According to your logic, the truth must logically be somewhere in the middle. Real logic, however, says that no determination can be made based on the respective positions of opinions lacking evidentiary support. In this case the reality of the situation could be fairly accurately determined by looking at Child B's grades. Let's assume that Child B is getting Cs. If so then the parent's supposition could actually be correct even though Child B actually thinks the opposite is true. According to your logic that would not follow.
Not at all. How do you grade the media? What is the best way to determine overal liberal or conservative bias? What's that? There is no scientific way to judge it? What do you do then? You use the best and most simple explanation, which ends up being right most of the time anyway. The simplest answer is to say that the media is in the middle. Reality, after all, is subjective in itself.
More or less, given that I've already acknowledged the media bias to be "soft core." Liberal is just a more convenient term, but if you prefer I'll try and stick to "left-leaning" or "biased toward the Democrat party." But meanwhile I can't help but note that you didn't offer an explanation for why that fact about registration and voting record isn't significant.
I gave a really good reason for the fact that registration isn't necessarily a factor of bias. Not all democrats are liberals. In fact I would say most of them are not. Take a look at southern democrats and then tell me that most democrats are liberals because they are not. Party affiliation does not prove bias anyway. Are we to believe that no matter who is reporting the news that they are biased one way or another in their reporting?
Actually I get called "racist" on a pretty regular basis once I identify myself as a conservative, especially on the internet or other places where people feel secure enough to say particularly vile things. In more formal circles I can only feel the insinuation.
Still, even though that is not a good thing to be called, it is nowhere near being called a communist, not in this society where communism is made out to be the opposite of everything america stands for. There are still large pockets of the US where racism is accepted. This is not true of communism.
Sometimes that's true, just as you didn't see a lot of crazy lefties protesting the Democrat convention, just raising some minor issues.
Protesters are not the media. This is totally irrelevant. Calling them "crazy lefties" invalidates your reasoning even more.
I understand that it's hard to break out of established behavior patterns, but if you don't care to have a legitimate discussion with me, don't bother responding. If you want to argue that they actually don't offer "real" news, present an argument for that, but don't be condescending with me until I've given you a reason for that kind of attitude.
You mean to tell me that all that nonsense that never panned out during the Clinton era was news? Howso? It never went anywhere and most of it was conspiracy theory nutcase stuff. Clinton ordering a hit on Vince Foster? Give me a break.
Actually I already did. You assumed I was saying something different than what I did. It's pretty clear from my statement that I suggested the hate and irrationality were threatening the democracy, not liberalism.
You clearly stated that this hate and irrationality was coming from liberals so you still don't escape my characterization of you.
Surely you can admit that many liberals these days openly profess a passionate hatred of Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft. Plenty of conservatives despised Clinton, but I can't recall any incidents where things got this nasty.
That's your bias coming into play. You cannot say this with a straight face after all the accusations about Clinton where made.
You can say it all you want, but conservatives aren't the ones doing t
do you think poor people paying 16% of their income for SS and medicare is "fair"?
I never said that. I think the present system is severely flawed. I just don't think an untested system is the perfect plan when not enough is known about possible flaws and loopholes. You say there are none but I wouldn't be so sure if I were you.
You're defining conditions by claims, which is an extraordinarily specious argument. Apply that reasoning to just about anything and it would sound pretty ridiculous, as it does here. Opposing claims is not evidence of an intermediate condition. "Creationists say that evolution is wrong and scientists say that it's right, so evolution is probably half-right." That kind of thinking makes no sense and is an obstruction to legitimate argument.
That's nonsense and totally irrelevant to what we are talking about. If a conservative thinks something is liberal and a liberal thinks something is conservative it is only LOGICAL to assume that the belief is inbetween the two idealogies. Would you rather assume that it is actaully more liberal than a liberal believes or more conservative than a conservative believes? That makes less sense than what I said.
Ignore claims for the moment and look at facts:
#1) Those who work in the media are registered Democrat and vote Democrat by overwhelming margins.
Liberal != Democrat.
#2) Word usage analyses by places such as Harvard, Stanford, and UCLA show a clear left-leaning bias.
I can find studies that say the opposite. So what?
Al Sharpton has made numerous comments throughout his public life condemning white people as a whole. That by definition is racist, although some continue to insist that prejudice against the majority race cannot be considered racism. Granted, he's toned down his rhetoric in the last year or so, but has a history of bigotry against the "white interloper."
Please cite examples. Besides, if he has "toned down his rhetoric" is it fair to continue to call him a racist?
Faulty premise. You mean to tell me that liberals haven't tarnished the word "conservative." The word conjures up images of stubborn, ignorant white men often with racist overtones. You can't pretend that only one side has attempted to denigrate the other, but for whatever reason conservatives haven't become ashamed of their designation. I suspect this actually has very little to do with what epithets are attached to a particular political designation and more to do with how comfortable people are with their own views.
