It's always funny to hear the greenies make fun of the all-too-Texan quirk of mispronouncing "new-cue-ler" while they make the actually meaningful error of not understanding the actual issues at hand. Too bad this guy's old buddies have so rabidly excommunicated him, but they're just as blind in their faith and their Nukes = Evil mantra as they would suggest that an oil-burning, SUV-driving Texan is in his own world view. Critical thinking, people! (both of you!)
everybody should pay for the carbon they have already emitted into the atmosphere
Does that include all of the coal and wood that Europe burned for thousand+ years before they colonized North America? And, are you going to take into account the net increase in trees we plant in the US, as opposed the complete clear-cutting that's going on across all of Asia and Central/South America? How about countries that profit from exporting carbon to other places (say, Venezuela to China)? They're never going to burn as much as China, but their economy completely depends on it. I'd like to see the ledger sheet you've got in mind to take all of that, and the past emissions you refer to, into account. Oh... and "pay" to whom? At what rate? Do we pay (to whom, the UN?) for emissions 200 years ago at some rate equal to the per capita value of those emissions back then? Adjusted how, to current dollars? Do you adjust for changing life expectancy during those years? Please expand on that.
I don't agree with all your points, but you make a good argument, so I modded you +1 Insightful. Just wanted to let you know that not everyone mods based on their personal beliefs.
I appreciate that... but of couse I'd rather you appreciated both the structure of the response and the actual point(s) I was making. However, I'll take the points on form, if that's all I can get!:-)
Where does government money go that doesn't create jobs in America?
Much of it is spent very, very inefficiently (relative to activity in the private sector). Or, much of it is "spent" as grants, social programs, and other hand-out-ish type stuff that doesn't actually require (or produce) an actual productive job in return for that money. Simple re-distribution of money from a worker to (say) a non-worker does not create a job.
Pork-type spending (like, building pointless highways in the middle of nowhere, or sponsoring a teapot museum in the Carolinas - really!) may ultimately employ people in the literal sense, but it doesn't focus that money in areas where there's a real, 'natural' demand for the output of those workers. It's very distorting, and creates false spots in the economic landscape.
Why do you expect investors to invest as much money in America as the American government as opposed to investing in overseas and multinational companies
I expect investors to invest money wherever it suits them. If they're smart, they'll invest a goodly amount in domestic activity... but there's nothing wrong with investing in operations overseas, because that creates larger, newer, hungrier markets in those other places... and if you're still banking on the US as an innovative, useful place, those other countries will then have more to spend on our higher-end goods and services. Do you really think we're better off running low-end textile mills in this country? Or, are we better off leveraging developing economies that need the stimulation at that level, and focusing locally on more high-end, info/service/brain-type stuff that we do so well? It's not as simple as investing in/outside our borders, because we're completely past that as an economic model anyway. Practically everything we consume is made in China... so why not invest there and have a greater impact in how we operate parts of our companies there, and do everything we can to make Chinese citizens able to buy from us the stuff that we're still better at?
I think the other thing that's worth mentioning is that "tax cuts" cover a lot of ground. Where it really counts is in reducing the capital gains taxes, so that people who have their cash tied up in something (a second family house, or a pile of stocks, etc) can liberate it and move the investment onto something else (which stimulates growth) without getting killed by taxes. This is much more of a middle class thing than people think it is. Just selling one stock and turning right around to buy another that looks promising... that can clobber you with taxes. No money has landed in your hands, and some other company's just raised the capital with which to expand their business (and thus hire people, etc), but all the sudden 20% or so of the money you were willing to relocate into a needy part of the economy is... gone. That completely kills the incentive to push money into the hands of growing businesses that will make the most of it.
Lets not forget to add to that list no bid sweetheart deal contracts for hailburton
Please post your list of other firms with the personnel, experience, clearances, and other requirements ready to go, right then when needed. Then explain why they would have been cheaper and done a better job, and how the time spent bidding a mixed bag of hard-to-define-in-advance service requirements around through the CBD would have been quicker or ultimately in any way more effective.
Installing a big oil consultant as head of afghanistan
You'd rather that country's leadership was from more of a rural, poppy-growing industry? Or perhaps a retired warlord? There isn't much industry of any kind IN that country, so someone with the connections to actually get things working (with a legitimate business sector) in the local economy is critical. And perhaps you're forgetting the multiple rounds of actual, man-on-the-street votes that dictate the staffing of that country's government?
tax cuts
Which demonstrably, and directly contribute, year after year, to higher overall tax revenue and the economic activity that continues to produce more jobs. Please post your theory on how raising taxes contributes to employment, other than in government programs.
defeating net neutrality
BS. Stopping legislation that would require it has nothing to do with whether or not a provider can be as neutral as they choose. If you don't like the notion of the owner of a network running it as they see fit, start your own network and get customers by telling them that's part of your deal. Bandwidth provided by SBC (or Earthlink, or AT&T or Acme Smalltown Cableco) is not some natural resource: it's a product/service. The person providing the service can do as they please, and you can deal with them, or not. Would you rather the government also told landscaping companies that they have to charge the same rate for a mowed square foot of grass whether their customer is a townhouse owner or the owner of a 500 acre golf course? Let the market decide.
You'll make more rhetorical points if you don't try to string together a bunch of causality-confused, empty non-sequitors to paint some picture of The Man.
buisness can just have its way
So, buy your antibiotics, high-speed graphics cards, textiles, soybeans, airplane engines, high capacity batteries, and rolls of CAT5 from your local mom-and-pop manufacturers. Those tiny companies are always able to get you lower prices, innovative products, and nation-wide availability on demand. Have fun!
You can believe religious things either rationally or dogmatically.
We're at the heart, here, of where we disagree. Religious things revolve entirely around non-reason, though religious people still make use of reason in their daily lives (else they wouldn't be able to function in the actual world). The ol' "God Of The Gaps" concept is as true as it ever was, and depending on what part of the world you live in and how much information you've digested, the gaps just keep on getting smaller. Mysticism is used exactly where each person's own application of rational thought stops being necessary or isn't as comforting... but unless someone is actually damaged goods, the unreasoning part of their world view is usually limited to those areas where it doesn't so much matter.
