The first question is which side of the debate did the people who hacked this site come from.
Doesn't matter if the emails are valid.
The second question is do the people involved confirm the validity of the emails.
Yes, they do. There have been several interviews were they try to explain what they meant when they said what they did. They said they were taken out of context, never that they were misquoted.
And how do you know all this? That's right, the data. Well, if it turns out that the data has been manipulated, would you still believe it?
Evidently.
I'm not saying that climate change isn't happening. It has always happened. What I am saying is that the data needs to be reexamined, the code needs to be rewritten and the models need to be reevaluated. Why, because a couple of scientists fucked it up.
Oh I don't know, were you in a coma for the last couple of years ? I just find it really funny that the new stratergy now is to call into question the honesty and ethics of the researchers or basically personal attacks instead of challenging the freaking DATA. Denier still know what data is defined as right ?
The problem is that the DATA is now in question. I don't know where you've been for the past week or so, but it appears that many of the scientists who have been writing reports for policy makers in the UN and various world governments have been manipulating data, cherry picking data, and then destroying data. After that, they have been denying data to those who ask for it who might discredit their "findings". Why would challenging them be considered a personal attack? It's their professional credibility that is in question.
So, I guess the question should be, why are you not challenging credibility of those that changed, destroyed and withheld data?
Come on, now. Einstein did claim to believe in something called God, but this God was just about nothing like the God that Christians call God. Einstein's God was an unknowable mystical being who did not answer prayers, give out commandments, punish sins or define morality, send people to Hell, or affect anyone personally. If you stood up in church and said "yeah, I believe in God, but he doesn't punish sins or answer prayers, he never wrote any holy books, and there's no such thing as salvation", you'd be considered an atheist, even if you didn't use the word yourself and even if you technically still believe in God.
And it didn't affect his ability to do critical thinking (much) because this God doesn't say or do anything. If God doesn't say or do anything, there's not much room for him to get in the way of critical thinking.
Fine, but the point was that Einstein said he was not an atheist, as the GGP was trying the claim. The post that this was in response to said that when Einstein said "God", he meant the Universe, not some old guy with a gray beard. While Einstein did not believe in a "personal God", he also said he was not an atheist, meaning that he did believe in God, not the Universe as God.
Either way, it doesn't matter. The whole post that started this was saying that you would have to be an idiot to believe in God as such a belief is completely counter to science. Einstein himself said, "I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Was the OP stating that Einstein is not a scientist? Even if you throw Einstein out, what about Kelvin, Kepler, Galileo or Newton? How about someone more recent like Georges Lemaitre who even though he was a Catholic Priest, was still fully capable of proving Einstein's theory of a static universe and came up with the Big Bang Theory (not the TV show!)?
Having a religious and scientific mind are not mutually exclusive. Many leading scientists, some who I have met in person did not find God UNTIL they became scientist. In other words, they looked at the evidence and determined that God must exist. You may want to call it a cop out or simply disagree, until you are a published scientist near the top your field, I don't think you have grounds to criticize.
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Right. That quote is on the site I linked as well HERE. There are also other quotes:
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."
and
"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."
and finally:
"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."
First of all, your ignorance is downright supernatural in itself. Very VERY few Christians believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. But since you seem to think that Christians are so ignorant, maybe you should tell the modern scientists that base their knowledge on the science that came from these guys: Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627) Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Rene Descartes (1596-1650) Isaac Newton (1642-1727) Robert Boyle (1791-1867) Michael Faraday (1791-1867) Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) William Thomson Kelvin (1824-1907) Max Planck (1858-1947) Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
All believed in God, many were devout Christians. Of course, that is a very partial list. Do you really think that you are smart enough to you say that these guys are unable to "can apply a modicum of critical thinking to remedy their condition." Sorry, but until modern astronomy, physics, philosophy, or even the scientific basis for temperature are based on your work, you are unqualified to criticize these guys.
(if you are to mod this off topic, it's only fair to mod the parent OT first)
I moved into a house previously owned by a smoker. Almost got nicotine poisoning just from touching the wallpaper...
