With Bush, Inc. in charge, you can always rely on their ability to come up with something worse. It is notable that the proposed replacement is interested in the anti-missile, missile system (another name for the ill-fated corporate pork-fest known as star wars). This sentence; "the retired director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency tops a list of five men that President Bush is considering to take over the space agency." sends chills down my spine.
This is the same group that took money for Malaria and made it seem like new money for AIDs assistance for Africa. Then the pay-out gets stretched to beyond the administrations tenure. Like the "Iraq Rebuilding" that has only managed to spend about $250 million.
So look the NASA to put on a dog and pony and end up doing pentagon research assignments.
Another interesting tidbit I just heard from a man who wrote a book on why the Challenger accident was a result of the NASA's decline, is that NASA comes out of the same funding category as Welfare.
I don't know, can it get any more cynical than to pit the dream for the stars against a kid getting fed? Believe me, either it will be a ill conceived, money-wasting affair to get to Mars that pulls funding from serious research projects that have a real benefit (best case) or NASA will work on anti-missile, missile systems that fail to consider that ICBMs were the threat of the last two decades. Does anyone in the Bush brain trust bother to read? OK, now that is a rhetorical question.
No, I've actually saw a NeoCon float into the air his faith was so strong. And many have started dragging their knuckles, throwing poo and grunting things like "flip flop" and grinning to each other like they said something profound.
It seems science has been terribly wrong about evolution; "if you quit believing it, it might pass you by."
Do I sound a little pissed? The liberal in me has been trying to convince these people that the media is "CORPORATE" and that Liberal and Republican and other terms are just ways to distract us so that we will sling poo at each other.
You can't even save these throwbacks from themselves. I would want to laugh at what happens when we get a Flat Tax or a Value Added Tax to further rip off the poor and the middle class, but alas, I'll be too busy getting by and scraping out a living.
And Evolution is not a theory, it is an observed fact. When they say "Darwin's Theory of Evolution" please note that Darwin was a scientist who posed an explanation for why a few species of animal could come to an island and fill all the ecological niches in diverse roles. There is more than one "Theory" of evolution. Survival of the fittest does not explain everything we observe. There is a lot more cooperation in nature then we once believed. But the important point is, that people need to know that because science has not explained the HOW of something, it doesn't mean that the WHAT isn't a fact. All life evolves. That is fact, or we wouldn't need a new flu vaccine each year (quick someone tell the white house). And gravity DOES exist, and that is a fact, even though there are no good explanations of HOW it works.
That is another point; nature has diverse roles for all life. So we can't all be rich owners or financial brokers. Some of us have to pick up the trash or make things. Should those people have no right to a fair living?
Conspiracy crap? A good percentage of liberals I know are very uneasy about the choice of companies that created these voting machines.
Here is a test. Next 4 years, we can choose our companies to build the machines and to count the numbers. Michael Moore, and George Sourros will head the companies. Does that make you feel comfortable? Don't complain if somehow Barbara Streisand wins California, You just have to Move On.
Oh. and just because you can site an example where the Republicans didn't win, when they've had a great showing of blithering failures (oh, the economy, pollution, the rising cost of healthcare + anything else I'd bother to mention), does not mean that they didn't try to cheat.
The Libertarian you mention may actually be pushing the same NeoCon agenda that has worked so well for Mexico. I don't want to get into that debate, but having been a Libertarian and a Republican for I while, I had to leave because their economic concepts were not sustainable, and the Dems looked the least evil by a smidgen.
But I also live in Georgia, which is the Belt Buckle of the Bible Belt, so no amount of self interest or reality will outweigh a good rhetorical moralizer. And the ignorance of people listening to Neal Bortz and nodding to his ideas of a Value Added Tax are making me want to retch.
By the way, some months ago, the president of DieBold publicly stated that he would do everything in his power to see that President Bush was re-elected.
Can you not admit, that a system where elected officials approve the budgets for private corporations who control who gets elected IS a system that is bound to be corrupted? What are we paying for these boxes anyway? About $100k a piece? Doesn't that mean that most of the expense is for "services rendered".
And note, that in 2000, the Florida Government payed the people who conducted the voting about 10 times as much as 4 years before. The number of rejected voters went from about 8,000 to over 90,000. It has now been verified, that many of the people who were rejected was unwarranted (and of course, mostly from Democratic voters). I could point to a number of articles discussing this, but you would not be convinced.
Why are people so dead set against an idea of a "conspiracy." It is damn well profitable to have a president give taxpayer money to corporations. It is worth Billions. And we have many examples of overpaid contracts to look at. There are all sorts of conspiracies. But it seems that anyone pointing it out is automatically a nut. So what does anyone do about a conspiracy? Hand the crooks the keys and hope they run over a school bus full of kids on prime time news so that we can be sure they are the bad guys?
I'll say it. I think the Bush administration is a bunch of crooks. They behave like crooks. They act like crooks. They want everything secret and they punish anyone who criticizes them. They were conveniently incompetent on 9/11 and it has done nothing but give them a green light to push through their agenda. They have pandered to just about every corporate supporter, in historically cynical ways. They have lied and said Iraq was an immanent threat. Oops. Now we must forgive them because it is a tough job. Meanwhile, Billions of dollars of taxpayer money are going to companies owned by the Carlyle group, which has financial dealings with almost all of the Bush administration (Halliburton ain't half of it). And we are supposed to shrug that off because it's only coincidence that it's their pockets the money lands in "hey, it could happen to anyone".
