You do realize that the situation in Europe would be identical to that of the US if gasoline/petrol was priced similarly, right? I know several Europeans who came to the US with this attitude only to eventually find themselves purchasing a gas-guzzling SUV.
Not much to do with oil prices; more to do with infrastructure. I can't imagine getting by in the US without a car, unless I was based entirely in one of the larger cities, say New York. Otherwise, how are you to get to the mall to buy food and clothing?
Will the power balance ever change.. is it possible for someone with a motivation to assist society in general to make it into a powerful position?
No. That kind of person doesn't have the skills required to get into that position in the first place. You need to be cut-throat to get ahead in politics and business, otherwise someone who is more cut-throat than you will take your place.
It's not really about free speech here. It's just the chinese goverment protecting it's profits. Well.. guess that's why the corporations seem to get so well along with these guys.
It's also why no one is calling for regime change. It's the old McDonalds Piece Formula, i.e. no two countries with McDonalds have ever gone to war. It's not about free speach and rights; it's all about the Benjamins.
Incidentally, so did the Game Gear - you could play console (Master System) games on your portable (Game Gear) - sort of like the Game Boy Player in reverse.
The Game Gear was a portable Master System, it was the same innards. It's not emulation or backwards compatibility; the adaptor was simply to put the different sized cartridges into the portable.
Is that support for Saddam i hear there? i am assuming you havent seen all the mass graves.
This war has killed more Iraqi civilians than have ever been in mass graves. No, not it's not support for Saddam either. Just pointing out the misinformation about Iraq that has been planted by our leaders in order to make a lot of money.
you do know that iraq is the most secular of all the arab countries and they have had all of that for a very long time right?
Absolutely. I'm sure many people reading this are completele unaware of the fact that Iraq was one of the few Middle Eastern states where women are not only allowed to drive, but they can also go (and were encouraged) to university and get a good career. And no one was forcing anyone to follow any particular religion or wear various different headgear.
We must "liberate" these represive heathens immediately!
I can fully understand Arabs & Muslims not wanting us in their countries
That has NOTHING to do with anything. No "terrorist" has said "all white folk please leave". They want us to stop messing around in their POLICAL AFFAIRS. They want us to stop toppling democracies and replacing them with puppet governments, who we then arm and support as they carry out their war crimes. In Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and many other states (not just in the middle east), we have backed the "bad guy" whenever it is deemed to be in our interests.
Anytime that some one tries to tell you that they "hate freedom" or they "hate our religion" is a lying manipulative piece of shit. Got get a history book please an learn why people fly planes into buildings and blow themselves up. You might then start questioning the policies of your own government which where the DIRECT cause of these attacks.
I think the cutoff is mainly the design of the weapon.
The cut-off is the marketing of the weapon. "non-lethal" is the arms industries equivalent of "leveraging synergy-driven for change in tomorrows world". Whatever sells more units. Market research indicates that some people aren't a huge fan of killing.
I guess you can play the semantics game if you like but, generally speaking, when you operate a non-lethal weapon correcly and as intented, nobody dies.
The only ones playing word games are the "non-lethal" camp. Pointing out this is not playing semantics, it's stating a fact. They are the ones using double-speak, not us.
Re:How is that a problem for America?
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I would like to point out that no nation on Earth has spent and spends as much time, lives and money to insure that conflicts are carried out as "legally" as they can be.
The citizens of the following countries invite you to put down the Jerry Bruikheimer "documentaries" and read some real history. Stuff that happened.
Iran
Chile
Haiti
Nicaragua
The Phillippines
El Salvador
VietNam
Guatemala
Argentina
Greece
Brazil
You are living in a dream world. The America you believe in hasn't existed for 50 years, and your complete and utter ignorance of the facts illustrates how bad things have gotten in your neck of the woods. You actually believe you are "the good guy". And you wonder why people why some people hate you so much?
but the US and other NATO militaries try much harder than anyone ever has to mitigate the impact on civilians and non-combatants.
No, they seek to mitigate the perceived impact. I suggest you read up on the practice of embedded reporters, especially with respect to Falluja. The US militry has been indiscriminally killing people, even those waving white flags. You won't see this footage on your TV. Neither will you see the footage of chemical weapons (mk77) being used on civilians by US forces. If you think the reports from the "offical" reporters are in any way close to the truth, you are living in a dream world. Step out of line, you lose all press privledges and get sent home. That's the truth of embedded reporting.
