Just curious, did you have this same attitude 4 years ago? or at 8 years ago..?
I seem to recall a lot of dems screaming like banshees, nonstop, after both prior elections. In contrast, I think most republicans have generally been more calm and mature about losing this election (with the exception of a few white supremacist racists)
PS - Obama is not some kind of messiah, he's a politician, like any other. This will be more obvious in time. All this wide eyed sycophancy is going to lead to embarrassment.
This is not news-worthy news here. It's just another/. opportunity to Bush-bash and/or praise Obama.
Why is it that it took a constitutional amendment to start prohibition of alcohol, and bring it back...but, other drugs have been taken out of public use by the swipe of a pen?
A lot of court cases, which took place between the enactment of prohibition and the present, that drastically altered the interpretation of: the elastic clause, the general welfare clause, and the interstate commerce clause.
The real reason drugs remain illegal stems from the fact that society, as a whole, has taken responsibility for the actions of its individual citizens. As long as we socialize the costs of substance abuse: neglected children, hospital bills, and criminal activity; society will proscribe behaviors which tend to increase those costs. Rightly or wrongly, society, as a whole, views drug use as a cost which carries no benefit.
As a, more or less, strict libertarian, I believe that all drugs should be legalized. I also believe that the government has no business picking up the tab for the costs of abuse. So, while we continue to view it as the government's job to pay for someone else's risky behavior, we'll never see the blanket legalization of all drugs.
Exactly! This is what worries me about socialistic type societies sometimes. Everyone wants their "freedom", but they're more than willing to submit to more and more socialistic programs and government oversight because of the promise of a safety blanket. Everytime someone you allow someone to do "something for you", you're also giving them a degree of control over your life.
In general, everyone winds up paying or being punished for the action of a few.
Oi, you finally bought into everything they've been shoving down your throat here for years?
Do you sincerely believe the POTUS is personally responsible for everything that's gone wrong in this country? That Congress has no bearing or effect and is to be absolved of all blame? Man, when will people get over this idyllic assumption that the man in the White House controls everything? It's too simplistic, too black and white. If that were the case, we wouldn't bother with 3 branches of government, we wouldn't have a Congress. Sure the president does have some powers (especially during wartime) but he's a convenient scapegoat for the opposition party for the most part.
In regards to the whole wiretapping thing:
Personally I don't think Bush is "power hungry". And actually, it was Cheney who started up the wiretaps, not Bush, who found out about it later (according to an NPR interview). I think Bush has allowed it though, whether you agree with him or not, simply because of 9-11, not because of some power trip, and I'm shocked at the number of people who no longer feel AQ is any kind of threat. That's exactly the complacent, cocky mindset that allowed 9-11 to happen in the first place, and here, a scant 7 years later, it seems we haven't learned our lesson.
That's the irony of a government who's managed to do a decent job of suppressing terrorism (the pathetic FAA aside); the threat is perceived to be non-existent and the gov't gets no credit for anything other than being oppressive. I suspect years from now, when current documents are declassified, we're going to shuddering with the number of close calls we never knew about.
The greatest tool in fighting terrorism is intelligence, not bombs; and getting that intel in time.
So just how do you guys propose we get that intelligence inside our own country? Going through the current bureaucratic system, by the time you get a warrant, the threat has likely caught on and moved. Also, I don't equate wiretapping within the country as spying on our own citizens: more likely, we're wiretapping on illegal aliens within our own country. Big difference.
I don't like losing any constitutional rights anymore than anyone else, but I seriously doubt they're wiretapping me - or any of you.
Of course, that brings us to the classic "slippery slope" argument - the wiretapping starts small, but never gets repealed, the practice expands and soon Big Brother is watching everyone. Well, not if we keep an eye on it, it won't. It was done for anti-terrorism purposes - and let's keep it that way. But I'm not convinced of the wisdom of doing away with it entirely right now. We could lose very valuable information.
This brings us to the next argument: the old adage, "Those who are willing to sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither". A brilliant saying, but I think it's being used grossly out of context in the here and now. When Ben Franklin said that during the revolutionary war, the colonists were the ones practicing subterfuge within a British government - in a way, we Americans were the terrorists. Franklin simply meant that those who weren't brave enough to fight were cowards who didn't deserve a free country. Now those words are being twisted into something completely different. I wonder: would Ben Franklin approve of such wiretaps, given the threat to the US? I wouldn't be shocked if he did. The young, fledgling US of A was no idyllic Utopia then either.
Lastly, the fact that the wiretaps are constantly used to slam Bush, but the same people usually fail to mention Obama's support for them too suggests that it's more a political ploy than a genuine issue of concern.
Geniuses are more the product of their upbringing and social circumstances during their development as a human being and less the product of some genetic accident.
