Plenty of dictators have invaded non-hostile countries and the US didn't much care.
Yeah? Name one.
Stalin and Eastern European countries that they did not hold at the end of WWII. China and Tibet. Japan before they attacked us. Argentina and the Falklands.
Ah. So we should wait until after somebody kills a few million people before we do anything about it?
Or until a Black Hawk gets shot down and the American public cries out against us preventing genocide and warlords. We can't create a double standard on who deserves our protection just beacuse of mineral rights over their land.
You mean, when Saddam wasn't sending his armies up to crush the rebellions and slaughter innocent civilians?
Again, see double standard. If they had no oil it'd be another country we would either have not gotten invloved with, or pulled out of when enough people die to make front page.
We were not in a position to stop Stalin or Pol Pot when they were slaughtering millions.
Says who? Stalin maybe, but Pol Pot was the leader of a third world jungle nation who killed between 1/3 and 1/2 of his population. Maybe you don't value their lives like you value white peoples.
First of all, it still isn't a sales point. The whole point of the Iraq war is and has always been to eliminate the threat that Saddam Hussein and his WMD posed to our national security. Second, nobody has revealed that the WMD threat was non-existent.
I've read you evidence and I see no weapons, only the basics to start a small scale program years down the road. The chemical and biological weapons we found had a shelf life of a few months up to a year. By the time we found them they were already well beyond their shelf life and most were hold overs from their war with Iran or the first Gulf War. We know know he wouldn't have given weapons to Islamic extremists because he would no longer be in control of them. Dictators thrive on control. He had no methods to reach the U.S. with any weapons even if he had the resources to make a functional weapon. He also knew that we would trace them back to him if he ever did use them against us or an ally. As I said earlier, he was a threat only to his people, and we have let innocent civillians die in the hands of warlords and dictators before. Why is Iraq so special that the US values their lives over, say, Somalians? Didn't we pull out and let the warlords continue to kill and starve their population? See double standard again.
Well, there never has been a civilization or government where everybody was equal. The only difference is that under our government, every body has a shot at fulfilling their dream.
So God forbid we keep trying to make all people truly equal. Under our government everybody has a chance at their dreams provided they are born into the right family and environment. I bet we could find a couple million (at least) who are born poor, lack a proper public education (not their fault we don't value inner city schools like the suburban ones), have no chance at college, and work the same minimum wage job that their parents did, and repeat the cycle with their own families. From the sounds of things I can assume you have never spent even a minute in public housing. It's funny how something like that can change you view on that 'stale old class struggle' argument. We can't even provide for many of our own citizens. I thought one of governments roles was to take care of it's own people. With the money we spent on Iraq, we could have done a lot of good within our own borders.
Well, the fact that was used to base this invasion was that Saddam Hussein had and was actively seeking WMD programs that posed a threat to our security. This certainly hasn't been proven false, and the only "predetermined agenda" has been to make our
Saddam in no way posed a threat to you. He did not support terrorists. It a lie, he was a threat only to his people. The first Gulf War and following weapons inspections ensured that he couldn't even mount a real attack against a friut stand.
He was a dictator. Dictators don't stay in power by sharing their technology and power. If he gave terrorists access to weapons he would no longer be in control of them. Bin Laden is on record calling Saddam a "Socialist Infidel". The Muslim extrimists everyone says Saddam was helping actually wanted to see him dead more than any American.
He can shoot at our patrol planes all he wants because he knew if actually shot one down it'd be his ass. Iran was, and is, more of a terrorists best friend than Iraq ever was. Answer me this one question: Why did we invade Iraq and not Iran given that fact?
I don't know what this deal is with France being the only country asking for evidence instead of biasd inteligence and political cliche. Let's try almost every member of the UN and NATO to start. Haven't they been the brunt of many more (read: in numbers of) attacks than we were? They have been a target longer than the US and are thousands of miles closer to Iraq than we are. If the threat of Saddam were real wouldn't they want to jump in the ring with us? Bravo to the rest of the world for thinking and asking real questions instead of being led around by their fears.
