Given that human rights are basically a codification of canon law with a few references scratched out, your statement is stupid.
Human rights are first and foremost based on Christian principles.
Let's think about the principle of leaving civilians alone in battle for example, and look at it from a few moral viewpoints :
Atheism : either it's tactically advantageous to attack villagers, in that case let the genocide begin, or it's not tactically interesting, so leave them alone as long as it's practical. Given that cities and villages provide very good cover, the first case will be the most common.
Note that the two large atheistic creeds of the 20th century, nazism and communism, all used scorched earth tactics, meaning they massacred their OWN civilians for tactical advantage.
And let's just shut up about some other tactics conceived by atheists. Mao and the "progressive hero" Che.
Christianity : "do onto others as you would have them do onto you", evidently only attack if there is no other option. The preferred option is to send an ambassador to your enemy, decide to fight, where, make sure everyone has ample warning and time to collect their armies, and then fight it out in the field. When surrounding an enemy force, you offer everyone the chance to leave before hostilities begin. (which is what human rights say, and how the large majority of European wars were fought).
Islam: islam has the concepts of raids. While there should not be a genocide, and people should not be killed for no reason (but people, especially women and children, *are* kidnapped to serve as slaves, to be used as wages for the soldiers), there should be constant attacks on civilians, in order to resupply the main muslim force, resulting in a slow eradication of the population. Additionally, any village that is even slightly suspected of supplying the enemy (whether forced to do so or not), though, is massacred to the last man. The purpose is to remain supplied longer than the enemy can (in the desert, obviously not a bad tactic). Also different from Christianity : any kind of ambush, if it kills the enemy (independant of how it affects the locals) is considered the epitome of honor. This is how the prophet fought, on direct orders from allah.
Does this really leave any doubt ? Anything you disagree with ?
Why do you lie ? It's not as if America is trying to kill Afghan civilians, and it's the Taliban's fault. You see, they hide amongst those civilians (often with full knowledge of the "innocents").
Add to that that the Taliban will not stop until America "has the same traditions", to put it nicely (or so they say themselves).
So it would seem to be American gays that you get to kill, no ? American women you get to stone. Or let the game start by stoning a few afghans, for, say, making a drawing of a bird in the sand, and end, say, with taking a kalashnikov through a few parks in the center of San Francisco, killing everyone. You know, for bonus points.
Besides if this game gets to offend one group's honor, surely it can offend a few others, no ?
Besides I don't get what the objection is... a) do you think killing gays and stoning women would violate morality, and that's unaccceptable... but killing American soldiers doesn't ? b) you think your idea of morality and "honor" deserves to be protected by law (ie. by guns), but others don't
I think it is arrogant and counterproductive to Islamic/US relations for them to build this symbol near ground zero, but the laws of this land say they can. That's what makes the US different than, e.g., Iran or just about any Islamic nation.
You might want to look up one of the main differences between islam and christianity. If you're hoping to court sympathy for the US in islamic lands by pointing out that we support equality and separation of church and state, you're not going to get very far. I would even say it's extremely counterproductive. A bit like starting an American political party advocating the right to paedophilia (or any other policy that goes against a core religious belief).
Islam is about power and control. Nothing proves power and control like this despicable building would. It will be a disaster for freedom, and not just in the US.
Quite frankly, if anyone wants any kind of freedom to live under a government of his/her choice, he or she is not a muslim (or they could be an idiot).
Actually half a million per household. But yes, I'm saying 5500 per household (for the entire network, including last-mile, interconnects, electricity,...) is BY FAR not enough.
Another poster said that the $46 billion would only pay for a nationwide backbone, without last-mile functionality. Now *that* sounds believable. But they're most certainly not getting a line into every street for that price.
A good price for laying fiber is $70 per meter (you're certainly not getting screwed for that price). More in the city, less in some types of countryside. Just making a backbone from Perth to Brisbane with 1 drop-off in every major city (most certainly not a trench crossing *every* street), and everything in between, say takes five times the distance between those cities.
