Right...because, as we all know, the US has been pro-WMD proliferation since WW2.
Do some research and quit believing everything you read on znet. France and Germany were the primary technology and industrial providers for Iraq's WMD program.
50 Bell Ranger helicopters were sold to Iraq. These are not and never have been gunship class helicopters. They are light utility helicopters, typically used in the US for radio traffic watch.
The sum total of US military sales to Iraq over the last 30 years was $150,000. That's one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. China, Russia, France, and South Africa far surpassed the US in military sales to Iraq.
Germany and France were the primary suppliers of Iraq's WMD program, not the United States.
The only country to have used helicopters to spray chemical weapons so far has been Iraq. The helicopters in question that Bell sold to Iraq were civilian model helicopters. While they could easily be outfitted with weapons, there were far more effective gunship platforms available (ie, Russian ones) for a cheaper price. And Iraq fitting them with chemical weapons was probably not an anticipated result. People who get pissed over that might as well get pissed at Toyota for selling their trucks to the Taliban.
Compare that with German assistance in pointing out how a pesticide factory could be switched over to chemical weapons relatively easy.
What is the world becoming? A West-based tyranny through corporate globalization.
Or so says the Chomsky groupy. Thats what I like about you guys, you are so predictable.
Tyranny has been the common human condition since before history. Western civilization and Western liberalism were the forces that changed all that. This, sadly, is the fact that Chomskyites tend to miss. Even their ideology is rooted in Western philosophy. Democracy, republics, socialism, communism, anarchism, these are all Western originated, formalized types of government, forms that have not resonated just in the West, but have spread throughout the world...largely by Westerners.
It isn't that other cultures haven't achieved, it's that their achievements have largely been localized. From a contribution standpont, it doesn't matter what you achieve if you keep it to yourself.
With the exception of a *few* individuals, the West has had nothing to offer "the rest of humanity".
And of course, this is exactly the point. Contributions are made, ultimately, by individuals. And while a *few* individuals, relatively speaking, have contributed to humanity as a whole, the question is, while is that *few* a hell of a lot more than any other group or culture?
of the 2nd intifadah, the majority of Palestinians have supported suicide bombings. If one is talking about suicide bombings against settlers in the West Bank or Gaza, it's almost universal. If one is talking about civilians in Israel proper, the support erodes a bit, but it's still a majority. That's quite some group pathology when a majority of people think it's a perfectly good idea to have someone blow themselves up in a pizza cafe dismembering women and babies. Or hand out candy celebrating after the immediate aftermath of September 11th (when initial estimates were ranging up to 30,000 dead). What a great day for Palestinians and Muslims.
And then the kicker...people like 'alex ant' that jump in and defend the suicide bombers and call people who criticize the Palestinians racist. Awesome. Just remember folks, killing minorities isn't racist as long as it's Shyloks and Kykes we're talking about.
General Boykin mentions God and Satan in a speach and these guys fall into an apoplectic fit rushing over each other in the bid to be the first to condemn him and any would be Christians who dare to invoke some sort of moral imprimatur to the war in Afghanistan or Iraq. Yet criticize the Palestinians or defend the Israelis and these same people rush to defend the right of Palestinians to celebrate the death of 3000 Americans and to practice their Allah given right to blow up little Jew babies.
Given you said "get with the times", rather than "get a clue" one could almost forgive the awful combination of hubris and ignorance you displayed. Almost.
As pointed out by a previous poster, the footage shot of Palestinians cheering was not 'old stock footage', and it was not an isolated incident.
From the Committe to Protect Journalists (http://www.cpj.org/), an excerpt:
"In the aftermath of September 11, Palestinian security forces prevented several journalists from covering celebrations among Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus of the attacks on the United States. In one well-publicized incident, a PNA official told an Associated Press (AP) cameraman that his safety could not be guaranteed if footage of the rallies was aired. Fearing for the cameraman's safety, AP elected not to broadcast the images."
