... if I had no choice but to trust either of them, I'd take Obama over McCain, for reasons noted.
I didn't see any serious reasons, but OK.
Ha. Nah. I just don't know how Obama is "more honest." He certainly hasn't been very honest in this campaign. I didn't even bring up the Rev Wright stuff, or his various dishonest attacks on Hillary and McCain.
I'm not gonna go there. The barbecue is hot and there's a cold beer waiting for me.;) But my impression is that a lot of that was media hype. It's akin to saying, well, yeah, I have friends the fact of which I associate with them disqualifies me to be president because they are firebrands and occasionally say things that can be construed as racist. Whoop de fucking doo.
No, that wasn't my point. My point was about honesty. He said he never heard Wright say such things (even though he had been a member for decades and Wright says things like that a lot); he said he would never disown Wright (which he later did); and so on.
I also do not care about the Wright stuff itself, much. I do care about how he lied and manipulated to deal with it.
McCain's friendly circle is quite well known, and includes people who steal everything that isn't locked down.
That's an oddly false thing to say, but note again, I was not talking about the company he keeps, but his response to the "scandal" about it.
While the political arena is overall a slimepit, the republican party is rather well known for the levels they will descend to, as you well know, given your position there.
Actually, it's quite clear in my area -- Washington state -- that the Democrats are MUCH worse than the Republicans. There was the racist flyer from the Dem party against a black Republican that said something like, "do you want him in YOUR neighborhood?" There was just last month a racist ad against the GOP candidate for governor, trying to use an ethnic stereotype of Italians against him by using The Sopranos' theme song (illegally) in an ad.
That's not to say the Republicans are squeaky clean. I am waging war against a Democrat running for state Senate right now, Fred Walser. Everything I posted on that site is true. I have been very careful about that. Meanwhile Walser -- who was actually convicted of lying and sentenced to a year in jail in June -- just sent out a piece that directly lies about his Republican opponent.
Some people say my site is "low" or "slimy." I say as long as it is true and relevant to the person's fitness for office, then it is perfectly above-board. I am not talking about his family (except in regard to his wife's service as the Mayor of Monroe), I am not talking about his personality or character, only providing relevant facts related to his existing record of service that speak to his character.
If only the Democrats around here would do the same as I am, then I'd not complain about them being dirty.
I have. Forgive me if I still think he's the lesser of the two evils.;)
Sorry, but I won't. McCain has no serious dirt in his past (yes, that includes the Keating scandal, for which he was completely exonerated, with even Democrats on the ethics committee and the prosecutor saying there was no evidence he did anything wrong).
*shrug* - you are still playing the game.
I am, literally, fighting for liberty. Are you? If so, good.
Obama's stated position is a 16 month timetable for withdrawal of the main forces.
Which he has, in recent months, repeatedly stated will depend entirely on whether we can do so without leaving Iraq in a state of chaos.
Whether there is a "timetable" is irrelevant, because with both McCain and Obama, the timetable is "as soon as we can without threatening Iraq's security."
Obama says 16 months, but by Obama's own admission, that is the same thing as saying "as soon as possible," which is what McCain says.
[McCain] started suggesting expedited withdrawal as a possible option after Maliki's announcement undermined his "100 years if necessary" position.
McCain never had such a position. This is a persistent lie, and it's sad. He did not say 100 years "if necessary," he said 100 years "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."
Well, or his handlers are. No matter, I do concede that the Obama campaign is more interested -- and PERHAPS more insightful, though the jury's still out -- about some important technological issues. I just do not accept that he can be trusted on any of it.
he had his technical stance up long, long ago
Right, just like his stance on the DC gun ban, which he favored before he opposed. Look, I am not trying to make Obama out to be a Kerry-style flip-flopper. But he simply does not have the experience for me to trust him, and he has shown many times that he cannot be trusted.
If he gets elected and he follows through on it, great. I won't hold my breath.
And I also won't sit here worrying about McCain, since most of this stuff won't happen anyway.
What worries me more than McCain's view on this stuff is that both of them back a shield law for reporters. This is far more important than all this stuff, IMO.
