So, either the designers were lying when they said it was designed for a 707 impact, or...?
As the post above you explained, the engineers weren't lying, they (along with everyone else at the time) didn't forsee the secondary effects of an impact. The impact of the planes did not cause the collapses, but they did strip away insulation from the steel frame, and it was the resulting aviation fuel fire which got so hot it started to partially melt the steel and that resulted in the steel frame buckling. I know conspiricy theories are everyone's favorite, and we all look for evil intent first, but I think simple oversight/stupidity explains this tragedy best.
A nuclear containment building is nothing like a scyscraper anyway. First they aren't near as tall, thus their "frame" doesn't carry as much weight, all their weight is on the "outside" anyway, there is no internal structure beyond just supports, and what the building is protecting. Second, the Towers were made of iron, concrete, and glass, whereas these containment buildings are made of 3 to 4 contiguous feet of reinforced concrete. Most importantly, these buildings are designed specifically to prevent penetration (from within or without). The Towers, of course, couldn't be designed that way given their height and the need for visibility (ever seen glass windows in a nuclear containment building? Didn't think so.), scyscrapers are just designed to "survive" a penetrating impact, where the impact does massive damage but the frame survives to keep the building from collapsing. Clearly this didn't happen with the Towers because someone forgot to factor in the extreme temperatures of an aviation fuel fire.
A containment building however is designed to withstand the impact without allowing any penetration at all. One test I heard of was when they rammed a fighter jet at full speed into a building built like a containment vessel. The jet disappeared, but it took only ~2 inches of the outside concrete with it. The rest of the building was unharmed.
By stating upfront that he believes inflation = thievery
He didn't say that, you did.
What I saw was a guy talking about a wealthy individual doing things with his money and at one point asking for bailout help, and you responded with a strange anti-government rant equating taxation with robbery, which is not only bizarre in itself, but it had nothing to do with what Sevn was talking about since George Soros isn't a bloody government! Like I mentioned elsewhere, all Soros did was ask for financial help, he couldn't "steal" anything from the taxpayers because since he wasn't a government, he couldn't tax anyone. People and companies ask the government for bailouts all the time, they aren't thieves, since they can't steal anything, the government has to give it to them.
Idiot modder's be damned, if I'm Flamebait you are at the very least Offtopic, since Sevn is talking about a person and your post that I responded to you was talking about governmental power, along with some other weird stuff (purchasing bonds is also robbery?!?).
Thats your opinion about his record, however, the fact is he *does* have a record, therefore he *has* done something, so whether its "said" or "done", the implication is still false.
I do not do that. I do not argue about Vietnam,
I've never heard anyone say Kerry hasn't said anything.
Ok, maybe not you specifically, but I *have* heard people (here in politics.slashdot.org) say Kerry "has nothing to say", and "can only talk about Vietnam". Those are completely false, and they know it but continue to say so anyway because as long as the story is the critiquing of Kerry, we aren't critiquing Bush. Its an old tactic.
ROFL!!!
Hrm? Do you think I was saying what Bush
Yea, I pulled that one right out of my arse. Sorry.
You can say that, but you can't argue it, because you won't win.
Depends on what we're arguing about.
Kerry said the war was the right decision, when it was made.
I simply don't believe that is true. If these comments by Kerry on the Senate floor during the debate on war authorization are correct, then a lot people agreed with him. He made clear what he expected, was reassurred by recent Bush comments (which turned out to be lies), and took a difficult stand. In the end Bush lied, Kerry felt betrayed, and began to oppose the way Bush was running the war, but he's never changed his mind about believing that voting for it then, with the knowledge he had at the time, was the right thing to do.
There are two things here: one, a lot of people are oversimplifying Kerry's reasoning for these votes to use it against him, but I remember that time too, and it wasn't clear then that Bush was wrong about the WMDs, that Bush, after making noises of being responsible, would then decide to act unilaterally. Kerry believed that war may be necessary, but he NEVER agreed with how Bush eventually prosecuted the war. That is the difference.
