Like usual Twirp anyone who doesn't agree with you is a dumbass and doesn't deserve to be heard. This is just your easy out since you are apparently incapable of penning reasoned rhetoric to actually support your positions.
I really wish you'd stop pretending you are the great defender of America's "Freedom and Democracy". You, like of most of the modern Republican party, dominated as it is by the moral "majority", REALLY wants a one party state where everyone agrees with you, anyone who doesn't had better shut up, get out or pay the price people pay in police states. You and Bill O'Reilly are two of a kind, he tells everyone who challenges him and his world view to shut up too.
Its is kind of a stupid statement but there is some substance to it. Fundementalist Islamic terrorists do hate the lax morals in the west. Muslims abhor alcohol and drug use. They abhor pornography, casual sex and homosexuality. I think gambling is on the list too though I forget. They aren't fond of pop music and you have to admit, rap in particular, in isn't a real positive influence on people, especially children. They obviously dislike equality and freedom for women.
With the exception of the last one they do have a point, the West is pretty corrupt and is working hard to spread that corruption uniformly across the globe.
The paradox is all of those "freedoms" are equally ahored by the religious right that has taken over the Republican party. So an arguement can be made "they" could just as easily be the Republican party. "The Republican party hates us for our freedom". After all the U.S. is now putting more people in prison than most of the rest of the world, so it appears they hate people for exercising their freedom to engage in recreational drug use and are locking them up for years over it. Some Southern states in particular continue to try to jail gays for consensual sex.
There is unfortunately some truth to calling the Republican party the American Taliban. Of course the Democrats are equally to blame for the war on drugs etc.
All in all its just more doublespeak coming out of the Bush administration. It is the perfect thing to say to distract people from the fact that they are using the war on terror to take away the freedoms Al Qaeda and the Republican's hate. Maybe that is the secret plan to win the war. If the Republican's take away all the freedoms Al Qaeda hates then they will no longer have a reason to attack us....heh....irony.
Yes but you do need to work on your target recognition algorithms and not expend your energy attacking someone who was using superb irony in a biting attack on the people, you, me and he would prefer would either A) get a clue or B) move to a police state instead of turning the U.S. in to one.
The standard tin foil hat response is pretty weak most of the time, and especially so this time. It is a tool often used by people who can't rebut something they don't like using reasoned argument, so they just regurgitate this canned response, They pparently lack the rhetorical skill to make an arguement of their own.
Homeland Security is run by Republicans. They did coordinate most of the security at both conventions. I would be disappointed with them if they DIDN'T try to make the Democrats look bad by putting in an order for extra razor wire for the Free Speech cage at the DNC. They are thoroughly aware of how much heat the Bush administration is getting for the Free Speech Zones, and screening their campaign appearances, in an attempt to suppress dissent. The DHS, DOJ and Secret Service are fighting numerous court cases over it.
I can't prove they did do it on purpose, probably no one can unless a DHS insider rats them out, but it is thoroughly plausible, and obviously desirable to tar the Democrat's with some of the same Free Speech Zone brush.
I was the first one to mark it funny, though I've since posted to the thread so my mod point got pulled, appears Funny is holding without my mod point though.
You are to be commended for your prose. It apparently suckered some mad dog, war mongering, neocons into modding it interesting which truly is scary, though believable, when you see some of the mad dog conservative rhetoric on Slashdot, Twirlip being a prominent leader.
At the same time it managed to sucker some mad dog liberals into getting up a froth at the mouth for possibly suggest such a thing.
I'm pretty sure the Dept. of Homeland security did the security arrangements at both, though maybe the parties had some input. I wouldn't be surprised if the Tom Ridge and Co. went over the top on the Democrat free speech zone, with the razor wire, etc to make it look worse than the Republican's and apparently, in your case at least, it worked. It also helped defang complaints about the Republican convention, where all the protests were anyway, because the story had already gotten stale during the Democratic convention.
I will agree with you that big brotherism isn't just a Republican thing. Its a ruling elite versus the rest of us thing. The Democratic and Republican parties really are the two faces of the same thing, the moneyed elite, executives and shareholders of big corporations and Wall Street really running things and putting on a show to sucker the rest of us in to thinking they have a choice or a say in anything that matters. Yale and Connecticut is one center, probably the most malevolent one, and Nantucket and Harvard is another. Just look at where the candidates this year where schooled:
George W. Bush, Yale, Skull and Bones John F. Kerry, Yale, Skull and Bones Joe Lieberman, Yale Howard Dean, Yale, Dick Cheney, Yale, though he dropped out before he was flunked out. He didn't have the Bush family name and legacy to insure passing grades like the top of his ticket.
Skull and Bones, the Yale secret fraternity, home of the elite of the elite has something like 800 living members. What do you think the odds are out of a pool of 800 people you would draw both Presidential candidates for a nation of nearly 300 million. I'd like a ticket to that lottery.
Both parties, despite the rhetoric, are doing a great job of shifting a huge tax burden on working people, while the tax burden on the wealthy and large corporations is all but gone, especially by the time they exploit the loopholes and tax shelters they paid the politicians in their back pockets to put in for them. The end result is there is an accelerating concentration of wealth in the hands of a very small elite, while more American's are landing in poverty than ever, real income is declining not increasing and there is a rising tide of people losing their health insurance.
The Patriot Act really was written by both Democrats and Republicans and most of the objectives were roughed out well before 9/11. The Democrats put on a show about being against it now, but thats mostly a show because most of the ordinary people in their base hate it. They really don't make an issue out of it trying to woo independents and centrist Republican's to their side, Kerry's rabid dialog on it during the primaries and silence now is a vivid illustration of this basic fact. I'm also pretty sure the Dem's main problem with it at the moment is an obnoxious Republican Attorney general is exploiting it instead of their people.
I'm willing to bet a plugged nickel if a Democrat is elected President the Patriot Act will survive, presumably under another name and with cosmetic changes. The Democrats are currently rabid desperate to make sure they look tough on Terrorism and that means repressive law enforcement in the U.S. and foreign adventures abroad.
I did propose a solution either in this thread or a previous one. Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager is proposing it too. Some politicians who don't suck, and have some name recognition need to really harness the Internet in 2006 and 2008, collect about a half billion dollars in small contributions from ordinary people, and form a real, viable third party and throw the other two out of office, a nice centrist party that represents ordinary people, not corporations, not extremist Christians, not socialist whackos that want government to do everything for them. The Progressive party and Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party is the last something like it was successfully done. The key problem, the two entrenched parties have taken to amazingly antidemocratic means to deny third parties access to the ballot and access to the air waves so its more of an uphill battle than it was then. John McCain and Howard Dean would have been the kind of people needed to lead it, but after the groveling they've done to Bush and Kerry respectively this year I'm not sure they are fit for the job.
There are a lot of problems to fix in the U.S. but the one at the top of the list is there are two parties that completely dominate political life and they are both so completely corrupted its hopeless to try and fix them.
The next problem on the list American's have to stop wanting the extremism they are currently cheering on in Fox News and the Republican party. They need to start living those Christian values, instead of mouthing them, "Do unto others....", "Beat the sword in to ploughshares....", "Turn the other cheek...". As long as a majority of American's want extremism, vote for it and cheer it on its not going away. Unfortunately American's are sitting on top of a global economic and military empire and that doesn't promote Christian values, it promotes imperial values and imperial corruption.
"Then again, "loser" isn't what I'd call a thoughtful critique."
I'm sorry but from everything I've seen of him it just fits. Could you tell me something he's done in his life outside his dubious Jekyl and Hyde bit during and after Vietnam that makes him stand out as a winner. He does everything the Republicans say he does, he flip flops, he adopts postions not out of conviction but based on how well he thinks they will play with the people he's pandering to at the moment, and its seems to be completely lost on him people notice he constantly mutates his positions out of convenience. He is just disingenuous.
Bush is just as bad, he's failed in everything he did in his life and he doesn't have the resume to be President either. Just because Bush is really bad and everyone is on the ABB key still doesn't make Kerry not suck.
" Oh yeah, protecting the rights of citizens would be nice too."
Well you see thats just silly. The Democratic leadership is no more interested in protecting the rights of ordinary citizens than the Republicans are. Most of the Democrats, Kerry in particular, were enthusiastic supporters of the Patriot act and Homeland Security. They are enthusiatic supports of the no fly list because they are deathly afraid of being accused of being soft on terrorism. They have some misgivings and back pedal when they are pandering to their base since a lot of their base despise the Patriot act. I hate to remind you but the only reason Kerry railed against it was because Dean was railing against it and it was working. As soon as he got the nomination locked up and he switched to pandering to the beloved swing voters he doesn't really mention it much any more.
You see most American's are just fine with abandoning their freedom if it makes them "safer" and richer. American's really don't deserve civil liberties any more. They take them for granted, the don't value them, they aren't willing to fight for them, I'm not sure most even want them especially if they have to stick their neck out to protect them.
"Vague insults won't exactly help you with your goals. No, the Democratic party isn't perfect, but in your comparison between the wrongs the Republican Party has committed and the general insults you give to the Democrats, I think its clear that the Democrats win."
