...How can anybody worry about Apple's hardware sales?
Hardware is commodity future landfill fodder with razor thin, death spiral profit margins. Apple has an OS that people actually want and are willing to pay for, and the ridiculously overpriced, underpowered hardware is what blocks people with a sensible distaste for being ripped off from actually buying it. The answer is so obvious that even an MBA could get it right--
--Yet Apple's solution isn't to start selling OS X to the masses on a 13 cent CD or 0.13 cent download, but to protect a margin which was built on suckers who don't understand economies of scale. [Ducks]
...to bazillions of PC owners who wouldn't mind trying it if by chance it threatens that bottomless goldmine of profit to be found in selling commodity hardware.
Brilliant. Apple gets it 100% bass-ackwards once again. People want the OS, but they hate paying 1995's pricing for last year's hardware, so apple decides that bargain basement x86 hardware in pretty plastic is more valuable than the OS.
(As a matter of fact, bazillions IS a technical term!)
...if they have reservation touch screens for their Falon Gong Reeducation Centers? Can I denounce someone to the secret police by reporting their reactionary bourgeois activities with a camera cell phone?
What about coffins and death beds? If I want to die in China of some easily preventable disease, black lung, or speaking my mind, can I reserve my place a head of time with a cell phone?
...whatever 100% detail-free claim, promise and/or assertion that would win him the presidency.
The great thing about Kerry is you can support him even if you totally disagree with him on the issues. Just wait five minutes or go listen to him in front of a different audience and you'll hear him say exactly what you wanted to hear.
Because the troops serve to fulfill the foreign policy objectives of the state, and the state has decided to depose a dangerous regime, claiming they can stay home is:
a) a waste of money, since we hire them to fight at our behest.
b) really just a euphemism for "pull them out now", because we can't win. (Essay bonus: How is that 'support'?
c) really just a euphemism for "pull them out now", because we shouldn't win. (Essay bonus: Same as above)
d) someone who thinks war is always wrong when it suspiciously appears to be in the actual interests of the United States.
e) someone who thinks that war is always wrong because it never solved anything except independence, slavery, and the speedy end of the worst regimes of the 20th century.
The people killed in Iraq TODAY are either victims of suicide bombers, people who choose to take up arms against the new regime, or (sometimes, and only sometimes) the neighbors of terrorists who haven't turned in the mass murderers who kill their fellow Iraqi's next door because they don't give a crap. WAAAAAhHHHH. Cry me a river.
But what could we expect from someone who claims: 1. that 1/3 of the mass graves are iranian dead
-Thank goodness we can discount the other 2/3rds of the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS THAT HAVE BEEN FOUND.
2. That we have killed more in one year than saddam in 20.
-Nice math skills you fascist shill. 15K vs. a regime that killed 30-50k per year. Hmmm. 15K vs. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS.
You're a deluded but nonetheless incredibly lucky idiot who had the foresight to be born in a place that won't stuff you into a plastic shredder feet first for telling a joke, or gang rape your wife and children while you watch because you didn't say the right thing. What do you choose to do with this incredible gift? Lick the posthumous boots of the second last (and definitely worst) NATIONAL SOCIALIST regime on earth. (Syria is now the last). An idiot like you probably doesn't know that NATIONAL SOCIALISM == NAZI. You're a modern day nazi apologist, or as Lenin put it: a useful idiot.
1. You didn't know that air quality in the U.S. has been improving continuously over the last several decades, even during the big bad Bush administration?
2. You didn't realize that color coded pictures of gases says nothing about the source of a gas, even if you were to blame it on humans based on someone's unchecked assertion.
Gee, maybe non-mechanics shouldn't jump to conclusions until more details get fleshed out.
Renault probably had the worst contemporary car designs and quality control I ever saw when I was a mechanic in the late 80's, early 90's. If there was a way to design something that would be a REALLY bad idea in the real world, these rocket scientists manage to do. Master Fuckologists. They make late 80's VW/Audi look good, and that's no small achievement.
It's not even worth arguing with someone who can only parrot sophmoric rhetorical reposts ("that's Dogma!") and double back on their own conclusions. ("High density states get more power, but I'll complain about rural people having disproportionate power"), -er no.
There is a difference between not having as much say in selecting a president as a Texan and not being able to protect your state's interests. The former is not disenfranchisement because it in no way negates your state's (perhaps limited) role in selecting a national official, but the latter is serious in that it negates the rational for statehood and renders geographical differences and the way of life they promote indefensible. Please stop trying to blur distinctions by drawing relationships that don't exist.
Sorry, Texas is worth more in Electoral votes than Ohio. You may have a fractionally smaller electoral vote, statistically speaking, but this is ignoring the very benefit of a winner take all system. If you are in the majority in a large state, your smaller electoral fraction means much more than the slightly larger fraction of a small state, because all of your state's electors will go to support your candidate, and that means the electors your minority would have chosen is still larger than the smaller states majority. This is why the people in the majority of a large state have more power, but the people in the minority have less. Wahh, cry me a river. That's why we call them elections. No Virginia, it is not unfair that people in the minority lose elections. They can move if they don't like it. It is a free country, after all.
