...and the worst thing about it is I sleep with a white-noise generator turned on. Nothing worse than falling asleep as the phone receives an email, causing the b'beep-b'beep-b'b'b'beep interference on those soothing sounds.
The good news, of course, is that this interference is subject to the inverse squares law, so while there's audible interference at 3 feet, if I move my bag (with phone in it) 6 feet away from the noise generator, it's fine.
It really should be "...in that there have never been so many...", if we're going to be pedantic. But granted, yours is A/A- material, where the original is C-grade material.
You're right, you can't measure a win based on body count. The best way to win a conflict is to avoid it by diplomatic means, but if you're in it, you can only say you won if you achieved your initial goals in a manner that your goal state was sustainably stable after the war is over.
I did not say that the US lost in Vietnam. We simply did not win. After years of losing thousands of American lives and many times more Vietnamese lives, we finally decided that the right thing to do was to leave, and the world did not fall apart. Why? Because we had no business being there, and our presence there made what was essentially a local conflict much, much worse. Tens of thousands of people, American, Vietnamese and other, did not have to die during that conflict.
If you go by your metric of who won the most battles, then you'd have to say that the British won the American Revolution. George Washington, using guerilla-style strike and retreat tactics, is said to have lost nearly every battle. But, as I said, you can't win a war against an entrenched local militia. The British won battles over and over again, but eventually saw it was never going to end, and they left. Thus, we won.
Your response is also fairly 18th-century in another way. The idea that being more brutal could have ended this war sooner may be correct on the surface, but it hardly would have made the US a light unto all nations on the world stage. You can't win by sheer brutality unless, as you say, you kill all of your enemies, but that's just not sustainable, as that in itself will create more enemies.
As I say, we shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place, but since we did, I'll tell you the single biggest mistake we made: disbanding the Iraqi army and not immediately enlisting them to help rebuild the country. When you've got extremist agitators in town, offering money and glory for the disenfranchised, you need to give the unemployed, starving, militarily trained men something positive to do, or, having recently been beaten and spurned, they're going to join your enemy.
I have friends in the military, and I feel strongly that--with a few notable exceptions--they have fought honorably, and they've done the best they can with the mission they've been given. But the mission itself was a piece of shit from its inception, and it's only been made worse by major, major mis-steps along the way, especially from the non-military leadership who have put so many Americans in harms way.
It sounds like you're an advocate for continued military action until a clear and absolute victory can be claimed in Iraq. I'd be interested to hear how you see it playing out; as I'm sure you can tell, I'm a skeptic, but I'm always interested in hearing thoughts of people who clearly see things differently than I do.
My personal solution is, set a time-line, encourage the Iraqi government to stand not only on their own two feet, but to request--and pay for--military and police support from the international community. Draw down the US presence to the same levels as other nations are willing to commit, for as long as we are all welcome there. If and when things stabilize enough, we send in civilian corps to help with rebuilding, and possibly influencing their educational system.
I don't see this as defeat for the US military; I see it as the proper way to stop the bleeding and start rebuilding. Defeat would be losing another 20,000 Americans and another 200,000 Iraqis over the next eight years. Defeat would be spending trillions of dollars overseas while, stateside, people are losing their homes. Defeat would be $4.00 US to one Euro. Defeat would be what happened to the USSR when they couldn't bring themselves to give up on their own folly mission in the same neck of the woods.
With you on FISA, but that 2nd amendment stuff is a misread. 2A guarantees the right to bear arms *as part of a well organized militia*. It does not guarantee individuals the right to own guns for whatever purposes they want.
The only reason that politicians support this misread is that, if anything, they would prefer that people would forget about the constitutional blessing of militias.
It's funny that, when looking at Iraq, people often say, "We should have learned from Vietnam that you can win battles, but not wars against an entrenched local militia." What's funny about it is that we should have learned that from the American Revolution. What is being done to us in Iraq is exactly the founding act of our nation.
True, my wording was not clear; state law was established, and Palin's administration continued to flout state law for months. Your point about federal law makes this factoid even that much more repulsive.
That and McCain's recent finger-quotes when dismissing issues of women's health surrounding abortion make the McC/P ticket--to me--absolutely, positively unacceptable.
I disagree with your choice, but I, for one would not have modded you down. If I hadn't already wasted too much time posting in this thread, I'd try to convince you otherwise using my powers of free speech, but I certainly respect your free speech. Especially considering you were not baiting or trolling; quite to the contrary, you've clearly thought about this topic, which is more than what we normally see here on/.