I call serious BS. Even if you ate all the wallpaper in the house, it would not be enough to give you nicotine poisoning. However, that much glue would probably kill you. Your symptoms, if you even had them, were psychosomatic at best. Otherwise, you would not be able to walk into a bar that allows smoking and touch a bar stool, a dart or pool que, or even a door knob to go to the john.
I chose to respond to your post because I feel it was the best one. I know the thread is dead so I hope someone actually reads it.
ArcherB, I'd like to thank you for your service.
Don't thank me, thank my recruiter. (inside joke)
Timing. We had been attacked by people from Saudi A. and planned in Afghan., why choose to attack Iraq now? The answer is most likely, without the sting of 9/11 still on our minds, they would not have been able to get support for the war.
You're right. 9-11 showed that we were vulnerable. We always assumed that attacks always happened "over there" somewhere. 9-11 showed that were could be attacked here. Before 9-11, Iraq was not a threat. They did not have the ability to attack us here. Once we saw that a bunch of poorly funded uneducated jihadis could hit us, we realized what Iraq could do. They wouldn't even have to hit us themselves. They could simply fund groups like Al Quaeda and have them do the dirty work.
Also consider that many world leaders, (I believe our own are included in this) truly believed that Iraq was working on weapons programs. Why? Because Iraq wanted us to believe that. No one could fathom why Iraq would lie about not having weapons programs. We all expected them lie about having them. Sure, some people said they were not working on WMD's, but these are the same people saying that Iran is not working on a nuclear bomb. We didn't know that Iraq was bluffing, attempting to call our bluff. Their mistake was that we were not bluffing. Our mistake was that they were.
Many times the justification for invading Iraq is that they defied international law, and that Hussein killed many 10's of thousands of his people. If that is the criteria for invading a country, why not pick one that is 10 times worse? What about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide
You're right again! We should have done something in Rwanda. Rwanda showed the incompetence of the UN and their inability to risk lives, even as millions were slaughtered. Clinton's mistake was not acting unilaterally in Rwanda and it was a lesson Bush learned from. I hope we don't make that mistake again. We can not depend on the UN.
So as long as you are clear about what your mission really was, an economic one, and can be proud of doing that job well, be proud. As long as Americans know that they traded hundreds of thousands of Iraq lives, and thousands of American lives, for oil and greater Middle East stability, then it is fine to be proud of it. Be proud of the bravery of our solidiers, or proud of the economic mission.
Your mostly correct. The mission Iraq was about oil. Not because we wanted it or planned on taking it, but because oil is worth money and money can buy anything. When a man like Saddam Hussein is in power, there is little doubt that the oil money would not have gone into the economy, but would have been used to fund military programs (see Iran). Those military programs could eventually be a threat to us and would have immediately been a threat to the region, as history has shown. Iraq had invaded every one of their neighboring countries at one point with the exception of Syria.
Fortunately, Saddam considered loyalty above ability. This meant that his military officers were promoted because they were loyal to Saddam. Competence had little or nothing to do with it. This left Iraq with a military in the top five of the world, with complete boobs running it. We could not count on this staying this way. Leadership can be purchased. Militaries can be outsourced by funding external groups (Al Quaeda... see above). Lesser countries can be overwhelmed by raw numbers (see Kuwait). So yes. It was about oil. Iraq was a threat because of oil.
Iraq becoming more democratic was a side effect. You can still choose to feel
To top it off, our invasion of Iraq totally screwed our operations in Afghanistan. So we did the absolute most ass backwards, ineffective thing we could have done, and now we are paying for it. Well, our young men and women are. Okay, not the sons and daughters of the people who sent us into Iraq, obviously, but, you know, our disposable young men and women are paying for it.
Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?
As a former soldier who went to the Middle East, I can tell you that I knew very well what our mission was and fully supported it. If I didn't, I would not have gone. I would have made a pass at the Platoon SGT or something to get my ass thrown out of the Army. When I was over there, I met the people I was there defending and understood why I was there. I was given freedom from my forefathers with help from the French. I didn't earn it. What makes me so damn special that I get freedom from tyranny and these people don't? I've earned it now. Sure, I didn't fight for my own freedom, but I gave the gift to someone else and would have been willing to die for it. I made that decision before I ever signed.