Wow, the energy bill even indemnifies oil companies from lawsuits they might incur over gasoline additives. OK. The future looks bright. King George will start the "No two-headed baby left behind" program. Retraining as a circus freak can help a large portion of the genetically damaged. Good thing they can't sue.
And all 5 of the electronic voting companies have been major donators to the Reelect Bush fund.
Most never actually read the Patriot act. They had 8 hours or something before they had to sign it. Amazing so much stuff written so quickly. The DMCA just meant a lot of money to reelection coffers. Standard Operating Procedure.
What liberal or progressive is saying that they actually think these Democratic representatives are 100% pure? The rhetorical arguement for our current 4 year run of utter incompetence is that somehow, the opposing views have to have all the answers and meanwhile have troups of Angels trumpeting their purity before people will realise that we as a country are being very foolish.
Yes, there were problems with the Kyoto agreement. But we (I mean, the moron in Chief when I say WE), should have attended the latest rounds and should have stayed engaged. We could have come to some agreement and we should have been willing to make sacrifices.
And by sacrifices, I don't mean the tax right off for people buying Hummers. Or doing absolutely nothing positive towards conservation, or emmissions reduction.
But most NeoCons I talk to, will only realise that their was a problem, when the last ice cube melts from the North Pole. We in the US just look like a bunch of fools right now. Ironic that NASCAR and Hummers are so popular. Dumn American jokes will be the rage in twenty years.
If everything is done by pen and paper, 1) it'll take forever to get the election results, and 2) the losing candidate can still question the vote.
This is only for the election and our future. Let's not stand on convenience so that we can keep a crook in office. Besides, the major reason that these elections keep getting more expensive by a factor of ten each four years is because the crooks seem to be developing even more lavish tastes. Katherine Harris didn't come cheap.
The labels make $.68 on every track sale. Almost pure profit because they are just allowing Apple to repurpose a CD sale. This is much more per/unit profit then for each track in a store.
Apple is going to be fine. The labels can't leave a profit--they are incapable. The indies will take over. In a few years, most new artists will be "direct-to-web".
" If you think it's worth it, use it and don't bitch. If you think it's not worth it, use a different product and don't bitch. You make the choice, you get the pros and cons."
I'm sick of people sticking up for the big guy. Look, the companies look out for their interests and we look out for ours. Simply not buying isn't good enough. We have to express our opinion to others (bitch), in order to influence others to follow our lead. Collective bargaining (bitching) is absolutely the only way to change things in a Capitalist society.
You only have choice over what you are offered. So if you don't speak up, you won't be given reasonable offerings.
Universal DRM is a way to keep Apple from gaining control. The labels and Apple know it. Next comes the propaganda war to see if the the labels can get the consumers to buy into it.
All the consumers are going to do is shrug. They have an iPod, everything works fine. Why do they need ANOTHER DRM?
This won't go anywhere unless they can lobby for it.
But really, the only way this is going to be resovled is that the LABELS go the way of the buggy whip. That's what they are afraid of and legislating like Hell to stop. Once Apple is the prime source for music, exactly of what use are the Labels? Promotion and distribution can all occur anywhere you have web access and a display, which, in a few years, will be essentially everywhere.
The RIAA can only be a force for negative progress. They are trying to say that we all should be taxed, or bound in chains in order that they can sell each and every consumer a buggy-whip for their car. We don't need their horse, and we certainly don't need to pay for their buggy-whip.
You make some good arguments. But we should argue the ethics, not the religion. Saying; Human life is not ours with which to experiment. This implies there is some edict from God.
Now would you argue that a new type of cast is an experiment on human life that God wouldn't want? I suppose not. But would you argue that a person having an operation to not overeat or change their sex is something God would or wouldn't want? Less clear.
Is it OK if I remove some skin from my body and throw it away? You and I would probably say yes.
Is it OK if a fertilized cell grows up to become a human. Yes again.
Is it OK if that cell I removed from my body, with new technology grows up to become a human? I would say yes, but you might disagree.
But the cloning they are talking about is making duplicate cells in an embryonic process.
I think that many Right-To-Life advocates are making the argument that abortion and embryo research are murder. How do they define life? Is it just humans cells... NO. It is special cells that become babies. So is it merely human genes... no, they don't want my finger growing into a person, it's an embryo. Is it then consciousness that defines human life. NO. Fetuses don't even have brain waves until after the second trimester, and yet, most consider a day old blastocist to be sacred.
See the problem. You have no definable ethics that clearly state what truly constitutes a human life. Though both sides need to better state the case. Genetics alone don't make a human. Embryo alone does not make a human, because for most of the process, you'd be hard-put to differentiate between a mouse, a monkey or a human.
I'm probably getting too deep for this discussion though. I'm not talking coldly of no regard for humanity. It's just that I'm thinking way ahead to a time where that won't be so easy to define. The arguments I hear today about life and value and what is Gods province are based on what we can do today, but are not necessarily right or wrong, just provincial.
The idea that a thing that can grow to BECOME a human life is the only vessel of genius that can carry a human soul is going to look a lot like superstition in a few hundred years. If my finger could be grown in a vat to become a person I could come to know, what then constituted the SOUL, or the Human-ness? It takes a brain to suffer, a body to live and DNA to have human potential. So far, the only arguments for a soul I've heard from the Church is the ability to put a check in a collection plate.
