What makes you think the models don't take water vapor into account? Besides, what is the magical property of water vapor that somehow invalidates GW? That's like telling the fire Marshal you pouring gasoline though out your house had nothing to do with the fire because his investigation didn't take into account the wood that was already in the house.
> It's "If we'd tried to fix global cooling, we'd have been wrong", and "If we try to fix global warming, we may very well do wrong again."
It never was a case of "all scientists were wrong to believe in global cooling in the 1970's" so there would have been nothing to attempt to fix. It is a myth being spread now that scientists in the 70's believed global cooling and were wrong. The few bits of evidence being cited is either not quoted from scientific journals, misquoted from scientific journals, or completely fabricated. There was some talk about nuclear winter which would occur "if" we blew each other up with nukes. There was also talk of historic patterns suggesting we are due for an ice age soon. Nether of those state that the earth is, or was in the 70's, cooling down. Scientists did not believe in global cooling in the 70's, period.
The difference now is that Scientists from differing fields of study are all finding evidence of global warming. They are publishing their findings in scientific journals so that their findings are subject to peer review. Other scientists have compared the studies and looked for causes. They all agree that the earth is without a doubt warming up and all evidence points to a drastic increase in green house gasses, in particular, CO2.
You can believe the politicians if you like but I prefer to believe the scientists, the ones who are the experts, the ones we count on to research this stuff, the ones who don't have a vested interest in the outcome of their studies. If there was a belief of global cooling, this would have been brought up in the 80's while the 70's were still fresh in our minds.
Lets say the taxable income is $20 minus and after taxes you are left with $25, you save 10$ and spend $15 and you have the same amount of savings as plan B but you have spent as much as plan A.
Bah, tried to clearify that and made it worse. You start with the same $30 but of that, only $20 is taxable after all deductions. The tax is $5 and so the total left is $25.
You have several flaws of logic, if any logic at all, in your comparison. First, you are saving twice as much in plan B, therefor of course you are going to earn more from interest. You are using a 33.33% tax rate yet most people dont currently pay that much on taxes. If you were making enough to be in the 33.33% tax bracket, you could put away much more than the $5 you indicate and people would if savings weren't a measly 1%.
Most people pay 25% and less with deductions and credits. Lets say the taxable income is $20 minus and after taxes you are left with $25, you save 10$ and spend $15 and you have the same amount of savings as plan B but you have spent as much as plan A. The only difference is all of the savings in Plan B is subject to taxes where as only the interest in Plan A is.
This is besides the point that poor people would have trouble saving anything at all and rich people can order take out from Mexico and Canada among other places.
Until the taxes are paid. $40K gross = $22K net after all taxes. Then rent and food takes the rest.
I was making that much in the 90's plus I had investments that were paying well yet I never paid anywhere close to that much in taxes. Either you are making up dramatic sounding numbers or you need new tax software. Perhaps you dont work but just got lucky with a lottery ticket.
Also, if you are paying $22k a year in food and rent and calling youself poor, you must have one luxurious cardboard box. Try living on less than $15k a year which is full time pay at minimum wage before taxes. Now for those of you who think living on welfare is the lap of luxury, try living on half of that $15k.
But I agree with you. If the poor would only save their money instead of wasting it, they would be better off with a VAT. Instead of that weekly plate of meat and potatos, they could be saving $20. They could go without electricity for another $150 a month. If the kids could share a back pack for school. Before you know it, they will have saved up $3000. And at the end of the year, without taxes, they will have $30 in interest. Of course, they can't spend that or it will be taxed.
There are plenty on the right who also hate Bush because of his policies. It is just not advantageous for them to say so at this time. We (Bush haters, not lefties or righties) hate Bush because we love the country and hate what he has done to it. Some of his core supporters, religious zealots, are now turning on him since they see he does sufficiently hate gays and arabs enough for them.
If you look a little closer at yourself you may find you have a lot of hate yourself. I'll beat you have a seething fear and hatred of Hillary Clinton. I bet even the name makes your skin crawl. What's the big threat? She's not even president. Oh yea, I remember, she's a lesbian who married Bill for political reasons.
We have rational reasons we can point to for what we hate about Bush and they are all about his policy that affects us all, not some far fetched rumor.
He has failed with the economy driving up the deficit while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals and cooperations at the expense of the poorest.
He has failed in Afghanistan to capture the leaders of the 9/11 attackers and rebuild the country so it's no longer a haven for terrorists.
He invaded a sovereign nation and lied to us about the true reasons. In the process, he alienated the rest of the world and created a new haven for terrorists.
He misused the military during that invasion putting them at great risk of injury or death by not sending enough troops, not using the right type of troops and sending them in under-equipped.
He threatened other nations with invasion causing them to shut down dialog with the west and start production of arms, especially nuclear arms, to defend themselves.
He has used fear mongering of terrorism to justify suppression of lawful protest and speech and to illegally wiretap his imagined enemies.
He has endorsed the use of torture and holding prisoners of war illegally and justifies it by changing the definition of the words to suit him and the fear mongering catch all of the war on terrorism.
Most of all, he dismisses critics as anti-american, terrorists supporters, or worse and even when it's obvious they were right, he refuses to admit it and correct his mistakes.
We hate Bush because he is a failure and he is causing America to fail.
I see your point. How could I have been so dense. This is genies. I'm 100% on board with this now that you have explained it so well. Let me explain this in more simple terms for those ignorant left wingnut moonbats.
If you label someone a terrorist.... With me so far? I'll go slow for you.....they become terrorists, therefore, no due process of law needed, they loose all constitutional rights on the spot. We are free to then wiretap the the filthy terrorist and if he doesn't say anything over the phone, we can detain and torture him until he does.
We should expand this new tool. We can call pedophiles terrorists, then we dont have to worry about them getting out and hurting the children ever again. If you see someone who glances at children in a manor you feel is not right, Club him over the head and call the defense department and explain he was getting all terrorist like.
