It's true that it was a factor, yes. It's also a factor for volcanic soil. Regardless, they were repeatedly devastated, and they kept coming back...
New Orleans is similar in being an extremely well-place port with access to fishing, oil, and river traffic. The economic benefits far outweigh the costs.
Perhaps we shouldn't rebuild on the lands that keep getting destroyed... I hear that's what they did in the days before governmental disaster relief.
Actually, that's not true. The Sumerians consistently rebuilt in the same spots after (constant) floods. Same with the Egyptians. The Romans did not abandon any of the cities around Pompeii (i.e. Capua). Many cities in Africa were completely rebuilt after disasters. The Yangtze floods a lot, and they rebuilt. The Japanese learned to build earthquake-proof buildings. Cultures everywhere still rebuild at the foot of volcanoes. The Indians/Sri Lankans rebuilt after typhoons/tsunamis.
While it's not a great idea, people certainly still do it. While most of them would wait for the city to stabilize naturally, a good location is a good location. New Orleans is a fairly unbeatable location for a port (like Alexandria, which is still there after half the damn went into the Med), and any culture in their right mind would rebuild.
The possible loss of human life in the future, while an awful possibility, does not preclude them rebuilding.
It took Israel 3 years to pull out of the Sinai after the peace treaty was signed, and they had occupied it for 9 years.
You can lead a man to water, but you can't make him drink. I don't think that installing a democratic government in Iraq is going to change the situation there at all. If they get fed up, they'll demand a change, and better their society (Lebanon, happened in Iran during the last election). I don't think it will make the region more stable, nor less likely to breed terrorism. We invaded a country halfway around the globe for no discernable reason (to them), killed civilians (500 LB precision bombs dropped on hideouts across the street from schools/hospitals still damage them), and we were partly dictating the terms of their constitution.
Hatred of the US in the region won't disappear until we're more magnanimous. US helicopters are used to strafe crowds in Gaza, for instance. Until we give the countries in the region an equal footing (i.e. not just blanket support of Israel), it won't get better. If there's one thing that won't change there, it's their hatred of the Jews. If ANY other country had attacked a US ship in international waters, it would have been war. If any other country had threatened to bomb a nuclear reactor in a foreign country and assassinate it's leaders we would have been championing a Security Council resolution. If any other country had allowed its troops to ban the Red Cross and run over US citizens with main battle tanks, there would have been embargos. If any other country had perpetrated rocket attacks from Apaches in front of a mosque against a man in a wheelchair surrounded by children, if any other country were building a new Berlin wall, if any other country were...
See where I'm going with this?
I have no beef with Israel personally (besides the human rights violations), but it's clear favoritism to one country in the region from the world's only remaining superpower (until China and the EU come into their own). THIS is why they hate us. Relations in the Middle East were fine before all this crap.
That being said, I feel a bit as if the war is all a show. Everyone's focused on it while they gut the EPA, federal funding for public schools, the library system, and anything else they can. They have an agenda, and they have all the wrong people in all the wrong places (why is a former mining company executive the Undersecretary of the Interior for mining?). The tax rebates W gave out back in 2002? (whenever Gray Davis got ejected) could have balanced the budget of every state (every state had a defecit, and only Connecticut is not required by their constitution to balance it) and had money leftover. Instead every state froze wages, or cut healthcare for the poor, or funding for schools, as well as raising taxes. I realize the state and federal governments are seperate entities, but it should have been different.
Because school buses are not private property. Neither are Greyhounds. They need appropriate authorization from the companies (be they ISDs or otherwise) that operate them before than can take them. The authorities are not allowed to be lawless even when everybody else is.
You missed my point. The Iraq war wasn't needed to prevent a conventional attack on America by the Saddam's government but there are many ways that it could have prevented attacks on the US. Keeping the terrorists busy, showing the liberals middle-east that the US is serious about liberisation of the middle east. In the long term, stability in the middle east will mean less attacks. In the short term, the terrorists are busy in Iraq.
Yes, the terrorists are busy, for the short term . That's the worry. Previously, they were sent to Chechnya or another war zone to get experience. Very few of the insurgents in Iraq are actually Iraqi nationals. I fear what we're doing is training them to fight us in a few years, and training them to hate us. Countries over there (which are far from liberal, Lebanon aside) don't want us sticking our nose in from across the world.
If we were serious about the 'liberation' of the Middle East, we should have started a long time ago. Israel should not have been allowed to hold the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula decades after treaty. Saudi Arabia is one of the most autocratic, restrictive countries on Earth. They're our 2nd closest ally (after Israel) in the Middle East. Why didn't we stop Mbutu, or Pol Pot, or the genocide in the Sudan? We're showing we care about our interests. I can't honestly say why we're there (not for the oil, as they certainly would have expected almost total loss of the oil fields from the first war), but it's not for liberation.
You can't seriously believe that do you? The Taliban have a fundamentalist islamic vision and so does bin laden. I really don't see how you can think they were just "paid" to look the other way.
We actually have a fairly good picture of the organization. Similar hijackings were planned in the late 90s (stopped in the Phillipines before they happened). We have a good idea of the chain of command. The Taliban was not involved in planning. They were superfluous for funding, since bin Laden is independently wealthy, and the money trail doesn't lead to them anyway. Taliban troops may have assisted training camps, but they weren't involved in direct action.
The soviet situation was different. Firstly, they didn't succeed in installing a government and getting 9 out of 10 eligible votes to vote and secondly they didn't have another superpower (america) helping the other side.
