Once again, why? Why isn't postulating that such an event must exist nothing more than forcing the universe into a preconceived box, and as such no different from something like creationism?
Saying "there may be a way of generating this asymmetry dynamically, and if so we should look for it" is not forcing the universe into a pre-conceived box. It is the opposite view, that anything we measure should just be explained away as an initial condition of the universe ("that's just the way things started out"), that is closer to creationism ("it's just the way god created it").
Would it be a prerequisite that a big bang produces as much matter as antimatter?
I'm moving out of my depth here, but the answer is probably no. Even if it did, future interactions between particles may cause an imbalance (as is thought to have occurred in our universe). A prerequisite for what, anyway?
I'm afraid the answer is actually yes, at least if you replace 'a prerequisite' by 'excepted from the laws of physics'. Since there is nothing in the laws of physics to make us believe that matter is 'preferred' over anti-matter, we naturally assume that the amounts of both in the early universe are the same. The problem with this most natural assumption is that, if there was the same amount of matter and anti-matter in the universe, and they stayed in thermal equilibrium as the universe cooled (which is true for most of its history), they would almost completely annihilate and there would be too little matter left over today to make up what we presently see. So we need an event that favours matter over anti-matter to produce the required leftover matter we see. This is called the baryogenesis problem. Of course, you CAN just demand that the required extra matter be put in as an initial condition, but most physicists shun that approach, especially since the matter excess is one part in 10 billion, an unnaturally small number which would have to be put in by hand. We prefer to find a way to generate that asymmetry dynamically.
It doesn't matter who leads the Liberals they won't get a majority in the current conditions, they might squeeze out a minority.
What you don't seem to understand is that a large percentage of people in Canada don't particularly LIKE the Liberals, and don't want to see them rule on their own.
If they want to stop the Conservatives, they can try a hand at forming a coalition. But don't ask me to vote for a party I don't like just because you hate the Conservatives more.
As far as analysis. There was one in a newspaper recently which indicated the Greens siphoned off enough votes that 19 less Liberals and NDP were elected.
If progressive voters had voted strategically, they would have sent more Liberals, more NDP and more Bloc and more Greens to the government. Instead we get more and more conservative in a country that is largely progressive and left leaning.
Only if literally millions of voters sat down together and tediously worked out where it would be best to send their votes. Who's being the naive idealist again?
The green party is essentially the "Ralph Nader party" They elect no members and siphon off enough center/left votes to give yet more seats to the Conservatives. Idealistic people voting their idealism and giving the worse case result in reality.
Sorry, but this 'blame the third party' crap really piss me off, especially in this election, where it doesn't hold up to analysis. Even if you took every single Green vote in every riding and gave it to the Liberal candidate in that riding, the party would still have lost a dozen seats. No one lost this election for the Liberals except the Liberals, and the Greens certainly didn't prevent a Liberal government.
I'm proud to vote for whoever I think is the best party to lead Canada, and not for some 'lesser of two evils' party.
No system is perfect, but historically the Parliamentary system has been probably been balanced between both major parties.
The problem is that there are more than two parties in Canada. Almost as many people voted for the Greens and NDP as for the Liberals (25% vs 26%), yet they get half as many seats. The problem with our system is that it equally helps the Conservatives and Liberals, while screwing over everyone else.
Sorry, my bad. But my point still stands - seeing as basically the rest of the world including US financial markets were working it kind of destroys their whole 'urgency argument'.
Your point absolutely does stand (I just wanted to offer that correction as a supplement). In any case, the Christans in congress had no excuse not to be there, if it was indeed so urgent. And of course, it wasn't, since the money won't be spent by Paulson for weeks.
Your argument that the Nazis succeeded by putting smaller groups into camps (while avoiding larger minorities) is completely irrelevant given the fact that scapegoating and imprisonment of the Jews was going on at the same time. Which is what both I and kill-1 were trying to tell you. If you knew that already, then why bother suggesting in your original post that Fascists could succeed by "carefully avoid[ing] scapegoating whole races or ethnicities", and then using the Nazis as an example?
No one called you an apologist, no one accused you of anti-semitism. All we did was express our opinion, based on the content of your post, that you haven't been educated about Nazi rule or the Holocaust. If you consider that an insult, then you could at least try to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about that period, instead of throwing around accusations.
And at least read our posts before you bother to respond. The date I gave was when Polish Jews were rounded up and imprisoned in ghettos. Simply because they weren't labelled 'camps' doesn't mean that the Jews weren't forcibly confined before 1941. kill-1's post is about Kyrstallnacht, a night when many Jewish businesses and institutions were burned to the ground. So of course our dates don't match, since we're not talking about the same thing. Indeed, you can't get an education from either of us, since you don't bother to read what we wrote.
