The majority of the people out there are socially conservative, fiscally "populist". Which means when liberals talk about banning guns, they may pick up the odd vote or two in New York and San Fransisco, but they lose a whole lot more in the "fly over" country in-between.
By the same token, it takes an economist to understand that losing my job today is good for the economy as a whole. The average joe worker just knows he's losing his job to some foreigner in a place he has trouble naming. A rising tide might lift all boats, but if your boat is sinking, you are still going under.
If the Democrats adopted a more socially conservative agenda (ie, abandoned affirmative action, their anti-gun stance, etc) they would remove the Republican lock on the "white-man" vote and would be an unstoppable electoral force.
The problem is, the EU only does the "right thing" when it applies to foreign companies, foreign agriculture (especially 3rd world agriculture), etc.
Cows in the EU get a subsidy equivilent to $250 per year from the EU. There are a billion people in the world that subsist on less than $200 a year.
Pressure from the EU on Zimbabwe was the major reason why American GM corn was turned back at the ports in the midst of a famine. Can't feed the starving people in Zimbabwe franken food, because it might jeapoardize future EU contracts. This is exactly what was threatened.
Oh yeah, the EU, making a habit of doing the right thing.
They were not criminal acts? So if we catch one of the terrorists who commited these acts we should set them free? Terrorists acts are criminal. Duh! FBI was involved in every terrorist attack you mentioned. They are always there.
No, they were acts of war, but Clinton chose to prosecute them (prosecute as in carry out) as criminal acts.
GHB 41? Is that some secret code for something?
George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st POTUS.
As opposed to GWB 43, George Walker Bush, 43rd and current POTUS (President of the United States).
It appears he is abusing his position in office for his own political and finacial gain while stepping over the graves of America's finest.
Unsubstantiated (and unsubstantiable) oppinion. About as provable as me claiming Clinton killed Ron Brown to keep him quiet about Democratic fund raising shenanigans or that Clinton was conspiring to change the government of the US into a communist dictatorship because he married Hillary whose heroes were communist radicals of the 60s that wanted to overthrow the government.
Bush is already rich. Were he so inclined, there would be a lot easier ways for him to make himself wealthier than invading Iraq.
Furthermore, Iraq isn't about Iraqi oil, and certainly not about US control of that oil. Iraq's GDP is 20 billion US dollars. Even if we were raping Iraq completely, that's still a 10 year break even. In reality, all of Iraq's oil money is going back into Iraq. The point was geopolitical, not oil.
Just remember when it comes to vote time vote for who you know is best. Dont vote a straight ticket! Know the facts (in otherwords watch something other than just Fox news).
The sword cuts both ways. You should expand your basis for criticism beyond moveon.org's and Michael Moore's talking points. There are plenty of legimate arguments one can use against Bush, but blood for oil isn't one of them.
Its amazing you point those out. In all cases Clinton worked with our security forces (CIA and FBI) and foreign governments (Yemin and Saudia Arabia in particular) and made hundreds of arrests. Do you think he should have started a full scale ground war on allied countries to get those terrorists? There have been several bombings in Saudi Arabia since Bush is in office. Why not send our troops to invade Saudi Arabia? Will that stop it? And while your at it, there have been hordes of bombings in Israel. Why not invade there also?
You seem to miss the fact that the Khobar towers bombings targeted American soldiers. The Cole attack targeted an American destroyer. These were not criminal acts where the FBI needed to come in, these were acts of war. And Clinton did all of shit. It took GHB 41 intervening with the Saudis to get any cooperation out of them, because Clinton was quite disinterested in it. There have been reams of books and articles written to this effect by people who served in the Clinton administration and were there.
As for oaths:...and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me...
In other words, brotha, you don't get to choose how you are used once you volunteer, the President does, and you sign on to that voluntarily.
This is old news. Where ( or who ) have you been listening to to give you false info that there was no genocide going on?
Apparently, you don't know how to read, because your article didn't really back up your claim of genocide. Finding a mass grave of 90 bodies dating from a period of heavy fighting between the Serbs and the KLA is hardly indicative of genocide, especially in light of claims of half a million dead Kosovars that was being bandied around to justify the intervention. Especially when the grave dated from over a year before the Kosovo campaign started. (In other words, not related at all to the action that precipitated the NATO bombing campaign).
President Bush still lied to the American people
So you say. How about maybe he was just wrong? For someone you guys think is a dimwitted fool, he sure seems to be pretty devious, huh? Continually outsmarting his betters on the left. Amazing.