Now before you selectivly ignore certain arguments and say that Saddam was worse than Hitler and say that I must love Jews and hate Muslims, lets ask a World War 2 vet what he thinks. My neighbor who lost both legs in the Arden Forrest (a true partiot) seems to think "Fuck that frat boy Bush. I gave half my body to save humanity from a monster. These boys in Iraq are patriots too. Not because they they are fighting someone as evil as Hitler, but because they do their job even though they know the reason for war is a lie."
Tell that to the families of the estimated 500,000 to 2 million people he killed. But that is beside the point, anyway. We didn't invade Iraq because Saddam was committing genocide- we invaded to eliminate one of the most serious terrorist threats in the world. Liberating 25 million people was just a nice perk.
So it's between 0.5 and 2 million. That's a gigantic margin of error. I wonder who generated it and how they came to that conclusion. I mean that could beat out the Holocaust. I bet Bush could use that number to help us forget the fact his State of the Union and Powell's UN address were total bullshit. The bad intelligence can be blamed on the President and his staff picking and choosing what they wanted the public to hear wile leaving out much more credible sources saying that the intelligence told to the public was flawed. Now if you poke around the official Bush website you will find a video. It starts off with Kerry, Moore and others criticizing the president. Then it switches over to audio of Hitler giving a speech and still pictures of Bush with his quotes at the bottom. According the official reelection video which was sanctioned by Bush, he says "God told me to strike at Al-Qaeda and I did. Then he told me to strike at Saddam, and I did." So we go from weapons of mass destruction, to liberating the people, to God told me to do it. Congratulations George W. You are the first person God has talked to since Joan of Arc. Somebody should remind him he was not elected to be our religious leader. I don't care if God tells him to jump off a cliff. He should represent us and not religion. Leave that crap to the Pope.
(2nd and 3rd world allies don't count)
Why not? Because that doesn't fit with your distorted world view?
No, because we did all of the work and took all of the risks. Didn't the Pillipinos disappear after their first soldier was kidnapped? Allies in this war were a complete formality so we didn't have to say we were going alone.
Yeah. Saddam never invaded a non-hostile border state like **cough** Kuwait **cough**.
Kuwait is not the same as ALL of Europe. Not by mass, population or any other measure. Plenty of dictators have invaded non-hostile countries and the US didn't much care.
And why would it not compare? Are the Kurds, Shiias, and Arabs that Saddam killed somehow less important than the Jews that Hitler killed?
Easy answer, Hitler killed more people and took extra lengths to dehumanize them for years before the final solution. After the first war, Iraq's minority groups enjoyed many freedoms and were largely self-governing. We did not step in to stop Stalin's purges, or Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, or any of the other human rights violations that involved more people than Saddam's killings. Saving the Iraqi people was not a sales point until the WMD threat was revealed to be bullshit.
I think you have a basic misunderstanding of what a democracy is.
I know exactly what democracy is. It was born in ancient Greece where all native males had an equal voice in their governing. America is not a true democracy. As I said earlier, money is power. So either makes a few constitutional amendments to remove money from politics, or tax the hell out of the (usually greedy) ultra-rich who otherwise really don't give a shit about people born into and dying in poverty. I think one of our historical documents had the phrase "To provide for the well being". The truth is that most of the 1% don't earn their money, they are born into it. It's easy to not give a damn about others, everyone is born conservative. It takes heart and education care about fellow man. If the 1% are too greedy to realize the can live opulently and do good with the majority of their money then it should be governments role to step in and say you are a bad citizen.
Well, if you judge ones existence by how much money they have, then I guess it may be more meaningful. But to the rest of us who are not shallow money-grubbers, wealth really doesn't have much to do with how meaningful your existence is.
Again you completely ignored the point about the wealthy using their power (aka money) to make their say in government more meaningful than mine. We are supposed to be living in a country where everyone is equal, but in truth we are not.
Ah, so any failure in our foreign policy over the past 50 years should prevent us from defending ourselves today?
