I don't think that is a given. We probably could go with either:
A. A huge government intervention B. No government intervention
I favor B. I think it will be fine if all the businesses and individuals that did stupid, risky things end in total ruin. That's what you get and deserve when you taken excessive and misguided risks in a free market. I think the bailout plan proposed by the Bush administration is mostly designed to bail out their fat cat Republican constituency before Bush and Paulson are kicked out the door. That is why they wanted $700 billion NOW, with no oversight, so they could blow it all bailing out their friends before Obama gets in the white house, and the orgy of cronyism and leeching off the government the last 8 years is over, or at least it switches to a Democratic orgy. It looks a lot like the bailout was a last orgy of wealth redistribution to the wealthy and as is typical for the Bush administration they used fear mongering to try to shove it through Congress without anyone questioning. Its cool it did get questioned and I hope Congress holds their ground though I doubt they will.
It might actually be good if American business and American people can't get business loans, credit cards, mortgages or home equity loans. I saw earlier today that the "average" American is carrying a $10,000 balance on their credit card. That is insane. I have a $0 dollar balance on my credit cards and so do a lot of others so that probably means the credit junkies are carrying $20,000 on their credit cards probably at a steep interest rate. In the last 10 years or so the savings rate by the average person in China has risen from like 30% to something like 45%. During the same period the average savings rate for an American has plunged to 0%. We don't save everything. The little we do save is canceled out by staggering debt burden.
The U.S. desperately needs to go cold turkey from their credit addiction, business, individual and government. Seizing of the credit markets is a sure way to make it happen. I'm really glad I no longer get 3 credit card offers in the mail every week. That was insane.
A complete freeze in our credit markets may actually start compelling American people and businesses to live within their means, as in don't spend money you don't have. If you want to buy something work for it first.... gasp. It may hammer the housing and auto industries.... tough.
The silver lining in the housing crash is home prices in the U.S. were astronomically inflated. If they crash 30-50% that will just bring them down to a sane level. It totally needs to happen, its not a bad thing. Sure its going to hammer people's net worth but if your net worth came from riding a housing bubble then it was a sham in the first place. The same can be said for the stock market. There is no law that says your stocks have to always go up/ If you've invested in the stock market for a while you made a lot of money, tough luck that you've lost 20% this year. Deal with it, stop whining and stop expecting the government to FORCE the stock market to always go up. Real markets don't do that. They should only go up when your businesses are really profitable and productive. Most American companies really aren't.
Bottom line is most Americans were engaging in a giant Ponzi scheme the last few years, a lot of you made a lot of money on it. It crashed. Ponzi schemes always do. If you were taking out huge home equity loans, flipping houses, etc. its time to take your medicine for doing something foolish.
Meanwhile we need to learn to make things again, we need to learn skills that have real economic value on the global stage. We need to rebuild our infrastructure and break our dependence on imported oil. Seriously, you aren't entitled to money for nothing and chicks for free no matter what the song says. The rest of the world is eating your lunch and unless you get off your butts and do something worthwhile you a
The U.S. government tends to be one of the telco's largest customers. Attacking one of your largest customers is usually not a good idea, and is unlikely to happen. I think they know I doubt it will gain them even a perceptible blip in good will with their home and small business customers. Home and small business customers mostly care how much their phone bills are and what kind of service they get for it.
If you recall Qwest pushed backed on participating in this surveillance program when it first started because of their concerns about its legality. Shortly there after the suddenly lost a huge classified telecommunications deal with the government, it caused a huge miss in their quarterly results and they couldn't talk about why because it was classified, their CEO was accused of misleading shareholders and eventually ended up in Federal prison. He may have been doing so fishy stuff for which he deserved some punishment but there was a huge signal sent from the Bush administration about playing ball.
Morale of the story is trying to fuck with the Federal government, especially the Bush administration, was and probably still is incredibly dangerous. They are, after all, people who think its OK to thrown black hoods over peoples heads and send them away to be tortured.
I doubt they will retaliate against the EFF like they did Qwest because they will probably opt to just stone wall the case and will probably succeed. Maybe a President Obama will be different but I doubt he will want all the bad people in the Bush administration perp walked because it sets a dangerous precedent for when he leaves office and a Republican President takes over.
"You think an OS with a pre-loaded dock which is still tied to overpriced hardware should...."
The thing about OSX is everything works out of the box, there are strong usability guidelines in every application, every application has a consistent UI so a user can count on every application to be consistent and easy to use. It also has a bunch of killer apps.
Its unfortunate Apple hardware is so expensive because it does restrict it to the affluent and really shuts out the poor parts of the world. Its also unfortunate its not more open than it is. But..... you simply can't argue with the fact that it is is a VERY well done desktop operating system with a bunch of very well done applications... and Apple does usability very well. Give them their due and stop being petty. I am no Mac fan boy, I still use a Linux desktop all the time, but every time Linux pokes me in the eye with a sharp stick, which it does ALL THE TIME, I waiver. There is a lot to be said for an OS where there are grown ups who make sure that the GUI and multimedia work consistently, as opposed to Linux where no one is in charge, and it shows in every way on the desktop, and people do things based on their religion and with no regard for the end user.
I simply don't think open source CAN develop a first class desktop experience. The simple fact everyone CAN do their own thing, creates complete chaos in a GUI and has caused such horrible fragmentation that Linux is defeating itself on the desktop at this point.
"Ubuntu Linux tops 8 million users."
Yay for marketing spin. I doubt anyone even knows how many people actually run Linux on the desktop, I'm sure not taking Ubuntu's word for it.
"I still don't understand why it's getting so much hate when Pulseaudio"
I don't understand how you can defend ALSA by admitting its such a bad audio API that it had to be brushed under the rug by hiding it under a bastardized API like Pulse. ALSA is so bad that people have developed about a dozen API's on top of it to try to hide it and make it go away. Unfortunately all this has done has proliferated a bunch more half baked API's that application developers have to try to support and Pulse Audio isn't any better than the rest. It is for all practical purposes ESD doing the same thing ESD did which was to try to hide the fact OSS sucked. The ALSA emulation in Pulse is terrible, though thats more ALSA's fault since its such an overdone and complex API its nearly impossible for anything to emulate it.
Another key point is PulseAudio isn't on ALL distro's so an application developer still can't count on it being there and just code to it.
Another issue with ALSA is its such a convoluted, over done API it makes life living hell for people who have to write drivers to support it. Especially when you get in to embedded CPU's you can count on the ALSA driver to be the last part of the kernel to be implemented by a silicon company, and its always one of the buggiest drivers.
The fact PulseAudio even exists and everyone is switching to it is the ultimate admission by the Linux community that ALSA is a complete failure.
As an application developer I just want a simple, standard API, that I KNOW will be on every Linux box, and it will always work and work the same on every box. I just want to set basic things like rate, number of channels and format, and then just write buffers and have it just work. I don't want to know about period size or threshholds or the other 20 knobs that are in the user facing API that most application developers should never see.
"When Miguel wrote Gnumeric it made *huge* strides for free software on the desktop."
I don't give him any credit for it because I've never used it. I've had to use GTK more than I care to remember, and I hate it with a passion, thanks Miguel for making it a Linux standard. Only spread sheet I've ever used on Linux is in Open Office. Spreadsheets aren't ground breaking software, which is why they were one of the first apps on the original PC and DOS. I remember there was a free spread sheet with source that shipped with TurboC like 15 years ago. So.... yawn.