I think a lot of people, like you, are forgetting that the rabidly anti-war candidates LOST to Kerry in the Democratic primaries. That was not a fluke. Democrats believed, AT THE TIME, that a harslhly anti-war candidate would not be able to defeat Bush, so they went with the "moderate", the one who agreed with the principle of the use of force in this circumstance, but not with the way Bush actually applied the use of force. Now you and I have the benefit of hindsight today, but neither Kerry nor the Democrats had it then.
So what you see as a flip-flop, does not look like a flip-flop to me, given the sequence of events, and what we did and didn't know at the time. You are implying Kerry is weak because he didn't take the radical stance at the time, whereas I'm saying it took courage to stick with a moderate position when the moderate position was under attack from both sides.
Consider this: What if there HAD been WMDs there? What if Bush had changed his mind and sought UN support? What if the situation in Iraq did NOT turn out as horrible as it has? We know that these things were unlikely to have happened because with 20/20 hindsight we now know Bush is a complete moron, but at the time, NO ONE knew what was coming. So if the Dems had selected Dean, and the Iraqi invasion goes better than it actually did, Dean would have been ripped to shreds for his militant anti-war stance, and the Reps would have 4 more years. If Kerry had gone anti-war at the war resolution point, and things went well, both Kerry and Dean would have likely lost in the primaries and it would be some other candidate who took a moderate position on
what the hell do you need an other centrist party for?
As an alternative to the 2 established parties which have been in power for so long they've taken their position for granted.
Would you even know a republican from a democrat if they wouldn't show the little 'D' and 'R' right next to their names?
I thought the little 'D' was really 'd'?:)
The libertarian party is exactly what you describe: it draws the free marketeers, smaller government republicans and the pro civil liberties and anti war democrats.
That's your description, not mine, my description of the current Lib party is very simple: "too extremist to ever win an election".
Rather, it was intended to eliminate those who might stand in the way of a contemplated revolution
Well, if you think about it, its the same reason the phrase is still being used today.
remove the guardians of independent thinking.
The difference this time is that too many of the lawyers are now the guardians of a status quo which improves their own financial well being at the expense of both the larger society as well as common sense.
I must seriously disagree. I don't understand how you can miss the connection between choice and freedom. Choice IS freedom! When one exists, so does the other. Is a country which gives you only one choice for President a free country? What is freedom if not the ability to make different choices for living your life than the others around you?
What you are advocating is RMS's idea of freedom, because implicit in your argument is that non-free software (shareware) isn't a choice and isn't free. Your argument is the 'F' in 'FOSS', however the parent explicitly used 'FOSS' to indicate he was using the wider definition of 'freedom', including Open Source which argues that FOS and proprietary can coexist. In this case, the choice, and therefore the freedom, is *between* FOSS and shareware and even MS's monopoly. Just because you and I don't see the latter 2 as either "free" or good choices doesn't mean that others (like the grandparent) won't see them as choices. Since they are choices for some, that makes it a freedom (even if we disagree with their reasoning).
Even though I probably agree with you on many things, and have used and will always prefer the GPL, for me FOSS is all about *choice*. Freedom is implicit in that, but choice is the most practical and beneficial element involved. With FOSS, I don't have to worry about one company telling me how to use my computer. I have numerous choices that I don't have with Windows: Linux over BSD, CLI over X11 (or CLI within X11), KDE over GNOME, Debian over Red Hat, Python over Perl, Gimp over KPaint, etc, etc. For some this is construed as a disadvantage (they have different goals than we do), but to me this is FOSS's true strength.
Frankly, moderats are content to simply vote for Bush or Kerry.
Well with the absence of a third "moderate" alternative, then sure. My point is if you give them a realistic third option, they may NOT vote for the usual suspects. A lot of people went with Perot for example just to show dissatisfaction with the establishment.
but that is simply a self-perpetuating meme
Its self-perpetuating for a reason.:)
A vote for a 3rd party can actually have a much bigger impact on government policy than a vote for a major party.
