I thought the USA was founded on immigration, you know
It was built by immigrants, but strictly speaking, it was founded on tax revolt. We didn't like sending payment to England just because you were trying to pay for the French and Indian war.
-jcr
We really didn't fix immigration as a part of our national identity until after the Civil War. Prior to that time, most Americans traced their ancestry to Britain. Irish, Germans, Poles, etc, didn't start coming here until well after the country was founded, and didn't kick into high gear until after the War between the States, which, consequently, is also about the time anti-immigrant sentiment really took off. And that "nation of immigrants" identity hasn't exactly been static since then. After World War One, we locked down draconian limits on immigration that stayed in place until the early 1960's. I think eventually those draconian limits are coming back. Our attitude towards immigration seems to swing back and forth over the generations.
Warren Buffett is suggesting that we allow more skilled workers into the country because it will help shore up the housing market and keep money in the US that would often go overseas with outsourcing.
Buffett wants much higher taxation for upper middle class and rich taxpayers. And yet he also supports not only more H-1B's, but much more H-1B's. So, is the middle class supposed to love him or hate him?
Something to consider... just because someone is rich doesn't mean they're right about everything. Wealth is simply proof that Buffett knows how to make money. Nothing more. We shouldn't assign him, or any other wealthy or famous man for that matter, any great level of expertise on anything else outside of their field of expertise. Would you take governing advice from, say, Larry Ellison? Nothing annoys me quite like "Well Warren Buffett says", or "Bill Gates says" in arguments that have nothing to do with what Buffett or Gates actually do for a living.
"A good percentage of you here on/. voted for those chuckleheads. So big surprise when they turn around and dick you by making it easier for your employer to replace you with someone making cardboard slum wages. And even if the next president cuts it off the day they take office, the people already here will be able to stay to middle of their term. "
So do you honestly think Barack Obama is going to eliminate, or even scale back H-1B? Are you that naive?
H-1B is heavily supported by both major parties, and the Libertarians as well. So basically, the only political entities that oppose it... Greens, the American Conservative Party, can't even muster a combined 1 percent in the Presidential elections, so their influence is squat.
Since H-1B only affects a relatively small part of the US workforce, it's not going away. Ever. There just isn't enough middle class anger at it. So go ahead and replace all the chuckleheads in Washington. Hell, replace them all with liberal Democrats. Then despair at the fact that they're going to support H-1B as strongly as any conservative Republican. Because both parties believe it's good for our economy.
If you think H-1B's are going away in this, or any other election, more fool you.
I'd mod parent down, but I'd rather explain why I disagree.
Good. Moderating a post down simply because you disagree with it is an abuse of the moderation system - you may notice that there are no "-1, Wrong" or "-1, I Disagree" options.
However, there is the nebulous "Overrated" which is basically used the same way. Overrated is generally used by Slashdot mods as the "your opinion sucks and I'm modding you down for it" option.
Didn't know that, thanks for the info. Prince Bandar, USAF trained and Western friendly (supposedly an admirer of Johnny Walker Red Label) would be a smart choice for them (depending on his health), but of course, they'll choose who they want for their own reasons.
"Pearl Harbor was an act of war by an actual official country. It was part of continued efforts by Japan to wage war on our country. Real war. Not this diluted down "war on [drugs|terror|crime]"."
If you don't think what Al Qaeda is doing is "real war", then you're a fool, simply stated. If you want to really hurt the United States, this is how you conduct war against us.
No, Al Qaeda isn't a country with a flag and a uniformed army. But that's the whole point. After WW II and Korea, it became bleedingly obvious to even the most obtuse minds that you couldn't beat the United States in a traditional army-on-army nation/state fight. America's will, riches, and industrial base were just too hard to overcome. That's why our hardest openents haven't been countries since then, but guerilla organizations. And not just against the US, but the West in general. If Libya declares a line of death and sends fighters against the 6th fleet, we shoot them down and bomb their air force bases. But Hamas/Islamic Jihad/Al Qaeda... they blow up bus stations, hijack airplanes, mow down pedestrians... and then flee behind some other country's borders. Hamas has taken this to a high art (or low, if you will), by perfecting the technique of hitting Israelis and then running and hiding in family homes, schools, hospitals, etc... and then daring Israel to strike them.
Not a uniformed army? Damn right. The bad guys got smart, and realized uniformed armies don't stand a chance against us. But that doesn't make bringing the towers down, or blowing up Khobar Towers, or making a great big hole in the USS Cole any less an act of war, because I promise you that Al Qaeda certainly believes they're at war against us. They've simply minimized their vulnerabilities. They sure act like they're at war.
"9/11 happened once. *poof* done. There's no sustained offensive. We aren't fighting to take back Manhattan."
Again, they've learned not to do things like "sustained offensives"... they've learned that it is much more effective for them overall to hit big targets, terrify the population, and then move on to planning the next big act of terror. People like you seem to think that because the Towers operation wasn't done by a uniformed force, and wasn't designed to take out a military objective that it wasn't war, that it wasn't strategic thinking. But Bin Laden wanted to bring down our most important symbols... the Pentagon, probably the White House, and the two buildings that most represented American financial power. Symbols matter, sir. Reference Jimmy Doolittle's tactically useless but strategically brilliant B-25 raid from carriers against Japan. It caused a few fires, destroyed a few buildings, but raised American spirits immensely. After months of taking a licking in the Pacific, we were ready to carry on after Jimmy's flight.
Every time a World Trade Center or a Khobar Towers happnes, our enemies re-dedicate themselves to their fight. They're inspired.
By bringing down the Towers, Bin Laden was in essence telling us that "I can't take out an aircraft carrier or smash an armored division, but I can shake your (and the world's) confidence in your true weapons... your financial dominance">.
