Lot's of things seem common sense that are really just common myth.
As a general trend gun ownership in the US has largely been increasing per capita, yet per gun deaths (ignoring justifiable shooting IIRC) has been going down.
The general rule is always be warry of 'what every one knows' and 'common wisdom'. A good percentage of the time it's just b.s. or an urban legend or simular.
Untill you consider that this 'insignificant' amount is just ONE of the independents. My point was if the exit polls show 43% dem 43% rep and 6% other, then why do they report instead 50% rep and 50% dem? At the very least they could report the actual npercentages they get.
Also assuming your 3% error margin is correct (it actually varies from poll to poll) that 2% means it can be any value >0 >=5. assuming your talking exit polls. I was actually refering to thier previous election counts, actual numbers. Well I suppose one could argue for a margin of error in vote counting, but I hope it's less than 3%, especially after the 2000 elections.
Note that was just one state they got 2%+ in. They were one the ballot as a party in all 50 states and most other places (dc, peurto rico, etc.) that vote in the US & territories. I don't know what the level is for fed matching funds, but IIRC it's fairly close to what they get.
Mushroom clouds are an artifact of big explosions, not just atomic/hydrogen bombs.
One interesting ordinance is the fule-air explosive devices. Take two gases that are explosive when combined and ignigted and put them in two big tanks at a great presure then release it all at once and a split second later when the expaning mix covers a football field, but is still at very high (80+ atmospheres iirc) detonate them.
When first developed generals and such warned that thier use might be mistaken for an neuclear weapons.
If you've seen the movie outbreak the bomb they were going to drop to stop that plauge was a FAE munition.
The tell tale in this case of course would be the gamma radation signature as well as other factors, by itself a mushroom cloud just means a very big bang.
If thier election law says 'no' do they not need to find a federal law or state or federal constitutional basis for overturning said law?
I realize an argument could be made for removing a candidate who droped out, but not adding a new candidate after the limit.
I think it's possible NJ needs to find some judges for thier court rather these clueless morons if my understanding of what happened is accurate.
I'd have to read the decision and the law itself to have a solid opinion, but this makes them look very, very bad and clueless as to the POINT of most election laws, let alone thier job and the limits of thier authority.
"They did a damn poor job of convincing most of the world that the intelligence was credible. Of course, that's because Iraq wasn't hoarding WMDs and Bush&Co. were lying."
Did you even read what you replied to? I wasn't talking about just the us intellegence agencies, but many of the more respected european ones as well. Not to mention the UN's 'determination'. It's "most of the world" whose intelligence agencies I was calling credible.
Strange how you forget the arguments against at the time weren't 'no he doesn't have them' but 'let the inspectors find them' with no real doubt that he had them, only as to how much. It was a given by most nations at the time that he had them, just the details were unknown. And this is because it's the image Saddam seemed to be trying to put out. How else can you explain his game playing 'I don't have any, but I won't prove it'. It shure looks to me like he was trying to seem to have them to intimidate his neighbors while at the same time co-operate (or appear to) just enough to keep those who could do somthing serious to him from ever quite making the move, well he lost the gamble.
And whether or not Iraq was a legitimate target in the 'war on terror' is actually of limited relevance to my supposition anyway. The point was Bush showed that the US could and would take military action if it felt it needed to, and in a big way, this makes others think twice before protecting and harboring 'terrorists' or otherwise obstructing operations (including covert) to deal with them, especially if just to assert thier importance. The major countries have been around long enough to recognize the real message, and the third world dictatorships of the week will get the overt one.
No please go re-read what I wrote, it's not a defence of Bush, but an atempted anlysis of some of the likely(imho) reasoning behind using big military in a situation that would be at least as amendable to covert and related operations.
In fact some of it scares me, I don't mind to much when the US throws around it's weight around whithin reason in trade relations or treaties or other negotiations, I expect that in diplomacy.
It's when we start setting policies that allow for pre-emptive attacks I worry. I can't say there is never a reason for pre-emtion, becuase clearly you can't always let the other guy shoot first, but it should always be reasoned case by case and used only under the gravest circumstances.
Telling, frightning. That judge should be impeached, or at least dissmissed depending on the actual mechanism in that state.
And unless it violates state or federal constitution, GW shouldn't be on illinois ballot if your right about thier aug 30 deadline. (could be some party official took care of the red tape already, after all did anyone doubt who the republican nominee would be?)
"I love many of the things the Libertarian party stands for, but every damn time you give them TV time what do they do? Go on about pot.
The Libetarians will never be taken seriously if they keep going on about drugs. They are defeated before they ever get to the polls because of it."
Actually every time I see a Libertarian talking about thier parties stance on recreational drugs of any sort it's because the media person involved is trying to paint them as 'the loony drug party' not because 'they go on about it'. This is an attempt to discredit them by ridicule rather than objective viewing of the platform or even facts.