Let's also not pretend that we live under free market capitalism, because we don't and the legistlature makes all sorts of claims as to what it can regulate for all sorts of activities. If you don't think that one part of the population can politically dominate another and sap it dry without any recompense, than I suggest you look at your latest paycheck, specifically under the boxes which contain Federal taxation, Social Security, Medicare, and any other programs for which you must work till June to pay for regardless of whether you use them, and for most of your life you will not. I suppose we could recoup these losses (just like the rural dwellers of your imagination) by overcharging the benefactors of the welfare state which demand them for all those goods they need, but mainly we only sell to those who have disposable incomes, so I doubt that's a winning proposition for us.
I do not have to explain why we should be a federation of geographical states since you are the one arguing that it is nonsensical, but I will: There is, depite your fervent hopes, a very real, non-dogmatic difference between economics, which is 99.9% of the time a geographically based activity undertaken for survival, and identity traits which are affected matters of personal choice usually practiced in one's free time and often without regard to geographical location. (Perhaps you should look up the definition of 'dogma' while your looking up 'disenfranchisement'). You cannot jump to the conclusion that voters in Texas or California don't matter because the outcome appears to be obvious. If they didn't show up, it wouldn't be.
Since the economic activity of the vast majority of economic participants IS geographically based, (a fact, not an dogmatic assertion) any government which ignored geographical interests would be a nothing more than centralized tyranny based on which arbitrarily demarcated group could breed faster.
Since the people of these regional areas CHOSE to form regional governments and apply for statehood under a federal system which respected much of their independence and sovereignty under the 10th amendment, and they freely surrendered some of this sovereignty in exchange for a particular form of representation which guaranteed their relevance, it is reasonable to expect that this deal should be preserved, or else we should let these regions leave peacefully if we c
"Your vote won't count unless you're an moron, idiot, imbecile, or some other kind of retard."
Well, this would explain alot.:)
"See the pattern?"
No-- See the false analogy? The relationship between one's IDENTITY traits and how they vote is not (and constitutionally should not be) inextricably linked. The relationship between one's ECONOMIC activity and how one vote's is, -if one is not a moron. This is why the law is based upon PROPERTY RIGHTS, and the primary POLICE POWER of each state is to protect property rights.
Rural states have different economic requirements than urban environments, and their economic interests differ accordingly. Since the FEDERAL government's primary peacetime function is the regulation and promotion of economic activity, and is itself a FEDERATION of states, it is supposed to represent every state's interests as equally legitimate, not just the high density ones.
"You need to explain why one kind of minority deserves a boost to it's power, but not any of those others."
Ok. First, your conclusion is false: High population states DO get more power in the House of Representatives, and in the Electoral college. They get the same power as their less populated peers in the Senate. Problem? Than found a country and write your own constitution, but don't pretend that the U.S. one was based on majority rule when it was based on preserving a FEDERATION of states.
Second: The people in the "minority" are the majority within their state. The state is equal in the eyes of the federation, so please explain why a state with a higher population is deserving to be MORE EQUAL than its peers. What moral argument could be made against succession if the smaller states could be enslaved and pushed around by the larger states?
"Only 40%? The existing system has disenfranchised the 75% of voters who don't live in swing states, so that'll be an improvement."
Ridiculous. 1) The ability to vote in a state where you are in the minority != disenfranchisement. You are allowed to move to another state you know, --it's a free country. 2) The "Swing states" wouldn't be swing states if the other states didn't actually tally up the votes and get a reputation as a "red" or "blue" state.
"Of course, according to your argument, 49% of the population is ALWAYS disenfranchised by the other 51%. From one point of view, that is true- but still meaningless."
Also ridiculous, and Captain Carrot never made that argument. DISENFRANCHISEMENT is the inability to vote. If you get to vote, you are not DISENFRANCHISED. Maybe you should take Captain Carrot's advice and read all of the Federalist Paper*s*, and consult a legal dictionary or an encyclopedia while you're at it, rather than just pretend you have read them.
Writing 2 pages of blowhard bilge that STARTS with a total out-and-out mistatement of history.
The conclusion of the BUTLER report (that's so you can google it and actually read it this time, moron) was that the intelligence was NOT sexed up.
Stop reading easily-discredited partisan hacks who were fired *for cause* like Andrew Gilligan (who really got spanked by the report you couldn't remember the name of) and get a clue. Then read the U.S. Senate Intelligence Report and the 9-11 commission which echoed the same conclusions.
Saddam was famous throughout the middle east (and much of the world) for paying a $25,000 bonus to each family of any Palestinian suicide bomber who carried out the act.
"Germany would certainly support a war against any country openly supporting terrorism"
-Oh Really? (Here I thought Shroeder was just trying to distract attention from chronic 14% unemployment and social services at the brink of bankruptcy. (Not that we don't have a few of those ourselves)
You conflate "Simplistic" an ephithet, with "Simple" as in "uncomplicated" yet nevertheless "correct":
1. The fact that other axioms were not mentioned does not dispute that the three axioms which were stated are INDISPENSABLE to our society's practice of individual rights, the general trend of civilization, and the basis of any morality which recognizes the primacy of individual rights, (which one could argue is a prerequisite for morality, since the social mechanism of morality is only necessary where there is need for self control as a result of, and prerequisite for the existence of individual freedom).