I am prefectly comfortable with my liberal views but that doesn't stop people from shouting "liberal" at me like it is the equivalent of calling me a communist. After all that is a favorite comparison by conservatives. There really isn't a worse thing you can be called in our society considering the cold war. There is no equivalent for conservatives.
Clearly you haven't actually listened to much talk radio. Rush and his ilk regularly express their displeasure with Bush, albeit not as much as the Democrats. Those talk show hosts are out to serve themselves, no one else.
Give me a break. Bill O'Reilly has the same technique as Rush. They criticize Bush in fairly minor ways for a brief time and then jump all over liberals for the rest of the show. They usually use their criticisms to segue into how much worse the democrats are than Bush.
Every right-wing show out there brings up what it considers to be under or un-reported news, sometimes legitimate and sometimes not. If you can't grasp that then I don't know exactly what grounds we're going to argue from.
I'm sorry I meant actual news not the latest whitewater scandal that never happened or the SBVFT scandal that resulted in the exposure of political shenanigans.
It's not the fact that they're liberal which threatens our democracy, but the fact that a significant minority of them have become so hate-filled and irrational.
You cannot escape my original characterization of you by saying "a significant minority of liberals have become hate-filled and irrational". I could probably provide as much evidence that a "significant minority" of conservatives have become hate-filled and irrational as you could about liberals. That doesn't prove a damn thing about either camp.
I wasn't talking about personal preference, I was saying that if liberals intend to be taken seriously and achieve some kind of meaningful dialogue then they need to cut back on some of the vitriolic rhetoric.
I would have to say that the same goes for conservatives.
1. Zell Miller never said he was a liberal. He said he was a Democrat. There is a difference. Thank you for proving that you really don't understand politics.
Poor reading comprehension pervades all of slashdot. Stop putting words in my mouth. I never claimed that Miller said he was a liberal. I only said that people do not always live up to the label they give themselves.
2. Who is to say who is a liberal and who is a conservative? Are you going to use a litmus test? Do you believe in the right to an abortion? Do you believe in the death penalty? Do you believe that burning the flag should be a right? two people may have completely different answers to these, and still believe that they are "liberal". Who are you to label them? Oh that's right, you're the one who wants to label people "poor" and "disenfranchised" and "discriminated against".
The right to abortion is a liberal view. Being against the death penalty is a liberal view. The right to burn a flag is a liberal view. You prove my point when you say people may have different opinions on these matters yet label themselves the same. This is my point exactly. How can you trust a survey that asks whether one is liberal or conservative? You cannot because their true beliefs could be all over the map. As for your odd rant about labeling people "poor and disenfranchised" I have no response. I don't even know what point you were trying to make. It just sounded like more lunatic raving to me.
3. If you want to say that Democrats = liberal and Republican = conservative; you are wrong about the fact that more people have liberal beliefs. As evidenced by the recent polls, people are pretty evenly split.
There's another claim I never made. It is obvious by my Zell Miller remark that I don't beleive that "Democrats = liberal and Republican = conservative". Therefor in my view I don't think that is a valid way to measure liberalism vs conservatism. Most people don't actually know the policies of either canidate and are not making educated opinions of either canidate. Besides that, if you take into account Nader, who is obviously a liberal, then the split would favor liberals/democrats. Of course I don't believe in that liberal=democrat/conservative=republican crap anyway.
Bush had to deal with 9/11 and a recession. To have done, what he has done is a very worthy accomplishment.
Also, his term is not over yet. Clearly you are not an economics scholar.
Clearly I am not a scholar? How so? Because I mentioned that Bush hasn't even achieved job growth at the level of population growth? I never said a word about why but now that you mention it can people please stop blaming every economic negative on 9/11 and the recession while they claim every economic positive is Bush's accomplishment.
Furthermore, the current unemployment rate, 5.6%, is lower than the averages for the 70's, 80's and 90's. Since when is 5.6% unemployment bad? I know our allies would kill to have that number.
I never said otherwise. You cleary are not a reader. This isn't really a statistic conservatives should be touting though considering that jobs haven't increased enough to sustain population growth. There is an obvious disparity between these statistics.
The rest of the questions only show that the media isn't as left as FAIR and its interests.
Just as the claim of liberal bias only shows that the media is to the left of conservatives, as it should be. That makes the media pretty much right in the middle. Isn't it funny how liberals don't think the media is liberal enough and conservatives don't think it is conservative enough? Well actually it isn't that funny, it makes perfect sense if the media is really centrist.
That'd be like someone painting all Democrats as fire-brand racists just because Al Sharpton happened to be one of their presidential candidates.
I guess you might as well throw in a little slander after all the other crap that came out of your mouth. How exactly is Sharpton a racist?
Seriously, liberals need to get a grip on reality before anyone can take them seriously. Do you see conservatives scared of identifying themselves with that label?
No, because the right has done such an effective job at tarnishing the word "liberal". It is almost always used in a condescending manner.
Do you see more than a handful of people trying to say that talk radio isn't strongly right-leaning? Again no, pretty much everyone I've seen admits that the radio goes right, though they justify that bias by saying that they're trying to counter left-leaning television media.