In the next five years the truth will come out about what's been going on in Iraq. US politics is in for a major shake up that'll make the blowjob thing look like kids stuff.
I think it's more likely the CIA just called the president of the company and said, "hey, wanna help us screw the Soviets?"
Wouldn't be too far fetched, certainally prior art of that kind of thing. It's well known that CIA and MI6 are actively involved in commercial espionage. Any business in the UK intending to sell overseas can drop MI6 and the Foreign Office a call and get access to normally restricted information. The Foreign Office is the legitimate face of this; the main difference being that they cannot bribe foreign officials. No such restrictions on MI6 of course!;-)
Look up the Airbus scandal for more info. Granted, the espionage was used to prove other illicit dealings, but that's not the point! Well, I suppose it is...the lesson to learn is that everyone is at it.
This _is_ the article -- it should be modded "informative", not "funny."
"funny" gives no karma to the poster, hence it's use here. It would probably make sense for a new moderation type to cover this sort of post, that perhaps even gives negative karma.
The network was closed, based on an X.25ish HDLC and the software was blown on to UV erasable EPROMs. The CIA may have modified the s/w at the pump stations, but again it is doubtful.
The CIA (etc) don't sit behind IE flaws and root-kits. If they want to hack a network, they literally break in an attach what they want. Or they do it at the phone company and just man-in-the-middle on the line. Things like Carnivore are well known now, so it's not as if any of this is beyond the realms of reality.
Finally, they could have an employee on the inside. Probably the most likely candidate. "hey buddy, wanna help protect your freedom? Slip this in the next commie release and I'll give you a few thousand dollars". Like all security, the human link is the weakest.
This is software related, but it is not a software bug.
If anything, it's process-related, as are the metric/imperial snafus. As someone in the industry, I'd say that an incredibly large number of "bugs" would be avoided if the people producing the software followed decent standards and software development processes.
It's always struck me as a little odd that there are jurisdictions where someone trespassing can be shot (dead!) without any crime having been committed... but if the trespasser shows up when you're not around, picks your front door lock, and a 100-pound safe falls on his head and kills him, then that's a crime.
Look at the article you just read (or probably didn't;-). Absorb it. Consider that systems engineered by humans can contain flaws. A human won't shoot the postman or a paramedic ariving unannounced at your door, but the 100-pound safe doesn't differentiate between legitimate and non-legitimate visitors. So, when you kill the eight year old asking for his ball back from your garden, you go to jail.
OK, so you are now thinking, "what if the trap was indoors, behind lock & key?". Then I say, "what if you had dialed 911, were laying with a broken back and the paramedics have to break down your door?".
but this woman was way over 400 pounds. You don't just get like that from Twinkies and soap operas.
Yes you do, if you don't move at all. Just walking from one room to the other is exercise that burns calories. Her only exercise was moving one arm between the bowl and her mouth. Those twinkies aren't going anywhere. Jeez, she was literally crapping in-situ, the undigested fat was probably working its way back into her body via reverse-osmosis.
Could she have maybe fended off such a syndrome with an active lifestyle?
Come on, she moved so little her skin grafted itself to the couch. I've had some long couch sessions myself I've got to admit, but at least every now and then I move a little to get more comforable. The idea of a piece of your skin that has remained static for so long that it's grown into its surroundings is obscene. That's the behaviour you expect from trees.
It's easy for somebody who never struggled with their weight to accuse fat people of some moral shortcoming, never mind that they themselves don't always lead perfectly healthy lives either.
That's a different argument. This woman "didn't always lead a perfectly healthy life"? Hell, she wasn't even close. She didn't even get up to go to the bathroom!. That's right, she was literally stewing in her own filth. They had to air the house with fans just so that the emergency workers could stand the stench.
Your argument holds for people who could be called overweight, or even "chubby" by fashion standards. Obese is another thing altogether, and this example takes that one extreme further. You can blame her "genes" all you want, it's 90% her own concious fault, with the other 10% resting squarely on her friends and family who let it get this bad.
She may have been ill, but if so it was a pyschological illness. I remember the story of the girl who existed entirely on potato chips and had a heart-attack. She tried to sue the maker of the snacks instead of accepting responsibility for her own actions. Why accept responsibilty when blaming others is so much easier.
Why don't we just make it a crime to withhold passwords from the police, then you at least have something to charge them with without us having to bring back internment.
They did that four or five years ago already! It's called the RIP act, and means that the authorities can request your keys and it's crime to deny them. You also ARE NOT ALLOWED to tell anyone that the request has been made.