2. There should be no rational dispute that communism is, by it's own definition, a political system, not a philosophical excercise in idealism. Since Ms. Coulter was discussing the political system in practice, ideals are completely irrelevant and not worthy of consideration until they cease to be ideals and become actual practices.
3. There is no rational objection to Ms. Coulter's citing only a few regimes, since every other communist regime has been equally deadly to the three axioms which are indispensible to individual freedom, and a theoretical regime never existed is a collection of ideals by another name, not a political system. Pol Pot is just a face in the crowd compared to Ho Chi Min, Kim Jong Il, Mao Tse Sung, Castro, Stalin, Idi Amin, or any of the other host of serial murdering psychopaths who count their victims with at least 6 zeros, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE REGIMES savaged these axioms.
4. But if we want to talk theory, then let's be crystal clear: Communism, the political system, has been an absolute abject failure every time it has been tried, with each and every regime having made a significant contribution to over 100,000,000 individuals slaughtered in the last century. We do not need to try it again to "get it right". We need to rise above the level of an obstinate retarded child and recognize that 20-some experiments which render 100,000,000 extinguished lives without a single exception or anomaly is VERY strong evidence of a causal relationship between the political system and the destruction of individual freedoms. Therefore one does not need to wait for the midnight knock of the Internal Security Directorate to shift the burden of proof onto the next would-be butcher to prove that communism ISN'T antithetical to individual liberties.
5. Much like dreams and ideals, communal housing arrangements are not a political system, because they are voluntary associations within a political system which respects the right to form such associations.Calling a hippie commune within a democratic political structure "communism in practice" is like calling an oyster "fearlessly idealistic" because it has no intrinsic exoskeletal protection and ignore the non-intrinsic hard shell that completely encloses it. A hippie commune is a voluntary association of people who voluntarily accept restrictions upon their behavior. A communist regime is not a voluntary association, nor does it tolerate voluntary adherence to its proscriptions.
Call me crazy, but I don't think the identification of people who sneak furtive looks at underwear (of either sex) on display in public storefronts is very high on the FBI's list, and if the subversive book you want to browse was so subversive, it wouldn't be for sale in a freakin bookstore, now would it?
...And if you are casing a building, I would hope that the security which is supposed to protect the public from thieves, vandals, or something more serious (like suicide bombers) WILL notice you before you act.
Having the technical ability to detect people who might be preparing to act against the property or safety of others is a strange definition of "evil". Exactly what right does this infringe?
Israel has not USED it's nukes. It could, but it hasn't. Why should a government which acts responsibly be forced to place its trust in the hands of others. For that matter, If the principle makes sense for Israel, why shouldn't the U.S. be held to the same standard? -We won't because we would never put our own fate in the hands of others, and neither will Israel.
The assassination of PLO leaders who engage in terrorist acts and support opertations *against civilian targets* is no different than the U.S. killing Osama bin Ladin, or any number of terrorist leaders. This is not a street fight, or Israel would have played by street rules and won a long time ago by wiping the palestinians off the face of the earth. They have not because they are a civilized people who do not resort to the intentional targeting and killing of civilians to achieve political ends.
The idea that our support for Israel was the cause of 9-11 is totally unsupported by the facts. Osama's major claim (as stated in his declaration of war against the United States in 1996) was the presence of "infidel" troops in the Saudi Arabian peninsula. They were there not to protect Israel, but to protect Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Quatar, United Arab Emirates, and the status quo of the oil producing countries from... Saddam Hussein, who had violated 14 UN sanctions since the end of the Gulf War. Not that Osama needed a cause for killing anyone, because his people show no compunction killing fellow muslims in Pakistan, Yemin, Sudan and Saudi Arabia because they are of the wrong sect (Shi'a) or not radical enough.
Finally, your response that its our support for Israel that's to blame doesn't address the problem. The foreign policy of the United States cannot be dictated by foreign psychopaths who dislike our policies, or we would soon have none except total isolation, soon to be followed by our own decimation.
