1 - Three acts of terrorism have occurred in the United States since Pres. Bush took power. (9-11, Anthrax, Sniper). Thus Bush averages 1 attack per year (3 years in office, 3 attacks). Clinton, in comparison averages 1 every 4 years (World Trade Center Bombing and Oklahoma City). By the parent post's logic Clinton did a better job of protecting against terrorism.
Whoa... You consider the sniper a terrorist act, then surely you must consider Columbine (Clinton), Edgewater (Mass consulting firm) shootings (Clinton). Olympic Park Bombing? (Clinton) What about Waco? EgyptAir crash? That's 1 terrorist act for each Clinton Year
Of course this line of reasoning is off base, since the effort has been to stop Al Qaeda. There hasn't been one since 9/11 on US soil. Now whether that's because of the Administration's effort, or simply because Al Qaeda hasn't tried is what's debateable.
So why is it that what Ashcroft is doing is so great? Why is it that for the POSSIBILITY of preventing terrorism we're willing to let this man and his minions trample upon our civil liberties?
Most of the stuff posted on./ about Ashcroft is paranoid fantasy. I'm not going to claim he's the best AG ever or anything like that, but check a site like spinsanity (which tries to cut through the rhetoric on both the left and right), and you discover that Ashcroft is nowhere near the monster that he is portrayed by his political opponents. He's suffered the same type of smear campaign from the Left that the Right did to Clinton
If Bush was anything like Hitler, the Secret police would soon be at your door for posting that.
Bush is at least as much a raving rightwing religious lunatic as Hitler was (he has allegedly been found face down on the Oval Office floor praying)
Evidence please?
- and he has much more power and much less control and much less opposition in this country than Hitler did in Germany.
Whatever! To people like you, the reason Republicans keep making gains is some "Vast Right Wing conspiracy (tm)". The truth is rhetoric of the left has become so hysterical and out of control that it's alienating people. This post is a great example of that.
Normal americans wouldn't have a problem with a reincarnated Hitler. As long as they have TV, plenty of food, etc. most of them will be happy.
Now the second kind you have in these parades seem to be
people who want to mislabel Hitler. Everybody in the world is Hitler. Bush
is Hitler, Ashcroft is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Hitler, the only one who isn't
Hitler is the foreign guy with the mustache dropping people who don't agree
with him into the wood chipper...He's NOT Hitler.
Look at the deficit figures and economic markers before that time.
Recessions happen, it's a fact of life. Fewer people working and lower corporate profits and a crappy stock market mean lower tax revenue. So unless you want to raise taxes on top of the pain, you've either got to cut govt spending, (very tough to do politically) or run a deficit. According to Keynsian Economic theory, which normally Democrats love, it's a GOOD thing to run a deficit during a recession because of the stimulative effects of the extra spending.
Actually, it just boils down to complacency and sheepishness. You'd be suprised how many people support Bush simply because their parents said to or their preacher said to.
And you'd be surprised how many people vote Democrat because their union or preacher said to.
My whole family is Democrat, and so is my wife's family. Yet I tend to vote Republican. How does your theory explain this?
Proof? No, but what looks like frightening bugs in one of the most critical tasks of a democracy, from companies whose owners are heavily involved in politic. Now, that does not necessarily mean that election-rigging is under way, but IMHO it is cause enough for public scrutiny.
Hanging chads, falling chads, dimpled chads. There are already frightening bugs in the voting process, that the voter's intention has to be determined by counters heavily involved in the political process. There's always potential for election fraud. There's always stories about dead people voting. I think if anything, these machines should help reduce the potential for fraud.
All three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption?
NO, it's not
corruption is when you have actual proof of wrong doing
Manufacturing voting machines is not illegal
Donating money to politician is not illegal.
Where is the logical conclusion that because I give to a certain candidate, that I am going to behave badly and create machines that vote for that candidate? Many companies give money to WHOMEVER is in power because they want things done now, now have wait years for the next administration that is to their ideological liking.
Sure there is concern about such machines. Obviously the machines do need to be well documented, tamper-proof, auditable, etc. But there are many problems with the current system also (punch ballots anyone?).
The only force that drives down taxes is political demand from taxpayers. If the tax payers are already experiencing a boon due to low energy costs, they aren't likely to demand a tax cut.
The government isn't going to say "we have more than we need, we're going to cut your taxes". No, they'll just find new ways to spend it.
