Many if not most are also willing to at least examine the potential veracity of an anonymous statement, especially if it comes with some sort of substantiating evidence
I don't know if that's actually true - especially in the sort of context that's being discussed.
Let's say you're on the road, and Googling for a couple of quick restaurant reviews in the town you're headed to, looking for a place to take your family for pizza before you drive on. Joe's Pizza comes up, looking swell. And Tony's Pizza is right there next to, complete with an anonymous "review" (by Joe!) that says Tony's Pizza is famous for kitchen staff that don't wash their hands, even though there have been several cases of hepatitis traced back to that restaurant.
You're on your damn iPhone, trying to decide where to sit down for a pizza. Are you REALLY going to "examine the veracity" of what seems to be a local patron's take on a seedy restaurant... or are you just going to click the screen and have your iPhone tell you how to get to Joe's, instead of Tony's? What if only ten percent of people do that? Wouldn't you say that Tony has a case for finding out who's slandering him, and costing him business? Or do you propose an anonymous flame war as a way to level the playing field? Because all that does is raise the overall noise level, and achieve nothing. Someone who acts with malice in a public forum - and specifically tells lies about someone in a deliberate effort to harm them - has every reason to expect that a judge will help the target of that malice get to the bottom of it.
Which, as noted, makes absolutely no difference. It's just a place. A zip code. It happens to be a far, far better place than any other facility we have for securely keeping such prisoners, but I'm sure that when they decide where to move them, you'll get to see the exact same physical arrangements crop up in Kansas, or New York, or wherever else such a detention facility is set aside for the exact same purpose. Only, the weather won't be as nice year-round.
The second formed a "Special Task Force" to come up with a way to deal with captured people who are suspected of being terrorists
Right. Same thing Bush did. He asked Congress to provide an unshakeable, clear set of legal guidelines and laws. They chose not to. Facets of the matter wound up in court, including the Supreme Court, in pursuit of clarity on the matter. Very mixed results so far. Obama doesn't have any clearer information from the congress than Bush did. Any policy that Obama sets forth without the congress setting it into law becomes just another executive whim, subject (at best) to the exact sort of judicial review that Bush's policies went through - and to which he responded with modifications to his policies. Obama's "special task force" can do nothing but make recommendations. Where are those same people (who he expects to make recommendations) going to come up with newer information than has already been available on this topic for years? There is no new information, there is only the absence of legislation.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid don't want to go on record saying that they think that foreign insurgents from Syria or Iran sending mentally retarted women strapped with explosives into Iraqi or Afghani checkpoints that include US military personnel are either normal criminals, or soldiers. They are neither. And even Pelosi and Reid know that - which is why they're too chickenshit to propose an entirely new legislative approach to dealing with such people when they're caught. Obama spent years campaigning, and fancies himself a constitutional expert. Have you noticed that in all of those years of complaining about such prisoners, he never once mentioned what he would do with them? Right. He knew that most people are too dumb to realize that "closing Gitmo" isn't the same as actually dealing with the subject at hand. Doesn't matter, his shallow public speaking on the subject was a perfect match for the shallow thinkers that thought the sound bites were some sort of actually proposed new policy, and voted for him.
Hopefully one that won't take a sweet dump all over the Geneva Conventions that we came up with after the atrocities of WWII.
Ah, you mean the Geneva Conventions that apply to uniformed soldiers who report up a chain of command to a nation-state fighting a war? That Geneva Convention? Excellent. Please do mention which nation-state and chain of command is commanding the actions of a Yemeni financier working in Pakistan to channel money to Saudi college students who are in Afghanistan to kill US soldiers if they can, or at least murder some school teachers, if that's the best they can do. Do please also mention the specific problems you're most worried about, here. Legal representation? All of the detainees have it. Visits from the Red Cross (or Red Cresent)? All of the detainees get them. Health care? Check. Food, religious services, exercise? Right. I suppose you're actually complaining about the whole non-dangerous, but still quite motivating pouring-water-down-the-nose part of interrogating a few of the people from whom they knew they had some urgent info to pry? Fine. Those tactics, of course, were banned by executive order years ago.
So, again: how does closing Gitmo and moving those prisoners to another physical place change anything? Right. It doesn't. It just costs millions of dollars, in exchange for some cheap political points that only score any traction among uninformed sound-bite consuming people who are alr
Ham Sandwich Sued For Not Being Anything Like A Set Of Golf Clubs!
Got a lawyer? You can file suit. I don't quite get why people got so mightly pleased when they hear that someone of whom they don't approve now gets to spend a bunch of money to deal with the fact they just got sued. Because your neighbor could sue you for the fact that your hubcaps are too shiny, and the reflections aren't being properly stopped by their tinfoil hat. And you'd still have to hire a lawyer.
There's an administration in place that understands that sacrificing our values to fight an enemy without values is self-contradictory
Which is why they're going to close the place, but don't have any better solution on what to do with the detainees that are still there (since the previous administration already got rid of all of the ones that made that process easy). Pretending that the place, or name of the place where prisoners are held, can simply be changed at that that's somehow a change in the policy is absurd. Just like when Bush was C-in-C, Obama still doesn't have any new law from Congress that specifically spells out what to do with a non-uniformed person who is caught overseas attacking US soldiers and other interests, or assisting and financing those that do. The very same European countries than wanted nothing to do with helping to deal with these guys when Bush was in office are just as not interested in being stuck with them now that Obama's in charge. The same countries that, if these guys were to be returned to them, that would end up seeing them immediately killed... no change. So, you're sounding very pleased that we're going to swap out GitMo for some other physical address, as it that makes any difference whatsoever.
While that is biased, that isn't the bias that's the most interesting in terms of Slashdot culture. If this had happened a year ago, when it was "Bush's Helicopter," the tag would have been "haha" or worse.
Re:Parents choose their baby's name
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Wow, that was an awful analogy...impressively so
The point (given this audience) was that referring to "dog breeders" as a group is no more helpful than referring to "programmers" as a group. The audience here understands that there operating systems and applications that have gone off into wretched, ill-conceived, dead-end directions, just like some purebred dog bloodlines have. But you can't talk about what "the dog breeders" have done and more than you can talk about what "the operating system vendors" have done. There are people who do it right, and people who don't.