Evidence for this?
In the last election the Democrats didn't care about Nader - now they REALLY care about him, but instead of engaging him they're just playing dirty tricks.
Well its the Reps who are working so hard to get Nader on the ballets, so who is really playing the dirty tricks here?
I don't see your logic. The Dems still don't care about Nader, they're just mad at him because he's running when he and everyone else knows he doesn't stand a chance in hell, and he's also running while Bush has no one running that would siphon votes from him. The only thing Nader can do is swing a few close states to Bush by taking crucial votes from Kerry, and a LOT of people see Bush as a hell of a lot worse than Kerry.
If they lose another election solely because of him maybe they'll start taking another look at his supporters and consider embracing the movement.
They can't and you know that. Just as the Reps can't accept Buchannon's crap into their main platform either. The difference is, Buchannon hasn't chosen to run in the primary and take votes away from Bush this time, and the Libertarians only cost Bush.39% in 2000 versus Nader taking 2.8% from Gore. Nader has no rational explanation for running in this election, knowing that the anger level against Bush is high this time, and thus anyone who effectively helps Bush is not going to be welcome by the center-left of the electorate this time. I don't think he *has* any supporters this time, except conservatives pretending to be ultra-liberal to get him on the ballot.
If you avoid voting third party because "anybody would be better than Bush" or "anybody would be better than Gore", then you'll be accepting whatever the major parties want to give you for a long time.
Until there is a "reasonable" 3rd party that I and many others would be willing to vote for, the point is moot. That was the whole point of my prior post. Fringe groups can't win elections, so voting for them is a waste. Deny that all you will, but it remains the truth.
if everybody is content to vote status quo.
As I said in my prior post, without a realistic alternative (a 3rd candidate that could actually win) smart people realize that they have no choice. If there is no real difference in the 2 usual suspects, then voting really doesn't matter. If one of the candidates is much worse than the other, then voting for the other party's candidate is the only logical way to keep the "worse" candidate out of office.
By definition, the status quo is what you get when no new viable alternatives are available.
For starters, he trumpets the oft-stated mistake that there is no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda
Check your sources, to say that that memo is misleading is to be fawningly polite. The truth is itsbullshit. Bush has yet to give a coherent argument about why we needed to invade Iraq, but not invade Syria or Saudi Arabia or Iran or Jordan or etc, because all those other countries have had minor or low level connections with terroists organizations too, but we aren't attacking them. This is the problem: even if it was true in a technical sense (low level connections may have existed), it wasn't true in a fundamental or practical sense because:
Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.
Hussein was extremely suspicious of the radical Islamists, he himself was a secular nationalist, not a religious nut. Within Iraq he actively suppresed Islamic fundamentalism.
Removing Hussein did *not* hurt Al Queada in any way. Al Queda was in Afghanistan, but they had no known presence in Iraq (for the reason given above) until we removed Hussein and the Iraqi army which allowed the terrorists to infiltrate into Iraq.
Americans are now more threatened by Al Queda than ever before, because AQ has about 300,000+ convenient US targets in Iraq now to go after, a substantial population to hide within, and a real, *genuine* resistance movement (anti-West Islamic fundamentalists in Iraq) to complicate attempts at stopping AQ. Had we kept our presence to just Afghanistan, we would be now in a much better situation.
Next, he brings out the ridiculous draft claim. First, re-enlistment rates are at record highs.
No, they aren't. The military, for the most part, for most units, is meeting its own targets for retention, but that doesn't make them records. Second, the big exception is the National Guard, which is dramatically failing to meet its retention goals nationwide, and because half the troops in Iraq are reservists, this is a serious problem. (If Bush plans more of these wars, the Army may be forced to abandon the concept of integrating the Guard into the full-time military units). Third, we don't know yet what the full effect of multiple, back-to-back, year-long deployments are going to do in the long run to the Army. If the Army can end those long deployments soon, it may have no effect, but if they can't stop it because of a chronic lack of combat troops, it could start to have a bad effect. Fourth, the longer the Army uses "stop loss" orders (Bush's stealth draft) to keep people from going home after serving their time, that will have a negative impact on people too (particularly the Guard). Finally, it depends on who you ask, many units aren't having major problems with retention, but some definitely are.