I'm a little skeptical there are actually millions of people even using Linux on their desktops and I imagine the number is shrinking in the face of the fact that OSX is so well done. If you split those in half between Gnome and KDE I imagine you would be down to hundreds of thousands of people who agree or disagree with him. Then further trim the number by the hundreds of thousands of Linux desktop users who probably have no strong opinion on the religious wars between Gnome and KDE. You will probably be left with maybe a hundred thousand fanatics who will wage an endless religious war on the subject while OSX wins the desktop war for discriminating users, and Windows will continue to win with people who aren't very discriminating or play games on their PC. About the only hope Linux has on the desktop is in countries like China and Brazil which hate the U.S. and its corporations enough that they don't want their PC's owned by Microsoft or Apple.
Just to prove I'm one of those doomed religious fanatics I'd have to agree with the guy that started this thread, that while GNOME has some nice work in it in places, for the most part GTK is really poor foundation to build a GUI on and GNOME ends up being a pretty poor GUI due to its weak foundation. Its really sad Qt wasn't put under a license similar to Freetype way back when, because if it had Linux would be light years ahead of where it is today on the desktop. Though as another thread here hit the nail on the head, ALSA is such a horrible audio API it is also driving a bunch of nails in the coffin.
I've always had a strong suspicion Miguel is a Microsoft mole who has been doing a really awesome job of insuring Linux will never be any good on the desktop by poisoning it from within. If I was Bill Gates I'd sure be paying Miguel a small fortune under the table to do all the damage he's done to the Linux desktop over the years.
Voting is useless if ALL the candidates from two parties suck and the whole fracking system is stacked against 3rd party candidates. Especially when it comes in to intrusions in to our civil liberties the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans, slightly different about it, but at the end of the say just as bad.
Voting wont solve the problem until there are people who are running are worth voting for and fact is there just aren't many really good people who are also opting for a career in politics. If there were they would stil have survive the selection process the media applies to them which destroys most of them... errr.... all of them who aren't "mainstream", which more or less means "status quo" and "business as usual", which means pro big government and pro corporations, both of which translate in to to anti civil liberties for ordinary people. There used to be this illusion the Republicans were for small government, limited spending and keeping goverment out of peoples lives but McCarthism, Nixon and the last eight years proved that campaign rhetoric to be a big lie.
You look around the world and its kind of obvious China, U.S. Russia, and the U.K. among many others are moving to various shades of authoritarian nanny states designed for big corporate interests, the affluent, "law and order" and totally smashing individual freedoms. Its would take a complete miracle for ordinary people to turn it around at this point, if anyone tried, and very few will because its a great way to have your life ruined.
I was reading in China they had these protest parks for people to protest in during the Olympics. Well for some reason no one has. Why, because they have to apply for a permit to protest in them. Some brave people have applied, they've either disappeared, or the officials wouldn't give them the applications. Two elderly ladies, 70 somethings, one nearly blind, applied for permits 5 times to protest inadequate compensation for the leveling of their homes to make room for Olympic redevelopment. Since they wouldn't take no for asking to protest in the parks the Chinese said were there to protest in, they've now been sentenced to a year of labor and reeducation. I don't think they've locked them up yet but if they open their mouths once more the two grandmothers will end up in a prison camp, probably making stuff to sell at Walmart.
"Apple has consistently proven themselves capable in delivering a product that people love"...except for MobileMe..... though maybe they will salvage now that they turned it over to the iTunes team. Don't think AppleTV is a raging success yet either.
It is a knock against Apple that they are so secretive in their product launches that they can't really beta test new products so when things go bad they can go bad in a big way. That was apparently the case with MobileMe, it wasn't tested well at all to handle high loads.
I'm not sure how they tested the new 3G in the iPhone but I assume it was mostly tested by Apple employees in Silicon Valley which probably doesn't give you test coverage for areas which aren't dense and urban with a saturation cell tower coverage. It wouldn't be surprising if the chip set is new that it hasn't been tested in a broad array of areas with spotty or otherwise complex cell coverage.
I imagine the USAF is in a rush to deploy more UAV's since Gates fired their Air Force Secretary and their top ranking officers. Gates has expressed his frustration with the USAF on numerous occasions for their reluctance to embrace or deply UAV's fast enough or carrying their weight in Iraq and Afghanistan which needs UAV's not F-22's and B-2's. As I recall the Army was creating their own UAV force because they were fed up with the services the Air Force was offering.
I'm curious to see if the Air Force is holding to the line that they will only let trained pilots fly UAV's. As I recall this was a key factor in slowing UAV deployment in the Air Force, that and the fact their leadership tends to be fighter jocks who don't want to let go of being fighter jocks in gold plated F-22's. I imagine there are some benefits in having trained pilots but they are extremely expensive resources, in relatively short support, and I doubt most of them went through the enormous effort to become a pilot to sit in a trailer flying a UAV for boring hours on end. I imagine a fair percentage of their training has no value in flying UAV's. I imagine using only officers who are trained pilots must cause a huge increase in costs versus the Army who are probably using NCO's.
I recently bought a Dell XPS 630, yes their customer support is still in India and still sucks, but it was an OK price for an OK game system and didn't want to build myself. On the website I clicked I wanted to configure it with XP but everything from that point on said it was a Vista and nothing but vista. I was resigned to that and was going to buy XP myself if Vista sucked. I was jazzed when the machine came with Windows XP installed, and with Vista CD's but not installed.
You kinda wonder if the big name vendors are telling Microsoft they are delivering with Vista, and they are shipping Vista CD's, but are installing XP because that's what people want.
"But appeasing tyrants is generally not a good move, either."
The problem the U.S. has here is much of the world thinks Bush is a tyrant. Because he invaded Iraq under false pretenses, and condoned torturing people he doesn't really have any moral high ground to stand on at this point. I recall when Bush and the U.S. started lecturing Putin about issues with elections in Russia he shot back that the elections in the U.S., after irregularities in Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Alabama, weren't anything to be bragging about.
From reading the online newspapers today it appears the Georgians are more than a little unhappy that the U.S. and NATO are apparently going to let Russia swallow Georgia whole if they feel like. Has Bush even managed to tear himself away from the Olympics yet? Putin rushed back from the Olympics to the border with Georgia and is apparently hands on commanding the invasion. I'm guessing this is going to be another round of George being asleep at the switch, and caught with his pants down during a crisis, while one of his most faithful friends and allies is destroyed. Of course there is a question what he could do about it if he wanted to. The U.S. military is stretched so thin, that other than air power and nuclear threats, there is nothing he could do to stop this invasion.
"Better enforcement of the existing labor laws might be a good place to start."
The problem with the government enforcing labor laws is the Bush administration is blatantly pro business and anti labor so the the chances of the Fed's doing it are slim to none, Elaine Chow is one of the most pro business, anti labor, labor secretaries of all time. As I recall her family made substantial money in container shipping lines between the U.S. and China so her family are direct beneficaries of off shoring American jobs. She is a classic case of the fox guarding the chicken coop. The Labor Department under her guide has done nothing but gut employment law and enforcement.
Unless the government enforces the laws there is no other solution other than workers filing a law suit, or trying to start a union which is a near impossibility in the tech sector. Most tech workers don't even like the idea of unions, and if you succeeded in starting one tech companies would off shore your job overnight these days. Of course a successful lawsuit could easily end in the same result and Apple will just move the jobs.
