I'm no supporter of the Obama Administration, but in this case, so what?
The government isn't banning what YOU can read. It's controlling what's on TSA workstations. Considering how much people screw off on company time (and in this case, it's taxpayer time), I'd just as soon see government agencies go back to dumb terminals for things like email and creating/editing documents, and take Internet access out of the equation completely. I work in aviation, and the vast majority of TSA employees are essentially beat cops... except their beat is your luggage. Most of them have no need for access to a computer at all.
This is akin to the "all puppies are lovely act" - anyone who doesn't vote yes on it is a communist.
Seriously - doesn't California have bigger problems to tackle? It really is a testament to how broken government is when the only thing they can pass is a change to the state rock.
More than a testament to broken government, it's a reflection of the state and its people too. This is yet another sign of how California, once the greatest most glamorous state in the union, has become the nation's laughingstock. California looks more and more like Rome at the end of its life. Unfortunately, what happens to California is often a precursor of where the rest of the country is going.
All get together and agree to do nothing. Watch as the government doesn't withdraw federal funding for all schools.
One, they'd never take that bet. Two, the government would pull the funding. Most colleges have become too reliant on Uncle Sugar's dollars to wait them out even if they wanted to.
And the larger point here is that this is the downside of being dependent upon the federal tit; you do whatever they tell you, or you lose your money. Period. I'd like to see more schools take Hillsdale College's approach; refuse all federal aid, including Pell Grants and GI Bill tuition, put your fundraising prowess to use helping with private student aid rather than building the latest trendy facility to keep up with the Joneses.
Because no one else on Earth _wants_ anything close to it. They cost way too much for the marginal benefits they provide.
Define "marginal benefits"? No one else wants the expense of the Shuttle. I think it's quite a stretch to say that no one else would actually like to have working shuttles.
I have really gotten on an austerity kick with federal budgets, including defense (and I'm very much a hawk). But I think it's patently stupid to retire something before you have a working replacement up and running. NASA does not, as I don't consider renting from the sometimes-hostile Russian government a replacement. I call that a literal case of Russian Roulette.
"Oh hello, President Obama. You want a heavy launch later this year, but I see you've been giving money and moral support to Georgia. I'm afraid we have a problem here. You can always go elsewhere, and.... oh that's right. No, you can't.".
"I can remember many other amazingly old and slow machines that have found happy owners in people who could easily have bought new stuff if they wanted to."
I've got an old Dell 333mhz Celeron box that I use as a server for a public access wi-fi network for our patrons at work, and many of the access points are 802.11b. Since it's a public, then WEP doesn't even come into it. The Dell has 320 mb of RAM, a 3 gig hard drive, and it runs Debian on XFCE with a minimal installation. Basically it's just a DHCP server and firewall for our patrons while they surf, and it works beautifully. And otherwise, it would be in a landfill somewhere.
As for 802.11b, there are plenty of uses for it in appropriate situations. And while WEP has vulnerabilities, really, how many people know how to exploit them? I wouldn't use it in a situation that required absolute security, but if you've picked a good passphrase, 802.11b is much less of a security risk than standard desktop apps that we 'd never dream of getting rid of.
Isn't that pretty much Barack Obama's policy as well?
"We're not staying in Iraq for "100 years if need be " as McCain promised"
You yourself summed it up. "If need be". It's obvious that we won't need to. So why is McCain at fault in that statement? Further, that statement was misconstrued as a promise to stay "100 years", irregardless of circumstances. MoveOn's commercial... the one with the mother and baby saying "you can't have him"... was the biggest example of this fallacy.
"DADT is going away"
Maybe, maybe not. But that's not up to the President. That's up to Congress.
"He's gotten the federal gov't to lay off pot users where states have allowed pot us."
"Lay Off" is stretching things a bit. The Attorney General said that prosecuting pot users wouldn't have as high a priority, not that it would stop. And Obama reaffirmed his objection to legalization. And he certainly hasn't opposed California authorities cracking down on pot dispensers.
Actually, the constitution gives SCOTUS the power to make a decision for whatever reason they please.
Um, no. All three branches have written limits on what their jobs are. And the Constitution pretty clearly lays out both the types of cases SCOTUS can hear, and the scope of their power.
Section 2, Article 3 of the Constitution:
"The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects."
SCOTUS has original jurisdiction on very, very few things... mostly states bringing suit against other states. The power of SCOTUS is further limited by the 11th Amendment as well.
So wait...you're saying you want her to inject opinion into her rulings, instead of basing her rulings solely on law? Isn't ruling from the heart and not from the head exactly the sort of thing people rail against when it comes to Supreme Court nominees?
