The US Senate voted 95-0 against the Kyoto treaty. Kyoto's still dead and buried many years later in the US because of that vote even though the Senate's changed composition and Clinton's no longer president. Such a lopsided vote has a powerful influence that can stretch a very long time. A 400 vote margin in the House means that it would take us losing a city for a draft to get back on the table and even then it would be iffy.
During Schroeder's last campaign, a US pullout of troops in Germany was raised lots of times on the net as a response to his harsh antiamericanism. Every time that it was the Germans said, in effect, don't let the door hit you on the way out. It'll be an economic blow for them, sure, but I don't think we should worry about economic effects anymore than the Germans did. In reality, we should be worried about it significantly less.
There's a difference between identifying climate change and fingering a source. We still don't know enough to eliminate the solar cycle as a source of global warming climate variability.
Knocking down global growth by adopting greenhouse gas treaties that may be unnecessary isn't just a bit of money, plus or minus, in middle class pockets. It's the difference between life and death in the third world.
Since Kyoto went out for signature and ratification several years have passed. There are an awful lot of Kyoto signatories who have done less than the US to clean up their polluting industries than we have done while steadfastly refusing to sign on to Kyoto. For a very long time, lots of countries signed but nobody was ratifying the thing and now everybody is startled to find that if the thing goes into force, most of the signatory nations will quickly be deemed in violation of the treaty.
A piece of paper does not equal a cleaner environment.
The PRC is the world's fastest growing car market. It's also creating huge commodity imbalances across the board and that includes its sucking up foreign energy of all types including oil.
Actually, countries that are making the jump from the 3rd world to the 1st are incredibly dirty and have very fast growing economies. The PRC has smog like you wouldn't believe and still uses leaded gas, among other "easy" ways to grow dirty.
The fundamental unfairness of the start dates picked and the refusal to properly include offsetting carbon sinks doomed this treaty to US opposition from the beginning. Bush's only innovation was to not be two faced about the whole thing and tolerate us having to lie about ratifying.
The number of illegal double voters in Florida and several other states is quite likely to have exceeded the margin of victory in those states in the 2000 presidential election. If you can truck in your supporters to double vote, it doesn't matter how nice you are to legitimate voters, their votes still don't count properly. The illegal votes also tend not to be randomly distributed across party lines but rather heavily favor the Democrat party. Convicted felons are a highly Democrat voting group.
Believe me, if the rest of the sane 1st world were to up their military spending to 3%-4% of GDP, we'd be more than happy to back down our own military spending. The entire concept of the Security Council is that the major powers will police the world. The fact that the other major powers can't field a military force anywhere near as effective is not the fault of the US.
Nice comment but a little fact challenged. Current US policy under Bush is to pull back US troops from the DMZ and also to reduce the number of US troops in South Korea. N. Korea is apparently unhappy with this too. Perhaps without the "threat" of the US troops on the border it becomes more difficult to sacrifice all on the alter of security against the US invading?
No, not like those deals at all. Halliburton is a public company running under GAAP rules. Their profit margins are decent but not outstanding and entirely public.
The deals that France and Russia had with Saddam included massive bribery, financial diversion of oil monies away from starving kids and into bribery of high elected officials in these and other countries. The oil for food scandal touches so many high ups around the world that it's not even funny in the sad way that government corruption can sometiems be.
The corrupt campaign to buy Saddam's way out of sanctions was working. It's quite likely that sanctions would have been a dead letter by now not formally repealed and Saddam would have turned right around and picked up where he left off.
Both Wilson and FDR both ran as peace candidates right before getting us into world wars. 9/11 was the biggest attack on our territory since Pearl Harbor. Of course we're going to have radical shifts in policy after such an event. One of those radical shifts is how we're approaching nation building.
Actually, Al Queda is just a shell of its former self. Taking out amorphous terrorist groups bears some resemblance to taking out mafia families. The mafia declined because the feds got good at identifying leaders and taking them out quicker and quicker. New leaders were promoted but had less and less experience until the entire structure of the enterprise collapsed. A similar process is now going on with Al Queda. The leadership that was there on 9/11/01 is mostly dead or captured and, in many cases, their replacements are gone too.
Wow, talk about ugly. Do they treat people visiting from Zimbabwe as if they were Robert Mugabe? I think it's quite unlikely that they do. You should get out with a better class of people.
Why is it when I read this post, I got a flashback of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"? It was the part where the fake, astroturf campaign to discredit Sen. Smith gets brought out onto the floor of the Senate and it's just devastating to the poor guy.