The Towers operations were, frankly, as brilliant a strategic operation as any conventional military battle. We couldn't immediately fight back on this front at all. And how did we lose Vietnam? Simply put, we lost the will to fight. We won military. The Tet Offensive was an absolute disaster. We crippled the NVA and Viet Cong so badly they couldn't mount a major offensive for another 12 months. But Walter Cronkite goes on TV and says we can't win, and LBJ realizes its over, our will to win is gone. Will to win is essential. And Al Qaeda targeting two things they could wound... our financial sector and our will to win.
"Really, and this is what "they" don't want you to realize, is that OBL and crew just aren't relevant here."
Just because it's rare compared to, say, dying in a car accident doesn't make it trivial, anymore than Pearl Harbor was trivial. How many people in Nebraska or Kentucky were in danger from the Japanese fleet?
I'll agree we've overreacted some domestically, but we were attacked, and the attackers swore to keep going until they got what they wanted... which basically includes things like compulsory kneeling to Mecca five times a day, and taking away your right to post asshat comments on Slashdot.
And you can't blame it all on the war. Some of this stuff was inevitable in any case. If Osama Bind Laden had never ordered an attack on New York, we'd still have domestic bad guys doing everything from blowing up Federal buildings, to ever sophisticated robbery schemes. The increasingly cheap and advanced technologies available to everyone... including nutbags and criminals... only enhances our natural fear of them. And the era of Big Brother was coming long before the Twin Towers were brought down. After all, Orwell saw this back in the late 40's. Technology itself also guaranteed that. Cities were talking about things like red light cameras long before 2001.
Much of this stuff was coming anyway. It's just convenient to blame it on 9/11.
I agree with you on everything but the smoking issue. Your right to smoke does not over rule my right to not breath in your smoke. And before you say "then you can leave", no, that's not the way the world works. I don't have to quit my job because you want to smoke.
Ok, in a general business establishment, you may have a point. But then, what right does the government have to forbid smoking in a place that caters to smokers? Say I open a restaurant or club that caters to smokers... I hire only people that smoke themselves... the entire premise of the place is to give smokers a place to go. But under current laws, the government would still forbid smoking inside an establishment for smokers. Tell me how that's free or fair?
...that there's no way something this asinine could possibly pass 1st Amendment muster. Especially since political speech is exactly the epicenter of that amendment. I would say that, but I also witnessed all three branches of the federal government fail us spectacularly on McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.
All it takes is enough sympathetic judges, and viola, it's Constitutional... even if it isn't Constitutional.
One thing both political sides seem to increasingly agree on these days is that the judicial branch may be the weak link in the design of our Constitutional guarantee of rights. If a judge says so, it's so, even the the Constitution directly contridicts it. All you need is a majority of SCOTUS opinions, and what's done is done. Once SCOTUS rules, unlike a Congressional Bill or an Executive Order, there's no way to appeal it. It's done. Final. You'd have to get a Constitutional Amendment passed to change that ruling, and if the issue came back before SCOTUS, they could simply void the meaning and spirt of the amendment with a stroke of their pens.
Increasingly, the written opinions of the Supreme Court is our real constitution, not the 200+ year old document itself.
Editorials are opinion, not legitimate reporting of facts.
So? Opinion isn't exempt in the Fairness Doctrine. In fact most of the application of the doctrine on the airwaves has traditionally been against editorial content. The argument goes that there's only so much broadcast bandwidth out there, and so since the government licenses the airwaves, they have a responsibility to see that all viewpoints get a fair shot.
Never mind that with the huge selection of opinion avenues... radio, TV, satellite, print, the Internet... the idea of bandwidth scarcity is essentially obsolete, especially for the Internet. But that hasn't stopped the doctrine's backers from trying to bring it back from the dead anyway, and worse, they want to apply it to non-broadcast media.
The Fairness Doctrine isn't. All throughout it's history, it's been used by whoever was in power at the time to silence their enemies, or at least quiet them down some. The doctrine is nothing but government nannyism, and its death was too long in coming. For those of you that are so eager to bring it back, think long and hard about that. Sooner or later, someone you don't like is going to get elected, and use it against you.
"So, yes, the Republicans are more effective at betraying the country and completely screwing it up because they don't let facts get in the way of their "disciplined" assault on this nation and their support of their party over the interests of their country."
If you'd take your lithium for a minute and use some reason, you'd recognize that whatever your party, whatever your ideology, if your party's leadership can't crack the whip and line up the votes, they're not going to get anything done in Congress. Sloppy anarchy isn't a virtue in politics. If you want your party to be noble, free spirits that can't get their agenda passed, hey, best wishes and good luck. But most people actually want their political party to accomplish something. This is simple politics 101; if you don't have some unity in your political organization, you're not going to get jack squat done.
I hate that they went out of the hardware business, but they did what they had to do. But man, did I love my Genesis, especially taking those pre-Internet trips to the software store at the mall to buy games for it (and programs for the PC before the Net really caught on). Coming home from work to blow off some steam with Sonic or Jurassic Park or Echo the Dolphin. Good times.
"... in that there is a lot more bickering and infighting among the left."
Partisanship isn't their problem, then, discipline is. And I'm not the first to notice this. Way back in the 1930's, Will Rogers said "I belong to no organized political party; I am a Democrat".
"Perhaps if you actually watched the show your statement would appear more informed. Colbert is just as hard on democrats as republicans, which is why Pelosi banned democrats in congress from going on his show."
I have watched some his (and Stewart's) episodes. Despite my distaste at their politics, both men are obviously very talented, and it's hard to ignore that. And while both of them make a point of skewing Democrats that are in trouble, I think you're pretty blind if you don't see the meat of both shows is liberal edged satire, with conservatives usually being in their crosshairs. They make no claim to being fair and balanced, which is one reason their audience adores them. Just like Limbaugh.