Yes, that means that the "average" human could, with the right parenting, circumstances and/or education (as distinct from schooling, which what passes off as education these days), be a genius.
What was so unique about Einstein's upbringing? He basically drove himself. It seems more genetic than environment to me, though I'm sure both play a role.
You can foster a learning environment where people gain book smarts and value wisdom, but intelligence itself (the ability to learn, solve problems, and recognize patterns)is an internal value, IMO.
Anyway, I'd love to see a "real" Neanderthal. Hey, maybe they could blend the DNA to make it an "Einstein Neanderthal"!
They did, which is why the zombie plague outbreak of 32,612 BC wiped them out but left a few humans.
Contrary to popular opinion, zombies don't eat just brains, nor do they talk and say, "Brraaaaaiinnnssss". They are opportunists, and will eat any organ or bits o' flesh they can sink their rotting teeth into. Brains are actually rather hard to get to, being encased in the cranium and all.
And not just that, but what about David Kernell who broke into and read Gov Palin's emails? What will happen to him, a slap on the wrist?
C'mon, that's far worse than reading a mere "send" or "call" list. He hoped to find some dirt but found nothing so he can't even try to use the ends to justify the means.
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's double standards.
And really, whoever compared this to the wiretaps during a time of war, when internal espionage is 100% feasible, is comparing apples to oranges - a really desperate swipe at the current administration.
The main thing that came out of it for me (and sort of killed my view of him as a Straight Talker, etc) was that he was always an opportunist (Keating 5, change of stance on torture to try and get elected, etc).
Like I said, I agree he wasn't the best candidate they ever put forth. However, McCain (and John Glenn) were both cleared in the Keating 5 scandal. Cranston, DeConcini, and Riegle were charged. McCain got out when he realized how improper the whole thing was.
The committee found that Glenn and McCain were only minimally involved, and accused McCain of "poor judgment". The committee's counsel had wanted to drop McCain from the case entirely, but leaders kept him in it to maintain an appearance of bipartisan scandal. McCain later concluded: "I was judged eventually, after three years, of using, quote, poor judgment, and I agree with that assessment".
As far as it being "just" Rolling Stone mag, imagine if "Macy's" had started putting out negative banners about Obama in all their stores - it would have had an effect, regardless of their "news validity".
My point was though, there was dirt on both sides, but they chose to only cover the one side. Selective journalism = propaganda.
I agree - NPR is fairly balanced, I think. I don't perceive a bias in them, though my wife thinks I'm crazy for saying that. I think they've made strides toward giving both sides equal time.
Fox and CNN are both biased, but in importantly different ways (besides the obvious R vs L thing):
Fox is very blatant, it's part of their tabloid style. They will bring up issues that are out there that put their guy in a negative light, but then they'll proceed to discuss those issues and usually belittle or trivialize them, and then move on.
CNN, on the other hand, is far more subtle, they exercise their bias via selective reporting; if it's a negative story on their guy, they simply don't report on it - like the time Al Gore's kid got a DUI or DWI, and CNN didn't go anywhere near that story, but, they were all over the Bush girls' drinking. This subtlety appears to give them a more objective "businesslike" sheen but underneath they too have bias. I see Ted Turner as essentially the mirror reverse image of Rupert Murdoch, TT is just more surreptitious about it.
I don't watch MSNBC so I don't personally know how they swing. Didn't they used to have that "Savage" loudmouth guy on there a few years ago?
Granted - but then on that note, what does trying to get laid in your youth have to do with it either? - Yet, Rolling Stone Magazine - with it's huge readership - ran a cover story by Tim Dickinson (October, I think?)that was nothing less than a full out attack on McCain, a character assassination based on his "gallivanting" youth in the armed services. There was nothing really new there, it was just written to paint him in as negative a light as humanly possible. Not that I think McCain was the best choice the Repubs ever put forward (I don't), but the stuff in this article was really trite (not to mention decades ago), and I didn't see any huge cover stories bringing up any of Obama's negative youthful aspects - he gets treated like he's some sort of messiah.
If you dig up "dirt" on one candidate, and there's clearly dirt on the other (Ayres, for one thing), then you gotta do the other too. The media can't claim it's just "reporting news" when it's being blatantly selective. (Yes, Fox was in McCain's corner but they also reported "dirt" on him as well as Obama).
That Rolling Stone issue was little more than a huge negative ad campaign. I have no doubt that issue did a lot to sway a large chunk of youth culture to eschew McCain. (Even though so many kids act the same exact way in College! lol)
Relevance is a matter of perspective - and which side you're on, apparently.
Hugely disappointed seems a bit extreme. The alternative was Sarah Palin ending up taking over when McCain has problems.
Both candidates promised price controls and nationalization and "socialism" (the American variety, which is a much more general than the rest of the world means by that word).