This works for street gangs too. Hell, we can get rid of all the dregs of society. Drug users? Not in my country. Someone bothers you asking for your change? Call the terrorist hotline. You no longer have to take a bad business partner to court. Just report him. We can even rid ourselves of gays and atheists. Say goodbye to the democrats, hehe, of course I mean "terrorists".
The myth is that the money we pay in social security is locked away somewhere which has never been the case. You are forgetting that the bonds gain interest over the lifetime. You aren't just getting the ammont of the bond, you are getting that ammount plus a whole lot more. If the cash was left in the social security as you suggest, it would be substantially less than using bonds and would not keep up with inflation.
The analogy of the wife leaving IOUs doesn't really match and you point out why. Unlike the wife, the government is able to pay back the bind plus the interest because it can print dollars. You can point out that the value of the dollar may be weaker at that time but it may also be stronger.
A better analogy is the bank loaning out your money when you deposit it as the money is always available from someone elses account should you go to withdraw it. There is nothing being done that hasn't always been done. Using bonds is a lot more secure than the way it was done before. If it were invested in stocks as some suggest, it would have actually lost value in the 2001 stock crash.
It is clear there never were any WMDs. There are no sites found that could have been used to build them. There were no documents found that showed evidence of their production. There has been no one coming forward to offer evidence or even testify knowledge of them. You would think if Saddam's own family would turn him and his sons in for a reward that someone, anyone, would offer evidence of WMDs for reward yet there has been no one. For crying out loud, even Bush admits all the evidence used to justify the invasion was a "mistake". If you can't believe us that there were no WMDs, couldn't you at least believe him?
As for the lies, the subject of this topic, Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a long time republican and close aid to the Bush administration, who now says he took part in a hoax apon the American people and the world. What he is saying is that the Bush hawks knew the information their were using to justify the invasion of Iraq was false. You can claim sour grapes or book selling or the typical line to discredit a critic but if being a military man and a republican insider isn't enough for you, the facts on the ground bear witness that lend this man all the credibility he needs.
The invasion force did not secure known nuclear sites. They did not secure aluminum tubes, the vary type the white house could only be used for nuclear weapons production. They did not secure chemical plants which could have dual used as chemical weapons sites. They did not even secure ammo dumps which were looted and are now being used against us. What did they secure but oil fields?
Also lending credibility that the Bush administration purposely misled us is that he isn't the first one or the only one to make these claim. He is only the latest in a long line of insiders and experts who have said what the Bush administration has been saing is totally false. Just because a boy cries wolf doesn't mean it's safe to ignore his warning, especially when half the town has seen the wolf too.
I do admit Clinton lied and he shouldn't have. He should have told those questioning that it was none of their damn business. I thought his little dance around definitions rather pitiful myself but he should not have been put in that position in the first place. I find it rather disingenuous to continue to compare on a little white lie intended to save face in a personal matter with multiply, repetitive, grandiose lies intended to manipulate the citizenry in a massive propaganda effort that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans, tens of thousands of Iraqis, and resulted in the rest of the worlds to treat us with skepticism at the very least. If the only thing politicians lied about was who they had sex with, we would all be better off.
Oh, you mean the same Bin Laden who still attacked us after Clinton's limp wristed attempt as defeating him. You're just kidding yourself if you think the attack on Afganistan was anything more than an attempt to distract the public. Both of us, and the majority of the worlds populace, know that if Clinton wanted Bin Laden dead it would have been a done deal.
So are you admitting that Bush does not want Bin Laden "dead or alive?" Are you agreeing with those of us who say the threat by Bin Laden is being used to manipulate the population through fear into giving the Bush administration free reign to lord over us as a dictator? Bush has much more support and power at his disposal for killing Bin Laden yet he still lives. Not only does he still live, but we have pulled troops away from finding him to secure oil fields in Iraq. Now that you have established that our current government has no intention of killing or capturing the biggest terrorist of our time, we are left to question what this "war on terror" is all about.
It is you trying to obfiscate the issue. Maybe the attacks on the USS Cole and the embassies weren't enough to worry the Bush administration but it was very alarming to Clinton. While the method Clinton used to retaliate for the attack on the Cole can be questioned, at the time he was accused of using it to distract from the sex investigation. I believe the stronger the response to Bin LAden, the louder the republicans in congress would have howled. Remember "wag the dog?" That is what the poster is pointing out. Even if Clinton tried to take stronger action, the republican's in congress at the time would have sought to prevent it. They were against the very type of invasion and nation building going on in Iraq and even Afghanistan.
It is clear now that Bin Laden was a threat and trying to take him out was the right thing to do. But what you hear now from Bush supporters is that he didn't do enough, as if he should have been clarvoyent enough to have forseen 9/11. That belays the fact that it was Clinton who took the threat Bin Laden posed seriously and, apon leaving office, even warned the new white house that Bin Laden was their biggest threat. It belies the fact that it was the Bush administration that ignored that warning and new warnings from several sources of the threat Al Qeada posed in the near future. While you can accuse the Clinton administration of not realizing the threat soon enough, it was the bush administation which didn't take it seriously at all. The Bush administration was told of the nature of the threat and chose to ignore it which is the bigger crime.
You are right in saying that killing Bin may or may not have stopped the 9/11 attack as that was already in the works and most likely didn't rely on Bin Laden. It is unfair to blame Clinton or the republican's for not knowing about the attacks in the future. That is the job of the intelligence departments which failed for numerous reason. But now that the truth is known and they still support the Bush administration, they share the blame for Bush's failures. Democrats share the blame in this as well as they largely supported the war in Iraq in spite of knowing it was a distraction from the real "war on terror" which is going after Al Qaeda.
No- but then again, the aim isn't to be "better" than they are- the aim is to get revenge and instill enough fear of the US to end the freakin' jihad.
And to that aim, we have failed and will always fail. There are many more angry with us and have taken up arms now than ever before, many who were sympathetic towards us after 9/11.