The difference here is that right wing radio pundits aren't reporting news that may be ignored by the so-called liberal media, they are merely shills for the republicans. They parrot the talking points of the day. They are in no way, shape, or form, a news source. If they wanted to counter the so-called liberal media they would involve themselves in reporting underreported news not punditry.
Until liberals can: A) admit their own faults and B) admit that conservatives aren't the spawn of Satan, there really isn't much chance of productive discussion with them. It takes a solid grasp of reality, honest introspection, and a willingness to listen for two sides to get together. I'll grant that conservatives have certainly been out of line at times themselves as well, but right now the left is so hate-filled and irrational that it's damaging and perhaps even threatening our democracy.
That is an odd paragraph considering that you begin with accusing liberals as viewing conservatives as the spawn of satan and you end with accusing liberals of threatening our democracy. It looks like you need to first admit that liberals aren't a threat to democracy before liberals stop viewing people like yourself as the spawn of satan.
Those numbers are totally flawed. A more accurate depiction of the average american can be made by asking questions about issues rather than flat out asking whether one holds a liberal or conservative idealogy. Conservatives have tarnished the word "liberal" and people fear that label. When asked about the issues themselves more people have liberal beliefs than conservative beliefs. The gap between people who call themselves liberal and people who have liberal beliefs is very large. The label someone gives themself does not necessarily hold true. Just look at Zell Miller.
If Wal*Mart is doing something illegal, then stop them. If they're not, it's business.
I love you hardcore capitalists. Fuck everyone, it's business and that makes it okay. Who needs morals and ethics when we have the free market? What a crock of shit. Don't forget their disgusting policy to insure older workers with themsevles as the benefactors. That's just despicable.
Well the grandparent basically said that if you don't like minimum wage jobs then work somewhere else, to that I say if you don't like unions jobs then work somewhere else.
Union busting? Unions are terrible, and a waste of time. I worked in a union-backed retail store, and the only thing I found the union did was take my money from my paycheck every week. I tried using it, and the union was, and continues to be, worthless. I applaud Wal*Mart for being union-free.
People have the right to form a union if they want to. If you don't like unions then don't join them. It's not anyone else's problem. Despite complaints from people about unions (including my own personal experience) their presence is better than their abscense. We've already seen what happens when we don't have the right to form unions.
How can you be "anti-competitive"? I don't know what you mean, mind explaining?
Do you know anything about predatory pricing, discriminatory pricing, and display fees? I didn't think so or you wouldn't be posting.
I have no experiences with the discriminatory behavior, so I can't really comment much on your final statement. In my area, there are more women working in Wal*Mart than there are men, so I don't know how true your statement is in terms of the entire company. Your area may have problems, but I would link that more to the poor managerial staff, and not Wal*Mart in general. But as I said, I don't have experience with that, so I can't comment much.
First of all, the CEO must ultimately take responsibility for the company. In fact CEO's have been arrested for offenses committed by their managers or even salespeople usually as a result of healthcode violations. Walmart also has a responsibility as a company to provide for a fair and non-discriminatory work environment and they haven't done that. Maybe you missed the news when Walmart had a class action lawsuit against them for disciminatory behaviour, concerning the lack of women who received promotions. Next time you are in a Walmart take a look at what positions the women usually hold as compared to the men.
Actually the possiblity that the DNA belonged to OJ was 99.5%, meaning that every 1 in 200 people had DNA similar enough to match the sample the police had.
1. Share a rather large porno collection on the campus network and then stay up to the early morning (which I'm sure most slashdotters did in their days in college) and check who connects to your computer for some late night masterbation. A lot of idiots name their computers after themselves. Then all you have to do is look their name up in the directory and scare the living piss out of them when you call them up and ask them if they are enjoying your wonderful bukkake clips.
2. Spring semester is the best. If you have freely available condoms, usually from the RA, they make great waterballons. (Make sure to save a few for the weekends!) Living on the top floor is the best, especially when girls are sunbathing in the quad. They're easy targets.
3. There are usually a lot of parties the first couple of days of the semester. Go to them. You will meet people there that you will be friends with for at least the rest of your college years. You will also meet a lot of hot drunk freshmen girls who will do anything now that their fathers aren't looking over them.
4. Go to class. I find that even idiots that attend class end up passing in the end. Talk to your teachers, make sure they know who you are. This will give you leeway in the future if you need it. Most profs don't give a shit about you if they never saw you in class.
5. Don't get serious with any girls until at least your junior year. You'll never have an opportunity to have so much sex with so many different girls ever again.
Nobody has to declare that they are at, above, or below the poverty level... EVERYONE pays taxes, and EVERYONE gets a rebate on the taxes paid up to the poverty level, wether they've spent that money or not. And it's a REBATE
Oh I get it now. Even the poor get screwed by this tax. It's nice to get a big rebate but it's terrible when you have to front the money in the first place. How do they keep track of how much money you spent anyway? Do you have to keep all your receipts?
