" People already don't trust their brand name and their ability to innovate"
I'm kind of curious if people actually have new Lenovo designed and built laptops and what they think of them. Are they actually good designs at a good price, as good as or better than IBM Thinkpads, so there is a reason to go out of your way to buy them?
IBM Thinkpad was a powerful brand with a lot of market presence, but as nearly as I can tell Lenovo Thinkpad has no cachet at all so this deal basically destroyed the brand and the brand was the only thing of value in the deal for Lenovo. The only thing of value in this deal for IBM was it was the price they had to pay, surrendering their PC business to China, to gain very limited access to China's markets in other areas. Most people would call this deal extortion or black mail but that is how the Fascists in China do business and unfortunately it seems to work.
At the moment the Chinese are HORRIBLE at establishing brand presence in the U.S. Their strength seems to be in producing incredibly cheap commodity products, things that you will buy just because they are so cheap but with the realization you are risking getting a product that is crap, and the brands are a complete crap shoot and change weekly, at least on the shelves at Walmart.
I'm just not sure people are going to buy Chinese laptops. Most people want a quality product, with a well known brand, and are willing to pay a little more for it, and China has no brand presence or track record that instills the confidence that you make you want to buy a big ticket laptop from them. I have a no name, no brand, Chinese made LCD. It was cheap but it has annoying dead pixels in it and thats kind of what you expect from Chinese made products from Walmart.
Have to agree with the parent. Until Linux can get these to "just work" as well as Microsoft Linux ain't happening on the desktop:
- Printing - Audio - Movie players - Device drivers for every device - Games, Games, Games - Application, Applications, Applications
And as in "just work" I mean any noob can press a button and they just work. I don't mean spending hours, a day or days searching for answers online, searching for the right driver, and editing configuration files and knowing some cryptic command line you need to know to make something work.
I can make Linux work on the desktop and I love it and wouldn't dream of switching but there is zero chance 99% of the computer users are going to put up with all the things in Linux that don't "just work" on the desktop.
It is also an unfortunate delusion in the Linux community, that seems to have infected Apple and Microsoft in Vista, that eye candy on desktops actually counts for something. Sure its better if the desktop is dazzlingly pretty, than ugly, but people don't want eye candy if it means they have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to upgrade a computer that otherwise would work just fine or it noticeably slows down their computer just rendering it. They also don't want "eye candy" if it means developers are spending all their time making "eye candy" work instead of makeing essential, and less fun, things just work, thing need need to have a usable computer like printing, audio, movie players, etc.
"I'm sure that there are a few gunless places with state funded infanticide that would be happy to have you."
After all this how could you miss the most basic point I made, you moron, or since you though you had the last word you just though you would put some words in my mouth and make out like I'm a Chinese Fascist. China and America are way to much alike lately, therefor it would be the last place on earth I'd go. You are more like the Chinese government than me. They are forcing people to have abortions, you are trying to force people to not to. I'm of the opinion its a choice best left to the woman involved (i.e. why don't both you and the Chinese learn to mind your own fucking business for a change).
Like I've said I could care less about abortion or gun control. They are dead last on the list of issues I care about since I'm not planning on making any babies and I don't care whether I have a gun or not since they are more trouble than useful. The only thing I care about is the fact dickheads like you are voting for the worst political leaders imaginable, people who are doing grievous harm to both America and the world, because YOU are completely OBSESSED with these two issues, not me.
Pay per view is hands down the best moving viewing option available at the moment for my taste. DVD's are way expensive for most of the mediocre movies out today. Theaters are far to much hassle and money other than maybe for a date. I'll pay $4-5 dollars to watch movies that are good but not great, I wont pay $20+. DVD's are a good diversion for a on a long trip but I favor a good book on an airplane, its way less hassle.
Pay per view the only drawbacks are:
- you have to watch on their schedule unless you DVR it - you have to watch it non stop unless you DVR it - Its not HD at least not on the crap DirectTV I have.
If the satellite and cable networks just had a good HD pay per view service that didn't cost an arm and a leg people would buy HD TV's and that would be all most people would want.
I'll only buy a DVD for something really good I want to watch multiple times like Lord of the Rings and there just aren't many of those.
I wont pay for HBO/Showtime/Starz because you have to buy all 3 to be sure you can see all the new releases, they are slow to get new releases, They should be offering their current programming on HD for only a slightly higher price, and unfortunately most of the programming just isn't very good IMHO.
"WHY IS NO ONE IN THE MEDIA ASKING THESE QUESTIONS?"
After 9/11 the Bush Administration was extremely successful in their "You are either with us or you are against us" strategy which painted anyone who questioned the Bush administration's actions, including journalists, as unpatriotic, or practically terrorists themselves. This is a classic propaganda and nationalism card and they played it very well. This campaign along with the general mood after 9/11 completely terrified journalists out of questioning anything the Bush administration did. Its just now starting to wear off because a few journalists are realizing they were played for complete suckers by the Bush administration.
Rupert Murdoch built Fox News to completely destroy the liberal media and independence in the news room and it worked. He single handedly turned news networks in to sensationalist propaganda tools for the executive branch, witness Fox's Tony Snow is now the press secretary. The fact Fox sky rocketed to #1 news network after 9/11 made all the other networks try to emulate them, not refute them. CNN is now an embarrassing Fox News parody, they aren't even good at it, so they are tanking. I can't stand watching CNN anymore. One liberal media outlet down. The Daily Show is the only liberal news outlet left and its a comedy show, parody. The best thing that could happen to American media right now would be for Time-Warner to sell CNN back to Ted Turner so he could rebuild a news network to challenge the Fox propaganda machine.
TV journalists are hired and rise through the network ranks based on how photogenic they are and on how much of a sycophant they are to both corprate executives, and politicians, not based on their ability as investigative journalists. The networks White House Correspondents and the Pentagon correspondents are just regurgitating the stuff the White House and the Pentagon want them to say on the TV that night. They are thinly veiled propaganda tools of the government. They don't do ANY independent investigation.
Most media outlets are now owned by large corporations thanks to consolidation, and most large corporations have no interest in investigative journalists who attack the government or stoke controversy that might cost them revenue or political good will.
One of the more disturbing invocations of state-secret privilege by George W. Bush was on November 1, 2001, when he signed Executive Order 13233. This order allows George W. to unilaterally prevent any access to his presidential papers for 12 years after he leaves office, unless he and only he authorizes it. Even if the sitting president authorizes it, he can still veto the release.
If its upheld, this should prevent future Congresses or courts from even seeing incriminating executive branch documents to investigate or charge him with illegal or unconstitutional acts, until 2020. Future Presidents can see them but can't release or act on them unless George W. authorizes it. You have to figure that a few weeks after 9/11, George W. was about to sign some orders to do some things that future governments might consider criminal or unconstitutional and his lawyers created this executive order so he could unilaterally obstruct any future investigations, even when he is no longer President. What might those acts be? Massive domestic spying on Americans without court approval, a prison on Gitmo outside the jurisdiction of any court, arresting American citizens without due process, authorization of torture by the military and CIA, secret prisons, launching an illegal war in Iraq based on a web of lies, dramatic expansion of the Rendition program to snatch people anywhere in the world, in violation of other nation's sovereignty to send people to secret prisons to be tortured?
Rendition is particularly apt in a discussion of state-secret privilege. It was used to kill a case brought by
I'm not wasting any more time on you. You aren't even a good or interesting debater so wasting time answering you isn't worth it. If you just had something interesting or novel to add maybe I would hang but you are just regurgitating tired and predictable dogma. You are NEVER going to change your moronic and irresponsible voting patterns, but its your constitutional right to vote like a moron so more power to you. If you and a bunch of people like you keep doing it and keep putting in truly dangerous people like George W. and Uncle Dick, just because they are pro life and pro gun, then I will probably just leave the U.S. again, and maybe this time work really hard to ditch my U.S. citizenship so I can stop paying taxes to subsidize dangerous lunatics.
Unfortunately when the U.S. ends up as a smoldering hole in the ground, or worse a dangerous police state with a gigantic dangerous military tampling the rest of the world, thanks to people like you, there probably wont be any safe place on the planet to get away from it. So just in case, and in advance, FUCK YOU and thanks for all the fish:)
I found the Criminal Information Protection Act which codifies classified information in a trial, but as I expected it is completely written in the context of the government being the plaintiff when they need to use classified information to convict a defendant of espionage, terrorism or leaking. You see the government will divulge classified information to nail you but they wont allow you to use classified information to nail them.
Having researched it I agree that the government will try to just use the state-secret privilege so Hayden wont even make it to the stand. If by some miracle the judge doesn't cave to it and Hayden does have to testify then I assume either CIPA will have to come in to play and be bent to this novel case, or Hayden will just refuse to answer any questions that would divulge classified information because it would in fact incriminate him in the process if he did it in a public court.
The Wikipedia article on the states-secret privilege is quite interesting and probably more interesting than the WSJ article.
Its not even a law, its just a precedent that was established during the McCarthy era where the Air Force used it, apparently fraudulently, to cover up the fact a B-29 crash was due to poor maintenance of the air plane, and was basicly negligence on the part of the Air Force.
"In United States v. Reynolds (1953), the widows of three crew members of a B-29 Superfortress bomber that had crashed in 1948 sought accident reports on the crash, but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission. The Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch could bar evidence from the court which they had deemed a threat to national security. In 2000, the accident reports in question were declassified and released, and were found to contain no secret information. They did, however, contain information about the poor state of condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case. Many commentators have alleged government misuse of secrecy in the landmark case."
Just goes to show you that once you let your government establish an illegal and unconstitutional precedent, during times of war or paranoia, to screw you, they can continue to abuse it forever. The Bush administration has been successfully using the fact that Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the civil war to justify denying American citizens basic due process today, and that FDR spied on American cables in World War II to justify spying on Americans now indefinitely.