Sorry but it would take a book to outline all the things that are wrong with the Democratic party. There must be something wrong with them because they are increasingly unable to compete against a pack or right wing nut cases that should have never been elected but were because the Democrats were worse.
In a nutshell they don't seem to actually stand for anything any more. They seem to just pander to a disjoint group of special interests, trial lawyers, unions, blacks, gays, pro choice women. At the same time they pander to them they take them completely for granted since they know they wont vote Republican and there is no viable alternative.
You can see how bankrupt the Democrats are when they get on the Homeland security sawhorse. You know this country really doesn't need to pour billions and billions of dollars in to "Homeland Security" and trying to "prevent" a terrorist attack, to search every container ship, to outfit every dinky fire department in the country with biochem suits. Its feel good rhetoric, thats all, and in the end its just an insane waste of money because they can't get a grip on actually fighting Al Qaeda. If you want to fight Al Qaeda it means a bare knuckled brawl in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, among others, and neither party has the stomach for it. Fighting it also means fixing the root causes of the strife between the West and the Arab world, in particular it means moving to a balanced position between Israel and the Arabs and compelling a solution to the Palestinian problem, instead of giving Israel a blank check to humiliate the Arab world.
I'm sure your proud of yourself playing doorman for America, but I'm already actively working on getting out of the U.S., don't need your help, the Bush administration is way better than you are at making anyone sane want to leave the U.S.
I'd be cool with Christian's in power if they actually adhered to the teachings of Christ. Unfortunately I don't think rampant greed and bloodthirsty militarism are Christian values, and those are the two basic tenants of the so called "Christians" taking over America and the Republican party. Just as extremist Muslims are an abomination to Islam, extremist Christians are an abomination to Christianity. If there was a second coming and Christ appeared in America did the things he did, and said things he said 2000 years ago, he'd be locked up or killed by the "Christians" running the U.S.
I'm working hard to line up a country where I can go and stay, and renounce my citizenship. No point in moving out of the U.S. and keep the passport and keep paying taxes to support the current madness. Its not easy. It takes a lot of work to find a country that will be a good place to live and that isn't completely under the thumb of the U.S. America's shadow has become so long there really aren't many places left in the world where you can escape it. I lost track but I think the U.S. has troops in something like 135 countries and I imagine the FBI and CIA are meddling in the same number or more.
I tried to read your link. It was pretty dumb. Its just further proof of how far off the deep end the right wing fringe in the U.S. has gone. I'm really sure there is a left wing conspiracy to use schools to convert everyone to Islam.
I know you'll hate it but I think it is a good idea if schools teach courses in all the major religions, from a cultural and historical perspective. It might alleviate a lot of ignorance and promote more understanding and tolerance. It might fix the acute case of tunnel vision infecting most Christians in the U.S. Again they seem to regurgitate the New Testment the same way Madrasas regurgitate the Koran. No one actually listens to whats those books say, or connect that those teachings are pretty much the exact opposite of the things most of their political, economic and religious leaders are actually doing in the names of those great teachings.
I used subscribe to the notion this was a Republican conspiracy to steal the election. Maybe it still is but the election was really stolen back in Iowa and New Hampshire when Kerry miraculously went from cellar dweller to winner. The guy is unfortunately a loser, no one in their right mind actually likes him. Most of the people voting for him are voting against Bush and not for Kerry.
It would be very interesting to have insight in to the machinations in Iowa and New Hampshire that destroyed Dean's candidacy. Did Al Gore and Jimmy Carter endorse him, because they knew it would make him look like an establishment man and hence a hypocrite. About a dozen rich democrats from the DNC and DLC inner circle funded attack ads in Iowa that equated him to Osamm bin Laden, coupled with a couple dumb remarks insured his fall in Iowa. When the media started piling in the race was decided though a tiny fraction of Democrats had actually voted. When Dean was destroyed, that was the point when the American people were actually denied any real choice. Its kind of wasting your time to steal the presidential election with electronic voting since it's already been stolen.
You see, there isn't a dimes worth of difference between Bush and Kerry on the stuff that matters, Iraq, the patriot act, homeland security, the war on islamic terrorism. They are both going to spend the U.S. in to bankruptcy and line the pockets of big corporations and their wealthy shareholders at the expense of working people.
Most telling, they are both Yale grads and Skull and Bones men. You know democracy is dead in America when a secret fraternity of the elite of the elite, which has 800 living members, can count BOTH presidential candidates as members. What are the odds on that unless the whole process is rigged.
Maybe Kerry was maneuvered into the Democratic nomination by the ruling elite to take a fall, or maybe they knew he was such a pathetic candidate that running him insured Bush would be reelected, or maybe they will be happy whichever one wins though I wager Bush is their favorite. The new Forbes billionaire's list is out and Forbes says they overwhelmingly support Bush. Why shouldn't they, he's given them unprecedented windfalls.
Running a shill is about the only way Bush could get reelected, after the deceit and insanity his administration perpetrated in Iraq. If people were to actually stop and look at how pathetic his record has really been over the last 4 years he would be rode back to Texas on a rail. Fortunately people don't have to think about it, they just have to see that loser John Kerry "reporting for duty" and all of sudden Bush doesn't seem so bad. We'll he really is bad but there isn't anything you can do about it so they just resign themselves to it and pretend it doesn't matter.
Maybe riggable electronic voting machines, and the Pentagon's plan to gain control over the military's vote, were insurance to make sure Bush wins but I doubt that will be necessary at this point. The media feeding frenzy has already started and that will insure Kerry will be doomed before the people even weigh in on the subject, the same kind of frenzy that devoured Dean.
If electronic voting machines are going to be used to rig an election the most likely races they will be used on are the Senate races. The Republicans are desperate to get 60 seats in the Senate because at that point they would have a democratically elected and constitutional dictatorship, especially after a few more years of stacking the courts. When that happens the U.S. is going to be a good country to get out of, and the rest of the world really needs to start working on a global alliance to prevent this group of extremist Christians from dominating the entire planet.
The next four years are going to be a dark period for the U.S. no matter what.
The first question that comes to mind, considering recent Slashdot stories that indicate software engineering employment in the U.S. has plunged dramatically lately, is that this may be misleading. How do you get rising salaries when there is a glut of unemployed IT people?
One answer, perhaps companies are off shoring all the lower paid jobs, so there are fewer employed engineers but they are in more skilled and higher paying jobs. If you are going to do a salary survey you need to correlate the number of employed people with their salaries and not just look at salaries. If there are 10-20% fewer employed people, but they are getting 14% better wages, its not as rosy as it sounds.
Not sure this is the explanation since rising wages should imply a shortage of skilled labor, but you have to wonder. Another possibility is large numbers of people are completely leaving the field, and not entering it in the first place, which would explain declining employment but rising wages due to a labor shortage.
"1) Tax cuts. Got those passed 5 months into office, and got a second round passed 2 years later."
I'll give you that one though its probably going to eventually bankrupt the Federal government. The tax cuts for the middle class are largely token were mostly pushed by the Democrats, not really the Republicans. The massive tax cuts for the wealthy are now and will in the future lead to a massive concentration of wealth in the hands of the wealthiest few percent. Last time this happened in a big way, in the late 1800's and early 1900's, the massive poverty it caused in everyone else lead to social upheaval. It spawned the Progressive movement and Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party which put in the progressive tax system that Bush is currently dismantling. Regressive tax codes like Bush is implementing are doomed to failed unless you consider a few percent being filthy rich and 90+% in grinding poverty a success. In a capitalist system its really easy to make buckets of money if you already have money, and nearly impossible if you dont and are working for a living. The tax code needs to fund the government from people who are making the buckets of money and not people who are scraping by working for a living.
"2) Education reform. Signed NCLB less than 2 years into office with wide bipartisan support (in fact, most of it was written by Democrats)."
Only problem is its largely underfunded. Its also interesting Bush's Secretary of Education headed the Houston school district which was a model for "No Child Left Behind". It since been discovered Houston's remarkable success was largely due to doctoring their books. In particular they misrecorded dropouts as transfers. It made their low dropout rate look like a phenomenal success story when in fact it was a sham. Besides which it's mostly just mandatory testing, the education system will deteriorate in to nothing more than training kids to pass the test. Schools that don't train kids to pass the test will be flagged as failures and gutted, and money will go in to the pockets of big private education companies running sham charter schools who will if nothing else train kids to take the test.
"3) Prescription Drug Benefit. Passed this 3 years into office, and benefits take effect early next year."
I'm not sure exactly what he promised in the campaign but I imagine it was a meaningful prescription drug benefit for seniors. What was passed was a gigantic tax giveaway to drug, insurance and health care companies. The actual benefit to seniors is so obfuscated and complicated almost none understand it and its uptake by seniors has been relatively poor. The numbers look better than they are since many seniors already in HMO's were forced to enroll.
Since the bill denies the Medicare system the ability to use its buying power to negotiate drug prices the drug companies can, when the time comes, just jack up their prices and completely erase any benefit seniors will get out of the benefit. It will cause a massive drain on funds from the Medicare system and hasten its bankruptcy. You might note the out of pocket expense for Medicare was just jacked up by a by record percentage, a harbinger of things to come.
"4) Social Security Reform. Didn't get his inititive passed that would allow a portion of our SS benefits to be invested in the private sector."