I think his point was more that precedent can be wrong if it was unconstitutional in the first place. This is why I hate hearing Stare Decisis... "the issue is settled". What if it was settled contrary to the Constitution? "Seperate but Equal" was almost certainly unconstitutional, as it was a blatant violation of fourteenth amendment. And yet it was precedent for many years. Until it wasn't. It seems we "respect precedent" until we decide not to respect precedent. Stare Decisis really means "It's settled until someone changes it".
Ironically though, concerning Dred Scott, it wasn't unconstitutional. Slavery was legal in much of the US at the time, and the Missouri Compromise did not void the property status of slaves. It may have been immoral, but it was legal, and had SCOTUS declared on their own that slaves were instantly citizens, it would have been a blatant violation of their office, and led to a constitutional crisis... and probably started the Civil War earlier than happened.
Courts have made policy decisions since time immemorial. When laws are ambiguous, somebody needs to decide what the fuck is supposed to happen, and those people are called "judges".
Not in the US legal system, at least not at the Federal High Court level. The three branches were designed not only to have their powers limited, but the scope of their duties as well. John Roberts is more right than wrong when he says a SCOTUS judge should be an umpire, calling balls and strikes. At SCOTUS, if you're doing anything other than declaring a law "Constitutional" or "Unconstitutional", then you're infringing on the duties of the Congress. In messy reality, sometimes they do it anyway, but the point is they're not supposed to under the design of the US federal government. Not even John Marshall... arguably the most influential SCOTUS judge in history... thought that the bench should be legislating. "Saying what the law is" doesn't not include making legislation. That's Congress' job.
Now, lower courts are a bit different in America. Judges there have more of a traditional English Common Law duty, including decreeing specific remedies to specific problems. But the Constitution clearly lays out the duties of the SCOTUS, and unlike other courts, their scope of action was created from the start to be limited, for the sake of keeping limited government, and in the views of the Founders, preventing too much power in any branch. "Limited Government" doesn't just mean that three sets of bodies are balanced in power... it also means that what they can do is also limited in the American model of government.
People whining about "legislating from the bench" are invariably people without legal backgrounds (or deliberately hypocritical politicians, but then I repeat myself).
You don't need a legal background to understand how the United States government was designed to work. A basic civics class will do. Perhaps you need a refresher on the American concept of "seperation of powers".
" Because, as they say, if females were in leadership positions, there would be only peace in the world."
I don't know whether you were being sarcastic or not, but I've heard this crap parroted enough elsewhere (Sally Field at the Academy Awards: "If women ran the world there wouldn't be any damn wars!") that it desperately needs to be refuted.
What does this list have in common?
Golda Meir Margaret Thatcher Queen Mary I Queen Elizabeth I Queen Victoria Indira Ghandi
Besides having ovaries, they all led their nations through wars, and some of them started brutal wars of conquest. And they're not historical anachronisms, either. Cristina Kirchner in Argentina is rattling her sabre at Britain again.
I'll be the first to argue that there are very real differences between men and women. I'm also a deep believer in "hell hath no fury". Women would bring in an era of peace and harmony? Are you kidding? Do you honestly think that Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin would usher in an age of pacifism?
"Yea, sure, so when one component fails, you're stuck without ANY connectivity of any sort while you wait for the replacement for the entire kit."
Or, you could just walk down to Best Buy and pick up another one. My electronics stores all sell them, and I live in a fairly rural area. And having three separate devices isn't any more reliable. What if the modem goes? I doesn't matter if the access point is still working then. You still don't have Internet access. Buying a 3-in-1 is one of the best things I've ever done. It's smaller, easier to manage, and uses less power. And it's not like they're scarce.
"Without him, that voice of command is gone and none too soon as the core software and business model itself are under threat from OSS."
Under threat how? While OSS will continue to grow in the business space, the biggest gains have already been made. Most of the companies that would ditch Unix for Linux have already done so. Companies that run Windows Server are generally satisfied with it... the server platform was never the problem at MS, the desktop was, particularly Vista. And open source doesn't have a chance in hell of threatening Microsoft on the desktop. The biggest potential threat there is a resurgent Apple, especially on the consumer side, but increasingly on the business desktop for smaller organizations.
The fact is, for large enterprises, there really isn't an alternative to Windows on the desktop, and Microsoft knows it. And Linux certainly isn't a threat there, that's for sure. This whole "OSS is about to rule" thing is just another silly variant of "this is the year of Linux on the desktop!"... it's the Duke Nukem Forever of software fantasies.