Another interesting invocation of the "state-secret privilege" was in 2005 in a patent suit brought against none other than AT&T. Apparently a company called Crater Corp thinks AT&T is violating its patents for "WetMate underwater fiber optic coupling devices" which I'm guessing is probably being used by the U.S. to tap and evesdrop on fiber optic cables on the ocean floor. I would assume it must be used for tapping otherwise it wouldn't be classified. Now the U.S. has used underwater tapping technology against the Soviet Union for a long time, both on copper and fiber optic cables, but I bet you the NSA in concert with the U.S. Navy is underwater tapping any fiber optic cable they can't eavesdrop on land with the help of U.S. phone companies. It would be an interesting case to tack in to this case against AT&T.
The "state-secret privilege" was also use to defeat a case brought by Maher Arar, the Canadian detained by the U.S. at a New York Airport on his way home to Canada. You probably remember reading about it here on slashdot. He was shipped by the U.S. to Syria where he was abused for a year or so before Canada finally managed to free him. His crime as best I remember was he signed as a reference on a lease for a friend of a family member
I grew up working alongside illegal aliens most from Mexico but Central America too. Their work ethic is consistently head and shoulders better than most Americans, my proof is my own eyes. The proof is employers are going out their way to hire them, yes because they are cheap but also because they will put in a hard days work for not a lot of money. Same is true of most people coming from Asia whether they be legal or illegal.
"I also take offense at you lumping every west german into the "lazy, spoiled" category"
Its just one of those facts of life that when you grow up in a relatively affluent society, where life is pretty easy you just don't develop the same kind of work ethic you do when you have to work all day everyday just to keep a roof over your head and food on the table, and you see next door real and grinding poverty. People in affluent countries come to expect higher and higher wages for less and less work, and lots of leisure time. This worked until globalization happened, the iron and bamboo curtains came down and vast pools of cheap labor came on the market.
Americans who grew up in the depression and lived through World War II have ten times the work ethic of young people today raised on TV and video games. Older Americans appreciate the value of a dollar and they know what really hard times are like, most Americans today don't... yet. Thats why they are called America's greatest generation because they lived through a ton of adversity and they built an extremely successful country in spite of or maybe because of it. They had real drive to work hard and succeed. Contrast this with the dot com millionaires of a few years ago, who didn't do anything particularly useful and expected to get rich anyway, or the plethora of corprate scandals lately where executive after executive cooks the books, pockets vast sums for nothing, and doesn't see how this is a problem.
"Money for nothing and chicks for free" really is the motto of affluent western countries today. Post World War II generations are taking what was once a very successful country and running it in to the ground because they have no work ethic or maybe ethics period. They just expect to get rich whether they do anything to justify it or not. So now America is the world's biggest debtor nation and living off a giant credit card, and a lot of young people are trust fund babies living off their parent's hard work.
"Having the prices on our agriculture, housing, food, etc. go up because we're actually paying the workers what they're worth is *not* dependance, so come up with another argument, please"
Hate to break it you but we are living under Capitalism, for better or worse, so what people are worth is what they are getting paid, its sucks but thats the law of the invisible hand. America and Western Europe are completely not competitive in a globalized world as is, thanks to high cost of living, high wages, and high health insurance costs. If you insist on giving farm workers $15 dollars an hour and Blue Cross, it will just be way cheaper to import the food from some third world country, Walmart will, people will buy it, because most people will always by the cheapest product, and most of America's farms will crater. To be even remotely competitive in a globalized world farms need workers making minimum wage or less.
Its just an unfortunate fact that globalization is going to destroy workers in affluent countries. Its going to make workers in developing countries better off than they are, but they aren't going to get rich either. I read recently in CSM that Chinese workers in China's booming Southern coastal region are in fact starting to demand higher wages and better working conditions and wage inflation is starting to set in. In the globalized world this probably means India or Bangladesh will start undercutting them and Walmart will start getting its T-shirts from them instead.
The only people that are going to get rich in the new
Yea but you can't be compelled to commit a crime in the process of testifying, and if Hayden were to say anything about this classified program in a public court room he could immediately be charged by the government for leaking classified information.
I was maybe using "plead the fifth" in an overly broad sense since people know what it means. It doesn't exactly apply but it is close. If you make someone with a security clearance divulge classified information in the witness stand they would not only be incriminating themselves but they would actually be committing a crime on the stand. Like I said the government would either have to declassify the information or arrangements would have to be made for a special court that is authorized to hear top secret testimony. It can be done since the government does it whenever they need to try someone for espionage or leaking classified information but I wager the government would do everything in its power to obstruct such a court if they are the defendants and not the plaintiff.
First off Gore wasn't "my guy", I didn't vote from him either.
It needs to go because it is an anachronism and allows a minority of voters to win elections. Small states, like Wyoming and the Dakotas will unfortunately fight tooth and nail to keep it because it gives their votes disproportionate weight compared to voters in places like California and New York. Unfortunately the small states which get this disproportionate power also happen to be ones that vote pro life, pro gun and voted in one of the worst President in U.S. history.
"So, tell me about my religion. What knowest thou of my religious beliefs? You've ducked the question multiple times now."
I don't know a damn thing about your religion and I don't really care. Maybe you are an atheist who happens to be pro life but the odds of that are low. If you look at those polls previously cited rabid pro lifers are overwhelmingly Catholic or fundamentalist Protestant so chances are you are too. If you aren't I don't care because most of the people voting solely for pro life candidate are and they are a real problem to good governance.
"The person who will do the best job running the country is the one who will support my second amendment rights and respect the right to life."
Those two issues pale to insignificance beside the disaster in Iraq, political corruption and the truly scary state of the economy, especially the budget and trade deficits. The changes in abortion and gun law have been insignificant in the last 6 years. Maybe George W. managed to pack the supreme court to overturn Roe V. Wade and maybe he didn't. Like I said I'd love to see Roe V. Wade get overturned because it would lead to a political bloodbath for the Republicans and social conservatives because there would be a massive surge of one issue voters, mostly women, voting pro choice.
"They are less harmful to YOU and your worldview."
No, people voting on 1 or 2 issues to the complete exclusion of all others are harmful to everyone, and that covers people voting pro life or pro choice, for guns or against. As I've said before and you've never rebutted you would put Adolph Hitler in the White House as long as he pushed your two buttons and his opponent didn't.
Me not being a women and not being married I really don't care which way the law falls on abortion. I have guns, but they really aren't that useful so I don't care how that issue falls either.
The only issue I care about is that the people currently running the country are complete morons and people like you voted for them and will keep voting for them. I care that tens of thousands of people are getting killed in Iraq, that some of my tax dollars are part of the $400 billion wasted there with no end in sight. I care that my government has racked up nearly $9 trillion dollars in debt and I will be taxed for the rest of my life for it. I care that my country is running nearly a half a trillion dollars in trade deficit each year which is simply unsustainable and my government is totally OK with this and doing nothing to fix it. I care that my government is massively corrupt and selling legislation to the highest bidder, and passing bills that are counter to the best interests of every citizen of this country.
I forgot to add you can setup a trial where classified information and testimony is involved but I think the judges, lawyers and everyone else involved have to have a security clearance, and I'm not sure you can have a jury trial in this case. This is done when the government needs to convict someone for espionage. I just bet it would be nearly impossible for private citizens to bring a case where classified information is involved and this case will probably follow in that mold
"Pretty soon we'll have the public looking for traffic violations"
Dude your predictive powers are amazing, because this has been happening for years. Just listen to a police scanner. There are numerous dispatches a day where people are calling in wreckless and drunk drivers.
The key enabler for this snitch state was the cell phone. People didn't stop and search for a phone booth to call in wreckless drivers but now they can whip out their cell phone and the guy is reported before he is even out of sight. Not sure how high the success rate is for actually catching people reported this way, nor even how often cops even look for someone reported this way, but I assume if they are in the area they will look for the vehicle and stop it if there appears to be a problem. This snitch state is much more effective in smaller communities because in the city the dispatcher will laugh their ass off if you call in anything below armed robbery on the severity scale.
When you add in still and video cameras to your cell phone you have the snitch state's dream tool for ratting on your fellow man. When you report someone you can also send the video/audio evidence of whatever illegal, stupid or unpatriotic act you caught them at.
Good samaritans(a.k.a. nosy, busy body snitches) don't stop at just wreckless drivers. You hear calls all the time for people calling in complaints because... gasp... someone left a baby or a dog alone in a locked car for more than two minutes, or a husband and wife are yelling at each other in the privacy of their own hime. So if you have a baby NEVER leave it alone in the car, even if it takes more time to get it in and out of the safety seat than you would have actually spent inside the store, and don't even think about taking your pet with you in the car anymore because their is a busy body snitch who is dieing to rat you out. And don't fight with your spouse unless you are in a sound proof room.
I'm pretty sure he can plead the fifth. To get and keep his security clearance he can never divulge classified information. This program is no doubt still classified despite the fact that it was leaked. If he were to just confirm its existence he would be breaking the laws relating to his security clearance and subject to prosecution. You can't make people break the law, or incriminate themselves on the witness stand assuming the Bush administration hasn't unilaterally overturned this basic civil liberty yet. To get Hayden or anyone else in the NSA to testify about this program it would have to be declassified which ain't gonna happen.
If there was enough information leaked already to clearly establish that the records were turned over illegally then they might still have a case, but the government probably will try to have all the leaked evidence thrown out and to prevent anyone in the phone companies, who might not have a clearance to worry about, from testifying on national security grounds.
You would hope that if the law was broken, and it almost certainly was, that the phone companies and the government would be held to account. There is a communication act the explicitly forbids releasing your phone records without a court order.
It is an unfortunate fact that laws are much more vigorously enforced against ordinary citizens than they are against people in power. When the DOJ brings a Federal case against a citizen their success rate is extremely high like 80%. When citizen's bring a case against the government their success rate is extremely low. Welcome to Fascism.
I'd have to agree that it is kind of bizarre that they are tapping ordinary citizens to watch their cameras for them. My guess its most probably a ploy to win public support, to let all the little people frustrated by illegal immigration to feel like they can do their little part to stop it. I really can't see anyone with a life spending hours a day staring at a largely empty stretch of desert doing this. Get a life.