Except it's not surgery. Agressive action like two fronts we opened up (yes we, if you are a us citizen) do have a diplomatic effect. And look at the two countries we hit. Afganistan was the host nation, by choice, of a man engineered 9/11. No one can rationaly expect us not to hit back. And Iraq was run by a nutcase who refused to honor a cease fire and was hording wmd's (or so it appeared to most credible intelligence agencies worldwide) with a populace that long run would be better off with him gone.
Now you have the whole world on notice that the US will hit hard if it feels it must, and now Countries are far less likely to give the US more than token grief on any anti-terrorism actions. And thus the stage is set for real anti-terrorism, covert ops. I'm not saying that's what the adminstration, or even joint chiefs or intell community are planning, or even that it's a good idea. It's just a logical reason to do a conventional (mostly) attack on two such targets, afganistan was probably expected, Iraq proves we'll do it again. Think Psychological warfare and subtle message and what position this puts the us in. Not that this is the safest tactic, and only having the millitary might we do have makes it even possible. In a few years (10-30?) China may be in a position to contend though.
Not unless, 'none of the above', is a valid candidate. Elswise a vote for none of the above is treated like a failure to vote, it doesn't count and whom ever of the properly registered candidates gets the most votes will be declared the winner, even if only a few percent voted other than 'none of the above'.
However if a high enough percentage of people DO vote other than for a major party it will certainly make news, unless it's a slow creep up like non-voting has been. If we had gone to <50% of the elegible voters doing so in one or two election cycles it'd be big news.
What I find interesting the fact that at least one party other than the two majors gets at least 1% of the vote each time, yet the news agencies typically report x% dem and y% rep, where x+y always totals 100. After what the reporting of florida did in 2000 I would hope that sort of lying would stop. It'd be one thing not to name every party that got at least one vote, but they shouldn't change the actuall percentages (rounding to the nearest.1% or so shure, just make shure to say so), this is part of the false illusion that there is only two viable candidates. Joe public looks on tv and sees rep+dem=100% and believes no one is voting 3rd party so doesn't bother to vote that way himself.
In 92 the libertarians were on the ballot by Party (same way as the rep's and dem's), they got a significant vote (somewhere around 2% iirc) yet nothing on the news but dems x% reps y% and perot of course, he was too rich to ingore. and it all added up to 100%, when that was false.
Untill the news media starts telling the truth it's going to be an uphill battle for any third party to get anywhere barring the occassional billionair or already famous person.
It's checks and balances, it makes it much harder (in theory at least if not in practice). The other reason we don't have 'universal' health care is because there are significant drawbacks, when you take away the incentive for innovation and competition you lose quality and advancement in tech, not all of it, just allot. Currently the us medical system is one of the most capable in the world and the reason it isn't on of the least expensive is that the insurance companies lose so much gambling on the stock market and paying out frivolous lawsuit settlements, combine that with the easy profit laws passed for the pharmaceutical and some other lobbies by thier bought and paid for congress critters.
What needs to happen is NOT government funded/mandated health care (government is always the LEAST efficient way to do things, except buy congressmen), but less government interference in favor of corp lobbiests and perhaps some sort of tax breaks or such to make it easier to afford, but I'm leary of the last given the left's standard tactic of making the poor and minorities dependant and beholden on them so they don't dare vote against them. Tort reform in a very limited way would be usefull as well, mostly by making it easier for frivolous lawsuits to be dumped and or have significant penalties, perhaps for both plaintiff and the lawyer.
I wasn't responding to your post. Mine is sibling to yours and responding to the same post.
Not that I coudn't have done so, I had to check to be shure as I posted on 5 hours sleep and 20+ hours awake:(
I've occasionaly had slashdot (or firefox) scramble the indenting a few times, re-load always fixed it though.
But these things do happen in text only forums, been running into all sorts of who said what to whom confusion since I started on the local bbs's in '84. No harm done.
You do make a few uncertain assumptions in your reasoning I'd like to point out.
The first is that Saddam is a rational man and agrees with your reasoning. Neigther is a given.
If he was rational and we're saying dissarm and prove it or we invade he has a few choices. The first is to dissarm and prove it in a manner that makes invasion unlikely. Yet he continued to obstruct inspectors, indeed he even kicked them out for several years. Another option is to refuse and hope that having wmd's are sufficient deterent. His third is to keep them while trying to convince us he did get rid of them, possibly hinting that he didn't for deterance reasons, while playing games to try and deter us in other ways such as getting as many states on the un against invasion. This third option is the apearance he projected.
This is all assuming wmd's are strictly deterent in nature, which is not necessarily so. In fact one of the things we were saying is we feared eventual agressive use of them. Now given that keeping or even failing to give evidence of thier destruction, is not a rational choice as it ends in invasion.