Instead thanks to tax cuts and massive spending, the Bush administration has been continuing to spend the Social Security surplus coming in from payroll taxes on the poor and middle class to defray the cost of this tax cut for the filthy rich. It is in fact an acutely regressive tax system that punished the poor and middle class to the benefit of the wealthy who don't pay taxes on dividends any more and pay a puny tax on capital gains. Unfortunately working people are getting no break on payroll taxes and instead of using the surplus to keep the system solvent in the near future the government will continually jack up the retirement age and cut benefits. Ca
I guess I'm willing to concede that Red Hat's business model MIGHT play well with the stuffed shirts who sit in the CxO office and spend more time thinking about their golf game than their business.
But, I should think most in the geek community should have had their fill of Red Hat and the business model at this point. If the geeks are dead set against Red Hat there is a least a chance the CxO's wont go that route.
The two key places Red Hat burned their bridges:
A) Red Hat starts this cool little subscription service for end users, I buy a year's subscription and they for all practical purposes killed the OS I'm using and the update service six months in to my subscription. Welching on paid subscriptions, and failing to support their distributions, is a really bad indicator and should give pause to any business paying a bucketload of money for basically the same kind of service. If they've welched on their services once they are more than capable of doing it again.
B) Its more than a little cynical for them to dump most of their non money making distribution development on community volunteers in Fedora, expect them to work for free, and Red Hat still takes it as their prerogative to dictate everything that happens in Fedora. If you are working for a money making corporation expect payment or don't do it. There are plenty of freer distributions around where you can donate your time and get paid with control over your project based on the merits of your contribution, if nothing else.
I just finished nuking all but one ancient 7.3 Red Hat distribution off my machines, couldn't be happier and am not looking back. Gentoo rocks. If the whole Gentoo team and their servers fell off the face of the earth I could still do essential updates to my installed machines and maintain them without much problem indefinitely. There is a lot of blather about the "freedom" of Linux but if your letting yourself get locked in to the whims and tyrannies of distro developers you really don't have as much freedom as you think, especially when the distro developer is mostly trying to make their quarterly numbers to keep Wall Street happy and will screw any customer necessary to achieve that end.
"Let's see, the US has never manipulated its currency, has always respected intellectual property, has never reverse engineered anynody else's products.... like I said, riiiight."
The U.S. buys and sells dollars like every country does, it is a free market currency so you do that. China PEGS their currency. It is the ultimate manipulation. It completely prevents any market forces from adjusting it. There isn't any comparison.
The U.S. had intellectual property rights as does most of the Western world. They actually do try to enforce them. Reverse engineering and IP theft is rampant in China. There isn't any comparison.
I forgot to mention China's workers are also decidedly unfree so they have very little ability to fight for better working conditions, benefits and salaries. It makes them look great to businessmen looking for cheap subservient labor but its not a free labor market.
At this point you seem to be to dumb to argue with.
"Seems to me that the 60 years since the end of the last global war have been a lot more peaceful than almost any other period in history."
You also seem to have no graspe of modern history. There has been one proxy war after another. since the end of World War II, Korea, Vietnam for 30 years, Afghanistan multiple times, Yuogoslavia multiple times, Arab Israeli multiple times, Iran-Iraq, Iraq-Kuwait, India-Pakistan, two invasions of Iraq, Panama, Grenada, and civil wars across the globes. The only reason there hasn't been a global war was because the U.S., the U.S.S.R, Britain and France and China have nuclear weapons. It had NOTHING to do with globalization or economics. Again you have no clue what you are talking about.
"planned this going back to Mao and continuing with the Gang of Four and Deng and so on"
Actually no, it started after Mao and the Gang of Four died. Your rhetoric here is just stupid. Its became the plan of the current leadership when they deduced the obvious, they couldn't beat the west militarily or idealogically but they have the one thing needed to destroy the West economically, a huge underpaid, oppressed labor pool, versus the West where labor is expensive.
"Repeat: outsourcing and offshoring are natural parts of a free market."
If it were a truly free market I might agree with you but it isn't.
Exhibit A the Chinese manipulate their currency and peg it at an artificially low rate so their labor and goods are inherently cheaper, at least until they've destroyed all their competition. Thats who you win an economic war, just like Microsoft did, you undersell all your competition until they collapse and when they are gone you can charge as much as you feel like. If you want free markets the first prerequisite is the Chinese have to let their currency float so the markets decide what their currency, goods and labor are worth.
Exhibit B if you want free markets that are sane they have to respect intellectual property. They don't, they routinely reverse engineer machinery designed at considerable expense by others, sell knock offs at a fraction of the price and put the company that designed the product out of business. They also look the other way when software and media are pirated wholesale.
I'm sorry friend but you really are a sucker to think that what is happening is just A-OK. You've fallen for globalization propaganda. Globalization benefits multinational corporation, its going to lead to devastation for working people. Sure you can buy stuff cheap at Walmart but that won't help if your unemployed or getting an ever declining wages and benefits. Fact is nations exist to insure the economic well being of their citizens. There is no rule that says you have to put all the working people in your country in to poverty in the name of globalization. Trade barriers were there to prevent other countries from dumping, and economic manipulations that would otherwise allow them to destroy your economy.
As for your delusion that it makes the world safe from war, just wait till you see the kind of blackmail leverage the Chinese will have on the West when they can destroy Western economies just by shutting off the container ship traffic, and have a massive pool of U.S. dollars that can be used to destabilize the U.S. economy. If the Chinese want to regain control of Taiwan, they will soon have the leverage to do it without firing a shot. The Chinese are also working towards a position of economic dominance that can be coupled with, not instead of a powerful military. They will soon have the money and technology to build weapons that match those of the U.S. and combine that with 5 fold more boots to put on the ground.
Of course the Chinese government is behind and it is a plan. It the high tech version of what they've been doing to manufacturing for a few years now. Undercut manufacturing in the rest of the world especially through low labor costs, the rest of the world gives up and moves all their machine tools, manufacturing capibility and technology to China, the rest of the world becomes completely dependent on China for manufacturing and they can so start to jack up their prices because they no will soon have no competition worth mentioning.
The end result is one giant American or European company after another is transfering the crown jewels of their intellectual property in to a country that has complete disdain for intellectual property rights and enforcement. Once its all transfered and Chinese nationals are the ones doing all the new development the foreign devil companies are going to be completely expendable and expended.
Its a great strategy for catapulting yourself from a technology backwater where you are mostly reverse engineering and soldering to global technological dominion.
The stupidity of American politicians and business leaders is truly amazing especially when they are blinded by greed.
Twirp, Twirp, Twirp. Have you turned so chicken shit you can't take me on under your login any more. I see you still have your formidable debating style, call everything you disagree with crap, with no substantce in yuour rebuttal and hurling profanity at the person saying it. You do seem to be a smart person Twirp, but you are really good at hiding it most of the time.
By the way Twirp, exactly what news organization do you work for. I'd like to read some of your stuff and see if the quality is as low as many, though not all, of your posts here.
If all of my theories are crap you need to propose a new alternative, or are you trying to deny the facts about Little George youth when he was a cocaine sniffing, drunk, partying frat boy who was constantly being bailed out of jams by his daddy. I assure there is record of little George doing community service at PUSH. I'm pretty sure a partier frat boy wouldn't do it out of the goodness of his heart. How do you explain it?
Since your tongue tied at the moment I'll help with more theories, I guess its possible CBS forged the docs but that would have been an insane thing to do on their part.
I suppose the Kerry campaign did it but again it would be insane for them to do such a piss poor job of it since it just makes them look bad.
Please share with us your infinite wisdom, Twirp. You are the only one that knows the truth and its just not right for you to keep depriving us, your most ardent fans, of that one and only truth, known only to you.
"I'm not implying it. After three days of research, I'm saying it outright. These memos are forgeries, and inept ones at that."
I think you're right Twirp but you have to go to the next step and think about who forged them and why to get to the heart of the story.
1. I imagine you will say its some left wing nut case trying to trash Little George. Problem is I think if they were serious about this they would have done a better job of it. Thinking they would use a computer and try to pass it off for an ancient typewriter is insane. I think they would have got an ancient typewriter. Its not that hard to do.
2. Maybe someone knew what was in the original documents so they wrote them out on a computer to try and restore records long since destroyed. They knew what was in the memos was true and is what mattered and they didn't care that they didn't do a great job forcing them. They weren't forging them, what they were doing was restoring documents Bush and his political operatives destroyed when they were given unsupervised access to his Guard file, and they were definitely given access to his file early in his political career to shred all the dirt that would have destroyed his political career if it got out, especially that he refused his flight physical because they'd instituted drug testing that year and he would have been nailed for Cocaine use.
3. My favorite and preferred theory is Karl Rove is the one that actually forged them and then fed them to CBS through a circuitous route. It would be genius and he is a malevolent genius. He makes the Democrats look bad, he trashes CBS which has been pretty hard on his administration, and most of all he makes the charges about Bush's youth appear fabricated when they are in fact true. They are true just not provable since all the documents have been shredded. In particular there is a tell all book coming soon about George's youth, part of which is sourced from Neal Bush's ex wife and will once again expose George W.'s extensive romance with Cocaine, including small time dealing and a felony conviction, which thanks to connections, was plea bargained to 6 months of community service to poor black folks, which he mostly ducked, and it was purged from his record. His felonious youth should have precluded him from holding office, how does that compare to Clinton lieing about sex. If this books comes on the heals of this forgery uproar it makes it a lot easier to discredit it the book....oh look it must be forgery and lies just like that Guard thing, those Democrats are so desperate.
