By late summer, the first rebate checks were putting money in consumers' pockets. Many rebate checks arrived in the weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The economy started growing in late fall --- and has grown since.
"At the very least, the Bush tax cuts [in 2001] helped lift the economy out of recession modestly and countered the effect of the terror attacks," said economist William Beach, director of the center for data analysis at the Heritage Foundation.
And that was 9 MONTHS after he took office.
You sir (or madam) are a demagog -- and an ignorant (or deliberately obtuse) one at that.
My dog barked BEFORE I got a flat tire -- Therefore, my barking dog caused my flat tire.
Also known as a falacy of false cause... I figured proj_2501 wouldn't know what the hell you were talking about as he apparently has no idea what the hell HE'S talking about...
I'll avoid your ridicules and baseless "Bush Bashing" and point out a severe error in your statement:
Thank you Mr. George W. Bush for ruining the 8 years of Clintons tax free internet
The error:
"Bush" hasn't done anything to "ruin 8 years of Clintons tax free internet". First, The internet wasn't Clintons. Second, if you RTFA and passed your high school civics class, you'd see that the states are asking CONGRESS who's constitutional role involves taxes and NOT the President's.
Summary:
Congress != President Executive Branch != Levy Taxes State Government != Federal Government You == ill-informed
Right. The point I was trying to make was that the blanket statement that "RH machines are safe" wouldn't be accurate -- and somewhat misleading. I guess I was a bit too obtuse.
Is that accurate? I read that as saying "With the version shipped with RH and RH Enterprise" -- which is an OLDER version. Doesn't that mean that if an RH user has updated SSH to a newer version, they are vulnerable?
Re:Yes, the way to help the economy is cut taxes.
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Tech Rich Get Richer
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Yeah, right. "CBO found that the top one percent of households paid 23 percent of all federal taxes that year, including payroll, excise and other federal taxes." This was for 1997, before the Bush tax cuts.
You need to READ your sources. That includes PAYROLL TAXES. Like the taxes you pay for social security -- the benefits of which are dependent on your WAGE and the amount you pay in.
The person you responded to was talking about INCOME TAX which is vastly out of balance. It amazes me that while Social Security and other federal taxes are based on a flat wage percentage you can't see the inequity of INCOME TAX.
Compair a person who makes $20k/year with a person who makes $70k/year. They BOTH pay the same rate to SSI at about 5%-6%. 20K man pays a little over $1000 and 70K man pays a little over $3500. 3.5 times the wage, 3.5 times the tax. Makes sense.
But, when you compair INCOME tax, 20K man pays about $3000, and 70K man pays over $20,000. Do the math. While, $70k man makes 3.5x $20k man, it will take around 7 (seven) $20k men to equal the taxes brought in by $70k man.
Now, if you make around $12,000 or less, you pay NO income tax -- AND, you get an EIC (you get money BACK from the government -- money that you NEVER PAID in the first place).
You need to take the advice given to YOU and YOU read the numbers -- not try and wash them over by including taxes which are ALREADY levied at a FAIR AND FLAT rate in an attempt to say "see? it's not that bad".
Pull out a calculator and your pay stub from dec 2002.
Now. Check your Federal income tax, state income tax, SSI, unemployment, etc etc. Calculate all those together.
Now, figure out how much you spent last year at the supermarket -- electronics store, etc etc etc (sales tax). Calculate that.
Now, check your utility bills -- figure out how much you paid for gas, water, power, telphone service, cell phone, pager, etc. Calculate that.
Now, figure out how much you spent on fuel for your car. Calculate how much tax you paid for THAT last year.
Car registration, professional state licence fees, property taxes, etc. Calculate that.
God help you if your a smoker.
Add all those taxes together and divide that by your income last year. You should end up with 50% (+/- a few % points). Last year, I paid out over 52% of what I made in taxes. I itemize everything, too. EVERYTHING.
I am not wealthy, either. My wife and I have just spent the last several years saving for a house that will further eat close to 1/3 of our income (whats left after taxes) as a house payment.
ipchains (or whatever). Block traffic to sshd from all but known clients who NEED access. I do this anyway.
If you're a lazy SOB and not security minded, you COULD just change the default port to something weird like 19326 or something -- at least that will keep most ssh exploit scripts at bay and probably "buy" you the time you want while you wait for RH.