It should teach us that if we make such a big move (like invading a country for the first time in our history) to think it out first and base it on facts, not fear or intelligence warped to fit a predetermined agenda. And what are you talking defending? Defending us from Saddam? That's laughable. He was no more a threat to us than Castro. Have you read the 9/11 report saying that Iran, not Iraq, had a role in the attacks? Why are we not invading Iran right now? Iraq = no role... Iran = a role. Was the President bullshitting us to attack Iraq for ulterior motives? Because using his same Pre-invasion logic, we should be headed to Iran right now.
While you may be concerned about hurting our "allies" feelings, I'm more concerned about going after a culture and ideology that is intent on killing as many Americans as possible, as well as any nation that provides support or strength to this ideology.
So now we went to war over ideology? I thought it was because Saddam as attacking us every day with unseen forces or had WMD's that could reach us. I don't want to tell the families of fallen soldiers that we went to war over people talking shit about America. The truth is America was sold on the war based on a credible threat. As time progressed and that threat never materialized the story switched to liberating the Iraqi's. That a noble objective, but that's not how it was sold to us. Basically
Yeah, that's why Kerry has vowed to be "Tough on drugs".
Find me a politican who has vowed to be "soft" on drugs. That's just career suicide. "Tough on drugs" is just another piece of political cliche that must be spouted before someone can offically enter office.
Good. Because pulling out with the job half done is much worse. Besides, we live in a time when "patriot" has be redefined as agreeing with the governemnt. He had to side with war or risk the Bush PR machine labeling him as a coward, traitor, unAmerican.
Yeah because Kerry is going to invade a country that never attacked us
Germany never attacked us- should we have waited to go to war with them? Oh, and Iraq did attack us almost every day between 1991 and 2002.
So you are comparing the actions of Nazi Germany to Saddam? I don't recall Saddam taking over the entire Middle East like Hitler took over all of Europe (save England and Spain). And KNOW you can be ignorant enough to compare the Holocaust to Saddam's purges. I mean that would just be stupid. Also, can you please reference exactly where and when he attacked us almost daily.
giving massive tax cuts to the rich.
Everybody that pays taxes got a tax cut. The only reason the rich got a "massive" tax cut is because they pay a massive amount of taxes.
So it's OK for 1% of the population to control over 90% of its wealth? That's not democracy, that's unregulated business gone crazy. Tell me, what can an individual do with $10 billion that he can't do with $1 billion. Money is power. Just because someone is rich shouldn't make their existence more meaningful than mine, but to politicians the person with more money has a louder voice.
Iraqi quagmire
The liberation of Iraq has been one of the most stunningly successful military compaigns ever. I was going to ask what possible motivations you could have to call it a quagmire, but I think we both know the answer to that...
And when we installed "democracy" in South America to stop Communism we called it a success too. Now look how peaceful and uncorrupted their governments are. Lest wait a few years before we declare unconditional success. If Iraq collapses in a few years... well, FUBAR. Enter more terrorists generated by harsh conditions which will be blamed on us.
with the entire free World hating our guts So, you like to exaggerate, eh?
"Entire" and "hating" may be exaggerations. It should be "the alienation of some of our historically strongest and staunchest allies." To be fair, you have exaggerated quite a bit too.
or should I say if Bush hadn't gotten appointed
No, you shouldn't say that.
That's very true. Even though he was appointed by the Supreme Court, Gore should be blamed for giving up his challenges.
I think most of those were U.N. interventions. The killing and genocide in these countries made Sadam look tame in comparison. Iraq is the FIRST time the U.S. has invaded a country by itself (2nd and 3rd world allies don't count).
Since Iraq was the first time in history we invaded a country, it will make a bold mark in our history making it scrutinized for a very long time. In 25 or 50, even 100, years when we look back, what explanation are we going to give our children and grandchildren? Look at how we criticized things like the Bay of Pigs, Sacco & Vanzetti and the Scopes "monkey" trials. The last thing I want my generation being labeled as is a bunch of people who let their fear strike them down as ignorant enough to follow a person whose personal agenda is more powerful than the national agenda.
I agree in theory, but in practice a vote libertarian is a vote for Bush. Just ask anybody who voted for Nader in 2000.
The good news is that the courts ruled that vote swapping sites were legal. I hope people remember them and renew their sites for this years election.
