I agree about the rest of his ravings. The only thing I'm against is the characterization of the metaphor of the internet as "a series of tubes" as hilariously inaccurate.
Actually, I think both parties are shit. You've got the center-left democrats and the far left republicans(They can pretend they're right-wing, but that's all marketing).
There's only one man in politics I respect, and he won't be anything more than a congressman from Texas because he's got too much integrity to accept the fictions the two main parties require you to accept to even be part of the debate.
I4. There are very few V4 engines, probably because it wouldn't be any more balanced than an inline 4 configuration, but would require much greater complexity. You could make a V4 shorter than an I4, which is why it's used extensively in motorcycle, but it'll cost much more to design and build.
You're bang on though. An Intel Extreme quad-core will eat a Via Nano for breakfast. You could probably emulate the Via Nano faster on the Intel Extreme quad-core than the Via will even go. The thing is, the Nano will last for an hour on the energy the Intel Extreme quad-core will use in a minute.
The emotional investment is ridiculously easy to explain.
There are about 5,000 american soldiers dead in Iraq, a war of aggression against a nation that hadn't attacked us based on false information. That's 5,000 families who are without a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, an aunt, an uncle, a neice, a nephew. A young man or woman dying needlessly is a very tragic and emotional event.
It's not hard to get worked up over stuff like that. It's very easy, in fact, to get all self-righteous and call Republicans murderers who are sending our soliders to needless, useless, valueless deaths in the asshole of the world.
Honestly, I think anyone who knows anything knows you're right. I mean, the word "pipe" is part of network jargon for a reason, and the only difference between a tube and a pipe is that a tube is better engineered and you can use precision fittings and bend it, instead of having to threading the ends of each piece to join together with joints. It's like calling the colour of a banana "saffron" instead of "yellow".
On the other hand, it's fun and easy to make fun of Republicans, especially old ones who talk about technology.
My question is, how many Republicans can get charged with major crimes before they have to stop pretending morality is part of their platform?
I guess what I'm saying is, the court should choose damages as a percentage of non-rent non-heat net income, rather than as a percentage of pure net income.
I mean, the 1,000 fine for someone making 10,000 will it ridiculously hard. The 10,000 for someone making 100,000 will hit a bit, but the 10 million for a person making 100 million is almost a drop in the bucket, because the scales are so large. It won't really be a deterrant like the 1000 will be for the poor person.
If we went with a working income instead, then the person barely making anything could be charged 50% of their working income for 1 year and be charged 400 dollars. The person making 100,000 could be charged 50% of their working income for 1 year and be charged 30,000, and the person making 100 million would take a full 50 million dollar hit, since they don't often pay rent.
IANAL, but it seems to me only friend 4 is guilty of murder. The rest are guilty of gross negligence causing death, since it's insanely irresponsible to be upping the ante each time, knowing that friend 4 is a psycho.
No process control at all is better than insanely dangerous process control. I'd prefer a person watch a process if the alternative is less scrutiny on a dangerously unreliable process control system.
I disagree there. In order to survive, you've got base costs. Once these base costs are paid, everything BEYOND that is profit.
This doesn't seem relevant, except that if you've got a very low income person making 10,000/yr who is about meeting their base costs and thus only has a few dollars every payday of disposable income, 1,000 is going to be a nearly insurmountable sum of money to pay back. For the high income person making 100,000/yr, 10,000 is a big deal, but not that big a deal. They can pay it back in 2-3 months if they try, since their mandatory living expenses are covered by a much smaller proportion of their income.
If you're buying your employees coffee from starbucks, and you're paying retail, odds are your business has problems way larger than your coffee budget.
The process isn't exactly hard. Put in disk, hit "next" 20 times, enter the code on the bottom of the case.
I'd say you've got to at least be able to install a pre-packaged linux distro on a P3 with 128MB of RAM before you can consider yourself a techie. You should be able to do it from scratch if you're any good.