Perhaps you need to review what happened with the Soviets. They did install a government, though there was no voting. They fought Mujahideen rebels, much as we are today. They didn't control much outside of Kabul, much as we are today. The big difference is that we DON'T have another superpower (the USSR was a superpower at the time, but I'll assume you made a typo and meant 'did' instead of 'didn't') supporting the other side (as we did, supporting the rebels against the Soviets).
I agree that it isn't ideal but good things take time. The situation under the taliban wasn't much better (warlords, drug lords etc). The taliban had "methods" for dealing with drugs which "liberal" governments wouldn't agree with.
Anyway, I just can't understand people who run around claming that afghanistan has been destroyed by the US and that they're worse off. I really can't.
I didn't say things are worse than they were, I said they don't have much infrastructure (we bombed out the railways and roads, which are still largely in ruins). Things are better than they were, but the US populace as a whole doesn't have much patience for nationbuilding, and I have a feeling we're going to end up pulling out before we stablize the region. At some point, and probably soon, we'll get sick of seeing casualty reports from rebels that just don't seem to go away and pull out. That'll leave them in the same place they were in before we got there.
I actually said the worst hurricance, not the strongest. Katrina was Cat5 over the gulf, and maximum sustained winds were 175 MPH with gusting up to 205 to 210, according to the National Hurricane Center and NASA.
Yes, like I said, it's been under sea level since they built the levees (after flooding), but it was not built below sea level. In any case, you can't simply abandon a city of 1,000,000 that routes ~25% of the nations energy because of that.
I've also read the National Disaster Plan (former military), though that was before the creation of DHS. The governor should have asked sooner, but even without an immediate request for aid, I don't see why they weren't prepping like the DoD.
It was a failure on all levels. The NOPD has been rife with corruption for as long as I've been alive, and buying new radios just wasn't on the agenda. That being said, they -did- do the best with what they had when it hit. While corruption and failure to prepare properly (as in the radios, not necessarily the supplies) certainly contributed to the situation, they stepped up to the plate a lot faster than the federal government. The state seems to be impotent.
I don't honestly know why they didn't prepare better. I don't know why he didn't commandeer buses (school buses were probably out of the scope of his authority to take, though). A lot of people didn't expect it to be as bad as it was in NO, and some of it can be attributed to that. It's a failure in every possible way, but my point was that once the scope of the disaster was realized, it took too long.
I don't expect the guard to be waiting at the borders to every state when a hurricane hits, but when it's a Cat5 (as Katrina was until shortly before landfall), they certainly should be. They were for Andrew. It took about a day for troops to make it there. Ft. Polk is a 6 hour drive from NO, and it's the seat of the JROC as well as OpFor. With DoD directives in place, a federal state of disaster should have been declared IMMEDIATELY, like it has been for every other major (and a few minor) hurricane in the last decade, and aid would have been able to make it much faster.
I think the problem is that the buck never stops. Ray Nagin will blame it on the fed, who'll blame it on the LA governor, who'll blame it on FEMA, etc. Somebody's going to have to take the fall for it eventually, and we'll just have to see who. I think Something Awful says it much better than I could...
Sorry, and the vaunted Republican leadership is doing what? Fly fishing? Seeing plays? They're both at fault. If it were a Democratic president, the Republicans would be doing the same thing and you know it. It's a choice between 2 bad parties. You can't win. Neither one really gives a damn about anything other than staying in office, getting rich, and having a bridge named after them.
I suggest you see the definition of ad-hominem first. You attacked the Democrats, which had nothing to do with the facts. I attacked your arguments (except for the jibe at the end).
Did you see any terrorist attacks before we invaded them (9/11 and the attacks in '93 (which were planned stateside) aside)?
You didn't?
It's a logical fallacy to assume that because we invaded, that's what stopped the attacks. It's 8-10 years between attacks, and it almost certainly isn't over yet. Tell me that in 10 years, and I'll accede to you being right.
Because they did not have the ability to do so. If Iraq had been able to strike the United States, they certainly would have done so in the 10 years between wars. As stated, Saddam was an incredibly secular leader. He only really cared about staying rich and surviving unharassed. He would not have jeopardized it to attack the US.
And he funded suicided bombers in Israel.
Yes, he paid the families of the suicide bombers who attacked in Israel. Everybody in the Middle East hates the Israelis, even westernized countries like Lebanon, and it's not a secret. He paid the families posthumously, though. It wasn't as if he was recruiting them. He wasn't a great guy by any means, but terrorist leader he wasn't.
Yeah, like that's how they would choose to attack the US. Has nothing to do with them funding and homing the terrorists.
See above. bin Laden did do that in Afghanistan, but he could just as easily be doing it now from Chechnya, Pakistan, or wherever the hell he is. The Taliban wasn't really involved in any manner other than getting paid to look the other way.
I said they were unable to attack the US through military means because that's precisely the threat that our government offered and so many people seemed to believe. Remember, though, everybody looks out for number one. The government leaders in Afghanistan and Iraq had no more desire to get ousted, impoverished, and possibly killed than any other leaders anywhere. National governments do not attack the United States as it stands right now. We didn't even catch the Al-Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan, they just moved. Why do you think we're any safer now?
Or maybe the YOU are learning their tactics? I mean, if they attack the US they aren't going to be attacking in a conventional way and therefore aren't going to be confronted by an ARMY force are they?
On the other hand, the military are understanding how the extremists work and at the same time are seeding liberty in countries which could certainly benefit from it. Look at Afghanistan for an example. They've made amazing progress in such a short amount of time and many countries (and the UN) are ensuring success. Admittedly Iraq is not as successful (yet).