Re:Are you an idiot?
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Designer Babies
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· Score: 2, Insightful
we have no idea when consciousness begins
But we certainly know when it hasn't. For example: when there's no nervous system it's safe say there's no conciousness. A fertalized egg, or even a clump of 100 cells, doesn't have the wiring for consciousness. There's no there there.
Re:Parents choose their baby's name
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One only has to look at what breeders have done to pure breed dogs over the years to know this is a horrendously bad idea
Nonsense. That's like saying, "One only has to look at what programmers have done to web browsers, blah blah blah."
Thoughtless back yard breeders who don't know their Mendelian genetics and can't look past their affection for their own dog to see the merits of a breeding are what cause the bad bloodlines. Responsible breeders go to enormous lengths (and expense) to cultivate what works in a breed while also keeping the gene pool from getting too shallow in their own lines. Puppy mills and casual breeders are the problem. Solid breed clubs and thinking breeders are the cure.
people who'd like to showcase their artwork/photography or something to their friends and family?
It costs less than a half-caffe no-foam latte each month to have your own web site someplace (say, over at GoDaddy, etc) where you have complete control over that sort of thing. If you use Facebook to socially interact with your friends/family, just put up LINKS to where you actually park your artwork, and send them over for a look. If you put up high-enough resolution copies of your artwork/photography on a free service like Facebook - high enough res to be useful to third parties, mind you - and the work has significant value as web decor, stock, etc to other people - than you have only yourself to blame for being so cheap as to rely on Facebook to be the place where you exhibit it. Just get and use your own web space, and take control of the process for the pittance it costs.
And, as we've seen in every comment you've made in this thread, you back farther and farther away from even attempting to address the actual substance. You're quick to throw around the insults right out of the shoot, and reach like a child for the word "stupid" instead of facing the uncomfortable reality that someone's bothered to call your whiny bluff. That's another characteristic of leftist politics: as soon as someone asks you to get specific, you just shout your insults more loudly, hoping no one will notice that you've dodged the issues.
Perhaps you'd like to watch some video of the Democrat chairs of the legislative finance committees telling the Republicans to shut up about the looming disasater coming in the mortgage finance sector? Just visit YouTube, you can't miss it. Enjoy watching the leaders of the political left explain how there's nothing wrong, and that Fannie/Freddie should continue to back even more impossible, economy-wrecking loans, and should consider them safe because of implied government backing for those loans. Go ahead, watch. Listen. Learn something.
In the meantime, try reading your own posts as if you were new to the thread. Look at the absolute lack of any substance, any facts, any logic, any reason. You trot out fake historical quotes, and then say it doesn't matter if it's fiction. You say that the continual, repeating pattern of oppressive leftist governments throughout history shouldn't be considered examples of leftist governments... but just in case, you throw in Hitler in a futile attempt to somehow say that fascism is the same as capitalism (go ahead - try the dictionary, which will do you some good). And that indicates that you don't know what a market or a constitutional republic is, and don't know what an actual fascist is... but you like the sound of the word "Hitler" when trying to make someone else sound bad, so you use it just like you use the word "stupid" - like any other uninformed, juvenile rant.
So. Which "lie" did you have in mind? Do you have some secret knowledge about who was chairing the house and senate finance committees for the past two years - information that nobody else has? That sure would be something. You could get on television with impressive revisionist information like that, instead of stamping your feet here and using the words "stupid" and "lie" as a childish way to avoid actually talking about the substance of the matter. Go ahead, give it a try: tell me that I'm wrong about the way the tax laws are applied. Specifically refute the numbers I presented. No? I didn't think so.
voting in the criminals who caused the current economic crisis
I didn't vote for Democrats, so you can't blame me for that one. You should, though, take a moment to actually understand what happened when people like Barney Frank sat in hearings about what was coming, and said over and over again how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were properly capitalized, not to worry, blah blah blah. The people who were correct, and who were saying otherwise? Republicans. Representative from the Bush administration. Of course, Frank - the Democrat chairing the hearings, and whose committee was directly involved in whether and how to deal the situation - did nothing. Why? Because by mandating that those mortgage-backing entities must underwrite loans even for people that had absolutely no chance of repaying them bought votes for his party. But of course that meant that the financial institutions being told they must make those loans were lining up for a major credit crunch when people who shouldn't have received mortgages failed to pay for them.
And let's not forget those major backers of the left, the labor unions. The major US auto manufacturers - GM and Chrysler in particular - have been run into ruin by absurdly high overhead costs brought on by those unions. Contracts that demand that the manufacturers pay more in workers' retirement pay than they ever made or contributed while working. On compensation costs for some assembly line workers that exceeded $80/hour, even when there was nothing to do. Is it any mystery that the foreign-owned and operated factories working elsewhere in the country aren't in the same trouble? The labor unions strangled the businesses that were feeding them, and then wonder what happened. Gee, what a mystery.
Of course you already knew all that, since you're such an accurate historian, right? You already knew that the policies of the left, which are entirely driven by division and class strife and promises of huge entitlements paid for by other people, are exactly why so many bad mortgages were written and invested upon, and some large employers are drowning in entitlement obligations.
You are too stupid even to realize how heavily tilted the laws are in favor of the rich and the well-to-do.
Ah. And that's why only the top 5% of earners in the country pay over half of the country's taxes? And why the top 50% of earners in the country pay over 96% of the taxes? Yeah those rich people sure on getting over, huh? The bottom entire half of the earners in the country pay less that 4% of the taxes, but receive the overwhelming share of the entitlement program payouts. Your idea of "heavily tilted," just like your grasp of history, is exactly, precisely backwards. It's funny how you keep using the word "stupid," though. I guess that's fashionable in the 9th grade. You'll move on to better words as you get older, don't worry.
What the hell are you talking about? Why do you think that my very first response to you was to ask you for a link so that YOU would have to look it up and realize that you were quoting propoganda, not reality. You really don't handle nuance very well, I see.
Callous conservatives need to learn that the poor have a limit to how much shit they can take from people like you
Really? What is it, exactly, that I am doing to "the poor?" Please be specific. Right now, I pay huge income taxes. They pay none.
