If the dude can't even keep from eating his foot or cowering to Nancy Reagan in the span of 3 days, how can we reasonably expect him to handle an ex-KGB agent who runs his country through a puppet and who is staging his return as that country's president (this time, probably for life)?
Because standing up to Putin won't cost him any votes in 2012, whereas offending Nancy Reagan very well could have?
I voted McCain; I was (and am) a fan of the pork-barrel spending cuts he wanted to implement
So what are you going to do to solve the other 98% of the Federal budget deficit after you get rid of earmarks? And what's pork? Most Americans would view stuff that their own Congressman brings home as "economic development" and stuff that the other 434 bring home as "pork". Might it just be that some earmarks actually serve a valid purpose and that purpose is lost somewhere in all the discussion about the abuse and excess?
But the republicans didn't have a filibuster-proof majority in both houses during those six years.
A) They didn't need it, the Democrats were too spineless to oppose them anyway
B) The Democrats won't get it anyway, and if they do (they won't) then that's as good of a mandate as any out of this electorate. Certainly a better mandate than GWB's 51-49 re-election.
Yes, I am entirely sure of that. Having already read your biased and factually incorrect link before, it will not convince me otherwise.
*shrug*, I've looked at the body of evidence and I've concluded that she's a nutjob. Asking the town librarian if she could ban books and telling a local resident that man and dinosaurs walked the Earth together.
Draw your own conclusions but it's interesting to see at least three different sources for her fundamentalist beliefs.
The actual number [pollingreport.com] is usually over 50%, depending on how the question is asked. In particular, over half of Americans support teaching Creationism alongside evolution in public schools.
See, it's the "alongside" part that I have a problem with. If you want to teach creationism in theology class then all the power to you. Hell, I'd sign my kids up for that class. It's when they start talking about teaching it in science class that I have issues.
which remove bluetooth capability just to prevent you from loading mp3s without buying a usb kit from them. Or won't let you use your mp3s as ringtones
Actually, like most DRM it's not particularly effective. At least with the Motorola's that they sell. It takes all of five minutes and a usb cable to bypass the DRM and load whatever media files you want onto your phone and use them for whatever purpose (ringtone) you desire.
Ever hear of the Spanish American War [wikipedia.org] and the USS Maine?
How many people are going to bring this up with no understanding of what actually happened to the USS Maine? The Maine either hit a mine or suffered an internal explosion caused by a fire in her coal bunkers. Nobody knows for sure -- but no serious historian that I'm aware of has ever suggested that the United States deliberately blew her up.
Pro-war factions in the United States definitely took advantage of the explosion to advance their case for war against Spain but it's a far cry from that to saying that we arranged for the explosion to happen in the first place. I can't help but think of the nutjobs who think that Israel and/or the CIA arranged the 9/11 attacks.
This implies that people have to justify their existence or be exterminated on principle!
<sarcasm>Yes, that's exactly what I was implying. People who can't justify their existence need to be exterminated on principle, preferably starting with you.</sarcasm>
When US troops marched into Iraq and Afghanistan, halved the food production, killed or imprisioned hundreds of thousands of men, raped some women and created a desperate and improverished middle class, freely exploited by the multinationals moving in.... Did this act as a deterrent?
I won't discuss Iraq because I opposed that war from the beginning so I suspect we'd largely agree with each other. In the case of Afghanistan I don't really see that as being our fault. If the Taliban had been willing to hand the SOB over then we wouldn't have had to go into that country. War is hell -- nothing is ever going to change that.
I'm not sure why you even bring the romans into this. They were nasty and brutal in many ways and places, and I would not like a modern power to attempt to duplicate their behaviour or collapse.
I wouldn't want to see it either. Just pointing out that the game used to be played by very different rules. Hell, you don't even have to go back 2,000 years -- during WW2 we bombed enemy cities into the ground. As I said, war is hell. Best to bring all of your firepower into play and end it as quickly as possible.
I think this statement right here is what's wrong with the left-wing in America, in a nutshell.
There's a lot wrong with the left and the right-wing in this country. Both place ideology ahead of reality. Both are more interested in beating the other than they are in Governing. Both have convinced themselves that America will be destroyed if the other side wins -- and they are justified in using all manner of despicable tactics to prevent that from happening.
