Didn't say you can't do it. Sam Walton and Michael Dell are equally good examples. Its just way easier to make money without really trying or doing anything to deserve it if you already have it.
The key point about Bill Gate which ties in to the rest of my post is he makes most of his billions through a MONOPOLY and he engages in the high tech version of dynamiting his competitors just like good old J.D. Rockefeller.
Joe acquired his wealth by some pretty shady means. One of his favorites was "stock pooling" in which a few investors colluded to drive up a stock and then dumped it before it crashed. He may have been a key contributor to the 1929 crash. Would that be more of a motivator or an engine Twirp?
He also sold booze during prohibition. He had a license to import medicinal alcohol from Britain and he just happened to move a LOT of medicine in to the U.S.
His first generation heirs had something going for them but subsequent generations seem to be getting progressively more pathetic just like the Bush family.
"is not incomprehensible to American English speakers?"
I really doubt its much more comprehensible to English English speakers, English English is much closer to American English than either are to Shakespeare's English. Of course he was an artist so maybe thats why no one understands him.
Not entirely sure many of us would have an easy time understanding urban American(black) english because its diverged and innovating rapidly and thats over the course of a few decades.
Don't imagine most seniors would be very comfortable trying to read the english variant most young people are using in IM today.
"Middle English a la Chaucer dates back more than 400 years, so that's not really an ideal example. "
But Twirlip said language change "very, very slowly" and its nearly identical over 400 years and Twirp is never wrong. Whats difference does tacking on another 300 years or so make.
"That's exactly what the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative did."
Where exactly is the Hydrogen coming from in the President's plan, Twirp? I'd heard a rumour most it was going to come from the nuclear, oil, gas and coal industries. Wondering if you can confirm? I'm thinking using Hydrocarbons to produce Hydrogen might leave behind carbon dioxide and further us along to our goal of greening up the world with the Greenhouse effect. It will be interesting to see if they actually pull off pumping underground or if they even bother if it cuts in to their profit margin.
Most of the funding for his program, what little of it there is, is going in to the pockets of his friend in Detroit and in oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear industry. Its the only way this program avoided dying a quick death like so many renewable energy initiatives before. If any politician actually attempted to create a Hydrogen fuel program that, that was really renewable, environmentally friendly, would happen in our life time, and that threatened these monopolies he would be out on his ass.
"You haven't the foggiest idea who I am, do you? I'm about a libertarian as I am communist."
I think Twirp has you there. As nearly as I can tell he is more of a compassionate Fascist like his heroes and role models Bush/Cheney. He's in the compassionate wing because as far as I know he confines his brown shirting to verbal abuse of everyone on Slashdot he disagrees with and doesn't actually break any heads.
"monopoly on reasoned discourse"
Well he sure doesn't have it and I've never even seen you attempt reasoned discourse, Twirp. So who IS monopolizing all the reasoned discourse around here, please stand up and stop hogging it.
How do you think these will impact the U.S. economic outlook:
- Crop failure - Floods - Drought - Class 5+ Hurricanes (Hurricanes were a big boon to the construction industry in Florida I'll grant you). - Flooding coastal cities(which tends to be where lots of people live), flooding islands and most of Florida - Massive Wildfires and forests cratering - Devastation of the reefs and the seafood that lives in them - Mass extinctions
On the plus side in another couple of decades the Arctic ocean will probably melt enough that a Northwest passage will open between the Atlantic and Asia which will allow Walmart to ship Chinese goods to Europe more efficiently.
I personally am buying beach front property on the northern coasts of Siberia and Canada since they will be prime beachfront and termperate in the new world order. Well not really beach front I'm only buying realestate a couple hundred feet above sea level.
I'll grant you Kyoto was flawed but not for the reason you give. Thanks to globalization putting pollution limits on national boundries is insane. China in particular, as a developing country, gets a free pass in Kyoto and it is the worlds biggest up and comer in the pollution arena. I imagine the U.S. can in fact meet Kyoto limits without any alteration of its current economy simply by moving all its heavy manufacturing to China which its already doing. Only remaining domestic pollution would be cars which no one is interested in fixing and power generation which could probably be moved to Canada or Mexico in a pinch.
Its probably true it is a natural human condition, but is one of our baser traits. Most societies endeavor to restrain it as part of becoming civilized. Greed sits at the root of the trees called corruption and lawlessness.
If a society doesn't attempt to restrain wealth concentration you end up with 1% filthy rich and 99% dirt poor which is the case in most pathetic third world countries. America was a lot happier place thanks to distributing its wealth to a big middle class, am evenness of distribution rapidly eroding thanks to "free trade" and tax cuts for the rich.
Wealth concentration is the natural outgrowth of capitalism because its WAY easier to make lots of money if you have lots of money and really hard to make it if you have none. Rational men recognize this and take measures to maintain some balance. Teddy Roosevelt was one such man as his Bull Moose party championed progressive taxation to rein in the robber barons of the late 19th and early 20th century who were on a track to acquire most of the nations wealth and create a few all powerful monopolies (i.e. Standard Oil). Rockefeller acquired his monopoly by dynamiting his competitors among other things. Is dynamiting your competitors in the name of greed more of a motivator or an engine?
As one other poster pointed out, allowing a family to acquire massive wealth and pass it on unfettered to one generation after another is how you create an aristocracy, and each subsequent generation tends to be more pathetic than the last because they are born with silver spoons in their mouths(like the Bush family). People who start from scratch and claw their way to the top on their own merits tend to be a lot healthier for the nation than spoiled rich kids who just live of the investment income from their daddy's estate.
Another obvious outcome of a 1% to 99% wealth distribution is eventually the 99% notice and realize they outnumber the 1% by 99 to 1 and they can either sack them at the ballot box or with a guillotine.
" just they were good engineering companies that make pretty decent rockets."
They have plenty of good engineers, though I really doubt they are as good as they used to be thinks to the cratering U.S. education system. As institutions they are bankrupt, their management is unethical their business model so that makes them bankrupt as a whole. Not exactly sure what exactly they've done lately as far as making rockets. Goddard and the Germans did the hard work. These two companies have been mostly milking them and making derivatives ever since with huge Federal subsidies. You'd hope they'd do something worthwhile considering the gold plated buckets of tax dollars they are handed every year. The Russians are just as good if not better. Europeans may well pass them if they get the bugs worked out of the new Ariane's. Airbus is well on its way to leaving Boeing in the dust as far as commercial airliners go. I'll grant you they are unmatched at engineering missile defense but thats because no other country is insane enough to pour the huge sums in to it the U.S. does.
Not sure Boeing would be solvent were it not for the constant and massive infusion of tax dollars. Hate to break it to but keeping companies afloat with subsidies is socialism/fascism not capitalism or free enterprise.
"If you don't like the way things are in the USA..haul your ass outta here, we won't miss you."
Heh, there is some classic right wing rhetoric. If you don't like the screwed up, increasingly right wing, increasingly embarrassing America get the hell out because we have no interest in putting it back on an even keel. Jump on the bandwagon and sing praises of it no matter how screwed up it obviously is, right? Our way or the highway right? Your either with us our your against us, right? Hate to break it to you but if this country actually upheld the ideals its supposed to stand for I should be able to criticize it till I'm blue in the face and you should love and welcome it. Your intolerance of opposing viewpoints is disturbing, and that holds for the new right wing across the board. Its not just disturbing its scary and... uh... UnAmerican:) My original posts didn't even really oppose your viepoint, something you figured out as this thread went along but that didn't stop you from an instant name calling bombardment because you hit a few keywords that set you off.
"Mosaddeq had been appointed Prime Minister by the Shah but had Communist leanings, wanted to nationalize the oil industry that Britain controlled,"
So many interesting assertions.
You gloss over the fact the Shah's family had seized power in a British backed coup in 1921 which overthrew the Iranian constitution and a more or less democratic government. The British had oil interests in Iran from before World War I and the Shah's family were compliant puppets in giving away Iran's oil to the British for a song.
Mossadegh was elected to parliament several times and was elected to Prime Minister by the parliament originally. He was most certainly democraticly elected more times than the Shah and his dad ever were.