I was referring to a very famous incident in history;
No, you were quoting a piece of fiction, even while lecturing about knowing history. Which really is quite funny.
And why should the left be responsible for Stalin, any more than the right should be responsible for Hitler?
You really don't study history, do you? Leftist governments before and after Stalin's, and right on up through this very minute, continue to imprison and murder thousands of people who simply don't want to live under their thumb. Marxist paradises like North Korea continue to this day to run labor camps. Cuba kills its own citizens for trying to escape. China imprisons, tortures, and kills citizens for simply saying out loud that the leftist idealogy of their government should be challenged. That's what happens when "for the people" leftist revolutionary types actually gain power. Leftists should be "responsible" for that because it's built right into their world view. Heroes of the left, like Che Guevera, were the embodiment of it: he didn't think trials were necessary before executing political opponents.
Hitler, on the other hand, was a fascist, not a "conservative." And just like today's leftists, he could only describe people in terms of the ethnic or class groups to which they belong. And just like today's leftists, he could only get popular traction by stoking class envy. He was the very antithesis of the minimal-government, constitutionalist, open-market perspective of conservatives. That you can't even mentally differentiate between people who support a republic and someone else who was a murderous fascist says that you, yourself have learned nothing from history. I'm not even sure you read your own posts - because if you did, you'd be highly embarassed.
A conservative says: "let them eat cake". Guess how the poor reacted to that? Since you're such an historian and all.
If you don't know the answer, then you are further proof that conservatives are too stupid to learn from history.
That's really quite amusing. Which conservative said that, by the way? Really. Please provide a nice, solid link, would you? You being such an historian and all.
Perhaps you're referring to the line that was attributed to a particular member of the French aristocracy, back in the day? A fact for you: Marie Antoinette never said that. It was attributed to her in a political screed written by opposition to discredit her. It was propoganda from proto-leftists.
Regardless... let's talk about how thoroughly the left forgets the history of leftist idealogy and practice, shall we? Shall we start with the deaths of untold tens of millions at the hands of collectivist governments in the name of "the workers?" How about the organized left removing scientists, artists, musicians, writers, teachers and many more, and condemning them to brutal deaths in the east's killing fields? All in the name of the poor, of course.
I suppose we should look at a more successful, example, huh? I know... Venezuela! Yes, the triumph of the liberty, freedom, and bliss that the left - unfettered by Eeeevil conservative opposition (since Hugo Chavez has his political opponents beaten and arrested when they try to run for office) - so wants for The Workers. Nationalization of industry, banking, broadcasting... ah, paradise! Just give it a little while: the left in the US is busy on that front right now. They couldn't be happier to have a recession as license to expand the role of government into more corners of our lives, and charge us for doing so. You know, for the poor and everything. I wonder how the poor will react to that? Perhaps... to demand more of the same? Ah, paradise! More poor, demanding ever more from the dwindling not-poor. That's the left's vision for the world: the lowest common demoninator, and few people who still work anyway, making the whole thing go.
Conservatives think that everything bad that happens to someone, everything, is their own fault and they should be able to fix it themselves.
You can't convince them otherwise, trust me.
Liberals think that everything bad that happens to someone, everything, is the fault of an insufficiently liberal (and thus evil) other person, and that the liberals would be able to fix it for them if they only had total legislative, executive, and judicial power, and more tax money, and if the person suffering the problem could be made to listen to their benevolent superiors about each and every thing that they do or might want to do. Only the Nanny State can fix it for them.
So this newbie (at the time) President, with no "faulty" intelligence to blame, had already decided...
Were you paying attention to the eventually "non-newbie" guy who held the office for eight years before Bush? He repeatedly said that Iraq's WMDs and missile programs were a grave threat. Not the possibility of them, not the if-we-find-them-they-might-be, but the existence of them - including their demostrated use against thousands of people in the north of the country, and the huge stockpiles of them seen and recorded by inspectors following the Kuwait invasion and spanking episode. Clinton even launched cruise missiles into Iraq with the intention of destroying a facility that he was convinced (by the same CIA upon which Bush was relying as he took office, run by people that Clinton put there) was making WMDs.
As for Bush "painting a picture" of Iran... are you not listening when the head of every government in Europe describes it the same way? When Obama - now in receipt of the same intelligence that Bush looked at every day for years - is now saying the same thing?
only one country that is crazy enough to be willing to use nuclear weapons - USA
Ah. I suppose you'd have preferred that many hundreds of thousands - probably millions - of more people died in a grueling land invasion of mainland Japan? You preferred the horrific results of the firestorms created by the use of conventional weapons in Japanese cities? You'd have liked it if many, many more Japanese civilians had been caught up in the meatgrinder that would have been the "conventional" means by which to shut down that country's military machinery and purpose? You sure are compassionate.
Hans Blix was telling the UN Security Council flat out that Iraq was complying...
Would this be the same Hans Blix who couldn't get inspectors, ever, into many areas he wanted to inspect? The same Hans Blix who expressed shock - shock! - at the discovery that Saddam was taking UN oil-for-food money and using it for anything but feeding his people, and especially for doing things like buying and building long range missiles, right up until the invasion? People with deliberately, rhetorically selective memory shouldn't bitch about anyone else's short memory.
This defeats your various arguments about how you should have an absolute, unfettered right to determine how your wealth is used, because you rely on equating your wealth and the output of your work
No. The person who created the wealth makes the decision to pass it down to someone else, or not to. Some people decide they'd rather give it to their favorite school, or some wildlife preservation fund, or to blow it all in Vegas right before they die. It's their choice. If they choose to give it to their kids, then they're also choosing to give it to whoever those kids pass it along to. The person who creates it decides, and sets those things into motion.
You forgot to explain to us why children should be entitled to benefit from their parents' wealth in the first place. (And note that I said wealth, not "work" as you inaccurately put it.)
They are the same thing.
Let's say a parent works hard today to grow a potato. The parent wants the child to have part of that potato for the day's meal. You would prefer the government takes all of the potatos, and then doles them back out again? Why?
How about if the parent thinks that the kid needs shoes instead of another potato, and trades the potato for some shoes. You're still having a problem with that? Why?
