Well, there is nothing particularly "lovely" about it — it just can't be discounted. There is a saying in Russian: "Tell me, who your friends are, and I'll say, who you are."
Therefore all members of those two parties should be held under the deepest suspicion of kidnapping, false imprisonment, and torture.
Was that part of any of the party's strategy or tactics, or did they just condone somebody else doing it? The depth of your suspicion ought to depend on the answer, but basically, yes, you are right. If you are dealing with a member of a group, that does something (as a group) — good or bad — it is reasonable to think, that the individual member is doing it or would do it too.
So please explain how the opportunity to state whether I have a problem with Osama bin Laden being on an abusive [emphasis mine -mi] government list is a "great opportunity".
Whenever you — in response to an assertion, that you hold certain opinion on a matter — deny expressing an opinion, there is almost always a great opportunity to express one way or another for clarity. Skipping that opportunity is usually a sign of either a desire to muddle up the discussion or not wanting to confirm, that the initial assertion was, in fact, accurate. Your hinting at being afraid of some sort of persecution on yourself is quite laughable too.
You are yet to demonstrate, BTW, that the list is, in fact abusive (although your current.sig certainly is). But given your now-established tendency to obfuscate an argument, I don't really care... So long...
Well, the Judiciary will not allow his prosecution, but the Executive not only may, but must treat him with suspicion... Don't be ridiculous — had he done something you actually disapprove of yourself (and escaped prosecution on a technicality), you would've agreed with me.
If somebody walked up to a cop and said: "I think, all cops should be killed," — would you not call the cop an idiot, if he didn't take a goooood look at the guy, jotted down his description, and shared the info with his colleagues? Although Ayers' actual crimes were committed when Obama was 8 years old, his public insistence on regretting only not setting more bombs continues to this day — both law enforcement and the rest of us would, indeed, be idiots, if we didn't carefully watch, what he is doing and whom he is helping to get ahead...
Then, again, looking at the polls today, perhaps, we are, indeed, mostly comprised of idiots...
You can't list drivers licenses as a counterexample, because drivers licenses are about driving cars, not traveling by car.
Yes, I suppose, you can walk too — except, you are still likely to be on a public highway and may be picked up by the Executive government at their whim — whether or not you are on any list. And then, again, you ignored my other example — provision of very basic services (be it plumbing or floating horses' teeth or even use of whois and traceroute) increasingly requires an Executive Government's license, which can be taken away on a whim and without Judiciary's review.
Yet, somehow, I see neither ACLU nor yourself complaining about these outrages — and I suspect, you actually celebrated (along with most Slashdotters) the one requiring MediaSentry to have a private investigator (!) license to run whois and traceroute...
Then let's say that they placed people on this list any time they saw someone who, say, supported whatever political party they don't like. Even though pulling people over for lengthy traffic stops any time they exceed the speed limit is entirely within their rights, this still counts as persecution.
Well, that depends on what that hypothetical political party is advocating and known for. For example, if repeated trespassing (as was the case with Max Obuszewski and pals) is part of that party's action plan, then suspecting all its members of trespassing is quite reasonable.
Unless I actually said somewhere that I don't have a problem with Osama bin Laden being on the list, do not assume that this is the case.
You just missed a great opportunity to state, for the record, whether or not you actually have a problem with Osama bin Laden being on the list of suspected terrorists... I wonder, why you chose not to state your opinion... Khmm...
That would be like throwing a net in the sea and catching _all_ the damn fish.
A fisherman's goal is to sustain himself — not eliminate fish. If he catches all fish at once, he will starve tomorrow.
A law-enforcement's goal is to eliminate crime. (Now, we can cynically suspect, cops may want to leave some crooks alone so as not obsolete themselves, but we are so far from eliminating crime, that it is a moot point.)
Just doesn't seem right.
It — automatic prosecution of all traffic violations — would, actually, be wonderful compared to the current situation, where only the unlucky get punished. (This is why I argue for automatically-issued speeding citations based on the entry and exit times and the distance between those points on a toll road.)
On the one hand, it will eliminate selective enforcement, where being local, or good looking, or having the correct bumper sticker can get someone off the hook. And on the other hand, unreasonable restrictions (such as obscenely low speed limits) will get eliminated, once everybody has to obey them.
If he did something illegal, arrest and charge him.
He (William Ayers) did, does not deny it, and remains proud and remorseless — he can not be charged because of an earlier prosecutorial misconduct. We can not continue prosecuting him for fear of encouraging more such misconduct, but he ought to be treated as a pariah with the utmost disdain and suspicion. (Along with those, who chose to associate with him, of course.)