I always had issues with the far-right in this country but I never realized how similar the far-left was until I started watching Countdown and reading Dailykos. Fucking partisans will be the death of all of us.....
Your point is still valid though, we are way to worked up over 3K dead than should be warranted
It's a little bit more than just 3k murdered people. The destruction of the World Trade Center and subsequent disruption of the airline industry cost us billions of dollars. The long term economic damage to Lower Manhattan may well add billions more to that bill.
I guess I don't understand dismissing the impact of that day because it was "only" 3,000 people. I'm not a big fan of the way the Bush Administration handled 9/11 but trying to say that it was no big deal seems like stupidity from the opposite end of the scale.
Assuming that you're referring to 9/11, there's actually no evidence backing up your assertion. Would you care to try and prove that statement or will you demonstrate some integrity and retract it?
I'm a bit confused as to what you are claiming. Is your claim that there is no evidence linking OBL to the murders on 9/11? Do his own words convince you of the need to retract your own statement?
So your point is that the United States isn't pure and innocent? That's hardly news. My point was that the French doesn't exactly have a leg to stand on either -- nuclear testing, attacks on Allied harbors, colonialism, the little adventure with the Brits and Israelis in Suez, etc, etc, etc.
No, but we did attack *our own fucking ships* in a foreign harbor as an excuse to knock over a domino we ourselves set up which is pretty obviously much worse.
I'll assume you are referring to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Where in that incident did we attack our own ships? Our ships were approached by Vietnamese torpedo boats and some fire was briefly exchanged. The second "attack" was radar/sonar operator error by most accounts. I'm curious to know where we attacked our own ships in that incident?
That was called the Vietnam War if you pay as little attention to history as seems clear frrm your post.
I pay a lot of attention to history. Maybe you should pay some attention to your typing and/or spelling?
As others have pointed out, more americans die every day at the hands of impaired drivers than died in the 9/11 attacks...
3,000 people every day in car accidents? That's a million people per year. I think your numbers are slightly inflated a bit. In any case, I don't buy the "more people die in car accidents" line as an excuse to allow a murderer to remain at large. If you follow that logic I guess we shouldn't have tracked down the Beltway Snipers and brought them to justice -- I mean they only murdered 13 people and we all know that many more die each day in car accidents....
I think a sense of proportion is required.
Did I say it wasn't? Did I not say that we shouldn't have declared "war" on him?
As Ghandi, observed, the policy of 'an eye for an eye' eventually makes everyone blind.
Well if you want to be a pacifist, all the power to you. Personally I want the SOB that attacked my country to be punished for his crimes.
Um, because playing by the rules is the mark of a civilized people?
Better to bend/break the rules when fighting someone who doesn't follow them than to wind up dead because you played by the rules while your enemies weren't.
Perhaps you might want to re-read your Roman history, and find out why their empire crumbled. Something to do with too many foreign mis-adventures, not enough money to pay for it all, and incompetent leadership. Does any of that sound even remotely familiar to you?
And how is any of that relevant to the example that I gave? Did I advocate for foreign adventures? All I want to see is OBL brought to justice for his crimes. I don't particularly care if that justice takes the form of a murder trial or a bunker busting bomb. If it had been up to me we would have gone into Afghanistan with overwhelming force, captured/killed him and then left.
I see. Well then, what kind of seeing eye dog would you like?
I don't share your pacifist philosophy so I don't agree with this premise.
Umm, see Gulf of Tonkin and the USS Maine, just off the top of my head. Those weren't even ALLIES, they were our OWN!
A) Nobody knows for sure what happened to the Maine. The most likely cause was a coal fire that caused her magazines to explode. I've never seen any mainstream historian suggest that the explosion was deliberately arranged by the United States as a pretext to go to war.
B) Which ships were blown up in the Gulf of Tonkin incident?
So tell me, other than voting the rascals out, what recourse do the People have to end this war if they don't like it?
I suppose that would come down to the four boxes: soapbox, ballot box, jury box and ammo box. Items #1 and #2 clearly didn't work.... the Democrats took over Congress largely because of the backlash against the war but are too spineless to actually end it.
Our form of government has NEVER been about popular opinion, nor will it, nor should it!