The fact is that the center-right is pretty united around supporting President Bush. Sen. Kerry's getting half his support from people who like him and half from people who don't like Bush. Unless Kerry can turn that around, that's going to leave him without any sort of mandate to govern if he actually gets elected.
A Kerry presidency will leave us drifting and crippled for four years at a time when we could ill afford it.
Actually, Kyoto isn't in effect because the rest of the world hasn't ratified it, at least not enough of it has. Russia's on the fence and announces it'll join one side on even days and the other on odd days (without Russia or the US joining, Kyoto's sunk).
There apparently is an (unratified!) treaty that the US has signed stating that the US has to follow treaties that it has signed until it is definitively ratified or rejected. The US political system can't stand the loads of hypocrisy that the EU and most of the rest of the Kyoto signatories can tolerate. They can afford to sign but not implement without tearing themselves apart, apparently. The US can't do that.
What was the part about a 95-0 vote that was unclear? Clinton signed it in the way that he did (at the last minute and without any hope of ratification) as part of his transition strategy of leaving flaming policy turds on the front door of the White House for the incoming Republicans to stomp on.
It was a juvenile, nasty prank that was intended to wreck Bush's international relations with many allies right off the bat and it worked like a charm. Part of the reason why foreigners hate Bush is because Democrats have engaged in international relations sabotage during this presidency.
We've been in a war since the 1970s when the Islamists started reintroducing the veil. We didn't notice we were in a war untill something like 3000 people died and billions were lost in terrorist attacks in NY & DC.
Treating a war as a war instead of a police matter is a serious choice in this election that has profound implications. As for the economy, the bubble had popped right at the end of the Clinton administration. Bush inherited the hangover and we're currently in a recovery phase at 5.4% unemployment. That's similar to the level where Clinton sought reelection (5.5%) in a booming economy.
As for civil liberties, I would compare the two parties in how they treat political dissent to see who is the greater threat to freedom. The Democrat party's concentration camp/free speech zone was shameful. The NYC protests were not penned in with fences, were guarded carefully to prevent violence, and were an all around success as their message got out (as did the message of their counter-protesters).
You might want to read the Constitution while you're at it. The filibuster is an internal Senate rule, something that has been modified over the years and weakened. The Senate has the right, according to the Constitution, to set its own rules, including the limiting and even outright elimination of the filibuster.
These judges are generally known and have some bipartisan support in the form of 3-5 Democrat senators willing to vote to confirm. The filibuster is on because Democrats are unwilling to let the majority prevail and Republicans are unwilling to physically grind down the Democrats until they concede or die from round the clock talking without rest. The process would put too much of the business of the country on hold so this lesser solution is up to bat, simply a change or clarification of the rules to make clear that filibusters aren't for majority supported appeals court justices.
One more reason why e-texts are going to revolutionize education. Pressure groups will lose their influence to strike material when the cost of the material is a sunk cost and you can offer multiple versions at little additional cost.
Once the message becomes bits and the physical carrier can be separated out, there's actually a profit opportunity for textbook publishers to make supplementals for parents who would like the non-expurgated version of their kids texts. A little downloading magic and voila your kids textbooks are no longer lobotomized.
The West is also moving on past being able to reproduce itself both biologically and philosophically. Not all change is necessarily progress. The most religious state of the West is the US and of the 1st world states it is also the state that has most retained its christian character in its people. Whether there is any causation involved in this correlation is intensely debated. By no means is christianity interesting for only historical reasons.
Unless the black hats are dumb enough to recruit internationally, that would be the FBI's shit list. Once you get past our national border, things get highly variable. You start to have to worry about extradition and what your national law code is as well as the law codes of the countries through which your DDOS traffic passes.
If 1 year in jail/ 5k fines is a felony, the interstate conspiracy to commit such felony would be a separate crime (conspiracy to commit a felony) that would have been committed even if the crime didn't even happen. In other words, steer clear unless you have a lawyer on call to determine your potential liability.
In the Republicans' defense, they seem to be making more of an effort to accommodate their protesters than the Democrats did in Boston. There will be no concrete, chain link, and barbed wire enclosures. The GOP convention isn't going to be a free speech center but it isn't going to be as bad as Boston proved to be.