What's really fucked up is that people like the Guilford Four, also accused of terrorism during a politically sensitive time, we put away on fake evidence compiled by the police who were anxious to get a result. Back then, you were "innocent until proven Irish". Now it's "until proven Islamic". They were tortured for confessions and finger pointing. Sound familiar? Something happening RIGHT NOW?
Computer evidence is next to useless. It is infinitely easier to fake a word doc than it is someones handwriting, DNA and fingerprints that one might find on a piece of paper. I predict that in 10 years, once new forensic techniques for IT data analysis become available, a whole slew of "terrorists" will have their convictions quashed as the polices simply created a few fake emails. This is not tin-foil hat territory, this has happened numerous times in the past.
When will the public wake up? These "detention without trial" laws are something that the authorities have been seeking for decades. Only now do they feel they have the inertia to get them passed.
The definition of terrorism is "using fear to achieve a politcal goal". I wonder who the REAL terrorists are here...?
But I don't get why Google Maps gets the credit for this. Microsoft (yuck!) developed this concept for web based Outlook years ago, and it has been implemented by many smaller developers since then.
Such as myself. Google Maps uses client-side XSL transforms to pull in XML data and turn it into HTML. I wrote a client app that did this four years ago. I abandoned it however as Mozilla didn't support client-side XSL at the time and I wasn't happy with an I.E. only solution. It was mind-blowingly fast (for the time). Full page refreshes were the norm back then and it impressed quite a lot of people. I posted the source to a board back then, a small part of me wonders if one of the Google developers saw this and was inspired by it...;-)
Are there any ajax javascript libraries that can be used to take the pain out of client-side XSL? Something that provides nice cross-browser functions and has an open license arrangement? I'm using a flash based solution for this sort of thing (no cross browser bull), but I'd rather have good old DHTML.
Every speaker sounds different, so I'm with the audiophiles on that one. I wouldn't spend money on crazy wires, but I certainally would take a few CDs along to the hifi shop and test potential kit out first. Some systems are better with different types of music. The same applies to audio compression by the way, different codecs for different sounds. Rock is apparently really bad on mp3.
It's clear that different systems have different harmonics. "warm", well that's in the eye of the beholder as you say. It's no more silly a definition than some of the terms wine tasters use! "tinny" is different though, it's pretty defined what tinny is. Poor high-end frequencies, non-existent bass. Like it sounds as though it's coming out a tin can. Tinny is the sound you get from an old-school pocket radio.
Can you show me or describe how copper from Africa sounds better then copper from Mexico?
If it has difference inductance/resistance properties, then it WILL sound different. Basic analog elecronics; you're producing a frequency filter whenever you use anything other than superconductors. Is it noticable? I don't know, never heard of someone silly enough to try it, but I daresay someone has.
I have a hard time believing that using a $400 power cord for the last freaking 3 ft from the wall to your actual equipment can play any role at all in the warmth and sound you hear from the equipment.
Yah, to a certain point that much is true. However, it's an exponential scale. If you hookup using shit wire, it can't carry the required current to power the peaks in the music. I'm not saying that the uber-expensive cable is any better than the one that came in the box, but it can make a difference. Ditto speaker wire and interconnects, the stuff that comes in the box for them should be replaced if you are serious as they are really crappy conductors. It's just like the overclockers; at some point you get dimminishing returns for your investment. See the article the other day about folk who spend a fortune just to get an extra 2% in their memory timings. Is it worth the money? Probably not, but it makes them feel good about themselves...;-)
Remember who signed the DMCA--Clinton. I think free speech in the slashdot, eff sense is really quite orthogonal to party lines.
Until you get rid of those party lines, you'll always be making a mockery of democracy. Every US political debate breaks down into red vs blue, instead of one point of view verses another. It's a great way of avoiding constructive debate and actually getting anything done. This benefits them, but not you, not your country and certainally not freedom or democracy, supposedly the pillars of America.
Of course, as long as the general population believes that this system is "democratic", the wool will continue to be pulled over their eyes. You'll continue to choose between a douche and a turd and never once question the system that presents those choices. And before moderating me off-topic, realise that this is directly on-topic, as this bill refered to the whole campaign finance issue. I tend not to deal in euphansims, and as such I call "campaign contributions" for what they are. Political Bribery. Corruption of the highest order. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. It's not only legal, it's a key, essential part of the electoral process in most western democracies. Certainally in the US, there is an undebatable correlation between campaign spending and campaign success. The people who make these "donations" use phrases like "return on investment", not "charitable donations".