So we're talking $70 per meter * 4300 * 1000 meter * 5 just for the backbone = 1.6 billion AU$. To connect streets in those major cities alone, you'd need 100 times that amount. 1000 if you wish to connect *every* stupid little town.
Whoops we've already crashed the budget by nearly a factor of 3. So doing what they promised will go about 30000% over budget.
Seems about right for a government project, of course.
While I agree that the price difference between 100 mbit and gigabit (both require a fiber network) is small, there is no way to build a nationwide network for a small US state for that budget. This network is not going to get built, no matter who gets elected. A national fiber network for australia with connections to even 10% of houses... I seriously doubt it could be done with hundred times that budget.
This is ignoring the obvious fact that the current international internet infrastructure most certainly cannot take a network with even a few million australians connected at 100 mbit, even if they only use 1% of their connection. Total international bandwidth available in Australia is about 1 terabit (theoretical peak capacity for currently deployed infrastructure - not actually operational connectivity, and brining the full capacity online won't be cheap at all). About 8 million Australians have internet service (and that this bill claims to double that), so that's 1 terabit / 16 million = 32 kbit per australian. You're just not going to get above that level. Consider that due to the previous round of government interference, there's barely anything hosted in Australia so to get at anything interesting they're going to need international bandwidth.
It's just a false campaign promise. Money thrown at a black hole.
And frankly people who let their votes be decided by "we'll give you more free stuff" deserve exactly what they'll get.
Money is really just a made-up concept (by Obama ? He's in power currently) that is only there to exploit you. It has no meaning in the real world. Oppression, man...
Obviously that's what's really going on.
Now why didn't I think of that ? Sorry to doubt your politics. After all, one shouldn't question dogma, and make up just any excuse to keep believing the most ridiculous drivel just because, you know, it's the inconvenient truth. Sorry to doubt your dogmas.
Exactly, but you can guess how the greens will respond to it. The signals the market gives are simple :
1) hybrid cars do not pay back for their own investment in money : they're bad for the individual 2) that money is not simply a made up number, it mainly denotes energy used in production : they use more, not less energy 3) given that the production of energy is the cause of our pollution, they're... worse, not better for the environment than gas-guzzlers 4) this is WITH subsidies distorting the prices to make hybrids look good. In reality they're worse than their price would suggest
So the political class is once again doing what they do best : a) they're making the problem worse b) while appearing to do good
From biofuels starving people, over emission regulations moving jobs to China where they pollute more, to subsidies for "green" technology that isn't green at all, except for the color on the PR folders... in reality gaia, greens, and all the environmental regulations they accomplished have worse results than doing nothing at all.
And, sadly, the cost-cutting measures of ExxonMobil (and...) probably did help the environment.
Terrorism is simply a desperate way to achieve a political goal.
It's an effective way. That probably means it's not nearly as desperate as you'd think. Quite frankly, islam is built on terror. It started with terror, and all of it's large advances always coincided with massive terrorism (much, much worse than what we see today).
Any idiot with homemade bombs can do this. 9/11, on the other hand, did require competence.
I doubt it, they got lucky. American policy simply was based on everyone being a "good christian" and not even trying this (which was a very good assumption right up till 2001).
Do we hate their tactics, or their goals?
They kill to get their way. The problem is what was the repeating feature of muslim history. Terror starts out more-or-less what you might call "advancing the (military intrests of) islam" (then again islam is a verb, it literally means 'submission', but note that it is not the passive form of the verb. A better translation would perhaps be "submitting", which would be an english verb that, like the arab one, calls subtle attention to the fact that it is the submission of others (ie. everyone) that is the target) (note also that it is not "submission to god" that is meant, as god is only used as an unspoken subject, never as an unspoken object (that's why "incha'allah" means 'leave it to god' while "incha'" simply means 'leave it to me'. "allah" really is required there. Likewise islam(a') means "submit (everyone) (to me)"). The point being that islam's stated goals are of military nature.
