'Jerk' is awfully strong language, even if his point isn't entirely correct. If he'd changed it to 'lost' instead of 'shipped overseas' it would have been fairly correct as Bush also is the first administration since Hoover to have our employment figures show a net job loss in his term. This administration also did praise outsouring overseas, and they do support it, and this has eroded a *lot* of middle class jobs.
And the Billy Bass. That was a peculiarly useful gadget in one respect. When someone spends too much time in your cube, just press that red button and they'll bail out fast. The down side is the random people who run into the cube and do a drive by Billy Bassing.
I am a USian, so I know nothing of European service, but I certainly remember Ma Bell differently.
There was certainly spotty long distance service from Ma Bell. I remember having to try to call my grandparents a few times after we would get disconnected (and get whacked hard on the bill with extra charges for it). I remember not being allowed to buy my own phone (all phones were leased from AT&T). I also recall a general sense of disdain from the phone company when we tried to get (strangely frequent) billing issues sorted out (we couldn't ditch them for another carrier).
After the breakup of Ma Bell, you could buy your own telephone (previuosly they were leased and you enjoyed a monthly charge for them). After many years of one stagnant design, suddenly there were cool phone designs available and you didn't have to pay a monthly leasing fee. I also had competing long distance companies, and when one of them pissed me off, I could (and did) change service. It took a while for the prices to drop, but they did drop.
"It is much easier than the steps needed to get OS X.3 to connect to AD"
I think you would only say this if you haven't actually done it.
To bind an OS X 10.3. client or server to an AD Domain: 1) go to the 'Directory Access' application, double click it 2) click 'Active Directory' 3) click 'configure' 4) enter the forest, a computer id (for the host you are logging in on), when it prompts you for an AD admin and password enter them 5) click 'OK' 6) Click the 'Authentication' tab, and add the AD domain.
That's it. You are done, and the setting will persist across reboots. At that point all services will authenticate against AD, and you can log in as an AD user at the GUI if you want. At that point all getpw*() functions will see the users and groups in AD, and all apps using the OS X specific DirectoryServices API will see them as well. PAM will work too, though you don't need to use PAM.
You really should read up on the facts of the case so that your arguments be relevant to the facts at hand.
"According to the SCAA, the optimal water temperature for coffee is 92 - 96C (197.6 - 204.8F) for 90% of the contact time."
That's irrelevant, since you are citing brewing temp., not serving temp. The coffee cools after brewing. That's why there is a usually heater for the coffee pot.
"Any hot water can burn ou and cause severe burns depending on a lot of factors."
While there may be other factors, the primary significant factors for burns are temperature and contact time. The damage caused by higher temperatures is far greater as it rises. The higher the temperature, the shorter the contact time needed to cause a burn.
"Eitherway, McDonalds did nothing more than serve fresh brewed coffee at the temperatures at which coffee is brewed."
Once again, brewing vs. serving temps. are not the same. McDonalds knew it was serving coffee at temperatures higher than its competitors, and admitted it in the case. It was separately proved that McDonalds served coffee at temperatures significantly higher than any competitor by having people go to all major vendors and measure the temperatures of the served coffee.
They knew that their coffee was dangerously hot and had been injuring people, but they continued doing it even after their own QA and safety people recommended against it. While it is true that one should expect coffee to be hot, theirs was significantly hotter than normal, so normal safety measures would not necessarily be effective. FWIW, the court did find "Grandma" partly at fault and reduced the fine accordingly.
Finally, please read the fact sof the case. I realize that you are making crap up to try to justify your skewed view the "Grandma" was stupid, greedy, etc. (which is likely a product of an immature conservative political view). If you want to play that game you need to have correct facts at hand so that you can properly skew them.
"185-190 is well below the boiling point of water (which is how hot most home cofee makers make their water.)"
I believe that at sea level the boiling point of water is 212 degrees. Whether 190 degrees is "well below" 212 degrees is a matter of opinion, not fact. It was established in the trial by experts that Coffee served at home is generally 135 to 140 degrees.
