No, the local providers will choose NOT to compete with a free service and will leave town.
Leave town?! Don't you mean sprawling, monolithic city? We're talking about San Francisco! It's a huge market. No ISP worth its salt would ignore a market that huge simply because of a little competition.
"...it is also reasonable to think that the origin of the "N-word" came from a bully's(cracker) pun on the phonetic and inferior similarities with "renege" and 'niggardly'." [Emphasis mine]
This is ridiculous. You mean to tell me that while you're against the use of any word that even sounds like a black racial slur under the idiotic assumption that the words are tangentially related, you see nothing wrong with using an actual WHITE racial slur at the same time you express your righteous indignation?
What ever happened to your hypersensitivity and supposed consideration for the psychology of the reader? Are only black people deserving of tolerance?
Let's be honest, this really isn't about tolerance anyway, is it?
Is an unsupported allegation justification for going to war? Would you condemn an individual to death over an unsupported allegation? What about an entire army of humans?
I think your rhetorical semantics are missing (or conveniently dodging) the point. In fact, I'll show you just how here in a second in the italicized portions below.
The fact of the matter is that the suspicion of an al-qaeda link is only ONE of the number of justifications for going to war:
-Iraq was in violation of the surrender agreement it signed with the United States following the first Iraq war. So, are you saying that serious and legitimate agreements between countries are not something to be respected? If so, why even bother with the notion of sovereignty if one rouge nation can do as it pleases?
-Though Iraq did not have chemical or biological stockpiles that we had expected, it DID have a number of illegal weapons such as medium range ballistic missiles. Do international resolutions mean nothing to you? Is it okay for Saddam, a madman, to have these weapons? If Saddam had used one of these illegal weapons to kill one of your loved ones, would you still not support the invasion of Iraq? Would you still if your loved ones lived in, say, Israel?
-Saddam was an evil despot. He killed countless of his own people and brutalized them with torture and extreme punishment. Are we not morally obligated to prevent pain and suffering if we are in a position to do so? Would you leave a baby to drown in a puddle if you had the chance to help it? How about a large group of babies approximately the population of Iraq? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
...That means that my informed opinion is half as effective.
And here's where you are wrong: less voters != more informed voters. In fact, all it really does is remove power from the masses (where it belongs) into the hands of special interest groups, Politicial Action Comittees (PACs), and professional politicians whose goals may or may not (in all likelihood, the latter) be in the best interest of us all.
It seems quite evident that those in power recognize this--otherwise we would already have incentives like a "voter lottery" in place. The truth is, the established government neither needs nor wants your vote. Congress is running at a 96% re-election rate with no term-limits. Why rock the boat and risk losing your cushy government job ?
If you think I'm wrong, answer me this: Why is it that in the United States, statistically the hardest working nation in the world, that we don't have a holiday off for the one right we claim to cherish the most: voting? Why is it that Christmas is a national holiday when not all citizens are Christians and the government has nothing to do (these days) with Christianity when November 2nd, a day affecting all Citizens in the union is a regular work day?
But at the same time, being in an age of information, if we just want to steal/'borrow'/pirate any idea that is put out there for the public consumpution and not pay it's creator any... then why should any of us think or express ideas?
In all honesty, I really hate people like you. People who believe nothing is important or valuable unless it is involved in the endless pursuit of symbolic pieces of paper. What ever happened to human achievement or the pursuit of excellence? How can you and your ilk treat an untainted piece of culture, a thought-provoking novel, or a heart-stirring poem that touches your very soul like some fucking widget you're entitled to endlessly peddle to the faceless masses?
Art, literature, and music existed LONG before the idea of "intellectual property," and have no doubt that, were IP laws repealed tomorrow, they would continue to grow and even flourish in ways we can't even imagine under the current paradigm--if only because all the rock-star wannabes would quit and go into business classes where they belong.
Just stop right there. Bush isn't responsible for 9/11. Nobody is responsible for the wicked acts of others. True, our intelligence systems failed us, but much of the failures were due to policies established under previous administrations--including your man Clinton. I refer you to the Toracelli principle if you doubt me.
Well, then Iraq. Brilliant invasion. Problem is, it was totally unjustified.
Unjustified? They were in violation of countless treaties--including the surrender agreement established with the United States at the end of the first Iraq war. EVERYBODY, including the Clinton administration, thought they had weapons of mass destruction, and though they didn't have as biological or nuclear agents as we had suspected, they did have many illegal weapons including some medium-range ballistic missiles. Furthermore, though the al-Qeada relationships are unclear, Saddam had publicly and directly supported the extremist Islam movement in the past. I personally remember when he started giving the families of suicide bombers checks for US $50,000 in Palastine.
In addition, Saddam was a huge human rights abuser. People were frequently killed for small things like "looking at" one of his palaces--when he wasn't ethnically cleansing the population or executing dissidents, that is. I don't understand how you can think we were violating the sovreignity of the Iraq nation or the the respect of its people by invading or overthrowing this man and his band of thugs. I understand that the US isn't the world's police and that these things happen in other countries too, but can't you at least admit, given the circumstances lined out in the previous paragraph, that Iraq was a unique situation? In other words, given that we were legally justified (by all accounts except Kofi Annan's... pfft) in invading, don't such human rights abuses make us morally justified as well?
The other problem- no strategy to win the postwar environment. The first major screwup was...
Well, I'm sure John Kerry and crew would have done everything right had they been in the same situation...right? Hindsight is 20/20. Were strategic mistakes made? Of course. Analysts are human. Military officials are human. George W. Bush is human. Hence, mistakes were made. Again, back to my original post, what I don't see in your post or John Kerry's rhetoric are solutions for the future. I see nit-picking. Some of these criticisms even fall out of the president's scope at times such as: the flu vaccine shortage or the Abu Graive prision abuse. Both of which, according to the evidence, were due to circumstances out of the president's control (i.e. bad supplies from England and a small group of frustrated soldiers acting out-of-line, respectively^1).