Yes, WE are learning their tactics. They like to ambush us in the hills. Couldn't we have learned that from any insurgency or guerilla operations? Make a case study out of what happened to the Soviets in the 80s in Afghanistan. Same effect. All we're learning is that they're very hard to root out and they like to shoot at us. On the other hand, they are learning how we operate, what equipment we use, what tactics we use, when we use airpower, and what we have at our disposal.
Yes, we're seeding liberty all right. We are doing good things in Afghanistan, no doubt. Women have a lot more rights, and there is more infrastructure (though a lot of that is the Caspian Oil Pipeline). Unfortunately, the last estimates I heard from my friends in the military (who were deployed there) were that we maintained a functional control zone of 100m around Kabul. The rest is provisional warlords and druglords.
Rather than making ad-hominem attacks about Democrats, consider the facts.
New Orleans was not below sea level when they built it. The floodplain kept it above until fairly recently, and all the canals they dug to allow oil traffic allowed much more of it to silt out, bringing it down even further.
Initial help DID come from state and local governments. The local government was essentially obliterated by the scope of the damage, but the police force has done what they can. Martial law was requested long before help arrived. Communications infrastructure is completely gone and it's virtually impossible to coordinate.
I'm glad Ray Nagin is blasting the federal government. At least he's telling it like it is on the ground, which is a perspective you can't get from a flyby in Air Force One. I work for a company that provides real-time weather data. We KNEW there were 210 mph gusts before it hit. It's the worst hurricane of the century, and we were aware of it. Why was federal aid not waiting? FEMA classified a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as the 3rd worst possible disaster. The Pentagon was putting paperwork through days before the hurricane hit. Why was FEMA not more prepared?
Think about New York in the days following 9/11. It was a tragedy, sure, but it was localized to about one city block. If they had leveled an area the size of New Orleans, and made it virtually unhabitable (through flooding/fires/collapse of the subway system/whatever), the reaction there would have been about the same. The fact that somebody has an [R] by their name on TV does not make them infallible, and any politician in New Orleans, regardless of credo, would have been in the same situation as we have right now. They knew approximately 24 hours in advance that a class 4/5 hurricane was going to hit New Orleans. A week is bullshit. Do you think they should evactuate as soon as a tropical depression forms in the Gulf because it -might- hit New Orleans?
Your rhetoric does not a coherent argument make. Not every conservative is stupid, but most stupid people are conservative. -John Stuart Mill. I think you fit the bill. If you don't agree, think before you post next time.
The deferred compensation is his salary. They spread it out over a few years to avoid taxes.
I should have said, Cheney is not making any money off of his stock options. It's true that he still has stock that expires in 2007, but all after-tax proceeds are forfeit while he's in office.
I dislike the administration as much as the next guy, but Cheney has nothing invested in the way, financially. Halliburton is getting an assload of money without having to bid for contracts like everybody else, but Cheney hasn't gotten the kickbacks (yet). It's very possible that he'll just go back to Halliburton when he gets out of the government and get a giant bonus, but it's not happening now.
Why is it small potatoes exactly? The cost in human lives and property damage is far higher, and the situation is worse in every measurable way.
The war didn't prevent any attacks on the US. I'm sure Saddamn would have loved to take a crack at us, if he could, but he was an extremely secular leader (not associated with the religious nutjobs in Al-Qaeda) who would not have jeopardized his situation through a terrorist attack on the US.
SCUDs didn't have nearly the range to hit the US. They could barely hit Israel.
Afghanistan is a warzone with no infrastructure (we destroyed it all) largely controlled by regional warlords.
Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq had the navy or airpower to attack the US. Period. All we're doing is giving foreign nationals (most of the terrorists in either country are from Saudi, Pakistan, and other countries) experience fighting that they would have gotten in Chechnya before so they can hit us harder next time once they know our tactics. Stop posting bullshit.
I know you can't bother reading the articles, but not even the review? The book covers OGL 2.0, and the Orange Book (which covers vertex/pixel/fragment shaders) if alluded to several times as well as directly referenced with a clear explanation of what it is.
Comments on our "Orwellian" government are worthless. If the DoD was going to sell/give this information to other goverment agencies, why wouldn't they simply get it from the IRS (also Federal) or your local DMV (local/state, and they have no jurisdiction whatsoever over this without subpoenaing for it with a justifiable legal cause). Tracking you is not a -bad- thing. Most of us have probably registered for Selective Service already, so we're in a database of some kind. This is useful for tracking "undesirables" (as in undesirable for service, not terrorist sympathizers or anything).
Studies have shown that an all-volunteer military is significantly more effective than a drafted one, because they WANT to serve their country. Compulsory service (ala Israel) works if people are patriotic/worried enough about their national wellbeing. We, clearly, are not one of those nations.
The idea that all your information suddenly becomes available for search by any goverment agency (or even most of DoD) is silly. Goverment agencies are massive things, and everything is very segregated, not only because of departmental pride/antagonism, but because a lot of it is unnecessary/invasive if everyone has access to it. Note: NSA/Homeland Security probably has all this information and more (anybody else remember the massive ramdisk they got?), but your average recruiter doesn't even have access to your school/medical records, much less tax info or anything else that's been suggested.
Riiiggghhttt.... A government shill? Probably not. An idiot if he were actually involved? Certainly.
The nature of the work at Groom Lake requires secrecy. While abusive politics and unsafe working condiitons may be part of every military installation, they still need to abide by certain regulations. Goverment records of a base that actually exists and tracking what comes out of it (byproducts, etc) could be enough to comprimise the secrecy of the work that goes on there. So, it serves its purpose of being a secret research facility by staying off the books.