Entire link is here: http://www.cpj.org/attacks01/mideast01/PAT. html
Malaria? Chagas? River blindness? We can fight stomach acid, cholesterol buildups, and hair loss and we can't come up with something to effectively stop fucking worms from crawling into somebody's eyeballs?
If it's so 'fucking' easy, then why don't you go do it?
Just to give you a little clue, vaccines don't cure viral infections, they prevent you from getting infected. And they do that by training your immune system to fight off the disease itself. And that only works if there is something distinctive about the virus for the immune system to "remember" and the virus doesn't mutate in the meantime. That's why no one has cured the cold yet.
Anti-biotics work by exploiting the difference between (among many other things) cell division in bacteria (prokaryotes) and eukaryotes. A fucking worm is a eukaryote. Get a drug that kills the worm in the eye, and guess what, it'll probably kill the eye too. Or maybe the person with the eye.
I thought everyone already just absolutely knew (because Al Gore said so) that big time global warming was a fact and we have to do something NOW, except those mean nasty Republicans who are bought and paid for by the oil companies.
Hmmm...just a suggestion, but why don't you get over it? Is it really your business what other people choose to spend their money on? I mean, you don't see me criticizing you for your habit of buying gay porn do you?
Time to market: not only do products need to be delivered cheap, they also need to be delivered within a timeframe where they are still useful. Even in mature CMM level 3 or 4 shops, sometimes the business environment requires a rapid development cycle.
Quality of delivery: even though English is the lingua franca of India, there is still a huge language barrier (there is a huge language barrier with many Indians that are over here as H1Bs or green cards). Language misunderstandings, exacerbated by a 10 hour time difference and mostly email exchanges rather than face to face meetings are going to eat in dramatically to those cost savings, and also affect time to delivery. At the end of the day, there is something intrinsicly valuable in being able to walk across the hall and tell the programmer or project team where they are fscking up at.
Legal issues: if you subcontract out the work to an American company and they don't deliver, they might be legally liable, and action can be taken against them in the US court system. As an American company, try suing an Indian company in India. Good luck. If the Indian company doesn't deliver, you are SOL.
If you work in an environment where your company spends 12 months generating an RFP or a detailed requirements document, and time to delivery is measured in year+ increments, offshoring probably IS a cost saving possibility. If instead, you work in an environment (like I do) where your customers don't really have a good idea of what they want until it's almost done, and projects are generally three to six months, then no way will offshoring work.
"I only watched about 10 minutes of FOX war coverage. All of which consisted of an analyst (the guy with the opinions) trying to reign in the over-enthusastic anchor (the supposedly objective guy) from putting predictions in his mouth about how the Iraqis would welcome the liberation with flowers and other straight-from-the-whitehouse crap. Cable channel of the absurd."
I only read two paragraphs of yours, but it was enough for me to assume that you are an idiot. Wow, it really is easy to make unsubstantiated statements using minimal evidence as proof! Thanks for the demonstration. So, we have it on equal authority that a) Fox is the cable channel of the absurd because you watched 10 minutes of it (as if you won't find 10 minutes of absurdity on MSNBC, CNN, etc), and b) you are an idiot.
I love it how "liberals" claim to be objective and deal in facts when mostly, they are anything but, and deal in nothing close to "facts"...just their unsubstantiated oppinion, and because they think it, it must be true. It's like a herd of cows all milling around going "moo". Just place cows with liberals and "moo" with "Fox is stupid" or "Republicans are stupid". They are all about on the same level of intellectual discourse and factual accuracy.
This is the best thing I've read all day. We shouldn't allow immigrants in that need to be "job trained" in the first place. The real benefit would be keeping unqualified immigrants out in the first place. Immigration is NOT a right, it is a privilege.
1/3 of the convicted criminals currently being cycled through California are illegal aliens.
The net-net of immigration was positive prior to 1965. The 1965 immigration act fucked that all up.