So, the real question is at this point: Do you still believe I am uninformed? Show me, and those like me, where our basis for evaluating George Bush's job with regard to the war on terror is wrong and I, and many other moderates, honestly will vote for John Kerry (who I believe has much better domestic policies).
-Grym
^1--As an aside, did you know that Jerri England, one of the soldiers convicted for the prisioner abuse became impregnated while in Iraq by one of her superior officers? Furthermore, did you know that she wasn't even stationed at Abu Graive? She was AWOL from her unit to "visit her boyfriend." These soldiers were already in serious violation of the established rules before the abuse even began. I know a lot of liberals (including the ones at the New York Times, who ran the story literally 50+ times on the front page--more than coverage than they gave the WTC attacks) were hoping that this would be some huge conspiracy, but it just wasn't. These people weren't under direct orders from the president or Rumsfeld--or anyone, it seems!
That's a pretty good example of uninformed. What Bush's policies do not seem to get is that there are not a finite number of terrorists...
You're seriously underestimating the administration's strategy if you think it's simply about killing as many terrorists as possible.
By being in Iraq, we are forcing the terrorists to attack us amongst their own people. Even if they care, terrorists, due to the relatively lower technology they have, are forced to kill their own people to accomplish their goals. In this way, they're undermining their own support. How could this be accomplished were we NOT on the offensive in Iraq? You don't actually think any Arabs really care about few (thousand even) infidels being killed in America, do you?
Mao said, the guerilla is a fish and the people are the sea: a successful guerilla war depends on popular support for the rebels; and that's what the tactics we are using so far are creating.
To compare this to Vietnam, is a bit disingenuous because the Iraqis (with the exception of Saddam's tribe), having just been freed from the yoke of a brutal dictatorship, WANT the peace, stability and democracy which stands in line with the U.S.'s best interests. The insurgents promise nothing more than another dictator or corrupt Islamic theocracy.
Bombing a weapons cache in Iraq kills insurgents, but if you kill women, children, and innocents in the process, you can create as many insurgents as you kill.
Nobody's arguing that the US-inflicted causalities due to current fighting won't create a few more terrorists. They will. This is why we go to great lengths to minimize them with the use of laser-guided weapons and so on. The terrorists don't and/or can't. Already we've seen in some towns the people rise up against the terrorists because of this fact.
You know what, though? I think you, and a good number of other people are missing the forest for the tress. This is a long-term strategy. The benefits of a free and stable Iraq are too great for us to ignore. I firmly believe that if you give a person (muslim or not) a decent way to make a living for him and his own, he'll be content and won't turn to things like the real root of our problem, extremist Islam. Iraq, with its large middle-class, extensive oil-fields, and high level of technology is a PERFECT candidate in the region for creating a democratic muslim society. Its establishment would undermine the Islamic theocracies throughout the Middle East.
Not to mention that we need to cooperate with other nations in Europe and elsewhere to prosecute the war on these terrorist organizations, however we've alienated our allies.
Much of Europe and the UN didn't want us to go to war in Iraq because: 1) Iraq was quite profitable due to the Oil-for-Food program for many of its leaders. 2) Our actions implied the UN was irrelevant.
The first isn't our fault. The second occurred ONLY because the UN failed to enforce its own resolutions. Again, how is this our fault? We were justified in going to war based solely on the violation Iraq's surrender agreement of the first Iraq war.
(I'll continue the rest of this later. I've got to go to class.)
Most media exists to make money. Advertisers are understandably careful not to alienate anyone. It is not possible to develop an accurate opinion of government activities only by listening to the carefully crafted phrases from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one policy over another. It's necessary to read books.
I'm sorry, but have you even been watching TV lately? It's just as polarized--if not exaggeratedly so--than the public. In fact, watching TV, you'd think we were on the verge of a civil war. Whereas most people I talk to (barring a select few) really don't care.
You're right about one thing, the media is about making money, but there is no thought to alienation of viewers, because outrageous political hackery SELLS.
George Soros says, "President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values." If Dole had been elected instead of Clinton, the U.S. would have had sensible leadership. This election is different. It is not a matter of which candidate you like. If you vote for Bush, you are poorly informed...
See, this type of blanket statement doesn't help anything. The fact that you've said it either represents that YOU are poorly informed or are too jaded to see that a legitimate room for disagreement exists.
A great number of people, including myself, believe that George W. Bush (whether you like him or not--I don't) is doing a good job with regard to the war on terror, and consider it the main issue of the day. Furthermore, the democratic candidate offers only criticism without solutions and negativism that many in the country--again including myself--don't feel is the direction we want this country to go.
...Unfortunately, older (SCPH-10090) Multitap adapters are not compatible with the new PS2 because the memory-card and controller-port placements don't match the port layouts on the older system.
Anybody ever notice that Sony is a bunch of bastards when it comes to multitaps? The things are like $30 (God knows why) and are ALWAYS incompatible with previous versions.
I don't know... I've played a bit of paintball, and let me tell you: those things hurt. If you were hit in the face/neck/groin without the protective gear, WITH or WITHOUT an irritant like pepper inside, you're going to be down for the count.
Furthermore, I'm ABOSOLUTELY POSITIVE these paintballs are different from the off-the-shelf variety in that they are much harder and shot significantly faster. I'd imagine this is necessary to prevent the pepper from breaking in the hopper if the officer is running around of whatnot. This would only make for a more painful hit (and accurate shot too...).
