Besides, I think a regular backpack is perfectly functional, unless you have a 17" laptop. Used one all the time for my old 12 incher (which was about the same time as today's 15 incher, because of widescreen and having the screen stretched very close to the edge).
I once got a cheap thirty dollar pack which fit my needs just fine. Problem was, the zippers were lousy. One day I put my Titanium Powerbook in there without having the zippers all the way closed. The zippers worked their way open until the whole pack flopped open and deposited my powerbook on the concrete. Totalled it. Two lessons I took away from this:
1) A backpack works fine but make it a quality backpack. It's worth it. I bought a medium-sized North Face pack five years ago and have taken it on god only knows how many trips to how many countries, and it works as good as ever and works fine for protecting my computer.
2)Go for a tough plastic case on your computer. My iBook takes a hell of a beating, and comes away a bit sorry looking but fully functional (same with my old black PowerBook G3). The metal enclosure of the PowerBook just did not absorb as much damage, (although for all I know the new aluminum alloy ones could be better). As far as I'm concerned, the metal case looked snazzy when it was new, but got beat up pretty fast. And since you need some sort of protective case or sleeve wherever you go, you don't actually save any weight over the iBook, which I have found is tough enough not to need the padding and pampering.
I think one very effective way to reduce the effects of gerrymandering, and other seeming corruption, is an increase in the size of representatives in the House
What, require candidates to weigh a minimum of like, 350 lbs?
On a more serious note, why haven't there been any discussions focusing on the past two debates? Meanwhile, there has been a lot of discussion regarding independent candidates whose chances of being elected are statistically indistinguishable from zero.
In my opinion, the reality of the situation is that either a democrat or a republican is going to be running things the next four years. Given their differences on issues like taxation, the economy, gay marriage, abortion, and foreign policy, which one we get stuck with is going to have a huge influence on the society we live in. And let's not hear that uninformed "they're all the same" nonsense. In the second debate, they came down on different sides of virtually every single question, with the exception of the draft.
A lot of people are annoyed having politics in a tech forum, but as I see it the tech community cannot (and should not) live independently of the larger society (yes, even those of us who are stuck behind a keyboard so much the word "society" sounds oddly unfamiliar). Maybe it would be worth starting up some discussions on how the choices facing us may affect that community?
Darwin didn't actually suggest a dinosaurian origin of birds, as far as I know, but his contemporary Thomas Henry Huxley did.
The Chinese beds that produce this stuff are simply astonishing. They preserve plants, fish, insects, furry mammals, furry pterosaurs... and so on. Some of these critters actually preserve color patterns: the fish preserve countershading, and many of the insects have spots and stripes. The little carnivorous dinosaur Sinosauropteryx actually has stripes on the furry tail.
The dromaeosaurs ("raptors") out of these beds are even cooler. They have flight feathers- not just on the arms, but also on the feet. The later dromaeosaurs (Velociraptor and its kin)seem to be flightless offshoots of these early fliers- so in this case at least, some dinosaurs are descended from birds rather than vice versa.
So my question is, does supporting Badnarik help or hurt Bush's chances? Cos if he's likely to siphon off Republicans rather than Kerry voters, I might just have to write the guy a check...
Looking at the Libertarian and Green candiates, I've gotta say, guys, it's not the system that's keeping them from larger acceptance, it's thier platform and candidates. They are too fringy to get widespread support in the United States.
They are pretty fringy, but the big problem is that a third party weakens one of the two existing parties. So in 2000, if a bunch of people want someone more left than Gore and vote for Nader, the result is that this siphons off support from Gore and the right wing wins. So voting far left actually favors the right, and voting far right favors the left.
There are alternatives. Some countries have ranked ballots- I could say vote for Nader first, and then vote for Kerry as my second choice. If Nader doesn't win, then Kerry gets my vote.
The "free market" of campaigning, debates and TV is deeply under governmental control.