"I find it interesting that you bring up planes here, because the numbers directly contradict your claims."
No, not really. You mention at at present, the US has more fighters in total than Russia and China. But that wasn't true until about 15 years ago, in the aftermath of the death of the Soviet Union, which had far greater numbers of aircraft alone than the US did, not even counting the air forces of its former Warsaw Pact satellite states.
Our current "lower numbers, higher tech" philosophy is a direct holdover from the Cold War, when we couldn't match the industrial production of military items the Soviet Union was churning out. The whole idea of the Air/Land Battle concept of the late 70's and 80's was to use small number of technically superior weapons (with superior trained people) to cut off the supply lines of advancing Warsaw Pact forces, and to isolate their front lines from their reserves and supply lines. This was adapted precisely because there was no way a combined US/Nato force was ever going to match the Soviets on a plane to plane, tank to tank basis. They had the numbers game won, flat.
So while we presently have more fighters, take a look at that inventory again. How many of them are actually in production? Just a couple of them now. The rest are old, and are in the process of being phased out, and long ago lost their technical edge (the F-15 was designed in the 60's remember). The last F-16 that USAF purchased was bought in the mid-90's, 15 years ago. While the fleet is large compared to Russia and China now, it's mostly old, and going away. Again, what is actually in production now?
Just the F/A-18 Super Hornet, and the F-22. And the Raptor is about to end production, as you noted. That leaves The F-35, which is still in testing. Now look at projected force numbers. As noted, the USAF gets no more than 187 Raptors, total. They're planning on getting around 2200 F-35's, and plans call for the Navy to get a little over 400. But the reality is, they'll never get anywhere near those numbers. Why? Budget realities. The drawback of hyper-high-tech aircraft is a hyper-high-price. Both SecDef Gates, and Congress is calling for defense cuts, especially in expensive big ticket items. If the F-35 survives at all, there's a good chance the Navy cancels it's version in favor of the much-cheaper Super Hornet. I'm seeing projections that in a best case scenario, at current costs, USAF gets no more than 1200 F-35's. And again, one of the Frank Commission's recommendation was to cancel the F-35.
No matter what happens, the US is looking at a radically shrinking USAF and reduced Naval air arm, and fairly soon, within this decade. There simply isn't the money to buy everything the services want. The "cheap" F-35 now costs as much as the much more capable F-22 itself.
Just FYI, I've become a critic of the "low numbers, hyper tech" approach. I'd like a level of tech somewhat better than our adversaires, but I'd also like high numbers of aircraft and ships too. That means making some compromises in level of technology. I don't want to go back to utter simplicity and stamped steel, but at the same time, I think we've gotten something horribly wrong when the richest nation on Earth can't even afford the weapons on their drawing boards. I for one am an advocate of "evolutionary > revoltionary" in defense acquisitions now. I think we shoudl simply build updated versions of current designs (the Navy is doing this to some extent with the Super Hornet, which comes in at under $50 million apiece, compared to the F-35 which is projected to be around $122 million apiece on average).
Yes, get as much tech as you can afford, but afford it. Because quantity really does have a quality all it's own.
"The military might of the US lies in its industrial output, not its secrets. Secrets only protect the US regime from its own population."
The military might of the US is primarily about two things: the quality and training of its troops, and its lead in military technology over adversaries. Industrial output means nothing, as our focus is on small numbers of advanced weaponry. We have 20 B-2 bombers. That's it. We'll have 187 F-22 fighters. That's it. Whether it's wise or not, the US is counting on technological superiority, not the sheer numbers of industrial output. Industrial output was WWII, when a war with a peer enemy would last for years and you had time to make more weapons. A war with China would be very short, one way or the other. So blithely allowing our most advanced technology to be leaked to China, or anyone for that matter, is stupidity on a grand scale.
Should the US rely on a few hyper-expensive, highly secretive weapons for its defense? That's another debate, and an important one. But as long as we have our current strategy, allowing those secrets to be given away would be self-defeating, no? "We're relying on our technology, but sure, here are the secrets to our latest weapons. Enjoy!".
The sheer size of a company doesn't neccessarily make it fail, and may even be a benefit under certain conditions. What helped kill companies like the mega TW-AOL merger is making a huge company out of such dissimilar parts and cultures. TW both overestimated and didn't understand the value of AOL, nor of the Internet at all. It looked good on a balance sheet, but didn't work well in real life. Compare this to a company like Boeing that buys a competitor (McDonnell-Douglas for example). It's one airplane maker buying another. Same market, similar cultures, and a greater liklihood of success.
