Just as a weird question, I know you guys aren't down with drilling ANWR because of the environment, but, is that an absolute thing? I'm looking at it like, it's trillion dollars worth of oil and the country could use some money right now.
For me, yeah, it's pretty much an absolute thing. I think we should try to leave untouched wilderness alone, and I don't buy arguments that oil exploration can or will be done there without significantly disrupting the environment. It'd take a lot to convince me otherwise; not saying I won't listen, just that the barrier is pretty high.
The other things you suggest are refreshingly rational. I don't often hear people, on either left or right, suggesting things that would meaningfully improve the country, particularly where transportation and energy infrastructure is concerned.
An improved and expanded rail network, both for freight and passengers, would be great for the country. Even without a widespread shift away from imported oil, greater use of rail over long haul trucking would reduce our degree of dependency. I'd also like to see more money put into transportation in and around cities and metro areas, if only to reduce congestion.
I like the idea of a bailout for homeowners over a bailout for the mortgage banks. I think it needs to be coupled with a bit more regulation of the loan industry to prevent it happening again. I'm not quite sure how you work the criteria for the bailout, and I have some misgivings about giving a pass to people who used HELOCs and mortgages to live well beyond their means. But life isn't perfect.
I also like the idea of building nuclear power plants. It's kind of unfortunate that the industry started off with lousy designs and bad maintenance. It's definitely possible to build and operate the things safely - France can do it, so we can too. I think it ought to involve a significant amount of careful governmental regulation, though, as I just don't trust the industry to police itself - given the opportunity, they'll do everything cheaply and half-assed. Alternative energy is also something to invest in, if only because it makes sense to diversify your assets when investing.
I guess a lot of that comes down to a question of money. Pity we've put so much into Iraq - even with the same irresponsible financing scheme, had we dumped that money into infrastructure, we'd be far better off in the long run.
I wasn't really upset by the slur; it did sort of make me take your point a bit less seriously, though.
That said, it's kind of a shame if the only way you can get right wingers to pay attention to you is to use a slur, perhaps it's just a kind of bizarro-world PC.
As an aside, this liberal isn't interested in taking your guns - I own several myself.
I don't quite get what you're arguing for in that response. I certainly don't think there's a meaningful threat to the US from the Muslim world, excepting as regards some terrorist activity and possibly some large problems if nuclear weapons get out of control Pakistan. Nobody sane actually takes that Capliphate bullshit seriously. It's big talk from small men.
I don't what this has to do with why you chose to use a slur. If it's in an ironic sense, I apologize for my lack of sensitivity.
You just can't resist the opportunity to use slurs and smear whole groups of people, can you?
How about "Al Qaida?" It's more accurate than "the muzzies," it's less wildly broad in who it blames for 9/11, and it's even shorter to type. But maybe it doesn't achieve your goal of projecting hate at the whole of the Muslim world.
The worldwide DDT ban has caused the deaths of millions worldwide. Even if DDT were to make the bald eagle extinct, which is highly doubtful, the lives of millions of men, women, and children is more important to me.
Utter bullshit - a lie perpetuated by chemical manufacturers and anti-environmentalist conservatives. First, DDT use is not banned worldwide - and is still used in places where malaria is endemic; it's used in far smaller quantities than the previous agricultural use. Second, there are other, less dangerous compounds, that can be used to combat malaria carrying mosquitoes. Third, the ban on agricultural use (which was the most environmentally damaging use of the compound) may actually have improved the usefulness of DDT in a limited anti-malarial role, since it reduced the pressure on mosquitoes to evolve a resistance to the chemical.
Leaving aside the fact that none of these (apart from the ice age bit) has anything to do with global climate change, and you seem to be conflating any kind of environmental concern into one undifferentiated mass:
Overpopulation and starvation is a problem - consider someone not in your cozy part of the developed world for a change.
DDT ceased to be a problem once it was banned - it's effects on wild species are starting to go away now.
Pollution and smog are still a problem, but environmental regulations have helped rein them in somewhat.
The ozone layer, if you recall, was a problem (and still has a hole in it) and a ban was placed on CFCs, which stopped the problem from worsening and has reduced the size of the ozone hole.