How about if the potato is good for a pair of shoes and a toothpick - even though nobody needs a toothpick just this moment. The parent puts the toothpick aside, knowing that the child might want it later. The horror! Wealth in the form of an earned toothpick - just sitting there, being horded by the parent. Why on earth should the parent have any say in who gets to use that toothpick, huh? I know, you think it's more appropriate if the government is in charge of that. But why?
Someone else who really, really needs a toothpick might consider the toothpick-having family to be wealthy indeed. The only reason the family has it is because of work. Who cares (aside from you, apparently) if the product of the work sits around for a while before it's used? Though you seem to strangely prefer a hand-to-mouth existence over the evil, unfair building up of wealth (read: the deferred consumption of what you traded your work to acquire - how Eeeevil!), I'm still not sure why you think that anyone other than the person who did the job of working and/or had the willpower to defer consuming the product of that work, should be entitled to it, or to deciding who is.
The burden isn't on ME to say why a parent can decide this her own child should benefit from her own work. The burden is on YOU to explain why a parent should NOT be allowed to work towards their own child's well being. How is it "inaccurate" to talk about ownership of one's work, and of whatever else of value one trades that work for? Children can benefit from their parents' wealth because that's what the parents decided to do with the output of their work and decision making. Parents can and do sometimes decide that they don't want one or all of their children to benefit that way. Are you being deliberately obtuse on this subject?
No, I pointed out that he's describing his position incorrectly. Socialists always like to leave out the little part about who pays for things, and always hate to mention that they're just changing one form of inequity (of outcome) for another form of inequity (in terms of who does the actual work and pays for or invests in new things). That's the grand lie-of-omission of leftist politics.
a child's future should not suffer from having bad parents or being raised in a bad situation
So, what are you going to do about parents who are simply jerks, and send their bright, high-IQ children out into the world with a hearty embrace of trollish attitudes, or crazy religious ferver nurtured at home, or some other toxicity that has nothing to do with the family's financial situation? Should the government step in and take over the raising of all children so that they all get the same exact upbringing, in every way? No? So you only want the government to intercede in some aspects of the child's upbringing.
I live just outside of Washington, DC. The public school system there costs more per grade school student (in excess of $10,000 per student per year) than in most other cities in the country. They have an abyssmal track record of educating students. Why? Because the parents of those children - even though they're being given ample opportunities to have their kids well educated - don't have a cultural interest in having well educated kids. Money, teachers, and resources of all kinds get thrown right down the toilet in pursuit of equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity is right there for the taking, at huge expense to local taxpayers. There are school districts all around the country that could educate three kids for what DC spends on one - and those kids in other areas would thrive. Why? Because their parents step up and do what the parents should do.
we (in the USA) should be giving all of our children the opportunities to excel to their potential
So what would you do in a case like DC, where everyone else IS (at greater expense than anywhere else) providing what's needed to launch kids into the world equipped to make something of themselves, and it's their own parents that are actually preventing it from working?
For example, the access to my country's equivalent to the ivy league schools doesn't depend on your family's wealth
Right. It depends on someone else's wealth. So, you could have two extremely hard-working parents who have a kid that's of average intelligence and native academic skills. They know that putting that kid in a really excellent setting (analagous to an Ivy League school) would help the kid make the very most of his averageness. And they're willing to put their hard work (money) on the line. And then you've got another kid of significant IQ, academic potential, etc., whose parents don't have the same hustle or dedication to getting their offspring educated. You're saying that the two hard working parents should give up on having their kid go to the really good school, and instead write a check to put a different kid - one that someone else decided to have - into that school. That's "social justice?" You're making the average kid's parents slaves to the smart kid.
you clearly demonstrated you failed to understand the concept
Oh no, I get it just fine. You want the government to say which kid gets to benefit from a parent's hard work. Your notion of "social justice" isn't that a smart kid should naturally get access to a better school, it's that hard working parents don't have a say in which child - their own, or someone else's - gets the benefit of their hard work. How just of you!
True social justice is found in the notion that it's not very smart to have children when you're not ready to provide for them. Socialism preaches a disconnect in that causality, and pushes the burden of consequence onto other people - and by definition, the very other people who are doing the most work.
I can sum that up as 'conservatives believe that kids should have a different education based on their parents status in society'?
That's not summing it up, that's injecting a completely separate (and straw man) item into the discussion. We're not talking about equal access to public education as the "social justice" Ayers advocates - we're talking about the lefty notion of "social justice" that he thinks should be strongly pounded into kids' heads while they're in school.
I guess I don't see why a small school/equal education system would achieve the 'socialist' agenda
Smallness doesn't achieve it, teachers achieve it. And because socialism - a la Ayers - is so counter to human instincts, it's more likely to get cemented into a maleable young person's mind if its unrelentingly pushed by an authority figure (a teacher) in a more intimate setting. When you're trying to get a kid to swallow something irrational (whether it's socialism or creationism), it's easier if a teacher can focus on fewer students while doing the indoctrinating. If you have teachers that aren't pushing such nonsense, but happen to also be able to teach critical thinking, science, history, grammar, etc., in a smaller setting - that's great. But it's very, very expensive.
Then you should also be against Ayers and his perspective. Because he's very much about pushing an idealogical agenda, rather than letting kids become critical enough thinkers to hash through this stuff on their own, using reason. He's all about pre-empting that thought process, and going right for a generation of "stick it to the man" resenters of success. He's an aging socialist hippie that to this day says he regrets not going further in his use of violence to get attention and make his points. I'm not sure why we're even talking about whether his notions about education policy are worth implementing.
what is it about small schools, social justice, equity and community that conservatives dislike?
It's guys like Ayers that use terms like "social justice" to mean "everyone should get the same stuff in life, regardless of what they produce." And he has spent years overtly advocating for the use of schools as idealogical indoctrination centers aimed specifically at cranking out kids who see the world as one big entitlement engine. He's a redistribution-of-wealth guy, not a create-more-wealth guy, and he wants schools to make sure kids see the world the same way. And he thinks that small schools have a better chance of really drilling socialism into kids' heads.