Well, we'd be better off if we either based it on families or areas many more miles wide...I prefer the idea that the family of a suicide bomber simply isn't fit to live.
And that is the very definition of terrorism. If you can't get to the people doing you harm, you attack their family and supporters in hopes of creating fear. Should we execute Timothy McVeigh's family? Should we kill the families of Eric Rudolph and the kaczynski family? Did the death of Randy Weaver's family or the extended family at Waco end terrorism in the US? I think the families of those who died in the Alfred P. Murrah Building could answer that.
It seems to me the plan is going exactly how Al Qeada envisioned it. Everything seems to fall in place for them, including the latest row over cartoons.
You are making Rumsfeld out to be some genius rather than the complete failure that he is. The reason we so quickly took Iraq was because Saddam outsmarted Rumsfeld despite warnings from many experts including military commanders. And I dont know how you come up with the US using Guerrilla tactics. Blitzkrieg V.2 is a more accurate description and it seems Rumsfeld has borrowed much more than blitzkrieg from the Nazis.
Saddam left his regular army out in front to fight but pulled his republican guard back into hiding, knowing they couldn't match the US military equipment. His plan was for forcing the US into a Guerrilla warfare where technology doesn't matter so much. He must have seen Blackhawk down. Instead of learning from Somalia, the first gulf war, and in fact, Afghanistan, he chose to carpet bomb the locals instead of enlisting them to help out.
Rumsfeld was warned they didn't have enough troops, he was warned that Saddam would retreat and use gorilla warfare and a insurgency. He was told he should negotiate surrenders and enlist the help of local generals who felt no great loyalty to Saddam. He chose to ignore them all. He wanted to prove his method was better. Well we see now that it wasn't. The decision to invade was a failure on Bush's part but the failures of the invasion and occupation are the fault of Rumsfeld.
The original poster is correct, the US military does generally lack the skills in insurgency, occupation and Guerrilla warfare. They are great when it comes to blowing things up but not when it comes to getting the local people on your side. They go in with a cocky attitude that everyone should bow down to us for saving them from themselves and if you dont bow, you must be the enemy. They made progress but let it slip when they allowed things like Abu Ghraib and bombed wedding parties. The special forces tend to be better about that as evidence in Afghanistan.
A better comparison is how to get through the menu to the app.
Windows: Start/programs/Adobe/Acrobat? nope, not there. Start/programs/Adobe inc/Pagemaker? nope Start/Programs/Adobe co/Illustrator? nope Start/Programs/Adobe Systems/GoLive? nope, where is it? Start/Programs/Adobe Solutions/photoshop There it is.
And we know who Adobe is. It's worse when you have a hundred apps from companies you never heard of before.
Linux: K(or foot, etc)/apps/graphics/GIMP What could be more simple?
This person is right but for the wrong reason. It is impossible to commit terrorism against US citizens because all the terrorists are in Iraq. PETA can't even launch an ICBM against us because we have star wars missle defense. We are 100% safe, folks. Go about your purchases as you normally would.
While I agree Linux and OSX are not immune, I don't think that makes them a greater threat. Viruses have been tried and are less successful at spreading. The reasons are many but I will list a few. I'll use the term virus but this also includes worms, trojans, rootkits, spyware and what ever else is out there.
First, the OS comes with many software packages already so people aren't for want for programs from warzes sites.
Second, most linux and OSX users get their software from their distribution vendor who keeps a better eye out for these types of things.
Third, in the case of linux in particular, there are many different vendors which differ slightly to greatly in the ways of doing things and the versions of programs. A one virus fits all is harder to write and viruses are typically limited to one vendor.
Forth, the user and permission scheme doesn't allow the typical user to install programs as root so if a user account is compromised, little damage is ususlly done beyond that.
Fifth, there are many tools available to linux users to better evaluate damage done by a virus and repair it. This includes live CDs and floppies with access to networks, any file systems, and backup/restore tools.
Linux and OSX systems do get infected from time to time, usually through exploits in programs other than those directly related to the OS. This is usually because the programs haven't been kept up to date. Linux systems are vulnerable to the same types of human errors as windows. The difference is it usually doesn't spread far from there. Viruses are less successful at spreading than their windows counterparts.
It's disingenuous to say linux or OSX is immune but it's equally disingenuous to say it's simply because there are less systems used. There are more linux/apache/mysql websites on the web but they fall victim to attacks less than windows/IIS/mssql.
No one is telling this fucktard to use OSS but I bet someone is paying this fucktard to slam it.
He has a point that some printers don't have drivers but the same is true for Microsoft windows. The vendors supply the drivers to microsoft and they generally dont for linux. If the vendors don't supply drivers for windows, windows doesn't support the printer. I found this out when I purchased Win XP 64 for a customer, thinking if MS released it officially, that it must at least support the devices that XP 32 did. I was wrong. Not a single driver for three different printers, all less than a few years old. Email to the vendors went unanswered or a reply that they wont be writing XP 64 drivers for that model. Three different vendors, no drivers. No wrapper from microsoft to use existing 32 bit drivers either.
In all, when a device is supported by linux drivers, they work well and are usually less than 100k and certainly less than 500k. The windows drivers are generally 10meg to 40meg in size and often cause the system to become unstable. And these drivers get carried along with the development of the kernel so devices that were supported 10 years ago are still supported today. I don't have to go out and buy a new printer with every new version of the OS. If you ask me who wins on hardware support, it's OSS.
There are several commercial products that will provide printer drivers under linux if he doesn't like what was provided for free. He should be able to afford it with the money he saved not buying windows. As others pointed out, he can also use the source and fix the bugs or write his own drivers. I suspect finding ways to use OSS is not his motive, though. His descriptions says it all.
"Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest."
Let's see, a more moral digital age includes shooting people who act like lemmings, spanking boys, spitting on frenchmen and vomiting because someone powers his house with the sun? He strives to be the Bill O'Reilly of IT world for which I say "bullshit doesn't spin." I'm sure he is paid well for his opinions of OSS by it's opponents, just as the real O'Reilly is paid well by the opponents of honest journalism.