If you are a republican no matter what (which voting for McCain/Palin would indicate) then you should be happy for Obama to win. The country is screwed - thank you Clinton and Bush and Greenspan and Bernanke - with the point of no return long passed. Both of them would have made things worse, well Obama will and McCain would have I guess. But there's a chance that when people see that the US is no longer the world's super power they might just blame Obama and usher in a couple of decades of Republican rule.
If McCain won, then it's absolutely certain that it would usher in decades of Democrat rule since there'd be nowhere for the blame to go except the Republicans (Clinton would be long forgotten). Yeah, yeah Democrat congress - no one cares buck stops with the boss.
America is broke as a country. That military overseas is going to be unaffordable reasonably soon, and the troops will have to be brought home simply because they won't be able to be paid anymore. Obama has a better chance of pulling that off than McCain without it looking like a complete failure - he can declare victory and pretend the job is done, McCain would lose a lot of face being forced to bring the troops home because the country can't afford to buy them food anymore.
I think you raise some interesting and valid points, but I still don't think McCain is going to kick the bucket as soon as everyone suggests.
(BTW, anyone seen him listed in an online death pool? )
We might face the same issue with Obama - if some whacko skinhead actually manages to off him (and you know they'll try), we're stuck with Biden.
Either way, this has been a really lousy millennium to be president, and I don't see it improving anytime real soon.
I agree. Warm up is important, no doubt about that, but I think the "old school" of exercise over emphasizes stretching a bit, and this wouldn't be the first report I've heard that said stretching (or rather, excessive stretching)can actually be detrimental. It's the same thing with the "8 glasses of water a day" myth - it's going overboard.
The FA isn't saying "don't stretch", rather, they're simply pointing out that a static 30 second stretch will weaken the muscle up to 30% for up to half an hour.
I used to lift in my younger days, and I always felt shakier with the weights if I overdid the stretching before hand. So, I interpret it as, some stretching = good, over stretching = bad.
Not sure i agree. Pax americana has hardly been peaceful. Frankly i don't think the chinese are all that interested in world domination by military force, they're accomplishing much the same goal economically anyway. And the russians... they're like the middle east, get the world off oil and they're impotent.
That would make Russia all the more dangerous, I think, and I worry that China's surge in economics is just "phase one". They want to be a super power in every sense of the word.
Anyhoo, I wasn't making a strawman argument that you guys necessarily want the US to dry up and disappear (though I think some do), I just trying to illustrate the point that we're a placeholder of sorts. (Before us, it was Great Britain, and so on).
Had it not been for 9-11, things would be very different today.
I guess the question is this: do we want to make it a requirement that a candidate be able to afford high end clothing out of their own finances before they can run for President? Because if a candidate needs high end clothes, and its not acceptable for the campaign to buy them, then that's the requirement that we just added to the list of Presidential qualifications.
No, I think she should have worn nice jeans and a nice shirt to her rallies. That's all that's needed to win Joe Sixpack over. Especially when you pass yourself off as a hockey mom. Why not dress the part? I think the American people would appreciate a little honesty from their politicians every once in a while.
I don't think her wanting to dress appropriately as a VP candidate is exactly "dishonest". So, she's a hockey mom in her personal life and on her private time. That doesn't mean she should dress casual 24/7 as a matter of "integrity", especially when attending an affair with the gravity of a presidential race or rally.
I agree with what you're saying here regarding the tabloid style and sensationalism - though all media outlets are sensationalist, really- my beef is the claim that they "make up" stories.
Can anyone cite any validated reference of any time Fox actually fabricated a news story?
Spin or partisanship is one thing, but outright fraud is another. In that sense, I find them as valid.
Equally invalidating to a news organization is the suppression of news stories when it hurts their preferred candidate. I've seen Fox cover negative stories of Republicans (and those who claim they don't aren't really watching!) but also negative stories on the other side that other sources tend to ignore, like when Gore's kid got a DUI or DWI. CNN didn't consider that newsworthy, but if it had been a Republican's kid, you bet it'd would've been one of their top stories.
And I watch both Fox and CNN. MSNBC, meh, not so much.
Oh - and Fox babes rock! Can't argue with that!;-)
Sorry, I didn't see the part about "Australian politics". No, I don't think Oz land is part of the EU! lol
Personally, I don't think the world is ready yet not have a democratic country that tends to lead, for the simple reason that nature abhors a vacuum. If the US "steps down", someone will step in to take that spot - but who? Better us than Russia or China.
Believe me, most Americans don't want to play "policemen of the world", but at this particular time in history, if someone doesn't at least take a strong lead, someone else will, and chances are they'll be a whole lot worse than us. History is full of examples - those who don't learn from it are doomed to repeat it. I consider us the lesser of necessary evils.;-)
Let me ask a hypothetical question:
If the USA disappeared off the face of the Earth overnight, which would happen?