Slashdot Mirror
Many if not most are also willing to at least examine the potential veracity of an anonymous statement, especially if it comes with some sort of substantiating evidence
I don't know if that's actually true - especially in the sort of context that's being discussed.
Let's say you're on the road, and Googling for a couple of quick restaurant reviews in the town you're headed to, looking for a place to take your family for pizza before you drive on. Joe's Pizza comes up, looking swell. And Tony's Pizza is right there next to, complete with an anonymous "review" (by Joe!) that says Tony's Pizza is famous for kitchen staff that don't wash their hands, even though there have been several cases of hepatitis traced back to that restaurant.
You're on your damn iPhone, trying to decide where to sit down for a pizza. Are you REALLY going to "examine the veracity" of what seems to be a local patron's take on a seedy restaurant... or are you just going to click the screen and have your iPhone tell you how to get to Joe's, instead of Tony's? What if only ten percent of people do that? Wouldn't you say that Tony has a case for finding out who's slandering him, and costing him business? Or do you propose an anonymous flame war as a way to level the playing field? Because all that does is raise the overall noise level, and achieve nothing. Someone who acts with malice in a public forum - and specifically tells lies about someone in a deliberate effort to harm them - has every reason to expect that a judge will help the target of that malice get to the bottom of it.
One closed Gitmo
Which, as noted, makes absolutely no difference. It's just a place. A zip code. It happens to be a far, far better place than any other facility we have for securely keeping such prisoners, but I'm sure that when they decide where to move them, you'll get to see the exact same physical arrangements crop up in Kansas, or New York, or wherever else such a detention facility is set aside for the exact same purpose. Only, the weather won't be as nice year-round.
The second formed a "Special Task Force" to come up with a way to deal with captured people who are suspected of being terrorists
Right. Same thing Bush did. He asked Congress to provide an unshakeable, clear set of legal guidelines and laws. They chose not to. Facets of the matter wound up in court, including the Supreme Court, in pursuit of clarity on the matter. Very mixed results so far. Obama doesn't have any clearer information from the congress than Bush did. Any policy that Obama sets forth without the congress setting it into law becomes just another executive whim, subject (at best) to the exact sort of judicial review that Bush's policies went through - and to which he responded with modifications to his policies. Obama's "special task force" can do nothing but make recommendations. Where are those same people (who he expects to make recommendations) going to come up with newer information than has already been available on this topic for years? There is no new information, there is only the absence of legislation.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid don't want to go on record saying that they think that foreign insurgents from Syria or Iran sending mentally retarted women strapped with explosives into Iraqi or Afghani checkpoints that include US military personnel are either normal criminals, or soldiers. They are neither. And even Pelosi and Reid know that - which is why they're too chickenshit to propose an entirely new legislative approach to dealing with such people when they're caught. Obama spent years campaigning, and fancies himself a constitutional expert. Have you noticed that in all of those years of complaining about such prisoners, he never once mentioned what he would do with them? Right. He knew that most people are too dumb to realize that "closing Gitmo" isn't the same as actually dealing with the subject at hand. Doesn't matter, his shallow public speaking on the subject was a perfect match for the shallow thinkers that thought the sound bites were some sort of actually proposed new policy, and voted for him.
Hopefully one that won't take a sweet dump all over the Geneva Conventions that we came up with after the atrocities of WWII.
Ah, you mean the Geneva Conventions that apply to uniformed soldiers who report up a chain of command to a nation-state fighting a war? That Geneva Convention? Excellent. Please do mention which nation-state and chain of command is commanding the actions of a Yemeni financier working in Pakistan to channel money to Saudi college students who are in Afghanistan to kill US soldiers if they can, or at least murder some school teachers, if that's the best they can do. Do please also mention the specific problems you're most worried about, here. Legal representation? All of the detainees have it. Visits from the Red Cross (or Red Cresent)? All of the detainees get them. Health care? Check. Food, religious services, exercise? Right. I suppose you're actually complaining about the whole non-dangerous, but still quite motivating pouring-water-down-the-nose part of interrogating a few of the people from whom they knew they had some urgent info to pry? Fine. Those tactics, of course, were banned by executive order years ago.
So, again: how does closing Gitmo and moving those prisoners to another physical place change anything? Right. It doesn't. It just costs millions of dollars, in exchange for some cheap political points that only score any traction among uninformed sound-bite consuming people who are alr
Ham Sandwich Sued For Not Being Anything Like A Set Of Golf Clubs!
Got a lawyer? You can file suit. I don't quite get why people got so mightly pleased when they hear that someone of whom they don't approve now gets to spend a bunch of money to deal with the fact they just got sued. Because your neighbor could sue you for the fact that your hubcaps are too shiny, and the reflections aren't being properly stopped by their tinfoil hat. And you'd still have to hire a lawyer.
There's an administration in place that understands that sacrificing our values to fight an enemy without values is self-contradictory
... no change. So, you're sounding very pleased that we're going to swap out GitMo for some other physical address, as it that makes any difference whatsoever.
Which is why they're going to close the place, but don't have any better solution on what to do with the detainees that are still there (since the previous administration already got rid of all of the ones that made that process easy). Pretending that the place, or name of the place where prisoners are held, can simply be changed at that that's somehow a change in the policy is absurd. Just like when Bush was C-in-C, Obama still doesn't have any new law from Congress that specifically spells out what to do with a non-uniformed person who is caught overseas attacking US soldiers and other interests, or assisting and financing those that do. The very same European countries than wanted nothing to do with helping to deal with these guys when Bush was in office are just as not interested in being stuck with them now that Obama's in charge. The same countries that, if these guys were to be returned to them, that would end up seeing them immediately killed
"windows" article tag biased
While that is biased, that isn't the bias that's the most interesting in terms of Slashdot culture. If this had happened a year ago, when it was "Bush's Helicopter," the tag would have been "haha" or worse.
Wow, that was an awful analogy...impressively so
The point (given this audience) was that referring to "dog breeders" as a group is no more helpful than referring to "programmers" as a group. The audience here understands that there operating systems and applications that have gone off into wretched, ill-conceived, dead-end directions, just like some purebred dog bloodlines have. But you can't talk about what "the dog breeders" have done and more than you can talk about what "the operating system vendors" have done. There are people who do it right, and people who don't.
we have no idea when consciousness begins
But we certainly know when it hasn't. For example: when there's no nervous system it's safe say there's no conciousness. A fertalized egg, or even a clump of 100 cells, doesn't have the wiring for consciousness. There's no there there.