What I find a bit hypocritical is that the Libertarian Party is complaining that the networks refuse to air the third party debates. My guess is that if the networks seriously believed that listening to the third party candidates yell at each other would make them more money than "When Animals Attack" or "Fear Factor" then they would broadcast it. So the decision to not broadcast this is just part of the workings of the free markets. Even if it is a political decision- say, Rupert Murdock wants to further the Republican agenda on Fox News rather than promote the Libertarian party- it's his company, and its his right to do so, correct?
then the continued existence of other communist countries (China, North Korea, etc) must be taken as negative evidence of the efficiency of free markets.
China is communist in name only at this point- they are a fascist dictatorship.
The key difference I noted was that Bush seems pretty content with over 1,000 American deaths, while Kerry seems to prefer multinational deaths. Inclusion of Badnarik into the debate would have offered Americans a real alternative: a non-interventionist foreign policy, an anti-war president, and a plan of immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
Not really an option because of Powell's "Pottery Barn" doctrine: you break it, you own it. The war was a catastrophic mistake, but to say "well, we fucked up, sorry, we're heading home now- you guys straighten stuff out" isn't the right move. Things are pretty bad there, but a unilateral withdrawal without anything to back stuff up would be even worse. Imagine the various Shiite militias at each others necks, and then the Shiites fighting against the Sunnis, remnants of the Baathist regime, and the Kurdish North breaking away from everybody, maybe prompting an invasion by Turkey... we're talking Yugoslavia, on a much larger scale.
Furthermore I've never seen any evidence that an unregulated market will always serve the interests of consumers.
You can't get much more unregulated than Iraq these days, but you don't see Libertarians emigrating in droves. Also, post-communist Russia is freer than the USSR but most people- even a lot of economists- agree that the quality of life is lower. Of course, you don't have to worry about being offed by the KGB, but you do have to worry about being offed by the Mafia, which is what they are doing to a lot of the journalists. I hate to say it, but I think the Chinese may have made the right move by cracking down on the dissidents and modernizing their economy before giving people their political rights.
As for hypocritical, it does seem a bit much to complain that the networks "refuse to air" the debate. Seems to me, a network executive would take one look at that debate and say "this doesn't look like a money making proposition" and broadcast "When Animals Attack" or whatever instead. If you're such a proponent of free markets, why complain if the free markets choose against you?
I agree with you- this is a much overlooked point. You can find clips online, and the Bush who debated Ann Richards was clearly a much more lucid person than our current Bush, which makes you wonder what's up with him these days. Is he back on the bottle? Has the psychiatrist got him on some sort of high-powered drugs (wouldn't surprise me in the least- being President must be incredibly stressful, and in America drugs are prescribed for virtually everything)? Have all the years of booze and coke caught up with him?
For that matter, the pretzel story strikes me as pretty weak. I could see someone choking on a pretzel, but that's not what they claimed happened- supposedly it cut off the blood flow to his head.
I'm no Bush fan. I think he is about as bright as the average American, probably less. This is why I am defending him. He was clearly confused by the lights.
Then what do you think it was? Do you really want us to think that the Government that has the technology to put a cruise missile into your bedroom window couldn't come up with a small enough receiver that wouldn't show up on a tv camera in the small of your back?
It's the remote control hooked up to his spine that lets Dick Cheney operate him remotely. Seriously, if he is being given verbal prompting, the Democrats shouldn't make a fuss about it. If that is the case, it sure as heck isn't helping any.
Incidentally, I thought he sucked in tonight's debate as well. There was that part where he got angry and practically jumped at the moderator, for instance. You lose your temper, and you lose the argument. And the whole time he had the petulant tone of a spoiled child. Perhaps not as big a failure as the first debate, but bad enough in that it shows that the first debate wasn't any fluke. Bush looks lost compared to Kerry. To be fair, Kerry dodged a couple of questions (he didn't say outright whether he would kick Iran's ass, for instance), but Bush completely failed the last one, "name three mistakes". All he could do was say there were some people he wouldn't have appointed- he could only blame other people. As much as stuff keeps going wrong with this administration, he keeps insisting that everyone else is at fault, not him. More than fifty years old and he still acts like a spoiled brat, but then what do you expect- it sounds like the guy has never really had to deal with the consequences of his actions.