That leaves the ice age thing. Yeah, that wasn't correct. On the other hand, climate science has had 30 years of scientific progress and technological advances to provide it better tools and models. There's satellites monitoring the weather now, oceanic temperature monitors, super computers running climatic models. And the vast majority of the scientists working in the field agree that global warming is a problem, and that it's likely caused by humans. There are people who legitimately don't agree with the popular models; there are also people who are mostly funded by oil companies who are essentially paid to create noise to confuse the public.
Is it possible they're wrong? Of course. But since you're into conflating unrelated issues together into an undifferentiated mass, I say that things look they come out on the side of human generated global warming being a problem that needs to be dealt with.
Sorry, but I ain't buying it this time!
I'll make a wild guess and say that you probably never bought it, despite the fact that the environmentalists and scientists were right on 4 out of 5 of the things you cite. Kinda makes you a useless contrarian.
I'm beginning to tire of people who refuse to take global warming seriously as a threat to the well-being of the human species and the larger environment.
How about we make a deal - if global warming turns out not to cause widespread famine and damage, I'll give you $100 for being right. If it does turn out to be a problem, you commit suicide to spare resources for those of us who saw the problem coming.
That's one area where (commercial) software development and pharma are a bit closer. Most pharama companies spend significantly more on marketing than on R&D - Merck, for example spent $7.6 billion on marketing vs $4.9 billion on R & D, according to their 2007 10-K filing. Microsoft, similarly, spent $11.5 billion on marketing and $7.1 billion on R & D.
You can think of open source software as being mostly the other way around. There's significantly more spent on development (in terms of donated time, resources, etc) than on marketing.
Either the Democrats will do the right thing and work to reverse the expanded powers the government has taken for itself over the past 8 years, or the Republicans in Congress will get paranoid and work the press to help force a roll back of those powers so the Democratic president can't use them.
Yes, sir or ma'am, you are completely correct. It's kind of a pity that Archer-Daniels-Midland has more and better representation in Washington than you do, isn't it?
I sure hope that this is the point in the debate where the surety of failure is justified in terms of Islamic radicalism, Iranian interventionism and Iraqi incompetence & corruption, since these are the leading contributors to the clusterfuck that Iraq has become.
The largest single contributor to the clusterfuck that is going on now is the dissolution of the Iraqi Army. Hundreds of thousands of armed men with families who could have been put to work providing security (and to hear to Jay Garner tell it, were ready to work with the US) were instead put out on the streets without jobs. Then there was de-bathification, which put a large number of Sunnis out of government ostensibly forever. Even people who joined the party just to get ahead, never really buying into the ideology or committing crimes, were kicked out.
Those two events created most of the problems. Coupled with the pitifully inadequate US troop presence, the shocking lack of security at the weapons dumps around the country, and the insistence on putting ideologically-correct people in positions of power in the country in preference to qualified ones, failure was assured in Iraq.
Iranian intervention in Iraq has contributed very little to the violence. That's a canard that conservatives like to throw out to distract from the complete failure of US policy in the country, and to gin up support for an attack on Iran. It's bullshit.
The opponents prediction of failure certainly wasn't defined ahead of time in military terms.
The failure was not military - the military performed admirably given the resources and orders it was given. The failure was one of policy and politics. And don't pretend that nobody saw it coming. The State Department had a multi-volume treatise on how to stabilize the country afterwards which was entirely ignored by the necons running the defense department. The fact that the Sunni minority had long and brutally repressed the Shiite majority was well known. The decision makers in Washington opted to believe the happy talk of Chalabi and the INC, rather than the evidence and advice of experienced folks in their own government.
But none of this has anything to do with the French; I still don't believe they were motivated at all by anyone's best interest.
Be that as it may - do you still believe that the US was motivated by anything but the best interests of the neocons visions for a westernized Middle East and the GOP's electoral strategy for the 2004 elections? Seriously?
I wouldn't make such categorical statements about all animal rights supporters.
I'm a supporter of animal rights - I think it's wrong to treat sentient species the way food livestock are treated. I also don't like PETA or Ingrid Newkirk, I don't agree with a lot of what they have to say, and it strikes me that most of their time is spent in search of attention for themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
One could have summed up ever more succinctly:
Both; see the Critique of Pure Reason, synthetic a priori judgements.