For those who forgot or didn't know, here is an example: I live in a region that will most likely vote Bush (midwest). That means if I were to vote for a 3rd party, it would be a "wasted" vote. A swap site allows me to trade my vote with someone else who lives in an area where Bush will most likely lose. I vote Democrat for them, and they vote my 3rd party for me. If this happens on a large scale the national vote can suddenly swing with little prediction.
The Democrats who whould have been a close 2nd in my area get more votes than they otherwise would have, hopefully making this a Democratic state; and the other state where the Dems were going to win anyway get a boost in 3rd party votes. Maybe if we can get the 3rd party votes high enough (I think it's 5% overall) they will get benifits like Perot did the first time he ran (but not the second time).
That's how America's electoral system works. Since it's designed to support only 2 parties, voting isn't about choosing who you think the best leader is. It's all about voting for the person who stands the best chance of beating the person you least want in office. Until the day you see a ballot telling you to put in order (ex: 1 thru 5) the people you want governing, this is how the system must be played.
I would like to thank our legally appointed President for showing me that youthful idealism has no place in politics and opening my eyes to the stark reality of the way things really work.
Well you could also say that Microsoft is sick of being the one constantly being sued and has decided to swing back or at least put themselves in a position to block the next swing. Find me one case where Microsoft is suing over a patent they hold.
And when a hostile country starts massing troops right across the border it's ok to to not make any plans until the first shot? MS isn't spending all this time and money to patent the world just for shits and giggles. Don't forget, crazy.... not stupid. They will pull their guns if there is enough to lose, or win.
They are trying to play both sides of the field. To me, Microsoft is like watching the homeless guy down the street have an argument with himself. Very entertaining, but it's advisable to keep your distance.
In my area CC owns all but 10 stations on the FM band. The also own all 10 of the top 10 stations with at least 1 in each genre. Even though they may own just over 10% of the stations nationwide, if they are strategiclly placed in urban areas (like they are) they can still dominate the majority of peoples choices.
Norton Navigator also had multiple desktops. I'm not sure if it was 3.11 of 95, but one of S3's first "3D" cards could make the desktop resolution larger than the display resolution. Although not technically paging, panning is close.
Remember in comic books when the good guy turned the bad guy into the cops? Now the 'good guy' rips the cops guts out and leads the others on a high speed chase killing more.
Around the time of the red scare and HUAC the comic book industry feared being black balled as communists so they voluntarly censored themselves for over 30 years. No shadow could be cast over a law enorcemnt officers, government was blindly trusted, and no talk of drugs (even anti-drug story's). Personally, I'm glad that's changed. I couldn't tolerate living in a fake, leave it to beaver world.
As far as cutting class and slapping women are concerned, country music has been doing that for decades, and people have been romanticizing killers and gangsters for even longer. And it's not cool to be a drug dealer, but some people have nowhere else to go and there's too much money to be made. I do recall some of the prohibition era gangsters being idolized too. Same product, new wrapper.
I will admit that the statement was exagerated. It should be either pro-Bush or pro-"You Can't Do Any Worse". Given Bush's record of power abuse though I can't imagine Kerry continuing in hs footsteps.
Who said Bush or Kerry were patriotic? Name one large sacrifice either has made for the well-being of American society. Please keep in mind that either running for, or being, president is not a sacrifice.
Any canidate who is affiliated with a political party is not as interested in welfare of the public as much as they are the continuation of their respective parties. There is a reason many of the founding fathers considered laws preventing the formation of political parties; they exist to serve themselves above all else.
Also, with American electorate laws setup in a way that only support 2 parties, you must understand that voting is not choosing who is the best leader, but a choice of the lesser of 2 evils. At the moment it looks like the choices are either pro-Bush or Pro-Constitution.
Then again, the majority of people who buy pre-built systems with windows already loaded probably don't even know what an operating system is, let alone possible alternatives.
The boom in computer users and wired homes far outpaced the education of the average user. Not a day goes by that I don't talk to someone who doesn't know the difference between memory and storage. Most people refer to their case as the CPU. The fairly recent decision by ISPs to block ports is evidence that most people don't know and don't care about these matters. The average AOL user doesn't care that their machine is a spam zombie as long as their chat, IM, or email work.