Hey, if you hire tens of thousands of lawyers, that becomes a veritable "army", you say? Hrm. While we suffer from an excess of lawyers in this country, we need to send tens of thousands of more personnel to Iraq in order to win...
Could it be that the Democrats have a secret plan for how to win the war?
What I find endlessly interesting is the amount of effort and money being spent to make video games that mirror real life - as though there isn't this real life out there waiting for you!
You could say the same thing about reading Moby Dick, seeing a production of Hamlet, or watching Friends instead of going out and interacting with real friends. We humans often find imitations of reality to be far more interesting than the real thing. Sometimes fiction is a lot more educational and emotionally satisfying than real life. The best books have characters who you care for just like a friend, and the best games have experiences that you can remember fondly even though they weren't real.
...cutting off millions of children from internet access is the best way to prevent them from downloading pictures of Janet Jackson's breast. Now at last our most precious resources, our children, are safe. Stupid, but safe.
Bush may be an intellectual lightweight as far as US presidents go, but Bush can't be blamed for everything wrong with anything to do with the USA.
Yes, but as a rabid, enraged liberal, it's my duty to at least try to blame him. As for intellectual lightweight, the guy's a freakin' neutrino- virtually massless.
Can anyone look at the news today and seriously believe this? While the two parties use similar tactics to get in power (which includes sucking up to the wealthy and big corporations to get money), the agendas they plan on furthering are very, very different. (1) Bush's intent is to push for conservative Christian values- to ban abortion, ban gay marriage, etc. Kerry is against doing that. (2) The Bush administration believes that tax cuts should favor the wealthiest Americans; Kerry believes that the people who can most afford to pay should shoulder more of the burden. (3) On foreign policy, the Bush administration has repeatedly shown that it has little or no interest in working with the international community, instead it is interested in the unilateral use of American military power to further American goals. Kerry is in favor of working with other countries and the United Nations. (4) Kerry wants to stop nuclear proliferation, George Bush wants to develop new nuclear weapons. Just to name a few. There are clear differences between the candidates, just like there were last time around. Can anyone seriously believe that Al Gore would have launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq?
I did vote for Nader in '96. I heard him talk and found his ideas and idealism inspiring. I couldn't vote for him in 2000, however. It was clear that the victory of George Bush would be too high a price to pay for whatever tiny effect the protest votes might have. And this fear turned out to be well founded. George Bush has mishandled the economy, run the nation for the benefit of the millionaires and the Halliburtons , and worked to undo so much of Nader's accomplishments. Nader worked for clean water, and environmental protection, but now the Bush administration has been undoing his accomplishments. Nader's campaign set his agenda back, instead of furthering it. The irony is, Nader's principles were too important for me to actually vote for the guy. Now look at Nader- who will listen to him? He's become a joke among the left. Far from influencing the debate, it seems that many news sources won't even report on the guy anymore. I can't even remember the last time I heard anything about him in the Times or on NPR.
Nader at least has some good points. In my opinion, the Libertarians are just crackpots and loons, though. Unfortunately, they are dangerous crackpots because a lot of their more idiotic ideas have been picked up by the Neocons. Look at the Iraq mess and you see some Libertarian principles put in action. "Hell, we don't need a strong central authority- just let capitalism take care of everything!" Now we have insurrection, beheadings, car bombs in the street because there is no strong central authority in Iraq. Or how about the idea that the private sector can do everything better? That's given us the excesses of Halliburton. Plus you get these mercenaries who are completely unaccountable for any abuses they may commit while they are over there. Libertarians have that same utopian streak which is the Achilles' heel of the Neocons.
