Oh, and nevermind the basic fact that KERRY WAS THE ONE FULL OF SHIT.
For the historically challenged, some first-hand testimony of veterans. BTW, I've been to some grass roots Kerry events, and they are filled with Vietnam vets who say, all around, "I've been waiting 30 years to vote for this man," because he spoke to their experiences, which no one else was willing to do.
SCOTT CAMILE: "My name is Scott Camile. I was a Sgt. attached to Charley
1/1. I was a forward observer in Vietnam. I went in right after high
school and I'm a student now... The cutting off of heads -- on
Operation Stone -- there was a Lt. Colonel there and two people had
their heads cut off and put on stakes and stuck in the middle of the
field. And we were notified that there was press covering the operation
and that we couldn't do that anymore. Before we went out on the
operation we were told not to waste our heat tablets on food but to save
them for the villages because we were going to destroy all the villages
and we didn't give the people any time to get out of the villages. We
just went in and burned them and if people were in the villages yelling
and screaming, we didn't help them. We just burned the houses as we
went.
"MODERATOR: Why did you use the heat tabs? Did you just light off the
villages with matches or just throw the heat tabs in so it would keep
burning?
"CAMILE: We'd throw the heat tabs in because it was quicker and they'd
keep burning. They couldn't put the heat tabs out. We'd throw them on
top of the houses. People cut off ears and when they'd come back in off
of an operation you'd make deals before you'd go out and like for every
ear you cut off someone would buy you two beers, so people cut off ears.
The torturing of prisoners was done with beatings and I saw one case
where there were two prisoners. One prisoner was staked out on the
ground and he was cut open while he was alive and part of his insides
were cut out and they told the other prisoner if he didn't tell them
what they wanted to know they would kill him. And I don't know what he
said because he spoke in Vietnamese but then they killed him after that
anyway."
JAMES DUFFY: "I served as a machine gunner, on a CH-47, Chinook
helicopter with Company A, 228th Aviation Battalion, 1st Air Cav.
Division, from February '67 to April '68.
"I iced a contingent of Vietnamese peasants chopping wood and I decided,
well, if the Vietnamese can fire a round into my ship, then I can fire
as many rounds into the Vietnamese as I want to.
"So I swung my machine gun onto this group of peasants and opened fire.
Fortunately, the gun jammed after one or two rounds, which was pretty
lucky, because this group of peasants turned out to be a work party
hired by the government to clear the area and there was GIs guarding
them about 50 meters away. But my mind was so psyched out into killing
gooks that I never even paid attention to look around and see where I
was. I just saw gooks and I wanted to kill them. I was pretty scared
after that happened because that sort of violated the unwritten code
that you can do anything you want to as long as you don't get caught.
That's, I guess that's, what happened with the My Lai incident. Those
guys just were following the same pattern that we've been doing there
for 10 years, but they had the misfortune of getting caught at it.
"I looked out across the field and I spotted a Vietnamese woman peasant
running away from the ship. I fired a burst of about six or seven rounds
into her back before we fired, before we hit the ground. When I was
being questioned as to what happened about two weeks later by a captain
in my company, I told him what we did and what I did. We both had a good
laugh about it. That was pretty much company policy. Also in Hue, during
the Tet offensive in '68, I observed American fighters and bombers
(Phantoms) dropping bombs and napalm into very crowded streets full of
civilians. I don't know how many people were wiped out in that pla
Conservatives don't generally argue that the poor shouldn't be helped (okay, some wacko conservative commentators aside)
Hm. Well, the conservative brain trust behind George W. Bush believes this, saying that being poor is a moral failure, not something that anyone can help them with. Since Bush is mainstream conservative, I guess you believe most American conservatives are wacko.
they argue that government programs are hurting instead of helping and that private efforts might be more effective.
On its face there's no controversy here. The trouble is that when conservatives say this 1) usually they're lying about the evidence, 2) usually they have no viable alternate plan, and 3) their policy consists of defunding, regulating and otherwise breaking these programs, rather than figuring out where they are failing and how they can be made more effective and more efficient.
you have the opportunity to decalre any existing work
Anyone that can declare all of the ideas they've worked on hasn't worked on many ideas. I couldn't begin to list all of the (usually cracked) ideas I've had over the years, or predict which I will return to, what tiny few will pan-out, and so-forth. The whole notion is absurd. It makes sense for mature technologies, for example a project you're managing on sourceforge, or some-such thing. But something you've been kicking around in your head for a few years? Be real. If you can declare every one of those then your head is pretty damn small.
The ADA is a huge expense. One example: if a public school gets a deaf student they provide a translator. This is expensive. Private schools just say "no". This is a central problem of most voucher programs. If they exempt private schools from ADA, manditory assessments, and other costly mandates, they dramatically bias the market in favor of private schools. As public schools lose students (and so, funding), disabled students are effectively ghettoized.