"Comparing Colbert to Limbaugh is pretty ignorant."
It's not quite apples and apples, but it's not apples an oranges either. All the hosts are essentially entertainers playing to one political slant; one is upfront about it, while another uses a device (playing an over-the-top conservative) to enhance the comedy. One has a political show that's funny, the other has a comedy show that's political. Again, since the two sides apparently have some different tastes, you're not going to get opposing analogues that are both successful... but there are more similarities than differences here considering both shows are at their core entertainment, and both men are entertainers.
"That's the problem with conservatives, they can't approach things without an intensely partisan mindset"
Uh, some can, some can't. Are you actually going to claim liberals are any different? Because I'd love to point you to several major liberal websites where the denizens will readily prove to you that if it ain't liberal, it's downright evil. No room for gray areas. Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, Truthout, Alternet... there's a pretty long list here. So if I were you, I'd reconsider this notion that liberals are all capable of tolerant, non-partisan thinking. They're just as human as the conservatives they oppose.
" And Fox News did a Daily Show-esque show called the "1/2 Hour News Hour" [wikipedia.org] that was just abysmal to watch and not even close to funny (it ran for 13 episodes before the Fox conservatives abandoned their opposition to euthenasia long enough to grant it a mercy killing)."
Hell, I'm a conservative, and I'll be the first to tell you that show wasn't just bad, it was plain embarrassing. Bad skits. Canned laugh tracks. Every bad trick in show business you can think of, that abomination had it. It couldn't die fast enough for me.
That show was a prime example of somethings conservatives sometimes do that they never should... try to make a right wing version of a successful liberal phenomena. "Hey, we'll make a conservative Daily Show!". No, you wont. You'll make a cheap knockoff that nobody likes and is done badly. And to be fair, liberals also do this stuff as well... how many attempts have we seen to try and do a liberal version of Limbaugh's program? There's a long and distinguished list of utter failure on that front (Hello, Air America!).
For whatever reason... one sides' success.... The Daily Show, Limbaugh, pick your example... just doesn't seem to translate well to the other side. Any attempts to "reverse engineer" it and make your own seems destined to fall on it's face.
"In contrast, their Republican counterparts essentially gain nothing."
Well there's a shock. I've always thought that Republicans going on Stewart's or Colbert's show was a complete waste of time, unless their aim was to be mocked mercilessly with no benefits whatsoever. Stewart at least tries to be somewhat balanced (as much as his politics will allow him), but Colbert wastes no time with such ideas.
It'd be like a liberal Democrat going on Rush Limbaugh's program. Just what do you think you're going to get out of it? You're certainly going into hostile territory with little hope of reward. You're not going to sway that audience's opinions... they're pretty well set. I think a Republican going on Colbert's show is not only a waste of time, it's worse. He has a young liberal audience, and if anything changes their opinions, it'll be time and experience. Nothing you say is going to sway them.
"No, it's not greed that drives Lucas to destroy our cherished childhood memories of one of the most seminal films ever made. It's his pride. He simply refuses to believe he's as awful of a filmmaker as he really is, and stuff like Clone Wars is the result."
Maybe you're right. I still don't exclude cynical greed as a profit motive... to some people, enough is never enough... but as Hemingway once said, the rich are very different from you and I, so perhaps Lucas really does think that stuff like Clone Wars is a vital addition to the arts.
In that case, it's a good thing he's rich, because living in your own little world like that must take a lot of maintenance...
"The one thing that the Air Force provides that cannot be done by another branch of the military is an external thoughtline. The extra branch of the military creates more opportunity for different opinions, different strategies, and different analyses of strategies."
So your justification for an independent Air Force is essentially an Apple Computer slogan? "Think Different"?
Do you honestly think the other services are incapable of "thinking different", especially when it comes to airpower? I have to call BS on that, especially since it's so often that USAF's different thinking involves the idea that airpower can win wars all by itself. That kind of "think different" we can do without.
"The Air Force has been a deciding factor in a lot of engagements"
Airpower has been the deciding factor in a lot of engagements. Airpower is an absolutely vital part of warfare. But that in itself doesn't justify an independent military branch. Any service could wield airpower, and in fact, all do. The Army is just crippled by regulations regarding what kinds of aircraft they can and can't use.
"and I question whether the Navy's air capability would be anywhere close to what it is now without the Air Force looking over its shoulder."
That's silly. When the Air Force builds an aircraft carrier, get back to us on that argument. In the history of jet aircraft, when a service needs to adopt another services jets, the Air Force usually adopts a Naval design, not the other way around. The F-4 and A-7 were Navy planes, and both were used extensively by the USAF, especially the Phantom, after TAC found that the F-4 could easily best any of their showcase century series fighters. The F-86 sabre was a Navy FJ Fury with swept wings. The only operational case of an air force based jet being adapted to a carrier was an abject failure... the horrid F-111B that was so bad, the Navy had Grumman design the F-14 as an alternative. By the time McDonnell Douglas finished turning the Northrorp YF-17 into the F/A-18, it was a completely different airplane. Even now there are rumbles that the Navy version of the F-35 "joint strike fighter" may never see operational service out of Navy concerns for its initial land-based design.
So I'd say the Navy has done just fine in the aerial arena without the Air Force "looking over their shoulder".
Why the Air Force? It seems like such a reach outside their normal scope. I would think that the Army would be the proper place for such a command.
