Yeah, that really has worked in China so far! China is a totalitarian, extremely nationalistic country run completely by the military. Within 20 years, China will be the most economically and militarily powerful nation on Earth, and will likely double that strength by 2050.
And are a terrorist or terrorist supporter caught in an act of War against the United States. Then, you'll still be treated a helluva lot better than Chinese political 'dissidents,' no torture, no organ harvesting, and 3 generations of your family gets to keep their jobs.
Funny eh. They're moving away from services that run with conf files back to the registry. And they're doing GUI only versions of their OSs for ease of use for the average user. Why not just port all their stuff to som Microsoft OS?
How in the world did the parent get 4 points for 'insightful?'
Don't nuclear power plants extract one heckuva lot more energy per unit of fuel than oil? In any case, we have 50 years to come up with alternatives to oil, so why assume that something better than oil and nuclear power won't be developed by then?
YOur proposed shift towards pure capitalism will fail...
Communism has been tried hundreds of times throughout history and has failed every single time. Captialism is the only economic system with demonstrable long term success.
Some of the stuff you have mentioned will simply create massive discrepancies in wealth.
Name them or stop FUDding.
This will result in class wars
Yeah sure.
As far as letting people invest in the stock market. You just better hope that you don't get into a long recession or deflation. Japan, a capitalist country by all standards, has been in a deflation for something like 10 years. I haven't kept up to date but the Japanese stock market index (ie. all blue chips) was at a 10 year low. If such a thing happened with social security, millions would literally be out on the street...
Yes, this is the major counter to social security reform. However, careers don't last 10 years, they last *50*. And over a 50 year time span, the Japanese economy, has greatly expanded, far more than the anemic 2% the current pure "New Deal" style Social Security system tries to guarantee.
Over a 20 year period, the U.S. stock market has NEVER contracted, and by limiting investment to only the most reliable and oldest stocks, stability is virtually guaranteed. It is far more likely the current system will become unsustainable in the next 50 years than an absolute collapse of the U.S. economy would occur. And if the economy collapse that badly, and in the long term, the current system would instantly become unsustainable because it relies entirely on tax revenue extracted from that economy.
What would be an acceptable way for Kerry and Lieberman to argue against this law by your standards?
How about not sensationalising possibilities they are not occurring, especially when these things can only be done with judicial permission? These types of library and internet searches have been done for years without any civil rights 'crises.' The only change under the Patriot Act was to extend these exact same procedures to terrorist suspects. Yet we don't breathlessly demand extraordinary steps to disclose these operations for narcotics trafficers. These Democrats are pandering, and it's time to step back and get some perspective.
1. Knowledge of law enforcement tactics would be useful in evading capture by ANY criminal, much moreso organized terrorists. Now terrorists will be more bold in planning attacks and networking and communication, knowing their movements aren't being tracked as closely as they once assumed.
2. It may be true the Justice Department and the FBI have no resources to, for instance, track frequent visitors to terrorist web sites, but I doubt it. I'd like to see the numbers on how often these procedures are used in narcotics investigations. It can't be proven they're too scared to use them on terrorism cases, but given all the over-the-top accusations, I think that is probably the case.
Time to counter some misinformation being put out by anti-Ashcroftites about the Patriot Act including the lie that library and internet searches are done w/o notification or in a secret way:
1. The article uses the word 'deceptive.' Obviously Kerry was trying to create the impression that this was happening. You would really have to go back and parse the sentence to think otherwise. This is a very typical politician's trick, and it is indeed 'deceptive.'
2. Oh, come on, Lieberman was clearly implying Ashcroft was *using* those powers and what he was complaining about was exactly *where* and *when* those instances were occurring. Again, these are an experienced politician's statements that very stongly imply one thing but never outright lie. The article used the word 'deception.'
3. I would somewhat agree with that, the ACLU argument has nothing to do with the number of these types of investigations performed, just that they should never occur w/o judicial oversight. I am torn on that since, as long as there is no indication it has been abused, I think judicial oversight is premature.
I am concerned about big brother snooping around my library too, but w/o evidence of abuse I am willing to give my leaders the benefit of the doubt, for now. What the authors and I have a problem with is opportunistic Democrats and unreasonable anti-Ashcroftites doing their level best to create the false impression that the law is being abused. Ashcroft gave the 'zero' numbers to the Democrats privately and they chose to still claim they were not being leveled with. Ashcroft then had to release this sensitive info publicly to stop them. Now, terrorists know the FBI is too scared to use this new capability, which can only be a bad thing.