My non-partisan stance befuddles you, or ?;)
Ha. Nah. I just don't know how Obama is "more honest." He certainly hasn't been very honest in this campaign. I didn't even bring up the Rev Wright stuff, or his various dishonest attacks on Hillary and McCain.
I think he's a lot more honest about how he does feel about the issues, it doesn't feel - to me, yes - like he's playing the career game.
If you look at his history in Chicago and read what his contemporaries say about him, I don't think you'll feel the same way.
You're entitled to form and hold your own opinions. For a little while longer, anyway.
Ha. I think I was just pwn3d.
Your response is typical of the ones I get from many career republican voters. I find them just as amusing as the ones I get from the other end of the spectrum. Neither style of fanatic, in my opinion, has much of anything new to offer.
Fanatic? If you've read any of my posts over the years you'd see *I'm* not a fanatic. I have heavily criticized many Republicans, including McCain (which I did in this post!) and Bush, and I've actually posted defenses of both Kerry and Obama during their runs.
Yes, I usually vote Republican, but not because I am partisan per se, but because I strongly believe in the principles the GOP pretends to espouse. And while voting GOP might not always get us there, voting Democrat will usually move us in the other direction.
I am the chair of my legislative district GOP, and I recently posted my picks for the primary. In it I actually split my picks between a Democrat and a Republican for State Auditor, because the incumbent Democrat has done a very good job IMO, but I also respect and admire his Republican challenger. I think we will be well-served by either one.
So yes, I am a Republican. But I do not always approve of Republicans and what they do, and I sometimes defend, and even support, Democrats.
Insulting other people by claiming they're fabricating things to cover up some sort of self-justification of their irrational beliefs regarding their candidate is in poor taste.
Lying to make your own candidate look good is in poor taste. Shrug.
Doing it so that for the express reason that it justifies your own irrational beliefs in your candidate is just being a fucking prick.
It is astonishing to me that you would attack me for pointing out the fact that someone else is not telling the truth. Lunacy.
If McCain is the second coming of Jesus Christ and therefore he is honest and pure
Straw man fallacy.
why not try convincing us instead of just telling us Obama's a dick and anybody who supports him is lying?
This is what is wrong with politics. It encourages people to be limit their thought processes. Jut because one side is crap, doesn't mean another side is crap, and one can't have an enclosed object without at least three straight sides.
I am not saying there is something wrong with what McCain did, obviously. I am just saying people who attack McCain as always being wrong are full of it.
McCain was a relatively humble person, who, although not always right, seemed to try to be right. Even when GW Bush, a deserter from the US Military, attacked him, McCain took the high ground. It resulted in the US electing a deserter, but McCain remained in good graces.
Wow. No, THAT is what is wrong with politics, people like you LYING and saying that Bush was ever a deserter.
Now, McCain has learned the political lesson and has changed his position on oil
Only in response to actual changes in our situation. Duh.
Iraq
Wow, this is a big fat lie. McCain's position on Iraq has not changed AT ALL. His position today -- we should leave as soon as we can leave Iraq with a stable government and military that can provide security, that we should increase troops to whatever level necessary to accomplish the job, etc. -- is the exact same position he had five years ago.
and even though he whines incessantly about the fact he was tortured, he all of the sudden understands that torture is necessary
Also a lie. McCain has NEVER come out in favor of torture.
Faced with an opponnent like that, Obama had a choice. He could have played the game just as dirty and stuck to the letter of the law while raping its spirit.
Wow.
You are so completely full of it I don't know where to begin.
I won't bother, except to say that anyone familiar with the law and with Obama's statements knows that this is PRECISELY what he did: rape the spirit of the law, when he lied and said that his decision to opt out of public financing WAS THE SAME as public financing.
Anyway, you also neglected to talk about the fact that Obama NEVER at ANY TIME followed through with his promise to "aggressively pursue" public financing. If you think that's principled, you're alone.