I know paintballs sound funny, but no way do you want to get shot by these things. Afterall, the crowd dispersed, didn't they?
You're also relying on 20 year old studies as to what percentage of reporters consider themselves liberal.
NOT TRUE. The Pew Research Center conducted the study just this year (2004) and released its findings MAY 2004. I EVEN SAID THAT IN THE ESSAY. A synopsis can be found here.
...If you refuse to believe that, than consider this, if reporters are constantly surrounded by information maybe you should consider why with all that information they would be liberal? Perhaps it's because being liberal is what intelligent people are?
Ahh... Here it is, ladies and gentleman, for your viewing pleasure: the "enlightened liberal." He professes tolerance, but anybody who disagrees with him surely must be stupid... or--better yet--evil . He likes to assume that only he can appreciate the fine arts and the complicated public affairs. Therefore, it only makes sense that he and his ilk dictate how the rest of us should live and what we should hear and see. After all he knows what's best for us--even if we can't see it for ourselves.
-Grym
Re:He is trying to move the Dem Party Leftwards
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The Nader Factor
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Wow... "Tentacles of Rage," huh? LOL Quite a rare, comedic gem, you've found here.
Seriously, have you even read the thing? I wouldn't blame you if you haven't; it's hilariously terrible! It's written in first person with evidence that, the majority of the time, borders on anecdotal. The author was so hard-pressed to find conservative media outlets that, for one table, he only managed to find TWELEVE among the THOUSANDS of newspapers, television networks, radio shows, and so on! Two of them are even websites! LOL
...it can put out memes about leftist ideas to match the rightwing ideas that have dominated political discourse over the last 35 years or so
What evidence do you have to back up this assertion? Do you even live in the US? Political "discussion" is quite liberal at times. How do you explain the political discourse around Affirmative Action? Abortion? Gay marriage?
I think you--and the distinguished author of "TENTACLES OF RAGE!!"--are vastly over-estimating the ability of conservatives to be heard in the U.S. Sorry, pointing to well-funded, conservative think-tanks without even touching the multi-billion dollar liberal Hollywood establishment just doesn't cut it. In fact, if you want a counter-argument, click here.
Let's see how long it takes for you to get modded down as "offtopic", "flamebait", or "troll," though, because appearantly, at slashdot, we subscribe to the last definition of evil and anything that challenges that assumption MUST be wrong.
Read my message history some time. I don't even like Bush, but I get modded down if I even try to combat the "Bush == stupid, evil, brilliant (see: stupid) mastermind behind a new world order"-mindset.
Which makes them bigger, and more expensive. And since you don't have NASA funded well enough to have a conveyor belt of parts running past a large number of experiments, and you're motivated to cut costs and keep each individual mission as small as possible, you get the current situation.
So what's your solution? Throw money on the problem until it goes away? Since when has that ever worked?
I'm sorry but NASA's recent string of screw-ups that have jeopardized safety and scientific goals do little to provide evidence that they should get MORE money to piss away.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the exploration and advancement of mankind into space. I just don't think it should be done or even CAN be done by the bureaucratic mess that is NASA post-1970s.
Why should it take probable cause or a court order to gather information?
It's very simple: To keep the government out of the personal lives of law-abiding citizens.
What's crazy is that the two checks you're worried about were never considered a problem in the past. A court wiretapping order can be obtained in minutes, and depending upon the judge, probable cause can be quite lacking in substance. But both of these checks are crutial to preventing abuse of the system. A court order ensures that the mass-monitoring people doesn't occur. Probable cause makes sure that the government doesn't do something as foolish or questionable as wiretapping every muslim/arabic/black/whatever person in the country.
Sure, I guess. And the kind of searching the government would have to do to get that information should certainly require a court order.
*sigh*... All of the situations I described only required the recording of a simple phonecall or the monitoring of a private discussion in a public area, which according to you is A-OK for the government to monitor even if they don't have a good reason. Haven't you ever called a doctor? Haven't you ever talked personally with a friend/clergymember in public?
...But you asked if the government should require reasonable cause to gather information, implying that this would be for any information, including that which is already publically available, or that which you have already given to someone else without having them promise not to redistribute it.
So...what are you suggesting here? That I need to have my doctors, friends, and spirtual advisors sign legal documents before and after every conversation so it doesn't get used by the thought-police against me? So, are they going to ask me for those documents for proof that such a "promise" were made? If so, wouldn't that defeat the damn point of monitoring me to begin with? If not, what if a person promises me they won't say anything but then does? Have my rights (what little you believe we deserve) been violated?
Practicality aside, even if your system were possible, it's bullshit. If there's no reason to suspect me of doing anything illegal, why do they need to collect information about me to begin with? It's both an extreme waste of time and taxpayer money that's an injustice upon the innocent people--whether they have knowledge of it or not--who it claims to protect.
"In certain extremely narrow cases.
Oh that's just classic... Just how common do you think a terrorist is in the United States?! You're pointing to the rarest of cases and claiming it warrents an overhaul of the whole system. I'm arguing that it's the exact opposite. There are only an extremely narrow number of cases (bomb is ticking; terrorist needs caught) in which probable cause or a court order is a hinderance.
I agree with you right up to this point: "So the fact the top 1% of wage earners pays 30% of the tax burden and the to 20% pay nearly 70% is not enough for you?"
I think by pointing to those numbers you're ignoring the elephant in the room. The real problem isn't the tax brackets or who pays what. The real problem lies with the distribution of wealth in our society.