BTW, you clamor for transparency from Ashcroft, but then when the Justice Department does exactly that, you don't trust him?
Er, that's true but that has been the case for every single president in the last 50 years.
As for ineffectual programs, ever since the Department of Education was established, the quality of education in this country has plummeted. All the increases in education spending has been eaten up by the DOE, and their political agenda to shift the focus of education from the three "R's" to sex promotion, watering down curriculum, and limiting accountability and discipline is a great example of good intentions (by Reagan) being hijacked by political agendas on the left.
That's the biggest one. I'd also eliminate entirely the National Edowment for the Untalented Arts, public brodcasting, and all government subsidies to all private industries. I'd privatize all public schools and put every dollar of those revenues into vouchers, with the school decision reserved to parents alone to rule out the political interference that devestated the public school system.
Also, the social security system cannot survive in the long run with the current level of benefits w/o either incredible tax hikes or a much better rate of return. So, I'd allow taxpayers to invest all their social security taxes in the stock market, 5% in the first few years, scaling up to 100% 20 years from now. I like the idea of limiting that choice to only stable, 'big' stocks that have been around a very long time and aren't going anywhere. Even those would have a far higher rate of return than the current system, while gradually eliminating social security as an expense to the government. Of course that revenue would disappear, but it would keep politicians from spending it on unrelated crap then promising to repay at some unknown future date.
Democrats knew all along their accusations about the Patriot Act were phony:
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york091903.asp
Ashcroft haters spreading lies on Patriot Act:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/roeser/cst-edt-roes 20.html
err.. no it's not. I don't see anyone on the left supporting the inefficiencies you speak of.
Well, no, but the left certainly likes to ignore their enormous costs so they can complain they don't have enough money for their ineffectual government programs.
lol I guess falsities turn into truth in your fantasy world. USA is NOT out of the recession. And the "lifting" you talk of was goin gto happen anyway. In any case, even those that are in favour of the tax cuts claim that it will take 3 or 4 years for them to make an impact.
Are you on drugs??? The recession lasted 2 quarters, and the GDP been growing at around 3% ever since. Now, I don't know what schrewl of economics you attended, but that is, by definition, not recession. Sure, tax cuts take time to have effect, but the effect is a lot stronger than the equivalent spending by some inefficient government bureacracy, which will pay one secretary $90,000 a year w/ absurd benefits instead of 3 private citizens a reasonable salary (and who will contribute to growing the economy, not sucking the life out of it).
I don't know if raising taxes ever creates growth but spending certainly does. Right now, Europe is trying to get out of the recession by spending, while USA is relying on tax-cuts. Let's see which one works.
Haha, it's no contest! Our market approach has outdone Europe's for 50 years. Let's see, Europe's economy is not recovering, and is on the verge of a 'double-dip' recession in Germany and other countries. America's economy is out of recession, all major economic indicators are up from 2 years ago (including consumer spending and confidence), and the stock market is doing great. Now, granted the job market is not recovering, but that probably cannot happen for another year because so many manufacturing jobs went to China and Mexico in the past decade, and won't be coming back. We have to make new jobs, which takes many years of growth, and that means private investment, not a few new 'artificial' government jobs in inefficient goverment bureaucracies that suck even more money out of the real economy.
There is a typo there but anyway, your point is understood. Just the fact that most of the debt is owned by the Americans doens't mean it can be conveniently ignored. Debt is debt! It won't go away just because YOU own it instead of some foreigner!
I really should use that 'preview' button more.;)
It is not a question of ignoring. The national debt simply has to be taken into perspective. It is a long-term concern, but concentrating on paying it off at the expense of economic growth is counterproductive.
Here is that NY Times link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/18/opinion/18FRIE.h tml
For the best politics site on the web, go to:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com
Wha-wha-whaaat? What does that have to do with the left? Well, for one thing it's the flip side of what you termed 'right-wing.' der!
Just because they're wasteful doesn't they don't admit to it in private, at least when talking about the other guy. In any case, every single major tax cut in the past century has been followed immediately by economic growth and within, including Bush's, which have lifted us out of the tech-bubble recession. What would you do? RAISE taxes? When has that EVER created growth?