IIRC the large convoy of trucks went to syria. If I missremember the counrty name, it's the one run by bathist that suddenly decided to dismantle 'thier' wmd programs shortly after we invaded Iraq. I do recall we have sat photo's of a couple of truck(18 wheelers) convoys crossing out of the country into the other country run by bathist. What is not known is what was in those trucks.
Sats are great, but on cloudy days they are rather limited.
I would also point out the majority of Iraq's suspected 'wmd's' were chemical or known biolobicals we can deal with (to some degree) on the battlefield and his ability to get them to the US is questionable.
And frankly in Saddams case it would have been Irrational to use them during the invasion. All it could have accomplished was for us to shift to air strikes and cruise missles with considerable severity. The outrage over his using them would've been sever and predictable. His only hope at that point is that if we don't find them he might be able to get his dictatorship back when we're looked at as having invaded under false pretenses. Or at the very least get away and live as a well to do exile in some other friendly state (his sons did try to take a few billion out of the country).
Your second possible reality would require that not only do we have a superior intellegence apparatus to other credible countries, but so superior that we could fool them as well about Iraq's wmd's and that we HAVE been fooling them for years prior to invasion (this would go back into clintons terms and possible G.H. bushes) with the intent of eventually invading.
Your second 'quick assumptions' are what many credible countries and the UN are on the record as claiming. Indeed we (the USA) knows for a fact at some time he did have them simply because 'we still have the reciepts'. The only real question about Iraq's possesion of WMD's is where they went (syria, scrap heap, bottom of ocean, super-secret bunker under Iraq we can't find, etc.) and when.
Basically it was know fact he had them at one point, he was obligated to destroy them in a way that could be checked. He failed to do so and even evicted those there to help him prove his compliance as well as played games with them when they were there the first time and when they were re-admitted years later. Does this look to anyone like he got rid of them? Accusing Bush of some conspiracy to knowingly invade a dissarmed Iraq is less credible than assuming Saddam shipped the stuff out of country or hid them very well (still a remote possibility) or more likely tried to play games to convince us he got rid of them while convincing his neighbors he still had them to keep them in line.
Yes there were screw ups, we have neigther the weapons or any idea where they went other than a few left overs we've found.
Untill we can find out what happened to the wmd's we don't know what thier status w
This was from working at a sams club for a couple of months. I saw these things happen.
They can even read the breakage monitors for the glass doors on the freezer goods from bentonvill.
They started with the JIT ordering/shipping process and kept expanding it to everything from what I was told.
The first time I saw the parking lot lights out before close the manager I worked under told me all the cloudy days had caused them to come on early and when the automated controlls in bentonvill had a usage 'budget' it was adjusting for to limit electricity costs and it would take a while to fix the 'problem' because they couldn't force them to turn back on locally.
I was told by a different manager that the schedule for the sprinklers was downloaded from bentonvill and would run no matter what for specific times and durations.
All this to controll costs and micromanage expenses to maximize profit according to 'plan'.
As far as links you are welcom to look, but somehow I doubt Wallmart posts thier operational details online anywhere.
Brilliant?!? Clever and centralized I'll give you, but anyplace that has ONE central controll center that can shut off LIGHTS from states away, and does so with NO local overide isn't exactly brilliant.
I know of one sam's club where for a week straight the parking lot lights would shut down an hour before the place closed for bussiness. The sprinklers would come on every three days at 4 pm, even during a a downpour.
Maybe the people who put in the tech are smart, but the people running the systems aren't.
There are other anectedotes I could tell, but you get the idea. Everything is run from Bentonvill Arkansas, and there are no local overides unless mandated by law, NOT EVEN for management.
I was explaining the conceptual difference between belief in a negative vs. lack of belief in a positive.
Atheist: without (a) god
Agnostic: without knowledge (of god)
Antitheist: against belief in (a) god Althogh general usuage would place all atheist as antithiest, I generaly try to keep all three seperate.
Though how you came to the conclusion I was even trying to define athiest in atempting to help the above spot the conceptual confusion he apeared to have is uncertain, but these things happen in text only conversations.
I do agree that pre-emption is definately a dangerous road to travel. My only point was the distinction between what he said and what Bush actually said.
A much better argument was that Iraq was in material breach of the cease fire that halted a more legitimate war and thus subject to renewed attacks.
His whole list started out with reasonable assumptions and then proceded by steady shift to drift farther from fact to political spin and ended on likely falsity as a conclusion.
Not entirely true. Slashdot is run by people who can remove items. IIRC wasn't slashdot forced to remove somthing about scientology due to leagal action from said group?
