"Of course you can't get online in the first place without an approved operating system"
From a geeks perspective I'd look upon this as a challenge. In particular would it be possible to create a Pirate Internet, along the lines of Pirate Radio. Use unregulated wireless and create a mesh network that covers the U.S., and links to the rest of the Internet through Canada and Mexico, or maybe shortwave. Would it be possible to create a alternate network for everyone that opts out of trusted computing and corporate and government control of their computers and the network.
To the extent that radio has turned totaly corporate and boring, I find college radio to often be much more interesting and I suspect pirate radio would be to if I could find some in the area. Would the same be true of the the pirate internet. Would all the really interesting and bold stuff move there and today's Internet would continue down the road to sterile corprate websites and subscription only content.
Another interesting question is if the U.S. tried to unilaterally force trusted computed would the rest of the world follow. I suspect not. I could see China going for trusted computing but only if their government controlled it and not Microsoft, Intel and the U.S. If the U.S. had one brand of trusted computing and China another the Internet would fragment and stop being the internet.
Its also possible the U.S. would try to force trusted computing and the rest of the world would just ignore it leading to two outcomes:
- The rest of the world ignores it, it fails and the U.S. ignores it too - The rest of the world ignores it, the U.S. clings to it and uses oppressive government regulation to inflict it within its borders, and the U.S. would turn in to a black hole in the internet. The rest of the world would ignore it and potentially block U.S. access to the rest of the world in retaliation. I'm wondering if instead of economic sanctions in a future world we might see internet sanctions where a rogue nation is shut out of the rest of the world's Internet as a form of punishment for bad behavior.
In the later scenario could a Pirate Internet spring up in the U.S. and continue to connect to the rest of the world's Internet in defiance of government attempts to suppress it. It would be pretty hard especially when the FCC sends trucks, full of armed goons, around the country hunting down wireless network nodes. A pirate internet would need a lot of redundancy and nodes that are relatively elusive and transient.
"Just like I lobby the government every time I write my Congressman a letter. It's called "representative democracy."
Yea but chances are your letter is read by a coop and filed in obscurity unless you are the Congressman's campaign contribution list or he otherwise knows who you are.
Large corporations, or their K street lobbyist, on the other will routinely meet your congressmen face to face, offer campaign contributions to the full extent of the law, and other assorted favors to insure their clients get what they want from legislation and contracts.
You should have watched the House and Senate during the Medicare "Reform" Act. The lobby of the Capitol building was swarming with lobbyists for the drug, insurance and healthcare corporations, all circling like the sharks they are, smelling blood(money) in the water. The bill was such a horrible piece of legislation it couldn't pass on its own so House and Senate leadership had to arm twist all night to get the votes they needed and they held the vote open for hours which is against the rules until they got just enough votes to pass it.
During this same time the lobbyists were also hard at work outright buying votes because they desperately wanted that bill to pass. Its a bonanza for the drug and healthcare corporations, and in fact does frighteningly little for seniors for the price tag.
As I recall one congressman was retiring from politics and dead set against it. The lobbyists couldn't buy him because he was fed up and quitting, so they tried buying his vote by promising to get his son elected. As I recall it was in fact probably illegal vote buying though not sure what came of it.
Another example of how corporations lobby and you don't is Billy Tauzin. He is the relatively corrupt politician who lead the charge to ram the Medicare reform bill through Congress. He did this at a time when he had a million dollar plus job offer waiting for him from an industry group representing, you guessed it the drug companies. The unspoken deal, pass Medicare "reform" and we make you rich when you retire.
Another fascinating aspect of the the Medicare Reform, it really is a case study in how deeply corrupted our government has become, is that the Medicare administrator, Thomas Scully, was also job shopping with corporations he dealt with during the run up to passing the "reform bill". It was a blatant conflict of interest but the White House approved his job shopping anyway. This same administrator intentionally and blatantly suppressed the true cost estimates for the bill. If the true cost had come out before the vote it never would have passed. Scully needed the estimate to be not over $400 billion over ten years to get is passed so, he lied and told everyone thats what it was. He was no doubt assured a high paying job in in the private sector in return for being corrupt. One of the people who worked for him had some ethics and started demanding the true numbers, which were $551 billion, be released and Scully threatened him with ruination. The true figure was suppressed until the bill passed and then about a month later the Bush administration admited it was really at least $551 billion which would have never passed. A few weeks ago new estimates came out and its ballooned to $700 billion dollars and it really hasn't even started yet.
One key reason the cost is ballooning is the drug industry lobbyists managed to add a clause in the legislation that forbids Medicare from negotiating the prices for the drugs its buying for seniors. The drug companies can charge as much as they feel like and raise the prices at their whim. They invested a few million on lobbyists and they will reap hundreds of billions of dollars in profits at the expense of tax payers. The only cap on how much this bill will cost taxpayers is how blatant the drug companies want to be in jacking up the prices of the drugs they sell to Medicare.
You really have no clue if you think your silly little letter is even remotely the
"If you break it down to raw physics, how much energy does it take to heat at 1 acre/foot of water 1 degree celcious. Light is easy to produce, energy of the amount the sun or even the earth produces is beyond our foreseeable grasp."
Man you are thick. The problem from all the gas flaring isn't the heat produced, its the voluminous quantities of CO2 it produces. CO2 is a green house gas, which increases the propensity of our atmosphere to trap the Sun's heat and as you said yourself the Sun showers the earth with lots of HEAT. The fact that man is adding CO2 and methane to the atmosphere on a continuing basis is almost certainly contributing to increased trapping of the Sun's heat, increasing the Earth's temperature. Get it yet?
Another illuminating example of Man's capacity to alter our climate, which is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is ozone depletion. Its an amazingly good example because it too is caused by human activity releasing gasses, chlorofluorocarbons, in to the atmosphere, not huge releases, but billions of tiny releases by aerosol cans, refrigerators and air conditioning leaks. If we had taken your approach, denial, and hadn't banned the problem gasses we might well have destroyed the ozone layer that shields us from ultraviolet radiation and we would have all died and taken much of life on this planet with us.
"I will, but I recall a Syrian actually being an enemy combatant. I do plan to look into this as I really would like to see what came of the trials."
Here is one transcript from a man who was in the famous nude pyramid. He was an Iragi civilian being held for theft/looting and he is beyond a shadow of a doubt protected by the Geneva conventions on treatment of civilians in occupied countries, and they specificly band sexual humiliation. He is so ashamed he is is suicidal.
"I'm certain there are and I am content with covert missions and interrogations involving torcher."
WTF is "torcher"? You in favor of setting people on fire too? All I can say is you are sick, and I've had enough, you belong in my Foes list next to my allstar list of right wing wackos many of them think torture is cool too.
Probably should point out the obvious hypocrisy in supporting toppling Saddam because he tortured people and then saying its OK for the U.S. to torture people too.
The only thing I wish for you in life is that someday you land in dark, dank prison cell and spend a few years of your life being tortured every day, you deserve it.
"No, I'm no holding no war or information against you, nor have I committed any crimes punishable in such way."
Like I said many of those people in Abu Graib were being held on suspicion of theft/looting. They hadn't been charged with anything, they hadn't been convicted of anything, so by your lame ass standard I can accuse you of theft and come over and arrest and torture you. Whats your address?
Later dude, your posts aren't worth the bandwidth. Probably should consider not posting your B.S. for the rest of the world to see. Your embarrasing, you give Americans a bad name and they don't need any help in that regard.
Forgot to ask where did you developed this mistaken assumption. Sistani lived in exile in Iran much of his life. He speaks with a think Persian accent which puts off many Iraqi Arab Shia's. He has vast ties with Iran. He claims to not subscribe to Iran's Wilayet al-Faqih("governance of the religious jurist") which is a plus, since that is Khomeni's doctrine under which clerics in Iran dictate every aspect of life in Iran. Sistani's theocracy may place Shia clerics somewhat less directly in control of every aspect of life in Iraq but they are still going to be exerting massive influence over the governance of Iraq. Remains to be seen what the Shia's actually do when they are in power though. Though Iranian and Iraqi Shia's diverge some on political views their common religion is still certain to unite them on many fronts.
The Al Sadr Shia faction in Iraq which is smaller but very vocal are devout follower of Wilayet al-Faqih. If they were to gain power eventually, which is unlikely, Iraq would look exactly like Iran politicly.
Maybe you were confused thinking Iraq doesn't like Iran by the fact Iraq's Sunni's hate Iran and fought a decade long war with them. Iraq's Sunni's tend to hate all Shia's, Iraqi or Iranian, they consider their branch of Islam to be heresy and spent the duration of Saddam's rule persecuting them which is why most of their surviving leadership were in exile in Iran.
"I think the same is true about global warming the earth will always be changing, we will learn to deal with it and prevent it when possible."
So I'm assuming you are saying its impossible to do anything about global warming and human activity has nothing to do with it, well people will disagree. I think your wrong, but like I said earlier there are plenty of reasons to stop burning fossil fuels even if they aren't causing global warming, and maybe there is that off chance they are contributing to it and if we stop burning them we lessen the problem.
Or we could take your approach, go in to denial that human activity is contributing to it, and burn coal with abandon. Unfortunately your assertion that human activity isn't contributing to it could be wrong, since you don't have more proof to back your position than the Kyoto advocates do at this point, there simply isn't enough data. The problem with your approach is that if and when you are proven wrong it may be to late to do anything about it. What do you do then besides say "oops".
"We aren't that powerful"
Well you have no actual basis on which to make that assertion. There was a picture in the National Geographic recently showing source of manmade light around the globe at night from. Look it up, look for all the light coming from gas being flared off from oil and gas wells. Its amazing. Look up the global map recently for pollution, I think it was NO2, from a satellite study. You can tell from space where all the coal fired power plants and smelters are because China and the Northeastern U.S. are blanketed in the pollution from them, part of Germany too.
Go visit a coal fired power plant, my favorite the one by Glen Canyon damn in Arizona. Look at all the CO2 billowing out of its smoke stack. It might not be quite a match for a Volcano but it runs 24x7 and has for years. Its one of thousands of coal fired power plants in the world. Its pretty naive of you to think that 6.5 billion people don't have an impact on the environment. Again look for space and see the millions of acres of rain forest we've clear cut or slashed and burned. Look at the oceans and see how many species we've fished to near extinction.
Sorry man but chances are you are just flat wrong.
"In Abu Graib, pictures should not have been taken and some of the photos may have been taken out of context"
You're wrong and you are just being an apologist. The context for them is well known, some of the Iraqis in them were called to testify about them and described what happened in graphic detail, can dig up the transcripts if you like.
If you think they are no big deal I assume you would be OK if we come and do the same stuff to you?
"If there was torture, I hope they find those responsible."