The religion-powered suicide bomber banking on those 70 (Dogmatic) Virgins is definitely damaged goods, intellectually. The person who just leans over to religion to make wedding ceremonies feel a little more serious, or who, in grief at the side of a deathbed, has a shouting match with [choose your deity]... is being just as (if fleetingly) irrational, but isn't applying their superstition in a way that they think alters the physical reality around them, etc. The "it was horrible the way that tornado killed the family next door... but we're so glad God saved us when our house didn't fall down" crowd would, I think, still build their house the same way next time... and probably not bank on God to hold their roof on. They tie God to emotional response in times of stress, but when they're doing something that demands a clear head (like, choosing roofing materials), God is tucked away in the gaps, as usual.
# of people who believe religious stuff dogmatically as a proportion of those who believe religious stuff at all
Ummm... they're all just one big set of "believers," here. You're either a believer, or you're not. You've got nothing but belief to go on, otherwise you wouldn't be talking about it in those terms. You're making it sound like one believer is just taking someone's word for it, while another believer is working on a sound, demonstrable, consistent set of facts that don't require belief. If the latter were the case, you'd call it "science," and not require belief at all. You're either thinking magical thoughts or you're not... never mind whether you synthesize those magical thoughts on your own and, not having read them somewhere, attempt to evade the "dogma" lable. Taking up someone else's magical constructs, or producing your own... neither are rational. You may be able to maintain some air of consistency within the magical constructs (especially when they don't have any bearing on the real world, and hence no testable consequences), but that self-contained "rational" consistency - built on a pointless foundation of actual irrationality, even if only about one premise - makes the whole thing truly insidious. The dogmatics are actually easier to excuse, if that's all they've known. Those that use un-reason to build a house of intellectual cards within which they (knowingly)carry on "rationally" are the much darker, more corrosive types.
There are many methods to verify religious beliefs. They are not the same as science. You can't have someone else come and conduct the same experiment and get identical results.
You like to quote the dictionary to deflect actual concepts, so I'll try this one (from M-W) out on you:
verify: to establish the truth, accuracy, or reality of
But there are nonetheless methods. The first is internal consistency. Another is personal experience. Neither of these is scientific, but both are mechanisms to check the validity of the "myths they're nursing along".
The person who does a rain dance to make it rain, and then notices that sometime in the following week that it in fact has rained has not "verified" their irrational belief s
Perhaps I should clarify. Science (and the output of scientific work) can and is trotted out by some people in a dogmatic way, not unlike the usual props that accompany religion. But the key issue is that those people are erring when they build a science-based dogmatic crutch for their world view. They may be citing perfectly good, rational facts and theories but when they do so dogmatically, rather than scientifically (meaning, with a full embrace of the actual scientific method, which demands continual re-evaluation), they do science (and reason) a disservice.
On the other hand, you have those that require a dollup of superstition or mysticism to give their world view a little of the warmth and fuzziness that they don't have it in themselves to derive from the world the way it actually is. In the absence anything other than myth and wishful thinking as a backdrop for the non-science-based things that they weave into their lives, they have two choices:
1) Make up new stuff every day, or throw a dart at the rich tapestry of stuff that other people have made up. Either way, that's the stuff that fills in the intellectual/philosophical gaps for the day. For most people, this doesn't produce warmth and fuzziness, because the built-in rational part of the brain knows that adopting entirely new premises about the nature of the universe every day is insincere, and Officially Flaky to the degree that even most Seriously Flaky People recognize that they're just thrashing around.
2) Stick with the same mystically derived magical thinking constructs from one day to the next so that you don't have to spend each day asking yourself if you're a religion-shopping Official Flake looking for whatever belief system has the shinier web site or freshest celebrity that day. Waking up the next day, too lazy to question the gritty details of the myths you've adopted, and just proceeding with the ones from yesterday: Dogma.
Yes, I woke up today in no mood to re-evaluate the science that confirms relativity, or to see if evolution is still a viable notion. But I don't need to, because there's no faith required when I know I can check for myself if I have the time. I understand the means by which a rational, science-informed view of the world is being built, and need no dogma to keep it all clear for me or to provide for me ready answers. That is in stark contrast with religious people... they have no mechanism to check the validity of the myths they're nursing along, but they stick to their guns any way. Dogma.
Beliefs are dogmatic based on WHY they are held - not WHAT they are.
You make this assertion repeatedly, and it appears to be at the foundation of much of what drives your world view. But it's wrong.
Beliefs are dogmatic when they must be because of what they are. When you hold as true something that conflicts with observable reality, or which is logically contradictory, you're dealing with a framework that requires dogma (lest the person embracing that framework snap out of it and, applying reason, see that it's nonsense). Dogma is the loud, thumping drum to which your mind hurridly marches past the landscape of rationality. One doesn't dogmatically embrace reason (in place of supersitious belief), one simply uses reason in considering and functioning within the world. Each step away from reason requires some dogma to cover your tracks.
I don't know if intentionally exposing them to forbidden court material is "ill-conceived". It's kind of hard to accidentally send transcripts to witnesses... I'm sure she'll get to write a book about the trial.
Of course it wasn't an accident in the "oops, I forwarded this to the wrong addresses" sense. It was poor judgement. But the technology that made it so easy for her to do it was: internet enabled e-mail. My point is that the "cost" of turning on publicly-transcieving e-mail accounts for investigators and other people with legally critical jobs involve more than some server admin mouseclicks and a little more storage... there's substantial training and oversight involved.
All of the bureau's employees have secure mail accounts for use within that organization. Publicly available accounts, and accounts from which bureau employees can send mail to the public are indeed more complex (think about the tracking they'd require), and would require a lot more than typical corporate non-training when it comes to what they can or should do with that type of communication.
One mis-step in a CC or Reply-All and you could completely torpedo an investigation or a trial. Just look at what one lackluster prosecutor did with some ill-conceived e-mail sent to prospective witnesses during the ongoing 9/11 trial happening right now. This subject is a lot more complicated than meets the eye.