Now you are complaining that the poverty level is defined too low... and I'm saying these people will have MORE money to spend, they will have GREATER buying power with their money... they will recieve 100% of their paychecks...
That's true but they'll be paying a 23% markup on everything up front. They won't really have greater buying power because they'll still be paying the same taxes, just in a different way. Sure they'll get their rebate but isn't that the same as getting your refund?
Moreover, remove corporate taxes, payroll taxes, and the cost of tax compliance, and prices for most products will GO DOWN.
I read that on the site you linked to but I don't buy it. Sure prices may go down a little but I don't think it will offset the prices completely to the levels they were before. I don't see any real proof to back this up.
Your counter argument that poverty is defined too low in some high cost areas is not a counter argument for anything the fair tax is offering... in fact, the only thing it seems applicaple for arguing is that the fair tax doesn't go far enough! But people, everybody, rich and poor alike, can only benefit from the fair tax... I'm not seeing any negatives, certainly nothing you've written is a counter argument.
You're not seeing any negatives because you're not looking for them. No system is perfect and if this system was in place I'm sure we'd get a good view of it, warts and all.
The biggest problem with this system to me is that the real spenders in our economy is the middle class. The rich bank or invest most of their money. They'll get richer and spend their money overseas where they don't pay taxes to the US governement while the middle and lower classes once again get stuck with the brunt of the burden of taxation.
Really? My laptop screen is pretty nice but my brother's 19" viewsonic p95f crt is beautiful to look at. I would much rather look at that screen all day long then stare into an LCD with only one resolution.
You didn't read my post. The official poverty level is way below what should be considered poverty where I live. You cannot live on what is considered the "poverty level", so not only will those people who make just above the poverty level get screwed royally, but how are business supposed to tell whether or not people are at the poverty level or not? Do we issue poverty IDs? Don't you think it is possible for bussinesses to fraudulently sell products, claiming that they were selling to non tax-paying citizens, all the while charging tax to customers. Despite your beliefs, this is not as entirely easy as you think it is.
I agree. I think whoever came up with this color scheme should be poisoned, stabbed, shot, hung, steretched, diesemboweled, drawn and quartered. That's just my opinion.
Yeah I read that and I knew you were going to bring it up. It wouldn't work unless they changed the definition of "poverty level". No one could suvive making less than the "poverty level" in my area, or even more than the "poverty level". You would immediatley bring people above the poverty level right down below it after they paid 23% taxes on everything they bought. You then have a giant disparity between people right below this magical "poverty level" and right above it. You also have an enourmous disparity between people who live in different parts of the country and have different standards of living.
As for loopholes I don't see how you can miss them. There is no where to look on that site for loopholes. They aren't going to show you the major problems of this method. Centralised taxing at least has the resources to catch someone who is cheating. How do you do that with this "fair tax"? If you have money, and friends, I'm sure you could learn to do some high class bartering, or hide behind non-profit groups for purchasing. Don't think that the rich will forget how to swindle people. You'll just make it easier for them to get away with.
Battery life. The more our devices actually 'work', the more power they consume. Add the network/radio overhead which generally tends to consume quite a bit of power on top of that and you have a problem. People have to come to accept a certain standard of usability though. So you either need to limit power consumption, and hence cripple a mobile device's effectivity as a grid note or add bigger batteries.
This technology is not right around the corner. It's a long ways off. Everything could be different by the time this takes off, if it does. Batteries could be small, affordable, and long lasting. Who knows, maybe wireless power will be safe and feasible by then.
Manufacturers. They basically won't like this. It takes a less powerful device to accomplish the same task. So why buy a new gizzmo if you can just use some nearby grid node.
Just because a device can do with more with less on a grid does not mean that people will want a less powerfull device. What if you want to be off the grid for certain things? For privacy perhaps?
And lastly, sheer economics. For this to work, people would have to see benifits now. Nobody wants to buy a new PDA that has less battery life just to be part of something big if there's no immediate gain. And, due to the fact that you need a whole bunch of grid nodes in order to have a useful network of some sort, that just won't happen.
What about cell phones? We didn't always have cell phone towers yet they have become incredibly popular. It would be even easier for wireless grid devices to become popular because regular devices could be built with this technoloy before it became useful.
"Hmm, if I buy this now I might get free Internet access two years down the road. In the meantime, everybody's freeloading off of me though (since there's nobody else whose device you could use). I think not."
Not really. People without these enabled devices wouldn't be able to take advantage of your device. Even if they were able to I'm sure you could turn the service off.
No, because it is in no way fair. The poor spend more money on what they need. The rich spend more on what they want. There is usually little decision on what the poor buy. There is a lot of room in the decision making process when it comes to what the rich purchase. So in the end, you're really only screwing the poor for buying what they need, while you reward the rich by pretty much eliminating their taxes. Besides that, there is more room for loopholes in that system and it would utterly destroy the economy anyways.
If you do not include social security and medicare, and include only the actual federal income tax, the "rich" are paying a higher percentage of total federal income tax than they were before the tax cuts.