"BTW, for reference, your hot water heater in your house probably keeps the water arround 140"
That is irrelevant. The important fact is that water heated to 185 degrees causes a 3rd degree burn. As the temperature decreases toward 155 degrees, the extent of the burn relative to that temperature decreases exponentially. McDonald's QA manager testified that a burn hazard exists with any food served at 140 degrees or above, and that McDonald's coffee was not fit for consumption because it would burn the mouth and throat. They also knew that at least 700 of their customers were burned, but still refused to lower the temperature to a more reasonable one. Not all of those previous incidents were about spills. In many cases customers mouths and throats were burned with 3rd degree burns from trying to drink the coffee.
"Are you out of your feaking mind? McDonalds was selling HOT COFFEE. This was not a law suit about justice, it was a law suit about money. Had it been Bob's Doughnut Shop there never would have been an issue."
You should follow the link so that you can be informed about the facts.
It was not about money. The original suit was only for coverage of her medical costs. McDonalds brought it on themselves by refusing to pay for her medical expenses, and refusing to settle out of court. Perhaps you could justify saying it was about money, so long as you qualified that by saying that it was about McDonalds' greed.
McDnalds was not just selling hot coffee. They were selling coffee hot enough to cause a 3rd degree burn. That is a very severe burn where the tissue under the skin is damaged, and which causes scarring. It wasn't just hot, it was scalding hot. There were more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebeck's. They knew they were injuring people yet they did nothing about it. They were negligent.
"You are all victims. Nothing is your responsibility. Pride yourself in being stupid. Someone else is always to blame."
This has nothing to do with victimization, pride in stupidity, or avoiding personal responsibility. McDonalds acted in a stupid and irresponsible way which they knew was injuring their customers. When a corporation acts in an irresponsible way, the main way to punish them and correct the behavior is through lawsuits. Since you can't put them in jail, fines are the main way that corporations are punished and their behavior corrected.
McDonald's knew its coffee sometimes caused serious burns, but did nothing to correct this, and they continued to sell the 185-190 degree coffee.
When "Grandma" was injured, the burns were so bad that "Grandma" required two skin grafts. She had 3rd degree burns over 6 percent of her body. "Grandma" initially only asked McDonalds to cover the cost of the surgeries, which they refused, and they fought "Grandma" all the way up through the courts. In the court they admitted their customers were unaware that they could suffer third-degree burns from the coffee.
McDonalds behaved incredibly unconscionably in this case, and deserved to be fined. Lawsuits are a good thing. Fines against corporations are the only way to punish companies when they behave in a way that injures people. It may be that there are occasional abuses, but they are far less common than the tort reform advocates would have you believe, which is why they keep spewing misinformation, such as misrepresenting the McDonalds case, or the cases in the href="http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp">St ella awards.
It's true that the dot com boom was inevitably going to slip, but Clinton pulled off a successful economy before the "bubble."
The dot com bust hurt the economy, but whether it had to get as bad as it got under Bush, and whether the Dems could have straightened things out if they were given more time are only speculative.
My speculation is that since the Clinton administration really did put fiscal discipline, principles and policy over politics a great deal, and since Bush II's & co. appear to make no decision that doesn't involve some kind of cronyism or scheming, and since the Republicans of the last 20 years have not been true to the once traditional Republican economic value of fiscal conservatism, that if the Dems. had remained in office, their more enlightened fiscal discipline could have handled the economy far better than Bush has. The handling of the economy after that event is where the Republicans were put to shame. Bush II's crew are such screwups that even my Republican friends cringe at his economic policies. The Dems. should make some political hay out of it.
Heisenberg was driving down the road, and a policeman pulled him over. He asked, "do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg replied, "no, but I can tell you where I am."
"Gay rights are not a core Democratic issue. But they SHOULD be. Democrats are having a hard time distinguishing themselves from Republicans. No one believes that they're in favor of fiscal responsibility, or that their position on Iraq is viable."
What the Dems really need to do is convince the American people that they are more fiscally responsible than Republicans. After all, this is actually true, and it appears that the fiscal profligacy and incompetence of the Republicans isn't likely to ever end.
They also need to make sure that people know that the core values of the Democratic party are affordable healthcare, protecting american jobs, and affordable education, and that these can be achieved while being far more fiscally responsible. They also need to do a better job of pointing out that the Republicans have failed us with respect to all of those goals.
I am all for gay rights, and am disgusted by the cynical and twisted rhetoric that the Republicans use to try to use people's fear and hatred of gays to push their agenda, but I don't think that should be the focus, as it really isn't going to give that much headway. There are a lot more bigoted jerks in this country than there should be, and many of them will be more motivated to vote based on hate and fear than anything else. While the Dems should be progressive, they shouldn't be holding up their banner about an issue that they have consistently gotten bloody noses on.