A) Peace, tranquility and self-governance would settle over the world, and they lived happily ever after.
B) Wars would break out everywhere, and several dictators would attempt (and possibly succeed) to reign over free countries.*
C) No difference.
Russia seems to be heading in that direction already
Cowardly moderators, you couldn't resist, could you?
This is flamebait or trolling how? exactly?
How about claiming an official news source "makes up" stories? Now that's flamebait and trolling. All I did was challenge that accusation.
I never said Fox wasn't biased, but the news stories they report are still valid and true - regardless of spin - they don't "make up" stuff, and that's what I was responding to.
They spin stuff to balance out the spin from Ted Turner. You really think Ted Turner is neutral?? He's the left equivalent of Rupert Murdoch.
Every newspaper and cable news network is biased one way or another. Newspapers actually endorse candidates, which I think is ludicrous, no matter which guy they go for. Ultimately, the media should just report.
Power isn't just about military might. Economics, among other things, is a big player. You sound pretty arrogant yourself.
So many (not all) Europeans seem to want to see America reduced to a satellite country, one who asks for "forgiveness" or "permission" from the EU. NO country would allow itself to slip like that, yours included. Why should we?
You think the EU is ready to stand up and replace the US as world leader? Go for it. Your history is far more bloody than ours...should be interesting.
If you don't think the president matters, then I hope that you didn't vote. After all, why expend all the time and energy to even pay attention to politics. Just let us silly liberals run everything and tell yourself that it doesn't matter who is in charge.
But you guys give waaay too much credit or blame to the POTUS. It simply doesn't have the level of effect on everything you claim the office does.
You tend to completely ignore Congress, but maybe that's a partisan issue - if the Congress were a Republican majority, it might be different.
Or maybe it's just your socialist idea of government, you think a single man should or could have that much power over the government.
But now that it's a total Democratic sweep, you won't be able to blame Republicans for everything much longer, and that should be interesting and refreshing.
The Patriot Act isn't going away, for one thing, and I hope you enjoy paying higher taxes because it's not the "rich" that's gonna get it - it's all of us - it always is.
You haven't seen infrared printers, infrared keyboards, mice, webcams? Your TV remote works by shining an infrared LED. Gameboy systems used to have infrared emitters/sensors so that they could communicate with each other.
Yes, but wireless mice generally do not work on infrared communications. They're RF. The infrared beam only replaces the old mechanical ball system of tracking the surface. It has nothing to do with replacing the cable. That's why lots of infrared mice still have to be plugged into the USB or PS/2 port.
Wireless does not = optical.
Who says security theater is there to "calm" the crowds. Most travelers aren't fearful of their safety or agitated until they experience the theatrics. The point is to make people believe that there's something to fear. There's good money and political capital in fearful and aggravated passengers.
Cause yeah, everyone knows that's great for business! Those airlines are making a fortune making people falsely believe they could be killed while flying their airline!
Also, aside from the raw statistics of the thing, there's another compounding factor that makes this even more useless*, which is it's rather simple for terrorists to game the system with dry runs.
Terrorist organizations already tend to use people not on our radar for attacks, so if they get pulled out of line on a dry-run, we won't have anything on them and it'll look like yet another false positive. Our young jihadi goes through the line with a bunch of his buddies, and everyone who gets pulled out of line doesn't go through the next time. Once you've discovered the group of people who aren't detected by the terrorist detector/profilers/crystal ball, the hot run can proceed with little fear of getting caught.
I agree up to a point, but the stress level in a dry run is also going to be significantly less than the real thing too, so how effective dry runs are remains questionable. They could do runs such that only the leader knows whether it's a dry run or the real deal and only informs the rest of the cell once they're past security checkpoints, but the leader would still be in the know and be a potential risk.
What I want to know is, how the hell do they measure heart rate and pulse from a distance?
The whole reason Palin is using Yahoo instead of government sponsored email is that any email sent through those channels is archived for a Very Long Time as a matter of public record. Wondering what the clerk at the DMV is REALLY emailing about? Put in a freedom of information act request and it's all yours.
By Palin using yahoo, it's not closely watched and she can conduct official business off the record. It's very poor form to do so and is the real story here.
But there was nothing "incriminating" in her emails. She wasn't using it to "conduct business" to hide anything. So your argument is completely unsubstantiated.
I suppose Biden and Obama have personal email accounts with absolutely NO political related matter in them? That's silly, they all do - they're politicians.
Slashdot Mirror
Hal, hate to be the one to tell you...
We Won. You Lost. Get Over It.
Just curious, did you have this same attitude 4 years ago? or at 8 years ago..?
/. opportunity to Bush-bash and/or praise Obama.