And yes! It makes me VERY proud to be an American, thank you.
We invaded Iraq. They had nothing to do with 9/11
Right. They violated 17 UN resolutions, tried to assassinate a former US president, fired at our soldiers who were there enforcing an UN mandate, and do I need to bring up the mass graves filled with men and women still clutching their toddler children?
Afghanistan may have been their home base, but if we invade countries because they house terrorists, who should we have invaded because of Tim McVeigh?
Housing terrorists is one thing. Terrorists live everywhere. It's when the government knows they are there and do nothing about it. The Taliban didn't just "house" Al Qaeda , they harbored them. They actively assisted them and refused our offer to take care of them ourselves. What would you have Bush do? "Hello, Mr. Taliban guy, Dubya here. Listen, the guys that planned the attack that killed 3000 of our citizens are in your country. Do you mind if we come get them? I'm sorry, what was that? No way in Hell? What about my mother? Well, OK then. Thank you for your time. (hangs up phone). Sorry, Dick, they said no."
The hijackers were from all over, mostly from countries with governments that are our allies who are doing what they can to combat the problem themselves. Invading them would halt those efforts and turn the populations against us. The plan was hatched in Afghanistan, however, where the then government did what they could to protect and harbor those who planned the attacks.
What exactly did we have the stomach for then that we don't now? Nuclear bombs?
That and the whole idea of carpet bombing populated areas. While "WE" don't have the stomach for it, I hope our enemies are at least as civilized. I have little hope for our current crop of enemies, however.
What Fox "News" broadcasts is not a "challenge" to the White House. It's made-up accusations, like this Anita Dunn nonsense, like the fuss about ACORN, like the association between the President and Bill Ayers, that make it an arm of the Republican party. These stories are simply specious, having no purpose beyond allowing the talking heads to call President Obama a socialist over and over on national TV.
Oh, Good God! Fox News did not make the videos up! Anita Dunn really did say that Mao Tse Tung was one of her favorite philosophers. Could you imagine the uproar if a member of GWB's cabinet had stated that Hitler or Pol Pot were one of his favorite philosophers?!!? It would be broadcast nonstop on every news network until this cabinet member resigned in shame with full investigations to follow. Sorry, but Anita said it, she meant it, and it was on video. Fox didn't need to make anything up. If you believe that, you are deluding yourself. Look up the video for yourself.
As for the relationship between Ayers and Obama, it was real. Sure, they may not have been best friends and swapped wives or anything, but there was a relationship. These guys not only worked together and served on various boards together, but Obama's political career was started at a meet-and-greet hosted at Bill Ayers' house by Bill Ayers himself. Again, if GWB or any other Republican and most Democrats had started their political careers at the home of an admitted terrorist, it would make the news 24/7. And again, this relationship is well documented by non-Fox sources and is public record/fact. If you deny that there was a relationship, you are deluding yourself again. You seem to be doing a lot of that lately.
You bring up ACORN. ACORN is an organization that receives tax payer money whose members were offering to assist what they thought were a pimp and prostitute get tax breaks for their child sex slave operation. The evidence is on video and indisputable. Are you seriously OK with that? Sure, the organization has done some good, but there are other organizations that could do a better job without all the unadulterated corruption. Oh, and Obama once worked for ACORN and wears his Community Organizing experience like a badge of honor. You do know what the C and the O in ACORN stands for don't you? Funny how that relationship didn't get any media attention either.
Finally, it has been proven that Fox News truly is the most "Fair and Balanced" network out there. I understand that you don't like views you disagree with being shared, but just because they are not YOUR views doesn't mean that those who with differing views should be silenced. You'll need to look up the First Amendment for the reasons why.
Give me a break. The Guardian article you quoted leads with
"Fox News is clearly an arm of the Republican party. Obama is right to throw caution to the wind and treat it as such."
The MSNBC cite isn't even from NBC, it's a wingnut blog!