By your presentation one would be left with the impression that an injustice were being done to the top 1% or 20%. Hardly. Our government was designed, from the very beginning, in a manner to cater to the financially elite. (I refer you to Beard's "An Economic Interpretation to the Constitution") It's in this respect that the financially elite who hoard literally billions of dollars owe quite a bit back to the society and legal/financial systems that allow them to amass and maintain their great fortunes at little to no personal effort. (Patents, copyrights, the stock market, government contracts, and federal interest rates--all immediately come to mind as examples.)
So to answer your question: Do I agree with increasing tax rates on the rich? YES, provided that the per-capita income gap is increasing--which it is... drastically so.
You're the guy who posts those old, outdated, essays on how liberal the media is.
Actually, the essay I posted was written this summer as a rebuttal to a video my class watched in my political science class at Virginia Tech. My e-mail is anprNOSPAMice2@vt.edu (remove NOSPAM). Feel free to e-mail me if you have any doubts. My essay and the information therein are neither old nor outdated.
Well Grym, I'm sure you're saying to yourself: BUT that has nothing to do with the reporters!? Of course it does! That study you relied on to prove reporters are more liberal is 20 years old.
No, the Pew Research Center study was conducted during this year and was released just this March. I even said that in the essay itself.
So you disagree. You believe that the media is conservative. Fine, but for your theory to hold water, you'll have to answer the following:
- I've provided you evidence that national journalists are disproportionately liberal with respect to the American public. Can you provide empirical evidence that the media ownership is, in fact, "very conservative?" Or are we just supposed to take your word for it?
- One could make the argument that corporations (and therefore, the media companies) generally benefit from conservative economic policies. While this notion is disputable, for the sake of the argument, you can assume it to be true. So, if this is the case or, as Chomsky argues what mainly skews coverage towards conservatism, what would motivate the media to report conservatively on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion, welfare, and so on? How could a corporation or, more particularly, a media company be affected one way or another by any of these issues?
- If the media is operated by "very conservative" owners that "often direct hiring practices," how do you explain the aforementioned data the liberal makeup of the media reported by the Pew Research Center? If your assertion is true, wouldn't the trend in ideology be opposite?
Reading the names of the fallen used to be considered an act of honoring the memory of the soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice
Not necessarily. If you read the names off under the implied heading "These are the men George W. Bush killed:" (which is what this is) then it is neither honorable nor an act of respect. It's a deceitful attempt to use their sacrifices to assert something (ie. the war in Iraq was "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time") that the soldiers, (let's be honest) in all likelihood, DIDN'T believe themselves.
When Micheal Moore says things like "Would you sacrifice your child to secure Fallujah?" (actual quote from a Bill O'Reilly interview), he does the exact same thing. It's "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" all over again.
We have a volunteer army. Every soldier in Iraq signed up of his or her own volition. They aren't children. They're adults who are smart enough to decide for themselves. I know quite a few people from my High School that signed up specifically to go to war in Iraq because they believed (and still believe) that it was the right decision, and although all of them have been fortunate enough not be injured or killed, I know they'd be pissed if their sacrifices were being used by politicians in this context.
Nonsense. Not being tracked isn't even a freedom, let alone a fundamental one.
Oh but it is! In fact, it's one of the most important ones! But like most freedoms it's easy to not appreciate it until it's gone.
How can you have a free society if everybody is looking over his or her shoulder making sure Uncle Sam would approve? How can you have a free market if people are afraid to buy anything that might be considered suspicious? What if every morally or socially questionable act you have ever or might do could come back to haunt you if you didn't do the person watching you some favors?
Privacy is FUNDAMENTAL to a free society. It is a right, and though it isn't spelled out explicitly in the Bill of Rights, it doesn't have to be! It was on these grounds that many, in fact, opposed the ratification of the first ten amendments, because they were afraid that by enumerating certain rights, the government would feel less obligated to respect others--which is EXACTLY what we're seeing today with the PATRIOT Act.
Why should it take probable cause or a court order to gather information?
Do you really not see the problem with this? That information just doesn't disappear once they realize you're doing nothing illegal. It gets sent to some file or saved on a computer hard drive.
Ever done anything you're embarrassed about--wouldn't want your loved ones to know? What if you have AIDS and don't want your insurance company/employer to know? What if you've had an abortion? What if you're a closet homosexual? What if you're a recovering alcoholic/drug addict but have since quit? What if you cheated on your wife? Ever visited an inappropriate website or posted something outrageous (that you don't even believe) on the internet to get a rise out of people? The list could go on forever.
ANY of those things could ruin a person's social (or even political... remember the gay republican senator who just got exposed? I wonder why he isn't running for re-election...) life, and yet ALL of them are completely legal. If the government has unfettered access to the private lives of LAW-ABIDING citizens, what's to stop a little (hell.. A LOT) malfeasance or blackmail from occurring? If you think corporations have politicians by the balls now, just imagine how powerful the person in control (or even just the $10/hour data tech) of said database would be?
Don't think I'm overreacting here. The exact same thing happened in both the Nazi Germany AND the USSR under the guise of stopping criminals/dissidents. History has proven that concentrating political power in one area only works until ONE person who would abuse it attains power. This is the whole idea behind the checks-and-balance structure with which the US was founded. A question I've heard no proponent of the PATRIOT act answer is how can this portion of the bill be realistically checked? As displayed earlier, said information is the ace-of-spades in our political world.
The only real solution is to add judicial oversight into who does and doesn't get scrutinized, but of course, this is EXACTLY the check the law removed.
How was my post--a voice of reason amongst politically charged rhetoric--FLAMEBAIT?!?
Sorry for contributing my point of view, guys. I'll be sure to chant "Neo-cons are teh sux" with the rest of you from now on, seeing as how that's all you want to hear.