Personally, I'd buy this 130 dollar laptop in a heartbeat. If I found one for 150-200 at the local electronics store, I'd own it today, without question.
I don't want big iron for a portable machine.
I want something to run portable applications. I don't want or need to run a compiler, a bittorrent, or a Quake 3 on my portable.
I've been waiting for years for something cheap I can just sit and type with on the road. Something I can take outside and surf the internet on without fearing that I'm going to lose 3 months savings if someone walks away with it. I want something that can manage pictures on a memory card during trips, something that can hold images of a few road maps and directions so I can travel with security, something that can pull music off a USB hard drive in a pinch and plug into a sound system. I also want all this in a package that's new, with a new battery, new LCD, new drives, new electronics, and a waranty so I can get in at the beginning of the bathtub curve of reliability rather than somewhere in the middle, with the protection from infant mortality.
There's a REASON industrial equipment costs so much. You're paying for quality, for reliability, for design standards that take into account the fact that you'll never find good conditions in the field, even in the control room.
Using some cheap laptop from China to run your industrial plant is the same as murder, because of the inevitability of failure. If I ever saw an engineer or engineering technologist use one to control a plant that could explode or melt down and kill lots of people, I'd work to have that engineer or engineering technologist's professional license revoked.
One thing to note, 400MHz today isn't 400MHz 10 years ago. Depending on which processor this thing uses, it could be much much more powerful than the 10 year old laptop, or it could be much much less powerful than the 10 year old laptop. We certainly have new technologies today which could allow a very quick 400MHz machine. Imagine, most of the newest Core 2 Duos only sit at 2GHz.
Obama is likely campaigning in other countries because he realises something very important: The US is a superpower at the behest of the rest of the world, not in defiance of the rest of the world. If you want proof of this, just look at various central banks response to the US subprime mortgage crisis. Even though we caused the problems entirely on our own, they devalued their own currencies by introducing massive amounts of capital to the market.
Bush and the Republicans keep acting like the world is against the US. That couldn't be further from the truth. Most foreigners may have strong words for the US, but at the end of the day, it's the US economy which helps keep the world spinning, and everyone knows that.
The problem is, the Republicans ARE turning the world against us, and that's having major ramifications in the world. We're starting to have problems selling our debt, so we're stuck asking the Federal Reserve to print more currency. People aren't travelling to the US anymore, so the trade deficit increases. This decreases the currency influx into the states, forcing the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low to ensure there's adequate money supply, which further compounds the problem of massive inflation.
Basically, once the world starts to have more confidence in the US, they'll start buying our stocks again, they'll start buying our debt again, they'll start building trade relationships with us again, and we might start to see the incredible decline cease. (if you've got 0.7% GDP growth but 20% inflation over the same period, we're in a recession)
It's only sense then. Obama isn't just campaigning to win the campaign; he's campaigning to change America for the better. He's investing political capital he'll be ready to reap benefits with on day 1. The Republicans on the other hand....Say, doesn't John McCain have a black baby? Oh wait. No, that was last time he ran for president.
I wouldn't bet on super cheap PV cells any time soon. Industry moves very slowly. If a breakthrough in PV tech was discovered tomorrow, I wouldn't expect cells using the new tech to be available for at least a decade, probably far longer than the payback period of the ones you've got.
Growth in the markets in the past 8 years has been abysmal. If trends continue, you won't make as much on the stock market as you would on a good bank account, and neither will beat inflation, considering we're at 7% for the year already.
Saving is saving. Investing is investing. The fact that you can't even conceptualise the concept of saving money, that you HAVE to risk your money in an investment to even consider it saving, shows that I'm on the right track. If you had 100 dollars in 1800, and you buried it, your same 100 dollars in 1900 would be worth about the same, with a very small amount of annual deviation. If you had that same 100 dollars in 1900, it would be worth the same as 5 dollars would have been worth in 1900. The fact that you MUST invest your money, the fact that your money MUST make more money in order to stop itself from being devalued shows that inflation is a tax, and it sucks the value out of your money. 1913 isn't far enough back in terms of monentary policy. For 130 years before the great depression and FDR, we had sound money. Inflation isn't a mandatory part of the monetary system.