They found a bunch of low level enlisted gaurdsmen to use as scape goats. It is unlikely any of the officers and civilian leadership who ordered, condoned and laid the foundation for the torture will EVER be held responsibile at least as long as the Republicans control all branches of the government. There will never be an investigation that isn't a whitewash. Its obvious the White House has sanctioned and authorized use of torture, to many memos have leaked and its happening all over the world. There were 20 or more outright murders of prisoners under investigation last I heard.
The question the Abu Graib photos raises is not what the show, but what kind of torture is going on that no one is taking pictures of so its never been exposed. The U.S. has secret detention facilities in numerous places around the world run by disciplined special forces, which may well be doing stuff 10 times worse tha Abu Graib but are disciplined enough they wont be caught. Only mistake the Army made in Abu Graib was using undisciplined gaurdsmen to do it. They were understaffed so they let amateurs do it and they got caught. Even if American's aren't doing its been established beyond a shadow of a doubt the U.S. is shipping
Damn you are a rocket scientist. If you weren't completely clueless you might have deduced that he is most probably Canadian, though American education is so dismal in things like basic Geography you probably don't know where Toronto is.
"You're not worth proof reading"
People who live in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones. Apparently your own posts aren't worth proofreading either.
For example, WTF is a "Tornato"?
In general your post is rambling gibberish. Try working on coherent, complete sentences, that actually make some kind of point. It certainly looks like you were educated in America.
Me I'm not a pedant like you so I don't care if there are typos in BS slashdot posts but maybe you should stop ranting about proof reading when you apparently don't proof read your own posts.
"Meanwhile the Iraqies have at least demonstrated that they actually want a democracy, a topic that was hotly debated beforehand."
Actually all it showed is that the Shia's and the Kurd's want power which they've wanted for most of the last century. There was never any doubt that they were overjoyed when Saddam was toppled.
The only thing that was open for debate is if the Sunni's wanted Democracy. They obviously don't since they didn't vote at all, partially from threats from insurgents but mostly because they knew that even if they did vote in large numbers they are still going to be powerless in the new government, since they are completely outnumbered so why bother. If the Sunnis don't endorse the new government their insurgency is going to continue indefinitely, or at least until Iraq splits in to three part in a civil war, Kurd's in the North, Sunnis in the center and Shias in the south.
OK so next problem is do the Shia's really want Democracy. Indications are they want their clerics to be running the government and they want their constitution to be a regurgitation of Islamic law(the same law the Taliban and the Saudi's base(d) their government on). If and when that happens Iraq isn't going to be a Democracy its going to be a theocracy. In case you don't understand the the difference, in a culture where clerics dominate every aspect of life the clerics are going to decide who runs, and they are going to tell everyone in the mosques to vote for their candidates which they practicly did this time around.
To put it another way chances are high Iraq will end up as much of a Democracy as Iran currently is. Iran isn't. Iran has elections too but Shia clerics predetermine who can run and who is going to win which is exactly what Iraq's Shia's are going to do.
Thats was a chickenshit cop out if ever I heard one. The difference between living on an island and riding out a hurricane and riding out global warming, is global warming likely to be permanent. Whole islands and whole coasts are going to disappear as the ice packs in the Arctic and Antarctica melt. In case you were unaware a huge percentage of the world's population are living on coasts. The cost of relocating them all or building dikes and levees is going to be enormous.
"We have torture law?"
Yep. The U.S. congressed banned torture in 1994. I think they passed a law requiring adherence to the Geneva conventions since the scandals broke but I'm not positive on that one
I assure the people in Abu Graib were protected from torture under the Geneva coventions protecting civilians in occupied countries which is what Iraq is. It has nothing to do with terrorists, or enemy combatants. Most of the people in Abu Graib were ordinary people rounded up in sweeps or at worst for looting which everyone in Iraq did in the power vacuum the U.S. left after the invasion because it didn't have enough soldiers to secure the country, hence anarchy and a flood of people going in to prison who weren't terrorists, and who were apparently tortured.
" The constitution only applies to US citizens, no one else."
Nice try, you lose. Jose Padilla is a U.S. citizen and has been held for years now without access to a lawyer, charges being filed, access to family or any of the most basic rights American citizen's are assured under the Bill of Rights and Rule of Law. Now that the precedent has been set the Bush administration can arrest any U.S. citizen they fell like and hold them for them life without ever giving them a day in court or even a day with a lawyer.
A couple people held in Gitmo were American citizen's too.
I assure you Europeans and everyone in the civilized world are going to stop coming to the U.S. if its made clear that they have no basic legal rights or due process when they are here which is what you are saying. Good way to destroy your economy.
"We can do with with out nuclear, it is just harder, I don't really see a problem."
Once you start using nukes everyone else who has them is going to start using them too. Maybe its OK to use one on a cave in the middle of nowhere, next its OK to use one downtown Baghdad to take out one of Saddam Jr's bunkers. Next, we can't risk American lives doing street to street in Fallujah, lets just move everybody back and flatten it with a nuke. The U.S. practicly did flatten it one house at a time, it would have been a lot easier to just nuke the place with one bomb and fewer Americans would die.
Using nukes will make war fighting vastly easier that why once you start using them you won't stop.
There is an internet rumor circulating that Bush relayed to Al Qaida the message that if they attack again the U.S., the U.S. will nuke all the holy sites in Arabia. Far fetched now but plausible once the U.S. starts using tactical nukes as a matter of routine.
"Huh? Wouldn't the largest block of people....have more votes? Their constitution isn't even drafted yet, give them some credit."
I think you didn't understand a think I said there. Please work on your rather poor reading comprehension. Your American education must be relatively poor.
"Last I recall, we have a democracy, the Congress can at any moment put a stop to military operations if they wanted to. In either case, you've left your first subject and went to Iraq, which I'm going to ignore from here on in."
Again bad reading comprehension on your part. I wasn't talking about the U.S. I was saying the U.S. is going to be unhappy when their fledgling Democracy in Iraq turns in to an Iranian aligned Islamic theocracy. When that happens chances are they will have to conjour up an excuse to invade and put them out of power again, and keep doing it until they elect
Other than potentially making a start at ending global warming, which if it happens, and it is an "if", is going to do far more damage to the world both physically and economicly than Kyoto will.
I think a really good test for Americans would be to offer, or maybe compel them to trade their current homes and real estate for an estate several times more valuable on some low lying coastland or better yet a low lying tropical island and see if they are willing to gamble that global warming is a lie.
All in all its waste of time debating U.S. entry in to Kyoto, or even that the U.S. will make any significant investment in weaning itself from complete dependence on coal because with the current political regime its go a snow balls chance in hell. Even if the U.S. rejects Kyoto which there are valid reasons to reject, it should still solve its addiction to fossil fuels and there is an indisputable case for doing that.
But no, Kyoto is inevitably going to end up one of American's expansive land fills probably outside of Washingtoon D.C. alongside the Geneva conventions, the ABM treaty, U.S. law against torture, the rule of law, the Constitution and it appears very soon the global test ban treaty.
There is irony that as the U.S. tries to dictate to nation after nation that thou shalt not develop nuclear weapons the U.S. is in fact developing new ones, is going to test them in violation of treaty, and in the case of the new nuclear bunker busters is almost inevitably going to start using them to kill people for the first time since World War II. When the U.S. takes the first step off that slippery slope the world is going to become a VERY dangerous place.
"The extend of this can be debated, but hold it to be true that some progress has been made."
It certainly is a subject for debate. Just because an election was held proves next to nothing. There is still a high probability that the Shia majority is just bideing its time until the constitution is written, the next elections are held which the Shia's will win, which the Shia will always win being 60% of the population and being an extremely cohesive voting block. Sistani issued a Fatwah compelling his large block of Shia's to vote which is why they did in such large numbers, the voted because they knew they would win the power they've been denied so long by doing so.
Sunni turnout was in fact dismal, they are shut completely out of power unless the Shia and Kurd's throw them crumbs, and this insures the Sunni insurgency will continue unabated which it has.
Once the Shia have cemented their hold on power, they can then tell the U.S. to get its troops out and the U.S. will either:
- Have to withdraw its troops in deference to Iraq's sovereign will and its Democraticly elected government - Say no, leave its troops there and the elections the Republican's are so proud of are then proven to be a sham
You see the U.S. really only likes Democracies when they vote the way the White House wants them to. If they don't the U.S. really isn't that big a supporter of the concept.
Assuming the U.S. withdraws the Shia are then free to institute an Islamic theocracy and align themselves with Iran. Women will most probably be oppressed under Islamic law more like they were under the Taliban than the relative freedoms they enjoyed under Saddam's secular state, and in fact already are more oppressed than they were in most areas. Christians and Jews also enjoyed some tolerance for their religion under Saddam and are generally being forced to leave Iraq as it swings hard towards fundementalist Islamic state.
Meanwhile the Kurd's in the north are also voting en masse and trying to secure as much power as they can get at the ballot box and as much territorial control they can of the oil fields around Kirkuk. They are also bidding their time and waiting patiently. When the opport
Only problem is they've failed the last 4 tests in a row. The first 5 tests kind of worked but its widely recognized that they were heavily scripted and not even close to realistic, now that they are attempting something realistic its failed everytime.
The other obvious point being the last *test* failed too. Normally if you are test flying something and you have a failure you fix the problem. If you don't fix the problem what's the point of testing in the first place, other than you are hoping everything just works. As nearly as I can tell they didn't fix the cause of the last failure, they just brushed the problem of overloading data busses, and data dropouts, under the rug. If you don't actually fix the problems you find in testing chances are high they will continue to recur in future tests and when it goes operational. Low and behold they did have another failure which sure looks a lot like the last one.
And finally, as nearly as a I can tell, though the missiles are still in testing, and obviously not ready to go in to production, they did in fact put them in to production and have deployed 14 or so in Alaska and California. The project is under huge pressure to go operational NOW and though the obviously aren't ready, but they declared it operational anyway. If they missiles are in fact defective two things follow:
- The missiles which have been deployed will have to be taken down and repaired, when a fix is known, probably at great expense - The system has zero credibility as a deterrent. If North Korea decides to launch missiles at the U.S. they can do so with reasonable confidence that the missile defense will fail. A key point behind testing is to prove to your enemies the system works so it serves as a deterrent. By having test failure after test failure and still going operational you have the opposite effect, you make your deterrent look like a joke and a laughing stock.
"If that makes me a wacko, then break out the straitjackets."
Well there is some impressive and dense prose up there but you did wander off the deep end enough times that yea I think it probably does suggest wacko more than statesman.
You rambled so much, and made some giant leaps where its not even clear what you are talking about exactly and its probably dangerous for me to even try to rebut it but there are few points that probably should be made.
Only speaking for me personally I don't want nor do I subscribe to either of the two black and white extremes you propose for America.
Do I want "unaccountable, so-called enlightened few to completely redefine the basic building blocks of society", nope.