The problem with your argument is the assumption that the US government is by/of/for the people. Once you realize that this has not been the case for the past 20 years, then you will feel much better about bending over and taking it like a true Patriot.
The government we have *IS* by/of/for the people. If you think the people (US citizins) aren't responsible for the government we have, you clearly dont understand how our country works. You obviously have a gripe with the government -- and you obviously BLAME the government -- however, any and all blame lies squarly with us -- "we the people".
I'm less worried about legislating advanced technology -- which I believe would come if given direction.
I just don't see how ANY BODY can expect to do this on $14 billion a year (NASA's budget) when we cant even cover the costs of all our government aid packages at almost $500 billion a year and Defense spending at about the same (thats $1 trillion). Where's the extra funding going to come from?
Someone's going to need to shave some money off those programs and redirect it to NASA. OR somehow direct the private sector to do this -- a la cash bonuses (like Longatude). I believe Jerry Pornelle had a good idea about how to do this...
Re:ST theme became clear the other day
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New Heinlein Novel
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I'd feel better having a real combat veteran ordering the youth of today to their deaths, at least that person would know what they will face.
Are you suggesting that only someone with a record in the miltary is qualified for the Presidency? Like Grant? He was a WONDERFUL president, huh?
What about those presidents who DIDN'T have any miltary career yet served during times of war?
Like FD Roosevelt? People didn't appear to have problems with HIM ordering the "youth" of "that day" to their deaths.
Like Abraham Lincoln? History has sure been kind to HIM ordering the "youth" of "that day" to their deaths.
How about Woodrow Wilson? Again, people didn't appear to have problems with HIM order the "youth" of "that day" to their deaths.
I think the bigger issue is that daddy got him (like all the other rich boys) into the ANG for Nam
How about some material to back that up? It's easy to toss out claims as an AC without backup material. You do know that Ben Barnes has testified in court that there was no influence brought on him bringing GWB jr in the ANG? Or are you a tin-foil hat wearing wacko?
You need to re-read your own comment with a critical eye.
You stated, quite clearly and without abiguity that lafiel was suggesting blocking all ports but 110 and 25. Read it. It's there. Your own words.
THEN, you go on and suggest blocking only SOME ports would be pointless:
and assuming that you will only block a few nominal ports, how long til the unblocked ports become commonly used, and hence exploited?
Then you go BACK to the ALL PORTS BLOCKING is bad theme, which was never suggested or implied:
if you want a block everything approach then you would be killing usability
Sir (or madam), I read your post and provided a thoughtful response. Hardly "knee jerk". If you honstly re-read your comment and my reply, I'm sure you will agree.
so what your saying is that everything incoming should be blocked, save port 25, 110 (consumers need not have any other incomnig traffic)
I should point out that the phrase "so what you are saying..." translates as: "I'm about to put words in your mouth". At least the way you used it.
Where did he say "everything" should be blocked? Even his analogy to email filtering implies that EMAIL isn't COMPLETELY blocked -- just unwanted email.
This is a hot-button issue and too many people are ready to "knee jerk" their way in to making foolish statements.
Re:ST theme became clear the other day
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New Heinlein Novel
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· Score: 1
and he went AWOL for his last year of service.
Let's keep this in perspective. The total amount of time unaccounted for is something like 30 days. One year is misleading. And it wasn't his last year -- it was during the time he requested for a temporary transfer to Alabama where he was working as an aid to a campaign. 72 to early 73, IIRC. He then returned and attended reserves until September 73.
Lets talk facts:
September 1973, Bush submitted a request for discharge from the Texas ANG and to be transfered to the Air Reserve Personnel Center.
As this was approved, it ended any requirements to attend monthly drills or makeup time. AND he was discharged honorably, then moved on to Harvard a month later.
So, what I see is a lot of people harping on a possible red herring of 30 some-odd missing days which didn't chafe the ANG of Texas one little bit.
Please note I say POSSIBLE. I've read that he (Bush) and his family claimed they didn't attempt to influence that decision and interviews with the people involve back that up. I'll be happy to change my opionion about this AWOL thing as soon as someone can provide compelling evidence that contradicts this. Please remember, it's got to be more than the "AWOL FOR A YEAR" mantra.
As for source material, google for it. The Boston Globe got it via the Freedom of Information Act last year.