Our Government isn't about popular opinion but if you don't see the problem with remaining at war when you've lost the support of the populace then I don't see much hope for convincing you of the merits of my position. The only reason we are still at war is because of the all-volunteer force -- the war doesn't even seem real unless you are a service member or family thereof. I actually liked Charlie Rangel's idea -- bring back the draft. That'll make the populace give a shit about when we send our sons and daughters into battle and ensure that a broad segment of society is carrying the weight.
The rest of us were asked to go shopping while our military was sent into the meat grinder of a country that posed zero threat to the United States. And please don't give me that crap about WMDs and links to terrorists -- if that was our criteria for going to war then why didn't we invade Pakistan, North Korea and Iran?
"Mr. Newman asserts World War I was actually caused by BritainÃ(TM)s desire to invade Iraq for oil
I can assert any number of things -- that doesn't make them true or historically accurate. Did the British also assassinate the Archduke as part of their evil plot to invade Iraq for oil?
The People aren't allowed to decide when wars start or end
The peoples representatives are, and regardless, in a Constitutional Republic such as ours the Government derives it's power from the consent of the governed. If the populace doesn't want to remain in Iraq than our Government should be taking steps to remove ourselves from that conflict.
The American public's view of the war in Iraq is deeply flawed and thus not credible
I agree. A majority of the American public thought that Saddam was linked to 9/11. A majority of the American public was led to believe that our security was imperiled and any minute now we'd be seeing a mushroom cloud over New York City. If our view of the war in Iraq is "deeply flawed" then, IMHO, you should look no further than the White House Briefing Room.
how in the world does that qualify them to determine when we should leave Iraq
Because the American people are opposed to the war and want it to end. This isn't an autocracy -- the opinions of the populace are actually supposed to matter in this country.
Slashdot Mirror
If the dude can't even keep from eating his foot or cowering to Nancy Reagan in the span of 3 days, how can we reasonably expect him to handle an ex-KGB agent who runs his country through a puppet and who is staging his return as that country's president (this time, probably for life)?
Because standing up to Putin won't cost him any votes in 2012, whereas offending Nancy Reagan very well could have?
I voted McCain; I was (and am) a fan of the pork-barrel spending cuts he wanted to implement
So what are you going to do to solve the other 98% of the Federal budget deficit after you get rid of earmarks? And what's pork? Most Americans would view stuff that their own Congressman brings home as "economic development" and stuff that the other 434 bring home as "pork". Might it just be that some earmarks actually serve a valid purpose and that purpose is lost somewhere in all the discussion about the abuse and excess?
Why was this marked Troll? I find it a very valid statement.
Because it was loaded down with hyperbole and violated Godwin's law?
What then would Bell Telephones obligations be?
Depends on which party is in control of the FCC/Washington and how well Bell hedged her bribes^Wcampaign contributions that year.
But the republicans didn't have a filibuster-proof majority in both houses during those six years.
A) They didn't need it, the Democrats were too spineless to oppose them anyway
B) The Democrats won't get it anyway, and if they do (they won't) then that's as good of a mandate as any out of this electorate. Certainly a better mandate than GWB's 51-49 re-election.
Yes, I am entirely sure of that. Having already read your biased and factually incorrect link before, it will not convince me otherwise.
*shrug*, I've looked at the body of evidence and I've concluded that she's a nutjob. Asking the town librarian if she could ban books and telling a local resident that man and dinosaurs walked the Earth together.
Draw your own conclusions but it's interesting to see at least three different sources for her fundamentalist beliefs.
One party in complete control of everything... bye bye remnants of democracy...
Eh, democracy survived the first six years of the GWB administration. Somehow I don't think the Democrats will do any worse.....
The actual number [pollingreport.com] is usually over 50%, depending on how the question is asked. In particular, over half of Americans support teaching Creationism alongside evolution in public schools.
See, it's the "alongside" part that I have a problem with. If you want to teach creationism in theology class then all the power to you. Hell, I'd sign my kids up for that class. It's when they start talking about teaching it in science class that I have issues.
Neither Palin nor McCain has ever expressed a desire to force either you or your children to follow their religious choices.
Are you sure about that?
which remove bluetooth capability just to prevent you from loading mp3s without buying a usb kit from them. Or won't let you use your mp3s as ringtones
Actually, like most DRM it's not particularly effective. At least with the Motorola's that they sell. It takes all of five minutes and a usb cable to bypass the DRM and load whatever media files you want onto your phone and use them for whatever purpose (ringtone) you desire.