You do not get to come up with an arbitrary third category of "didn't break the law but I still don't like him" and then persecute people in that category.
What persecution are you talking about? People are simply added to a list — a list of those, who can be denied things by the government, that it can already deny to anyone. The (Executive) government's ability to deny basic things like travel (even driving is a privilege, not a right — that's why you need a license), or fixing a toilet (licensed plumbers only) is an awful thing. And the list itself is troublesome, as it lists suspects, rather than convicts.
But these are different stories. If you don't have a problem with Osama bin Laden being on the list (he was not convicted either, was he?) then you should not have a problem with anyone else being there.
Counter-point: Living in fear is worse than death.
No, actually, it is not... Catchy quote, but not true.
Living in a nation where everyone is untrusted by government..?
I don't see a relation between the first phrase and the second...
This is about where things are going, not where things are.
It is how the things are. Unfortunately, but tolerably... Everyone has to present an ID to board a flight or to enter a government building, for example... It sucks, but, as the government says — somewhat convincingly — they have to be right 100% of the time, whereas our enemies need only one success to score a major victory.
[...] on top of yesterday's news that datamining for terrorists is not feasible due to false positives) of just how badly the use of these lists can be abused.
Uhm, that study may be pointing out at potential misuse of the lists &mdash treating the entries as actual terrorists, rather than mere suspects — but not at abuse. Software is not going to care. It takes an actual overzealous cop to abuse the list by placing a person on it, against whom no reasonable suspicions exist.
That said, considering the present-day prominence (and a comfortable life of a tenured professor) of an anti-war protester turned terrorist (to this day unrepentant), the Maryland cops' action is not that unconscious...
It is not that all such protesters are necessarily going to become terrorists, it is that there is a prominent example of how doing that can not only go unpunished by the Law, but, actually, glorified by Public Opinion — or, at least, significant segments thereof...
With Ayers on everybody's mind because his protege is within grasp of becoming the next President, I would not blame those cops for suspecting, that some of the present-day anti-war activists may be up to blowing up a thing or two...
Well, in Soviet Russia you wouldn't spend much time on such a list — you'd either be dead or dying in Siberia.
The jokes are still quite funny — but they are on those, who say them. For the most vicious abuser in America, that one can come up with, is McCarthy. Booo-freaking-hoo. He caused a few thousands to lose their jobs (temporarily). And that's being seriously equated to millions, who lost their lives in Soviet Russia?.. A joke indeed.
We don't allow this sort of behavior to go unpunished in a civilized society.
Should not we also punish people, who helped this dimwit publicize his exploit? Gawker still hosts his screen-shots, you know — because it is "news-worthy"...
No. Probable cause must be required before search.
Not if you are crossing the border, unfortunately. The discussed bill is an improvement over the current situation, though...
As far as the border-patrol are concerned, it seems, everyone is to be searched. They are doing you a favor, when they let you through unmolested.
And it has always been this way, although their practices related to laptops have brought some attention. And it can't be easily changed, regretfully, even if Feingold is aiming for some "low-hanging fruit" of the silliest of their practices.
There is no contradiction. Those flagged by the software can be quietly investigated by the government... But an existence of any such an investigation shall not be deemed grounds for, uhm, anything — none of "No Fly" list bullshit, etc... We've always had the notion of "innocent until proven guilty" — but we have not always followed it, because "there is no smoke without fire". Well, there can be — if the smoke-detector raises a false alarm.
Let the software pick up suspects. But let's not treat these innocent people any different — until proven guilty.
Much like a broken smoke detector waking you up in the middle of the night is not grounds for rejecting the idea of automatic smoke detection altogether, this technology can be extremely useful...
I expect we'll have the capability in the next decade or so as processor core density, memory, and storage continues to increase at their current rate -- eventually, the machine will be able to "brute-force" through the docs just like the Chinese data entry folks in this article.
In the next decade or so we will have increased our processing power about 1000 times over. This work is scalable "sideways" — two pages can be processed by two computers independently. Which means, a thousand of today's computers could've done the work @home-style.
The problem is not with the processing power — it is the lack of algorithms. You and I reassemble the hand-written characters quite differently from how today's computers do it. The software will need to be created — and it is not the lack of CPU/memory/storage power, that's holding it.
