"He is only continuing the war that was started by his predecessor." Wait...what?
When the US responds militarily the Taliban's supporting, enabling, and protecting Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda AFTER the 9/11 attacks, this is defined as George Bush "starting a war"?
Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in 1990, loses to a US-led military liberation of Kuwait and invasion of Iraq, then spends the next 12 years not complying with UN disarmament resolutions, killing thousands of Iraqis who oppose him, sending money to suicide terrorists, sheltering international terrorists like Abu Nidal, and violating no-fly zones AFTER 9/11, thus prompting another US-led military liberation and invasion of Iraq, this is defined as George Bush "starting a war"?
Both of those wars could have been avoided if the Taliban and Saddam Hussein would simply have complied with UN resolutions (to turn over bin Laden and to verifiably disarm, respectively). The war in Afghanistan was started by the Taliban and al Qaeda, and the war in Iraq was started by Saddam Hussein.
Well, explain all that to the hundreds of Cubans who annually try to float on inner tubes to Key West. If they fail, they die. If they are caught by this humanitarian's police or military, they go to jail.
In spite of all our debates about whether or not Castro is good/bad/indifferent, I look to the fact that people are willing to die or go to prison as a reliable indicator of the quality of life there.
I might agree that he is not as bad as Kim Jong-il, but that is hardly a compliment, is it?
And why the qualifier quotes on "communism", anyway? Castro is perfectly comfortable saying he is a communist, why can't you admit he is?
The sequel will be initially called "Revenge of the Hobbits". But someone will decide that because Hobbits do not do revenge very well, it should be called "Return of the Hobbits".
Later, we should expect to see three more prequels: "The Illusory Threat", "Attack of the Orcs", and lastly "Revenge of the Nazgul", because they do that fairly well.
And somehow they will make General Zod into a wuss...
Sure: Because mind-control is a standard leftist tactic. Don't believe me? Just try to speak your mind on a college campus in defense of secure borders, the Iraq war, or against gay marriage and see if you aren't branded a racist, assaulted, shouted down, sentenced to a "sensitivity" class, expelled, or all the above. Then speak in favor of gay marriage or of "open borders", or against the Iraq war, and you will be safe and probably applauded. Shouting down the opposition has been a standard leftist tactic for a very long time. This blogger bill was just another facet of that.
To be fair, I know some Republicans want this thing too, but the bottom line is that the Dems are in power and they are just trying to lock in their majority. The GOP did the same thing via McCain/Feingold a couple years ago.
When we, as a citizenry, reward politicians who buy our votes by using public monies (via taxation), we encourage them to grow government more and more. They are just now at the point where they feel they can safely try to shut us up for our own good. When government grows, freedom shrinks.
The only arguments we really get to hear at the federal level are 'why' one party's government power-grab is better for you than the other's (call it the argument btw the "Welfare State" and "Compassionate Conservatism"). In either case, freedom loses.
Neither party will ever again cut the size of government for one simple reason: We do not punish them at the polls. Too many of us are happy to have the government 'give' us something to tell them to stop it and abide by the Constitution (in this case, refer to Amendments 1 and 10).
I haven't read everything posted on here this topic, but I did not see any discussion of what American scientists "knew" circa 1975: We were headed for another Ice Age. And those scientists and a few politicians of course had all the data to "prove" it. Fortunately, we listened skeptically then, and eventually did pretty much nothing to keep from encasing ourselves in a global ice cube. It is 75 in Dallas today. Brrr.
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go dribble some used 20W50 on some kittens. I am headed to a GOP mixer...
Thanks; that makes a lot of sense. I was a 'straight-A' math student until I bumped hard into trig in the 11th grade, and realized that I had reached the limit of my mathematical talents and interest!
With my high-school sophomore son asking me if I had ever, ever, really needed to solve a problem with a quadratic equation in my adult life (answered with a sheepish 'no'), I am looking for help as to why abstract math is important.