Instead of allowing immigration based on the quality of the immigrant, we now have an immigration policy based on pre-existence of family members already in the United States. So Pablo gets a greencard, moves in, and mom, dad, Pablo's wife and 4 kids all get to come in. Only Pablo is the only one that works. Because a $10/hr day laborer job will put a family of 6 below the poverty level, Pablo is on more public assistance (way more) than the hypothetical taxes he might pay. But since he earns so little, changes are he gets the earned income tax credit, so he actually gets paid money by the Federal government, not pays any in. Pablo's folks are too old to work, so they also get public assistance. And yes I'm using an ethno-centric immigration example because the vast majority of our immigration comes from Mexico, and the vast majority of immigrants are very poorly educated and are a net drain on the economy. In effect, the 1965 Immigration Act has done exactly what it's proponents (Edward "I drowned my girlfriend" Kennedy) said it would not.
These suburban revolutionariess prattle about their lost rights.
What do you think happens during a revolution?
The *only* revolution that ever turned out well was the American one.
*Every* *single* *other* political revolution resulted in situations much, much worse than what led to the revolution in the first place.
And oh, btw the way, the solution to you "losing your rights" is not to blow up innocent people (up to and including government bureaucrats). Given how few people participate (relatively speaking) in American politics, if your cause is persuasive, it should be no problem getting a plurality to support you.
Ah, but thats the rub, isn't it? You guys don't have a plurality backing you. Hence the revolution. My way or the highway. If you can't get what you want out of the system, break the system, and fuck whoever else gets hurt.
Why, is your friend who is running an 'informative site' on Arab nations putting in things like:
"Top 10 Ways to Avoid Israeli Checkpoints on Your Way To Blow Up Babies?"
or
"Why Bid Laden Was Right?"
Somehow, I think that if you are worried, this isn't your run of the mill Worldbook Encyclopedia type site.
Note to the various revolutionary idiots out there: yes, putting out an site advocating the violent overthrow of the US government and the inflicting of mass casualties on US citizens will be regarded dimly by the US government and by US citizens in general.
It's almost like you guys are back in French Guyana and wondering why people don't want to drink the flavored punch. Duh!
Aside from the tidal forces that would tear you apart, you'd also have to deal with the "white wall" of EM energy that had piled up at the event horizon, and I assure you, you would notice a difference had you not already been turned into elementary particles to begin with.
"I'm sure the F/A-22 will be a good plane, but this "most advance in the world" kind of thing is somewhat naive. Anyway, since up to now the best planes were russian (oh! the blasphemy), I guess a "wait and see" attitude is advisable."
Russian aircraft haven't faired too well in real world testing. The certainly make some good air frames, but a combat aircraft is more than it's airframe. Example, Russian aircraft are notorious for unreliable engines with a very short operational lifespan. Another example: most Russian aircraft have very short ranges, relative to their Western, and especially American counterparts.
Oh, and the F-22 IS the most advanced air-to-air combat fighter in the world. There isn't anything that comes close in it's capabilities that isn't still a fantasy in some Russian engineer's head (ie, 10-15 years away from being produced).
The older, more effective insulation foam, which was CFC based, was replaced with a much less effective foam that was more 'environmentally friendly' that was susceptible to breaking off in ways that the old foam was not:
"Now, go back to the time of Reagan, Nixon, or J.E. Hoover"
Hmmm...wouldn't be a bit of bias there, would there? Unsubstantiated bias at that.
And note, you don't have to go back that far: what exactly were those FBI files on Republicans doing in Hilary Clinton's safe in the White House?
By far the biggest abusers of this type during the 20th Century were Democrats:
Franklin D. Roosevelt
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
William J. Clinton
Anything that Reagan, Nixon, or Ashcroft did or is doing pales in comparison collectively to what just one of the Democratic presidents listed above did in the realm of 'destroying ppl [sic]'.