There was a long tortured power struggle between the two and its to complicated to go in to here. Hereis a somewhat less biased timeline than mine or your BS.
Mossadegh did some bad things but he was also under full scale attack from the U.S., the British and the Shah which led to some desperate measures.
Mossadegh was a nationalist and a socialist and very popular in Iran most of his life until the height of the coup effort. Its a stretch to brand to try to brand him a communist but that is the American way.
In 1947 Iran got only $20 million of that years $112 million in oil profits most of the rest of which went to the British. The Iranians and Mossadegh were mostly just trying to get a 50/50 share of the profits being made on THEIR OIL and to fix a deal stacked in the favor of a colonial master. After Operation AJAX the U.S. managed to seize a fair percentage of the Iranian oil concession much to the dismay of the British.
"and was actually reforming and helping to modernize Iranian society which included expanding rights of women in Iran"
Excepting of course his father gained power in a coup that overthrew a legitimate government and the Shah and his dad were Monarchs/Dictators. Not sure what the Shah's record on human rights was in the '40's, there was still some sembelence of a constitution at the time. The only record that counts is after the 1953 coup when he had a stranglehold on power. The U.S. and Israel helped build the Shah's secret police, SAVAK, in 1957 which had the worst human rights record on the planet for the duration of its reign of terror until 1979, it was worse than the Stasi and the KGB and on par with Saddam. Brutal repression was the only way he held power after Mossadegh was overthrown because Mossadegh was popular in Iran and the Shah WAS NOT.
" And you have no idea of how hard they and NASA will go to cover them up in some situations."
Uh yes I do, from first hand experience. I know exactly how crooked they are. Talk about 180's. In your earlier rhetoric you are making out Lockheed and Boeing are pure as driven snow and its all NASA's fault and now you are stealing my talking point again.
"DO realize he is in the profit arena"
Uh yea. Could you stop telling me my talking points and acting like you're telling me something I don't know? I'm all for Rutan making a profit in the private sector. The problem with Boeing and Lockheed's profit margin is its coming from lieing, cheating, padding, bribing and stealing out of tax payer's pockets, reference Boeing's tanker deal and one company stealing all the other companies documents to land a missile contract.
" He used to work for Lockheed IIRC."
If he did he sure doesn't mention it in his bio. He did work for the Air Force at Edwards Air Force base, maybe it was through Lockheed but he sure doesn't mention it or take pride in it. He really despises both Boeing and Lockheed, and it appears to be based on experience with them.
"They haven't been used to stage democratic coups"
Not sure what a "democratic coup" is. They were used to topple Saddam, a sovereign government, like him or not. Not in the Middle East but military bases were used to topple Noriega in Panama, a CIA stooge/thug gone bad. Maybe you are splitting semantic hairs or you obviously don't know your history since the U.S. ran the coup in Iran that put the Shah in power. It was a CIA operation so military bases weren't exactly required. Search for Mossadegh, the sovereign leader they toppled and the CIA code name AJAX. This coup reinstalled the Shah who was every bit as brutal as Saddam. Search on SAVAK, his secret police. The Shah's reign is why the Iranian's hate the U.S. so much and why they stormed the U.S. embassy as payback.
"I don't think the USA is going to be in Iraq for very long."
At this point I don't think I have any confidence in what YOU think. Someone, a U.S. general I think recently said it was unlike they Iraq security forces could stand on their own for 10 years. Joe Biden after a recent tour of Iraq called their training a joke. One of the guys who was supposed to have set up the joke training just got promoted to head the Department of Homeland Security which make me feel real safe.
"I think doing something abotu N.Korea"
Again I don't think you know what you are talking about. The Bush administration is obviously doing their best to do nothing about North Korea or make it worse. Kind of obvious when they do have WMD's and the U.S. didn't invade them and Iraq didn't have any WMD's and the U.S. did invade them. They have no strategic resources(a.k.a. oil) and aren't much of a threat to Israel, just South Korea, Japan and a remote threat to the U.S.
"Plus we KNOW they are selling nuke technology"
Uh so. Pakistan has been doing that for years and they are our ally and the people doing it got off scot free. Most of the proliferation that is a problem now in Iran and North Korea is thanks to Pakistan.
"I take back the troll comment...I think we see a lot alike yet a lot different."
Please NOOOOOOOOO. Thats the biggest slam you've lobbed my way today. I'll grant you, you've done so many 180's that you are basically stealing all my talking points.
"A) The bill passed last week, not before the election. "
The rosy rhetoric and big promises came right about the start of the Presidential race. Big promises and rosy rhetoric being very easy to make and do, while actually spending the money is something of an afterthought. I assure you all the aerospace workers were voting on the rosy promises of long term employment, and exciting edventures going where no man has gone before, and not the realities involved with funding or doing it.
"There are NOT 1000s of NASA Centers,"
That 1000's number includes all the contractors big and small that get their pay checks from NASA directly or indirectly. Sorry you misunderstood.
" The occupation of the Middle East? Laughable, and not at all part of the "Bush Plan"
U.S. is already occupying Iraq, has troops most of the time in Kuwait, bases in Bahrain and a billion dollar air base in Qatar. There are going to be something like 10-12 permanent bases in Iraq, empty rhetoric to the country. Their is a proxy army in Israel with billions and billions in U.S. supplied top of the line weapons that dominates everything in the region.
The U.S. is ALREADY occupying the Middle East in case you haven't noticed. Rhetoric for a WMD invasion against Iran is already warming up and will hit a fever pitch when Iran tries to bring their nuclear reactor on line next year, something Israel and the U.S. probably wont allow and taking it out could well start a war hot or cold. Only reason the rhetoric isn't at a higher pitch is because the invasion of Iraq went so bad. They were planning on taking it down in a few weeks, have a rose throwing parade and then use it as a jumping off place to take down Iran and Syria, Israel's last two enemies in the region. They will settle for coups, in Iran in particular, which would be even better.
"Rutan isn't interested in doing more than he is doing now."
Wasn't talking Mars, sorry you misunderstood. He is just aiming for LEO and a space hotel at the moment. Wouldn't be surprised if the moon is after that. I'm willing to bet he will get there before NASA knowing what a fine job NASA did with the ISS. Rutan is associated with Transformational Space and they are trying to get in on some of the Crew Exploration Vehicle if you read the links. He has plans/dreams for a next gen vehicle to make it to orbit and to a space hotel.
At the moment he is just trying to make the Virgin deal profitable so he will have more funding for the next step (without needing tax dollar fed pork) because the next steps will take a lot more than $25 million, no arguement. He deserves a real pat on the back for trying to make space travel profitable and self sustaining. I for one hope he succeeds, you can trash him all you want.
"Since when is making a profit BAD? Are you a socialist or communist? "
Why don't you stop the right wing mud slinging friend. I'm sitting here rooting for Burt Rutan and he is as free enterprise as you can get. If you would have thought before you spewed you would have realized I'm pro free enterprise in space and the anti socialism in space advocate here. Rutan hates Boeing and Lockheed as much as I do and for the same reason. They are basicly socialism operating under the guise of capitalism. Two companies who take turns landing billion dollar aerospace contracts which they milk for an eternity and only occasionally deliver something that is worth anything. They are almost always behind schedule, overbudget, inefficient and a key reason why the manned space program is in the bad shape its in. They are more government agencies than free enterprise these days. If they were free enterprise they would do something in space on their own, besides launch satellites, which is hugely subsidized by the government(military and NASA).
"If anyone is screwing up Space it's the poor management at NASA that lets the contractors get away with things they shouldn't. Go back to your bridge Troll.."
I don't think you've considered the possible real motives behind this initiative:
A) To lock up crucial votes in Florida and the space coast of Florida in the 2004 election, which happened nicely. You can be sure everyone in that area is going to vote for a President promising them years of lucrative employment and a strong local economy. To Florida as a whole space program is prestige so they like politicians who pour money in to it D or R.