Maybe there is a time and a place for third parties. But not this election- too much is at stake. Yeah, I'd like to be able to vote for a candidate I truly believed in deeply. It's unfair that I can't. Well guess what? Life isn't fair. Get over it. We have to make tough decisions between unpleasant choices, and that's life. Given a choice between Bad and Really Bad, I'll choose Bad every time.
Frankly, I hate to see the biased, left-wing liberal media make such a huge issue out of George W. Bush's support for the Geocentric Universe Hypothesis.
Re:All we need now...
on
How to Podcast
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· Score: 3, Interesting
...are some decent shows to subscribe too! For some reason, I can't see The Scripting News catching on for the general populace.
I would love it if you could set up your iPod to automatically download NPR in MP3 format.Currently I stream a lot of their programming (Morning Edition, Wait Wait, Fresh Air) through my computer but it'd be great to be able to put this on an iPod and listen to it while running, on the subway, whatever. It's nice to be able to listen to it whenever you want, catch stuff you've missed, rewind, etc.
specifically i am hoping he won't be as protectionist as kerry
Um, WTF? Bush has gotten slammed again and again for unfair trade practices, e.g. putting tariffs on steel.
1. the invasion of afghanistan. i think it needed to be done. maybe there were some bad choices made, but i don't see kerry or anyone else doing better. mostly i expect mediocre results from government, and generally i thought this response to sept 11 was pretty well done. i really like harmad karzai or however the hell you spell his name.
The invasion of Afhganistan was the right thing to do and one of the few decisions of his that I can agree with. Unfortunately, the Bush administration's decisions have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here. The country is now run by a bunch of heroin-trafficking warlords instead of religious fanatics, so it's arguable whether this is progress or not. Karzai's government has little influence outside of Kabul. The Taliban continues to fight on, and bin Laden was allowed to escape.
bush isn't my ideal candidate. i just think he will do better than kerry
All you have to do Look at Bush's record. He's given us an unjustified war which has tied us down in a bloody guerilla war with the Iraqi people. As a result, the Islamic world hates us and supports Al Qaeda more than ever, and North Korea and Iran are free to pursue nuclear weapons because they know we can't spare the troops to do anything. By going into Iraq without building a consensus, killing a lot of civilians, and torturing people at Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration has done incredible damage to our reputation in the world. The United States used to be a world leader- but who's going to want to follow us now? He's been wrong on almost every important decision he's made. It's not that he's "not ideal". He's the worst president in a generation. He promised to bring this country together, instead he's torn it apart, and I can never remember being so ashamed to be an American. What kind of a leader is that? How can you lead when half the nation and most of the rest of the world hates your guts?
To be fair, not all European beers are good. Heineken is like the Microsoft of beers: it's a lousy product, but it's ubiquitous because of great marketing.
An interesting thing I've noticed in travels is that third world countries, no matter how screwed up everything else is, seem to be able to put out a national beer. I think the national brewery was about the only thing that actually worked well in Madagascar. Says something about humanity's priorities. If we were in some post-apocalyptic Mad Max kind of a future, you can bet the breweries would still be going. Not that this is a bad thing.
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I once got a cheap thirty dollar pack which fit my needs just fine. Problem was, the zippers were lousy. One day I put my Titanium Powerbook in there without having the zippers all the way closed. The zippers worked their way open until the whole pack flopped open and deposited my powerbook on the concrete. Totalled it. Two lessons I took away from this:
1) A backpack works fine but make it a quality backpack. It's worth it. I bought a medium-sized North Face pack five years ago and have taken it on god only knows how many trips to how many countries, and it works as good as ever and works fine for protecting my computer.
2)Go for a tough plastic case on your computer. My iBook takes a hell of a beating, and comes away a bit sorry looking but fully functional (same with my old black PowerBook G3). The metal enclosure of the PowerBook just did not absorb as much damage, (although for all I know the new aluminum alloy ones could be better). As far as I'm concerned, the metal case looked snazzy when it was new, but got beat up pretty fast. And since you need some sort of protective case or sleeve wherever you go, you don't actually save any weight over the iBook, which I have found is tough enough not to need the padding and pampering.