The argument against stem cell research and cell cloning research has little appreciation for what it means to be human. There is nothing but unrealized potential in a collection of cells. If God cared so much about this, why then does he allow 80% of embryos in women to be re-absorbed (aborted naturally). But then, who am I to presume God's will?
I see an urgent need to clone non-viable human parts, and cells while making sure none grow to consciousness. You see, once the genie is out of the bottle, the desire for many to have new arms and legs will be overwhelming (profitable), so if we bury our head in the sands and wash hands or the whole thing, the cheaper and unethical growing of full viable clones for the purpose of harvesting organs will happen. I think we can both agree that this would be horrible. But it is often the case that ethical practices take a bit more care and work. So it is important to spend the money and do the ethical research, so that there isn't too much profit in "doing the wrong thing".
Ethical dilemmas occur when you have the ABILITY to do something. We have to grow up and take responsibility for what we can do. If you are unable to save a person with a heart attack, you hold their hand and comfort them as they die. If you gain the technology to replace the heart, should you help the person now? Probably. If that person will continue as conscious and have a life they deem worthy of living, then definitely. The argument that
Where to begin. I suppose I have to rip apart everything you said one at a time.
* Democrats claim Bush will reinstate the draft. Despite two bills introduced by Democrats, Bush absolutely claims that no draft will be done, even going as far as to explain that the draft would be contrary for their plans for better trained, more mobile army.
Bush claims; "X". If Bush claims he will clean up the environment, spread Democracy and protect America; well, he'll allow the polluters to pollute more because that's what they paid for, he'll send tanks, he'll fail to succeed at everything and have a reasonable excuse every time. In short; any Bush campaign promise you've heard in 2004, you also heard in 2000. So that means, you want to give him 4 more years not to do anything useful? If Bush claimed the sky was blue, I'd have to look at it again, just to make sure. This man is useless for our country now, because he has absolutely ZERO credibility anywhere but among NeoCons in this country.
You should understand the skepticism about the draft. Many of us (Liberals, Progressives, sane people) expect that with Bush's diplomatic skills (ahem), we're gonna need a whole mess more troops. Bush is always courageous enough to send somebody else's kids. I think we need a constitutional law that the only politicians who get to vote for a war, are ones sending their kids into harms way--but I digress, we can't raise the bar now. We have to wait for a Democrat to do that.
It goes against Bush's principles? I have seen no evidence that he has anything but self-righteousness. These guys get businesses donators together, make a plan to help the businesses, then tack on some patriotic-religious crap and throw all the propaganda they can spin against the wall, and amazingly it sticks. You guys are suckers for anything with tough talk or God thrown in. My daddy taught me that if someone tells you what a great Christian they are, hold onto your wallet. Personal belief is fine, but all this "i Believe" and "I Pray" doesn't mean crap as far as making sure people do the right thing. Note: Bin Laden is totally devout and convinced of his own righteousness. Faith does not inevitably lead to good decisions, it only helps people endure bad ones.
* It was Democrats, not Republicans, who actively lynched blacks in the South for voting, who instituted poll taxes and reading requirements. Republicans are the ones who fought them and instituted federal rules on who is and is not allowed to vote, and prosecuted the lynchings by the Democrat Ku Klux Klan. (Yes, that's right, most KKK members were democrats!)
The Dems of the old days you are talking about were the Dixicrats. Who do you think makes up the Republican party in the south today? The label is not the story. Republican and Democratic ideals have changed over the years. There are no Klan supporters among Democrats today, so why bring this up?
* It was Democrats, not Republicans, who managed the counties where the voters were reportedly disenfranchised in Florida during the 2000 election scandal. The butterfly ballot was approved by democrat election officials. This claim was unsubstantiated because it didn't happen, yet they continue to insinuate it.
Why do bank robbers rob banks? Because that's where the money is. So of course it was democrats who managed the counties where voter fraud occurred--because they were throwing out mostly democratic votes. Why would fraud need to occur in Republican counties? Just follow the disgraceful conduct of Catherine Harris. Read the BBC accounts of James Baker in Florida. The recount never happened--it was stopped by a sham protest. And you need to give Gore credit, he recused himself from the vote in congress so he would not be the one voting himself into office. The supreme court had no such class, as they interceded in the Florida Supreme courts decision to recount the vote... which was not what they are supposed to do, there was no constitutional issue.
This is a political section. Get used to change, will you? If you like Slashdot being technical, then having a forum for people to rant about politics might get some of that nonsense out of the technical forums.
To me, this election is much more important than the next Windows or Mac OS update.
This is now a pollitical section for geeks. I think it is a great idea because you have a different tone then perhaps you would get on a normal newsgroup forum.
When alcohol was made illegal, bootleg alcohol replaced it. When drugs were made illegal, bootleg drugs replaced it. The product here is not illegal music, it is music. If music were made illegal, the analogy would stand, but this is not about that.
Since the key product is still readily available, this is not a case that is at all similar to prohibition or the war on drugs.
I don't understand, what exactly did you just prove in your arguement? The examples the poster used are HARDER to stop. Of course it isn't similar. The poster is saying it is useless and impossible--so what are you arguing? Not impossible in the same way?