I doubt California state has the jurisdiction or the interest to do it either. If the Fed's did enforce employment laws and drove up Apple's labor costs, again they would probably just off shore the jobs. With globalization its nearly impossible to do anything that will maintain a standard of living or pleasant working conditions for U.S. workers, because good working conditions price the jobs out of the market unless the jobs are in the service sector and can't be off shored.
"Google should be a grindhouse too, since Apple can get away with it"
Interesting point though Google is operating a near monopoly in search and have buckets of money flowing in as a result. Monopolies completely bend all the rules. Google is so selective in their hiring I doubt most Apple employees could get a job there, so they really aren't competing against each other.
"Globalization has improved the conditions of humanity on a scale NEVER witnessed before in human history."
At least according to you..... Not sure most Americans would agree with you. The standard of living for most American, and a lot of Western Europeans is in steady decline. China and India probably have a better standard of living in select pockets, but the vast majority of their populations are still in grinding poverty. China in particular has staggering pollution problems which are running completely counter to improved conditions, in fact their water and air is poisoning them on a daily basis. I think I would say there are select pockets that are much improved while much of the world is in decline.
Much of the prosperity in the U.S. during the Bush years was completely dependent on a housing bubble which has popped, it was an illusion, a pyramid scheme, a fantasy.
"GW Bush, was president of that most horrible nation, the USA (which gives to charities/poor/sick more than all other nations combined)."
Money which the U.S. is borrowing from the rest of the world. In case you haven't heard the U.S. government deficit is running around $500 billion a year and I assume the current account deficit is over a trillion a year by now. Its shear stupidity to be borrowing money at the rate the U.S. is borrowing it and then handing it out in foreign aid. The U.S. economy is going to inevitably crater if it continues.
The Republican policies of the last 8 years are accelerating the decline of the U.S. economy not improving it. Maybe you have a point that the Bush administrations policies, and to an extent Clinton before him, are enriching the rest of the world, by transferring wealth from the U.S to China, India and the Middle East. I see your point, Bush has probably been the best thing that could have happened economically for the rest of the world, unfortunately he's destroying the U.S. economy do do it, average Americans are already paying a price for it, and will probably pay dearly for it in the future. America is turning in to a debtor nation, full of debtors, on a scale never seen before.
In reading the U.S. Libertarian party's web site on the issue, which probably represents only one take of one flavor of Libertarianism, it appears they are OK with unions as long as both employees and employers can take 'em or leave 'em. It would be interesting if there are any unions that actually work and survive like that. Unless the unions is representing a precious labor pool the company has to have it would seem to me most employers would quickly get rid of the unions. As long as there are employees willing to work for a lower wage than the union workers they union would be quickly undercut by cheaper workers.
I imagine Libertarians would view unions like the UAW and Teamsters with disdain since they deny both employees and employers their freedom. Employees can't get work in union shops without joining the union, paying their dues and doing what they say and employers can't hire workers that aren't in the union for a lot of jobs.
Unions are antithetical to Libertarianism. It doesn't really have anything to do with political or social freedom. Unions are by design the antithesis of free markets since they seek to set labor rates not based on supply and demand of workers but artificially by the threat of strikes and by depriving employers of workers unless they pay artificially inflated wages.
Its just an irreconcilable problem that employers without the burden of Unions or government regulation are going to screw workers... unless there is a real shortage of workers which there usually isn't, especially thanks to globalization. Unions on the other hand tend to create inflated wage rates, and workers that aren't held to account for their performance causing horrible efficiency and inflation. There is probably some happy median where there is enough worker organization to keep abusive employers in check, without creating an overpriced and underperforming work force you see with powerful unions. Unfortunately that median can never be held and instead there are wide swings between the extremes.
Thanks to globalization unions are pretty much doomed at the moment. You try to create a union any employer who can will just move to a country where they wont have to put up with unions. Its nearly impossible to unionize the entire planet. Many countries are pro business and openly hostile to unions. In fact the U.S. spent most of the last century toppling governments in the third world that were pro worker, Socialisim and unions. Ostensibly it was to fight Communism but it was also to make the world safe for multinationals and capitalists and to insure an abundant supply of cheap labor for Capitalists.
"don't like how Apple does business, quit, and get another job"
The funny thing about labor markets is if one employer gets away with abusive practices, especially a prominent one, pretty soon they all do it to compete and you wont have any place better to go. Not saying Apple's conditions are abusive, some people could just be whining, but practices at a lot of high tech companies are pretty abusive and probably getting more so.
Unless there is a serious shortage of workers its expected for employers to devolve to the lowest common denominator they can get away with. With a planet bursting at the seems with workers, with globalization, the internet, container ships and fiber optics, the whole world is now the labor pool which means, chances are, working for the man is gonna suck from now on.
You sound like one of those people that thinks the invisible hand of free markets will solve all problems. The only problem is all indications are the invisible hand, unchecked, will result in a small percentage of the world's population, the ones with capital being extremely rich and everyone else being extremely poor. Around 1900 working conditions in the U.S. were pretty similar to China, and wealth was concentrating in the hand of the few. It took the progressive movement, labor unions, and a World War II fueled boom to raise the standard of living for everyone in the U.S. We are now seeing wealth concentration at a disturbing level again and that living standard crater for working people, partially thanks to the Bush administration. A hedge fund manager making billions of dollars a year pays taxes at 15%. Most working people pay around %37.5 counting income and all payroll taxes, and not counting regressive sales taxes. Most people didn't notice but the Republicans instituted an extremely regressive tax system designed to destroy working people and to make the rich, very rich, very fast.
There is an interesting twist lately for manufacturing workers. With soaring oil prices its becoming very expensive to ship heavy commodities and manufactured good half way around the world. The cost for shipping containers from China to U.S. have gone from $3000 to $8000 and container ships are dropping their speed %20 to save fuel increasing shipping times. I read that some manufacturers targeting the U.S. are moving from China back to Mexico to reduce shipping costs.
"Oh come on. Comparing the U.S. to Nazi Germany just weakens your cause. I don`t think that the U.S. is after world domination. At least not consciously."
The U.S. is totally after world domination. Its just not doing it as overtly as Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Its mostly seeking to do it economically and culturally, and only militarily whenever there is some regime they can easily squash that challenges American hegemony. Fortunately for the rest of the world, at least since Bush took over, they are completely sucking at it and the economic domination is in complete collapse. Militarily the U.S. is so bogged down in Iraq it can't do anything else or it would, no doubt, have gone after Iran already.
"Japan successfully attacked the U.S. in WWII, albeit Hawaii, and they did so over thousands of miles of ocean."
They didn't INVADE the U.S. They lobbed bombs and torpedoes in a sneak attack and ran. Big, big difference. That wouldn't even be possible since spy satellites were invented. Mounting an amphibious invasion on a small island and on a country with 200-300 million people most of whom have guns is a whole different scale of a problem. It took the U.S. years to collect the resources to invade Normandy, and they had the benefit of Great Britain as a jumping off point.
You will never be able to sort out how much of it is due to the geography and how much is due to the staggering sums the U.S. spends on aircraft carriers and nukes, so there isn't any point in arguing about it. About the only conclusion we've reached is its obvious the U.S. military is powerful, it OUGHT to be when you spend as much on it as the rest of the world combined. I'm just of the opinion its totally excessive, and what you get when a military industrial establishment that is ought of control and with unchecked power. The U.S. also spends way to much time invading countries under false pretenses and toppling governments which are none of their business. I think it is still indisuputable that the U.S. is currently the most aggressive nation on the planet, and everything you've said supports that.
