Some Iraqis may have very well wished for the U.S. to remove Saddam Hussein from power. That has no bearing on the misrepresentation of the intelligence by the Bush administration in order manipulate the country into going to war. It also has no bearing on the bungling ineptitude of the Bush administration in prosecuting that war and the subsequent occupation of Iraq.
Read Cobra II. It's a very balanced account of the planning and prosecution of the war. Rumsfeld micromanaged the military, and unfortunately for everyone involved he was grossly incompetent.
What about the Iraqis that just up above you claimed we were trying to save? Over 200,000 dead documented by Iraq Body Count. These deaths are all a result of the invasion of Iraq and the power vacuum which ensued.
Tens of thousands of American lives have been shattered, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives have been shattered, millions of Iraqis have had to flee their homes, barbaric ISIS has taken over parts of the region that the Bush administration intentionally weakened. Iran has turned into a major player in the region. The war was a complete, unmitigated strategic disaster.
It doesn't seem very objective to say that Democrats deserve "all the blame", which to me implies that you think the Bush administration is blameless. There's no factual basis for that opinion.
I said the Bush administration is "almost" wholly responsible. They deserve the preponderance of blame. They misrepresented the evidence on alleged WMDs and links to Al Qaeda.
The Bush administration was incompetent. They promised that it would be easy to invade Iraq. They said it could be done on the cheap. SecDef Rumsfeld forced the military to deploy less than a quarter of the force which their own planning had determined was necessary for the occupation of Iraq. They expected and planned for no resistance. They expected and planned for all of the existing government structure to remain intact. They disbanded the military, which overnight created a highly armed and trained resistance movement which resulted in the deaths of thousands and debilitating injuries to tens of thousands of American soldiers. They were arrogant and stupid, and we as a country will be paying the price for a very very long time. Trillions of dollars and countless American lives ruined.
On top of that, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives and millions were displaced (fled their homes) by the sectarian conflict which was unleashed by the invasion of Iraq. On top of that, priceless antiquities from the birth of civilization were destroyed in the looting which occurred after the liberation of Baghdad, and subsquently in areas where ISIS has taken over, such as Mosul, due to the power vacuum which resulted directly from the toppling of the Iraqi government.
The invasion of Iraq was unnecessary. It was stupid. It was careless. It was evil. It was the Bush administration's strong desire to invade Iraq. They ginned up the intelligence to make it happen. They are almost wholly responsible for the debacle which ensued.
I agree with you that Democrats and Republicans in Congress should not have authorized the Iraq war. It was a colossal mistake. But, the blame rests squarely with the Bush administration, which manipulated the country into going to war.
Democrats deserve far less blame than the Bush administration, which actually set the war in motion. The Bush administration argued that they needed the authorization to use force in order to have a strong negotiating position with Saddam Hussein. Turned out negotiation was the furthest thing from their minds. The actual invasion of Iraq was ordered by Bush. The Democrats watched from the sidelines, powerless to affect the actions of the executive branch (they had abdicated their power by authorizing the use of force).
Thanks. The editing tool is pretty sophisticated, so I think I did it right, but if not I'll fix it.:-)
I also added a "no left turn" restriction at the intersection, so that it matches the existing signage, and I modified all of the roads in the gated residential area to be private access roads.
When we are born, we have no choice what home we are born into, or who our parents are. We may be born into wealth or poverty. We may have parents who treat us with care and tenderness; or we may have parents who don't know how to care for a child, have drug addictions, are incarcerated, are violent, or are mentally unstable. Some children are loved and kissed, while other children are severely neglected, beaten, or abused sexually. This is the lottery we all played. Most of us won. Some children lost.
Abused children are missing a part of their childhood. Where they should have received love, they received brutality or neglect. Because they missed out on a crucial part of their development, they are behind the other children. Children which have to be removed from their parents for their protection can sometimes be placed with family or a close friend. When this is not possible, they enter the foster care system.
In the foster care system, there may be many people involved in the child's life: parents, other family or friends, social workers, attorneys, therapists, doctors, educators, foster parents or group home staff, and hopefully a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) or Guardian ad Litem (GAL).
A CASA is a volunteer who is a constant adult presence in the child's life, which may be lacking other permanency. While social workers, group home staff, therapists, and doctors may work with many children, a CASA is assigned to a single child. The CASA meets with the child at least every other week, takes her out for activities or to eat, learns about her needs and circumstances, and uses this knowledge to advocate for her best interests.
"The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog" contains stories about children who went through trauma, and recovered to a degree one would not have thought possible. One of the stories is about the indoctrinated children who were released from Waco, before the structure burned. Another story is about a child which spent about a year (as I recall) caged like an animal. Though disturbing, it's a fascinating look at childhood development and a fresh way of looking at how best to care for traumatized children and help them to be able to heal as much as possible.
"Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential -- and Endangered" is about how empathy is "learned", and why it is so essential.
Both books are by co-authors Dr. Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz. They are highly recommended for anyone working with traumatized children.
The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. Quit arguing about how to use the government against the "other side", whichever side you are on. If you don't want the government making you pay for Iraq, shrink the government. If you don't want the government telling Catholics they have to fund birth control and abortifacients, shrink the government.
Quit using the government as a stick with which to beat your enemies, then complaining when they turn around and use it to beat on you.
What nonsense! That's about like saying that if your brother takes a hammer to your bedroom walls, you should get rid of the hammer instead of doing something about your psycho brother. Government is a tool. It can be a tool operated for the public good or a tool for the enrichment of defense contractors. I choose the former, Republicans choose the latter, and you choose to throw away the tool.
How did this get labeled Insightful? The Federal Government is requiring many Catholic organizations to provide contraception in the policies they provide their employees. Because these organizations pay at least partially for these policies, they are being required to pay for contraception. The slimy move to say it doesn't have to be in the policy, but has to be provided for free it just bull and every one knows it.
I have less than zero sympathy, because I was forced to pay for the invasion of Iraq, with all the subsequent aftermath of at least 4 million people displaced from their homes, hundreds of thousands killed, worse living conditions than before, and women's rights brought down to the standard of other countries in the region.
And I'm supposed to support Catholic organizations' mission to deny birth control coverage for their employees? Not gonna happen.
It's pretty unfair to tar Democrats with the actions of Boss Tweed in the 1800's. I suggest you drop him from your list in the future.;)
Today's Republican corruption is unprecedented, except maybe in the days of the old political machines.
Here's a nice list of corrupt and scandalized Republicans in the Bush administration, from TPMmuckracker. Note that this list doesn't include convicted (now ex-) Congressman Bob Ney, Jack Abramoff, or other non-administration Republicans, but it's a loooong list nonetheless.
Rumsfeld has been one of the worst SecDef's of all time.
Read Cobra II, the definitive history of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Rumsfeld micromanaged the deployment of troops to Iraq to such an extent that personnel arrived without their equipment and troops were assigned to tasks they had no training for. Rumsfeld discounted the experience of his generals, and thought that he knew more about warfighting, logistics, etc. than the people who spent their whole career training and preparing for it. He expressly forbade planning for the postwar environment. How stupid is that?!
Here's an article on the web to get you started:
Offense and Defense: The Battle Between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon
Or you can google "Rumsfeld" and "TPFDL".
The study was only posted after Boxer dropped a ton of whoop-ass on the Chairman of the FCC. She only had the report because a whistleblower from within the FCC provided it to her. Otherwise, we would never have heard that the FCC had found that locally-owned stations produce significantly more local news than do non-locally-owned stations.
Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC.
Also, the Wall Street Journal opinion section is not exactly the place to go to find genuine scientific analysis. It's a propaganda mill for the same business interests which support Richard Lindzen. There is plenty of money for scientists willing to speak on behalf of big business, despite Lindzen's contrary and alarmist claims.
It takes a special kind of courage to speak out on behalf of the downtrodden coal and oil industries.
"Democrat Party" is the disparaging term which Republicans use for the "Democratic Party". It's sort of like calling Mormons "Morons", another disparaging term which rightwingers throw around.
1) We've based our economy entirely around cheap transportation. JIT delivery and distributed production only makes sense in the context of cheap transportation costs.
2) Oil is used for a lot more than running our automobiles. Goodbye cheap plastic containers. Guess what a lot of food is packaged in?
Prices of everything would go up in Peak Oil times, not just your occasional drives.
"...I find that they don't go after left-leaning politicians when they should be."
Probably because you go by what you hear about the ACLU on the news. You should check out the ACLU website to see what their priorities are, rather than going on the basis of second-hand sources.
For instance, they went after the Clinton administration in regards to the Echelon spying program:
Nevertheless, the American Civil Liberties Union has been requesting congressional hearings on Echelon for nearly a year. In a letter sent to the House Government Reform Committee in April 1999, the ACLU said: "It is important that Congress investigate to determine if the Echelon program is as sweeping and intrusive as has been reported."
Slashdot Mirror
Some Iraqis may have very well wished for the U.S. to remove Saddam Hussein from power. That has no bearing on the misrepresentation of the intelligence by the Bush administration in order manipulate the country into going to war. It also has no bearing on the bungling ineptitude of the Bush administration in prosecuting that war and the subsequent occupation of Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Read Cobra II. It's a very balanced account of the planning and prosecution of the war. Rumsfeld micromanaged the military, and unfortunately for everyone involved he was grossly incompetent.
http://www.amazon.com/Cobra-II...