When I worked for a computer repair company, a lady came in with a broken machine. Ignoring the fact it was a Compaq running Windows ME and AOL, I quickly decided it had something to do with the dozen viruses and hundreds of pieces spyware/adware. I removed the all of it, defragged, and sent it back. The next day she was in bitching about how I broke some trivial GAIN utility that was wrapped around a wad of spyware. I told her politely that she had to choose between her computer acting as it should, or that crappy utility. Per her orders, I reinstalled GAIN, voided her warranty, and put a no service order on her account.
It's not a case of "good enough", it's a case of "the majority of people are ignorant and appathetic".
It's really very simple. Marketing. A good marketing firm can make people believe what ever they want about a product without ever saying it directly. Windows is still the boss because the GNU/Linux/OSS movements have nowhere near the disposable income of Redmond's marketing teams.
I'm sure that walkie feature is nice for some conditions, but I swear I'm going to slap the next person in the elevator who feels like using it to gossip about who slept with whom.
Knowing Hatch's other brain children, I'm not very shocked by the news. As with most of his other bought-and-paid-for legislation I don't see much coming from this. On the unlikely chance something is produced, won't the vagueness of the wording be applicable to legitimate P2P applications as well? This sounds just like the Betamax case. An industry doesn't like new technology, so they buy politicians to try and completely outlaw it. P2P is the future of the internet. Star topography, even though the dominant layout of the internet, still has major weakness that mesh topography can provide solutions for. By the looks of everything, he is being so vague as to include any sort of decentralized communications.
I was always told republicans were about less government intervention into personal and business sectors. In the last 4 years I've seen more laws passed where the government takes an active role in propping up the powers of big business while legislating away so many personal rights and privileges. This doesn't seem like the hands-off approach they like to pat themselves on the back so much for.
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Stalin and Eastern European countries that they did not hold at the end of WWII. China and Tibet. Japan before they attacked us. Argentina and the Falklands.
Or until a Black Hawk gets shot down and the American public cries out against us preventing genocide and warlords. We can't create a double standard on who deserves our protection just beacuse of mineral rights over their land.
Again, see double standard. If they had no oil it'd be another country we would either have not gotten invloved with, or pulled out of when enough people die to make front page.
Says who? Stalin maybe, but Pol Pot was the leader of a third world jungle nation who killed between 1/3 and 1/2 of his population. Maybe you don't value their lives like you value white peoples.
I've read you evidence and I see no weapons, only the basics to start a small scale program years down the road. The chemical and biological weapons we found had a shelf life of a few months up to a year. By the time we found them they were already well beyond their shelf life and most were hold overs from their war with Iran or the first Gulf War. We know know he wouldn't have given weapons to Islamic extremists because he would no longer be in control of them. Dictators thrive on control. He had no methods to reach the U.S. with any weapons even if he had the resources to make a functional weapon. He also knew that we would trace them back to him if he ever did use them against us or an ally. As I said earlier, he was a threat only to his people, and we have let innocent civillians die in the hands of warlords and dictators before. Why is Iraq so special that the US values their lives over, say, Somalians? Didn't we pull out and let the warlords continue to kill and starve their population? See double standard again.
So God forbid we keep trying to make all people truly equal. Under our government everybody has a chance at their dreams provided they are born into the right family and environment. I bet we could find a couple million (at least) who are born poor, lack a proper public education (not their fault we don't value inner city schools like the suburban ones), have no chance at college, and work the same minimum wage job that their parents did, and repeat the cycle with their own families. From the sounds of things I can assume you have never spent even a minute in public housing. It's funny how something like that can change you view on that 'stale old class struggle' argument. We can't even provide for many of our own citizens. I thought one of governments roles was to take care of it's own people. With the money we spent on Iraq, we could have done a lot of good within our own borders.
They pulled the video because it was just too insane and caused a lot of trouble.
e =UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=bush+hitler+moore+kerry+vide o
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&i
Saddam in no way posed a threat to you. He did not support terrorists. It a lie, he was a threat only to his people. The first Gulf War and following weapons inspections ensured that he couldn't even mount a real attack against a friut stand.
