"I know that I will be flamed with out mercy for daring to suggest a bias but here is a sample of"
Or maybe you are being selective in your memory. The forged Guard document story was thoroughly covered on Slashdot to the detriment of CBS, Kerry and the Democrats though its questionable if it had anything to do with Kerry and the Democrats. Maybe you just can't cope with stories that don't agree with your world view so you fixate on them.
It is becoming a tried and true tactic by the right to scream bias at every opportunity and pound the media and editors in to becoming biased to the right because they get worn down by constantly accused of having a liberal bias. Its worked really well thanks to 9/11, the rise of Fox News, and constant threat of being accused of being unpatriotic if you question the Bush administration.
The "liberal bias" in American media has been largely erased, and the pounding CBS is taking should finish it off. In its place we have an increasingly right wing bias which is why the U.S. was very successfully rushed in to the war in Iraq without the media questioning a fabricated case for WMD's and ties between 9/11 and Iraq at all. They were to busy riding along with the troops cheering it on, to do their job and challenging the reason for an aggressive, preemptive, illegal war.
It should be noted Iraq is rushing from treating women with reasonably equality and rights under Saddam, a secular socialis(as long as they didn't run afoul of his psycho sons), to an increasingly strict Islamic state where women are rapidly losing their rights. Kind of ironic considering all the Bush administration rhetoric about the U.S. liberating them.
On the news a week or so ago they had video of an Iraqi standing at the gate to a major university turning away a woman student because she was wearing PANTS.
I should also point out that focusing all this angst on the Taliban is kind of misplaced. The Saudi's treat women almost as bad, they are still publicly beheading people on a routine basis, and they routinely torture prisoners. They strictly enforce Islamic law which is exactly what the Taliban was doing though slightly more zealously. So why do American's rail against the Taliban and not the Saudis? Answer the Saudi's are friends of the U.S. with lots of oil, they are especially good friends of the Bush family, and the Taliban were not. It should be pointed out Cheney and assorted other oil barons were pretty good buddies with the Taliban when they were trying to negotiate a deal for a trans Afghanistan gas pipeline.
Points out how much BS there is in the Bush admininistration propaga.....rhetoric.
I haven't been following the news enough in the last couple of days to now what the cause and effect are. Like I said someone in the know, probably in the CIA is engaging in open warfare on the Bush administration and the Neocons lately. Unless they are busted I imagine you will get a story a week from someone leaking the dirt on the massive deception the Bush administration has been engaged in.
Not sure I'd write this story off to NYT grand standing. Its is an extremely important story that has unfortunately never acquired legs before. Unfortunately there have been a dozen extremely important stories that haven't gotten the play they should partially thanks to the skill of the media handlers in the Bush administration and widespread fear of retaliation in the press, or being branded "Unpatriotic" if you question the Bush administration's truthfullness.
Bush's National Guard SHOULD be a major story but instead of Bush getting what he deserves over it Dan Rather is getting filleted for it. Its bad CBS got suckered by forged documents, but its WAY WORSE that Bush operatives managed to purge all the real and embarrasing documents out of Bush's Guard file. Its a near certainty he refused his flight physical because they'd just instituted drug testing as part of it and George would have failed due to his fondness for Cocaine at the time. When he refused it he should have been brought up on charges or sent to Vietnam but for the string pulling of his family and friends.
Another story that shouldn't be forgotten is the role Chalibi played in fabricated the Iraq WMD case. His "defectors", especially "Curveball" fabricated most of the anecdotal evidence on WMD's. The CIA and everyone else doubted their credibility, except that is for Cheney and the DOD Neocons who WANTED to hear what they were saying even if they new it was a lie and either fell for it hook, line and sinker, or more probably figured everyone else could be made to fall for it.
"We're talking two years after the fact and these anonymous sources are only now growing a spine?"
It isn't a new story. It shows you how asleep at the wheel people have been that anyone thinks its a new story. Its been known for a year or more that there was a total of one expert claiming they were suitable for centrifuges and a host of experts who KNEW they were not. It a story getting some new legs because some people are growing a spine. In case you haven't noticed there have been a string of leaks, apparently coming out of the CIA, in the last couple weeks, designed to embarrass the Bush administration before the election. Last week it was the intelligence estimates that had predicted the insurgency in the Iraq which the Bush administration choose to ignore.
The Bush administration has been trying to make the CIA and George Tenant the fall guy for all of these failures and I think people in the CIA have had enough of it and are fighting back. It was Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, Pearl and the rest of the Neocons in the DOD who fabricated the case for war in Iraq, the CIA unfortunately went along when they shouldn't have but the Neocons in the DOD are literally getting away with murder while the CIA is literally being destroyed over it and that will be really bad for the U.S. in the long run. How is it being destroyed. Porter Goss is being made its head and if you thought there was a danger of the CIA being politicized before just wait until he is its head. He is as partisan as they come and a Bush administration lap dog. The CIA is also going to be sucked in to the intelligence reform act. If you thought we had intelligence problems before wait until they are all in one agency, and under a political hack like Goss. There wont even be the pretense of objectivity and second opinions. At least a few agencies, like state were debunking the Iraq WMD case. When all intelligence is in one agency it will be EASIER to fabricate a case for war as was done in Iraq.
As an aside as part of the National Intelligence reform it appears the Republican's are going to try to force through the ultimate symbol of Big Brotherism, a National ID card for every citizen.
Its happened more than once. The Gulf of Tonkin incident used to sucker the U.S. in to Vietnam was very similar. The South Vietnamese were attacking the North Vietnamese coast with patrol boats, the North Vietnamese amazingly enough fought back. An American destroyer was supporting the South Vietnamese boats and provoking retaliation, but it now appears it was never even fired on. By the time LBJ finished spinning it the North Vietnamese had engaged in a sneak attack on an American ship, practically a Pearl Harbor, and thus the U.S. was suckered in to a quagmire that cost the U.S. dearly. It is so very similar to Iraq today. The North Vietnamese were no angels and deserved to be fought but the puppet regimes the U.S. stood up in the South were far worse which is why the insurgency in Vietnam continued to grow throughout the war. If you are going to meddle in a civil war you need to make sure you are backing people who don't suck. Allawi has all the earmarks of another ruthless corrupt puppet that will foment a continuing insurgency.