Palin didn't personally charge anyone, but her town, while she was mayor, did indeed have that policy in place, in violation of established state law.
Just because you say it's only a rumor doesn't mean that it's not true. You need only read to find the details.
Palin stands on a thin veneer of plausible deniability, although it is indeed difficult to think that a mayor in a town the size of Wasilla wouldn't know about this. She blames a 'rogue police chief'.
Anyway, the original question was about whether it's smart to choose a president based on their pro- or anti-choice stance. And my original point still stands. Activist conservative judges, if given enough of a majority, will find a way to overturn established law. If you agree with Roe v. Wade, then you'll want Obama to be choosing our next SC justice or two. If not, you'll want McCain making that choice.
Whether or not it's important to you is a different question. Whether or not it's an issue of privacy or the start of life is a different question. The truth is, the next president will determine whether established law is upheld, or if fanatical religious activists will be able to overturn their nemesis of laws.
Not a red herring. Some bizarre factions of even mainstream religions think it's a sin to practice contraception. The question of when life begins is code words for "how can I keep you from offending my god?" The people fighting to take this right away have no problem with killing Moslems in unjust wars, or playing god through state-sponsored executions.
There is well-established common law regarding pre-"quickening" state of the baby, and again, this is in the text of Roe v. Wade. The fact that activist conservatives want to go to extremes to let a woman make her own decisions about her body by banning a safe and reliable procedure and limiting that woman's choices post conception to dangerous back-alley wire hangar abortions is, well, pathological.
This is, of course, compounded by the fact that the same people are more likely than not to want to take reproductive education out of our schools, and to condemn attempts to make condoms or other mechanisms of safer sex available. Teenagers have sex; there's no doubt about that. If you don't educate them, if you don't allow them access to protection, they're going to get pregnant. And if they don't want the baby, they're going to get abortions, one way or another.
So let's forget about the fetus for a moment; doesn't the life of the mother count for anything?
If I ever wished there was a way to stab someone in the face over the internet, now is the time.
OK, I'm not into violence, but the sheer heartfelt honesty of this response made me laugh out loud. But seriously, we should have compassion for the insane and mentally deficient. My understanding is that they're working on a medication that will cure people of neo-con-ism.
Okay, so... The state is using them, so the state should pay for them. It is criminal evidence, not a medical procedure. We don't make murder victim's estates pay for gathering murder evidence, either. It's in the general good to prosecute criminals, and it's been accepted that evidence gathering is the responsibility of the police and paid for by the state. Why rape should be any different is beyond me.
Public good? State should pay? That sounds like SOCIALISM!!!
Actually, it's not dumb. There are very likely to be some Supreme Court replacements in the next 8 years, and a president who is anti-choice enough to choose a VP candidate who thinks that abortion should be illegal even in cases of incest/rape is not likely to choose a justice who will uphold Roe v. Wade.
You may not ever want to get an abortion yourself, but there are people who want to deny that option to every woman,and and such a fundamental infringement on privacy and the right to choose what happens to your own body is unacceptable. It's one step away from making women wear burquas.
Actually, you are being a pedant. You're right, but, y'know, I'm sure you did know what the OP meant.
I don't mean this as an insult; it's just that your post made me grin. Kind of like when someone underscores what they are expressing metaphorically by saying, "literally." Like: "I was so hungry I literally could have eaten a horse." I've actually taken to saying, myself, "[blah blah], literally! By which I mean figuratively."
And when anyone questions my most outlandish statements, I tell them, straight faced, "I always speak in hyperbole. Always. ALLLWAYS."
Well, there you go. Rightly or wrongly, I'm very surprised, just as promised. You should see how wide my eyes are. You'd think I'd be used to it, as often as I'm wrong...
On all phones I have ever owned, the SMS is delivered to the phone and you are billed, regardless of whether you read it or not. I can't say for certain that your service is different, but I'd be very surprised if it were.
Not sure what the proper citation method is, but what I've described is a backdoor that I myself have seen. If a friend of mine comments on or tags an image in one of their friends' albums, I can get in and view everything in that album. I still can't leave the album and get into other ones, nor can I see the third party's profile, but the album containing the tagged or commented photo is wide open.
Slashdot Mirror
...and the worst thing about it is I sleep with a white-noise generator turned on. Nothing worse than falling asleep as the phone receives an email, causing the b'beep-b'beep-b'b'b'beep interference on those soothing sounds.
The good news, of course, is that this interference is subject to the inverse squares law, so while there's audible interference at 3 feet, if I move my bag (with phone in it) 6 feet away from the noise generator, it's fine.