B) Distract all the space advocates, lobbyists, contractors and politicians who represent the thousand places with NASA centers or contractors who dine from the giant pork machine that is NASA. While they are distracted with chump change for this new program, that will probably never make it to the bending metal stage, they quickly euthanize the Shuttle and ISS. Then around 2008 when this program starts sucking up real money one of two things happen:
1) The ISS model, they just pour money in to it forever, never enough to do it or do it right but just enough to keep all the pork addicted contractors and congressional districts in gravy
2) The Bush, I hate science and bureaucracy, model where some realist points out that with the U.S., which is running huge deficits thanks to privatizing Social Security, more tax cuts for the rich, and maintaing occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria, just can't afford it. The program gets the axe, the Shuttle and ISS are long gone, and the U.S. has no manned space program and one giant bureaucracy many politician's hate dies a quick death. Ironicly everyone will be relieved by this because the current manned space program sucks so bad.
At this point we can only hope private ventures lead by Burt "Kelly Johnson" Rutan and Transformational Space, (a.k.a t/Space), will have grabbed the fumbled ball and ran with it. Would be way better than letting Boeing and Lockheed continue to screw up the manned space program in the name of profit
The funding and arming is not as organized and concerted as the $3.5 billion Reagan pumped in to them, and the future Al Qaida, but they still do have plenty of benefactors in the Muslim world in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in particular, some of them really rich. The kind of war their fighting doesn't demand a huge infusion of money since its mostly small arms and improvised explosives. I imagine anti tank and anti aircraft missiles are probably something they don't have in the abundance the original Mujadeen did.
The Iraqi insurgents are also no doubt getting some help from Iran, Syria and the rest of the arab world.
The Pakistan army just announced they are pulling their troops out of big chunks of the tribal areas and ceeding them to Al Qaida and the Taliban so the insurgency in Afghanistan has pretty much the same operating base it did against the Soviet Union though they can't be quite as open or blatant about it there.
"US turned a blind eye"
Nothing new here. The CIA has a long history of condoning or outright engaging in drug trafficing when they see an angle in it, especially a funding angle for wars, legal and illegal.
It was great American propganda to make out like the Taliban and Al Qaida were major drug trafficers when it runs against every grain of their religion and they had largely stamped it out in areas they controlled with ruthless penalties for growers, trafficers and users.
The following rant probably doesn't really apply to this guy since he is doing nice work.
The main push from the West on indigenous peoples you are alluding to is to try to compel them to adopt a modern western life style. Not having RTFA maybe this guys is doing the opposite of what the rest of the West and its corporations do. Those corporations don't want affordable and sustainable, they want expensive housing full of modern appliances and carpet they sell, built of wood, steel and concrete they manufacture and heated and cooled with electricity, oil and gas they sell.
Modern western countries want to sell their lifestyle to the rest of the world to make a profit.
It is a fine and comfortable lifestyle too so people do want it, the only problem with it is horribly unsustainable. Indigenous peoples generally did a lot less damage to the world around them before they adopted modern technology and life style. Their life wasn't easy and their life spans weren't the longest, but the obvious problem with lengthening life spans is the world is eventually going to crater under the population burden. Perhaps it wouldn't if their was a concerted and responsible effort at birth control but religious zealots in particular, (i.e. the catholic church and the current Bush administration, abhor responsible birth control), abhor birth control. Its just one of those quirks of organized religion that they do everything in their power to maximize their flock because thats how you win in the organized religion game, by having the most warm bodies, putting money in the collection plate and cleansing or converting people in other religions, which is why we have so many religion based wars.
The one thing most likely to crater our modern western lifestyle, getting 2 billion or so Indians and Chinese to adopt the western lifestyle. The Chinese have already started the rush to buying cars with their new found affluence. The world's precious oil reserves are going to disappear fast if a couple billion more people start living the wasteful life style of Americans, driving 2-4 hours a day, solo, in a car to work for example.
Sorry jumped in to the rant at Twirp and wasted a good ramp. Pretty common for right wingers to moan about how starved the U.S. military is around here and it is insane.
Canadians should wear it as badge of honor that they starve their military though the helicopters risk lives. U.S. has the same problem with relatively new Coast Guard helicopters which have rapidly failing engines. They have two but when one goes they can't hover and they often have to make scary on the fly landings on a tiny deck.
The world is currently not in a stage where massive conventional military expenditure is justified. Its mostly a waste on insurgencies and terrorism.
I have mixed views on Canada being in Afghanistan. It is the one country that deserved invading after 9/11 with Pakistan a close second. It would be nice to stabilize it but its slowly torn apart one foreign army after another including the British and the U.S.S.R. It had more to do with collapsing the Soviet Union than just about any other single cause.
I can say that I wasn't entirely plussed with Martin licking George W.'s boots this week. Canada should give him more of the 1 finger wave until he stops being a dick which is unlikely. He was looking a lot like Bush's other poodle, Tony Blair.
His posts are like catching fish in a barrel they are so ripe with BS I can't resist, excluding his Mac posts which are often actually useful and insightful. As soon as he stops slinging profanity laced dirt at every post and poster he disagrees with I'll probably get tired of him and stop. It would help if he stops shoveling right wing propaganda too, but I have less of a problem with that than the viscous name calling and personal attacks he laces it with. If we wants to push right wing viewpoints and do it with substance and insightful debate that would be totally cool, and very refreshing, though I would probably debate him over it.
Its not like I'm exactly the only Twirp camp follower. He has acquired a following of people who detest both his style and his substance. He is an excellent troll.
"Does it make you feel good when you repeat "Twirp" over"
Why yes it does. Its a term of endearment. Its pretty kind compared to the steady stream of offensive and often profane name calling Twirp uses in about 50% of his posts.
"to basically starve our military to the point it is at."
Starved....Starved?
The U.S. spends around a half trillion dollars a year now on defense, intelligence and the war in Iraq. The U.S. spends as much or more than the entire rest of the world combined.
The only reason the military looks starved is because there aren't enough feet in boots in the Army and Marines. It looks starved for a variety of reasons:
- Americans are doing occupation duty in an amazingly large number of places around the world, including Germany which hasn't seen a war in 60 years and really even a threat of one in 15 years. The U.S. has troops in like a 100 countries now. - The Pentagon and the White House don't want to add soldiers to the Army and Marines because they don't want to pay the long term bill for all their benefits, healthcare in particular. This is a key reason they contract out nearly everything they can to Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater, they don't have a long term VA liability for them (though most of the mercenaries in Blackwater get bot VA benefits and a six figure contractor salaries and were trained at great expense by Uncle Sam). - The U.S. is engaged in two active wars against insurgencies, one really vicious in Iraq and the mordern U.S. military simply wasn't built to fight insurgencies or pull occupation duty. Insurgencies grind up a lot of soldiers and they cancel out most of America's technical superiority. - The Republican's wont institute a draft because they know it would be long term political suicide and its becoming increasingly hard and expensive to recruit volunteers in to the Army and Marines because American kids know it means standing in the wrong end of the shooting gallery in Iraq for long periods. - The Pentagon and Congress are obsessed with spending exorbinant sums on incredibly expensive weapons and they suck all the money out of the rest of the military especially the Army and National Guard infantrymen in the army boots. Their contractors like Boeing and Lockheed also like it when they hand them buckets of money for overpriced, behind schedule weapons systems many of which are canclled before the go in to production. The B-2 is a great example, at over a billion dollars a copy, while the B-52 and a few million a copy still does the majority of the death from above role since the B-2 is to small in number, expensive and logistically challenged to use in combat in any serious way.
I could go on. I'm just amazed when American's take the position American doesn't spend enough on its military. Its a ridiculous position.
"I guess the fact that we're doing both never occurred?"
What exactly are we doing to fix education besides "No Child Left Behind" which is little more than forcing schools to teach to a standardized test, its not teaching people to think or to learn or actually placing any real value on academic achievement in schools. Last I heard its also severely underfunded so its a lot of mandates not backed by funding. Its either pass the test or lose funding so schools are increasingly doing nothing but rote training to pass the test and slashing everything that doesn't contribute to passing the test. Athletics still rates far higher than academics and until that priority gets fixed schools are screwed. Most also teachers make less than just about any other career you can think of for a college graduate. Its also notworthy that Rod Paige, Bush's point man on Education until recently was previously the head of Houston's school system. It was cited as the model for educational success in Bush's Texas and for "No Child Left Behind", until it came out they were so successful only because they were forging the data on their students, in particular morphing dropouts in to transfers so it looked like they had a really low drop out rate when in fact it was quite high.