If you don't want these things to happen you need people challenging the administration when they are lieing and not after all the damage has been done like now. It was painfully obvious at the time the Iraq WMD case was a lie but journalists and politicians alike were deathly afraid to challenge it in the wake of 9/11 lest they be branded as unpatriotic and soft on "Terrorism", many who did challenge it were branded just that by the Bush administration and Fox News. So its easy to Monday morning quarterback and say people should know better, but the fact is most people who tried to speak out, paid dearly for it.
Cheney and the Neocons had the whole Iraq thing outlined before 9/11. They no doubt danced a jig when 9/11 happened because they knew they could get away with almost anything in the post 9/11 frenzy. You can't really even blame George for it. He was just doing what Cheney was whispering in his ear. Cheney is the one really running the country. Bush is just an empty headed figurehead with a powerful name.
Its unfortunate the truth might turn off some undecideds but the fact is the guy has received about a hundred free passes so far and its time it stopped before this country makes another really big mistake in November. At some point he and his band of liars need to be held to account. Unlike Slick Willy lying, the lying they've been doing has gotten a thousand Americans killed and thousands of Iraqi's. Its also cost this country over a hundred billion and will easily hit two hundred billion. Its also permanently damaged America's standing in the world and created a recruiting bonanza for Islamic extremists.
You also need to couple this with the extreme rhetoric coming out of the Republican's, both in their convention and in attack ads that have basically said voting for Kerry is a vote for Osama Bin Laden and another 9/11. Up until this week it was a smear campaign that was working very well. Why hasn't that inflammatory rhetoric been turning off undecideds. It looks to me like its been working VERY well. Maybe you should get indignant about it too.
All in all its about time there was a little inflammatory rhetoric coming from the Anybody But Bush camp and the media. So far they've looked a lot like Europe appeasing Hitler and you know how well that worked.
Poland is in the "bribed" part of the coalition. Their foreign minister flat out admitted last summer they were in Iraq to get a piece of the oil field action. Gotta give the guy kudos for honesty though I should think it would be a career limiting trait for a diplomat.
Its unfortunate Kerry didn't know about this statement and didn't throw it back in George's face when George was losing it on "Don't forget Poland".
One thing I'll give the British over the U.S. they make their Prime Minister stand up in front of the opposition and take a grilling. Its pretty obvious George is living in a cocoon, no one ever challenges him, and the first time he had to face some from Kerry he pretty much lost it. I also wager he simply can't deal with the issues unless its regurgitating his "message" or Cheney is whispering in his ear what to say. The debate seemed to prove that.
I'd have to say there may be at least a grain of truth to the rumours circulating about George's mental health. You don't come out of years of acute alcoholism and drug use, untreated, and not carry deep mental scaring, especially when you are under major pressure. The guy simply doesn't have what it takes to hold any position with any power.
Would committing a felony but having it purged from your record count. There is a pretty high probability George W. was arrested for Cocaine possession in Texas in his youth. He apparently cut a deal and got off with 6 months community service working with poor black kids in a program called PUSH and it was purged from his record. Isn't being rich and powerful nice? How many poor and black kids did the same thing and ended up with felony convictions and doing time. I assure you a rich white frat boy wouldn't be working with poor black kids unless he had to to stay out of jail.
I think it would be a more informative web site if they quoted Poland's foreign minister from the Summer after the invasion. These statements put Poland squarely in the "bribed" part of the coalition:
"Poland seeks Iraqi oil stake," BBC News Online, 3 July 2003
Poland, which has sent troops to support the US-led forces in Iraq, has acknowledged its "ultimate objective" is to acquire supplies of Iraqi oil.
The Polish Foreign Minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said his country had never disguised the fact that it sought direct access to the oilfields.
He was speaking as a group of Polish firms signed a deal with a subsidiary of US Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton.
The US firm, Kellogg, Brown and Root, has already won million-dollar contracts to carry out reconstruction work in Iraq.
"We have never hidden our desire for Polish oil companies to finally have access to sources of commodities," Mr Cimoszewicz told the Polish PAP news agency. Access to the oilfields "is our ultimate objective," he added.
Or maybe you are once again deluding yourself into thinking the non stop stream of effluvium you write online actually counts for something.
My experience from Slashdot is the right wing fanatics worship the posts of the right wing fanatics and left wing fanatics worship at the the posts of the left wing fanatics, and everyone else has a life and could care less.
The "blip" in the polls could probably be better attributed to:
- Increasingly savage and non stop attack ads from the Shrub crowd, on the heals of a savage convention. Kerry/Edwards are pretty much defenseless against the Weapons of Mass Distraction. Its amazing what hundreds of millions of dollars worth of TV ads can do to the brains of most Americans.
- The pollsters and the media, that includes you doesn't it Twirp, have started a feeding frenzy over Kerry's carcass, and those inevitably turn in to self fulfilling prophecy
- Kerry is unfortunately about the worst candidate the Dems could have picked if they actually wanted to win an election. Again I'll resort to the explanation that it is unnatural that there are 800 people in the elite of the elite's secret society, Yale's Skull and Bones, so what are the odds both Presidential candidates in a nation of 300 million would be members. I figure they must of stood Kerry up just so they can make sure Bush wins. No way a loser like George "Mooolaaas" Bush could have won on his own against anyone even half way decent and who was trying.
Its lost on most people but Allawi was part of Saddam's Bathist regime earlier in life. What he did for him is a little cloudy but indications are he was one of Saddam's enforcers, in other words he either did wet work stamping out Saddam's enemies or arranged to have it done, especially in Britain and Europe.
For some reason Allawi and Saddam had a major falling out and Saddam nearly succeeded in having him murdered with an ax. Allawi survived and has been a CIA and British stooge every since trying to exact his revenge on Saddam. Its not like he is exactly in this to bring "Freedom and Democracy" to Iraq.
He is a thug and an American puppet, nothing more and nothing less. He has a lot in common with the thugs and puppets the U.S. propped up in Vietnam. They were corrupt, ruthless and despised by most of their people too and helped fuel an insurgency that nearly destroyed another U.S. occupation army. Propping up bad puppets is the surest way in the book to fuel a neverending insurgency.
Allawy is where he is because he is loyal to the Bush administration and will do their bidding. He was the second choice for this role after it became obvious their previous chosen puppet Chalibi couldn't be trusted and was working for himself and Iran more than he was the U.S.