Bush can't get up on television and say "hey, if you're deaf, go f* yourself", but that's the basic thrust of his policy.
When a conservative proposes a voucher program that holds private schools to the same standards I'll believe their intentions are honorable.
(Incidentally, in the example above, if the translator happens to have a teaching certificate they get counted for the purposes of calculating student/teacher ratios even though they are full-time with one student. Beware of uncontrolled studies of the effects of student/teacher ratios.)
Public education gets little federal money. Republicans haven't been using federal money to destroy public education. Rather, they've been 1) passing unfunded mandates like No Child Left Behind which have zero chance of improving education, but are busting budgets across the US and are supplanting local curriculum standards; and 2) spreading enormous piles of disinformation about the quality of public education in an effort to discredit it.
The keys to understanding the problems with public education are 1) understanding assessment (What are you trying to measure? What tools do you have to measure it? What do the tools really measure?), and 2) understanding where the money is going.
The per-student cost of public education went up significantly a couple decades ago due to a single cause. When you find out what that cause is you'll understand why Republicans don't like to talk about it when they're bashing public education.
No society in history has become literate through private education. Private education is a failure.
That's arguably not true, depending on when he signed up. Signing up to defend our country is one thing. Signing up to fight elective wars for delusional nutcases who lie every time they try to explain why we should be there is, well, something else.
Contrary to popular belief, the Cassini missions are run by JPL, which is a federally funded research facility that has close ties to NASA, but isn't actually a part of NASA.
And you think our hypothetical nanomachines don't?
No, they don't.
but the fact remains that evolution is an exceedingly efficient engineer.
piffle. Effective, perhaps, but certainly not efficient.
To make the matter clear (and paraphrasing a geneticist on the subject): People don't understand the power of genetics. They think with genetic engineering that we can make, say, a rose of a different color, or flies with extra wings. But with genetic engineering we can make a dog grow an orange.
This is far outside the bounds of what evolution (nature) can do, because evolution has always to derive from previous forms.
Nanomachines are similarly unhinged from natural history.
a good drip coffee maker (or a French Press type for those in a hurry)
... or if you're addicted to a stronger cup, try a moka pot, a.k.a. "stovetop espresso maker". It's not espresso, but it's as close as you'll get without spending several hundred dollars.
Anyone who still doesn't think AL Qaeda and Iraq have links after the beheading of a kidnapped American and the Jordanian bomb plot is self-delusional.
Anyone who is still trying to conflate Al Qaeda and Iraq is a god-damned liar.
Islamic militants are in Iraq because Americans are there. It's easier to target Americans in the Middle East than it is to target them in America. Iraq has nothing to do with it. If we'd dropped Americans anywhere in the Middle East, terrorists would have come to kill them.
Islamic terrorism was not, in fact, Saddam's great sin. You can't use the consequences of your actions to retroactively justify your war. The decision to go to war must stand on the pre-war conditions: the WMDs, and the brutal dictator. The plan that was hatched, a fast path to a unilateral war with a light-weight force and little post-war planning, must stand on the only argument that made sense: that Iraq had WMDs, capable of hitting American targets, that had to be taken out immediately.
But that argument was not supported by evidence then or now. We went to war for lies.
Almost nothing you're saying has any relationship to reality at all. You're parroting hot headed pundits that have no idea what's going on in the real world. They may be popular ideas, but they're not actually true.
To make one point, which is all I have time for at the moment, complaining that modern public schools are too concerned with feelings is preposterous, especially as is relates to social promotion.
The figures on social promotion are clear. The theory of holding children back is that they will be better educated if you make them repeat a grade until they get it right. But the data is that if you hold children back then they leave school less educated than they do if you promote them with their age group. Time to get a new theory.
It's a fairly simple formula: do you want your population more educated, or less educated? The data is that when you institute holding students back you end up with a population that is less educated. This may offend your faith in punishment and reward, but consider that school is about education, not punishment.
Similarly, the data show that emotional states have a profound impact on students ability to learn. "Feelings" matter. Children who feel they are incapable, or are disturbed by other emotional problems don't, in fact, learn well. You can make fun of it all you want, but in the real world if you want results you will pay attention to feelings.
According to the Neocons, this was going to be a cheap and easy war.
Not merely cheap. They claimed Iraqi oil was going to pay for it. They put forward this claim by overstating Iraqi oil infrastructure to the point of absurdity. Everyone (outside of American neocons) knew these predictions were nuts before we went into Iraq.
Reductions in emissions are enormously profitable.
One blanket statement deserves another...