Except the capitalists you worship fail to tell you one thing: the original debt has still not been paid off. If corporations, who are all capitalist, were following your advice, they would be bankrupt within 10 years.
I know you can do it. Repeat after me: the only thing that matters is that the economy expands in the long run. Since the national debt has expanded WAY more than the size of the national debt, and most of that debt is owed to Americans, it was certainly worth it.
Spoken like a true left-winger... Something you fail to realize: most of the money is spent on "discretionary" things, but in an incredibly inefficient way: useless/counterproductive liberal bureaucrats who can't be fired and have 12 assistants, incredibly lavish facilities, contracts for unions that go way over budget and take 5 times as long to accomplish simple crap, $50 billion in fraud annually because the General Accounting Office can't figure out where the tax dollars are being spent, sweet Jesus I could go on and on and on...
Don't tell us the government can't do more with less, every time they raise our taxes they are asking us to do so. Any Washington insider will tell you that w/o the pro-growth Bush tax cuts congress would have spent that money anyway, just on wasteful, non-stimulative pork projects.
In any case, by your last statement you clearly don't understand the idea of present investment in future growth. The idea is run the right kind of deficits now (tax cuts and pro-private sector-growth spending), hoping the resulting economic growth will overcome them later, like it always has.
I just read your rant about the windows versus mac menus. I can't believe you think that, for an app in the background, searching for a non-damaging area of the app to click on, slowly moving your mouse over to it (not on edge of screen, clicking, looking for the exact menu item to click on, then moving your mouse much further to get to it is 'faster.' When you're not switching between apps, sure, the mac way is better, otherwise the windows/linux way is much easier. In any case, you still have to search horizontally for the correct menu both ways. I wish they both did pie menus!
Slashdot Mirror
China is communists in name only, they are mostly capitalist and totalitarian, effectually fascist.
Yeah, that really has worked in China so far! China is a totalitarian, extremely nationalistic country run completely by the military. Within 20 years, China will be the most economically and militarily powerful nation on Earth, and will likely double that strength by 2050.
God help us all then.
And are a terrorist or terrorist supporter caught in an act of War against the United States. Then, you'll still be treated a helluva lot better than Chinese political 'dissidents,' no torture, no organ harvesting, and 3 generations of your family gets to keep their jobs.
No, but they have 1.4 billion opressed souls, and no oil contracts with France so there's a chance.
Then call it what it is: a highly nationalistic, militartistic (runs *everything*) FASCIST state.
Funny eh. They're moving away from services that run with conf files back to the registry. And they're doing GUI only versions of their OSs for ease of use for the average user. Why not just port all their stuff to som Microsoft OS?
How in the world did the parent get 4 points for 'insightful?'
Don't nuclear power plants extract one heckuva lot more energy per unit of fuel than oil? In any case, we have 50 years to come up with alternatives to oil, so why assume that something better than oil and nuclear power won't be developed by then?
Of course it took 2 billion years.
I'll see you in hell William Munny!
Actually in the Gattaca world it was illegal to discrimate based on DNA makeup but the law was ignored.
"'The Venn diagram of facts doesn't intersect. The intersection of all of those statements is the null set,' Geer said."
Hey, Greer, we're humans here.
YOur proposed shift towards pure capitalism will fail...
Communism has been tried hundreds of times throughout history and has failed every single time. Captialism is the only economic system with demonstrable long term success.
Some of the stuff you have mentioned will simply create massive discrepancies in wealth.
Name them or stop FUDding.
This will result in class wars
Yeah sure.
As far as letting people invest in the stock market. You just better hope that you don't get into a long recession or deflation. Japan, a capitalist country by all standards, has been in a deflation for something like 10 years. I haven't kept up to date but the Japanese stock market index (ie. all blue chips) was at a 10 year low. If such a thing happened with social security, millions would literally be out on the street...
Yes, this is the major counter to social security reform. However, careers don't last 10 years, they last *50*. And over a 50 year time span, the Japanese economy, has greatly expanded, far more than the anemic 2% the current pure "New Deal" style Social Security system tries to guarantee.
Over a 20 year period, the U.S. stock market has NEVER contracted, and by limiting investment to only the most reliable and oldest stocks, stability is virtually guaranteed. It is far more likely the current system will become unsustainable in the next 50 years than an absolute collapse of the U.S. economy would occur. And if the economy collapse that badly, and in the long term, the current system would instantly become unsustainable because it relies entirely on tax revenue extracted from that economy.