I find the contrast between Obama's tech page and McCain's interesting in that in Obama's he talks more about what should be done... On that standpoint alone I would trust Obama more
Despite the fact that he's never actually DONE anything, and that he's already changed on many of the things he SAID he would do?:-)
I am entirely non-partisan; while I think Obama is likely the more honest of the two
This befuddles me. I can't speak for YOU of course, but I wonder if the reason many people think this is because they believe that Obama "means well," so even if he goes back on something, well, he meant it at the time! And if McCain changes on something, well, he "obviously" was lying.
Jamie, that was one hell of a great rant
I don't believe I have ever thought a rant was good that was almost entirely based on fabrications.
Of Course. This _is_ the "McCain" in "McCain-Feingold" we're talking about, after all.
Surely you're familiar with the McCain-Feingold "incumbency protection act", who's aim is to create a dubious "protected class" of people for whom the 1st amendment (which protects _political speech_ and no other type) still actually applies.
For everyone else (people who aren't "real journalists") -- no more 1st amendment rights for you, anytime an election is 6 months (or wahtever the bill says) away.
McCain Feingold is one of these ridiculous laws that, when examined, seems totally ridiculous and unconstitutional.
Not for nothing, let's remember the fact that Democrats supported the bill 198-12, and Republicans supported it 41-176, in the House. In the Senate, it was 46-3, and 11-38. In the Congress, Republicans broadly opposed the "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act," and Democrats almost universally supported it.
So let us not pretend (not that you were doing so) that Obama, a Democrat, who has already proven to be unprincipled on campaign financing (saying he would do one thing out of campaign finance principles, and then rejecting that principle and pretending what he was doing was following that principle), would not be in favor of McCain-Feingold too.
What I find more important is that the target of his humor is the ceaseless argumentation on all matters, political and otherwise, that the citizenry engages in when permitted freedom of speech.
You are implying McCain believes people need to be "permitted" freedom of speech.
You are, of course, completely making that up. There is no truth to it. It's odd that you feel the need to lie about McCain; if he's so bad, why don't you just stick to truth?
The sad thing is that YOUR guy, Obama, has attacked "the blogosphere" at least as much as McCain, but you apparently... don't care. He has blamed "blogs" and the Internet for "driving up" his negatives. How dare he attack this "democracy at its most raw!"
Come to think of it, you've done the same thing on MANY occasions.
The point, of course, is that it is one thing to attack certain expressions on the Internet, and another to condemn the Internet in general. You, Obama, and McCain have all criticized certain expressions, not the whole thing.
And politicians like McCain mock them, and mock the way we argue.
No, he only criticizes SOME of the way they argue, such as pretending to be superior and making stuff up. And good for him. And good for you and Obama for doing the exact same thing.
In 2006, John McCain gave the commencement address at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, and took the opportunity to mock individual expression
Incorrect, of course. Quite clearly, the quote shows that he is mocking people -- especially young people -- who think they are infallible and that know better than everyone else.
Kinda like, well, you!
I hope you are not intentionally misrepresenting what McCain said, and that you're being merely stupid.
Now, I don't doubt it. Before, though, there wasn't even any definitive proof anyone had died. I thought that was kind of a prerequisite for charging someone with murder.
I didn't mean that the government should be able to eliminate rights at whim, only that should it become clear that something that we thought was good, actually is more bad than good we should be able to change it.
We can change anything we like. We can amend the Constitution. But the Bill of Rights is there to protect the minority from the majority. It is the rights of minorities that matter -- it is the reason why we have a republic and not a democracy -- and we should have near-unanimous agreement to take away ANY rights.
Actually, I would vote for taking the purely logical route if we could be certain enough of the numbers.
But... then it would not be "the purely logical route."
The reason we declare things rights is because we are certain that they have some benefit that is so useful that it can't be done without.
Absolutely false. There is no truth in that whatsoever, and frankly, it's one of the scariest damned things I've read in a long time. Our rights primarily protect us from the government. And who would decide if our rights provide some "benefit"? The government! So what you're saying is that rights do not exist AT ALL. If government decides they provide no "benefit," then poof, we have no more protection from the government. That is entirely illogical, unworkable, and tyrannical.