If they were actually serious about doing this they would acquire some relatively simple software to detect motion in the video, and filter out shadows from clouds, brush blowing in the wind or the occasional jack rabbit. I'm pretty sure we must have the technology to reliably detect people walking through a video frame. When the software detects a probable it would put it in a queue for a paid dispatcher to confirm and call in the troops. Of course this would be the sane, intelligent and rational approach. This being Texas we are talking about they predictably didn't opt for sane, intelligent or rational. They are after all the same state that launched George W's political career and boy was that insane, dumb and irrational.
"Otherwise, how do you stop terrorists and criminals from coming across, possibly with weapons?"
This program isn't about stopping "terrorists". That is just a convenient excuse to justify it. If a small number of "terrorists" want to get in to this country they will figure out a way.
It isn't going to stop drug smuggling either because they will quickly learn to defeat these lame ass cameras. They already build elaborate tunnels in urban areas along the border.
The only thing this program is going to slow down is Mexicans walking across the border to get jobs in the U.S. The crushing paradox here is the U.S. economy is now completely dependent on these workers and if you actually succeeded in getting rid of them all numerous industries would crater like agriculture, construction, gardening, house keeping(including hotels) and restaraunts. The other crushing paradox is many politicians have been bought and paid by these industries to make sure the government looks the other way on illegal immigration and illegal employment so there is a healthy supply of these workers. Despite your assertion to the contrary, in fact the U.S. government was bought out by coporations and affluent campaign donors long ago. The illegal immigrant problem is a DIRECT result of exactly that. Big agribusiness in particular demanded their congressmen let them get away with employing large numbers of illegal aliens so Congress has for decades blocked every attempt at enforcing the borders and made it easy for employers to get away with employing illegals which is why there are 11-13 million of them working in this country now.
The current demand to control immigration is entirely xenophobic and maybe that is not entirely bad. Many American, Lou Dobb's first among them, are stressed at the massive influx of Hispanics in to their states and communities, and once they have children who are U.S. citizens they are acquiring political power too. But again this situation didn't just happen, business and politicians colluded to make it happen because they wanted the cheap, hard working, labor which isn't most American workers. Interestingly I read in the Christian Science Monitor that Germany has the same issue. They import large numbers of Poles each summer to work in agriculture, in spite of the fact a lot of Germans are unemployed. The Poles are just vastly more productive at doing things like picking crops because they have a much higher tolerance for hard work and a much better work ethic than lazy, spoiled West Germans.
"We haven't been sold out to corporations. This is evident in the increasing regulation of them, and their portrayal by politicians as Bad (e.g. The recent trend about punishing oil companies for making profits")."
This is such an incredibly naive statement it boggles the mind. There is not a "trend" to punish oil companies for excess profits. There are a few politicians, mostly Democrats, paying lip service to the idea because its a campaign season and it plays well with voters. There is zero chance of an excess profits tax on oil companies getting through a Republican congress or by the oil men in the White House. The big energy companies completely own the Republican party. Rather than punishing them the Republicans gave them something like $16 billion in tax breaks and subsidies in the energy bill last year. The last thing energy companies needed at this point are incentives, to do things like drill for oil, when they are all making more money than they ever have. They would be insane to not be pouring their windfalls in to exploration when oil is consistently at $60-70 a barrel.
There is a giant laundry list of legislation corporations bribed the Republicans in to passing in the last 6 years. It wasn't quite as blatant under the Democrats but they are bought and paid for too.
- Medicare D, is a massive windfall to drug, insurance and health care companies. The point man in Congress for this bill, Billy Tauzin had a multimillion dollar consulting job lin
"The only question that really matters is "Is the size of your voting block larger than the likely margin of victory?" If it is, you have the power and ability to sway the results of an election."
Uh...not really, if the voting block on the other side of the issue is bigger than yours you aren't deciding the election.
The only other factor in your favor is the retarded electoral college. Since pro lifers are deciding elections in backward states like Kansas and South Dakota, you may be throwing the electoral college to your candidate if its close which it has been. Of course when a candidate wins the electoral college and not a plurality like George W. did in 2000 that mostly is just an indicator the antiquated electoral college needs to go. The electoral college caused a serious mistake to be made in 2000 and it was a mistake that ran counter to the majority of voters expressed will.
"One issue voters?"
Exactly and you will get your own medicine. Its a simple fact most women want to decide when they have their children and not be forced to have them because dickhead bible thumpers like yourself think its your prerogative to tell them how to live their lives and to force your religious indoctrination on the,. Women have educational goals and careers now, they aren't being kept barefoot and pregnant like many religions would like them to be. Being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is a great way to destroy a woman's education or a promising career. The world has changed since the last time abortion was outlawed and it very unlikely women are going to let you turn back the clock in most of he country, Kansas and South Dakota excepted where they do want to keep their women barefoot and pregnant.
"You just hit the nail on the head. We get out and vote. It's not going out of your way to engage in your civic responsibility."
Unfortunately you are going out to vote solely to influence 1 or 2 issues. If you were exercising your civic responsibility you would be voting for candidates who will do the best job running the country, you know upholding the Constitution, on defense, foreign affairs, the economy, passing responsible legislation, etc. You are in fact some of the most civically irresponsible people there are. You will vote for a complete moron who is incapable of fulfilling the most basic duties of his office just because he pushed your button on two issues. In fact you already did and his name is George W. Bush.
People who don't vote are less harmful than you because at least they are deferring the decision to voters who pay attention to issues and a candidates qualifications and attempt to make a reasoned choice, often between some bad alternatives.
If you want to be civically responsible either stop voting or learn to vote responsibly. Checking the box next to any loser who says he is pro life and pro gun isn't being even remotely responsible.
You need to appreciate there are two halves to the economy, the capitalists and the workers. If workers are being royally screwed it usually is considered good news for the shareholders and good news for the capitalist side of the economy. Thats why stocks often go up when companies announce layoffs. If a company succeeds in cutting labor costs without going in to a death spiral that is generally considered good for the economy. The code word for it is improved productivity, fewer workers producing about the same revenue. If all the "improved productivity" leads to really high unemployment that is a bad sign but the U.S. unemployment rate is low, unfortunately because there are lots of workers who are underemployed, but not unemployed. If workers pay and benefits are being cut(underemployment) that is wonderful for the capitalist side of the economy, lower labor costs is sweet music to capitalists.
It would be a problem that Americans are increasingly underemployed and can't buy all the corporations goods and services but fortunately in a globalized economy corporations can sell them to increasingly affluent consumers in China and India and make up the difference.
When it comes to companies offshoring to India and China, and SUN is offshoring in a big way, layoffs in the U.S. are in fact wonderful for the company, the economy and the stock market. They are trading very expensive workers in the U.S. who have expensive health insurance, for workers who are dramatically cheaper. Assuming the foreign workers can do the job, the company wins, the shareholders win and the capitalist side of the economy wins kind of. SUN conveniently skips mentioning that while they are laying off U.S. workers they are hiring in Asia. Its better marketing to just say you are cutting your U.S. work force than to admit you are really offshoring it.
True American workers get screwed but in a globalized economy you can in fact screw workers in your homeland and still have a great stock market, very successful corporations and what looks like a good economy.
All in all, the U.S. economy has been quite prosperous under the Bush administration especially considering the hit it took due to 9/11.
A key point though is that much of the economic growth is due to stimulus. The U.S. economy has a LOT of stimulus. Stimulus in this case is a code word for the U.S. government borrowing nearly a half a trillion dollars every year and pumping it in to the economy to create artificial growth. The U.S. now also borrows nearly a half a trillion to cover all the Chinese goods it buys and can't really pay for. The GDP growth for a year is really close to the same amount George W. is borrowing and spending in a year.
Stimulus comes as tax cuts for the rich(income, capital gains and dividends), pork for defense contractors and war profiteers(i.e. Iraq where we spend more now than we did in Vietnam after adjusting for inflation, Vietnam did nearly crater the U.S. economy in the 70's), pork for drug and insurance companies(Medicare D), pork for energy companies(16 billion in energy subsidies for oil companies making record profits), Katrina pork(Mississippi just got $700 million to move a rail line off the coast that had just been rebuilt after Katrina for $200 million), Homeland Security pork, Transportation bill pork(Alaska's bridge to nowhere $200 million), gigantic new ag subsidies, a few billions for vaccines and stuff for bird flu if it ever happens, it goes on and on. EVERYTIME a little problem springs up the Republicans just throw a few billion more in stimulus(deficit spending) at it and all that stimulus lands in the pockets of corporations and businessmen who lined their campaign coffers, and it improves the stock market and the economy.
Unfortunately it is prosperity being bought with Uncle Sam's credit card(Treasury notes), we will be paying ever increasing interest on it probably forever or until the U.S. defaults. Treasury notes are in fact a pretty good investment right now, 5% interest
"Unfortunately for you, every member of society gets to express their opinion on the matter."
Yea but when it comes to the voting booth, which is where this thread started, your power as a voting block is directly proportional to your numbers. Since you are in fact in a distinct minority you have dramatically less influence on elections than you like to tell everyone you have. You might win in backward places like South Dakota on a state level but you are completely outnumbered on the national level. I REALLY would like to see the Republicans manage to outlaw abortion on a large scale. They would get slaughtered in the next election and every election after because pro choice women, many of whom have been backing Republicans on other issues, would completely mobilize against them.
At this point I close my case. In fact pro lifers aren't really deciding the outcome of elections or at least not any more than pro choice, and chances are you have less influence because there are fewer of you. Only thing that might swing it back in your favor is you are such mad dogs on the issue you might go out of your way to vote, and to vote solely on the issue. Most pro choicers are somewhat complacent on the issue because abortion is still mostly available. If you succeed in actually outlawing it the pro choice block will galvanize and start going out of their way to defeat your beloved candidates.
"Stats you want, stats you get."
I don't think you read, or you didn't understand your own link. Yes, that link says women feel more strongly about abortion than men, which is kind of obvious since they are the ones who have to endure them, or the consequences of not being able to get one. But women are also dramatically more likely to oppose more restriction on abortion than men which is a fact you conveniently left out. Sure more women are opposed to abortion than men, but an even bigger percentage of women are strongly pro choice. Men, don't care about abortion as much as women, duh. You lose again.
"I think that when liberals don't respect the right to protect oneself as expressed in the second ammendment, that means that any right of expression that may be legally recognized is in fact meaningless when faced with coercion by an armed government."