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No, the local providers will choose NOT to compete with a free service and will leave town.
Leave town?! Don't you mean sprawling, monolithic city? We're talking about San Francisco! It's a huge market. No ISP worth its salt would ignore a market that huge simply because of a little competition.
-Grym
"...it is also reasonable to think that the origin of the "N-word" came from a bully's(cracker) pun on the phonetic and inferior similarities with "renege" and 'niggardly'." [Emphasis mine]
This is ridiculous. You mean to tell me that while you're against the use of any word that even sounds like a black racial slur under the idiotic assumption that the words are tangentially related, you see nothing wrong with using an actual WHITE racial slur at the same time you express your righteous indignation?
What ever happened to your hypersensitivity and supposed consideration for the psychology of the reader? Are only black people deserving of tolerance?
Let's be honest, this really isn't about tolerance anyway, is it?
-Grym
Is an unsupported allegation justification for going to war? Would you condemn an individual to death over an unsupported allegation? What about an entire army of humans?
I think your rhetorical semantics are missing (or conveniently dodging) the point. In fact, I'll show you just how here in a second in the italicized portions below.
The fact of the matter is that the suspicion of an al-qaeda link is only ONE of the number of justifications for going to war:
-Iraq was in violation of the surrender agreement it signed with the United States following the first Iraq war. So, are you saying that serious and legitimate agreements between countries are not something to be respected? If so, why even bother with the notion of sovereignty if one rouge nation can do as it pleases?
-Though Iraq did not have chemical or biological stockpiles that we had expected, it DID have a number of illegal weapons such as medium range ballistic missiles. Do international resolutions mean nothing to you? Is it okay for Saddam, a madman, to have these weapons? If Saddam had used one of these illegal weapons to kill one of your loved ones, would you still not support the invasion of Iraq? Would you still if your loved ones lived in, say, Israel?
-Saddam was an evil despot. He killed countless of his own people and brutalized them with torture and extreme punishment. Are we not morally obligated to prevent pain and suffering if we are in a position to do so? Would you leave a baby to drown in a puddle if you had the chance to help it? How about a large group of babies approximately the population of Iraq? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
-Grym
Hah... look! My posts (even my reply to yours) got modded "off-topic" while yours remained untouched!
At least you make me smile (though a cynical smile it may be) every now and then, /.
-Grym
And here's where you are wrong: less voters != more informed voters. In fact, all it really does is remove power from the masses (where it belongs) into the hands of special interest groups, Politicial Action Comittees (PACs), and professional politicians whose goals may or may not (in all likelihood, the latter) be in the best interest of us all.
It seems quite evident that those in power recognize this--otherwise we would already have incentives like a "voter lottery" in place. The truth is, the established government neither needs nor wants your vote. Congress is running at a 96% re-election rate with no term-limits. Why rock the boat and risk losing your cushy government job ?
If you think I'm wrong, answer me this: Why is it that in the United States, statistically the hardest working nation in the world, that we don't have a holiday off for the one right we claim to cherish the most: voting? Why is it that Christmas is a national holiday when not all citizens are Christians and the government has nothing to do (these days) with Christianity when November 2nd, a day affecting all Citizens in the union is a regular work day?
-Grym
But at the same time, being in an age of information, if we just want to steal/'borrow'/pirate any idea that is put out there for the public consumpution and not pay it's creator any... then why should any of us think or express ideas?
In all honesty, I really hate people like you. People who believe nothing is important or valuable unless it is involved in the endless pursuit of symbolic pieces of paper. What ever happened to human achievement or the pursuit of excellence? How can you and your ilk treat an untainted piece of culture, a thought-provoking novel, or a heart-stirring poem that touches your very soul like some fucking widget you're entitled to endlessly peddle to the faceless masses?
Art, literature, and music existed LONG before the idea of "intellectual property," and have no doubt that, were IP laws repealed tomorrow, they would continue to grow and even flourish in ways we can't even imagine under the current paradigm--if only because all the rock-star wannabes would quit and go into business classes where they belong.
-Grym
(cont...) Where to begin?
Okay, first, 9/11...
Just stop right there. Bush isn't responsible for 9/11. Nobody is responsible for the wicked acts of others. True, our intelligence systems failed us, but much of the failures were due to policies established under previous administrations--including your man Clinton. I refer you to the Toracelli principle if you doubt me.
Well, then Iraq. Brilliant invasion. Problem is, it was totally unjustified.
Unjustified? They were in violation of countless treaties--including the surrender agreement established with the United States at the end of the first Iraq war. EVERYBODY, including the Clinton administration, thought they had weapons of mass destruction, and though they didn't have as biological or nuclear agents as we had suspected, they did have many illegal weapons including some medium-range ballistic missiles. Furthermore, though the al-Qeada relationships are unclear, Saddam had publicly and directly supported the extremist Islam movement in the past. I personally remember when he started giving the families of suicide bombers checks for US $50,000 in Palastine.
In addition, Saddam was a huge human rights abuser. People were frequently killed for small things like "looking at" one of his palaces--when he wasn't ethnically cleansing the population or executing dissidents, that is. I don't understand how you can think we were violating the sovreignity of the Iraq nation or the the respect of its people by invading or overthrowing this man and his band of thugs. I understand that the US isn't the world's police and that these things happen in other countries too, but can't you at least admit, given the circumstances lined out in the previous paragraph, that Iraq was a unique situation? In other words, given that we were legally justified (by all accounts except Kofi Annan's... pfft) in invading, don't such human rights abuses make us morally justified as well?
The other problem- no strategy to win the postwar environment. The first major screwup was...
