosts file in the Internet security options.
The most effective and dangerous censorship is "self censorship". Most perople tend to limit themselves to information and opinions they happen to agree with and ignore any thing that might disrupt their current thinking. The current internet topology makes it very hard to censor information for long periods of time in countries with a robust internet and wireless communication networks. There are always ways to circumvent the blocks put in place by governments who seek to restrict information.
Because you believe the "government is full of liars, buggers, and thieves" you possess a strong bias against the government and will always let that bias dominate your decision making when looking at the government. This is similar to someone declaring "all Muslims are terrorists" and using that belief in all future discussions. There are indeed liars, buggers, and thieves that work for the government but there are 14.6 million government employees. How many of those does it take to meet your definition of "full". Also keep in mind that the general public is also full of "liars, buggers, and thieves". According to your logic that makes the entire US just a bunch of liars, buggers, and thieves. And I am sure this trait holds true for the entire world. So by using wide ranging, all inclusive denunciations, and unsupported accusations you display all the signs of being one of those who feels they are much more intelligent than anyone else and thus it is up to you to make sure the rest of us know what the truth really is. This entire thread started with me questioning the story that alleged the government is hiding something but there is no offering of details to support the accusations in the story. You then took this to mean I always agree with government actions which I don't, not by a long shot. The unsupported story in this post is an example of how someone can post mis-information but still convince a lot of people that the story is true without even investigation of the accusations. But since you have already condemned the entire government you don't need to bother with any fact checking because you have all ready made up your mind. This is the same with any major story today. There are large numbers of people who believe anything they are told and since the web has now made it easy to rapidly spread dis-information across the world. Dis-information for the sole purpose of manipulating the masses. Even the well known Wikipedia online encyclopedia contributes to this problem. Just look up any controversial topic in Wikipedia and see how the "facts" are repeatedly "updated" everyday. I would start with looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The vast majority of Arabs have never even heard about the Arab countries attacking Israel in 1973 in force and and getting their assess handed to them. Or of Israel returning the Sinai to Egypt for a peace treaty. Most Arabs think Egypt won the war. In truth Israel beat back the surprise attack and proceeded to cut off and totally surround the Egyptian military. In return for peace Israel returned the soldiers and the land. The land Israel has occupied was a direct result of wars waged against them Instead the Arabs and their supporters think that Israel was the aggressor in each conflict for the sole purpose of stealing land. This dis-information has helped fuel a non-stop war for over the past 40 years. Acknowledging this information to everyone might lance the boil of hatred in the region and possibly create an opening for a peaceful resolution. There may be wrongs on both sides but if the problem is ever going to be solved it will take full disclosure of the facts with each side acknowledging their wrongs. It's a situation directly caused by dis-information.
I'm sorry but I am not following your scenario, at least on how it applies to the original post. The discussion started off by me saying that elaborate conspiracy theories that cannot be verified with facts is damaging to society. I am not talking about one particular event I am taking a wider view of society as a whole. I am talking about the way truth is re-defined on the Internet. About people who post complete nonsense and accusations that end up going viral and distorting the facts because most people will not even attempt to verify the facts being presented in someones argument. About how political and antagonistic partners who only except the facts that support thier opinions and ignore any facts that might prove them wrong. This type of behavior is a major factor in generating the violence throughout the world today. Social web based media is the perfect platform for shaping the truth while spreading lies and propaganda to manipulate the public.
I am evidently talking above your comprehension level. I am not and have not said I believe everything the government says. I'm saying you cannot by default consider everything the government says and does is illegal or untrustworthy. Taking that hardline stance resolves nothing. Every government action deserves to be examined and judged based on the facts of the event. And yes precedents can be considered when reaching your determination but precedents are only one factor in the process of determining truth from fiction. You have taking the stance that the government is ALWAYS lying and then using your inability or unwillingness to find evidence to back up your pre-conceived notions as proof they are lying. You see no problems with this type of mindset? Your other points are so off the mark I don't even know how to refute them other than tell you to loosen up your tin foil hat a little and try to be a little more open minded if you ever expect anyone to give a shit what you think. You have labled a huge swath of people as liars and thieves will little or no evidence to back up your rightous indignation. The worst part is this type of attitude never results in resolving any problems. It creates vapid emotionalism, gross stereotyping, and heated animosity between people. It might be a good tactic when trying to hype up a crowd to man the barricades and fight the "man" but most the time it results only in distrust,chaos, and eventually violence.