It really should be "...in that there have never been so many...", if we're going to be pedantic. But granted, yours is A/A- material, where the original is C-grade material.
You're right, you can't measure a win based on body count. The best way to win a conflict is to avoid it by diplomatic means, but if you're in it, you can only say you won if you achieved your initial goals in a manner that your goal state was sustainably stable after the war is over.
I did not say that the US lost in Vietnam. We simply did not win. After years of losing thousands of American lives and many times more Vietnamese lives, we finally decided that the right thing to do was to leave, and the world did not fall apart. Why? Because we had no business being there, and our presence there made what was essentially a local conflict much, much worse. Tens of thousands of people, American, Vietnamese and other, did not have to die during that conflict.
If you go by your metric of who won the most battles, then you'd have to say that the British won the American Revolution. George Washington, using guerilla-style strike and retreat tactics, is said to have lost nearly every battle. But, as I said, you can't win a war against an entrenched local militia. The British won battles over and over again, but eventually saw it was never going to end, and they left. Thus, we won.
Your response is also fairly 18th-century in another way. The idea that being more brutal could have ended this war sooner may be correct on the surface, but it hardly would have made the US a light unto all nations on the world stage. You can't win by sheer brutality unless, as you say, you kill all of your enemies, but that's just not sustainable, as that in itself will create more enemies.
As I say, we shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place, but since we did, I'll tell you the single biggest mistake we made: disbanding the Iraqi army and not immediately enlisting them to help rebuild the country. When you've got extremist agitators in town, offering money and glory for the disenfranchised, you need to give the unemployed, starving, militarily trained men something positive to do, or, having recently been beaten and spurned, they're going to join your enemy.
I have friends in the military, and I feel strongly that--with a few notable exceptions--they have fought honorably, and they've done the best they can with the mission they've been given. But the mission itself was a piece of shit from its inception, and it's only been made worse by major, major mis-steps along the way, especially from the non-military leadership who have put so many Americans in harms way.
It sounds like you're an advocate for continued military action until a clear and absolute victory can be claimed in Iraq. I'd be interested to hear how you see it playing out; as I'm sure you can tell, I'm a skeptic, but I'm always interested in hearing thoughts of people who clearly see things differently than I do.
My personal solution is, set a time-line, encourage the Iraqi government to stand not only on their own two feet, but to request--and pay for--military and police support from the international community. Draw down the US presence to the same levels as other nations are willing to commit, for as long as we are all welcome there. If and when things stabilize enough, we send in civilian corps to help with rebuilding, and possibly influencing their educational system.
I don't see this as defeat for the US military; I see it as the proper way to stop the bleeding and start rebuilding. Defeat would be losing another 20,000 Americans and another 200,000 Iraqis over the next eight years. Defeat would be spending trillions of dollars overseas while, stateside, people are losing their homes. Defeat would be $4.00 US to one Euro. Defeat would be what happened to the USSR when they couldn't bring themselves to give up on their own folly mission in the same neck of the woods.
Isn't there something in our constitution about ex-post-facto laws being illegal? I'd think that granting retroactive immunity would fit that bill.
With you on FISA, but that 2nd amendment stuff is a misread. 2A guarantees the right to bear arms *as part of a well organized militia*. It does not guarantee individuals the right to own guns for whatever purposes they want.
The only reason that politicians support this misread is that, if anything, they would prefer that people would forget about the constitutional blessing of militias.
It's funny that, when looking at Iraq, people often say, "We should have learned from Vietnam that you can win battles, but not wars against an entrenched local militia." What's funny about it is that we should have learned that from the American Revolution. What is being done to us in Iraq is exactly the founding act of our nation.
"They have to get out to take a piss sooner or later."
Depends...
True, my wording was not clear; state law was established, and Palin's administration continued to flout state law for months. Your point about federal law makes this factoid even that much more repulsive.
That and McCain's recent finger-quotes when dismissing issues of women's health surrounding abortion make the McC/P ticket--to me--absolutely, positively unacceptable.
I can post on /.; I should be the technology czar.
I disagree with your choice, but I, for one would not have modded you down. If I hadn't already wasted too much time posting in this thread, I'd try to convince you otherwise using my powers of free speech, but I certainly respect your free speech. Especially considering you were not baiting or trolling; quite to the contrary, you've clearly thought about this topic, which is more than what we normally see here on /.
Palin didn't personally charge anyone, but her town, while she was mayor, did indeed have that policy in place, in violation of established state law.