Second, there will not be a draft. Bush has stated that he doesn't want a draft
I believe the whole issue in dispute here is whether we can trust Shrubby anymore. I believe this about as much as I believed his father's "no new taxes" pledge.
Of course we will first dismantle the army and reassemble it -- the first one wanted to kill us (baathists) and the second one is our ally!
You need to get in touch with the troops. Its high ranking officers in the military that are the ones admitting we should have kept the Iraqi military force structure intact (this doesn't mean keeping the politically appointed officers, nor does it mean keeping units like the Republican Guard). I'm pretty sure even Rummy has conceded this. This was
I've always found it ironic that a guy who made billions off bad central bank policies can give a few hundred million (possibly two years of interest) to economic development and gets a get out of jail free card from all the people who would normally hate him.
Oh, and not to mention a guy the conservatives would call a "smart bizness man", until he decides to use his money against them, then suddenly he's "a crook" for asking for help. If the government had given him the money, *they* would have been the ones "stealing" from the taxpayer. Asking for something you don't have the power to take, is not the same as *taking* it. By this logic, Chrysler Corporation was a massive "thief" for asking the government to bail them out a few decades back. They did, and the government did, but if you think it was a mistake, don't blame Chrysler, they just made a *request*, blame the government for granting them the request.
Fourth, of course the criticisms about Kerry are about what he says, because he hasn't done anything. Kerry himself rarely talks about what he has done (except in Vietnam), because there's nothing there of interest.
More of the Big Lie machine... Just because the Rabid Right says Kerry "hasn't said anything" doesn't make it true. It is in your interest to keep the argument on something like Vietnam rather than let Kerry turn the debate back to Iraq or the economy. Its the *Right* who keeps screaming that Kerry "hasn't said anything" when in fact he has said all sorts of things about the economy, Iraq, our relations with the world and the UN, etc, in his stump speaches, which I'll bet $10 you haven't heard (yea, like Fox News is ever going to be really Fair and Balanced(TM)(BS)). I got another $10 that says Kerry in the debates doesn't bring up Vietnam unless as a reference to the character assasinations launched against him over his service.
Further, I don't know how you can consider what Bush has done in Iraq a substantive issue
ROFL!!!!!
but the fact that Kerry has completely reversed his position on Iraq is not (e.g., the invasion was "the right decision" in May 2003, but now it is "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time").
Well, ask the ones caught by Bush's stealth draft, after they had served their time, including in Iraq, getting out and thinking their service was over, but who are now going back to Iraq. I'm not at all sure its an "overwhelming majority" anymore. A majority yes, but overwhelming?
Not this year. He's been taken off the Ohio ballot because most of the signatures he presented turned out to be forgeries. Only the Reps call him viable, the Dems just see him as working for Bush, since they believe he siphoned off enough votes from Gore to give FLA to Bush, and he's trying to do the same again.
There is one thing this discussion is missing: Major 3rd parties in the US are created not to simply be a spoiler for one of the major parties, but a spoiler for *both*. Perot (whatever you thought of him) was a more legitimate "3rd option" since he was drawing from the discontented on both sides and it was within the realm of possibility that he could get close to 33% and really contest the race (he didn't but everyone realized his impact would be significant).
Nader and all the others aren't like Perot, each one is really just a parasite on one of the main parties, and most of the people who might agree with them continue to act as a subgroup of one of the main parties so they can wield some influence, hence the libertarians being an historically significant block within the Reps, and Nader's constituency being solely from the Dems - but 99% of them are staying with the Dems this year because they now know a vote for Nader is effectively a vote for Bush.