So a lack of evidence automatically means someone is lying? I never said I took government statements at face value. I don't believe they are always lying but I also do not believe they always tell the truth. I need facts to make that determination. "They did it before! They will do it again!" is not a solid platform to be standing on when accusing people of wrong doing or does the concept of innocent until proven guilty escape your understanding? Precedence has it's place when analyzing an event but you can not rely on precedents alone. Precedence factors alone lead to pre-judgements and stereotypes.
It has been shown over and over that journalists, politicians, rabble rousers, malcontents, and your basic trouble makers will waste no time in releasing damaging information for profit, political power, or revenge passed off as some form of justice. But they need to be able to prove their assertions or suffer the fate of being branded as a liar or conspiracy nut. If the conclusion presented in the parent post is even close to being proven there would be people jumping up and down to promote their findings and reap their rewards. How many people can the CIA silence? Every time they try they increase the risk of further exposure and our government is pretty well versed in risk analysis. Just because they have the risk analysis does not mean they actually use the analysis properly. That's one reason I believe that the governments story concerning the killing of Osama. There is no way in hell this or any other President would step out on that limb. There are just to many people with factual knowledge of the operation. You assume the CIA is involved in drug trafficking but you have based your opinion on years of hearsay without any verifiable facts to support that charge. You issue a blanket unsupported statement that does nothing but ratchet up animosity of the CIA. I am not saying that the CIA hasn't taken advantage of the drug trade as a means of fulfilling their primary obligation which is to protect the US from similar organizations around the world. That's why the CIA has no jurisdiction in the US and is barred from operating directly in the US. I'm sure they have crossed the line somewhere along the line but those restrictions are in place because it is assumed they may step over the line know and then to fulfill their job requirements. Making them out to be principles in the drug trade without any supporting facts harms the organization. And yes, their operations can sometimes be on the far side of legal but any clandestine state security service practices the same methods in the real world. Idealists usually have no business in the security arena. An idealist would shun all forms of coercion and violence on the chance that everything might work out OK if we just come together. However there has not been a single international conflict solved without some degree of violence. We like to proclaim ourselves evolved but without our tech base we are the same as the people were 200 or more years ago. To pretend this is not true just postpones and increases the violence when it all comes apart. Once again I am not excusing them of possible wrong doing but proffering non-ending and non-verifiable charges against the organization creates enough background noise to obscure those times when they may have went to far. What I fear the most is seeing how the truth is being systematically re-written using the communication abilities of the Internet. There are governments and special interest groups and individuals who use multiple online identities and websites to refute or support anything related to them on the Internet. It is propaganda on steroids.
By truth I mean verifiable facts of an event without including any predispostions or bias in the verification of the facts. I don't believe everything the government says but I do leave room for a stray truth now and then. Truth is being defined on the internet by people that do not even pretend to be unbiased in their pronouncements. A good conspiracy theory can offer up the means to attack or discredit those who think differently. The situation is muddled further by the sheer volumn of hearsay and conspiracy theories posted on the Internet. It doesn't matter if the theories are legitimate. Just by throwing out theory after theory can generate uncertainty and confusion for those who do not take the time to truly investigate the situation before forming an opinion. And investigation does not include participating in partisan echo chamber web forums.
You willl get modded down because your assertions are not grounded in reality and are proferred in a context free environment. And stop with the fucking war crimes BS. War is killing and breaking things. The rules of war are nonsense because in the end there is not a single armed force on the planet that would allow any so called rules of war to stand in the way of them winning the war. Purposely targeting civilians is probably the only justifiable complaint in war so until you are willing to hold Syria, Libya, and pretty much every other country in the middle east to the same standard you complaints are just backgrouund noise. By the way what action would you recommend for punishing Saddam for gassing his citizens? Send the police in to arrest him? Apply the dreaded UN sanctions? Give him a good talking to? How about just ignoring him and complain about the US for being mean? What is your recommendation for dealing with the asshats in Syria who are busy shelling subdivisions and conducting mass arrests? I am really interested in how you would handle this problem.
How many kooks would that be? Where is the proof of any of the allegations and suppositions mentioned in the screed published. Conspiricy morons are rapidly ursuping the truth with wild unsupported reasoning and theories. The internet allows these type of stories to go viral. Once that happens there are sites that support and post the fictional stories and then link to others in the same support group. Thse groups then use each other as their "proof" that the story is true when in reality the story still has not been verified with any facts. Although I could be wrong. Maybe you are gifted with so much intellegience and foresight that only YOU are capable of recognizing the real truth but I doubt it. Unless you can prove it?