Iraq never was a threat to the U.S. or its allies.
Right, because, after all, Iraq never invaded Kuwait or Iran or launched Scuds at Israel, or threatened to invade Saudi Arabia, or tried to assassinate Bush, or held 3,000 Americans and foreign nationals hostile, or tried to develop nuclear weapons and never used nerve gas on the Iranians or the Kurds. Nor was Iraq hosting Abu Nidal. No, they were perfectly harmless.
What disgusts me is people like you who think American soldiers are worth, as you said, "geopolitical dividends"
Like it or not, the purpose of the military is to serve the interests of the state. Period. Part of that is geopolitical dividends like, gosh, making countries that were previously funding terrorists stop funding terrorists. One of the ways you do that is by threatening the use of force. And the only way that threat is effective is if it's a credible threat. Under people like you or Clinton, it would never be credible, and hence our enemies would attack us with impugnity, knowing we would never strike back (WTC 1993, Khobar Towers bombing, Cole attack...no response to any of them).
I don't care about Clinton, to be honest. It's the people that think Clinton was the best thing next to sliced bread that irk me. The guy was as corrupt as corrupt can be.
You want unilateral? Try Kosovo. How short a memory the Democrats (especially the Democratic presidential candidates) and their apologists seem to have. Somehow bombing the shit out of the Serbs for spurious claims of genocide (subsequently proven false) despite a lack of a UN mandate was laudable, but liberating 26 million Iraqis on spurious claims of WMD isn't.
The difference: a Republican in the White House. That, and the fact the Republicans supported the Kosovo intervention, unlike the 5th column democrats (except for Lieberman and Miller).
You fools on the left are either unwilling or unable to see that the war in Iraq has paid tremendous geopolitical dividends. Saudi Arabia, heretofore unwilling to crack down on Al Qaeda all of a sudden (since March) decided to do so. Libya decided to give up it's WMD. Iran decided to abandon it's nuclear program and start opening dialogue with the United States. Even Syria is pursuing rapproachment.
And don't pretend to cry crocodile tears over the death of soldiers in Iraq. Your ilk was the same kind that was spitting on soldiers on their return from Vietnam a generation and a half ago.
Ah, but the difference which you seem incapable of grasping is: in one case, the POTUS (Clinton) did the deeds, and in the other case (Bush), someone in his administration did the deed. Bush may or may not have known the information he gave to Congress was correct or incorrect. Clinton knew he was lying, he had given his oath to tell the truth. Disputable indeed.
Hillary wanted to fire the White House Travel Office to place her own cronies in. So she did. And then, to create the justification for the firing, she ordered an FBI investigation of the travel office, forcing them to defend themselves against unfounded CRIMINAL allegations. In short, she was trying to destroy other people's lives.
They didn't just find that Clinton lied under oath (a crime), he also coerced a witness to lie under oath (a bigger crime) in order to to cover up his tracks against a sexual misconduct lawsuit brought by a private citizen, who, shock of shocks, had a case that Clinton was forced to settle because his witness tampering (a crime) didn't pan out.
There's a big difference for getting fired for getting in an argument and starting a fight at work, than getting imprisoned for walking outside without something covering your head.
But obviously, you are too stupid to realize that. So why not move to Saudi Arabia and see how they tolerate your criticism over there?
Bush didn't destroy international cooperation, he forced the issue and demonstrated that nations like France, Russia, and Germany were not our allies, unlike some people were insisting and for some reason continue to insist today.
Bush did not destroy cooperation, the other nations destroyed it by not cooperating. I guess people like you think that was a sign to pick up your things and go home "oh well, the French said no, so I guess we shouldn't do this after all".
Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.
and you are wrong about it being ineffective against mosquitos. Even against mosquitos that had developed resistance to DDT, it still functioned as an effective irritant (and is part of the reason why it is still used to spray the inside of dwellings).
It's effectiveness has never really been in question, nor it's adverse effect on the environment (it IS significant). However, the same environmentalists (see parent of my original post) that like to claim that they are in favor of saving the little brown people were instrumental in banning a chemical that went far in reducing the number of children killed per year because of malaria (currently about a million die children from it each year).
These are the same people that helped persuade Zimbabwe from accepting GM-modified corn last year even though they were in the midst of a famine. Gosh, better for the poor brown indigenous people to starve to death than be exposed to franken food.
So, sorry, I have to call fraud every time I hear environmentalists crying about poor people in the southern hemisphere. Their actions certainly haven't followed their rhetorical concern.
"But then again, poor people in the third world does not matter, eh?"