Exactly, because after all comrade, we know the Communists were just misunderstood humanitarians out to improve the lot for the average man and woman. Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, and Castro they were just misunderstood, and the tens of millions of people they collectively killed were counter-revolutionaries and deserved to die.
The FARC in Columbia are fighting for peasants rights. So is the Shining Path in Peru.
And the Rosenbergs! They were innocent, and even if they weren't innocent, they were fighting for the one true faith. Who cares if they gave the atomic bomb secrets to the Russians, right? Compare that to McCarthyism...McCarthy actually had the gall to call some communists...communists.
The means justify the ends? Who cares what the end result is, we used noble means, right?
After the overthrow of the Tsar in 1917, the democrats were so intent on maintaining the nobility of their means, they let themselves get slaughtered by the Bolsheviks, lest they descend to their opponents levels.
Sometimes, the end really does justify the means.
Collecting DNA: not all that intrusive. Catching murderers and rapists: a very good end.
Get a grip people. You get fingerprinted at the DMV. They list your license on your driving license. Is that a violation of your privacy too?
People invest in dividends for residual income. Not only that, it is real money that gets deposited in your account(s). A stock on a fun ride up is just theoretical gain until you sell it.
Most dividends are pegged to earnings, not stock price. Which means if the stock price declines, the yield of the dividend goes up relative to the stock price. Which creates buying pressure, and helps stabilize a decline in stock prices.
Because dividends are real money, they can't be 'faked' like balance sheet statements using uncollected sales numbers. And because of the dividend tax cuts, companies can't use the (bogus even before) argument double taxation as a reason for not paying out a dividend.
A company paying a healthy and regular dividend is, more than likely, a healthy company.
Slashdot Mirror
Right...because, as we all know, the US has been pro-WMD proliferation since WW2. Do some research and quit believing everything you read on znet. France and Germany were the primary technology and industrial providers for Iraq's WMD program.
50 Bell Ranger helicopters were sold to Iraq. These are not and never have been gunship class helicopters. They are light utility helicopters, typically used in the US for radio traffic watch.
The sum total of US military sales to Iraq over the last 30 years was $150,000. That's one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. China, Russia, France, and South Africa far surpassed the US in military sales to Iraq.
Germany and France were the primary suppliers of Iraq's WMD program, not the United States.
The only country to have used helicopters to spray chemical weapons so far has been Iraq. The helicopters in question that Bell sold to Iraq were civilian model helicopters. While they could easily be outfitted with weapons, there were far more effective gunship platforms available (ie, Russian ones) for a cheaper price. And Iraq fitting them with chemical weapons was probably not an anticipated result.
People who get pissed over that might as well get pissed at Toyota for selling their trucks to the Taliban.
Compare that with German assistance in pointing out how a pesticide factory could be switched over to chemical weapons relatively easy.
here come the black helicopters, only now they are coming for the lefties. I guess every group has their raving mad paranoid lunatics.
What is the world becoming? A West-based tyranny through corporate globalization.
Or so says the Chomsky groupy. Thats what I like about you guys, you are so predictable.
Tyranny has been the common human condition since before history. Western civilization and Western liberalism were the forces that changed all that. This, sadly, is the fact that Chomskyites tend to miss. Even their ideology is rooted in Western philosophy. Democracy, republics, socialism, communism, anarchism, these are all Western originated, formalized types of government, forms that have not resonated just in the West, but have spread throughout the world...largely by Westerners.
It isn't that other cultures haven't achieved, it's that their achievements have largely been localized. From a contribution standpont, it doesn't matter what you achieve if you keep it to yourself.
With the exception of a *few* individuals, the West has had nothing to offer "the rest of humanity".