I don't know how many times I've been called a "liberal Bush hater". No, I just hate corrupt murdering fuckwits. The fact he has a elephant on his party logo is not relevant to anything. But so long as you can divert the discussion from issues to bipartisan mudslinging, you don't get your real bad laundry aired in public.
In my ideal world of the future, all politics is done on a board similar to slashdot, with everyone posting as an annoymous coward. Once the debate is over, the owners of the comments are revealed. Being caught colluding (mod me up, nudge nudge) results in the members being temporarilly banned, with public exposure. Of course, this will never happen, as it's humanities nature to form tribes then divide and concquor. The two-party system is a direct result of this.
I know, "released"? What the hell? Is that the euphanism we're using now? I forget which edition of newspeak we are on.
"Released" sounds pleasant. "What did you do today, honey?", "I got released from work!!", "Wonderful, let's celebrate!".
Meanwhile, those of us in the real world use words like "fired", "laid-off", "redundant". I can see why their market research indicated a change was required. It's like rebranding "cancer" as "closure".
Slashdot Mirror
Not much to do with oil prices; more to do with infrastructure. I can't imagine getting by in the US without a car, unless I was based entirely in one of the larger cities, say New York. Otherwise, how are you to get to the mall to buy food and clothing?
No. That kind of person doesn't have the skills required to get into that position in the first place. You need to be cut-throat to get ahead in politics and business, otherwise someone who is more cut-throat than you will take your place.
It's also why no one is calling for regime change. It's the old McDonalds Piece Formula, i.e. no two countries with McDonalds have ever gone to war. It's not about free speach and rights; it's all about the Benjamins.
The Game Gear was a portable Master System, it was the same innards. It's not emulation or backwards compatibility; the adaptor was simply to put the different sized cartridges into the portable.
This war has killed more Iraqi civilians than have ever been in mass graves. No, not it's not support for Saddam either. Just pointing out the misinformation about Iraq that has been planted by our leaders in order to make a lot of money.
Until 9-11, the IRA did the same in New York every St Patricks day. White Christians behaving the same way, who would have thunk it...?
Absolutely. I'm sure many people reading this are completele unaware of the fact that Iraq was one of the few Middle Eastern states where women are not only allowed to drive, but they can also go (and were encouraged) to university and get a good career. And no one was forcing anyone to follow any particular religion or wear various different headgear.
We must "liberate" these represive heathens immediately!
No different from the Christian anti-abortionist terrorists then...or any other moral crusaider.
I bet you believe that Iraq was repressive and anti-equality as well. Ah ignorance, how easy & simple your life must be.
That has NOTHING to do with anything. No "terrorist" has said "all white folk please leave". They want us to stop messing around in their POLICAL AFFAIRS. They want us to stop toppling democracies and replacing them with puppet governments, who we then arm and support as they carry out their war crimes. In Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and many other states (not just in the middle east), we have backed the "bad guy" whenever it is deemed to be in our interests.
Anytime that some one tries to tell you that they "hate freedom" or they "hate our religion" is a lying manipulative piece of shit. Got get a history book please an learn why people fly planes into buildings and blow themselves up. You might then start questioning the policies of your own government which where the DIRECT cause of these attacks.
The cut-off is the marketing of the weapon. "non-lethal" is the arms industries equivalent of "leveraging synergy-driven for change in tomorrows world". Whatever sells more units. Market research indicates that some people aren't a huge fan of killing.
I guess you can play the semantics game if you like but, generally speaking, when you operate a non-lethal weapon correcly and as intented, nobody dies.
The only ones playing word games are the "non-lethal" camp. Pointing out this is not playing semantics, it's stating a fact. They are the ones using double-speak, not us.
The citizens of the following countries invite you to put down the Jerry Bruikheimer "documentaries" and read some real history. Stuff that happened.
You are living in a dream world. The America you believe in hasn't existed for 50 years, and your complete and utter ignorance of the facts illustrates how bad things have gotten in your neck of the woods. You actually believe you are "the good guy". And you wonder why people why some people hate you so much?
but the US and other NATO militaries try much harder than anyone ever has to mitigate the impact on civilians and non-combatants.
No, they seek to mitigate the perceived impact. I suggest you read up on the practice of embedded reporters, especially with respect to Falluja. The US militry has been indiscriminally killing people, even those waving white flags. You won't see this footage on your TV. Neither will you see the footage of chemical weapons (mk77) being used on civilians by US forces. If you think the reports from the "offical" reporters are in any way close to the truth, you are living in a dream world. Step out of line, you lose all press privledges and get sent home. That's the truth of embedded reporting.