Secondly, if he were actually a former-employee or the like, you can bet your ass he had a TSSCI (Top Secret-Secret Compartmentalized Information) clearance. That means he's fucked. Number one, he'd need to submit anything press (books, interviews, etc) related to the NSA/CIA for checking first, so they could take out any references to information that isn't declassified yet (75 years is standard for declassification, not even the existence of Groom Lake). If not, he can be charged with a wide range of charges, which amount to a lot of time in a friendly Federal Prison. Secondly, because of the nature of the clearance (and it doesnn't get much better, all our classified information is compartmentalized) means that we wouldn't have access to a lot of the details he supposedly verified, unless he were pretty far up the chain of command, at which point, he's easily identifiable to the governemnt.
Well, the flight patterns by observation of the Aurora bomber would disagree with you there. Regardless of the fact that it's existence may have been acknowledged (though I would doubt that, considering the employees were unable to sue the government over a location that didn't exist over their lung problems from burning toxic waste), it doesn't matter. Just because the location may now officially exist, it doesn't mean that their projects are suddenly out in the open does it? It can still be used for experimental (read: secret) research.
Yes, you -could- assume that. However, being as they were MAPPING A GOVERNMENT INSTALLATION, I doubt if that defense would hold up in court.
Anyway, common law only applies to private citizens and organizations, not to the governemnt.
Start shooting? Yes.
Knowing what the government is doing with your tax dollars is not one of you unalienable rights (not that any of those are really secure anymore, but that's another rant). This is not an act of civil disobedience.
Those civilians would be crossing a line that says "If you cross this line, you will be shot." Our government keeps certain things hidden from us to maintain our superiority. Hell, there are a lot of things we don't use in time of war because we don't want foreign militaries to get a hold of them. Expect that military CS, beanbag guns, and possibly lethal measures (read: claymores and a Spectre gunship if it's needed.
Also, expect that the leaders of this gathering would be sent to a chain-link cage in Guantanamo as insurrectionists or terrorists.
I didn't intend for an implicatin that we pay less than other countries for OPEC oil. What I meant was that our oil prices are far less than those in the rest of the world because of US refinery gain. We net more usable petruleum products, including gasoline, per barrel of crude than anyone else in the world. Combined with our national crude production and our import levels, we are the worlds largest producer of refined oil. It stands to reason that our oil would be far cheaper than everyone else in the world.
Worldwide Oil Production
Beyond that, I wouldn't say we've taken out the major threat to stabilization. We ARE the major threat to stabilization. Well, us and Israel. While there is no doubt that Saddam was evil, I wouldn't necessarily say that Iraq is better off, nor is the Mideast more stable. If you don't agree, just follow the news, preferably the BBC or some international news source that isn't a propaganda outlet for our government, and watch the "stability" in the region when we pass power to a regional government. If the Kurds want an autonomous state, a lot of Iran and Turkey goes with 'em, and it'll be a major war in the Gulf. Even if they don't, expect Chaos in Iraq after we leave, their opportunistic neighbors (Iran, mainly) will fill the power vacuum and destroy whatever we may have managed to create.
The majority of our oil comes from Canada, Saudi, Mexico, and Venezuela. Expect Saudi to not be quite so friendly this year after we accused them of harboring terrorists... 2/5ths of our oil comes from OPEC, and they've been putting out some pretty low numbers for production in the past few years. However, there are certain countries in OPEC (Venezuela, Saudi) that do their best to stop OPEC from finalizing yearly production too low. OPEC did it last year, and Venezuela produced extra crude for us.
1/5th of our oil comes from sources in the Gulf. There is no conspiracy by the Arabs to jack up our oil prices. Everyone else in the world pays more than we do. It's the backbone of their economy, and they treat it as such.
Yeah... I can feel maturity just oozing from you. I can tell that you paid a lot of thought to what I wrote. I'm not saying that nobody copies anything, what I'm saying is that every Matrix fanboy raves about how "nobody's ever done anything like this before." I read your summation of the movie, though I saw it several weeks ago (benefits of working IT for a large film exhibitor), and it exemplifies my original post. Flashy special effects do not a good movie make. I don't care about the sunglasses, or the guns, or the sentinels, my problem is that nobody seems to realize that the Wachowski brothers are simply rehashing other people's stories. Had they given credit where it was due, I wouldn't have a beef.
Had every Fantasy author merely ripped of Tolkien's PREMISE/PLOT, that would be a problem. They do not, however, whereas the Wachowski brothers merely added an unheard level of preachy, "philosophical" bullshit to the last two films in their trilogy.
Get out of your parent's basement and educate yourself, instead of merely trolling with asinine mockery about how real-life objects were used in movies.
Has anybody else read any novels by William Gibson? Or any kind of cyberpunk at all? Admittedly, the movies based off of Gibson's own works suck (see Johnny Mnemonic, another Keanu Reeves film), the Matrix has, as a whole, done nothing but rip off elements from Neuromancer, "the red pill" from Total Recall, of all movies, and numerous elements from other stories. Those who feel that these coincidences are a "homage" are advised to consider how well blatent plagarism like this would go off in the world of software copyrights.
While it is nice to see a cyberpunk movie, I would merely like to see credit given where it is due, and to stop hearing the incessant chatter of those who feel that the Wachoskis are visionary should see Bound or Assassins. Both movies are so-so, but far from the kind of image that they have projected onto themselves with the Matrix. Flashy special effects/kung fu can only get you so far. Let's see how they do with King Conan.
Slashdot Mirror
It's true that it was a factor, yes. It's also a factor for volcanic soil. Regardless, they were repeatedly devastated, and they kept coming back...