As a practical matter It's not an issue (unless you count stuff modded down to -1 as removed isntead of just non-obvious)
Since you placed your biases out there I'll add mine first. I generaly vote libertarian even though they carry good concepts a bit past what I feel are optimal points. I have a slight conservative bias on fiscal policy and slight to moderate left bias on social issues. Otherwise I'm probaly middle of the road or off in an odd direction.
1-3 I agree with. 4 is pragmatically correct, though small amounts of some wmd's and programs were found. And there is speculation that much of Iraq's wmd's were sent to a neighboring country just prior to the war, the evidince is limited and circumstantial at best. 5 The pretext was to invade BEFORE Iraq was a direct danger. as in don't wait till it's too late. As well as that he had wmd's and other banned weapons (he did have banned weapons, just not much in the way of nbc/wmd weapons). 5&6 The presence of significant wmd's was not an administration fabrication, or even the sole failure of US intelligence, but was considered valid by quite a few respected countries including several european ones and Russia. One can hardly fault someone for going by currently accepted fact. It would be like blaming someone for using newtons theories of gravity to predict mercury before Einstien had his say.
Your conclusion that Bush decieved the public is based on the premis that he knew saddam had no significant levels of wmd's. If this is true then he had better intell than most of the civilized world.
It's only because so many countries KNEW Iraq had WMD's that I even mentioned the idea that he shipped them out to another country (a Lot of large trucks did cross the borders out of Iraq shortly before the war). I have to wonder how so many got it wrong unless you credit Saddam and Iraq with significant powers of deception, and the insanity to use them in a way likely to only cuase him serious grief. Still it's possible, given how paranoid dictators can be, to do so thinking maybe the belief he had hidden wmd's could scare his neighbors.
Actually there are some species of goats that are white, and sometimes have a single horn (a not so rare defect?, memory is fuzzy) and are thought to be the beast behind the unicorn myths.
I think your getting lost on a semantic difference.
Belief in 0 gods is different than 0 belief in gods. The first is a specific belief, the second a lack of belief.
Consider amoral vs immoral the two are often confused yet amoral means without consideration for morals wereas immoral means in violation of morals.
It's the difference between without a thing and against a thing.
Many religeous types decide if you don't explicitly support a god you must therefore be against god, this failure of understanding (often deliberate) is what he assumed in your case.
Agnostic, IIRC, implies a lack of sufficient knowledge/understanding know/believe for or against theism in specific or general. Which logicaly is where all interested parties (those that care about theism) should place themselves given that the premis usually put forth require far more capability than a human mind is capable of. Personaly given what the major religeons state about thier gods and doctrines I find it all a bit silly to claim to have THE answer moreso than any other religeon when no-one is capable of evaluating the claim.
Sorry, but his post wasn't trollish. It simply pointed out the fallacy in the post above it through a form of reduction to absurdity and you took it as a personal attack and flamed.
Popularity does not equate to quality. It often equates to least offensive to largest group, or even best marketing. There is also the phenomenon of 'fad' or simular if two of your peers do somthing you do it also, then peer 4 sees this and so on.
What you said could be missleading to some. What the Constitution does say on treaties:
"Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
Basically putting them on par with federal law, not the constitution. Though they would have 'the force of the contitution' as you said, some might mistakenly think that meant 'as if part of the constitution'.
But treaties entered into by the US do overide state laws and constitutions.
One other binder on treaties is in article II section 2 clause 2: "He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;... ". With 'he' being the president. (the remainder II:2:2 speaks of ambassadors and supreem court justices and such)
Admittedly both of those cases involved religeous idiots, but bad guys? The stories on that site are iffy at best, not that rotten.com is what I'd call a solid source of news and historical fact.
Some of the 'facts' on that site are dubious at best. There is also nothing there about the b.s. meth lab excuse the batf used to get military help at Waco, or the fact that Mr. Weaver was strongly pressured to saw down the shotgun, and it was under the leagal length by a tiny fraction of an inch, well within a reasonable margin of error (1/8 or 1/16 iirc approx1.5-3mm).
Unless things have changed, last I looked into brand-x vs brand-y with cd-r's it turned out that all the different lables (with a couple of exceptions) just bought from wichever factory gave them the best deal that month for thier sales volume and slaped thier lable on it. If it hasn't changed then what was brand-x this month could be the exact same discs brand-y is selling next month. I usually just buy the cheapest at the speed I want and have rarely burned a coaster because the discs themselves were bad when bought.
What used to be true a couple years ago was that if your burner didn't work well with some batches try looking at the color of the record side, this was more likely important as there are different dyes and reflective coatings in use, though most modern burners shouldn't care.
Slashdot Mirror
Lot's of things seem common sense that are really just common myth.
As a general trend gun ownership in the US has largely been increasing per capita, yet per gun deaths (ignoring justifiable shooting IIRC) has been going down.