While Cocoa (really Mach-O) apps would have been easy to move (I used to run apps remotely on Mac OS X Server 1.2), that doesn't account for all apps on Mac OS X. Carbon (really CFM) and Classic would not have that capacity without a lot of work. I expect that Apple decided to drop the support since it wasn't really that advantageous to most users, would be really confusing for many users, and wouldn't work for a lot of apps.
Add to that that Apple has Apple Remote Desktop, a commercial product for remotely running apps, and I could see a number of reasons why they would have been fine with dropping support.
These are guesses. There could also be real techincal reasons why it broke that were too serious of hurdles to manage for so minimal a payoff.
Maybe you sould read your link. Those folks were arrested not for 'quoting bible verse', but for attempting to incite a riot. They went to Outfest looking to start trouble, not to peacefully quote the bible, and they were removed before they could cause the fights/riot they were trying to start.
Unfortunately, the link is down, here's the Google Cache.
Your story is incomplete and slightly inaccurate. First, George Washington was probably not a Christian, but a Deist, and while there are spiritual overtones to that proclamation, he clearly avoided any Christian references.
While Washington did devote a day in November to Thanksgiving, it was not a continuing holiday. It was Lincoln who established Thanksgiving day as we know it.
While there is no language in the proclamation regarding the Pilgrims, the Pilgrims' had a day of thanks after their struggles, and when the day of thinksgiving was announced there was some discord among the colonies, with many feeling the hardships of a few Pilgrims did not warrant a national holiday. It is clear that Washington's proclamation was an echo of the Pilgrim's Thanksgiving. So your elementary school teacher was actually correct.
You're right that the source wasn't the best ever, there are plenty of other sources one can google for. The real point is that the Republicans took a (somewhat imperfect) districting scheme which was laid out by a non-partisan panel and turned it into extreme partisan gerrymandering.
The 2000 Census brought the need for redistricting. There was a lot of conflict over the redistricting, so a non-partisan panel of federal judges made the final mapbased solely on Census data without poitical consideration. A year later, spurred on by Tom DeLay, the Republicans decided to override the fair redistricting in a wholly partisan fashion as described in various articles on your site such as this one.
We now have an new level of absolutely insane gerrymandering that simply dwarfs anything that the Dems. ever tried. I live in Austin. Our city was chopped into slivers by the Republicans' redistricting to try to dilute our votes.
"Most of the uproar is from the Republicans trying to reverse the grossly partisan gerrymandering that took place just a little while ago to keep the Republicans from coming to power."
As a Texan, I have to say that is a totally false and highly partisan mischaracterization of the situation prior to the Republican's abusive redistricting. What actually happened was that both parties had fought in our legislature and could not come up with a solution for the redistricting. So the map was drawn by a nonpartisan panel of federal judges, based on the 2000 Census figures. A year later, the Republicans got enough control to push their new redistricting along, and a new Republican map was pushed through which was not based on any new Census information, but was purley designed to try to get a political advantage.
So I guess you'd agree that Nixon's horrible econoic policies were what we were seeing under Carter, and Carter's thoughtful economic policies were what caused the growth in the Reagan Administration, while Reagan's disastrous policies brought us the awful Bush I economy.
What MS needs most is old school hackers fixing Windows to make it suck less in crucial areas that a fair number of admins care about. They know that a lot of folks think their command prompt utterly sucks. It makes me want to throw things every time I have to use their accursed shell.
If they also implemented highly effective remote command line administration and took a few other pages from places where *NIX design makes life easy for admins I would also be very pleased. And those old school hackers would have my respect for fixing what was such an awful mess.
I once sort of respected Nader (pre 2000), even though I didn't agree with him. Now I am shocked at how low he has sunk. Not only is he taking in tons of money from the Republican Party, and letting them run ads for him, knowing full well that they are using him to as a tool against the Dems., but now he is running on the freaking Reform platform to get on the ticket after the Greens dropped him. How anyone can imagine Nader to be a progressive while he is cozying up with a the party of a racist neanderthal like Pat Buchanan is beyond me.
I don't see how he could get any votes now - he has spit in the face of anyone on the left by courting the worst on the right, but nobody but those on the left could stomach like his views.
