America's spending on military is far out of step with what is necessary or prudent. You've got the most high tech airforce.
It might be expensive and high tech, but the USAF proved to be utterly useless at countering a real threat just over 3 years ago.
Similarly "Star Wars". Really, do you still feel at risk from ICBMs? Anyone attacking America with nuclear weapons in this century is not going to be using a missile as the delivery mechanism. Or if they do it'll be sub-orbital.
If a terrorist actually does have an ICBM they want to shoot at the US they'd most likely launch it from another country they disliked... Anyway it's actually harder to build a working ICBM than a working fission device.
However, in 5-10 years if the PATRIOT act is still around, I believe things will change greatly. Once the US stops chasing people around the globe these very convenient changes in rights and law will be used against everyone equally.
What makes you think the US will stop harassing other countries? Like the "War on (some) Drugs" the "War on (some) Terror" is intended as a war without end. Anyway such laws are never likely to be used against everyone equally. They are just far too useful for those in positions of power to help maintain their power.
The problem of terrorism is due to almost exclusively people who are not American citizens.
So so any US Citizens who happen to be terrorists would only commit terrorism outside the US? Problem is that this has been proven not to be the case. Anyway what's to stop terrorists using blackmail, intimidation, bribary, identity theft, etc to ensure that all their operatives appear to be US Citizens?
Increasing surveillance and intruding on the privacy of foreigners is the right way to go and does not violation the Constitution. The Constitution is, after all, only for American citizens.
You should re-read it. Only in a few parts is mention even made of the issue of Citizenship. The actual purpose of the US Constitution is to define what the US Federal Government can and can't do. There arn't that many places where it actually says something only applies to US Citizens.
I would assume Badnarik's relatively isolationist.
A position which would probably be in agreement with a large proportion (possibly a majority) of the US population.
What his diplomatic skills are like I don't know.
The people who an isolationist president would seriously piss off would be the various lobby groups who want the US to be involved in other countries. IMHO this would take someone very brave. Since some of these lobby groups have plenty of money and little respect for human life.
Wouldn't you find change away from Bush's foreign and human rights policies meaningful?
What makes you think that John Kerry would be that different from George Bush on these issues. There are plenty of ways in which these two people (as well as the Democratic and Republican parties) are in agreement. It tends to be the generally ignored "third parties" in US politics who have any kind of radical ideas.
I really appreciate that he still used a glycol/water mixture. Pretty unnecessary, but certainly a nice touch.
Car anti-freeze also contains anti corrosion additives. The radiator was probably never designed to be used with pure water.
Radiators were made to have a flow of air over them, so putting a fan blowing over that thing would greatly increase its cooling abilities.
An internal combustion engine produces a lot more waste heat than a computer. Using moving air, through either the car's motion or via a fan is to keep the size of the radiator down.
It should sicken everyone that both major parties are willing to go so far to win that we are now hearing about so many voter fraud problems arising before the election.
Which makes rather a farce of any claims about the US "exporting democracy"
Voter fraud should be one of the most severe crimes on the federal law books, it should be classified as a form of "attempting to overthrow the United States Government." No less than five years in prison IMO.
Unless the people involved were government officials. The traditional punishment for "high treason" being execution. Either way implimenting such a law would result in a round of elections, due the number of incumbants being "indisposed".
That said, America needs a much more comprehensive solution to voter fraud. It is one of the few things that I think warrants having a DNA tag for every citizen. There should be a national voter database that has the DNA of all citizens in it so that instead of having a national id you only have to go to the precinct and get a quick biometric test done to verify your ID.
This wouldn't be of much help when the people who are administering the elections are those perpetrating the fraud. The simplist solution is to have people who are independent of all candidates and political parties administering all aspects of the electoral process. Including boundries, voter registration, candidate registration, voting and counting. This is the way things are done in most of the rest of the world.
I also don't support violence and terrorism, but Bin Laden really described my own view of the USA's current state (which is beginning to look like the old USSR if you ask me).