"'We were hit by a hurricane that we're were powerless to prevent' Which caused the city to be flooded which could have easily been prevented."
Which engineering school did you graduate from because most experts on the subject say that to have prevented that flood would have had to have started 20 years ago and would cost billions of dollars.
"'New Orleans exists where it does for a lot of practical reasons, and those reasons are very important to the economic workings of this country.' The extreme majority of the population had nothing to do with shipping, fishing, oil, etc."
What economics school did you graduate from because most experts say that New Orleans is a major shipping port and supplies much of the country's seafood, petrolium and natural gas products. You are right, a large part of the population were not involved with shipping, fishing or oil production but who the hell do you expect to run the restaurats, build the houses, Provide power, water, roads, Sell cars, boats, appliances, fix cars, boats, appliances, teach the children...? As you can see, it takes a lot more than oil workers to run an oil town. The practical reason for where it exists has nothing to do with that, though. It was settled there because it was the first place going up the river that wasn't a swamp. It was, and still is, the hub for everything going up and down the river and out into the gulf.
"Yall just sat your asses down and waited for the federal government to come help you."
Yea, they sat on their asses all right, on the few dry areas of the city, without communication, food, water, dealing with hundreds of thousands of desperate people trying to save as many as they can while waiting for FEMA who sat on their asses in Washington or ate at fancy restaurants in Baton Rogue. The Local authorities did the best they could and more than you could ask them to given the situation. The buses you refer to dont drive themselves and were not under the authority of the city. It was FEMA who was suppose to coordinate the use of transportation with outside communities because they were well aware that communications would be the first thing to go in NO. I'm sure the mayor would have authorized commandeering them had he had the drivers but he didn't. New Orleans had the 5 day's worth of supplies for the people they expected at the superdome. They were quickly overwhelmed because they didn't get the help to evacuate people that they depended on. They also didn't get the supplies brought in that they expected to get.
"Like, oh, say... Texas? We did a pretty good job of hauling our asses outta there when we heard a hurricane was coming through."
Perhaps you didn't notice but texans did not get "outta there." They were stuck on highways and are lucky it turned and didn't hit them. If you want a model of evacuation, look a little east to New Orleans. Last year when they had a scare from Ivan, it was taking over 8 hours just to get out of the city. Then there were long traffic jams and cars out of gas once on the highway, much like around Houston. They revised the plans and opened up new routes and started contraflow earlier so that it only took a 2 hour wait to get out on the city. They also enlisted the help of tow trucks and fuel trucks along the evacuation route to help keep traffic flowing. Their remaining problem was that a large segment of the population didn't or couldn't leave.
"Just another example of relying on other, non-local, groups. Did you never think that maybe yall should handle it yourselves? Also, it was publicly known that it could only handle a category 3 storm, and guess what? A category 4 storm broke it. What a surprise."
Did you think if yall Texans handled things yourselves, the Army Corps of Engineers would have had the resources to strengthen the levee system?
Despite your opinion, the universe does not revolve around you and where you live. There are many states and communities who have serious water concerns, my state of Florida being one of them. We have pollution, salt water intrusion, droughts, sink holes, you name it. We have many very delicious springs but that water is largely sold to the bottled water companies. We have regulations on how much they can take from the springs because it's our source of our water too yet they are often caught pumping out more than they are allowed and given a slap on the wrist. There are fights between communities over how much water they are pumping or pollution flowing into supplies.
Perhaps since we were so stupid as to be born and raised in an area with so many water concerns, we should all wise up and move to where you so brilliantly decided to be born. I'm sure your area, where ever it is, can support 16 million Floridians. Heck we could invite the Californians too. We'll have a big water balloon fight on your lawn. And when you run out of water, we will move back and be taken aback at your complaints because by then, our water tables will have replenished.
I do agree with you that the water problems differ in different areas and most of the problems should be dealt with at the local and state level. Some problems that extend across state borders, however, and sometimes have to be dealt with at the federal level or at least with federal aid. If LA and Vegas can't or wont do something to reduce the impact they have on water supplies down stream, the federal government should step in. If nothing else, the downstream communities could use the federal courts.
I dont understand all the paranoia some people have about the federal government and federal funds helping some areas in times of need. Florida and the east coast have never turned down federal aid after hurricanes. I dont see any of the midwest states turning down federal aid after floods or droughts. I dont see the mountain states turning down federal aid during forest fire season. Why all the bitching about New Orleans or California when they need federal help? After all, we are the United States, not the I've got mine, you get yours States.
Well if the company is willing to do something like this, they aren't concerned with quality control. I'm pretty sure the motherboards they make are crap and not worth the money even at $70 and including a real celeron. I wouldn't be surprised if they were overclocked to 1.7GHz to begin with.
That article gave me a great idea. I spent a few hours tinkering in the garage and came up with an idea that's going to revolutionize lunar living. And because I use all petrolium products to build my units, I can sell them for much less that the lunar lawn mower. The prototypes will be more expensive but I think I can get the price of the mass produced product down to $12,854.95 a piece. Certainly more practical than a lunar lawnmower. I now present THE LUNAR DELINTER!
What we need is a list of artists and labels that aren't a part of the RIAA and support them. I use to buy a lot of CDs. New artists and to replace my favorite albums. I was never and still am not a big fan of downloaded music. I stopped buying CDs around the time of the napster crackdown. I tried napster and I could find 1000 hits of Britney Spears but if I wanted to find an old album I haven't listened to in a while or some new artist to see if I liked them, I was screwed. If I found them at all, it was a modem user with 20 people queued ahead of me. I now only buy CDs at yard sales and at an occasional concert. I would buy more new CDs if I could clearly identify which labels were in the RIAA or not and would encourage others to do the same. Does anyone know of such a list?