Industries that have actually "gone green" have very consistently found that their profits soar. The don't have to worry about the expense of waste disposal, treatment, regulation, etc., etc. Working with "green" materials is frequently easier, too. You don't worry about poisoning your employees, you don't need special gear to handle it.
Reducing CO2 emissions could drive an incredible economic boom, as we ditch the expensive and dirty technologies required to burn fossil fuels.
CO2 emissions and the people who sprout its affect have in no way proven that emissions equal an increase in the Earth's temperature.
That CO2 emissions will heat up the earth is disputed by noone. This is a basic fact of the physics of our atmosphere. You can hear it from Stephen Hawkings if you want to. The disputes are over 1) how much it will heat the earth, and 2) how fast it will heat the earth.
Slashdot Mirror
How many first-hand sworn testimonies of vets do you want? You can have about any number. See a few earlier in this thread.
For the historically challenged, some first-hand testimony of veterans. BTW, I've been to some grass roots Kerry events, and they are filled with Vietnam vets who say, all around, "I've been waiting 30 years to vote for this man," because he spoke to their experiences, which no one else was willing to do.
Fossil fuels are not subsidized in the USA
Fossil fuels are subsidized in the USA, at around $10 billion per year for research, exploration, etc.
Persian Gulf defense in '95 was about $35.2 billion.
Research funds to solar have been around $40 million. Wind about $20 million.
Reminds me of an episode I heard several months ago... Garrison Keillor was discussing his recent on-show conversion to become a Republican.
/ index.html
Keillor plays a Republican. Here's a quote from an interview published just last week:
I've always been a Democrat. Never tried to hide it, never thought I had to.
Link: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2004/08/21/keillor
Also note that he just published a book titled Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America
Conservatives don't generally argue that the poor shouldn't be helped (okay, some wacko conservative commentators aside)
Hm. Well, the conservative brain trust behind George W. Bush believes this, saying that being poor is a moral failure, not something that anyone can help them with. Since Bush is mainstream conservative, I guess you believe most American conservatives are wacko.
they argue that government programs are hurting instead of helping and that private efforts might be more effective.
On its face there's no controversy here. The trouble is that when conservatives say this 1) usually they're lying about the evidence, 2) usually they have no viable alternate plan, and 3) their policy consists of defunding, regulating and otherwise breaking these programs, rather than figuring out where they are failing and how they can be made more effective and more efficient.
1) bomb sniffers
2) require a 2nd external entrance to the cockpit, and partition it from the cabin, as is done in other countries.
The two threats a plane faces are the threat of terrorists taking control of the plane (#2) and the threat of bombing (#1).
becasue it's easy to take your dog, 3 kids, and pull you boat from a Bike.
I could count on one hand the number of SUVs I see per day that have more than one person in them.
you have the opportunity to decalre any existing work
Anyone that can declare all of the ideas they've worked on hasn't worked on many ideas. I couldn't begin to list all of the (usually cracked) ideas I've had over the years, or predict which I will return to, what tiny few will pan-out, and so-forth. The whole notion is absurd. It makes sense for mature technologies, for example a project you're managing on sourceforge, or some-such thing. But something you've been kicking around in your head for a few years? Be real. If you can declare every one of those then your head is pretty damn small.
EnderWiggnz is on it.
The ADA is a huge expense. One example: if a public school gets a deaf student they provide a translator. This is expensive. Private schools just say "no". This is a central problem of most voucher programs. If they exempt private schools from ADA, manditory assessments, and other costly mandates, they dramatically bias the market in favor of private schools. As public schools lose students (and so, funding), disabled students are effectively ghettoized.
Bush can't get up on television and say "hey, if you're deaf, go f* yourself", but that's the basic thrust of his policy.
When a conservative proposes a voucher program that holds private schools to the same standards I'll believe their intentions are honorable.
(Incidentally, in the example above, if the translator happens to have a teaching certificate they get counted for the purposes of calculating student/teacher ratios even though they are full-time with one student. Beware of uncontrolled studies of the effects of student/teacher ratios.)
I don't remember the bit in the 2nd amendment about chemical weapons. What are you talking about?
... and remember, "they" is "we". The income tax had very, very broad support with voters, because the alternatives (which they lived under) sucked.
Public education gets little federal money. Republicans haven't been using federal money to destroy public education. Rather, they've been 1) passing unfunded mandates like No Child Left Behind which have zero chance of improving education, but are busting budgets across the US and are supplanting local curriculum standards; and 2) spreading enormous piles of disinformation about the quality of public education in an effort to discredit it.
The keys to understanding the problems with public education are 1) understanding assessment (What are you trying to measure? What tools do you have to measure it? What do the tools really measure?), and 2) understanding where the money is going.