Allawi is being used to try to put an Iraq face on a very long term U.S. occupation of the Middle East. As Kerry said tonight the U.S. is building 14 permanent military bases in Iraq and the largest U.S. embassy in the world. The plan is to stay there permanently and use it as a military base to project power across the Middle East, especially at Iran and Syria, and to pressure Saudi Arabia as needed. Iraq is an especially good location to project control over the world's largest oil fields. As the $50/barrel price of oil suggests, oil supplies are getting tight especially as China's economy goes ballistic. In the next couple of decades the country that controls the worlds oil is going to decide the economic winners and losers by deciding who gets that oil.
Saudi Arabia really sucked as a military base because the Saudi's massively constrained what the U.S. did there. Iraq wont have that problem with a puppet regime in place. Unless Iran and Syria collapse from within or become very compliant to America's demands there is a near certainty Iraq will be the springboard to take them down next, after another WMD frenzy, which is already building over Iran's nuclear aspirations.
Its interesting it also came out this week there is or was going to be a CIA project to influence Iraq's election by both legal and illegal means. At the moment its important to the Bush administration they put together the pretense of elections, but its more important they make sure a compliant puppet like Allawi wins. Again its lost on most American's but the CIA has a long history of influencing and outright rigging elections around the globe, including the efforts of Nixon's plumbers to rig the American election in 1972.
If all you Bush fan boys want to cry "tin foil hat" just remember its already been proven Nixon tried to rig the 1972 election with the help of people who were straight out of the CIA. There is absolutely no reason they wont try to do it again in the U.S., Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bush clan are ruthless Machiavellian's and have been since at least Bert Walker and Prescott Bush. They play hard ball and they play to win.
With electronic voting, without a paper trail, it will be laughably easy to rig the U.S. election. Its no accident when Bush was asked about what would happen if Kerry won, that he said that Kerry wasn't going to win. Bush seems to already know he has the election in the bag.
The passage you quote is a very specific instance of being secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, which is, in fact, one of the rights the Patriot Act is designed to trample in the name of making people "secure". The parent is referring to a right to be "secure" in the broad sense, as in being safe from physical or economic assault which, as the parent said, isn't a right any government can really assure.
As much of a pedant as you are, I'm baffled why you failed to comprehend what the parent was actually saying and why your retort is so off the mark.
OK, so substitute a laser target designator on a soldiers rifle on the ground, or a targeting laser for one of the Airbone laser laboratories. From a random google link:
"To the left is an image of a low powered visible beam that was used in the development of the system used by ABL to compensate for fluctuations in the atmosphere. An observer is visible on the deck below. He is watching for aircraft who may accidentally be in the region. Pilots can be dazzled by the laser, so as a last line of defense against his, someone armed with a cut-off switch keeps his eye on the skies."
If there is an accident with a laser you should probably at least consider the possibility of an accident with a government owned laser especially in that region which is ripe with labs, bases and military aircraft.
I should add earlier today I had an epiphany and I now see the light in the "War on Terror" (I wish I could do an echo chamber over the internet to make that sound more ominous). I see the light at the end of the tunnel, a way to end this war and I think the Bush administration is already on to it.
You see the Shrubs keep saying "They hate us for our Freedom and Democracy". So today I put two and two together. If we want to end this war what do we do. Put and end to that nasty "Freedom and Democracy" they hate so much. Pass the Patriot Act, take away everyone model rockets and laser pointers, create a National ID card which the Republicans are apparently going to shove through on the back of the National Intelligence act they are trying to shove through Congress before the election, create a single massive spying agency with all the best of the CIA, DOD, NSA, FBI and give it carte blanche to spy on everyone foreign and domestic without barriers, restore the draft as soon as the election is out of the way, and most importantly appoint Twirp as propaganda minister.
Presto, the nasty "Freedom and Democracy" thing is gone, the "Terrorists" no longer have a reason to hate us, the war is over. Please forward your nominations for my Nobel Peace prize to Sweden.
Yea and it could have been from a laser targeting system on a military aircraft. I guess its a sign of the times, and your bent for scare mongering, that you favored the scenario best suited to scaring people.
Hate to be a pedant Twirp, but how can we be in "the middle" of war that will never end, what is the middle of infinity? In saying that I'm just going by Bush administration rhetoric that its a war that will never end, and on at least one occasion George said he couldn't win it, which I guess means either it will never end or he is planning on losing. Of course he flip flopped on that statement right after that.
You may as well get used to the idea of doing without your lasers, model rockets, model airplanes, John Kerry stickers, fertilizer, pocket knifes, sewing scissors, screw drivers, etc.
The Bush administration did have a chance to beat Al Qaeda if they had gone in to Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan fast, with overwhelming and sustained force, but instead they fought the war that mattered, on the cheap, using two bit warlord proxies who let Al Qaeda and the Taliban slip away to fight another day. I'm wondering if the CIA let them slip away since Al Qaeda is, after all, their baby, the CIA having funded, trained and armed them to fight the Russions in Afghanistan in the 1980's. Maybe the couldn't stand seeing one of their children snuffed out, its kind of a Dr. Frankenstien script.
And of course Pakistan and assorted Saudi's are doing their part to keep insure the war will never end.
Meanwhile the Bush administration rushed off to a war against a secular dictatorship that had nothing to do with 9/11 and have apparently created a second war that will never end, insurgencies being extraordinarily long lived and unlikely to end till the occupier gives up and loses. On deck, we have Iran and Syria to be never ending wars #3 and #4.
"There is NO substance to "they hate our freedoms."
I'd still have to disagree, I understand you disapprove of the propaganda application of the statement by the Bush administration but there is a grain of truth to it. I'm not saying it is THE reason for the current war, but it is a fact that fundamentalist Muslims do hate the lax morals in the West, and they would in fact do away with many of them if they took over the U.S.
As an example, in Iraq, owners of liquor stores are apparently Christian, since no good Muslim sells or drinks alcohol. As Iraq has rushed towards Islamic fundamentalism many Christian liquor store owners are being compelled to close or leave. Saddam was a bad man but one positive is he did keep religious fundamentalism in check, and that is no longer the case. Women in particular had a lot more rights under Saddam's secular government than they are going to see in the new, increasingly, fundamentalist Iraq, as long as they didn't run afoul of his secret police or his sons. A couple nights ago the news showed a man, apparently self appointed morality monitor, standing at the gates of one of Iraq's University's barring a women from entering because she was wearing pants.
Living under the taliban whether they be Afghan, Iraqi or American would be bad, but if look at Afghanistan under the Taliban, despite the American propaganda to the contrary, they were very devoted to and successful at destroying opium production in the areas under their control, much more so than under the U.S. occupation and the fiefdoms of the new Afghanistan where opium production is exploding.