One thing for sure is that the new algorithms will need to use the spell-checking engine(s) to better guess, what the next letter might be. On top of that, they would need to be equipped with grammar-checkers too, to be able to guess the next word, however illegible. Human speech (and thus writing) is quite redundant often — even if a misplaced coma can reverse the meaning on occasion.
Our brain certainly uses its knowledge of both the general rules of the language and that of the domain of what's written — this is why another doctor can decipher another doctor's handwriting, for example, that's infamously illegible to mere mortals. The software will have to do the same — and it can start doing it already.
If you bothered to follow the link I posted, you would've seen:
How al Qaeda's tensions with Taleban got pretty high too.
How the eloquence of the al Qaeda's leaders (including that of bin Laden himself) patched it up.
Saddam Hussein strived for legitimacy and prestige among Arabs. That he started as a secular, rather than religious, leader was not that important in the face of stiffening world animosity. Stalin (Saddam's hero, BTW), also changed tack dramatically, when the Germans appeared only miles from Moscow.
Al Qaeda would've provided him with the legitimacy in exchange for whatever biological, chemical, or even nuclear know-how (or even actual weapons) they were seeking (see article). It would've been a good match...
Ooooh, I see, deposing an impotent dictator, destroying the infrastructure of a sovereign nation, and killing untold numbers of it's citizens for dubious reasons was *just*.
The evidence to Saddam's potency is his 100% (not 99%, a round 100%) "win" in the Iraqi elections — only five months before the US invasion, and the collapse of his statue at the hands of enthusiastic Iraqis.
But my sentence you quoted was, actually, talking about Roosevelt's — anti-Hitler — cause. Still, I'm glad, you understood, how it may as well be applied to Bush's anti-Saddam cause — whether Bush lied (like Roosevelt) or was completely honest.
Even Bush, who was accused — by the most hysterical of his enemies — of planning to cancel elections, only got, what 51% in the subsequent (not canceled) vote in 2004?..
What if bin Laden set up good relations with Myanmar, or North Korea, or any other number of corrupt regimes in the world.
That was far less likely, for he had neither religious nor ethnic kinship with those. Compared to Iraq, those countries are also far less developed and more isolated from the rest of the world, making them much less suitable for Al Qaeda's purposes.
And, of course, the we can not free everybody from a repressive regime, does not mean, we should not try to free some.
your entire post is riddled with excuses that can only be said in hindsight
Hindsight is what gives Bush's critics most of their ammunition too.
But my arguments are not based on hindsight. There were good reasons, why Saddam remained a dangerous enemy — and was soundly bombed before. Alistair Cooke may be too intellectual in his enumeration of reasons, but hard facts remain.
The fact is, *at the time*, there was no good reason to invade Iraq.
Well, it should've been done years earlier — and the previous President agreed. (It is just that his balls were used for a different purpose.) But the reasons to do it didn't become any worse with time.
And even if you don't buy that argument, *terrorism* was no good reason to invade Iraq, since they had no connection to 9/11...
Saddam's support for terrorism is well established regardless of whether or not he was connected to a particular act of terror, such as 9/11. For example, he was sponsoring terror attacks against Israel, by giving $10K to families of the dead bombers. The last reward ceremony took place in February 2003.
In short, they lied.
Whether or not lies were used as additional arguments, does not invalidate the perfectly real other arguments. And, although this is off-topic, they, probably, did not lie, after all.
They lied, and now Americans are paying the price in lives, as well as in hard dollar figures
So? Roosevelt lied too in order to get Americans to begin helping Britain against Hitler in earnest. But it was a just cause, and the world is better off as a result. Oh, and most of the justifications today — Hitler's atrocities — really weren't known to the outside world. Unlike the Iraq war, America's participation in WW2 (many times more expensive in lives in treasure) actually needed some hindsight justification.
And, just FYI, the disapproval at the time had nothing to do with jealousy.
Of course, it is. Either jealousy — no other country could punish Saddam like we did — the entire Europe could not even leash Milosevic without our help; or fear — by the other asshole-regimes world-wide.
The OSI and FSF agree that free or open source licenses, respectively, should never have any sort of usage clause in them. Richard Stallman has publicly encouraged everybody to find ways to profit off free software.
Profit is not everything. My little project may be for sale, but I will not sell to anyone owning a Che Guevara T-shirt, for example.
He diverted resources from the former to invade the latter?
There was no need there for tanks, artillery, or more than a few bombers, which is what largely went to Iraq.
If you're supposed to be looking for a needle in a haystack, people will wonder when you move all your metal detectors to the cotton bale next door.