One of the real concerns is, how successful would a Fascist state be if it carefully avoided scapegoating whole races or ethnicities?...At this late date, most people have lost sight of the fact that the Nazis didn't really start putting Jews in the camps, in large numbers, until late 1941 or early 42.
You are in serious need of an education if you believe that the Nazis didn't start scapegoating Jews until 1941. Anti-Semitism was a basic principle of Nazism. Hitler's anti-semitic rantings are documented back to the 1920s. Widespread discrimination of the Jews in law goes back as far as 1935, with the Nuremberg Laws. The forced confinement of Jews in ghettos started as early as October 1939, the start of WW2. The only reason Jews weren't massacred in large numbers in death camps before 1941 is because it took that much time to round up all the Jews and deport them.
The supporters act as if this thing is so urgent and there is no alternative, but then they take their time by taking off due to a Jewish holiday that not even a lot of Jews celebrate..
Actually, Rosh Hashanah, is one of the few holidays that almost ALL Jews, regardless of orthodoxy, celebrate. That is why the two days of Rosh Hashanah, along with Yom Kippur, are referred to as the High Holidays.
Since they had to add 100 billion dollars to the bill to pass it, can we start calling it the 800 billion dollar bailout bill now?
Oh, take a look at the effect the bill had on the stock market. Here's the Dow's performance during trading hours on Friday. See if you can guess at what time they passed the bill. They sure are grateful, aren't they?
Unless it really is true, in which case we are probably focussing on entirely the wrong aspect of the case.
We are focusing on the wrong aspect of the case, regardless. This is not a libel case, but a question of whether the lack of protection of freedom of speech in schools applies even when the offense takes place outside of school. But since the conversation has steered toward what qualifies as parody, I think it's worth a response.
It could be interpreted as a parody, but it could also be interpreted as a cry for help by a sexually-abused student who knows (or fears) that they will receive no support from their parents if they make the allegation public. Or it could be interpreted as an attempt to appear to be such a cry for help
Did you not see the quote I posted from the myspace page? The entire 'accusation' consisted of him saying his interests included
and described him as a 40-year-old married, bisexual man whose interests included "being a tight ass," "fucking in my office" and "hitting on students and their parents,"
Does this look like a 'cry for help', or just some joke made at the expense of the principal? You need to apply some basic reasoning to this situation instead of going out of your way to find the most far-out explanation for the page. Kids make fun of their teachers and principals. In this era, they sometimes do it on Myspace.
As for fahrbot's post, I won't even get into how ridiculous it is to compare an adult's stalking and harassment of a 13 year old girl to a kid's prank on his adult principal.
Unless the site was *clearly* a parody, calling someone a "sex addict who 'hits on students'" is slander - or libel when written.
Of course it was a parody. The page was a fake profile of the principal. How many people proudly advertise that they are paedophiles on Myspace?
Here's what happened, according to court papers: J.S. and another student, identified as K.L., posted a profile on MySpace in March 2007 that showed a photo of principal James S. McGonigle they had taken from the district's Web site. The profile didn't use the principal's name, but identified the person pictured as a "principal,"and described him as a 40-year-old married, bisexual man whose interests included "being a tight ***," "******* in my office" and "hitting on students and their parents," according to U.S. District Judge James M. Munley's opinion.
So let me ask you a question. Do you ever vote in elections? When you do, are the guys you vote for positioned such that you agree with them on EVERY SINGLE TOPIC THEY STAND FOR?
Maybe AC just votes for people who agree with the positions on the topics he feels are most important. Obviously if Obama really felt strongly about FISA immunity, he would have voted against it. He clearly didn't care that much about immunity, despite his words.
If not, then you either don't vote (in which case, you just lost all ability to criticize how anybody else votes)...
I'm pretty sure that there's no caveat in the first amendment that prohibits people from voicing their opinion if they don't vote.
I have little doubt that the goal is not to win the lawsuit, but to waste his time. They're hoping that the triple burden of his day job, his blog, and defending this lawsuit will be too much.
Don't give in to them, Ray. It's important for us to have this blog asa counter-attack to the RIAA BS machine.
Have you seen what the White House does to people? It sucks their life right out of them. White House years are like dog years. I predict that if elected, McCain will die of a stress-induced heart attack within 2 years and Palin will be President.
Care to bet? An actuarial firm actually did a study of McCain and Obama's likelihood of remaining healthy in office (a better question than 'is he alive?' for determining whether or not they are able to perform the duties of the president). They found that McCain has a 90.3% chance of staying in good health through 2011. Obviously, the chances of him staying alive are higher. I'd take those odds any day.