Yes, the U.N. is corrupt. 14 santions without action while the UN collected 3 Billion dollars a year in what *Iraqis* call the "oil for palaces" program, including 800 Million dollars per year for weapons inspections during the 4 years when there *were no weapons inspections*. Koffi Annon's own son was hired as a "consultant" for a few months (and paid hansomly) by the company which (surprise) won the contract to administer the program. Koffi Annon finally relented and named Paul Volker to investigate this incident a few months ago. Among other things, the investigation has discovered confisacted documents turned over by the Coalition Authority which demonstrated first hand knowledge of kickbacks and oil dumping for the benefits of Elf Total and Russian Oil interests, and even a baldface demand for a "contribution" to an official of the UN program to be returned. http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/lak ia_import_e xport.pdf
Recently an auditor investigating the situation was killed when his car blew up... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3863 917.stm
Here is a good overview on the subject, complete with links to pdfs as the lakia document above. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,124298,00.html
Other notable malfeasance: Rwanda- 800,000 dead for several months of total inaction, (so much for one of the U.N.'s original rationales: to organize multi-national coalitions to prevent genocide.) Bosnia 10,000+ during the first Yugoslavian War, no action during Kosovo (NATO stepped in since they wouldn't), and 5 years later under U.N. management Kosovo still has electical production issues that are *worse* than Iraq's after 8 months. Palestinians still live in UN refugee camps after 30 years of total inaction. The PLO has gotten Billions in aid during this time, and Arafats cronies live in villas. I don't think that could happen without UN administrative complicity of the sort demonstrated in Iraq. For this Koffi Annon and the UN itself were given a nobel peace prize (for what accomplishment exactly?)
The level of your moral relativism is astonishing. Homicide bombings are not "defensive". The people who send kids with the express intent to kill civilians are not the moral equivalents of an army which takes every care to not arbitrarily level the place even though they could do so within a matter of minutes. Who cares?, it's not your city that will get nuked when a pschopath who killed 3000 people just for showing up at work decides to take out American Cities until he gets around to yours. (That description also proportionally applies to Arafat and Israeli cities).
You and Kano must be the most deluded fucks in the world. Israel hasn't USED it's nukes on anyone. Iran or any other fascist state (that would be a government that kills people without provocation because of their religious or ethnic origins in the name of religion or nationalism, as opposed to a state which attacks an aggressor nation in a manner which attempts to spare innocent civilians in order to keep many more from getting slaughtered. The idea that a state which has not used its weapons of mass destruction on neighbors which have invaded it on multiple occassions needs to be reigned in by the totally corrupt UN just demonstrates the depths of your insanity.
I post under my ID (unlike a coward like you) so other deluded idiots who equate a modern democracy with a terrorist run kleptocracy can mod me down. I consider it a privilege to take a hit for truth.
but they are completely arbitrary. I stand by the claim that a reduction in tax rates constitute a tax cut in the sense that the majority of humanity would recognize the term.
As for Al Franken, I have his "Lying" book and his arguments are just rhetorical b.s. The top 25% of income tax payers pay more than 60% of the federal proceeds. The top 50% pay 96% of the receipts. The bottom 50% pay less than 4% of the reciepts, and if you have children and are not on welfare (although you can be on aid) (i.e., you had income taxes withheld via a W2) then you qualify for an earned income tax credit which is where the government pays you more than you paid them. BTW, the EITC would be a good example of tax relief, as you relieves you from taxes that you actually owed, as opposed to a reduction in tax rates, which reduces the amount of taxation you owe in the first place.
Yes the rich pay more based on the amount of taxable income involved. But soaking the rich "because they can afford it" is not a moral argument. They worked for that money and it's not yours to take. They also invest in stocks, which raises money for corporations which doesn't go under a mattress, but is used to invest in new enterprises which create more jobs and opportunities for wealth, an activity which has done more for more people than any welfare program has ever done. Their reward for risking money that they have already paid income taxes on? A second round of taxation if the risk happens to have worked out.
Finally, your first post implied that you *didn't* get much back. Everybody is allowed to juggle their bad stocks, etc, to maximize their tax writeoffs every year, so I congratulate you (I don't want anybody to pay more than they have to) and recommend you try to find more writeoffs this year, as these are not in any way unusual events.
The tax cuts may not be permanent (just try and let them sunset, Mr./Mrs. Congressman), but they are most definitely tax cuts, as they actually lower tax rates, (and increase various other deductions) across the board. So a Loooong time must be 2001, and a decade of tax cuts is still a tax cut. The only people who argue otherwise are those who don't want to be accurately labeled as "tax hikers" when they allow them to return to Clinton era levels in 2011.
If you're not trolling, you are probably thinking of the $300 rebates (which are technically retroactive refunds of withholdings that had yet to be (and now never would be) collected.
Anybody who paid *ANY* income taxes got significant relief, and contrary to the propaganda, the lowest tax bracket got the proportionally highest cut because their rate went from 15% to 10%, a 33% reduction which was unmatched in any of the other brackets.
Of course, the whole idea that the "poor" are getting screwed because the upper 25% who pay for 60% of government services (overwhelmingly slanted to meet the needs of the poor) got more money back than the bottom 40% who contribute 4% of the proceeds is just a study in myopic math.
And if you really did make any significant amount of money, than you did get a good amount back if you actually worked it out at tax time. Anybody who says they didn't is either lying or didn't earn jack squat.
...since Congress outlawed my right to run a political ad for a cause of my choosing 60 days before an election, it's good to know we the people are still free to distribute porn.
Slashdot Mirror
...How can anybody worry about Apple's hardware sales?