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What makes you think the models don't take water vapor into account? Besides, what is the magical property of water vapor that somehow invalidates GW? That's like telling the fire Marshal you pouring gasoline though out your house had nothing to do with the fire because his investigation didn't take into account the wood that was already in the house.
> It's "If we'd tried to fix global cooling, we'd have been wrong", and "If we try to fix global warming, we may very well do wrong again."
It never was a case of "all scientists were wrong to believe in global cooling in the 1970's" so there would have been nothing to attempt to fix. It is a myth being spread now that scientists in the 70's believed global cooling and were wrong. The few bits of evidence being cited is either not quoted from scientific journals, misquoted from scientific journals, or completely fabricated. There was some talk about nuclear winter which would occur "if" we blew each other up with nukes. There was also talk of historic patterns suggesting we are due for an ice age soon. Nether of those state that the earth is, or was in the 70's, cooling down. Scientists did not believe in global cooling in the 70's, period.
The difference now is that Scientists from differing fields of study are all finding evidence of global warming. They are publishing their findings in scientific journals so that their findings are subject to peer review. Other scientists have compared the studies and looked for causes. They all agree that the earth is without a doubt warming up and all evidence points to a drastic increase in green house gasses, in particular, CO2.
You can believe the politicians if you like but I prefer to believe the scientists, the ones who are the experts, the ones we count on to research this stuff, the ones who don't have a vested interest in the outcome of their studies. If there was a belief of global cooling, this would have been brought up in the 80's while the 70's were still fresh in our minds.
Lets say the taxable income is $20 minus and after taxes you are left with $25, you save 10$ and spend $15 and you have the same amount of savings as plan B but you have spent as much as plan A.
Bah, tried to clearify that and made it worse. You start with the same $30 but of that, only $20 is taxable after all deductions. The tax is $5 and so the total left is $25.
You have several flaws of logic, if any logic at all, in your comparison. First, you are saving twice as much in plan B, therefor of course you are going to earn more from interest. You are using a 33.33% tax rate yet most people dont currently pay that much on taxes. If you were making enough to be in the 33.33% tax bracket, you could put away much more than the $5 you indicate and people would if savings weren't a measly 1%.
Most people pay 25% and less with deductions and credits. Lets say the taxable income is $20 minus and after taxes you are left with $25, you save 10$ and spend $15 and you have the same amount of savings as plan B but you have spent as much as plan A. The only difference is all of the savings in Plan B is subject to taxes where as only the interest in Plan A is.
This is besides the point that poor people would have trouble saving anything at all and rich people can order take out from Mexico and Canada among other places.
I was making that much in the 90's plus I had investments that were paying well yet I never paid anywhere close to that much in taxes. Either you are making up dramatic sounding numbers or you need new tax software. Perhaps you dont work but just got lucky with a lottery ticket.
Also, if you are paying $22k a year in food and rent and calling youself poor, you must have one luxurious cardboard box. Try living on less than $15k a year which is full time pay at minimum wage before taxes. Now for those of you who think living on welfare is the lap of luxury, try living on half of that $15k.
But I agree with you. If the poor would only save their money instead of wasting it, they would be better off with a VAT. Instead of that weekly plate of meat and potatos, they could be saving $20. They could go without electricity for another $150 a month. If the kids could share a back pack for school. Before you know it, they will have saved up $3000. And at the end of the year, without taxes, they will have $30 in interest. Of course, they can't spend that or it will be taxed.
There are plenty on the right who also hate Bush because of his policies. It is just not advantageous for them to say so at this time. We (Bush haters, not lefties or righties) hate Bush because we love the country and hate what he has done to it. Some of his core supporters, religious zealots, are now turning on him since they see he does sufficiently hate gays and arabs enough for them.
If you look a little closer at yourself you may find you have a lot of hate yourself. I'll beat you have a seething fear and hatred of Hillary Clinton. I bet even the name makes your skin crawl. What's the big threat? She's not even president. Oh yea, I remember, she's a lesbian who married Bill for political reasons.
We have rational reasons we can point to for what we hate about Bush and they are all about his policy that affects us all, not some far fetched rumor.
He has failed with the economy driving up the deficit while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals and cooperations at the expense of the poorest.
He has failed in Afghanistan to capture the leaders of the 9/11 attackers and rebuild the country so it's no longer a haven for terrorists.
He invaded a sovereign nation and lied to us about the true reasons. In the process, he alienated the rest of the world and created a new haven for terrorists.
He misused the military during that invasion putting them at great risk of injury or death by not sending enough troops, not using the right type of troops and sending them in under-equipped.
He threatened other nations with invasion causing them to shut down dialog with the west and start production of arms, especially nuclear arms, to defend themselves.
He has used fear mongering of terrorism to justify suppression of lawful protest and speech and to illegally wiretap his imagined enemies.
He has endorsed the use of torture and holding prisoners of war illegally and justifies it by changing the definition of the words to suit him and the fear mongering catch all of the war on terrorism.
Most of all, he dismisses critics as anti-american, terrorists supporters, or worse and even when it's obvious they were right, he refuses to admit it and correct his mistakes.
We hate Bush because he is a failure and he is causing America to fail.
I see your point. How could I have been so dense. This is genies. I'm 100% on board with this now that you have explained it so well. Let me explain this in more simple terms for those ignorant left wingnut moonbats.
....they become terrorists, therefore, no due process of law needed, they loose all constitutional rights on the spot. We are free to then wiretap the the filthy terrorist and if he doesn't say anything over the phone, we can detain and torture him until he does.
If you label someone a terrorist.... With me so far? I'll go slow for you.
We should expand this new tool. We can call pedophiles terrorists, then we dont have to worry about them getting out and hurting the children ever again. If you see someone who glances at children in a manor you feel is not right, Club him over the head and call the defense department and explain he was getting all terrorist like.
This works for street gangs too. Hell, we can get rid of all the dregs of society. Drug users? Not in my country. Someone bothers you asking for your change? Call the terrorist hotline. You no longer have to take a bad business partner to court. Just report him. We can even rid ourselves of gays and atheists. Say goodbye to the democrats, hehe, of course I mean "terrorists".