What would be an acceptable way for Kerry and Lieberman to argue against this law by your standards?
How about not sensationalising possibilities they are not occurring, especially when these things can only be done with judicial permission? These types of library and internet searches have been done for years without any civil rights 'crises.' The only change under the Patriot Act was to extend these exact same procedures to terrorist suspects. Yet we don't breathlessly demand extraordinary steps to disclose these operations for narcotics trafficers. These Democrats are pandering, and it's time to step back and get some perspective.
1. Knowledge of law enforcement tactics would be useful in evading capture by ANY criminal, much moreso organized terrorists. Now terrorists will be more bold in planning attacks and networking and communication, knowing their movements aren't being tracked as closely as they once assumed.
2. It may be true the Justice Department and the FBI have no resources to, for instance, track frequent visitors to terrorist web sites, but I doubt it. I'd like to see the numbers on how often these procedures are used in narcotics investigations. It can't be proven they're too scared to use them on terrorism cases, but given all the over-the-top accusations, I think that is probably the case.
Time to counter some misinformation being put out by anti-Ashcroftites about the Patriot Act including the lie that library and internet searches are done w/o notification or in a secret way:
9 4284.asp
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Sep/09212003/commenta/
1. The article uses the word 'deceptive.' Obviously Kerry was trying to create the impression that this was happening. You would really have to go back and parse the sentence to think otherwise. This is a very typical politician's trick, and it is indeed 'deceptive.'
2. Oh, come on, Lieberman was clearly implying Ashcroft was *using* those powers and what he was complaining about was exactly *where* and *when* those instances were occurring. Again, these are an experienced politician's statements that very stongly imply one thing but never outright lie. The article used the word 'deception.'
3. I would somewhat agree with that, the ACLU argument has nothing to do with the number of these types of investigations performed, just that they should never occur w/o judicial oversight. I am torn on that since, as long as there is no indication it has been abused, I think judicial oversight is premature.
I am concerned about big brother snooping around my library too, but w/o evidence of abuse I am willing to give my leaders the benefit of the doubt, for now. What the authors and I have a problem with is opportunistic Democrats and unreasonable anti-Ashcroftites doing their level best to create the false impression that the law is being abused. Ashcroft gave the 'zero' numbers to the Democrats privately and they chose to still claim they were not being leveled with. Ashcroft then had to release this sensitive info publicly to stop them. Now, terrorists know the FBI is too scared to use this new capability, which can only be a bad thing.
BTW, you clamor for transparency from Ashcroft, but then when the Justice Department does exactly that, you don't trust him?
Er, that's true but that has been the case for every single president in the last 50 years.
As for ineffectual programs, ever since the Department of Education was established, the quality of education in this country has plummeted. All the increases in education spending has been eaten up by the DOE, and their political agenda to shift the focus of education from the three "R's" to sex promotion, watering down curriculum, and limiting accountability and discipline is a great example of good intentions (by Reagan) being hijacked by political agendas on the left.
That's the biggest one. I'd also eliminate entirely the National Edowment for the Untalented Arts, public brodcasting, and all government subsidies to all private industries. I'd privatize all public schools and put every dollar of those revenues into vouchers, with the school decision reserved to parents alone to rule out the political interference that devestated the public school system.
Also, the social security system cannot survive in the long run with the current level of benefits w/o either incredible tax hikes or a much better rate of return. So, I'd allow taxpayers to invest all their social security taxes in the stock market, 5% in the first few years, scaling up to 100% 20 years from now. I like the idea of limiting that choice to only stable, 'big' stocks that have been around a very long time and aren't going anywhere. Even those would have a far higher rate of return than the current system, while gradually eliminating social security as an expense to the government. Of course that revenue would disappear, but it would keep politicians from spending it on unrelated crap then promising to repay at some unknown future date.
Democrats knew all along their accusations about the Patriot Act were phony: http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york091903.asp Ashcroft haters spreading lies on Patriot Act: http://www.suntimes.com/output/roeser/cst-edt-roes 20.html
Democrats knew all along their accusations about the Patriot Act were phony:1 903.asp
d t-roes 20.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york09
Ashcroft haters spreading lies on Patriot Act:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/roeser/cst-e
err.. no it's not. I don't see anyone on the left supporting the inefficiencies you speak of.