Remember, we're actually talking disinflation here. (People earn the same salary, but costs of goods fall). Goods that can easily be manufactured to meet rising demand (like electronics) would probably not inflate much, if at all. but others where there are limited supply (housing, health care) would.
Right, but in the case of housing, except for new homes, house prices are driven by supply and demand. I doubt you'd see existing home prices tumble if you suddenly had very low energy costs. In fact, you'd probably see them shoot up, because of the extra money in home buyers pockets that used to go to energy costs.
Of course the builder who can suddenly build houses much more cheaply stands to make a huge profit.
And why did they use PCs at work? As I pointed out, partly because PCs had the best text mode display.
The fact that they were made by IBM had more to do with it than display quality. There used to be a saying "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM", before MS took over that mantle.
Have you ever used an original IBM PC? (circa 1981/82) I have one in my basement. It is the biggest piece of crap system I have ever used. It takes at least 45 seconds from the time you flick the switch until it decides that it is a computer and should start the boot process. They had nice keyboards, and they were built like a tank. Apart from that, they don't have much going for them other than the IBM label.
What he probably means is that this could make energy costs so cheap, that all of the money spent on energy today (not just your electric bill, but also the amount of money in the goods you buy that go to energy costs, etc.) The buying power of someone earning 35K would be equivalent of someone earning 150K today.
I think that claim is exagerated. The biggest chunks of anyones income are taxes and housing, not things affected very much by energy costs.
OTOH, most of the peers of the early PCs had total crap text modes; they couldn't do what the PC could do. (Yes, this includes the Apple. There were no Macs yet.) This is one of the major reasons the PC ended up dominating; text mode was simply more important. Remember that back then most all business use and a good amount of home use was in text mode (word processing, spreadsheets, financial, etc.).
The reason PCs dominated was that many consumers wanted a computer that was compatible with the one they used at work.
The Mac, Amiga and ST were released mid-80's with comprable text capabilities. But these systems could not offer Lotus 1-2-3 and other brand-name apps that the customer demanded. So despite the fact that they were years ahead of the PC in technology (by almost all measures), they were ultimately doomed.
Well, you could shop in a friendly mom-n-pop store where they do know this.
But mom-n-pop stores may know how they've stored it, but they won't know how their vendor stored it. They aren't buying straight from the manufacturer in most cases.
I have CD's from 8 years ago, 4 years ago with stick on labels. I haven't had a failure on any (yet). I would think the harsh chemicals in permanent marker would be more damaging to the CD-R than the label glue anyway.
I also only have a 4X burner (which may be significant from other reports I've seen). I noticed higher failure rates from a 12x burner used at work, but these disks seem to fail sooner rather than later.
For storage, I keep them either in a jewel case or protective sleeve at room temperature, but out of sunlight. Humidity varies.
Keep in mind, this article only presents anecdotal evidence about labels, not a study on their impact.
The cheap-ass CompUSSR CD-R with and without their corporate logo were the main object of testing.
I bought a spindle of these once... I'd say at least 70% of these are bad the moment you remove them from the burner (if the burning process doesn't give up on them first).
Maybe I just got a bad spindle. Granted, you don't expect store-brand anything to be of the best quality, but you do expect at least some quality! I had read an article that essentially said that it didn't matter what brand name was on the CD-R, they are all produced in the same handful of factories.
Don't buy from stores that have humid, warm warehouses.
How are you supposed to know the conditions for the warehouse for a given store? I doubt even the employees of the store would know the answer to this.
Well France, for example, gets something like 90% of it's electricity from Nuclear (no greenhouse emmisions). You simply cannot do that in the US, the environmentalists won't allow it.
Why do people think environmentalists would be biased, anyway?
Because the "environmental movement" is based on left-wing politics more so than science. Look what happens to you when you question their claims. They don't debate you, they attack you mercilessly. Is this the way responsible scientists behave? I hope not.
At the core, the left-wing environmental movement is a relatively new way of packaging the old leftist ideals. It tends to be anti-capitalist, anti-business, anti-progress. Republicans, including W. and his Father have voted for and signed environmental legislation, but do they ever get any credit for it with the so called environmental movement? No? See it's about politics, not science.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned with the environment, but we need to act based on science, not hype.
I don't mean to say Foxnews is perfect. I have my problems with it too. The on-air personalities are overstocked with Republican personalities, I'd prefer more balance there, and I don't mean by bringing in jerk-offs like Geraldo.