Funny, but that is just the attitude that the environmentalists took towards DDT. Who cares if it took malaria deaths from 2 million a year to 30,000 or so? It was killing birds, and besides, the people dying were all poor, brown, indigenous types.
"How come the burden of proof is on the environmental scientists?"
Uh, how about because it's the environmentalist wackos that want people to change their behavior.
You guys are like the schizophrenic neighbor that acuses his neighbor of interfering with his brain waves via his satelite dish. "Prove me wrong!" he says.
You (and he) are the ones making the allegations. The burden of proof is on you.
And this is precisely Lomborg's (and many others as well) point. Environmentalists aren't waging a scientific debate, they are shutting down scientific debate in the grand tradition of the medieval Catholic church.
When they can't shout down their opponents, they try to appeal to the emotional. Burning gas, coal, and oil causes little children to have asthma. Oh no.
Never mind that, without the locomotion energy provided for by gas and oil products, the children nor their parents might never have been born for lack of food.
Nothing to see here, move along.
And environmentalists wonder why they have a luddite reputation.
One can argue many things, and might even be correct, but the argument that the US "armed Saddam Hussein" is demonstrably false, has been demonstrated to be false over over, yet the syncophants on the anti-American left like to repeat it over and over. Shades of Orwell and Goebbels (a lie repeated enough times eventually becomes to believed as if it were the truth).
Actually, the waste left over is NOT just ordinary helium.
For example: 3H + 2H = 4He + n + 17.6 MeV
That's supposedly the most promising fusion reaction. That 'n' is a fast neutron. Whatever it collides with is going to be carrying an extra neutron, and will either fission, or become an isotope (radioactive, of course).
At the end of the day, the reality is, fusion isn't really all that cleaner than fission.
Slashdot Mirror
"I, for one, am never going to the US if I can possibly avoid it."
Good, we don't want you over here.
Since we are talking about air travel here, how many terrorist actions abort airplanes have been executed by domestic Americans?
How many have been executed by Muslims?
I rest my case.
The majority of the people out there are socially conservative, fiscally "populist". Which means when liberals talk about banning guns, they may pick up the odd vote or two in New York and San Fransisco, but they lose a whole lot more in the "fly over" country in-between.
By the same token, it takes an economist to understand that losing my job today is good for the economy as a whole. The average joe worker just knows he's losing his job to some foreigner in a place he has trouble naming. A rising tide might lift all boats, but if your boat is sinking, you are still going under.
If the Democrats adopted a more socially conservative agenda (ie, abandoned affirmative action, their anti-gun stance, etc) they would remove the Republican lock on the "white-man" vote and would be an unstoppable electoral force.
Lincoln Chafee is otherwise known as a RINO, ie, a Republican in Name Only.
For example, the American Conservative Union gives Lincoln Chafee a lifetime score of 42, a and a 2003 score of 35.
By comparison, Zel Miller (a democrat), has a lifetime score of 65, and a 2003 score of 75.
Also in comparison, Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas), lifetime scores a 91, and for 2003 scores 75.
The problem is, the EU only does the "right thing" when it applies to foreign companies, foreign agriculture (especially 3rd world agriculture), etc.
Cows in the EU get a subsidy equivilent to $250 per year from the EU. There are a billion people in the world that subsist on less than $200 a year.
Pressure from the EU on Zimbabwe was the major reason why American GM corn was turned back at the ports in the midst of a famine. Can't feed the starving people in Zimbabwe franken food, because it might jeapoardize future EU contracts. This is exactly what was threatened.
Oh yeah, the EU, making a habit of doing the right thing.
Repetitive stress injury to his right hand.
They were not criminal acts? So if we catch one of the terrorists who commited these acts we should set them free? Terrorists acts are criminal. Duh! FBI was involved in every terrorist attack you mentioned. They are always there.
No, they were acts of war, but Clinton chose to prosecute them (prosecute as in carry out) as criminal acts.
GHB 41? Is that some secret code for something?
George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st POTUS.
As opposed to GWB 43, George Walker Bush, 43rd and current POTUS (President of the United States).
It appears he is abusing his position in office for his own political and finacial gain while stepping over the graves of America's finest.
Unsubstantiated (and unsubstantiable) oppinion. About as provable as me claiming Clinton killed Ron Brown to keep him quiet about Democratic fund raising shenanigans or that Clinton was conspiring to change the government of the US into a communist dictatorship because he married Hillary whose heroes were communist radicals of the 60s that wanted to overthrow the government.