Payroll taxes are a bigger burden for the poor than their income taxes are. The problem is that payroll taxes don't scale up. So basically you are only looking at half the picture. While the poor have effectively double the taxes because of payroll taxes, the sum is negligible for the rich.
The Word.doc format is well documented and parsed by hundreds of applications, including various open source office suites.
It's still not fully compatible though. It works mostly but I've had minor formatting errors with openoffice.
And it's forward-compatible since Word 97, so the FUD about Microsoft changing the format and screwing up open source apps is crap.
How does forward compatiblity make it possible to effectively convert a file format? It means nothing. The format is still changing. Just because you can open a word97 document with word2003, doesn't mean the format is unchanged.
Nobody helped Microsoft reverse-engineer WordPerfect and various other formats, yet they did it and claimed the market share.
Like I said before, the word format is still changing, the wordperfect format has been stable for a long time now.
Ditto for various API compatibility issues. NT emulated DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, yet WINE still chokes on circa-1995 apps. DOS is de-facto 100% documented and Windows 3.1 is de-facto 100% documented.
Have you ever used WINE? Win95 is pretty much fully implemented. 98 is right behind. NT/XP is much harder because it was not the focus of wine development from the beginning.
DOS is de-facto 100% documented
And dosemu does a fine job at dos.
Win32 is a moving target, but the stuff needed to run nine-year old apps is well-known.
That's precisely why the only real problem these days with wine is win32.
Slashdot Mirror
Not at all. How do you grade the media? What is the best way to determine overal liberal or conservative bias? What's that? There is no scientific way to judge it? What do you do then? You use the best and most simple explanation, which ends up being right most of the time anyway. The simplest answer is to say that the media is in the middle. Reality, after all, is subjective in itself.
More or less, given that I've already acknowledged the media bias to be "soft core." Liberal is just a more convenient term, but if you prefer I'll try and stick to "left-leaning" or "biased toward the Democrat party." But meanwhile I can't help but note that you didn't offer an explanation for why that fact about registration and voting record isn't significant.
I gave a really good reason for the fact that registration isn't necessarily a factor of bias. Not all democrats are liberals. In fact I would say most of them are not. Take a look at southern democrats and then tell me that most democrats are liberals because they are not. Party affiliation does not prove bias anyway. Are we to believe that no matter who is reporting the news that they are biased one way or another in their reporting?
Actually I get called "racist" on a pretty regular basis once I identify myself as a conservative, especially on the internet or other places where people feel secure enough to say particularly vile things. In more formal circles I can only feel the insinuation.
Still, even though that is not a good thing to be called, it is nowhere near being called a communist, not in this society where communism is made out to be the opposite of everything america stands for. There are still large pockets of the US where racism is accepted. This is not true of communism.
Sometimes that's true, just as you didn't see a lot of crazy lefties protesting the Democrat convention, just raising some minor issues.
Protesters are not the media. This is totally irrelevant. Calling them "crazy lefties" invalidates your reasoning even more.
I understand that it's hard to break out of established behavior patterns, but if you don't care to have a legitimate discussion with me, don't bother responding. If you want to argue that they actually don't offer "real" news, present an argument for that, but don't be condescending with me until I've given you a reason for that kind of attitude.
You mean to tell me that all that nonsense that never panned out during the Clinton era was news? Howso? It never went anywhere and most of it was conspiracy theory nutcase stuff. Clinton ordering a hit on Vince Foster? Give me a break.
Actually I already did. You assumed I was saying something different than what I did. It's pretty clear from my statement that I suggested the hate and irrationality were threatening the democracy, not liberalism.
You clearly stated that this hate and irrationality was coming from liberals so you still don't escape my characterization of you.
Surely you can admit that many liberals these days openly profess a passionate hatred of Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft. Plenty of conservatives despised Clinton, but I can't recall any incidents where things got this nasty.
That's your bias coming into play. You cannot say this with a straight face after all the accusations about Clinton where made.
You can say it all you want, but conservatives aren't the ones doing t
One store with female managers doesn't make you right either. Do you see my point now?
I never said that. I think the present system is severely flawed. I just don't think an untested system is the perfect plan when not enough is known about possible flaws and loopholes. You say there are none but I wouldn't be so sure if I were you.
That's nonsense and totally irrelevant to what we are talking about. If a conservative thinks something is liberal and a liberal thinks something is conservative it is only LOGICAL to assume that the belief is inbetween the two idealogies. Would you rather assume that it is actaully more liberal than a liberal believes or more conservative than a conservative believes? That makes less sense than what I said.
Ignore claims for the moment and look at facts: #1) Those who work in the media are registered Democrat and vote Democrat by overwhelming margins.
Liberal != Democrat.
#2) Word usage analyses by places such as Harvard, Stanford, and UCLA show a clear left-leaning bias.
I can find studies that say the opposite. So what?
Al Sharpton has made numerous comments throughout his public life condemning white people as a whole. That by definition is racist, although some continue to insist that prejudice against the majority race cannot be considered racism. Granted, he's toned down his rhetoric in the last year or so, but has a history of bigotry against the "white interloper."