;)
Well, no, but the left certainly likes to ignore their enormous costs so they can complain they don't have enough money for their ineffectual government programs.
lol I guess falsities turn into truth in your fantasy world. USA is NOT out of the recession. And the "lifting" you talk of was goin gto happen anyway. In any case, even those that are in favour of the tax cuts claim that it will take 3 or 4 years for them to make an impact.
Are you on drugs??? The recession lasted 2 quarters, and the GDP been growing at around 3% ever since. Now, I don't know what schrewl of economics you attended, but that is, by definition, not recession. Sure, tax cuts take time to have effect, but the effect is a lot stronger than the equivalent spending by some inefficient government bureacracy, which will pay one secretary $90,000 a year w/ absurd benefits instead of 3 private citizens a reasonable salary (and who will contribute to growing the economy, not sucking the life out of it).
I don't know if raising taxes ever creates growth but spending certainly does. Right now, Europe is trying to get out of the recession by spending, while USA is relying on tax-cuts. Let's see which one works.
Haha, it's no contest! Our market approach has outdone Europe's for 50 years. Let's see, Europe's economy is not recovering, and is on the verge of a 'double-dip' recession in Germany and other countries. America's economy is out of recession, all major economic indicators are up from 2 years ago (including consumer spending and confidence), and the stock market is doing great. Now, granted the job market is not recovering, but that probably cannot happen for another year because so many manufacturing jobs went to China and Mexico in the past decade, and won't be coming back. We have to make new jobs, which takes many years of growth, and that means private investment, not a few new 'artificial' government jobs in inefficient goverment bureaucracies that suck even more money out of the real economy.
There is a typo there but anyway, your point is understood. Just the fact that most of the debt is owned by the Americans doens't mean it can be conveniently ignored. Debt is debt! It won't go away just because YOU own it instead of some foreigner!
I really should use that 'preview' button more.
It is not a question of ignoring. The national debt simply has to be taken into perspective. It is a long-term concern, but concentrating on paying it off at the expense of economic growth is counterproductive.
Here is that NY Times link: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/18/opinion/18FRIE.h tml
For the best politics site on the web, go to:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com
no free democracy (those democratic in deed *and* name) has attacked another free democracy in 150 years. Maybe that's what makes them think that.
meant that 3rd paragraph to be italics, not the 2nd and 4th, oops.
Wha-wha-whaaat? What does that have to do with the left? Well, for one thing it's the flip side of what you termed 'right-wing.' der!
Just because they're wasteful doesn't they don't admit to it in private, at least when talking about the other guy. In any case, every single major tax cut in the past century has been followed immediately by economic growth and within, including Bush's, which have lifted us out of the tech-bubble recession. What would you do? RAISE taxes? When has that EVER created growth?
Except the capitalists you worship fail to tell you one thing: the original debt has still not been paid off. If corporations, who are all capitalist, were following your advice, they would be bankrupt within 10 years.
I know you can do it. Repeat after me: the only thing that matters is that the economy expands in the long run. Since the national debt has expanded WAY more than the size of the national debt, and most of that debt is owed to Americans, it was certainly worth it.
Spoken like a true left-winger... Something you fail to realize: most of the money is spent on "discretionary" things, but in an incredibly inefficient way: useless/counterproductive liberal bureaucrats who can't be fired and have 12 assistants, incredibly lavish facilities, contracts for unions that go way over budget and take 5 times as long to accomplish simple crap, $50 billion in fraud annually because the General Accounting Office can't figure out where the tax dollars are being spent, sweet Jesus I could go on and on and on...
Don't tell us the government can't do more with less, every time they raise our taxes they are asking us to do so. Any Washington insider will tell you that w/o the pro-growth Bush tax cuts congress would have spent that money anyway, just on wasteful, non-stimulative pork projects.
In any case, by your last statement you clearly don't understand the idea of present investment in future growth. The idea is run the right kind of deficits now (tax cuts and pro-private sector-growth spending), hoping the resulting economic growth will overcome them later, like it always has.
I just read your rant about the windows versus mac menus. I can't believe you think that, for an app in the background, searching for a non-damaging area of the app to click on, slowly moving your mouse over to it (not on edge of screen, clicking, looking for the exact menu item to click on, then moving your mouse much further to get to it is 'faster.' When you're not switching between apps, sure, the mac way is better, otherwise the windows/linux way is much easier. In any case, you still have to search horizontally for the correct menu both ways. I wish they both did pie menus!