Except that the USSR never came up with the idea of splitting the Communist party into "Communist A" and "Communist B" parties:) Though to most of the world the US electoral system is as obviously bogus as that in the former USSR and Eastern Europe.
And when a terrorist shares the same view as a Canadian, you should really start to think about where the problem REALLY is...
The cause of terrorism is a percieved injustice combined with a lack of a forum to address than injustice. Typically only a minority of people will ever advocate or take part in terrorist acts. If a large and diverse group of people percieve that such an injustice exists then that tends to indicate that there is a real problem.
(you really think terrorists are attacking the USA for no good reasons?
IME many Americans are genuinly ignorant of the reasons why their country is so unpopular. The idea of the US "promoting Democracy" gets taken seriously in the US. Where the actions of the US Government in the destruction of several democratic governments in the latter half of the 20th centry isn't widly know.
How about "the USA should stop invading/attacking/trying to rule other countries", is that a good enough reason for ya?)
There is an apparent paradox in that whilst most of the US population tends towards a position of isolationism, the US government (and certainly several interests lobbying it) tends towards trying to be an imperial power. This appears to have started with the Spanish American war where the US wound up occupying parts of the Spanish empire plus Hawaii.
Of course he's taunting: he won. He managed to force the hand of the NeoCons,
Probably not too hard, since it appears that he and the NeoCons have rather similar ways of looking at the world.
and Americans are slowly starting to realize that it stopped being the Land of the Free a while ago (and never was for some).
Odds on most of the US population hasn't even started to realise this.
I used to think 'how can the current Administration with all its resources be manipulated so easily by a lowly scumbag who is hiding in caves?' -- but now am thinking that their goals may not be so far apart after all; the NeoCons got what they wanted in Congress--and so did Al Qaeda.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows. It's not even unknown for political groups who have apparently mutually exclusive viewpoints to activly co-operate. There's also the links the NeoCons have with right wing Christianity. Which is unlikely to be that far away from the kind of Islam the likes of Bin Laden believe.
Yeah, if by "free speech" you mean "allow terrorists to broadcast propoganda with possible underlying go codes for their cells".
Maybe all political speach should be banned. Though that might mean that news stations would have to try rather harder find news:) Anyway, assuming some kind of global terrorist network exists, there are far easier ways to broadcast "go codes". Including advertisments and even spam.
Not that I can imagine the current politicians taking the job of legislator seriously. The DMCA wasn't read by the legislators of the states that passed it, either.
At least part of the problem is too many "professional" politicans.
It was 2000 pages long (or more). Nobody can read that. Yet we're supposed to know and obey it. RIGHT!
Maybe if there were more ordinary people in the US Congress it would have been filed under "waste paper".
It's becoming increasingly likely that the purpose of the laws is to make EVERYONE a felon.
Not everyone various "corporate people" appear to be excluded as do politicans...
Imagine trying to understand 735 documents composed of such language, some of which can be many many pages, or make "small" adjustments to current laws. Some bills, I'm sure, are written and titled to purposely obfuscate their true intentions as well.
This sounds very similar to the problem with the US Patent Office. The difference is that the US Congress is not actually obliged to pass any bills at all.
Re:"repression of thought" often found in college
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
Odd that the types of people doing these freedom surveys don't seem to be bothered when the type of speech prohibited is speech they don't like.
That's just human nature. The real hypocrisy comes into play when supposed "freedom" advocates start calling for speach codes and bans
Any nation(s) attempting to do so would be green glass, and admittedly we would be too. So that's a non-starter. Stick with terrorist bombing: then you'll have a chance to keep whatever country you call home from total destruction.
Make sure also to give your operatives identification documents of another country you don't like:)
Americans LOVE to go on about how they are not electing a president, but electing "The Leader of the Free World". So which is it, asshat? Is the president of the USA the leader of the free world (in which case, presumably, non-american opinions should be taken into account) or is he the president of the US, but no leader of the free world?
There's also the related issue of if the USA is actually part of the "free world" in the first place.
Please choose already so the rest of us can just leave you the fuck alone, like you so desperately want.