The myth is that the money we pay in social security is locked away somewhere which has never been the case. You are forgetting that the bonds gain interest over the lifetime. You aren't just getting the ammont of the bond, you are getting that ammount plus a whole lot more. If the cash was left in the social security as you suggest, it would be substantially less than using bonds and would not keep up with inflation.
The analogy of the wife leaving IOUs doesn't really match and you point out why. Unlike the wife, the government is able to pay back the bind plus the interest because it can print dollars. You can point out that the value of the dollar may be weaker at that time but it may also be stronger.
A better analogy is the bank loaning out your money when you deposit it as the money is always available from someone elses account should you go to withdraw it. There is nothing being done that hasn't always been done. Using bonds is a lot more secure than the way it was done before. If it were invested in stocks as some suggest, it would have actually lost value in the 2001 stock crash.
It is clear there never were any WMDs. There are no sites found that could have been used to build them. There were no documents found that showed evidence of their production. There has been no one coming forward to offer evidence or even testify knowledge of them. You would think if Saddam's own family would turn him and his sons in for a reward that someone, anyone, would offer evidence of WMDs for reward yet there has been no one. For crying out loud, even Bush admits all the evidence used to justify the invasion was a "mistake". If you can't believe us that there were no WMDs, couldn't you at least believe him?
As for the lies, the subject of this topic, Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a long time republican and close aid to the Bush administration, who now says he took part in a hoax apon the American people and the world. What he is saying is that the Bush hawks knew the information their were using to justify the invasion of Iraq was false. You can claim sour grapes or book selling or the typical line to discredit a critic but if being a military man and a republican insider isn't enough for you, the facts on the ground bear witness that lend this man all the credibility he needs.
The invasion force did not secure known nuclear sites. They did not secure aluminum tubes, the vary type the white house could only be used for nuclear weapons production. They did not secure chemical plants which could have dual used as chemical weapons sites. They did not even secure ammo dumps which were looted and are now being used against us. What did they secure but oil fields?
Also lending credibility that the Bush administration purposely misled us is that he isn't the first one or the only one to make these claim. He is only the latest in a long line of insiders and experts who have said what the Bush administration has been saing is totally false. Just because a boy cries wolf doesn't mean it's safe to ignore his warning, especially when half the town has seen the wolf too.
I do admit Clinton lied and he shouldn't have. He should have told those questioning that it was none of their damn business. I thought his little dance around definitions rather pitiful myself but he should not have been put in that position in the first place. I find it rather disingenuous to continue to compare on a little white lie intended to save face in a personal matter with multiply, repetitive, grandiose lies intended to manipulate the citizenry in a massive propaganda effort that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans, tens of thousands of Iraqis, and resulted in the rest of the worlds to treat us with skepticism at the very least. If the only thing politicians lied about was who they had sex with, we would all be better off.
Oh, you mean the same Bin Laden who still attacked us after Clinton's limp wristed attempt as defeating him. You're just kidding yourself if you think the attack on Afganistan was anything more than an attempt to distract the public. Both of us, and the majority of the worlds populace, know that if Clinton wanted Bin Laden dead it would have been a done deal.
So are you admitting that Bush does not want Bin Laden "dead or alive?" Are you agreeing with those of us who say the threat by Bin Laden is being used to manipulate the population through fear into giving the Bush administration free reign to lord over us as a dictator? Bush has much more support and power at his disposal for killing Bin Laden yet he still lives. Not only does he still live, but we have pulled troops away from finding him to secure oil fields in Iraq. Now that you have established that our current government has no intention of killing or capturing the biggest terrorist of our time, we are left to question what this "war on terror" is all about.
It is you trying to obfiscate the issue. Maybe the attacks on the USS Cole and the embassies weren't enough to worry the Bush administration but it was very alarming to Clinton. While the method Clinton used to retaliate for the attack on the Cole can be questioned, at the time he was accused of using it to distract from the sex investigation. I believe the stronger the response to Bin LAden, the louder the republicans in congress would have howled. Remember "wag the dog?" That is what the poster is pointing out. Even if Clinton tried to take stronger action, the republican's in congress at the time would have sought to prevent it. They were against the very type of invasion and nation building going on in Iraq and even Afghanistan.
It is clear now that Bin Laden was a threat and trying to take him out was the right thing to do. But what you hear now from Bush supporters is that he didn't do enough, as if he should have been clarvoyent enough to have forseen 9/11. That belays the fact that it was Clinton who took the threat Bin Laden posed seriously and, apon leaving office, even warned the new white house that Bin Laden was their biggest threat. It belies the fact that it was the Bush administration that ignored that warning and new warnings from several sources of the threat Al Qeada posed in the near future. While you can accuse the Clinton administration of not realizing the threat soon enough, it was the bush administation which didn't take it seriously at all. The Bush administration was told of the nature of the threat and chose to ignore it which is the bigger crime.
You are right in saying that killing Bin may or may not have stopped the 9/11 attack as that was already in the works and most likely didn't rely on Bin Laden. It is unfair to blame Clinton or the republican's for not knowing about the attacks in the future. That is the job of the intelligence departments which failed for numerous reason. But now that the truth is known and they still support the Bush administration, they share the blame for Bush's failures. Democrats share the blame in this as well as they largely supported the war in Iraq in spite of knowing it was a distraction from the real "war on terror" which is going after Al Qaeda.
No- but then again, the aim isn't to be "better" than they are- the aim is to get revenge and instill enough fear of the US to end the freakin' jihad.
And to that aim, we have failed and will always fail. There are many more angry with us and have taken up arms now than ever before, many who were sympathetic towards us after 9/11.
Well, we'd be better off if we either based it on families or areas many more miles wide...I prefer the idea that the family of a suicide bomber simply isn't fit to live.