Actually, making it public domain makes sure a whole can of worms doesn't get opened.
If the copyright holder can't be found or identified, why bother with limiting the penalties? Why not just make the work public domain?
TOM isn't a Stern table, which should be obvious because it doesn't suck giant fucking donkey balls.
Theater of Magic totally rules.
Ho ho. Dean Esmay. Fail.
For me, yeah, it's pretty much an absolute thing. I think we should try to leave untouched wilderness alone, and I don't buy arguments that oil exploration can or will be done there without significantly disrupting the environment. It'd take a lot to convince me otherwise; not saying I won't listen, just that the barrier is pretty high.
The other things you suggest are refreshingly rational. I don't often hear people, on either left or right, suggesting things that would meaningfully improve the country, particularly where transportation and energy infrastructure is concerned.
An improved and expanded rail network, both for freight and passengers, would be great for the country. Even without a widespread shift away from imported oil, greater use of rail over long haul trucking would reduce our degree of dependency. I'd also like to see more money put into transportation in and around cities and metro areas, if only to reduce congestion.
I like the idea of a bailout for homeowners over a bailout for the mortgage banks. I think it needs to be coupled with a bit more regulation of the loan industry to prevent it happening again. I'm not quite sure how you work the criteria for the bailout, and I have some misgivings about giving a pass to people who used HELOCs and mortgages to live well beyond their means. But life isn't perfect.
I also like the idea of building nuclear power plants. It's kind of unfortunate that the industry started off with lousy designs and bad maintenance. It's definitely possible to build and operate the things safely - France can do it, so we can too. I think it ought to involve a significant amount of careful governmental regulation, though, as I just don't trust the industry to police itself - given the opportunity, they'll do everything cheaply and half-assed. Alternative energy is also something to invest in, if only because it makes sense to diversify your assets when investing.
I guess a lot of that comes down to a question of money. Pity we've put so much into Iraq - even with the same irresponsible financing scheme, had we dumped that money into infrastructure, we'd be far better off in the long run.
That's hilariously funny. Thanks, I needed that.
I wasn't really upset by the slur; it did sort of make me take your point a bit less seriously, though.
That said, it's kind of a shame if the only way you can get right wingers to pay attention to you is to use a slur, perhaps it's just a kind of bizarro-world PC.
As an aside, this liberal isn't interested in taking your guns - I own several myself.
I don't quite get what you're arguing for in that response. I certainly don't think there's a meaningful threat to the US from the Muslim world, excepting as regards some terrorist activity and possibly some large problems if nuclear weapons get out of control Pakistan. Nobody sane actually takes that Capliphate bullshit seriously. It's big talk from small men.
I don't what this has to do with why you chose to use a slur. If it's in an ironic sense, I apologize for my lack of sensitivity.
Kindly see his response to my post. He deliberately selected a slur.
Brush up on your ability to detect the bigots.
Maybe not what Republicans want to hear, but it's pretty much true.
You just can't resist the opportunity to use slurs and smear whole groups of people, can you?
How about "Al Qaida?" It's more accurate than "the muzzies," it's less wildly broad in who it blames for 9/11, and it's even shorter to type. But maybe it doesn't achieve your goal of projecting hate at the whole of the Muslim world.
Or are we only counting criminals that aren't considered above the law?
Utter bullshit - a lie perpetuated by chemical manufacturers and anti-environmentalist conservatives. First, DDT use is not banned worldwide - and is still used in places where malaria is endemic; it's used in far smaller quantities than the previous agricultural use. Second, there are other, less dangerous compounds, that can be used to combat malaria carrying mosquitoes. Third, the ban on agricultural use (which was the most environmentally damaging use of the compound) may actually have improved the usefulness of DDT in a limited anti-malarial role, since it reduced the pressure on mosquitoes to evolve a resistance to the chemical.
- Overpopulation and starvation is a problem - consider someone not in your cozy part of the developed world for a change.
- DDT ceased to be a problem once it was banned - it's effects on wild species are starting to go away now.
- Pollution and smog are still a problem, but environmental regulations have helped rein them in somewhat.
- The ozone layer, if you recall, was a problem (and still has a hole in it) and a ban was placed on CFCs, which stopped the problem from worsening and has reduced the size of the ozone hole.