"Maybe because at the time there was basically no _opposing view_."
Not that you could tell from the media, but there were many opposing views and a very large opposition to the war. There were the *largest protests in history* against the invasion. There were many experts, pundits, and politicians who were against the invasion. There were experts in Middle Eastern affirs, Intelligence experts and others who had many reasons to oppose the invasion who were completely ignored. And worst of all, they turned out to be correct.
The AP story contained an error. They ran a retraction.
How many retractions has FOX run for their reports of WMDs being found in Iraq? Fox has run countless misleading or inaccurate stories and has never run any corrections that I have seen.
"Fox is to be applauded for putting their agenda right out there in front so you don't have to guess at it."
Fox has never stated that they have any agenda. They are so incredibly biased that their biases are completely obvious. But they claim to be 'Fair and Balanced', and when various parties have accused them of bias, their management has always and consistently denied any bias.
The media certainly is not 'strongly left-leaning.' As someone with left leaning views, I am constantly disgusted with the media's conservative biases. A few simple examples: the coverage of the leadup to the Iraq war (cheerleading without any representation of the opposing views), the inequalities of the coverage of the Republican vs. the Democratic conventions (the Repubs. got a lot more tie overall, and Obama's brilliant keynote speech which was the hilight of the the Dem's convention was not broadcast on the major networks).
Beyond that Republicans decrying left wing media bias seem to conveniently forget that FOX (the Republican propaganda network) is part of the Media.
I realize that you feel that way, but polls of journalists makes it clear that your feeling doesn't reflect reality. I am afraid I can't dredge up the dang polls I was recently reading, but the numbers are pretty close to 50/50 for many major newspapers. When you turn to TV news, the Republicans dominate all over. Even NPR, which many consider left leaning has 60% Republican journalists (!).
In the end the viewpoints of the Journos are relatively unimportant. Editorial control is what matters, and the editors kowtow to advertisers and political pressure from whoever is in power (currently Republicans).
Slashdot Mirror
'Jerk' is awfully strong language, even if his point isn't entirely correct. If he'd changed it to 'lost' instead of 'shipped overseas' it would have been fairly correct as Bush also is the first administration since Hoover to have our employment figures show a net job loss in his term. This administration also did praise outsouring overseas, and they do support it, and this has eroded a *lot* of middle class jobs.
And the Billy Bass. That was a peculiarly useful gadget in one respect. When someone spends too much time in your cube, just press that red button and they'll bail out fast. The down side is the random people who run into the cube and do a drive by Billy Bassing.
I am a USian, so I know nothing of European service, but I certainly remember Ma Bell differently.
There was certainly spotty long distance service from Ma Bell. I remember having to try to call my grandparents a few times after we would get disconnected (and get whacked hard on the bill with extra charges for it). I remember not being allowed to buy my own phone (all phones were leased from AT&T). I also recall a general sense of disdain from the phone company when we tried to get (strangely frequent) billing issues sorted out (we couldn't ditch them for another carrier).
After the breakup of Ma Bell, you could buy your own telephone (previuosly they were leased and you enjoyed a monthly charge for them). After many years of one stagnant design, suddenly there were cool phone designs available and you didn't have to pay a monthly leasing fee. I also had competing long distance companies, and when one of them pissed me off, I could (and did) change service. It took a while for the prices to drop, but they did drop.
"It is much easier than the steps needed to get OS X.3 to connect to AD"
I think you would only say this if you haven't actually done it.
To bind an OS X 10.3. client or server to an AD Domain:
1) go to the 'Directory Access' application, double click it
2) click 'Active Directory'
3) click 'configure'
4) enter the forest, a computer id (for the host you are logging in on), when it prompts you for an AD admin and password enter them
5) click 'OK'
6) Click the 'Authentication' tab, and add the AD domain.
That's it. You are done, and the setting will persist across reboots. At that point all services will authenticate against AD, and you can log in as an AD user at the GUI if you want. At that point all getpw*() functions will see the users and groups in AD, and all apps using the OS X specific DirectoryServices API will see them as well. PAM will work too, though you don't need to use PAM.
How much simpler is Xandros than that?
You really should read up on the facts of the case so that your arguments be relevant to the facts at hand.
"According to the SCAA, the optimal water temperature for coffee is 92 - 96C (197.6 - 204.8F) for 90% of the contact time."