Apples and Oranges can be compared if you are talking about fruit. Do I have to explain the previous analogy?
The arguement against these illegal drugs is that they are unhealthy and kill people.
Of course, if the government distributed them for free to addicts only, they could make sure of the users health and bankrupt the drug trade at the same time.
In fact, even with dangerous chemicals mixed in and scary production standards, cocaine abuse only killed about 4,000 people at the height of its use during the 1980's. Compare that to (from memory, here), about 120,000 deaths on average to prescription drugs (tobacco is also about this rate, I believe--too lazy to google this, since I feel like facts have very little chance of penetrating, thick, neanderthalCon brains).
It's the poverty and gun play associated with drugs that kill most. If we made Bibles illegal, you'd have as many people dying in the Bible-Trade. Legal religion kills way too many people as it is, thank you very much.
Our American system is not meant to hinder crime and drug abuse, it is meant to punish bad people. It is interesting that many of the well to do that I know in suburbia, "experimented with drugs" just like our current president (though, his experimenting was a little more intensive than most), and since none of them were caugh by the law enforcement system, they have since grown up, gotten jobs, and are productive, upstanding citizens.
There are a lot of prison jobs (biggest area of job growth outside of government these last 4 years), and the system is large and powerful. If drugs were decriminalized, that would mean about an 80% reduction in prison population and probably the same reduction in people in the criminal justice system.
Face it, we are addicted to crime here. You have to have laws that most people break, so that you can have criminals.
If we just ignored people who did stupid things... ah, forget it--that's too far fetched. It is frustrating to live in America, where common knowledge dictates that all these "morality laws" are the way to make things RIGHT. Unfortuneatly, no one can point to any success with the Puritanical American model on much of anything. It's the less religious, socially free countries that actually have success in these social issues. Repressive societies only manage to abuse people and force problems into the closet. But why do what works, eh?
The war on drugs has led to 0% increase in drug use. In fact, has the "Kerry Commission" revealed (see, he did do stuff in the senate), the CIA itself was involved in Cocaine importation with Manuel Noriega, and much of the money was laundered through BCCI. Some may call this a conspiracy theory, but sadly, no. It was a report from a senate investigation, and some of the information came out on Frontline, and of course the BBC.
The war on Terror has scared Americans $hitless, and is a worry to moderates in Arab countries who have been positive or tolerant of the US until now. Terrorism has actually been increasing.
Perhaps they will start using tanks on file sharers, but my guess is that they will go after the money. That works, right? Exactly what Kerry was trying to do in the Senate and was blocked by the NeoCons from doing so. In fact, a newly released "secret" FBI document this past month reveals that the executive branch gave orders to the FBI to back off of any financial investigations of the Bin Laden family--just months before 9/11. This wasn't to protect Osama, it was because Bush got millions of Bin Laden money for his oil ventures.
So this threat will be pumped up beyond reason. Theft and security will be sound bites for intellectual property right propaganda. The big battle front will be "royalties" for copyrighted technology and genes. You won't be able to make an innovation without doling out extreme sums to Royalty holders. In ten years, we'll be calling the fat cats the Royalty for short. Full circle.
So, before anyone starts supporting a "war on anything" (like the current war on truth), remember that there is no exit strategy for these wars. There are no examples of them succeeding, except where the people are killed to save the village. These "wars" are meant to be constant exceptions to gain control. Will music, oil or drugs ever get cheaper while we are chasing down the last script kiddie--no. We will pay a protection tax to cover the expenses of protecting the profits of over-priced things. Does that sentence even make sense?
Note; despite the bitching of Bible-thumpers in the US about moral decay, during the 90's we have seen the largest ever drop in crime and violence in the US. A lot of that has to do with Education, Employment and Police. Since all of those things have been neglected the last few years, we should again see an uptick in crime. Note that crime will remain low, because now much of it will be reclassified as terrorism. Joy all around!
Agreed. The federal government shouldn't be in the business of protecting company profits... that would be Facism. Oh, I forgot, must have slept too long during the 80's. We are a country run by business.
Really, this is Bungies fault. They developed on a Microsoft system so inevitably someone hacked in and stole the code. If the responsibility for protecting secrets and securing networks were on the corporations then we wouldn't have to worry about our civil rights. Heck, even the fashion industry protects their designs.
The Government seems to just need a pretext to chip away at privacy and the constitution.
At 3 gigs, though, I think pre-ordering will get it to your house faster than downloading that big a file from the P2P nets. There is more worry about pirates making copies of the real disks then of kids who don't buy anything anyway, piecing together a French version over the course of a month. This will effect $0 in sales.
WalMart employees also tend to depend on public assistance more than the workers they replace. W is notorious for leaving healthcare to the state. And since the workers make 30% less than the workers they replace at other retail outlets, that means they qualify, because they are poor (thoughtful, that).
So welcome to the working poor, for families on the edge of desperation. And don't mind retirement, you can look forward to being a WalMart greeter in your golden years.
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With Bush, Inc. in charge, you can always rely on their ability to come up with something worse. It is notable that the proposed replacement is interested in the anti-missile, missile system (another name for the ill-fated corporate pork-fest known as star wars). This sentence; "the retired director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency tops a list of five men that President Bush is considering to take over the space agency." sends chills down my spine.