Does this kind of math actually do anything? I am not knocking it or your knowledge, but...do you get paid more for knowing this kind of thing? Build better bird houses? Is your grass greener? Does you car run better? Refrigerator run more efficiently? Is this what helped Apollo 13 get back safely?
I have zero clue what that kind of math does...I guess I like the kind that allows me to accurately cut wood moulding for my living room.
...as the USS Enterprise, circa 2300. Capt. Kirk ran a tight ship with about 420 guys/gals/beings. Less than that didn't seem to work, as the M-5 automation experiment had some bugs.
But I don't think the Enterprise lasted anything like 50 years, did it? -A, -B, -C, -D, -E....
I am thirlled with my Karma. It saddens me to see that the thing doesn't get the support of other brands. I actually am on my second: I left the first on an airplane and some sh!tbag decided to keep it for him/herself, rather than doing the civilized thing and notifying the lost/found.
Anyway...I like the click-wheel (thought I wish the software would let me run 'around the horn'. My son has an iPod mini, and I guess I just can't get on board with the lack of tactile feedback. Just me, I suppose, because I know there are 20 million folks who are totally fine with it.
I also like the network support, the included RCA connection dock, and the totally eye-candy blue-light thing.
Well, I don't know what part of Texas you live in, but in Dallas we had 5" of snow which stayed on the ground for a week last Christmas (2004). It snowed on Dec 22, the temp dropped to the low teens and stayed below freezing beyond Christmas day. It was the first White Christmas I ever saw (I am 43, and have lived most of my life in Tampa, Virginia Beach, Charleston (SC), and here).
We had 4" on Valentine's Day 2004, which made it one of Dallas' snowiest years on record (we get hardly any snow here, though we get a couple of ice storms annually).
On Dec 6th this year, it was 8 degrees at my home just south of Denton. That same morning, it was colder here than Minneapolis (I had been working there on a project). There was a little bit of sleet on the ground, from the storm the previous day, on which the high temp was 23 (colder than Minneapolis).
I know that long-term trends and individual events are not the same thing, and certainly there is much evidence that the world is warming. But I remember the late 70's (junior high for me) when there was a string of very cold winters, and all the 'experts' were talking about a new ice age.
Guys, the jet stream is just weird for the US this year; it has just shifted and is making it nice for us but awfully cold for eastern Europe. It happens every so often. So maybe it was the warmest year ever, but go tell that to the good folks of Moscow, Athens, or Salzburg right now.
All kinds of natural events - volcano eruptions, solar radiation fluctuations, maybe even the shifting of the magnetic poles - likely has some effect on weather patterns. And we are a long way from proving that SUV's or lawn mowers are the culprits.
I am no scientist, and I could be wrong (which is an admission I haven't heard reciprocated by others), but I think global warming is probably a natural event.
1. The US did about thirty years of deficit spending way before Dubya. Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton ran deficits until the late '90s, though Clinton cut the military pretty much the whole time he was in office. He benefitted from a robust economy (for which he should get some of the credit) and was forced by House Republicans to balance the budget, so a budget surplus was the result. 9/11 required Dubya to increase military/security spending and shocked an already weakening economy (which was exacerbated by the Enron and Worldcom scandals), so tax receipts fell and the deficit was back. His tax cuts demonstrably resulted in an economic rebound (see point 2 below).
2. Tax cuts do not cause deficits! Tax cuts spur economic growth, which yields jobs, business and consumer spending, etc., which yields increased income tax remittances. Deficits are caused by too much spending, which Congress is all too happy to do.
3. "The rich" get most of the cut benefit because they pay most of the taxes! I forget the specifics, but something like the top 5% of the income earners (say, those making above $100k/yr...hardly "rich") pay something like 60% of the taxes. The bottom half pay a small percentage (maybe 20%).
Or was it in fact given to him by the LAPD investigator who stumbled upon it in a downtown manufacturing facility, after having been called in by the fire department to look into a report of a homicide and vandalism after a tanker truck had exploded nearby?