That's irrelevant, since you are citing brewing temp., not serving temp. The coffee cools after brewing. That's why there is a usually heater for the coffee pot.
"Any hot water can burn ou and cause severe burns depending on a lot of factors."
While there may be other factors, the primary significant factors for burns are temperature and contact time. The damage caused by higher temperatures is far greater as it rises. The higher the temperature, the shorter the contact time needed to cause a burn.
"Eitherway, McDonalds did nothing more than serve fresh brewed coffee at the temperatures at which coffee is brewed."
Once again, brewing vs. serving temps. are not the same. McDonalds knew it was serving coffee at temperatures higher than its competitors, and admitted it in the case. It was separately proved that McDonalds served coffee at temperatures significantly higher than any competitor by having people go to all major vendors and measure the temperatures of the served coffee.
They knew that their coffee was dangerously hot and had been injuring people, but they continued doing it even after their own QA and safety people recommended against it. While it is true that one should expect coffee to be hot, theirs was significantly hotter than normal, so normal safety measures would not necessarily be effective. FWIW, the court did find "Grandma" partly at fault and reduced the fine accordingly.
Finally, please read the fact sof the case. I realize that you are making crap up to try to justify your skewed view the "Grandma" was stupid, greedy, etc. (which is likely a product of an immature conservative political view). If you want to play that game you need to have correct facts at hand so that you can properly skew them.
"185-190 is well below the boiling point of water (which is how hot most home cofee makers make their water.)"
I believe that at sea level the boiling point of water is 212 degrees. Whether 190 degrees is "well below" 212 degrees is a matter of opinion, not fact. It was established in the trial by experts that Coffee served at home is generally 135 to 140 degrees.
"BTW, for reference, your hot water heater in your house probably keeps the water arround 140"
That is irrelevant. The important fact is that water heated to 185 degrees causes a 3rd degree burn. As the temperature decreases toward 155 degrees, the extent of the burn relative to that temperature decreases exponentially. McDonald's QA manager testified that a burn hazard exists with any food served at 140 degrees or above, and that McDonald's coffee was not fit for consumption because it would burn the mouth and throat. They also knew that at least 700 of their customers were burned, but still refused to lower the temperature to a more reasonable one. Not all of those previous incidents were about spills. In many cases customers mouths and throats were burned with 3rd degree burns from trying to drink the coffee.
"Are you out of your feaking mind? McDonalds was selling HOT COFFEE. This was not a law suit about justice, it was a law suit about money. Had it been Bob's Doughnut Shop there never would have been an issue."
You should follow the link so that you can be informed about the facts.
It was not about money. The original suit was only for coverage of her medical costs. McDonalds brought it on themselves by refusing to pay for her medical expenses, and refusing to settle out of court. Perhaps you could justify saying it was about money, so long as you qualified that by saying that it was about McDonalds' greed.
McDnalds was not just selling hot coffee. They were selling coffee hot enough to cause a 3rd degree burn. That is a very severe burn where the tissue under the skin is damaged, and which causes scarring. It wasn't just hot, it was scalding hot. There were more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebeck's. They knew they were injuring people yet they did nothing about it. They were negligent.
"You are all victims. Nothing is your responsibility. Pride yourself in being stupid. Someone else is always to blame."
t ella awards.
p ress_room/facts/frivolous/McdonaldsCoffeecase.aspx
This has nothing to do with victimization, pride in stupidity, or avoiding personal responsibility. McDonalds acted in a stupid and irresponsible way which they knew was injuring their customers. When a corporation acts in an irresponsible way, the main way to punish them and correct the behavior is through lawsuits. Since you can't put them in jail, fines are the main way that corporations are punished and their behavior corrected.
McDonald's knew its coffee sometimes caused serious burns, but did nothing to correct this, and they continued to sell the 185-190 degree coffee.
When "Grandma" was injured, the burns were so bad that "Grandma" required two skin grafts. She had 3rd degree burns over 6 percent of her body. "Grandma" initially only asked McDonalds to cover the cost of the surgeries, which they refused, and they fought "Grandma" all the way up through the courts. In the court they admitted their customers were unaware that they could suffer third-degree burns from the coffee.