Read the Declaration of Independence. The Rights of Man. The reason we have rights -- whether you personally believe in it or not -- is because we believe we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.
Unalienable means those rights simply belong to us, and cannot be taken away, no matter what any "numbers" say. Now granted, the right to a particular weapon is not unalienable. But the right to defend yourself, including from the government, is. And it is far more important that I am able to retain my right to defend myself, than it is what any gun statistic says.
If we accidentally made a bad choice, we should correct it.
No number can show that we made a bad "choice," because the only "choice" we made is to recognize the natural rights we already had.
I think it would be VERY easy to show that free speech has caused great harm in this country. I think it would be VERY foolish to try to use that information to try to take away free speech, and it is not because free speech has done more good than harm -- I think that is probably true, but I do not care -- it is because it is my right as a sovereign human being to speak my mind.
This is just an act of judicial activism, sort of like when the SCOTUS decided that the votes of the people of Florida were not as valuable as those in other parts of the nation, and refused to set precedence. False on both counts. This is not any sort of judicial activism, first. And second, the SCOTUS never, ever, decided that the votes of Floridians are less valuable than any other votes (indeed, if anything, by restricting Florida and Florida alone to the higher standard, the Gore camp argued that Floridians were getting their votes treated MORE valuably than everyone else's... but seven of the nine Supreme Court justices disagreed).
In fact, justice Souter, IIRC, stated that there's no evidence of any sort that the framers of the US constitution meant for arms to be completely unregulated. And the majority didn't say that they were to be completely unregulated. They quite clearly accepted all other existing regulations, beyond the restricting simple private ownership and possession in the home. Straw man fallacy.
Banning handguns is something which is sensible when the crime rate gets as high as it is in certain portions of the country. You are allowed to believe that. But no matter how sensible it is, it's unconstitutional.
Given the high troll rate on Slashdot, it is sensible for the government to regulate who can post here. But it would be unconstitutional.
Saying that guns don't kill people, people kill people, is bullshit. It's, um, true.
Show me an instant when a person killed a person with a gun when they didn't have a gun. Wow, now I get it. You are seriously confused here. You think guns are prima facie wrong, and that the gun itself IS a crime. See, most people think that's stupid. Most people think a gun is a tool and that it is what you DO with it that may be a crime. Your point there is the question-begging fallacy: it assumes that KILLING WITH A GUN is the real problem, when most people think KILLING is the problem.
The actually logical, non-fallacious, question is to show an instance where someone who would have murdered was prevented from doing so just because he didn't have a gun. Note that within a week of Columbine, a man intentionally drove his car into a schoolyard, murdering multiple children.
It is not logical to look at tools you dislike and seek to ban them. What is logical is to try to prevent the resultant acts that you dislike, such as "killing."
That is the point of "guns don't kill people." A non-murderer with a gun won't murder just because he has one, and a murderer without a gun will murder without one.
While the UK has proven pretty definitively that complete bans of all forms of firearms does not work, there is absolutely no reason why banning certain types of firearms in areas like Philadelphia or DC is a bad idea. Well, it's unconstitutional, for starters.
This debate is not open to statistics. Should we make the right to speak or practice religion dependent on how many times speech or religion has been used for good, as opposed to ill? Or should the right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure be weighed against how often such unreasonable searches and seizures catch bad guys?
Of course not. We say, this is a right, and we must respect it. Period.
Mini:~ max$ ssh max@emac.local Password: Last login: Thu Jun 19 03:37:58 2008 eMac:~ max$ osascript -e 'tell app "ARDAgent" to do shell script "whoami"'; root
Come again? Even though the eMac is sitting right next to the mini, there's no VNC or other screen sharing running. I presume you missed the part where I said "The AppleScript requires an account to be logged in at the console," and that "max" is logged in at the console of the eMac.
No, again, you need the account you're using to be logged into the console, one way or another. If you are logged in as "gandalf" on the console, then you can run this script as "gandalf" over ssh, but not as "frodo."
Of course, you can run it as "root" over ssh, but that kinda defeats the purpose!