Pay attention to the thread, how about? The question is, why would France have, despite glaring evidence, have said that it would always, no matter what, use its ill-deserved veto-enabled seat on the security council to stop any action, ever, that would involve force against Saddam? Primarily because of a long history of doing business with him (even he has his forces taking shots at aircraft patroling the no-fly zones, skimmed "humanitarian" resources from his people to keep building more weapons and palaces, etc), and because a gigantic and rapidly expanding Middle-Eastern/African Muslim immigrant population that is simmering away in France's stratified socialist wonderland (with no job prospects, a stagnant economy, and a portable cultural leadership that - as we saw in the riots - leverages flimsy excuses to stir up telegenic trouble). And because with so little actual global clout available to it, the craven French government would rather watch Iraq rot under Saddam, and watch him send cash to suicide bombers, and watch him shop around for missle parts, etc., just so they could make a show of being not the US. It was callow, and embarassing for the French people.
The riots, per se, have very little to do with Iraq... but they are a perfect example of one of the reasons that the French did not want to allow themselves to be painted, by a sensationalist Arab press, as being anti-Muslim in their foreign relations. This has backfired, of course, because they were hoping that Saddam himself would fall from inside, and they'd still have their economic connections intact with the Baathists, the better to reap the financial rewards of providing more services. Poor judgement.
De-clawing of any law enforcement in Germany? Have you ever even been there?
Hmmm, let's see. My wife was born in Frankfurt, also lived in Munich, Berlin, Vienna, and elsewhere. Many family trips there... does any of that count? Many personal friends in foreign service, international business, law enforcement, defense/intel who work there. Does any of that count? Friends and neighbors from places throughout Africa and the middle east who have spent recent years there in school among immigrant student populations... does any of that count? Germany's wide-open borders, crazily hands-off attitude (only recently starting to straighten out) towards the movement and activities of transparently hostile, radicalized militant Islamists, and drooping economy are well known. The German government's resistence to holding Saddam accountable for his continuing provocations had nothing to do with their awareness of the available intel, but instead with internal elections and cheesy leftist muscle-flexing for the press ("I'll stand up to Bush! Vote for me!") without a single thought for whether or not they were going to condemn millions of Iraqis to another generation of murderous Sunni Baathist rule. You'd think Germany, of all places, would know better (I hope that comment didn't invoke Godwin).
There is no reason why Siria, or even Iraq would want to deploy WMD's anyway. If they really wanted to deploy WMD's, or hurt the USA or Israel, they could have already done so in the last 20 years.
I sure wish I could get as much sleep as you apparently do (I have to assume that you slept through Iraq's casual lobbing of SCUD missles at Israel as Saddam was being kicked out of Kuwait?). I'm not saying that Syria would be foolish enough to use Saddam's exported WMDs against the US, I'm saying that he (Saddam) did have plenty of such materials still stashed away, and was very busy trying to keep the UN from seeing and touching them. The Germans, the French, and everyone else knew that. More pointless paper sanctions against Saddam weren't going to stop him from stashing stuff with his buddies in Syria.
All this talks simply takes away the focus of the reason why Europe and many other countries don't support the U
Why did most of these countries who *believed* Saddam had WMD refuse to go to war in Iraq?
You mean France? Germany? Russia? You know, the ones with substantial (and ongoing) cash-generating relationships with Saddam? The ones with politicians and business interests busily scraping cash off of the oil for food program? Or are you thinking more in terms of the Russian lack of any actual workable military with which to contribute, and serious hopes of still trying to be a counter-US player in that part of the world, just for the sake of being contrary (as a PR move)? Or were you thinking of the high number of Islamist-types that have set up camp in Germany and France, where it's increasingly politically difficult to do anything that might offend them, or even just give them an excuse to act offended (see recent riots in France, see the complete de-clawing of any law enforcement in Germany, as it relates to dealing with radicalized, militant foreigners living locally on the dole while they plot things like 9-11... which is exactly what happened).
Or, you could remind yourself of the number of countries that saw the same intel, and very much pitched in. You could even remind yourself of the security council votes that gave Saddam one last chance lest he face dire consequences. It's not "most of these countries," it's more like a minority of them. Places like eastern Europe, more recently familiar with living under tyrants like Saddam, were and still are all for removing him from power.
If you want to get upset about something, get upset about where all of Saddam's toys went (ahem: check in Syria, which is full of his people, his money, and many shipments of his WMD-related goodies and technology).
What the hell happened to the spy agency? CIA Agents now chat away on unsecure cell phones, check into foreign hotels using GSAs (US gov't issued credit cards), and leak every other intelligence briefing to the press.
I think you're confusing run-of-the-mill analysts, staffers, and appointees with truly under-cover operatives. Those people work completely off the books, are funded with laundered, trail-less transactions that defy this sort of snooping, and are frequently risking their personal lives to operate in the way that they do. Far from the portrait that's painted in this article, those folks are quite submerged. They don't know each other, and their handling is very compartmentalized from much farther up the agency food chain.
The parade of contractors, interns, food service workers, well-known analysts (a la Plame), etc., is a completely different layer than the Extra Spooky types.
What was so magical about the 6 August 2001 President Daily Brief
If you've read it, you know that it wasn't in any way helpful towards any actual action that would have allowed us to predict the use of tiny pocket box cutters to, essentially, kill thousands of people. Never mind when, or specifically, in any way, which people traveling from what Euro countries through which US cities with which operational details in mind. And of course, minus things like recent changes (read: PATRIOT act), domestic law enforcement and foreign intel were kept very much at arm's length from one another. That PDB doesn't do squat to change the circumstances.
But if 'Mr Bush was on a month-long "working holiday" at his Texas ranch' at the time, it's not unfair to say that perhaps he wasn't taking the threats seriously.
Of course it's unfair. Presidents away from the White House are completely surrounded by briefers, communications gear, daily (and even hourly) teleconferences, etc. Even Bill Clinton, hanging out on Martha's Vineyard with Hollywood types, was just as plugged into his C-in-C duties as when he was in DC. The president is not an intelligence analyst. He would get nothing else done if he had to gather and interpret intel and decide when to act on each and every open-ended threat possibility. The C-in-C's role is to delegate that stuff, and to be briefed on what's being done. Trying to micro-manage counterterrorism from the Oval Office (whether the real one or the mobile one that follows every president when they're away from DC) is crazy, and I'd consider any president that did it to be really misunderstanding his job and under-using his chain of command.