Its a contraction of George Dubya and ass, dub-ass. I think Twirp was slamming the President but I'm not sure. Stop slamming our President Twirp, if you don't respect the man at least respect the office.
LOL. So why don't you post under your login if its so meaningless. At least I'm putting something on the line. Your putting nothing on the line and its pretty easy to run your mouth when your doing that.
Again for all I know your just Twirp going to creative writing school trying to get me to call off the dogs. He REALLY wants to play the Internet brown shirt without anyone calling him on it, and the fact that I am calling him on it again, is no doubt, really ticking him off and I'm sure he wants me to let him go about his merry way roughing up one Slashdot denizen after another.
I've been letting his posts lie for a while, some of them are in fact informative, but I caught up on some of his posts this week, and he is again resorting one offensive post after another and getting away with it.
"I also think that you are intimidated and jealous of what you perceive as knowledge and intelligence coming from Twirlip."
LOL, now I know its you Twirp. You break your arm patting yourself on the back that hard.
No, Twirp I have high confidence this is you. You better drop one of them a line and have them come over and post under their login in a vain attempt to salvage your credibility, like last time we played this little astroturfing game. I really doubt your fanatics came flocking to this thread in the space of a couple of hours to back you up. If they had I wager they wouldn't have cowered under AC posts.
The timing of your posts says its you, the rhetoric says its you, the name calling says its you, telling people to shut up says its you, being a flaming pedant is all you. If its not you someone has your distinctive style COMPLETELY down, and a trademark case is in order.
As I recall when we started our little dialog you assured me you had a barrel full of ink so I couldn't win. Barely a teaspoon full of ink later and you cratered, and have resorted to nothing but juvenile AC posts to reply to me ever since.
Yadda....yadda.....yadda...one AC post is worth as much as another....nothing. Just, people or maybe a person, engaging in vicious attacks like all of the above and to top it off they are too chicken shit to do it under their login.
Big difference between you and me is I'm not ashamed of what I'm saying so I'm doing it under my login.
Twirp's viscious rhetoric makes Slashdot a worse place, day after day. He savages one person after another, a few deserve it, most don't. He tries to intimidate people expressing viewpoints he wants to silence in to silence and that is NOT WHAT THIS COUNTRY IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT, but increasingly is. He can spout his BS all he ones for all I care but STOP THE PERSONAL ATTACKS.
Will me rebounding some of it at him stop him, no, but at least he will for a few minutes taste his own medicine. You could always hope he would wake up, smell the coffee, and realize that the way he feels right now is how he makes people feel day after day for no good reason.
I was baiting you Twirp. I tried it with "bold faced liar" which as I recall set you off a while ago, but you didn't go for it. But you went for this one in spades, you couldn't help yourself, everyone knows you are flaming pedant.
You should've also used a different insult than "dumbass", the just used it a couple posts up if you wanted to even attempt to pretend you aren't the one doing the immature, offensive AC astroturfing. Geez you didn't even spell it right. Whats the matter your blood boiling because playing the Internet brown shirt isn't working, and you can't even type straight.
Your credibility is fading fast here Twirp, not like you had any coming in.
There you go again Twirp, telling people to shut up.
I'll stop replying to your posts the day you stop the name calling and start winning arguments with rational debate instead of the verbal brown shirting.
Its really obvious you are doing the offensive AC posts. Your first AC post was at 1:20, your other two posts under your login are at 1:25 and 1:29. Important safety tip when you engaging in juvenile AC posts, don't post them at the same time, in fact a nearly perfectly spaced 5 minute interval, as the posts under your login.
Twirp, Twirp, Twirp. Remember a while back when you claimed you didn't know how to post as an anonymous coward, overlooking the little problem that it is a giant check box next to the submit button you use 20 times a day, and that you are a bold face liar, and these juvenile AC posts are the real you.
Well I really wish you'd stop being a pussy, pull that tail out from between your legs and reply to my posts under your login, you know mano y mano. Are you afraid or did you realize you wont win your feeble attempts at debate using the pathetic arrows in your rhetorical quiver, verbal bullying, flag waving, regurgitated Bush administration rhetoric and unsupported BS (synonymous with regurgitated Bush administration rhetoric).
"We have an American political spectrum, okay? It's a subset of the whole spectrum."
Only thanks to people like you and your idol, Eugene McCarthy. This is supposed to be a free country and you are supposed to be able to have the political views of your choosing as long as you aren't trying to seize power or otherwise violate the constitution.
Obviously that isn't the case in America because people like you and Gene have mercilessly persecuted anyone who doesn't conform to your narrow and twisted view of the world.
All in all, you seem really big on "Freedom" until someone uses it in a way you don't like and personally approve of and at that point you seem to be first in line to deny other people their freedom. Freedom really is empty rhetoric to you and your friends in the Republican party and the moral majority, isn't it.
Capitalism has great strengths, it also has great weakness, like all complex systems. It isn't a sacred cow, and the people who treat it like one are likely to undermine its strengths, and enhance its flaws.
One obvious example being if you let it run unchecked you are going to end up with a bunch of monopolies, or maybe eventually one monopoly, that will end up destroying the free markets you so breathlessly praise. Is that OK with you? After all its just market forces at work so it must be OK, right? Your not going to let the government intervene in the markets to stop it are you, sacrilege.
Another obvious example of how capitalism rings hollow in America today, the so called "Medicare Reform Bill", where your Republican party, champions of free markets forbade Medicare to negotiate prices for drugs to get a fair price. It is, all in all, a blatant intervention in free markets by big government. It is nothing more than the Republicans transfering large sums from tax payers pockets in to the pockets of their wealthy friends in the drug and health industries. I am outraged at this anti-capitalist behavior, take them out and shoot them.
Left unchecked Capitalism is going to result in massive concentration of wealth in the hands of a very lucky, very few, especially if the Republicans continue to move to a regressive tax system, and continue to use the government to transfer money from tax payers to their friends. You would probably sing praises of that as "the law of the jungle" and "survival of the fittest". Well it is more an inherent result of capitalism that if you have lots of capital its really easy to make a lot more of it. If you're in that lucky few I guess it is something to sing praises of...as long as you live in a gated community with enough armed guards to deal with the other 99% of the world you've pushed in to abject poverty and starvation, pushed them by exploiting them and looting every available corner of the world so you can have yours.