I logged in via SSH to an Xserve I admin and I got the same response... 'root'. I doubt it, unless the user you logged in as was logged into the console already...
Just embed the script in an applescript *.app executable, which many clueless users (I know, I am a Mac sysadmin to some of them) will click on, despite the warnings from the system on trying to start an executable from Mail and on first launching the app. Right. It is yet another possible Trojan Horse vector. Most of us here are hard to trick into this, but most users at large are not.
Slashdot Mirror
All I can say is that your assessment of the various positions is so simplistic that I don't even know where to start to debunk them.
Riiiiiiiiight.
... if I had no choice but to trust either of them, I'd take Obama over McCain, for reasons noted.
I didn't see any serious reasons, but OK.
Ha. Nah. I just don't know how Obama is "more honest." He certainly hasn't been very honest in this campaign. I didn't even bring up the Rev Wright stuff, or his various dishonest attacks on Hillary and McCain.
I'm not gonna go there. The barbecue is hot and there's a cold beer waiting for me. ;) But my impression is that a lot of that was media hype. It's akin to saying, well, yeah, I have friends the fact of which I associate with them disqualifies me to be president because they are firebrands and occasionally say things that can be construed as racist. Whoop de fucking doo.
No, that wasn't my point. My point was about honesty. He said he never heard Wright say such things (even though he had been a member for decades and Wright says things like that a lot); he said he would never disown Wright (which he later did); and so on.
I also do not care about the Wright stuff itself, much. I do care about how he lied and manipulated to deal with it.
McCain's friendly circle is quite well known, and includes people who steal everything that isn't locked down.
That's an oddly false thing to say, but note again, I was not talking about the company he keeps, but his response to the "scandal" about it.
While the political arena is overall a slimepit, the republican party is rather well known for the levels they will descend to, as you well know, given your position there.
Actually, it's quite clear in my area -- Washington state -- that the Democrats are MUCH worse than the Republicans. There was the racist flyer from the Dem party against a black Republican that said something like, "do you want him in YOUR neighborhood?" There was just last month a racist ad against the GOP candidate for governor, trying to use an ethnic stereotype of Italians against him by using The Sopranos' theme song (illegally) in an ad.
That's not to say the Republicans are squeaky clean. I am waging war against a Democrat running for state Senate right now, Fred Walser. Everything I posted on that site is true. I have been very careful about that. Meanwhile Walser -- who was actually convicted of lying and sentenced to a year in jail in June -- just sent out a piece that directly lies about his Republican opponent.
Some people say my site is "low" or "slimy." I say as long as it is true and relevant to the person's fitness for office, then it is perfectly above-board. I am not talking about his family (except in regard to his wife's service as the Mayor of Monroe), I am not talking about his personality or character, only providing relevant facts related to his existing record of service that speak to his character.
If only the Democrats around here would do the same as I am, then I'd not complain about them being dirty.
I have. Forgive me if I still think he's the lesser of the two evils. ;)
Sorry, but I won't. McCain has no serious dirt in his past (yes, that includes the Keating scandal, for which he was completely exonerated, with even Democrats on the ethics committee and the prosecutor saying there was no evidence he did anything wrong).
*shrug* - you are still playing the game.
I am, literally, fighting for liberty. Are you? If so, good.
Yawwwwwwwn. "I can't actually rebut what you say so I am going to resort to being stupid!" Your mother must be proud.
Obama's stated position is a 16 month timetable for withdrawal of the main forces.
Which he has, in recent months, repeatedly stated will depend entirely on whether we can do so without leaving Iraq in a state of chaos.
Whether there is a "timetable" is irrelevant, because with both McCain and Obama, the timetable is "as soon as we can without threatening Iraq's security."
Obama says 16 months, but by Obama's own admission, that is the same thing as saying "as soon as possible," which is what McCain says.
[McCain] started suggesting expedited withdrawal as a possible option after Maliki's announcement undermined his "100 years if necessary" position.
McCain never had such a position. This is a persistent lie, and it's sad. He did not say 100 years "if necessary," he said 100 years "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."