Even simpler, if the US want's to be left alone leaving the rest of the planet alone might be a good starting point:)
George W. Bush is President of the United States, not President of the Rest of the World. His job is to act in the best interests of the United States. If that means going against the wishes of the rest of the world, so be it.
On the other hand seriously pissing off the rest of the planet probably isn't in the best interests of any one country.
Errr, that's a real bad example to pick.
The US was, and is, a nation that fostered terrorism in quite a number of countries around the world.
The CIA even coined the term "blowback" for the situation where they got hurt by their terrorist sponsorship.
Do you think that gives China the right to send in the helicopter gunships and take over?
If China planned this they'd probably wait until the US had invaded a few more countries (thus having the minimum of military actually defending the US itself) then form some kind of coallition or act through the UN.
Remember, double standards come home to roost. Unless you get a heap more humility and start acting to the standards of the civilised world, one day you are going to find out that type of behaviour hurts. Don't whine about it then, you're not special and have no special rights. Learn the lesson now, before its too late.
Advice applicable to quite a few other countries...
You're basically saying that the U.S. should be able to invade any country suspected of harboring terrorists, and nobody else should have a say in it. Not the invaded country. Not its allies. Not our allies. Nobody. We are judge, jury, and executioner.
Actually it's even more than "judge, jury, and executioner". Since it all it apperently takes is an unproven claim from the US government...
If America continues its economic slide, it could get overtaken by China and India. Then you're going to wish you'd been a little less eager to popularize the idea that a country should be able to do preemptively invade another country if the invading country feels that it's in the interests of "national security" to do so.
If the US continues along this path then sooner or later it will be on the receiving end of a "pre-emptive" attack/invasion.
A lot of us Americans are frankly weary of the outside world trying to influence our internal politics. And many of us are just as weary of our tax dollars being used to influence internal events of other countries.
Interestingly most of the rest of the planet is at least as fed up with this as well. Especially those who have the misfortune to live in the Middle East as well as parts of Central and South America. These "tax dollers" very often wind up paying for people to suffer and die. (As well as making plenty of enemies of the US.) But you won't find either the Democrats or the Republicans wanting to end the "war on (some) drugs"; "war on (some) terror"; abolish "foreign aid"; abandon military bases in foreign countries. Instead spending the vast amounts of money these consume on things of direct relevence to the American people.
Many of us would be pleased as punch to be out of the UN
The Zionist lobby would not want that. There are simply too many people in the current US Government who's primary loyalty is not to the USA. Suggest leaving Afghanistan, Iraq and especially Israel to themselves and see who makes a fuss... Removing the military base on Diago Garcia would, most likely, make friends of the Chagossiens, but would any US politican even consider it.
as it is clearly irrelevant and has an agenda that counters recognized civil liberties in the US.
Compared with the attacks on civil liberties coming from the US Government itself the UN is hardly anything to worry about. If you don't like the way the rest of the world views the US then you as the US populace need to fix your government. The bad news is that it's so badly broken that rather more effort than just casting a few votes (through a farcical electoral system) on the second of November.
And I suspect that even if Jesus Christ came out of the sky escorted by angels playing harps and trumpets, and said "I support John Kerry", 50% of republicans would still say "bah, liberal messiah bias" and vote Bush anyway.
The only question would be if that would be before or after Jesus gets locked up as a terrorist leader:)
when owners start breeding from them and selling on the kittens??? Will there be a strict EULA that forbids the owner from breeding and that they must have them neutered at the first available opportunity???
It's not as if the cat will take any notice of an EULA. Even if they manage to breed a super intelligent literate cat, it will take one look at it, say "stupid humans" and go back to reading "humans and how to train them". As cats have been doing for the past few thousand years:)
Slashdot Mirror
Most people forget the overhead costs of switching to an entirely new system.
Similary they forget that the "Microsoft route" actually involves switching every few years anyway...
America's spending on military is far out of step with what is necessary or prudent. You've got the most high tech airforce.
It might be expensive and high tech, but the USAF proved to be utterly useless at countering a real threat just over 3 years ago.