On the health care front you certainly can have quality health care if you can afford it or have good insurance. Fewer people have insurance every year and its cost is exploding at a rate many employers are forced to cut it back or drop it. It is a key motivator for outsourcing since its a key factor in pricing American workers out of the global market. I really doubt if you are uninsured or on Medicaid in these rough neighborhoods your health care is very good. Not sure fixing health care will have any impact on crime though.
"living wage" well we all know we aren't making any progress there. Its been nearly forever since the minimum wage has been raised and its not a living wage by any measure. Outsourcing, to China in particular, is putting substantial downward pressure on wages for most workers, with top executives being the only ones that still make out like bandits. Don't think working in Walmart qualifies as a living wage either.
"Only on Slashdot could a misguided piece of crap like this get votes."
Pot....Kettle.....Black....Twirp.
It would be a radical approach but I wager the best thing you could do to fix these neighborhoods would be to legalize Marijuana. If it was readily available over the counter everyone would be stoned and things would be a lot more peaceful. You would eliminate at least part of the drug trafficing that make these neighborhoods dangerous and reduce the number of otherwise harmless people landing in prison thanks to the war on drugs. Maybe if bud was readily available at low prices it would steer people away from meth, cocaine and heroine because those make people nuts.
On evolution there are a number of local school boards who have mandated stickers on biology text books saying evolution is only a theory which is true but they are big fat obnoxious stickers on the front of the book to placate religious fundementalists. The state of Texas is leading the charge against evolution in text books and they buy so many text books they make the publishers follow.
Someone else pointed to an excellent article that nailed it in detail, that biology textbooks will probably soon have to include a theory that an intelligent force is behind life and the universe. Wont say God initially but it wont take long before it gets there. Once the leak in the dike is sprung there is a fair chance we will be back to the Scopes trial and the bible thumpers will ban teaching evolution because they can't cope with the fact we might have evolved from apes, and the world and universe is dramaticly older than the biblical time line with its begats. Their goal is to suppress any science that counters their creationist view of the world. Whats next after that, banning genetic sequencing because its tampering in God's secret code and shows our generic structure is identical to lower animals in many places indicating genetic mutation and evolution is where species come from?
As for the Grand Canyon its been on the news lately that the creationist coerced the park service in to putting a book on their book store that says the Grand Canyon is a few thousand years old and was created in the 40 days of the great flood. In this case they are seeking to overturn geology in favor of creationism.
"the most expensive construction project is (guess what!!) an expansion to the stadium."
This is a really good example. It is now extremely common for cash strapped cities to sink a half billion dollars in to new sport stadiums while their schools, fire, police, libraries, etc. go begging.
George W. Bush made part of his early fortune conning a city in Texas in to passing new taxes to build a new stadium for the Rangers which the owners of the Rangers, George included, profited mightily from.
Maybe if you are a 5 sport varsity athlete and sitting on top of the social pecking order it wouldn't register you were getting special treatment. How many pep rallies did your school hold for academic achievers? Did academic achievers get the same kudos as the star quarterback or forward?
Maybe it depends on the school but I saw athletes get non stop favoritism and preferential treatment in college. Its no secret that a star athlete who is academicly challenged can get a free ride through any university that values a winning football or basketball team over academic integrity. Many coaches are pulling in million dollar salaries which doesn'y mesh well with the salaries top professors are making. Simple fact of life that the football and basketball teams at division 1 schools bring in huge sums of money in TV contracts and ticket sales. Where there is that much money there is corruption.
As an alternate way to put it I was watching an interview with a mother in India with a honor student for a child. She spelled out why India was beating the U.S. in technology. Indians for the most part don't value sports at all outside of the national obsession with cricket. They aren't the world's best athletes(don't see many Indians on the podium at the olympics). So what do they value... academic achievement above all else. American kids are playing sports while Indian kids are studying math and science all day every day. Their lives are consumed by getting top scores on the tests that will get them in to the best universities which in turn gets them the best jobs. It may not be a balanced or the healthiest life style but it results in people who do know math, science and engineering and that are highly sought by tech companies the world over, especially in the U.S. Not sure if you've been to a big tech company in the valley, but you will see Indians in large and disproportionate numbers.
Well the Reagan administration and the CIA pretty much did create them in the 1980's to fight a proxy war against the U.S.S.R in Afghanistan when. Its something they did exceptionally well since they tied a superpower, with vast military superiority, in knots for 10 years and started the collapse of the Soviet Union. The disaffected and disillusioned vets coming back from Afghanistan did more to bring down the Soviet Union than Reagan running his mouth and squandering money on defense. The few billion he pumped in to the Mujadeen in the Pakistan tribal areas, which included Osama, did more than all the rest put together.
Not sure I would link Al Qaida to the the U.S. government though you never know. You would think they would have managed to catch Bin Laden by now if they were trying.
I think they are probably more like a pet that's gone bad and bites the hand of the one who fed it. Manueal Noriega, former head of Panama was like that too. He was a CIA stooge until he turned on them and we invaded Panama to take him down. He is rotting in Federal pen now.
I will have to agree the Republicans and the Bush administration have benefited mightily from 9/11 and Al Qaida whomever they answer to. Bush was heading towards a truly mediocre one term presidency before 9/11 save him.
They couldn't have gotten away with any of shit they've pulled without it:
- Jacking defense and intelligence up to a half trillion a year - The Patriot Act - Invading Iraq - Scaring the American people so bad that they reelected him despite a record of incompetence and abuse that has most of the world despising the U.S. - Destroying our rights to due process i.e. arresting people indefinitely with out charges or trial and subjecting them to varying degress of torture.
And coming soon:
- National ID cards, if we are lucky, with RFID tags so we can all be tracked every minute - Merging the CIA, NSA, NRO, DIA and part of the FBI in to one all seeing all powerful spying agency, free to spy on Americans and foreigners alike, that would be the envy of the old KGB and Richard Nixon. - Changes in the Senate rules so they can appoint extremist judges with a simple majority followed by "rule changes" to eliminate the fillibuster so Democrats can't stop them from passing their extremist agenda. Once the courts are packed and the Democrats in the Senate castrated we will have a "democraticly" elected dictatorship.
"Last I heard".... Yeah, right....complete FUD on most of this.
Actually it was from the excellent Charlie Rose show on PBSU interviewing a guy who wrote a book on why America is losing its competitive edge, don't remember his name. Charlie Rose does some good interviews, way better than the big networks though he tends to be a little liberal for the right wing nutcases.
If you want I can dig up some references. The guy said applications for graduate schools are way up at U of Toronto and Oxford partially because its a long hard slog just to get a visa to study in the U.S. since 9/11, I think he said it take a year or more now.
The recent election statistics also show the highly educated trend heavily against the right wing nutcases who currently run the U.S.
Anecdotally I've read a lot of posts here on Slashdot, from people who've said they would never think of coming to the U.S. anymore to live, work, study or go to conferences because its become so onerous to enter the U.S., secret dont fly and arrest immediately lists full of bogus names, and there have been to many well documented instances of people being arrested and subjected to various degrees of torture(often after being sent to countries who are good at toture). The one case I remember most vividly was a Canadian resident who was just flying through New York to Canada, who was pulled off a plan and was deported to Syria where he was tortured for a year until the Canadians finally found and extricated him.
Another good one was Cat Stevens, having his flight diverted and being detained as a terrorist, like the guy that wrote "Peace Train" is an imminent threat to America. Though now that I think about it someone advocating "Peace" might be a threat to the people who run America these days.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't say you can't do it. Sam Walton and Michael Dell are equally good examples. Its just way easier to make money without really trying or doing anything to deserve it if you already have it.