The general rule is always be warry of 'what every one knows' and 'common wisdom'. A good percentage of the time it's just b.s. or an urban legend or simular.
Mycroft
Untill you consider that this 'insignificant' amount is just ONE of the independents. My point was if the exit polls show 43% dem 43% rep and 6% other, then why do they report instead 50% rep and 50% dem? At the very least they could report the actual npercentages they get.
Also assuming your 3% error margin is correct (it actually varies from poll to poll) that 2% means it can be any value >0 >=5. assuming your talking exit polls. I was actually refering to thier previous election counts, actual numbers. Well I suppose one could argue for a margin of error in vote counting, but I hope it's less than 3%, especially after the 2000 elections.
Note that was just one state they got 2%+ in. They were one the ballot as a party in all 50 states and most other places (dc, peurto rico, etc.) that vote in the US & territories. I don't know what the level is for fed matching funds, but IIRC it's fairly close to what they get.
Mycroft
Mushroom clouds are an artifact of big explosions, not just atomic/hydrogen bombs.
One interesting ordinance is the fule-air explosive devices. Take two gases that are explosive when combined and ignigted and put them in two big tanks at a great presure then release it all at once and a split second later when the expaning mix covers a football field, but is still at very high (80+ atmospheres iirc) detonate them.
When first developed generals and such warned that thier use might be mistaken for an neuclear weapons.
If you've seen the movie outbreak the bomb they were going to drop to stop that plauge was a FAE munition.
The tell tale in this case of course would be the gamma radation signature as well as other factors, by itself a mushroom cloud just means a very big bang.
Mycroft
Mycroft
If thier election law says 'no' do they not need to find a federal law or state or federal constitutional basis for overturning said law?
I realize an argument could be made for removing a candidate who droped out, but not adding a new candidate after the limit.
I think it's possible NJ needs to find some judges for thier court rather these clueless morons if my understanding of what happened is accurate.
I'd have to read the decision and the law itself to have a solid opinion, but this makes them look very, very bad and clueless as to the POINT of most election laws, let alone thier job and the limits of thier authority.
Mycroft
"They did a damn poor job of convincing most of the world that the intelligence was credible. Of course, that's because Iraq wasn't hoarding WMDs and Bush&Co. were lying."
Did you even read what you replied to? I wasn't talking about just the us intellegence agencies, but many of the more respected european ones as well. Not to mention the UN's 'determination'. It's "most of the world" whose intelligence agencies I was calling credible.
Strange how you forget the arguments against at the time weren't 'no he doesn't have them' but 'let the inspectors find them' with no real doubt that he had them, only as to how much. It was a given by most nations at the time that he had them, just the details were unknown. And this is because it's the image Saddam seemed to be trying to put out. How else can you explain his game playing 'I don't have any, but I won't prove it'. It shure looks to me like he was trying to seem to have them to intimidate his neighbors while at the same time co-operate (or appear to) just enough to keep those who could do somthing serious to him from ever quite making the move, well he lost the gamble.
And whether or not Iraq was a legitimate target in the 'war on terror' is actually of limited relevance to my supposition anyway. The point was Bush showed that the US could and would take military action if it felt it needed to, and in a big way, this makes others think twice before protecting and harboring 'terrorists' or otherwise obstructing operations (including covert) to deal with them, especially if just to assert thier importance. The major countries have been around long enough to recognize the real message, and the third world dictatorships of the week will get the overt one.
No please go re-read what I wrote, it's not a defence of Bush, but an atempted anlysis of some of the likely(imho) reasoning behind using big military in a situation that would be at least as amendable to covert and related operations.
In fact some of it scares me, I don't mind to much when the US throws around it's weight around whithin reason in trade relations or treaties or other negotiations, I expect that in diplomacy.
It's when we start setting policies that allow for pre-emptive attacks I worry. I can't say there is never a reason for pre-emtion, becuase clearly you can't always let the other guy shoot first, but it should always be reasoned case by case and used only under the gravest circumstances.
Mycroft
Telling, frightning. That judge should be impeached, or at least dissmissed depending on the actual mechanism in that state.
And unless it violates state or federal constitution, GW shouldn't be on illinois ballot if your right about thier aug 30 deadline. (could be some party official took care of the red tape already, after all did anyone doubt who the republican nominee would be?)
Mycroft
"I love many of the things the Libertarian party stands for, but every damn time you give them TV time what do they do? Go on about pot.
The Libetarians will never be taken seriously if they keep going on about drugs. They are defeated before they ever get to the polls because of it."
Actually every time I see a Libertarian talking about thier parties stance on recreational drugs of any sort it's because the media person involved is trying to paint them as 'the loony drug party' not because 'they go on about it'. This is an attempt to discredit them by ridicule rather than objective viewing of the platform or even facts.