Slashdot Mirror
"I know that I will be flamed with out mercy for daring to suggest a bias but here is a sample of"
Or maybe you are being selective in your memory. The forged Guard document story was thoroughly covered on Slashdot to the detriment of CBS, Kerry and the Democrats though its questionable if it had anything to do with Kerry and the Democrats. Maybe you just can't cope with stories that don't agree with your world view so you fixate on them.
It is becoming a tried and true tactic by the right to scream bias at every opportunity and pound the media and editors in to becoming biased to the right because they get worn down by constantly accused of having a liberal bias. Its worked really well thanks to 9/11, the rise of Fox News, and constant threat of being accused of being unpatriotic if you question the Bush administration.
The "liberal bias" in American media has been largely erased, and the pounding CBS is taking should finish it off. In its place we have an increasingly right wing bias which is why the U.S. was very successfully rushed in to the war in Iraq without the media questioning a fabricated case for WMD's and ties between 9/11 and Iraq at all. They were to busy riding along with the troops cheering it on, to do their job and challenging the reason for an aggressive, preemptive, illegal war.
It should be noted Iraq is rushing from treating women with reasonably equality and rights under Saddam, a secular socialis(as long as they didn't run afoul of his psycho sons), to an increasingly strict Islamic state where women are rapidly losing their rights. Kind of ironic considering all the Bush administration rhetoric about the U.S. liberating them.
On the news a week or so ago they had video of an Iraqi standing at the gate to a major university turning away a woman student because she was wearing PANTS.
I should also point out that focusing all this angst on the Taliban is kind of misplaced. The Saudi's treat women almost as bad, they are still publicly beheading people on a routine basis, and they routinely torture prisoners. They strictly enforce Islamic law which is exactly what the Taliban was doing though slightly more zealously. So why do American's rail against the Taliban and not the Saudis? Answer the Saudi's are friends of the U.S. with lots of oil, they are especially good friends of the Bush family, and the Taliban were not. It should be pointed out Cheney and assorted other oil barons were pretty good buddies with the Taliban when they were trying to negotiate a deal for a trans Afghanistan gas pipeline.
Points out how much BS there is in the Bush admininistration propaga.....rhetoric.
I haven't been following the news enough in the last couple of days to now what the cause and effect are. Like I said someone in the know, probably in the CIA is engaging in open warfare on the Bush administration and the Neocons lately. Unless they are busted I imagine you will get a story a week from someone leaking the dirt on the massive deception the Bush administration has been engaged in.
Not sure I'd write this story off to NYT grand standing. Its is an extremely important story that has unfortunately never acquired legs before. Unfortunately there have been a dozen extremely important stories that haven't gotten the play they should partially thanks to the skill of the media handlers in the Bush administration and widespread fear of retaliation in the press, or being branded "Unpatriotic" if you question the Bush administration's truthfullness.
Bush's National Guard SHOULD be a major story but instead of Bush getting what he deserves over it Dan Rather is getting filleted for it. Its bad CBS got suckered by forged documents, but its WAY WORSE that Bush operatives managed to purge all the real and embarrasing documents out of Bush's Guard file. Its a near certainty he refused his flight physical because they'd just instituted drug testing as part of it and George would have failed due to his fondness for Cocaine at the time. When he refused it he should have been brought up on charges or sent to Vietnam but for the string pulling of his family and friends.
Another story that shouldn't be forgotten is the role Chalibi played in fabricated the Iraq WMD case. His "defectors", especially "Curveball" fabricated most of the anecdotal evidence on WMD's. The CIA and everyone else doubted their credibility, except that is for Cheney and the DOD Neocons who WANTED to hear what they were saying even if they new it was a lie and either fell for it hook, line and sinker, or more probably figured everyone else could be made to fall for it.
"We're talking two years after the fact and these anonymous sources are only now growing a spine?"
It isn't a new story. It shows you how asleep at the wheel people have been that anyone thinks its a new story. Its been known for a year or more that there was a total of one expert claiming they were suitable for centrifuges and a host of experts who KNEW they were not. It a story getting some new legs because some people are growing a spine. In case you haven't noticed there have been a string of leaks, apparently coming out of the CIA, in the last couple weeks, designed to embarrass the Bush administration before the election. Last week it was the intelligence estimates that had predicted the insurgency in the Iraq which the Bush administration choose to ignore.
The Bush administration has been trying to make the CIA and George Tenant the fall guy for all of these failures and I think people in the CIA have had enough of it and are fighting back. It was Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, Pearl and the rest of the Neocons in the DOD who fabricated the case for war in Iraq, the CIA unfortunately went along when they shouldn't have but the Neocons in the DOD are literally getting away with murder while the CIA is literally being destroyed over it and that will be really bad for the U.S. in the long run. How is it being destroyed. Porter Goss is being made its head and if you thought there was a danger of the CIA being politicized before just wait until he is its head. He is as partisan as they come and a Bush administration lap dog. The CIA is also going to be sucked in to the intelligence reform act. If you thought we had intelligence problems before wait until they are all in one agency, and under a political hack like Goss. There wont even be the pretense of objectivity and second opinions. At least a few agencies, like state were debunking the Iraq WMD case. When all intelligence is in one agency it will be EASIER to fabricate a case for war as was done in Iraq.
As an aside as part of the National Intelligence reform it appears the Republican's are going to try to force through the ultimate symbol of Big Brotherism, a National ID card for every citizen.
Its happened more than once. The Gulf of Tonkin incident used to sucker the U.S. in to Vietnam was very similar. The South Vietnamese were attacking the North Vietnamese coast with patrol boats, the North Vietnamese amazingly enough fought back. An American destroyer was supporting the South Vietnamese boats and provoking retaliation, but it now appears it was never even fired on. By the time LBJ finished spinning it the North Vietnamese had engaged in a sneak attack on an American ship, practically a Pearl Harbor, and thus the U.S. was suckered in to a quagmire that cost the U.S. dearly. It is so very similar to Iraq today. The North Vietnamese were no angels and deserved to be fought but the puppet regimes the U.S. stood up in the South were far worse which is why the insurgency in Vietnam continued to grow throughout the war. If you are going to meddle in a civil war you need to make sure you are backing people who don't suck. Allawi has all the earmarks of another ruthless corrupt puppet that will foment a continuing insurgency.