I haven't seem inflamitory language in the tickers/scrawls personally, but that's probably because I don't pay attention to it most of the time (only enough to catch the second half of an interesting item, --really annoying. Only CNN Headline News does the the scrawl correctly -- no scrolling!)
I actually watch CNN most of the time, I think they are the most balanced, but Fox provides a needed antidote to watching Jennings/Rather/Brokow. I can only take so much of their "Things are as bad as they can possibly get/give up all hope now" approch to reporting.
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Whoa... You consider the sniper a terrorist act, then surely you must consider Columbine (Clinton), Edgewater (Mass consulting firm) shootings (Clinton). Olympic Park Bombing? (Clinton) What about Waco? EgyptAir crash? That's 1 terrorist act for each Clinton Year
Of course this line of reasoning is off base, since the effort has been to stop Al Qaeda. There hasn't been one since 9/11 on US soil. Now whether that's because of the Administration's effort, or simply because Al Qaeda hasn't tried is what's debateable.
So why is it that what Ashcroft is doing is so great? Why is it that for the POSSIBILITY of preventing terrorism we're willing to let this man and his minions trample upon our civil liberties?Most of the stuff posted on ./ about Ashcroft is paranoid fantasy. I'm not going to claim he's the best AG ever or anything like that, but check a site like spinsanity (which tries to cut through the rhetoric on both the left and right), and you discover that Ashcroft is nowhere near the monster that he is portrayed by his political opponents. He's suffered the same type of smear campaign from the Left that the Right did to Clinton
or maybe he was just eating pretzels!
If Bush was anything like Hitler, the Secret police would soon be at your door for posting that.
Bush is at least as much a raving rightwing religious lunatic as Hitler was (he has allegedly been found face down on the Oval Office floor praying)Evidence please?
- and he has much more power and much less control and much less opposition in this country than Hitler did in Germany.Whatever! To people like you, the reason Republicans keep making gains is some "Vast Right Wing conspiracy (tm)". The truth is rhetoric of the left has become so hysterical and out of control that it's alienating people. This post is a great example of that.
Now the second kind you have in these parades seem to be people who want to mislabel Hitler. Everybody in the world is Hitler. Bush is Hitler, Ashcroft is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Hitler, the only one who isn't Hitler is the foreign guy with the mustache dropping people who don't agree with him into the wood chipper...He's NOT Hitler.
--Dennis Miller
Really? Where's your proof?
Trouble: Largest deficitNot as a percentage of GDP
Look at the deficit figures and economic markers before that time.Recessions happen, it's a fact of life. Fewer people working and lower corporate profits and a crappy stock market mean lower tax revenue. So unless you want to raise taxes on top of the pain, you've either got to cut govt spending, (very tough to do politically) or run a deficit. According to Keynsian Economic theory, which normally Democrats love, it's a GOOD thing to run a deficit during a recession because of the stimulative effects of the extra spending.
And you'd be surprised how many people vote Democrat because their union or preacher said to.
My whole family is Democrat, and so is my wife's family. Yet I tend to vote Republican. How does your theory explain this?
Hanging chads, falling chads, dimpled chads. There are already frightening bugs in the voting process, that the voter's intention has to be determined by counters heavily involved in the political process. There's always potential for election fraud. There's always stories about dead people voting. I think if anything, these machines should help reduce the potential for fraud.
NO, it's not
corruption is when you have actual proof of wrong doing
Manufacturing voting machines is not illegal
Donating money to politician is not illegal.
Where is the logical conclusion that because I give to a certain candidate, that I am going to behave badly and create machines that vote for that candidate? Many companies give money to WHOMEVER is in power because they want things done now, now have wait years for the next administration that is to their ideological liking.
Sure there is concern about such machines. Obviously the machines do need to be well documented, tamper-proof, auditable, etc. But there are many problems with the current system also (punch ballots anyone?).
The only force that drives down taxes is political demand from taxpayers. If the tax payers are already experiencing a boon due to low energy costs, they aren't likely to demand a tax cut.
The government isn't going to say "we have more than we need, we're going to cut your taxes". No, they'll just find new ways to spend it.
Yes and no.
Remember, we're actually talking disinflation here. (People earn the same salary, but costs of goods fall). Goods that can easily be manufactured to meet rising demand (like electronics) would probably not inflate much, if at all. but others where there are limited supply (housing, health care) would.
Right, but in the case of housing, except for new homes, house prices are driven by supply and demand. I doubt you'd see existing home prices tumble if you suddenly had very low energy costs. In fact, you'd probably see them shoot up, because of the extra money in home buyers pockets that used to go to energy costs.