Please cite examples. Besides, if he has "toned down his rhetoric" is it fair to continue to call him a racist?
Faulty premise. You mean to tell me that liberals haven't tarnished the word "conservative." The word conjures up images of stubborn, ignorant white men often with racist overtones. You can't pretend that only one side has attempted to denigrate the other, but for whatever reason conservatives haven't become ashamed of their designation. I suspect this actually has very little to do with what epithets are attached to a particular political designation and more to do with how comfortable people are with their own views.
I am prefectly comfortable with my liberal views but that doesn't stop people from shouting "liberal" at me like it is the equivalent of calling me a communist. After all that is a favorite comparison by conservatives. There really isn't a worse thing you can be called in our society considering the cold war. There is no equivalent for conservatives.
Clearly you haven't actually listened to much talk radio. Rush and his ilk regularly express their displeasure with Bush, albeit not as much as the Democrats. Those talk show hosts are out to serve themselves, no one else.
Give me a break. Bill O'Reilly has the same technique as Rush. They criticize Bush in fairly minor ways for a brief time and then jump all over liberals for the rest of the show. They usually use their criticisms to segue into how much worse the democrats are than Bush.
Every right-wing show out there brings up what it considers to be under or un-reported news, sometimes legitimate and sometimes not. If you can't grasp that then I don't know exactly what grounds we're going to argue from.
I'm sorry I meant actual news not the latest whitewater scandal that never happened or the SBVFT scandal that resulted in the exposure of political shenanigans.
It's not the fact that they're liberal which threatens our democracy, but the fact that a significant minority of them have become so hate-filled and irrational.
You cannot escape my original characterization of you by saying "a significant minority of liberals have become hate-filled and irrational". I could probably provide as much evidence that a "significant minority" of conservatives have become hate-filled and irrational as you could about liberals. That doesn't prove a damn thing about either camp.
I wasn't talking about personal preference, I was saying that if liberals intend to be taken seriously and achieve some kind of meaningful dialogue then they need to cut back on some of the vitriolic rhetoric.
I would have to say that the same goes for conservatives.
Poor reading comprehension pervades all of slashdot. Stop putting words in my mouth. I never claimed that Miller said he was a liberal. I only said that people do not always live up to the label they give themselves.
2. Who is to say who is a liberal and who is a conservative? Are you going to use a litmus test? Do you believe in the right to an abortion? Do you believe in the death penalty? Do you believe that burning the flag should be a right? two people may have completely different answers to these, and still believe that they are "liberal". Who are you to label them? Oh that's right, you're the one who wants to label people "poor" and "disenfranchised" and "discriminated against".
The right to abortion is a liberal view. Being against the death penalty is a liberal view. The right to burn a flag is a liberal view. You prove my point when you say people may have different opinions on these matters yet label themselves the same. This is my point exactly. How can you trust a survey that asks whether one is liberal or conservative? You cannot because their true beliefs could be all over the map. As for your odd rant about labeling people "poor and disenfranchised" I have no response. I don't even know what point you were trying to make. It just sounded like more lunatic raving to me.
3. If you want to say that Democrats = liberal and Republican = conservative; you are wrong about the fact that more people have liberal beliefs. As evidenced by the recent polls, people are pretty evenly split.
There's another claim I never made. It is obvious by my Zell Miller remark that I don't beleive that "Democrats = liberal and Republican = conservative". Therefor in my view I don't think that is a valid way to measure liberalism vs conservatism. Most people don't actually know the policies of either canidate and are not making educated opinions of either canidate. Besides that, if you take into account Nader, who is obviously a liberal, then the split would favor liberals/democrats. Of course I don't believe in that liberal=democrat/conservative=republican crap anyway.
Clearly I am not a scholar? How so? Because I mentioned that Bush hasn't even achieved job growth at the level of population growth? I never said a word about why but now that you mention it can people please stop blaming every economic negative on 9/11 and the recession while they claim every economic positive is Bush's accomplishment.
Furthermore, the current unemployment rate, 5.6%, is lower than the averages for the 70's, 80's and 90's. Since when is 5.6% unemployment bad? I know our allies would kill to have that number.
I never said otherwise. You cleary are not a reader. This isn't really a statistic conservatives should be touting though considering that jobs haven't increased enough to sustain population growth. There is an obvious disparity between these statistics.
You obviously have not been to many walmarts if you think most of them are run by females.
Just as the claim of liberal bias only shows that the media is to the left of conservatives, as it should be. That makes the media pretty much right in the middle. Isn't it funny how liberals don't think the media is liberal enough and conservatives don't think it is conservative enough? Well actually it isn't that funny, it makes perfect sense if the media is really centrist.
That'd be like someone painting all Democrats as fire-brand racists just because Al Sharpton happened to be one of their presidential candidates.
I guess you might as well throw in a little slander after all the other crap that came out of your mouth. How exactly is Sharpton a racist?