If you don't want these things to happen you need people challenging the administration when they are lieing and not after all the damage has been done like now. It was painfully obvious at the time the Iraq WMD case was a lie but journalists and politicians alike were deathly afraid to challenge it in the wake of 9/11 lest they be branded as unpatriotic and soft on "Terrorism", many who did challenge it were branded just that by the Bush administration and Fox News. So its easy to Monday morning quarterback and say people should know better, but the fact is most people who tried to speak out, paid dearly for it.
Cheney and the Neocons had the whole Iraq thing outlined before 9/11. They no doubt danced a jig when 9/11 happened because they knew they could get away with almost anything in the post 9/11 frenzy. You can't really even blame George for it. He was just doing what Cheney was whispering in his ear. Cheney is the one really running the country. Bush is just an empty headed figurehead with a powerful name.
Its unfortunate the truth might turn off some undecideds but the fact is the guy has received about a hundred free passes so far and its time it stopped before this country makes another really big mistake in November. At some point he and his band of liars need to be held to account. Unlike Slick Willy lying, the lying they've been doing has gotten a thousand Americans killed and thousands of Iraqi's. Its also cost this country over a hundred billion and will easily hit two hundred billion. Its also permanently damaged America's standing in the world and created a recruiting bonanza for Islamic extremists.
You also need to couple this with the extreme rhetoric coming out of the Republican's, both in their convention and in attack ads that have basically said voting for Kerry is a vote for Osama Bin Laden and another 9/11. Up until this week it was a smear campaign that was working very well. Why hasn't that inflammatory rhetoric been turning off undecideds. It looks to me like its been working VERY well. Maybe you should get indignant about it too.
All in all its about time there was a little inflammatory rhetoric coming from the Anybody But Bush camp and the media. So far they've looked a lot like Europe appeasing Hitler and you know how well that worked.
Poland is in the "bribed" part of the coalition. Their foreign minister flat out admitted last summer they were in Iraq to get a piece of the oil field action. Gotta give the guy kudos for honesty though I should think it would be a career limiting trait for a diplomat.
Its unfortunate Kerry didn't know about this statement and didn't throw it back in George's face when George was losing it on "Don't forget Poland".
One thing I'll give the British over the U.S. they make their Prime Minister stand up in front of the opposition and take a grilling. Its pretty obvious George is living in a cocoon, no one ever challenges him, and the first time he had to face some from Kerry he pretty much lost it. I also wager he simply can't deal with the issues unless its regurgitating his "message" or Cheney is whispering in his ear what to say. The debate seemed to prove that.
I'd have to say there may be at least a grain of truth to the rumours circulating about George's mental health. You don't come out of years of acute alcoholism and drug use, untreated, and not carry deep mental scaring, especially when you are under major pressure. The guy simply doesn't have what it takes to hold any position with any power.
Would committing a felony but having it purged from your record count. There is a pretty high probability George W. was arrested for Cocaine possession in Texas in his youth. He apparently cut a deal and got off with 6 months community service working with poor black kids in a program called PUSH and it was purged from his record. Isn't being rich and powerful nice? How many poor and black kids did the same thing and ended up with felony convictions and doing time. I assure you a rich white frat boy wouldn't be working with poor black kids unless he had to to stay out of jail.
I think it would be a more informative web site if they quoted Poland's foreign minister from the Summer after the invasion. These statements put Poland squarely in the "bribed" part of the coalition:
"Poland seeks Iraqi oil stake," BBC News Online, 3 July 2003
Poland, which has sent troops to support the US-led forces in Iraq, has acknowledged its "ultimate objective" is to acquire supplies of Iraqi oil.
The Polish Foreign Minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said his country had never disguised the fact that it sought direct access to the oilfields.
He was speaking as a group of Polish firms signed a deal with a subsidiary of US Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton.
The US firm, Kellogg, Brown and Root, has already won million-dollar contracts to carry out reconstruction work in Iraq.
"We have never hidden our desire for Polish oil companies to finally have access to sources of commodities," Mr Cimoszewicz told the Polish PAP news agency. Access to the oilfields "is our ultimate objective," he added.
Or maybe you are once again deluding yourself into thinking the non stop stream of effluvium you write online actually counts for something.
My experience from Slashdot is the right wing fanatics worship the posts of the right wing fanatics and left wing fanatics worship at the the posts of the left wing fanatics, and everyone else has a life and could care less.
The "blip" in the polls could probably be better attributed to:
- Increasingly savage and non stop attack ads from the Shrub crowd, on the heals of a savage convention. Kerry/Edwards are pretty much defenseless against the Weapons of Mass Distraction. Its amazing what hundreds of millions of dollars worth of TV ads can do to the brains of most Americans.
- The pollsters and the media, that includes you doesn't it Twirp, have started a feeding frenzy over Kerry's carcass, and those inevitably turn in to self fulfilling prophecy
- Kerry is unfortunately about the worst candidate the Dems could have picked if they actually wanted to win an election. Again I'll resort to the explanation that it is unnatural that there are 800 people in the elite of the elite's secret society, Yale's Skull and Bones, so what are the odds both Presidential candidates in a nation of 300 million would be members. I figure they must of stood Kerry up just so they can make sure Bush wins. No way a loser like George "Mooolaaas" Bush could have won on his own against anyone even half way decent and who was trying.
Its lost on most people but Allawi was part of Saddam's Bathist regime earlier in life. What he did for him is a little cloudy but indications are he was one of Saddam's enforcers, in other words he either did wet work stamping out Saddam's enemies or arranged to have it done, especially in Britain and Europe.
For some reason Allawi and Saddam had a major falling out and Saddam nearly succeeded in having him murdered with an ax. Allawi survived and has been a CIA and British stooge every since trying to exact his revenge on Saddam. Its not like he is exactly in this to bring "Freedom and Democracy" to Iraq.
He is a thug and an American puppet, nothing more and nothing less. He has a lot in common with the thugs and puppets the U.S. propped up in Vietnam. They were corrupt, ruthless and despised by most of their people too and helped fuel an insurgency that nearly destroyed another U.S. occupation army. Propping up bad puppets is the surest way in the book to fuel a neverending insurgency.
Allawy is where he is because he is loyal to the Bush administration and will do their bidding. He was the second choice for this role after it became obvious their previous chosen puppet Chalibi couldn't be trusted and was working for himself and Iran more than he was the U.S.