The MSNBC cite shows a video of MSNBC. Ignore the blog, ignore the comments and let the video speak for itself. The GGP seemed to not believe that the WH was a "war" with Fox News and asked for Non-Fox sources. The Guardian link also shows this and it is certainly NOT a Republican, conservative or Fox News site, as you clearly pointed out.
So, first you try to rebut by saying that my first source does not agree with Fox News, which is not what I was trying to show, and then you complain that my second link is conservative and it agrees with Fox News. The point was to show WH attacks towards Fox News, which both sites did. For more, please use Google. Search terms, "Anita Dunn" "Fox News", with quotes.
BTW, challenging the WH and reporting on the stuff they do does not make you "an arm of the Republican party". It makes you a news organization.
Oh yes, here's another one: the inability to make two rows of taskbar at the bottom.
Actually, I think this is possible now. Although, I agree that the rest of KDE4 makes me not want to use it either so I can't confirm at the moment. I do go back to it every now and again to check it out and see what's new. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well with remote desktop programs like vnc or freenx so I can't confirm that multi-row taskbar at the moment.
When you configure your panel ( Right Click on the Panel bar-->Arrangement->Size-->"Custom" ) so that the size is less than 34 pixels, it will display as a single row.
When it is more than 34 pixels but less than 52 pixels, it will display as a double row. When it is greater than 52 pixels, it will display as a triple row.
(You can also choose "Tiny" or "Small" and it will be a single row, whereas "Normal" will display as a double row, and "Large" will display as a triple row.)
You do not have the right to be a fucking bunch of asshats and liars aka Fox News. With speech comes resposibility and the Murdoch press left that bit out years ago.
So, who decides who is telling the truth and who is lying? The President? And... you're OK with that? The President can declare who can say the news and who can't, what is news and what isn't, and what is truth and what is not?
Oh, and yeah, lying (See CBS and their fake GWB NG documents) and being a bunch of asshats is protected by the Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of the Press. Read the Federalist Papers and ask yourself, "What if George Washington had declared that the writers of the Federalist Papers were a bunch of "lying asshats"?"
Because Fox News isn't broadcasting anywhere anymore. It's obvious that their rights aren't protected, and they were shut down.
Wait, What???? Oh sorry, here's Fox News on my TV right here!
I guess their rights to say whatever shit they want are indeed being defended. My bad.
So, are you saying that there is nothing between complete freedom and total shutdown?
So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except FoxNews? Is it OK to give "scoops" to every network but FoxNews? Sure, not every network can attend, so I understand if the Shelbyville Gazette doesn't get invited, but Fox has the ratings to be considered on the short list of invitees. Even the other networks are getting uncomfortable with it:
Despite the administration’s pledge to play nice earlier this week, the White House tried to exclude Fox News – alone among the five White House "pool" networks – from interviewing executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg on Thursday.
After CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC balked at the plan Tuesday, ABC News’ Jake Tapper asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the appropriateness of the administration's saying that Fox News, which he called "one of our sister organizations," is "not a news organization."
(From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press... but what would they know, right?)
As for the BBC, you trust a government owned and run network over free ones? Really? BBC is the NPR and PBS of Britain. Sorry, I think the "Bullshit" is coming from you.
Slashdot Mirror
it's just sometimes, it's a resource hog.
A bad workman always blames his tools
When you are given a screw driver to drive a nail, blaming the tool makes sense!
The first question is which side of the debate did the people who hacked this site come from.
Doesn't matter if the emails are valid.
The second question is do the people involved confirm the validity of the emails.
Yes, they do. There have been several interviews were they try to explain what they meant when they said what they did. They said they were taken out of context, never that they were misquoted.
And how do you know all this? That's right, the data. Well, if it turns out that the data has been manipulated, would you still believe it?
Evidently.
I'm not saying that climate change isn't happening. It has always happened. What I am saying is that the data needs to be reexamined, the code needs to be rewritten and the models need to be reevaluated. Why, because a couple of scientists fucked it up.
Oh I don't know, were you in a coma for the last couple of years ? I just find it really funny that the new stratergy now is to call into question the honesty and ethics of the researchers or basically personal attacks instead of challenging the freaking DATA. Denier still know what data is defined as right ?