"Almost 1000 soldiers died!"
What about the Iraqis that just up above you claimed we were trying to save? Over 200,000 dead documented by Iraq Body Count. These deaths are all a result of the invasion of Iraq and the power vacuum which ensued.
https://www.iraqbodycount.org/
"you learn from the mistakes and move on"
The U.S. borrowed the money to pay for the war. The final tab will be in the trillions.
http://www.reuters.com/article...
Tens of thousands of American lives have been shattered, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives have been shattered, millions of Iraqis have had to flee their homes, barbaric ISIS has taken over parts of the region that the Bush administration intentionally weakened. Iran has turned into a major player in the region. The war was a complete, unmitigated strategic disaster.
It doesn't seem very objective to say that Democrats deserve "all the blame", which to me implies that you think the Bush administration is blameless. There's no factual basis for that opinion.
I said the Bush administration is "almost" wholly responsible. They deserve the preponderance of blame. They misrepresented the evidence on alleged WMDs and links to Al Qaeda.
https://news.vice.com/article/...
They executed a sustained propaganda campaign for the purpose of manipulating the country to go to war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
Also, Rumsfeld has to rank as one of the three worst defense secretaries in American History. Read Cobra II for more information:
http://www.amazon.com/Cobra-II...
The Bush administration was incompetent. They promised that it would be easy to invade Iraq. They said it could be done on the cheap. SecDef Rumsfeld forced the military to deploy less than a quarter of the force which their own planning had determined was necessary for the occupation of Iraq. They expected and planned for no resistance. They expected and planned for all of the existing government structure to remain intact. They disbanded the military, which overnight created a highly armed and trained resistance movement which resulted in the deaths of thousands and debilitating injuries to tens of thousands of American soldiers. They were arrogant and stupid, and we as a country will be paying the price for a very very long time. Trillions of dollars and countless American lives ruined.
On top of that, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives and millions were displaced (fled their homes) by the sectarian conflict which was unleashed by the invasion of Iraq. On top of that, priceless antiquities from the birth of civilization were destroyed in the looting which occurred after the liberation of Baghdad, and subsquently in areas where ISIS has taken over, such as Mosul, due to the power vacuum which resulted directly from the toppling of the Iraqi government.
The invasion of Iraq was unnecessary. It was stupid. It was careless. It was evil. It was the Bush administration's strong desire to invade Iraq. They ginned up the intelligence to make it happen. They are almost wholly responsible for the debacle which ensued.
I agree with you that Democrats and Republicans in Congress should not have authorized the Iraq war. It was a colossal mistake. But, the blame rests squarely with the Bush administration, which manipulated the country into going to war.
Democrats deserve far less blame than the Bush administration, which actually set the war in motion. The Bush administration argued that they needed the authorization to use force in order to have a strong negotiating position with Saddam Hussein. Turned out negotiation was the furthest thing from their minds. The actual invasion of Iraq was ordered by Bush. The Democrats watched from the sidelines, powerless to affect the actions of the executive branch (they had abdicated their power by authorizing the use of force).
I think the point about "serious film and theater" means film and theater which addresses the human condition or speaks truth to power.
The records law was brought into the 21st century after Clinton left the State Department. Also, she turned over all official correspondence.
She may not have violated any laws.
http://thedailybanter.com/2015...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...
Thanks! OSM is pretty amazing.
Thanks. The editing tool is pretty sophisticated, so I think I did it right, but if not I'll fix it. :-)
I also added a "no left turn" restriction at the intersection, so that it matches the existing signage, and I modified all of the roads in the gated residential area to be private access roads.
I modified a road in OSM to be one-way, because it is an exit only road from a gated community. Will this change be reflected in the OSM routing?
For the moment, the change is reflected on the map but not in the routing.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Boy-...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...
When we are born, we have no choice what home we are born into, or who our parents are. We may be born into wealth or poverty. We may have parents who treat us with care and tenderness; or we may have parents who don't know how to care for a child, have drug addictions, are incarcerated, are violent, or are mentally unstable. Some children are loved and kissed, while other children are severely neglected, beaten, or abused sexually. This is the lottery we all played. Most of us won. Some children lost.
Abused children are missing a part of their childhood. Where they should have received love, they received brutality or neglect. Because they missed out on a crucial part of their development, they are behind the other children. Children which have to be removed from their parents for their protection can sometimes be placed with family or a close friend. When this is not possible, they enter the foster care system.
In the foster care system, there may be many people involved in the child's life: parents, other family or friends, social workers, attorneys, therapists, doctors, educators, foster parents or group home staff, and hopefully a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) or Guardian ad Litem (GAL).