Careful, there, son. You're sounding way, way too rational to be using this web site. I mean, honestly... sizing up someone's general character, and having a soft spot for someone who actually speaks his own mind (however ineloquently) and sticks to his guns (despite polls and a shrill press)? I too have plenty of bones to pick with Bush, especially on some social and med/sci/ethics stuff. But: if you knew nothing else about him, and nothing else about, say, John Kerry... which would you rather just hang out with for an hour? Which would you find to be a more intolerably pompous, condescending, drone? Which one's repeated marrying-for-money would you roll your eyes (as he opines about sacrifice, etc). Nope... if you just met W in otherwise unremarkable circumstances, you'd probably just consider him a nice guy. And those that have actually worked closely with him indicate that he's much sharper, and more informed, than typical coverage would have you believe.
And then, there's Hillary: also bright, informed, more articulate, but also a completely transparent panderer and overall political windsock.
While I appreciate your use of a Fijian invasion as an academic exercise, it's still not working. Your point was that people in the US, minus their government and military (destroyed by powerful Fiji) could be reasonably expected to angrily lash out and to rally around people saying they could restore some US pride. Fine (I'm with you on that).
But the problem is that your analogy would also require (to mirror what's happening in Iraq), say, Protestants in Pennsylvania to blow up farmers' markets used by Catholics in Ohio as part of their lashing out against Fiji. It's irrational, it's not productive... and it's what the Baathists/Sunnis are doing as they try to regain the minority power they muscled into decades ago (at the point of a gun) in Iraq. Other players in the region have an interest in destabilizing a neighboring proto-democracy, and are of course pitchin in. It would be like Canada backing the Protestants. Sorry, the analogy doesn't really fit.
Experiments such as these really can't tell us the explanation, can they?
True, but what they can do is illustrate to those that think there is only one (magic, devine) just-add-water explanation that they're simply, demostrably incorrect.
Before someone says, "Ted Nugent, is that you?" please just hear me out for a second.
First, I don't think that any kid is confused about whether the portrayal of a giant-bodied, over-muscled avatar with an oddly small head, swinging a sparkly, glowing, acid-dripping battle axe the size of a Vespa scooter at an imaginary hominid foe with a boar's head or a stormtrooper's outfit is real or not. No more than kids 50 years ago were confused about whether the Lone Ranger perhaps lived down the street, or whether wearing green tights (a la Erol Flynn) and climbing trees with a sword and a bow was a particularly good idea. Most kids have way more common sense than all of that, then and now. But if playing a game or watching a movie in any way wires up a few synapses in a violence-desensitizing way (I'll buy that there might be a little to that), it's not like that's fundamentally new, even if it's more intense in a realistic-ish FPS.
But what allows a kid to properly evaluate what they're seeing is a reality baseline and a sense of consequence. Some decades back, most families were far, far more connected to daily life and death. It was called "keeping chickens" or "hunting rabbits" or "not spending $2000 at the vet every time Rover gets sick." When a kid has personally had a hand in delivering meat to the family's dinner table, some pretty primitive stuff kicks in. Specifically, one's own mortality, frailty, and an awareness of the finality of lethal acts are cemented early and hard. That makes life more precious, and makes maliciously using a gun or other weapon something to think about, rather than to do with all the impulse one would use when thumbing a game controller's "shoot" button.
A rural kid that's cut a goat's throat or gutted a deer for the meat locker is intimate with the reality of a large mammal (just like himself) never taking another breath, and growing cold right before his eyes. That same kid - a hundred years ago - could read something like Rudyard Kipling or Robert Loius Stevenson and (quaint as it seems now) actually feel some dread at the thought of a pirate (in print, no less - no slow, 3D pan shots) about to cut someone's throat. That meant something.
I can honestly say that those kids I know, brought up hunting and fishing (which includes killing, cleaning, preparing, and eating what they kill) are more thoughtful about violence, un-obsessed with goofing with guns, and tend to think about a lot of things (like fatty meat at the grocery store) with more perspective than most angsty, disconnected, suburbanite emo-cases that know where their neighbor's dad keeps a gen-u-wine katana.
The budget part is true. The implication that we just wander the earth "invading small countries" is nonsense. Afghanistan involved the removal of the toxic Taliban, and Iraq wouldn't have been an issue if Saddam hadn't invaded Kuwait. Were you thinking of Japan, maybe? Or Germany? Do you have any sense of history about where the western democracies have "invaded" and where they have not?
If the US thought nothing of invading small countries, we'd have long since turned Cuba into an annexed vacation spot, turned Hugu Chavez into valet parking attendant, paved over North Korea, etc. But we have not. Much, no doubt, to your rhetorical disappointment.
Never mind, of course, the considerable overlap in raw research dollars, logistical support, and technology applications that NASA enjoys with the military.
Google needs to do a better job of weeding out the ilk but I don't see a technical way that they can do that. Does anyone? How would you code to recognize the difference between an original source and a rehash of the exact same material (with different wording)?
Hmm. How about tracking the apparent age of any webs of links that point to that content? Or, for a more generalized credibility checkup, look at the domain registration. Does the.com also own the.net,.us,.info, etc? Are the domains registered for more than the next 6 months? There are all sorts of more meta-ish indicators of the overall credibility of a site, and that can be (and I'm certain is) used by people like Google to weight searc results.
But I can tell you that sitting down and writing coherent, grammatically correct, well-punctuated content on a structurally clean web site to which a fair number of non-related (no common ownership, no obvious link farming, etc) other sites link will - on anything but the most common topics - jump you right up into the top results.
To help stamp out the plagarists, just grab an occasional unique phrase from each of your hotter pages and Google that string. If other results come back, follow the trail and smack the pirates around as needed.
Slashdot Mirror
Was this article written by the nuke PR folks?
Nope. But you're clearly the exact sort of person he's talking about - who can't see the fundamental difference between the Chernobyl and TMI events.
I'm not sure this is news, other than that whoever this guy is, is saying it.
The real news, if you RTFA, is that his former green bretheren still treat him like a pariah for... being rational.