This is the same group that took money for Malaria and made it seem like new money for AIDs assistance for Africa. Then the pay-out gets stretched to beyond the administrations tenure. Like the "Iraq Rebuilding" that has only managed to spend about $250 million.
So look the NASA to put on a dog and pony and end up doing pentagon research assignments.
Another interesting tidbit I just heard from a man who wrote a book on why the Challenger accident was a result of the NASA's decline, is that NASA comes out of the same funding category as Welfare.
I don't know, can it get any more cynical than to pit the dream for the stars against a kid getting fed? Believe me, either it will be a ill conceived, money-wasting affair to get to Mars that pulls funding from serious research projects that have a real benefit (best case) or NASA will work on anti-missile, missile systems that fail to consider that ICBMs were the threat of the last two decades. Does anyone in the Bush brain trust bother to read? OK, now that is a rhetorical question.
No, I've actually saw a NeoCon float into the air his faith was so strong. And many have started dragging their knuckles, throwing poo and grunting things like "flip flop" and grinning to each other like they said something profound.
It seems science has been terribly wrong about evolution; "if you quit believing it, it might pass you by."
Do I sound a little pissed? The liberal in me has been trying to convince these people that the media is "CORPORATE" and that Liberal and Republican and other terms are just ways to distract us so that we will sling poo at each other.
You can't even save these throwbacks from themselves. I would want to laugh at what happens when we get a Flat Tax or a Value Added Tax to further rip off the poor and the middle class, but alas, I'll be too busy getting by and scraping out a living.
And Evolution is not a theory, it is an observed fact. When they say "Darwin's Theory of Evolution" please note that Darwin was a scientist who posed an explanation for why a few species of animal could come to an island and fill all the ecological niches in diverse roles. There is more than one "Theory" of evolution. Survival of the fittest does not explain everything we observe. There is a lot more cooperation in nature then we once believed. But the important point is, that people need to know that because science has not explained the HOW of something, it doesn't mean that the WHAT isn't a fact. All life evolves. That is fact, or we wouldn't need a new flu vaccine each year (quick someone tell the white house). And gravity DOES exist, and that is a fact, even though there are no good explanations of HOW it works.
That is another point; nature has diverse roles for all life. So we can't all be rich owners or financial brokers. Some of us have to pick up the trash or make things. Should those people have no right to a fair living?
Conspiracy crap? A good percentage of liberals I know are very uneasy about the choice of companies that created these voting machines.
Here is a test. Next 4 years, we can choose our companies to build the machines and to count the numbers. Michael Moore, and George Sourros will head the companies. Does that make you feel comfortable? Don't complain if somehow Barbara Streisand wins California, You just have to Move On.
Oh. and just because you can site an example where the Republicans didn't win, when they've had a great showing of blithering failures (oh, the economy, pollution, the rising cost of healthcare + anything else I'd bother to mention), does not mean that they didn't try to cheat.
The Libertarian you mention may actually be pushing the same NeoCon agenda that has worked so well for Mexico. I don't want to get into that debate, but having been a Libertarian and a Republican for I while, I had to leave because their economic concepts were not sustainable, and the Dems looked the least evil by a smidgen.
But I also live in Georgia, which is the Belt Buckle of the Bible Belt, so no amount of self interest or reality will outweigh a good rhetorical moralizer. And the ignorance of people listening to Neal Bortz and nodding to his ideas of a Value Added Tax are making me want to retch.
By the way, some months ago, the president of DieBold publicly stated that he would do everything in his power to see that President Bush was re-elected.
Can you not admit, that a system where elected officials approve the budgets for private corporations who control who gets elected IS a system that is bound to be corrupted? What are we paying for these boxes anyway? About $100k a piece? Doesn't that mean that most of the expense is for "services rendered".
And note, that in 2000, the Florida Government payed the people who conducted the voting about 10 times as much as 4 years before. The number of rejected voters went from about 8,000 to over 90,000. It has now been verified, that many of the people who were rejected was unwarranted (and of course, mostly from Democratic voters). I could point to a number of articles discussing this, but you would not be convinced.
Why are people so dead set against an idea of a "conspiracy." It is damn well profitable to have a president give taxpayer money to corporations. It is worth Billions. And we have many examples of overpaid contracts to look at. There are all sorts of conspiracies. But it seems that anyone pointing it out is automatically a nut. So what does anyone do about a conspiracy? Hand the crooks the keys and hope they run over a school bus full of kids on prime time news so that we can be sure they are the bad guys?
I'll say it. I think the Bush administration is a bunch of crooks. They behave like crooks. They act like crooks. They want everything secret and they punish anyone who criticizes them. They were conveniently incompetent on 9/11 and it has done nothing but give them a green light to push through their agenda. They have pandered to just about every corporate supporter, in historically cynical ways. They have lied and said Iraq was an immanent threat. Oops. Now we must forgive them because it is a tough job. Meanwhile, Billions of dollars of taxpayer money are going to companies owned by the Carlyle group, which has financial dealings with almost all of the Bush administration (Halliburton ain't half of it). And we are supposed to shrug that off because it's only coincidence that it's their pockets the money lands in "hey, it could happen to anyone".
Wow, the energy bill even indemnifies oil companies from lawsuits they might incur over gasoline additives. OK. The future looks bright. King George will start the "No two-headed baby left behind" program. Retraining as a circus freak can help a large portion of the genetically damaged. Good thing they can't sue.