Someone wasted a lot of time putting together this BS. And I'm wasting time responding. If everything in this missive is true why is it not on the front page of news papers around the world? Surely at least one or two journalist reading this would take the time to verify everything mentioned here and waste no time releasing the findings. The US government is not competent enough to successfully keep secrets of this magnitude. In this case and the 9/11 case there are just too many people involved to cover up incidents of this involved. There is a limit on how many people the government can pay off or threaten to keep their mouths shut.The President would not have announced this action the way he did if there was even the slightest chance that someone can could provide contrary information.
If the US falls it will take the rest of the world with it. Britain was powerful in it's day and is still a respectable country today however the world is still trying to recover from their actions all across the planet. After all it was their inspiring and enlightened rulers who divided up the middle east territories.
Seeing as I wrote this post yesterday I couldn't have seen the story posted today now could I? However, it's the extraction method from shale causing the pollution not the natural gas itself. There are plenty of other sources of natural gas that don't require processing shale. Extracting natural gas or oil from shale should be the fallback worse case scenerio option. To maintain environmental safety increases the extraction cost which makes it more expensive then other sources.
Distribution is one of the main factors standing in in way of implementing alternative energy because the technology is still defining itself and if you start creating new distribution methods you need to know what the dominate source will be. It will probably take 20+ years for alternative energy to make appreciable gains against our current energy supply.
The electric car supply chain is already in action, granted it is small but the manufacturers are tooling up their plants and parts suppliers to support electric car manufacturing and the technology behind electric and battery life is moving forward. However, the biggest contributor to global warming is electricity generation not autos. Natural Gas is becoming a more viable and is cleaner option. As one example, there are already big cities using natural gas powered buses. The technology centered around solar and wind is also moving forward. People would not be investing in this technology if they didn't think it will payoff big in the future. I also doubt this development is being done to combat global warming. It sounds good in the companies press releases but it is the potential to make a lot of money that is driving these changes. The next Exxon could end up being a company that supplies the alternative energy market instead of petroleum market. We are lucky that the countries supplying 80% of the oil today are unreliable, erratic, and unstable to inject some urgency into to speeding up the introduction of alternatives. I also think it is safe to say that in the future alternative energy solutions will be cheaper.
How about the excuse of having to pay for the rebuilding of your infrastructure as well as providing protection it for 50 years to make sure you didn't destroy yourself for a 3rd time.
Your moral equivilency reasoning is the biggest reason why terrorists have no compunction in killing civilians. Your statement is all a Jihadist needs to justify their actions to themselves. Terrorism is effective today because people are willing to make excuses for it and blame the victims instead of the perpetrators.
So you create a fictional scenerio based on "hearsay" which you then declare you don't really believe and then you proceed to throw out your definition of inexcusable based on this situation. It's reasoning like this that helps to conceal the truth while at the same time highlighting your moral bankruptcy.
The earlier post definitively stated that the US had the lowest tax rate which was incorrect. If you look at the link I provided you would see the tax figures was the combination of both Fed and State taxes.
The war machine is only taking 4% of the yearly GDP and that ranks 28th on the list of countries comparing GDP against military expenditures. I'm not saying that is a good or bad thing I just think you need to look at the big picture now and then.
You have to admit that "open source" evangelists sometimes get a little carried away when singing the praises of open source projects. Like the some of the previous posts mentioned hunting for bugs by reading the source code rarely produces any results. Having an "open mind" is much more valuable than just using "open source". In 25 years of development the one thing I have learned above anything else is you should always chose the right tool for right job when building systems. Closed Source, Open Source, Linux , and Windows all have their places.
"The US has some of the lowest corporate taxes in the world." No that statement is unsupported. The US corporation taxes are ranked #1 in the world. Currently, the average combined federal and state corporate tax rate in the U.S. is 39.3 percent http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/22917.html
One of the advances in oil shale recovery is in situ extraction. Drill a shaft, lower a heating element down the shaft, apply heat, pump up the liquefied shale and take it to the refinery. Over simplified but you get the basic idea. This method is easier on the environment because strip mining and huge amounts of water are not required. I certainly don't expect large scale shale oil operations until the price becomes cheaper than importing. Oil shale reserves are a safety net in case oil imports become to expensive or the current producers become unreliable.