In the next five years the truth will come out about what's been going on in Iraq. US politics is in for a major shake up that'll make the blowjob thing look like kids stuff.
Wouldn't be too far fetched, certainally prior art of that kind of thing. It's well known that CIA and MI6 are actively involved in commercial espionage. Any business in the UK intending to sell overseas can drop MI6 and the Foreign Office a call and get access to normally restricted information. The Foreign Office is the legitimate face of this; the main difference being that they cannot bribe foreign officials. No such restrictions on MI6 of course! ;-)
Look up the Airbus scandal for more info. Granted, the espionage was used to prove other illicit dealings, but that's not the point! Well, I suppose it is...the lesson to learn is that everyone is at it.
"funny" gives no karma to the poster, hence it's use here. It would probably make sense for a new moderation type to cover this sort of post, that perhaps even gives negative karma.
The CIA (etc) don't sit behind IE flaws and root-kits. If they want to hack a network, they literally break in an attach what they want. Or they do it at the phone company and just man-in-the-middle on the line. Things like Carnivore are well known now, so it's not as if any of this is beyond the realms of reality.
Finally, they could have an employee on the inside. Probably the most likely candidate. "hey buddy, wanna help protect your freedom? Slip this in the next commie release and I'll give you a few thousand dollars". Like all security, the human link is the weakest.
If anything, it's process-related, as are the metric/imperial snafus. As someone in the industry, I'd say that an incredibly large number of "bugs" would be avoided if the people producing the software followed decent standards and software development processes.
Look at the article you just read (or probably didn't ;-). Absorb it. Consider that systems engineered by humans can contain flaws. A human won't shoot the postman or a paramedic ariving unannounced at your door, but the 100-pound safe doesn't differentiate between legitimate and non-legitimate visitors. So, when you kill the eight year old asking for his ball back from your garden, you go to jail.
OK, so you are now thinking, "what if the trap was indoors, behind lock & key?". Then I say, "what if you had dialed 911, were laying with a broken back and the paramedics have to break down your door?".
Makes perfect sense to me.
Yes you do, if you don't move at all. Just walking from one room to the other is exercise that burns calories. Her only exercise was moving one arm between the bowl and her mouth. Those twinkies aren't going anywhere. Jeez, she was literally crapping in-situ, the undigested fat was probably working its way back into her body via reverse-osmosis.
Could she have maybe fended off such a syndrome with an active lifestyle?
Come on, she moved so little her skin grafted itself to the couch. I've had some long couch sessions myself I've got to admit, but at least every now and then I move a little to get more comforable. The idea of a piece of your skin that has remained static for so long that it's grown into its surroundings is obscene. That's the behaviour you expect from trees.
It's easy for somebody who never struggled with their weight to accuse fat people of some moral shortcoming, never mind that they themselves don't always lead perfectly healthy lives either.
That's a different argument. This woman "didn't always lead a perfectly healthy life"? Hell, she wasn't even close. She didn't even get up to go to the bathroom!. That's right, she was literally stewing in her own filth. They had to air the house with fans just so that the emergency workers could stand the stench.
Your argument holds for people who could be called overweight, or even "chubby" by fashion standards. Obese is another thing altogether, and this example takes that one extreme further. You can blame her "genes" all you want, it's 90% her own concious fault, with the other 10% resting squarely on her friends and family who let it get this bad.
She may have been ill, but if so it was a pyschological illness. I remember the story of the girl who existed entirely on potato chips and had a heart-attack. She tried to sue the maker of the snacks instead of accepting responsibility for her own actions. Why accept responsibilty when blaming others is so much easier.
They did that four or five years ago already! It's called the RIP act, and means that the authorities can request your keys and it's crime to deny them. You also ARE NOT ALLOWED to tell anyone that the request has been made.
Computer evidence is next to useless. It is infinitely easier to fake a word doc than it is someones handwriting, DNA and fingerprints that one might find on a piece of paper. I predict that in 10 years, once new forensic techniques for IT data analysis become available, a whole slew of "terrorists" will have their convictions quashed as the polices simply created a few fake emails. This is not tin-foil hat territory, this has happened numerous times in the past.
When will the public wake up? These "detention without trial" laws are something that the authorities have been seeking for decades. Only now do they feel they have the inertia to get them passed.