What, require candidates to weigh a minimum of like, 350 lbs?
On a more serious note, why haven't there been any discussions focusing on the past two debates? Meanwhile, there has been a lot of discussion regarding independent candidates whose chances of being elected are statistically indistinguishable from zero.
In my opinion, the reality of the situation is that either a democrat or a republican is going to be running things the next four years. Given their differences on issues like taxation, the economy, gay marriage, abortion, and foreign policy, which one we get stuck with is going to have a huge influence on the society we live in. And let's not hear that uninformed "they're all the same" nonsense. In the second debate, they came down on different sides of virtually every single question, with the exception of the draft.
A lot of people are annoyed having politics in a tech forum, but as I see it the tech community cannot (and should not) live independently of the larger society (yes, even those of us who are stuck behind a keyboard so much the word "society" sounds oddly unfamiliar). Maybe it would be worth starting up some discussions on how the choices facing us may affect that community?
The Chinese beds that produce this stuff are simply astonishing. They preserve plants, fish, insects, furry mammals, furry pterosaurs... and so on. Some of these critters actually preserve color patterns: the fish preserve countershading, and many of the insects have spots and stripes. The little carnivorous dinosaur Sinosauropteryx actually has stripes on the furry tail.
The dromaeosaurs ("raptors") out of these beds are even cooler. They have flight feathers- not just on the arms, but also on the feet. The later dromaeosaurs (Velociraptor and its kin)seem to be flightless offshoots of these early fliers- so in this case at least, some dinosaurs are descended from birds rather than vice versa.
It's said that he died a virgin... so in at least one respect Newton was not, and did not get, "lucky".
Somehow I suspect that if that would keep the Mickey Mouse copyright out of the public domain, then that just might happen
So my question is, does supporting Badnarik help or hurt Bush's chances? Cos if he's likely to siphon off Republicans rather than Kerry voters, I might just have to write the guy a check...
They are pretty fringy, but the big problem is that a third party weakens one of the two existing parties. So in 2000, if a bunch of people want someone more left than Gore and vote for Nader, the result is that this siphons off support from Gore and the right wing wins. So voting far left actually favors the right, and voting far right favors the left.
There are alternatives. Some countries have ranked ballots- I could say vote for Nader first, and then vote for Kerry as my second choice. If Nader doesn't win, then Kerry gets my vote.
What I find a bit hypocritical is that the Libertarian Party is complaining that the networks refuse to air the third party debates. My guess is that if the networks seriously believed that listening to the third party candidates yell at each other would make them more money than "When Animals Attack" or "Fear Factor" then they would broadcast it. So the decision to not broadcast this is just part of the workings of the free markets. Even if it is a political decision- say, Rupert Murdock wants to further the Republican agenda on Fox News rather than promote the Libertarian party- it's his company, and its his right to do so, correct?
"Oh, just out... stimulating the economy."
China is communist in name only at this point- they are a fascist dictatorship.
Not really an option because of Powell's "Pottery Barn" doctrine: you break it, you own it. The war was a catastrophic mistake, but to say "well, we fucked up, sorry, we're heading home now- you guys straighten stuff out" isn't the right move. Things are pretty bad there, but a unilateral withdrawal without anything to back stuff up would be even worse. Imagine the various Shiite militias at each others necks, and then the Shiites fighting against the Sunnis, remnants of the Baathist regime, and the Kurdish North breaking away from everybody, maybe prompting an invasion by Turkey... we're talking Yugoslavia, on a much larger scale.
You can't get much more unregulated than Iraq these days, but you don't see Libertarians emigrating in droves. Also, post-communist Russia is freer than the USSR but most people- even a lot of economists- agree that the quality of life is lower. Of course, you don't have to worry about being offed by the KGB, but you do have to worry about being offed by the Mafia, which is what they are doing to a lot of the journalists. I hate to say it, but I think the Chinese may have made the right move by cracking down on the dissidents and modernizing their economy before giving people their political rights.