Dude you are delusional to think that if everyone in the U.S. just had more guns it would make a difference.
First off Americans already have more guns that most places.
Second there is next to a zero chance that any significant number of Americans are going to storm Washington D.C. with their guns in hand and take their government back. If they tried they would make for some entertaining TV on the news networks, it would last about a day and then you would all be dead, in a psychiatric hospital or in jail for life. Rifles are no match for tanks, F-16's and Apaches. I guess you could lock yourself in some remote cabin and shoot at any government official who approaches but chances are you would also not make a difference and would quickly end up dead or in prison for life.
Third, the best you could hope to do would be a guerilla war where you would pick off some symbol of the establishment now and again. The media would probably paint you as delusional psychos, everyone would agree with their TV, and you wouldn't accomplish anything other than providing greater justification for your government to strip even more of our civil liberties. The only way guerilla wars succeed is when they have the support of large numbers of people who have nothing to lose. You wouldn't.
There isn't going to be any armed uprising in the U.S. until things get WAY worse than they are. People have to be starving, or seriously persecuted before they contemplate armed revolt. Most Americans still have way to good a life compared to the rest of the world to risk it all. They are also way too lazy, spoiled, media hypnotized, ignorant of all things political and just down right indifferent to do anything requiring a backbone. The U.S. is about where Germany was in the mid 1930's. At long as they have jobs, and the economy is OK, they will tolerate complete nut jobs running their government, and they wont give a damn if they take away all their civil liberties, or occasionally round up groups of people nobody liked anyway.
Now one thing that could form a foundation for revolt is another 10 years of war in a deteriorating Iraq. The Soviet Union's long, brutal and insane war in Afghanistan created millions of bitter disillusioned vets who had a real reason and desire to topple their government for doing that to them. They were key players in bringing down the Soviet Union. If the U.S. stays in Iraq a few more years and it keeps falling apart at the same rate U.S. vets might be a nucleus for change, the one missing ingredient is you need to draft people and make them go there which is why the Republicans wont even consider a draft. If you are volunteering to go to Iraq you can't exactly blame your government for sending you there and getting your legs blown off. But you also can't subject people to tour after tour in a hot dusty place, where they don't understand the language or culture and where people they can't see are picking them off day after day without really messing up their heads. Iraq veterans are well trained in the use of weapons and they will know how insurgencies work first hand because they are learning from some masters in Iraq.
Another path to insurrection is if the U.S. economy continues to be run by politicians and executives whose economic skills rival that of chimpanzees. The U.S. could in the next decade or two face a real economic collapse. The U.S. simply can't sustain current account deficits at the current level for very long. The U.S. dollar will eventually collapse and no foreign countries will support the debt. Most foreign central banks are already very reluctant to buy American debt because the U.S. dollar is so weak. China is still propping us up and buying dollars because they want to keep taking milkin
"It should be decided by the states. On the national level, our goal is the overturn of Roe Vs. Wade."
Yea and then you are going to push to outlaw it state by state. Don't BS anyone, you would still completely lose it on the subject if its legal any place in the U.S.
"Respecting the sanctity of life does in no way require that one be a pacifist."
Uh... yes it does. When it comes to wars the number of innocent civilians killed, women, pregnant women, children and babies is always staggering. If you really cared about "innocent" life you would be opposed to war too unless they were really about self defense and in America they seldom ever are about that.
When it comes to guns in America the vast majority of people they kill are "innocent" lives, either in accidents or innocent people being murdered by gun toting criminals. The number of instances for your scenario, where people use guns to successfully defend themselves from attack is tiny. Either you have your gun locked away so your kids can't get it in which case it will probably do you no good if you are suddenly attacked or attacked away from home, or you have a loaded gun under your pillow or your jacket in which case its far more likely to kill someone in your family than an imagined boogie man.
Me personally I think gun law in this country is fine and I really can't see why people like you froth at the mouth over it. Hand guns should be hard to get, hunting rifles and shotguns are pretty easy to own in most states, you could toughen up laws some and I wouldn't care, you could loosen them and I wouldn't care. Its unlikely anyone will ever restrict them to the level places like Japan do, nor is anyone likely to let everyone have them without restriction.
"Women are more pro life than men."
Maybe you could quote a poll or statistic showing that. This is the best unbiased polling I can find on the subject but it doesn't break out men and women. The only women who really matter on the subject are the 1 million plus who get an abortion every year and who are spared an unwanted child or the devastation of their education or career.
The key thing to draw from this vast battery of polls is pro-choice outnumbers pro-life by a wide margin like 51 to 39%. There are really only about 15% who want to completely outlaw abortions, most want them available or available with restrictions. You are in fact in an insignificant minority despite your delusions of grandeur. If people were voting based purely on abortion the Democrats would be winning hands down.
You can mod it flame bait all you want but its a simple fact Slashdot needs a product review section for these submissions that are obviously plugs designed to boost sales of some product and stop pretending like they are news. There is a least a 50/50 chance the submitter works for the company that makes said product and is hoping to reap a windfall by getting it on the/. front page.
"but when you're scratching your head and wondering about why you can't get your people elected"
Dude you really need to get it through your head that, rather than being the most important voters, you are the LEAST important voters. The Republicans know they have your vote so they can and do screw you on every other issue that actually counts. The Democrats write off your vote before they even start. The same is true of one issue pro choice voters except flip flop the parties.
If you people started voting with your brain instead of your issue yes you would matter which is all I've been saying but since you don't and probably never will...
Swing voters in swing states are the only voters that matter now and they don't vote on and probably don't care about abortion or guns.
The only abortion swing that will be interesting to see is if the Republicans actually succeed in banning abortion. Then all the women, especially of child bearing age, who started voting Republican on other issues, like security paranoia, are going to flee back to the Democrats because they will remember how much it sucks to be a women in a country that outlaws abortion so their lives get destroyed by unwanted pregnancies, or they die getting dangerous backalley abortions.
I should also point out that just because pro life, pro gun Republicans have won the last few elections says nothing about 2006 or 2008. Most of the country is completely sick of the horrible job the Republicans have been doing, especially due to Iraq and their widespread, blatant corruption. You would hope Americans are fed up that the Republicans are shredding the Consitution and their civil liberties but most American seem to be too dumb to care.
Chances are high American's will hold their noses and vote Democrat just to throw the arrogant dicks out on their asses and your obssession with pro life/pro gun wont make a bit of difference despite your delusion to the contrary.
And by the way... damn... if you are going to be a two issue voter at least pick two that aren't mutually exclusive and contradictory. If you really consider life to be sacred you should be pro life and anti gun. If you want a gun because someday you think you are going to shoot someone I should point out guns are basically tools to commit abortions in the fourth trimester and later. At that point you are killing gods creation, whether they be man or animal at a point that they really do have consciousness and brains. If you really ever do use a gun for its intended purpose you are in fact the BIGGEST FLAMING HYPOCRITE in existence.
The truth is like I've said already, you are against abortion and contraception because your church wants you to make babies so they brainwashed you to oppose everything that would obstruct that. They also want you to pack guns so that if anyone ever comes after your religion you can blow their brains out, sanctity of life be damn. Just stop and think man, either life is sacred, or you want to pack a gun and snuff it out with impunity. The contradiction would cause your brain to explode if you had one.
Dude, I WAS trolling you, that was biting sarcasm, and your feeble attempt to make "fun" of me fell flat.
You see everytime the subject of George W. comes up you say the exact same damn thing. I mostly just wish you would at least try to be a little more creative and say something at least interesting. Yes we know by now you that for some moronic reason you are a two issue candidate. You would, as nearly as we can tell, vote for Adolph Hitler if he was pro life and pro gun, over Thomas Jefferson if he backed first trimester abortions to save the mothers life, or suggested that maybe in fact its not particularly useful for some wacko thug to have a machine gun for "hunting".
You want the whole freaking world to think like you do on these two topics, and you think if you just keep repeating it we will, well chances are no one is changing their opinion on these inflammatory issues. The only thing we care about is you and the people who think like you got together and inflicted a spoiled rotten, preppy loser like George W. on us, a guy that is in the running for one of the worst, most destructive presidents in America history, just because he is pro life and pro gun.
Now maybe it was forgivable you elected him the first time because maybe you didn't really understand how dumb, easily manipulated and clueless George W. really was, but reelecting him was completely and totally unforgivable. The only thing I'll agree with you on is the candidates the Democrats fielded against him were so bad I can almost understand why people voted against them, but damn, NOBODY could have fucked up America or the U.S. as bad as George W. is, and you didn't vote against Kerry and Gore because they sucked but because you didn't like their position on two issues.
" Religious people have a long history of opposing certain methods of birth control. "
Dude if you followed the first troll I spelled out exactly why that is. The religion game is entirely about a few smart people suckering as many dumb people as possible in to bowing at their feet, giving them 10% of your income, and breeding like rabbits so your religion can crowd all the competing religions off the face of the planet. Its way easier to grow the flock if you get existing members to drop 10 babies who will be brainwashed...err...indoctrinated in to the religion from birth than it is to go out and find new suckers...err...converts whose mind you have to reshape when they are old and not so impressionable as little kids.
Now I can totally see opposing contraception and abortion back when the world was empty, life spans were short, you were living on dangerous frontiers and doing everything possible to stave off extinction. But when the planet has 6 billion people on it, about 3 billion people more than it probably should have on it and we are on a track heading towards 12 or 18 billion at which point we run out of food, water and basically everything and we all start dieing anyway, it is simply complete and utter stupidity to do everything in your power to prevent people from using birth control and to compell them to have unwanted children, who they wont raise properly, just because the were weak and had sex. I guess everyone could practice abstinence, but chances are......
The jury is still out but the guy that wrote Freakonomics thinks there is a possible correlation between declining crime rate and the legalization of abortion. Put simply criminals are frequently built from unwanted kids raised in bad homes born to moms that wouldn't have brought them in to this world except for self righteous people like you want to tell other people how to live.
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" People already don't trust their brand name and their ability to innovate"
I'm kind of curious if people actually have new Lenovo designed and built laptops and what they think of them. Are they actually good designs at a good price, as good as or better than IBM Thinkpads, so there is a reason to go out of your way to buy them?