I seem to recall a lot of dems screaming like banshees, nonstop, after both prior elections. In contrast, I think most republicans have generally been more calm and mature about losing this election (with the exception of a few white supremacist racists)
PS - Obama is not some kind of messiah, he's a politician, like any other. This will be more obvious in time. All this wide eyed sycophancy is going to lead to embarrassment.
This is not news-worthy news here. It's just another
Why is it that it took a constitutional amendment to start prohibition of alcohol, and bring it back...but, other drugs have been taken out of public use by the swipe of a pen?
A lot of court cases, which took place between the enactment of prohibition and the present, that drastically altered the interpretation of: the elastic clause, the general welfare clause, and the interstate commerce clause.
The real reason drugs remain illegal stems from the fact that society, as a whole, has taken responsibility for the actions of its individual citizens. As long as we socialize the costs of substance abuse: neglected children, hospital bills, and criminal activity; society will proscribe behaviors which tend to increase those costs. Rightly or wrongly, society, as a whole, views drug use as a cost which carries no benefit.
As a, more or less, strict libertarian, I believe that all drugs should be legalized. I also believe that the government has no business picking up the tab for the costs of abuse. So, while we continue to view it as the government's job to pay for someone else's risky behavior, we'll never see the blanket legalization of all drugs.
Exactly! This is what worries me about socialistic type societies sometimes. Everyone wants their "freedom", but they're more than willing to submit to more and more socialistic programs and government oversight because of the promise of a safety blanket. Everytime someone you allow someone to do "something for you", you're also giving them a degree of control over your life.
In general, everyone winds up paying or being punished for the action of a few.
Oi, you finally bought into everything they've been shoving down your throat here for years?
Do you sincerely believe the POTUS is personally responsible for everything that's gone wrong in this country? That Congress has no bearing or effect and is to be absolved of all blame? Man, when will people get over this idyllic assumption that the man in the White House controls everything? It's too simplistic, too black and white. If that were the case, we wouldn't bother with 3 branches of government, we wouldn't have a Congress. Sure the president does have some powers (especially during wartime) but he's a convenient scapegoat for the opposition party for the most part.
In regards to the whole wiretapping thing:
Personally I don't think Bush is "power hungry". And actually, it was Cheney who started up the wiretaps, not Bush, who found out about it later (according to an NPR interview). I think Bush has allowed it though, whether you agree with him or not, simply because of 9-11, not because of some power trip, and I'm shocked at the number of people who no longer feel AQ is any kind of threat. That's exactly the complacent, cocky mindset that allowed 9-11 to happen in the first place, and here, a scant 7 years later, it seems we haven't learned our lesson.
That's the irony of a government who's managed to do a decent job of suppressing terrorism (the pathetic FAA aside); the threat is perceived to be non-existent and the gov't gets no credit for anything other than being oppressive. I suspect years from now, when current documents are declassified, we're going to shuddering with the number of close calls we never knew about.
The greatest tool in fighting terrorism is intelligence, not bombs; and getting that intel in time.
So just how do you guys propose we get that intelligence inside our own country? Going through the current bureaucratic system, by the time you get a warrant, the threat has likely caught on and moved. Also, I don't equate wiretapping within the country as spying on our own citizens: more likely, we're wiretapping on illegal aliens within our own country. Big difference.
I don't like losing any constitutional rights anymore than anyone else, but I seriously doubt they're wiretapping me - or any of you.
Of course, that brings us to the classic "slippery slope" argument - the wiretapping starts small, but never gets repealed, the practice expands and soon Big Brother is watching everyone. Well, not if we keep an eye on it, it won't. It was done for anti-terrorism purposes - and let's keep it that way. But I'm not convinced of the wisdom of doing away with it entirely right now. We could lose very valuable information.
This brings us to the next argument: the old adage, "Those who are willing to sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither". A brilliant saying, but I think it's being used grossly out of context in the here and now. When Ben Franklin said that during the revolutionary war, the colonists were the ones practicing subterfuge within a British government - in a way, we Americans were the terrorists. Franklin simply meant that those who weren't brave enough to fight were cowards who didn't deserve a free country. Now those words are being twisted into something completely different. I wonder: would Ben Franklin approve of such wiretaps, given the threat to the US? I wouldn't be shocked if he did. The young, fledgling US of A was no idyllic Utopia then either. Lastly, the fact that the wiretaps are constantly used to slam Bush, but the same people usually fail to mention Obama's support for them too suggests that it's more a political ploy than a genuine issue of concern.
Wouldn't work.
Geniuses are more the product of their upbringing and social circumstances during their development as a human being and less the product of some genetic accident.
Yes, that means that the "average" human could, with the right parenting, circumstances and/or education (as distinct from schooling, which what passes off as education these days), be a genius.