If you don't believe me that inflation is a tax, just ask Ben Bernanke, chairman of the federal reserve. "[...] I couldn't agree with you more that inflation is a tax, and that inflation is currently too high."
You can decide not to waver, but you should at least consider the idea that being foreign occupiers in this reigon of the world, guilty of a war of aggression against an arab muslim nation, means that our VERY PRESENCE in the reigon CREATES instability. I argue that for the cost of staying there, human (ours AND theirs) and otherwise, it's immoral to be there. Our arrogance is making the situation worse, not better.
Our banana republic there, our puppet government, doesn't really count. As long as we're there with our guns and bombs and planes, it's really hard to argue that we're a benign presence, and that the government WE set up isn't really under our control.
The stuff that almost nobody talks about is stuff like the Valerie Plame affair, but what about the federal funding going into propoganda? Video News Releases are almost never talked about, but stuff like this means that we are more sophisticated than Cuba, but just as bad. Maybe worse, since we pretend we're moral and free and just.
We can agree that the people in charge probably don't care as much about cheap labour as they say. That's why I'm saying, if it's an issue, fix it. I'm sick of politicians pretending to care about things but voting differently. I'm sick of politicians pretending to be principled but pursuing whatever they want. That's why I think Ron Paul is one helluva guy. I may not agree with him on every vote, but at least he's been principled and consistent for 30 years.
Acute market fluctuations and true inflation are two different things. I can show you 10 years where prices went down, and 10 more where prices went up. The thing is, from 1800 to 1900, the cost of living was virtually unchanged. From 1900 to 2000, the cost of living increased by orders of magnitude.
Sound money doesn't promise to be a cure-all, and if you think that, you haven't been listening to Ron Paul, because he hasn't promised it'd be a cure-all, just an effective part of a larger economic policy. It will stop long-term inflation. It will stop the government from inducing inflation to pay for wars. It will ensure that people's savings won't erode because of an increase in the money supply, thus promoting savings(Investment is different from saving. If I saved 100 dollars in 1900, it would be worth 5 cents on the dollar today). It will ensure that debts won't simply disappear after 100 years or so because of inflation, thus eliminating perpetual accumulation of debts.
Government accumulation of debt is related to price increases, but inflation of the money supply has occurred because you don't need an ounce of gold to print one dollar. At it stands, because of the unsound money policies, the government can borrow 1 trillion dollars from China, spends that money, and the banking system which holds that money can create 3 trillion dollars in US Dollars. That's what's killing us, that's why we've got the massive, continuous spike in consumer costs, because the monetary supply keeps on going up and up and up.
It seems to me that your history only goes back 20 years or so. This is true with respect to your understanding of the monetary supply and the gold standard, and it's true with respect to Iraq. They are the only arab nation that did away with the sharia courts and replaced it with a western system of justice. They are the only arab nation in the middle east that gave rights to women. They built roads, they built the best education system in the middle east, and all of that was ended when we pushed Saddam into the 10 years war with Iran. In 1991, we'd already been messing around in the middle east for 50 years, and in Iraq for at least 20.
We finished the shooting. Saddam Hussein's Iraq is done, his Republican Guard defeated. It's gone. It's over. We won the war. The war is over. We need to leave. Let the Iraqis police themselves. If they want help, we'll train them, but not as occupiers, as allies.
I agree with you regarding illegal immigrants. They just folks trying to make a living in the world. I'm not saying they're bad people, I'm saying that it's the duty of the federal government to defend our borders, and the fact that they're here means they're failing their mandate. Bring our troops home and defend our borders before fighting in other countries.