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The US Senate voted 95-0 against the Kyoto treaty. Kyoto's still dead and buried many years later in the US because of that vote even though the Senate's changed composition and Clinton's no longer president. Such a lopsided vote has a powerful influence that can stretch a very long time. A 400 vote margin in the House means that it would take us losing a city for a draft to get back on the table and even then it would be iffy.
During Schroeder's last campaign, a US pullout of troops in Germany was raised lots of times on the net as a response to his harsh antiamericanism. Every time that it was the Germans said, in effect, don't let the door hit you on the way out. It'll be an economic blow for them, sure, but I don't think we should worry about economic effects anymore than the Germans did. In reality, we should be worried about it significantly less.
There's a difference between identifying climate change and fingering a source. We still don't know enough to eliminate the solar cycle as a source of global warming climate variability.
Knocking down global growth by adopting greenhouse gas treaties that may be unnecessary isn't just a bit of money, plus or minus, in middle class pockets. It's the difference between life and death in the third world.
Since Kyoto went out for signature and ratification several years have passed. There are an awful lot of Kyoto signatories who have done less than the US to clean up their polluting industries than we have done while steadfastly refusing to sign on to Kyoto. For a very long time, lots of countries signed but nobody was ratifying the thing and now everybody is startled to find that if the thing goes into force, most of the signatory nations will quickly be deemed in violation of the treaty.
A piece of paper does not equal a cleaner environment.
The PRC is the world's fastest growing car market. It's also creating huge commodity imbalances across the board and that includes its sucking up foreign energy of all types including oil.
Actually, countries that are making the jump from the 3rd world to the 1st are incredibly dirty and have very fast growing economies. The PRC has smog like you wouldn't believe and still uses leaded gas, among other "easy" ways to grow dirty.
The fundamental unfairness of the start dates picked and the refusal to properly include offsetting carbon sinks doomed this treaty to US opposition from the beginning. Bush's only innovation was to not be two faced about the whole thing and tolerate us having to lie about ratifying.
The number of illegal double voters in Florida and several other states is quite likely to have exceeded the margin of victory in those states in the 2000 presidential election. If you can truck in your supporters to double vote, it doesn't matter how nice you are to legitimate voters, their votes still don't count properly. The illegal votes also tend not to be randomly distributed across party lines but rather heavily favor the Democrat party. Convicted felons are a highly Democrat voting group.
Believe me, if the rest of the sane 1st world were to up their military spending to 3%-4% of GDP, we'd be more than happy to back down our own military spending. The entire concept of the Security Council is that the major powers will police the world. The fact that the other major powers can't field a military force anywhere near as effective is not the fault of the US.
Nice comment but a little fact challenged. Current US policy under Bush is to pull back US troops from the DMZ and also to reduce the number of US troops in South Korea. N. Korea is apparently unhappy with this too. Perhaps without the "threat" of the US troops on the border it becomes more difficult to sacrifice all on the alter of security against the US invading?
No, not like those deals at all. Halliburton is a public company running under GAAP rules. Their profit margins are decent but not outstanding and entirely public.
The deals that France and Russia had with Saddam included massive bribery, financial diversion of oil monies away from starving kids and into bribery of high elected officials in these and other countries. The oil for food scandal touches so many high ups around the world that it's not even funny in the sad way that government corruption can sometiems be.
The corrupt campaign to buy Saddam's way out of sanctions was working. It's quite likely that sanctions would have been a dead letter by now not formally repealed and Saddam would have turned right around and picked up where he left off.
Both Wilson and FDR both ran as peace candidates right before getting us into world wars. 9/11 was the biggest attack on our territory since Pearl Harbor. Of course we're going to have radical shifts in policy after such an event. One of those radical shifts is how we're approaching nation building.
Actually, Al Queda is just a shell of its former self. Taking out amorphous terrorist groups bears some resemblance to taking out mafia families. The mafia declined because the feds got good at identifying leaders and taking them out quicker and quicker. New leaders were promoted but had less and less experience until the entire structure of the enterprise collapsed. A similar process is now going on with Al Queda. The leadership that was there on 9/11/01 is mostly dead or captured and, in many cases, their replacements are gone too.
Wow, talk about ugly. Do they treat people visiting from Zimbabwe as if they were Robert Mugabe? I think it's quite unlikely that they do. You should get out with a better class of people.
Why is it when I read this post, I got a flashback of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"? It was the part where the fake, astroturf campaign to discredit Sen. Smith gets brought out onto the floor of the Senate and it's just devastating to the poor guy.