It takes luck to ensure that nothing happens to the card after you punched it. Once it leaves your hand, it is not immediately fed into a card reader in front of your eyes. The chad system is fragile enough that hanging chads, extra punches, and stray chads from neighboring cards can be introduced during shipping and handling.
Most of those "luck" issues you mentioned hang on the voter.
Extra punches and hang chads in particular. I cant speak for the card-stock outside of my county (LA CA), but our card stock is pretty damn solid and I cant see these things being a problem unless introduced by the voter initially by not following the simple directions.
I would agree, however, that over time, it becomes less and less viable to use the cards for the purpose of 'record-keeping'. Then again, I don't think they were ever meant for or designed to be used for that.
(B) Get an on-screen summary of your 'VOTES' after you've completed and get the chance to OK.
(C) Once OKd, get a print out of same in both plain text and machine-readable bar codes
(D) Make final OK to record vote (Paper matches screen)
(E) Drop the print out in a 'ballot box'
Vote counting would consist of the voting machines doing a semi-instant count. Further validation would be taking those hard-printed receipts to a non-networked tally machine.
Check the results from both. Do they match? If not, use the paper tallied results as those would have been validated by the voter as being accurate.
But really, it doesn't require much more than an IQ of 70 to learn how to use a punch-card ballot -- AND make sure the chads are completely removed...
...and CERTAINLY doesn't constitute a ruling on the case.
Agreed. It doesnt. It's more likely (and IANAL) due to Bowers v. Baystates narrow judgement and the decenting justice's citing of Vault v. Quaid (in hopes of a 'fair use' appeal). It may not be the perfect case for a "fair use" decision -- which what an appeal of this type would essentially be.
It's not that American's think it's a "capital crime" to be left-wing -- it goes both way for both extremes. Too far left or too far right and you can end up marked as -- yup, you guessed it. An extremist. If you're really interested, there's tons of information available on the web that show the leftests pounding the "right" and their "vast right-wing conspiracy" and the right pounding the lefts "tax and spend".
My problem is mostly with people who are so far in one direction or another they blindly follow their political dogma.
America is, in my opinion, somewhere in the middle of all that but the demagogs get all the press. The problem is if you're a centrist and you argue an issue against an extremist, you end up labeled an extremist on the OTHER end in an attempt to marginalize your argument. Basic attack the person. "You people this" or "You and your commie friends" or "You and your friends at Enron" (from this thread) are a few examples.
I beleive Americans want the oportunities a free market and capitolism provides while providing basic needs for those who either cant or for some reason unable to provide for themselves. The problems arrise in the impletmentation. Waste, fraud, apathy and beurocratic overhead drive up the costs. If one side is in power too long, all the problems associated with it (left==spending beyond tax base, right==business over public wellfare (minor examples)). Then the call comes for REFORM! It's cyclic.
By the way, there is no such thing as "free health care". It costs money and it costs A LOT. I'm I saying that public healthcare not be provided to those that cant afford it? No. But you cant slice a pie in to portions that add up to 130% before you create economic ruin as is happening in CA.
Geez. Your sobig-f volume for that period (2 or 3 days?) is larger than our entire MONTLY volume of email (sans viruses).
One thing I hate is seeing "pass it on" emails where everybody CCs their ENTIRE contact list to let everybody know not to boil water in a microwave or it might blow up, or something as equally inane.
That means now EVERYBODY on that list has everybody else's email address on their system and Klez, Sobig, Yaha, Sircam, whatever has additional targets to attack. My users are pretty good about using BCC, but I can't control people outside our orginization.
You sir (or madam) are a demagog -- and an ignorant (or deliberately obtuse) one at that.
Translation:
A happened before B -- therefore, A caused B.
Example:
My dog barked BEFORE I got a flat tire -- Therefore, my barking dog caused my flat tire.
Also known as a falacy of false cause... I figured proj_2501 wouldn't know what the hell you were talking about as he apparently has no idea what the hell HE'S talking about...
"Bush" hasn't done anything to "ruin 8 years of Clintons tax free internet". First, The internet wasn't Clintons. Second, if you RTFA and passed your high school civics class, you'd see that the states are asking CONGRESS who's constitutional role involves taxes and NOT the President's.