The key point about Bill Gate which ties in to the rest of my post is he makes most of his billions through a MONOPOLY and he engages in the high tech version of dynamiting his competitors just like good old J.D. Rockefeller.
Perfectly valid point.
Joe acquired his wealth by some pretty shady means. One of his favorites was "stock pooling" in which a few investors colluded to drive up a stock and then dumped it before it crashed. He may have been a key contributor to the 1929 crash. Would that be more of a motivator or an engine Twirp?
He also sold booze during prohibition. He had a license to import medicinal alcohol from Britain and he just happened to move a LOT of medicine in to the U.S.
His first generation heirs had something going for them but subsequent generations seem to be getting progressively more pathetic just like the Bush family.
"is not incomprehensible to American English speakers?"
I really doubt its much more comprehensible to English English speakers, English English is much closer to American English than either are to Shakespeare's English. Of course he was an artist so maybe thats why no one understands him.
Not entirely sure many of us would have an easy time understanding urban American(black) english because its diverged and innovating rapidly and thats over the course of a few decades.
Don't imagine most seniors would be very comfortable trying to read the english variant most young people are using in IM today.
"Middle English a la Chaucer dates back more than 400 years, so that's not really an ideal example.
"
But Twirlip said language change "very, very slowly" and its nearly identical over 400 years and Twirp is never wrong. Whats difference does tacking on another 300 years or so make.
"That's exactly what the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative did."
Where exactly is the Hydrogen coming from in the President's plan, Twirp? I'd heard a rumour most it was going to come from the nuclear, oil, gas and coal industries. Wondering if you can confirm? I'm thinking using Hydrocarbons to produce Hydrogen might leave behind carbon dioxide and further us along to our goal of greening up the world with the Greenhouse effect. It will be interesting to see if they actually pull off pumping underground or if they even bother if it cuts in to their profit margin.
Most of the funding for his program, what little of it there is, is going in to the pockets of his friend in Detroit and in oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear industry. Its the only way this program avoided dying a quick death like so many renewable energy initiatives before. If any politician actually attempted to create a Hydrogen fuel program that, that was really renewable, environmentally friendly, would happen in our life time, and that threatened these monopolies he would be out on his ass.
"You haven't the foggiest idea who I am, do you? I'm about a libertarian as I am communist."
I think Twirp has you there. As nearly as I can tell he is more of a compassionate Fascist like his heroes and role models Bush/Cheney. He's in the compassionate wing because as far as I know he confines his brown shirting to verbal abuse of everyone on Slashdot he disagrees with and doesn't actually break any heads.
"monopoly on reasoned discourse"
Well he sure doesn't have it and I've never even seen you attempt reasoned discourse, Twirp. So who IS monopolizing all the reasoned discourse around here, please stand up and stop hogging it.
"Kyoto was so vicious to the US economic outlook"
How do you think these will impact the U.S. economic outlook:
- Crop failure
- Floods
- Drought
- Class 5+ Hurricanes (Hurricanes were a big boon to the construction industry in Florida I'll grant you).
- Flooding coastal cities(which tends to be where lots of people live), flooding islands and most of Florida
- Massive Wildfires and forests cratering
- Devastation of the reefs and the seafood that lives in them
- Mass extinctions
On the plus side in another couple of decades the Arctic ocean will probably melt enough that a Northwest passage will open between the Atlantic and Asia which will allow Walmart to ship Chinese goods to Europe more efficiently.
I personally am buying beach front property on the northern coasts of Siberia and Canada since they will be prime beachfront and termperate in the new world order. Well not really beach front I'm only buying realestate a couple hundred feet above sea level.
I'll grant you Kyoto was flawed but not for the reason you give. Thanks to globalization putting pollution limits on national boundries is insane. China in particular, as a developing country, gets a free pass in Kyoto and it is the worlds biggest up and comer in the pollution arena. I imagine the U.S. can in fact meet Kyoto limits without any alteration of its current economy simply by moving all its heavy manufacturing to China which its already doing. Only remaining domestic pollution would be cars which no one is interested in fixing and power generation which could probably be moved to Canada or Mexico in a pinch.
Pot....Kettle.....Black, Twirp
Its probably true it is a natural human condition, but is one of our baser traits. Most societies endeavor to restrain it as part of becoming civilized. Greed sits at the root of the trees called corruption and lawlessness.
If a society doesn't attempt to restrain wealth concentration you end up with 1% filthy rich and 99% dirt poor which is the case in most pathetic third world countries. America was a lot happier place thanks to distributing its wealth to a big middle class, am evenness of distribution rapidly eroding thanks to "free trade" and tax cuts for the rich.
Wealth concentration is the natural outgrowth of capitalism because its WAY easier to make lots of money if you have lots of money and really hard to make it if you have none. Rational men recognize this and take measures to maintain some balance. Teddy Roosevelt was one such man as his Bull Moose party championed progressive taxation to rein in the robber barons of the late 19th and early 20th century who were on a track to acquire most of the nations wealth and create a few all powerful monopolies (i.e. Standard Oil). Rockefeller acquired his monopoly by dynamiting his competitors among other things. Is dynamiting your competitors in the name of greed more of a motivator or an engine?
As one other poster pointed out, allowing a family to acquire massive wealth and pass it on unfettered to one generation after another is how you create an aristocracy, and each subsequent generation tends to be more pathetic than the last because they are born with silver spoons in their mouths(like the Bush family). People who start from scratch and claw their way to the top on their own merits tend to be a lot healthier for the nation than spoiled rich kids who just live of the investment income from their daddy's estate.
Another obvious outcome of a 1% to 99% wealth distribution is eventually the 99% notice and realize they outnumber the 1% by 99 to 1 and they can either sack them at the ballot box or with a guillotine.
Guess that explains why Shakespeare and Chaucer are so easy for most people to read and comprehend today.
" just they were good engineering companies that make pretty decent rockets."
... uh ... UnAmerican :) My original posts didn't even really oppose your viepoint, something you figured out as this thread went along but that didn't stop you from an instant name calling bombardment because you hit a few keywords that set you off.
They have plenty of good engineers, though I really doubt they are as good as they used to be thinks to the cratering U.S. education system. As institutions they are bankrupt, their management is unethical their business model so that makes them bankrupt as a whole. Not exactly sure what exactly they've done lately as far as making rockets. Goddard and the Germans did the hard work. These two companies have been mostly milking them and making derivatives ever since with huge Federal subsidies. You'd hope they'd do something worthwhile considering the gold plated buckets of tax dollars they are handed every year. The Russians are just as good if not better. Europeans may well pass them if they get the bugs worked out of the new Ariane's. Airbus is well on its way to leaving Boeing in the dust as far as commercial airliners go. I'll grant you they are unmatched at engineering missile defense but thats because no other country is insane enough to pour the huge sums in to it the U.S. does.
Not sure Boeing would be solvent were it not for the constant and massive infusion of tax dollars. Hate to break it to but keeping companies afloat with subsidies is socialism/fascism not capitalism or free enterprise.
"If you don't like the way things are in the USA..haul your ass outta here, we won't miss you."
Heh, there is some classic right wing rhetoric. If you don't like the screwed up, increasingly right wing, increasingly embarrassing America get the hell out because we have no interest in putting it back on an even keel. Jump on the bandwagon and sing praises of it no matter how screwed up it obviously is, right? Our way or the highway right? Your either with us our your against us, right? Hate to break it to you but if this country actually upheld the ideals its supposed to stand for I should be able to criticize it till I'm blue in the face and you should love and welcome it. Your intolerance of opposing viewpoints is disturbing, and that holds for the new right wing across the board. Its not just disturbing its scary and
"Mosaddeq had been appointed Prime Minister by the Shah but had Communist leanings, wanted to nationalize the oil industry that Britain controlled,"
So many interesting assertions.
You gloss over the fact the Shah's family had seized power in a British backed coup in 1921 which overthrew the Iranian constitution and a more or less democratic government. The British had oil interests in Iran from before World War I and the Shah's family were compliant puppets in giving away Iran's oil to the British for a song.