Obviously, you do not actually understand McCain's position on Iraq, Obama's position on Iraq, or both.
All along, McCain has said we should leave Iraq as soon as we can do so safely, with Iraq remaining secure behind us.
This is now Obama's position.
Shrug.
Obama is at least paying attention ...
Well, or his handlers are. No matter, I do concede that the Obama campaign is more interested -- and PERHAPS more insightful, though the jury's still out -- about some important technological issues. I just do not accept that he can be trusted on any of it.
he had his technical stance up long, long ago
Right, just like his stance on the DC gun ban, which he favored before he opposed. Look, I am not trying to make Obama out to be a Kerry-style flip-flopper. But he simply does not have the experience for me to trust him, and he has shown many times that he cannot be trusted.
If he gets elected and he follows through on it, great. I won't hold my breath.
And I also won't sit here worrying about McCain, since most of this stuff won't happen anyway.
What worries me more than McCain's view on this stuff is that both of them back a shield law for reporters. This is far more important than all this stuff, IMO.
My non-partisan stance befuddles you, or ? ;)
Ha. Nah. I just don't know how Obama is "more honest." He certainly hasn't been very honest in this campaign. I didn't even bring up the Rev Wright stuff, or his various dishonest attacks on Hillary and McCain.
I think he's a lot more honest about how he does feel about the issues, it doesn't feel - to me, yes - like he's playing the career game.
If you look at his history in Chicago and read what his contemporaries say about him, I don't think you'll feel the same way.
You're entitled to form and hold your own opinions. For a little while longer, anyway.
Ha. I think I was just pwn3d.
Your response is typical of the ones I get from many career republican voters. I find them just as amusing as the ones I get from the other end of the spectrum. Neither style of fanatic, in my opinion, has much of anything new to offer.
Fanatic? If you've read any of my posts over the years you'd see *I'm* not a fanatic. I have heavily criticized many Republicans, including McCain (which I did in this post!) and Bush, and I've actually posted defenses of both Kerry and Obama during their runs.
Yes, I usually vote Republican, but not because I am partisan per se, but because I strongly believe in the principles the GOP pretends to espouse. And while voting GOP might not always get us there, voting Democrat will usually move us in the other direction.
I am the chair of my legislative district GOP, and I recently posted my picks for the primary. In it I actually split my picks between a Democrat and a Republican for State Auditor, because the incumbent Democrat has done a very good job IMO, but I also respect and admire his Republican challenger. I think we will be well-served by either one.
So yes, I am a Republican. But I do not always approve of Republicans and what they do, and I sometimes defend, and even support, Democrats.
Insulting other people by claiming they're fabricating things to cover up some sort of self-justification of their irrational beliefs regarding their candidate is in poor taste.
Lying to make your own candidate look good is in poor taste. Shrug.
Doing it so that for the express reason that it justifies your own irrational beliefs in your candidate is just being a fucking prick.
It is astonishing to me that you would attack me for pointing out the fact that someone else is not telling the truth. Lunacy.
If McCain is the second coming of Jesus Christ and therefore he is honest and pure
Straw man fallacy.
why not try convincing us instead of just telling us Obama's a dick and anybody who supports him is lying?
Also straw man fallacy.
And a red herring, like the rest of your post.
This is what is wrong with politics. It encourages people to be limit their thought processes. Jut because one side is crap, doesn't mean another side is crap, and one can't have an enclosed object without at least three straight sides.
I am not saying there is something wrong with what McCain did, obviously. I am just saying people who attack McCain as always being wrong are full of it.
McCain was a relatively humble person, who, although not always right, seemed to try to be right. Even when GW Bush, a deserter from the US Military, attacked him, McCain took the high ground. It resulted in the US electing a deserter, but McCain remained in good graces.
Wow. No, THAT is what is wrong with politics, people like you LYING and saying that Bush was ever a deserter.
Now, McCain has learned the political lesson and has changed his position on oil
Only in response to actual changes in our situation. Duh.