There is a huge difference between a viable 3rd movement and a fringe movement. Fringe movements (Nader, Libertarians, others today) almost always leech off one of the main parties and therefore can never make a difference other than to possibly give the victory to the other side, a viable 3rd party however pulls from both main parties, and has the potential to beat them (needing only 33.34% + 1 of the vote).
My main point is that a 3rd party, in a system without proportional representation, is only viable when its capable of attracting large groups of people away from both the main-stream parties, and actually *winning*. In Europe people will vote for a party even if they know it won't win a majority, because it will win representation above a certain threshold percentage of the total vote. In the US, your vote only counts as a positive when the party you vote for has a realistic chance of winning. If the party doesn't have a realistic chance at a majority, your vote is at least worthless, and at worst, giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
So if you want people to vote for a 3rd party, either give them a proportional representation system where their vote means something even if their party doesn't get the majority, or give them a 3rd party that can actually win. Everything else being said is just hot air.
What we need is not the Libertarians, or Nader, or the Constitution Party. What we need is the "Moderate Party", a centrist organization, built from scratch via grass-roots mobilization, without ties to (or the chains of) the dominating special interests of today, capable of drawing the discontented and moderates from both the dominant parties as well as independents, where most people realize a vote for them might mean something.
Slashdot Mirror
Doh!
That was mean.
As the post above you explained, the engineers weren't lying, they (along with everyone else at the time) didn't forsee the secondary effects of an impact. The impact of the planes did not cause the collapses, but they did strip away insulation from the steel frame, and it was the resulting aviation fuel fire which got so hot it started to partially melt the steel and that resulted in the steel frame buckling. I know conspiricy theories are everyone's favorite, and we all look for evil intent first, but I think simple oversight/stupidity explains this tragedy best.
A nuclear containment building is nothing like a scyscraper anyway. First they aren't near as tall, thus their "frame" doesn't carry as much weight, all their weight is on the "outside" anyway, there is no internal structure beyond just supports, and what the building is protecting. Second, the Towers were made of iron, concrete, and glass, whereas these containment buildings are made of 3 to 4 contiguous feet of reinforced concrete. Most importantly, these buildings are designed specifically to prevent penetration (from within or without). The Towers, of course, couldn't be designed that way given their height and the need for visibility (ever seen glass windows in a nuclear containment building? Didn't think so.), scyscrapers are just designed to "survive" a penetrating impact, where the impact does massive damage but the frame survives to keep the building from collapsing. Clearly this didn't happen with the Towers because someone forgot to factor in the extreme temperatures of an aviation fuel fire.
A containment building however is designed to withstand the impact without allowing any penetration at all. One test I heard of was when they rammed a fighter jet at full speed into a building built like a containment vessel. The jet disappeared, but it took only ~2 inches of the outside concrete with it. The rest of the building was unharmed.
We'll trade ya Helens for Big Ben, whaddya' say?
Not to me, and not to Sevn.
He didn't say that, you did.
What I saw was a guy talking about a wealthy individual doing things with his money and at one point asking for bailout help, and you responded with a strange anti-government rant equating taxation with robbery, which is not only bizarre in itself, but it had nothing to do with what Sevn was talking about since George Soros isn't a bloody government! Like I mentioned elsewhere, all Soros did was ask for financial help, he couldn't "steal" anything from the taxpayers because since he wasn't a government, he couldn't tax anyone. People and companies ask the government for bailouts all the time, they aren't thieves, since they can't steal anything, the government has to give it to them.
Idiot modder's be damned, if I'm Flamebait you are at the very least Offtopic, since Sevn is talking about a person and your post that I responded to you was talking about governmental power, along with some other weird stuff (purchasing bonds is also robbery?!?).
If you know its hyperbole then why say it?
Thats your opinion about his record, however, the fact is he *does* have a record, therefore he *has* done something, so whether its "said" or "done", the implication is still false.
Ok, maybe not you specifically, but I *have* heard people (here in politics.slashdot.org) say Kerry "has nothing to say", and "can only talk about Vietnam". Those are completely false, and they know it but continue to say so anyway because as long as the story is the critiquing of Kerry, we aren't critiquing Bush. Its an old tactic.