But terrorism soon starts choosing all sorts of sides in political battles, even trade disputes. (such as the enmity between the saudi state and al qaeda, resulting in a de-facto alliance between israel and mecca alliance that is aimed, not at Jews, but at islam).
The end result, if terrorism is not totally eradicated, is total and complete destruction of everything, but mostly, of everyone.
What we *should* hate is where terrorism leads, if it takes off (and it has "taken off" many times in history).
Just because a proof is invalid doesn't mean that something is wrong. There are lots of incorrect proofs of things. There are even many things that are thought to be true, but we have no clue how to prove them.
So the set of correct mathematical knowledge can be the empty set, and it could be the case that there is no single theoretically valid proof. Of course this would make the correct mathematical knowledge to be the "empty set" as in :
{ { } }
and not the set
{ }
But is that truly so very different ?
Of course, set theory is known to be consistent (not correct) as long as you do not postulate the existence of any non-empty collection. So there is a notation problem in here somewhere. Hmmm, it's been a while since I've had set theory.
You don't have to go into philosophy to get these. Theoretical mathematics will help you out here.
Suppose you had a "perfect" learner. One that tries every theoretically possible analytical technique. And then it manages to surprise you : it discovers existing mathematics, and perhaps a bit more, but nothing truly remarkable. That would simply be the result of a mathematical property of the "mathematical space" (the set of all possible mathematical knowledge, of, say all Godel-sentences) : that would simply mean that space is chaotic.
There are already known properties of the total mathematical search space : for one, it's not necessarily consistent (and thus not necessarily correct). It is known to be large: there is more mathematics than there are atoms in the universe (but it remains an open question if the subset of correct mathematical theory is infinite. Theoretically it could even be the empty set - that mathematics is fundamentally flawed).
The fun thing is that these robots truly have a one-track mind. They do not learn -at all- within one generation, even if they have a brain that is relatively similar to ours. The brain is configured -entirely- at "birth" by the natural selection algorithm.
And yet they display a few remarkably human traits, that seem to -but don't- indicate learning. Memory. Strategy. Having a strategy responding to the "enemy". Yet by most standards -they don't think during the game. This makes one wonder... is the fact that humans have memory, adapt "somewhat", devise strategy really an indication of the level of thought we think humans have ?
Makes one wonder just how one-track the human mind is. Everyone likes to always accuse everyone else of "not seeing the truth" about very nontrivial problems. Are people really "seeing the truth" or just repeating what they were programmed ?
History of science definitely seems to agree with the "programmed" argument. Other histories... even more. We are mindless automatons, we just like to think we aren't.
Do you even find that terrorism requires competence ? Are failed attacks really that much less effective (as long as at least some succeed - even with little casualties) ?
That's because the government is merely the biggest corporation around. Why would you expect any different behavior from them ?
Also, quite frankly, would you be willing to live with the consequences of giving America 1/3rd less energy ? (knowing that energy cannot be taken away from most things without ghastly consequences. It can be taken away from your private home (from your always-on computer), from your car (or from your wallet if you use public transportation), basically, it can be taken away from the common American. Because most types of production and transportation just can't operate on less cash, that means private persons would have to give up 75% or more of the energy they use to accomodate this. That would literally mean no heating in winter, nor cooling in summer. It'd be a return to the times when a bodycount was made after winter in every city.
Until we have a good option, we can't do without the Saudi's.
Yeah, I mean terrorism has increased massively over the years (and even 2010 has much more than 2009), but given how quickly the spineless give in, it's actually amazing it hasn't increased faster. And more and more people keep saying to just give them what they want, since terrorists, whether muslim, tamil, lefties, or even right-wing terrorists (not many of those around, but not zero either).
You see, terrorists are the real victims here, don't you understand ? Like saudi arabia.
Good campaign speech. Bit low on facts, but hey I've learned to live with that long ago.