I can't think of any company that has openly worked this hard to piss off it's customers.
I take it you don't live in an area with Comcast? ;)
Valve's forum accounts aren't linked. They're separate from the Steam Community, for the time being.
Fixed that for you.
The point is, they're not going to continue getting money if they keep screwing over, on a continuing basis, the people who give them the money.
Then how do you explain the fact that the cable and cellular companies are still in business? ;)
Ever hear of the Spanish American War [wikipedia.org] and the USS Maine?
How many people are going to bring this up with no understanding of what actually happened to the USS Maine? The Maine either hit a mine or suffered an internal explosion caused by a fire in her coal bunkers. Nobody knows for sure -- but no serious historian that I'm aware of has ever suggested that the United States deliberately blew her up.
Pro-war factions in the United States definitely took advantage of the explosion to advance their case for war against Spain but it's a far cry from that to saying that we arranged for the explosion to happen in the first place. I can't help but think of the nutjobs who think that Israel and/or the CIA arranged the 9/11 attacks.
This implies that people have to justify their existence or be exterminated on principle!
<sarcasm>Yes, that's exactly what I was implying. People who can't justify their existence need to be exterminated on principle, preferably starting with you.</sarcasm>
When US troops marched into Iraq and Afghanistan, halved the food production, killed or imprisioned hundreds of thousands of men, raped some women and created a desperate and improverished middle class, freely exploited by the multinationals moving in.... Did this act as a deterrent?
I won't discuss Iraq because I opposed that war from the beginning so I suspect we'd largely agree with each other. In the case of Afghanistan I don't really see that as being our fault. If the Taliban had been willing to hand the SOB over then we wouldn't have had to go into that country. War is hell -- nothing is ever going to change that.
I'm not sure why you even bring the romans into this. They were nasty and brutal in many ways and places, and I would not like a modern power to attempt to duplicate their behaviour or collapse.
I wouldn't want to see it either. Just pointing out that the game used to be played by very different rules. Hell, you don't even have to go back 2,000 years -- during WW2 we bombed enemy cities into the ground. As I said, war is hell. Best to bring all of your firepower into play and end it as quickly as possible.
I think this statement right here is what's wrong with the left-wing in America, in a nutshell.
There's a lot wrong with the left and the right-wing in this country. Both place ideology ahead of reality. Both are more interested in beating the other than they are in Governing. Both have convinced themselves that America will be destroyed if the other side wins -- and they are justified in using all manner of despicable tactics to prevent that from happening.
I always had issues with the far-right in this country but I never realized how similar the far-left was until I started watching Countdown and reading Dailykos. Fucking partisans will be the death of all of us.....
Your point is still valid though, we are way to worked up over 3K dead than should be warranted
It's a little bit more than just 3k murdered people. The destruction of the World Trade Center and subsequent disruption of the airline industry cost us billions of dollars. The long term economic damage to Lower Manhattan may well add billions more to that bill.
I guess I don't understand dismissing the impact of that day because it was "only" 3,000 people. I'm not a big fan of the way the Bush Administration handled 9/11 but trying to say that it was no big deal seems like stupidity from the opposite end of the scale.
Assuming that you're referring to 9/11, there's actually no evidence backing up your assertion. Would you care to try and prove that statement or will you demonstrate some integrity and retract it?
I'm a bit confused as to what you are claiming. Is your claim that there is no evidence linking OBL to the murders on 9/11? Do his own words convince you of the need to retract your own statement?
So your point is that the United States isn't pure and innocent? That's hardly news. My point was that the French doesn't exactly have a leg to stand on either -- nuclear testing, attacks on Allied harbors, colonialism, the little adventure with the Brits and Israelis in Suez, etc, etc, etc.
No, but we did attack *our own fucking ships* in a foreign harbor as an excuse to knock over a domino we ourselves set up which is pretty obviously much worse.
I'll assume you are referring to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Where in that incident did we attack our own ships? Our ships were approached by Vietnamese torpedo boats and some fire was briefly exchanged. The second "attack" was radar/sonar operator error by most accounts. I'm curious to know where we attacked our own ships in that incident?
That was called the Vietnam War if you pay as little attention to history as seems clear frrm your post.