Well, I'm sure John Kerry and crew would have done everything right had they been in the same situation...right? Hindsight is 20/20. Were strategic mistakes made? Of course. Analysts are human. Military officials are human. George W. Bush is human. Hence, mistakes were made. Again, back to my original post, what I don't see in your post or John Kerry's rhetoric are solutions for the future. I see nit-picking. Some of these criticisms even fall out of the president's scope at times such as: the flu vaccine shortage or the Abu Graive prision abuse. Both of which, according to the evidence, were due to circumstances out of the president's control (i.e. bad supplies from England and a small group of frustrated soldiers acting out-of-line, respectively^1).
So, the real question is at this point: Do you still believe I am uninformed? Show me, and those like me, where our basis for evaluating George Bush's job with regard to the war on terror is wrong and I, and many other moderates, honestly will vote for John Kerry (who I believe has much better domestic policies).
-Grym
^1--As an aside, did you know that Jerri England, one of the soldiers convicted for the prisioner abuse became impregnated while in Iraq by one of her superior officers? Furthermore, did you know that she wasn't even stationed at Abu Graive? She was AWOL from her unit to "visit her boyfriend." These soldiers were already in serious violation of the established rules before the abuse even began. I know a lot of liberals (including the ones at the New York Times, who ran the story literally 50+ times on the front page--more than coverage than they gave the WTC attacks) were hoping that this would be some huge conspiracy, but it just wasn't. These people weren't under direct orders from the president or Rumsfeld--or anyone, it seems!
That's a pretty good example of uninformed. What Bush's policies do not seem to get is that there are not a finite number of terrorists...
You're seriously underestimating the administration's strategy if you think it's simply about killing as many terrorists as possible.
By being in Iraq, we are forcing the terrorists to attack us amongst their own people. Even if they care, terrorists, due to the relatively lower technology they have, are forced to kill their own people to accomplish their goals. In this way, they're undermining their own support. How could this be accomplished were we NOT on the offensive in Iraq? You don't actually think any Arabs really care about few (thousand even) infidels being killed in America, do you?
Mao said, the guerilla is a fish and the people are the sea: a successful guerilla war depends on popular support for the rebels; and that's what the tactics we are using so far are creating.
To compare this to Vietnam, is a bit disingenuous because the Iraqis (with the exception of Saddam's tribe), having just been freed from the yoke of a brutal dictatorship, WANT the peace, stability and democracy which stands in line with the U.S.'s best interests. The insurgents promise nothing more than another dictator or corrupt Islamic theocracy.
Bombing a weapons cache in Iraq kills insurgents, but if you kill women, children, and innocents in the process, you can create as many insurgents as you kill.
Nobody's arguing that the US-inflicted causalities due to current fighting won't create a few more terrorists. They will. This is why we go to great lengths to minimize them with the use of laser-guided weapons and so on. The terrorists don't and/or can't. Already we've seen in some towns the people rise up against the terrorists because of this fact.
You know what, though? I think you, and a good number of other people are missing the forest for the tress. This is a long-term strategy. The benefits of a free and stable Iraq are too great for us to ignore. I firmly believe that if you give a person (muslim or not) a decent way to make a living for him and his own, he'll be content and won't turn to things like the real root of our problem, extremist Islam. Iraq, with its large middle-class, extensive oil-fields, and high level of technology is a PERFECT candidate in the region for creating a democratic muslim society. Its establishment would undermine the Islamic theocracies throughout the Middle East.
Not to mention that we need to cooperate with other nations in Europe and elsewhere to prosecute the war on these terrorist organizations, however we've alienated our allies.
Much of Europe and the UN didn't want us to go to war in Iraq because: 1) Iraq was quite profitable due to the Oil-for-Food program for many of its leaders. 2) Our actions implied the UN was irrelevant.
The first isn't our fault. The second occurred ONLY because the UN failed to enforce its own resolutions. Again, how is this our fault? We were justified in going to war based solely on the violation Iraq's surrender agreement of the first Iraq war.
(I'll continue the rest of this later. I've got to go to class.)
-Grym
Most media exists to make money. Advertisers are understandably careful not to alienate anyone. It is not possible to develop an accurate opinion of government activities only by listening to the carefully crafted phrases from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one policy over another. It's necessary to read books.
I'm sorry, but have you even been watching TV lately? It's just as polarized--if not exaggeratedly so--than the public. In fact, watching TV, you'd think we were on the verge of a civil war. Whereas most people I talk to (barring a select few) really don't care.
You're right about one thing, the media is about making money, but there is no thought to alienation of viewers, because outrageous political hackery SELLS.
George Soros says, "President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values." If Dole had been elected instead of Clinton, the U.S. would have had sensible leadership. This election is different. It is not a matter of which candidate you like. If you vote for Bush, you are poorly informed...
See, this type of blanket statement doesn't help anything. The fact that you've said it either represents that YOU are poorly informed or are too jaded to see that a legitimate room for disagreement exists.
A great number of people, including myself, believe that George W. Bush (whether you like him or not--I don't) is doing a good job with regard to the war on terror, and consider it the main issue of the day. Furthermore, the democratic candidate offers only criticism without solutions and negativism that many in the country--again including myself--don't feel is the direction we want this country to go.
-Grym
Anybody ever notice that Sony is a bunch of bastards when it comes to multitaps? The things are like $30 (God knows why) and are ALWAYS incompatible with previous versions.
-Grym
I don't know... I've played a bit of paintball, and let me tell you: those things hurt. If you were hit in the face/neck/groin without the protective gear, WITH or WITHOUT an irritant like pepper inside, you're going to be down for the count.