Summary:
Congress != President
Executive Branch != Levy Taxes
State Government != Federal Government
You == ill-informed
Right. The point I was trying to make was that the blanket statement that "RH machines are safe" wouldn't be accurate -- and somewhat misleading. I guess I was a bit too obtuse.
Is that accurate? I read that as saying "With the version shipped with RH and RH Enterprise" -- which is an OLDER version. Doesn't that mean that if an RH user has updated SSH to a newer version, they are vulnerable?
The person you responded to was talking about INCOME TAX which is vastly out of balance. It amazes me that while Social Security and other federal taxes are based on a flat wage percentage you can't see the inequity of INCOME TAX.
Compair a person who makes $20k/year with a person who makes $70k/year. They BOTH pay the same rate to SSI at about 5%-6%. 20K man pays a little over $1000 and 70K man pays a little over $3500. 3.5 times the wage, 3.5 times the tax. Makes sense.
But, when you compair INCOME tax, 20K man pays about $3000, and 70K man pays over $20,000. Do the math. While, $70k man makes 3.5x $20k man, it will take around 7 (seven) $20k men to equal the taxes brought in by $70k man.
Now, if you make around $12,000 or less, you pay NO income tax -- AND, you get an EIC (you get money BACK from the government -- money that you NEVER PAID in the first place).
You need to take the advice given to YOU and YOU read the numbers -- not try and wash them over by including taxes which are ALREADY levied at a FAIR AND FLAT rate in an attempt to say "see? it's not that bad".
Jeez.
Pull out a calculator and your pay stub from dec 2002.
Now. Check your Federal income tax, state income tax, SSI, unemployment, etc etc. Calculate all those together.
Now, figure out how much you spent last year at the supermarket -- electronics store, etc etc etc (sales tax). Calculate that.
Now, check your utility bills -- figure out how much you paid for gas, water, power, telphone service, cell phone, pager, etc. Calculate that.
Now, figure out how much you spent on fuel for your car. Calculate how much tax you paid for THAT last year.
Car registration, professional state licence fees, property taxes, etc. Calculate that.
God help you if your a smoker.
Add all those taxes together and divide that by your income last year. You should end up with 50% (+/- a few % points). Last year, I paid out over 52% of what I made in taxes. I itemize everything, too. EVERYTHING.
I am not wealthy, either. My wife and I have just spent the last several years saving for a house that will further eat close to 1/3 of our income (whats left after taxes) as a house payment.
There needs to be more equity in taxation.
Depends on your distro. up2date for RH is a good example.
ipchains (or whatever). Block traffic to sshd from all but known clients who NEED access. I do this anyway.
If you're a lazy SOB and not security minded, you COULD just change the default port to something weird like 19326 or something -- at least that will keep most ssh exploit scripts at bay and probably "buy" you the time you want while you wait for RH.
I'm less worried about legislating advanced technology -- which I believe would come if given direction.
I just don't see how ANY BODY can expect to do this on $14 billion a year (NASA's budget) when we cant even cover the costs of all our government aid packages at almost $500 billion a year and Defense spending at about the same (thats $1 trillion). Where's the extra funding going to come from?
Someone's going to need to shave some money off those programs and redirect it to NASA. OR somehow direct the private sector to do this -- a la cash bonuses (like Longatude). I believe Jerry Pornelle had a good idea about how to do this...
What about those presidents who DIDN'T have any miltary career yet served during times of war?
Like FD Roosevelt? People didn't appear to have problems with HIM ordering the "youth" of "that day" to their deaths.
Like Abraham Lincoln? History has sure been kind to HIM ordering the "youth" of "that day" to their deaths.
How about Woodrow Wilson? Again, people didn't appear to have problems with HIM order the "youth" of "that day" to their deaths.How about some material to back that up? It's easy to toss out claims as an AC without backup material. You do know that Ben Barnes has testified in court that there was no influence brought on him bringing GWB jr in the ANG? Or are you a tin-foil hat wearing wacko?
You stated, quite clearly and without abiguity that lafiel was suggesting blocking all ports but 110 and 25. Read it. It's there. Your own words.
THEN, you go on and suggest blocking only SOME ports would be pointless:
Then you go BACK to the ALL PORTS BLOCKING is bad theme, which was never suggested or implied:
Sir (or madam), I read your post and provided a thoughtful response. Hardly "knee jerk". If you honstly re-read your comment and my reply, I'm sure you will agree.