IBM Thinkpad was a powerful brand with a lot of market presence, but as nearly as I can tell Lenovo Thinkpad has no cachet at all so this deal basically destroyed the brand and the brand was the only thing of value in the deal for Lenovo. The only thing of value in this deal for IBM was it was the price they had to pay, surrendering their PC business to China, to gain very limited access to China's markets in other areas. Most people would call this deal extortion or black mail but that is how the Fascists in China do business and unfortunately it seems to work.
At the moment the Chinese are HORRIBLE at establishing brand presence in the U.S. Their strength seems to be in producing incredibly cheap commodity products, things that you will buy just because they are so cheap but with the realization you are risking getting a product that is crap, and the brands are a complete crap shoot and change weekly, at least on the shelves at Walmart.
I'm just not sure people are going to buy Chinese laptops. Most people want a quality product, with a well known brand, and are willing to pay a little more for it, and China has no brand presence or track record that instills the confidence that you make you want to buy a big ticket laptop from them. I have a no name, no brand, Chinese made LCD. It was cheap but it has annoying dead pixels in it and thats kind of what you expect from Chinese made products from Walmart.
Have to agree with the parent. Until Linux can get these to "just work" as well as Microsoft Linux ain't happening on the desktop:
- Printing
- Audio
- Movie players
- Device drivers for every device
- Games, Games, Games
- Application, Applications, Applications
And as in "just work" I mean any noob can press a button and they just work. I don't mean spending hours, a day or days searching for answers online, searching for the right driver, and editing configuration files and knowing some cryptic command line you need to know to make something work.
I can make Linux work on the desktop and I love it and wouldn't dream of switching but there is zero chance 99% of the computer users are going to put up with all the things in Linux that don't "just work" on the desktop.
It is also an unfortunate delusion in the Linux community, that seems to have infected Apple and Microsoft in Vista, that eye candy on desktops actually counts for something. Sure its better if the desktop is dazzlingly pretty, than ugly, but people don't want eye candy if it means they have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to upgrade a computer that otherwise would work just fine or it noticeably slows down their computer just rendering it. They also don't want "eye candy" if it means developers are spending all their time making "eye candy" work instead of makeing essential, and less fun, things just work, thing need need to have a usable computer like printing, audio, movie players, etc.
"I'm sure that there are a few gunless places with state funded infanticide that would be happy to have you."
After all this how could you miss the most basic point I made, you moron, or since you though you had the last word you just though you would put some words in my mouth and make out like I'm a Chinese Fascist. China and America are way to much alike lately, therefor it would be the last place on earth I'd go. You are more like the Chinese government than me. They are forcing people to have abortions, you are trying to force people to not to. I'm of the opinion its a choice best left to the woman involved (i.e. why don't both you and the Chinese learn to mind your own fucking business for a change).
Like I've said I could care less about abortion or gun control. They are dead last on the list of issues I care about since I'm not planning on making any babies and I don't care whether I have a gun or not since they are more trouble than useful. The only thing I care about is the fact dickheads like you are voting for the worst political leaders imaginable, people who are doing grievous harm to both America and the world, because YOU are completely OBSESSED with these two issues, not me.
Pay per view is hands down the best moving viewing option available at the moment for my taste. DVD's are way expensive for most of the mediocre movies out today. Theaters are far to much hassle and money other than maybe for a date. I'll pay $4-5 dollars to watch movies that are good but not great, I wont pay $20+. DVD's are a good diversion for a on a long trip but I favor a good book on an airplane, its way less hassle.
Pay per view the only drawbacks are:
- you have to watch on their schedule unless you DVR it
- you have to watch it non stop unless you DVR it
- Its not HD at least not on the crap DirectTV I have.
If the satellite and cable networks just had a good HD pay per view service that didn't cost an arm and a leg people would buy HD TV's and that would be all most people would want.
I'll only buy a DVD for something really good I want to watch multiple times like Lord of the Rings and there just aren't many of those.
I wont pay for HBO/Showtime/Starz because you have to buy all 3 to be sure you can see all the new releases, they are slow to get new releases, They should be offering their current programming on HD for only a slightly higher price, and unfortunately most of the programming just isn't very good IMHO.
"WHY IS NO ONE IN THE MEDIA ASKING THESE QUESTIONS?"
After 9/11 the Bush Administration was extremely successful in their "You are either with us or you are against us" strategy which painted anyone who questioned the Bush administration's actions, including journalists, as unpatriotic, or practically terrorists themselves. This is a classic propaganda and nationalism card and they played it very well. This campaign along with the general mood after 9/11 completely terrified journalists out of questioning anything the Bush administration did. Its just now starting to wear off because a few journalists are realizing they were played for complete suckers by the Bush administration.
Rupert Murdoch built Fox News to completely destroy the liberal media and independence in the news room and it worked. He single handedly turned news networks in to sensationalist propaganda tools for the executive branch, witness Fox's Tony Snow is now the press secretary. The fact Fox sky rocketed to #1 news network after 9/11 made all the other networks try to emulate them, not refute them. CNN is now an embarrassing Fox News parody, they aren't even good at it, so they are tanking. I can't stand watching CNN anymore. One liberal media outlet down. The Daily Show is the only liberal news outlet left and its a comedy show, parody. The best thing that could happen to American media right now would be for Time-Warner to sell CNN back to Ted Turner so he could rebuild a news network to challenge the Fox propaganda machine.
TV journalists are hired and rise through the network ranks based on how photogenic they are and on how much of a sycophant they are to both corprate executives, and politicians, not based on their ability as investigative journalists. The networks White House Correspondents and the Pentagon correspondents are just regurgitating the stuff the White House and the Pentagon want them to say on the TV that night. They are thinly veiled propaganda tools of the government. They don't do ANY independent investigation.
Most media outlets are now owned by large corporations thanks to consolidation, and most large corporations have no interest in investigative journalists who attack the government or stoke controversy that might cost them revenue or political good will.
One of the more disturbing invocations of state-secret privilege by George W. Bush was on November 1, 2001, when he signed Executive Order 13233. This order allows George W. to unilaterally prevent any access to his presidential papers for 12 years after he leaves office, unless he and only he authorizes it. Even if the sitting president authorizes it, he can still veto the release.
If its upheld, this should prevent future Congresses or courts from even seeing incriminating executive branch documents to investigate or charge him with illegal or unconstitutional acts, until 2020. Future Presidents can see them but can't release or act on them unless George W. authorizes it. You have to figure that a few weeks after 9/11, George W. was about to sign some orders to do some things that future governments might consider criminal or unconstitutional and his lawyers created this executive order so he could unilaterally obstruct any future investigations, even when he is no longer President. What might those acts be? Massive domestic spying on Americans without court approval, a prison on Gitmo outside the jurisdiction of any court, arresting American citizens without due process, authorization of torture by the military and CIA, secret prisons, launching an illegal war in Iraq based on a web of lies, dramatic expansion of the Rendition program to snatch people anywhere in the world, in violation of other nation's sovereignty to send people to secret prisons to be tortured?
Rendition is particularly apt in a discussion of state-secret privilege. It was used to kill a case brought by
I'm not wasting any more time on you. You aren't even a good or interesting debater so wasting time answering you isn't worth it. If you just had something interesting or novel to add maybe I would hang but you are just regurgitating tired and predictable dogma. You are NEVER going to change your moronic and irresponsible voting patterns, but its your constitutional right to vote like a moron so more power to you. If you and a bunch of people like you keep doing it and keep putting in truly dangerous people like George W. and Uncle Dick, just because they are pro life and pro gun, then I will probably just leave the U.S. again, and maybe this time work really hard to ditch my U.S. citizenship so I can stop paying taxes to subsidize dangerous lunatics.
:)
Unfortunately when the U.S. ends up as a smoldering hole in the ground, or worse a dangerous police state with a gigantic dangerous military tampling the rest of the world, thanks to people like you, there probably wont be any safe place on the planet to get away from it. So just in case, and in advance, FUCK YOU and thanks for all the fish
L8r dude.
I found the Criminal Information Protection Act which codifies classified information in a trial, but as I expected it is completely written in the context of the government being the plaintiff when they need to use classified information to convict a defendant of espionage, terrorism or leaking. You see the government will divulge classified information to nail you but they wont allow you to use classified information to nail them.
Having researched it I agree that the government will try to just use the state-secret privilege so Hayden wont even make it to the stand. If by some miracle the judge doesn't cave to it and Hayden does have to testify then I assume either CIPA will have to come in to play and be bent to this novel case, or Hayden will just refuse to answer any questions that would divulge classified information because it would in fact incriminate him in the process if he did it in a public court.
The Wikipedia article on the states-secret privilege is quite interesting and probably more interesting than the WSJ article.
Its not even a law, its just a precedent that was established during the McCarthy era where the Air Force used it, apparently fraudulently, to cover up the fact a B-29 crash was due to poor maintenance of the air plane, and was basicly negligence on the part of the Air Force.
"In United States v. Reynolds (1953), the widows of three crew members of a B-29 Superfortress bomber that had crashed in 1948 sought accident reports on the crash, but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission. The Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch could bar evidence from the court which they had deemed a threat to national security. In 2000, the accident reports in question were declassified and released, and were found to contain no secret information. They did, however, contain information about the poor state of condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case. Many commentators have alleged government misuse of secrecy in the landmark case."
Just goes to show you that once you let your government establish an illegal and unconstitutional precedent, during times of war or paranoia, to screw you, they can continue to abuse it forever. The Bush administration has been successfully using the fact that Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the civil war to justify denying American citizens basic due process today, and that FDR spied on American cables in World War II to justify spying on Americans now indefinitely.
Another interesting invocation of the "state-secret privilege" was in 2005 in a patent suit brought against none other than AT&T. Apparently a company called Crater Corp thinks AT&T is violating its patents for "WetMate underwater fiber optic coupling devices" which I'm guessing is probably being used by the U.S. to tap and evesdrop on fiber optic cables on the ocean floor. I would assume it must be used for tapping otherwise it wouldn't be classified. Now the U.S. has used underwater tapping technology against the Soviet Union for a long time, both on copper and fiber optic cables, but I bet you the NSA in concert with the U.S. Navy is underwater tapping any fiber optic cable they can't eavesdrop on land with the help of U.S. phone companies. It would be an interesting case to tack in to this case against AT&T.