Furthermore, I'm ABOSOLUTELY POSITIVE these paintballs are different from the off-the-shelf variety in that they are much harder and shot significantly faster. I'd imagine this is necessary to prevent the pepper from breaking in the hopper if the officer is running around of whatnot. This would only make for a more painful hit (and accurate shot too...).
I know paintballs sound funny, but no way do you want to get shot by these things. Afterall, the crowd dispersed, didn't they?
-Grym
Sorry--not March--MAY. Not that it really matters, seeing as how that makes it even more recent.
I guess I shouldn't hold my breath for a rebuttal.
-Grym
You're also relying on 20 year old studies as to what percentage of reporters consider themselves liberal.
NOT TRUE. The Pew Research Center conducted the study just this year (2004) and released its findings MAY 2004. I EVEN SAID THAT IN THE ESSAY. A synopsis can be found here.
Ahh... Here it is, ladies and gentleman, for your viewing pleasure: the "enlightened liberal." He professes tolerance, but anybody who disagrees with him surely must be stupid... or--better yet-- evil . He likes to assume that only he can appreciate the fine arts and the complicated public affairs. Therefore, it only makes sense that he and his ilk dictate how the rest of us should live and what we should hear and see. After all he knows what's best for us--even if we can't see it for ourselves.
-Grym
Wow... "Tentacles of Rage," huh? LOL Quite a rare, comedic gem, you've found here.
Seriously, have you even read the thing? I wouldn't blame you if you haven't; it's hilariously terrible! It's written in first person with evidence that, the majority of the time, borders on anecdotal. The author was so hard-pressed to find conservative media outlets that, for one table, he only managed to find TWELEVE among the THOUSANDS of newspapers, television networks, radio shows, and so on! Two of them are even websites! LOL
What evidence do you have to back up this assertion? Do you even live in the US? Political "discussion" is quite liberal at times. How do you explain the political discourse around Affirmative Action? Abortion? Gay marriage?
I think you--and the distinguished author of "TENTACLES OF RAGE!!"--are vastly over-estimating the ability of conservatives to be heard in the U.S. Sorry, pointing to well-funded, conservative think-tanks without even touching the multi-billion dollar liberal Hollywood establishment just doesn't cut it. In fact, if you want a counter-argument, click here.
-Grym
Hmm... Let's see the moderation:
30% Flamebait
20% Overrated
-Grym
Excellent post.
Let's see how long it takes for you to get modded down as "offtopic", "flamebait", or "troll," though, because appearantly, at slashdot, we subscribe to the last definition of evil and anything that challenges that assumption MUST be wrong.
Read my message history some time. I don't even like Bush, but I get modded down if I even try to combat the "Bush == stupid, evil, brilliant (see: stupid) mastermind behind a new world order"-mindset.
-Grym
Which makes them bigger, and more expensive. And since you don't have NASA funded well enough to have a conveyor belt of parts running past a large number of experiments, and you're motivated to cut costs and keep each individual mission as small as possible, you get the current situation.
So what's your solution? Throw money on the problem until it goes away? Since when has that ever worked?
I'm sorry but NASA's recent string of screw-ups that have jeopardized safety and scientific goals do little to provide evidence that they should get MORE money to piss away.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the exploration and advancement of mankind into space. I just don't think it should be done or even CAN be done by the bureaucratic mess that is NASA post-1970s.
-Grym
Why should it take probable cause or a court order to gather information?
It's very simple: To keep the government out of the personal lives of law-abiding citizens.
What's crazy is that the two checks you're worried about were never considered a problem in the past. A court wiretapping order can be obtained in minutes, and depending upon the judge, probable cause can be quite lacking in substance. But both of these checks are crutial to preventing abuse of the system. A court order ensures that the mass-monitoring people doesn't occur. Probable cause makes sure that the government doesn't do something as foolish or questionable as wiretapping every muslim/arabic/black/whatever person in the country.
Sure, I guess. And the kind of searching the government would have to do to get that information should certainly require a court order.
*sigh*... All of the situations I described only required the recording of a simple phonecall or the monitoring of a private discussion in a public area, which according to you is A-OK for the government to monitor even if they don't have a good reason. Haven't you ever called a doctor? Haven't you ever talked personally with a friend/clergymember in public?
So...what are you suggesting here? That I need to have my doctors, friends, and spirtual advisors sign legal documents before and after every conversation so it doesn't get used by the thought-police against me? So, are they going to ask me for those documents for proof that such a "promise" were made? If so, wouldn't that defeat the damn point of monitoring me to begin with? If not, what if a person promises me they won't say anything but then does? Have my rights (what little you believe we deserve) been violated?
Practicality aside, even if your system were possible, it's bullshit. If there's no reason to suspect me of doing anything illegal, why do they need to collect information about me to begin with? It's both an extreme waste of time and taxpayer money that's an injustice upon the innocent people--whether they have knowledge of it or not--who it claims to protect.
"In certain extremely narrow cases.
Oh that's just classic... Just how common do you think a terrorist is in the United States?! You're pointing to the rarest of cases and claiming it warrents an overhaul of the whole system. I'm arguing that it's the exact opposite. There are only an extremely narrow number of cases (bomb is ticking; terrorist needs caught) in which probable cause or a court order is a hinderance.
-Grym
I agree with you right up to this point: "So the fact the top 1% of wage earners pays 30% of the tax burden and the to 20% pay nearly 70% is not enough for you?"
I think by pointing to those numbers you're ignoring the elephant in the room. The real problem isn't the tax brackets or who pays what. The real problem lies with the distribution of wealth in our society.