Similarly "Star Wars". Really, do you still feel at risk from ICBMs? Anyone attacking America with nuclear weapons in this century is not going to be using a missile as the delivery mechanism. Or if they do it'll be sub-orbital.
If a terrorist actually does have an ICBM they want to shoot at the US they'd most likely launch it from another country they disliked... Anyway it's actually harder to build a working ICBM than a working fission device.
However, in 5-10 years if the PATRIOT act is still around, I believe things will change greatly. Once the US stops chasing people around the globe these very convenient changes in rights and law will be used against everyone equally.
What makes you think the US will stop harassing other countries? Like the "War on (some) Drugs" the "War on (some) Terror" is intended as a war without end.
Anyway such laws are never likely to be used against everyone equally. They are just far too useful for those in positions of power to help maintain their power.
The problem of terrorism is due to almost exclusively people who are not American citizens.
So so any US Citizens who happen to be terrorists would only commit terrorism outside the US? Problem is that this has been proven not to be the case. Anyway what's to stop terrorists using blackmail, intimidation, bribary, identity theft, etc to ensure that all their operatives appear to be US Citizens?
Increasing surveillance and intruding on the privacy of foreigners is the right way to go and does not violation the Constitution. The Constitution is, after all, only for American citizens.
You should re-read it. Only in a few parts is mention even made of the issue of Citizenship. The actual purpose of the US Constitution is to define what the US Federal Government can and can't do. There arn't that many places where it actually says something only applies to US Citizens.
I would assume Badnarik's relatively isolationist.
A position which would probably be in agreement with a large proportion (possibly a majority) of the US population.
What his diplomatic skills are like I don't know.
The people who an isolationist president would seriously piss off would be the various lobby groups who want the US to be involved in other countries.
IMHO this would take someone very brave. Since some of these lobby groups have plenty of money and little respect for human life.
Wouldn't you find change away from Bush's foreign and human rights policies meaningful?
What makes you think that John Kerry would be that different from George Bush on these issues. There are plenty of ways in which these two people (as well as the Democratic and Republican parties) are in agreement.
It tends to be the generally ignored "third parties" in US politics who have any kind of radical ideas.
They died years ago. Now they're just shambling around like a zombie, causing damage and panic, and looking for brains. So far they haven't found any.
:)
Maybe they are hoping someone will vote for them
I really appreciate that he still used a glycol/water mixture. Pretty unnecessary, but certainly a nice touch.
Car anti-freeze also contains anti corrosion additives. The radiator was probably never designed to be used with pure water.
Radiators were made to have a flow of air over them, so putting a fan blowing over that thing would greatly increase its cooling abilities.
An internal combustion engine produces a lot more waste heat than a computer. Using moving air, through either the car's motion or via a fan is to keep the size of the radiator down.
It should sicken everyone that both major parties are willing to go so far to win that we are now hearing about so many voter fraud problems arising before the election.
Which makes rather a farce of any claims about the US "exporting democracy"
Voter fraud should be one of the most severe crimes on the federal law books, it should be classified as a form of "attempting to overthrow the United States Government." No less than five years in prison IMO.
Unless the people involved were government officials. The traditional punishment for "high treason" being execution.
Either way implimenting such a law would result in a round of elections, due the number of incumbants being "indisposed".
That said, America needs a much more comprehensive solution to voter fraud. It is one of the few things that I think warrants having a DNA tag for every citizen. There should be a national voter database that has the DNA of all citizens in it so that instead of having a national id you only have to go to the precinct and get a quick biometric test done to verify your ID.
This wouldn't be of much help when the people who are administering the elections are those perpetrating the fraud.
The simplist solution is to have people who are independent of all candidates and political parties administering all aspects of the electoral process. Including boundries, voter registration, candidate registration, voting and counting.
This is the way things are done in most of the rest of the world.
I also don't support violence and terrorism, but Bin Laden really described my own view of the USA's current state (which is beginning to look like the old USSR if you ask me).