The problem is that the DATA is now in question. I don't know where you've been for the past week or so, but it appears that many of the scientists who have been writing reports for policy makers in the UN and various world governments have been manipulating data, cherry picking data, and then destroying data. After that, they have been denying data to those who ask for it who might discredit their "findings". Why would challenging them be considered a personal attack? It's their professional credibility that is in question.
So, I guess the question should be, why are you not challenging credibility of those that changed, destroyed and withheld data?
Come on, now. Einstein did claim to believe in something called God, but this God was just about nothing like the God that Christians call God. Einstein's God was an unknowable mystical being who did not answer prayers, give out commandments, punish sins or define morality, send people to Hell, or affect anyone personally. If you stood up in church and said "yeah, I believe in God, but he doesn't punish sins or answer prayers, he never wrote any holy books, and there's no such thing as salvation", you'd be considered an atheist, even if you didn't use the word yourself and even if you technically still believe in God.
And it didn't affect his ability to do critical thinking (much) because this God doesn't say or do anything. If God doesn't say or do anything, there's not much room for him to get in the way of critical thinking.
Fine, but the point was that Einstein said he was not an atheist, as the GGP was trying the claim. The post that this was in response to said that when Einstein said "God", he meant the Universe, not some old guy with a gray beard. While Einstein did not believe in a "personal God", he also said he was not an atheist, meaning that he did believe in God, not the Universe as God.
Either way, it doesn't matter. The whole post that started this was saying that you would have to be an idiot to believe in God as such a belief is completely counter to science. Einstein himself said, "I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Was the OP stating that Einstein is not a scientist? Even if you throw Einstein out, what about Kelvin, Kepler, Galileo or Newton? How about someone more recent like Georges Lemaitre who even though he was a Catholic Priest, was still fully capable of proving Einstein's theory of a static universe and came up with the Big Bang Theory (not the TV show!)?
Having a religious and scientific mind are not mutually exclusive. Many leading scientists, some who I have met in person did not find God UNTIL they became scientist. In other words, they looked at the evidence and determined that God must exist. You may want to call it a cop out or simply disagree, until you are a published scientist near the top your field, I don't think you have grounds to criticize.
I don't have time to look all of these up, but you can try this quote on for size:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Right. That quote is on the site I linked as well HERE. There are also other quotes:
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."
and
"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."
and finally:
"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."
First of all, your ignorance is downright supernatural in itself. Very VERY few Christians believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. But since you seem to think that Christians are so ignorant, maybe you should tell the modern scientists that base their knowledge on the science that came from these guys:
Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)
Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627)
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Robert Boyle (1791-1867)
Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
William Thomson Kelvin (1824-1907)
Max Planck (1858-1947)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
All believed in God, many were devout Christians. Of course, that is a very partial list. Do you really think that you are smart enough to you say that these guys are unable to "can apply a modicum of critical thinking to remedy their condition." Sorry, but until modern astronomy, physics, philosophy, or even the scientific basis for temperature are based on your work, you are unqualified to criticize these guys.
(if you are to mod this off topic, it's only fair to mod the parent OT first)
Yeah, you're right.
None of that melting ice caps, record glacial melts, and lack of ozone layer above the Antartic stuff means anything. All of it's BS.
How do you know any of what you say is true if can't see or trust the raw data?
I'll grant you that transparency hasn't been very good. But you can ignore that little passage between Thule and Vancouver that's nearly ice free now.
No one is denying climate change. The climate is and always has changed for billions of years. What is up for debate is WHY the climate is changing.
No they don't, you can install the synergy package yourself.
sudo apt-get install synergy
Of course, you need the right repo's.
I moved into a house previously owned by a smoker. Almost got nicotine poisoning just from touching the wallpaper...
I call serious BS. Even if you ate all the wallpaper in the house, it would not be enough to give you nicotine poisoning. However, that much glue would probably kill you. Your symptoms, if you even had them, were psychosomatic at best. Otherwise, you would not be able to walk into a bar that allows smoking and touch a bar stool, a dart or pool que, or even a door knob to go to the john.