Seriously, liberals need to get a grip on reality before anyone can take them seriously. Do you see conservatives scared of identifying themselves with that label?
No, because the right has done such an effective job at tarnishing the word "liberal". It is almost always used in a condescending manner.
Do you see more than a handful of people trying to say that talk radio isn't strongly right-leaning? Again no, pretty much everyone I've seen admits that the radio goes right, though they justify that bias by saying that they're trying to counter left-leaning television media.
The difference here is that right wing radio pundits aren't reporting news that may be ignored by the so-called liberal media, they are merely shills for the republicans. They parrot the talking points of the day. They are in no way, shape, or form, a news source. If they wanted to counter the so-called liberal media they would involve themselves in reporting underreported news not punditry.
Until liberals can: A) admit their own faults and B) admit that conservatives aren't the spawn of Satan, there really isn't much chance of productive discussion with them. It takes a solid grasp of reality, honest introspection, and a willingness to listen for two sides to get together. I'll grant that conservatives have certainly been out of line at times themselves as well, but right now the left is so hate-filled and irrational that it's damaging and perhaps even threatening our democracy.
That is an odd paragraph considering that you begin with accusing liberals as viewing conservatives as the spawn of satan and you end with accusing liberals of threatening our democracy. It looks like you need to first admit that liberals aren't a threat to democracy before liberals stop viewing people like yourself as the spawn of satan.
Those numbers are totally flawed. A more accurate depiction of the average american can be made by asking questions about issues rather than flat out asking whether one holds a liberal or conservative idealogy. Conservatives have tarnished the word "liberal" and people fear that label. When asked about the issues themselves more people have liberal beliefs than conservative beliefs. The gap between people who call themselves liberal and people who have liberal beliefs is very large. The label someone gives themself does not necessarily hold true. Just look at Zell Miller.
I love you hardcore capitalists. Fuck everyone, it's business and that makes it okay. Who needs morals and ethics when we have the free market? What a crock of shit. Don't forget their disgusting policy to insure older workers with themsevles as the benefactors. That's just despicable.
Well the grandparent basically said that if you don't like minimum wage jobs then work somewhere else, to that I say if you don't like unions jobs then work somewhere else.
People have the right to form a union if they want to. If you don't like unions then don't join them. It's not anyone else's problem. Despite complaints from people about unions (including my own personal experience) their presence is better than their abscense. We've already seen what happens when we don't have the right to form unions.
How can you be "anti-competitive"? I don't know what you mean, mind explaining?
Do you know anything about predatory pricing, discriminatory pricing, and display fees? I didn't think so or you wouldn't be posting.
I have no experiences with the discriminatory behavior, so I can't really comment much on your final statement. In my area, there are more women working in Wal*Mart than there are men, so I don't know how true your statement is in terms of the entire company. Your area may have problems, but I would link that more to the poor managerial staff, and not Wal*Mart in general. But as I said, I don't have experience with that, so I can't comment much.
First of all, the CEO must ultimately take responsibility for the company. In fact CEO's have been arrested for offenses committed by their managers or even salespeople usually as a result of healthcode violations. Walmart also has a responsibility as a company to provide for a fair and non-discriminatory work environment and they haven't done that. Maybe you missed the news when Walmart had a class action lawsuit against them for disciminatory behaviour, concerning the lack of women who received promotions. Next time you are in a Walmart take a look at what positions the women usually hold as compared to the men.
Actually the possiblity that the DNA belonged to OJ was 99.5%, meaning that every 1 in 200 people had DNA similar enough to match the sample the police had.
1. Share a rather large porno collection on the campus network and then stay up to the early morning (which I'm sure most slashdotters did in their days in college) and check who connects to your computer for some late night masterbation. A lot of idiots name their computers after themselves. Then all you have to do is look their name up in the directory and scare the living piss out of them when you call them up and ask them if they are enjoying your wonderful bukkake clips.
2. Spring semester is the best. If you have freely available condoms, usually from the RA, they make great waterballons. (Make sure to save a few for the weekends!) Living on the top floor is the best, especially when girls are sunbathing in the quad. They're easy targets.
3. There are usually a lot of parties the first couple of days of the semester. Go to them. You will meet people there that you will be friends with for at least the rest of your college years. You will also meet a lot of hot drunk freshmen girls who will do anything now that their fathers aren't looking over them.
4. Go to class. I find that even idiots that attend class end up passing in the end. Talk to your teachers, make sure they know who you are. This will give you leeway in the future if you need it. Most profs don't give a shit about you if they never saw you in class.
5. Don't get serious with any girls until at least your junior year. You'll never have an opportunity to have so much sex with so many different girls ever again.
Oh I get it now. Even the poor get screwed by this tax. It's nice to get a big rebate but it's terrible when you have to front the money in the first place. How do they keep track of how much money you spent anyway? Do you have to keep all your receipts?
Now you are complaining that the poverty level is defined too low... and I'm saying these people will have MORE money to spend, they will have GREATER buying power with their money... they will recieve 100% of their paychecks...