NBC-Comcast will in no way be a monopoly... there's plenty of competition out there. So let them merge. If they suceed, great. If not, let their investors bear the burden of the decision. That's how commerce works.
Yeah, now they will be fucked by their Government instead. Who do you think has the bigger dick?
This is going to turn out one of two ways.
Best Case: the NBN operates somewhat like AmtTrak in the US, forever receiving subsidies from the national government while getting government-granted monopolies on some kinds of operation.
Worst Case: the Australian government decides that NBN is a really good start on nationalizing all Internet access in their country.
Either way, the people that think this operation will be spun off privately and profitably one day are fools.
Moon Mars never had a chance because no one could fund it.
Moon Mars never had a chance because we came to our senses and realized that getting a manned trip to Mars is impossible right now, and that simply returning to the Moon without doing anything new was a waste of time and money.
Yes, they do. I see people knocking rote learning here, but the fact is, rote learning is an invaluable method of retaining facts, and is the best way to conduct early math education. The old pros were right about "drill till it kills" for basic math. It's also the only way you're really going to learn an extensive list of things like important dates and events. So if you're scoring higher on a standardized test, then yes, you're definitely learning more.
Now, does that mean rote learning is the ONLY way we should learn? Of course not. But tossing out rote is like tossing out forks and declaring that from now on, all we'll use are spoons. Us what's appropriate for the context. Use rote when necessary, and use other methods when necessary.
"Sharron Angle is fucking crazy. [huffingtonpost.com]"
Well, if the HuffPuff said it, then I'm sold.
BTW, if you think Sharon Angle is crazy for wanting to eliminate several departments in the Federal government, and phase out Social Security as it currently exists, then you're going to be mighty shocked at how many crazy people there are.
The reason is the drug war. In the olden days, Illegal drugs were made by professional chemists in white coats who had pride in the quality of their product. It also had the backing of big money from that are better unnamed sources and pure intermediate chemicals to work with. Today, It's made using the simplest and usually worst methods, using filthy chemicals by thugs.
You have a very idealized version of drug use's "Good Ole' Days". There really weren't any. To begin with, the first Federal prohibition against drugs didn't come until 1914, when the Harrison Act was passed. And many of the drugs on the prohibited list aren't very common on the streets today.
Do you know when America had its biggest addiction problem, by far? If you said "the sixties" or "today", you'd be flat wrong. The high water mark for addiction in this country was between the Civil War and right before WWI. Between 2 and 5 percent of the population was addicted to drugs. And I mean really addicted. Do you know who helped cause this? Dirty street pushers? Columbian gangs? No.
Doctors.
That's right, our biggest addiction rates came from the men in "clean white coats".... but it was all legal. After morphine became widely available, doctors so overused opiates for even minor patient problems that addiction became common. You could literally go the hospital with a middling ailment and come home addicted to morphine.
Do you know what the most common profile of the American drug addict was prior to WWI? The white, middle class housewife. The closest thing to a "drug pusher" was the snake oil salesman that offered a bottle of liquid for whatever ailed you. And that bottle was often up to 50 percent morphine-based, and was often cut with dangerous chemicals. So much for pride in quality of the product.
There are legitimate criticisms of the drug war, many of them. But don't pretend that before the "drug war" that we didn't have a huge problem. The biggest aid in bringing down both the addiction rate, and cleaning up the quality of drugs? A government law. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which prohibited the consumption of opiates without a prescription.
This isn't news really, I mean we all know that the white house has been for sale to the highest bidders for that last few administrations.
The White House... and every other government center of power... has been for sale on and off since they all came to exist. That's the rotten nature of politics. The more a politician claims to be cleaner than his opponents, the more skeletons he has in his closet.
Constellation, particularly Ares, was a boondoggle that was years behind schedule and was never going to get us there.
Now we can work on Mars and do it in a feasible manner. Commercial companies like SpaceX can handle the LEO stuff, and maybe even heavy lift.
Also, it gets rid of ATK, who should have never gotten another contract after blowing up Challenger.
I think we agree on the ultimate aims here, but private companies aren't ready to man-launch yet... Elon Musk has openly said he'll need hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies to get SpaceX's products man rated.
Slashdot Mirror
The point of the 1st Amendment is to protect UNPOPULAR speech!.
What has happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?"
And what has happened to the promise of the most open and transparent in history?
I'm no supporter of the Obama Administration, but in this case, so what?
