Obama is as much of a disgrace to this country as Bush ever was.
I agree with you up until that point. While Obama has been a letdown on lots of issues, he hasn't really been like Bush. Obama is winding down the Iraq war, trying to build bridges with the Cairo speech, and making the White House a bit more transparent. As Bill Maher said to those who said to boycott Democrats for not doing enough, "When it comes to voting, when we only have two choices, You gotta grow up and realize there’s a big difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy."
The "9 million saved lives" figure he is touting is the prediction of how many future lives will be saved once the malaria vaccines etc. complete their development, pass their clinical trials, and become widespread.
"Over this decade, we believe unbelievable progress can be made, in both inventing new vaccines and making sure they get out to all the children who need them. We could cut the number of children who die every year from about 9 million to half of that, if we have success on it"
I think it's more in the line of "I'm offended on behalf of Egyptians" or "that goes against the standards of society by making a joke over someone's crisis."
People will always be idiots. If you go back and read the slashdot stories on 9/11/2001 there were morons who were posting "Someone set up us the bomb!"
I suppose this one is more newsworthy by the fact that he put his real name on it and it's unusually tacky for someone considered so professional.
If Microsoft were to ever dream up an idea this creative and outside the box, they'd probably implement it 2 years from now. Kudos to Google for getting it working so quickly.
You're going to have to show me some citations there. Do you actually trust opinion polls in a police state that lacks free speech?
When you ban all other political parties, they get together, moderates and radicals alike. It's because they have a common goal to get rid of the existing regime and are being persecuted together. That's why the Brotherhood is seen as popular because they are the !=Mubarak party. When you remove that block, the supporters fragment once more. Look at Iraq for example; all the formerly-banned opposition groups have divided into their respective parties; Communist, Salafi, secularist, Velayat, etc. They were all opposed to Saddam, and he painted them all as Muslim extremists, traitors, puppets of Iran, Israel, and the US, etc. Most of them weren't.
If you remove Mubarak and allow the formation of political parties once again, you won't see religious extremism take over. Jeffersonian democracy is not like that, instead you get competing factions that will cancel each other's votes out. You'd get a spectrum of political parties from right to left; the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wasat, the National Democratic Party (Mubarak's regime), Socialist party, Communist party, etc. Egypt is not the same as Iran or Saudi etc. You have a large urban class, Cairo is like the Hollywood of the Arab world, and there are tens of millions of non-Muslims living in the land. This revolution is not over religion, it's over political freedom, poverty, and against police repression.
High road? He's been on TV crowing about how he is the country's leader of freedom. Nothing but hollow rhetoric.
He fired the entire cabinet of technocrats, in a lame attempt to deflect blame to others, and is only making the crowds angrier. He could have ordered a more brutal crackdown, but he knows that's what caused the Shah of Iran to lose, so he's not willing to make such a suicidal move. The high road would have been for him to announce a peaceful transition to democracy and upcoming elections and a repeal of his emergency powers that he's been using to suppress free speech and jail people without cause. Egypt is known for the most brutal police and prisons in the region.
I don't think the Muslim Brotherhood will take over. Egypt actually has many political Opposition parties and alternative leaders, like Ayman Nour, the Wasat party, etc. They'd be far more likely to win than the Brotherhood. Keep in mind they've been sitting this one out for various strategic reasons. Even so, if they had to run for elections, they'd run towards the center like many other groups. Banning a party, as Mubarak did, will only make it more hardline. Whenever a far right party wins seats, they either are forced to moderate their ideas or they usually lose the next election.
Nope. The Muslim brotherhood explicitly has been saying for the last week how they're staying out of this one. Mubarak would LOVE to blame this on terrorists or outsiders, as a way of delegitimizing the protests, so they're not going to try helping him out on that. Egypt is not really known for their extremism, and democracy would likely moderate any factions that try it, especially since there is a very large secular crowd in the country as well as millions of Christians.
It's a really clever idea to have a speech-to-tweet service setup, since its circumventing the block, but I don't think it's all that practical for several reasons:
1. Does it transcribe Arabic? 2. If you can't get online in Egypt, how will Egyptian people follow the twitter feeds? Broadcasting to the outside world is important, but what's somewhat more important to the Egyptians right now is reaching each other, since they're trying to coordinate a massive million-person protest in Cairo and can't do it via word-of-mouth alone.
That's a mischaracterization. They are only on the side of more police power in terms of drunk driving. It's a very limited subset of traffic law. They don't really care about warrants to search your trunk etc. let alone the rest of the police actions.