Mossadegh was elected to parliament several times and was elected to Prime Minister by the parliament originally. He was most certainly democraticly elected more times than the Shah and his dad ever were.
There was a long tortured power struggle between the two and its to complicated to go in to here. Hereis a somewhat less biased timeline than mine or your BS.
Mossadegh did some bad things but he was also under full scale attack from the U.S., the British and the Shah which led to some desperate measures.
Mossadegh was a nationalist and a socialist and very popular in Iran most of his life until the height of the coup effort. Its a stretch to brand to try to brand him a communist but that is the American way.
In 1947 Iran got only $20 million of that years $112 million in oil profits most of the rest of which went to the British. The Iranians and Mossadegh were mostly just trying to get a 50/50 share of the profits being made on THEIR OIL and to fix a deal stacked in the favor of a colonial master. After Operation AJAX the U.S. managed to seize a fair percentage of the Iranian oil concession much to the dismay of the British.
"and was actually reforming and helping to modernize Iranian society which included expanding rights of women in Iran"
Excepting of course his father gained power in a coup that overthrew a legitimate government and the Shah and his dad were Monarchs/Dictators. Not sure what the Shah's record on human rights was in the '40's, there was still some sembelence of a constitution at the time. The only record that counts is after the 1953 coup when he had a stranglehold on power. The U.S. and Israel helped build the Shah's secret police, SAVAK, in 1957 which had the worst human rights record on the planet for the duration of its reign of terror until 1979, it was worse than the Stasi and the KGB and on par with Saddam. Brutal repression was the only way he held power after Mossadegh was overthrown because Mossadegh was popular in Iran and the Shah WAS NOT.
" And you have no idea of how hard they and NASA will go to cover them up in some situations."
Uh yes I do, from first hand experience. I know exactly how crooked they are. Talk about 180's. In your earlier rhetoric you are making out Lockheed and Boeing are pure as driven snow and its all NASA's fault and now you are stealing my talking point again.
"DO realize he is in the profit arena"
Uh yea. Could you stop telling me my talking points and acting like you're telling me something I don't know? I'm all for Rutan making a profit in the private sector. The problem with Boeing and Lockheed's profit margin is its coming from lieing, cheating, padding, bribing and stealing out of tax payer's pockets, reference Boeing's tanker deal and one company stealing all the other companies documents to land a missile contract.
" He used to work for Lockheed IIRC."
If he did he sure doesn't mention it in his bio. He did work for the Air Force at Edwards Air Force base, maybe it was through Lockheed but he sure doesn't mention it or take pride in it. He really despises both Boeing and Lockheed, and it appears to be based on experience with them.
"They haven't been used to stage democratic coups"
Not sure what a "democratic coup" is. They were used to topple Saddam, a sovereign government, like him or not. Not in the Middle East but military bases were used to topple Noriega in Panama, a CIA stooge/thug gone bad. Maybe you are splitting semantic hairs or you obviously don't know your history since the U.S. ran the coup in Iran that put the Shah in power. It was a CIA operation so military bases weren't exactly required. Search for Mossadegh, the sovereign leader they toppled and the CIA code name AJAX. This coup reinstalled the Shah who was every bit as brutal as Saddam. Search on SAVAK, his secret police. The Shah's reign is why the Iranian's hate the U.S. so much and why they stormed the U.S. embassy as payback.
"I don't think the USA is going to be in Iraq for very long."
At this point I don't think I have any confidence in what YOU think. Someone, a U.S. general I think recently said it was unlike they Iraq security forces could stand on their own for 10 years. Joe Biden after a recent tour of Iraq called their training a joke. One of the guys who was supposed to have set up the joke training just got promoted to head the Department of Homeland Security which make me feel real safe.
"I think doing something abotu N.Korea"
Again I don't think you know what you are talking about. The Bush administration is obviously doing their best to do nothing about North Korea or make it worse. Kind of obvious when they do have WMD's and the U.S. didn't invade them and Iraq didn't have any WMD's and the U.S. did invade them. They have no strategic resources(a.k.a. oil) and aren't much of a threat to Israel, just South Korea, Japan and a remote threat to the U.S.
"Plus we KNOW they are selling nuke technology"
Uh so. Pakistan has been doing that for years and they are our ally and the people doing it got off scot free. Most of the proliferation that is a problem now in Iran and North Korea is thanks to Pakistan.
"I take back the troll comment...I think we see a lot alike yet a lot different."
Please NOOOOOOOOO. Thats the biggest slam you've lobbed my way today. I'll grant you, you've done so many 180's that you are basically stealing all my talking points.
"A) The bill passed last week, not before the election. "
The rosy rhetoric and big promises came right about the start of the Presidential race. Big promises and rosy rhetoric being very easy to make and do, while actually spending the money is something of an afterthought. I assure you all the aerospace workers were voting on the rosy promises of long term employment, and exciting edventures going where no man has gone before, and not the realities involved with funding or doing it.
"There are NOT 1000s of NASA Centers,"
That 1000's number includes all the contractors big and small that get their pay checks from NASA directly or indirectly. Sorry you misunderstood.
" The occupation of the Middle East? Laughable, and not at all part of the "Bush Plan"
U.S. is already occupying Iraq, has troops most of the time in Kuwait, bases in Bahrain and a billion dollar air base in Qatar. There are going to be something like 10-12 permanent bases in Iraq, empty rhetoric to the country. Their is a proxy army in Israel with billions and billions in U.S. supplied top of the line weapons that dominates everything in the region.
The U.S. is ALREADY occupying the Middle East in case you haven't noticed. Rhetoric for a WMD invasion against Iran is already warming up and will hit a fever pitch when Iran tries to bring their nuclear reactor on line next year, something Israel and the U.S. probably wont allow and taking it out could well start a war hot or cold. Only reason the rhetoric isn't at a higher pitch is because the invasion of Iraq went so bad. They were planning on taking it down in a few weeks, have a rose throwing parade and then use it as a jumping off place to take down Iran and Syria, Israel's last two enemies in the region. They will settle for coups, in Iran in particular, which would be even better.
"Rutan isn't interested in doing more than he is doing now."
Wasn't talking Mars, sorry you misunderstood. He is just aiming for LEO and a space hotel at the moment. Wouldn't be surprised if the moon is after that. I'm willing to bet he will get there before NASA knowing what a fine job NASA did with the ISS. Rutan is associated with Transformational Space and they are trying to get in on some of the Crew Exploration Vehicle if you read the links. He has plans/dreams for a next gen vehicle to make it to orbit and to a space hotel.
At the moment he is just trying to make the Virgin deal profitable so he will have more funding for the next step (without needing tax dollar fed pork) because the next steps will take a lot more than $25 million, no arguement. He deserves a real pat on the back for trying to make space travel profitable and self sustaining. I for one hope he succeeds, you can trash him all you want.
"Since when is making a profit BAD? Are you a socialist or communist? "
Why don't you stop the right wing mud slinging friend. I'm sitting here rooting for Burt Rutan and he is as free enterprise as you can get. If you would have thought before you spewed you would have realized I'm pro free enterprise in space and the anti socialism in space advocate here. Rutan hates Boeing and Lockheed as much as I do and for the same reason. They are basicly socialism operating under the guise of capitalism. Two companies who take turns landing billion dollar aerospace contracts which they milk for an eternity and only occasionally deliver something that is worth anything. They are almost always behind schedule, overbudget, inefficient and a key reason why the manned space program is in the bad shape its in. They are more government agencies than free enterprise these days. If they were free enterprise they would do something in space on their own, besides launch satellites, which is hugely subsidized by the government(military and NASA).
"If anyone is screwing up Space it's the poor management at NASA that lets the contractors get away with things they shouldn't. Go back to your bridge Troll.."
How exactly
I don't think you've considered the possible real motives behind this initiative:
A) To lock up crucial votes in Florida and the space coast of Florida in the 2004 election, which happened nicely. You can be sure everyone in that area is going to vote for a President promising them years of lucrative employment and a strong local economy. To Florida as a whole space program is prestige so they like politicians who pour money in to it D or R.