The government isn't banning what YOU can read. It's controlling what's on TSA workstations. Considering how much people screw off on company time (and in this case, it's taxpayer time), I'd just as soon see government agencies go back to dumb terminals for things like email and creating/editing documents, and take Internet access out of the equation completely. I work in aviation, and the vast majority of TSA employees are essentially beat cops... except their beat is your luggage. Most of them have no need for access to a computer at all.
This is akin to the "all puppies are lovely act" - anyone who doesn't vote yes on it is a communist.
Seriously - doesn't California have bigger problems to tackle? It really is a testament to how broken government is when the only thing they can pass is a change to the state rock.
More than a testament to broken government, it's a reflection of the state and its people too. This is yet another sign of how California, once the greatest most glamorous state in the union, has become the nation's laughingstock. California looks more and more like Rome at the end of its life. Unfortunately, what happens to California is often a precursor of where the rest of the country is going.
All get together and agree to do nothing. Watch as the government doesn't withdraw federal funding for all schools.
One, they'd never take that bet. Two, the government would pull the funding. Most colleges have become too reliant on Uncle Sugar's dollars to wait them out even if they wanted to.
And the larger point here is that this is the downside of being dependent upon the federal tit; you do whatever they tell you, or you lose your money. Period. I'd like to see more schools take Hillsdale College's approach; refuse all federal aid, including Pell Grants and GI Bill tuition, put your fundraising prowess to use helping with private student aid rather than building the latest trendy facility to keep up with the Joneses.
Because no one else on Earth _wants_ anything close to it. They cost way too much for the marginal benefits they provide.
Define "marginal benefits"? No one else wants the expense of the Shuttle. I think it's quite a stretch to say that no one else would actually like to have working shuttles.
I have really gotten on an austerity kick with federal budgets, including defense (and I'm very much a hawk). But I think it's patently stupid to retire something before you have a working replacement up and running. NASA does not, as I don't consider renting from the sometimes-hostile Russian government a replacement. I call that a literal case of Russian Roulette.
"Oh hello, President Obama. You want a heavy launch later this year, but I see you've been giving money and moral support to Georgia. I'm afraid we have a problem here. You can always go elsewhere, and.... oh that's right. No, you can't.".
"I can remember many other amazingly old and slow machines that have found happy owners in people who could easily have bought new stuff if they wanted to."
I've got an old Dell 333mhz Celeron box that I use as a server for a public access wi-fi network for our patrons at work, and many of the access points are 802.11b. Since it's a public, then WEP doesn't even come into it. The Dell has 320 mb of RAM, a 3 gig hard drive, and it runs Debian on XFCE with a minimal installation. Basically it's just a DHCP server and firewall for our patrons while they surf, and it works beautifully. And otherwise, it would be in a landfill somewhere.
As for 802.11b, there are plenty of uses for it in appropriate situations. And while WEP has vulnerabilities, really, how many people know how to exploit them? I wouldn't use it in a situation that required absolute security, but if you've picked a good passphrase, 802.11b is much less of a security risk than standard desktop apps that we 'd never dream of getting rid of.
"We didn't invade Iran like McCain promised."
He promised we'd take military action if neccessary, and that he'son the record saying that he would attack Iran “if it’s a provable direct threat” involving nuclear weapons, and he’d need “a whole lot of other information about Iranian intentions.”
Isn't that pretty much Barack Obama's policy as well?
"We're not staying in Iraq for "100 years if need be " as McCain promised"
You yourself summed it up. "If need be". It's obvious that we won't need to. So why is McCain at fault in that statement? Further, that statement was misconstrued as a promise to stay "100 years", irregardless of circumstances. MoveOn's commercial... the one with the mother and baby saying "you can't have him"... was the biggest example of this fallacy.
"DADT is going away"
Maybe, maybe not. But that's not up to the President. That's up to Congress.
"He's gotten the federal gov't to lay off pot users where states have allowed pot us."
"Lay Off" is stretching things a bit. The Attorney General said that prosecuting pot users wouldn't have as high a priority, not that it would stop. And Obama reaffirmed his objection to legalization. And he certainly hasn't opposed California authorities cracking down on pot dispensers.
Obush?
Actually, the constitution gives SCOTUS the power to make a decision for whatever reason they please.
Um, no. All three branches have written limits on what their jobs are. And the Constitution pretty clearly lays out both the types of cases SCOTUS can hear, and the scope of their power.
Section 2, Article 3 of the Constitution:
"The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects."
SCOTUS has original jurisdiction on very, very few things... mostly states bringing suit against other states. The power of SCOTUS is further limited by the 11th Amendment as well.