The "state-secret privilege" was also use to defeat a case brought by Maher Arar, the Canadian detained by the U.S. at a New York Airport on his way home to Canada. You probably remember reading about it here on slashdot. He was shipped by the U.S. to Syria where he was abused for a year or so before Canada finally managed to free him. His crime as best I remember was he signed as a reference on a lease for a friend of a family member
"Where's the proof?"
... yet. Thats why they are called America's greatest generation because they lived through a ton of adversity and they built an extremely successful country in spite of or maybe because of it. They had real drive to work hard and succeed. Contrast this with the dot com millionaires of a few years ago, who didn't do anything particularly useful and expected to get rich anyway, or the plethora of corprate scandals lately where executive after executive cooks the books, pockets vast sums for nothing, and doesn't see how this is a problem.
I grew up working alongside illegal aliens most from Mexico but Central America too. Their work ethic is consistently head and shoulders better than most Americans, my proof is my own eyes. The proof is employers are going out their way to hire them, yes because they are cheap but also because they will put in a hard days work for not a lot of money. Same is true of most people coming from Asia whether they be legal or illegal.
"I also take offense at you lumping every west german into the "lazy, spoiled" category"
Its just one of those facts of life that when you grow up in a relatively affluent society, where life is pretty easy you just don't develop the same kind of work ethic you do when you have to work all day everyday just to keep a roof over your head and food on the table, and you see next door real and grinding poverty. People in affluent countries come to expect higher and higher wages for less and less work, and lots of leisure time. This worked until globalization happened, the iron and bamboo curtains came down and vast pools of cheap labor came on the market.
Americans who grew up in the depression and lived through World War II have ten times the work ethic of young people today raised on TV and video games. Older Americans appreciate the value of a dollar and they know what really hard times are like, most Americans today don't
"Money for nothing and chicks for free" really is the motto of affluent western countries today. Post World War II generations are taking what was once a very successful country and running it in to the ground because they have no work ethic or maybe ethics period. They just expect to get rich whether they do anything to justify it or not. So now America is the world's biggest debtor nation and living off a giant credit card, and a lot of young people are trust fund babies living off their parent's hard work.
"Having the prices on our agriculture, housing, food, etc. go up because we're actually paying the workers what they're worth is *not* dependance, so come up with another argument, please"
Hate to break it you but we are living under Capitalism, for better or worse, so what people are worth is what they are getting paid, its sucks but thats the law of the invisible hand. America and Western Europe are completely not competitive in a globalized world as is, thanks to high cost of living, high wages, and high health insurance costs. If you insist on giving farm workers $15 dollars an hour and Blue Cross, it will just be way cheaper to import the food from some third world country, Walmart will, people will buy it, because most people will always by the cheapest product, and most of America's farms will crater. To be even remotely competitive in a globalized world farms need workers making minimum wage or less.
Its just an unfortunate fact that globalization is going to destroy workers in affluent countries. Its going to make workers in developing countries better off than they are, but they aren't going to get rich either. I read recently in CSM that Chinese workers in China's booming Southern coastal region are in fact starting to demand higher wages and better working conditions and wage inflation is starting to set in. In the globalized world this probably means India or Bangladesh will start undercutting them and Walmart will start getting its T-shirts from them instead.
The only people that are going to get rich in the new
Yea but you can't be compelled to commit a crime in the process of testifying, and if Hayden were to say anything about this classified program in a public court room he could immediately be charged by the government for leaking classified information.
I was maybe using "plead the fifth" in an overly broad sense since people know what it means. It doesn't exactly apply but it is close. If you make someone with a security clearance divulge classified information in the witness stand they would not only be incriminating themselves but they would actually be committing a crime on the stand. Like I said the government would either have to declassify the information or arrangements would have to be made for a special court that is authorized to hear top secret testimony. It can be done since the government does it whenever they need to try someone for espionage or leaking classified information but I wager the government would do everything in its power to obstruct such a court if they are the defendants and not the plaintiff.
"It needs to go because your guy didn't win?"
First off Gore wasn't "my guy", I didn't vote from him either.
It needs to go because it is an anachronism and allows a minority of voters to win elections. Small states, like Wyoming and the Dakotas will unfortunately fight tooth and nail to keep it because it gives their votes disproportionate weight compared to voters in places like California and New York. Unfortunately the small states which get this disproportionate power also happen to be ones that vote pro life, pro gun and voted in one of the worst President in U.S. history.
"So, tell me about my religion. What knowest thou of my religious beliefs? You've ducked the question multiple times now."
I don't know a damn thing about your religion and I don't really care. Maybe you are an atheist who happens to be pro life but the odds of that are low. If you look at those polls previously cited rabid pro lifers are overwhelmingly Catholic or fundamentalist Protestant so chances are you are too. If you aren't I don't care because most of the people voting solely for pro life candidate are and they are a real problem to good governance.
"The person who will do the best job running the country is the one who will support my second amendment rights and respect the right to life."
Those two issues pale to insignificance beside the disaster in Iraq, political corruption and the truly scary state of the economy, especially the budget and trade deficits. The changes in abortion and gun law have been insignificant in the last 6 years. Maybe George W. managed to pack the supreme court to overturn Roe V. Wade and maybe he didn't. Like I said I'd love to see Roe V. Wade get overturned because it would lead to a political bloodbath for the Republicans and social conservatives because there would be a massive surge of one issue voters, mostly women, voting pro choice.
"They are less harmful to YOU and your worldview."
No, people voting on 1 or 2 issues to the complete exclusion of all others are harmful to everyone, and that covers people voting pro life or pro choice, for guns or against. As I've said before and you've never rebutted you would put Adolph Hitler in the White House as long as he pushed your two buttons and his opponent didn't.
Me not being a women and not being married I really don't care which way the law falls on abortion. I have guns, but they really aren't that useful so I don't care how that issue falls either.
The only issue I care about is that the people currently running the country are complete morons and people like you voted for them and will keep voting for them. I care that tens of thousands of people are getting killed in Iraq, that some of my tax dollars are part of the $400 billion wasted there with no end in sight. I care that my government has racked up nearly $9 trillion dollars in debt and I will be taxed for the rest of my life for it. I care that my country is running nearly a half a trillion dollars in trade deficit each year which is simply unsustainable and my government is totally OK with this and doing nothing to fix it. I care that my government is massively corrupt and selling legislation to the highest bidder, and passing bills that are counter to the best interests of every citizen of this country.
I forgot to add you can setup a trial where classified information and testimony is involved but I think the judges, lawyers and everyone else involved have to have a security clearance, and I'm not sure you can have a jury trial in this case. This is done when the government needs to convict someone for espionage. I just bet it would be nearly impossible for private citizens to bring a case where classified information is involved and this case will probably follow in that mold
"Pretty soon we'll have the public looking for traffic violations"
... gasp ... someone left a baby or a dog alone in a locked car for more than two minutes, or a husband and wife are yelling at each other in the privacy of their own hime. So if you have a baby NEVER leave it alone in the car, even if it takes more time to get it in and out of the safety seat than you would have actually spent inside the store, and don't even think about taking your pet with you in the car anymore because their is a busy body snitch who is dieing to rat you out. And don't fight with your spouse unless you are in a sound proof room.
Dude your predictive powers are amazing, because this has been happening for years. Just listen to a police scanner. There are numerous dispatches a day where people are calling in wreckless and drunk drivers.
The key enabler for this snitch state was the cell phone. People didn't stop and search for a phone booth to call in wreckless drivers but now they can whip out their cell phone and the guy is reported before he is even out of sight. Not sure how high the success rate is for actually catching people reported this way, nor even how often cops even look for someone reported this way, but I assume if they are in the area they will look for the vehicle and stop it if there appears to be a problem. This snitch state is much more effective in smaller communities because in the city the dispatcher will laugh their ass off if you call in anything below armed robbery on the severity scale.
When you add in still and video cameras to your cell phone you have the snitch state's dream tool for ratting on your fellow man. When you report someone you can also send the video/audio evidence of whatever illegal, stupid or unpatriotic act you caught them at.
Good samaritans(a.k.a. nosy, busy body snitches) don't stop at just wreckless drivers. You hear calls all the time for people calling in complaints because
I'm pretty sure he can plead the fifth. To get and keep his security clearance he can never divulge classified information. This program is no doubt still classified despite the fact that it was leaked. If he were to just confirm its existence he would be breaking the laws relating to his security clearance and subject to prosecution. You can't make people break the law, or incriminate themselves on the witness stand assuming the Bush administration hasn't unilaterally overturned this basic civil liberty yet. To get Hayden or anyone else in the NSA to testify about this program it would have to be declassified which ain't gonna happen.
If there was enough information leaked already to clearly establish that the records were turned over illegally then they might still have a case, but the government probably will try to have all the leaked evidence thrown out and to prevent anyone in the phone companies, who might not have a clearance to worry about, from testifying on national security grounds.
You would hope that if the law was broken, and it almost certainly was, that the phone companies and the government would be held to account. There is a communication act the explicitly forbids releasing your phone records without a court order.
It is an unfortunate fact that laws are much more vigorously enforced against ordinary citizens than they are against people in power. When the DOJ brings a Federal case against a citizen their success rate is extremely high like 80%. When citizen's bring a case against the government their success rate is extremely low. Welcome to Fascism.
I'd have to agree that it is kind of bizarre that they are tapping ordinary citizens to watch their cameras for them. My guess its most probably a ploy to win public support, to let all the little people frustrated by illegal immigration to feel like they can do their little part to stop it. I really can't see anyone with a life spending hours a day staring at a largely empty stretch of desert doing this. Get a life.
If they were actually serious about doing this they would acquire some relatively simple software to detect motion in the video, and filter out shadows from clouds, brush blowing in the wind or the occasional jack rabbit. I'm pretty sure we must have the technology to reliably detect people walking through a video frame. When the software detects a probable it would put it in a queue for a paid dispatcher to confirm and call in the troops. Of course this would be the sane, intelligent and rational approach. This being Texas we are talking about they predictably didn't opt for sane, intelligent or rational. They are after all the same state that launched George W's political career and boy was that insane, dumb and irrational.