And isn't Dr. Chappelle in fact the owner of a start-up firm called Cyberdyne Systems, Inc.? And don't they now have several secret patents for (speculated) military hardware and IT applications?
I was going to respond to any of the dozens of other "Bush=Hitler" junk posts, but I just got too depressed by the mindset. I am sorry to see Slashdot be so overrun by folks who really don't see the world - or this country and its people (I am American) - for what it is: not perfect, but the best anywhere.
"Democrats represent more than 50% of the population in the senate, even though they're in the minority"
Well, that means exactly nothing, because the Senate is not built around population. A senator is supposed to represent the state in which he lives. The House is a better measure of popular representation, and it has been Republican since 1994.
Also, keep in mind that the Democrats have lost the presidency twice in the last 5 years, and they have lost seats in the Senate over the last 3. Americans are clearly trending Republican/conservative (Bill Clinton was elected as a moderate Democrat, as opposed to Kerry and Gore who are demostrably very far left), so it is absolutely called for and appropriate that Bush nominate a conservative in the vein of Scalia to the Court.
As to the up/down vote thing, the filibuster for court nominations is a practice without precedent employed by Democrats over the last 3 years. They abused 200+ year tradition and custom; Republicans are perfectly justified in adapting to the new tactic.
Also note that the last two justices appointed to the Court (Bader-Ginsburg, who worked for the ACLU, and Steven Breyer, who worked for Ted Kennedy) were not filibustered or mal-treated by Senate Republicans...I am curious to see if Schumer and Leahy have the class of Orrin Hatch. We shall see.
Slashdot Mirror
"He is only continuing the war that was started by his predecessor." Wait...what? When the US responds militarily the Taliban's supporting, enabling, and protecting Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda AFTER the 9/11 attacks, this is defined as George Bush "starting a war"? Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in 1990, loses to a US-led military liberation of Kuwait and invasion of Iraq, then spends the next 12 years not complying with UN disarmament resolutions, killing thousands of Iraqis who oppose him, sending money to suicide terrorists, sheltering international terrorists like Abu Nidal, and violating no-fly zones AFTER 9/11, thus prompting another US-led military liberation and invasion of Iraq, this is defined as George Bush "starting a war"? Both of those wars could have been avoided if the Taliban and Saddam Hussein would simply have complied with UN resolutions (to turn over bin Laden and to verifiably disarm, respectively). The war in Afghanistan was started by the Taliban and al Qaeda, and the war in Iraq was started by Saddam Hussein.
I assume they have enough guys to do both of these...StarCraft 2 was in line first and needs to be delivered first. It's about time...
Well, explain all that to the hundreds of Cubans who annually try to float on inner tubes to Key West. If they fail, they die. If they are caught by this humanitarian's police or military, they go to jail.
In spite of all our debates about whether or not Castro is good/bad/indifferent, I look to the fact that people are willing to die or go to prison as a reliable indicator of the quality of life there.
I might agree that he is not as bad as Kim Jong-il, but that is hardly a compliment, is it?
And why the qualifier quotes on "communism", anyway? Castro is perfectly comfortable saying he is a communist, why can't you admit he is?
The sequel will be initially called "Revenge of the Hobbits". But someone will decide that because Hobbits do not do revenge very well, it should be called "Return of the Hobbits".
Later, we should expect to see three more prequels: "The Illusory Threat", "Attack of the Orcs", and lastly "Revenge of the Nazgul", because they do that fairly well.
And somehow they will make General Zod into a wuss...
Sure: Because mind-control is a standard leftist tactic. Don't believe me? Just try to speak your mind on a college campus in defense of secure borders, the Iraq war, or against gay marriage and see if you aren't branded a racist, assaulted, shouted down, sentenced to a "sensitivity" class, expelled, or all the above. Then speak in favor of gay marriage or of "open borders", or against the Iraq war, and you will be safe and probably applauded. Shouting down the opposition has been a standard leftist tactic for a very long time. This blogger bill was just another facet of that.