People will always "wonder", but the move was not unreasonable. First of all, the "cotton bale next door" had its own, unrelated, shards, that had to be taken out — long ago.
And second, it was quite reasonable to believe, that the crafty needle would quietly move from the haystack to the cotton bale. Although Saddam's and Osama's distaste for each other was known, what was not as publicized, was Osama's earlier tensions with Mullah Omar. We only learned of it in 2004, when The Atlantic's journalist published his story:
The Arabs' general contempt for the backwardness of Afghanistan was not lost on the Taliban, whose leaders grew annoyed with Osama bin Laden's focus on public relations and the media. Letters found on the computer reveal that relations between the Arabs and the Taliban had grown so tense that many feared the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, would expel the Arabs from the country.
Kicked out from Afghanistan by the US and its allies, Osama could very well have patched up his differences with Saddam, and begin a mutually-useful cooperation.
And then, of course, there was a question of moral high ground. Despite the howls of jealous "international disapproval" and the internal opposition (angry not so much at the war, as at Bush's earlier tax-cuts and reforms of the education system), ridding the world of an asshole of Saddam Hussein's caliber was a Very Good Thing (TM).
That the post-war efforts to rebuild the country were mismanaged and are only getting back on track now, is not an argument against it.
You are basing your argument that mark-to-market is one of the main contributors to the credit crunch.
Not to the crunch, but to the failure of the investment banks.
The only argument I can see is that MtM played a part in perpetrating the bubble by re-pricing these instruments in a positive feedback loop. However, the main problem is still with the nature of these instruments, and their fallibility. MtM only made it worse.
Well, yes, the positive feedback loop made it so much worse, that it was the difference between prosperity and catastrophe — positive feedback has that ability in other areas: it can destroy bridges and buildings, blow up electronics, and in a nuclear reaction it makes the difference between sustained, electricity-producing heat and a mushroom-cloud explosion... No instrument is infallible — just as no bank can survive a run-on.
Finally, your analogy is *way* off the mark. I'm not saying people shouldn't fly. It's just that the pilot shouldn't be skipping pre-flight checks.
Well, higher up in this thread, it was suggested, that it was the CDOs, that are at fault, and the Republicans were blamed for allowing them with their deregulation. Heck, some people are now suggesting even the practice of short selling be banned for good — that's not even planes, that's like banning railroads...
If the polls are to be believed, there are roughly even odds on this "hypothetical" transition at the moment. And I can't agree planning the organization and staffing of a Presidential adminstration is insignificant.
The role might, with any luck, be significant in the future. It is not significant to the past. The past in which McCain's corruption has allegedly — or suggestively — occurred.
I'm not sure why this is a problem. Taking on the role of a straight-up advocate, as lobbyists do, seems at least as likely to shape one's opinions as giving access to lobbyists
Sincerely holding an opinion — shaped by whatever factors — is worlds away from insincerely expressing the same opinion for money. Obama was the second largest among Senators paid by the Fannie and Freddie. Hence, the doubts of his sincerity. You may say, that lobbyists are paid too, and so their sincerity is in doubt too — but McCain is neither a lobbyist, nor did he get anywhere near as much as Obama from the F and F.
I'm not, however, aware of specific connections other than Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson.
How many does one need?
*Everybody* in Washington was connected to FM/FM.
Well, and here we come back to the same (related) mind-tricks well known to the political manipulators and other leaders of the people. And the tricks are:
If a damaging allegation surfaces against your side, be quick to come up with a similar sounding one against the opponent. It does not matter, if your counter-allegation is weakly substantiated, or that whatever you are counter-alleging is, in fact, dissimilar in nature or in scale to the one against you. So long as it sounds similar, people will be dismissing your opponent's accusations with a: "Sigh, aren't these guys all the same." You don't even have to prove anything — just throw an accusation, and see news articles repeat ad nauseum, that "questions linger".
When looking for dirt on your opponent, try to attach a name to it, that was already attached to some other scandal or practice. This
either associates your opponent with not only the scandal at hand, but also with that other, however unrelated, scandal
or neutralizes the voter's animosity against the culprit(s) of that other, however unrelated scandal, by tarring your opponent with the same-sounding impropriety.