Allawi is being used to try to put an Iraq face on a very long term U.S. occupation of the Middle East. As Kerry said tonight the U.S. is building 14 permanent military bases in Iraq and the largest U.S. embassy in the world. The plan is to stay there permanently and use it as a military base to project power across the Middle East, especially at Iran and Syria, and to pressure Saudi Arabia as needed. Iraq is an especially good location to project control over the world's largest oil fields. As the $50/barrel price of oil suggests, oil supplies are getting tight especially as China's economy goes ballistic. In the next couple of decades the country that controls the worlds oil is going to decide the economic winners and losers by deciding who gets that oil.
Saudi Arabia really sucked as a military base because the Saudi's massively constrained what the U.S. did there. Iraq wont have that problem with a puppet regime in place. Unless Iran and Syria collapse from within or become very compliant to America's demands there is a near certainty Iraq will be the springboard to take them down next, after another WMD frenzy, which is already building over Iran's nuclear aspirations.
Its interesting it also came out this week there is or was going to be a CIA project to influence Iraq's election by both legal and illegal means. At the moment its important to the Bush administration they put together the pretense of elections, but its more important they make sure a compliant puppet like Allawi wins. Again its lost on most American's but the CIA has a long history of influencing and outright rigging elections around the globe, including the efforts of Nixon's plumbers to rig the American election in 1972.
If all you Bush fan boys want to cry "tin foil hat" just remember its already been proven Nixon tried to rig the 1972 election with the help of people who were straight out of the CIA. There is absolutely no reason they wont try to do it again in the U.S., Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bush clan are ruthless Machiavellian's and have been since at least Bert Walker and Prescott Bush. They play hard ball and they play to win.
With electronic voting, without a paper trail, it will be laughably easy to rig the U.S. election. Its no accident when Bush was asked about what would happen if Kerry won, that he said that Kerry wasn't going to win. Bush seems to already know he has the election in the bag.
I think you completely missed the point, Twirp.
The passage you quote is a very specific instance of being secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, which is, in fact, one of the rights the Patriot Act is designed to trample in the name of making people "secure". The parent is referring to a right to be "secure" in the broad sense, as in being safe from physical or economic assault which, as the parent said, isn't a right any government can really assure.
As much of a pedant as you are, I'm baffled why you failed to comprehend what the parent was actually saying and why your retort is so off the mark.
OK, so substitute a laser target designator on a soldiers rifle on the ground, or a targeting laser for one of the Airbone laser laboratories. From a random google link:
"To the left is an image of a low powered visible beam that was used in the development of the system used by ABL to compensate for fluctuations in the atmosphere. An observer is visible on the deck below. He is watching for aircraft who may accidentally be in the region. Pilots can be dazzled by the laser, so as a last line of defense against his, someone armed with a cut-off switch keeps his eye on the skies."
If there is an accident with a laser you should probably at least consider the possibility of an accident with a government owned laser especially in that region which is ripe with labs, bases and military aircraft.
I should add earlier today I had an epiphany and I now see the light in the "War on Terror" (I wish I could do an echo chamber over the internet to make that sound more ominous). I see the light at the end of the tunnel, a way to end this war and I think the Bush administration is already on to it.
You see the Shrubs keep saying "They hate us for our Freedom and Democracy". So today I put two and two together. If we want to end this war what do we do. Put and end to that nasty "Freedom and Democracy" they hate so much. Pass the Patriot Act, take away everyone model rockets and laser pointers, create a National ID card which the Republicans are apparently going to shove through on the back of the National Intelligence act they are trying to shove through Congress before the election, create a single massive spying agency with all the best of the CIA, DOD, NSA, FBI and give it carte blanche to spy on everyone foreign and domestic without barriers, restore the draft as soon as the election is out of the way, and most importantly appoint Twirp as propaganda minister.
Presto, the nasty "Freedom and Democracy" thing is gone, the "Terrorists" no longer have a reason to hate us, the war is over. Please forward your nominations for my Nobel Peace prize to Sweden.
Yea and it could have been from a laser targeting system on a military aircraft. I guess its a sign of the times, and your bent for scare mongering, that you favored the scenario best suited to scaring people.
Hate to be a pedant Twirp, but how can we be in "the middle" of war that will never end, what is the middle of infinity? In saying that I'm just going by Bush administration rhetoric that its a war that will never end, and on at least one occasion George said he couldn't win it, which I guess means either it will never end or he is planning on losing. Of course he flip flopped on that statement right after that.
You may as well get used to the idea of doing without your lasers, model rockets, model airplanes, John Kerry stickers, fertilizer, pocket knifes, sewing scissors, screw drivers, etc.
The Bush administration did have a chance to beat Al Qaeda if they had gone in to Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan fast, with overwhelming and sustained force, but instead they fought the war that mattered, on the cheap, using two bit warlord proxies who let Al Qaeda and the Taliban slip away to fight another day. I'm wondering if the CIA let them slip away since Al Qaeda is, after all, their baby, the CIA having funded, trained and armed them to fight the Russions in Afghanistan in the 1980's. Maybe the couldn't stand seeing one of their children snuffed out, its kind of a Dr. Frankenstien script.
And of course Pakistan and assorted Saudi's are doing their part to keep insure the war will never end.
Meanwhile the Bush administration rushed off to a war against a secular dictatorship that had nothing to do with 9/11 and have apparently created a second war that will never end, insurgencies being extraordinarily long lived and unlikely to end till the occupier gives up and loses. On deck, we have Iran and Syria to be never ending wars #3 and #4.
"There is NO substance to "they hate our freedoms."
I'd still have to disagree, I understand you disapprove of the propaganda application of the statement by the Bush administration but there is a grain of truth to it. I'm not saying it is THE reason for the current war, but it is a fact that fundamentalist Muslims do hate the lax morals in the West, and they would in fact do away with many of them if they took over the U.S.
As an example, in Iraq, owners of liquor stores are apparently Christian, since no good Muslim sells or drinks alcohol. As Iraq has rushed towards Islamic fundamentalism many Christian liquor store owners are being compelled to close or leave. Saddam was a bad man but one positive is he did keep religious fundamentalism in check, and that is no longer the case. Women in particular had a lot more rights under Saddam's secular government than they are going to see in the new, increasingly, fundamentalist Iraq, as long as they didn't run afoul of his secret police or his sons. A couple nights ago the news showed a man, apparently self appointed morality monitor, standing at the gates of one of Iraq's University's barring a women from entering because she was wearing pants.
Living under the taliban whether they be Afghan, Iraqi or American would be bad, but if look at Afghanistan under the Taliban, despite the American propaganda to the contrary, they were very devoted to and successful at destroying opium production in the areas under their control, much more so than under the U.S. occupation and the fiefdoms of the new Afghanistan where opium production is exploding.