Absolutely nothing. The system is exactly a popularity contest, where truth is determined democratically, rather than by actual relationship to reality.
Yes. Fortunately for us, we post on Slashdot, where unpopular ideas are always given a fair hearing and no one ever abuses the mod system.
I whole-heartedly agree with you.The 'Party allegiance above all' mentality is what leads to the appointment of like-minded ideologues with little experience. And with the growth of the party comes massive donations which inevitably lead to corruption. Worst of all is the control they have over message which leads to the same talking points being repeated over and over again. I remember watching cable news networks before the democratic convention. Every time a democrat came on, you'd hear the same argument repeated verbatim: "This is a candidate that doesn't even know how many houses he has". And listen to John Fund on Real Time, if you can stomach it. Talking point after talking point after talking point.
Honestly, I would go further than saying that we should look to third parties. At best that would lead to another large corrupt party, and at worst, it would just take the place of the Democrats or the Republicans, leaving the US with the same two party system. What we need is abolish political parties entirely and get independents elected. Candidates who can think for themselves (and voice their opinions freely) and actually care about the people they represent.
Except it doesn't seem that Ron Paul really supports Barr over other third party candidates, and Barr certainly doesn't seem to like Paul. When Ron Paul announced that he was endorsing 'third party candidates' collectively, this was Barr's response
"I'm not interested in third parties getting the most possible votes. I'm interested in Bob Barr as the nominee for the Libertarian Party getting the most possible votes,"
You certainly deserve to be considered a troll for the way you dive in one sided to the Israeli Palestinian conflict (in an article that has nothing to do with it, no less), dismissing all arguments from the 'secular left' (apparently any arguments from someone who doesn't believe in your God are now invalid?). But I'd rather deliver a proper response.
Yes, because Israel, a loyal US Ally/Satellite that has advanced US Agenda in the mideast, and contained its military operations to self defense, should be abandoned because an artificial liberation movement has become the latest leftist craze.
Israel is nothing more than a money sink for your taxes and a rallying point terrorists use to whip up hate for the US. What does billions of dollars a year in aid to Israel buy the US? An Iraqi nuclear strike in 1981 that the US could have accomplished? A useless war with Lebanon that only served to strengthen Hezbollah? You tell me what the big strategic advantage is in buying Israel's allegiance. Why it is worth having every radical Imam linking the US and Israeli policy together. Why it is worth the increased risk to US civilians and soldiers.
Arafat the Egyptian embraced lefty rhetoric and style, so like Castro, became seen as a darling of the left who love dictators if they embrace "revolution."
Yeah, because the rightneverembraceddictators. Oh and lest you think that's an old practice, Bush just made friends with Muammar al-Gaddafi, at the same time Gaddafi was blackmailing Europe for hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for the lives of 6 innocent doctors and nurses.
The amount of land in dispute is TRIVIAL, except to Israel that is in physical danger without it. Emotional attachment aside, financial compensation to the displaced Arabs, including purchasing them land in nearby Arab nations, would have been WAY CHEAPER than the current disaster of a policy.
If the US decided it needed your house for its defence, gave you some cash and told you to get out, and go live with your fellow Christians at the closest YMCA, would you consider that an acceptable offer?
So keep spewing hateful ignorance, and be prepared to lose to the silent majority in two months, because you guys are irrational and crazy.
See, this is how I know you are a partisan fool. Every poll taken over the past year shows that the democrats will makes gains in both the Senate and the House. But of course there's a 'silent majority'. There's always just enough people with your exact views, who are coincidentally never heard from, to make you on the side of The People and the rest of us (what a rational person would call the 'vocal majority') crazy extremists.
I happened to catch that segment too and it was brilliant. But the Republicans aren't the only ones who have done a 180 here*. It's as if on the day Palin was chosen, the Democrats and Republicans accidentally sent each other their respective talking points after wiping the past 3 months from their collective memories. Because that's the only explanation for their behaviour. Let's review their 'experience' talking points before and after Palin was announced as the VP choice:
Before
Republicans: Only someone with years of government and foreign policy experience is qualified to be President. Obama has only 3 years in the Senate on his resume and doesn't deserve the Presidency.
Democrats: Experience doesn't mean much when it comes to the Presidency, but Obama has the right kind of experience necessary to be president anyways.
After
Republicans: Experience doesn't mean much when it comes to the Vice Presidency, but Palin has the right kind of experience necessary to be President anyways. Democrats: Only someone with years of government and foreign policy experience is qualified to be Vice President. Palin has only 2 years as governor on her resume and doesn't deserve the Vice Presidency or the Presidency.