McDonalds behaved incredibly unconscionably in this case, and deserved to be fined. Lawsuits are a good thing. Fines against corporations are the only way to punish companies when they behave in a way that injures people. It may be that there are occasional abuses, but they are far less common than the tort reform advocates would have you believe, which is why they keep spewing misinformation, such as misrepresenting the McDonalds case, or the cases in the href="http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp">S
Read about the facts behind the McDonalds incident here:
http://www.atla.org/consumermediaresources/tier3/
It's true that the dot com boom was inevitably going to slip, but Clinton pulled off a successful economy before the "bubble."
The dot com bust hurt the economy, but whether it had to get as bad as it got under Bush, and whether the Dems could have straightened things out if they were given more time are only speculative.
My speculation is that since the Clinton administration really did put fiscal discipline, principles and policy over politics a great deal, and since Bush II's & co. appear to make no decision that doesn't involve some kind of cronyism or scheming, and since the Republicans of the last 20 years have not been true to the once traditional Republican economic value of fiscal conservatism, that if the Dems. had remained in office, their more enlightened fiscal discipline could have handled the economy far better than Bush has. The handling of the economy after that event is where the Republicans were put to shame. Bush II's crew are such screwups that even my Republican friends cringe at his economic policies. The Dems. should make some political hay out of it.
Heisenberg was driving down the road, and a policeman pulled him over. He asked, "do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg replied, "no, but I can tell you where I am."
"I'm not saying the republicans are fiscally responsible - just that the democrats sure haven't shown they are either."
I guess you missed the Clinton administration...
"Gay rights are not a core Democratic issue. But they SHOULD be. Democrats are having a hard time distinguishing themselves from Republicans. No one believes that they're in favor of fiscal responsibility, or that their position on Iraq is viable."
What the Dems really need to do is convince the American people that they are more fiscally responsible than Republicans. After all, this is actually true, and it appears that the fiscal profligacy and incompetence of the Republicans isn't likely to ever end.
They also need to make sure that people know that the core values of the Democratic party are affordable healthcare, protecting american jobs, and affordable education, and that these can be achieved while being far more fiscally responsible. They also need to do a better job of pointing out that the Republicans have failed us with respect to all of those goals.
I am all for gay rights, and am disgusted by the cynical and twisted rhetoric that the Republicans use to try to use people's fear and hatred of gays to push their agenda, but I don't think that should be the focus, as it really isn't going to give that much headway. There are a lot more bigoted jerks in this country than there should be, and many of them will be more motivated to vote based on hate and fear than anything else. While the Dems should be progressive, they shouldn't be holding up their banner about an issue that they have consistently gotten bloody noses on.
While Cocoa (really Mach-O) apps would have been easy to move (I used to run apps remotely on Mac OS X Server 1.2), that doesn't account for all apps on Mac OS X. Carbon (really CFM) and Classic would not have that capacity without a lot of work. I expect that Apple decided to drop the support since it wasn't really that advantageous to most users, would be really confusing for many users, and wouldn't work for a lot of apps.
Add to that that Apple has Apple Remote Desktop, a commercial product for remotely running apps, and I could see a number of reasons why they would have been fine with dropping support.
These are guesses. There could also be real techincal reasons why it broke that were too serious of hurdles to manage for so minimal a payoff.
Maybe you sould read your link. Those folks were arrested not for 'quoting bible verse', but for attempting to incite a riot. They went to Outfest looking to start trouble, not to peacefully quote the bible, and they were removed before they could cause the fights/riot they were trying to start.
Unfortunately, the link is down, here's the Google Cache.
Your story is incomplete and slightly inaccurate. First, George Washington was probably not a Christian, but a Deist, and while there are spiritual overtones to that proclamation, he clearly avoided any Christian references.
While Washington did devote a day in November to Thanksgiving, it was not a continuing holiday. It was Lincoln who established Thanksgiving day as we know it.
While there is no language in the proclamation regarding the Pilgrims, the Pilgrims' had a day of thanks after their struggles, and when the day of thinksgiving was announced there was some discord among the colonies, with many feeling the hardships of a few Pilgrims did not warrant a national holiday. It is clear that Washington's proclamation was an echo of the Pilgrim's Thanksgiving. So your elementary school teacher was actually correct.
Read more about it here
FWIW, you are allowed to use the conservative media too.
You're right that the source wasn't the best ever, there are plenty of other sources one can google for. The real point is that the Republicans took a (somewhat imperfect) districting scheme which was laid out by a non-partisan panel and turned it into extreme partisan gerrymandering.