Of course the builder who can suddenly build houses much more cheaply stands to make a huge profit.
The fact that they were made by IBM had more to do with it than display quality. There used to be a saying "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM", before MS took over that mantle.
Have you ever used an original IBM PC? (circa 1981/82) I have one in my basement. It is the biggest piece of crap system I have ever used. It takes at least 45 seconds from the time you flick the switch until it decides that it is a computer and should start the boot process. They had nice keyboards, and they were built like a tank. Apart from that, they don't have much going for them other than the IBM label.
What he probably means is that this could make energy costs so cheap, that all of the money spent on energy today (not just your electric bill, but also the amount of money in the goods you buy that go to energy costs, etc.) The buying power of someone earning 35K would be equivalent of someone earning 150K today.
I think that claim is exagerated. The biggest chunks of anyones income are taxes and housing, not things affected very much by energy costs.
Will it explode after exactly fifty years like my power plants in Sim City do?
The reason PCs dominated was that many consumers wanted a computer that was compatible with the one they used at work.
The Mac, Amiga and ST were released mid-80's with comprable text capabilities. But these systems could not offer Lotus 1-2-3 and other brand-name apps that the customer demanded. So despite the fact that they were years ahead of the PC in technology (by almost all measures), they were ultimately doomed.
The EGA mode with the most colors had a fixed 16 colors in a 320x200 display. The ST and Amiga both had better capabilities than that.
VGA cards may have looked better on paper than the Amiga or ST, but the slow (8mhz, shared among all cards) ISA bus really hampered their performance.
It wasn't until SVGA and local bus technology (VLB and PCI) became available (1993ish) on the PC that PCs surpassed the Amiga (a computer from 1985!)
But mom-n-pop stores may know how they've stored it, but they won't know how their vendor stored it. They aren't buying straight from the manufacturer in most cases.
I have CD's from 8 years ago, 4 years ago with stick on labels. I haven't had a failure on any (yet). I would think the harsh chemicals in permanent marker would be more damaging to the CD-R than the label glue anyway.
I also only have a 4X burner (which may be significant from other reports I've seen). I noticed higher failure rates from a 12x burner used at work, but these disks seem to fail sooner rather than later.
For storage, I keep them either in a jewel case or protective sleeve at room temperature, but out of sunlight. Humidity varies.
Keep in mind, this article only presents anecdotal evidence about labels, not a study on their impact.
Just make sure your only copy of the text file isn't on the CD-R ;-)
This is fine for data, but not music. I mean, you can't refer to that text file while trying to find a new CD to listen to while driving!
I bought a spindle of these once... I'd say at least 70% of these are bad the moment you remove them from the burner (if the burning process doesn't give up on them first).
Maybe I just got a bad spindle. Granted, you don't expect store-brand anything to be of the best quality, but you do expect at least some quality! I had read an article that essentially said that it didn't matter what brand name was on the CD-R, they are all produced in the same handful of factories.
How are you supposed to know the conditions for the warehouse for a given store? I doubt even the employees of the store would know the answer to this.
$60,000? That's pennies to MS.
Well France, for example, gets something like 90% of it's electricity from Nuclear (no greenhouse emmisions). You simply cannot do that in the US, the environmentalists won't allow it.
Because the "environmental movement" is based on left-wing politics more so than science. Look what happens to you when you question their claims. They don't debate you, they attack you mercilessly. Is this the way responsible scientists behave? I hope not.
At the core, the left-wing environmental movement is a relatively new way of packaging the old leftist ideals. It tends to be anti-capitalist, anti-business, anti-progress. Republicans, including W. and his Father have voted for and signed environmental legislation, but do they ever get any credit for it with the so called environmental movement? No? See it's about politics, not science.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned with the environment, but we need to act based on science, not hype.
I don't mean to say Foxnews is perfect. I have my problems with it too. The on-air personalities are overstocked with Republican personalities, I'd prefer more balance there, and I don't mean by bringing in jerk-offs like Geraldo.
I haven't seem inflamitory language in the tickers/scrawls personally, but that's probably because I don't pay attention to it most of the time (only enough to catch the second half of an interesting item, --really annoying. Only CNN Headline News does the the scrawl correctly -- no scrolling!)
I actually watch CNN most of the time, I think they are the most balanced, but Fox provides a needed antidote to watching Jennings/Rather/Brokow. I can only take so much of their "Things are as bad as they can possibly get/give up all hope now" approch to reporting.