I hate to say it, since I live in a place that fits the rural demographic and there are a lot of good people in them, but most of the people that live in them tend to be flat out dumb, are poorly educated and are complete suckers for the attack ads, smears and fear mongering that pass for political campaigns.
The number of churches vastly outnumber all other types of major buildings combined, most people are barely getting by but they still pour money in to the collection plates they can't afford in a never ending church building and supporting spree. Bible study and Sunday school tends to outrank a real education in importance, and unfortunately they are complete suckers for the extremist Christian religion pitch that is becoming the mainstay of the Republican party.
They also still tend to be thoroughly bigoted against blacks, hispanics and gays so once again the lily white Republican party suits them to a T.
If you want to see some of the worst pork coming out of Washington its farm subsidies that are being used to buy farm state votes by both parties. Farm state Democrats almost help passed the Republican energy bill for no other reason than it was laden with Ethanol subsidies that goes straight in to the pockets of corn farmers. Unfortunately much of the pork goes to wealthy and corporate farmers who don't need it, rather that poor independent farmers who do.
All in all I'd say its actually proven to be a bad thing for the country that the rural states have disproportional clout in the political process. Fact is they are for the most part nuts a fact born out by the fact that they overwhelmingly support the current President who doesn't have the resume to be President and whose first term is a complete mess if you ever stopped to objectively look at it. As long as he can out "Aw shucks" and "Praise the Lord" his opponent his still wins. Of course the candidate the Democrats fielded is so pathetic anyone could beat him.
Even if you ditched the electoral college the rural states still get disproportionally powerful representation through the Senate.
I don't think you quite hit the nail on the head though yes a candidate should win only if they get 50+% of the vote.
What you really need:
1) A constitutional amendment is required to dispose of the god awful electoral college. It all by itself discourages voting and is disenfranchising millions of voters in the Presidential election. If you are a blue in a very red state or a red in a very blue state you are wasting your vote thanks to the electoral college. It also results in the incumbent bestowing, and candidates promising, disproportionate pork to the battleground states, and they know it and milk it for all its worth. The candidates also don't campaign in any uncontested state further cutting many people out of the process.
2) There needs to be legislation or a constitution amendment that prevents the two major parties from passing laws that prevent new parties from starting or gaining access to the ballot. Indiana for example requires you get 3% in every election. As soon as a party falls below that as the Green's did in 2002 they are disbanded by the tyranny of the state and have to petition to get on the ballot and win 3 percent again to be recognized as a party. It is blatantly undemocratic and not something you would think could happen in this nation which is a supposed pillar of Democracy.
3) I really doubt you are going to make any ranking system work. It would be chaos considering this country has trouble just counting a simple vote for a candidate. Stick with the system proven in every other country in the world everyone gets on the first ballot and a run off between the top two candidates if no one wins 50% in the first ballot.
4) I dearly love to see the major parties have to form coalitions to control the House and Senate. Its often chaotic in Isreal, Italy etc. but its the only way people with minority views have any influence on government. As it is one of the two major parties wins control of the House, Senate and White House and they go off the deep end as the Republican's are doing and the Dem's have done in the past. Gridlock really is the best situation even though many bad mouth it, because no new laws are better than a bunch of whacked in the head laws that are opposed by a big percentage of American's like the Patriot Act.
If you want to see the last really successful 3rd party I think it was Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive/Bull Moose party. Interestingly enough it sprung out of an era where the very wealthy and corporate monopolies were massively abusing the majority of Americans and the tax system was taxing working people in to the ground while and encouraging wealth concentration in the hands of the lucky few, a situation very similar to the one we have today.
For a business with very machines I'm not sure I can see ANY justification for binary packaging. Your admin should have a dedicated Gentoo build machine(s) used for nothing but building system images. For an upgrade you nuke the old system image and copy the new one on, and run a post install script to do the host specific customization. If you update the whole system image you correct damaged and hacked systems as part of the upgrade. Though you do still want an automated script to propagate a merge from a single ebuild to every machine to do urgent security patches.
I don't think I can see any comparison between the headaches of binary package compatibilities and an occasional broken ebuild. A broken ebuild is usually trivial to fix and you really can fix it yourself.
The place where Gentoo wins the distro wars is the whole Gentoo team and their servers could fall off the face of the earth and I could, with a little work maintain my distribution myself, doing my own cherry picked updates and security patches, indefinitely. You don't really have to worry about some assholes, in North Carolina for example, deciding to end of life the distro your business depends on.
A major part of it in LA is its a city thats been overrun with illegal immigrants and they were mostly unschooled in their country of origin. Most don't speak English so are obviously illterate in English though the blurb on the news said most weren't literate in any language. The bar for literacy in the study wasn't high either, it was read a bus schedule, fill out a job application or read directions on a prescription, things fairly essential to basic living.
A key reason the U.S. is turning in to a third world country is because the third world is moving in to the U.S. unhindered. The Department of Homeland Security could close the border if they wanted to, they have the technology and could get the money, but like I said business and politicians LIKE illegal immigration. It is a huge pool of cheap labor who have no rights and are easily exploited. If you actually cut it off America's economy would crater because the U.S. is totally dependent on it for maids, manicurists, dishwashers, janitors, gardners, farm workers and just about every other form of menial labor.
Well first off I'm more arch conservative or libertarian than anything. I cherish the smallest government possible, but I favor taxing the rich because they can afford to pay and I favor universal health insurance because people shouldn't die because they can't pay for health care.
True conservatives hate the Bush administration too because they are slowly instituting a police state and trampling everyone's civil liberties, and they are bankrupting the U.S. through budget and trade deficits.
Second, I'm not sure there is anything irrational in the part you quoted. Are you saying George wasn't convicted for Cocaine posession and I'm lieing. That would be bad of me, but I'm not and I think you know it.
If somebody is convicted on a felony drug charge, this is a narcotic we are taking about here and not a little weed, it does in fact disqualify someone from the Presidency unless your powerful family pulls strings and gets it brushed under the rug. In many states, for example if you are a black felon in Florida you couldn't even vote after the same conviction.
I'm thinking it was nearly mandatory George go through the Texas governorship on his road to the White House. As Governor he had complete power to make sure all the dirt in his Texas state records could be properly cleaned. Most of the worst of it was in Texas. In particular he could give his operatives unfettered access to his Guard files and presumably he was able to dispose of any remnant of his Cocaine conviction though it was probably destroyed when he finished the community service anyway.
As for "irrational hatred of President Bush" I would say it is quite rational to hate him. He is an arrogant SOB. He's turned most of the world against the U.S. He is destroying civil liberties at rate not seen since McCarthyism (something which also occurred the last time the Republican's had power). He's gotten a thousand American's killed, and thousands scared for life, in Iraq in a war based on lies. I'm all for fighting Al Qaeda but he should have fought that war in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia where the heart of the problem is, and done it right, instead of blowing it off in a rush to take out a grudge on Saddam.
"1. Streamlined: UserLinux is a streamlined distribution with one key application in mind for a given piece of functionality. One web browser, one word processor, one mail client, one web server. This reduces support overhead both for users and for maintaining security."
And the problem being if you don't like their choice of the "one key application" its basically gonna suck, KDE being the obvious application set in the second class citizen category. Since I dumped Red Hat, or actually Red Hat dumped me, and I switched to Gentoo I'm happy as can be and I'm never going back to a distribution that wants to make choices for me. I'm sure UserLinux might fit some businesses that want everything done for them and Gentoo is not for everyone but if you like having control over your distribution instead of your distribution controlling you its the ticket.
"He let his flight status lapse because he knew he wouldn't be flying any more and because a physical examination is not a fun thing to do with your day."
He didn't take his physical because this is when the Guard instituted drug testing as part of it. Its ridiculous to suggest he'd risk landing in Vietnam just because taking the physical was not fun.
Its no secret was a frequent cocaine user during this period. He would have been nailed for drug use if he hadn't so he refused. He did and he should have been remanded to regular service for the insubordination and would have if he didn't have connections.
You did know W. was busted in Texas for cocaine possession. Again thanks to family connections he got off with six months of community service at PUSH. I assure you he didn't do community service for poor black folks out of the goodness of his heart. If he'd been poor or black he would have gotten a felony conviction and it would have ended his political career. America and the world would be a better place too.
I imagine the new documents are forged. I wish they'd sneaked by. The problem we have here is the Bush family and their very skilled and ruthless operatives went around destroying all the evidence of his pathetic excuse for a life, including gaining unsupervised and illegal access to his guard file when they destroyed all the really embarrasing documents. As a result there is no proof that he isn't fit to be President, though he isn't, so he has the Teflon coating.
"George W. Bush was born on third base and he thinks he hit a triple" Ann Richards
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
Slashdot Mirror
"George Soros is a well-documented dumbass"
Pot....kettle.....black
Like usual Twirp anyone who doesn't agree with you is a dumbass and doesn't deserve to be heard. This is just your easy out since you are apparently incapable of penning reasoned rhetoric to actually support your positions.