That leaves the ice age thing. Yeah, that wasn't correct. On the other hand, climate science has had 30 years of scientific progress and technological advances to provide it better tools and models. There's satellites monitoring the weather now, oceanic temperature monitors, super computers running climatic models. And the vast majority of the scientists working in the field agree that global warming is a problem, and that it's likely caused by humans. There are people who legitimately don't agree with the popular models; there are also people who are mostly funded by oil companies who are essentially paid to create noise to confuse the public. Is it possible they're wrong? Of course. But since you're into conflating unrelated issues together into an undifferentiated mass, I say that things look they come out on the side of human generated global warming being a problem that needs to be dealt with. I'll make a wild guess and say that you probably never bought it, despite the fact that the environmentalists and scientists were right on 4 out of 5 of the things you cite. Kinda makes you a useless contrarian.I'm beginning to tire of people who refuse to take global warming seriously as a threat to the well-being of the human species and the larger environment.
How about we make a deal - if global warming turns out not to cause widespread famine and damage, I'll give you $100 for being right. If it does turn out to be a problem, you commit suicide to spare resources for those of us who saw the problem coming.
voicefx? Do you still use dbase files everywhere?
That's one area where (commercial) software development and pharma are a bit closer. Most pharama companies spend significantly more on marketing than on R&D - Merck, for example spent $7.6 billion on marketing vs $4.9 billion on R & D, according to their 2007 10-K filing. Microsoft, similarly, spent $11.5 billion on marketing and $7.1 billion on R & D.
You can think of open source software as being mostly the other way around. There's significantly more spent on development (in terms of donated time, resources, etc) than on marketing.
Keep this in mind the next time a dittohead tells you the media has a liberal bias. If it was ever true, it's certainly not true now.
Tracking prisoners? With Bluetooth devices? Horseshit.
RFID is a far better choice - it's passive (no batteries) and it's cheap. I bet the purpose of Bluetooth tracking is to track non-imprisoned people.
Either the Democrats will do the right thing and work to reverse the expanded powers the government has taken for itself over the past 8 years, or the Republicans in Congress will get paranoid and work the press to help force a roll back of those powers so the Democratic president can't use them.
Yes, sir or ma'am, you are completely correct. It's kind of a pity that Archer-Daniels-Midland has more and better representation in Washington than you do, isn't it?
The largest single contributor to the clusterfuck that is going on now is the dissolution of the Iraqi Army. Hundreds of thousands of armed men with families who could have been put to work providing security (and to hear to Jay Garner tell it, were ready to work with the US) were instead put out on the streets without jobs. Then there was de-bathification, which put a large number of Sunnis out of government ostensibly forever. Even people who joined the party just to get ahead, never really buying into the ideology or committing crimes, were kicked out.
Those two events created most of the problems. Coupled with the pitifully inadequate US troop presence, the shocking lack of security at the weapons dumps around the country, and the insistence on putting ideologically-correct people in positions of power in the country in preference to qualified ones, failure was assured in Iraq.
Iranian intervention in Iraq has contributed very little to the violence. That's a canard that conservatives like to throw out to distract from the complete failure of US policy in the country, and to gin up support for an attack on Iran. It's bullshit.
The failure was not military - the military performed admirably given the resources and orders it was given. The failure was one of policy and politics. And don't pretend that nobody saw it coming. The State Department had a multi-volume treatise on how to stabilize the country afterwards which was entirely ignored by the necons running the defense department. The fact that the Sunni minority had long and brutally repressed the Shiite majority was well known. The decision makers in Washington opted to believe the happy talk of Chalabi and the INC, rather than the evidence and advice of experienced folks in their own government.
Be that as it may - do you still believe that the US was motivated by anything but the best interests of the neocons visions for a westernized Middle East and the GOP's electoral strategy for the 2004 elections? Seriously?
I wouldn't make such categorical statements about all animal rights supporters.
I'm a supporter of animal rights - I think it's wrong to treat sentient species the way food livestock are treated. I also don't like PETA or Ingrid Newkirk, I don't agree with a lot of what they have to say, and it strikes me that most of their time is spent in search of attention for themselves.