It's always funny to hear the greenies make fun of the all-too-Texan quirk of mispronouncing "new-cue-ler" while they make the actually meaningful error of not understanding the actual issues at hand. Too bad this guy's old buddies have so rabidly excommunicated him, but they're just as blind in their faith and their Nukes = Evil mantra as they would suggest that an oil-burning, SUV-driving Texan is in his own world view. Critical thinking, people! (both of you!)
everybody should pay for the carbon they have already emitted into the atmosphere
Does that include all of the coal and wood that Europe burned for thousand+ years before they colonized North America? And, are you going to take into account the net increase in trees we plant in the US, as opposed the complete clear-cutting that's going on across all of Asia and Central/South America? How about countries that profit from exporting carbon to other places (say, Venezuela to China)? They're never going to burn as much as China, but their economy completely depends on it. I'd like to see the ledger sheet you've got in mind to take all of that, and the past emissions you refer to, into account. Oh... and "pay" to whom? At what rate? Do we pay (to whom, the UN?) for emissions 200 years ago at some rate equal to the per capita value of those emissions back then? Adjusted how, to current dollars? Do you adjust for changing life expectancy during those years? Please expand on that.
I don't agree with all your points, but you make a good argument, so I modded you +1 Insightful. Just wanted to let you know that not everyone mods based on their personal beliefs.
:-)
I appreciate that... but of couse I'd rather you appreciated both the structure of the response and the actual point(s) I was making. However, I'll take the points on form, if that's all I can get!
Where does government money go that doesn't create jobs in America?
Much of it is spent very, very inefficiently (relative to activity in the private sector). Or, much of it is "spent" as grants, social programs, and other hand-out-ish type stuff that doesn't actually require (or produce) an actual productive job in return for that money. Simple re-distribution of money from a worker to (say) a non-worker does not create a job.
Pork-type spending (like, building pointless highways in the middle of nowhere, or sponsoring a teapot museum in the Carolinas - really!) may ultimately employ people in the literal sense, but it doesn't focus that money in areas where there's a real, 'natural' demand for the output of those workers. It's very distorting, and creates false spots in the economic landscape.
Why do you expect investors to invest as much money in America as the American government as opposed to investing in overseas and multinational companies
I expect investors to invest money wherever it suits them. If they're smart, they'll invest a goodly amount in domestic activity... but there's nothing wrong with investing in operations overseas, because that creates larger, newer, hungrier markets in those other places... and if you're still banking on the US as an innovative, useful place, those other countries will then have more to spend on our higher-end goods and services. Do you really think we're better off running low-end textile mills in this country? Or, are we better off leveraging developing economies that need the stimulation at that level, and focusing locally on more high-end, info/service/brain-type stuff that we do so well? It's not as simple as investing in/outside our borders, because we're completely past that as an economic model anyway. Practically everything we consume is made in China... so why not invest there and have a greater impact in how we operate parts of our companies there, and do everything we can to make Chinese citizens able to buy from us the stuff that we're still better at?
I think the other thing that's worth mentioning is that "tax cuts" cover a lot of ground. Where it really counts is in reducing the capital gains taxes, so that people who have their cash tied up in something (a second family house, or a pile of stocks, etc) can liberate it and move the investment onto something else (which stimulates growth) without getting killed by taxes. This is much more of a middle class thing than people think it is. Just selling one stock and turning right around to buy another that looks promising... that can clobber you with taxes. No money has landed in your hands, and some other company's just raised the capital with which to expand their business (and thus hire people, etc), but all the sudden 20% or so of the money you were willing to relocate into a needy part of the economy is... gone. That completely kills the incentive to push money into the hands of growing businesses that will make the most of it.
Lets not forget to add to that list no bid sweetheart deal contracts for hailburton
Please post your list of other firms with the personnel, experience, clearances, and other requirements ready to go, right then when needed. Then explain why they would have been cheaper and done a better job, and how the time spent bidding a mixed bag of hard-to-define-in-advance service requirements around through the CBD would have been quicker or ultimately in any way more effective.
Installing a big oil consultant as head of afghanistan
You'd rather that country's leadership was from more of a rural, poppy-growing industry? Or perhaps a retired warlord? There isn't much industry of any kind IN that country, so someone with the connections to actually get things working (with a legitimate business sector) in the local economy is critical. And perhaps you're forgetting the multiple rounds of actual, man-on-the-street votes that dictate the staffing of that country's government?
tax cuts
Which demonstrably, and directly contribute, year after year, to higher overall tax revenue and the economic activity that continues to produce more jobs. Please post your theory on how raising taxes contributes to employment, other than in government programs.
defeating net neutrality
BS. Stopping legislation that would require it has nothing to do with whether or not a provider can be as neutral as they choose. If you don't like the notion of the owner of a network running it as they see fit, start your own network and get customers by telling them that's part of your deal. Bandwidth provided by SBC (or Earthlink, or AT&T or Acme Smalltown Cableco) is not some natural resource: it's a product/service. The person providing the service can do as they please, and you can deal with them, or not. Would you rather the government also told landscaping companies that they have to charge the same rate for a mowed square foot of grass whether their customer is a townhouse owner or the owner of a 500 acre golf course? Let the market decide.
You'll make more rhetorical points if you don't try to string together a bunch of causality-confused, empty non-sequitors to paint some picture of The Man.
buisness can just have its way
So, buy your antibiotics, high-speed graphics cards, textiles, soybeans, airplane engines, high capacity batteries, and rolls of CAT5 from your local mom-and-pop manufacturers. Those tiny companies are always able to get you lower prices, innovative products, and nation-wide availability on demand. Have fun!
We're at the heart, here, of where we disagree. Religious things revolve entirely around non-reason, though religious people still make use of reason in their daily lives (else they wouldn't be able to function in the actual world). The ol' "God Of The Gaps" concept is as true as it ever was, and depending on what part of the world you live in and how much information you've digested, the gaps just keep on getting smaller. Mysticism is used exactly where each person's own application of rational thought stops being necessary or isn't as comforting... but unless someone is actually damaged goods, the unreasoning part of their world view is usually limited to those areas where it doesn't so much matter.