I really wish you'd stop pretending you are the great defender of America's "Freedom and Democracy". You, like of most of the modern Republican party, dominated as it is by the moral "majority", REALLY wants a one party state where everyone agrees with you, anyone who doesn't had better shut up, get out or pay the price people pay in police states. You and Bill O'Reilly are two of a kind, he tells everyone who challenges him and his world view to shut up too.
Its is kind of a stupid statement but there is some substance to it. Fundementalist Islamic terrorists do hate the lax morals in the west. Muslims abhor alcohol and drug use. They abhor pornography, casual sex and homosexuality. I think gambling is on the list too though I forget. They aren't fond of pop music and you have to admit, rap in particular, in isn't a real positive influence on people, especially children. They obviously dislike equality and freedom for women.
With the exception of the last one they do have a point, the West is pretty corrupt and is working hard to spread that corruption uniformly across the globe.
The paradox is all of those "freedoms" are equally ahored by the religious right that has taken over the Republican party. So an arguement can be made "they" could just as easily be the Republican party. "The Republican party hates us for our freedom". After all the U.S. is now putting more people in prison than most of the rest of the world, so it appears they hate people for exercising their freedom to engage in recreational drug use and are locking them up for years over it. Some Southern states in particular continue to try to jail gays for consensual sex.
There is unfortunately some truth to calling the Republican party the American Taliban. Of course the Democrats are equally to blame for the war on drugs etc.
All in all its just more doublespeak coming out of the Bush administration. It is the perfect thing to say to distract people from the fact that they are using the war on terror to take away the freedoms Al Qaeda and the Republican's hate. Maybe that is the secret plan to win the war. If the Republican's take away all the freedoms Al Qaeda hates then they will no longer have a reason to attack us....heh....irony.
Yes but you do need to work on your target recognition algorithms and not expend your energy attacking someone who was using superb irony in a biting attack on the people, you, me and he would prefer would either A) get a clue or B) move to a police state instead of turning the U.S. in to one.
The standard tin foil hat response is pretty weak most of the time, and especially so this time. It is a tool often used by people who can't rebut something they don't like using reasoned argument, so they just regurgitate this canned response, They pparently lack the rhetorical skill to make an arguement of their own.
Homeland Security is run by Republicans. They did coordinate most of the security at both conventions. I would be disappointed with them if they DIDN'T try to make the Democrats look bad by putting in an order for extra razor wire for the Free Speech cage at the DNC. They are thoroughly aware of how much heat the Bush administration is getting for the Free Speech Zones, and screening their campaign appearances, in an attempt to suppress dissent. The DHS, DOJ and Secret Service are fighting numerous court cases over it.
I can't prove they did do it on purpose, probably no one can unless a DHS insider rats them out, but it is thoroughly plausible, and obviously desirable to tar the Democrat's with some of the same Free Speech Zone brush.
I was the first one to mark it funny, though I've since posted to the thread so my mod point got pulled, appears Funny is holding without my mod point though.
You are to be commended for your prose. It apparently suckered some mad dog, war mongering, neocons into modding it interesting which truly is scary, though believable, when you see some of the mad dog conservative rhetoric on Slashdot, Twirlip being a prominent leader.
At the same time it managed to sucker some mad dog liberals into getting up a froth at the mouth for possibly suggest such a thing.
Bravo!!
I'm pretty sure the Dept. of Homeland security did the security arrangements at both, though maybe the parties had some input. I wouldn't be surprised if the Tom Ridge and Co. went over the top on the Democrat free speech zone, with the razor wire, etc to make it look worse than the Republican's and apparently, in your case at least, it worked. It also helped defang complaints about the Republican convention, where all the protests were anyway, because the story had already gotten stale during the Democratic convention.
I will agree with you that big brotherism isn't just a Republican thing. Its a ruling elite versus the rest of us thing. The Democratic and Republican parties really are the two faces of the same thing, the moneyed elite, executives and shareholders of big corporations and Wall Street really running things and putting on a show to sucker the rest of us in to thinking they have a choice or a say in anything that matters. Yale and Connecticut is one center, probably the most malevolent one, and Nantucket and Harvard is another. Just look at where the candidates this year where schooled:
George W. Bush, Yale, Skull and Bones
John F. Kerry, Yale, Skull and Bones
Joe Lieberman, Yale
Howard Dean, Yale,
Dick Cheney, Yale, though he dropped out before he was flunked out. He didn't have the Bush family name and legacy to insure passing grades like the top of his ticket.
Skull and Bones, the Yale secret fraternity, home of the elite of the elite has something like 800 living members. What do you think the odds are out of a pool of 800 people you would draw both Presidential candidates for a nation of nearly 300 million. I'd like a ticket to that lottery.
Both parties, despite the rhetoric, are doing a great job of shifting a huge tax burden on working people, while the tax burden on the wealthy and large corporations is all but gone, especially by the time they exploit the loopholes and tax shelters they paid the politicians in their back pockets to put in for them. The end result is there is an accelerating concentration of wealth in the hands of a very small elite, while more American's are landing in poverty than ever, real income is declining not increasing and there is a rising tide of people losing their health insurance.
The Patriot Act really was written by both Democrats and Republicans and most of the objectives were roughed out well before 9/11. The Democrats put on a show about being against it now, but thats mostly a show because most of the ordinary people in their base hate it. They really don't make an issue out of it trying to woo independents and centrist Republican's to their side, Kerry's rabid dialog on it during the primaries and silence now is a vivid illustration of this basic fact. I'm also pretty sure the Dem's main problem with it at the moment is an obnoxious Republican Attorney general is exploiting it instead of their people.
I'm willing to bet a plugged nickel if a Democrat is elected President the Patriot Act will survive, presumably under another name and with cosmetic changes. The Democrats are currently rabid desperate to make sure they look tough on Terrorism and that means repressive law enforcement in the U.S. and foreign adventures abroad.
I did propose a solution either in this thread or a previous one. Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager is proposing it too. Some politicians who don't suck, and have some name recognition need to really harness the Internet in 2006 and 2008, collect about a half billion dollars in small contributions from ordinary people, and form a real, viable third party and throw the other two out of office, a nice centrist party that represents ordinary people, not corporations, not extremist Christians, not socialist whackos that want government to do everything for them. The Progressive party and Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party is the last something like it was successfully done. The key problem, the two entrenched parties have taken to amazingly antidemocratic means to deny third parties access to the ballot and access to the air waves so its more of an uphill battle than it was then. John McCain and Howard Dean would have been the kind of people needed to lead it, but after the groveling they've done to Bush and Kerry respectively this year I'm not sure they are fit for the job.
There are a lot of problems to fix in the U.S. but the one at the top of the list is there are two parties that completely dominate political life and they are both so completely corrupted its hopeless to try and fix them.
The next problem on the list American's have to stop wanting the extremism they are currently cheering on in Fox News and the Republican party. They need to start living those Christian values, instead of mouthing them, "Do unto others....", "Beat the sword in to ploughshares....", "Turn the other cheek...". As long as a majority of American's want extremism, vote for it and cheer it on its not going away. Unfortunately American's are sitting on top of a global economic and military empire and that doesn't promote Christian values, it promotes imperial values and imperial corruption.
"Then again, "loser" isn't what I'd call a thoughtful critique."
I'm sorry but from everything I've seen of him it just fits. Could you tell me something he's done in his life outside his dubious Jekyl and Hyde bit during and after Vietnam that makes him stand out as a winner. He does everything the Republicans say he does, he flip flops, he adopts postions not out of conviction but based on how well he thinks they will play with the people he's pandering to at the moment, and its seems to be completely lost on him people notice he constantly mutates his positions out of convenience. He is just disingenuous.
Bush is just as bad, he's failed in everything he did in his life and he doesn't have the resume to be President either. Just because Bush is really bad and everyone is on the ABB key still doesn't make Kerry not suck.
" Oh yeah, protecting the rights of citizens would be nice too."
Well you see thats just silly. The Democratic leadership is no more interested in protecting the rights of ordinary citizens than the Republicans are. Most of the Democrats, Kerry in particular, were enthusiastic supporters of the Patriot act and Homeland Security. They are enthusiatic supports of the no fly list because they are deathly afraid of being accused of being soft on terrorism. They have some misgivings and back pedal when they are pandering to their base since a lot of their base despise the Patriot act. I hate to remind you but the only reason Kerry railed against it was because Dean was railing against it and it was working. As soon as he got the nomination locked up and he switched to pandering to the beloved swing voters he doesn't really mention it much any more.
You see most American's are just fine with abandoning their freedom if it makes them "safer" and richer. American's really don't deserve civil liberties any more. They take them for granted, the don't value them, they aren't willing to fight for them, I'm not sure most even want them especially if they have to stick their neck out to protect them.
"Vague insults won't exactly help you with your goals. No, the Democratic party isn't perfect, but in your comparison between the wrongs the Republican Party has committed and the general insults you give to the Democrats, I think its clear that the Democrats win."