Hardware is commodity future landfill fodder with razor thin, death spiral profit margins. Apple has an OS that people actually want and are willing to pay for, and the ridiculously overpriced, underpowered hardware is what blocks people with a sensible distaste for being ripped off from actually buying it. The answer is so obvious that even an MBA could get it right--
--Yet Apple's solution isn't to start selling OS X to the masses on a 13 cent CD or 0.13 cent download, but to protect a margin which was built on suckers who don't understand economies of scale.
[Ducks]
...to bazillions of PC owners who wouldn't mind trying it if by chance it threatens that bottomless goldmine of profit to be found in selling commodity hardware.
Brilliant. Apple gets it 100% bass-ackwards once again. People want the OS, but they hate paying 1995's pricing for last year's hardware, so apple decides that bargain basement x86 hardware in pretty plastic is more valuable than the OS.
(As a matter of fact, bazillions IS a technical term!)
Is that different enough for you?
...if they have reservation touch screens for their Falon Gong Reeducation Centers? Can I denounce someone to the secret police by reporting their reactionary bourgeois activities with a camera cell phone?
What about coffins and death beds? If I want to die in China of some easily preventable disease, black lung, or speaking my mind, can I reserve my place a head of time with a cell phone?
...whatever 100% detail-free claim, promise and/or assertion that would win him the presidency.
The great thing about Kerry is you can support him even if you totally disagree with him on the issues. Just wait five minutes or go listen to him in front of a different audience and you'll hear him say exactly what you wanted to hear.
Because the troops serve to fulfill the foreign policy objectives of the state, and the state has decided to depose a dangerous regime, claiming they can stay home is:
a) a waste of money, since we hire them to fight at our behest.
b) really just a euphemism for "pull them out now", because we can't win. (Essay bonus: How is that 'support'?
c) really just a euphemism for "pull them out now", because we shouldn't win. (Essay bonus: Same as above)
d) someone who thinks war is always wrong when it suspiciously appears to be in the actual interests of the United States.
e) someone who thinks that war is always wrong because it never solved anything except independence, slavery, and the speedy end of the worst regimes of the 20th century.
1. the U.S. communications and survelliance technology didn't work as expected.
2. Allowing the U.S. troops to be surprised by:
- 5 to 10 to 1 advantage in troops.
- 70 to 14 APC's.
- 30 on 30 tanks. (the important figure here)
3. The Iraqi's got massacred at this engagement, and we lost almost no one.
Shouldn't the headline be: '*Some* technology failed', or better yet 'In spite of some failures, the technology was wildly successful'?
...because we weren't in a serious shooting war with them, and if we were, we would have bombed them flat and built Disney Island in it's place.
If we had, people would still be bitching about that. But Kennedy chickened out, and we nearly got WWIII as a result in 1962.
The people killed in Iraq TODAY are either victims of suicide bombers, people who choose to take up arms against the new regime, or (sometimes, and only sometimes) the neighbors of terrorists who haven't turned in the mass murderers who kill their fellow Iraqi's next door because they don't give a crap. WAAAAAhHHHH. Cry me a river.
But what could we expect from someone who claims: 1. that 1/3 of the mass graves are iranian dead
-Thank goodness we can discount the other 2/3rds of the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS THAT HAVE BEEN FOUND.
2. That we have killed more in one year than saddam in 20.
-Nice math skills you fascist shill. 15K vs. a regime that killed 30-50k per year. Hmmm. 15K vs. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS.
You're a deluded but nonetheless incredibly lucky idiot who had the foresight to be born in a place that won't stuff you into a plastic shredder feet first for telling a joke, or gang rape your wife and children while you watch because you didn't say the right thing. What do you choose to do with this incredible gift? Lick the posthumous boots of the second last (and definitely worst) NATIONAL SOCIALIST regime on earth. (Syria is now the last). An idiot like you probably doesn't know that NATIONAL SOCIALISM == NAZI. You're a modern day nazi apologist, or as Lenin put it: a useful idiot.
1. You didn't know that air quality in the U.S. has been improving continuously over the last several decades, even during the big bad Bush administration?
2. You didn't realize that color coded pictures of gases says nothing about the source of a gas, even if you were to blame it on humans based on someone's unchecked assertion.
Gee, maybe non-mechanics shouldn't jump to conclusions until more details get fleshed out.
Renault probably had the worst contemporary car designs and quality control I ever saw when I was a mechanic in the late 80's, early 90's. If there was a way to design something that would be a REALLY bad idea in the real world, these rocket scientists manage to do. Master Fuckologists. They make late 80's VW/Audi look good, and that's no small achievement.
It's not even worth arguing with someone who can only parrot sophmoric rhetorical reposts ("that's Dogma!") and double back on their own conclusions. ("High density states get more power, but I'll complain about rural people having disproportionate power"), -er no.
There is a difference between not having as much say in selecting a president as a Texan and not being able to protect your state's interests. The former is not disenfranchisement because it in no way negates your state's (perhaps limited) role in selecting a national official, but the latter is serious in that it negates the rational for statehood and renders geographical differences and the way of life they promote indefensible. Please stop trying to blur distinctions by drawing relationships that don't exist.