But what do you have to say about the fact that Elena Kagan was clearly in favor of banning books ? Furthermore she cooperated in a case that actually wanted to ban a book. "Somehow" that, the whole point in this thread, is missing in your point. Perhaps the book was astroturfing, yes, fully agreed. Perhaps there was money behind it, again, yes.
She's made it clear, on many occasions, that she intends to repeat her attempts to ban books with certain viewpoints.
I guess democrats, at the very least you, and ms. Kagan, just feel that the plebs cannot be trusted to form opinions, and should not be allowed to do so except under your -so graciously offered- guidance. The fact that people like you defend this by saying it somehow safeguards democracy is beyond ludicrous. But hey Hitler justified his nomination as dictator for life by that very same reason, as did Chavez, Kim Jong Il and Mugabe and I guess you've not quite sunk that low.
What's next ? Bread and Games ?
And quite frankly, we all know what happened if Bush would have whispered something to his friends about "not really" liking a book. Why the obvious double standard ? Isn't judging people differently because of ideological differences racist ? Are you a racist ?
If not, why such obvious ideological bias and ad-hominem attacks ?
Slashdot Mirror
Given that human rights are basically a codification of canon law with a few references scratched out, your statement is stupid.
Human rights are first and foremost based on Christian principles.
Let's think about the principle of leaving civilians alone in battle for example, and look at it from a few moral viewpoints :
Atheism : either it's tactically advantageous to attack villagers, in that case let the genocide begin, or it's not tactically interesting, so leave them alone as long as it's practical. Given that cities and villages provide very good cover, the first case will be the most common.
Note that the two large atheistic creeds of the 20th century, nazism and communism, all used scorched earth tactics, meaning they massacred their OWN civilians for tactical advantage.
And let's just shut up about some other tactics conceived by atheists. Mao and the "progressive hero" Che.
Christianity : "do onto others as you would have them do onto you", evidently only attack if there is no other option. The preferred option is to send an ambassador to your enemy, decide to fight, where, make sure everyone has ample warning and time to collect their armies, and then fight it out in the field. When surrounding an enemy force, you offer everyone the chance to leave before hostilities begin. (which is what human rights say, and how the large majority of European wars were fought).
Islam: islam has the concepts of raids. While there should not be a genocide, and people should not be killed for no reason (but people, especially women and children, *are* kidnapped to serve as slaves, to be used as wages for the soldiers), there should be constant attacks on civilians, in order to resupply the main muslim force, resulting in a slow eradication of the population. Additionally, any village that is even slightly suspected of supplying the enemy (whether forced to do so or not), though, is massacred to the last man. The purpose is to remain supplied longer than the enemy can (in the desert, obviously not a bad tactic). Also different from Christianity : any kind of ambush, if it kills the enemy (independant of how it affects the locals) is considered the epitome of honor. This is how the prophet fought, on direct orders from allah.
Does this really leave any doubt ? Anything you disagree with ?
Why do you lie ? It's not as if America is trying to kill Afghan civilians, and it's the Taliban's fault. You see, they hide amongst those civilians (often with full knowledge of the "innocents").
Add to that that the Taliban will not stop until America "has the same traditions", to put it nicely (or so they say themselves).
So it would seem to be American gays that you get to kill, no ? American women you get to stone. Or let the game start by stoning a few afghans, for, say, making a drawing of a bird in the sand, and end, say, with taking a kalashnikov through a few parks in the center of San Francisco, killing everyone. You know, for bonus points.
Besides if this game gets to offend one group's honor, surely it can offend a few others, no ?
Besides I don't get what the objection is ... ... but killing American soldiers doesn't ?
a) do you think killing gays and stoning women would violate morality, and that's unaccceptable
b) you think your idea of morality and "honor" deserves to be protected by law (ie. by guns), but others don't
So which is it ?
I think it is arrogant and counterproductive to Islamic/US relations for them to build this symbol near ground zero, but the laws of this land say they can. That's what makes the US different than, e.g., Iran or just about any Islamic nation.