One only has to look at what breeders have done to pure breed dogs over the years to know this is a horrendously bad idea
Nonsense. That's like saying, "One only has to look at what programmers have done to web browsers, blah blah blah."
Thoughtless back yard breeders who don't know their Mendelian genetics and can't look past their affection for their own dog to see the merits of a breeding are what cause the bad bloodlines. Responsible breeders go to enormous lengths (and expense) to cultivate what works in a breed while also keeping the gene pool from getting too shallow in their own lines. Puppy mills and casual breeders are the problem. Solid breed clubs and thinking breeders are the cure.
people who'd like to showcase their artwork/photography or something to their friends and family?
It costs less than a half-caffe no-foam latte each month to have your own web site someplace (say, over at GoDaddy, etc) where you have complete control over that sort of thing. If you use Facebook to socially interact with your friends/family, just put up LINKS to where you actually park your artwork, and send them over for a look. If you put up high-enough resolution copies of your artwork/photography on a free service like Facebook - high enough res to be useful to third parties, mind you - and the work has significant value as web decor, stock, etc to other people - than you have only yourself to blame for being so cheap as to rely on Facebook to be the place where you exhibit it. Just get and use your own web space, and take control of the process for the pittance it costs.
As I said, conservatives like you lie a lot.
... but just in case, you throw in Hitler in a futile attempt to somehow say that fascism is the same as capitalism (go ahead - try the dictionary, which will do you some good). And that indicates that you don't know what a market or a constitutional republic is, and don't know what an actual fascist is... but you like the sound of the word "Hitler" when trying to make someone else sound bad, so you use it just like you use the word "stupid" - like any other uninformed, juvenile rant.
And, as we've seen in every comment you've made in this thread, you back farther and farther away from even attempting to address the actual substance. You're quick to throw around the insults right out of the shoot, and reach like a child for the word "stupid" instead of facing the uncomfortable reality that someone's bothered to call your whiny bluff. That's another characteristic of leftist politics: as soon as someone asks you to get specific, you just shout your insults more loudly, hoping no one will notice that you've dodged the issues.
Perhaps you'd like to watch some video of the Democrat chairs of the legislative finance committees telling the Republicans to shut up about the looming disasater coming in the mortgage finance sector? Just visit YouTube, you can't miss it. Enjoy watching the leaders of the political left explain how there's nothing wrong, and that Fannie/Freddie should continue to back even more impossible, economy-wrecking loans, and should consider them safe because of implied government backing for those loans. Go ahead, watch. Listen. Learn something.
In the meantime, try reading your own posts as if you were new to the thread. Look at the absolute lack of any substance, any facts, any logic, any reason. You trot out fake historical quotes, and then say it doesn't matter if it's fiction. You say that the continual, repeating pattern of oppressive leftist governments throughout history shouldn't be considered examples of leftist governments
So. Which "lie" did you have in mind? Do you have some secret knowledge about who was chairing the house and senate finance committees for the past two years - information that nobody else has? That sure would be something. You could get on television with impressive revisionist information like that, instead of stamping your feet here and using the words "stupid" and "lie" as a childish way to avoid actually talking about the substance of the matter. Go ahead, give it a try: tell me that I'm wrong about the way the tax laws are applied. Specifically refute the numbers I presented. No? I didn't think so.
voting in the criminals who caused the current economic crisis
I didn't vote for Democrats, so you can't blame me for that one. You should, though, take a moment to actually understand what happened when people like Barney Frank sat in hearings about what was coming, and said over and over again how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were properly capitalized, not to worry, blah blah blah. The people who were correct, and who were saying otherwise? Republicans. Representative from the Bush administration. Of course, Frank - the Democrat chairing the hearings, and whose committee was directly involved in whether and how to deal the situation - did nothing. Why? Because by mandating that those mortgage-backing entities must underwrite loans even for people that had absolutely no chance of repaying them bought votes for his party. But of course that meant that the financial institutions being told they must make those loans were lining up for a major credit crunch when people who shouldn't have received mortgages failed to pay for them.
And let's not forget those major backers of the left, the labor unions. The major US auto manufacturers - GM and Chrysler in particular - have been run into ruin by absurdly high overhead costs brought on by those unions. Contracts that demand that the manufacturers pay more in workers' retirement pay than they ever made or contributed while working. On compensation costs for some assembly line workers that exceeded $80/hour, even when there was nothing to do. Is it any mystery that the foreign-owned and operated factories working elsewhere in the country aren't in the same trouble? The labor unions strangled the businesses that were feeding them, and then wonder what happened. Gee, what a mystery.
Of course you already knew all that, since you're such an accurate historian, right? You already knew that the policies of the left, which are entirely driven by division and class strife and promises of huge entitlements paid for by other people, are exactly why so many bad mortgages were written and invested upon, and some large employers are drowning in entitlement obligations.
You are too stupid even to realize how heavily tilted the laws are in favor of the rich and the well-to-do.
Ah. And that's why only the top 5% of earners in the country pay over half of the country's taxes? And why the top 50% of earners in the country pay over 96% of the taxes? Yeah those rich people sure on getting over, huh? The bottom entire half of the earners in the country pay less that 4% of the taxes, but receive the overwhelming share of the entitlement program payouts. Your idea of "heavily tilted," just like your grasp of history, is exactly, precisely backwards. It's funny how you keep using the word "stupid," though. I guess that's fashionable in the 9th grade. You'll move on to better words as you get older, don't worry.
So I finally goaded you into looking it up
What the hell are you talking about? Why do you think that my very first response to you was to ask you for a link so that YOU would have to look it up and realize that you were quoting propoganda, not reality. You really don't handle nuance very well, I see.
Callous conservatives need to learn that the poor have a limit to how much shit they can take from people like you
Really? What is it, exactly, that I am doing to "the poor?" Please be specific. Right now, I pay huge income taxes. They pay none.