Yea, I pulled that one right out of my arse. Sorry.
Depends on what we're arguing about.
I simply don't believe that is true. If these comments by Kerry on the Senate floor during the debate on war authorization are correct, then a lot people agreed with him. He made clear what he expected, was reassurred by recent Bush comments (which turned out to be lies), and took a difficult stand. In the end Bush lied, Kerry felt betrayed, and began to oppose the way Bush was running the war, but he's never changed his mind about believing that voting for it then, with the knowledge he had at the time, was the right thing to do.
There are two things here: one, a lot of people are oversimplifying Kerry's reasoning for these votes to use it against him, but I remember that time too, and it wasn't clear then that Bush was wrong about the WMDs, that Bush, after making noises of being responsible, would then decide to act unilaterally. Kerry believed that war may be necessary, but he NEVER agreed with how Bush eventually prosecuted the war. That is the difference.
I think a lot of people, like you, are forgetting that the rabidly anti-war candidates LOST to Kerry in the Democratic primaries. That was not a fluke. Democrats believed, AT THE TIME, that a harslhly anti-war candidate would not be able to defeat Bush, so they went with the "moderate", the one who agreed with the principle of the use of force in this circumstance, but not with the way Bush actually applied the use of force. Now you and I have the benefit of hindsight today, but neither Kerry nor the Democrats had it then.
So what you see as a flip-flop, does not look like a flip-flop to me, given the sequence of events, and what we did and didn't know at the time. You are implying Kerry is weak because he didn't take the radical stance at the time, whereas I'm saying it took courage to stick with a moderate position when the moderate position was under attack from both sides.
Consider this: What if there HAD been WMDs there? What if Bush had changed his mind and sought UN support? What if the situation in Iraq did NOT turn out as horrible as it has? We know that these things were unlikely to have happened because with 20/20 hindsight we now know Bush is a complete moron, but at the time, NO ONE knew what was coming. So if the Dems had selected Dean, and the Iraqi invasion goes better than it actually did, Dean would have been ripped to shreds for his militant anti-war stance, and the Reps would have 4 more years. If Kerry had gone anti-war at the war resolution point, and things went well, both Kerry and Dean would have likely lost in the primaries and it would be some other candidate who took a moderate position on
If you don't see the logical fallacy in the above statement, them I'm not the moron.
As an alternative to the 2 established parties which have been in power for so long they've taken their position for granted.
I thought the little 'D' was really 'd'?
That's your description, not mine, my description of the current Lib party is very simple: "too extremist to ever win an election".
Well, if you think about it, its the same reason the phrase is still being used today.
The difference this time is that too many of the lawyers are now the guardians of a status quo which improves their own financial well being at the expense of both the larger society as well as common sense.
I must seriously disagree. I don't understand how you can miss the connection between choice and freedom. Choice IS freedom! When one exists, so does the other. Is a country which gives you only one choice for President a free country? What is freedom if not the ability to make different choices for living your life than the others around you?
What you are advocating is RMS's idea of freedom, because implicit in your argument is that non-free software (shareware) isn't a choice and isn't free. Your argument is the 'F' in 'FOSS', however the parent explicitly used 'FOSS' to indicate he was using the wider definition of 'freedom', including Open Source which argues that FOS and proprietary can coexist. In this case, the choice, and therefore the freedom, is *between* FOSS and shareware and even MS's monopoly. Just because you and I don't see the latter 2 as either "free" or good choices doesn't mean that others (like the grandparent) won't see them as choices. Since they are choices for some, that makes it a freedom (even if we disagree with their reasoning).
Even though I probably agree with you on many things, and have used and will always prefer the GPL, for me FOSS is all about *choice*. Freedom is implicit in that, but choice is the most practical and beneficial element involved. With FOSS, I don't have to worry about one company telling me how to use my computer. I have numerous choices that I don't have with Windows: Linux over BSD, CLI over X11 (or CLI within X11), KDE over GNOME, Debian over Red Hat, Python over Perl, Gimp over KPaint, etc, etc. For some this is construed as a disadvantage (they have different goals than we do), but to me this is FOSS's true strength.