By your presentation one would be left with the impression that an injustice were being done to the top 1% or 20%. Hardly. Our government was designed, from the very beginning, in a manner to cater to the financially elite. (I refer you to Beard's "An Economic Interpretation to the Constitution") It's in this respect that the financially elite who hoard literally billions of dollars owe quite a bit back to the society and legal/financial systems that allow them to amass and maintain their great fortunes at little to no personal effort. (Patents, copyrights, the stock market, government contracts, and federal interest rates--all immediately come to mind as examples.)
So to answer your question: Do I agree with increasing tax rates on the rich? YES, provided that the per-capita income gap is increasing--which it is... drastically so.
-Grym
-Grym
You're the guy who posts those old, outdated, essays on how liberal the media is.
Actually, the essay I posted was written this summer as a rebuttal to a video my class watched in my political science class at Virginia Tech. My e-mail is anprNOSPAMice2@vt.edu (remove NOSPAM). Feel free to e-mail me if you have any doubts. My essay and the information therein are neither old nor outdated.
Well Grym, I'm sure you're saying to yourself: BUT that has nothing to do with the reporters!? Of course it does! That study you relied on to prove reporters are more liberal is 20 years old.
No, the Pew Research Center study was conducted during this year and was released just this March. I even said that in the essay itself.
So you disagree. You believe that the media is conservative. Fine, but for your theory to hold water, you'll have to answer the following:
- I've provided you evidence that national journalists are disproportionately liberal with respect to the American public. Can you provide empirical evidence that the media ownership is, in fact, "very conservative?" Or are we just supposed to take your word for it?
- One could make the argument that corporations (and therefore, the media companies) generally benefit from conservative economic policies. While this notion is disputable, for the sake of the argument, you can assume it to be true. So, if this is the case or, as Chomsky argues what mainly skews coverage towards conservatism, what would motivate the media to report conservatively on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion, welfare, and so on? How could a corporation or, more particularly, a media company be affected one way or another by any of these issues?
- If the media is operated by "very conservative" owners that "often direct hiring practices," how do you explain the aforementioned data the liberal makeup of the media reported by the Pew Research Center? If your assertion is true, wouldn't the trend in ideology be opposite?
-Grym
Reading the names of the fallen used to be considered an act of honoring the memory of the soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice
Not necessarily. If you read the names off under the implied heading "These are the men George W. Bush killed:" (which is what this is) then it is neither honorable nor an act of respect. It's a deceitful attempt to use their sacrifices to assert something (ie. the war in Iraq was "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time") that the soldiers, (let's be honest) in all likelihood, DIDN'T believe themselves.
When Micheal Moore says things like "Would you sacrifice your child to secure Fallujah?" (actual quote from a Bill O'Reilly interview), he does the exact same thing. It's "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" all over again.
We have a volunteer army. Every soldier in Iraq signed up of his or her own volition. They aren't children. They're adults who are smart enough to decide for themselves. I know quite a few people from my High School that signed up specifically to go to war in Iraq because they believed (and still believe) that it was the right decision, and although all of them have been fortunate enough not be injured or killed, I know they'd be pissed if their sacrifices were being used by politicians in this context.
-Grym
Nonsense. Not being tracked isn't even a freedom, let alone a fundamental one.
Oh but it is! In fact, it's one of the most important ones! But like most freedoms it's easy to not appreciate it until it's gone.
How can you have a free society if everybody is looking over his or her shoulder making sure Uncle Sam would approve? How can you have a free market if people are afraid to buy anything that might be considered suspicious? What if every morally or socially questionable act you have ever or might do could come back to haunt you if you didn't do the person watching you some favors?
Privacy is FUNDAMENTAL to a free society. It is a right, and though it isn't spelled out explicitly in the Bill of Rights, it doesn't have to be! It was on these grounds that many, in fact, opposed the ratification of the first ten amendments, because they were afraid that by enumerating certain rights, the government would feel less obligated to respect others--which is EXACTLY what we're seeing today with the PATRIOT Act.
-Grym
Why should it take probable cause or a court order to gather information?
Do you really not see the problem with this? That information just doesn't disappear once they realize you're doing nothing illegal. It gets sent to some file or saved on a computer hard drive.
Ever done anything you're embarrassed about--wouldn't want your loved ones to know? What if you have AIDS and don't want your insurance company/employer to know? What if you've had an abortion? What if you're a closet homosexual? What if you're a recovering alcoholic/drug addict but have since quit? What if you cheated on your wife? Ever visited an inappropriate website or posted something outrageous (that you don't even believe) on the internet to get a rise out of people? The list could go on forever.
ANY of those things could ruin a person's social (or even political... remember the gay republican senator who just got exposed? I wonder why he isn't running for re-election...) life, and yet ALL of them are completely legal. If the government has unfettered access to the private lives of LAW-ABIDING citizens, what's to stop a little (hell.. A LOT) malfeasance or blackmail from occurring? If you think corporations have politicians by the balls now, just imagine how powerful the person in control (or even just the $10/hour data tech) of said database would be?
Don't think I'm overreacting here. The exact same thing happened in both the Nazi Germany AND the USSR under the guise of stopping criminals/dissidents. History has proven that concentrating political power in one area only works until ONE person who would abuse it attains power. This is the whole idea behind the checks-and-balance structure with which the US was founded. A question I've heard no proponent of the PATRIOT act answer is how can this portion of the bill be realistically checked? As displayed earlier, said information is the ace-of-spades in our political world.
The only real solution is to add judicial oversight into who does and doesn't get scrutinized, but of course, this is EXACTLY the check the law removed.
-Grym
Flamebait?
How was my post--a voice of reason amongst politically charged rhetoric--FLAMEBAIT?!?
Sorry for contributing my point of view, guys. I'll be sure to chant "Neo-cons are teh sux" with the rest of you from now on, seeing as how that's all you want to hear.
-Grym