Bush is already rich. Were he so inclined, there would be a lot easier ways for him to make himself wealthier than invading Iraq.
Furthermore, Iraq isn't about Iraqi oil, and certainly not about US control of that oil. Iraq's GDP is 20 billion US dollars. Even if we were raping Iraq completely, that's still a 10 year break even. In reality, all of Iraq's oil money is going back into Iraq. The point was geopolitical, not oil.
Just remember when it comes to vote time vote for who you know is best. Dont vote a straight ticket! Know the facts (in otherwords watch something other than just Fox news).
The sword cuts both ways. You should expand your basis for criticism beyond moveon.org's and Michael Moore's talking points. There are plenty of legimate arguments one can use against Bush, but blood for oil isn't one of them.
Then again, I had a social life outside EQ.
Liar.
Its amazing you point those out. In all cases Clinton worked with our security forces (CIA and FBI) and foreign governments (Yemin and Saudia Arabia in particular) and made hundreds of arrests. Do you think he should have started a full scale ground war on allied countries to get those terrorists? There have been several bombings in Saudi Arabia since Bush is in office. Why not send our troops to invade Saudi Arabia? Will that stop it? And while your at it, there have been hordes of bombings in Israel. Why not invade there also?
...and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me...
You seem to miss the fact that the Khobar towers bombings targeted American soldiers. The Cole attack targeted an American destroyer. These were not criminal acts where the FBI needed to come in, these were acts of war. And Clinton did all of shit. It took GHB 41 intervening with the Saudis to get any cooperation out of them, because Clinton was quite disinterested in it. There have been reams of books and articles written to this effect by people who served in the Clinton administration and were there.
As for oaths:
In other words, brotha, you don't get to choose how you are used once you volunteer, the President does, and you sign on to that voluntarily.
This is old news. Where ( or who ) have you been listening to to give you false info that there was no genocide going on?
Apparently, you don't know how to read, because your article didn't really back up your claim of genocide. Finding a mass grave of 90 bodies dating from a period of heavy fighting between the Serbs and the KLA is hardly indicative of genocide, especially in light of claims of half a million dead Kosovars that was being bandied around to justify the intervention. Especially when the grave dated from over a year before the Kosovo campaign started. (In other words, not related at all to the action that precipitated the NATO bombing campaign).
President Bush still lied to the American people
So you say. How about maybe he was just wrong? For someone you guys think is a dimwitted fool, he sure seems to be pretty devious, huh? Continually outsmarting his betters on the left. Amazing.
Iraq never was a threat to the U.S. or its allies.
Right, because, after all, Iraq never invaded Kuwait or Iran or launched Scuds at Israel, or threatened to invade Saudi Arabia, or tried to assassinate Bush, or held 3,000 Americans and foreign nationals hostile, or tried to develop nuclear weapons and never used nerve gas on the Iranians or the Kurds. Nor was Iraq hosting Abu Nidal. No, they were perfectly harmless.
What disgusts me is people like you who think American soldiers are worth, as you said, "geopolitical dividends"
Like it or not, the purpose of the military is to serve the interests of the state. Period. Part of that is geopolitical dividends like, gosh, making countries that were previously funding terrorists stop funding terrorists. One of the ways you do that is by threatening the use of force. And the only way that threat is effective is if it's a credible threat. Under people like you or Clinton, it would never be credible, and hence our enemies would attack us with impugnity, knowing we would never strike back (WTC 1993, Khobar Towers bombing, Cole attack...no response to any of them).
I don't care about Clinton, to be honest. It's the people that think Clinton was the best thing next to sliced bread that irk me. The guy was as corrupt as corrupt can be.
You want unilateral? Try Kosovo. How short a memory the Democrats (especially the Democratic presidential candidates) and their apologists seem to have. Somehow bombing the shit out of the Serbs for spurious claims of genocide (subsequently proven false) despite a lack of a UN mandate was laudable, but liberating 26 million Iraqis on spurious claims of WMD isn't.
The difference: a Republican in the White House. That, and the fact the Republicans supported the Kosovo intervention, unlike the 5th column democrats (except for Lieberman and Miller).
You fools on the left are either unwilling or unable to see that the war in Iraq has paid tremendous geopolitical dividends. Saudi Arabia, heretofore unwilling to crack down on Al Qaeda all of a sudden (since March) decided to do so. Libya decided to give up it's WMD. Iran decided to abandon it's nuclear program and start opening dialogue with the United States. Even Syria is pursuing rapproachment.