Excellent point. In places like Sweden (I think), it's illegal to drive with the flu, because it's proven that they have reaction times more sluggish than even drunk drivers with a BAC of 0.08%
The decision to use seatbelts is taken out of your hands because much of the time, when people are injured in car accidents, my taxpayer money goes towards your ambulance, police, and hospital care. Particlarly if you have no insurance. If you have insurance in the US, it's quite often Medicaid or Medicare, so my taxpayer money is going towards it anyway.
How is that different than anywhere in the Balkans? The entire region has instability and destruction of churches and mosques by various ethnic and nationalist groups isn't new. It's more due to being in the Balkans and dealing with a spiral of reciprocating violence rather than being a Muslim country, my original point.
You're missing my point. Bush was pretty exceptional in that he called for democratization and then gave even more support to the despots than usual. Bush announced his change in foreign policy to work for more Arab democratization, and then when Egypt arrested all the people who dared run on the ballot against Mubarak, Condileeza Rice pretty much did nothing. Uzbekistan had a large human rights scandal where the police boiled a man to death and the government opened fire on protestors. However, Uzbekistan was a necessary partner for its airbase that could supply Afghanistan, so the US pretended it didn't happen.
You're listing Tunisia as a counterexample, when I don't think it belongs there. Had these protests happened under Bush, he would probably have backed Ben Ali, "our vital partner in the war on terror." Want proof? Bush supported Musharraf to the hilt until the very end, which seriously damaged the US image in the country. (Pakistanis loved the US before Bush, as opinion polls show) When the pro-democracy forces took over again, they were angry that the US had been blatantly blocking democracy and rule of law in their country.
Obama did a lot of good, including in recent coup places like Honduras. Here's hoping he can undo the rest of the damage.
Whenever Fox puts something out as a story, you need to ask yourself, what's their angle? How does this feed into their narrative? You know which ones I'm talking about (US is the best, Liberals are at it again and trying to destroy America, Security over freedom, middle east is scary, etc)
Tunisia doesn't count. Ben Ali, the dictator who was recently forced out due to massive protests and rioting, was considered to be a "loyal Bushie" who enthusiastically endorsed Bush's War on Terror. In exchange for his support, Bush always excluded him from his calls for Democratization in the Arab world. If these protestors had tried this stunt under Bush, Bush probably would have supported Ben Ali against them.
Slashdot Mirror
Obama is as much of a disgrace to this country as Bush ever was.
I agree with you up until that point. While Obama has been a letdown on lots of issues, he hasn't really been like Bush. Obama is winding down the Iraq war, trying to build bridges with the Cairo speech, and making the White House a bit more transparent. As Bill Maher said to those who said to boycott Democrats for not doing enough, "When it comes to voting, when we only have two choices, You gotta grow up and realize there’s a big difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy."
Yes, I meant Lamebook captures the issue in an excellent example, not the actual posting in question.
Behold, Lamebook captured it all so well in one post
The "9 million saved lives" figure he is touting is the prediction of how many future lives will be saved once the malaria vaccines etc. complete their development, pass their clinical trials, and become widespread.
I think it's more in the line of "I'm offended on behalf of Egyptians" or "that goes against the standards of society by making a joke over someone's crisis."
People will always be idiots. If you go back and read the slashdot stories on 9/11/2001 there were morons who were posting "Someone set up us the bomb!"
I suppose this one is more newsworthy by the fact that he put his real name on it and it's unusually tacky for someone considered so professional.
You'd see one story, and then the same story immediately after it.
Oh wait, is that the Matrix or /.? Probably both
If Microsoft were to ever dream up an idea this creative and outside the box, they'd probably implement it 2 years from now. Kudos to Google for getting it working so quickly.
You're going to have to show me some citations there. Do you actually trust opinion polls in a police state that lacks free speech?
When you ban all other political parties, they get together, moderates and radicals alike. It's because they have a common goal to get rid of the existing regime and are being persecuted together. That's why the Brotherhood is seen as popular because they are the !=Mubarak party. When you remove that block, the supporters fragment once more. Look at Iraq for example; all the formerly-banned opposition groups have divided into their respective parties; Communist, Salafi, secularist, Velayat, etc. They were all opposed to Saddam, and he painted them all as Muslim extremists, traitors, puppets of Iran, Israel, and the US, etc. Most of them weren't.
If you remove Mubarak and allow the formation of political parties once again, you won't see religious extremism take over. Jeffersonian democracy is not like that, instead you get competing factions that will cancel each other's votes out. You'd get a spectrum of political parties from right to left; the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wasat, the National Democratic Party (Mubarak's regime), Socialist party, Communist party, etc. Egypt is not the same as Iran or Saudi etc. You have a large urban class, Cairo is like the Hollywood of the Arab world, and there are tens of millions of non-Muslims living in the land. This revolution is not over religion, it's over political freedom, poverty, and against police repression.
High road? He's been on TV crowing about how he is the country's leader of freedom. Nothing but hollow rhetoric.