The fact is that the center-right is pretty united around supporting President Bush. Sen. Kerry's getting half his support from people who like him and half from people who don't like Bush. Unless Kerry can turn that around, that's going to leave him without any sort of mandate to govern if he actually gets elected.
A Kerry presidency will leave us drifting and crippled for four years at a time when we could ill afford it.
Actually, Kyoto isn't in effect because the rest of the world hasn't ratified it, at least not enough of it has. Russia's on the fence and announces it'll join one side on even days and the other on odd days (without Russia or the US joining, Kyoto's sunk).
There apparently is an (unratified!) treaty that the US has signed stating that the US has to follow treaties that it has signed until it is definitively ratified or rejected. The US political system can't stand the loads of hypocrisy that the EU and most of the rest of the Kyoto signatories can tolerate. They can afford to sign but not implement without tearing themselves apart, apparently. The US can't do that.
What was the part about a 95-0 vote that was unclear? Clinton signed it in the way that he did (at the last minute and without any hope of ratification) as part of his transition strategy of leaving flaming policy turds on the front door of the White House for the incoming Republicans to stomp on.
It was a juvenile, nasty prank that was intended to wreck Bush's international relations with many allies right off the bat and it worked like a charm. Part of the reason why foreigners hate Bush is because Democrats have engaged in international relations sabotage during this presidency.
We've been in a war since the 1970s when the Islamists started reintroducing the veil. We didn't notice we were in a war untill something like 3000 people died and billions were lost in terrorist attacks in NY & DC.
Treating a war as a war instead of a police matter is a serious choice in this election that has profound implications. As for the economy, the bubble had popped right at the end of the Clinton administration. Bush inherited the hangover and we're currently in a recovery phase at 5.4% unemployment. That's similar to the level where Clinton sought reelection (5.5%) in a booming economy.
As for civil liberties, I would compare the two parties in how they treat political dissent to see who is the greater threat to freedom. The Democrat party's concentration camp/free speech zone was shameful. The NYC protests were not penned in with fences, were guarded carefully to prevent violence, and were an all around success as their message got out (as did the message of their counter-protesters).
You might want to read the Constitution while you're at it. The filibuster is an internal Senate rule, something that has been modified over the years and weakened. The Senate has the right, according to the Constitution, to set its own rules, including the limiting and even outright elimination of the filibuster.
These judges are generally known and have some bipartisan support in the form of 3-5 Democrat senators willing to vote to confirm. The filibuster is on because Democrats are unwilling to let the majority prevail and Republicans are unwilling to physically grind down the Democrats until they concede or die from round the clock talking without rest. The process would put too much of the business of the country on hold so this lesser solution is up to bat, simply a change or clarification of the rules to make clear that filibusters aren't for majority supported appeals court justices.
One more reason why e-texts are going to revolutionize education. Pressure groups will lose their influence to strike material when the cost of the material is a sunk cost and you can offer multiple versions at little additional cost.
Once the message becomes bits and the physical carrier can be separated out, there's actually a profit opportunity for textbook publishers to make supplementals for parents who would like the non-expurgated version of their kids texts. A little downloading magic and voila your kids textbooks are no longer lobotomized.
The West is also moving on past being able to reproduce itself both biologically and philosophically. Not all change is necessarily progress. The most religious state of the West is the US and of the 1st world states it is also the state that has most retained its christian character in its people. Whether there is any causation involved in this correlation is intensely debated. By no means is christianity interesting for only historical reasons.
Unless the black hats are dumb enough to recruit internationally, that would be the FBI's shit list. Once you get past our national border, things get highly variable. You start to have to worry about extradition and what your national law code is as well as the law codes of the countries through which your DDOS traffic passes.
If 1 year in jail/ 5k fines is a felony, the interstate conspiracy to commit such felony would be a separate crime (conspiracy to commit a felony) that would have been committed even if the crime didn't even happen. In other words, steer clear unless you have a lawyer on call to determine your potential liability.
In the Republicans' defense, they seem to be making more of an effort to accommodate their protesters than the Democrats did in Boston. There will be no concrete, chain link, and barbed wire enclosures. The GOP convention isn't going to be a free speech center but it isn't going to be as bad as Boston proved to be.
In all fairness, Hugh Hewitt's new book along with Ann Coulter's most recent one meet the test of honest to God right wing spite.
Neither party is entirely clean in the spite game though I agree that the left seems to be making hate literature a real specialty of theirs
I'm sure that you were all up in arms over Perot too. That choice, of course, gored Republicans so the liberals saw no problem with it.