The 2000 Census brought the need for redistricting. There was a lot of conflict over the redistricting, so a non-partisan panel of federal judges made the final mapbased solely on Census data without poitical consideration. A year later, spurred on by Tom DeLay, the Republicans decided to override the fair redistricting in a wholly partisan fashion as described in various articles on your site such as this one.
We now have an new level of absolutely insane gerrymandering that simply dwarfs anything that the Dems. ever tried. I live in Austin. Our city was chopped into slivers by the Republicans' redistricting to try to dilute our votes.
"Most of the uproar is from the Republicans trying to reverse the grossly partisan gerrymandering that took place just a little while ago to keep the Republicans from coming to power."
As a Texan, I have to say that is a totally false and highly partisan mischaracterization of the situation prior to the Republican's abusive redistricting. What actually happened was that both parties had fought in our legislature and could not come up with a solution for the redistricting. So the map was drawn by a nonpartisan panel of federal judges, based on the 2000 Census figures. A year later, the Republicans got enough control to push their new redistricting along, and a new Republican map was pushed through which was not based on any new Census information, but was purley designed to try to get a political advantage.
So I guess you'd agree that Nixon's horrible econoic policies were what we were seeing under Carter, and Carter's thoughtful economic policies were what caused the growth in the Reagan Administration, while Reagan's disastrous policies brought us the awful Bush I economy.
What MS needs most is old school hackers fixing Windows to make it suck less in crucial areas that a fair number of admins care about. They know that a lot of folks think their command prompt utterly sucks. It makes me want to throw things every time I have to use their accursed shell.
If they also implemented highly effective remote command line administration and took a few other pages from places where *NIX design makes life easy for admins I would also be very pleased. And those old school hackers would have my respect for fixing what was such an awful mess.
I once sort of respected Nader (pre 2000), even though I didn't agree with him. Now I am shocked at how low he has sunk. Not only is he taking in tons of money from the Republican Party, and letting them run ads for him, knowing full well that they are using him to as a tool against the Dems., but now he is running on the freaking Reform platform to get on the ticket after the Greens dropped him. How anyone can imagine Nader to be a progressive while he is cozying up with a the party of a racist neanderthal like Pat Buchanan is beyond me.
I don't see how he could get any votes now - he has spit in the face of anyone on the left by courting the worst on the right, but nobody but those on the left could stomach like his views.
"Maybe because at the time there was basically no _opposing view_."
Not that you could tell from the media, but there were many opposing views and a very large opposition to the war. There were the *largest protests in history* against the invasion. There were many experts, pundits, and politicians who were against the invasion. There were experts in Middle Eastern affirs, Intelligence experts and others who had many reasons to oppose the invasion who were completely ignored. And worst of all, they turned out to be correct.
The AP story contained an error. They ran a retraction.
How many retractions has FOX run for their reports of WMDs being found in Iraq? Fox has run countless misleading or inaccurate stories and has never run any corrections that I have seen.
"Fox is to be applauded for putting their agenda right out there in front so you don't have to guess at it."
Fox has never stated that they have any agenda. They are so incredibly biased that their biases are completely obvious. But they claim to be 'Fair and Balanced', and when various parties have accused them of bias, their management has always and consistently denied any bias.
The media certainly is not 'strongly left-leaning.' As someone with left leaning views, I am constantly disgusted with the media's conservative biases. A few simple examples: the coverage of the leadup to the Iraq war (cheerleading without any representation of the opposing views), the inequalities of the coverage of the Republican vs. the Democratic conventions (the Repubs. got a lot more tie overall, and Obama's brilliant keynote speech which was the hilight of the the Dem's convention was not broadcast on the major networks).
Beyond that Republicans decrying left wing media bias seem to conveniently forget that FOX (the Republican propaganda network) is part of the Media.
I realize that you feel that way, but polls of journalists makes it clear that your feeling doesn't reflect reality. I am afraid I can't dredge up the dang polls I was recently reading, but the numbers are pretty close to 50/50 for many major newspapers. When you turn to TV news, the Republicans dominate all over. Even NPR, which many consider left leaning has 60% Republican journalists (!).
In the end the viewpoints of the Journos are relatively unimportant. Editorial control is what matters, and the editors kowtow to advertisers and political pressure from whoever is in power (currently Republicans).