He fired the entire cabinet of technocrats, in a lame attempt to deflect blame to others, and is only making the crowds angrier. He could have ordered a more brutal crackdown, but he knows that's what caused the Shah of Iran to lose, so he's not willing to make such a suicidal move. The high road would have been for him to announce a peaceful transition to democracy and upcoming elections and a repeal of his emergency powers that he's been using to suppress free speech and jail people without cause. Egypt is known for the most brutal police and prisons in the region.
I don't think the Muslim Brotherhood will take over. Egypt actually has many political Opposition parties and alternative leaders, like Ayman Nour, the Wasat party, etc. They'd be far more likely to win than the Brotherhood. Keep in mind they've been sitting this one out for various strategic reasons. Even so, if they had to run for elections, they'd run towards the center like many other groups. Banning a party, as Mubarak did, will only make it more hardline. Whenever a far right party wins seats, they either are forced to moderate their ideas or they usually lose the next election.
Nope. The Muslim brotherhood explicitly has been saying for the last week how they're staying out of this one. Mubarak would LOVE to blame this on terrorists or outsiders, as a way of delegitimizing the protests, so they're not going to try helping him out on that. Egypt is not really known for their extremism, and democracy would likely moderate any factions that try it, especially since there is a very large secular crowd in the country as well as millions of Christians.
It's a really clever idea to have a speech-to-tweet service setup, since its circumventing the block, but I don't think it's all that practical for several reasons:
1. Does it transcribe Arabic?
2. If you can't get online in Egypt, how will Egyptian people follow the twitter feeds? Broadcasting to the outside world is important, but what's somewhat more important to the Egyptians right now is reaching each other, since they're trying to coordinate a massive million-person protest in Cairo and can't do it via word-of-mouth alone.
I don't think Virginia MADD represents NY MADD adequately. The ones I know wouldn't do something so crazy.
That's a mischaracterization. They are only on the side of more police power in terms of drunk driving. It's a very limited subset of traffic law. They don't really care about warrants to search your trunk etc. let alone the rest of the police actions.
Excellent point. In places like Sweden (I think), it's illegal to drive with the flu, because it's proven that they have reaction times more sluggish than even drunk drivers with a BAC of 0.08%
The decision to use seatbelts is taken out of your hands because much of the time, when people are injured in car accidents, my taxpayer money goes towards your ambulance, police, and hospital care. Particlarly if you have no insurance. If you have insurance in the US, it's quite often Medicaid or Medicare, so my taxpayer money is going towards it anyway.
All right,
"state department american defeat korea" Zero meaningful matches on google. What was the GP talking about?
{Citations needed}
All right, I get your point on Tunisia, but Obama and Clinton are really dropping the ball on Egypt, they are taking Mubarak's side over the public:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/28/obama-clinton-wobble-egypt-mubarak
How is that different than anywhere in the Balkans? The entire region has instability and destruction of churches and mosques by various ethnic and nationalist groups isn't new. It's more due to being in the Balkans and dealing with a spiral of reciprocating violence rather than being a Muslim country, my original point.
You're missing my point. Bush was pretty exceptional in that he called for democratization and then gave even more support to the despots than usual. Bush announced his change in foreign policy to work for more Arab democratization, and then when Egypt arrested all the people who dared run on the ballot against Mubarak, Condileeza Rice pretty much did nothing. Uzbekistan had a large human rights scandal where the police boiled a man to death and the government opened fire on protestors. However, Uzbekistan was a necessary partner for its airbase that could supply Afghanistan, so the US pretended it didn't happen.
You're listing Tunisia as a counterexample, when I don't think it belongs there. Had these protests happened under Bush, he would probably have backed Ben Ali, "our vital partner in the war on terror." Want proof? Bush supported Musharraf to the hilt until the very end, which seriously damaged the US image in the country. (Pakistanis loved the US before Bush, as opinion polls show) When the pro-democracy forces took over again, they were angry that the US had been blatantly blocking democracy and rule of law in their country.
Obama did a lot of good, including in recent coup places like Honduras. Here's hoping he can undo the rest of the damage.
{citation needed}
Whenever Fox puts something out as a story, you need to ask yourself, what's their angle? How does this feed into their narrative? You know which ones I'm talking about (US is the best, Liberals are at it again and trying to destroy America, Security over freedom, middle east is scary, etc)
Tunisia doesn't count. Ben Ali, the dictator who was recently forced out due to massive protests and rioting, was considered to be a "loyal Bushie" who enthusiastically endorsed Bush's War on Terror. In exchange for his support, Bush always excluded him from his calls for Democratization in the Arab world. If these protestors had tried this stunt under Bush, Bush probably would have supported Ben Ali against them.