Well with the absence of a third "moderate" alternative, then sure. My point is if you give them a realistic third option, they may NOT vote for the usual suspects. A lot of people went with Perot for example just to show dissatisfaction with the establishment.
Its self-perpetuating for a reason.
Evidence for this?
Well its the Reps who are working so hard to get Nader on the ballets, so who is really playing the dirty tricks here?
I don't see your logic. The Dems still don't care about Nader, they're just mad at him because he's running when he and everyone else knows he doesn't stand a chance in hell, and he's also running while Bush has no one running that would siphon votes from him. The only thing Nader can do is swing a few close states to Bush by taking crucial votes from Kerry, and a LOT of people see Bush as a hell of a lot worse than Kerry.
They can't and you know that. Just as the Reps can't accept Buchannon's crap into their main platform either. The difference is, Buchannon hasn't chosen to run in the primary and take votes away from Bush this time, and the Libertarians only cost Bush
Until there is a "reasonable" 3rd party that I and many others would be willing to vote for, the point is moot. That was the whole point of my prior post. Fringe groups can't win elections, so voting for them is a waste. Deny that all you will, but it remains the truth.
As I said in my prior post, without a realistic alternative (a 3rd candidate that could actually win) smart people realize that they have no choice. If there is no real difference in the 2 usual suspects, then voting really doesn't matter. If one of the candidates is much worse than the other, then voting for the other party's candidate is the only logical way to keep the "worse" candidate out of office.
By definition, the status quo is what you get when no new viable alternatives are available.
Spoken like someone obbsessed with an idea that few others accept.
What part of
did you not understand?
Correction: Real Estate with a lot of Black Gold.
Check your sources, to say that that memo is misleading is to be fawningly polite. The truth is its bullshit.
Bush has yet to give a coherent argument about why we needed to invade Iraq, but not invade Syria or Saudi Arabia or Iran or Jordan or etc, because all those other countries have had minor or low level connections with terroists organizations too, but we aren't attacking them. This is the problem: even if it was true in a technical sense (low level connections may have existed), it wasn't true in a fundamental or practical sense because:
No, they aren't. The military, for the most part, for most units, is meeting its own targets for retention, but that doesn't make them records. Second, the big exception is the National Guard, which is dramatically failing to meet its retention goals nationwide, and because half the troops in Iraq are reservists, this is a serious problem. (If Bush plans more of these wars, the Army may be forced to abandon the concept of integrating the Guard into the full-time military units). Third, we don't know yet what the full effect of multiple, back-to-back, year-long deployments are going to do in the long run to the Army. If the Army can end those long deployments soon, it may have no effect, but if they can't stop it because of a chronic lack of combat troops, it could start to have a bad effect. Fourth, the longer the Army uses "stop loss" orders (Bush's stealth draft) to keep people from going home after serving their time, that will have a negative impact on people too (particularly the Guard). Finally, it depends on who you ask, many units aren't having major problems with retention, but some definitely are.
I believe the whole issue in dispute here is whether we can trust Shrubby anymore. I believe this about as much as I believed his father's "no new taxes" pledge.
You need to get in touch with the troops. Its high ranking officers in the military that are the ones admitting we should have kept the Iraqi military force structure intact (this doesn't mean keeping the politically appointed officers, nor does it mean keeping units like the Republican Guard). I'm pretty sure even Rummy has conceded this. This was
Oh, and not to mention a guy the conservatives would call a "smart bizness man", until he decides to use his money against them, then suddenly he's "a crook" for asking for help. If the government had given him the money, *they* would have been the ones "stealing" from the taxpayer. Asking for something you don't have the power to take, is not the same as *taking* it. By this logic, Chrysler Corporation was a massive "thief" for asking the government to bail them out a few decades back. They did, and the government did, but if you think it was a mistake, don't blame Chrysler, they just made a *request*, blame the government for granting them the request.