The difference is that WE ASKED THE FRENCH. Who in Afghanistan asked you for help in getting freedom? If they didn't ask, you aren't 'helping' them.
The Northern Alliance asked for our help. Just as the revolutionaries asked the French.
I chose to respond to your post because I feel it was the best one. I know the thread is dead so I hope someone actually reads it.
ArcherB, I'd like to thank you for your service.
Don't thank me, thank my recruiter. (inside joke)
Timing. We had been attacked by people from Saudi A. and planned in Afghan., why choose to attack Iraq now? The answer is most likely, without the sting of 9/11 still on our minds, they would not have been able to get support for the war.
You're right. 9-11 showed that we were vulnerable. We always assumed that attacks always happened "over there" somewhere. 9-11 showed that were could be attacked here. Before 9-11, Iraq was not a threat. They did not have the ability to attack us here. Once we saw that a bunch of poorly funded uneducated jihadis could hit us, we realized what Iraq could do. They wouldn't even have to hit us themselves. They could simply fund groups like Al Quaeda and have them do the dirty work.
Also consider that many world leaders, (I believe our own are included in this) truly believed that Iraq was working on weapons programs. Why? Because Iraq wanted us to believe that. No one could fathom why Iraq would lie about not having weapons programs. We all expected them lie about having them. Sure, some people said they were not working on WMD's, but these are the same people saying that Iran is not working on a nuclear bomb. We didn't know that Iraq was bluffing, attempting to call our bluff. Their mistake was that we were not bluffing. Our mistake was that they were.
Many times the justification for invading Iraq is that they defied international law, and that Hussein killed many 10's of thousands of his people. If that is the criteria for invading a country, why not pick one that is 10 times worse?
What about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide
You're right again! We should have done something in Rwanda. Rwanda showed the incompetence of the UN and their inability to risk lives, even as millions were slaughtered. Clinton's mistake was not acting unilaterally in Rwanda and it was a lesson Bush learned from. I hope we don't make that mistake again. We can not depend on the UN.
So as long as you are clear about what your mission really was, an economic one, and can be proud of doing that job well, be proud. As long as Americans know that they traded hundreds of thousands of Iraq lives, and thousands of American lives, for oil and greater Middle East stability, then it is fine to be proud of it. Be proud of the bravery of our solidiers, or proud of the economic mission.
Your mostly correct. The mission Iraq was about oil. Not because we wanted it or planned on taking it, but because oil is worth money and money can buy anything. When a man like Saddam Hussein is in power, there is little doubt that the oil money would not have gone into the economy, but would have been used to fund military programs (see Iran). Those military programs could eventually be a threat to us and would have immediately been a threat to the region, as history has shown. Iraq had invaded every one of their neighboring countries at one point with the exception of Syria.
Fortunately, Saddam considered loyalty above ability. This meant that his military officers were promoted because they were loyal to Saddam. Competence had little or nothing to do with it. This left Iraq with a military in the top five of the world, with complete boobs running it. We could not count on this staying this way. Leadership can be purchased. Militaries can be outsourced by funding external groups (Al Quaeda... see above). Lesser countries can be overwhelmed by raw numbers (see Kuwait). So yes. It was about oil. Iraq was a threat because of oil.
Iraq becoming more democratic was a side effect. You can still choose to feel
To top it off, our invasion of Iraq totally screwed our operations in Afghanistan. So we did the absolute most ass backwards, ineffective thing we could have done, and now we are paying for it. Well, our young men and women are. Okay, not the sons and daughters of the people who sent us into Iraq, obviously, but, you know, our disposable young men and women are paying for it.
Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?
As a former soldier who went to the Middle East, I can tell you that I knew very well what our mission was and fully supported it. If I didn't, I would not have gone. I would have made a pass at the Platoon SGT or something to get my ass thrown out of the Army. When I was over there, I met the people I was there defending and understood why I was there. I was given freedom from my forefathers with help from the French. I didn't earn it. What makes me so damn special that I get freedom from tyranny and these people don't? I've earned it now. Sure, I didn't fight for my own freedom, but I gave the gift to someone else and would have been willing to die for it. I made that decision before I ever signed.