"Otherwise, how do you stop terrorists and criminals from coming across, possibly with weapons?"
This program isn't about stopping "terrorists". That is just a convenient excuse to justify it. If a small number of "terrorists" want to get in to this country they will figure out a way.
It isn't going to stop drug smuggling either because they will quickly learn to defeat these lame ass cameras. They already build elaborate tunnels in urban areas along the border.
The only thing this program is going to slow down is Mexicans walking across the border to get jobs in the U.S. The crushing paradox here is the U.S. economy is now completely dependent on these workers and if you actually succeeded in getting rid of them all numerous industries would crater like agriculture, construction, gardening, house keeping(including hotels) and restaraunts. The other crushing paradox is many politicians have been bought and paid by these industries to make sure the government looks the other way on illegal immigration and illegal employment so there is a healthy supply of these workers. Despite your assertion to the contrary, in fact the U.S. government was bought out by coporations and affluent campaign donors long ago. The illegal immigrant problem is a DIRECT result of exactly that. Big agribusiness in particular demanded their congressmen let them get away with employing large numbers of illegal aliens so Congress has for decades blocked every attempt at enforcing the borders and made it easy for employers to get away with employing illegals which is why there are 11-13 million of them working in this country now.
The current demand to control immigration is entirely xenophobic and maybe that is not entirely bad. Many American, Lou Dobb's first among them, are stressed at the massive influx of Hispanics in to their states and communities, and once they have children who are U.S. citizens they are acquiring political power too. But again this situation didn't just happen, business and politicians colluded to make it happen because they wanted the cheap, hard working, labor which isn't most American workers. Interestingly I read in the Christian Science Monitor that Germany has the same issue. They import large numbers of Poles each summer to work in agriculture, in spite of the fact a lot of Germans are unemployed. The Poles are just vastly more productive at doing things like picking crops because they have a much higher tolerance for hard work and a much better work ethic than lazy, spoiled West Germans.
"We haven't been sold out to corporations. This is evident in the increasing regulation of them, and their portrayal by politicians as Bad (e.g. The recent trend about punishing oil companies for making profits")."
This is such an incredibly naive statement it boggles the mind. There is not a "trend" to punish oil companies for excess profits. There are a few politicians, mostly Democrats, paying lip service to the idea because its a campaign season and it plays well with voters. There is zero chance of an excess profits tax on oil companies getting through a Republican congress or by the oil men in the White House. The big energy companies completely own the Republican party. Rather than punishing them the Republicans gave them something like $16 billion in tax breaks and subsidies in the energy bill last year. The last thing energy companies needed at this point are incentives, to do things like drill for oil, when they are all making more money than they ever have. They would be insane to not be pouring their windfalls in to exploration when oil is consistently at $60-70 a barrel.
There is a giant laundry list of legislation corporations bribed the Republicans in to passing in the last 6 years. It wasn't quite as blatant under the Democrats but they are bought and paid for too.
- Medicare D, is a massive windfall to drug, insurance and health care companies. The point man in Congress for this bill, Billy Tauzin had a multimillion dollar consulting job lin
"The only question that really matters is "Is the size of your voting block larger than the likely margin of victory?" If it is, you have the power and ability to sway the results of an election."
Uh...not really, if the voting block on the other side of the issue is bigger than yours you aren't deciding the election.
The only other factor in your favor is the retarded electoral college. Since pro lifers are deciding elections in backward states like Kansas and South Dakota, you may be throwing the electoral college to your candidate if its close which it has been. Of course when a candidate wins the electoral college and not a plurality like George W. did in 2000 that mostly is just an indicator the antiquated electoral college needs to go. The electoral college caused a serious mistake to be made in 2000 and it was a mistake that ran counter to the majority of voters expressed will.
"One issue voters?"
Exactly and you will get your own medicine. Its a simple fact most women want to decide when they have their children and not be forced to have them because dickhead bible thumpers like yourself think its your prerogative to tell them how to live their lives and to force your religious indoctrination on the,. Women have educational goals and careers now, they aren't being kept barefoot and pregnant like many religions would like them to be. Being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is a great way to destroy a woman's education or a promising career. The world has changed since the last time abortion was outlawed and it very unlikely women are going to let you turn back the clock in most of he country, Kansas and South Dakota excepted where they do want to keep their women barefoot and pregnant.
"You just hit the nail on the head. We get out and vote. It's not going out of your way to engage in your civic responsibility."
Unfortunately you are going out to vote solely to influence 1 or 2 issues. If you were exercising your civic responsibility you would be voting for candidates who will do the best job running the country, you know upholding the Constitution, on defense, foreign affairs, the economy, passing responsible legislation, etc. You are in fact some of the most civically irresponsible people there are. You will vote for a complete moron who is incapable of fulfilling the most basic duties of his office just because he pushed your button on two issues. In fact you already did and his name is George W. Bush.
People who don't vote are less harmful than you because at least they are deferring the decision to voters who pay attention to issues and a candidates qualifications and attempt to make a reasoned choice, often between some bad alternatives.
If you want to be civically responsible either stop voting or learn to vote responsibly. Checking the box next to any loser who says he is pro life and pro gun isn't being even remotely responsible.
You need to appreciate there are two halves to the economy, the capitalists and the workers. If workers are being royally screwed it usually is considered good news for the shareholders and good news for the capitalist side of the economy. Thats why stocks often go up when companies announce layoffs. If a company succeeds in cutting labor costs without going in to a death spiral that is generally considered good for the economy. The code word for it is improved productivity, fewer workers producing about the same revenue. If all the "improved productivity" leads to really high unemployment that is a bad sign but the U.S. unemployment rate is low, unfortunately because there are lots of workers who are underemployed, but not unemployed. If workers pay and benefits are being cut(underemployment) that is wonderful for the capitalist side of the economy, lower labor costs is sweet music to capitalists.
It would be a problem that Americans are increasingly underemployed and can't buy all the corporations goods and services but fortunately in a globalized economy corporations can sell them to increasingly affluent consumers in China and India and make up the difference.
When it comes to companies offshoring to India and China, and SUN is offshoring in a big way, layoffs in the U.S. are in fact wonderful for the company, the economy and the stock market. They are trading very expensive workers in the U.S. who have expensive health insurance, for workers who are dramatically cheaper. Assuming the foreign workers can do the job, the company wins, the shareholders win and the capitalist side of the economy wins kind of. SUN conveniently skips mentioning that while they are laying off U.S. workers they are hiring in Asia. Its better marketing to just say you are cutting your U.S. work force than to admit you are really offshoring it.
True American workers get screwed but in a globalized economy you can in fact screw workers in your homeland and still have a great stock market, very successful corporations and what looks like a good economy.
All in all, the U.S. economy has been quite prosperous under the Bush administration especially considering the hit it took due to 9/11.
A key point though is that much of the economic growth is due to stimulus. The U.S. economy has a LOT of stimulus. Stimulus in this case is a code word for the U.S. government borrowing nearly a half a trillion dollars every year and pumping it in to the economy to create artificial growth. The U.S. now also borrows nearly a half a trillion to cover all the Chinese goods it buys and can't really pay for. The GDP growth for a year is really close to the same amount George W. is borrowing and spending in a year.
Stimulus comes as tax cuts for the rich(income, capital gains and dividends), pork for defense contractors and war profiteers(i.e. Iraq where we spend more now than we did in Vietnam after adjusting for inflation, Vietnam did nearly crater the U.S. economy in the 70's), pork for drug and insurance companies(Medicare D), pork for energy companies(16 billion in energy subsidies for oil companies making record profits), Katrina pork(Mississippi just got $700 million to move a rail line off the coast that had just been rebuilt after Katrina for $200 million), Homeland Security pork, Transportation bill pork(Alaska's bridge to nowhere $200 million), gigantic new ag subsidies, a few billions for vaccines and stuff for bird flu if it ever happens, it goes on and on. EVERYTIME a little problem springs up the Republicans just throw a few billion more in stimulus(deficit spending) at it and all that stimulus lands in the pockets of corporations and businessmen who lined their campaign coffers, and it improves the stock market and the economy.
Unfortunately it is prosperity being bought with Uncle Sam's credit card(Treasury notes), we will be paying ever increasing interest on it probably forever or until the U.S. defaults. Treasury notes are in fact a pretty good investment right now, 5% interest
"Unfortunately for you, every member of society gets to express their opinion on the matter."
Yea but when it comes to the voting booth, which is where this thread started, your power as a voting block is directly proportional to your numbers. Since you are in fact in a distinct minority you have dramatically less influence on elections than you like to tell everyone you have. You might win in backward places like South Dakota on a state level but you are completely outnumbered on the national level. I REALLY would like to see the Republicans manage to outlaw abortion on a large scale. They would get slaughtered in the next election and every election after because pro choice women, many of whom have been backing Republicans on other issues, would completely mobilize against them.
At this point I close my case. In fact pro lifers aren't really deciding the outcome of elections or at least not any more than pro choice, and chances are you have less influence because there are fewer of you. Only thing that might swing it back in your favor is you are such mad dogs on the issue you might go out of your way to vote, and to vote solely on the issue. Most pro choicers are somewhat complacent on the issue because abortion is still mostly available. If you succeed in actually outlawing it the pro choice block will galvanize and start going out of their way to defeat your beloved candidates.
"Stats you want, stats you get."
I don't think you read, or you didn't understand your own link. Yes, that link says women feel more strongly about abortion than men, which is kind of obvious since they are the ones who have to endure them, or the consequences of not being able to get one. But women are also dramatically more likely to oppose more restriction on abortion than men which is a fact you conveniently left out. Sure more women are opposed to abortion than men, but an even bigger percentage of women are strongly pro choice. Men, don't care about abortion as much as women, duh. You lose again.
"I think that when liberals don't respect the right to protect oneself as expressed in the second ammendment, that means that any right of expression that may be legally recognized is in fact meaningless when faced with coercion by an armed government."