The whole "Cybercommand" thing was yet another attempt by USAF to dominate an emerging military technology. It was a power grab. After WW II, they argued against other services having airplanes. They managed to get missiles and fixed wing aircraft taken away from the Army. They got the Army's Cheyenne gunship helicopter killed because it looked too much like a fighter plane. In Vietnam, they got SecDef McNamera to issue an order stating that Marine F-4's were to be limited to ground attack only... the fighter mission inland was for USAF alone. They could defend themselves if attacked by MiGs, but could not go MiG hunting on their own. Last year they tried to monopolize robotic aerial drones. And Cybercommand tried to monopolize military computer ops. USAF has a long history of not only protecting their turf, but moving in on others if it benefitted them. They have a reputation for arrogance. The Air Force Association's description of the branch was "first among equals"... as if any such thing could really exist.
Just like any other military tactic or technology... intelligence, airpower, any single military technology... each service should have their own "cybercommand", with a unifying leadership and authority over all branches at DOD. And I think we're heading in that direction, with SecDef Gates sacking the USAF leadership recently. There was a lot of resentment in the other branches at the Blues' attempt to hog the cyber mission, and I think this stand down is at least partly attributable to Gates trying to bring USAF leadership back on the reservation and play nice with the other kids.
We just don't need them anymore. We have better missiles, and better drones.
The only thing we need actually piloted aircraft for are close-in ground support, where things are too crowded/messy for computers to do a good job. And even then, remotely-piloted drones are taking over.
First, we're a long way off from being able to turn airpower completely over to robotic drones.
Second, I think you touched on the real question while missing the larger point... we're always going to need airpower... the military projection of power via aerial weapons. The question is, why do we need an Air Force? Why do we need an individual military branch with an identity based on airpower, when airpower is simply one facet of warfare that all branches need? The Navy has their own aircraft because oceans have skies over them too.
To me, splitting the Air Force from the Army was like establishing a separate military branch just for armor, or establishing an independent infantry branch. Why? What makes it imperitive to seperate airpower from ground power over the land? We did just fine with the Army Air Corps being a part of a larger Army. Ask any soldier, especially career soldier, and they'll likely complain about how USAF puts such a low priority on boring ground support missions... they aren't sexy enough to sell on recruiting posters.
Just as the Marines are tied at the hip to the Navy, the Air Force should more or less be a part of the Army. We don't live in castles in the sky. We live here on the ground, and ultimately, any air force's job is to support objectives on the ground when things are said and done. We have air superiority fighters because we don't want the enemy's aircraft hurting our guys on the ground.
I think our previous model of splitting defense responsibilities via geography between the Army and the Navy was a better model than our current one, with the Air Corps (or Army Air Forces, if you will) and the Marine Corps subordinate to their larger sister services. USAF went independent because of the argument that airpower in and of itself should fight separately, which was an outgrowth of Billy Mitchell's ideas. The problem is that Mitchell was wrong about a lot of things. He thought armies and navies were largely obsolete, and history has proven him wrong on that.
Airpower is just a tool, one that can be used by any branch. It doesn't justify a separate service, with all its associated costs duplication. Should we establish a separate service for submarines just because they're under the water? Of course not. Why establish a separate service just for airplanes?
God forbid someone making money in this world. Do you realize that Lucas paid for this movie and a full seasons worth of episodes right out of his own pocket? Shame on him for trying to make his money back. Oh and that Dark Knight movie, that is a huge cash grab...HUGE!
First, I have no problem whatsoever making money. I think that as long as its not your most important value, making money is a good thing. I'm a capitalist, and a staunch advocate of capitalism.
Second, he paid for it out his pocket. Ok. So what? That's an investment on what he's probably correct in asserting will be a larger return. It's business, and in Hollywood, self-financing your project isn't exactly unheard of. People do it all the time. This just means Lucas doesn't have a take a cut or pay a percentage to someone else.
Lastly, the problem isn't money, the problem is that he's pushing yet more crap in the guise of quality. The fault really isn't with Lucas. The fault is with us if we fall for it. Lucas is just doing his best P.T. Barnum here... there's a sucker born every minute, or in the case of Star Wars fans, several of them. Hey, Barnum was rich too. He didn't get that way by being stupid or by giving a sucker an even break.
While I don't think anyone can defend some of the RIAA's tactics, have you ever told any of your clients "well, while they suck, you are committing copyright violation and pirating music"?
Maybe it's just my jaded view of trial lawyers (and I'm certainly not alone in that), but have you ever actually told your clients "Well, you are breaking the law and taking what you didn't pay for"?
Gotta say, I've gone back and watched those as an adult and been shocked at how mediocre they really are. I guess nine year olds are an easy audience to please.
I don't think the original is mediocre at all. Simple, maybe, but that doesn't equal mediocre. I think your opinion may be colored by the fact that for 30 years, competitors have tried to ape Lucas' original genius, by adding more and more special effects, and by making the story more complex, adult, and "real".
But that's missing the point completely. Star Wars struck such a universal chord in us because it's essentially a fairy tale with a moral story at the center. The simplicity was actually part and parcel of why it was so effective. Simple was a virtue in that movie. We didn't want nuance and intrigue and grey areas. After Vietnam, Watergate, Pol Pot, Jonestown, Charles Manson, urban riots, and Soviets stretching across the globe, we had all the nuance, intrigue, and gray areas we could handle, thanks. What we needed was a simple, old fashioned, black and white tale that showed good guys should still beat beat guys. Lucas gave us exactly what we needed, what our souls were craving; a cut and dried heroic epic with a moral to the story. He just did it with spaceships and wookies.
And maybe that's why the last few movies were so abominable. He went from a straight up "good guys are better than bad guys" allegory to "only the Sith deal in absolutes"; he took away our simple heroic fairy tale, and gave us... nuance, intrigue, and gray areas.
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I thought the USA was founded on immigration, you know
It was built by immigrants, but strictly speaking, it was founded on tax revolt. We didn't like sending payment to England just because you were trying to pay for the French and Indian war.