Do I want your basic building blocks to completely dominate life like a straightjacket so that everyone is compelled to exist in a family unit with one man, one woman, 10 children, go to Church, stay married for the duration of your life even if you hate the person you married, essentially to have all the color drained out of life by conformism and the tyranny of the majority, nope.
You see I want, and I think our founding fathers wanted a country where if you wanted to be a religious fanatic and stay married for life to someone you hate because your beliefs say you can't divorce, and have 10 children you can and no one should ever say you cant.
But then too the framework they founded suggests that if you choose to not subscribe to a religion or subscribe to one that is abhorred by the majority that is your right too and you should not be discriminated against or persecuted for making that choice. If, for whatever reason, monogomous heterosexual marriage is not suited to your view on life, well that should be your right too, and it is fundementally wrong for people like you to start railing against anyone who chooses to not subscribe to your rigid view of acceptable societal building blocks.
To summarize I don't have the right to tell you to not follow your religion, nor do you have the right to tell me I must have a religion. If I take action that precludes you from following your religion I'm in the wrong, if you take action to attempt to inflict your religion on me, against my will and in the public square, you are equally in the wrong.
Our founding fathers established the concept of separation of church and state because many of them fled religious persecution in Europe, persecution that arose precisely because a single religion established itself as the state religion and any citizen of the state that didn't accept that religion would be subjected to both religious and civil persecution.
The thing most rabid Christians completely don't get is that separation of church and state is something they want as much or more than atheists. Its not there to persecute the religious, and compel them in to atheism, its to prevent a dominant majority religion from entrenching itself in the state and using the state to compel everyone else to conform to their belief system. An unfortunate consequence, that they don't understand, of this separation is it is important to keep religion out of the commons. Religion and family beliefs like sexual preference are personal and private and they should stay personal and private between your family and your church.
As soon as you start putting the ten commandments or the Koran in a courtroom you are saying to people who aren't Judeo-Christian or Muslim respectively that justice, rather than being blind is looking at you through eyes colored by a religion which is not yours. Instead of impartial justice you've taken the first step in turning justice in to religious persecution.
Bottomline is the thing the religious right doesn't get is that if we are going to have a free nation where all faiths are respected, and all those of no faith are respected you can't force your belief system on people in the public square. It is wonderful to have a President that has religious belief, but it is his duty
Heh, so the mods on your post are spot on and the fact mine is +5 insightful is wildly wrong. Either moderation works or it doesn't.
"What are you, like 12 or something?"
There is some real intelligent rhetoric. Is that the best you can do? Are you like 12 or something?
"Do you know anything about American history at all? The religious right are not the people who are trying to dismantle every single element "
What does history have to do with it, we are talking about current events here?
Hate to break it to you but I'm an arch fiscal conservative, and social liberal and your attempt to cubbyhole me failed miserably.
I want my government as small as possible, and I want it to live and let live. Unfortunately the new religious right and the New Republican party is failing as badly, on both counts, as any political movement I've seen in the U.S. in my rather long lifetime which is why, in my book they deserve to get some venom lobbed at them, Lord know they've been dishing it out. Democrats suck too but they seem to be substantially less dangerous than the Republicans, for example Joe McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Watergate, Ronald Reagan and Iran Contra, and of course today George W. Bush seems to be more dangerous than all of them combined, and apparently has all their worst qualities rolled up in to one demented little package. LBJ is the only recent Dem President eve, in the same league for malevolence. Worst thing Clinton did was lie about sex. If I have to pick between the two which currently I do I'll take the Democrat just based on the track record for dangerous nut cases in the Republican party.
"clearly are incapable of nothing but parroting the worst cliches of the left"
Now I'm hurt, I'm thinking it was biting, original satire and if nothing else I pushed the boundries, but then I think we've established you are no judge.
P.S.
Was just verifying you are a wacko before I added you to my Foes list with rest of the Slashdot wacko hall of fame. Wasn't entirely clear when you started if qualified, since as I said I was willing to believe your first post was a joke, but no you've established since you do seem to be a bone fide wacko.
Here is some rocket news that is current. Slashdot moderators in their infinite wisdon rejected it in favor of a Linux based cat feeder.
George W's Missile defense system attempted another test flight today. The target warhead launched great, the interceptor once again sat on the pad and refused to launch, for the second time in a row. They've had 4 outright failures in 9 attempts and I'm not sure the 5 were entirely successful, its hard to tell with the people running the progream controlling all the information on the test. They can't easily hide the fact the missile didn't launch so they have to admit to those failures.
Last time they discovered the data busses were overloading and when they started dropping data the flight control computers aborted the launch. Rather than fixing the overloaded busses and dropped data, which would probably be time consuming they just increased the threshold at which point an abort would occur. Yikes, for $8 billion a year you could hope for better engineering than that.
This time they did the same thing they did last time, damage control, and tried to blame ground equipment and claim the interceptor is great, though they most probably have no clue what the problem was just like last time. I'm going to laugh so hard if the dropped data exceeded the new higher threshold.
We are spending around $8 billion on this dog that wont hunt, and with its current dismal track record it wont serve as any deterrent. If it doesn't work against one missile being launched from a known location on a known trajectory launched at a known time what are the chances it will work against a surprise attack from a location not knowm in advance and attacks with potentially multiple missiles, multiple warheads and decoys or maneuvering warheads like the ones the Russians are developing to defeat it.
"they are usually reduced to practice in industry, and it's the industry again that makes the actual drugs"
I really doubt thats the case. Once the drug is discovered anyone can bring it in to production. I'm pretty sure the government/military has done it for things the military needs like vaccines.
You could kid yourself and think drug companies and the FDA are necessary to establish efficacy and safety, but it in fact appears that system is deeply, deeply flawed, with drug companies successfully suppressing bad results and the FDA rubber stamping fraudulent studies because they have started working for the drug companies instead of being a dispassionate regulator.
"but I do know that you are not going to see any new drugs unless successfully developing them carries great rewards for those involved."
Or they are developed with public funding, since our government can sink billions of dollars in to high risk ventures with low probability of return. They already have in the past on things like building the Hoover Dam or space exploration.
The return on investment of having our tax dollars could well be worth it. The cost of drugs and health care is a huge drain on our economy and competitiveness. If drugs were available for cost it might compensate for the cost in taxes.
The desperate need is for social security numbers to be replaced with an encrypted digital signatures, and when you use it for something there is an authentication test required to prove you know the password to it.
The idea that your life can be destroyed if someone just acquires your name and social security number is insane. Social Security numbers are security through obscurity and they completely stopped working when the Internet came in to being.
And no I don't want the government to institute an all knowing, all seeing national identity system, which appears to be what they are shoving down the throats of states through drivers licenses, which will apparently become a unified national ID unless a state decides to forgo Federal funding for things like highway construction.
I just want them to mandate that secure digital signatures superceede social security numbers.
The argument and its probably a true one is if drug companies didn't have patents and exclusive rights to a drug for a period they would stop development of new drugs, and it is extravagantly expensive to get one through trials and FDA approval. Though it appears much of that process is a sham, and negative data on the safety of the drug is being routinely buried. The FDA is apparently largely funded by fees from drug companies which is a key reason they've started treating them like customers and not a target for disspassionate regulatory oversight.
It is quite possible that drug development could be better done with public funding which might well be what you get if you killed drug patents.
I think it would be somewhat less disruptive at least initially if you tried my 3 point plan and if it didn't work use the threat of voiding their patents as the sledge hammer to compel them to straighten up.
Regradless none of its going to happen with the Republican's in power and it might not be any better if the Democrats wer in power. Another thing drug companies are using their ill gotten gains for is a massive army of lobbyists and huge campaign contributions so they can pretty much own Congress.
Joking aside I see this is research is being done at UCLA presumably with public funding or maybe charitable donations.
I was just wondering if anyone has an educated guess how many medical and drug breakthroughs are happening in publicly funded institutions, the NIH being another example, and how many are actually developed inside the big drug and healthcare companies using private funding.
I ask because in the face of the extraordinarily high cost of drugs in the U.S., HIV drugs in particular, the usual retort by Republicans is drug companies need those huge profits to do groundbreaking R&D on new breakthrough drugs. Drug companies have the highest profits and profit margins of ANY major industrial sector in the U.S. or at least they did before they started getting hammered when it turned out drugs they were pushing like Zoloft and Vioxx are potentially dangerous.
I'm also curious how much of the privately funded drug company research is funded by the public through tax breaks, grants etc.
To put it another way how much do drug companies profit on breakthroughs from publicly funded research.
Another question what is the current ratio between drug company spending on advertising versus R&D. The never ending saturation TV ads, designed to compel American consumers to demand drugs from their doctors they may or may not need, must be costing billions and all those advertising costs which do no one any actual good are being tacked on to the cost of drugs and making seniors in particular pay through the nose for saturation advertising campaigns instead of drugs or drug R&D.
My three step plan to drive down the cost of drugs and healthcare:
A. Outlaw drug advertising just like ads for cigarettes and hard liquor. Its totally inappropriate and disceptive to advertise drugs using slick ads, like soda pop or underarm deodorant. Confine them to advertising to doctors and then only in the form of factual dissertations on the pros and cons of the drug, audited by a 3rd party for accuracy.
B. Mandate that drugs and publicly funded health breakthroughs be provided to the public at cost or with a regulated profit margin.
C. Rather than outlawing U.S. agencies, like Medicare, from negotiating fair prices for wholesale drug purchases, make it law that those agencies MUST negotiate fair wholesale prices, like Canada and most other sane nations do.
Well you should learn to spell hypocrisy because it fits you to a "T".
Lets hop in the way back machine and look at your post:
"A bunch of human-monkey hybrids that will certainly vote Democrat?!"
Well maybe it was a joke or satire and thats they way I took it but now that you are getting all holier than thou it could also be read as the most bigoted statement in this thread. If you want to get holier than though on bigotry this could be read as:
"human-monkey hybrids are sure to vote Democrat because they are obviously going to have an IQ of 12 and people with an IQ of 12 will vote Democrat"
or
"Democrats are pretty much human-monkey hybrids so they will fit right in"
You want to take it to the next level of bigotry, and the implication is there, you can leap to flagrant racism you can read it as:
"human-monkey hybrids are sure to vote Democrat, just look at how African Americans vote"
Sorry man but you asked for it when you moved in to the glass house and started flinging stones. You obviously should have qualified your satire with all kind of politicly correct caveats so no one will misinterpret it and think you are a flaming right wing bigot.
Biting satire is inevitably pretty hard hitting. You load it up will qualifications and caveats, liberal hand wringing and political correctness you may as well not even attempt it because it will suck.
I'd like to be all politically correct and enlightened liberal but I'm not really, I'm socially liberal, a live and let live kind of person, but am otherwise arch conservative which is also a live and let live bent.