For example, we see the first of these played against Israel (and the USA), when these countries are accused of "terrorism" for fighting the terrorists back (even if clumsily). We saw it played against Palin, whose church has invited an African pastor, who used to engage in witch hunts — intended to protect against reminders of Obama's viciously anti-American pastor, it backfired by, actually, reminding... Notice too, how that Kenyan pastor's "witch hunt" (with Back to the topic, we see it now in the attempts to portray McCain as equally corrupted by the failed mortgage lenders...
"Troopergate" is the example of the second trick — first it was Spitzer, whose attempts to use NY State Troopers to spy on his Republican opponents were labeled "troopergate" to bring up negative associations with Clinton's scandalous "troopergate". And now it is played against Palin, whose "troopergate" is even less similar to Clinton's than Spitzer's was, but the label is reused, "the questions linger", and it has already been said, that Sarah has "her own troopergate".
As it is, though, I can't agree that an adviser on Presidential transition is some kind of insignificant connection.
An adviser on the hypothetical and future transition... Most insignificant...
Directed about $47 million in lobbying from 2003 to 2006.
Again, assuming a linear relation, this person is about 400 times more compromised than Obama.
Here you are equating "directing" with "receiving".
I think there's at least a few more on the campaign, plus a dozen or so fundraisers for McCain.
And Obama has none, right?.. All of those 47% of the Democratic recipients of F&F monies have retired and have no hand in Obama's campaign?.. Only the Republicans are hungry for more and thus working for McCain...
More importantly than any of the attempts to assign corruption-coefficients is the fact, that McCain and others have introduced a bill, that went against Fannie and Freddie... But the Democrats opposed it on a party line — according to the article. Perhaps, you can discuss it with your acquaintances among Congressional leaders, and post the results? Clearly, the Democrats have sided with Fannie and Freddie — against McCain and the other co-sponsors.
Troopergate is interesting as a test of how important process and rule-of-law are to Palin
Yeah, she wanted a man, who threatened to kill his ex father-in-law and tasered his own 10 year-old son, to not be a police officer in her State. An outrageous violation of the due process on rule-of-law. Yep... Can be compared with Clinton using Arkansas troopers to deliver women to him.
There are certainly connections with the McCain campaign
Are you seriously equating an ex-lobbyist working for McCain (on McCain's presidential transition — a rather remote future possibility), with Obama and Dodd receiving actual cash?..
That's fifteen lashes with a wet mouse cord, and a nursing of an orphaned baby-penguin for 6 months. Report to room 2011 down the hall to receive the lashes, and pick up the penguin on your way out by reception.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, much better now, that all of their servers can be taken over at once through a single exploit...
Well, there is nothing particularly "lovely" about it — it just can't be discounted. There is a saying in Russian: "Tell me, who your friends are, and I'll say, who you are."
Was that part of any of the party's strategy or tactics, or did they just condone somebody else doing it? The depth of your suspicion ought to depend on the answer, but basically, yes, you are right. If you are dealing with a member of a group, that does something (as a group) — good or bad — it is reasonable to think, that the individual member is doing it or would do it too.
Whenever you — in response to an assertion, that you hold certain opinion on a matter — deny expressing an opinion, there is almost always a great opportunity to express one way or another for clarity. Skipping that opportunity is usually a sign of either a desire to muddle up the discussion or not wanting to confirm, that the initial assertion was, in fact, accurate. Your hinting at being afraid of some sort of persecution on yourself is quite laughable too.
You are yet to demonstrate, BTW, that the list is, in fact abusive (although your current .sig certainly is). But given your now-established tendency to obfuscate an argument, I don't really care... So long...
Well, the Judiciary will not allow his prosecution, but the Executive not only may, but must treat him with suspicion... Don't be ridiculous — had he done something you actually disapprove of yourself (and escaped prosecution on a technicality), you would've agreed with me.
If somebody walked up to a cop and said: "I think, all cops should be killed," — would you not call the cop an idiot, if he didn't take a goooood look at the guy, jotted down his description, and shared the info with his colleagues? Although Ayers' actual crimes were committed when Obama was 8 years old, his public insistence on regretting only not setting more bombs continues to this day — both law enforcement and the rest of us would, indeed, be idiots, if we didn't carefully watch, what he is doing and whom he is helping to get ahead...
Then, again, looking at the polls today, perhaps, we are, indeed, mostly comprised of idiots...
Yes, I suppose, you can walk too — except, you are still likely to be on a public highway and may be picked up by the Executive government at their whim — whether or not you are on any list. And then, again, you ignored my other example — provision of very basic services (be it plumbing or floating horses' teeth or even use of whois and traceroute ) increasingly requires an Executive Government's license, which can be taken away on a whim and without Judiciary's review.