To be fair, I know some Republicans want this thing too, but the bottom line is that the Dems are in power and they are just trying to lock in their majority. The GOP did the same thing via McCain/Feingold a couple years ago.
When we, as a citizenry, reward politicians who buy our votes by using public monies (via taxation), we encourage them to grow government more and more. They are just now at the point where they feel they can safely try to shut us up for our own good. When government grows, freedom shrinks.
The only arguments we really get to hear at the federal level are 'why' one party's government power-grab is better for you than the other's (call it the argument btw the "Welfare State" and "Compassionate Conservatism"). In either case, freedom loses.
Neither party will ever again cut the size of government for one simple reason: We do not punish them at the polls. Too many of us are happy to have the government 'give' us something to tell them to stop it and abide by the Constitution (in this case, refer to Amendments 1 and 10).
And if your CD gets scratched at school, the nurse has like five sticks of chapstick in her drawer.
If a little beer or wine is good for you, then a lot must be GREAT!
Do you have kids?
...welcome our six-legged, torso-brained, prehensile-tailed, naughty-organ-mouthed masters.
Thanks for injecting some common sense into this.
I haven't read everything posted on here this topic, but I did not see any discussion of what American scientists "knew" circa 1975: We were headed for another Ice Age. And those scientists and a few politicians of course had all the data to "prove" it. Fortunately, we listened skeptically then, and eventually did pretty much nothing to keep from encasing ourselves in a global ice cube. It is 75 in Dallas today. Brrr.
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go dribble some used 20W50 on some kittens. I am headed to a GOP mixer...
Thanks; that makes a lot of sense. I was a 'straight-A' math student until I bumped hard into trig in the 11th grade, and realized that I had reached the limit of my mathematical talents and interest!
With my high-school sophomore son asking me if I had ever, ever, really needed to solve a problem with a quadratic equation in my adult life (answered with a sheepish 'no'), I am looking for help as to why abstract math is important.
Does this kind of math actually do anything? I am not knocking it or your knowledge, but...do you get paid more for knowing this kind of thing? Build better bird houses? Is your grass greener? Does you car run better? Refrigerator run more efficiently? Is this what helped Apollo 13 get back safely?
I have zero clue what that kind of math does...I guess I like the kind that allows me to accurately cut wood moulding for my living room.
...as the USS Enterprise, circa 2300. Capt. Kirk ran a tight ship with about 420 guys/gals/beings. Less than that didn't seem to work, as the M-5 automation experiment had some bugs.
But I don't think the Enterprise lasted anything like 50 years, did it? -A, -B, -C, -D, -E....
I am thirlled with my Karma. It saddens me to see that the thing doesn't get the support of other brands. I actually am on my second: I left the first on an airplane and some sh!tbag decided to keep it for him/herself, rather than doing the civilized thing and notifying the lost/found.
Anyway...I like the click-wheel (thought I wish the software would let me run 'around the horn'. My son has an iPod mini, and I guess I just can't get on board with the lack of tactile feedback. Just me, I suppose, because I know there are 20 million folks who are totally fine with it.
I also like the network support, the included RCA connection dock, and the totally eye-candy blue-light thing.
Well, I don't know what part of Texas you live in, but in Dallas we had 5" of snow which stayed on the ground for a week last Christmas (2004). It snowed on Dec 22, the temp dropped to the low teens and stayed below freezing beyond Christmas day. It was the first White Christmas I ever saw (I am 43, and have lived most of my life in Tampa, Virginia Beach, Charleston (SC), and here).
We had 4" on Valentine's Day 2004, which made it one of Dallas' snowiest years on record (we get hardly any snow here, though we get a couple of ice storms annually).
On Dec 6th this year, it was 8 degrees at my home just south of Denton. That same morning, it was colder here than Minneapolis (I had been working there on a project). There was a little bit of sleet on the ground, from the storm the previous day, on which the high temp was 23 (colder than Minneapolis).
I know that long-term trends and individual events are not the same thing, and certainly there is much evidence that the world is warming. But I remember the late 70's (junior high for me) when there was a string of very cold winters, and all the 'experts' were talking about a new ice age.