That's true but they'll be paying a 23% markup on everything up front. They won't really have greater buying power because they'll still be paying the same taxes, just in a different way. Sure they'll get their rebate but isn't that the same as getting your refund?
Moreover, remove corporate taxes, payroll taxes, and the cost of tax compliance, and prices for most products will GO DOWN.
I read that on the site you linked to but I don't buy it. Sure prices may go down a little but I don't think it will offset the prices completely to the levels they were before. I don't see any real proof to back this up.
Your counter argument that poverty is defined too low in some high cost areas is not a counter argument for anything the fair tax is offering... in fact, the only thing it seems applicaple for arguing is that the fair tax doesn't go far enough! But people, everybody, rich and poor alike, can only benefit from the fair tax... I'm not seeing any negatives, certainly nothing you've written is a counter argument.
You're not seeing any negatives because you're not looking for them. No system is perfect and if this system was in place I'm sure we'd get a good view of it, warts and all.
The biggest problem with this system to me is that the real spenders in our economy is the middle class. The rich bank or invest most of their money. They'll get richer and spend their money overseas where they don't pay taxes to the US governement while the middle and lower classes once again get stuck with the brunt of the burden of taxation.
Really? My laptop screen is pretty nice but my brother's 19" viewsonic p95f crt is beautiful to look at. I would much rather look at that screen all day long then stare into an LCD with only one resolution.
You didn't read my post. The official poverty level is way below what should be considered poverty where I live. You cannot live on what is considered the "poverty level", so not only will those people who make just above the poverty level get screwed royally, but how are business supposed to tell whether or not people are at the poverty level or not? Do we issue poverty IDs? Don't you think it is possible for bussinesses to fraudulently sell products, claiming that they were selling to non tax-paying citizens, all the while charging tax to customers. Despite your beliefs, this is not as entirely easy as you think it is.
Wow, obviously no one gets the reference. I thought geeks read slashdot?
I agree. I think whoever came up with this color scheme should be poisoned, stabbed, shot, hung, steretched, diesemboweled, drawn and quartered. That's just my opinion.
As for loopholes I don't see how you can miss them. There is no where to look on that site for loopholes. They aren't going to show you the major problems of this method. Centralised taxing at least has the resources to catch someone who is cheating. How do you do that with this "fair tax"? If you have money, and friends, I'm sure you could learn to do some high class bartering, or hide behind non-profit groups for purchasing. Don't think that the rich will forget how to swindle people. You'll just make it easier for them to get away with.
This technology is not right around the corner. It's a long ways off. Everything could be different by the time this takes off, if it does. Batteries could be small, affordable, and long lasting. Who knows, maybe wireless power will be safe and feasible by then.
Manufacturers. They basically won't like this. It takes a less powerful device to accomplish the same task. So why buy a new gizzmo if you can just use some nearby grid node.
Just because a device can do with more with less on a grid does not mean that people will want a less powerfull device. What if you want to be off the grid for certain things? For privacy perhaps?
And lastly, sheer economics. For this to work, people would have to see benifits now. Nobody wants to buy a new PDA that has less battery life just to be part of something big if there's no immediate gain. And, due to the fact that you need a whole bunch of grid nodes in order to have a useful network of some sort, that just won't happen.
What about cell phones? We didn't always have cell phone towers yet they have become incredibly popular. It would be even easier for wireless grid devices to become popular because regular devices could be built with this technoloy before it became useful.
"Hmm, if I buy this now I might get free Internet access two years down the road. In the meantime, everybody's freeloading off of me though (since there's nobody else whose device you could use). I think not."
Not really. People without these enabled devices wouldn't be able to take advantage of your device. Even if they were able to I'm sure you could turn the service off.
Payroll taxes are a bigger burden for the poor than their income taxes are. The problem is that payroll taxes don't scale up. So basically you are only looking at half the picture. While the poor have effectively double the taxes because of payroll taxes, the sum is negligible for the rich.
It's still not fully compatible though. It works mostly but I've had minor formatting errors with openoffice.
And it's forward-compatible since Word 97, so the FUD about Microsoft changing the format and screwing up open source apps is crap.
How does forward compatiblity make it possible to effectively convert a file format? It means nothing. The format is still changing. Just because you can open a word97 document with word2003, doesn't mean the format is unchanged.
Nobody helped Microsoft reverse-engineer WordPerfect and various other formats, yet they did it and claimed the market share.
Like I said before, the word format is still changing, the wordperfect format has been stable for a long time now.
Ditto for various API compatibility issues. NT emulated DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, yet WINE still chokes on circa-1995 apps. DOS is de-facto 100% documented and Windows 3.1 is de-facto 100% documented.
Have you ever used WINE? Win95 is pretty much fully implemented. 98 is right behind. NT/XP is much harder because it was not the focus of wine development from the beginning.
DOS is de-facto 100% documented
And dosemu does a fine job at dos.
Win32 is a moving target, but the stuff needed to run nine-year old apps is well-known.
That's precisely why the only real problem these days with wine is win32.