New Orleans is similar in being an extremely well-place port with access to fishing, oil, and river traffic. The economic benefits far outweigh the costs.
Perhaps we shouldn't rebuild on the lands that keep getting destroyed... I hear that's what they did in the days before governmental disaster relief.
Actually, that's not true. The Sumerians consistently rebuilt in the same spots after (constant) floods. Same with the Egyptians. The Romans did not abandon any of the cities around Pompeii (i.e. Capua). Many cities in Africa were completely rebuilt after disasters. The Yangtze floods a lot, and they rebuilt. The Japanese learned to build earthquake-proof buildings. Cultures everywhere still rebuild at the foot of volcanoes. The Indians/Sri Lankans rebuilt after typhoons/tsunamis.
While it's not a great idea, people certainly still do it. While most of them would wait for the city to stabilize naturally, a good location is a good location. New Orleans is a fairly unbeatable location for a port (like Alexandria, which is still there after half the damn went into the Med), and any culture in their right mind would rebuild.
The possible loss of human life in the future, while an awful possibility, does not preclude them rebuilding.
It took Israel 3 years to pull out of the Sinai after the peace treaty was signed, and they had occupied it for 9 years.
You can lead a man to water, but you can't make him drink. I don't think that installing a democratic government in Iraq is going to change the situation there at all. If they get fed up, they'll demand a change, and better their society (Lebanon, happened in Iran during the last election). I don't think it will make the region more stable, nor less likely to breed terrorism. We invaded a country halfway around the globe for no discernable reason (to them), killed civilians (500 LB precision bombs dropped on hideouts across the street from schools/hospitals still damage them), and we were partly dictating the terms of their constitution.
Hatred of the US in the region won't disappear until we're more magnanimous. US helicopters are used to strafe crowds in Gaza, for instance. Until we give the countries in the region an equal footing (i.e. not just blanket support of Israel), it won't get better. If there's one thing that won't change there, it's their hatred of the Jews. If ANY other country had attacked a US ship in international waters, it would have been war. If any other country had threatened to bomb a nuclear reactor in a foreign country and assassinate it's leaders we would have been championing a Security Council resolution. If any other country had allowed its troops to ban the Red Cross and run over US citizens with main battle tanks, there would have been embargos. If any other country had perpetrated rocket attacks from Apaches in front of a mosque against a man in a wheelchair surrounded by children, if any other country were building a new Berlin wall, if any other country were...
See where I'm going with this?
I have no beef with Israel personally (besides the human rights violations), but it's clear favoritism to one country in the region from the world's only remaining superpower (until China and the EU come into their own). THIS is why they hate us. Relations in the Middle East were fine before all this crap.
That being said, I feel a bit as if the war is all a show. Everyone's focused on it while they gut the EPA, federal funding for public schools, the library system, and anything else they can. They have an agenda, and they have all the wrong people in all the wrong places (why is a former mining company executive the Undersecretary of the Interior for mining?). The tax rebates W gave out back in 2002? (whenever Gray Davis got ejected) could have balanced the budget of every state (every state had a defecit, and only Connecticut is not required by their constitution to balance it) and had money leftover. Instead every state froze wages, or cut healthcare for the poor, or funding for schools, as well as raising taxes. I realize the state and federal governments are seperate entities, but it should have been different.
My $.02.
Because school buses are not private property. Neither are Greyhounds. They need appropriate authorization from the companies (be they ISDs or otherwise) that operate them before than can take them. The authorities are not allowed to be lawless even when everybody else is.
You missed my point. The Iraq war wasn't needed to prevent a conventional attack on America by the Saddam's government but there are many ways that it could have prevented attacks on the US. Keeping the terrorists busy, showing the liberals middle-east that the US is serious about liberisation of the middle east. In the long term, stability in the middle east will mean less attacks. In the short term, the terrorists are busy in Iraq.
Yes, the terrorists are busy, for the short term . That's the worry. Previously, they were sent to Chechnya or another war zone to get experience. Very few of the insurgents in Iraq are actually Iraqi nationals. I fear what we're doing is training them to fight us in a few years, and training them to hate us. Countries over there (which are far from liberal, Lebanon aside) don't want us sticking our nose in from across the world.
If we were serious about the 'liberation' of the Middle East, we should have started a long time ago. Israel should not have been allowed to hold the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula decades after treaty. Saudi Arabia is one of the most autocratic, restrictive countries on Earth. They're our 2nd closest ally (after Israel) in the Middle East. Why didn't we stop Mbutu, or Pol Pot, or the genocide in the Sudan? We're showing we care about our interests. I can't honestly say why we're there (not for the oil, as they certainly would have expected almost total loss of the oil fields from the first war), but it's not for liberation.
You can't seriously believe that do you? The Taliban have a fundamentalist islamic vision and so does bin laden. I really don't see how you can think they were just "paid" to look the other way.
We actually have a fairly good picture of the organization. Similar hijackings were planned in the late 90s (stopped in the Phillipines before they happened). We have a good idea of the chain of command. The Taliban was not involved in planning. They were superfluous for funding, since bin Laden is independently wealthy, and the money trail doesn't lead to them anyway. Taliban troops may have assisted training camps, but they weren't involved in direct action.
The soviet situation was different. Firstly, they didn't succeed in installing a government and getting 9 out of 10 eligible votes to vote and secondly they didn't have another superpower (america) helping the other side.