Where did he say "everything" should be blocked? Even his analogy to email filtering implies that EMAIL isn't COMPLETELY blocked -- just unwanted email.
This is a hot-button issue and too many people are ready to "knee jerk" their way in to making foolish statements.
Lets talk facts:
September 1973, Bush submitted a request for discharge from the Texas ANG and to be transfered to the Air Reserve Personnel Center.
As this was approved, it ended any requirements to attend monthly drills or makeup time. AND he was discharged honorably, then moved on to Harvard a month later.
So, what I see is a lot of people harping on a possible red herring of 30 some-odd missing days which didn't chafe the ANG of Texas one little bit.
Please note I say POSSIBLE. I've read that he (Bush) and his family claimed they didn't attempt to influence that decision and interviews with the people involve back that up. I'll be happy to change my opionion about this AWOL thing as soon as someone can provide compelling evidence that contradicts this. Please remember, it's got to be more than the "AWOL FOR A YEAR" mantra.
As for source material, google for it. The Boston Globe got it via the Freedom of Information Act last year.
Extra punches and hang chads in particular. I cant speak for the card-stock outside of my county (LA CA), but our card stock is pretty damn solid and I cant see these things being a problem unless introduced by the voter initially by not following the simple directions.
I would agree, however, that over time, it becomes less and less viable to use the cards for the purpose of 'record-keeping'. Then again, I don't think they were ever meant for or designed to be used for that.
Ok. How about this for verification:
(A) Vote (using some electronic voting machine)
(B) Get an on-screen summary of your 'VOTES' after you've completed and get the chance to OK.
(C) Once OKd, get a print out of same in both plain text and machine-readable bar codes
(D) Make final OK to record vote (Paper matches screen)
(E) Drop the print out in a 'ballot box'
Vote counting would consist of the voting machines doing a semi-instant count. Further validation would be taking those hard-printed receipts to a non-networked tally machine.
Check the results from both. Do they match? If not, use the paper tallied results as those would have been validated by the voter as being accurate.
But really, it doesn't require much more than an IQ of 70 to learn how to use a punch-card ballot -- AND make sure the chads are completely removed...
Most of the marketing calls I get are from my credit card companies trying to sell extra "features" for the card. This wont impact those at all.
Maybe once or twice a month, I get a call from the LA TIMES -- I wont be sad to see them never call again.
Very good question.
It's not that American's think it's a "capital crime" to be left-wing -- it goes both way for both extremes. Too far left or too far right and you can end up marked as -- yup, you guessed it. An extremist. If you're really interested, there's tons of information available on the web that show the leftests pounding the "right" and their "vast right-wing conspiracy" and the right pounding the lefts "tax and spend".
My problem is mostly with people who are so far in one direction or another they blindly follow their political dogma.
America is, in my opinion, somewhere in the middle of all that but the demagogs get all the press. The problem is if you're a centrist and you argue an issue against an extremist, you end up labeled an extremist on the OTHER end in an attempt to marginalize your argument. Basic attack the person. "You people this" or "You and your commie friends" or "You and your friends at Enron" (from this thread) are a few examples.
I beleive Americans want the oportunities a free market and capitolism provides while providing basic needs for those who either cant or for some reason unable to provide for themselves. The problems arrise in the impletmentation. Waste, fraud, apathy and beurocratic overhead drive up the costs. If one side is in power too long, all the problems associated with it (left==spending beyond tax base, right==business over public wellfare (minor examples)). Then the call comes for REFORM! It's cyclic.
By the way, there is no such thing as "free health care". It costs money and it costs A LOT. I'm I saying that public healthcare not be provided to those that cant afford it? No. But you cant slice a pie in to portions that add up to 130% before you create economic ruin as is happening in CA.
Geez. Your sobig-f volume for that period (2 or 3 days?) is larger than our entire MONTLY volume of email (sans viruses).
One thing I hate is seeing "pass it on" emails where everybody CCs their ENTIRE contact list to let everybody know not to boil water in a microwave or it might blow up, or something as equally inane.
That means now EVERYBODY on that list has everybody else's email address on their system and Klez, Sobig, Yaha, Sircam, whatever has additional targets to attack. My users are pretty good about using BCC, but I can't control people outside our orginization.