He was a dictator. Dictators don't stay in power by sharing their technology and power. If he gave terrorists access to weapons he would no longer be in control of them. Bin Laden is on record calling Saddam a "Socialist Infidel". The Muslim extrimists everyone says Saddam was helping actually wanted to see him dead more than any American.
He can shoot at our patrol planes all he wants because he knew if actually shot one down it'd be his ass. Iran was, and is, more of a terrorists best friend than Iraq ever was. Answer me this one question: Why did we invade Iraq and not Iran given that fact?
I don't know what this deal is with France being the only country asking for evidence instead of biasd inteligence and political cliche. Let's try almost every member of the UN and NATO to start. Haven't they been the brunt of many more (read: in numbers of) attacks than we were? They have been a target longer than the US and are thousands of miles closer to Iraq than we are. If the threat of Saddam were real wouldn't they want to jump in the ring with us? Bravo to the rest of the world for thinking and asking real questions instead of being led around by their fears.
Now before you selectivly ignore certain arguments and say that Saddam was worse than Hitler and say that I must love Jews and hate Muslims, lets ask a World War 2 vet what he thinks. My neighbor who lost both legs in the Arden Forrest (a true partiot) seems to think "Fuck that frat boy Bush. I gave half my body to save humanity from a monster. These boys in Iraq are patriots too. Not because they they are fighting someone as evil as Hitler, but because they do their job even though they know the reason for war is a lie."
No, because we did all of the work and took all of the risks. Didn't the Pillipinos disappear after their first soldier was kidnapped? Allies in this war were a complete formality so we didn't have to say we were going alone.
Kuwait is not the same as ALL of Europe. Not by mass, population or any other measure. Plenty of dictators have invaded non-hostile countries and the US didn't much care.
Easy answer, Hitler killed more people and took extra lengths to dehumanize them for years before the final solution. After the first war, Iraq's minority groups enjoyed many freedoms and were largely self-governing. We did not step in to stop Stalin's purges, or Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, or any of the other human rights violations that involved more people than Saddam's killings. Saving the Iraqi people was not a sales point until the WMD threat was revealed to be bullshit.
I know exactly what democracy is. It was born in ancient Greece where all native males had an equal voice in their governing. America is not a true democracy. As I said earlier, money is power. So either makes a few constitutional amendments to remove money from politics, or tax the hell out of the (usually greedy) ultra-rich who otherwise really don't give a shit about people born into and dying in poverty. I think one of our historical documents had the phrase "To provide for the well being". The truth is that most of the 1% don't earn their money, they are born into it. It's easy to not give a damn about others, everyone is born conservative. It takes heart and education care about fellow man. If the 1% are too greedy to realize the can live opulently and do good with the majority of their money then it should be governments role to step in and say you are a bad citizen.
Again you completely ignored the point about the wealthy using their power (aka money) to make their say in government more meaningful than mine. We are supposed to be living in a country where everyone is equal, but in truth we are not.
It should teach us that if we make such a big move (like invading a country for the first time in our history) to think it out first and base it on facts, not fear or intelligence warped to fit a predetermined agenda. And what are you talking defending? Defending us from Saddam? That's laughable. He was no more a threat to us than Castro. Have you read the 9/11 report saying that Iran, not Iraq, had a role in the attacks? Why are we not invading Iran right now? Iraq = no role... Iran = a role. Was the President bullshitting us to attack Iraq for ulterior motives? Because using his same Pre-invasion logic, we should be headed to Iran right now.
So now we went to war over ideology? I thought it was because Saddam as attacking us every day with unseen forces or had WMD's that could reach us. I don't want to tell the families of fallen soldiers that we went to war over people talking shit about America. The truth is America was sold on the war based on a credible threat. As time progressed and that threat never materialized the story switched to liberating the Iraqi's. That a noble objective, but that's not how it was sold to us. Basically
Yeah, that's why Kerry has vowed to be "Tough on drugs".
Find me a politican who has vowed to be "soft" on drugs. That's just career suicide. "Tough on drugs" is just another piece of political cliche that must be spouted before someone can offically enter office.