Mycroft
Except it's not surgery. Agressive action like two fronts we opened up (yes we, if you are a us citizen) do have a diplomatic effect. And look at the two countries we hit. Afganistan was the host nation, by choice, of a man engineered 9/11. No one can rationaly expect us not to hit back. And Iraq was run by a nutcase who refused to honor a cease fire and was hording wmd's (or so it appeared to most credible intelligence agencies worldwide) with a populace that long run would be better off with him gone.
Now you have the whole world on notice that the US will hit hard if it feels it must, and now Countries are far less likely to give the US more than token grief on any anti-terrorism actions. And thus the stage is set for real anti-terrorism, covert ops. I'm not saying that's what the adminstration, or even joint chiefs or intell community are planning, or even that it's a good idea. It's just a logical reason to do a conventional (mostly) attack on two such targets, afganistan was probably expected, Iraq proves we'll do it again. Think Psychological warfare and subtle message and what position this puts the us in. Not that this is the safest tactic, and only having the millitary might we do have makes it even possible. In a few years (10-30?) China may be in a position to contend though.
Mycroft
Not unless, 'none of the above', is a valid candidate. Elswise a vote for none of the above is treated like a failure to vote, it doesn't count and whom ever of the properly registered candidates gets the most votes will be declared the winner, even if only a few percent voted other than 'none of the above'. .1% or so shure, just make shure to say so), this is part of the false illusion that there is only two viable candidates. Joe public looks on tv and sees rep+dem=100% and believes no one is voting 3rd party so doesn't bother to vote that way himself.
However if a high enough percentage of people DO vote other than for a major party it will certainly make news, unless it's a slow creep up like non-voting has been. If we had gone to <50% of the elegible voters doing so in one or two election cycles it'd be big news.
What I find interesting the fact that at least one party other than the two majors gets at least 1% of the vote each time, yet the news agencies typically report x% dem and y% rep, where x+y always totals 100. After what the reporting of florida did in 2000 I would hope that sort of lying would stop. It'd be one thing not to name every party that got at least one vote, but they shouldn't change the actuall percentages (rounding to the nearest
In 92 the libertarians were on the ballot by Party (same way as the rep's and dem's), they got a significant vote (somewhere around 2% iirc) yet nothing on the news but dems x% reps y% and perot of course, he was too rich to ingore. and it all added up to 100%, when that was false.
Untill the news media starts telling the truth it's going to be an uphill battle for any third party to get anywhere barring the occassional billionair or already famous person.
Mycroft
It's checks and balances, it makes it much harder (in theory at least if not in practice). The other reason we don't have 'universal' health care is because there are significant drawbacks, when you take away the incentive for innovation and competition you lose quality and advancement in tech, not all of it, just allot. Currently the us medical system is one of the most capable in the world and the reason it isn't on of the least expensive is that the insurance companies lose so much gambling on the stock market and paying out frivolous lawsuit settlements, combine that with the easy profit laws passed for the pharmaceutical and some other lobbies by thier bought and paid for congress critters.
What needs to happen is NOT government funded/mandated health care (government is always the LEAST efficient way to do things, except buy congressmen), but less government interference in favor of corp lobbiests and perhaps some sort of tax breaks or such to make it easier to afford, but I'm leary of the last given the left's standard tactic of making the poor and minorities dependant and beholden on them so they don't dare vote against them. Tort reform in a very limited way would be usefull as well, mostly by making it easier for frivolous lawsuits to be dumped and or have significant penalties, perhaps for both plaintiff and the lawyer.
Mycroft
I wasn't responding to your post. Mine is sibling to yours and responding to the same post. :(
Not that I coudn't have done so, I had to check to be shure as I posted on 5 hours sleep and 20+ hours awake
I've occasionaly had slashdot (or firefox) scramble the indenting a few times, re-load always fixed it though.
But these things do happen in text only forums, been running into all sorts of who said what to whom confusion since I started on the local bbs's in '84. No harm done.
Mycroft
You do make a few uncertain assumptions in your reasoning I'd like to point out.
The first is that Saddam is a rational man and agrees with your reasoning. Neigther is a given.
If he was rational and we're saying dissarm and prove it or we invade he has a few choices. The first is to dissarm and prove it in a manner that makes invasion unlikely. Yet he continued to obstruct inspectors, indeed he even kicked them out for several years. Another option is to refuse and hope that having wmd's are sufficient deterent. His third is to keep them while trying to convince us he did get rid of them, possibly hinting that he didn't for deterance reasons, while playing games to try and deter us in other ways such as getting as many states on the un against invasion. This third option is the apearance he projected.
This is all assuming wmd's are strictly deterent in nature, which is not necessarily so. In fact one of the things we were saying is we feared eventual agressive use of them. Now given that keeping or even failing to give evidence of thier destruction, is not a rational choice as it ends in invasion.