And all 5 of the electronic voting companies have been major donators to the Reelect Bush fund.
This statement; f
Funny.
Most never actually read the Patriot act. They had 8 hours or something before they had to sign it. Amazing so much stuff written so quickly. The DMCA just meant a lot of money to reelection coffers. Standard Operating Procedure.
What liberal or progressive is saying that they actually think these Democratic representatives are 100% pure? The rhetorical arguement for our current 4 year run of utter incompetence is that somehow, the opposing views have to have all the answers and meanwhile have troups of Angels trumpeting their purity before people will realise that we as a country are being very foolish.
Yes, there were problems with the Kyoto agreement. But we (I mean, the moron in Chief when I say WE), should have attended the latest rounds and should have stayed engaged. We could have come to some agreement and we should have been willing to make sacrifices.
And by sacrifices, I don't mean the tax right off for people buying Hummers. Or doing absolutely nothing positive towards conservation, or emmissions reduction.
But most NeoCons I talk to, will only realise that their was a problem, when the last ice cube melts from the North Pole. We in the US just look like a bunch of fools right now. Ironic that NASCAR and Hummers are so popular. Dumn American jokes will be the rage in twenty years.
If everything is done by pen and paper, 1) it'll take forever to get the election results, and 2) the losing candidate can still question the vote.
This is only for the election and our future. Let's not stand on convenience so that we can keep a crook in office. Besides, the major reason that these elections keep getting more expensive by a factor of ten each four years is because the crooks seem to be developing even more lavish tastes. Katherine Harris didn't come cheap.
Hey Alsee, you win for most lucid arguements in this forum.
;-)
After me, of course.
The labels make $.68 on every track sale. Almost pure profit because they are just allowing Apple to repurpose a CD sale. This is much more per/unit profit then for each track in a store.
Apple is going to be fine. The labels can't leave a profit--they are incapable. The indies will take over. In a few years, most new artists will be "direct-to-web".
Either a RIAA agent, a hopeless sheep, or someone who worships big, powerful men.
" If you think it's worth it, use it and don't bitch. If you think it's not worth it, use a different product and don't bitch. You make the choice, you get the pros and cons."
I'm sick of people sticking up for the big guy. Look, the companies look out for their interests and we look out for ours. Simply not buying isn't good enough. We have to express our opinion to others (bitch), in order to influence others to follow our lead. Collective bargaining (bitching) is absolutely the only way to change things in a Capitalist society.
You only have choice over what you are offered. So if you don't speak up, you won't be given reasonable offerings.
Universal DRM is a way to keep Apple from gaining control. The labels and Apple know it. Next comes the propaganda war to see if the the labels can get the consumers to buy into it.
All the consumers are going to do is shrug. They have an iPod, everything works fine. Why do they need ANOTHER DRM?
This won't go anywhere unless they can lobby for it.
You are absolutely right about the labels.
But really, the only way this is going to be resovled is that the LABELS go the way of the buggy whip. That's what they are afraid of and legislating like Hell to stop. Once Apple is the prime source for music, exactly of what use are the Labels? Promotion and distribution can all occur anywhere you have web access and a display, which, in a few years, will be essentially everywhere.
The RIAA can only be a force for negative progress. They are trying to say that we all should be taxed, or bound in chains in order that they can sell each and every consumer a buggy-whip for their car. We don't need their horse, and we certainly don't need to pay for their buggy-whip.
You make some good arguments. But we should argue the ethics, not the religion. Saying; Human life is not ours with which to experiment. This implies there is some edict from God.
Now would you argue that a new type of cast is an experiment on human life that God wouldn't want? I suppose not. But would you argue that a person having an operation to not overeat or change their sex is something God would or wouldn't want? Less clear.
Is it OK if I remove some skin from my body and throw it away? You and I would probably say yes.
Is it OK if a fertilized cell grows up to become a human. Yes again.
Is it OK if that cell I removed from my body, with new technology grows up to become a human? I would say yes, but you might disagree.
But the cloning they are talking about is making duplicate cells in an embryonic process.
I think that many Right-To-Life advocates are making the argument that abortion and embryo research are murder. How do they define life? Is it just humans cells... NO. It is special cells that become babies. So is it merely human genes... no, they don't want my finger growing into a person, it's an embryo. Is it then consciousness that defines human life. NO. Fetuses don't even have brain waves until after the second trimester, and yet, most consider a day old blastocist to be sacred.
See the problem. You have no definable ethics that clearly state what truly constitutes a human life. Though both sides need to better state the case. Genetics alone don't make a human. Embryo alone does not make a human, because for most of the process, you'd be hard-put to differentiate between a mouse, a monkey or a human.
I'm probably getting too deep for this discussion though. I'm not talking coldly of no regard for humanity. It's just that I'm thinking way ahead to a time where that won't be so easy to define. The arguments I hear today about life and value and what is Gods province are based on what we can do today, but are not necessarily right or wrong, just provincial.
The idea that a thing that can grow to BECOME a human life is the only vessel of genius that can carry a human soul is going to look a lot like superstition in a few hundred years. If my finger could be grown in a vat to become a person I could come to know, what then constituted the SOUL, or the Human-ness? It takes a brain to suffer, a body to live and DNA to have human potential. So far, the only arguments for a soul I've heard from the Church is the ability to put a check in a collection plate.