I was referring to a very famous incident in history;
No, you were quoting a piece of fiction, even while lecturing about knowing history. Which really is quite funny.
And why should the left be responsible for Stalin, any more than the right should be responsible for Hitler?
You really don't study history, do you? Leftist governments before and after Stalin's, and right on up through this very minute, continue to imprison and murder thousands of people who simply don't want to live under their thumb. Marxist paradises like North Korea continue to this day to run labor camps. Cuba kills its own citizens for trying to escape. China imprisons, tortures, and kills citizens for simply saying out loud that the leftist idealogy of their government should be challenged. That's what happens when "for the people" leftist revolutionary types actually gain power. Leftists should be "responsible" for that because it's built right into their world view. Heroes of the left, like Che Guevera, were the embodiment of it: he didn't think trials were necessary before executing political opponents.
Hitler, on the other hand, was a fascist, not a "conservative." And just like today's leftists, he could only describe people in terms of the ethnic or class groups to which they belong. And just like today's leftists, he could only get popular traction by stoking class envy. He was the very antithesis of the minimal-government, constitutionalist, open-market perspective of conservatives. That you can't even mentally differentiate between people who support a republic and someone else who was a murderous fascist says that you, yourself have learned nothing from history. I'm not even sure you read your own posts - because if you did, you'd be highly embarassed.
A conservative says: "let them eat cake". Guess how the poor reacted to that? Since you're such an historian and all.
If you don't know the answer, then you are further proof that conservatives are too stupid to learn from history.
That's really quite amusing. Which conservative said that, by the way? Really. Please provide a nice, solid link, would you? You being such an historian and all.
Perhaps you're referring to the line that was attributed to a particular member of the French aristocracy, back in the day? A fact for you: Marie Antoinette never said that. It was attributed to her in a political screed written by opposition to discredit her. It was propoganda from proto-leftists.
Regardless... let's talk about how thoroughly the left forgets the history of leftist idealogy and practice, shall we? Shall we start with the deaths of untold tens of millions at the hands of collectivist governments in the name of "the workers?" How about the organized left removing scientists, artists, musicians, writers, teachers and many more, and condemning them to brutal deaths in the east's killing fields? All in the name of the poor, of course.
I suppose we should look at a more successful, example, huh? I know... Venezuela! Yes, the triumph of the liberty, freedom, and bliss that the left - unfettered by Eeeevil conservative opposition (since Hugo Chavez has his political opponents beaten and arrested when they try to run for office) - so wants for The Workers. Nationalization of industry, banking, broadcasting... ah, paradise! Just give it a little while: the left in the US is busy on that front right now. They couldn't be happier to have a recession as license to expand the role of government into more corners of our lives, and charge us for doing so. You know, for the poor and everything. I wonder how the poor will react to that? Perhaps... to demand more of the same? Ah, paradise! More poor, demanding ever more from the dwindling not-poor. That's the left's vision for the world: the lowest common demoninator, and few people who still work anyway, making the whole thing go.
Conservatives think that everything bad that happens to someone, everything, is their own fault and they should be able to fix it themselves.
You can't convince them otherwise, trust me.
Liberals think that everything bad that happens to someone, everything, is the fault of an insufficiently liberal (and thus evil) other person, and that the liberals would be able to fix it for them if they only had total legislative, executive, and judicial power, and more tax money, and if the person suffering the problem could be made to listen to their benevolent superiors about each and every thing that they do or might want to do. Only the Nanny State can fix it for them.
You can't convince them otherwise, trust me.
So this newbie (at the time) President, with no "faulty" intelligence to blame, had already decided...
Were you paying attention to the eventually "non-newbie" guy who held the office for eight years before Bush? He repeatedly said that Iraq's WMDs and missile programs were a grave threat. Not the possibility of them, not the if-we-find-them-they-might-be, but the existence of them - including their demostrated use against thousands of people in the north of the country, and the huge stockpiles of them seen and recorded by inspectors following the Kuwait invasion and spanking episode. Clinton even launched cruise missiles into Iraq with the intention of destroying a facility that he was convinced (by the same CIA upon which Bush was relying as he took office, run by people that Clinton put there) was making WMDs.
As for Bush "painting a picture" of Iran... are you not listening when the head of every government in Europe describes it the same way? When Obama - now in receipt of the same intelligence that Bush looked at every day for years - is now saying the same thing?
only one country that is crazy enough to be willing to use nuclear weapons - USA
Ah. I suppose you'd have preferred that many hundreds of thousands - probably millions - of more people died in a grueling land invasion of mainland Japan? You preferred the horrific results of the firestorms created by the use of conventional weapons in Japanese cities? You'd have liked it if many, many more Japanese civilians had been caught up in the meatgrinder that would have been the "conventional" means by which to shut down that country's military machinery and purpose? You sure are compassionate.
Hans Blix was telling the UN Security Council flat out that Iraq was complying...
Would this be the same Hans Blix who couldn't get inspectors, ever, into many areas he wanted to inspect? The same Hans Blix who expressed shock - shock! - at the discovery that Saddam was taking UN oil-for-food money and using it for anything but feeding his people, and especially for doing things like buying and building long range missiles, right up until the invasion? People with deliberately, rhetorically selective memory shouldn't bitch about anyone else's short memory.
This defeats your various arguments about how you should have an absolute, unfettered right to determine how your wealth is used, because you rely on equating your wealth and the output of your work
No. The person who created the wealth makes the decision to pass it down to someone else, or not to. Some people decide they'd rather give it to their favorite school, or some wildlife preservation fund, or to blow it all in Vegas right before they die. It's their choice. If they choose to give it to their kids, then they're also choosing to give it to whoever those kids pass it along to. The person who creates it decides, and sets those things into motion.
You forgot to explain to us why children should be entitled to benefit from their parents' wealth in the first place. (And note that I said wealth, not "work" as you inaccurately put it.)
They are the same thing.
Let's say a parent works hard today to grow a potato. The parent wants the child to have part of that potato for the day's meal. You would prefer the government takes all of the potatos, and then doles them back out again? Why?
How about if the parent thinks that the kid needs shoes instead of another potato, and trades the potato for some shoes. You're still having a problem with that? Why?