Yet, somehow, I see neither ACLU nor yourself complaining about these outrages — and I suspect, you actually celebrated (along with most Slashdotters) the one requiring MediaSentry to have a private investigator (!) license to run whois and traceroute...
Well, that depends on what that hypothetical political party is advocating and known for. For example, if repeated trespassing (as was the case with Max Obuszewski and pals) is part of that party's action plan, then suspecting all its members of trespassing is quite reasonable.
You just missed a great opportunity to state, for the record, whether or not you actually have a problem with Osama bin Laden being on the list of suspected terrorists... I wonder, why you chose not to state your opinion... Khmm...
A fisherman's goal is to sustain himself — not eliminate fish. If he catches all fish at once, he will starve tomorrow.
A law-enforcement's goal is to eliminate crime. (Now, we can cynically suspect, cops may want to leave some crooks alone so as not obsolete themselves, but we are so far from eliminating crime, that it is a moot point.)
It — automatic prosecution of all traffic violations — would, actually, be wonderful compared to the current situation, where only the unlucky get punished. (This is why I argue for automatically-issued speeding citations based on the entry and exit times and the distance between those points on a toll road.)
On the one hand, it will eliminate selective enforcement, where being local, or good looking, or having the correct bumper sticker can get someone off the hook. And on the other hand, unreasonable restrictions (such as obscenely low speed limits) will get eliminated, once everybody has to obey them.
He (William Ayers) did, does not deny it, and remains proud and remorseless — he can not be charged because of an earlier prosecutorial misconduct. We can not continue prosecuting him for fear of encouraging more such misconduct, but he ought to be treated as a pariah with the utmost disdain and suspicion. (Along with those, who chose to associate with him, of course.)
What persecution are you talking about? People are simply added to a list — a list of those, who can be denied things by the government, that it can already deny to anyone . The (Executive) government's ability to deny basic things like travel (even driving is a privilege, not a right — that's why you need a license), or fixing a toilet (licensed plumbers only) is an awful thing. And the list itself is troublesome, as it lists suspects, rather than convicts.
But these are different stories. If you don't have a problem with Osama bin Laden being on the list (he was not convicted either, was he?) then you should not have a problem with anyone else being there.
You did. In the GGP's example, one ran a red light. Try again to explain, what's wrong with all such people being automatically cited...
No, actually, it is not... Catchy quote, but not true.
I don't see a relation between the first phrase and the second...
It is how the things are. Unfortunately, but tolerably... Everyone has to present an ID to board a flight or to enter a government building, for example... It sucks, but, as the government says — somewhat convincingly — they have to be right 100% of the time, whereas our enemies need only one success to score a major victory.
Uhm, that study may be pointing out at potential misuse of the lists &mdash treating the entries as actual terrorists, rather than mere suspects — but not at abuse. Software is not going to care. It takes an actual overzealous cop to abuse the list by placing a person on it, against whom no reasonable suspicions exist.
That said, considering the present-day prominence (and a comfortable life of a tenured professor) of an anti-war protester turned terrorist (to this day unrepentant), the Maryland cops' action is not that unconscious...
It is not that all such protesters are necessarily going to become terrorists, it is that there is a prominent example of how doing that can not only go unpunished by the Law, but, actually, glorified by Public Opinion — or, at least, significant segments thereof...
With Ayers on everybody's mind because his protege is within grasp of becoming the next President, I would not blame those cops for suspecting, that some of the present-day anti-war activists may be up to blowing up a thing or two...
Well, in Soviet Russia you wouldn't spend much time on such a list — you'd either be dead or dying in Siberia.
The jokes are still quite funny — but they are on those, who say them. For the most vicious abuser in America, that one can come up with, is McCarthy. Booo-freaking-hoo. He caused a few thousands to lose their jobs (temporarily). And that's being seriously equated to millions, who lost their lives in Soviet Russia?.. A joke indeed.
And what is wrong with this?
Should not we also punish people, who helped this dimwit publicize his exploit? Gawker still hosts his screen-shots, you know — because it is "news-worthy"...
Not if you are crossing the border, unfortunately. The discussed bill is an improvement over the current situation, though...
As far as the border-patrol are concerned, it seems, everyone is to be searched. They are doing you a favor, when they let you through unmolested.
And it has always been this way, although their practices related to laptops have brought some attention. And it can't be easily changed, regretfully, even if Feingold is aiming for some "low-hanging fruit" of the silliest of their practices.