Sorry, Texas is worth more in Electoral votes than Ohio. You may have a fractionally smaller electoral vote, statistically speaking, but this is ignoring the very benefit of a winner take all system. If you are in the majority in a large state, your smaller electoral fraction means much more than the slightly larger fraction of a small state, because all of your state's electors will go to support your candidate, and that means the electors your minority would have chosen is still larger than the smaller states majority. This is why the people in the majority of a large state have more power, but the people in the minority have less. Wahh, cry me a river. That's why we call them elections. No Virginia, it is not unfair that people in the minority lose elections. They can move if they don't like it. It is a free country, after all.
Let's also not pretend that we live under free market capitalism, because we don't and the legistlature makes all sorts of claims as to what it can regulate for all sorts of activities. If you don't think that one part of the population can politically dominate another and sap it dry without any recompense, than I suggest you look at your latest paycheck, specifically under the boxes which contain Federal taxation, Social Security, Medicare, and any other programs for which you must work till June to pay for regardless of whether you use them, and for most of your life you will not. I suppose we could recoup these losses (just like the rural dwellers of your imagination) by overcharging the benefactors of the welfare state which demand them for all those goods they need, but mainly we only sell to those who have disposable incomes, so I doubt that's a winning proposition for us.
I do not have to explain why we should be a federation of geographical states since you are the one arguing that it is nonsensical, but I will: There is, depite your fervent hopes, a very real, non-dogmatic difference between economics, which is 99.9% of the time a geographically based activity undertaken for survival, and identity traits which are affected matters of personal choice usually practiced in one's free time and often without regard to geographical location. (Perhaps you should look up the definition of 'dogma' while your looking up 'disenfranchisement'). You cannot jump to the conclusion that voters in Texas or California don't matter because the outcome appears to be obvious. If they didn't show up, it wouldn't be.
Since the economic activity of the vast majority of economic participants IS geographically based, (a fact, not an dogmatic assertion) any government which ignored geographical interests would be a nothing more than centralized tyranny based on which arbitrarily demarcated group could breed faster.
Since the people of these regional areas CHOSE to form regional governments and apply for statehood under a federal system which respected much of their independence and sovereignty under the 10th amendment, and they freely surrendered some of this sovereignty in exchange for a particular form of representation which guaranteed their relevance, it is reasonable to expect that this deal should be preserved, or else we should let these regions leave peacefully if we c
And Teflon!
Or if landing is required, Moonshot 7? NASA grumbling: "So we showed them how to do it, and now our mission went to India."
"Your vote won't count unless you're an moron, idiot, imbecile, or some other kind of retard."
:)
Well, this would explain alot.
"See the pattern?"
No-- See the false analogy? The relationship between one's IDENTITY traits and how they vote is not (and constitutionally should not be) inextricably linked. The relationship between one's ECONOMIC activity and how one vote's is, -if one is not a moron. This is why the law is based upon PROPERTY RIGHTS, and the primary POLICE POWER of each state is to protect property rights.
Rural states have different economic requirements than urban environments, and their economic interests differ accordingly. Since the FEDERAL government's primary peacetime function is the regulation and promotion of economic activity, and is itself a FEDERATION of states, it is supposed to represent every state's interests as equally legitimate, not just the high density ones.
"You need to explain why one kind of minority deserves a boost to it's power, but not any of those others."
Ok. First, your conclusion is false: High population states DO get more power in the House of Representatives, and in the Electoral college. They get the same power as their less populated peers in the Senate. Problem? Than found a country and write your own constitution, but don't pretend that the U.S. one was based on majority rule when it was based on preserving a FEDERATION of states.
Second: The people in the "minority" are the majority within their state. The state is equal in the eyes of the federation, so please explain why a state with a higher population is deserving to be MORE EQUAL than its peers. What moral argument could be made against succession if the smaller states could be enslaved and pushed around by the larger states?
"Only 40%? The existing system has disenfranchised the 75% of voters who don't live in swing states, so that'll be an improvement."
Ridiculous. 1) The ability to vote in a state where you are in the minority != disenfranchisement. You are allowed to move to another state you know, --it's a free country. 2) The "Swing states" wouldn't be swing states if the
other states didn't actually tally up the votes and get a reputation as a "red" or "blue" state.
"Of course, according to your argument, 49% of the population is ALWAYS disenfranchised by the other 51%. From one point of view, that is true- but still meaningless."
Also ridiculous, and Captain Carrot never made that argument. DISENFRANCHISEMENT is the inability to vote. If you get to vote, you are not DISENFRANCHISED. Maybe you should take Captain Carrot's advice and read all of the Federalist Paper*s*, and consult a legal dictionary or an encyclopedia while you're at it, rather than just pretend you have read them.
Bend to our higher order of rationality, you emoting, non-vulcan lessers.
9 9/ qid=1093304520/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-0683350-421 1957
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/06700329
I for one welcome our older, wiser Republican masters.
Writing 2 pages of blowhard bilge that STARTS with a total out-and-out mistatement of history.
The conclusion of the BUTLER report (that's so you can google it and actually read it this time, moron) was that the intelligence was NOT sexed up.