IIRC the large convoy of trucks went to syria. If I missremember the counrty name, it's the one run by bathist that suddenly decided to dismantle 'thier' wmd programs shortly after we invaded Iraq. I do recall we have sat photo's of a couple of truck(18 wheelers) convoys crossing out of the country into the other country run by bathist. What is not known is what was in those trucks.
Sats are great, but on cloudy days they are rather limited.
I would also point out the majority of Iraq's suspected 'wmd's' were chemical or known biolobicals we can deal with (to some degree) on the battlefield and his ability to get them to the US is questionable.
And frankly in Saddams case it would have been Irrational to use them during the invasion. All it could have accomplished was for us to shift to air strikes and cruise missles with considerable severity. The outrage over his using them would've been sever and predictable. His only hope at that point is that if we don't find them he might be able to get his dictatorship back when we're looked at as having invaded under false pretenses. Or at the very least get away and live as a well to do exile in some other friendly state (his sons did try to take a few billion out of the country).
Your second possible reality would require that not only do we have a superior intellegence apparatus to other credible countries, but so superior that we could fool them as well about Iraq's wmd's and that we HAVE been fooling them for years prior to invasion (this would go back into clintons terms and possible G.H. bushes) with the intent of eventually invading.
Your second 'quick assumptions' are what many credible countries and the UN are on the record as claiming. Indeed we (the USA) knows for a fact at some time he did have them simply because 'we still have the reciepts'. The only real question about Iraq's possesion of WMD's is where they went (syria, scrap heap, bottom of ocean, super-secret bunker under Iraq we can't find, etc.) and when.
Basically it was know fact he had them at one point, he was obligated to destroy them in a way that could be checked. He failed to do so and even evicted those there to help him prove his compliance as well as played games with them when they were there the first time and when they were re-admitted years later. Does this look to anyone like he got rid of them? Accusing Bush of some conspiracy to knowingly invade a dissarmed Iraq is less credible than assuming Saddam shipped the stuff out of country or hid them very well (still a remote possibility) or more likely tried to play games to convince us he got rid of them while convincing his neighbors he still had them to keep them in line.
Yes there were screw ups, we have neigther the weapons or any idea where they went other than a few left overs we've found.
Untill we can find out what happened to the wmd's we don't know what thier status w
This was from working at a sams club for a couple of months. I saw these things happen.
They can even read the breakage monitors for the glass doors on the freezer goods from bentonvill.
They started with the JIT ordering/shipping process and kept expanding it to everything from what I was told.
The first time I saw the parking lot lights out before close the manager I worked under told me all the cloudy days had caused them to come on early and when the automated controlls in bentonvill had a usage 'budget' it was adjusting for to limit electricity costs and it would take a while to fix the 'problem' because they couldn't force them to turn back on locally.
I was told by a different manager that the schedule for the sprinklers was downloaded from bentonvill and would run no matter what for specific times and durations.
All this to controll costs and micromanage expenses to maximize profit according to 'plan'.
As far as links you are welcom to look, but somehow I doubt Wallmart posts thier operational details online anywhere.
Mycroft
Brilliant?!? Clever and centralized I'll give you, but anyplace that has ONE central controll center that can shut off LIGHTS from states away, and does so with NO local overide isn't exactly brilliant.
I know of one sam's club where for a week straight the parking lot lights would shut down an hour before the place closed for bussiness. The sprinklers would come on every three days at 4 pm, even during a a downpour.
Maybe the people who put in the tech are smart, but the people running the systems aren't.
There are other anectedotes I could tell, but you get the idea. Everything is run from Bentonvill Arkansas, and there are no local overides unless mandated by law, NOT EVEN for management.
Mycroft
I was explaining the conceptual difference between belief in a negative vs. lack of belief in a positive.
Atheist: without (a) god
Agnostic: without knowledge (of god)
Antitheist: against belief in (a) god
Althogh general usuage would place all atheist as antithiest, I generaly try to keep all three seperate.
Though how you came to the conclusion I was even trying to define athiest in atempting to help the above spot the conceptual confusion he apeared to have is uncertain, but these things happen in text only conversations.
Mycroft
I do agree that pre-emption is definately a dangerous road to travel. My only point was the distinction between what he said and what Bush actually said.
A much better argument was that Iraq was in material breach of the cease fire that halted a more legitimate war and thus subject to renewed attacks.
His whole list started out with reasonable assumptions and then proceded by steady shift to drift farther from fact to political spin and ended on likely falsity as a conclusion.
Mycroft
Mycroft.
Not entirely true. Slashdot is run by people who can remove items. IIRC wasn't slashdot forced to remove somthing about scientology due to leagal action from said group?