And that is the very definition of terrorism. If you can't get to the people doing you harm, you attack their family and supporters in hopes of creating fear. Should we execute Timothy McVeigh's family? Should we kill the families of Eric Rudolph and the kaczynski family? Did the death of Randy Weaver's family or the extended family at Waco end terrorism in the US? I think the families of those who died in the Alfred P. Murrah Building could answer that.
It seems to me the plan is going exactly how Al Qeada envisioned it. Everything seems to fall in place for them, including the latest row over cartoons.
You are making Rumsfeld out to be some genius rather than the complete failure that he is. The reason we so quickly took Iraq was because Saddam outsmarted Rumsfeld despite warnings from many experts including military commanders. And I dont know how you come up with the US using Guerrilla tactics. Blitzkrieg V.2 is a more accurate description and it seems Rumsfeld has borrowed much more than blitzkrieg from the Nazis.
Saddam left his regular army out in front to fight but pulled his republican guard back into hiding, knowing they couldn't match the US military equipment. His plan was for forcing the US into a Guerrilla warfare where technology doesn't matter so much. He must have seen Blackhawk down. Instead of learning from Somalia, the first gulf war, and in fact, Afghanistan, he chose to carpet bomb the locals instead of enlisting them to help out.
Rumsfeld was warned they didn't have enough troops, he was warned that Saddam would retreat and use gorilla warfare and a insurgency. He was told he should negotiate surrenders and enlist the help of local generals who felt no great loyalty to Saddam. He chose to ignore them all. He wanted to prove his method was better. Well we see now that it wasn't. The decision to invade was a failure on Bush's part but the failures of the invasion and occupation are the fault of Rumsfeld.
The original poster is correct, the US military does generally lack the skills in insurgency, occupation and Guerrilla warfare. They are great when it comes to blowing things up but not when it comes to getting the local people on your side. They go in with a cocky attitude that everyone should bow down to us for saving them from themselves and if you dont bow, you must be the enemy. They made progress but let it slip when they allowed things like Abu Ghraib and bombed wedding parties. The special forces tend to be better about that as evidence in Afghanistan.
A better comparison is how to get through the menu to the app.
Windows: Start/programs/Adobe/Acrobat? nope, not there.
Start/programs/Adobe inc/Pagemaker? nope
Start/Programs/Adobe co/Illustrator? nope
Start/Programs/Adobe Systems/GoLive? nope, where is it?
Start/Programs/Adobe Solutions/photoshop There it is.
And we know who Adobe is. It's worse when you have a hundred apps from companies you never heard of before.
Linux: K(or foot, etc)/apps/graphics/GIMP What could be more simple?
This person is right but for the wrong reason. It is impossible to commit terrorism against US citizens because all the terrorists are in Iraq. PETA can't even launch an ICBM against us because we have star wars missle defense. We are 100% safe, folks. Go about your purchases as you normally would.
While I agree Linux and OSX are not immune, I don't think that makes them a greater threat. Viruses have been tried and are less successful at spreading. The reasons are many but I will list a few. I'll use the term virus but this also includes worms, trojans, rootkits, spyware and what ever else is out there.
First, the OS comes with many software packages already so people aren't for want for programs from warzes sites.
Second, most linux and OSX users get their software from their distribution vendor who keeps a better eye out for these types of things.
Third, in the case of linux in particular, there are many different vendors which differ slightly to greatly in the ways of doing things and the versions of programs. A one virus fits all is harder to write and viruses are typically limited to one vendor.
Forth, the user and permission scheme doesn't allow the typical user to install programs as root so if a user account is compromised, little damage is ususlly done beyond that.
Fifth, there are many tools available to linux users to better evaluate damage done by a virus and repair it. This includes live CDs and floppies with access to networks, any file systems, and backup/restore tools.
Linux and OSX systems do get infected from time to time, usually through exploits in programs other than those directly related to the OS. This is usually because the programs haven't been kept up to date. Linux systems are vulnerable to the same types of human errors as windows. The difference is it usually doesn't spread far from there. Viruses are less successful at spreading than their windows counterparts.
It's disingenuous to say linux or OSX is immune but it's equally disingenuous to say it's simply because there are less systems used. There are more linux/apache/mysql websites on the web but they fall victim to attacks less than windows/IIS/mssql.
No one is telling this fucktard to use OSS but I bet someone is paying this fucktard to slam it.
He has a point that some printers don't have drivers but the same is true for Microsoft windows. The vendors supply the drivers to microsoft and they generally dont for linux. If the vendors don't supply drivers for windows, windows doesn't support the printer. I found this out when I purchased Win XP 64 for a customer, thinking if MS released it officially, that it must at least support the devices that XP 32 did. I was wrong. Not a single driver for three different printers, all less than a few years old. Email to the vendors went unanswered or a reply that they wont be writing XP 64 drivers for that model. Three different vendors, no drivers. No wrapper from microsoft to use existing 32 bit drivers either.
In all, when a device is supported by linux drivers, they work well and are usually less than 100k and certainly less than 500k. The windows drivers are generally 10meg to 40meg in size and often cause the system to become unstable. And these drivers get carried along with the development of the kernel so devices that were supported 10 years ago are still supported today. I don't have to go out and buy a new printer with every new version of the OS. If you ask me who wins on hardware support, it's OSS.
There are several commercial products that will provide printer drivers under linux if he doesn't like what was provided for free. He should be able to afford it with the money he saved not buying windows. As others pointed out, he can also use the source and fix the bugs or write his own drivers. I suspect finding ways to use OSS is not his motive, though. His descriptions says it all.
"Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest."
Let's see, a more moral digital age includes shooting people who act like lemmings, spanking boys, spitting on frenchmen and vomiting because someone powers his house with the sun? He strives to be the Bill O'Reilly of IT world for which I say "bullshit doesn't spin." I'm sure he is paid well for his opinions of OSS by it's opponents, just as the real O'Reilly is paid well by the opponents of honest journalism.