The argument against stem cell research and cell cloning research has little appreciation for what it means to be human. There is nothing but unrealized potential in a collection of cells. If God cared so much about this, why then does he allow 80% of embryos in women to be re-absorbed (aborted naturally). But then, who am I to presume God's will?
I see an urgent need to clone non-viable human parts, and cells while making sure none grow to consciousness. You see, once the genie is out of the bottle, the desire for many to have new arms and legs will be overwhelming (profitable), so if we bury our head in the sands and wash hands or the whole thing, the cheaper and unethical growing of full viable clones for the purpose of harvesting organs will happen. I think we can both agree that this would be horrible. But it is often the case that ethical practices take a bit more care and work. So it is important to spend the money and do the ethical research, so that there isn't too much profit in "doing the wrong thing".
Ethical dilemmas occur when you have the ABILITY to do something. We have to grow up and take responsibility for what we can do. If you are unable to save a person with a heart attack, you hold their hand and comfort them as they die. If you gain the technology to replace the heart, should you help the person now? Probably. If that person will continue as conscious and have a life they deem worthy of living, then definitely. The argument that
A equals B so therefore C!
He is saying that cloning in and of itself is just a man-made version of a natural process.
There was no mention of killing twins.
This sort of logic reminds me of people against gay marriage because then it will be OK to marry a goat.
Of course, I don't hear goats complaining, so what's the harm? Eh?
Where to begin. I suppose I have to rip apart everything you said one at a time.
* Democrats claim Bush will reinstate the draft. Despite two bills introduced by Democrats, Bush absolutely claims that no draft will be done, even going as far as to explain that the draft would be contrary for their plans for better trained, more mobile army.
Bush claims; "X". If Bush claims he will clean up the environment, spread Democracy and protect America; well, he'll allow the polluters to pollute more because that's what they paid for, he'll send tanks, he'll fail to succeed at everything and have a reasonable excuse every time. In short; any Bush campaign promise you've heard in 2004, you also heard in 2000. So that means, you want to give him 4 more years not to do anything useful? If Bush claimed the sky was blue, I'd have to look at it again, just to make sure. This man is useless for our country now, because he has absolutely ZERO credibility anywhere but among NeoCons in this country.
You should understand the skepticism about the draft. Many of us (Liberals, Progressives, sane people) expect that with Bush's diplomatic skills (ahem), we're gonna need a whole mess more troops. Bush is always courageous enough to send somebody else's kids. I think we need a constitutional law that the only politicians who get to vote for a war, are ones sending their kids into harms way--but I digress, we can't raise the bar now. We have to wait for a Democrat to do that.
It goes against Bush's principles? I have seen no evidence that he has anything but self-righteousness. These guys get businesses donators together, make a plan to help the businesses, then tack on some patriotic-religious crap and throw all the propaganda they can spin against the wall, and amazingly it sticks. You guys are suckers for anything with tough talk or God thrown in. My daddy taught me that if someone tells you what a great Christian they are, hold onto your wallet. Personal belief is fine, but all this "i Believe" and "I Pray" doesn't mean crap as far as making sure people do the right thing. Note: Bin Laden is totally devout and convinced of his own righteousness. Faith does not inevitably lead to good decisions, it only helps people endure bad ones.
* It was Democrats, not Republicans, who actively lynched blacks in the South for voting, who instituted poll taxes and reading requirements. Republicans are the ones who fought them and instituted federal rules on who is and is not allowed to vote, and prosecuted the lynchings by the Democrat Ku Klux Klan. (Yes, that's right, most KKK members were democrats!)
The Dems of the old days you are talking about were the Dixicrats. Who do you think makes up the Republican party in the south today? The label is not the story. Republican and Democratic ideals have changed over the years. There are no Klan supporters among Democrats today, so why bring this up?
* It was Democrats, not Republicans, who managed the counties where the voters were reportedly disenfranchised in Florida during the 2000 election scandal. The butterfly ballot was approved by democrat election officials. This claim was unsubstantiated because it didn't happen, yet they continue to insinuate it.
Why do bank robbers rob banks? Because that's where the money is. So of course it was democrats who managed the counties where voter fraud occurred--because they were throwing out mostly democratic votes. Why would fraud need to occur in Republican counties? Just follow the disgraceful conduct of Catherine Harris. Read the BBC accounts of James Baker in Florida. The recount never happened--it was stopped by a sham protest. And you need to give Gore credit, he recused himself from the vote in congress so he would not be the one voting himself into office. The supreme court had no such class, as they interceded in the Florida Supreme courts decision to recount the vote... which was not what they are supposed to do, there was no constitutional issue.
This is a political section. Get used to change, will you? If you like Slashdot being technical, then having a forum for people to rant about politics might get some of that nonsense out of the technical forums.
To me, this election is much more important than the next Windows or Mac OS update.
This is now a pollitical section for geeks. I think it is a great idea because you have a different tone then perhaps you would get on a normal newsgroup forum.
Where I vote they ask for ID to vote. Seems strange to me.
Sure, alchohol use was down. Death and crime weren't.
When it comes to social ills, they are never worse then their cures.
!!Hey, that quote is going into my sig!
When alcohol was made illegal, bootleg alcohol replaced it. When drugs were made illegal, bootleg drugs replaced it. The product here is not illegal music, it is music. If music were made illegal, the analogy would stand, but this is not about that.