Perhaps you need to review what happened with the Soviets. They did install a government, though there was no voting. They fought Mujahideen rebels, much as we are today. They didn't control much outside of Kabul, much as we are today. The big difference is that we DON'T have another superpower (the USSR was a superpower at the time, but I'll assume you made a typo and meant 'did' instead of 'didn't') supporting the other side (as we did, supporting the rebels against the Soviets).
I agree that it isn't ideal but good things take time. The situation under the taliban wasn't much better (warlords, drug lords etc). The taliban had "methods" for dealing with drugs which "liberal" governments wouldn't agree with.
Anyway, I just can't understand people who run around claming that afghanistan has been destroyed by the US and that they're worse off. I really can't.
I didn't say things are worse than they were, I said they don't have much infrastructure (we bombed out the railways and roads, which are still largely in ruins). Things are better than they were, but the US populace as a whole doesn't have much patience for nationbuilding, and I have a feeling we're going to end up pulling out before we stablize the region. At some point, and probably soon, we'll get sick of seeing casualty reports from rebels that just don't seem to go away and pull out. That'll leave them in the same place they were in before we got there.
I actually said the worst hurricance, not the strongest. Katrina was Cat5 over the gulf, and maximum sustained winds were 175 MPH with gusting up to 205 to 210, according to the National Hurricane Center and NASA.
Yes, like I said, it's been under sea level since they built the levees (after flooding), but it was not built below sea level. In any case, you can't simply abandon a city of 1,000,000 that routes ~25% of the nations energy because of that.
I've also read the National Disaster Plan (former military), though that was before the creation of DHS. The governor should have asked sooner, but even without an immediate request for aid, I don't see why they weren't prepping like the DoD.
It was a failure on all levels. The NOPD has been rife with corruption for as long as I've been alive, and buying new radios just wasn't on the agenda. That being said, they -did- do the best with what they had when it hit. While corruption and failure to prepare properly (as in the radios, not necessarily the supplies) certainly contributed to the situation, they stepped up to the plate a lot faster than the federal government. The state seems to be impotent.
I don't honestly know why they didn't prepare better. I don't know why he didn't commandeer buses (school buses were probably out of the scope of his authority to take, though). A lot of people didn't expect it to be as bad as it was in NO, and some of it can be attributed to that. It's a failure in every possible way, but my point was that once the scope of the disaster was realized, it took too long.
I don't expect the guard to be waiting at the borders to every state when a hurricane hits, but when it's a Cat5 (as Katrina was until shortly before landfall), they certainly should be. They were for Andrew. It took about a day for troops to make it there. Ft. Polk is a 6 hour drive from NO, and it's the seat of the JROC as well as OpFor. With DoD directives in place, a federal state of disaster should have been declared IMMEDIATELY, like it has been for every other major (and a few minor) hurricane in the last decade, and aid would have been able to make it much faster.
I think the problem is that the buck never stops. Ray Nagin will blame it on the fed, who'll blame it on the LA governor, who'll blame it on FEMA, etc. Somebody's going to have to take the fall for it eventually, and we'll just have to see who. I think Something Awful says it much better than I could...
Sorry, and the vaunted Republican leadership is doing what? Fly fishing? Seeing plays? They're both at fault. If it were a Democratic president, the Republicans would be doing the same thing and you know it. It's a choice between 2 bad parties. You can't win. Neither one really gives a damn about anything other than staying in office, getting rich, and having a bridge named after them.
I suggest you see the definition of ad-hominem first. You attacked the Democrats, which had nothing to do with the facts. I attacked your arguments (except for the jibe at the end).
Did you see any terrorist attacks before we invaded them (9/11 and the attacks in '93 (which were planned stateside) aside)?
You didn't?
It's a logical fallacy to assume that because we invaded, that's what stopped the attacks. It's 8-10 years between attacks, and it almost certainly isn't over yet. Tell me that in 10 years, and I'll accede to you being right.
And you know that how?
Because they did not have the ability to do so. If Iraq had been able to strike the United States, they certainly would have done so in the 10 years between wars. As stated, Saddam was an incredibly secular leader. He only really cared about staying rich and surviving unharassed. He would not have jeopardized it to attack the US.
And he funded suicided bombers in Israel.
Yes, he paid the families of the suicide bombers who attacked in Israel. Everybody in the Middle East hates the Israelis, even westernized countries like Lebanon, and it's not a secret. He paid the families posthumously, though. It wasn't as if he was recruiting them. He wasn't a great guy by any means, but terrorist leader he wasn't.
Yeah, like that's how they would choose to attack the US. Has nothing to do with them funding and homing the terrorists.
See above. bin Laden did do that in Afghanistan, but he could just as easily be doing it now from Chechnya, Pakistan, or wherever the hell he is. The Taliban wasn't really involved in any manner other than getting paid to look the other way.
I said they were unable to attack the US through military means because that's precisely the threat that our government offered and so many people seemed to believe. Remember, though, everybody looks out for number one. The government leaders in Afghanistan and Iraq had no more desire to get ousted, impoverished, and possibly killed than any other leaders anywhere. National governments do not attack the United States as it stands right now. We didn't even catch the Al-Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan, they just moved. Why do you think we're any safer now?
Or maybe the YOU are learning their tactics? I mean, if they attack the US they aren't going to be attacking in a conventional way and therefore aren't going to be confronted by an ARMY force are they?
On the other hand, the military are understanding how the extremists work and at the same time are seeding liberty in countries which could certainly benefit from it. Look at Afghanistan for an example. They've made amazing progress in such a short amount of time and many countries (and the UN) are ensuring success. Admittedly Iraq is not as successful (yet).