And of course, this is exactly the point. Contributions are made, ultimately, by individuals. And while a *few* individuals, relatively speaking, have contributed to humanity as a whole, the question is, while is that *few* a hell of a lot more than any other group or culture?
of the 2nd intifadah, the majority of Palestinians have supported suicide bombings. If one is talking about suicide bombings against settlers in the West Bank or Gaza, it's almost universal. If one is talking about civilians in Israel proper, the support erodes a bit, but it's still a majority. That's quite some group pathology when a majority of people think it's a perfectly good idea to have someone blow themselves up in a pizza cafe dismembering women and babies. Or hand out candy celebrating after the immediate aftermath of September 11th (when initial estimates were ranging up to 30,000 dead). What a great day for Palestinians and Muslims.
And then the kicker...people like 'alex ant' that jump in and defend the suicide bombers and call people who criticize the Palestinians racist. Awesome. Just remember folks, killing minorities isn't racist as long as it's Shyloks and Kykes we're talking about.
General Boykin mentions God and Satan in a speach and these guys fall into an apoplectic fit rushing over each other in the bid to be the first to condemn him and any would be Christians who dare to invoke some sort of moral imprimatur to the war in Afghanistan or Iraq. Yet criticize the Palestinians or defend the Israelis and these same people rush to defend the right of Palestinians to celebrate the death of 3000 Americans and to practice their Allah given right to blow up little Jew babies.
Given you said "get with the times", rather than "get a clue" one could almost forgive the awful combination of hubris and ignorance you displayed. Almost.
. html
As pointed out by a previous poster, the footage shot of Palestinians cheering was not 'old stock footage', and it was not an isolated incident.
From the Committe to Protect Journalists (http://www.cpj.org/), an excerpt:
"In the aftermath of September 11, Palestinian security forces prevented several journalists from covering celebrations among Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus of the attacks on the United States. In one well-publicized incident, a PNA official told an Associated Press (AP) cameraman that his safety could not be guaranteed if footage of the rallies was aired. Fearing for the cameraman's safety, AP elected not to broadcast the images."
Entire link is here:
http://www.cpj.org/attacks01/mideast01/PAT
Malaria? Chagas? River blindness? We can fight stomach acid, cholesterol buildups, and hair loss and we can't come up with something to effectively stop fucking worms from crawling into somebody's eyeballs?
If it's so 'fucking' easy, then why don't you go do it?
Just to give you a little clue, vaccines don't cure viral infections, they prevent you from getting infected. And they do that by training your immune system to fight off the disease itself. And that only works if there is something distinctive about the virus for the immune system to "remember" and the virus doesn't mutate in the meantime. That's why no one has cured the cold yet.
Anti-biotics work by exploiting the difference between (among many other things) cell division in bacteria (prokaryotes) and eukaryotes. A fucking worm is a eukaryote. Get a drug that kills the worm in the eye, and guess what, it'll probably kill the eye too. Or maybe the person with the eye.
I thought everyone already just absolutely knew (because Al Gore said so) that big time global warming was a fact and we have to do something NOW, except those mean nasty Republicans who are bought and paid for by the oil companies.
for all that stuff too: reducing the population by about 5.8 billion people.
Hmmm...just a suggestion, but why don't you get over it? Is it really your business what other people choose to spend their money on? I mean, you don't see me criticizing you for your habit of buying gay porn do you?
Or will only work under limited scenarios:
Time to market: not only do products need to be delivered cheap, they also need to be delivered within a timeframe where they are still useful. Even in mature CMM level 3 or 4 shops, sometimes the business environment requires a rapid development cycle.
Quality of delivery: even though English is the lingua franca of India, there is still a huge language barrier (there is a huge language barrier with many Indians that are over here as H1Bs or green cards). Language misunderstandings, exacerbated by a 10 hour time difference and mostly email exchanges rather than face to face meetings are going to eat in dramatically to those cost savings, and also affect time to delivery. At the end of the day, there is something intrinsicly valuable in being able to walk across the hall and tell the programmer or project team where they are fscking up at.