Iraq
Wow, this is a big fat lie. McCain's position on Iraq has not changed AT ALL. His position today -- we should leave as soon as we can leave Iraq with a stable government and military that can provide security, that we should increase troops to whatever level necessary to accomplish the job, etc. -- is the exact same position he had five years ago.
and even though he whines incessantly about the fact he was tortured, he all of the sudden understands that torture is necessary
Also a lie. McCain has NEVER come out in favor of torture.
Faced with an opponnent like that, Obama had a choice. He could have played the game just as dirty and stuck to the letter of the law while raping its spirit.
Wow.
You are so completely full of it I don't know where to begin.
I won't bother, except to say that anyone familiar with the law and with Obama's statements knows that this is PRECISELY what he did: rape the spirit of the law, when he lied and said that his decision to opt out of public financing WAS THE SAME as public financing.
Anyway, you also neglected to talk about the fact that Obama NEVER at ANY TIME followed through with his promise to "aggressively pursue" public financing. If you think that's principled, you're alone.
I find the contrast between Obama's tech page and McCain's interesting in that in Obama's he talks more about what should be done ... On that standpoint alone I would trust Obama more
Despite the fact that he's never actually DONE anything, and that he's already changed on many of the things he SAID he would do? :-)
I am entirely non-partisan; while I think Obama is likely the more honest of the two
This befuddles me. I can't speak for YOU of course, but I wonder if the reason many people think this is because they believe that Obama "means well," so even if he goes back on something, well, he meant it at the time! And if McCain changes on something, well, he "obviously" was lying.
Jamie, that was one hell of a great rant
I don't believe I have ever thought a rant was good that was almost entirely based on fabrications.
100% of what McCain has said since winning the nomination is crap.
Then why has Obama adopted so many of McCain's positions, including on Iraq?
Of Course. This _is_ the "McCain" in "McCain-Feingold" we're talking about, after all.
Surely you're familiar with the McCain-Feingold "incumbency protection act", who's aim is to create a dubious "protected class" of people for whom the 1st amendment (which protects _political speech_ and no other type) still actually applies.
For everyone else (people who aren't "real journalists") -- no more 1st amendment rights for you, anytime an election is 6 months (or wahtever the bill says) away.
McCain Feingold is one of these ridiculous laws that, when examined, seems totally ridiculous and unconstitutional.
Not for nothing, let's remember the fact that Democrats supported the bill 198-12, and Republicans supported it 41-176, in the House. In the Senate, it was 46-3, and 11-38. In the Congress, Republicans broadly opposed the "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act," and Democrats almost universally supported it.
So let us not pretend (not that you were doing so) that Obama, a Democrat, who has already proven to be unprincipled on campaign financing (saying he would do one thing out of campaign finance principles, and then rejecting that principle and pretending what he was doing was following that principle), would not be in favor of McCain-Feingold too.
What I find more important is that the target of his humor is the ceaseless argumentation on all matters, political and otherwise, that the citizenry engages in when permitted freedom of speech.
You are implying McCain believes people need to be "permitted" freedom of speech.
You are, of course, completely making that up. There is no truth to it. It's odd that you feel the need to lie about McCain; if he's so bad, why don't you just stick to truth?
The sad thing is that YOUR guy, Obama, has attacked "the blogosphere" at least as much as McCain, but you apparently ... don't care. He has blamed "blogs" and the Internet for "driving up" his negatives. How dare he attack this "democracy at its most raw!"
Come to think of it, you've done the same thing on MANY occasions.
The point, of course, is that it is one thing to attack certain expressions on the Internet, and another to condemn the Internet in general. You, Obama, and McCain have all criticized certain expressions, not the whole thing.
And politicians like McCain mock them, and mock the way we argue.
No, he only criticizes SOME of the way they argue, such as pretending to be superior and making stuff up. And good for him. And good for you and Obama for doing the exact same thing.
Fuck that shit.
Fuck your overtly partisan hypocrisy.
In 2006, John McCain gave the commencement address at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, and took the opportunity to mock individual expression
Incorrect, of course. Quite clearly, the quote shows that he is mocking people -- especially young people -- who think they are infallible and that know better than everyone else.