Conservative hypocrisy at its finest.
Sorry, but you failed utterly. Try answering the actual question given next time.
Yea, about as rare as a conservative with a sense of humility.
More of the Big Lie machine... Just because the Rabid Right says Kerry "hasn't said anything" doesn't make it true. It is in your interest to keep the argument on something like Vietnam rather than let Kerry turn the debate back to Iraq or the economy. Its the *Right* who keeps screaming that Kerry "hasn't said anything" when in fact he has said all sorts of things about the economy, Iraq, our relations with the world and the UN, etc, in his stump speaches, which I'll bet $10 you haven't heard (yea, like Fox News is ever going to be really Fair and Balanced(TM)(BS)). I got another $10 that says Kerry in the debates doesn't bring up Vietnam unless as a reference to the character assasinations launched against him over his service.
ROFL!!!!!
More of the Big Lie Machine.
Don't worry, give Bush another 4 years and he'll take care of that "problem" too.
Why not? I've had my fill of cruising in the Navy, but sail-boarding still looks fun.
Well, ask the ones caught by Bush's stealth draft, after they had served their time, including in Iraq, getting out and thinking their service was over, but who are now going back to Iraq. I'm not at all sure its an "overwhelming majority" anymore. A majority yes, but overwhelming?
Oops, I thought you were another Yankee saying "our system is perfect, we're America after all". :)
Apologies.
Not this year. He's been taken off the Ohio ballot because most of the signatures he presented turned out to be forgeries. Only the Reps call him viable, the Dems just see him as working for Bush, since they believe he siphoned off enough votes from Gore to give FLA to Bush, and he's trying to do the same again.
There is one thing this discussion is missing: Major 3rd parties in the US are created not to simply be a spoiler for one of the major parties, but a spoiler for *both*. Perot (whatever you thought of him) was a more legitimate "3rd option" since he was drawing from the discontented on both sides and it was within the realm of possibility that he could get close to 33% and really contest the race (he didn't but everyone realized his impact would be significant).
Nader and all the others aren't like Perot, each one is really just a parasite on one of the main parties, and most of the people who might agree with them continue to act as a subgroup of one of the main parties so they can wield some influence, hence the libertarians being an historically significant block within the Reps, and Nader's constituency being solely from the Dems - but 99% of them are staying with the Dems this year because they now know a vote for Nader is effectively a vote for Bush.
There is a huge difference between a viable 3rd movement and a fringe movement. Fringe movements (Nader, Libertarians, others today) almost always leech off one of the main parties and therefore can never make a difference other than to possibly give the victory to the other side, a viable 3rd party however pulls from both main parties, and has the potential to beat them (needing only 33.34% + 1 of the vote).
My main point is that a 3rd party, in a system without proportional representation, is only viable when its capable of attracting large groups of people away from both the main-stream parties, and actually *winning*. In Europe people will vote for a party even if they know it won't win a majority, because it will win representation above a certain threshold percentage of the total vote. In the US, your vote only counts as a positive when the party you vote for has a realistic chance of winning. If the party doesn't have a realistic chance at a majority, your vote is at least worthless, and at worst, giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
So if you want people to vote for a 3rd party, either give them a proportional representation system where their vote means something even if their party doesn't get the majority, or give them a 3rd party that can actually win. Everything else being said is just hot air.
What we need is not the Libertarians, or Nader, or the Constitution Party. What we need is the "Moderate Party", a centrist organization, built from scratch via grass-roots mobilization, without ties to (or the chains of) the dominating special interests of today, capable of drawing the discontented and moderates from both the dominant parties as well as independents, where most people realize a vote for them might mean something.
And the Big Lie Machine rolls on.....
(no point in responding to your BS, elwinc has already done so.)
A spoof of those folks is like a spoof of Heinreich Himmler and his SS. Its hard to get humor out of something that ugly.