I CAN compare this leak, which put a family in MORTAL DANGER, to jailing the same sort of opponent. Just because you use sneaky Karl Rove tactics to kill dissidents doesn't mean you're any better than the more honest totalitarian who'll just send jack booted thugs to your door.
I should also point out that Ron Paul didn't make discontinuing birthright citizenship a part of his platform while running for President. His plan is extremely coherent in terms of simply removing advantages to becoming an illegal alien for the people and for the employers. Employers can pay less and don't have to pay tax for an illegal alien, and that's a massive market advantage over a regular person, who wouldn't want to break the law and get caught by the IRS. Right now it makes sense to support stopping birthright citizenship because the incentives to break into the country and give birth are too great, but his plan as president would be to simply eliminate any incentive to illegally come into the country, or any incentive for us to care that he or she is illegal.
I agree with you that border security ought to be very lax in order to facilitate tourism and trade. Th
A marriage in Canada is recognised in the US, why would that change for marriages between states?
No matter what your definition of the word "minimalist", I think the US government obviously doesn't apply anymore. Every problem in the world these days they try to solve with another department.
You prove me right by showing what the investment in 1945 dollars is worth today. Putting that money into the high interest savings account would result in a loss of 600 million dollars to inflation, and most of that inflation comes after the 1970s with the end of the breton woods system. If you can't put your money into a high interest savings account without losing a large portion of that money to inflation which exists becuase of attempts to finance wars by the federal government, I'd call that a hidden tax.
We have no moral obligation to Iraq, for one simple reason: There's no reason to believe we'll be able to solve anything. We've been over there 20 years, and through our meddling, they've gone from being the most progressive, liberal, advanced nation in the middle east to being one of the most violent, dangerous, backwards nations. It's time we just pull out and let the Iraqis handle themselves, becuase we've had our shot, and a lot of people are dead for it. Our moral obligation is to stop playing God, stop spending our children and grandchildren's money on undeclared wars of aggression, to stop policing the world, and to have our military defend OUR borders instead of fighting useless wars out on the other side of the world. We've got the largest military in the world, the most advanced military in the world, there's no reason why we should even be having the illegal immigration debate. We spend more on the federal army, navy, and air force than the next 20 countries combined, we should be able to defend our own borders.
I'd love to agree with you that the press isn't under attack, but the whitehouse just won't let me. A family member of a dissident was put in mortal danger by the whitehouse for purely political reasons. If you don't see anything wrong with that, maybe I should point the jihadists at YOUR wife next.
Besides, they're secret prisons, and it's been established that we DO torture. How the hell do YOU know that people aren't getting locked up? It's not like they have right to common-law writ of Habeus Corpus. We could be holding a bunch of press there right now, and call them terrorists so the people don't get all upset.
I mention entitlements, and elsewhere I mention birthright citizenship. In my post, they're completely disconnected. Could it be that like you've done here, you're imagining a connection where none exists? Illegal immigration is a sovereignty issue. Our armed forces should be able to keep invaders at bay, and if they're not, we shouldn't be in other countries.
Seconded. If car companies actually gave a crap about the environment, it wouldn't be difficult to make vehicles that would cost twice or three times as much, but could become family heirlooms due to their longevity. Imagine: Stainless steel bodies that could last indefinitely, diesel motors that could last half a million miles, sealed fluidic bearings that'd last indefinitely, and body, electric, and motor designs set up for easy, low cost maintenance.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree about the rest of his ravings. The only thing I'm against is the characterization of the metaphor of the internet as "a series of tubes" as hilariously inaccurate.
Actually, I think both parties are shit. You've got the center-left democrats and the far left republicans(They can pretend they're right-wing, but that's all marketing).
There's only one man in politics I respect, and he won't be anything more than a congressman from Texas because he's got too much integrity to accept the fictions the two main parties require you to accept to even be part of the debate.