The religion-powered suicide bomber banking on those 70 (Dogmatic) Virgins is definitely damaged goods, intellectually. The person who just leans over to religion to make wedding ceremonies feel a little more serious, or who, in grief at the side of a deathbed, has a shouting match with [choose your deity]... is being just as (if fleetingly) irrational, but isn't applying their superstition in a way that they think alters the physical reality around them, etc. The "it was horrible the way that tornado killed the family next door... but we're so glad God saved us when our house didn't fall down" crowd would, I think, still build their house the same way next time... and probably not bank on God to hold their roof on. They tie God to emotional response in times of stress, but when they're doing something that demands a clear head (like, choosing roofing materials), God is tucked away in the gaps, as usual.
# of people who believe religious stuff dogmatically as a proportion of those who believe religious stuff at all
Ummm... they're all just one big set of "believers," here. You're either a believer, or you're not. You've got nothing but belief to go on, otherwise you wouldn't be talking about it in those terms. You're making it sound like one believer is just taking someone's word for it, while another believer is working on a sound, demonstrable, consistent set of facts that don't require belief. If the latter were the case, you'd call it "science," and not require belief at all. You're either thinking magical thoughts or you're not... never mind whether you synthesize those magical thoughts on your own and, not having read them somewhere, attempt to evade the "dogma" lable. Taking up someone else's magical constructs, or producing your own... neither are rational. You may be able to maintain some air of consistency within the magical constructs (especially when they don't have any bearing on the real world, and hence no testable consequences), but that self-contained "rational" consistency - built on a pointless foundation of actual irrationality, even if only about one premise - makes the whole thing truly insidious. The dogmatics are actually easier to excuse, if that's all they've known. Those that use un-reason to build a house of intellectual cards within which they (knowingly)carry on "rationally" are the much darker, more corrosive types.
There are many methods to verify religious beliefs. They are not the same as science. You can't have someone else come and conduct the same experiment and get identical results.
You like to quote the dictionary to deflect actual concepts, so I'll try this one (from M-W) out on you:
But there are nonetheless methods. The first is internal consistency. Another is personal experience. Neither of these is scientific, but both are mechanisms to check the validity of the "myths they're nursing along".
The person who does a rain dance to make it rain, and then notices that sometime in the following week that it in fact has rained has not "verified" their irrational belief s
Perhaps I should clarify. Science (and the output of scientific work) can and is trotted out by some people in a dogmatic way, not unlike the usual props that accompany religion. But the key issue is that those people are erring when they build a science-based dogmatic crutch for their world view. They may be citing perfectly good, rational facts and theories but when they do so dogmatically, rather than scientifically (meaning, with a full embrace of the actual scientific method, which demands continual re-evaluation), they do science (and reason) a disservice.
On the other hand, you have those that require a dollup of superstition or mysticism to give their world view a little of the warmth and fuzziness that they don't have it in themselves to derive from the world the way it actually is. In the absence anything other than myth and wishful thinking as a backdrop for the non-science-based things that they weave into their lives, they have two choices:
1) Make up new stuff every day, or throw a dart at the rich tapestry of stuff that other people have made up. Either way, that's the stuff that fills in the intellectual/philosophical gaps for the day. For most people, this doesn't produce warmth and fuzziness, because the built-in rational part of the brain knows that adopting entirely new premises about the nature of the universe every day is insincere, and Officially Flaky to the degree that even most Seriously Flaky People recognize that they're just thrashing around.
2) Stick with the same mystically derived magical thinking constructs from one day to the next so that you don't have to spend each day asking yourself if you're a religion-shopping Official Flake looking for whatever belief system has the shinier web site or freshest celebrity that day. Waking up the next day, too lazy to question the gritty details of the myths you've adopted, and just proceeding with the ones from yesterday: Dogma.
Yes, I woke up today in no mood to re-evaluate the science that confirms relativity, or to see if evolution is still a viable notion. But I don't need to, because there's no faith required when I know I can check for myself if I have the time. I understand the means by which a rational, science-informed view of the world is being built, and need no dogma to keep it all clear for me or to provide for me ready answers. That is in stark contrast with religious people... they have no mechanism to check the validity of the myths they're nursing along, but they stick to their guns any way. Dogma.
Beliefs are dogmatic based on WHY they are held - not WHAT they are.
You make this assertion repeatedly, and it appears to be at the foundation of much of what drives your world view. But it's wrong.
Beliefs are dogmatic when they must be because of what they are. When you hold as true something that conflicts with observable reality, or which is logically contradictory, you're dealing with a framework that requires dogma (lest the person embracing that framework snap out of it and, applying reason, see that it's nonsense). Dogma is the loud, thumping drum to which your mind hurridly marches past the landscape of rationality. One doesn't dogmatically embrace reason (in place of supersitious belief), one simply uses reason in considering and functioning within the world. Each step away from reason requires some dogma to cover your tracks.
I don't know if intentionally exposing them to forbidden court material is "ill-conceived". It's kind of hard to accidentally send transcripts to witnesses... I'm sure she'll get to write a book about the trial.
Of course it wasn't an accident in the "oops, I forwarded this to the wrong addresses" sense. It was poor judgement. But the technology that made it so easy for her to do it was: internet enabled e-mail. My point is that the "cost" of turning on publicly-transcieving e-mail accounts for investigators and other people with legally critical jobs involve more than some server admin mouseclicks and a little more storage... there's substantial training and oversight involved.
All of the bureau's employees have secure mail accounts for use within that organization. Publicly available accounts, and accounts from which bureau employees can send mail to the public are indeed more complex (think about the tracking they'd require), and would require a lot more than typical corporate non-training when it comes to what they can or should do with that type of communication.
One mis-step in a CC or Reply-All and you could completely torpedo an investigation or a trial. Just look at what one lackluster prosecutor did with some ill-conceived e-mail sent to prospective witnesses during the ongoing 9/11 trial happening right now. This subject is a lot more complicated than meets the eye.
What have those French riots to do with Iraq?