"But that is precisely why our defense has been so effective"
LOL. you're taking an enormous leap there which isn't really supported. It could be our defense has been so effective because the U.S. is surrounded by two huge oceans and the logistical challenges of attacking the U.S. are formidable. It would require an enormous navy to actually invade the U.S. Canada hasn't been invaded much either, except by the U.S. Switzerland doesn't spend anything close to what the U.S. does and I don't think its been invaded much either, despite sitting in the middle of a powder keg.
Rationalizing preemptive warfare is an enormously foolish thing to do. Taken to its logical conclusion you will quickly turn in to a rogue state engaged in non stop aggressive warfare and operating at the same level as Nazi Germany. The U.S. was very close to just than when it invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The rationales used in Granada, Kosovo and Panama were just as weak. None of those wars had anything to do with defending the U.S. or even preempting a threat they were just cases of the U.S. being a bully.
"I'm not saying it's perfect, but normalised against its size, the US is a mild-mannered mouse, a smiling puppy"
Dude you've been drinking to much U.S. government Koolaid. Most of the rest of the world knows the U.S. to be a meddling, bully, invading Iraq wasn't the first time. The U.S. has installed and propped up more dictators than just about any country in existence today, in the name of fighting Communism or defending the interests of its multinational corporations depending on your political viewpoint. In particular the U.S. has been especially fond of making Central America safe for U.S. Banana companies, and places like Iraq and Iran safe for U.S. oil companies. The U.S. under the Monroe doctrine has completely dominated every country in Central and South America since....Monroe.
In Africa the U.S. with the aid of Ethiopia toppled an Islamic government that had the first chance of restoring order there in a long time, and will in all probability let it land back under warlords, just because the U.S. couldn't tolerate an Islamic government running the place. The U.S. doesn't meddle much in Africa because its never cared about Africa as much as the European Imperial powers do, Somalia is just to close to the Persian Gulf where the U.S. does meddle, all the time.
"What on earth makes you think the US is the "most aggressive country"... ? "
Because the U.S. has invaded more countries by far than any other country at least since World War II. The other leading contenders for the title aren't around any more, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union.
Cuba multiple times(Bay of Pigs and Spanish American), Philippines(Spanish American), Panama, Grenada, Iraq two times, Afghanistan, and a dubious involvement in Vietnam propping up unpopular puppets, multiple invasions of Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and to many other banana republics to remember. Staged coups in Iran, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, again I can't even remember all the governments the U.S. has toppled over the last 100 years.
State and Federal workers don't respond to 911 calls. I didn't say anything about firing local government workers. Local government provides the services that matter to people on a day to day basis like police, education, fire and paramedics.
Other than the military its not really clear we actually need most of our Federal government to live day to day. It mostly just consumes vast sums of money. State government is also pretty dubious most of the time other than state highways and maybe universities.
"That's before you lost your job due the complete economic collapse that followed."
According to the free market conservatives the government does more damage to the economy than anything. Why would the economy collapse, unless the U.S. is Socialist and completely dependent on large numbers of government workers.
"The national defense is one of the few things the federal government does today that actually has a constitutional basis. I don't think anyone suggests getting rid of our military. It's one of the VERY few things our government has done that actually WORKS (when liberals aren't busy undermining it and/or its mission, anyway)."
I think that is seriously open to debate. For one things between the defense and intelligence establishment Afghanistan and Iraq wars what is the "defense" budget is up to $600-700 billion if you actually counted everything. This seems more than a little excessive for "defense" which it probably as much as the entire rest of the world combined spends on defense. Its also a LOT of money not going to any productive use.
When was the last time our National Defense actually did "defense". Its been playing offense in places that have nothing to do with the U.S. including Iraq, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada and Korea, Western Europe in World War I, Spanish American, Mexican wars. The only wars that strike me as being "defense" are the Revolution, 1812, World War II though the U.S. provoked Pearl Harbor with an oil embargo on Japan, and Afghanistan. Afghanistan would have been self defense but the Bush administration actually failed miserably in stomping Al Qaeda and the Taliban and instead let them move to the tribal areas of Pakistan where they've been living happily ever since, while we occupy Afghanistan to no good effect.
"Meanwhile, crime would run rampant on the streets"
I didn't say anything about disbanding local government and local police. They are the ones that stop crime. The state highway patrol would be the only thing that would be gone people see on a regular basis.
I was just talking about getting rid of state and Federal government. The only issues I can see with crime are that A) local authorities would have to hold their own prisoners instead of sending them off to the state. Maybe communities would have second thoughts about locking people up for long periods for things like drug possession if they have to hold them at local expense for long periods. B) Criminals could probably move to new localities to avoid the law if there weren't state and federal wide crime databases and authority.
People have existed with local government only, they could do it again. The only issue you would have is defense from other nations or other locales that can't live peacefully and coexist with their neighbors. I'm not sure it would be the anarchy you say it is unless there were things like food shortages. The conservatives assure us free markets will solve all problems so there should be no shortages, though you might have issues with currency without a Federal Reserve and Treasury.
One problem, I'm not a Democrat, I'm a registered independent, always have been. You won't get any argument from me that the Democrats steal lollipops from babies too, but I think you will be hard pressed to find any instance where Democrats have been as corrupt as the Bush and Nixon administrations.
Kind of sad the only way you can defend your apparent preference for the Republican party, after its been well established they've been on a spree of corruption and law breaking, is with the rabid attack dog defense.... Watch while I tear the Democrats apart, and dont look at all those crooks over there in my party. Its OK if we are crooks because the Democrats are too, that's just the way the system works.... NICE!!
I was reading on the Washington Post last night that voter registration for Democrats and Independents are surging while Republicans are plunging. They've lost something like a million registered voters in the last couple years. Independent registration is reaching a point that if they banded together they would be a real third party, something this country desperately needs, because you Republicans suck and so do the Democrats, I'm getting sick of listening to both of you, and its even worse the get to hold on to piece of the power because there are only two choices and they both suck.
"The thing is that the Clintons were pretty good at helping their friends and evading prosecution also"
Not that I'm defending the Clintons but there is a big, big difference. The Clintons were under CONSTANT scrutiny from special prosecutors and a hostile Republican house. Ken Starr made a career out of trying to pin something on the the Clinton's and failed. The only thing Starr ever caught him for was lying about having sex with Lewinsky, and sex is something everyone lies about, especially when you are married. As I recall Henry Hyde and Newt Gingrich were both having their own extramarital affairs during the same time the were getting all holier than thou at Clinton for having one.
Special prosecutors were done away with just in time to give Bush and minions a free pass and they had NO supervision for their first six years because the Republican congress was a rubber stamp and they could use 9/11 fear mongering to shut up just about everyone. They were actually breaking laws that matter, torturing people, locking people up without habeas corpus, spying on Americans without a warrant, politically motivated prosecutions, pissing on the Constitution. Clinton wasn't even in the same league as Bush, Cheney and Addington. You would have to go back to Nixon to find a president with equal contempt for the law.
Slashdot Mirror
"This Crisis Needs Government Intervention."