Dude you are delusional to think that if everyone in the U.S. just had more guns it would make a difference.
First off Americans already have more guns that most places.
Second there is next to a zero chance that any significant number of Americans are going to storm Washington D.C. with their guns in hand and take their government back. If they tried they would make for some entertaining TV on the news networks, it would last about a day and then you would all be dead, in a psychiatric hospital or in jail for life. Rifles are no match for tanks, F-16's and Apaches. I guess you could lock yourself in some remote cabin and shoot at any government official who approaches but chances are you would also not make a difference and would quickly end up dead or in prison for life.
Third, the best you could hope to do would be a guerilla war where you would pick off some symbol of the establishment now and again. The media would probably paint you as delusional psychos, everyone would agree with their TV, and you wouldn't accomplish anything other than providing greater justification for your government to strip even more of our civil liberties. The only way guerilla wars succeed is when they have the support of large numbers of people who have nothing to lose. You wouldn't.
There isn't going to be any armed uprising in the U.S. until things get WAY worse than they are. People have to be starving, or seriously persecuted before they contemplate armed revolt. Most Americans still have way to good a life compared to the rest of the world to risk it all. They are also way too lazy, spoiled, media hypnotized, ignorant of all things political and just down right indifferent to do anything requiring a backbone. The U.S. is about where Germany was in the mid 1930's. At long as they have jobs, and the economy is OK, they will tolerate complete nut jobs running their government, and they wont give a damn if they take away all their civil liberties, or occasionally round up groups of people nobody liked anyway.
Now one thing that could form a foundation for revolt is another 10 years of war in a deteriorating Iraq. The Soviet Union's long, brutal and insane war in Afghanistan created millions of bitter disillusioned vets who had a real reason and desire to topple their government for doing that to them. They were key players in bringing down the Soviet Union. If the U.S. stays in Iraq a few more years and it keeps falling apart at the same rate U.S. vets might be a nucleus for change, the one missing ingredient is you need to draft people and make them go there which is why the Republicans wont even consider a draft. If you are volunteering to go to Iraq you can't exactly blame your government for sending you there and getting your legs blown off. But you also can't subject people to tour after tour in a hot dusty place, where they don't understand the language or culture and where people they can't see are picking them off day after day without really messing up their heads. Iraq veterans are well trained in the use of weapons and they will know how insurgencies work first hand because they are learning from some masters in Iraq.
Another path to insurrection is if the U.S. economy continues to be run by politicians and executives whose economic skills rival that of chimpanzees. The U.S. could in the next decade or two face a real economic collapse. The U.S. simply can't sustain current account deficits at the current level for very long. The U.S. dollar will eventually collapse and no foreign countries will support the debt. Most foreign central banks are already very reluctant to buy American debt because the U.S. dollar is so weak. China is still propping us up and buying dollars because they want to keep taking milkin
"It should be decided by the states. On the national level, our goal is the overturn of Roe Vs. Wade."
... yes it does. When it comes to wars the number of innocent civilians killed, women, pregnant women, children and babies is always staggering. If you really cared about "innocent" life you would be opposed to war too unless they were really about self defense and in America they seldom ever are about that.
Yea and then you are going to push to outlaw it state by state. Don't BS anyone, you would still completely lose it on the subject if its legal any place in the U.S.
"Respecting the sanctity of life does in no way require that one be a pacifist."
Uh
When it comes to guns in America the vast majority of people they kill are "innocent" lives, either in accidents or innocent people being murdered by gun toting criminals. The number of instances for your scenario, where people use guns to successfully defend themselves from attack is tiny. Either you have your gun locked away so your kids can't get it in which case it will probably do you no good if you are suddenly attacked or attacked away from home, or you have a loaded gun under your pillow or your jacket in which case its far more likely to kill someone in your family than an imagined boogie man.
Me personally I think gun law in this country is fine and I really can't see why people like you froth at the mouth over it. Hand guns should be hard to get, hunting rifles and shotguns are pretty easy to own in most states, you could toughen up laws some and I wouldn't care, you could loosen them and I wouldn't care. Its unlikely anyone will ever restrict them to the level places like Japan do, nor is anyone likely to let everyone have them without restriction.
"Women are more pro life than men."
Maybe you could quote a poll or statistic showing that. This is the best unbiased polling I can find on the subject but it doesn't break out men and women. The only women who really matter on the subject are the 1 million plus who get an abortion every year and who are spared an unwanted child or the devastation of their education or career.
The key thing to draw from this vast battery of polls is pro-choice outnumbers pro-life by a wide margin like 51 to 39%. There are really only about 15% who want to completely outlaw abortions, most want them available or available with restrictions. You are in fact in an insignificant minority despite your delusions of grandeur. If people were voting based purely on abortion the Democrats would be winning hands down.
You can mod it flame bait all you want but its a simple fact Slashdot needs a product review section for these submissions that are obviously plugs designed to boost sales of some product and stop pretending like they are news. There is a least a 50/50 chance the submitter works for the company that makes said product and is hoping to reap a windfall by getting it on the /. front page.
"but when you're scratching your head and wondering about why you can't get your people elected"
... damn ... if you are going to be a two issue voter at least pick two that aren't mutually exclusive and contradictory. If you really consider life to be sacred you should be pro life and anti gun. If you want a gun because someday you think you are going to shoot someone I should point out guns are basically tools to commit abortions in the fourth trimester and later. At that point you are killing gods creation, whether they be man or animal at a point that they really do have consciousness and brains. If you really ever do use a gun for its intended purpose you are in fact the BIGGEST FLAMING HYPOCRITE in existence.
Dude you really need to get it through your head that, rather than being the most important voters, you are the LEAST important voters. The Republicans know they have your vote so they can and do screw you on every other issue that actually counts. The Democrats write off your vote before they even start. The same is true of one issue pro choice voters except flip flop the parties.
If you people started voting with your brain instead of your issue yes you would matter which is all I've been saying but since you don't and probably never will...
Swing voters in swing states are the only voters that matter now and they don't vote on and probably don't care about abortion or guns.
The only abortion swing that will be interesting to see is if the Republicans actually succeed in banning abortion. Then all the women, especially of child bearing age, who started voting Republican on other issues, like security paranoia, are going to flee back to the Democrats because they will remember how much it sucks to be a women in a country that outlaws abortion so their lives get destroyed by unwanted pregnancies, or they die getting dangerous backalley abortions.
I should also point out that just because pro life, pro gun Republicans have won the last few elections says nothing about 2006 or 2008. Most of the country is completely sick of the horrible job the Republicans have been doing, especially due to Iraq and their widespread, blatant corruption. You would hope Americans are fed up that the Republicans are shredding the Consitution and their civil liberties but most American seem to be too dumb to care.
Chances are high American's will hold their noses and vote Democrat just to throw the arrogant dicks out on their asses and your obssession with pro life/pro gun wont make a bit of difference despite your delusion to the contrary.
And by the way
The truth is like I've said already, you are against abortion and contraception because your church wants you to make babies so they brainwashed you to oppose everything that would obstruct that. They also want you to pack guns so that if anyone ever comes after your religion you can blow their brains out, sanctity of life be damn. Just stop and think man, either life is sacred, or you want to pack a gun and snuff it out with impunity. The contradiction would cause your brain to explode if you had one.
...and WTF is a blatant ad doing posing as a front page /. headline. Does CmdrTaco get 2 cents everytime we click one the link.
So what if its kind of a small form factor. There is nothing new about a WinCE or Linux based thin client at this point.
Dude, I WAS trolling you, that was biting sarcasm, and your feeble attempt to make "fun" of me fell flat.
You see everytime the subject of George W. comes up you say the exact same damn thing. I mostly just wish you would at least try to be a little more creative and say something at least interesting. Yes we know by now you that for some moronic reason you are a two issue candidate. You would, as nearly as we can tell, vote for Adolph Hitler if he was pro life and pro gun, over Thomas Jefferson if he backed first trimester abortions to save the mothers life, or suggested that maybe in fact its not particularly useful for some wacko thug to have a machine gun for "hunting".
You want the whole freaking world to think like you do on these two topics, and you think if you just keep repeating it we will, well chances are no one is changing their opinion on these inflammatory issues. The only thing we care about is you and the people who think like you got together and inflicted a spoiled rotten, preppy loser like George W. on us, a guy that is in the running for one of the worst, most destructive presidents in America history, just because he is pro life and pro gun.
Now maybe it was forgivable you elected him the first time because maybe you didn't really understand how dumb, easily manipulated and clueless George W. really was, but reelecting him was completely and totally unforgivable. The only thing I'll agree with you on is the candidates the Democrats fielded against him were so bad I can almost understand why people voted against them, but damn, NOBODY could have fucked up America or the U.S. as bad as George W. is, and you didn't vote against Kerry and Gore because they sucked but because you didn't like their position on two issues.
" Religious people have a long history of opposing certain methods of birth control. "
Dude if you followed the first troll I spelled out exactly why that is. The religion game is entirely about a few smart people suckering as many dumb people as possible in to bowing at their feet, giving them 10% of your income, and breeding like rabbits so your religion can crowd all the competing religions off the face of the planet. Its way easier to grow the flock if you get existing members to drop 10 babies who will be brainwashed...err...indoctrinated in to the religion from birth than it is to go out and find new suckers...err...converts whose mind you have to reshape when they are old and not so impressionable as little kids.
Now I can totally see opposing contraception and abortion back when the world was empty, life spans were short, you were living on dangerous frontiers and doing everything possible to stave off extinction. But when the planet has 6 billion people on it, about 3 billion people more than it probably should have on it and we are on a track heading towards 12 or 18 billion at which point we run out of food, water and basically everything and we all start dieing anyway, it is simply complete and utter stupidity to do everything in your power to prevent people from using birth control and to compell them to have unwanted children, who they wont raise properly, just because the were weak and had sex. I guess everyone could practice abstinence, but chances are......
The jury is still out but the guy that wrote Freakonomics thinks there is a possible correlation between declining crime rate and the legalization of abortion. Put simply criminals are frequently built from unwanted kids raised in bad homes born to moms that wouldn't have brought them in to this world except for self righteous people like you want to tell other people how to live.