You might want to look up one of the main differences between islam and christianity. If you're hoping to court sympathy for the US in islamic lands by pointing out that we support equality and separation of church and state, you're not going to get very far. I would even say it's extremely counterproductive. A bit like starting an American political party advocating the right to paedophilia (or any other policy that goes against a core religious belief).
Islam is about power and control. Nothing proves power and control like this despicable building would. It will be a disaster for freedom, and not just in the US.
Quite frankly, if anyone wants any kind of freedom to live under a government of his/her choice, he or she is not a muslim (or they could be an idiot).
Do you get to stone American women, and take a kalashnikov to a gathering of gays ?
The parent post can serve as a good example of WHY you'd need a laser attached to it's head.
Making sure grammar nazi's are so thoroughly removed from the gene pool that DNA itself starts to contain misspellings.
With lasers attached to it's head.
Actually half a million per household. But yes, I'm saying 5500 per household (for the entire network, including last-mile, interconnects, electricity, ...) is BY FAR not enough.
Another poster said that the $46 billion would only pay for a nationwide backbone, without last-mile functionality. Now *that* sounds believable. But they're most certainly not getting a line into every street for that price.
A good price for laying fiber is $70 per meter (you're certainly not getting screwed for that price). More in the city, less in some types of countryside. Just making a backbone from Perth to Brisbane with 1 drop-off in every major city (most certainly not a trench crossing *every* street), and everything in between, say takes five times the distance between those cities.
So we're talking $70 per meter * 4300 * 1000 meter * 5 just for the backbone = 1.6 billion AU$. To connect streets in those major cities alone, you'd need 100 times that amount. 1000 if you wish to connect *every* stupid little town.
Whoops we've already crashed the budget by nearly a factor of 3. So doing what they promised will go about 30000% over budget.
Seems about right for a government project, of course.
I wouldn't buy this.
You know, just one network engineer's opinion :
While I agree that the price difference between 100 mbit and gigabit (both require a fiber network) is small, there is no way to build a nationwide network for a small US state for that budget. This network is not going to get built, no matter who gets elected. A national fiber network for australia with connections to even 10% of houses ... I seriously doubt it could be done with hundred times that budget.
This is ignoring the obvious fact that the current international internet infrastructure most certainly cannot take a network with even a few million australians connected at 100 mbit, even if they only use 1% of their connection. Total international bandwidth available in Australia is about 1 terabit (theoretical peak capacity for currently deployed infrastructure - not actually operational connectivity, and brining the full capacity online won't be cheap at all). About 8 million Australians have internet service (and that this bill claims to double that), so that's 1 terabit / 16 million = 32 kbit per australian. You're just not going to get above that level. Consider that due to the previous round of government interference, there's barely anything hosted in Australia so to get at anything interesting they're going to need international bandwidth.
It's just a false campaign promise. Money thrown at a black hole.
And frankly people who let their votes be decided by "we'll give you more free stuff" deserve exactly what they'll get.
Nice post. I doubt these people will let facts "ruin" their dogmas, but nice post.
Thanks.
It's also a good point, that hybrids are only designed, on taxpayer money, to fulfill "green" fantasies, not to actually sell them to make a profit.
Ah obviously why didn't I think of that ?
Money is really just a made-up concept (by Obama ? He's in power currently) that is only there to exploit you. It has no meaning in the real world. Oppression, man ...
Obviously that's what's really going on.
Now why didn't I think of that ? Sorry to doubt your politics. After all, one shouldn't question dogma, and make up just any excuse to keep believing the most ridiculous drivel just because, you know, it's the inconvenient truth. Sorry to doubt your dogmas.