There is no contradiction. Those flagged by the software can be quietly investigated by the government... But an existence of any such an investigation shall not be deemed grounds for, uhm, anything — none of "No Fly" list bullshit, etc... We've always had the notion of "innocent until proven guilty" — but we have not always followed it, because "there is no smoke without fire". Well, there can be — if the smoke-detector raises a false alarm.
Let the software pick up suspects. But let's not treat these innocent people any different — until proven guilty.
Much like a broken smoke detector waking you up in the middle of the night is not grounds for rejecting the idea of automatic smoke detection altogether, this technology can be extremely useful...
In the next decade or so we will have increased our processing power about 1000 times over. This work is scalable "sideways" — two pages can be processed by two computers independently. Which means, a thousand of today's computers could've done the work @home-style.
The problem is not with the processing power — it is the lack of algorithms. You and I reassemble the hand-written characters quite differently from how today's computers do it. The software will need to be created — and it is not the lack of CPU/memory/storage power, that's holding it.
One thing for sure is that the new algorithms will need to use the spell-checking engine(s) to better guess, what the next letter might be. On top of that, they would need to be equipped with grammar-checkers too, to be able to guess the next word, however illegible. Human speech (and thus writing) is quite redundant often — even if a misplaced coma can reverse the meaning on occasion.
Our brain certainly uses its knowledge of both the general rules of the language and that of the domain of what's written — this is why another doctor can decipher another doctor's handwriting, for example, that's infamously illegible to mere mortals. The software will have to do the same — and it can start doing it already.
If you bothered to follow the link I posted, you would've seen:
Saddam Hussein strived for legitimacy and prestige among Arabs. That he started as a secular, rather than religious, leader was not that important in the face of stiffening world animosity. Stalin (Saddam's hero, BTW), also changed tack dramatically, when the Germans appeared only miles from Moscow.
Al Qaeda would've provided him with the legitimacy in exchange for whatever biological, chemical, or even nuclear know-how (or even actual weapons) they were seeking (see article). It would've been a good match...
The evidence to Saddam's potency is his 100% (not 99%, a round 100%) "win" in the Iraqi elections — only five months before the US invasion, and the collapse of his statue at the hands of enthusiastic Iraqis.
But my sentence you quoted was, actually, talking about Roosevelt's — anti-Hitler — cause. Still, I'm glad, you understood, how it may as well be applied to Bush's anti-Saddam cause — whether Bush lied (like Roosevelt) or was completely honest.
Even Bush, who was accused — by the most hysterical of his enemies — of planning to cancel elections, only got, what 51% in the subsequent (not canceled) vote in 2004?..
That was far less likely, for he had neither religious nor ethnic kinship with those. Compared to Iraq, those countries are also far less developed and more isolated from the rest of the world, making them much less suitable for Al Qaeda's purposes.
And, of course, the we can not free everybody from a repressive regime, does not mean, we should not try to free some.
Hindsight is what gives Bush's critics most of their ammunition too.
But my arguments are not based on hindsight. There were good reasons, why Saddam remained a dangerous enemy — and was soundly bombed before. Alistair Cooke may be too intellectual in his enumeration of reasons, but hard facts remain.
Well, it should've been done years earlier — and the previous President agreed. (It is just that his balls were used for a different purpose.) But the reasons to do it didn't become any worse with time.
Saddam's support for terrorism is well established regardless of whether or not he was connected to a particular act of terror, such as 9/11. For example, he was sponsoring terror attacks against Israel, by giving $10K to families of the dead bombers. The last reward ceremony took place in February 2003.
Whether or not lies were used as additional arguments, does not invalidate the perfectly real other arguments. And, although this is off-topic, they, probably, did not lie, after all.
So? Roosevelt lied too in order to get Americans to begin helping Britain against Hitler in earnest. But it was a just cause, and the world is better off as a result. Oh, and most of the justifications today — Hitler's atrocities — really weren't known to the outside world. Unlike the Iraq war, America's participation in WW2 (many times more expensive in lives in treasure) actually needed some hindsight justification.
Of course, it is. Either jealousy — no other country could punish Saddam like we did — the entire Europe could not even leash Milosevic without our help; or fear — by the other asshole-regimes world-wide.
Profit is not everything. My little project may be for sale, but I will not sell to anyone owning a Che Guevara T-shirt, for example.
There was no need there for tanks, artillery, or more than a few bombers, which is what largely went to Iraq.