What was so unique about Einstein's upbringing? He basically drove himself. It seems more genetic than environment to me, though I'm sure both play a role.
You can foster a learning environment where people gain book smarts and value wisdom, but intelligence itself (the ability to learn, solve problems, and recognize patterns)is an internal value, IMO.
Anyway, I'd love to see a "real" Neanderthal. Hey, maybe they could blend the DNA to make it an "Einstein Neanderthal"!
They did, which is why the zombie plague outbreak of 32,612 BC wiped them out but left a few humans.
Contrary to popular opinion, zombies don't eat just brains, nor do they talk and say, "Brraaaaaiinnnssss". They are opportunists, and will eat any organ or bits o' flesh they can sink their rotting teeth into. Brains are actually rather hard to get to, being encased in the cranium and all.
Hmm.. a neanderthal zombie.. now that'd be scary.
And not just that, but what about David Kernell who broke into and read Gov Palin's emails? What will happen to him, a slap on the wrist?
C'mon, that's far worse than reading a mere "send" or "call" list. He hoped to find some dirt but found nothing so he can't even try to use the ends to justify the means.
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's double standards.
And really, whoever compared this to the wiretaps during a time of war, when internal espionage is 100% feasible, is comparing apples to oranges - a really desperate swipe at the current administration.
Anyone else catch this from TFA?
"In the experiment, the laser ionizes and accelerates electrons, which are driven right through the gold target."
Excuse me, but how the hell do you "ionize" an electron?!?
I'm sure they meant to say, "..the gold atoms, and accelerates electrons.."
The main thing that came out of it for me (and sort of killed my view of him as a Straight Talker, etc) was that he was always an opportunist (Keating 5, change of stance on torture to try and get elected, etc).
Like I said, I agree he wasn't the best candidate they ever put forth. However, McCain (and John Glenn) were both cleared in the Keating 5 scandal. Cranston, DeConcini, and Riegle were charged. McCain got out when he realized how improper the whole thing was. The committee found that Glenn and McCain were only minimally involved, and accused McCain of "poor judgment". The committee's counsel had wanted to drop McCain from the case entirely, but leaders kept him in it to maintain an appearance of bipartisan scandal. McCain later concluded: "I was judged eventually, after three years, of using, quote, poor judgment, and I agree with that assessment".
As far as it being "just" Rolling Stone mag, imagine if "Macy's" had started putting out negative banners about Obama in all their stores - it would have had an effect, regardless of their "news validity".
My point was though, there was dirt on both sides, but they chose to only cover the one side. Selective journalism = propaganda.
I agree - NPR is fairly balanced, I think. I don't perceive a bias in them, though my wife thinks I'm crazy for saying that. I think they've made strides toward giving both sides equal time.
Fox and CNN are both biased, but in importantly different ways (besides the obvious R vs L thing):
Fox is very blatant, it's part of their tabloid style. They will bring up issues that are out there that put their guy in a negative light, but then they'll proceed to discuss those issues and usually belittle or trivialize them, and then move on.
CNN, on the other hand, is far more subtle, they exercise their bias via selective reporting; if it's a negative story on their guy, they simply don't report on it - like the time Al Gore's kid got a DUI or DWI, and CNN didn't go anywhere near that story, but, they were all over the Bush girls' drinking. This subtlety appears to give them a more objective "businesslike" sheen but underneath they too have bias. I see Ted Turner as essentially the mirror reverse image of Rupert Murdoch, TT is just more surreptitious about it.
I don't watch MSNBC so I don't personally know how they swing. Didn't they used to have that "Savage" loudmouth guy on there a few years ago?
Granted - but then on that note, what does trying to get laid in your youth have to do with it either? - Yet, Rolling Stone Magazine - with it's huge readership - ran a cover story by Tim Dickinson (October, I think?)that was nothing less than a full out attack on McCain, a character assassination based on his "gallivanting" youth in the armed services. There was nothing really new there, it was just written to paint him in as negative a light as humanly possible. Not that I think McCain was the best choice the Repubs ever put forward (I don't), but the stuff in this article was really trite (not to mention decades ago), and I didn't see any huge cover stories bringing up any of Obama's negative youthful aspects - he gets treated like he's some sort of messiah.
If you dig up "dirt" on one candidate, and there's clearly dirt on the other (Ayres, for one thing), then you gotta do the other too. The media can't claim it's just "reporting news" when it's being blatantly selective.
(Yes, Fox was in McCain's corner but they also reported "dirt" on him as well as Obama).
That Rolling Stone issue was little more than a huge negative ad campaign. I have no doubt that issue did a lot to sway a large chunk of youth culture to eschew McCain. (Even though so many kids act the same exact way in College! lol)
Relevance is a matter of perspective - and which side you're on, apparently.