I'm live and let live right up to the point its obvious the people in power are trying to dictate to me and everyone else how to live and then its war,
Todays fundementalists and the New Republican party scare true conservatives MORE than liberals. Not only have they hijacked the name of Jesus but they've totally hijacked and wrecked the meaning of conservative.
Bottomline is America has reached the point of a cold civil war. The religious right has declared it and unless you want to end up in a fundementalist Christian police state fighting back before its too late is called for. The thing the right would most like for all of their opponents to do is to unilaterally disarm and wallow in liberal hand wringing and political correctness while they take off the gloves, which they obviously already have, and shove their ideaology down the rest of the world's throat at the point of a gun.
"I would ask the author where he gets his bigoted, prejudiced impression of Christians?"
You have a point that it is bigotry on my part to tar all Christians with the same brush and for that I'm sorry. Many Christians are throughly good people, unfortunately many have apparently turned Antichristian and they are the ones who've apparently siezed power in the U.S. If you are writing biting satire its pretty hard to load it up with all the caveats and qualifications.
In particular, its important to qualify that I think the world of Christians who actually understand the teachings of Christ and live by them, though they seems to be increasingly few and far between. The problem is very few religious sects in the U.S. actually do outside of maybe the Quakers, Amish and Mennonites for example.
As an example you simply can't be Christian and pro war in Iraq or Vietnam, you especially can't be an actual Christian and be in the military and favor killing people with impunity in anything other than self defense and Iraq is most decidedly not self defense.
Bottomline is the American right wing and fundementalist Christians are as close to Antichristian as you can get. In fact they do Jesus a grievous disservice hijacking his name for the twisted ideology they practice. First and foremost Jesus forgave and accepted people, he didn't hate, pillory and persecute them for being different. That is the one message most fundementalist Christians completely lost out of the New Testament. It can be a subject of debate if his teachings were entirely pacifist but some of them most decidedly were. At least some of his teachings were decidedly anti greed and wealth accumulation, in fact many sound out right Communist, and again many American Christians are the greediest people you will find.
The American Catholic church simply can't claim to be followers of Jesus at the same time that they've allowed pedophilia to run rampant through the ranks of the priesthood, with it being either condoned or concealed by their leadership to the point its institutional. Institutional pedophilia is decidedly Antichristian.
Try tuning in the 700 club or any other Christian network and watch a while, especially Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and dispassionately weigh if what they are doing and saying adheres to the teachings of Jesus, especially the non stop efforts to sucker dumb red staters out of money, or the open bigotry against gays, liberals, muslims, or pretty much anyone who isn't a WASP.
Pay careful attention to politics in America, especially the now daily coverage by the major networks about how the religious right "WON" the election for the Republicans and how its their prerogative to dictate the American political agenda now.
If you were to take a long historical, objective, look at the history of the Christian church you will see a litany of religious persecution, religious wars, crusades, inquisitions, genocide(especially when they came to the New World), intolerance, etc. The cumulative record suggests Christianity completely lost its way, somewhere between the sermon on the Mount and what it became when it was institutionalized.
It will be a hard case to study but I'm pretty sure you will find a huge gap between the IQ's of red state, right wing Christians and blue state liberals. I'm pretty sure the election exit polls did show people with advanced degrees overwhelmly rejected the right wing, bible thumping Republicans. It kind of follows that you would need to be a few cans short of a six pack to fall for many of the fundementalist Christian churches in America, reference Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson again. Not sure George W. actually believes in Christianity, I'm more inclined to think its a convenient and necessary political ruse because he knows those are the people that are going to vote for him no matter how incompetent he his as long as he says God and Jesus in every other sentance. But if he does actually believe he does qualify as being a few cans short of a six pack.
"I don't know: show me the ape which has conquered the planet, which has tamed the forces of nature, which thinks, and maybe I'll consider him my equal..."
Maybe you haven't noticed but great apes are for the most part polygamists, nudists, pacifists, vegetarians and environmentalists. Were it not for their insanely destructive, and apparently extremely dumb, homo sapien next of kin they would probably live a relatively idyllic life for eons.
Unfortunately their insanely destructive, and apparently extremely dumb, Homo Sapien next of kin, are most probably going to wipe them out in a genocidal campaign probably because they are both pacifists and apparently liberals. Not long after that there is a fair chance homo sapiens will turn the entire planet in to an unbearable hell hole, thanks to overpollution, global warming, clear cutting forests, overpopulation, war, starvation, etc.
"I'll consider him my equal"
I'm pretty sure the great apes would consider it a pretty serious slap in the face if Homo Sapiens were to be so pretentious as to even suggest they were as good as the great apes.
"I expect the Religious Right will end up getting steam-rolled over the genetic engineering issue"
Well American bible thumpers have a multipart strategy for countering the hordes of 7.5 feet tall Chinese with the 220 IQ:
- Nuclear weapons, lots of nuclear weapons, so if the good lord wont start the rapture they can give him(or her) a hand with an artificial one. The U.S. government is apparently starting work on two new warhead designs, in defiance of several efforts by Congress to stop it, one really big and one really small. If the Republican's hold power a little while longer its likely we will see them break the global test ban treaty and start firing off nukes again. The test ban will most likely land in the same dumper as the ABM treaty, and the Kyoto accords, and the Geneva conventions on treating prisoners, Geneve conventions on treating civilians in occupied countries, U.S laws against torture, U.S. laws on due process, and of course the Constitution.
- Missile defense, it probably doesn't work but if it did it would keep the super intelligent Chinese from shooting back
- Stamp out birth control and abortion. Most religions do everything in their power to maximize population growth to increase the size of their flock, even if it does mean massive overpopulation. The Chinese are, by contrast aggressively trying to control population growth so maybe the bible thumpers, given enough time can out breed and out number them. There will be irony if in the next big war there will be a billion American soldiers, praising Jesus, as they use human waves to overwhelm the tiny Chinese Army, big and intelligent though they may be.
If the Chinese do all develop 220 IQ's there is a chance they might all become extremely enlightened and liberal. That means they will probably unilaterally disarm, and will be reluctant to start a war.
In this area low IQ Americans have a huge advantage. They will bankrupt their country buying weapons, and more weapons, and they are willing to use them at a drop of a hat.
I guess I'm saying is its possible geneticly engineering, super intelligent Chinese might be sitting ducks for low IQ, bigoted, hate filled, bible thumping Americans, who'll push the button in the name of Jesus.
That is the way most of government contractors drain money out of the pockets of tax payers isn't it. They get a percentage of each hour billed don't they so more people billing more hours means more profit, so they have an incentive to overestimate and overstaff.
"I am working on a similar project"
Wouldn't it being amazing if the government developed one good, standard system for managing documents and used it all its agencies, instead of squandering hundreds of millions of dollars developing basicly the same capability, but different, in each one of its little empires.
Hanssen was an interesting case, apparently he was a master at surfing the FBI's web. It is an illuminating case of institutional incompetence on the part of the FBI. He did numerous things that should have gotten him caught but didn't including getting caught breaking in to his bosses computer.
I can see how it might have impacted Virtual Case Files but not sure it should have. Things like the names of top secret agents in the U.S.S.R shouldn't have been on computers in the first place. I'm kind of the opinion everything in their case files should be accessible, unless its classified and then it should be in a safe, not on a computer.
It should be noted that SAIC is the same company who just cratered on the FBI's new Virtual Case File software contract. The one that cost us $170 million dollars and is probably going to be thrown out and replaced with COTS software(which will probably cost millions more). SAIC is one of the elite cadre of companies that specialize in using political influence to land huge government contracts worth billions that they often never deliver anything worth a plugged nickel for. Some other big names CSC, EDS, Lockheed, Boeing, Hallibiburton/KBR, Bechtel....
Virtual Case File was actually only 1/3 of a larger contract called Trilogy to modernize the FBI's computer systems. In total its a $600 million dollar project and it kind of sounds like the 2/3rds of it CSC is doing isn't going a lot better.
I'm wagering this is just one of many case studies in the U.S. government squandering money in knee jerk reactions after 9/11 that were awarded before any actual thought had been put in to them. The contractors all make out like bandits though. Remember that when you see the $300-$400 billion budget deficits and the slash and burning of domestic spending to pay for "homeland security". Its open to debate if any of the billions that hve been spent on "homeland security" have actually made the homeland more secure.
"It's not a matter of being lucky, it's a matter of being disciplined. $20 a month for the last 20 years, plus income tax refunds, plus money recieved at Christmas & birthdays, plus bonuses from work, etc.."
You are missing the point, by setting dividend taxes to zero the government is rewarding you for one and only one form of economic activity. In the process they are nearly forcing everyone to invest in the stock market and forcing companies to pay out everything possible in dividends. As massively as the Bush administration has tried to pump the stock market it should be doing a lot better than it is. Its not because of the huge budget and trade deficits which are pulling it down.
Regrettably the stock market, especially in the modern era has become more a form of high stakes gambling than sound investment.
Thanks to corporate corruption its often a huge gamble. Talk to people who invested everything in stocks due to booming returns in 1929 or Enron employees who were massively incentived to invest all their savings in to Enron stock and have been wiped out financially. Its not entirely rational for the government to compel and reward people to put all their savings in the stock market which is EXACTLY what they are doing. Wall Street loves it but its destroying diversification and sets Americans up for disaster in the event of another market crash.
Its also compeling people to stop investing in saving accounts so American's dont put money in to interest bearing accounts anymore. The returns are low AND its taxed in to the ground.
Thanks to online trading and low fees on stock trades many people are in fact using stock trading as a form of legalized gambling with all the volatility that produces.
So you didn't answer the question why should you be special and get untaxed income from dividends while someone who invests in saving accounts, bonds, or actually does real work is taxed in to the ground.
"The fact is, the number of 'very wealthy' is vanishingly small. Even if we taxed them at 100%, the total amount would be a drop in the bucket of the Federal budget."
That is absurd, some charts showing wealth and income distribution and how wealth is concentrating in the hands of the upper class at a disturbing rate.. The upper 1% of American control 40% of its wealth. The upper 5% control 61.4% of its wealth. After tax income for the richest 1% has went up 87% from 1980 to 1990 during Reaganmoics. After tax income went down 5% for the poorest 20%. I'd sure like to see the same charts for the last 5-20 years. It would be sickening.
The simple fact is the wealthiest 5% of American control most of its wealth, and they pay most of the taxes and that is that is they way it should be. If they aren't progressively taxed eventually they will control all the nations wealth. It is inherent in capitalism. If you have money is extremely easy to make more money, the more you have the more you make.
Sorry but I see zero rationale for the world's richest man, Bill Gates to take in some $3 billion dollars in untaxed dividends while we are running huge deficits and working people are losing at least 30% of their income in to income and payroll taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
"Of course you can't get online in the first place without an approved operating system"
From a geeks perspective I'd look upon this as a challenge. In particular would it be possible to create a Pirate Internet, along the lines of Pirate Radio. Use unregulated wireless and create a mesh network that covers the U.S., and links to the rest of the Internet through Canada and Mexico, or maybe shortwave. Would it be possible to create a alternate network for everyone that opts out of trusted computing and corporate and government control of their computers and the network.