:)
Except that the USSR never came up with the idea of splitting the Communist party into "Communist A" and "Communist B" parties
Though to most of the world the US electoral system is as obviously bogus as that in the former USSR and Eastern Europe.
And when a terrorist shares the same view as a Canadian, you should really start to think about where the problem REALLY is...
The cause of terrorism is a percieved injustice combined with a lack of a forum to address than injustice. Typically only a minority of people will ever advocate or take part in terrorist acts. If a large and diverse group of people percieve that such an injustice exists then that tends to indicate that there is a real problem.
(you really think terrorists are attacking the USA for no good reasons?
IME many Americans are genuinly ignorant of the reasons why their country is so unpopular. The idea of the US "promoting Democracy" gets taken seriously in the US. Where the actions of the US Government in the destruction of several democratic governments in the latter half of the 20th centry isn't widly know.
How about "the USA should stop invading/attacking/trying to rule other countries", is that a good enough reason for ya?)
There is an apparent paradox in that whilst most of the US population tends towards a position of isolationism, the US government (and certainly several interests lobbying it) tends towards trying to be an imperial power. This appears to have started with the Spanish American war where the US wound up occupying parts of the Spanish empire plus Hawaii.
Of course he's taunting: he won. He managed to force the hand of the NeoCons,
Probably not too hard, since it appears that he and the NeoCons have rather similar ways of looking at the world.
and Americans are slowly starting to realize that it stopped being the Land of the Free a while ago (and never was for some).
Odds on most of the US population hasn't even started to realise this.
I used to think 'how can the current Administration with all its resources be manipulated so easily by a lowly scumbag who is hiding in caves?' -- but now am thinking that their goals may not be so far apart after all; the NeoCons got what they wanted in Congress--and so did Al Qaeda.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows. It's not even unknown for political groups who have apparently mutually exclusive viewpoints to activly co-operate.
There's also the links the NeoCons have with right wing Christianity. Which is unlikely to be that far away from the kind of Islam the likes of Bin Laden believe.
Yeah, if by "free speech" you mean "allow terrorists to broadcast propoganda with possible underlying go codes for their cells".
:)
Maybe all political speach should be banned. Though that might mean that news stations would have to try rather harder find news
Anyway, assuming some kind of global terrorist network exists, there are far easier ways to broadcast "go codes". Including advertisments and even spam.
Or alternatively set up a Disater Relief office with a flexible budget that can come to the aid of areas hit by natural disasters as & when required.
:)
Maybe you could even give them a catchy name like "Federal Emergency Management Agency"
Not that I can imagine the current politicians taking the job of legislator seriously. The DMCA wasn't read by the legislators of the states that passed it, either.
At least part of the problem is too many "professional" politicans.
It was 2000 pages long (or more). Nobody can read that. Yet we're supposed to know and obey it. RIGHT!
Maybe if there were more ordinary people in the US Congress it would have been filed under "waste paper".
It's becoming increasingly likely that the purpose of the laws is to make EVERYONE a felon.
Not everyone various "corporate people" appear to be excluded as do politicans...
Imagine trying to understand 735 documents composed of such language, some of which can be many many pages, or make "small" adjustments to current laws. Some bills, I'm sure, are written and titled to purposely obfuscate their true intentions as well.
This sounds very similar to the problem with the US Patent Office. The difference is that the US Congress is not actually obliged to pass any bills at all.
Odd that the types of people doing these freedom surveys don't seem to be bothered when the type of speech prohibited is speech they don't like.
That's just human nature. The real hypocrisy comes into play when supposed "freedom" advocates start calling for speach codes and bans
Any nation(s) attempting to do so would be green glass, and admittedly we would be too. So that's a non-starter. Stick with terrorist bombing: then you'll have a chance to keep whatever country you call home from total destruction.
:)
Make sure also to give your operatives identification documents of another country you don't like
Americans LOVE to go on about how they are not electing a president, but electing "The Leader of the Free World". So which is it, asshat? Is the president of the USA the leader of the free world (in which case, presumably, non-american opinions should be taken into account) or is he the president of the US, but no leader of the free world?