Its a contraction of George Dubya and ass, dub-ass. I think Twirp was slamming the President but I'm not sure. Stop slamming our President Twirp, if you don't respect the man at least respect the office.
> too chicken shit to do it under their login.
"You're no more a person to me than an AC is."
LOL. So why don't you post under your login if its so meaningless. At least I'm putting something on the line. Your putting nothing on the line and its pretty easy to run your mouth when your doing that.
Again for all I know your just Twirp going to creative writing school trying to get me to call off the dogs. He REALLY wants to play the Internet brown shirt without anyone calling him on it, and the fact that I am calling him on it again, is no doubt, really ticking him off and I'm sure he wants me to let him go about his merry way roughing up one Slashdot denizen after another.
I've been letting his posts lie for a while, some of them are in fact informative, but I caught up on some of his posts this week, and he is again resorting one offensive post after another and getting away with it.
"I also think that you are intimidated and jealous of what you perceive as knowledge and intelligence coming from Twirlip."
LOL, now I know its you Twirp. You break your arm patting yourself on the back that hard.
No, Twirp I have high confidence this is you. You better drop one of them a line and have them come over and post under their login in a vain attempt to salvage your credibility, like last time we played this little astroturfing game. I really doubt your fanatics came flocking to this thread in the space of a couple of hours to back you up. If they had I wager they wouldn't have cowered under AC posts.
The timing of your posts says its you, the rhetoric says its you, the name calling says its you, telling people to shut up says its you, being a flaming pedant is all you. If its not you someone has your distinctive style COMPLETELY down, and a trademark case is in order.
As I recall when we started our little dialog you assured me you had a barrel full of ink so I couldn't win. Barely a teaspoon full of ink later and you cratered, and have resorted to nothing but juvenile AC posts to reply to me ever since.
Yadda....yadda.....yadda...one AC post is worth as much as another....nothing. Just, people or maybe a person, engaging in vicious attacks like all of the above and to top it off they are too chicken shit to do it under their login.
Big difference between you and me is I'm not ashamed of what I'm saying so I'm doing it under my login.
Twirp's viscious rhetoric makes Slashdot a worse place, day after day. He savages one person after another, a few deserve it, most don't. He tries to intimidate people expressing viewpoints he wants to silence in to silence and that is NOT WHAT THIS COUNTRY IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT, but increasingly is. He can spout his BS all he ones for all I care but STOP THE PERSONAL ATTACKS.
Will me rebounding some of it at him stop him, no, but at least he will for a few minutes taste his own medicine. You could always hope he would wake up, smell the coffee, and realize that the way he feels right now is how he makes people feel day after day for no good reason.
LOL.
I was baiting you Twirp. I tried it with "bold faced liar" which as I recall set you off a while ago, but you didn't go for it. But you went for this one in spades, you couldn't help yourself, everyone knows you are flaming pedant.
You should've also used a different insult than "dumbass", the just used it a couple posts up if you wanted to even attempt to pretend you aren't the one doing the immature, offensive AC astroturfing. Geez you didn't even spell it right. Whats the matter your blood boiling because playing the Internet brown shirt isn't working, and you can't even type straight.
Your credibility is fading fast here Twirp, not like you had any coming in.
There you go again Twirp, telling people to shut up.
I'll stop replying to your posts the day you stop the name calling and start winning arguments with rational debate instead of the verbal brown shirting.
Its really obvious you are doing the offensive AC posts. Your first AC post was at 1:20, your other two posts under your login are at 1:25 and 1:29. Important safety tip when you engaging in juvenile AC posts, don't post them at the same time, in fact a nearly perfectly spaced 5 minute interval, as the posts under your login.
Twirp, Twirp, Twirp. Remember a while back when you claimed you didn't know how to post as an anonymous coward, overlooking the little problem that it is a giant check box next to the submit button you use 20 times a day, and that you are a bold face liar, and these juvenile AC posts are the real you.
Well I really wish you'd stop being a pussy, pull that tail out from between your legs and reply to my posts under your login, you know mano y mano. Are you afraid or did you realize you wont win your feeble attempts at debate using the pathetic arrows in your rhetorical quiver, verbal bullying, flag waving, regurgitated Bush administration rhetoric and unsupported BS (synonymous with regurgitated Bush administration rhetoric).
"We have an American political spectrum, okay? It's a subset of the whole spectrum."
Only thanks to people like you and your idol, Eugene McCarthy. This is supposed to be a free country and you are supposed to be able to have the political views of your choosing as long as you aren't trying to seize power or otherwise violate the constitution.
Obviously that isn't the case in America because people like you and Gene have mercilessly persecuted anyone who doesn't conform to your narrow and twisted view of the world.
All in all, you seem really big on "Freedom" until someone uses it in a way you don't like and personally approve of and at that point you seem to be first in line to deny other people their freedom. Freedom really is empty rhetoric to you and your friends in the Republican party and the moral majority, isn't it.
Capitalism has great strengths, it also has great weakness, like all complex systems. It isn't a sacred cow, and the people who treat it like one are likely to undermine its strengths, and enhance its flaws.
One obvious example being if you let it run unchecked you are going to end up with a bunch of monopolies, or maybe eventually one monopoly, that will end up destroying the free markets you so breathlessly praise. Is that OK with you? After all its just market forces at work so it must be OK, right? Your not going to let the government intervene in the markets to stop it are you, sacrilege.
Another obvious example of how capitalism rings hollow in America today, the so called "Medicare Reform Bill", where your Republican party, champions of free markets forbade Medicare to negotiate prices for drugs to get a fair price. It is, all in all, a blatant intervention in free markets by big government. It is nothing more than the Republicans transfering large sums from tax payers pockets in to the pockets of their wealthy friends in the drug and health industries. I am outraged at this anti-capitalist behavior, take them out and shoot them.
Left unchecked Capitalism is going to result in massive concentration of wealth in the hands of a very lucky, very few, especially if the Republicans continue to move to a regressive tax system, and continue to use the government to transfer money from tax payers to their friends.
You would probably sing praises of that as "the law of the jungle" and "survival of the fittest". Well it is more an inherent result of capitalism that if you have lots of capital its really easy to make a lot more of it. If you're in that lucky few I guess it is something to sing praises of...as long as you live in a gated community with enough armed guards to deal with the other 99% of the world you've pushed in to abject poverty and starvation, pushed them by exploiting them and looting every available corner of the world so you can have yours.