So wait...you're saying you want her to inject opinion into her rulings, instead of basing her rulings solely on law? Isn't ruling from the heart and not from the head exactly the sort of thing people rail against when it comes to Supreme Court nominees?
I think his point was more that precedent can be wrong if it was unconstitutional in the first place. This is why I hate hearing Stare Decisis... "the issue is settled". What if it was settled contrary to the Constitution? "Seperate but Equal" was almost certainly unconstitutional, as it was a blatant violation of fourteenth amendment. And yet it was precedent for many years. Until it wasn't. It seems we "respect precedent" until we decide not to respect precedent. Stare Decisis really means "It's settled until someone changes it".
Ironically though, concerning Dred Scott, it wasn't unconstitutional. Slavery was legal in much of the US at the time, and the Missouri Compromise did not void the property status of slaves. It may have been immoral, but it was legal, and had SCOTUS declared on their own that slaves were instantly citizens, it would have been a blatant violation of their office, and led to a constitutional crisis... and probably started the Civil War earlier than happened.
Courts have made policy decisions since time immemorial. When laws are ambiguous, somebody needs to decide what the fuck is supposed to happen, and those people are called "judges".
Not in the US legal system, at least not at the Federal High Court level. The three branches were designed not only to have their powers limited, but the scope of their duties as well. John Roberts is more right than wrong when he says a SCOTUS judge should be an umpire, calling balls and strikes. At SCOTUS, if you're doing anything other than declaring a law "Constitutional" or "Unconstitutional", then you're infringing on the duties of the Congress. In messy reality, sometimes they do it anyway, but the point is they're not supposed to under the design of the US federal government. Not even John Marshall... arguably the most influential SCOTUS judge in history... thought that the bench should be legislating. "Saying what the law is" doesn't not include making legislation. That's Congress' job.
Now, lower courts are a bit different in America. Judges there have more of a traditional English Common Law duty, including decreeing specific remedies to specific problems. But the Constitution clearly lays out the duties of the SCOTUS, and unlike other courts, their scope of action was created from the start to be limited, for the sake of keeping limited government, and in the views of the Founders, preventing too much power in any branch. "Limited Government" doesn't just mean that three sets of bodies are balanced in power... it also means that what they can do is also limited in the American model of government.
People whining about "legislating from the bench" are invariably people without legal backgrounds (or deliberately hypocritical politicians, but then I repeat myself).
You don't need a legal background to understand how the United States government was designed to work. A basic civics class will do. Perhaps you need a refresher on the American concept of "seperation of powers".
" Because, as they say, if females were in leadership positions, there would be only peace in the world."
I don't know whether you were being sarcastic or not, but I've heard this crap parroted enough elsewhere (Sally Field at the Academy Awards: "If women ran the world there wouldn't be any damn wars!") that it desperately needs to be refuted.
What does this list have in common?
Golda Meir
Margaret Thatcher
Queen Mary I
Queen Elizabeth I
Queen Victoria
Indira Ghandi
Besides having ovaries, they all led their nations through wars, and some of them started brutal wars of conquest. And they're not historical anachronisms, either. Cristina Kirchner in Argentina is rattling her sabre at Britain again.
I'll be the first to argue that there are very real differences between men and women. I'm also a deep believer in "hell hath no fury". Women would bring in an era of peace and harmony? Are you kidding? Do you honestly think that Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin would usher in an age of pacifism?
"When Wine is good enough to run Warcraft 3""
That's a bit like saying "When Duke Nukem Forever is ready...".
"Yea, sure, so when one component fails, you're stuck without ANY connectivity of any sort while you wait for the replacement for the entire kit."
Or, you could just walk down to Best Buy and pick up another one. My electronics stores all sell them, and I live in a fairly rural area. And having three separate devices isn't any more reliable. What if the modem goes? I doesn't matter if the access point is still working then. You still don't have Internet access. Buying a 3-in-1 is one of the best things I've ever done. It's smaller, easier to manage, and uses less power. And it's not like they're scarce.
"Without him, that voice of command is gone and none too soon as the core software and business model itself are under threat from OSS."
Under threat how? While OSS will continue to grow in the business space, the biggest gains have already been made. Most of the companies that would ditch Unix for Linux have already done so. Companies that run Windows Server are generally satisfied with it... the server platform was never the problem at MS, the desktop was, particularly Vista. And open source doesn't have a chance in hell of threatening Microsoft on the desktop. The biggest potential threat there is a resurgent Apple, especially on the consumer side, but increasingly on the business desktop for smaller organizations.