As for hypocritical, it does seem a bit much to complain that the networks "refuse to air" the debate. Seems to me, a network executive would take one look at that debate and say "this doesn't look like a money making proposition" and broadcast "When Animals Attack" or whatever instead. If you're such a proponent of free markets, why complain if the free markets choose against you?
For that matter, the pretzel story strikes me as pretty weak. I could see someone choking on a pretzel, but that's not what they claimed happened- supposedly it cut off the blood flow to his head.
What, like a moth?
Hrm. Maybe it was a bullet proof vest designed for him by the Democrats?
It's the remote control hooked up to his spine that lets Dick Cheney operate him remotely. Seriously, if he is being given verbal prompting, the Democrats shouldn't make a fuss about it. If that is the case, it sure as heck isn't helping any.
Incidentally, I thought he sucked in tonight's debate as well. There was that part where he got angry and practically jumped at the moderator, for instance. You lose your temper, and you lose the argument. And the whole time he had the petulant tone of a spoiled child. Perhaps not as big a failure as the first debate, but bad enough in that it shows that the first debate wasn't any fluke. Bush looks lost compared to Kerry. To be fair, Kerry dodged a couple of questions (he didn't say outright whether he would kick Iran's ass, for instance), but Bush completely failed the last one, "name three mistakes". All he could do was say there were some people he wouldn't have appointed- he could only blame other people. As much as stuff keeps going wrong with this administration, he keeps insisting that everyone else is at fault, not him. More than fifty years old and he still acts like a spoiled brat, but then what do you expect- it sounds like the guy has never really had to deal with the consequences of his actions.
Hey, if you hire tens of thousands of lawyers, that becomes a veritable "army", you say? Hrm. While we suffer from an excess of lawyers in this country, we need to send tens of thousands of more personnel to Iraq in order to win...
Could it be that the Democrats have a secret plan for how to win the war?
You could say the same thing about reading Moby Dick, seeing a production of Hamlet, or watching Friends instead of going out and interacting with real friends. We humans often find imitations of reality to be far more interesting than the real thing. Sometimes fiction is a lot more educational and emotionally satisfying than real life. The best books have characters who you care for just like a friend, and the best games have experiences that you can remember fondly even though they weren't real.
Bush may be an intellectual lightweight as far as US presidents go, but Bush can't be blamed for everything wrong with anything to do with the USA.
Yes, but as a rabid, enraged liberal, it's my duty to at least try to blame him. As for intellectual lightweight, the guy's a freakin' neutrino- virtually massless.
Can anyone look at the news today and seriously believe this? While the two parties use similar tactics to get in power (which includes sucking up to the wealthy and big corporations to get money), the agendas they plan on furthering are very, very different. (1) Bush's intent is to push for conservative Christian values- to ban abortion, ban gay marriage, etc. Kerry is against doing that. (2) The Bush administration believes that tax cuts should favor the wealthiest Americans; Kerry believes that the people who can most afford to pay should shoulder more of the burden. (3) On foreign policy, the Bush administration has repeatedly shown that it has little or no interest in working with the international community, instead it is interested in the unilateral use of American military power to further American goals. Kerry is in favor of working with other countries and the United Nations. (4) Kerry wants to stop nuclear proliferation, George Bush wants to develop new nuclear weapons. Just to name a few. There are clear differences between the candidates, just like there were last time around. Can anyone seriously believe that Al Gore would have launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq?
I did vote for Nader in '96. I heard him talk and found his ideas and idealism inspiring. I couldn't vote for him in 2000, however. It was clear that the victory of George Bush would be too high a price to pay for whatever tiny effect the protest votes might have. And this fear turned out to be well founded. George Bush has mishandled the economy, run the nation for the benefit of the millionaires and the Halliburtons , and worked to undo so much of Nader's accomplishments. Nader worked for clean water, and environmental protection, but now the Bush administration has been undoing his accomplishments. Nader's campaign set his agenda back, instead of furthering it. The irony is, Nader's principles were too important for me to actually vote for the guy. Now look at Nader- who will listen to him? He's become a joke among the left. Far from influencing the debate, it seems that many news sources won't even report on the guy anymore. I can't even remember the last time I heard anything about him in the Times or on NPR.