Hugely disappointed seems a bit extreme. The alternative was Sarah Palin ending up taking over when McCain has problems.
Both candidates promised price controls and nationalization and "socialism" (the American variety, which is a much more general than the rest of the world means by that word).
If you are a republican no matter what (which voting for McCain/Palin would indicate) then you should be happy for Obama to win. The country is screwed - thank you Clinton and Bush and Greenspan and Bernanke - with the point of no return long passed. Both of them would have made things worse, well Obama will and McCain would have I guess. But there's a chance that when people see that the US is no longer the world's super power they might just blame Obama and usher in a couple of decades of Republican rule.
If McCain won, then it's absolutely certain that it would usher in decades of Democrat rule since there'd be nowhere for the blame to go except the Republicans (Clinton would be long forgotten). Yeah, yeah Democrat congress - no one cares buck stops with the boss.
America is broke as a country. That military overseas is going to be unaffordable reasonably soon, and the troops will have to be brought home simply because they won't be able to be paid anymore. Obama has a better chance of pulling that off than McCain without it looking like a complete failure - he can declare victory and pretend the job is done, McCain would lose a lot of face being forced to bring the troops home because the country can't afford to buy them food anymore.
I think you raise some interesting and valid points, but I still don't think McCain is going to kick the bucket as soon as everyone suggests.
(BTW, anyone seen him listed in an online death pool? )
We might face the same issue with Obama - if some whacko skinhead actually manages to off him (and you know they'll try), we're stuck with Biden.
Either way, this has been a really lousy millennium to be president, and I don't see it improving anytime real soon.
I agree. Warm up is important, no doubt about that, but I think the "old school" of exercise over emphasizes stretching a bit, and this wouldn't be the first report I've heard that said stretching (or rather, excessive stretching)can actually be detrimental.
It's the same thing with the "8 glasses of water a day" myth - it's going overboard. The FA isn't saying "don't stretch", rather, they're simply pointing out that a static 30 second stretch will weaken the muscle up to 30% for up to half an hour. I used to lift in my younger days, and I always felt shakier with the weights if I overdid the stretching before hand. So, I interpret it as, some stretching = good, over stretching = bad.
Not sure i agree. Pax americana has hardly been peaceful. Frankly i don't think the chinese are all that interested in world domination by military force, they're accomplishing much the same goal economically anyway. And the russians... they're like the middle east, get the world off oil and they're impotent.
That would make Russia all the more dangerous, I think, and I worry that China's surge in economics is just "phase one".
They want to be a super power in every sense of the word.
Anyhoo, I wasn't making a strawman argument that you guys necessarily want the US to dry up and disappear (though I think some do), I just trying to illustrate the point that we're a placeholder of sorts. (Before us, it was Great Britain, and so on).
Had it not been for 9-11, things would be very different today.
No, I think she should have worn nice jeans and a nice shirt to her rallies. That's all that's needed to win Joe Sixpack over. Especially when you pass yourself off as a hockey mom. Why not dress the part? I think the American people would appreciate a little honesty from their politicians every once in a while.
I don't think her wanting to dress appropriately as a VP candidate is exactly "dishonest". So, she's a hockey mom in her personal life and on her private time. That doesn't mean she should dress casual 24/7 as a matter of "integrity", especially when attending an affair with the gravity of a presidential race or rally.
I agree with what you're saying here regarding the tabloid style and sensationalism - though all media outlets are sensationalist, really- my beef is the claim that they "make up" stories.
;-)
Can anyone cite any validated reference of any time Fox actually fabricated a news story?
Spin or partisanship is one thing, but outright fraud is another. In that sense, I find them as valid.
Equally invalidating to a news organization is the suppression of news stories when it hurts their preferred candidate. I've seen Fox cover negative stories of Republicans (and those who claim they don't aren't really watching!) but also negative stories on the other side that other sources tend to ignore, like when Gore's kid got a DUI or DWI. CNN didn't consider that newsworthy, but if it had been a Republican's kid, you bet it'd would've been one of their top stories.
And I watch both Fox and CNN. MSNBC, meh, not so much.
Oh - and Fox babes rock! Can't argue with that!
Sorry, I didn't see the part about "Australian politics". No, I don't think Oz land is part of the EU! lol
;-)
Personally, I don't think the world is ready yet not have a democratic country that tends to lead, for the simple reason that nature abhors a vacuum. If the US "steps down", someone will step in to take that spot - but who? Better us than Russia or China.
Believe me, most Americans don't want to play "policemen of the world", but at this particular time in history, if someone doesn't at least take a strong lead, someone else will, and chances are they'll be a whole lot worse than us. History is full of examples - those who don't learn from it are doomed to repeat it. I consider us the lesser of necessary evils.