I don't think that is a given. We probably could go with either:
A. A huge government intervention
B. No government intervention
I favor B. I think it will be fine if all the businesses and individuals that did stupid, risky things end in total ruin. That's what you get and deserve when you taken excessive and misguided risks in a free market. I think the bailout plan proposed by the Bush administration is mostly designed to bail out their fat cat Republican constituency before Bush and Paulson are kicked out the door. That is why they wanted $700 billion NOW, with no oversight, so they could blow it all bailing out their friends before Obama gets in the white house, and the orgy of cronyism and leeching off the government the last 8 years is over, or at least it switches to a Democratic orgy. It looks a lot like the bailout was a last orgy of wealth redistribution to the wealthy and as is typical for the Bush administration they used fear mongering to try to shove it through Congress without anyone questioning. Its cool it did get questioned and I hope Congress holds their ground though I doubt they will.
It might actually be good if American business and American people can't get business loans, credit cards, mortgages or home equity loans. I saw earlier today that the "average" American is carrying a $10,000 balance on their credit card. That is insane. I have a $0 dollar balance on my credit cards and so do a lot of others so that probably means the credit junkies are carrying $20,000 on their credit cards probably at a steep interest rate. In the last 10 years or so the savings rate by the average person in China has risen from like 30% to something like 45%. During the same period the average savings rate for an American has plunged to 0%. We don't save everything. The little we do save is canceled out by staggering debt burden.
The U.S. desperately needs to go cold turkey from their credit addiction, business, individual and government. Seizing of the credit markets is a sure way to make it happen. I'm really glad I no longer get 3 credit card offers in the mail every week. That was insane.
A complete freeze in our credit markets may actually start compelling American people and businesses to live within their means, as in don't spend money you don't have. If you want to buy something work for it first.... gasp. It may hammer the housing and auto industries.... tough.
The silver lining in the housing crash is home prices in the U.S. were astronomically inflated. If they crash 30-50% that will just bring them down to a sane level. It totally needs to happen, its not a bad thing. Sure its going to hammer people's net worth but if your net worth came from riding a housing bubble then it was a sham in the first place. The same can be said for the stock market. There is no law that says your stocks have to always go up/ If you've invested in the stock market for a while you made a lot of money, tough luck that you've lost 20% this year. Deal with it, stop whining and stop expecting the government to FORCE the stock market to always go up. Real markets don't do that. They should only go up when your businesses are really profitable and productive. Most American companies really aren't.
Bottom line is most Americans were engaging in a giant Ponzi scheme the last few years, a lot of you made a lot of money on it. It crashed. Ponzi schemes always do. If you were taking out huge home equity loans, flipping houses, etc. its time to take your medicine for doing something foolish.
Meanwhile we need to learn to make things again, we need to learn skills that have real economic value on the global stage. We need to rebuild our infrastructure and break our dependence on imported oil. Seriously, you aren't entitled to money for nothing and chicks for free no matter what the song says. The rest of the world is eating your lunch and unless you get off your butts and do something worthwhile you a
The U.S. government tends to be one of the telco's largest customers. Attacking one of your largest customers is usually not a good idea, and is unlikely to happen. I think they know I doubt it will gain them even a perceptible blip in good will with their home and small business customers. Home and small business customers mostly care how much their phone bills are and what kind of service they get for it.
If you recall Qwest pushed backed on participating in this surveillance program when it first started because of their concerns about its legality. Shortly there after the suddenly lost a huge classified telecommunications deal with the government, it caused a huge miss in their quarterly results and they couldn't talk about why because it was classified, their CEO was accused of misleading shareholders and eventually ended up in Federal prison. He may have been doing so fishy stuff for which he deserved some punishment but there was a huge signal sent from the Bush administration about playing ball.
Morale of the story is trying to fuck with the Federal government, especially the Bush administration, was and probably still is incredibly dangerous. They are, after all, people who think its OK to thrown black hoods over peoples heads and send them away to be tortured.
I doubt they will retaliate against the EFF like they did Qwest because they will probably opt to just stone wall the case and will probably succeed. Maybe a President Obama will be different but I doubt he will want all the bad people in the Bush administration perp walked because it sets a dangerous precedent for when he leaves office and a Republican President takes over.
"You think an OS with a pre-loaded dock which is still tied to overpriced hardware should...."
The thing about OSX is everything works out of the box, there are strong usability guidelines in every application, every application has a consistent UI so a user can count on every application to be consistent and easy to use. It also has a bunch of killer apps.
Its unfortunate Apple hardware is so expensive because it does restrict it to the affluent and really shuts out the poor parts of the world. Its also unfortunate its not more open than it is. But..... you simply can't argue with the fact that it is is a VERY well done desktop operating system with a bunch of very well done applications... and Apple does usability very well. Give them their due and stop being petty. I am no Mac fan boy, I still use a Linux desktop all the time, but every time Linux pokes me in the eye with a sharp stick, which it does ALL THE TIME, I waiver. There is a lot to be said for an OS where there are grown ups who make sure that the GUI and multimedia work consistently, as opposed to Linux where no one is in charge, and it shows in every way on the desktop, and people do things based on their religion and with no regard for the end user.
I simply don't think open source CAN develop a first class desktop experience. The simple fact everyone CAN do their own thing, creates complete chaos in a GUI and has caused such horrible fragmentation that Linux is defeating itself on the desktop at this point.
"Ubuntu Linux tops 8 million users."
Yay for marketing spin. I doubt anyone even knows how many people actually run Linux on the desktop, I'm sure not taking Ubuntu's word for it.
"I still don't understand why it's getting so much hate when Pulseaudio"
I don't understand how you can defend ALSA by admitting its such a bad audio API that it had to be brushed under the rug by hiding it under a bastardized API like Pulse. ALSA is so bad that people have developed about a dozen API's on top of it to try to hide it and make it go away. Unfortunately all this has done has proliferated a bunch more half baked API's that application developers have to try to support and Pulse Audio isn't any better than the rest. It is for all practical purposes ESD doing the same thing ESD did which was to try to hide the fact OSS sucked. The ALSA emulation in Pulse is terrible, though thats more ALSA's fault since its such an overdone and complex API its nearly impossible for anything to emulate it.
Another key point is PulseAudio isn't on ALL distro's so an application developer still can't count on it being there and just code to it.
Another issue with ALSA is its such a convoluted, over done API it makes life living hell for people who have to write drivers to support it. Especially when you get in to embedded CPU's you can count on the ALSA driver to be the last part of the kernel to be implemented by a silicon company, and its always one of the buggiest drivers.
The fact PulseAudio even exists and everyone is switching to it is the ultimate admission by the Linux community that ALSA is a complete failure.
As an application developer I just want a simple, standard API, that I KNOW will be on every Linux box, and it will always work and work the same on every box. I just want to set basic things like rate, number of channels and format, and then just write buffers and have it just work. I don't want to know about period size or threshholds or the other 20 knobs that are in the user facing API that most application developers should never see.
"When Miguel wrote Gnumeric it made *huge* strides for free software on the desktop."
I don't give him any credit for it because I've never used it. I've had to use GTK more than I care to remember, and I hate it with a passion, thanks Miguel for making it a Linux standard. Only spread sheet I've ever used on Linux is in Open Office. Spreadsheets aren't ground breaking software, which is why they were one of the first apps on the original PC and DOS. I remember there was a free spread sheet with source that shipped with TurboC like 15 years ago. So.... yawn.