I4. There are very few V4 engines, probably because it wouldn't be any more balanced than an inline 4 configuration, but would require much greater complexity. You could make a V4 shorter than an I4, which is why it's used extensively in motorcycle, but it'll cost much more to design and build.
You're bang on though. An Intel Extreme quad-core will eat a Via Nano for breakfast. You could probably emulate the Via Nano faster on the Intel Extreme quad-core than the Via will even go. The thing is, the Nano will last for an hour on the energy the Intel Extreme quad-core will use in a minute.
The emotional investment is ridiculously easy to explain.
There are about 5,000 american soldiers dead in Iraq, a war of aggression against a nation that hadn't attacked us based on false information. That's 5,000 families who are without a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, an aunt, an uncle, a neice, a nephew. A young man or woman dying needlessly is a very tragic and emotional event.
It's not hard to get worked up over stuff like that. It's very easy, in fact, to get all self-righteous and call Republicans murderers who are sending our soliders to needless, useless, valueless deaths in the asshole of the world.
Honestly, I think anyone who knows anything knows you're right. I mean, the word "pipe" is part of network jargon for a reason, and the only difference between a tube and a pipe is that a tube is better engineered and you can use precision fittings and bend it, instead of having to threading the ends of each piece to join together with joints. It's like calling the colour of a banana "saffron" instead of "yellow".
On the other hand, it's fun and easy to make fun of Republicans, especially old ones who talk about technology.
My question is, how many Republicans can get charged with major crimes before they have to stop pretending morality is part of their platform?
I guess what I'm saying is, the court should choose damages as a percentage of non-rent non-heat net income, rather than as a percentage of pure net income.
I mean, the 1,000 fine for someone making 10,000 will it ridiculously hard. The 10,000 for someone making 100,000 will hit a bit, but the 10 million for a person making 100 million is almost a drop in the bucket, because the scales are so large. It won't really be a deterrant like the 1000 will be for the poor person.
If we went with a working income instead, then the person barely making anything could be charged 50% of their working income for 1 year and be charged 400 dollars. The person making 100,000 could be charged 50% of their working income for 1 year and be charged 30,000, and the person making 100 million would take a full 50 million dollar hit, since they don't often pay rent.
IANAL, but it seems to me only friend 4 is guilty of murder. The rest are guilty of gross negligence causing death, since it's insanely irresponsible to be upping the ante each time, knowing that friend 4 is a psycho.
No process control at all is better than insanely dangerous process control. I'd prefer a person watch a process if the alternative is less scrutiny on a dangerously unreliable process control system.
I disagree there. In order to survive, you've got base costs. Once these base costs are paid, everything BEYOND that is profit.
This doesn't seem relevant, except that if you've got a very low income person making 10,000/yr who is about meeting their base costs and thus only has a few dollars every payday of disposable income, 1,000 is going to be a nearly insurmountable sum of money to pay back. For the high income person making 100,000/yr, 10,000 is a big deal, but not that big a deal. They can pay it back in 2-3 months if they try, since their mandatory living expenses are covered by a much smaller proportion of their income.
If you're buying your employees coffee from starbucks, and you're paying retail, odds are your business has problems way larger than your coffee budget.
The process isn't exactly hard. Put in disk, hit "next" 20 times, enter the code on the bottom of the case.
I'd say you've got to at least be able to install a pre-packaged linux distro on a P3 with 128MB of RAM before you can consider yourself a techie. You should be able to do it from scratch if you're any good.
It's all about user requirements.
Personally, I'd buy this 130 dollar laptop in a heartbeat. If I found one for 150-200 at the local electronics store, I'd own it today, without question.
I don't want big iron for a portable machine.
I want something to run portable applications. I don't want or need to run a compiler, a bittorrent, or a Quake 3 on my portable.