The per-student cost of public education went up significantly a couple decades ago due to a single cause. When you find out what that cause is you'll understand why Republicans don't like to talk about it when they're bashing public education.
No society in history has become literate through private education. Private education is a failure.
Cancer also meets all of your criteria. So does sperm.
He knew the dangers when he signed up.
That's arguably not true, depending on when he signed up. Signing up to defend our country is one thing. Signing up to fight elective wars for delusional nutcases who lie every time they try to explain why we should be there is, well, something else.
Contrary to popular belief, the Cassini missions are run by JPL, which is a federally funded research facility that has close ties to NASA, but isn't actually a part of NASA.
Excuse me? What are you talking about?
about jpl
... will still only use one cpu. ;p
And you think our hypothetical nanomachines don't?
No, they don't.
but the fact remains that evolution is an exceedingly efficient engineer.
piffle. Effective, perhaps, but certainly not efficient.
To make the matter clear (and paraphrasing a geneticist on the subject): People don't understand the power of genetics. They think with genetic engineering that we can make, say, a rose of a different color, or flies with extra wings. But with genetic engineering we can make a dog grow an orange.
This is far outside the bounds of what evolution (nature) can do, because evolution has always to derive from previous forms.
Nanomachines are similarly unhinged from natural history.
... or if you're addicted to a stronger cup, try a moka pot, a.k.a. "stovetop espresso maker". It's not espresso, but it's as close as you'll get without spending several hundred dollars.
Avoid the low-end steam-driven espresso machines.
Anyone who still doesn't think AL Qaeda and Iraq have links after the beheading of a kidnapped American and the Jordanian bomb plot is self-delusional.
Anyone who is still trying to conflate Al Qaeda and Iraq is a god-damned liar.
Islamic militants are in Iraq because Americans are there. It's easier to target Americans in the Middle East than it is to target them in America. Iraq has nothing to do with it. If we'd dropped Americans anywhere in the Middle East, terrorists would have come to kill them.
Islamic terrorism was not, in fact, Saddam's great sin. You can't use the consequences of your actions to retroactively justify your war. The decision to go to war must stand on the pre-war conditions: the WMDs, and the brutal dictator. The plan that was hatched, a fast path to a unilateral war with a light-weight force and little post-war planning, must stand on the only argument that made sense: that Iraq had WMDs, capable of hitting American targets, that had to be taken out immediately.
But that argument was not supported by evidence then or now. We went to war for lies.
Almost nothing you're saying has any relationship to reality at all. You're parroting hot headed pundits that have no idea what's going on in the real world. They may be popular ideas, but they're not actually true.
To make one point, which is all I have time for at the moment, complaining that modern public schools are too concerned with feelings is preposterous, especially as is relates to social promotion.
The figures on social promotion are clear. The theory of holding children back is that they will be better educated if you make them repeat a grade until they get it right. But the data is that if you hold children back then they leave school less educated than they do if you promote them with their age group. Time to get a new theory.
It's a fairly simple formula: do you want your population more educated, or less educated? The data is that when you institute holding students back you end up with a population that is less educated. This may offend your faith in punishment and reward, but consider that school is about education, not punishment.
Similarly, the data show that emotional states have a profound impact on students ability to learn. "Feelings" matter. Children who feel they are incapable, or are disturbed by other emotional problems don't, in fact, learn well. You can make fun of it all you want, but in the real world if you want results you will pay attention to feelings.
According to the Neocons, this was going to be a cheap and easy war.
Not merely cheap. They claimed Iraqi oil was going to pay for it. They put forward this claim by overstating Iraqi oil infrastructure to the point of absurdity. Everyone (outside of American neocons) knew these predictions were nuts before we went into Iraq.
... join a CSA. Heirloom tomatoes delivered within hours of picking. After that experience store-bought tomatoes will always taste like cardboard.
;)
thanks
Reductions in emissions are costly.
Reductions in emissions are enormously profitable.
One blanket statement deserves another...
Industries that have actually "gone green" have very consistently found that their profits soar. The don't have to worry about the expense of waste disposal, treatment, regulation, etc., etc. Working with "green" materials is frequently easier, too. You don't worry about poisoning your employees, you don't need special gear to handle it.
Reducing CO2 emissions could drive an incredible economic boom, as we ditch the expensive and dirty technologies required to burn fossil fuels.
CO2 emissions and the people who sprout its affect have in no way proven that emissions equal an increase in the Earth's temperature.
That CO2 emissions will heat up the earth is disputed by noone. This is a basic fact of the physics of our atmosphere. You can hear it from Stephen Hawkings if you want to. The disputes are over 1) how much it will heat the earth, and 2) how fast it will heat the earth.