Let me ask a hypothetical question:
If the USA disappeared off the face of the Earth overnight, which would happen?
A) Peace, tranquility and self-governance would settle over the world, and they lived happily ever after.
B) Wars would break out everywhere, and several dictators would attempt (and possibly succeed) to reign over free countries.*
C) No difference.
Russia seems to be heading in that direction already
Cowardly moderators,
you couldn't resist, could you? This is flamebait or trolling how? exactly?
How about claiming an official news source "makes up" stories? Now that's flamebait and trolling. All I did was challenge that accusation.
I never said Fox wasn't biased, but the news stories they report are still valid and true - regardless of spin - they don't "make up" stuff, and that's what I was responding to.
They spin stuff to balance out the spin from Ted Turner. You really think Ted Turner is neutral?? He's the left equivalent of Rupert Murdoch. Every newspaper and cable news network is biased one way or another. Newspapers actually endorse candidates, which I think is ludicrous, no matter which guy they go for. Ultimately, the media should just report.
Power isn't just about military might. Economics, among other things, is a big player. You sound pretty arrogant yourself.
So many (not all) Europeans seem to want to see America reduced to a satellite country, one who asks for "forgiveness" or "permission" from the EU. NO country would allow itself to slip like that, yours included. Why should we?
You think the EU is ready to stand up and replace the US as world leader? Go for it. Your history is far more bloody than ours...should be interesting.
If you don't think the president matters, then I hope that you didn't vote. After all, why expend all the time and energy to even pay attention to politics. Just let us silly liberals run everything and tell yourself that it doesn't matter who is in charge.
But you guys give waaay too much credit or blame to the POTUS. It simply doesn't have the level of effect on everything you claim the office does. You tend to completely ignore Congress, but maybe that's a partisan issue - if the Congress were a Republican majority, it might be different.
Or maybe it's just your socialist idea of government, you think a single man should or could have that much power over the government.
But now that it's a total Democratic sweep, you won't be able to blame Republicans for everything much longer, and that should be interesting and refreshing.
The Patriot Act isn't going away, for one thing, and I hope you enjoy paying higher taxes because it's not the "rich" that's gonna get it - it's all of us - it always is.
Bullshit. Talk about being bitter and not getting along with your fellow Americans. Fox is as valid as CNN or any other news source.
You haven't seen infrared printers, infrared keyboards, mice, webcams? Your TV remote works by shining an infrared LED. Gameboy systems used to have infrared emitters/sensors so that they could communicate with each other.
Yes, but wireless mice generally do not work on infrared communications. They're RF. The infrared beam only replaces the old mechanical ball system of tracking the surface. It has nothing to do with replacing the cable. That's why lots of infrared mice still have to be plugged into the USB or PS/2 port.
Wireless does not = optical.
Who says security theater is there to "calm" the crowds. Most travelers aren't fearful of their safety or agitated until they experience the theatrics. The point is to make people believe that there's something to fear. There's good money and political capital in fearful and aggravated passengers.
Cause yeah, everyone knows that's great for business! Those airlines are making a fortune making people falsely believe they could be killed while flying their airline!
..
Sheesh
Why is this article tagged "Republicans" ? This is a liberal, typical NEA type notion, if anything.
Isn't Harrisburg a democratic majority?
Also, aside from the raw statistics of the thing, there's another compounding factor that makes this even more useless*, which is it's rather simple for terrorists to game the system with dry runs.
Terrorist organizations already tend to use people not on our radar for attacks, so if they get pulled out of line on a dry-run, we won't have anything on them and it'll look like yet another false positive. Our young jihadi goes through the line with a bunch of his buddies, and everyone who gets pulled out of line doesn't go through the next time. Once you've discovered the group of people who aren't detected by the terrorist detector/profilers/crystal ball, the hot run can proceed with little fear of getting caught.
I agree up to a point, but the stress level in a dry run is also going to be significantly less than the real thing too, so how effective dry runs are remains questionable. They could do runs such that only the leader knows whether it's a dry run or the real deal and only informs the rest of the cell once they're past security checkpoints, but the leader would still be in the know and be a potential risk.
What I want to know is, how the hell do they measure heart rate and pulse from a distance?
The whole reason Palin is using Yahoo instead of government sponsored email is that any email sent through those channels is archived for a Very Long Time as a matter of public record. Wondering what the clerk at the DMV is REALLY emailing about? Put in a freedom of information act request and it's all yours. By Palin using yahoo, it's not closely watched and she can conduct official business off the record. It's very poor form to do so and is the real story here.
But there was nothing "incriminating" in her emails. She wasn't using it to "conduct business" to hide anything. So your argument is completely unsubstantiated.
I suppose Biden and Obama have personal email accounts with absolutely NO political related matter in them? That's silly, they all do - they're politicians.