Sorry but it would take a book to outline all the things that are wrong with the Democratic party. There must be something wrong with them because they are increasingly unable to compete against a pack or right wing nut cases that should have never been elected but were because the Democrats were worse.
In a nutshell they don't seem to actually stand for anything any more. They seem to just pander to a disjoint group of special interests, trial lawyers, unions, blacks, gays, pro choice women. At the same time they pander to them they take them completely for granted since they know they wont vote Republican and there is no viable alternative.
You can see how bankrupt the Democrats are when they get on the Homeland security sawhorse. You know this country really doesn't need to pour billions and billions of dollars in to "Homeland Security" and trying to "prevent" a terrorist attack, to search every container ship, to outfit every dinky fire department in the country with biochem suits. Its feel good rhetoric, thats all, and in the end its just an insane waste of money because they can't get a grip on actually fighting Al Qaeda. If you want to fight Al Qaeda it means a bare knuckled brawl in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, among others, and neither party has the stomach for it. Fighting it also means fixing the root causes of the strife between the West and the Arab world, in particular it means moving to a balanced position between Israel and the Arabs and compelling a solution to the Palestinian problem, instead of giving Israel a blank check to humiliate the Arab world.
I could go on but it would take a book.
I'm sure your proud of yourself playing doorman for America, but I'm already actively working on getting out of the U.S., don't need your help, the Bush administration is way better than you are at making anyone sane want to leave the U.S.
I'd be cool with Christian's in power if they actually adhered to the teachings of Christ. Unfortunately I don't think rampant greed and bloodthirsty militarism are Christian values, and those are the two basic tenants of the so called "Christians" taking over America and the Republican party. Just as extremist Muslims are an abomination to Islam, extremist Christians are an abomination to Christianity. If there was a second coming and Christ appeared in America did the things he did, and said things he said 2000 years ago, he'd be locked up or killed by the "Christians" running the U.S.
I'm working hard to line up a country where I can go and stay, and renounce my citizenship. No point in moving out of the U.S. and keep the passport and keep paying taxes to support the current madness. Its not easy. It takes a lot of work to find a country that will be a good place to live and that isn't completely under the thumb of the U.S. America's shadow has become so long there really aren't many places left in the world where you can escape it. I lost track but I think the U.S. has troops in something like 135 countries and I imagine the FBI and CIA are meddling in the same number or more.
I tried to read your link. It was pretty dumb. Its just further proof of how far off the deep end the right wing fringe in the U.S. has gone. I'm really sure there is a left wing conspiracy to use schools to convert everyone to Islam.
I know you'll hate it but I think it is a good idea if schools teach courses in all the major religions, from a cultural and historical perspective. It might alleviate a lot of ignorance and promote more understanding and tolerance. It might fix the acute case of tunnel vision infecting most Christians in the U.S. Again they seem to regurgitate the New Testment the same way Madrasas regurgitate the Koran. No one actually listens to whats those books say, or connect that those teachings are pretty much the exact opposite of the things most of their political, economic and religious leaders are actually doing in the names of those great teachings.
I used subscribe to the notion this was a Republican conspiracy to steal the election. Maybe it still is but the election was really stolen back in Iowa and New Hampshire when Kerry miraculously went from cellar dweller to winner. The guy is unfortunately a loser, no one in their right mind actually likes him. Most of the people voting for him are voting against Bush and not for Kerry.
It would be very interesting to have insight in to the machinations in Iowa and New Hampshire that destroyed Dean's candidacy. Did Al Gore and Jimmy Carter endorse him, because they knew it would make him look like an establishment man and hence a hypocrite. About a dozen rich democrats from the DNC and DLC inner circle funded attack ads in Iowa that equated him to Osamm bin Laden, coupled with a couple dumb remarks insured his fall in Iowa. When the media started piling in the race was decided though a tiny fraction of Democrats had actually voted. When Dean was destroyed, that was the point when the American people were actually denied any real choice. Its kind of wasting your time to steal the presidential election with electronic voting since it's already been stolen.
You see, there isn't a dimes worth of difference between Bush and Kerry on the stuff that matters, Iraq, the patriot act, homeland security, the war on islamic terrorism. They are both going to spend the U.S. in to bankruptcy and line the pockets of big corporations and their wealthy shareholders at the expense of working people.
Most telling, they are both Yale grads and Skull and Bones men. You know democracy is dead in America when a secret fraternity of the elite of the elite, which has 800 living members, can count BOTH presidential candidates as members. What are the odds on that unless the whole process is rigged.
Maybe Kerry was maneuvered into the Democratic nomination by the ruling elite to take a fall, or maybe they knew he was such a pathetic candidate that running him insured Bush would be reelected, or maybe they will be happy whichever one wins though I wager Bush is their favorite. The new Forbes billionaire's list is out and Forbes says they overwhelmingly support Bush. Why shouldn't they, he's given them unprecedented windfalls.
Running a shill is about the only way Bush could get reelected, after the deceit and insanity his administration perpetrated in Iraq. If people were to actually stop and look at how pathetic his record has really been over the last 4 years he would be rode back to Texas on a rail. Fortunately people don't have to think about it, they just have to see that loser John Kerry "reporting for duty" and all of sudden Bush doesn't seem so bad. We'll he really is bad but there isn't anything you can do about it so they just resign themselves to it and pretend it doesn't matter.
Maybe riggable electronic voting machines, and the Pentagon's plan to gain control over the military's vote, were insurance to make sure Bush wins but I doubt that will be necessary at this point. The media feeding frenzy has already started and that will insure Kerry will be doomed before the people even weigh in on the subject, the same kind of frenzy that devoured Dean.
If electronic voting machines are going to be used to rig an election the most likely races they will be used on are the Senate races. The Republicans are desperate to get 60 seats in the Senate because at that point they would have a democratically elected and constitutional dictatorship, especially after a few more years of stacking the courts. When that happens the U.S. is going to be a good country to get out of, and the rest of the world really needs to start working on a global alliance to prevent this group of extremist Christians from dominating the entire planet.
The next four years are going to be a dark period for the U.S. no matter what.
As an example, I heard today on CNN and its on
The first question that comes to mind, considering recent Slashdot stories that indicate software engineering employment in the U.S. has plunged dramatically lately, is that this may be misleading. How do you get rising salaries when there is a glut of unemployed IT people?
One answer, perhaps companies are off shoring all the lower paid jobs, so there are fewer employed engineers but they are in more skilled and higher paying jobs. If you are going to do a salary survey you need to correlate the number of employed people with their salaries and not just look at salaries. If there are 10-20% fewer employed people, but they are getting 14% better wages, its not as rosy as it sounds.
Not sure this is the explanation since rising wages should imply a shortage of skilled labor, but you have to wonder. Another possibility is large numbers of people are completely leaving the field, and not entering it in the first place, which would explain declining employment but rising wages due to a labor shortage.
"1) Tax cuts. Got those passed 5 months into office, and got a second round passed 2 years later."
I'll give you that one though its probably going to eventually bankrupt the Federal government. The tax cuts for the middle class are largely token were mostly pushed by the Democrats, not really the Republicans. The massive tax cuts for the wealthy are now and will in the future lead to a massive concentration of wealth in the hands of the wealthiest few percent. Last time this happened in a big way, in the late 1800's and early 1900's, the massive poverty it caused in everyone else lead to social upheaval. It spawned the Progressive movement and Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party which put in the progressive tax system that Bush is currently dismantling. Regressive tax codes like Bush is implementing are doomed to failed unless you consider a few percent being filthy rich and 90+% in grinding poverty a success. In a capitalist system its really easy to make buckets of money if you already have money, and nearly impossible if you dont and are working for a living. The tax code needs to fund the government from people who are making the buckets of money and not people who are scraping by working for a living.
"2) Education reform. Signed NCLB less than 2 years into office with wide bipartisan support (in fact, most of it was written by Democrats)."
Only problem is its largely underfunded. Its also interesting Bush's Secretary of Education headed the Houston school district which was a model for "No Child Left Behind". It since been discovered Houston's remarkable success was largely due to doctoring their books. In particular they misrecorded dropouts as transfers. It made their low dropout rate look like a phenomenal success story when in fact it was a sham. Besides which it's mostly just mandatory testing, the education system will deteriorate in to nothing more than training kids to pass the test. Schools that don't train kids to pass the test will be flagged as failures and gutted, and money will go in to the pockets of big private education companies running sham charter schools who will if nothing else train kids to take the test.
"3) Prescription Drug Benefit. Passed this 3 years into office, and benefits take effect early next year."
I'm not sure exactly what he promised in the campaign but I imagine it was a meaningful prescription drug benefit for seniors. What was passed was a gigantic tax giveaway to drug, insurance and health care companies. The actual benefit to seniors is so obfuscated and complicated almost none understand it and its uptake by seniors has been relatively poor. The numbers look better than they are since many seniors already in HMO's were forced to enroll.
Since the bill denies the Medicare system the ability to use its buying power to negotiate drug prices the drug companies can, when the time comes, just jack up their prices and completely erase any benefit seniors will get out of the benefit. It will cause a massive drain on funds from the Medicare system and hasten its bankruptcy. You might note the out of pocket expense for Medicare was just jacked up by a by record percentage, a harbinger of things to come.