I've been waiting for years for something cheap I can just sit and type with on the road. Something I can take outside and surf the internet on without fearing that I'm going to lose 3 months savings if someone walks away with it. I want something that can manage pictures on a memory card during trips, something that can hold images of a few road maps and directions so I can travel with security, something that can pull music off a USB hard drive in a pinch and plug into a sound system. I also want all this in a package that's new, with a new battery, new LCD, new drives, new electronics, and a waranty so I can get in at the beginning of the bathtub curve of reliability rather than somewhere in the middle, with the protection from infant mortality.
There's a REASON industrial equipment costs so much. You're paying for quality, for reliability, for design standards that take into account the fact that you'll never find good conditions in the field, even in the control room.
Using some cheap laptop from China to run your industrial plant is the same as murder, because of the inevitability of failure. If I ever saw an engineer or engineering technologist use one to control a plant that could explode or melt down and kill lots of people, I'd work to have that engineer or engineering technologist's professional license revoked.
Grandparent isn't a techie either, judging from their other posts.
but I hear you get that exact same crap with Linux too so you can't complain too much.
You heard wrong.
One thing to note, 400MHz today isn't 400MHz 10 years ago. Depending on which processor this thing uses, it could be much much more powerful than the 10 year old laptop, or it could be much much less powerful than the 10 year old laptop. We certainly have new technologies today which could allow a very quick 400MHz machine. Imagine, most of the newest Core 2 Duos only sit at 2GHz.
Regarding your sig,
Obama is likely campaigning in other countries because he realises something very important: The US is a superpower at the behest of the rest of the world, not in defiance of the rest of the world. If you want proof of this, just look at various central banks response to the US subprime mortgage crisis. Even though we caused the problems entirely on our own, they devalued their own currencies by introducing massive amounts of capital to the market.
Bush and the Republicans keep acting like the world is against the US. That couldn't be further from the truth. Most foreigners may have strong words for the US, but at the end of the day, it's the US economy which helps keep the world spinning, and everyone knows that.
The problem is, the Republicans ARE turning the world against us, and that's having major ramifications in the world. We're starting to have problems selling our debt, so we're stuck asking the Federal Reserve to print more currency. People aren't travelling to the US anymore, so the trade deficit increases. This decreases the currency influx into the states, forcing the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low to ensure there's adequate money supply, which further compounds the problem of massive inflation.
Basically, once the world starts to have more confidence in the US, they'll start buying our stocks again, they'll start buying our debt again, they'll start building trade relationships with us again, and we might start to see the incredible decline cease. (if you've got 0.7% GDP growth but 20% inflation over the same period, we're in a recession)
It's only sense then. Obama isn't just campaigning to win the campaign; he's campaigning to change America for the better. He's investing political capital he'll be ready to reap benefits with on day 1. The Republicans on the other hand....Say, doesn't John McCain have a black baby? Oh wait. No, that was last time he ran for president.
I wouldn't bet on super cheap PV cells any time soon. Industry moves very slowly. If a breakthrough in PV tech was discovered tomorrow, I wouldn't expect cells using the new tech to be available for at least a decade, probably far longer than the payback period of the ones you've got.
Growth in the markets in the past 8 years has been abysmal. If trends continue, you won't make as much on the stock market as you would on a good bank account, and neither will beat inflation, considering we're at 7% for the year already.
Saving is saving. Investing is investing. The fact that you can't even conceptualise the concept of saving money, that you HAVE to risk your money in an investment to even consider it saving, shows that I'm on the right track. If you had 100 dollars in 1800, and you buried it, your same 100 dollars in 1900 would be worth about the same, with a very small amount of annual deviation. If you had that same 100 dollars in 1900, it would be worth the same as 5 dollars would have been worth in 1900. The fact that you MUST invest your money, the fact that your money MUST make more money in order to stop itself from being devalued shows that inflation is a tax, and it sucks the value out of your money. 1913 isn't far enough back in terms of monentary policy. For 130 years before the great depression and FDR, we had sound money. Inflation isn't a mandatory part of the monetary system.