-jcr
We really didn't fix immigration as a part of our national identity until after the Civil War. Prior to that time, most Americans traced their ancestry to Britain. Irish, Germans, Poles, etc, didn't start coming here until well after the country was founded, and didn't kick into high gear until after the War between the States, which, consequently, is also about the time anti-immigrant sentiment really took off. And that "nation of immigrants" identity hasn't exactly been static since then. After World War One, we locked down draconian limits on immigration that stayed in place until the early 1960's. I think eventually those draconian limits are coming back. Our attitude towards immigration seems to swing back and forth over the generations.
Warren Buffett is suggesting that we allow more skilled workers into the country because it will help shore up the housing market and keep money in the US that would often go overseas with outsourcing.
Buffett wants much higher taxation for upper middle class and rich taxpayers. And yet he also supports not only more H-1B's, but much more H-1B's. So, is the middle class supposed to love him or hate him?
Something to consider... just because someone is rich doesn't mean they're right about everything. Wealth is simply proof that Buffett knows how to make money. Nothing more. We shouldn't assign him, or any other wealthy or famous man for that matter, any great level of expertise on anything else outside of their field of expertise. Would you take governing advice from, say, Larry Ellison? Nothing annoys me quite like "Well Warren Buffett says", or "Bill Gates says" in arguments that have nothing to do with what Buffett or Gates actually do for a living.
"A good percentage of you here on /. voted for those chuckleheads. So big surprise when they turn around and dick you by making it easier for your employer to replace you with someone making cardboard slum wages. And even if the next president cuts it off the day they take office, the people already here will be able to stay to middle of their term. "
So do you honestly think Barack Obama is going to eliminate, or even scale back H-1B? Are you that naive?
H-1B is heavily supported by both major parties, and the Libertarians as well. So basically, the only political entities that oppose it... Greens, the American Conservative Party, can't even muster a combined 1 percent in the Presidential elections, so their influence is squat.
Since H-1B only affects a relatively small part of the US workforce, it's not going away. Ever. There just isn't enough middle class anger at it. So go ahead and replace all the chuckleheads in Washington. Hell, replace them all with liberal Democrats. Then despair at the fact that they're going to support H-1B as strongly as any conservative Republican. Because both parties believe it's good for our economy.
If you think H-1B's are going away in this, or any other election, more fool you.
I'd mod parent down, but I'd rather explain why I disagree.
Good. Moderating a post down simply because you disagree with it is an abuse of the moderation system - you may notice that there are no "-1, Wrong" or "-1, I Disagree" options.
However, there is the nebulous "Overrated" which is basically used the same way. Overrated is generally used by Slashdot mods as the "your opinion sucks and I'm modding you down for it" option.
Didn't know that, thanks for the info. Prince Bandar, USAF trained and Western friendly (supposedly an admirer of Johnny Walker Red Label) would be a smart choice for them (depending on his health), but of course, they'll choose who they want for their own reasons.
"Pearl Harbor was an act of war by an actual official country. It was part of continued efforts by Japan to wage war on our country. Real war. Not this diluted down "war on [drugs|terror|crime]"."
If you don't think what Al Qaeda is doing is "real war", then you're a fool, simply stated. If you want to really hurt the United States, this is how you conduct war against us.
No, Al Qaeda isn't a country with a flag and a uniformed army. But that's the whole point. After WW II and Korea, it became bleedingly obvious to even the most obtuse minds that you couldn't beat the United States in a traditional army-on-army nation/state fight. America's will, riches, and industrial base were just too hard to overcome. That's why our hardest openents haven't been countries since then, but guerilla organizations. And not just against the US, but the West in general. If Libya declares a line of death and sends fighters against the 6th fleet, we shoot them down and bomb their air force bases. But Hamas/Islamic Jihad/Al Qaeda... they blow up bus stations, hijack airplanes, mow down pedestrians... and then flee behind some other country's borders. Hamas has taken this to a high art (or low, if you will), by perfecting the technique of hitting Israelis and then running and hiding in family homes, schools, hospitals, etc... and then daring Israel to strike them.
Not a uniformed army? Damn right. The bad guys got smart, and realized uniformed armies don't stand a chance against us. But that doesn't make bringing the towers down, or blowing up Khobar Towers, or making a great big hole in the USS Cole any less an act of war, because I promise you that Al Qaeda certainly believes they're at war against us. They've simply minimized their vulnerabilities. They sure act like they're at war.
"9/11 happened once. *poof* done. There's no sustained offensive. We aren't fighting to take back Manhattan."
Again, they've learned not to do things like "sustained offensives"... they've learned that it is much more effective for them overall to hit big targets, terrify the population, and then move on to planning the next big act of terror. People like you seem to think that because the Towers operation wasn't done by a uniformed force, and wasn't designed to take out a military objective that it wasn't war, that it wasn't strategic thinking. But Bin Laden wanted to bring down our most important symbols... the Pentagon, probably the White House, and the two buildings that most represented American financial power. Symbols matter, sir. Reference Jimmy Doolittle's tactically useless but strategically brilliant B-25 raid from carriers against Japan. It caused a few fires, destroyed a few buildings, but raised American spirits immensely. After months of taking a licking in the Pacific, we were ready to carry on after Jimmy's flight.
Every time a World Trade Center or a Khobar Towers happnes, our enemies re-dedicate themselves to their fight. They're inspired.
By bringing down the Towers, Bin Laden was in essence telling us that "I can't take out an aircraft carrier or smash an armored division, but I can shake your (and the world's) confidence in your true weapons... your financial dominance">.