Good. Because pulling out with the job half done is much worse. Besides, we live in a time when "patriot" has be redefined as agreeing with the governemnt. He had to side with war or risk the Bush PR machine labeling him as a coward, traitor, unAmerican.
So it's OK for 1% of the population to control over 90% of its wealth? That's not democracy, that's unregulated business gone crazy. Tell me, what can an individual do with $10 billion that he can't do with $1 billion. Money is power. Just because someone is rich shouldn't make their existence more meaningful than mine, but to politicians the person with more money has a louder voice.
And when we installed "democracy" in South America to stop Communism we called it a success too. Now look how peaceful and uncorrupted their governments are. Lest wait a few years before we declare unconditional success. If Iraq collapses in a few years... well, FUBAR. Enter more terrorists generated by harsh conditions which will be blamed on us. "Entire" and "hating" may be exaggerations. It should be "the alienation of some of our historically strongest and staunchest allies." To be fair, you have exaggerated quite a bit too. That's very true. Even though he was appointed by the Supreme Court, Gore should be blamed for giving up his challenges.
I think most of those were U.N. interventions. The killing and genocide in these countries made Sadam look tame in comparison. Iraq is the FIRST time the U.S. has invaded a country by itself (2nd and 3rd world allies don't count).
Since Iraq was the first time in history we invaded a country, it will make a bold mark in our history making it scrutinized for a very long time. In 25 or 50, even 100, years when we look back, what explanation are we going to give our children and grandchildren? Look at how we criticized things like the Bay of Pigs, Sacco & Vanzetti and the Scopes "monkey" trials. The last thing I want my generation being labeled as is a bunch of people who let their fear strike them down as ignorant enough to follow a person whose personal agenda is more powerful than the national agenda.
Socialism is not Communism just like Anarchy is not Chaos. When the Fed makes up 100% of the GDP then you can call it Communism.
I agree in theory, but in practice a vote libertarian is a vote for Bush. Just ask anybody who voted for Nader in 2000.
The good news is that the courts ruled that vote swapping sites were legal. I hope people remember them and renew their sites for this years election.
For those who forgot or didn't know, here is an example: I live in a region that will most likely vote Bush (midwest). That means if I were to vote for a 3rd party, it would be a "wasted" vote. A swap site allows me to trade my vote with someone else who lives in an area where Bush will most likely lose. I vote Democrat for them, and they vote my 3rd party for me. If this happens on a large scale the national vote can suddenly swing with little prediction.
The Democrats who whould have been a close 2nd in my area get more votes than they otherwise would have, hopefully making this a Democratic state; and the other state where the Dems were going to win anyway get a boost in 3rd party votes. Maybe if we can get the 3rd party votes high enough (I think it's 5% overall) they will get benifits like Perot did the first time he ran (but not the second time).
That's how America's electoral system works. Since it's designed to support only 2 parties, voting isn't about choosing who you think the best leader is. It's all about voting for the person who stands the best chance of beating the person you least want in office. Until the day you see a ballot telling you to put in order (ex: 1 thru 5) the people you want governing, this is how the system must be played.
I would like to thank our legally appointed President for showing me that youthful idealism has no place in politics and opening my eyes to the stark reality of the way things really work.
Well you could also say that Microsoft is sick of being the one constantly being sued and has decided to swing back or at least put themselves in a position to block the next swing. Find me one case where Microsoft is suing over a patent they hold.
And when a hostile country starts massing troops right across the border it's ok to to not make any plans until the first shot? MS isn't spending all this time and money to patent the world just for shits and giggles. Don't forget, crazy.... not stupid. They will pull their guns if there is enough to lose, or win.
They are trying to play both sides of the field. To me, Microsoft is like watching the homeless guy down the street have an argument with himself. Very entertaining, but it's advisable to keep your distance.
In my area CC owns all but 10 stations on the FM band. The also own all 10 of the top 10 stations with at least 1 in each genre. Even though they may own just over 10% of the stations nationwide, if they are strategiclly placed in urban areas (like they are) they can still dominate the majority of peoples choices.
Norton Navigator also had multiple desktops. I'm not sure if it was 3.11 of 95, but one of S3's first "3D" cards could make the desktop resolution larger than the display resolution. Although not technically paging, panning is close.