"Millions of people disagree with you"
I'm a little skeptical there are actually millions of people even using Linux on their desktops and I imagine the number is shrinking in the face of the fact that OSX is so well done. If you split those in half between Gnome and KDE I imagine you would be down to hundreds of thousands of people who agree or disagree with him. Then further trim the number by the hundreds of thousands of Linux desktop users who probably have no strong opinion on the religious wars between Gnome and KDE. You will probably be left with maybe a hundred thousand fanatics who will wage an endless religious war on the subject while OSX wins the desktop war for discriminating users, and Windows will continue to win with people who aren't very discriminating or play games on their PC. About the only hope Linux has on the desktop is in countries like China and Brazil which hate the U.S. and its corporations enough that they don't want their PC's owned by Microsoft or Apple.
Just to prove I'm one of those doomed religious fanatics I'd have to agree with the guy that started this thread, that while GNOME has some nice work in it in places, for the most part GTK is really poor foundation to build a GUI on and GNOME ends up being a pretty poor GUI due to its weak foundation. Its really sad Qt wasn't put under a license similar to Freetype way back when, because if it had Linux would be light years ahead of where it is today on the desktop. Though as another thread here hit the nail on the head, ALSA is such a horrible audio API it is also driving a bunch of nails in the coffin.
I've always had a strong suspicion Miguel is a Microsoft mole who has been doing a really awesome job of insuring Linux will never be any good on the desktop by poisoning it from within. If I was Bill Gates I'd sure be paying Miguel a small fortune under the table to do all the damage he's done to the Linux desktop over the years.
Voting is useless if ALL the candidates from two parties suck and the whole fracking system is stacked against 3rd party candidates. Especially when it comes in to intrusions in to our civil liberties the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans, slightly different about it, but at the end of the say just as bad.
Voting wont solve the problem until there are people who are running are worth voting for and fact is there just aren't many really good people who are also opting for a career in politics. If there were they would stil have survive the selection process the media applies to them which destroys most of them ... errr.... all of them who aren't "mainstream", which more or less means "status quo" and "business as usual", which means pro big government and pro corporations, both of which translate in to to anti civil liberties for ordinary people. There used to be this illusion the Republicans were for small government, limited spending and keeping goverment out of peoples lives but McCarthism, Nixon and the last eight years proved that campaign rhetoric to be a big lie.
You look around the world and its kind of obvious China, U.S. Russia, and the U.K. among many others are moving to various shades of authoritarian nanny states designed for big corporate interests, the affluent, "law and order" and totally smashing individual freedoms. Its would take a complete miracle for ordinary people to turn it around at this point, if anyone tried, and very few will because its a great way to have your life ruined.
I was reading in China they had these protest parks for people to protest in during the Olympics. Well for some reason no one has. Why, because they have to apply for a permit to protest in them. Some brave people have applied, they've either disappeared, or the officials wouldn't give them the applications. Two elderly ladies, 70 somethings, one nearly blind, applied for permits 5 times to protest inadequate compensation for the leveling of their homes to make room for Olympic redevelopment. Since they wouldn't take no for asking to protest in the parks the Chinese said were there to protest in, they've now been sentenced to a year of labor and reeducation. I don't think they've locked them up yet but if they open their mouths once more the two grandmothers will end up in a prison camp, probably making stuff to sell at Walmart.
Welcome to the new world order.
"Apple has consistently proven themselves capable in delivering a product that people love" ...except for MobileMe..... though maybe they will salvage now that they turned it over to the iTunes team. Don't think AppleTV is a raging success yet either.
It is a knock against Apple that they are so secretive in their product launches that they can't really beta test new products so when things go bad they can go bad in a big way. That was apparently the case with MobileMe, it wasn't tested well at all to handle high loads.
I'm not sure how they tested the new 3G in the iPhone but I assume it was mostly tested by Apple employees in Silicon Valley which probably doesn't give you test coverage for areas which aren't dense and urban with a saturation cell tower coverage. It wouldn't be surprising if the chip set is new that it hasn't been tested in a broad array of areas with spotty or otherwise complex cell coverage.
Good post.
I imagine the USAF is in a rush to deploy more UAV's since Gates fired their Air Force Secretary and their top ranking officers. Gates has expressed his frustration with the USAF on numerous occasions for their reluctance to embrace or deply UAV's fast enough or carrying their weight in Iraq and Afghanistan which needs UAV's not F-22's and B-2's. As I recall the Army was creating their own UAV force because they were fed up with the services the Air Force was offering.
I'm curious to see if the Air Force is holding to the line that they will only let trained pilots fly UAV's. As I recall this was a key factor in slowing UAV deployment in the Air Force, that and the fact their leadership tends to be fighter jocks who don't want to let go of being fighter jocks in gold plated F-22's. I imagine there are some benefits in having trained pilots but they are extremely expensive resources, in relatively short support, and I doubt most of them went through the enormous effort to become a pilot to sit in a trailer flying a UAV for boring hours on end. I imagine a fair percentage of their training has no value in flying UAV's. I imagine using only officers who are trained pilots must cause a huge increase in costs versus the Army who are probably using NCO's.
I recently bought a Dell XPS 630, yes their customer support is still in India and still sucks, but it was an OK price for an OK game system and didn't want to build myself. On the website I clicked I wanted to configure it with XP but everything from that point on said it was a Vista and nothing but vista. I was resigned to that and was going to buy XP myself if Vista sucked. I was jazzed when the machine came with Windows XP installed, and with Vista CD's but not installed.
You kinda wonder if the big name vendors are telling Microsoft they are delivering with Vista, and they are shipping Vista CD's, but are installing XP because that's what people want.
"But appeasing tyrants is generally not a good move, either."
The problem the U.S. has here is much of the world thinks Bush is a tyrant. Because he invaded Iraq under false pretenses, and condoned torturing people he doesn't really have any moral high ground to stand on at this point. I recall when Bush and the U.S. started lecturing Putin about issues with elections in Russia he shot back that the elections in the U.S., after irregularities in Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Alabama, weren't anything to be bragging about.
From reading the online newspapers today it appears the Georgians are more than a little unhappy that the U.S. and NATO are apparently going to let Russia swallow Georgia whole if they feel like. Has Bush even managed to tear himself away from the Olympics yet? Putin rushed back from the Olympics to the border with Georgia and is apparently hands on commanding the invasion. I'm guessing this is going to be another round of George being asleep at the switch, and caught with his pants down during a crisis, while one of his most faithful friends and allies is destroyed. Of course there is a question what he could do about it if he wanted to. The U.S. military is stretched so thin, that other than air power and nuclear threats, there is nothing he could do to stop this invasion.
"Better enforcement of the existing labor laws might be a good place to start."
The problem with the government enforcing labor laws is the Bush administration is blatantly pro business and anti labor so the the chances of the Fed's doing it are slim to none, Elaine Chow is one of the most pro business, anti labor, labor secretaries of all time. As I recall her family made substantial money in container shipping lines between the U.S. and China so her family are direct beneficaries of off shoring American jobs. She is a classic case of the fox guarding the chicken coop. The Labor Department under her guide has done nothing but gut employment law and enforcement.
Unless the government enforces the laws there is no other solution other than workers filing a law suit, or trying to start a union which is a near impossibility in the tech sector. Most tech workers don't even like the idea of unions, and if you succeeded in starting one tech companies would off shore your job overnight these days. Of course a successful lawsuit could easily end in the same result and Apple will just move the jobs.