:)
There's also the related issue of if the USA is actually part of the "free world" in the first place.
Please choose already so the rest of us can just leave you the fuck alone, like you so desperately want.
Even simpler, if the US want's to be left alone leaving the rest of the planet alone might be a good starting point
George W. Bush is President of the United States, not President of the Rest of the World. His job is to act in the best interests of the United States. If that means going against the wishes of the rest of the world, so be it.
On the other hand seriously pissing off the rest of the planet probably isn't in the best interests of any one country.
Errr, that's a real bad example to pick.
The US was, and is, a nation that fostered terrorism in quite a number of countries around the world.
The CIA even coined the term "blowback" for the situation where they got hurt by their terrorist sponsorship.
Do you think that gives China the right to send in the helicopter gunships and take over?
If China planned this they'd probably wait until the US had invaded a few more countries (thus having the minimum of military actually defending the US itself) then form some kind of coallition or act through the UN.
Remember, double standards come home to roost. Unless you get a heap more humility and start acting to the standards of the civilised world, one day you are going to find out that type of behaviour hurts.
Don't whine about it then, you're not special and have no special rights. Learn the lesson now, before its too late.
Advice applicable to quite a few other countries...
You're basically saying that the U.S. should be able to invade any country suspected of harboring terrorists, and nobody else should have a say in it. Not the invaded country. Not its allies. Not our allies. Nobody. We are judge, jury, and executioner.
Actually it's even more than "judge, jury, and executioner". Since it all it apperently takes is an unproven claim from the US government...
If America continues its economic slide, it could get overtaken by China and India. Then you're going to wish you'd been a little less eager to popularize the idea that a country should be able to do preemptively invade another country if the invading country feels that it's in the interests of "national security" to do so.
If the US continues along this path then sooner or later it will be on the receiving end of a "pre-emptive" attack/invasion.
A lot of us Americans are frankly weary of the outside world trying to influence our internal politics. And many of us are just as weary of our tax dollars being used to influence internal events of other countries.
Interestingly most of the rest of the planet is at least as fed up with this as well. Especially those who have the misfortune to live in the Middle East as well as parts of Central and South America. These "tax dollers" very often wind up paying for people to suffer and die. (As well as making plenty of enemies of the US.)
But you won't find either the Democrats or the Republicans wanting to end the "war on (some) drugs"; "war on (some) terror"; abolish "foreign aid"; abandon military bases in foreign countries. Instead spending the vast amounts of money these consume on things of direct relevence to the American people.
Many of us would be pleased as punch to be out of the UN
The Zionist lobby would not want that. There are simply too many people in the current US Government who's primary loyalty is not to the USA.
Suggest leaving Afghanistan, Iraq and especially Israel to themselves and see who makes a fuss... Removing the military base on Diago Garcia would, most likely, make friends of the Chagossiens, but would any US politican even consider it.
as it is clearly irrelevant and has an agenda that counters recognized civil liberties in the US.
Compared with the attacks on civil liberties coming from the US Government itself the UN is hardly anything to worry about.
If you don't like the way the rest of the world views the US then you as the US populace need to fix your government. The bad news is that it's so badly broken that rather more effort than just casting a few votes (through a farcical electoral system) on the second of November.
And I suspect that even if Jesus Christ came out of the sky escorted by angels playing harps and trumpets, and said "I support John Kerry", 50% of republicans would still say "bah, liberal messiah bias" and vote Bush anyway.
:)
The only question would be if that would be before or after Jesus gets locked up as a terrorist leader
An illustration of how everyone wants ".com", no matter how appropriate. I could joke about how politicians are for sale and thus should be in .com,
Though if you need to ask the price then you can't afford it.
when owners start breeding from them and selling on the kittens??? Will there be a strict EULA that forbids the owner from breeding and that they must have them neutered at the first available opportunity???
:)
It's not as if the cat will take any notice of an EULA. Even if they manage to breed a super intelligent literate cat, it will take one look at it, say "stupid humans" and go back to reading "humans and how to train them". As cats have been doing for the past few thousand years