The Towers operations were, frankly, as brilliant a strategic operation as any conventional military battle. We couldn't immediately fight back on this front at all. And how did we lose Vietnam? Simply put, we lost the will to fight. We won military. The Tet Offensive was an absolute disaster. We crippled the NVA and Viet Cong so badly they couldn't mount a major offensive for another 12 months. But Walter Cronkite goes on TV and says we can't win, and LBJ realizes its over, our will to win is gone. Will to win is essential. And Al Qaeda targeting two things they could wound... our financial sector and our will to win.
"Really, and this is what "they" don't want you to realize, is that OBL and crew just aren't relevant here."
The terrorists have little to do with it. We did this to ourselves in an overreaction to the trivial terrorist threat. Yes it's trivial. You're more likely to commit suicide than die from a terrorist attack. Even lumped together with all other forms of violence it's trivial.
Just because it's rare compared to, say, dying in a car accident doesn't make it trivial, anymore than Pearl Harbor was trivial. How many people in Nebraska or Kentucky were in danger from the Japanese fleet?
I'll agree we've overreacted some domestically, but we were attacked, and the attackers swore to keep going until they got what they wanted... which basically includes things like compulsory kneeling to Mecca five times a day, and taking away your right to post asshat comments on Slashdot.
And you can't blame it all on the war. Some of this stuff was inevitable in any case. If Osama Bind Laden had never ordered an attack on New York, we'd still have domestic bad guys doing everything from blowing up Federal buildings, to ever sophisticated robbery schemes. The increasingly cheap and advanced technologies available to everyone... including nutbags and criminals... only enhances our natural fear of them. And the era of Big Brother was coming long before the Twin Towers were brought down. After all, Orwell saw this back in the late 40's. Technology itself also guaranteed that. Cities were talking about things like red light cameras long before 2001.
Much of this stuff was coming anyway. It's just convenient to blame it on 9/11.
I agree with you on everything but the smoking issue. Your right to smoke does not over rule my right to not breath in your smoke. And before you say "then you can leave", no, that's not the way the world works. I don't have to quit my job because you want to smoke.
Ok, in a general business establishment, you may have a point. But then, what right does the government have to forbid smoking in a place that caters to smokers? Say I open a restaurant or club that caters to smokers... I hire only people that smoke themselves... the entire premise of the place is to give smokers a place to go. But under current laws, the government would still forbid smoking inside an establishment for smokers. Tell me how that's free or fair?
...that there's no way something this asinine could possibly pass 1st Amendment muster. Especially since political speech is exactly the epicenter of that amendment. I would say that, but I also witnessed all three branches of the federal government fail us spectacularly on McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.
All it takes is enough sympathetic judges, and viola, it's Constitutional... even if it isn't Constitutional.
One thing both political sides seem to increasingly agree on these days is that the judicial branch may be the weak link in the design of our Constitutional guarantee of rights. If a judge says so, it's so, even the the Constitution directly contridicts it. All you need is a majority of SCOTUS opinions, and what's done is done. Once SCOTUS rules, unlike a Congressional Bill or an Executive Order, there's no way to appeal it. It's done. Final. You'd have to get a Constitutional Amendment passed to change that ruling, and if the issue came back before SCOTUS, they could simply void the meaning and spirt of the amendment with a stroke of their pens.
Increasingly, the written opinions of the Supreme Court is our real constitution, not the 200+ year old document itself.
Editorials are opinion, not legitimate reporting of facts.
So? Opinion isn't exempt in the Fairness Doctrine. In fact most of the application of the doctrine on the airwaves has traditionally been against editorial content. The argument goes that there's only so much broadcast bandwidth out there, and so since the government licenses the airwaves, they have a responsibility to see that all viewpoints get a fair shot.
Never mind that with the huge selection of opinion avenues... radio, TV, satellite, print, the Internet... the idea of bandwidth scarcity is essentially obsolete, especially for the Internet. But that hasn't stopped the doctrine's backers from trying to bring it back from the dead anyway, and worse, they want to apply it to non-broadcast media.
The Fairness Doctrine isn't. All throughout it's history, it's been used by whoever was in power at the time to silence their enemies, or at least quiet them down some. The doctrine is nothing but government nannyism, and its death was too long in coming. For those of you that are so eager to bring it back, think long and hard about that. Sooner or later, someone you don't like is going to get elected, and use it against you.
"So, yes, the Republicans are more effective at betraying the country and completely screwing it up because they don't let facts get in the way of their "disciplined" assault on this nation and their support of their party over the interests of their country."
If you'd take your lithium for a minute and use some reason, you'd recognize that whatever your party, whatever your ideology, if your party's leadership can't crack the whip and line up the votes, they're not going to get anything done in Congress. Sloppy anarchy isn't a virtue in politics. If you want your party to be noble, free spirits that can't get their agenda passed, hey, best wishes and good luck. But most people actually want their political party to accomplish something. This is simple politics 101; if you don't have some unity in your political organization, you're not going to get jack squat done.
I hate that they went out of the hardware business, but they did what they had to do. But man, did I love my Genesis, especially taking those pre-Internet trips to the software store at the mall to buy games for it (and programs for the PC before the Net really caught on). Coming home from work to blow off some steam with Sonic or Jurassic Park or Echo the Dolphin. Good times.
"... in that there is a lot more bickering and infighting among the left."
Partisanship isn't their problem, then, discipline is. And I'm not the first to notice this. Way back in the 1930's, Will Rogers said "I belong to no organized political party; I am a Democrat".
"Perhaps if you actually watched the show your statement would appear more informed. Colbert is just as hard on democrats as republicans, which is why Pelosi banned democrats in congress from going on his show."
I have watched some his (and Stewart's) episodes. Despite my distaste at their politics, both men are obviously very talented, and it's hard to ignore that. And while both of them make a point of skewing Democrats that are in trouble, I think you're pretty blind if you don't see the meat of both shows is liberal edged satire, with conservatives usually being in their crosshairs. They make no claim to being fair and balanced, which is one reason their audience adores them. Just like Limbaugh.