Exactly, but you can guess how the greens will respond to it. The signals the market gives are simple :
1) hybrid cars do not pay back for their own investment in money : they're bad for the individual ... worse, not better for the environment than gas-guzzlers
2) that money is not simply a made up number, it mainly denotes energy used in production : they use more, not less energy
3) given that the production of energy is the cause of our pollution, they're
4) this is WITH subsidies distorting the prices to make hybrids look good. In reality they're worse than their price would suggest
So the political class is once again doing what they do best :
a) they're making the problem worse
b) while appearing to do good
From biofuels starving people, over emission regulations moving jobs to China where they pollute more, to subsidies for "green" technology that isn't green at all, except for the color on the PR folders ... in reality gaia, greens, and all the environmental regulations they accomplished have worse results than doing nothing at all.
And, sadly, the cost-cutting measures of ExxonMobil (and ...) probably did help the environment.
Politics, gotta love it.
Great, now let's see if we can get Paris Hilton to say the same.
Or do we wait for another slow news day ?
Since you have to sign a contract to get the SIM card, I doubt it.
Just my 2c.
Terrorism is simply a desperate way to achieve a political goal.
It's an effective way. That probably means it's not nearly as desperate as you'd think. Quite frankly, islam is built on terror. It started with terror, and all of it's large advances always coincided with massive terrorism (much, much worse than what we see today).
Any idiot with homemade bombs can do this. 9/11, on the other hand, did require competence.
I doubt it, they got lucky. American policy simply was based on everyone being a "good christian" and not even trying this (which was a very good assumption right up till 2001).
Do we hate their tactics, or their goals?
They kill to get their way. The problem is what was the repeating feature of muslim history. Terror starts out more-or-less what you might call "advancing the (military intrests of) islam" (then again islam is a verb, it literally means 'submission', but note that it is not the passive form of the verb. A better translation would perhaps be "submitting", which would be an english verb that, like the arab one, calls subtle attention to the fact that it is the submission of others (ie. everyone) that is the target) (note also that it is not "submission to god" that is meant, as god is only used as an unspoken subject, never as an unspoken object (that's why "incha'allah" means 'leave it to god' while "incha'" simply means 'leave it to me'. "allah" really is required there. Likewise islam(a') means "submit (everyone) (to me)"). The point being that islam's stated goals are of military nature.
But terrorism soon starts choosing all sorts of sides in political battles, even trade disputes. (such as the enmity between the saudi state and al qaeda, resulting in a de-facto alliance between israel and mecca alliance that is aimed, not at Jews, but at islam).
The end result, if terrorism is not totally eradicated, is total and complete destruction of everything, but mostly, of everyone.
What we *should* hate is where terrorism leads, if it takes off (and it has "taken off" many times in history).
Just because a proof is invalid doesn't mean that something is wrong. There are lots of incorrect proofs of things. There are even many things that are thought to be true, but we have no clue how to prove them.
So the set of correct mathematical knowledge can be the empty set, and it could be the case that there is no single theoretically valid proof. Of course this would make the correct mathematical knowledge to be the "empty set" as in :
{ { } }
and not the set
{ }
But is that truly so very different ?
Of course, set theory is known to be consistent (not correct) as long as you do not postulate the existence of any non-empty collection. So there is a notation problem in here somewhere. Hmmm, it's been a while since I've had set theory.
Also ...
Customer roms are SO much easier to make for these phones (try the $phone_model android development forums, they're well worth it). Personally I'm gathering courage to try this out on my hero : Froyo for Hero ROM !.
Given what happened last time it'll take a week's time to pick up the pieces, but hey.
De-facto these are (more or less) open phones. Lots of them. Fuck GPLv3.
Let's restart the whole BSD vs GPL discussion ! You know, because there are so many unexplored avenues of discussion !
Technically, that's not legal. Hell, it's not even legal for fixed-line telephony.
You have to check if your handset is allowed on their network. The reason "otherwise the whole network could crash".
It's not because no-one checks that something is legal.
You don't have to go into philosophy to get these. Theoretical mathematics will help you out here.