"'We were hit by a hurricane that we're were powerless to prevent'
Which caused the city to be flooded which could have easily been prevented."
Which engineering school did you graduate from because most experts on the subject say that to have prevented that flood would have had to have started 20 years ago and would cost billions of dollars.
"'New Orleans exists where it does for a lot of practical reasons, and those reasons are very important to the economic workings of this country.'
The extreme majority of the population had nothing to do with shipping, fishing, oil, etc."
What economics school did you graduate from because most experts say that New Orleans is a major shipping port and supplies much of the country's seafood, petrolium and natural gas products. You are right, a large part of the population were not involved with shipping, fishing or oil production but who the hell do you expect to run the restaurats, build the houses, Provide power, water, roads, Sell cars, boats, appliances, fix cars, boats, appliances, teach the children...? As you can see, it takes a lot more than oil workers to run an oil town. The practical reason for where it exists has nothing to do with that, though. It was settled there because it was the first place going up the river that wasn't a swamp. It was, and still is, the hub for everything going up and down the river and out into the gulf.
"Yall just sat your asses down and waited for the federal government to come help you."
Yea, they sat on their asses all right, on the few dry areas of the city, without communication, food, water, dealing with hundreds of thousands of desperate people trying to save as many as they can while waiting for FEMA who sat on their asses in Washington or ate at fancy restaurants in Baton Rogue. The Local authorities did the best they could and more than you could ask them to given the situation. The buses you refer to dont drive themselves and were not under the authority of the city. It was FEMA who was suppose to coordinate the use of transportation with outside communities because they were well aware that communications would be the first thing to go in NO. I'm sure the mayor would have authorized commandeering them had he had the drivers but he didn't. New Orleans had the 5 day's worth of supplies for the people they expected at the superdome. They were quickly overwhelmed because they didn't get the help to evacuate people that they depended on. They also didn't get the supplies brought in that they expected to get.
"Like, oh, say... Texas? We did a pretty good job of hauling our asses outta there when we heard a hurricane was coming through."
Perhaps you didn't notice but texans did not get "outta there." They were stuck on highways and are lucky it turned and didn't hit them. If you want a model of evacuation, look a little east to New Orleans. Last year when they had a scare from Ivan, it was taking over 8 hours just to get out of the city. Then there were long traffic jams and cars out of gas once on the highway, much like around Houston. They revised the plans and opened up new routes and started contraflow earlier so that it only took a 2 hour wait to get out on the city. They also enlisted the help of tow trucks and fuel trucks along the evacuation route to help keep traffic flowing. Their remaining problem was that a large segment of the population didn't or couldn't leave.
"Just another example of relying on other, non-local, groups. Did you never think that maybe yall should handle it yourselves? Also, it was publicly known that it could only handle a category 3 storm, and guess what? A category 4 storm broke it. What a surprise."
Did you think if yall Texans handled things yourselves, the Army Corps of Engineers would have had the resources to strengthen the levee system?
http://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/us_nra/ace/tx.h tm
I think The New Orleans
Despite your opinion, the universe does not revolve around you and where you live. There are many states and communities who have serious water concerns, my state of Florida being one of them. We have pollution, salt water intrusion, droughts, sink holes, you name it. We have many very delicious springs but that water is largely sold to the bottled water companies. We have regulations on how much they can take from the springs because it's our source of our water too yet they are often caught pumping out more than they are allowed and given a slap on the wrist. There are fights between communities over how much water they are pumping or pollution flowing into supplies.
Perhaps since we were so stupid as to be born and raised in an area with so many water concerns, we should all wise up and move to where you so brilliantly decided to be born. I'm sure your area, where ever it is, can support 16 million Floridians. Heck we could invite the Californians too. We'll have a big water balloon fight on your lawn. And when you run out of water, we will move back and be taken aback at your complaints because by then, our water tables will have replenished.
I do agree with you that the water problems differ in different areas and most of the problems should be dealt with at the local and state level. Some problems that extend across state borders, however, and sometimes have to be dealt with at the federal level or at least with federal aid. If LA and Vegas can't or wont do something to reduce the impact they have on water supplies down stream, the federal government should step in. If nothing else, the downstream communities could use the federal courts.
I dont understand all the paranoia some people have about the federal government and federal funds helping some areas in times of need. Florida and the east coast have never turned down federal aid after hurricanes. I dont see any of the midwest states turning down federal aid after floods or droughts. I dont see the mountain states turning down federal aid during forest fire season. Why all the bitching about New Orleans or California when they need federal help? After all, we are the United States, not the I've got mine, you get yours States.
Well if the company is willing to do something like this, they aren't concerned with quality control. I'm pretty sure the motherboards they make are crap and not worth the money even at $70 and including a real celeron. I wouldn't be surprised if they were overclocked to 1.7GHz to begin with.
That article gave me a great idea. I spent a few hours tinkering in the garage and came up with an idea that's going to revolutionize lunar living. And because I use all petrolium products to build my units, I can sell them for much less that the lunar lawn mower. The prototypes will be more expensive but I think I can get the price of the mass produced product down to $12,854.95 a piece. Certainly more practical than a lunar lawnmower. I now present THE LUNAR DELINTER!
http://images.redial.net/lunardelinter.jpg
Ah, I see from others, there is some info out there. Good to know. Now to get the word out to consumers and artists alike.
What we need is a list of artists and labels that aren't a part of the RIAA and support them. I use to buy a lot of CDs. New artists and to replace my favorite albums. I was never and still am not a big fan of downloaded music. I stopped buying CDs around the time of the napster crackdown. I tried napster and I could find 1000 hits of Britney Spears but if I wanted to find an old album I haven't listened to in a while or some new artist to see if I liked them, I was screwed. If I found them at all, it was a modem user with 20 people queued ahead of me. I now only buy CDs at yard sales and at an occasional concert. I would buy more new CDs if I could clearly identify which labels were in the RIAA or not and would encourage others to do the same. Does anyone know of such a list?