Remember in comic books when the good guy turned the bad guy into the cops? Now the 'good guy' rips the cops guts out and leads the others on a high speed chase killing more.
Around the time of the red scare and HUAC the comic book industry feared being black balled as communists so they voluntarly censored themselves for over 30 years. No shadow could be cast over a law enorcemnt officers, government was blindly trusted, and no talk of drugs (even anti-drug story's). Personally, I'm glad that's changed. I couldn't tolerate living in a fake, leave it to beaver world.
As far as cutting class and slapping women are concerned, country music has been doing that for decades, and people have been romanticizing killers and gangsters for even longer. And it's not cool to be a drug dealer, but some people have nowhere else to go and there's too much money to be made. I do recall some of the prohibition era gangsters being idolized too.
Same product, new wrapper.
Do be careful, I was recently flamed down for arguing the same topic yesterday.
More people need to help meta-modearte. It helps keep the 'powers that be' in check.
I will admit that the statement was exagerated. It should be either pro-Bush or pro-"You Can't Do Any Worse". Given Bush's record of power abuse though I can't imagine Kerry continuing in hs footsteps.
He was in Vietnam, but was he on the line? I don't know too much detail on his tour(s).
Who said Bush or Kerry were patriotic? Name one large sacrifice either has made for the well-being of American society. Please keep in mind that either running for, or being, president is not a sacrifice.
Any canidate who is affiliated with a political party is not as interested in welfare of the public as much as they are the continuation of their respective parties. There is a reason many of the founding fathers considered laws preventing the formation of political parties; they exist to serve themselves above all else.
Also, with American electorate laws setup in a way that only support 2 parties, you must understand that voting is not choosing who is the best leader, but a choice of the lesser of 2 evils. At the moment it looks like the choices are either pro-Bush or Pro-Constitution.
Then again, the majority of people who buy pre-built systems with windows already loaded probably don't even know what an operating system is, let alone possible alternatives.
The boom in computer users and wired homes far outpaced the education of the average user. Not a day goes by that I don't talk to someone who doesn't know the difference between memory and storage. Most people refer to their case as the CPU. The fairly recent decision by ISPs to block ports is evidence that most people don't know and don't care about these matters. The average AOL user doesn't care that their machine is a spam zombie as long as their chat, IM, or email work.
When I worked for a computer repair company, a lady came in with a broken machine. Ignoring the fact it was a Compaq running Windows ME and AOL, I quickly decided it had something to do with the dozen viruses and hundreds of pieces spyware/adware. I removed the all of it, defragged, and sent it back. The next day she was in bitching about how I broke some trivial GAIN utility that was wrapped around a wad of spyware. I told her politely that she had to choose between her computer acting as it should, or that crappy utility. Per her orders, I reinstalled GAIN, voided her warranty, and put a no service order on her account.
It's not a case of "good enough", it's a case of "the majority of people are ignorant and appathetic".
It's really very simple. Marketing. A good marketing firm can make people believe what ever they want about a product without ever saying it directly. Windows is still the boss because the GNU/Linux/OSS movements have nowhere near the disposable income of Redmond's marketing teams.
I'm sure that walkie feature is nice for some conditions, but I swear I'm going to slap the next person in the elevator who feels like using it to gossip about who slept with whom.
Knowing Hatch's other brain children, I'm not very shocked by the news. As with most of his other bought-and-paid-for legislation I don't see much coming from this. On the unlikely chance something is produced, won't the vagueness of the wording be applicable to legitimate P2P applications as well? This sounds just like the Betamax case. An industry doesn't like new technology, so they buy politicians to try and completely outlaw it. P2P is the future of the internet. Star topography, even though the dominant layout of the internet, still has major weakness that mesh topography can provide solutions for. By the looks of everything, he is being so vague as to include any sort of decentralized communications.
I was always told republicans were about less government intervention into personal and business sectors. In the last 4 years I've seen more laws passed where the government takes an active role in propping up the powers of big business while legislating away so many personal rights and privileges. This doesn't seem like the hands-off approach they like to pat themselves on the back so much for.