If you don't believe me that inflation is a tax, just ask Ben Bernanke, chairman of the federal reserve. "[...] I couldn't agree with you more that inflation is a tax, and that inflation is currently too high."
You can decide not to waver, but you should at least consider the idea that being foreign occupiers in this reigon of the world, guilty of a war of aggression against an arab muslim nation, means that our VERY PRESENCE in the reigon CREATES instability. I argue that for the cost of staying there, human (ours AND theirs) and otherwise, it's immoral to be there. Our arrogance is making the situation worse, not better.
Our banana republic there, our puppet government, doesn't really count. As long as we're there with our guns and bombs and planes, it's really hard to argue that we're a benign presence, and that the government WE set up isn't really under our control.
The stuff that almost nobody talks about is stuff like the Valerie Plame affair, but what about the federal funding going into propoganda? Video News Releases are almost never talked about, but stuff like this means that we are more sophisticated than Cuba, but just as bad. Maybe worse, since we pretend we're moral and free and just.
We can agree that the people in charge probably don't care as much about cheap labour as they say. That's why I'm saying, if it's an issue, fix it. I'm sick of politicians pretending to care about things but voting differently. I'm sick of politicians pretending to be principled but pursuing whatever they want. That's why I think Ron Paul is one helluva guy. I may not agree with him on every vote, but at least he's been principled and consistent for 30 years.
Acute market fluctuations and true inflation are two different things. I can show you 10 years where prices went down, and 10 more where prices went up. The thing is, from 1800 to 1900, the cost of living was virtually unchanged. From 1900 to 2000, the cost of living increased by orders of magnitude.
Sound money doesn't promise to be a cure-all, and if you think that, you haven't been listening to Ron Paul, because he hasn't promised it'd be a cure-all, just an effective part of a larger economic policy. It will stop long-term inflation. It will stop the government from inducing inflation to pay for wars. It will ensure that people's savings won't erode because of an increase in the money supply, thus promoting savings(Investment is different from saving. If I saved 100 dollars in 1900, it would be worth 5 cents on the dollar today). It will ensure that debts won't simply disappear after 100 years or so because of inflation, thus eliminating perpetual accumulation of debts.
Government accumulation of debt is related to price increases, but inflation of the money supply has occurred because you don't need an ounce of gold to print one dollar. At it stands, because of the unsound money policies, the government can borrow 1 trillion dollars from China, spends that money, and the banking system which holds that money can create 3 trillion dollars in US Dollars. That's what's killing us, that's why we've got the massive, continuous spike in consumer costs, because the monetary supply keeps on going up and up and up.
It seems to me that your history only goes back 20 years or so. This is true with respect to your understanding of the monetary supply and the gold standard, and it's true with respect to Iraq. They are the only arab nation that did away with the sharia courts and replaced it with a western system of justice. They are the only arab nation in the middle east that gave rights to women. They built roads, they built the best education system in the middle east, and all of that was ended when we pushed Saddam into the 10 years war with Iran. In 1991, we'd already been messing around in the middle east for 50 years, and in Iraq for at least 20.
We finished the shooting. Saddam Hussein's Iraq is done, his Republican Guard defeated. It's gone. It's over. We won the war. The war is over. We need to leave. Let the Iraqis police themselves. If they want help, we'll train them, but not as occupiers, as allies.
I agree with you regarding illegal immigrants. They just folks trying to make a living in the world. I'm not saying they're bad people, I'm saying that it's the duty of the federal government to defend our borders, and the fact that they're here means they're failing their mandate. Bring our troops home and defend our borders before fighting in other countries.
I CAN compare this leak, which put a family in MORTAL DANGER, to jailing the same sort of opponent. Just because you use sneaky Karl Rove tactics to kill dissidents doesn't mean you're any better than the more honest totalitarian who'll just send jack booted thugs to your door.