Yes, WE are learning their tactics. They like to ambush us in the hills. Couldn't we have learned that from any insurgency or guerilla operations? Make a case study out of what happened to the Soviets in the 80s in Afghanistan. Same effect. All we're learning is that they're very hard to root out and they like to shoot at us. On the other hand, they are learning how we operate, what equipment we use, what tactics we use, when we use airpower, and what we have at our disposal.
Yes, we're seeding liberty all right. We are doing good things in Afghanistan, no doubt. Women have a lot more rights, and there is more infrastructure (though a lot of that is the Caspian Oil Pipeline). Unfortunately, the last estimates I heard from my friends in the military (who were deployed there) were that we maintained a functional control zone of 100m around Kabul. The rest is provisional warlords and druglords.
Try this site instead it has less propaganda
Rather than making ad-hominem attacks about Democrats, consider the facts.
New Orleans was not below sea level when they built it. The floodplain kept it above until fairly recently, and all the canals they dug to allow oil traffic allowed much more of it to silt out, bringing it down even further.
Initial help DID come from state and local governments. The local government was essentially obliterated by the scope of the damage, but the police force has done what they can. Martial law was requested long before help arrived. Communications infrastructure is completely gone and it's virtually impossible to coordinate.
I'm glad Ray Nagin is blasting the federal government. At least he's telling it like it is on the ground, which is a perspective you can't get from a flyby in Air Force One. I work for a company that provides real-time weather data. We KNEW there were 210 mph gusts before it hit. It's the worst hurricane of the century, and we were aware of it. Why was federal aid not waiting? FEMA classified a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as the 3rd worst possible disaster. The Pentagon was putting paperwork through days before the hurricane hit. Why was FEMA not more prepared?
Think about New York in the days following 9/11. It was a tragedy, sure, but it was localized to about one city block. If they had leveled an area the size of New Orleans, and made it virtually unhabitable (through flooding/fires/collapse of the subway system/whatever), the reaction there would have been about the same. The fact that somebody has an [R] by their name on TV does not make them infallible, and any politician in New Orleans, regardless of credo, would have been in the same situation as we have right now. They knew approximately 24 hours in advance that a class 4/5 hurricane was going to hit New Orleans. A week is bullshit. Do you think they should evactuate as soon as a tropical depression forms in the Gulf because it -might- hit New Orleans?
Your rhetoric does not a coherent argument make. Not every conservative is stupid, but most stupid people are conservative. -John Stuart Mill. I think you fit the bill. If you don't agree, think before you post next time.
The deferred compensation is his salary. They spread it out over a few years to avoid taxes. I should have said, Cheney is not making any money off of his stock options. It's true that he still has stock that expires in 2007, but all after-tax proceeds are forfeit while he's in office.
I dislike the administration as much as the next guy, but Cheney has nothing invested in the way, financially. Halliburton is getting an assload of money without having to bid for contracts like everybody else, but Cheney hasn't gotten the kickbacks (yet). It's very possible that he'll just go back to Halliburton when he gets out of the government and get a giant bonus, but it's not happening now.
Why is it small potatoes exactly? The cost in human lives and property damage is far higher, and the situation is worse in every measurable way. The war didn't prevent any attacks on the US. I'm sure Saddamn would have loved to take a crack at us, if he could, but he was an extremely secular leader (not associated with the religious nutjobs in Al-Qaeda) who would not have jeopardized his situation through a terrorist attack on the US. SCUDs didn't have nearly the range to hit the US. They could barely hit Israel. Afghanistan is a warzone with no infrastructure (we destroyed it all) largely controlled by regional warlords. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq had the navy or airpower to attack the US. Period. All we're doing is giving foreign nationals (most of the terrorists in either country are from Saudi, Pakistan, and other countries) experience fighting that they would have gotten in Chechnya before so they can hit us harder next time once they know our tactics. Stop posting bullshit.
Cheney no longer has stock in Halliburton. Seriously, though, I haven't seen Cheney since the campaign.
I know you can't bother reading the articles, but not even the review? The book covers OGL 2.0, and the Orange Book (which covers vertex/pixel/fragment shaders) if alluded to several times as well as directly referenced with a clear explanation of what it is.
Comments on our "Orwellian" government are worthless. If the DoD was going to sell/give this information to other goverment agencies, why wouldn't they simply get it from the IRS (also Federal) or your local DMV (local/state, and they have no jurisdiction whatsoever over this without subpoenaing for it with a justifiable legal cause). Tracking you is not a -bad- thing. Most of us have probably registered for Selective Service already, so we're in a database of some kind. This is useful for tracking "undesirables" (as in undesirable for service, not terrorist sympathizers or anything). Studies have shown that an all-volunteer military is significantly more effective than a drafted one, because they WANT to serve their country. Compulsory service (ala Israel) works if people are patriotic/worried enough about their national wellbeing. We, clearly, are not one of those nations. The idea that all your information suddenly becomes available for search by any goverment agency (or even most of DoD) is silly. Goverment agencies are massive things, and everything is very segregated, not only because of departmental pride/antagonism, but because a lot of it is unnecessary/invasive if everyone has access to it. Note: NSA/Homeland Security probably has all this information and more (anybody else remember the massive ramdisk they got?), but your average recruiter doesn't even have access to your school/medical records, much less tax info or anything else that's been suggested.