As a practical matter It's not an issue (unless you count stuff modded down to -1 as removed isntead of just non-obvious)
Mycroft
Since you placed your biases out there I'll add mine first. I generaly vote libertarian even though they carry good concepts a bit past what I feel are optimal points. I have a slight conservative bias on fiscal policy and slight to moderate left bias on social issues. Otherwise I'm probaly middle of the road or off in an odd direction.
1-3 I agree with.
4 is pragmatically correct, though small amounts of some wmd's and programs were found. And there is speculation that much of Iraq's wmd's were sent to a neighboring country just prior to the war, the evidince is limited and circumstantial at best.
5 The pretext was to invade BEFORE Iraq was a direct danger. as in don't wait till it's too late. As well as that he had wmd's and other banned weapons (he did have banned weapons, just not much in the way of nbc/wmd weapons).
5&6 The presence of significant wmd's was not an administration fabrication, or even the sole failure of US intelligence, but was considered valid by quite a few respected countries including several european ones and Russia. One can hardly fault someone for going by currently accepted fact. It would be like blaming someone for using newtons theories of gravity to predict mercury before Einstien had his say.
Your conclusion that Bush decieved the public is based on the premis that he knew saddam had no significant levels of wmd's. If this is true then he had better intell than most of the civilized world.
It's only because so many countries KNEW Iraq had WMD's that I even mentioned the idea that he shipped them out to another country (a Lot of large trucks did cross the borders out of Iraq shortly before the war). I have to wonder how so many got it wrong unless you credit Saddam and Iraq with significant powers of deception, and the insanity to use them in a way likely to only cuase him serious grief. Still it's possible, given how paranoid dictators can be, to do so thinking maybe the belief he had hidden wmd's could scare his neighbors.
Mycroft
Actually there are some species of goats that are white, and sometimes have a single horn (a not so rare defect?, memory is fuzzy) and are thought to be the beast behind the unicorn myths.
Mycroft
But Belief in no gods is very different from no belief in gods. One is a specific belief and the other is no belief at all.
Mycroft
I think your getting lost on a semantic difference.
Belief in 0 gods is different than 0 belief in gods. The first is a specific belief, the second a lack of belief.
Consider amoral vs immoral the two are often confused yet amoral means without consideration for morals wereas immoral means in violation of morals.
It's the difference between without a thing and against a thing.
Many religeous types decide if you don't explicitly support a god you must therefore be against god, this failure of understanding (often deliberate) is what he assumed in your case.
Agnostic, IIRC, implies a lack of sufficient knowledge/understanding know/believe for or against theism in specific or general. Which logicaly is where all interested parties (those that care about theism) should place themselves given that the premis usually put forth require far more capability than a human mind is capable of. Personaly given what the major religeons state about thier gods and doctrines I find it all a bit silly to claim to have THE answer moreso than any other religeon when no-one is capable of evaluating the claim.
Mycroft
Sorry, but his post wasn't trollish. It simply pointed out the fallacy in the post above it through a form of reduction to absurdity and you took it as a personal attack and flamed.
Popularity does not equate to quality. It often equates to least offensive to largest group, or even best marketing. There is also the phenomenon of 'fad' or simular if two of your peers do somthing you do it also, then peer 4 sees this and so on.
Mycroft
What you said could be missleading to some. What the Constitution does say on treaties:
"Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
Basically putting them on par with federal law, not the constitution. Though they would have 'the force of the contitution' as you said, some might mistakenly think that meant 'as if part of the constitution'.
But treaties entered into by the US do overide state laws and constitutions.
One other binder on treaties is in article II section 2 clause 2: "He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;... ". With 'he' being the president. (the remainder II:2:2 speaks of ambassadors and supreem court justices and such)
Mycroft
Admittedly both of those cases involved religeous idiots, but bad guys? The stories on that site are iffy at best, not that rotten.com is what I'd call a solid source of news and historical fact.
Some of the 'facts' on that site are dubious at best. There is also nothing there about the b.s. meth lab excuse the batf used to get military help at Waco, or the fact that Mr. Weaver was strongly pressured to saw down the shotgun, and it was under the leagal length by a tiny fraction of an inch, well within a reasonable margin of error (1/8 or 1/16 iirc approx1.5-3mm).
Mycroft
Unless things have changed, last I looked into brand-x vs brand-y with cd-r's it turned out that all the different lables (with a couple of exceptions) just bought from wichever factory gave them the best deal that month for thier sales volume and slaped thier lable on it. If it hasn't changed then what was brand-x this month could be the exact same discs brand-y is selling next month. I usually just buy the cheapest at the speed I want and have rarely burned a coaster because the discs themselves were bad when bought.
What used to be true a couple years ago was that if your burner didn't work well with some batches try looking at the color of the record side, this was more likely important as there are different dyes and reflective coatings in use, though most modern burners shouldn't care.
Mycroft