I pay a lot of attention to history. Maybe you should pay some attention to your typing and/or spelling?
As others have pointed out, more americans die every day at the hands of impaired drivers than died in the 9/11 attacks...
3,000 people every day in car accidents? That's a million people per year. I think your numbers are slightly inflated a bit. In any case, I don't buy the "more people die in car accidents" line as an excuse to allow a murderer to remain at large. If you follow that logic I guess we shouldn't have tracked down the Beltway Snipers and brought them to justice -- I mean they only murdered 13 people and we all know that many more die each day in car accidents....
I think a sense of proportion is required.
Did I say it wasn't? Did I not say that we shouldn't have declared "war" on him?
As Ghandi, observed, the policy of 'an eye for an eye' eventually makes everyone blind.
Well if you want to be a pacifist, all the power to you. Personally I want the SOB that attacked my country to be punished for his crimes.
Um, because playing by the rules is the mark of a civilized people?
Better to bend/break the rules when fighting someone who doesn't follow them than to wind up dead because you played by the rules while your enemies weren't.
Perhaps you might want to re-read your Roman history, and find out why their empire crumbled. Something to do with too many foreign mis-adventures, not enough money to pay for it all, and incompetent leadership. Does any of that sound even remotely familiar to you?
And how is any of that relevant to the example that I gave? Did I advocate for foreign adventures? All I want to see is OBL brought to justice for his crimes. I don't particularly care if that justice takes the form of a murder trial or a bunker busting bomb. If it had been up to me we would have gone into Afghanistan with overwhelming force, captured/killed him and then left.
I see. Well then, what kind of seeing eye dog would you like?
I don't share your pacifist philosophy so I don't agree with this premise.
Umm, see Gulf of Tonkin and the USS Maine, just off the top of my head. Those weren't even ALLIES, they were our OWN!
A) Nobody knows for sure what happened to the Maine. The most likely cause was a coal fire that caused her magazines to explode. I've never seen any mainstream historian suggest that the explosion was deliberately arranged by the United States as a pretext to go to war.
B) Which ships were blown up in the Gulf of Tonkin incident?
So tell me, other than voting the rascals out, what recourse do the People have to end this war if they don't like it?
I suppose that would come down to the four boxes: soapbox, ballot box, jury box and ammo box. Items #1 and #2 clearly didn't work.... the Democrats took over Congress largely because of the backlash against the war but are too spineless to actually end it.
Our form of government has NEVER been about popular opinion, nor will it, nor should it!
Our Government isn't about popular opinion but if you don't see the problem with remaining at war when you've lost the support of the populace then I don't see much hope for convincing you of the merits of my position. The only reason we are still at war is because of the all-volunteer force -- the war doesn't even seem real unless you are a service member or family thereof. I actually liked Charlie Rangel's idea -- bring back the draft. That'll make the populace give a shit about when we send our sons and daughters into battle and ensure that a broad segment of society is carrying the weight.
The rest of us were asked to go shopping while our military was sent into the meat grinder of a country that posed zero threat to the United States. And please don't give me that crap about WMDs and links to terrorists -- if that was our criteria for going to war then why didn't we invade Pakistan, North Korea and Iran?
"Mr. Newman asserts World War I was actually caused by BritainÃ(TM)s desire to invade Iraq for oil
I can assert any number of things -- that doesn't make them true or historically accurate. Did the British also assassinate the Archduke as part of their evil plot to invade Iraq for oil?
The People aren't allowed to decide when wars start or end
The peoples representatives are, and regardless, in a Constitutional Republic such as ours the Government derives it's power from the consent of the governed. If the populace doesn't want to remain in Iraq than our Government should be taking steps to remove ourselves from that conflict.
The American public's view of the war in Iraq is deeply flawed and thus not credible
I agree. A majority of the American public thought that Saddam was linked to 9/11. A majority of the American public was led to believe that our security was imperiled and any minute now we'd be seeing a mushroom cloud over New York City. If our view of the war in Iraq is "deeply flawed" then, IMHO, you should look no further than the White House Briefing Room.
how in the world does that qualify them to determine when we should leave Iraq
Because the American people are opposed to the war and want it to end. This isn't an autocracy -- the opinions of the populace are actually supposed to matter in this country.