Kinda like, well, you!
I hope you are not intentionally misrepresenting what McCain said, and that you're being merely stupid.
The question is backward. What is so GREAT about the spotted owl?
Now, I don't doubt it. Before, though, there wasn't even any definitive proof anyone had died. I thought that was kind of a prerequisite for charging someone with murder.
It's not.
I didn't mean that the government should be able to eliminate rights at whim, only that should it become clear that something that we thought was good, actually is more bad than good we should be able to change it.
We can change anything we like. We can amend the Constitution. But the Bill of Rights is there to protect the minority from the majority. It is the rights of minorities that matter -- it is the reason why we have a republic and not a democracy -- and we should have near-unanimous agreement to take away ANY rights.
Actually, I would vote for taking the purely logical route if we could be certain enough of the numbers.
But ... then it would not be "the purely logical route."
The reason we declare things rights is because we are certain that they have some benefit that is so useful that it can't be done without.
Absolutely false. There is no truth in that whatsoever, and frankly, it's one of the scariest damned things I've read in a long time. Our rights primarily protect us from the government. And who would decide if our rights provide some "benefit"? The government! So what you're saying is that rights do not exist AT ALL. If government decides they provide no "benefit," then poof, we have no more protection from the government. That is entirely illogical, unworkable, and tyrannical.
Read the Declaration of Independence. The Rights of Man. The reason we have rights -- whether you personally believe in it or not -- is because we believe we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.
Unalienable means those rights simply belong to us, and cannot be taken away, no matter what any "numbers" say. Now granted, the right to a particular weapon is not unalienable. But the right to defend yourself, including from the government, is. And it is far more important that I am able to retain my right to defend myself, than it is what any gun statistic says.
If we accidentally made a bad choice, we should correct it.
No number can show that we made a bad "choice," because the only "choice" we made is to recognize the natural rights we already had.
I think it would be VERY easy to show that free speech has caused great harm in this country. I think it would be VERY foolish to try to use that information to try to take away free speech, and it is not because free speech has done more good than harm -- I think that is probably true, but I do not care -- it is because it is my right as a sovereign human being to speak my mind.
Given the high troll rate on Slashdot, it is sensible for the government to regulate who can post here. But it would be unconstitutional.
Saying that guns don't kill people, people kill people, is bullshit. It's, um, true. Show me an instant when a person killed a person with a gun when they didn't have a gun. Wow, now I get it. You are seriously confused here. You think guns are prima facie wrong, and that the gun itself IS a crime. See, most people think that's stupid. Most people think a gun is a tool and that it is what you DO with it that may be a crime. Your point there is the question-begging fallacy: it assumes that KILLING WITH A GUN is the real problem, when most people think KILLING is the problem.The actually logical, non-fallacious, question is to show an instance where someone who would have murdered was prevented from doing so just because he didn't have a gun. Note that within a week of Columbine, a man intentionally drove his car into a schoolyard, murdering multiple children.
It is not logical to look at tools you dislike and seek to ban them. What is logical is to try to prevent the resultant acts that you dislike, such as "killing."
That is the point of "guns don't kill people." A non-murderer with a gun won't murder just because he has one, and a murderer without a gun will murder without one.
While the UK has proven pretty definitively that complete bans of all forms of firearms does not work, there is absolutely no reason why banning certain types of firearms in areas like Philadelphia or DC is a bad idea. Well, it's unconstitutional, for starters.We don't need to know that at all.
This debate is not open to statistics. Should we make the right to speak or practice religion dependent on how many times speech or religion has been used for good, as opposed to ill? Or should the right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure be weighed against how often such unreasonable searches and seizures catch bad guys?
Of course not. We say, this is a right, and we must respect it. Period.
No, again, you need the account you're using to be logged into the console, one way or another. If you are logged in as "gandalf" on the console, then you can run this script as "gandalf" over ssh, but not as "frodo."
Of course, you can run it as "root" over ssh, but that kinda defeats the purpose!
Um. If you say so.