Legal issues: if you subcontract out the work to an American company and they don't deliver, they might be legally liable, and action can be taken against them in the US court system. As an American company, try suing an Indian company in India. Good luck. If the Indian company doesn't deliver, you are SOL.
If you work in an environment where your company spends 12 months generating an RFP or a detailed requirements document, and time to delivery is measured in year+ increments, offshoring probably IS a cost saving possibility. If instead, you work in an environment (like I do) where your customers don't really have a good idea of what they want until it's almost done, and projects are generally three to six months, then no way will offshoring work.
"I only watched about 10 minutes of FOX war coverage. All of which consisted of an analyst (the guy with the opinions) trying to reign in the over-enthusastic anchor (the supposedly objective guy) from putting predictions in his mouth about how the Iraqis would welcome the liberation with flowers and other straight-from-the-whitehouse crap. Cable channel of the absurd."
I only read two paragraphs of yours, but it was enough for me to assume that you are an idiot.
Wow, it really is easy to make unsubstantiated statements using minimal evidence as proof! Thanks for the demonstration. So, we have it on equal authority that a) Fox is the cable channel of the absurd because you watched 10 minutes of it (as if you won't find 10 minutes of absurdity on MSNBC, CNN, etc), and b) you are an idiot.
I love it how "liberals" claim to be objective and deal in facts when mostly, they are anything but, and deal in nothing close to "facts"...just their unsubstantiated oppinion, and because they think it, it must be true. It's like a herd of cows all milling around going "moo". Just place cows with liberals and "moo" with "Fox is stupid" or "Republicans are stupid". They are all about on the same level of intellectual discourse and factual accuracy.
This is the best thing I've read all day. We shouldn't allow immigrants in that need to be "job trained" in the first place. The real benefit would be keeping unqualified immigrants out in the first place. Immigration is NOT a right, it is a privilege.
1/3 of the convicted criminals currently being cycled through California are illegal aliens.
The net-net of immigration was positive prior to 1965. The 1965 immigration act fucked that all up.
Instead of allowing immigration based on the quality of the immigrant, we now have an immigration policy based on pre-existence of family members already in the United States. So Pablo gets a greencard, moves in, and mom, dad, Pablo's wife and 4 kids all get to come in. Only Pablo is the only one that works. Because a $10/hr day laborer job will put a family of 6 below the poverty level, Pablo is on more public assistance (way more) than the hypothetical taxes he might pay. But since he earns so little, changes are he gets the earned income tax credit, so he actually gets paid money by the Federal government, not pays any in. Pablo's folks are too old to work, so they also get public assistance. And yes I'm using an ethno-centric immigration example because the vast majority of our immigration comes from Mexico, and the vast majority of immigrants are very poorly educated and are a net drain on the economy. In effect, the 1965 Immigration Act has done exactly what it's proponents (Edward "I drowned my girlfriend" Kennedy) said it would not.
These suburban revolutionariess prattle about their lost rights.
What do you think happens during a revolution?
The *only* revolution that ever turned out well was the American one.
*Every* *single* *other* political revolution resulted in situations much, much worse than what led to the revolution in the first place.
And oh, btw the way, the solution to you "losing your rights" is not to blow up innocent people (up to and including government bureaucrats). Given how few people participate (relatively speaking) in American politics, if your cause is persuasive, it should be no problem getting a plurality to support you.
Ah, but thats the rub, isn't it? You guys don't have a plurality backing you. Hence the revolution. My way or the highway. If you can't get what you want out of the system, break the system, and fuck whoever else gets hurt.
Why, is your friend who is running an 'informative site' on Arab nations putting in things like:
"Top 10 Ways to Avoid Israeli Checkpoints on Your Way To Blow Up Babies?"
or
"Why Bid Laden Was Right?"
Somehow, I think that if you are worried, this isn't your run of the mill Worldbook Encyclopedia type site.
Note to the various revolutionary idiots out there: yes, putting out an site advocating the violent overthrow of the US government and the inflicting of mass casualties on US citizens will be regarded dimly by the US government and by US citizens in general.