Pay attention to the thread, how about? The question is, why would France have, despite glaring evidence, have said that it would always, no matter what, use its ill-deserved veto-enabled seat on the security council to stop any action, ever, that would involve force against Saddam? Primarily because of a long history of doing business with him (even he has his forces taking shots at aircraft patroling the no-fly zones, skimmed "humanitarian" resources from his people to keep building more weapons and palaces, etc), and because a gigantic and rapidly expanding Middle-Eastern/African Muslim immigrant population that is simmering away in France's stratified socialist wonderland (with no job prospects, a stagnant economy, and a portable cultural leadership that - as we saw in the riots - leverages flimsy excuses to stir up telegenic trouble). And because with so little actual global clout available to it, the craven French government would rather watch Iraq rot under Saddam, and watch him send cash to suicide bombers, and watch him shop around for missle parts, etc., just so they could make a show of being not the US. It was callow, and embarassing for the French people.
The riots, per se, have very little to do with Iraq... but they are a perfect example of one of the reasons that the French did not want to allow themselves to be painted, by a sensationalist Arab press, as being anti-Muslim in their foreign relations. This has backfired, of course, because they were hoping that Saddam himself would fall from inside, and they'd still have their economic connections intact with the Baathists, the better to reap the financial rewards of providing more services. Poor judgement.
De-clawing of any law enforcement in Germany? Have you ever even been there?
Hmmm, let's see. My wife was born in Frankfurt, also lived in Munich, Berlin, Vienna, and elsewhere. Many family trips there... does any of that count? Many personal friends in foreign service, international business, law enforcement, defense/intel who work there. Does any of that count? Friends and neighbors from places throughout Africa and the middle east who have spent recent years there in school among immigrant student populations... does any of that count? Germany's wide-open borders, crazily hands-off attitude (only recently starting to straighten out) towards the movement and activities of transparently hostile, radicalized militant Islamists, and drooping economy are well known. The German government's resistence to holding Saddam accountable for his continuing provocations had nothing to do with their awareness of the available intel, but instead with internal elections and cheesy leftist muscle-flexing for the press ("I'll stand up to Bush! Vote for me!") without a single thought for whether or not they were going to condemn millions of Iraqis to another generation of murderous Sunni Baathist rule. You'd think Germany, of all places, would know better (I hope that comment didn't invoke Godwin).
There is no reason why Siria, or even Iraq would want to deploy WMD's anyway. If they really wanted to deploy WMD's, or hurt the USA or Israel, they could have already done so in the last 20 years.
I sure wish I could get as much sleep as you apparently do (I have to assume that you slept through Iraq's casual lobbing of SCUD missles at Israel as Saddam was being kicked out of Kuwait?). I'm not saying that Syria would be foolish enough to use Saddam's exported WMDs against the US, I'm saying that he (Saddam) did have plenty of such materials still stashed away, and was very busy trying to keep the UN from seeing and touching them. The Germans, the French, and everyone else knew that. More pointless paper sanctions against Saddam weren't going to stop him from stashing stuff with his buddies in Syria.
All this talks simply takes away the focus of the reason why Europe and many other countries don't support the U
Why did most of these countries who *believed* Saddam had WMD refuse to go to war in Iraq?
You mean France? Germany? Russia? You know, the ones with substantial (and ongoing) cash-generating relationships with Saddam? The ones with politicians and business interests busily scraping cash off of the oil for food program? Or are you thinking more in terms of the Russian lack of any actual workable military with which to contribute, and serious hopes of still trying to be a counter-US player in that part of the world, just for the sake of being contrary (as a PR move)? Or were you thinking of the high number of Islamist-types that have set up camp in Germany and France, where it's increasingly politically difficult to do anything that might offend them, or even just give them an excuse to act offended (see recent riots in France, see the complete de-clawing of any law enforcement in Germany, as it relates to dealing with radicalized, militant foreigners living locally on the dole while they plot things like 9-11... which is exactly what happened).
Or, you could remind yourself of the number of countries that saw the same intel, and very much pitched in. You could even remind yourself of the security council votes that gave Saddam one last chance lest he face dire consequences. It's not "most of these countries," it's more like a minority of them. Places like eastern Europe, more recently familiar with living under tyrants like Saddam, were and still are all for removing him from power.
If you want to get upset about something, get upset about where all of Saddam's toys went (ahem: check in Syria, which is full of his people, his money, and many shipments of his WMD-related goodies and technology).
What the hell happened to the spy agency? CIA Agents now chat away on unsecure cell phones, check into foreign hotels using GSAs (US gov't issued credit cards), and leak every other intelligence briefing to the press.
I think you're confusing run-of-the-mill analysts, staffers, and appointees with truly under-cover operatives. Those people work completely off the books, are funded with laundered, trail-less transactions that defy this sort of snooping, and are frequently risking their personal lives to operate in the way that they do. Far from the portrait that's painted in this article, those folks are quite submerged. They don't know each other, and their handling is very compartmentalized from much farther up the agency food chain.
The parade of contractors, interns, food service workers, well-known analysts (a la Plame), etc., is a completely different layer than the Extra Spooky types.
What was so magical about the 6 August 2001 President Daily Brief
If you've read it, you know that it wasn't in any way helpful towards any actual action that would have allowed us to predict the use of tiny pocket box cutters to, essentially, kill thousands of people. Never mind when, or specifically, in any way, which people traveling from what Euro countries through which US cities with which operational details in mind. And of course, minus things like recent changes (read: PATRIOT act), domestic law enforcement and foreign intel were kept very much at arm's length from one another. That PDB doesn't do squat to change the circumstances.
But if 'Mr Bush was on a month-long "working holiday" at his Texas ranch' at the time, it's not unfair to say that perhaps he wasn't taking the threats seriously.
Of course it's unfair. Presidents away from the White House are completely surrounded by briefers, communications gear, daily (and even hourly) teleconferences, etc. Even Bill Clinton, hanging out on Martha's Vineyard with Hollywood types, was just as plugged into his C-in-C duties as when he was in DC. The president is not an intelligence analyst. He would get nothing else done if he had to gather and interpret intel and decide when to act on each and every open-ended threat possibility. The C-in-C's role is to delegate that stuff, and to be briefed on what's being done. Trying to micro-manage counterterrorism from the Oval Office (whether the real one or the mobile one that follows every president when they're away from DC) is crazy, and I'd consider any president that did it to be really misunderstanding his job and under-using his chain of command.