I doubt California state has the jurisdiction or the interest to do it either. If the Fed's did enforce employment laws and drove up Apple's labor costs, again they would probably just off shore the jobs. With globalization its nearly impossible to do anything that will maintain a standard of living or pleasant working conditions for U.S. workers, because good working conditions price the jobs out of the market unless the jobs are in the service sector and can't be off shored.
"Google should be a grindhouse too, since Apple can get away with it"
Interesting point though Google is operating a near monopoly in search and have buckets of money flowing in as a result. Monopolies completely bend all the rules. Google is so selective in their hiring I doubt most Apple employees could get a job there, so they really aren't competing against each other.
"Globalization has improved the conditions of humanity on a scale NEVER witnessed before in human history."
At least according to you..... Not sure most Americans would agree with you. The standard of living for most American, and a lot of Western Europeans is in steady decline. China and India probably have a better standard of living in select pockets, but the vast majority of their populations are still in grinding poverty. China in particular has staggering pollution problems which are running completely counter to improved conditions, in fact their water and air is poisoning them on a daily basis. I think I would say there are select pockets that are much improved while much of the world is in decline.
Much of the prosperity in the U.S. during the Bush years was completely dependent on a housing bubble which has popped, it was an illusion, a pyramid scheme, a fantasy.
"GW Bush, was president of that most horrible nation, the USA (which gives to charities/poor/sick more than all other nations combined)."
Money which the U.S. is borrowing from the rest of the world. In case you haven't heard the U.S. government deficit is running around $500 billion a year and I assume the current account deficit is over a trillion a year by now. Its shear stupidity to be borrowing money at the rate the U.S. is borrowing it and then handing it out in foreign aid. The U.S. economy is going to inevitably crater if it continues.
The Republican policies of the last 8 years are accelerating the decline of the U.S. economy not improving it. Maybe you have a point that the Bush administrations policies, and to an extent Clinton before him, are enriching the rest of the world, by transferring wealth from the U.S to China, India and the Middle East. I see your point, Bush has probably been the best thing that could have happened economically for the rest of the world, unfortunately he's destroying the U.S. economy do do it, average Americans are already paying a price for it, and will probably pay dearly for it in the future. America is turning in to a debtor nation, full of debtors, on a scale never seen before.
In reading the U.S. Libertarian party's web site on the issue, which probably represents only one take of one flavor of Libertarianism, it appears they are OK with unions as long as both employees and employers can take 'em or leave 'em. It would be interesting if there are any unions that actually work and survive like that. Unless the unions is representing a precious labor pool the company has to have it would seem to me most employers would quickly get rid of the unions. As long as there are employees willing to work for a lower wage than the union workers they union would be quickly undercut by cheaper workers.
I imagine Libertarians would view unions like the UAW and Teamsters with disdain since they deny both employees and employers their freedom. Employees can't get work in union shops without joining the union, paying their dues and doing what they say and employers can't hire workers that aren't in the union for a lot of jobs.
Unions are antithetical to Libertarianism. It doesn't really have anything to do with political or social freedom. Unions are by design the antithesis of free markets since they seek to set labor rates not based on supply and demand of workers but artificially by the threat of strikes and by depriving employers of workers unless they pay artificially inflated wages.
Its just an irreconcilable problem that employers without the burden of Unions or government regulation are going to screw workers... unless there is a real shortage of workers which there usually isn't, especially thanks to globalization. Unions on the other hand tend to create inflated wage rates, and workers that aren't held to account for their performance causing horrible efficiency and inflation. There is probably some happy median where there is enough worker organization to keep abusive employers in check, without creating an overpriced and underperforming work force you see with powerful unions. Unfortunately that median can never be held and instead there are wide swings between the extremes.
Thanks to globalization unions are pretty much doomed at the moment. You try to create a union any employer who can will just move to a country where they wont have to put up with unions. Its nearly impossible to unionize the entire planet. Many countries are pro business and openly hostile to unions. In fact the U.S. spent most of the last century toppling governments in the third world that were pro worker, Socialisim and unions. Ostensibly it was to fight Communism but it was also to make the world safe for multinationals and capitalists and to insure an abundant supply of cheap labor for Capitalists.
"don't like how Apple does business, quit, and get another job"
The funny thing about labor markets is if one employer gets away with abusive practices, especially a prominent one, pretty soon they all do it to compete and you wont have any place better to go. Not saying Apple's conditions are abusive, some people could just be whining, but practices at a lot of high tech companies are pretty abusive and probably getting more so.
Unless there is a serious shortage of workers its expected for employers to devolve to the lowest common denominator they can get away with. With a planet bursting at the seems with workers, with globalization, the internet, container ships and fiber optics, the whole world is now the labor pool which means, chances are, working for the man is gonna suck from now on.
You sound like one of those people that thinks the invisible hand of free markets will solve all problems. The only problem is all indications are the invisible hand, unchecked, will result in a small percentage of the world's population, the ones with capital being extremely rich and everyone else being extremely poor. Around 1900 working conditions in the U.S. were pretty similar to China, and wealth was concentrating in the hand of the few. It took the progressive movement, labor unions, and a World War II fueled boom to raise the standard of living for everyone in the U.S. We are now seeing wealth concentration at a disturbing level again and that living standard crater for working people, partially thanks to the Bush administration. A hedge fund manager making billions of dollars a year pays taxes at 15%. Most working people pay around %37.5 counting income and all payroll taxes, and not counting regressive sales taxes. Most people didn't notice but the Republicans instituted an extremely regressive tax system designed to destroy working people and to make the rich, very rich, very fast.
There is an interesting twist lately for manufacturing workers. With soaring oil prices its becoming very expensive to ship heavy commodities and manufactured good half way around the world. The cost for shipping containers from China to U.S. have gone from $3000 to $8000 and container ships are dropping their speed %20 to save fuel increasing shipping times. I read that some manufacturers targeting the U.S. are moving from China back to Mexico to reduce shipping costs.
"Oh come on. Comparing the U.S. to Nazi Germany just weakens your cause. I don`t think that the U.S. is after world domination. At least not consciously."
The U.S. is totally after world domination. Its just not doing it as overtly as Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Its mostly seeking to do it economically and culturally, and only militarily whenever there is some regime they can easily squash that challenges American hegemony. Fortunately for the rest of the world, at least since Bush took over, they are completely sucking at it and the economic domination is in complete collapse. Militarily the U.S. is so bogged down in Iraq it can't do anything else or it would, no doubt, have gone after Iran already.
"Japan successfully attacked the U.S. in WWII, albeit Hawaii, and they did so over thousands of miles of ocean."
They didn't INVADE the U.S. They lobbed bombs and torpedoes in a sneak attack and ran. Big, big difference. That wouldn't even be possible since spy satellites were invented. Mounting an amphibious invasion on a small island and on a country with 200-300 million people most of whom have guns is a whole different scale of a problem. It took the U.S. years to collect the resources to invade Normandy, and they had the benefit of Great Britain as a jumping off point.