It's almost like you guys are back in French Guyana and wondering why people don't want to drink the flavored punch. Duh!
Aside from the tidal forces that would tear you apart, you'd also have to deal with the "white wall" of EM energy that had piled up at the event horizon, and I assure you, you would notice a difference had you not already been turned into elementary particles to begin with.
"I'm sure the F/A-22 will be a good plane, but this "most advance in the world" kind of thing is somewhat naive. Anyway, since up to now the best planes were russian (oh! the blasphemy), I guess a "wait and see" attitude is advisable."
Russian aircraft haven't faired too well in real world testing. The certainly make some good air frames, but a combat aircraft is more than it's airframe. Example, Russian aircraft are notorious for unreliable engines with a very short operational lifespan. Another example: most Russian aircraft have very short ranges, relative to their Western, and especially American counterparts.
Oh, and the F-22 IS the most advanced air-to-air combat fighter in the world. There isn't anything that comes close in it's capabilities that isn't still a fantasy in some Russian engineer's head (ie, 10-15 years away from being produced).
The older, more effective insulation foam, which was CFC based, was replaced with a much less effective foam that was more 'environmentally friendly' that was susceptible to breaking off in ways that the old foam was not:
m l2 /20 03/02/01.html/ DailyNews/shutt le_ross_safetyproblems030204.htmla rea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/510079 4.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77832,00.ht
http://education.atu.edu/people/sadams/blogger
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt
http://www.bay
LOL! Without reading your post I listed the exact same 4 democratic presidents.
"Now, go back to the time of Reagan, Nixon, or J.E. Hoover"
Hmmm...wouldn't be a bit of bias there, would there? Unsubstantiated bias at that.
And note, you don't have to go back that far: what exactly were those FBI files on Republicans doing in Hilary Clinton's safe in the White House?
By far the biggest abusers of this type during the 20th Century were Democrats:
Franklin D. Roosevelt
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
William J. Clinton
Anything that Reagan, Nixon, or Ashcroft did or is doing pales in comparison collectively to what just one of the Democratic presidents listed above did in the realm of 'destroying ppl [sic]'.
Exactly, because after all comrade, we know the Communists were just misunderstood humanitarians out to improve the lot for the average man and woman. Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, and Castro they were just misunderstood, and the tens of millions of people they collectively killed were counter-revolutionaries and deserved to die.
The FARC in Columbia are fighting for peasants rights. So is the Shining Path in Peru.
And the Rosenbergs! They were innocent, and even if they weren't innocent, they were fighting for the one true faith. Who cares if they gave the atomic bomb secrets to the Russians, right? Compare that to McCarthyism...McCarthy actually had the gall to call some communists...communists.
Let me see if I understand what you are saying:
The means justify the ends? Who cares what the end result is, we used noble means, right?
After the overthrow of the Tsar in 1917, the democrats were so intent on maintaining the nobility of their means, they let themselves get slaughtered by the Bolsheviks, lest they descend to their opponents levels.
Sometimes, the end really does justify the means.
Collecting DNA: not all that intrusive.
Catching murderers and rapists: a very good end.
Get a grip people. You get fingerprinted at the DMV. They list your license on your driving license. Is that a violation of your privacy too?
People invest in dividends for residual income. Not only that, it is real money that gets deposited in your account(s). A stock on a fun ride up is just theoretical gain until you sell it.
Most dividends are pegged to earnings, not stock price. Which means if the stock price declines, the yield of the dividend goes up relative to the stock price. Which creates buying pressure, and helps stabilize a decline in stock prices.
Because dividends are real money, they can't be 'faked' like balance sheet statements using uncollected sales numbers. And because of the dividend tax cuts, companies can't use the (bogus even before) argument double taxation as a reason for not paying out a dividend.
A company paying a healthy and regular dividend is, more than likely, a healthy company.