Suppose you had a "perfect" learner. One that tries every theoretically possible analytical technique. And then it manages to surprise you : it discovers existing mathematics, and perhaps a bit more, but nothing truly remarkable. That would simply be the result of a mathematical property of the "mathematical space" (the set of all possible mathematical knowledge, of, say all Godel-sentences) : that would simply mean that space is chaotic.
There are already known properties of the total mathematical search space : for one, it's not necessarily consistent (and thus not necessarily correct). It is known to be large: there is more mathematics than there are atoms in the universe (but it remains an open question if the subset of correct mathematical theory is infinite. Theoretically it could even be the empty set - that mathematics is fundamentally flawed).
The fun thing is that these robots truly have a one-track mind. They do not learn -at all- within one generation, even if they have a brain that is relatively similar to ours. The brain is configured -entirely- at "birth" by the natural selection algorithm.
And yet they display a few remarkably human traits, that seem to -but don't- indicate learning. Memory. Strategy. Having a strategy responding to the "enemy". Yet by most standards -they don't think during the game. This makes one wonder ... is the fact that humans have memory, adapt "somewhat", devise strategy really an indication of the level of thought we think humans have ?
Makes one wonder just how one-track the human mind is. Everyone likes to always accuse everyone else of "not seeing the truth" about very nontrivial problems. Are people really "seeing the truth" or just repeating what they were programmed ?
History of science definitely seems to agree with the "programmed" argument. Other histories ... even more. We are mindless automatons, we just like to think we aren't.
oh great ... your claim boils down to : "mathematics don't apply to us because we're using physics".
You should write to the nobel prize comittee. You see, it's brilliant.
Brilliant humor.
Do you even find that terrorism requires competence ? Are failed attacks really that much less effective (as long as at least some succeed - even with little casualties) ?
That's because the government is merely the biggest corporation around. Why would you expect any different behavior from them ?
Also, quite frankly, would you be willing to live with the consequences of giving America 1/3rd less energy ? (knowing that energy cannot be taken away from most things without ghastly consequences. It can be taken away from your private home (from your always-on computer), from your car (or from your wallet if you use public transportation), basically, it can be taken away from the common American. Because most types of production and transportation just can't operate on less cash, that means private persons would have to give up 75% or more of the energy they use to accomodate this. That would literally mean no heating in winter, nor cooling in summer. It'd be a return to the times when a bodycount was made after winter in every city.
Until we have a good option, we can't do without the Saudi's.
Yeah, I mean terrorism has increased massively over the years (and even 2010 has much more than 2009), but given how quickly the spineless give in, it's actually amazing it hasn't increased faster. And more and more people keep saying to just give them what they want, since terrorists, whether muslim, tamil, lefties, or even right-wing terrorists (not many of those around, but not zero either).
You see, terrorists are the real victims here, don't you understand ? Like saudi arabia.
Good campaign speech. Bit low on facts, but hey I've learned to live with that long ago.
But what do you have to say about the fact that Elena Kagan was clearly in favor of banning books ? Furthermore she cooperated in a case that actually wanted to ban a book. "Somehow" that, the whole point in this thread, is missing in your point. Perhaps the book was astroturfing, yes, fully agreed. Perhaps there was money behind it, again, yes.
She's made it clear, on many occasions, that she intends to repeat her attempts to ban books with certain viewpoints.
I guess democrats, at the very least you, and ms. Kagan, just feel that the plebs cannot be trusted to form opinions, and should not be allowed to do so except under your -so graciously offered- guidance. The fact that people like you defend this by saying it somehow safeguards democracy is beyond ludicrous. But hey Hitler justified his nomination as dictator for life by that very same reason, as did Chavez, Kim Jong Il and Mugabe and I guess you've not quite sunk that low.
What's next ? Bread and Games ?
And quite frankly, we all know what happened if Bush would have whispered something to his friends about "not really" liking a book. Why the obvious double standard ? Isn't judging people differently because of ideological differences racist ? Are you a racist ?
If not, why such obvious ideological bias and ad-hominem attacks ?