B) Distract all the space advocates, lobbyists, contractors and politicians who represent the thousand places with NASA centers or contractors who dine from the giant pork machine that is NASA. While they are distracted with chump change for this new program, that will probably never make it to the bending metal stage, they quickly euthanize the Shuttle and ISS. Then around 2008 when this program starts sucking up real money one of two things happen:
1) The ISS model, they just pour money in to it forever, never enough to do it or do it right but just enough to keep all the pork addicted contractors and congressional districts in gravy
2) The Bush, I hate science and bureaucracy, model where some realist points out that with the U.S., which is running huge deficits thanks to privatizing Social Security, more tax cuts for the rich, and maintaing occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria, just can't afford it. The program gets the axe, the Shuttle and ISS are long gone, and the U.S. has no manned space program and one giant bureaucracy many politician's hate dies a quick death. Ironicly everyone will be relieved by this because the current manned space program sucks so bad.
At this point we can only hope private ventures lead by Burt "Kelly Johnson" Rutan and Transformational Space, (a.k.a t/Space), will have grabbed the fumbled ball and ran with it. Would be way better than letting Boeing and Lockheed continue to screw up the manned space program in the name of profit
The funding and arming is not as organized and concerted as the $3.5 billion Reagan pumped in to them, and the future Al Qaida, but they still do have plenty of benefactors in the Muslim world in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in particular, some of them really rich. The kind of war their fighting doesn't demand a huge infusion of money since its mostly small arms and improvised explosives. I imagine anti tank and anti aircraft missiles are probably something they don't have in the abundance the original Mujadeen did.
The Iraqi insurgents are also no doubt getting some help from Iran, Syria and the rest of the arab world.
The Pakistan army just announced they are pulling their troops out of big chunks of the tribal areas and ceeding them to Al Qaida and the Taliban so the insurgency in Afghanistan has pretty much the same operating base it did against the Soviet Union though they can't be quite as open or blatant about it there.
"US turned a blind eye"
Nothing new here. The CIA has a long history of condoning or outright engaging in drug trafficing when they see an angle in it, especially a funding angle for wars, legal and illegal.
It was great American propganda to make out like the Taliban and Al Qaida were major drug trafficers when it runs against every grain of their religion and they had largely stamped it out in areas they controlled with ruthless penalties for growers, trafficers and users.
The following rant probably doesn't really apply to this guy since he is doing nice work.
The main push from the West on indigenous peoples you are alluding to is to try to compel them to adopt a modern western life style. Not having RTFA maybe this guys is doing the opposite of what the rest of the West and its corporations do. Those corporations don't want affordable and sustainable, they want expensive housing full of modern appliances and carpet they sell, built of wood, steel and concrete they manufacture and heated and cooled with electricity, oil and gas they sell.
Modern western countries want to sell their lifestyle to the rest of the world to make a profit.
It is a fine and comfortable lifestyle too so people do want it, the only problem with it is horribly unsustainable. Indigenous peoples generally did a lot less damage to the world around them before they adopted modern technology and life style. Their life wasn't easy and their life spans weren't the longest, but the obvious problem with lengthening life spans is the world is eventually going to crater under the population burden. Perhaps it wouldn't if their was a concerted and responsible effort at birth control but religious zealots in particular, (i.e. the catholic church and the current Bush administration, abhor responsible birth control), abhor birth control. Its just one of those quirks of organized religion that they do everything in their power to maximize their flock because thats how you win in the organized religion game, by having the most warm bodies, putting money in the collection plate and cleansing or converting people in other religions, which is why we have so many religion based wars.
The one thing most likely to crater our modern western lifestyle, getting 2 billion or so Indians and Chinese to adopt the western lifestyle. The Chinese have already started the rush to buying cars with their new found affluence. The world's precious oil reserves are going to disappear fast if a couple billion more people start living the wasteful life style of Americans, driving 2-4 hours a day, solo, in a car to work for example.
Sorry jumped in to the rant at Twirp and wasted a good ramp. Pretty common for right wingers to moan about how starved the U.S. military is around here and it is insane.
Canadians should wear it as badge of honor that they starve their military though the helicopters risk lives. U.S. has the same problem with relatively new Coast Guard helicopters which have rapidly failing engines. They have two but when one goes they can't hover and they often have to make scary on the fly landings on a tiny deck.
The world is currently not in a stage where massive conventional military expenditure is justified. Its mostly a waste on insurgencies and terrorism.
I have mixed views on Canada being in Afghanistan. It is the one country that deserved invading after 9/11 with Pakistan a close second. It would be nice to stabilize it but its slowly torn apart one foreign army after another including the British and the U.S.S.R. It had more to do with collapsing the Soviet Union than just about any other single cause.
I can say that I wasn't entirely plussed with Martin licking George W.'s boots this week. Canada should give him more of the 1 finger wave until he stops being a dick which is unlikely. He was looking a lot like Bush's other poodle, Tony Blair.
"You sure like to respond to his posts."
His posts are like catching fish in a barrel they are so ripe with BS I can't resist, excluding his Mac posts which are often actually useful and insightful. As soon as he stops slinging profanity laced dirt at every post and poster he disagrees with I'll probably get tired of him and stop. It would help if he stops shoveling right wing propaganda too, but I have less of a problem with that than the viscous name calling and personal attacks he laces it with. If we wants to push right wing viewpoints and do it with substance and insightful debate that would be totally cool, and very refreshing, though I would probably debate him over it.
Its not like I'm exactly the only Twirp camp follower. He has acquired a following of people who detest both his style and his substance. He is an excellent troll.
"Does it make you feel good when you repeat "Twirp" over"
Why yes it does. Its a term of endearment. Its pretty kind compared to the steady stream of offensive and often profane name calling Twirp uses in about 50% of his posts.
"to basically starve our military to the point it is at."
Starved....Starved?
The U.S. spends around a half trillion dollars a year now on defense, intelligence and the war in Iraq. The U.S. spends as much or more than the entire rest of the world combined.
The only reason the military looks starved is because there aren't enough feet in boots in the Army and Marines. It looks starved for a variety of reasons:
- Americans are doing occupation duty in an amazingly large number of places around the world, including Germany which hasn't seen a war in 60 years and really even a threat of one in 15 years. The U.S. has troops in like a 100 countries now.
- The Pentagon and the White House don't want to add soldiers to the Army and Marines because they don't want to pay the long term bill for all their benefits, healthcare in particular. This is a key reason they contract out nearly everything they can to Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater, they don't have a long term VA liability for them (though most of the mercenaries in Blackwater get bot VA benefits and a six figure contractor salaries and were trained at great expense by Uncle Sam).
- The U.S. is engaged in two active wars against insurgencies, one really vicious in Iraq and the mordern U.S. military simply wasn't built to fight insurgencies or pull occupation duty. Insurgencies grind up a lot of soldiers and they cancel out most of America's technical superiority.
- The Republican's wont institute a draft because they know it would be long term political suicide and its becoming increasingly hard and expensive to recruit volunteers in to the Army and Marines because American kids know it means standing in the wrong end of the shooting gallery in Iraq for long periods.
- The Pentagon and Congress are obsessed with spending exorbinant sums on incredibly expensive weapons and they suck all the money out of the rest of the military especially the Army and National Guard infantrymen in the army boots. Their contractors like Boeing and Lockheed also like it when they hand them buckets of money for overpriced, behind schedule weapons systems many of which are canclled before the go in to production. The B-2 is a great example, at over a billion dollars a copy, while the B-52 and a few million a copy still does the majority of the death from above role since the B-2 is to small in number, expensive and logistically challenged to use in combat in any serious way.
I could go on. I'm just amazed when American's take the position American doesn't spend enough on its military. Its a ridiculous position.
"I guess the fact that we're doing both never occurred?"