Just because you say it's only a rumor doesn't mean that it's not true. You need only read to find the details.
Palin stands on a thin veneer of plausible deniability, although it is indeed difficult to think that a mayor in a town the size of Wasilla wouldn't know about this. She blames a 'rogue police chief'.
Anyway, the original question was about whether it's smart to choose a president based on their pro- or anti-choice stance. And my original point still stands. Activist conservative judges, if given enough of a majority, will find a way to overturn established law. If you agree with Roe v. Wade, then you'll want Obama to be choosing our next SC justice or two. If not, you'll want McCain making that choice.
Whether or not it's important to you is a different question. Whether or not it's an issue of privacy or the start of life is a different question. The truth is, the next president will determine whether established law is upheld, or if fanatical religious activists will be able to overturn their nemesis of laws.
Not a red herring. Some bizarre factions of even mainstream religions think it's a sin to practice contraception. The question of when life begins is code words for "how can I keep you from offending my god?" The people fighting to take this right away have no problem with killing Moslems in unjust wars, or playing god through state-sponsored executions.
There is well-established common law regarding pre-"quickening" state of the baby, and again, this is in the text of Roe v. Wade. The fact that activist conservatives want to go to extremes to let a woman make her own decisions about her body by banning a safe and reliable procedure and limiting that woman's choices post conception to dangerous back-alley wire hangar abortions is, well, pathological.
This is, of course, compounded by the fact that the same people are more likely than not to want to take reproductive education out of our schools, and to condemn attempts to make condoms or other mechanisms of safer sex available. Teenagers have sex; there's no doubt about that. If you don't educate them, if you don't allow them access to protection, they're going to get pregnant. And if they don't want the baby, they're going to get abortions, one way or another.
So let's forget about the fetus for a moment; doesn't the life of the mother count for anything?
The right to privacy is indeed a major element of Roe V. Wade. Read the text.
OK, I'm not into violence, but the sheer heartfelt honesty of this response made me laugh out loud. But seriously, we should have compassion for the insane and mentally deficient. My understanding is that they're working on a medication that will cure people of neo-con-ism.
Okay, so... The state is using them, so the state should pay for them. It is criminal evidence, not a medical procedure. We don't make murder victim's estates pay for gathering murder evidence, either. It's in the general good to prosecute criminals, and it's been accepted that evidence gathering is the responsibility of the police and paid for by the state. Why rape should be any different is beyond me.
Public good? State should pay? That sounds like SOCIALISM!!!
OK, gonna turn off fox news now...
Actually, it's not dumb. There are very likely to be some Supreme Court replacements in the next 8 years, and a president who is anti-choice enough to choose a VP candidate who thinks that abortion should be illegal even in cases of incest/rape is not likely to choose a justice who will uphold Roe v. Wade.
You may not ever want to get an abortion yourself, but there are people who want to deny that option to every woman,and and such a fundamental infringement on privacy and the right to choose what happens to your own body is unacceptable. It's one step away from making women wear burquas.
We need to change the stereotypes of future generations of programmers!
Did you eat horse, or did you eat a horse? That is, did you eat an entire horse?
I had horse when I was in France a few years ago. When friends asked me how it was, I'd say, "It was g-o-o-o-o-o-d!" (think like a whinny)
I can't believe you called me verbose and well-heeled! Next thing you know, you'll be using the P-word... Professorial!
Actually, you are being a pedant. You're right, but, y'know, I'm sure you did know what the OP meant.
I don't mean this as an insult; it's just that your post made me grin. Kind of like when someone underscores what they are expressing metaphorically by saying, "literally." Like: "I was so hungry I literally could have eaten a horse." I've actually taken to saying, myself, "[blah blah], literally! By which I mean figuratively."
And when anyone questions my most outlandish statements, I tell them, straight faced, "I always speak in hyperbole. Always. ALLLWAYS."
Well, there you go. Rightly or wrongly, I'm very surprised, just as promised. You should see how wide my eyes are. You'd think I'd be used to it, as often as I'm wrong...
On all phones I have ever owned, the SMS is delivered to the phone and you are billed, regardless of whether you read it or not. I can't say for certain that your service is different, but I'd be very surprised if it were.
Not sure what the proper citation method is, but what I've described is a backdoor that I myself have seen. If a friend of mine comments on or tags an image in one of their friends' albums, I can get in and view everything in that album. I still can't leave the album and get into other ones, nor can I see the third party's profile, but the album containing the tagged or commented photo is wide open.
Just because they're there doesn't mean they work.