And don't pretend to cry crocodile tears over the death of soldiers in Iraq. Your ilk was the same kind that was spitting on soldiers on their return from Vietnam a generation and a half ago.
Talk about disgust and making people sick.
Ah, but the difference which you seem incapable of grasping is: in one case, the POTUS (Clinton) did the deeds, and in the other case (Bush), someone in his administration did the deed. Bush may or may not have known the information he gave to Congress was correct or incorrect. Clinton knew he was lying, he had given his oath to tell the truth. Disputable indeed.
Hillary wanted to fire the White House Travel Office to place her own cronies in. So she did. And then, to create the justification for the firing, she ordered an FBI investigation of the travel office, forcing them to defend themselves against unfounded CRIMINAL allegations. In short, she was trying to destroy other people's lives.
They didn't just find that Clinton lied under oath (a crime), he also coerced a witness to lie under oath (a bigger crime) in order to to cover up his tracks against a sexual misconduct lawsuit brought by a private citizen, who, shock of shocks, had a case that Clinton was forced to settle because his witness tampering (a crime) didn't pan out.
when Johnson (D) was 10 times worse. Nixon tried to gather information on his enemies, Johnson blackmailed them into submission.
Very insightful jgalun.
you got fired for stupidity.
There's a big difference for getting fired for getting in an argument and starting a fight at work, than getting imprisoned for walking outside without something covering your head.
But obviously, you are too stupid to realize that. So why not move to Saudi Arabia and see how they tolerate your criticism over there?
Bush didn't destroy international cooperation, he forced the issue and demonstrated that nations like France, Russia, and Germany were not our allies, unlike some people were insisting and for some reason continue to insist today.
Bush did not destroy cooperation, the other nations destroyed it by not cooperating. I guess people like you think that was a sign to pick up your things and go home "oh well, the French said no, so I guess we shouldn't do this after all".
Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.
and you are wrong about it being ineffective against mosquitos. Even against mosquitos that had developed resistance to DDT, it still functioned as an effective irritant (and is part of the reason why it is still used to spray the inside of dwellings).
It's effectiveness has never really been in question, nor it's adverse effect on the environment (it IS significant). However, the same environmentalists (see parent of my original post) that like to claim that they are in favor of saving the little brown people were instrumental in banning a chemical that went far in reducing the number of children killed per year because of malaria (currently about a million die children from it each year).
These are the same people that helped persuade Zimbabwe from accepting GM-modified corn last year even though they were in the midst of a famine. Gosh, better for the poor brown indigenous people to starve to death than be exposed to franken food.
So, sorry, I have to call fraud every time I hear environmentalists crying about poor people in the southern hemisphere. Their actions certainly haven't followed their rhetorical concern.
"But then again, poor people in the third world does not matter, eh?"
Funny, but that is just the attitude that the environmentalists took towards DDT. Who cares if it took malaria deaths from 2 million a year to 30,000 or so? It was killing birds, and besides, the people dying were all poor, brown, indigenous types.
"How come the burden of proof is on the environmental scientists?"
Uh, how about because it's the environmentalist wackos that want people to change their behavior.
You guys are like the schizophrenic neighbor that acuses his neighbor of interfering with his brain waves via his satelite dish. "Prove me wrong!" he says.
You (and he) are the ones making the allegations. The burden of proof is on you.
And this is precisely Lomborg's (and many others as well) point. Environmentalists aren't waging a scientific debate, they are shutting down scientific debate in the grand tradition of the medieval Catholic church.
When they can't shout down their opponents, they try to appeal to the emotional. Burning gas, coal, and oil causes little children to have asthma. Oh no.
Never mind that, without the locomotion energy provided for by gas and oil products, the children nor their parents might never have been born for lack of food.
Nothing to see here, move along.
And environmentalists wonder why they have a luddite reputation.
One can argue many things, and might even be correct, but the argument that the US "armed Saddam Hussein" is demonstrably false, has been demonstrated to be false over over, yet the syncophants on the anti-American left like to repeat it over and over. Shades of Orwell and Goebbels (a lie repeated enough times eventually becomes to believed as if it were the truth).
I guess I should've qualified my post as being in no way against nuclear power. We have to move to it sooner or later.
Actually, the waste left over is NOT just ordinary helium.
For example:
3H + 2H = 4He + n + 17.6 MeV
That's supposedly the most promising fusion reaction. That 'n' is a fast neutron. Whatever it collides with is going to be carrying an extra neutron, and will either fission, or become an isotope (radioactive, of course).
At the end of the day, the reality is, fusion isn't really all that cleaner than fission.