To the extent that radio has turned totaly corporate and boring, I find college radio to often be much more interesting and I suspect pirate radio would be to if I could find some in the area. Would the same be true of the the pirate internet. Would all the really interesting and bold stuff move there and today's Internet would continue down the road to sterile corprate websites and subscription only content.
Another interesting question is if the U.S. tried to unilaterally force trusted computed would the rest of the world follow. I suspect not. I could see China going for trusted computing but only if their government controlled it and not Microsoft, Intel and the U.S. If the U.S. had one brand of trusted computing and China another the Internet would fragment and stop being the internet.
Its also possible the U.S. would try to force trusted computing and the rest of the world would just ignore it leading to two outcomes:
- The rest of the world ignores it, it fails and the U.S. ignores it too
- The rest of the world ignores it, the U.S. clings to it and uses oppressive government regulation to inflict it within its borders, and the U.S. would turn in to a black hole in the internet. The rest of the world would ignore it and potentially block U.S. access to the rest of the world in retaliation. I'm wondering if instead of economic sanctions in a future world we might see internet sanctions where a rogue nation is shut out of the rest of the world's Internet as a form of punishment for bad behavior.
In the later scenario could a Pirate Internet spring up in the U.S. and continue to connect to the rest of the world's Internet in defiance of government attempts to suppress it. It would be pretty hard especially when the FCC sends trucks, full of armed goons, around the country hunting down wireless network nodes. A pirate internet would need a lot of redundancy and nodes that are relatively elusive and transient.
"Just like I lobby the government every time I write my Congressman a letter. It's called "representative democracy."
Yea but chances are your letter is read by a coop and filed in obscurity unless you are the Congressman's campaign contribution list or he otherwise knows who you are.
Large corporations, or their K street lobbyist, on the other will routinely meet your congressmen face to face, offer campaign contributions to the full extent of the law, and other assorted favors to insure their clients get what they want from legislation and contracts.
You should have watched the House and Senate during the Medicare "Reform" Act. The lobby of the Capitol building was swarming with lobbyists for the drug, insurance and healthcare corporations, all circling like the sharks they are, smelling blood(money) in the water. The bill was such a horrible piece of legislation it couldn't pass on its own so House and Senate leadership had to arm twist all night to get the votes they needed and they held the vote open for hours which is against the rules until they got just enough votes to pass it.
During this same time the lobbyists were also hard at work outright buying votes because they desperately wanted that bill to pass. Its a bonanza for the drug and healthcare corporations, and in fact does frighteningly little for seniors for the price tag.
As I recall one congressman was retiring from politics and dead set against it. The lobbyists couldn't buy him because he was fed up and quitting, so they tried buying his vote by promising to get his son elected. As I recall it was in fact probably illegal vote buying though not sure what came of it.
Another example of how corporations lobby and you don't is Billy Tauzin. He is the relatively corrupt politician who lead the charge to ram the Medicare reform bill through Congress. He did this at a time when he had a million dollar plus job offer waiting for him from an industry group representing, you guessed it the drug companies. The unspoken deal, pass Medicare "reform" and we make you rich when you retire.
Another fascinating aspect of the the Medicare Reform, it really is a case study in how deeply corrupted our government has become, is that the Medicare administrator, Thomas Scully, was also job shopping with corporations he dealt with during the run up to passing the "reform bill". It was a blatant conflict of interest but the White House approved his job shopping anyway. This same administrator intentionally and blatantly suppressed the true cost estimates for the bill. If the true cost had come out before the vote it never would have passed. Scully needed the estimate to be not over $400 billion over ten years to get is passed so, he lied and told everyone thats what it was. He was no doubt assured a high paying job in in the private sector in return for being corrupt. One of the people who worked for him had some ethics and started demanding the true numbers, which were $551 billion, be released and Scully threatened him with ruination. The true figure was suppressed until the bill passed and then about a month later the Bush administration admited it was really at least $551 billion which would have never passed. A few weeks ago new estimates came out and its ballooned to $700 billion dollars and it really hasn't even started yet.
One key reason the cost is ballooning is the drug industry lobbyists managed to add a clause in the legislation that forbids Medicare from negotiating the prices for the drugs its buying for seniors. The drug companies can charge as much as they feel like and raise the prices at their whim. They invested a few million on lobbyists and they will reap hundreds of billions of dollars in profits at the expense of tax payers. The only cap on how much this bill will cost taxpayers is how blatant the drug companies want to be in jacking up the prices of the drugs they sell to Medicare.
You really have no clue if you think your silly little letter is even remotely the
"If you break it down to raw physics, how much energy does it take to heat at 1 acre/foot of water 1 degree celcious. Light is easy to produce, energy of the amount the sun or even the earth produces is beyond our foreseeable grasp."
Man you are thick. The problem from all the gas flaring isn't the heat produced, its the voluminous quantities of CO2 it produces. CO2 is a green house gas, which increases the propensity of our atmosphere to trap the Sun's heat and as you said yourself the Sun showers the earth with lots of HEAT. The fact that man is adding CO2 and methane to the atmosphere on a continuing basis is almost certainly contributing to increased trapping of the Sun's heat, increasing the Earth's temperature. Get it yet?
Another illuminating example of Man's capacity to alter our climate, which is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is ozone depletion. Its an amazingly good example because it too is caused by human activity releasing gasses, chlorofluorocarbons, in to the atmosphere, not huge releases, but billions of tiny releases by aerosol cans, refrigerators and air conditioning leaks. If we had taken your approach, denial, and hadn't banned the problem gasses we might well have destroyed the ozone layer that shields us from ultraviolet radiation and we would have all died and taken much of life on this planet with us.
"I will, but I recall a Syrian actually being an enemy combatant. I do plan to look into this as I really would like to see what came of the trials."
Here is one transcript from a man who was in the famous nude pyramid. He was an Iragi civilian being held for theft/looting and he is beyond a shadow of a doubt protected by the Geneva conventions on treatment of civilians in occupied countries, and they specificly band sexual humiliation. He is so ashamed he is is suicidal.
"I'm certain there are and I am content with covert missions and interrogations involving torcher."
WTF is "torcher"? You in favor of setting people on fire too? All I can say is you are sick, and I've had enough, you belong in my Foes list next to my allstar list of right wing wackos many of them think torture is cool too.
Probably should point out the obvious hypocrisy in supporting toppling Saddam because he tortured people and then saying its OK for the U.S. to torture people too.
The only thing I wish for you in life is that someday you land in dark, dank prison cell and spend a few years of your life being tortured every day, you deserve it.
"No, I'm no holding no war or information against you, nor have I committed any crimes punishable in such way."
Like I said many of those people in Abu Graib were being held on suspicion of theft/looting. They hadn't been charged with anything, they hadn't been convicted of anything, so by your lame ass standard I can accuse you of theft and come over and arrest and torture you. Whats your address?
Later dude, your posts aren't worth the bandwidth. Probably should consider not posting your B.S. for the rest of the world to see. Your embarrasing, you give Americans a bad name and they don't need any help in that regard.
"Iraq doesn't like Iran, in any situation"
Forgot to ask where did you developed this mistaken assumption. Sistani lived in exile in Iran much of his life. He speaks with a think Persian accent which puts off many Iraqi Arab Shia's. He has vast ties with Iran. He claims to not subscribe to Iran's Wilayet al-Faqih("governance of the religious jurist") which is a plus, since that is Khomeni's doctrine under which clerics in Iran dictate every aspect of life in Iran. Sistani's theocracy may place Shia clerics somewhat less directly in control of every aspect of life in Iraq but they are still going to be exerting massive influence over the governance of Iraq. Remains to be seen what the Shia's actually do when they are in power though. Though Iranian and Iraqi Shia's diverge some on political views their common religion is still certain to unite them on many fronts.
The Al Sadr Shia faction in Iraq which is smaller but very vocal are devout follower of Wilayet al-Faqih. If they were to gain power eventually, which is unlikely, Iraq would look exactly like Iran politicly.
Maybe you were confused thinking Iraq doesn't like Iran by the fact Iraq's Sunni's hate Iran and fought a decade long war with them. Iraq's Sunni's tend to hate all Shia's, Iraqi or Iranian, they consider their branch of Islam to be heresy and spent the duration of Saddam's rule persecuting them which is why most of their surviving leadership were in exile in Iran.
"I think the same is true about global warming the earth will always be changing, we will learn to deal with it and prevent it when possible."
So I'm assuming you are saying its impossible to do anything about global warming and human activity has nothing to do with it, well people will disagree. I think your wrong, but like I said earlier there are plenty of reasons to stop burning fossil fuels even if they aren't causing global warming, and maybe there is that off chance they are contributing to it and if we stop burning them we lessen the problem.
Or we could take your approach, go in to denial that human activity is contributing to it, and burn coal with abandon. Unfortunately your assertion that human activity isn't contributing to it could be wrong, since you don't have more proof to back your position than the Kyoto advocates do at this point, there simply isn't enough data. The problem with your approach is that if and when you are proven wrong it may be to late to do anything about it. What do you do then besides say "oops".
"We aren't that powerful"
Well you have no actual basis on which to make that assertion. There was a picture in the National Geographic recently showing source of manmade light around the globe at night from. Look it up, look for all the light coming from gas being flared off from oil and gas wells. Its amazing. Look up the global map recently for pollution, I think it was NO2, from a satellite study. You can tell from space where all the coal fired power plants and smelters are because China and the Northeastern U.S. are blanketed in the pollution from them, part of Germany too.
Go visit a coal fired power plant, my favorite the one by Glen Canyon damn in Arizona. Look at all the CO2 billowing out of its smoke stack. It might not be quite a match for a Volcano but it runs 24x7 and has for years. Its one of thousands of coal fired power plants in the world. Its pretty naive of you to think that 6.5 billion people don't have an impact on the environment. Again look for space and see the millions of acres of rain forest we've clear cut or slashed and burned. Look at the oceans and see how many species we've fished to near extinction.
Sorry man but chances are you are just flat wrong.
"In Abu Graib, pictures should not have been taken and some of the photos may have been taken out of context"
You're wrong and you are just being an apologist. The context for them is well known, some of the Iraqis in them were called to testify about them and described what happened in graphic detail, can dig up the transcripts if you like.
If you think they are no big deal I assume you would be OK if we come and do the same stuff to you?
"If there was torture, I hope they find those responsible."