And yes! It makes me VERY proud to be an American, thank you.
We invaded Iraq. They had nothing to do with 9/11
Right. They violated 17 UN resolutions, tried to assassinate a former US president, fired at our soldiers who were there enforcing an UN mandate, and do I need to bring up the mass graves filled with men and women still clutching their toddler children?
Afghanistan may have been their home base, but if we invade countries because they house terrorists, who should we have invaded because of Tim McVeigh?
Housing terrorists is one thing. Terrorists live everywhere. It's when the government knows they are there and do nothing about it. The Taliban didn't just "house" Al Qaeda , they harbored them. They actively assisted them and refused our offer to take care of them ourselves. What would you have Bush do? "Hello, Mr. Taliban guy, Dubya here. Listen, the guys that planned the attack that killed 3000 of our citizens are in your country. Do you mind if we come get them? I'm sorry, what was that? No way in Hell? What about my mother? Well, OK then. Thank you for your time. (hangs up phone). Sorry, Dick, they said no."
What country were those hijackers from, again?
The hijackers were from all over, mostly from countries with governments that are our allies who are doing what they can to combat the problem themselves. Invading them would halt those efforts and turn the populations against us. The plan was hatched in Afghanistan, however, where the then government did what they could to protect and harbor those who planned the attacks.
What exactly did we have the stomach for then that we don't now? Nuclear bombs?
That and the whole idea of carpet bombing populated areas. While "WE" don't have the stomach for it, I hope our enemies are at least as civilized. I have little hope for our current crop of enemies, however.
Assuming they make the missile 90% reflective so only 10% of the power burns a hole, where does the remaining 90% reflect to?
Your house.
Where a giant Jiffy Pop is waiting to explode.
What Fox "News" broadcasts is not a "challenge" to the White House. It's made-up accusations, like this Anita Dunn nonsense, like the fuss about ACORN, like the association between the President and Bill Ayers, that make it an arm of the Republican party. These stories are simply specious, having no purpose beyond allowing the talking heads to call President Obama a socialist over and over on national TV.
Oh, Good God! Fox News did not make the videos up! Anita Dunn really did say that Mao Tse Tung was one of her favorite philosophers. Could you imagine the uproar if a member of GWB's cabinet had stated that Hitler or Pol Pot were one of his favorite philosophers?!!? It would be broadcast nonstop on every news network until this cabinet member resigned in shame with full investigations to follow. Sorry, but Anita said it, she meant it, and it was on video. Fox didn't need to make anything up. If you believe that, you are deluding yourself. Look up the video for yourself.
As for the relationship between Ayers and Obama, it was real. Sure, they may not have been best friends and swapped wives or anything, but there was a relationship. These guys not only worked together and served on various boards together, but Obama's political career was started at a meet-and-greet hosted at Bill Ayers' house by Bill Ayers himself. Again, if GWB or any other Republican and most Democrats had started their political careers at the home of an admitted terrorist, it would make the news 24/7. And again, this relationship is well documented by non-Fox sources and is public record/fact. If you deny that there was a relationship, you are deluding yourself again. You seem to be doing a lot of that lately.
You bring up ACORN. ACORN is an organization that receives tax payer money whose members were offering to assist what they thought were a pimp and prostitute get tax breaks for their child sex slave operation. The evidence is on video and indisputable. Are you seriously OK with that? Sure, the organization has done some good, but there are other organizations that could do a better job without all the unadulterated corruption. Oh, and Obama once worked for ACORN and wears his Community Organizing experience like a badge of honor. You do know what the C and the O in ACORN stands for don't you? Funny how that relationship didn't get any media attention either.
Finally, it has been proven that Fox News truly is the most "Fair and Balanced" network out there. I understand that you don't like views you disagree with being shared, but just because they are not YOUR views doesn't mean that those who with differing views should be silenced. You'll need to look up the First Amendment for the reasons why.
Funny I was going to say lay in the sun and ignore you.
It's IBM,not Sun.