Nader at least has some good points. In my opinion, the Libertarians are just crackpots and loons, though. Unfortunately, they are dangerous crackpots because a lot of their more idiotic ideas have been picked up by the Neocons. Look at the Iraq mess and you see some Libertarian principles put in action. "Hell, we don't need a strong central authority- just let capitalism take care of everything!" Now we have insurrection, beheadings, car bombs in the street because there is no strong central authority in Iraq. Or how about the idea that the private sector can do everything better? That's given us the excesses of Halliburton. Plus you get these mercenaries who are completely unaccountable for any abuses they may commit while they are over there. Libertarians have that same utopian streak which is the Achilles' heel of the Neocons.
Maybe there is a time and a place for third parties. But not this election- too much is at stake. Yeah, I'd like to be able to vote for a candidate I truly believed in deeply. It's unfair that I can't. Well guess what? Life isn't fair. Get over it. We have to make tough decisions between unpleasant choices, and that's life. Given a choice between Bad and Really Bad, I'll choose Bad every time.
(2) Martians
(3) Aliens
(4) Body Snatchers
(5) Kang & Kodos
(6) Marvin the Martian
(7) Mechagodzilla
(8) Silastic Armorfiends
(9) Young Republicans
(10) Brain Leeches of Carotene Beta
Frankly, I hate to see the biased, left-wing liberal media make such a huge issue out of George W. Bush's support for the Geocentric Universe Hypothesis.
I would love it if you could set up your iPod to automatically download NPR in MP3 format.Currently I stream a lot of their programming (Morning Edition, Wait Wait, Fresh Air) through my computer but it'd be great to be able to put this on an iPod and listen to it while running, on the subway, whatever. It's nice to be able to listen to it whenever you want, catch stuff you've missed, rewind, etc.
Um, WTF? Bush has gotten slammed again and again for unfair trade practices, e.g. putting tariffs on steel.
1. the invasion of afghanistan. i think it needed to be done. maybe there were some bad choices made, but i don't see kerry or anyone else doing better. mostly i expect mediocre results from government, and generally i thought this response to sept 11 was pretty well done. i really like harmad karzai or however the hell you spell his name.
The invasion of Afhganistan was the right thing to do and one of the few decisions of his that I can agree with. Unfortunately, the Bush administration's decisions have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here. The country is now run by a bunch of heroin-trafficking warlords instead of religious fanatics, so it's arguable whether this is progress or not. Karzai's government has little influence outside of Kabul. The Taliban continues to fight on, and bin Laden was allowed to escape.
bush isn't my ideal candidate. i just think he will do better than kerry
All you have to do Look at Bush's record. He's given us an unjustified war which has tied us down in a bloody guerilla war with the Iraqi people. As a result, the Islamic world hates us and supports Al Qaeda more than ever, and North Korea and Iran are free to pursue nuclear weapons because they know we can't spare the troops to do anything. By going into Iraq without building a consensus, killing a lot of civilians, and torturing people at Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration has done incredible damage to our reputation in the world. The United States used to be a world leader- but who's going to want to follow us now? He's been wrong on almost every important decision he's made. It's not that he's "not ideal". He's the worst president in a generation. He promised to bring this country together, instead he's torn it apart, and I can never remember being so ashamed to be an American. What kind of a leader is that? How can you lead when half the nation and most of the rest of the world hates your guts?
An interesting thing I've noticed in travels is that third world countries, no matter how screwed up everything else is, seem to be able to put out a national beer. I think the national brewery was about the only thing that actually worked well in Madagascar. Says something about humanity's priorities. If we were in some post-apocalyptic Mad Max kind of a future, you can bet the breweries would still be going. Not that this is a bad thing.