Since the key product is still readily available, this is not a case that is at all similar to prohibition or the war on drugs.
I don't understand, what exactly did you just prove in your arguement? The examples the poster used are HARDER to stop. Of course it isn't similar. The poster is saying it is useless and impossible--so what are you arguing? Not impossible in the same way?
Apples and Oranges can be compared if you are talking about fruit. Do I have to explain the previous analogy?
The arguement against these illegal drugs is that they are unhealthy and kill people.
Of course, if the government distributed them for free to addicts only, they could make sure of the users health and bankrupt the drug trade at the same time.
In fact, even with dangerous chemicals mixed in and scary production standards, cocaine abuse only killed about 4,000 people at the height of its use during the 1980's. Compare that to (from memory, here), about 120,000 deaths on average to prescription drugs (tobacco is also about this rate, I believe--too lazy to google this, since I feel like facts have very little chance of penetrating, thick, neanderthalCon brains).
It's the poverty and gun play associated with drugs that kill most. If we made Bibles illegal, you'd have as many people dying in the Bible-Trade. Legal religion kills way too many people as it is, thank you very much.
Our American system is not meant to hinder crime and drug abuse, it is meant to punish bad people. It is interesting that many of the well to do that I know in suburbia, "experimented with drugs" just like our current president (though, his experimenting was a little more intensive than most), and since none of them were caugh by the law enforcement system, they have since grown up, gotten jobs, and are productive, upstanding citizens.
There are a lot of prison jobs (biggest area of job growth outside of government these last 4 years), and the system is large and powerful. If drugs were decriminalized, that would mean about an 80% reduction in prison population and probably the same reduction in people in the criminal justice system.
Face it, we are addicted to crime here. You have to have laws that most people break, so that you can have criminals.
If we just ignored people who did stupid things... ah, forget it--that's too far fetched. It is frustrating to live in America, where common knowledge dictates that all these "morality laws" are the way to make things RIGHT. Unfortuneatly, no one can point to any success with the Puritanical American model on much of anything. It's the less religious, socially free countries that actually have success in these social issues. Repressive societies only manage to abuse people and force problems into the closet. But why do what works, eh?
The war on drugs has led to 0% increase in drug use. In fact, has the "Kerry Commission" revealed (see, he did do stuff in the senate), the CIA itself was involved in Cocaine importation with Manuel Noriega, and much of the money was laundered through BCCI. Some may call this a conspiracy theory, but sadly, no. It was a report from a senate investigation, and some of the information came out on Frontline, and of course the BBC.
The war on Terror has scared Americans $hitless, and is a worry to moderates in Arab countries who have been positive or tolerant of the US until now. Terrorism has actually been increasing.
Perhaps they will start using tanks on file sharers, but my guess is that they will go after the money. That works, right? Exactly what Kerry was trying to do in the Senate and was blocked by the NeoCons from doing so. In fact, a newly released "secret" FBI document this past month reveals that the executive branch gave orders to the FBI to back off of any financial investigations of the Bin Laden family--just months before 9/11. This wasn't to protect Osama, it was because Bush got millions of Bin Laden money for his oil ventures.
So this threat will be pumped up beyond reason. Theft and security will be sound bites for intellectual property right propaganda. The big battle front will be "royalties" for copyrighted technology and genes. You won't be able to make an innovation without doling out extreme sums to Royalty holders. In ten years, we'll be calling the fat cats the Royalty for short. Full circle.
So, before anyone starts supporting a "war on anything" (like the current war on truth), remember that there is no exit strategy for these wars. There are no examples of them succeeding, except where the people are killed to save the village. These "wars" are meant to be constant exceptions to gain control. Will music, oil or drugs ever get cheaper while we are chasing down the last script kiddie--no. We will pay a protection tax to cover the expenses of protecting the profits of over-priced things. Does that sentence even make sense?
Note; despite the bitching of Bible-thumpers in the US about moral decay, during the 90's we have seen the largest ever drop in crime and violence in the US. A lot of that has to do with Education, Employment and Police. Since all of those things have been neglected the last few years, we should again see an uptick in crime. Note that crime will remain low, because now much of it will be reclassified as terrorism. Joy all around!
Agreed. The federal government shouldn't be in the business of protecting company profits... that would be Facism. Oh, I forgot, must have slept too long during the 80's. We are a country run by business.
Really, this is Bungies fault. They developed on a Microsoft system so inevitably someone hacked in and stole the code. If the responsibility for protecting secrets and securing networks were on the corporations then we wouldn't have to worry about our civil rights. Heck, even the fashion industry protects their designs.
The Government seems to just need a pretext to chip away at privacy and the constitution.
At 3 gigs, though, I think pre-ordering will get it to your house faster than downloading that big a file from the P2P nets. There is more worry about pirates making copies of the real disks then of kids who don't buy anything anyway, piecing together a French version over the course of a month. This will effect $0 in sales.
WalMart employees also tend to depend on public assistance more than the workers they replace. W is notorious for leaving healthcare to the state. And since the workers make 30% less than the workers they replace at other retail outlets, that means they qualify, because they are poor (thoughtful, that).
So welcome to the working poor, for families on the edge of desperation. And don't mind retirement, you can look forward to being a WalMart greeter in your golden years.