Guys, the jet stream is just weird for the US this year; it has just shifted and is making it nice for us but awfully cold for eastern Europe. It happens every so often. So maybe it was the warmest year ever, but go tell that to the good folks of Moscow, Athens, or Salzburg right now.
All kinds of natural events - volcano eruptions, solar radiation fluctuations, maybe even the shifting of the magnetic poles - likely has some effect on weather patterns. And we are a long way from proving that SUV's or lawn mowers are the culprits.
I am no scientist, and I could be wrong (which is an admission I haven't heard reciprocated by others), but I think global warming is probably a natural event.
...and I, for one, welcome our new Martian overlords...
Three points:
1. The US did about thirty years of deficit spending way before Dubya. Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton ran deficits until the late '90s, though Clinton cut the military pretty much the whole time he was in office. He benefitted from a robust economy (for which he should get some of the credit) and was forced by House Republicans to balance the budget, so a budget surplus was the result. 9/11 required Dubya to increase military/security spending and shocked an already weakening economy (which was exacerbated by the Enron and Worldcom scandals), so tax receipts fell and the deficit was back. His tax cuts demonstrably resulted in an economic rebound (see point 2 below).
2. Tax cuts do not cause deficits! Tax cuts spur economic growth, which yields jobs, business and consumer spending, etc., which yields increased income tax remittances. Deficits are caused by too much spending, which Congress is all too happy to do.
3. "The rich" get most of the cut benefit because they pay most of the taxes! I forget the specifics, but something like the top 5% of the income earners (say, those making above $100k/yr...hardly "rich") pay something like 60% of the taxes. The bottom half pay a small percentage (maybe 20%).
I had no luck with the sea bass...
Did the chickens have large talons?
Or was it in fact given to him by the LAPD investigator who stumbled upon it in a downtown manufacturing facility, after having been called in by the fire department to look into a report of a homicide and vandalism after a tanker truck had exploded nearby?
And isn't Dr. Chappelle in fact the owner of a start-up firm called Cyberdyne Systems, Inc.? And don't they now have several secret patents for (speculated) military hardware and IT applications?
What do you mean, "No not really"?
i am amazed at the number of computer illiterate 18-22 year olds on campus.
I am amazed at the number of college grads that have no concept of spelling, grammar, or punctuation.
And I, for one, welcome our new Communist Chinese overlords...
Thanks for stating that.
I was going to respond to any of the dozens of other "Bush=Hitler" junk posts, but I just got too depressed by the mindset. I am sorry to see Slashdot be so overrun by folks who really don't see the world - or this country and its people (I am American) - for what it is: not perfect, but the best anywhere.
Anyway, thanks.
"Democrats represent more than 50% of the population in the senate, even though they're in the minority"
Well, that means exactly nothing, because the Senate is not built around population. A senator is supposed to represent the state in which he lives. The House is a better measure of popular representation, and it has been Republican since 1994.
Also, keep in mind that the Democrats have lost the presidency twice in the last 5 years, and they have lost seats in the Senate over the last 3. Americans are clearly trending Republican/conservative (Bill Clinton was elected as a moderate Democrat, as opposed to Kerry and Gore who are demostrably very far left), so it is absolutely called for and appropriate that Bush nominate a conservative in the vein of Scalia to the Court.
As to the up/down vote thing, the filibuster for court nominations is a practice without precedent employed by Democrats over the last 3 years. They abused 200+ year tradition and custom; Republicans are perfectly justified in adapting to the new tactic.
Also note that the last two justices appointed to the Court (Bader-Ginsburg, who worked for the ACLU, and Steven Breyer, who worked for Ted Kennedy) were not filibustered or mal-treated by Senate Republicans...I am curious to see if Schumer and Leahy have the class of Orrin Hatch. We shall see.
Gotcha. Makes sense: preserve the final 's'.
But I don't get why you folks drop the second 's' from the word 'sports'.