How about if the potato is good for a pair of shoes and a toothpick - even though nobody needs a toothpick just this moment. The parent puts the toothpick aside, knowing that the child might want it later. The horror! Wealth in the form of an earned toothpick - just sitting there, being horded by the parent. Why on earth should the parent have any say in who gets to use that toothpick, huh? I know, you think it's more appropriate if the government is in charge of that. But why?
Someone else who really, really needs a toothpick might consider the toothpick-having family to be wealthy indeed. The only reason the family has it is because of work. Who cares (aside from you, apparently) if the product of the work sits around for a while before it's used? Though you seem to strangely prefer a hand-to-mouth existence over the evil, unfair building up of wealth (read: the deferred consumption of what you traded your work to acquire - how Eeeevil!), I'm still not sure why you think that anyone other than the person who did the job of working and/or had the willpower to defer consuming the product of that work, should be entitled to it, or to deciding who is.
The burden isn't on ME to say why a parent can decide this her own child should benefit from her own work. The burden is on YOU to explain why a parent should NOT be allowed to work towards their own child's well being. How is it "inaccurate" to talk about ownership of one's work, and of whatever else of value one trades that work for? Children can benefit from their parents' wealth because that's what the parents decided to do with the output of their work and decision making. Parents can and do sometimes decide that they don't want one or all of their children to benefit that way. Are you being deliberately obtuse on this subject?
You flipped his point around to fit your argument
No, I pointed out that he's describing his position incorrectly. Socialists always like to leave out the little part about who pays for things, and always hate to mention that they're just changing one form of inequity (of outcome) for another form of inequity (in terms of who does the actual work and pays for or invests in new things). That's the grand lie-of-omission of leftist politics.
a child's future should not suffer from having bad parents or being raised in a bad situation
So, what are you going to do about parents who are simply jerks, and send their bright, high-IQ children out into the world with a hearty embrace of trollish attitudes, or crazy religious ferver nurtured at home, or some other toxicity that has nothing to do with the family's financial situation? Should the government step in and take over the raising of all children so that they all get the same exact upbringing, in every way? No? So you only want the government to intercede in some aspects of the child's upbringing.
I live just outside of Washington, DC. The public school system there costs more per grade school student (in excess of $10,000 per student per year) than in most other cities in the country. They have an abyssmal track record of educating students. Why? Because the parents of those children - even though they're being given ample opportunities to have their kids well educated - don't have a cultural interest in having well educated kids. Money, teachers, and resources of all kinds get thrown right down the toilet in pursuit of equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity is right there for the taking, at huge expense to local taxpayers. There are school districts all around the country that could educate three kids for what DC spends on one - and those kids in other areas would thrive. Why? Because their parents step up and do what the parents should do.
we (in the USA) should be giving all of our children the opportunities to excel to their potential
So what would you do in a case like DC, where everyone else IS (at greater expense than anywhere else) providing what's needed to launch kids into the world equipped to make something of themselves, and it's their own parents that are actually preventing it from working?
For example, the access to my country's equivalent to the ivy league schools doesn't depend on your family's wealth
Right. It depends on someone else's wealth. So, you could have two extremely hard-working parents who have a kid that's of average intelligence and native academic skills. They know that putting that kid in a really excellent setting (analagous to an Ivy League school) would help the kid make the very most of his averageness. And they're willing to put their hard work (money) on the line. And then you've got another kid of significant IQ, academic potential, etc., whose parents don't have the same hustle or dedication to getting their offspring educated. You're saying that the two hard working parents should give up on having their kid go to the really good school, and instead write a check to put a different kid - one that someone else decided to have - into that school. That's "social justice?" You're making the average kid's parents slaves to the smart kid.
you clearly demonstrated you failed to understand the concept
Oh no, I get it just fine. You want the government to say which kid gets to benefit from a parent's hard work. Your notion of "social justice" isn't that a smart kid should naturally get access to a better school, it's that hard working parents don't have a say in which child - their own, or someone else's - gets the benefit of their hard work. How just of you!
True social justice is found in the notion that it's not very smart to have children when you're not ready to provide for them. Socialism preaches a disconnect in that causality, and pushes the burden of consequence onto other people - and by definition, the very other people who are doing the most work.
I can sum that up as 'conservatives believe that kids should have a different education based on their parents status in society'?
That's not summing it up, that's injecting a completely separate (and straw man) item into the discussion. We're not talking about equal access to public education as the "social justice" Ayers advocates - we're talking about the lefty notion of "social justice" that he thinks should be strongly pounded into kids' heads while they're in school.
I guess I don't see why a small school/equal education system would achieve the 'socialist' agenda
Smallness doesn't achieve it, teachers achieve it. And because socialism - a la Ayers - is so counter to human instincts, it's more likely to get cemented into a maleable young person's mind if its unrelentingly pushed by an authority figure (a teacher) in a more intimate setting. When you're trying to get a kid to swallow something irrational (whether it's socialism or creationism), it's easier if a teacher can focus on fewer students while doing the indoctrinating. If you have teachers that aren't pushing such nonsense, but happen to also be able to teach critical thinking, science, history, grammar, etc., in a smaller setting - that's great. But it's very, very expensive.
Then you should also be against Ayers and his perspective. Because he's very much about pushing an idealogical agenda, rather than letting kids become critical enough thinkers to hash through this stuff on their own, using reason. He's all about pre-empting that thought process, and going right for a generation of "stick it to the man" resenters of success. He's an aging socialist hippie that to this day says he regrets not going further in his use of violence to get attention and make his points. I'm not sure why we're even talking about whether his notions about education policy are worth implementing.
what is it about small schools, social justice, equity and community that conservatives dislike?
It's guys like Ayers that use terms like "social justice" to mean "everyone should get the same stuff in life, regardless of what they produce." And he has spent years overtly advocating for the use of schools as idealogical indoctrination centers aimed specifically at cranking out kids who see the world as one big entitlement engine. He's a redistribution-of-wealth guy, not a create-more-wealth guy, and he wants schools to make sure kids see the world the same way. And he thinks that small schools have a better chance of really drilling socialism into kids' heads.
That's what.