They found a bunch of low level enlisted gaurdsmen to use as scape goats. It is unlikely any of the officers and civilian leadership who ordered, condoned and laid the foundation for the torture will EVER be held responsibile at least as long as the Republicans control all branches of the government. There will never be an investigation that isn't a whitewash. Its obvious the White House has sanctioned and authorized use of torture, to many memos have leaked and its happening all over the world. There were 20 or more outright murders of prisoners under investigation last I heard.
The question the Abu Graib photos raises is not what the show, but what kind of torture is going on that no one is taking pictures of so its never been exposed. The U.S. has secret detention facilities in numerous places around the world run by disciplined special forces, which may well be doing stuff 10 times worse tha Abu Graib but are disciplined enough they wont be caught. Only mistake the Army made in Abu Graib was using undisciplined gaurdsmen to do it. They were understaffed so they let amateurs do it and they got caught. Even if American's aren't doing its been established beyond a shadow of a doubt the U.S. is shipping
"I don't know if you're American"
Damn you are a rocket scientist. If you weren't completely clueless you might have deduced that he is most probably Canadian, though American education is so dismal in things like basic Geography you probably don't know where Toronto is.
"You're not worth proof reading"
People who live in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones. Apparently your own posts aren't worth proofreading either.
For example, WTF is a "Tornato"?
In general your post is rambling gibberish. Try working on coherent, complete sentences, that actually make some kind of point. It certainly looks like you were educated in America.
Me I'm not a pedant like you so I don't care if there are typos in BS slashdot posts but maybe you should stop ranting about proof reading when you apparently don't proof read your own posts.
"Meanwhile the Iraqies have at least demonstrated that they actually want a democracy, a topic that was hotly debated beforehand."
Actually all it showed is that the Shia's and the Kurd's want power which they've wanted for most of the last century. There was never any doubt that they were overjoyed when Saddam was toppled.
The only thing that was open for debate is if the Sunni's wanted Democracy. They obviously don't since they didn't vote at all, partially from threats from insurgents but mostly because they knew that even if they did vote in large numbers they are still going to be powerless in the new government, since they are completely outnumbered so why bother. If the Sunnis don't endorse the new government their insurgency is going to continue indefinitely, or at least until Iraq splits in to three part in a civil war, Kurd's in the North, Sunnis in the center and Shias in the south.
OK so next problem is do the Shia's really want Democracy. Indications are they want their clerics to be running the government and they want their constitution to be a regurgitation of Islamic law(the same law the Taliban and the Saudi's base(d) their government on). If and when that happens Iraq isn't going to be a Democracy its going to be a theocracy. In case you don't understand the the difference, in a culture where clerics dominate every aspect of life the clerics are going to decide who runs, and they are going to tell everyone in the mosques to vote for their candidates which they practicly did this time around.
To put it another way chances are high Iraq will end up as much of a Democracy as Iran currently is. Iran isn't. Iran has elections too but Shia clerics predetermine who can run and who is going to win which is exactly what Iraq's Shia's are going to do.
"There are risks buidling a house anywhere"
Thats was a chickenshit cop out if ever I heard one. The difference between living on an island and riding out a hurricane and riding out global warming, is global warming likely to be permanent. Whole islands and whole coasts are going to disappear as the ice packs in the Arctic and Antarctica melt. In case you were unaware a huge percentage of the world's population are living on coasts. The cost of relocating them all or building dikes and levees is going to be enormous.
"We have torture law?"
Yep. The U.S. congressed banned torture in 1994. I think they passed a law requiring adherence to the Geneva conventions since the scandals broke but I'm not positive on that one
I assure the people in Abu Graib were protected from torture under the Geneva coventions protecting civilians in occupied countries which is what Iraq is. It has nothing to do with terrorists, or enemy combatants. Most of the people in Abu Graib were ordinary people rounded up in sweeps or at worst for looting which everyone in Iraq did in the power vacuum the U.S. left after the invasion because it didn't have enough soldiers to secure the country, hence anarchy and a flood of people going in to prison who weren't terrorists, and who were apparently tortured.
" The constitution only applies to US citizens, no one else."
Nice try, you lose. Jose Padilla is a U.S. citizen and has been held for years now without access to a lawyer, charges being filed, access to family or any of the most basic rights American citizen's are assured under the Bill of Rights and Rule of Law. Now that the precedent has been set the Bush administration can arrest any U.S. citizen they fell like and hold them for them life without ever giving them a day in court or even a day with a lawyer.
A couple people held in Gitmo were American citizen's too.
I assure you Europeans and everyone in the civilized world are going to stop coming to the U.S. if its made clear that they have no basic legal rights or due process when they are here which is what you are saying. Good way to destroy your economy.
"We can do with with out nuclear, it is just harder, I don't really see a problem."
Once you start using nukes everyone else who has them is going to start using them too. Maybe its OK to use one on a cave in the middle of nowhere, next its OK to use one downtown Baghdad to take out one of Saddam Jr's bunkers. Next, we can't risk American lives doing street to street in Fallujah, lets just move everybody back and flatten it with a nuke. The U.S. practicly did flatten it one house at a time, it would have been a lot easier to just nuke the place with one bomb and fewer Americans would die.
Using nukes will make war fighting vastly easier that why once you start using them you won't stop.
There is an internet rumor circulating that Bush relayed to Al Qaida the message that if they attack again the U.S., the U.S. will nuke all the holy sites in Arabia. Far fetched now but plausible once the U.S. starts using tactical nukes as a matter of routine.
"Huh? Wouldn't the largest block of people....have more votes? Their constitution isn't even drafted yet, give them some credit."
I think you didn't understand a think I said there. Please work on your rather poor reading comprehension. Your American education must be relatively poor.
"Last I recall, we have a democracy, the Congress can at any moment put a stop to military operations if they wanted to. In either case, you've left your first subject and went to Iraq, which I'm going to ignore from here on in."
Again bad reading comprehension on your part. I wasn't talking about the U.S. I was saying the U.S. is going to be unhappy when their fledgling Democracy in Iraq turns in to an Iranian aligned Islamic theocracy. When that happens chances are they will have to conjour up an excuse to invade and put them out of power again, and keep doing it until they elect
"Kyoto is a massive efford and shows NO result."
Other than potentially making a start at ending global warming, which if it happens, and it is an "if", is going to do far more damage to the world both physically and economicly than Kyoto will.
I think a really good test for Americans would be to offer, or maybe compel them to trade their current homes and real estate for an estate several times more valuable on some low lying coastland or better yet a low lying tropical island and see if they are willing to gamble that global warming is a lie.
All in all its waste of time debating U.S. entry in to Kyoto, or even that the U.S. will make any significant investment in weaning itself from complete dependence on coal because with the current political regime its go a snow balls chance in hell. Even if the U.S. rejects Kyoto which there are valid reasons to reject, it should still solve its addiction to fossil fuels and there is an indisputable case for doing that.
But no, Kyoto is inevitably going to end up one of American's expansive land fills probably outside of Washingtoon D.C. alongside the Geneva conventions, the ABM treaty, U.S. law against torture, the rule of law, the Constitution and it appears very soon the global test ban treaty.
There is irony that as the U.S. tries to dictate to nation after nation that thou shalt not develop nuclear weapons the U.S. is in fact developing new ones, is going to test them in violation of treaty, and in the case of the new nuclear bunker busters is almost inevitably going to start using them to kill people for the first time since World War II. When the U.S. takes the first step off that slippery slope the world is going to become a VERY dangerous place.
"The extend of this can be debated, but hold it to be true that some progress has been made."
It certainly is a subject for debate. Just because an election was held proves next to nothing. There is still a high probability that the Shia majority is just bideing its time until the constitution is written, the next elections are held which the Shia's will win, which the Shia will always win being 60% of the population and being an extremely cohesive voting block. Sistani issued a Fatwah compelling his large block of Shia's to vote which is why they did in such large numbers, the voted because they knew they would win the power they've been denied so long by doing so.
Sunni turnout was in fact dismal, they are shut completely out of power unless the Shia and Kurd's throw them crumbs, and this insures the Sunni insurgency will continue unabated which it has.
Once the Shia have cemented their hold on power, they can then tell the U.S. to get its troops out and the U.S. will either:
- Have to withdraw its troops in deference to Iraq's sovereign will and its Democraticly elected government
- Say no, leave its troops there and the elections the Republican's are so proud of are then proven to be a sham
You see the U.S. really only likes Democracies when they vote the way the White House wants them to. If they don't the U.S. really isn't that big a supporter of the concept.
Assuming the U.S. withdraws the Shia are then free to institute an Islamic theocracy and align themselves with Iran. Women will most probably be oppressed under Islamic law more like they were under the Taliban than the relative freedoms they enjoyed under Saddam's secular state, and in fact already are more oppressed than they were in most areas. Christians and Jews also enjoyed some tolerance for their religion under Saddam and are generally being forced to leave Iraq as it swings hard towards fundementalist Islamic state.
Meanwhile the Kurd's in the north are also voting en masse and trying to secure as much power as they can get at the ballot box and as much territorial control they can of the oil fields around Kirkuk. They are also bidding their time and waiting patiently. When the opport
Only problem is they've failed the last 4 tests in a row. The first 5 tests kind of worked but its widely recognized that they were heavily scripted and not even close to realistic, now that they are attempting something realistic its failed everytime.
The other obvious point being the last *test* failed too. Normally if you are test flying something and you have a failure you fix the problem. If you don't fix the problem what's the point of testing in the first place, other than you are hoping everything just works. As nearly as I can tell they didn't fix the cause of the last failure, they just brushed the problem of overloading data busses, and data dropouts, under the rug. If you don't actually fix the problems you find in testing chances are high they will continue to recur in future tests and when it goes operational. Low and behold they did have another failure which sure looks a lot like the last one.
And finally, as nearly as a I can tell, though the missiles are still in testing, and obviously not ready to go in to production, they did in fact put them in to production and have deployed 14 or so in Alaska and California. The project is under huge pressure to go operational NOW and though the obviously aren't ready, but they declared it operational anyway. If they missiles are in fact defective two things follow:
- The missiles which have been deployed will have to be taken down and repaired, when a fix is known, probably at great expense
- The system has zero credibility as a deterrent. If North Korea decides to launch missiles at the U.S. they can do so with reasonable confidence that the missile defense will fail. A key point behind testing is to prove to your enemies the system works so it serves as a deterrent. By having test failure after test failure and still going operational you have the opposite effect, you make your deterrent look like a joke and a laughing stock.
"If that makes me a wacko, then break out the straitjackets."
Well there is some impressive and dense prose up there but you did wander off the deep end enough times that yea I think it probably does suggest wacko more than statesman.
You rambled so much, and made some giant leaps where its not even clear what you are talking about exactly and its probably dangerous for me to even try to rebut it but there are few points that probably should be made.
Only speaking for me personally I don't want nor do I subscribe to either of the two black and white extremes you propose for America.
Do I want "unaccountable, so-called enlightened few to completely redefine the basic building blocks of society", nope.