"4) Social Security Reform. Didn't get his inititive passed that would allow a portion of our SS benefits to be invested in the private sector."
Instead thanks to tax cuts and massive spending, the Bush administration has been continuing to spend the Social Security surplus coming in from payroll taxes on the poor and middle class to defray the cost of this tax cut for the filthy rich. It is in fact an acutely regressive tax system that punished the poor and middle class to the benefit of the wealthy who don't pay taxes on dividends any more and pay a puny tax on capital gains. Unfortunately working people are getting no break on payroll taxes and instead of using the surplus to keep the system solvent in the near future the government will continually jack up the retirement age and cut benefits. Ca
I guess I'm willing to concede that Red Hat's business model MIGHT play well with the stuffed shirts who sit in the CxO office and spend more time thinking about their golf game than their business.
But, I should think most in the geek community should have had their fill of Red Hat and the business model at this point. If the geeks are dead set against Red Hat there is a least a chance the CxO's wont go that route.
The two key places Red Hat burned their bridges:
A) Red Hat starts this cool little subscription service for end users, I buy a year's subscription and they for all practical purposes killed the OS I'm using and the update service six months in to my subscription. Welching on paid subscriptions, and failing to support their distributions, is a really bad indicator and should give pause to any business paying a bucketload of money for basically the same kind of service. If they've welched on their services once they are more than capable of doing it again.
B) Its more than a little cynical for them to dump most of their non money making distribution development on community volunteers in Fedora, expect them to work for free, and Red Hat still takes it as their prerogative to dictate everything that happens in Fedora. If you are working for a money making corporation expect payment or don't do it. There are plenty of freer distributions around where you can donate your time and get paid with control over your project based on the merits of your contribution, if nothing else.
I just finished nuking all but one ancient 7.3 Red Hat distribution off my machines, couldn't be happier and am not looking back. Gentoo rocks. If the whole Gentoo team and their servers fell off the face of the earth I could still do essential updates to my installed machines and maintain them without much problem indefinitely. There is a lot of blather about the "freedom" of Linux but if your letting yourself get locked in to the whims and tyrannies of distro developers you really don't have as much freedom as you think, especially when the distro developer is mostly trying to make their quarterly numbers to keep Wall Street happy and will screw any customer necessary to achieve that end.
"Let's see, the US has never manipulated its currency, has always respected intellectual property, has never reverse engineered anynody else's products .... like I said, riiiight."
The U.S. buys and sells dollars like every country does, it is a free market currency so you do that. China PEGS their currency. It is the ultimate manipulation. It completely prevents any market forces from adjusting it. There isn't any comparison.
The U.S. had intellectual property rights as does most of the Western world. They actually do try to enforce them. Reverse engineering and IP theft is rampant in China. There isn't any comparison.
I forgot to mention China's workers are also decidedly unfree so they have very little ability to fight for better working conditions, benefits and salaries. It makes them look great to businessmen looking for cheap subservient labor but its not a free labor market.
At this point you seem to be to dumb to argue with.
"Seems to me that the 60 years since the end of the last global war have been a lot more peaceful than almost any other period in history."
You also seem to have no graspe of modern history. There has been one proxy war after another. since the end of World War II, Korea, Vietnam for 30 years, Afghanistan multiple times, Yuogoslavia multiple times, Arab Israeli multiple times, Iran-Iraq, Iraq-Kuwait, India-Pakistan, two invasions of Iraq, Panama, Grenada, and civil wars across the globes. The only reason there hasn't been a global war was because the U.S., the U.S.S.R, Britain and France and China have nuclear weapons. It had NOTHING to do with globalization or economics. Again you have no clue what you are talking about.
Later dude.
"planned this going back to Mao and continuing with the Gang of Four and Deng and so on"
Actually no, it started after Mao and the Gang of Four died. Your rhetoric here is just stupid. Its became the plan of the current leadership when they deduced the obvious, they couldn't beat the west militarily or idealogically but they have the one thing needed to destroy the West economically, a huge underpaid, oppressed labor pool, versus the West where labor is expensive.
"Repeat: outsourcing and offshoring are natural parts of a free market."
If it were a truly free market I might agree with you but it isn't.
Exhibit A the Chinese manipulate their currency and peg it at an artificially low rate so their labor and goods are inherently cheaper, at least until they've destroyed all their competition. Thats who you win an economic war, just like Microsoft did, you undersell all your competition until they collapse and when they are gone you can charge as much as you feel like. If you want free markets the first prerequisite is the Chinese have to let their currency float so the markets decide what their currency, goods and labor are worth.
Exhibit B if you want free markets that are sane they have to respect intellectual property. They don't, they routinely reverse engineer machinery designed at considerable expense by others, sell knock offs at a fraction of the price and put the company that designed the product out of business. They also look the other way when software and media are pirated wholesale.
I'm sorry friend but you really are a sucker to think that what is happening is just A-OK. You've fallen for globalization propaganda. Globalization benefits multinational corporation, its going to lead to devastation for working people. Sure you can buy stuff cheap at Walmart but that won't help if your unemployed or getting an ever declining wages and benefits. Fact is nations exist to insure the economic well being of their citizens. There is no rule that says you have to put all the working people in your country in to poverty in the name of globalization. Trade barriers were there to prevent other countries from dumping, and economic manipulations that would otherwise allow them to destroy your economy.
As for your delusion that it makes the world safe from war, just wait till you see the kind of blackmail leverage the Chinese will have on the West when they can destroy Western economies just by shutting off the container ship traffic, and have a massive pool of U.S. dollars that can be used to destabilize the U.S. economy. If the Chinese want to regain control of Taiwan, they will soon have the leverage to do it without firing a shot. The Chinese are also working towards a position of economic dominance that can be coupled with, not instead of a powerful military. They will soon have the money and technology to build weapons that match those of the U.S. and combine that with 5 fold more boots to put on the ground.
I find the whole thing terrifying.
Of course the Chinese government is behind and it is a plan. It the high tech version of what they've been doing to manufacturing for a few years now. Undercut manufacturing in the rest of the world especially through low labor costs, the rest of the world gives up and moves all their machine tools, manufacturing capibility and technology to China, the rest of the world becomes completely dependent on China for manufacturing and they can so start to jack up their prices because they no will soon have no competition worth mentioning.
The end result is one giant American or European company after another is transfering the crown jewels of their intellectual property in to a country that has complete disdain for intellectual property rights and enforcement. Once its all transfered and Chinese nationals are the ones doing all the new development the foreign devil companies are going to be completely expendable and expended.
Its a great strategy for catapulting yourself from a technology backwater where you are mostly reverse engineering and soldering to global technological dominion.
The stupidity of American politicians and business leaders is truly amazing especially when they are blinded by greed.
Twirp, Twirp, Twirp. Have you turned so chicken shit you can't take me on under your login any more. I see you still have your formidable debating style, call everything you disagree with crap, with no substantce in yuour rebuttal and hurling profanity at the person saying it. You do seem to be a smart person Twirp, but you are really good at hiding it most of the time.
By the way Twirp, exactly what news organization do you work for. I'd like to read some of your stuff and see if the quality is as low as many, though not all, of your posts here.
If all of my theories are crap you need to propose a new alternative, or are you trying to deny the facts about Little George youth when he was a cocaine sniffing, drunk, partying frat boy who was constantly being bailed out of jams by his daddy. I assure there is record of little George doing community service at PUSH. I'm pretty sure a partier frat boy wouldn't do it out of the goodness of his heart. How do you explain it?
Since your tongue tied at the moment I'll help with more theories, I guess its possible CBS forged the docs but that would have been an insane thing to do on their part.
I suppose the Kerry campaign did it but again it would be insane for them to do such a piss poor job of it since it just makes them look bad.
Please share with us your infinite wisdom, Twirp. You are the only one that knows the truth and its just not right for you to keep depriving us, your most ardent fans, of that one and only truth, known only to you.
"I'm not implying it. After three days of research, I'm saying it outright. These memos are forgeries, and inept ones at that."
I think you're right Twirp but you have to go to the next step and think about who forged them and why to get to the heart of the story.
1. I imagine you will say its some left wing nut case trying to trash Little George. Problem is I think if they were serious about this they would have done a better job of it. Thinking they would use a computer and try to pass it off for an ancient typewriter is insane. I think they would have got an ancient typewriter. Its not that hard to do.
2. Maybe someone knew what was in the original documents so they wrote them out on a computer to try and restore records long since destroyed. They knew what was in the memos was true and is what mattered and they didn't care that they didn't do a great job forcing them. They weren't forging them, what they were doing was restoring documents Bush and his political operatives destroyed when they were given unsupervised access to his Guard file, and they were definitely given access to his file early in his political career to shred all the dirt that would have destroyed his political career if it got out, especially that he refused his flight physical because they'd instituted drug testing that year and he would have been nailed for Cocaine use.