FreeBSD and OSS, not linux and alsa, are finally rescuing me from bondage to the Mac platform.
Can you not get OSS to work under Linux?
Give me a break. The Guardian article you quoted leads with
"Fox News is clearly an arm of the Republican party. Obama is right to throw caution to the wind and treat it as such."
The MSNBC cite isn't even from NBC, it's a wingnut blog!
The MSNBC cite shows a video of MSNBC. Ignore the blog, ignore the comments and let the video speak for itself. The GGP seemed to not believe that the WH was a "war" with Fox News and asked for Non-Fox sources. The Guardian link also shows this and it is certainly NOT a Republican, conservative or Fox News site, as you clearly pointed out.
So, first you try to rebut by saying that my first source does not agree with Fox News, which is not what I was trying to show, and then you complain that my second link is conservative and it agrees with Fox News. The point was to show WH attacks towards Fox News, which both sites did. For more, please use Google. Search terms, "Anita Dunn" "Fox News", with quotes.
BTW, challenging the WH and reporting on the stuff they do does not make you "an arm of the Republican party". It makes you a news organization.
The GGP said:
So who says Fox is being bullied by the government? Fox News?
Bullshit.
The Guardian link is a non-Fox News, non-conservative source that shows that the White House is at "war" with Fox-News.
The MSNBC link shows a video from MSNBC speaking of the White House's "war" on Fox News.
Oh yes, here's another one: the inability to make two rows of taskbar at the bottom.
Actually, I think this is possible now. Although, I agree that the rest of KDE4 makes me not want to use it either so I can't confirm at the moment. I do go back to it every now and again to check it out and see what's new. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well with remote desktop programs like vnc or freenx so I can't confirm that multi-row taskbar at the moment.
Wait, here we go:
When you configure your panel ( Right Click on the Panel bar-->Arrangement->Size-->"Custom" ) so that the size is less than 34 pixels, it will display as a single row.
When it is more than 34 pixels but less than 52 pixels, it will display as a double row. When it is greater than 52 pixels, it will display as a triple row.
(You can also choose "Tiny" or "Small" and it will be a single row, whereas "Normal" will display as a double row, and "Large" will display as a triple row.)
You have the right to speech, that is true.
You do not have the right to be a fucking bunch of asshats and liars aka Fox News. With speech comes resposibility and the Murdoch press left that bit out years ago.
So, who decides who is telling the truth and who is lying? The President? And... you're OK with that? The President can declare who can say the news and who can't, what is news and what isn't, and what is truth and what is not?
Oh, and yeah, lying (See CBS and their fake GWB NG documents) and being a bunch of asshats is protected by the Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of the Press. Read the Federalist Papers and ask yourself, "What if George Washington had declared that the writers of the Federalist Papers were a bunch of "lying asshats"?"
Yea, whatever happened to it.
Because Fox News isn't broadcasting anywhere anymore. It's obvious that their rights aren't protected, and they were shut down.
Wait, What???? Oh sorry, here's Fox News on my TV right here!
I guess their rights to say whatever shit they want are indeed being defended. My bad.
So, are you saying that there is nothing between complete freedom and total shutdown?
So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except FoxNews? Is it OK to give "scoops" to every network but FoxNews? Sure, not every network can attend, so I understand if the Shelbyville Gazette doesn't get invited, but Fox has the ratings to be considered on the short list of invitees. Even the other networks are getting uncomfortable with it:
Despite the administration’s pledge to play nice earlier this week, the White House tried to exclude Fox News – alone among the five White House "pool" networks – from interviewing executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg on Thursday.
After CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC balked at the plan Tuesday, ABC News’ Jake Tapper asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the appropriateness of the administration's saying that Fox News, which he called "one of our sister organizations," is "not a news organization."
(From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press... but what would they know, right?)
I'll believe that when other independent sources (say, BBC) confirm Fox is being bullied.
Would you believe The Guardian?
How about MSNBC?
There are many more. Google is your friend.
As for the BBC, you trust a government owned and run network over free ones? Really? BBC is the NPR and PBS of Britain. Sorry, I think the "Bullshit" is coming from you.