Do I want your basic building blocks to completely dominate life like a straightjacket so that everyone is compelled to exist in a family unit with one man, one woman, 10 children, go to Church, stay married for the duration of your life even if you hate the person you married, essentially to have all the color drained out of life by conformism and the tyranny of the majority, nope.
You see I want, and I think our founding fathers wanted a country where if you wanted to be a religious fanatic and stay married for life to someone you hate because your beliefs say you can't divorce, and have 10 children you can and no one should ever say you cant.
But then too the framework they founded suggests that if you choose to not subscribe to a religion or subscribe to one that is abhorred by the majority that is your right too and you should not be discriminated against or persecuted for making that choice. If, for whatever reason, monogomous heterosexual marriage is not suited to your view on life, well that should be your right too, and it is fundementally wrong for people like you to start railing against anyone who chooses to not subscribe to your rigid view of acceptable societal building blocks.
To summarize I don't have the right to tell you to not follow your religion, nor do you have the right to tell me I must have a religion. If I take action that precludes you from following your religion I'm in the wrong, if you take action to attempt to inflict your religion on me, against my will and in the public square, you are equally in the wrong.
Our founding fathers established the concept of separation of church and state because many of them fled religious persecution in Europe, persecution that arose precisely because a single religion established itself as the state religion and any citizen of the state that didn't accept that religion would be subjected to both religious and civil persecution.
The thing most rabid Christians completely don't get is that separation of church and state is something they want as much or more than atheists. Its not there to persecute the religious, and compel them in to atheism, its to prevent a dominant majority religion from entrenching itself in the state and using the state to compel everyone else to conform to their belief system. An unfortunate consequence, that they don't understand, of this separation is it is important to keep religion out of the commons. Religion and family beliefs like sexual preference are personal and private and they should stay personal and private between your family and your church.
As soon as you start putting the ten commandments or the Koran in a courtroom you are saying to people who aren't Judeo-Christian or Muslim respectively that justice, rather than being blind is looking at you through eyes colored by a religion which is not yours. Instead of impartial justice you've taken the first step in turning justice in to religious persecution.
Bottomline is the thing the religious right doesn't get is that if we are going to have a free nation where all faiths are respected, and all those of no faith are respected you can't force your belief system on people in the public square. It is wonderful to have a President that has religious belief, but it is his duty
You're funny.
"I think +5 funny qualifies it as a joke."
Heh, so the mods on your post are spot on and the fact mine is +5 insightful is wildly wrong. Either moderation works or it doesn't.
"What are you, like 12 or something?"
There is some real intelligent rhetoric. Is that the best you can do? Are you like 12 or something?
"Do you know anything about American history at all? The religious right are not the people who are trying to dismantle every single element "
What does history have to do with it, we are talking about current events here?
Hate to break it to you but I'm an arch fiscal conservative, and social liberal and your attempt to cubbyhole me failed miserably.
I want my government as small as possible, and I want it to live and let live. Unfortunately the new religious right and the New Republican party is failing as badly, on both counts, as any political movement I've seen in the U.S. in my rather long lifetime which is why, in my book they deserve to get some venom lobbed at them, Lord know they've been dishing it out. Democrats suck too but they seem to be substantially less dangerous than the Republicans, for example Joe McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Watergate, Ronald Reagan and Iran Contra, and of course today George W. Bush seems to be more dangerous than all of them combined, and apparently has all their worst qualities rolled up in to one demented little package. LBJ is the only recent Dem President eve, in the same league for malevolence. Worst thing Clinton did was lie about sex. If I have to pick between the two which currently I do I'll take the Democrat just based on the track record for dangerous nut cases in the Republican party.
"clearly are incapable of nothing but parroting the worst cliches of the left"
Now I'm hurt, I'm thinking it was biting, original satire and if nothing else I pushed the boundries, but then I think we've established you are no judge.
P.S.
Was just verifying you are a wacko before I added you to my Foes list with rest of the Slashdot wacko hall of fame. Wasn't entirely clear when you started if qualified, since as I said I was willing to believe your first post was a joke, but no you've established since you do seem to be a bone fide wacko.
Here is some rocket news that is current. Slashdot moderators in their infinite wisdon rejected it in favor of a Linux based cat feeder.
George W's Missile defense system attempted another test flight today. The target warhead launched great, the interceptor once again sat on the pad and refused to launch, for the second time in a row. They've had 4 outright failures in 9 attempts and I'm not sure the 5 were entirely successful, its hard to tell with the people running the progream controlling all the information on the test. They can't easily hide the fact the missile didn't launch so they have to admit to those failures.
Last time they discovered the data busses were overloading and when they started dropping data the flight control computers aborted the launch. Rather than fixing the overloaded busses and dropped data, which would probably be time consuming they just increased the threshold at which point an abort would occur. Yikes, for $8 billion a year you could hope for better engineering than that.
This time they did the same thing they did last time, damage control, and tried to blame ground equipment and claim the interceptor is great, though they most probably have no clue what the problem was just like last time. I'm going to laugh so hard if the dropped data exceeded the new higher threshold.
We are spending around $8 billion on this dog that wont hunt, and with its current dismal track record it wont serve as any deterrent. If it doesn't work against one missile being launched from a known location on a known trajectory launched at a known time what are the chances it will work against a surprise attack from a location not knowm in advance and attacks with potentially multiple missiles, multiple warheads and decoys or maneuvering warheads like the ones the Russians are developing to defeat it.
"they are usually reduced to practice in industry, and it's the industry again that makes the actual drugs"
I really doubt thats the case. Once the drug is discovered anyone can bring it in to production. I'm pretty sure the government/military has done it for things the military needs like vaccines.
You could kid yourself and think drug companies and the FDA are necessary to establish efficacy and safety, but it in fact appears that system is deeply, deeply flawed, with drug companies successfully suppressing bad results and the FDA rubber stamping fraudulent studies because they have started working for the drug companies instead of being a dispassionate regulator.
"but I do know that you are not going to see any new drugs unless successfully developing them carries great rewards for those involved."
Or they are developed with public funding, since our government can sink billions of dollars in to high risk ventures with low probability of return. They already have in the past on things like building the Hoover Dam or space exploration.
The return on investment of having our tax dollars could well be worth it. The cost of drugs and health care is a huge drain on our economy and competitiveness. If drugs were available for cost it might compensate for the cost in taxes.
The desperate need is for social security numbers to be replaced with an encrypted digital signatures, and when you use it for something there is an authentication test required to prove you know the password to it.
The idea that your life can be destroyed if someone just acquires your name and social security number is insane. Social Security numbers are security through obscurity and they completely stopped working when the Internet came in to being.
And no I don't want the government to institute an all knowing, all seeing national identity system, which appears to be what they are shoving down the throats of states through drivers licenses, which will apparently become a unified national ID unless a state decides to forgo Federal funding for things like highway construction.
I just want them to mandate that secure digital signatures superceede social security numbers.
The argument and its probably a true one is if drug companies didn't have patents and exclusive rights to a drug for a period they would stop development of new drugs, and it is extravagantly expensive to get one through trials and FDA approval. Though it appears much of that process is a sham, and negative data on the safety of the drug is being routinely buried. The FDA is apparently largely funded by fees from drug companies which is a key reason they've started treating them like customers and not a target for disspassionate regulatory oversight.
It is quite possible that drug development could be better done with public funding which might well be what you get if you killed drug patents.
I think it would be somewhat less disruptive at least initially if you tried my 3 point plan and if it didn't work use the threat of voiding their patents as the sledge hammer to compel them to straighten up.
Regradless none of its going to happen with the Republican's in power and it might not be any better if the Democrats wer in power. Another thing drug companies are using their ill gotten gains for is a massive army of lobbyists and huge campaign contributions so they can pretty much own Congress.
Joking aside I see this is research is being done at UCLA presumably with public funding or maybe charitable donations.
I was just wondering if anyone has an educated guess how many medical and drug breakthroughs are happening in publicly funded institutions, the NIH being another example, and how many are actually developed inside the big drug and healthcare companies using private funding.
I ask because in the face of the extraordinarily high cost of drugs in the U.S., HIV drugs in particular, the usual retort by Republicans is drug companies need those huge profits to do groundbreaking R&D on new breakthrough drugs. Drug companies have the highest profits and profit margins of ANY major industrial sector in the U.S. or at least they did before they started getting hammered when it turned out drugs they were pushing like Zoloft and Vioxx are potentially dangerous.
I'm also curious how much of the privately funded drug company research is funded by the public through tax breaks, grants etc.
To put it another way how much do drug companies profit on breakthroughs from publicly funded research.
Another question what is the current ratio between drug company spending on advertising versus R&D. The never ending saturation TV ads, designed to compel American consumers to demand drugs from their doctors they may or may not need, must be costing billions and all those advertising costs which do no one any actual good are being tacked on to the cost of drugs and making seniors in particular pay through the nose for saturation advertising campaigns instead of drugs or drug R&D.
My three step plan to drive down the cost of drugs and healthcare:
A. Outlaw drug advertising just like ads for cigarettes and hard liquor. Its totally inappropriate and disceptive to advertise drugs using slick ads, like soda pop or underarm deodorant. Confine them to advertising to doctors and then only in the form of factual dissertations on the pros and cons of the drug, audited by a 3rd party for accuracy.
B. Mandate that drugs and publicly funded health breakthroughs be provided to the public at cost or with a regulated profit margin.
C. Rather than outlawing U.S. agencies, like Medicare, from negotiating fair prices for wholesale drug purchases, make it law that those agencies MUST negotiate fair wholesale prices, like Canada and most other sane nations do.
Well you should learn to spell hypocrisy because it fits you to a "T".
Lets hop in the way back machine and look at your post:
"A bunch of human-monkey hybrids that will certainly vote Democrat?!"
Well maybe it was a joke or satire and thats they way I took it but now that you are getting all holier than thou it could also be read as the most bigoted statement in this thread. If you want to get holier than though on bigotry this could be read as:
"human-monkey hybrids are sure to vote Democrat because they are obviously going to have an IQ of 12 and people with an IQ of 12 will vote Democrat"
or
"Democrats are pretty much human-monkey hybrids so they will fit right in"
You want to take it to the next level of bigotry, and the implication is there, you can leap to flagrant racism you can read it as:
"human-monkey hybrids are sure to vote Democrat, just look at how African Americans vote"
Sorry man but you asked for it when you moved in to the glass house and started flinging stones. You obviously should have qualified your satire with all kind of politicly correct caveats so no one will misinterpret it and think you are a flaming right wing bigot.
Biting satire is inevitably pretty hard hitting. You load it up will qualifications and caveats, liberal hand wringing and political correctness you may as well not even attempt it because it will suck.
I'd like to be all politically correct and enlightened liberal but I'm not really, I'm socially liberal, a live and let live kind of person, but am otherwise arch conservative which is also a live and let live bent.