Stop reading easily-discredited partisan hacks who were fired *for cause* like Andrew Gilligan (who really got spanked by the report you couldn't remember the name of) and get a clue. Then read the U.S. Senate Intelligence Report and the 9-11 commission which echoed the same conclusions.
...count as "openly supporting terrorism"?
Saddam was famous throughout the middle east (and much of the world) for paying a $25,000 bonus to each family of any Palestinian suicide bomber who carried out the act.
"Germany would certainly support a war against any country openly supporting terrorism"
-Oh Really? (Here I thought Shroeder was just trying to distract attention from chronic 14% unemployment and social services at the brink of bankruptcy. (Not that we don't have a few of those ourselves)
1. The fact that other axioms were not mentioned does not dispute that the three axioms which were stated are INDISPENSABLE to our society's practice of individual rights, the general trend of civilization, and the basis of any morality which recognizes the primacy of individual rights, (which one could argue is a prerequisite for morality, since the social mechanism of morality is only necessary where there is need for self control as a result of, and prerequisite for the existence of individual freedom).
2. There should be no rational dispute that communism is, by it's own definition, a political system, not a philosophical excercise in idealism. Since Ms. Coulter was discussing the political system in practice, ideals are completely irrelevant and not worthy of consideration until they cease to be ideals and become actual practices.
3. There is no rational objection to Ms. Coulter's citing only a few regimes, since every other communist regime has been equally deadly to the three axioms which are indispensible to individual freedom, and a theoretical regime never existed is a collection of ideals by another name, not a political system. Pol Pot is just a face in the crowd compared to Ho Chi Min, Kim Jong Il, Mao Tse Sung, Castro, Stalin, Idi Amin, or any of the other host of serial murdering psychopaths who count their victims with at least 6 zeros, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE REGIMES savaged these axioms.
4. But if we want to talk theory, then let's be crystal clear: Communism, the political system, has been an absolute abject failure every time it has been tried, with each and every regime having made a significant contribution to over 100,000,000 individuals slaughtered in the last century. We do not need to try it again to "get it right". We need to rise above the level of an obstinate retarded child and recognize that 20-some experiments which render 100,000,000 extinguished lives without a single exception or anomaly is VERY strong evidence of a causal relationship between the political system and the destruction of individual freedoms. Therefore one does not need to wait for the midnight knock of the Internal Security Directorate to shift the burden of proof onto the next would-be butcher to prove that communism ISN'T antithetical to individual liberties.
5. Much like dreams and ideals, communal housing arrangements are not a political system, because they are voluntary associations within a political system which respects the right to form such associations. Calling a hippie commune within a democratic political structure "communism in practice" is like calling an oyster "fearlessly idealistic" because it has no intrinsic exoskeletal protection and ignore the non-intrinsic hard shell that completely encloses it. A hippie commune is a voluntary association of people who voluntarily accept restrictions upon their behavior. A communist regime is not a voluntary association, nor does it tolerate voluntary adherence to its proscriptions.
Israel has not USED it's nukes. It could, but it hasn't. Why should a government which acts responsibly be forced to place its trust in the hands of others. For that matter, If the principle makes sense for Israel, why shouldn't the U.S. be held to the same standard? -We won't because we would never put our own fate in the hands of others, and neither will Israel.
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The assassination of PLO leaders who engage in terrorist acts and support opertations *against civilian targets* is no different than the U.S. killing Osama bin Ladin, or any number of terrorist leaders. This is not a street fight, or Israel would have played by street rules and won a long time ago by wiping the palestinians off the face of the earth. They have not because they are a civilized people who do not resort to the intentional targeting and killing of civilians to achieve political ends.
The idea that our support for Israel was the cause of 9-11 is totally unsupported by the facts. Osama's major claim (as stated in his declaration of war against the United States in 1996) was the presence of "infidel" troops in the Saudi Arabian peninsula. They were there not to protect Israel, but to protect Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Quatar, United Arab Emirates, and the status quo of the oil producing countries from... Saddam Hussein, who had violated 14 UN sanctions since the end of the Gulf War. Not that Osama needed a cause for killing anyone, because his people show no compunction killing fellow muslims in Pakistan, Yemin, Sudan and Saudi Arabia because they are of the wrong sect (Shi'a) or not radical enough.
Finally, your response that its our support for Israel that's to blame doesn't address the problem. The foreign policy of the United States cannot be dictated by foreign psychopaths who dislike our policies, or we would soon have none except total isolation, soon to be followed by our own decimation.
Yes, the U.N. is corrupt. 14 santions without action while the UN collected 3 Billion dollars a year in what *Iraqis* call the "oil for palaces" program, including 800 Million dollars per year for weapons inspections during the 4 years when there *were no weapons inspections*. Koffi Annon's own son was hired as a "consultant" for a few months (and paid hansomly) by the company which (surprise) won the contract to administer the program. Koffi Annon finally relented and named Paul Volker to investigate this incident a few months ago. Among other things, the investigation has discovered confisacted documents turned over by the Coalition Authority which demonstrated first hand knowledge of kickbacks and oil dumping for the benefits of Elf Total and Russian Oil interests, and even a baldface demand for a "contribution" to an official of the UN program to be returned.