People will always "wonder", but the move was not unreasonable. First of all, the "cotton bale next door" had its own, unrelated, shards, that had to be taken out — long ago.
And second, it was quite reasonable to believe, that the crafty needle would quietly move from the haystack to the cotton bale. Although Saddam's and Osama's distaste for each other was known, what was not as publicized, was Osama's earlier tensions with Mullah Omar. We only learned of it in 2004, when The Atlantic's journalist published his story:
Kicked out from Afghanistan by the US and its allies, Osama could very well have patched up his differences with Saddam, and begin a mutually-useful cooperation.
And then, of course, there was a question of moral high ground. Despite the howls of jealous "international disapproval" and the internal opposition (angry not so much at the war, as at Bush's earlier tax-cuts and reforms of the education system), ridding the world of an asshole of Saddam Hussein's caliber was a Very Good Thing (TM).
That the post-war efforts to rebuild the country were mismanaged and are only getting back on track now, is not an argument against it.
Not to the crunch, but to the failure of the investment banks.
Well, yes, the positive feedback loop made it so much worse, that it was the difference between prosperity and catastrophe — positive feedback has that ability in other areas: it can destroy bridges and buildings, blow up electronics, and in a nuclear reaction it makes the difference between sustained, electricity-producing heat and a mushroom-cloud explosion... No instrument is infallible — just as no bank can survive a run-on.
Well, higher up in this thread, it was suggested, that it was the CDOs, that are at fault, and the Republicans were blamed for allowing them with their deregulation. Heck, some people are now suggesting even the practice of short selling be banned for good — that's not even planes, that's like banning railroads...
The role might, with any luck, be significant in the future. It is not significant to the past. The past in which McCain's corruption has allegedly — or suggestively — occurred.
Sincerely holding an opinion — shaped by whatever factors — is worlds away from insincerely expressing the same opinion for money. Obama was the second largest among Senators paid by the Fannie and Freddie. Hence, the doubts of his sincerity. You may say, that lobbyists are paid too, and so their sincerity is in doubt too — but McCain is neither a lobbyist, nor did he get anywhere near as much as Obama from the F and F.
How many does one need?
Well, and here we come back to the same (related) mind-tricks well known to the political manipulators and other leaders of the people. And the tricks are:
For example, we see the first of these played against Israel (and the USA), when these countries are accused of "terrorism" for fighting the terrorists back (even if clumsily). We saw it played against Palin, whose church has invited an African pastor, who used to engage in witch hunts — intended to protect against reminders of Obama's viciously anti-American pastor, it backfired by, actually, reminding... Notice too, how that Kenyan pastor's "witch hunt" (with Back to the topic, we see it now in the attempts to portray McCain as equally corrupted by the failed mortgage lenders...
"Troopergate" is the example of the second trick — first it was Spitzer, whose attempts to use NY State Troopers to spy on his Republican opponents were labeled "troopergate" to bring up negative associations with Clinton's scandalous "troopergate". And now it is played against Palin, whose "troopergate" is even less similar to Clinton's than Spitzer's was, but the label is reused, "the questions linger", and it has already been said, that Sarah has "her own troopergate".
An adviser on the hypothetical and future transition... Most insignificant...
Here you are equating "directing" with "receiving".
And Obama has none, right?.. All of those 47% of the Democratic recipients of F&F monies have retired and have no hand in Obama's campaign?.. Only the Republicans are hungry for more and thus working for McCain...
More importantly than any of the attempts to assign corruption-coefficients is the fact, that McCain and others have introduced a bill, that went against Fannie and Freddie... But the Democrats opposed it on a party line — according to the article. Perhaps, you can discuss it with your acquaintances among Congressional leaders, and post the results? Clearly, the Democrats have sided with Fannie and Freddie — against McCain and the other co-sponsors.
Yeah, she wanted a man, who threatened to kill his ex father-in-law and tasered his own 10 year-old son, to not be a police officer in her State. An outrageous violation of the due process on rule-of-law. Yep... Can be compared with Clinton using Arkansas troopers to deliver women to him.
Are you seriously equating an ex-lobbyist working for McCain (on McCain's presidential transition — a rather remote future possibility), with Obama and Dodd receiving actual cash?..
Wow... No wonder, Sarah Palin's "troopergate" is seriously compared with Bill Clinton's.
That's fifteen lashes with a wet mouse cord, and a nursing of an orphaned baby-penguin for 6 months. Report to room 2011 down the hall to receive the lashes, and pick up the penguin on your way out by reception.