I'm live and let live right up to the point its obvious the people in power are trying to dictate to me and everyone else how to live and then its war,
Todays fundementalists and the New Republican party scare true conservatives MORE than liberals. Not only have they hijacked the name of Jesus but they've totally hijacked and wrecked the meaning of conservative.
Bottomline is America has reached the point of a cold civil war. The religious right has declared it and unless you want to end up in a fundementalist Christian police state fighting back before its too late is called for. The thing the right would most like for all of their opponents to do is to unilaterally disarm and wallow in liberal hand wringing and political correctness while they take off the gloves, which they obviously already have, and shove their ideaology down the rest of the world's throat at the point of a gun.
"I would ask the author where he gets his bigoted, prejudiced impression of Christians?"
You have a point that it is bigotry on my part to tar all Christians with the same brush and for that I'm sorry. Many Christians are throughly good people, unfortunately many have apparently turned Antichristian and they are the ones who've apparently siezed power in the U.S. If you are writing biting satire its pretty hard to load it up with all the caveats and qualifications.
In particular, its important to qualify that I think the world of Christians who actually understand the teachings of Christ and live by them, though they seems to be increasingly few and far between. The problem is very few religious sects in the U.S. actually do outside of maybe the Quakers, Amish and Mennonites for example.
As an example you simply can't be Christian and pro war in Iraq or Vietnam, you especially can't be an actual Christian and be in the military and favor killing people with impunity in anything other than self defense and Iraq is most decidedly not self defense.
Bottomline is the American right wing and fundementalist Christians are as close to Antichristian as you can get. In fact they do Jesus a grievous disservice hijacking his name for the twisted ideology they practice. First and foremost Jesus forgave and accepted people, he didn't hate, pillory and persecute them for being different. That is the one message most fundementalist Christians completely lost out of the New Testament. It can be a subject of debate if his teachings were entirely pacifist but some of them most decidedly were. At least some of his teachings were decidedly anti greed and wealth accumulation, in fact many sound out right Communist, and again many American Christians are the greediest people you will find.
The American Catholic church simply can't claim to be followers of Jesus at the same time that they've allowed pedophilia to run rampant through the ranks of the priesthood, with it being either condoned or concealed by their leadership to the point its institutional. Institutional pedophilia is decidedly Antichristian.
Try tuning in the 700 club or any other Christian network and watch a while, especially Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and dispassionately weigh if what they are doing and saying adheres to the teachings of Jesus, especially the non stop efforts to sucker dumb red staters out of money, or the open bigotry against gays, liberals, muslims, or pretty much anyone who isn't a WASP.
Pay careful attention to politics in America, especially the now daily coverage by the major networks about how the religious right "WON" the election for the Republicans and how its their prerogative to dictate the American political agenda now.
If you were to take a long historical, objective, look at the history of the Christian church you will see a litany of religious persecution, religious wars, crusades, inquisitions, genocide(especially when they came to the New World), intolerance, etc. The cumulative record suggests Christianity completely lost its way, somewhere between the sermon on the Mount and what it became when it was institutionalized.
It will be a hard case to study but I'm pretty sure you will find a huge gap between the IQ's of red state, right wing Christians and blue state liberals. I'm pretty sure the election exit polls did show people with advanced degrees overwhelmly rejected the right wing, bible thumping Republicans. It kind of follows that you would need to be a few cans short of a six pack to fall for many of the fundementalist Christian churches in America, reference Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson again. Not sure George W. actually believes in Christianity, I'm more inclined to think its a convenient and necessary political ruse because he knows those are the people that are going to vote for him no matter how incompetent he his as long as he says God and Jesus in every other sentance. But if he does actually believe he does qualify as being a few cans short of a six pack.
"I don't know: show me the ape which has conquered the planet, which has tamed the forces of nature, which thinks, and maybe I'll consider him my equal..."
Maybe you haven't noticed but great apes are for the most part polygamists, nudists, pacifists, vegetarians and environmentalists. Were it not for their insanely destructive, and apparently extremely dumb, homo sapien next of kin they would probably live a relatively idyllic life for eons.
Unfortunately their insanely destructive, and apparently extremely dumb, Homo Sapien next of kin, are most probably going to wipe them out in a genocidal campaign probably because they are both pacifists and apparently liberals. Not long after that there is a fair chance homo sapiens will turn the entire planet in to an unbearable hell hole, thanks to overpollution, global warming, clear cutting forests, overpopulation, war, starvation, etc.
"I'll consider him my equal"
I'm pretty sure the great apes would consider it a pretty serious slap in the face if Homo Sapiens were to be so pretentious as to even suggest they were as good as the great apes.
"I expect the Religious Right will end up getting steam-rolled over the genetic engineering issue"
Well American bible thumpers have a multipart strategy for countering the hordes of 7.5 feet tall Chinese with the 220 IQ:
- Nuclear weapons, lots of nuclear weapons, so if the good lord wont start the rapture they can give him(or her) a hand with an artificial one. The U.S. government is apparently starting work on two new warhead designs, in defiance of several efforts by Congress to stop it, one really big and one really small. If the Republican's hold power a little while longer its likely we will see them break the global test ban treaty and start firing off nukes again. The test ban will most likely land in the same dumper as the ABM treaty, and the Kyoto accords, and the Geneva conventions on treating prisoners, Geneve conventions on treating civilians in occupied countries, U.S laws against torture, U.S. laws on due process, and of course the Constitution.
- Missile defense, it probably doesn't work but if it did it would keep the super intelligent Chinese from shooting back
- Stamp out birth control and abortion. Most religions do everything in their power to maximize population growth to increase the size of their flock, even if it does mean massive overpopulation. The Chinese are, by contrast aggressively trying to control population growth so maybe the bible thumpers, given enough time can out breed and out number them. There will be irony if in the next big war there will be a billion American soldiers, praising Jesus, as they use human waves to overwhelm the tiny Chinese Army, big and intelligent though they may be.
If the Chinese do all develop 220 IQ's there is a chance they might all become extremely enlightened and liberal. That means they will probably unilaterally disarm, and will be reluctant to start a war.
In this area low IQ Americans have a huge advantage. They will bankrupt their country buying weapons, and more weapons, and they are willing to use them at a drop of a hat.
I guess I'm saying is its possible geneticly engineering, super intelligent Chinese might be sitting ducks for low IQ, bigoted, hate filled, bible thumping Americans, who'll push the button in the name of Jesus.
"It was also horribly overstaffed"
That is the way most of government contractors drain money out of the pockets of tax payers isn't it. They get a percentage of each hour billed don't they so more people billing more hours means more profit, so they have an incentive to overestimate and overstaff.
"I am working on a similar project"
Wouldn't it being amazing if the government developed one good, standard system for managing documents and used it all its agencies, instead of squandering hundreds of millions of dollars developing basicly the same capability, but different, in each one of its little empires.
Hanssen was an interesting case, apparently he was a master at surfing the FBI's web. It is an illuminating case of institutional incompetence on the part of the FBI. He did numerous things that should have gotten him caught but didn't including getting caught breaking in to his bosses computer.
I can see how it might have impacted Virtual Case Files but not sure it should have. Things like the names of top secret agents in the U.S.S.R shouldn't have been on computers in the first place. I'm kind of the opinion everything in their case files should be accessible, unless its classified and then it should be in a safe, not on a computer.
It should be noted that SAIC is the same company who just cratered on the FBI's new Virtual Case File software contract. The one that cost us $170 million dollars and is probably going to be thrown out and replaced with COTS software(which will probably cost millions more). SAIC is one of the elite cadre of companies that specialize in using political influence to land huge government contracts worth billions that they often never deliver anything worth a plugged nickel for. Some other big names CSC, EDS, Lockheed, Boeing, Hallibiburton/KBR, Bechtel....
Virtual Case File was actually only 1/3 of a larger contract called Trilogy to modernize the FBI's computer systems. In total its a $600 million dollar project and it kind of sounds like the 2/3rds of it CSC is doing isn't going a lot better.
I'm wagering this is just one of many case studies in the U.S. government squandering money in knee jerk reactions after 9/11 that were awarded before any actual thought had been put in to them. The contractors all make out like bandits though. Remember that when you see the $300-$400 billion budget deficits and the slash and burning of domestic spending to pay for "homeland security". Its open to debate if any of the billions that hve been spent on "homeland security" have actually made the homeland more secure.
"It's not a matter of being lucky, it's a matter of being disciplined. $20 a month for the last 20 years, plus income tax refunds, plus money recieved at Christmas & birthdays, plus bonuses from work, etc.."
You are missing the point, by setting dividend taxes to zero the government is rewarding you for one and only one form of economic activity. In the process they are nearly forcing everyone to invest in the stock market and forcing companies to pay out everything possible in dividends. As massively as the Bush administration has tried to pump the stock market it should be doing a lot better than it is. Its not because of the huge budget and trade deficits which are pulling it down.
Regrettably the stock market, especially in the modern era has become more a form of high stakes gambling than sound investment.
Thanks to corporate corruption its often a huge gamble. Talk to people who invested everything in stocks due to booming returns in 1929 or Enron employees who were massively incentived to invest all their savings in to Enron stock and have been wiped out financially. Its not entirely rational for the government to compel and reward people to put all their savings in the stock market which is EXACTLY what they are doing. Wall Street loves it but its destroying diversification and sets Americans up for disaster in the event of another market crash.
Its also compeling people to stop investing in saving accounts so American's dont put money in to interest bearing accounts anymore. The returns are low AND its taxed in to the ground.
Thanks to online trading and low fees on stock trades many people are in fact using stock trading as a form of legalized gambling with all the volatility that produces.
So you didn't answer the question why should you be special and get untaxed income from dividends while someone who invests in saving accounts, bonds, or actually does real work is taxed in to the ground.
"The fact is, the number of 'very wealthy' is vanishingly small. Even if we taxed them at 100%, the total amount would be a drop in the bucket of the Federal budget."
That is absurd, some charts showing wealth and income distribution and how wealth is concentrating in the hands of the upper class at a disturbing rate.. The upper 1% of American control 40% of its wealth. The upper 5% control 61.4% of its wealth. After tax income for the richest 1% has went up 87% from 1980 to 1990 during Reaganmoics. After tax income went down 5% for the poorest 20%. I'd sure like to see the same charts for the last 5-20 years. It would be sickening.
The simple fact is the wealthiest 5% of American control most of its wealth, and they pay most of the taxes and that is that is they way it should be. If they aren't progressively taxed eventually they will control all the nations wealth. It is inherent in capitalism. If you have money is extremely easy to make more money, the more you have the more you make.
Sorry but I see zero rationale for the world's richest man, Bill Gates to take in some $3 billion dollars in untaxed dividends while we are running huge deficits and working people are losing at least 30% of their income in to income and payroll taxes.