Careful, there, son. You're sounding way, way too rational to be using this web site. I mean, honestly... sizing up someone's general character, and having a soft spot for someone who actually speaks his own mind (however ineloquently) and sticks to his guns (despite polls and a shrill press)? I too have plenty of bones to pick with Bush, especially on some social and med/sci/ethics stuff. But: if you knew nothing else about him, and nothing else about, say, John Kerry... which would you rather just hang out with for an hour? Which would you find to be a more intolerably pompous, condescending, drone? Which one's repeated marrying-for-money would you roll your eyes (as he opines about sacrifice, etc). Nope... if you just met W in otherwise unremarkable circumstances, you'd probably just consider him a nice guy. And those that have actually worked closely with him indicate that he's much sharper, and more informed, than typical coverage would have you believe.
And then, there's Hillary: also bright, informed, more articulate, but also a completely transparent panderer and overall political windsock.
While I appreciate your use of a Fijian invasion as an academic exercise, it's still not working. Your point was that people in the US, minus their government and military (destroyed by powerful Fiji) could be reasonably expected to angrily lash out and to rally around people saying they could restore some US pride. Fine (I'm with you on that).
But the problem is that your analogy would also require (to mirror what's happening in Iraq), say, Protestants in Pennsylvania to blow up farmers' markets used by Catholics in Ohio as part of their lashing out against Fiji. It's irrational, it's not productive... and it's what the Baathists/Sunnis are doing as they try to regain the minority power they muscled into decades ago (at the point of a gun) in Iraq. Other players in the region have an interest in destabilizing a neighboring proto-democracy, and are of course pitchin in. It would be like Canada backing the Protestants. Sorry, the analogy doesn't really fit.
Actually, that really did help. Now, see if you can do a NASCAR analogy, or a perhaps a WoW analogy. We've got to cover all our bases, here.
Experiments such as these really can't tell us the explanation, can they?
True, but what they can do is illustrate to those that think there is only one (magic, devine) just-add-water explanation that they're simply, demostrably incorrect.
We're more likely to be hit between now and then by an object that we don't know about.
Or worse, our global sports broadcasting networks will collapse when a key satellite is destroyed by an LEO golf drive.
Before someone says, "Ted Nugent, is that you?" please just hear me out for a second.
First, I don't think that any kid is confused about whether the portrayal of a giant-bodied, over-muscled avatar with an oddly small head, swinging a sparkly, glowing, acid-dripping battle axe the size of a Vespa scooter at an imaginary hominid foe with a boar's head or a stormtrooper's outfit is real or not. No more than kids 50 years ago were confused about whether the Lone Ranger perhaps lived down the street, or whether wearing green tights (a la Erol Flynn) and climbing trees with a sword and a bow was a particularly good idea. Most kids have way more common sense than all of that, then and now. But if playing a game or watching a movie in any way wires up a few synapses in a violence-desensitizing way (I'll buy that there might be a little to that), it's not like that's fundamentally new, even if it's more intense in a realistic-ish FPS.
But what allows a kid to properly evaluate what they're seeing is a reality baseline and a sense of consequence. Some decades back, most families were far, far more connected to daily life and death. It was called "keeping chickens" or "hunting rabbits" or "not spending $2000 at the vet every time Rover gets sick." When a kid has personally had a hand in delivering meat to the family's dinner table, some pretty primitive stuff kicks in. Specifically, one's own mortality, frailty, and an awareness of the finality of lethal acts are cemented early and hard. That makes life more precious, and makes maliciously using a gun or other weapon something to think about, rather than to do with all the impulse one would use when thumbing a game controller's "shoot" button.
A rural kid that's cut a goat's throat or gutted a deer for the meat locker is intimate with the reality of a large mammal (just like himself) never taking another breath, and growing cold right before his eyes. That same kid - a hundred years ago - could read something like Rudyard Kipling or Robert Loius Stevenson and (quaint as it seems now) actually feel some dread at the thought of a pirate (in print, no less - no slow, 3D pan shots) about to cut someone's throat. That meant something.
I can honestly say that those kids I know, brought up hunting and fishing (which includes killing, cleaning, preparing, and eating what they kill) are more thoughtful about violence, un-obsessed with goofing with guns, and tend to think about a lot of things (like fatty meat at the grocery store) with more perspective than most angsty, disconnected, suburbanite emo-cases that know where their neighbor's dad keeps a gen-u-wine katana.
The budget part is true. The implication that we just wander the earth "invading small countries" is nonsense. Afghanistan involved the removal of the toxic Taliban, and Iraq wouldn't have been an issue if Saddam hadn't invaded Kuwait. Were you thinking of Japan, maybe? Or Germany? Do you have any sense of history about where the western democracies have "invaded" and where they have not?
If the US thought nothing of invading small countries, we'd have long since turned Cuba into an annexed vacation spot, turned Hugu Chavez into valet parking attendant, paved over North Korea, etc. But we have not. Much, no doubt, to your rhetorical disappointment.
Never mind, of course, the considerable overlap in raw research dollars, logistical support, and technology applications that NASA enjoys with the military.
Put a fork in it. That franchise is done already.
Google needs to do a better job of weeding out the ilk but I don't see a technical way that they can do that. Does anyone? How would you code to recognize the difference between an original source and a rehash of the exact same material (with different wording)?
.com also own the .net, .us, .info, etc? Are the domains registered for more than the next 6 months? There are all sorts of more meta-ish indicators of the overall credibility of a site, and that can be (and I'm certain is) used by people like Google to weight searc results.
Hmm. How about tracking the apparent age of any webs of links that point to that content? Or, for a more generalized credibility checkup, look at the domain registration. Does the
But I can tell you that sitting down and writing coherent, grammatically correct, well-punctuated content on a structurally clean web site to which a fair number of non-related (no common ownership, no obvious link farming, etc) other sites link will - on anything but the most common topics - jump you right up into the top results.
To help stamp out the plagarists, just grab an occasional unique phrase from each of your hotter pages and Google that string. If other results come back, follow the trail and smack the pirates around as needed.