A CASA is a volunteer who is a constant adult presence in the child's life, which may be lacking other permanency. While social workers, group home staff, therapists, and doctors may work with many children, a CASA is assigned to a single child. The CASA meets with the child at least every other week, takes her out for activities or to eat, learns about her needs and circumstances, and uses this knowledge to advocate for her best interests.
Please consider volunteering as a CASA.
http://www.casaforchildren.org...
"The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog" contains stories about children who went through trauma, and recovered to a degree one would not have thought possible. One of the stories is about the indoctrinated children who were released from Waco, before the structure burned. Another story is about a child which spent about a year (as I recall) caged like an animal. Though disturbing, it's a fascinating look at childhood development and a fresh way of looking at how best to care for traumatized children and help them to be able to heal as much as possible.
"Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential -- and Endangered" is about how empathy is "learned", and why it is so essential.
Both books are by co-authors Dr. Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz. They are highly recommended for anyone working with traumatized children.
As long as everyone knows the word we are talking about, nothing is lost by blocking out a few letters.
The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. Quit arguing about how to use the government against the "other side", whichever side you are on. If you don't want the government making you pay for Iraq, shrink the government. If you don't want the government telling Catholics they have to fund birth control and abortifacients, shrink the government.
Quit using the government as a stick with which to beat your enemies, then complaining when they turn around and use it to beat on you.
What nonsense! That's about like saying that if your brother takes a hammer to your bedroom walls, you should get rid of the hammer instead of doing something about your psycho brother. Government is a tool. It can be a tool operated for the public good or a tool for the enrichment of defense contractors. I choose the former, Republicans choose the latter, and you choose to throw away the tool.
How did this get labeled Insightful? The Federal Government is requiring many Catholic organizations to provide contraception in the policies they provide their employees. Because these organizations pay at least partially for these policies, they are being required to pay for contraception. The slimy move to say it doesn't have to be in the policy, but has to be provided for free it just bull and every one knows it.
I have less than zero sympathy, because I was forced to pay for the invasion of Iraq, with all the subsequent aftermath of at least 4 million people displaced from their homes, hundreds of thousands killed, worse living conditions than before, and women's rights brought down to the standard of other countries in the region.
And I'm supposed to support Catholic organizations' mission to deny birth control coverage for their employees? Not gonna happen.
It's pretty unfair to tar Democrats with the actions of Boss Tweed in the 1800's. I suggest you drop him from your list in the future. ;)
;)
Today's Republican corruption is unprecedented, except maybe in the days of the old political machines.
Here's a nice list of corrupt and scandalized Republicans in the Bush administration, from TPMmuckracker. Note that this list doesn't include convicted (now ex-) Congressman Bob Ney, Jack Abramoff, or other non-administration Republicans, but it's a loooong list nonetheless.
Our Great List of Scandalized Administration Officials
Here is a nice YouTube video listing Republicans who have been indicted or are currently under criminal investigation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6yeUYBIbGU
I like that the sheriff from Eureka is in the video. He's a real law-and-order type of guy.
Rumsfeld has been one of the worst SecDef's of all time. Read Cobra II, the definitive history of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Rumsfeld micromanaged the deployment of troops to Iraq to such an extent that personnel arrived without their equipment and troops were assigned to tasks they had no training for. Rumsfeld discounted the experience of his generals, and thought that he knew more about warfighting, logistics, etc. than the people who spent their whole career training and preparing for it. He expressly forbade planning for the postwar environment. How stupid is that?! Here's an article on the web to get you started: Offense and Defense: The Battle Between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon Or you can google "Rumsfeld" and "TPFDL".
The study was only posted after Boxer dropped a ton of whoop-ass on the Chairman of the FCC. She only had the report because a whistleblower from within the FCC provided it to her. Otherwise, we would never have heard that the FCC had found that locally-owned stations produce significantly more local news than do non-locally-owned stations.
"Democrat Party" is the disparaging term which Republicans use for the "Democratic Party". It's sort of like calling Mormons "Morons", another disparaging term which rightwingers throw around.
Not appropriate for a Slashdot story.
You're forgetting a couple of things.
1) We've based our economy entirely around cheap transportation. JIT delivery and distributed production only makes sense in the context of cheap transportation costs.
2) Oil is used for a lot more than running our automobiles. Goodbye cheap plastic containers. Guess what a lot of food is packaged in?
Prices of everything would go up in Peak Oil times, not just your occasional drives.
Probably because you go by what you hear about the ACLU on the news. You should check out the ACLU website to see what their priorities are, rather than going on the basis of second-hand sources.
For instance, they went after the Clinton administration in regards to the Echelon spying program:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/200