I should also point out that Ron Paul didn't make discontinuing birthright citizenship a part of his platform while running for President. His plan is extremely coherent in terms of simply removing advantages to becoming an illegal alien for the people and for the employers. Employers can pay less and don't have to pay tax for an illegal alien, and that's a massive market advantage over a regular person, who wouldn't want to break the law and get caught by the IRS. Right now it makes sense to support stopping birthright citizenship because the incentives to break into the country and give birth are too great, but his plan as president would be to simply eliminate any incentive to illegally come into the country, or any incentive for us to care that he or she is illegal.
I agree with you that border security ought to be very lax in order to facilitate tourism and trade. Th
Also, the batteries can be recycled, so manufacturing waste can be minimized.
Don't forget that led-acid batteries can be recycled.
Oh, I almost forgot, did you know that the batteries can be recycled?
A marriage in Canada is recognised in the US, why would that change for marriages between states?
No matter what your definition of the word "minimalist", I think the US government obviously doesn't apply anymore. Every problem in the world these days they try to solve with another department.
You prove me right by showing what the investment in 1945 dollars is worth today. Putting that money into the high interest savings account would result in a loss of 600 million dollars to inflation, and most of that inflation comes after the 1970s with the end of the breton woods system. If you can't put your money into a high interest savings account without losing a large portion of that money to inflation which exists becuase of attempts to finance wars by the federal government, I'd call that a hidden tax.
You say I'm naive, but I say you're ignorant of history. Inflation effectively didn't exist for 200 years under the gold standard. in the '20s, in an attempt to break the depression, they deviated from the gold standard and inflation began to creep up after the war ended and the effect of that deviation could be seen, and in the '70s when Nixon completely broke the final ties to the gold standard to help finance the war, it began to increase at an incredible rate.
We have no moral obligation to Iraq, for one simple reason: There's no reason to believe we'll be able to solve anything. We've been over there 20 years, and through our meddling, they've gone from being the most progressive, liberal, advanced nation in the middle east to being one of the most violent, dangerous, backwards nations. It's time we just pull out and let the Iraqis handle themselves, becuase we've had our shot, and a lot of people are dead for it. Our moral obligation is to stop playing God, stop spending our children and grandchildren's money on undeclared wars of aggression, to stop policing the world, and to have our military defend OUR borders instead of fighting useless wars out on the other side of the world. We've got the largest military in the world, the most advanced military in the world, there's no reason why we should even be having the illegal immigration debate. We spend more on the federal army, navy, and air force than the next 20 countries combined, we should be able to defend our own borders.
I'd love to agree with you that the press isn't under attack, but the whitehouse just won't let me. A family member of a dissident was put in mortal danger by the whitehouse for purely political reasons. If you don't see anything wrong with that, maybe I should point the jihadists at YOUR wife next.
Besides, they're secret prisons, and it's been established that we DO torture. How the hell do YOU know that people aren't getting locked up? It's not like they have right to common-law writ of Habeus Corpus. We could be holding a bunch of press there right now, and call them terrorists so the people don't get all upset.
I mention entitlements, and elsewhere I mention birthright citizenship. In my post, they're completely disconnected. Could it be that like you've done here, you're imagining a connection where none exists? Illegal immigration is a sovereignty issue. Our armed forces should be able to keep invaders at bay, and if they're not, we shouldn't be in other countries.
That's ok, I once lived in a house with very little insulation, and with power rates of one quarter what you pay, I was still paying 1,000/mo.
I'm happy I don't live there anymore.
That's just ignorant. Poor people get WAY more pussy than rich people. Just think about all the welfare mothers with six kids.
Seconded. If car companies actually gave a crap about the environment, it wouldn't be difficult to make vehicles that would cost twice or three times as much, but could become family heirlooms due to their longevity. Imagine: Stainless steel bodies that could last indefinitely, diesel motors that could last half a million miles, sealed fluidic bearings that'd last indefinitely, and body, electric, and motor designs set up for easy, low cost maintenance.
It's a pipe dream. It'll never happen.