You will never be able to sort out how much of it is due to the geography and how much is due to the staggering sums the U.S. spends on aircraft carriers and nukes, so there isn't any point in arguing about it. About the only conclusion we've reached is its obvious the U.S. military is powerful, it OUGHT to be when you spend as much on it as the rest of the world combined. I'm just of the opinion its totally excessive, and what you get when a military industrial establishment that is ought of control and with unchecked power. The U.S. also spends way to much time invading countries under false pretenses and toppling governments which are none of their business. I think it is still indisuputable that the U.S. is currently the most aggressive nation on the planet, and everything you've said supports that.
"But that is precisely why our defense has been so effective"
LOL. you're taking an enormous leap there which isn't really supported. It could be our defense has been so effective because the U.S. is surrounded by two huge oceans and the logistical challenges of attacking the U.S. are formidable. It would require an enormous navy to actually invade the U.S. Canada hasn't been invaded much either, except by the U.S. Switzerland doesn't spend anything close to what the U.S. does and I don't think its been invaded much either, despite sitting in the middle of a powder keg.
Rationalizing preemptive warfare is an enormously foolish thing to do. Taken to its logical conclusion you will quickly turn in to a rogue state engaged in non stop aggressive warfare and operating at the same level as Nazi Germany. The U.S. was very close to just than when it invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The rationales used in Granada, Kosovo and Panama were just as weak. None of those wars had anything to do with defending the U.S. or even preempting a threat they were just cases of the U.S. being a bully.
"I'm not saying it's perfect, but normalised against its size, the US is a mild-mannered mouse, a smiling puppy"
Dude you've been drinking to much U.S. government Koolaid. Most of the rest of the world knows the U.S. to be a meddling, bully, invading Iraq wasn't the first time. The U.S. has installed and propped up more dictators than just about any country in existence today, in the name of fighting Communism or defending the interests of its multinational corporations depending on your political viewpoint. In particular the U.S. has been especially fond of making Central America safe for U.S. Banana companies, and places like Iraq and Iran safe for U.S. oil companies. The U.S. under the Monroe doctrine has completely dominated every country in Central and South America since....Monroe.
In Africa the U.S. with the aid of Ethiopia toppled an Islamic government that had the first chance of restoring order there in a long time, and will in all probability let it land back under warlords, just because the U.S. couldn't tolerate an Islamic government running the place. The U.S. doesn't meddle much in Africa because its never cared about Africa as much as the European Imperial powers do, Somalia is just to close to the Persian Gulf where the U.S. does meddle, all the time.
"What on earth makes you think the US is the "most aggressive country" ... ? "
Because the U.S. has invaded more countries by far than any other country at least since World War II. The other leading contenders for the title aren't around any more, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union.
Cuba multiple times(Bay of Pigs and Spanish American), Philippines(Spanish American), Panama, Grenada, Iraq two times, Afghanistan, and a dubious involvement in Vietnam propping up unpopular puppets, multiple invasions of Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and to many other banana republics to remember. Staged coups in Iran, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, again I can't even remember all the governments the U.S. has toppled over the last 100 years.
State and Federal workers don't respond to 911 calls. I didn't say anything about firing local government workers. Local government provides the services that matter to people on a day to day basis like police, education, fire and paramedics.
Other than the military its not really clear we actually need most of our Federal government to live day to day. It mostly just consumes vast sums of money. State government is also pretty dubious most of the time other than state highways and maybe universities.
"That's before you lost your job due the complete economic collapse that followed."
According to the free market conservatives the government does more damage to the economy than anything. Why would the economy collapse, unless the U.S. is Socialist and completely dependent on large numbers of government workers.
"The national defense is one of the few things the federal government does today that actually has a constitutional basis. I don't think anyone suggests getting rid of our military. It's one of the VERY few things our government has done that actually WORKS (when liberals aren't busy undermining it and/or its mission, anyway)."
I think that is seriously open to debate. For one things between the defense and intelligence establishment Afghanistan and Iraq wars what is the "defense" budget is up to $600-700 billion if you actually counted everything. This seems more than a little excessive for "defense" which it probably as much as the entire rest of the world combined spends on defense. Its also a LOT of money not going to any productive use.
When was the last time our National Defense actually did "defense". Its been playing offense in places that have nothing to do with the U.S. including Iraq, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada and Korea, Western Europe in World War I, Spanish American, Mexican wars. The only wars that strike me as being "defense" are the Revolution, 1812, World War II though the U.S. provoked Pearl Harbor with an oil embargo on Japan, and Afghanistan. Afghanistan would have been self defense but the Bush administration actually failed miserably in stomping Al Qaeda and the Taliban and instead let them move to the tribal areas of Pakistan where they've been living happily ever since, while we occupy Afghanistan to no good effect.
"Meanwhile, crime would run rampant on the streets"
I didn't say anything about disbanding local government and local police. They are the ones that stop crime. The state highway patrol would be the only thing that would be gone people see on a regular basis.
I was just talking about getting rid of state and Federal government. The only issues I can see with crime are that A) local authorities would have to hold their own prisoners instead of sending them off to the state. Maybe communities would have second thoughts about locking people up for long periods for things like drug possession if they have to hold them at local expense for long periods. B) Criminals could probably move to new localities to avoid the law if there weren't state and federal wide crime databases and authority.
People have existed with local government only, they could do it again. The only issue you would have is defense from other nations or other locales that can't live peacefully and coexist with their neighbors. I'm not sure it would be the anarchy you say it is unless there were things like food shortages. The conservatives assure us free markets will solve all problems so there should be no shortages, though you might have issues with currency without a Federal Reserve and Treasury.
"rhetoric your party tells you to"
One problem, I'm not a Democrat, I'm a registered independent, always have been. You won't get any argument from me that the Democrats steal lollipops from babies too, but I think you will be hard pressed to find any instance where Democrats have been as corrupt as the Bush and Nixon administrations.
Kind of sad the only way you can defend your apparent preference for the Republican party, after its been well established they've been on a spree of corruption and law breaking, is with the rabid attack dog defense.... Watch while I tear the Democrats apart, and dont look at all those crooks over there in my party. Its OK if we are crooks because the Democrats are too, that's just the way the system works.... NICE!!
I was reading on the Washington Post last night that voter registration for Democrats and Independents are surging while Republicans are plunging. They've lost something like a million registered voters in the last couple years. Independent registration is reaching a point that if they banded together they would be a real third party, something this country desperately needs, because you Republicans suck and so do the Democrats, I'm getting sick of listening to both of you, and its even worse the get to hold on to piece of the power because there are only two choices and they both suck.
"The thing is that the Clintons were pretty good at helping their friends and evading prosecution also"
Not that I'm defending the Clintons but there is a big, big difference. The Clintons were under CONSTANT scrutiny from special prosecutors and a hostile Republican house. Ken Starr made a career out of trying to pin something on the the Clinton's and failed. The only thing Starr ever caught him for was lying about having sex with Lewinsky, and sex is something everyone lies about, especially when you are married. As I recall Henry Hyde and Newt Gingrich were both having their own extramarital affairs during the same time the were getting all holier than thou at Clinton for having one.
Special prosecutors were done away with just in time to give Bush and minions a free pass and they had NO supervision for their first six years because the Republican congress was a rubber stamp and they could use 9/11 fear mongering to shut up just about everyone. They were actually breaking laws that matter, torturing people, locking people up without habeas corpus, spying on Americans without a warrant, politically motivated prosecutions, pissing on the Constitution. Clinton wasn't even in the same league as Bush, Cheney and Addington. You would have to go back to Nixon to find a president with equal contempt for the law.