The fact is, for large enterprises, there really isn't an alternative to Windows on the desktop, and Microsoft knows it. And Linux certainly isn't a threat there, that's for sure. This whole "OSS is about to rule" thing is just another silly variant of "this is the year of Linux on the desktop!"... it's the Duke Nukem Forever of software fantasies.
"I find it interesting that you bring up planes here, because the numbers directly contradict your claims."
No, not really. You mention at at present, the US has more fighters in total than Russia and China. But that wasn't true until about 15 years ago, in the aftermath of the death of the Soviet Union, which had far greater numbers of aircraft alone than the US did, not even counting the air forces of its former Warsaw Pact satellite states.
Our current "lower numbers, higher tech" philosophy is a direct holdover from the Cold War, when we couldn't match the industrial production of military items the Soviet Union was churning out. The whole idea of the Air/Land Battle concept of the late 70's and 80's was to use small number of technically superior weapons (with superior trained people) to cut off the supply lines of advancing Warsaw Pact forces, and to isolate their front lines from their reserves and supply lines. This was adapted precisely because there was no way a combined US/Nato force was ever going to match the Soviets on a plane to plane, tank to tank basis. They had the numbers game won, flat.
So while we presently have more fighters, take a look at that inventory again. How many of them are actually in production? Just a couple of them now. The rest are old, and are in the process of being phased out, and long ago lost their technical edge (the F-15 was designed in the 60's remember). The last F-16 that USAF purchased was bought in the mid-90's, 15 years ago. While the fleet is large compared to Russia and China now, it's mostly old, and going away. Again, what is actually in production now?
Just the F/A-18 Super Hornet, and the F-22. And the Raptor is about to end production, as you noted. That leaves The F-35, which is still in testing. Now look at projected force numbers. As noted, the USAF gets no more than 187 Raptors, total. They're planning on getting around 2200 F-35's, and plans call for the Navy to get a little over 400. But the reality is, they'll never get anywhere near those numbers. Why? Budget realities. The drawback of hyper-high-tech aircraft is a hyper-high-price. Both SecDef Gates, and Congress is calling for defense cuts, especially in expensive big ticket items. If the F-35 survives at all, there's a good chance the Navy cancels it's version in favor of the much-cheaper Super Hornet. I'm seeing projections that in a best case scenario, at current costs, USAF gets no more than 1200 F-35's. And again, one of the Frank Commission's recommendation was to cancel the F-35.
No matter what happens, the US is looking at a radically shrinking USAF and reduced Naval air arm, and fairly soon, within this decade. There simply isn't the money to buy everything the services want. The "cheap" F-35 now costs as much as the much more capable F-22 itself.
Just FYI, I've become a critic of the "low numbers, hyper tech" approach. I'd like a level of tech somewhat better than our adversaires, but I'd also like high numbers of aircraft and ships too. That means making some compromises in level of technology. I don't want to go back to utter simplicity and stamped steel, but at the same time, I think we've gotten something horribly wrong when the richest nation on Earth can't even afford the weapons on their drawing boards. I for one am an advocate of "evolutionary > revoltionary" in defense acquisitions now. I think we shoudl simply build updated versions of current designs (the Navy is doing this to some extent with the Super Hornet, which comes in at under $50 million apiece, compared to the F-35 which is projected to be around $122 million apiece on average).
Yes, get as much tech as you can afford, but afford it. Because quantity really does have a quality all it's own.
"The military might of the US lies in its industrial output, not its secrets. Secrets only protect the US regime from its own population."
The military might of the US is primarily about two things: the quality and training of its troops, and its lead in military technology over adversaries. Industrial output means nothing, as our focus is on small numbers of advanced weaponry. We have 20 B-2 bombers. That's it. We'll have 187 F-22 fighters. That's it. Whether it's wise or not, the US is counting on technological superiority, not the sheer numbers of industrial output. Industrial output was WWII, when a war with a peer enemy would last for years and you had time to make more weapons. A war with China would be very short, one way or the other. So blithely allowing our most advanced technology to be leaked to China, or anyone for that matter, is stupidity on a grand scale.
Should the US rely on a few hyper-expensive, highly secretive weapons for its defense? That's another debate, and an important one. But as long as we have our current strategy, allowing those secrets to be given away would be self-defeating, no? "We're relying on our technology, but sure, here are the secrets to our latest weapons. Enjoy!".
Because that's worked so well with Microsoft?