3. My favorite and preferred theory is Karl Rove is the one that actually forged them and then fed them to CBS through a circuitous route. It would be genius and he is a malevolent genius. He makes the Democrats look bad, he trashes CBS which has been pretty hard on his administration, and most of all he makes the charges about Bush's youth appear fabricated when they are in fact true. They are true just not provable since all the documents have been shredded. In particular there is a tell all book coming soon about George's youth, part of which is sourced from Neal Bush's ex wife and will once again expose George W.'s extensive romance with Cocaine, including small time dealing and a felony conviction, which thanks to connections, was plea bargained to 6 months of community service to poor black folks, which he mostly ducked, and it was purged from his record. His felonious youth should have precluded him from holding office, how does that compare to Clinton lieing about sex. If this books comes on the heals of this forgery uproar it makes it a lot easier to discredit it the book....oh look it must be forgery and lies just like that Guard thing, those Democrats are so desperate.
I hate to say it, since I live in a place that fits the rural demographic and there are a lot of good people in them, but most of the people that live in them tend to be flat out dumb, are poorly educated and are complete suckers for the attack ads, smears and fear mongering that pass for political campaigns.
The number of churches vastly outnumber all other types of major buildings combined, most people are barely getting by but they still pour money in to the collection plates they can't afford in a never ending church building and supporting spree. Bible study and Sunday school tends to outrank a real education in importance, and unfortunately they are complete suckers for the extremist Christian religion pitch that is becoming the mainstay of the Republican party.
They also still tend to be thoroughly bigoted against blacks, hispanics and gays so once again the lily white Republican party suits them to a T.
If you want to see some of the worst pork coming out of Washington its farm subsidies that are being used to buy farm state votes by both parties. Farm state Democrats almost help passed the Republican energy bill for no other reason than it was laden with Ethanol subsidies that goes straight in to the pockets of corn farmers. Unfortunately much of the pork goes to wealthy and corporate farmers who don't need it, rather that poor independent farmers who do.
All in all I'd say its actually proven to be a bad thing for the country that the rural states have disproportional clout in the political process. Fact is they are for the most part nuts a fact born out by the fact that they overwhelmingly support the current President who doesn't have the resume to be President and whose first term is a complete mess if you ever stopped to objectively look at it. As long as he can out "Aw shucks" and "Praise the Lord" his opponent his still wins. Of course the candidate the Democrats fielded is so pathetic anyone could beat him.
Even if you ditched the electoral college the rural states still get disproportionally powerful representation through the Senate.
I don't think you quite hit the nail on the head though yes a candidate should win only if they get 50+% of the vote.
What you really need:
1) A constitutional amendment is required to dispose of the god awful electoral college. It all by itself discourages voting and is disenfranchising millions of voters in the Presidential election. If you are a blue in a very red state or a red in a very blue state you are wasting your vote thanks to the electoral college. It also results in the incumbent bestowing, and candidates promising, disproportionate pork to the battleground states, and they know it and milk it for all its worth. The candidates also don't campaign in any uncontested state further cutting many people out of the process.
2) There needs to be legislation or a constitution amendment that prevents the two major parties from passing laws that prevent new parties from starting or gaining access to the ballot. Indiana for example requires you get 3% in every election. As soon as a party falls below that as the Green's did in 2002 they are disbanded by the tyranny of the state and have to petition to get on the ballot and win 3 percent again to be recognized as a party. It is blatantly undemocratic and not something you would think could happen in this nation which is a supposed pillar of Democracy.
3) I really doubt you are going to make any ranking system work. It would be chaos considering this country has trouble just counting a simple vote for a candidate. Stick with the system proven in every other country in the world everyone gets on the first ballot and a run off between the top two candidates if no one wins 50% in the first ballot.
4) I dearly love to see the major parties have to form coalitions to control the House and Senate. Its often chaotic in Isreal, Italy etc. but its the only way people with minority views have any influence on government. As it is one of the two major parties wins control of the House, Senate and White House and they go off the deep end as the Republican's are doing and the Dem's have done in the past. Gridlock really is the best situation even though many bad mouth it, because no new laws are better than a bunch of whacked in the head laws that are opposed by a big percentage of American's like the Patriot Act.
If you want to see the last really successful 3rd party I think it was Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive/Bull Moose party. Interestingly enough it sprung out of an era where the very wealthy and corporate monopolies were massively abusing the majority of Americans and the tax system was taxing working people in to the ground while and encouraging wealth concentration in the hands of the lucky few, a situation very similar to the one we have today.
For a business with very machines I'm not sure I can see ANY justification for binary packaging. Your admin should have a dedicated Gentoo build machine(s) used for nothing but building system images. For an upgrade you nuke the old system image and copy the new one on, and run a post install script to do the host specific customization. If you update the whole system image you correct damaged and hacked systems as part of the upgrade. Though you do still want an automated script to propagate a merge from a single ebuild to every machine to do urgent security patches.
I don't think I can see any comparison between the headaches of binary package compatibilities and an occasional broken ebuild. A broken ebuild is usually trivial to fix and you really can fix it yourself.
The place where Gentoo wins the distro wars is the whole Gentoo team and their servers could fall off the face of the earth and I could, with a little work maintain my distribution myself, doing my own cherry picked updates and security patches, indefinitely. You don't really have to worry about some assholes, in North Carolina for example, deciding to end of life the distro your business depends on.
A major part of it in LA is its a city thats been overrun with illegal immigrants and they were mostly unschooled in their country of origin. Most don't speak English so are obviously illterate in English though the blurb on the news said most weren't literate in any language. The bar for literacy in the study wasn't high either, it was read a bus schedule, fill out a job application or read directions on a prescription, things fairly essential to basic living.
A key reason the U.S. is turning in to a third world country is because the third world is moving in to the U.S. unhindered. The Department of Homeland Security could close the border if they wanted to, they have the technology and could get the money, but like I said business and politicians LIKE illegal immigration. It is a huge pool of cheap labor who have no rights and are easily exploited. If you actually cut it off America's economy would crater because the U.S. is totally dependent on it for maids, manicurists, dishwashers, janitors, gardners, farm workers and just about every other form of menial labor.
Well first off I'm more arch conservative or libertarian than anything. I cherish the smallest government possible, but I favor taxing the rich because they can afford to pay and I favor universal health insurance because people shouldn't die because they can't pay for health care.
True conservatives hate the Bush administration too because they are slowly instituting a police state and trampling everyone's civil liberties, and they are bankrupting the U.S. through budget and trade deficits.
Second, I'm not sure there is anything irrational in the part you quoted. Are you saying George wasn't convicted for Cocaine posession and I'm lieing. That would be bad of me, but I'm not and I think you know it.
If somebody is convicted on a felony drug charge, this is a narcotic we are taking about here and not a little weed, it does in fact disqualify someone from the Presidency unless your powerful family pulls strings and gets it brushed under the rug. In many states, for example if you are a black felon in Florida you couldn't even vote after the same conviction.
I'm thinking it was nearly mandatory George go through the Texas governorship on his road to the White House. As Governor he had complete power to make sure all the dirt in his Texas state records could be properly cleaned. Most of the worst of it was in Texas. In particular he could give his operatives unfettered access to his Guard files and presumably he was able to dispose of any remnant of his Cocaine conviction though it was probably destroyed when he finished the community service anyway.
As for "irrational hatred of President Bush" I would say it is quite rational to hate him. He is an arrogant SOB. He's turned most of the world against the U.S. He is destroying civil liberties at rate not seen since McCarthyism (something which also occurred the last time the Republican's had power). He's gotten a thousand American's killed, and thousands scared for life, in Iraq in a war based on lies. I'm all for fighting Al Qaeda but he should have fought that war in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia where the heart of the problem is, and done it right, instead of blowing it off in a rush to take out a grudge on Saddam.
"1. Streamlined: UserLinux is a streamlined distribution with one key application in mind for a given piece of functionality. One web browser, one word processor, one mail client, one web server. This reduces support overhead both for users and for maintaining security."
And the problem being if you don't like their choice of the "one key application" its basically gonna suck, KDE being the obvious application set in the second class citizen category. Since I dumped Red Hat, or actually Red Hat dumped me, and I switched to Gentoo I'm happy as can be and I'm never going back to a distribution that wants to make choices for me. I'm sure UserLinux might fit some businesses that want everything done for them and Gentoo is not for everyone but if you like having control over your distribution instead of your distribution controlling you its the ticket.
"He let his flight status lapse because he knew he wouldn't be flying any more and because a physical examination is not a fun thing to do with your day."
He didn't take his physical because this is when the Guard instituted drug testing as part of it. Its ridiculous to suggest he'd risk landing in Vietnam just because taking the physical was not fun.
Its no secret was a frequent cocaine user during this period. He would have been nailed for drug use if he hadn't so he refused. He did and he should have been remanded to regular service for the insubordination and would have if he didn't have connections.
You did know W. was busted in Texas for cocaine possession. Again thanks to family connections he got off with six months of community service at PUSH. I assure you he didn't do community service for poor black folks out of the goodness of his heart. If he'd been poor or black he would have gotten a felony conviction and it would have ended his political career. America and the world would be a better place too.
I imagine the new documents are forged. I wish they'd sneaked by. The problem we have here is the Bush family and their very skilled and ruthless operatives went around destroying all the evidence of his pathetic excuse for a life, including gaining unsupervised and illegal access to his guard file when they destroyed all the really embarrasing documents. As a result there is no proof that he isn't fit to be President, though he isn't, so he has the Teflon coating.
"George W. Bush was born on third base and he thinks he hit a triple" Ann Richards
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush, December 2000