What exactly are we doing to fix education besides "No Child Left Behind" which is little more than forcing schools to teach to a standardized test, its not teaching people to think or to learn or actually placing any real value on academic achievement in schools. Last I heard its also severely underfunded so its a lot of mandates not backed by funding. Its either pass the test or lose funding so schools are increasingly doing nothing but rote training to pass the test and slashing everything that doesn't contribute to passing the test. Athletics still rates far higher than academics and until that priority gets fixed schools are screwed. Most also teachers make less than just about any other career you can think of for a college graduate. Its also notworthy that Rod Paige, Bush's point man on Education until recently was previously the head of Houston's school system. It was cited as the model for educational success in Bush's Texas and for "No Child Left Behind", until it came out they were so successful only because they were forging the data on their students, in particular morphing dropouts in to transfers so it looked like they had a really low drop out rate when in fact it was quite high.
On the health care front you certainly can have quality health care if you can afford it or have good insurance. Fewer people have insurance every year and its cost is exploding at a rate many employers are forced to cut it back or drop it. It is a key motivator for outsourcing since its a key factor in pricing American workers out of the global market. I really doubt if you are uninsured or on Medicaid in these rough neighborhoods your health care is very good. Not sure fixing health care will have any impact on crime though.
"living wage" well we all know we aren't making any progress there. Its been nearly forever since the minimum wage has been raised and its not a living wage by any measure. Outsourcing, to China in particular, is putting substantial downward pressure on wages for most workers, with top executives being the only ones that still make out like bandits. Don't think working in Walmart qualifies as a living wage either.
"Only on Slashdot could a misguided piece of crap like this get votes."
Pot....Kettle.....Black....Twirp.
It would be a radical approach but I wager the best thing you could do to fix these neighborhoods would be to legalize Marijuana. If it was readily available over the counter everyone would be stoned and things would be a lot more peaceful. You would eliminate at least part of the drug trafficing that make these neighborhoods dangerous and reduce the number of otherwise harmless people landing in prison thanks to the war on drugs. Maybe if bud was readily available at low prices it would steer people away from meth, cocaine and heroine because those make people nuts.
On evolution there are a number of local school boards who have mandated stickers on biology text books saying evolution is only a theory which is true but they are big fat obnoxious stickers on the front of the book to placate religious fundementalists. The state of Texas is leading the charge against evolution in text books and they buy so many text books they make the publishers follow.
Someone else pointed to an excellent article that nailed it in detail, that biology textbooks will probably soon have to include a theory that an intelligent force is behind life and the universe. Wont say God initially but it wont take long before it gets there. Once the leak in the dike is sprung there is a fair chance we will be back to the Scopes trial and the bible thumpers will ban teaching evolution because they can't cope with the fact we might have evolved from apes, and the world and universe is dramaticly older than the biblical time line with its begats. Their goal is to suppress any science that counters their creationist view of the world. Whats next after that, banning genetic sequencing because its tampering in God's secret code and shows our generic structure is identical to lower animals in many places indicating genetic mutation and evolution is where species come from?
As for the Grand Canyon its been on the news lately that the creationist coerced the park service in to putting a book on their book store that says the Grand Canyon is a few thousand years old and was created in the 40 days of the great flood. In this case they are seeking to overturn geology in favor of creationism.
"the most expensive construction project is (guess what!!) an expansion to the stadium."
This is a really good example. It is now extremely common for cash strapped cities to sink a half billion dollars in to new sport stadiums while their schools, fire, police, libraries, etc. go begging.
George W. Bush made part of his early fortune conning a city in Texas in to passing new taxes to build a new stadium for the Rangers which the owners of the Rangers, George included, profited mightily from.
Maybe if you are a 5 sport varsity athlete and sitting on top of the social pecking order it wouldn't register you were getting special treatment. How many pep rallies did your school hold for academic achievers? Did academic achievers get the same kudos as the star quarterback or forward?
Maybe it depends on the school but I saw athletes get non stop favoritism and preferential treatment in college. Its no secret that a star athlete who is academicly challenged can get a free ride through any university that values a winning football or basketball team over academic integrity. Many coaches are pulling in million dollar salaries which doesn'y mesh well with the salaries top professors are making. Simple fact of life that the football and basketball teams at division 1 schools bring in huge sums of money in TV contracts and ticket sales. Where there is that much money there is corruption.
As an alternate way to put it I was watching an interview with a mother in India with a honor student for a child. She spelled out why India was beating the U.S. in technology. Indians for the most part don't value sports at all outside of the national obsession with cricket. They aren't the world's best athletes(don't see many Indians on the podium at the olympics). So what do they value... academic achievement above all else. American kids are playing sports while Indian kids are studying math and science all day every day. Their lives are consumed by getting top scores on the tests that will get them in to the best universities which in turn gets them the best jobs. It may not be a balanced or the healthiest life style but it results in people who do know math, science and engineering and that are highly sought by tech companies the world over, especially in the U.S. Not sure if you've been to a big tech company in the valley, but you will see Indians in large and disproportionate numbers.
Well the Reagan administration and the CIA pretty much did create them in the 1980's to fight a proxy war against the U.S.S.R in Afghanistan when. Its something they did exceptionally well since they tied a superpower, with vast military superiority, in knots for 10 years and started the collapse of the Soviet Union. The disaffected and disillusioned vets coming back from Afghanistan did more to bring down the Soviet Union than Reagan running his mouth and squandering money on defense. The few billion he pumped in to the Mujadeen in the Pakistan tribal areas, which included Osama, did more than all the rest put together.
Not sure I would link Al Qaida to the the U.S. government though you never know. You would think they would have managed to catch Bin Laden by now if they were trying.
I think they are probably more like a pet that's gone bad and bites the hand of the one who fed it. Manueal Noriega, former head of Panama was like that too. He was a CIA stooge until he turned on them and we invaded Panama to take him down. He is rotting in Federal pen now.
I will have to agree the Republicans and the Bush administration have benefited mightily from 9/11 and Al Qaida whomever they answer to. Bush was heading towards a truly mediocre one term presidency before 9/11 save him.
They couldn't have gotten away with any of shit they've pulled without it:
- Jacking defense and intelligence up to a half trillion a year
- The Patriot Act
- Invading Iraq
- Scaring the American people so bad that they reelected him despite a record of incompetence and abuse that has most of the world despising the U.S.
- Destroying our rights to due process i.e. arresting people indefinitely with out charges or trial and subjecting them to varying degress of torture.
And coming soon:
- National ID cards, if we are lucky, with RFID tags so we can all be tracked every minute
- Merging the CIA, NSA, NRO, DIA and part of the FBI in to one all seeing all powerful spying agency, free to spy on Americans and foreigners alike, that would be the envy of the old KGB and Richard Nixon.
- Changes in the Senate rules so they can appoint extremist judges with a simple majority followed by "rule changes" to eliminate the fillibuster so Democrats can't stop them from passing their extremist agenda. Once the courts are packed and the Democrats in the Senate castrated we will have a "democraticly" elected dictatorship.
"Last I heard".... Yeah, right....complete FUD on most of this.
Actually it was from the excellent Charlie Rose show on PBSU interviewing a guy who wrote a book on why America is losing its competitive edge, don't remember his name. Charlie Rose does some good interviews, way better than the big networks though he tends to be a little liberal for the right wing nutcases.
If you want I can dig up some references. The guy said applications for graduate schools are way up at U of Toronto and Oxford partially because its a long hard slog just to get a visa to study in the U.S. since 9/11, I think he said it take a year or more now.
The recent election statistics also show the highly educated trend heavily against the right wing nutcases who currently run the U.S.
Anecdotally I've read a lot of posts here on Slashdot, from people who've said they would never think of coming to the U.S. anymore to live, work, study or go to conferences because its become so onerous to enter the U.S., secret dont fly and arrest immediately lists full of bogus names, and there have been to many well documented instances of people being arrested and subjected to various degrees of torture(often after being sent to countries who are good at toture). The one case I remember most vividly was a Canadian resident who was just flying through New York to Canada, who was pulled off a plan and was deported to Syria where he was tortured for a year until the Canadians finally found and extricated him.
Another good one was Cat Stevens, having his flight diverted and being detained as a terrorist, like the guy that wrote "Peace Train" is an imminent threat to America. Though now that I think about it someone advocating "Peace" might be a threat to the people who run America these days.