The sheer size of a company doesn't neccessarily make it fail, and may even be a benefit under certain conditions. What helped kill companies like the mega TW-AOL merger is making a huge company out of such dissimilar parts and cultures. TW both overestimated and didn't understand the value of AOL, nor of the Internet at all. It looked good on a balance sheet, but didn't work well in real life. Compare this to a company like Boeing that buys a competitor (McDonnell-Douglas for example). It's one airplane maker buying another. Same market, similar cultures, and a greater liklihood of success.
NBC-Comcast will in no way be a monopoly... there's plenty of competition out there. So let them merge. If they suceed, great. If not, let their investors bear the burden of the decision. That's how commerce works.
Yeah, now they will be fucked by their Government instead. Who do you think has the bigger dick?
This is going to turn out one of two ways.
Best Case: the NBN operates somewhat like AmtTrak in the US, forever receiving subsidies from the national government while getting government-granted monopolies on some kinds of operation.
Worst Case: the Australian government decides that NBN is a really good start on nationalizing all Internet access in their country.
Either way, the people that think this operation will be spun off privately and profitably one day are fools.
Moon Mars never had a chance because no one could fund it.
Moon Mars never had a chance because we came to our senses and realized that getting a manned trip to Mars is impossible right now, and that simply returning to the Moon without doing anything new was a waste of time and money.
higher test scores != learning more
Yes, they do. I see people knocking rote learning here, but the fact is, rote learning is an invaluable method of retaining facts, and is the best way to conduct early math education. The old pros were right about "drill till it kills" for basic math. It's also the only way you're really going to learn an extensive list of things like important dates and events. So if you're scoring higher on a standardized test, then yes, you're definitely learning more.
Now, does that mean rote learning is the ONLY way we should learn? Of course not. But tossing out rote is like tossing out forks and declaring that from now on, all we'll use are spoons. Us what's appropriate for the context. Use rote when necessary, and use other methods when necessary.
Thankfully, no one will ever trust Bradley Manning with a secret again, either.
"Sharron Angle is fucking crazy. [huffingtonpost.com]"
Well, if the HuffPuff said it, then I'm sold.
BTW, if you think Sharon Angle is crazy for wanting to eliminate several departments in the Federal government, and phase out Social Security as it currently exists, then you're going to be mighty shocked at how many crazy people there are.
The reason is the drug war. In the olden days, Illegal drugs were made by professional chemists in white coats who had pride in the quality of their product.
It also had the backing of big money from that are better unnamed sources and pure intermediate chemicals to work with.
Today, It's made using the simplest and usually worst methods, using filthy chemicals by thugs.
You have a very idealized version of drug use's "Good Ole' Days". There really weren't any. To begin with, the first Federal prohibition against drugs didn't come until 1914, when the Harrison Act was passed. And many of the drugs on the prohibited list aren't very common on the streets today.
Do you know when America had its biggest addiction problem, by far? If you said "the sixties" or "today", you'd be flat wrong. The high water mark for addiction in this country was between the Civil War and right before WWI. Between 2 and 5 percent of the population was addicted to drugs. And I mean really addicted. Do you know who helped cause this? Dirty street pushers? Columbian gangs? No.
Doctors.
That's right, our biggest addiction rates came from the men in "clean white coats".... but it was all legal. After morphine became widely available, doctors so overused opiates for even minor patient problems that addiction became common. You could literally go the hospital with a middling ailment and come home addicted to morphine.
Do you know what the most common profile of the American drug addict was prior to WWI? The white, middle class housewife. The closest thing to a "drug pusher" was the snake oil salesman that offered a bottle of liquid for whatever ailed you. And that bottle was often up to 50 percent morphine-based, and was often cut with dangerous chemicals. So much for pride in quality of the product.
There are legitimate criticisms of the drug war, many of them. But don't pretend that before the "drug war" that we didn't have a huge problem. The biggest aid in bringing down both the addiction rate, and cleaning up the quality of drugs? A government law. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which prohibited the consumption of opiates without a prescription.
This isn't news really, I mean we all know that the white house has been for sale to the highest bidders for that last few administrations.
The White House... and every other government center of power... has been for sale on and off since they all came to exist. That's the rotten nature of politics. The more a politician claims to be cleaner than his opponents, the more skeletons he has in his closet.
Constellation, particularly Ares, was a boondoggle that was years behind schedule and was never going to get us there.
Now we can work on Mars and do it in a feasible manner. Commercial companies like SpaceX can handle the LEO stuff, and maybe even heavy lift.
Also, it gets rid of ATK, who should have never gotten another contract after blowing up Challenger.
I think we agree on the ultimate aims here, but private companies aren't ready to man-launch yet... Elon Musk has openly said he'll need hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies to get SpaceX's products man rated.