Riiiggghhttt.... A government shill? Probably not. An idiot if he were actually involved? Certainly. The nature of the work at Groom Lake requires secrecy. While abusive politics and unsafe working condiitons may be part of every military installation, they still need to abide by certain regulations. Goverment records of a base that actually exists and tracking what comes out of it (byproducts, etc) could be enough to comprimise the secrecy of the work that goes on there. So, it serves its purpose of being a secret research facility by staying off the books. Secondly, if he were actually a former-employee or the like, you can bet your ass he had a TSSCI (Top Secret-Secret Compartmentalized Information) clearance. That means he's fucked. Number one, he'd need to submit anything press (books, interviews, etc) related to the NSA/CIA for checking first, so they could take out any references to information that isn't declassified yet (75 years is standard for declassification, not even the existence of Groom Lake). If not, he can be charged with a wide range of charges, which amount to a lot of time in a friendly Federal Prison. Secondly, because of the nature of the clearance (and it doesnn't get much better, all our classified information is compartmentalized) means that we wouldn't have access to a lot of the details he supposedly verified, unless he were pretty far up the chain of command, at which point, he's easily identifiable to the governemnt.
Well, the flight patterns by observation of the Aurora bomber would disagree with you there. Regardless of the fact that it's existence may have been acknowledged (though I would doubt that, considering the employees were unable to sue the government over a location that didn't exist over their lung problems from burning toxic waste), it doesn't matter. Just because the location may now officially exist, it doesn't mean that their projects are suddenly out in the open does it? It can still be used for experimental (read: secret) research.
Yes, you -could- assume that. However, being as they were MAPPING A GOVERNMENT INSTALLATION, I doubt if that defense would hold up in court. Anyway, common law only applies to private citizens and organizations, not to the governemnt.
Start shooting? Yes. Knowing what the government is doing with your tax dollars is not one of you unalienable rights (not that any of those are really secure anymore, but that's another rant). This is not an act of civil disobedience. Those civilians would be crossing a line that says "If you cross this line, you will be shot." Our government keeps certain things hidden from us to maintain our superiority. Hell, there are a lot of things we don't use in time of war because we don't want foreign militaries to get a hold of them. Expect that military CS, beanbag guns, and possibly lethal measures (read: claymores and a Spectre gunship if it's needed. Also, expect that the leaders of this gathering would be sent to a chain-link cage in Guantanamo as insurrectionists or terrorists.
I didn't intend for an implicatin that we pay less than other countries for OPEC oil. What I meant was that our oil prices are far less than those in the rest of the world because of US refinery gain. We net more usable petruleum products, including gasoline, per barrel of crude than anyone else in the world. Combined with our national crude production and our import levels, we are the worlds largest producer of refined oil. It stands to reason that our oil would be far cheaper than everyone else in the world. Worldwide Oil Production Beyond that, I wouldn't say we've taken out the major threat to stabilization. We ARE the major threat to stabilization. Well, us and Israel. While there is no doubt that Saddam was evil, I wouldn't necessarily say that Iraq is better off, nor is the Mideast more stable. If you don't agree, just follow the news, preferably the BBC or some international news source that isn't a propaganda outlet for our government, and watch the "stability" in the region when we pass power to a regional government. If the Kurds want an autonomous state, a lot of Iran and Turkey goes with 'em, and it'll be a major war in the Gulf. Even if they don't, expect Chaos in Iraq after we leave, their opportunistic neighbors (Iran, mainly) will fill the power vacuum and destroy whatever we may have managed to create.
Broekn link. Here Information on oil
Oh, please.
The majority of our oil comes from Canada, Saudi, Mexico, and Venezuela. Expect Saudi to not be quite so friendly this year after we accused them of harboring terrorists... 2/5ths of our oil comes from OPEC, and they've been putting out some pretty low numbers for production in the past few years. However, there are certain countries in OPEC (Venezuela, Saudi) that do their best to stop OPEC from finalizing yearly production too low. OPEC did it last year, and Venezuela produced extra crude for us.
1/5th of our oil comes from sources in the Gulf. There is no conspiracy by the Arabs to jack up our oil prices. Everyone else in the world pays more than we do. It's the backbone of their economy, and they treat it as such.
Educate yourself before you post.
Yeah... I can feel maturity just oozing from you. I can tell that you paid a lot of thought to what I wrote. I'm not saying that nobody copies anything, what I'm saying is that every Matrix fanboy raves about how "nobody's ever done anything like this before." I read your summation of the movie, though I saw it several weeks ago (benefits of working IT for a large film exhibitor), and it exemplifies my original post. Flashy special effects do not a good movie make. I don't care about the sunglasses, or the guns, or the sentinels, my problem is that nobody seems to realize that the Wachowski brothers are simply rehashing other people's stories. Had they given credit where it was due, I wouldn't have a beef.
Had every Fantasy author merely ripped of Tolkien's PREMISE/PLOT, that would be a problem. They do not, however, whereas the Wachowski brothers merely added an unheard level of preachy, "philosophical" bullshit to the last two films in their trilogy.
Get out of your parent's basement and educate yourself, instead of merely trolling with asinine mockery about how real-life objects were used in movies.
Has anybody else read any novels by William Gibson? Or any kind of cyberpunk at all? Admittedly, the movies based off of Gibson's own works suck (see Johnny Mnemonic, another Keanu Reeves film), the Matrix has, as a whole, done nothing but rip off elements from Neuromancer, "the red pill" from Total Recall, of all movies, and numerous elements from other stories. Those who feel that these coincidences are a "homage" are advised to consider how well blatent plagarism like this would go off in the world of software copyrights. While it is nice to see a cyberpunk movie, I would merely like to see credit given where it is due, and to stop hearing the incessant chatter of those who feel that the Wachoskis are visionary should see Bound or Assassins. Both movies are so-so, but far from the kind of image that they have projected onto themselves with the Matrix. Flashy special effects/kung fu can only get you so far. Let's see how they do with King Conan.