"Comparing Colbert to Limbaugh is pretty ignorant."
It's not quite apples and apples, but it's not apples an oranges either. All the hosts are essentially entertainers playing to one political slant; one is upfront about it, while another uses a device (playing an over-the-top conservative) to enhance the comedy. One has a political show that's funny, the other has a comedy show that's political. Again, since the two sides apparently have some different tastes, you're not going to get opposing analogues that are both successful... but there are more similarities than differences here considering both shows are at their core entertainment, and both men are entertainers.
"That's the problem with conservatives, they can't approach things without an intensely partisan mindset"
Uh, some can, some can't. Are you actually going to claim liberals are any different? Because I'd love to point you to several major liberal websites where the denizens will readily prove to you that if it ain't liberal, it's downright evil. No room for gray areas. Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, Truthout, Alternet... there's a pretty long list here. So if I were you, I'd reconsider this notion that liberals are all capable of tolerant, non-partisan thinking. They're just as human as the conservatives they oppose.
" And Fox News did a Daily Show-esque show called the "1/2 Hour News Hour" [wikipedia.org] that was just abysmal to watch and not even close to funny (it ran for 13 episodes before the Fox conservatives abandoned their opposition to euthenasia long enough to grant it a mercy killing)."
Hell, I'm a conservative, and I'll be the first to tell you that show wasn't just bad, it was plain embarrassing. Bad skits. Canned laugh tracks. Every bad trick in show business you can think of, that abomination had it. It couldn't die fast enough for me.
That show was a prime example of somethings conservatives sometimes do that they never should... try to make a right wing version of a successful liberal phenomena. "Hey, we'll make a conservative Daily Show!". No, you wont. You'll make a cheap knockoff that nobody likes and is done badly. And to be fair, liberals also do this stuff as well... how many attempts have we seen to try and do a liberal version of Limbaugh's program? There's a long and distinguished list of utter failure on that front (Hello, Air America!).
For whatever reason... one sides' success.... The Daily Show, Limbaugh, pick your example... just doesn't seem to translate well to the other side. Any attempts to "reverse engineer" it and make your own seems destined to fall on it's face.
"In contrast, their Republican counterparts essentially gain nothing."
Well there's a shock. I've always thought that Republicans going on Stewart's or Colbert's show was a complete waste of time, unless their aim was to be mocked mercilessly with no benefits whatsoever. Stewart at least tries to be somewhat balanced (as much as his politics will allow him), but Colbert wastes no time with such ideas.
It'd be like a liberal Democrat going on Rush Limbaugh's program. Just what do you think you're going to get out of it? You're certainly going into hostile territory with little hope of reward. You're not going to sway that audience's opinions... they're pretty well set. I think a Republican going on Colbert's show is not only a waste of time, it's worse. He has a young liberal audience, and if anything changes their opinions, it'll be time and experience. Nothing you say is going to sway them.
"No, it's not greed that drives Lucas to destroy our cherished childhood memories of one of the most seminal films ever made. It's his pride. He simply refuses to believe he's as awful of a filmmaker as he really is, and stuff like Clone Wars is the result."
Maybe you're right. I still don't exclude cynical greed as a profit motive... to some people, enough is never enough... but as Hemingway once said, the rich are very different from you and I, so perhaps Lucas really does think that stuff like Clone Wars is a vital addition to the arts.
In that case, it's a good thing he's rich, because living in your own little world like that must take a lot of maintenance...
"The one thing that the Air Force provides that cannot be done by another branch of the military is an external thoughtline. The extra branch of the military creates more opportunity for different opinions, different strategies, and different analyses of strategies."
So your justification for an independent Air Force is essentially an Apple Computer slogan? "Think Different"?
Do you honestly think the other services are incapable of "thinking different", especially when it comes to airpower? I have to call BS on that, especially since it's so often that USAF's different thinking involves the idea that airpower can win wars all by itself. That kind of "think different" we can do without.
"The Air Force has been a deciding factor in a lot of engagements"
Airpower has been the deciding factor in a lot of engagements. Airpower is an absolutely vital part of warfare. But that in itself doesn't justify an independent military branch. Any service could wield airpower, and in fact, all do. The Army is just crippled by regulations regarding what kinds of aircraft they can and can't use.
"and I question whether the Navy's air capability would be anywhere close to what it is now without the Air Force looking over its shoulder."
That's silly. When the Air Force builds an aircraft carrier, get back to us on that argument. In the history of jet aircraft, when a service needs to adopt another services jets, the Air Force usually adopts a Naval design, not the other way around. The F-4 and A-7 were Navy planes, and both were used extensively by the USAF, especially the Phantom, after TAC found that the F-4 could easily best any of their showcase century series fighters. The F-86 sabre was a Navy FJ Fury with swept wings. The only operational case of an air force based jet being adapted to a carrier was an abject failure... the horrid F-111B that was so bad, the Navy had Grumman design the F-14 as an alternative. By the time McDonnell Douglas finished turning the Northrorp YF-17 into the F/A-18, it was a completely different airplane. Even now there are rumbles that the Navy version of the F-35 "joint strike fighter" may never see operational service out of Navy concerns for its initial land-based design.
So I'd say the Navy has done just fine in the aerial arena without the Air Force "looking over their shoulder".
Why the Air Force? It seems like such a reach outside their normal scope. I would think that the Army would be the proper place for such a command.