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/lak ia_import_e xport.pdf
Recently an auditor investigating the situation was killed when his car blew up...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3863 917.stm
Here is a good overview on the subject, complete with links to pdfs as the lakia document above.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,124298
Other notable malfeasance: Rwanda- 800,000 dead for several months of total inaction, (so much for one of the U.N.'s original rationales: to organize multi-national coalitions to prevent genocide.) Bosnia 10,000+ during the first Yugoslavian War, no action during Kosovo (NATO stepped in since they wouldn't), and 5 years later under U.N. management Kosovo still has electical production issues that are *worse* than Iraq's after 8 months. Palestinians still live in UN refugee camps after 30 years of total inaction. The PLO has gotten Billions in aid during this time, and Arafats cronies live in villas. I don't think that could happen without UN administrative complicity of the sort demonstrated in Iraq. For this Koffi Annon and the UN itself were given a nobel peace prize (for what accomplishment exactly?)
Finally, I did p
That would be a better thing right?
The level of your moral relativism is astonishing. Homicide bombings are not "defensive". The people who send kids with the express intent to kill civilians are not the moral equivalents of an army which takes every care to not arbitrarily level the place even though they could do so within a matter of minutes. Who cares?, it's not your city that will get nuked when a pschopath who killed 3000 people just for showing up at work decides to take out American Cities until he gets around to yours. (That description also proportionally applies to Arafat and Israeli cities).
You and Kano must be the most deluded fucks in the world. Israel hasn't USED it's nukes on anyone. Iran or any other fascist state (that would be a government that kills people without provocation because of their religious or ethnic origins in the name of religion or nationalism, as opposed to a state which attacks an aggressor nation in a manner which attempts to spare innocent civilians in order to keep many more from getting slaughtered. The idea that a state which has not used its weapons of mass destruction on neighbors which have invaded it on multiple occassions needs to be reigned in by the totally corrupt UN just demonstrates the depths of your insanity.
I post under my ID (unlike a coward like you) so other deluded idiots who equate a modern democracy with a terrorist run kleptocracy can mod me down. I consider it a privilege to take a hit for truth.
but they are completely arbitrary. I stand by the claim that a reduction in tax rates constitute a tax cut in the sense that the majority of humanity would recognize the term.
As for Al Franken, I have his "Lying" book and his arguments are just rhetorical b.s. The top 25% of income tax payers pay more than 60% of the federal proceeds. The top 50% pay 96% of the receipts. The bottom 50% pay less than 4% of the reciepts, and if you have children and are not on welfare (although you can be on aid) (i.e., you had income taxes withheld via a W2) then you qualify for an earned income tax credit which is where the government pays you more than you paid them. BTW, the EITC would be a good example of tax relief, as you relieves you from taxes that you actually owed, as opposed to a reduction in tax rates, which reduces the amount of taxation you owe in the first place.
Yes the rich pay more based on the amount of taxable income involved. But soaking the rich "because they can afford it" is not a moral argument. They worked for that money and it's not yours to take. They also invest in stocks, which raises money for corporations which doesn't go under a mattress, but is used to invest in new enterprises which create more jobs and opportunities for wealth, an activity which has done more for more people than any welfare program has ever done. Their reward for risking money that they have already paid income taxes on? A second round of taxation if the risk happens to have worked out.
Finally, your first post implied that you *didn't* get much back. Everybody is allowed to juggle their bad stocks, etc, to maximize their tax writeoffs every year, so I congratulate you (I don't want anybody to pay more than they have to) and recommend you try to find more writeoffs this year, as these are not in any way unusual events.
The tax cuts may not be permanent (just try and let them sunset, Mr./Mrs. Congressman), but they are most definitely tax cuts, as they actually lower tax rates, (and increase various other deductions) across the board. So a Loooong time must be 2001, and a decade of tax cuts is still a tax cut. The only people who argue otherwise are those who don't want to be accurately labeled as "tax hikers" when they allow them to return to Clinton era levels in 2011.
If you're not trolling, you are probably thinking of the $300 rebates (which are technically retroactive refunds of withholdings that had yet to be (and now never would be) collected.
Anybody who paid *ANY* income taxes got significant relief, and contrary to the propaganda, the lowest tax bracket got the proportionally highest cut because their rate went from 15% to 10%, a 33% reduction which was unmatched in any of the other brackets.
Of course, the whole idea that the "poor" are getting screwed because the upper 25% who pay for 60% of government services (overwhelmingly slanted to meet the needs of the poor) got more money back than the bottom 40% who contribute 4% of the proceeds is just a study in myopic math.
And if you really did make any significant amount of money, than you did get a good amount back if you actually worked it out at tax time. Anybody who says they didn't is either lying or didn't earn jack squat.
...since Congress outlawed my right to run a political ad for a cause of my choosing 60 days before an election, it's good to know we the people are still free to distribute porn.