The definition of terrorism is "using fear to achieve a politcal goal". I wonder who the REAL terrorists are here...?
Superb, thank you very much!!
Such as myself. Google Maps uses client-side XSL transforms to pull in XML data and turn it into HTML. I wrote a client app that did this four years ago. I abandoned it however as Mozilla didn't support client-side XSL at the time and I wasn't happy with an I.E. only solution. It was mind-blowingly fast (for the time). Full page refreshes were the norm back then and it impressed quite a lot of people. I posted the source to a board back then, a small part of me wonders if one of the Google developers saw this and was inspired by it... ;-)
Are there any ajax javascript libraries that can be used to take the pain out of client-side XSL? Something that provides nice cross-browser functions and has an open license arrangement? I'm using a flash based solution for this sort of thing (no cross browser bull), but I'd rather have good old DHTML.
Every speaker sounds different, so I'm with the audiophiles on that one. I wouldn't spend money on crazy wires, but I certainally would take a few CDs along to the hifi shop and test potential kit out first. Some systems are better with different types of music. The same applies to audio compression by the way, different codecs for different sounds. Rock is apparently really bad on mp3.
It's clear that different systems have different harmonics. "warm", well that's in the eye of the beholder as you say. It's no more silly a definition than some of the terms wine tasters use! "tinny" is different though, it's pretty defined what tinny is. Poor high-end frequencies, non-existent bass. Like it sounds as though it's coming out a tin can. Tinny is the sound you get from an old-school pocket radio.
Can you show me or describe how copper from Africa sounds better then copper from Mexico?
If it has difference inductance/resistance properties, then it WILL sound different. Basic analog elecronics; you're producing a frequency filter whenever you use anything other than superconductors. Is it noticable? I don't know, never heard of someone silly enough to try it, but I daresay someone has.
I have a hard time believing that using a $400 power cord for the last freaking 3 ft from the wall to your actual equipment can play any role at all in the warmth and sound you hear from the equipment.
Yah, to a certain point that much is true. However, it's an exponential scale. If you hookup using shit wire, it can't carry the required current to power the peaks in the music. I'm not saying that the uber-expensive cable is any better than the one that came in the box, but it can make a difference. Ditto speaker wire and interconnects, the stuff that comes in the box for them should be replaced if you are serious as they are really crappy conductors. It's just like the overclockers; at some point you get dimminishing returns for your investment. See the article the other day about folk who spend a fortune just to get an extra 2% in their memory timings. Is it worth the money? Probably not, but it makes them feel good about themselves... ;-)
Until you get rid of those party lines, you'll always be making a mockery of democracy. Every US political debate breaks down into red vs blue, instead of one point of view verses another. It's a great way of avoiding constructive debate and actually getting anything done. This benefits them, but not you, not your country and certainally not freedom or democracy, supposedly the pillars of America.
Of course, as long as the general population believes that this system is "democratic", the wool will continue to be pulled over their eyes. You'll continue to choose between a douche and a turd and never once question the system that presents those choices. And before moderating me off-topic, realise that this is directly on-topic, as this bill refered to the whole campaign finance issue. I tend not to deal in euphansims, and as such I call "campaign contributions" for what they are. Political Bribery. Corruption of the highest order. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. It's not only legal, it's a key, essential part of the electoral process in most western democracies. Certainally in the US, there is an undebatable correlation between campaign spending and campaign success. The people who make these "donations" use phrases like "return on investment", not "charitable donations".
I don't know how many times I've been called a "liberal Bush hater". No, I just hate corrupt murdering fuckwits. The fact he has a elephant on his party logo is not relevant to anything. But so long as you can divert the discussion from issues to bipartisan mudslinging, you don't get your real bad laundry aired in public.
In my ideal world of the future, all politics is done on a board similar to slashdot, with everyone posting as an annoymous coward. Once the debate is over, the owners of the comments are revealed. Being caught colluding (mod me up, nudge nudge) results in the members being temporarilly banned, with public exposure. Of course, this will never happen, as it's humanities nature to form tribes then divide and concquor. The two-party system is a direct result of this.
Just like overclockers, car piston heads, Faberge Egg's, postage stamp's, card games, hookers.
Each to his own...
"Released" sounds pleasant. "What did you do today, honey?", "I got released from work!!", "Wonderful, let's celebrate!".
Meanwhile, those of us in the real world use words like "fired", "laid-off", "redundant". I can see why their market research indicated a change was required. It's like rebranding "cancer" as "closure".