The whole "Cybercommand" thing was yet another attempt by USAF to dominate an emerging military technology. It was a power grab. After WW II, they argued against other services having airplanes. They managed to get missiles and fixed wing aircraft taken away from the Army. They got the Army's Cheyenne gunship helicopter killed because it looked too much like a fighter plane. In Vietnam, they got SecDef McNamera to issue an order stating that Marine F-4's were to be limited to ground attack only... the fighter mission inland was for USAF alone. They could defend themselves if attacked by MiGs, but could not go MiG hunting on their own. Last year they tried to monopolize robotic aerial drones. And Cybercommand tried to monopolize military computer ops. USAF has a long history of not only protecting their turf, but moving in on others if it benefitted them. They have a reputation for arrogance. The Air Force Association's description of the branch was "first among equals"... as if any such thing could really exist.
Just like any other military tactic or technology... intelligence, airpower, any single military technology... each service should have their own "cybercommand", with a unifying leadership and authority over all branches at DOD. And I think we're heading in that direction, with SecDef Gates sacking the USAF leadership recently. There was a lot of resentment in the other branches at the Blues' attempt to hog the cyber mission, and I think this stand down is at least partly attributable to Gates trying to bring USAF leadership back on the reservation and play nice with the other kids.
We just don't need them anymore. We have better missiles, and better drones.
The only thing we need actually piloted aircraft for are close-in ground support, where things are too crowded/messy for computers to do a good job. And even then, remotely-piloted drones are taking over.
First, we're a long way off from being able to turn airpower completely over to robotic drones.
Second, I think you touched on the real question while missing the larger point... we're always going to need airpower... the military projection of power via aerial weapons. The question is, why do we need an Air Force? Why do we need an individual military branch with an identity based on airpower, when airpower is simply one facet of warfare that all branches need? The Navy has their own aircraft because oceans have skies over them too.
To me, splitting the Air Force from the Army was like establishing a separate military branch just for armor, or establishing an independent infantry branch. Why? What makes it imperitive to seperate airpower from ground power over the land? We did just fine with the Army Air Corps being a part of a larger Army. Ask any soldier, especially career soldier, and they'll likely complain about how USAF puts such a low priority on boring ground support missions... they aren't sexy enough to sell on recruiting posters.
Just as the Marines are tied at the hip to the Navy, the Air Force should more or less be a part of the Army. We don't live in castles in the sky. We live here on the ground, and ultimately, any air force's job is to support objectives on the ground when things are said and done. We have air superiority fighters because we don't want the enemy's aircraft hurting our guys on the ground.
I think our previous model of splitting defense responsibilities via geography between the Army and the Navy was a better model than our current one, with the Air Corps (or Army Air Forces, if you will) and the Marine Corps subordinate to their larger sister services. USAF went independent because of the argument that airpower in and of itself should fight separately, which was an outgrowth of Billy Mitchell's ideas. The problem is that Mitchell was wrong about a lot of things. He thought armies and navies were largely obsolete, and history has proven him wrong on that.
Airpower is just a tool, one that can be used by any branch. It doesn't justify a separate service, with all its associated costs duplication. Should we establish a separate service for submarines just because they're under the water? Of course not. Why establish a separate service just for airplanes?
God forbid someone making money in this world. Do you realize that Lucas paid for this movie and a full seasons worth of episodes right out of his own pocket? Shame on him for trying to make his money back. Oh and that Dark Knight movie, that is a huge cash grab...HUGE!
First, I have no problem whatsoever making money. I think that as long as its not your most important value, making money is a good thing. I'm a capitalist, and a staunch advocate of capitalism.
Second, he paid for it out his pocket. Ok. So what? That's an investment on what he's probably correct in asserting will be a larger return. It's business, and in Hollywood, self-financing your project isn't exactly unheard of. People do it all the time. This just means Lucas doesn't have a take a cut or pay a percentage to someone else.
Lastly, the problem isn't money, the problem is that he's pushing yet more crap in the guise of quality. The fault really isn't with Lucas. The fault is with us if we fall for it. Lucas is just doing his best P.T. Barnum here... there's a sucker born every minute, or in the case of Star Wars fans, several of them. Hey, Barnum was rich too. He didn't get that way by being stupid or by giving a sucker an even break.
Mr. Beckerman,
While I don't think anyone can defend some of the RIAA's tactics, have you ever told any of your clients "well, while they suck, you are committing copyright violation and pirating music"?
Maybe it's just my jaded view of trial lawyers (and I'm certainly not alone in that), but have you ever actually told your clients "Well, you are breaking the law and taking what you didn't pay for"?
Gotta say, I've gone back and watched those as an adult and been shocked at how mediocre they really are. I guess nine year olds are an easy audience to please.
I don't think the original is mediocre at all. Simple, maybe, but that doesn't equal mediocre. I think your opinion may be colored by the fact that for 30 years, competitors have tried to ape Lucas' original genius, by adding more and more special effects, and by making the story more complex, adult, and "real".
But that's missing the point completely. Star Wars struck such a universal chord in us because it's essentially a fairy tale with a moral story at the center. The simplicity was actually part and parcel of why it was so effective. Simple was a virtue in that movie. We didn't want nuance and intrigue and grey areas. After Vietnam, Watergate, Pol Pot, Jonestown, Charles Manson, urban riots, and Soviets stretching across the globe, we had all the nuance, intrigue, and gray areas we could handle, thanks. What we needed was a simple, old fashioned, black and white tale that showed good guys should still beat beat guys. Lucas gave us exactly what we needed, what our souls were craving; a cut and dried heroic epic with a moral to the story. He just did it with spaceships and wookies.
And maybe that's why the last few movies were so abominable. He went from a straight up "good guys are better than bad guys" allegory to "only the Sith deal in absolutes"; he took away our simple heroic fairy tale, and gave us... nuance, intrigue, and gray areas.
"Wow. Seriously dude, I've never, ever heard those words used together like that."
Any moment now, Mr. T is gonna throw snickers bars at him.
"Get some nuts!"