And the amazing thing is that they don't notice their own hypocrisy even as they call the other side hypocrites.
* Not that I blame Stewart for not going after Democrats. He's tried Obama jokes before and they fall flat with his audience. A shame, since he does a good a job on them as he does with Republicans.
Slashdot Mirror
Once again, why? Why isn't postulating that such an event must exist nothing more than forcing the universe into a preconceived box, and as such no different from something like creationism?
Saying "there may be a way of generating this asymmetry dynamically, and if so we should look for it" is not forcing the universe into a pre-conceived box. It is the opposite view, that anything we measure should just be explained away as an initial condition of the universe ("that's just the way things started out"), that is closer to creationism ("it's just the way god created it").
Would it be a prerequisite that a big bang produces as much matter as antimatter?
I'm moving out of my depth here, but the answer is probably no. Even if it did, future interactions between particles may cause an imbalance (as is thought to have occurred in our universe). A prerequisite for what, anyway?
I'm afraid the answer is actually yes, at least if you replace 'a prerequisite' by 'excepted from the laws of physics'. Since there is nothing in the laws of physics to make us believe that matter is 'preferred' over anti-matter, we naturally assume that the amounts of both in the early universe are the same. The problem with this most natural assumption is that, if there was the same amount of matter and anti-matter in the universe, and they stayed in thermal equilibrium as the universe cooled (which is true for most of its history), they would almost completely annihilate and there would be too little matter left over today to make up what we presently see. So we need an event that favours matter over anti-matter to produce the required leftover matter we see. This is called the baryogenesis problem. Of course, you CAN just demand that the required extra matter be put in as an initial condition, but most physicists shun that approach, especially since the matter excess is one part in 10 billion, an unnaturally small number which would have to be put in by hand. We prefer to find a way to generate that asymmetry dynamically.
It doesn't matter who leads the Liberals they won't get a majority in the current conditions, they might squeeze out a minority.
What you don't seem to understand is that a large percentage of people in Canada don't particularly LIKE the Liberals, and don't want to see them rule on their own.
If they want to stop the Conservatives, they can try a hand at forming a coalition. But don't ask me to vote for a party I don't like just because you hate the Conservatives more.
As far as analysis. There was one in a newspaper recently which indicated the Greens siphoned off enough votes that 19 less Liberals and NDP were elected.
Maybe you could provide a link, since I got my numbers by actually looking at the winning margins in seats lost by Liberals.
If progressive voters had voted strategically, they would have sent more Liberals, more NDP and more Bloc and more Greens to the government. Instead we get more and more conservative in a country that is largely progressive and left leaning.
Only if literally millions of voters sat down together and tediously worked out where it would be best to send their votes. Who's being the naive idealist again?
The green party is essentially the "Ralph Nader party" They elect no members and siphon off enough center/left votes to give yet more seats to the Conservatives. Idealistic people voting their idealism and giving the worse case result in reality.
Sorry, but this 'blame the third party' crap really piss me off, especially in this election, where it doesn't hold up to analysis. Even if you took every single Green vote in every riding and gave it to the Liberal candidate in that riding, the party would still have lost a dozen seats. No one lost this election for the Liberals except the Liberals, and the Greens certainly didn't prevent a Liberal government.
I'm proud to vote for whoever I think is the best party to lead Canada, and not for some 'lesser of two evils' party.
No system is perfect, but historically the Parliamentary system has been probably been balanced between both major parties.
The problem is that there are more than two parties in Canada. Almost as many people voted for the Greens and NDP as for the Liberals (25% vs 26%), yet they get half as many seats. The problem with our system is that it equally helps the Conservatives and Liberals, while screwing over everyone else.
I fail to see how you can draw any conclusions about the reliability of atmospheric physics papers from a study of biomedical research papers.
Hopefully after the election W will get sent to Iraq so the Iraqi's can thank him personally for all he has done for them.
Hillary and the congressional dems who voted for the war and continuing funding can go with him...
Does that include Obama?
Sorry, my bad. But my point still stands - seeing as basically the rest of the world including US financial markets were working it kind of destroys their whole 'urgency argument'.
Your point absolutely does stand (I just wanted to offer that correction as a supplement). In any case, the Christans in congress had no excuse not to be there, if it was indeed so urgent. And of course, it wasn't, since the money won't be spent by Paulson for weeks.
Your argument that the Nazis succeeded by putting smaller groups into camps (while avoiding larger minorities) is completely irrelevant given the fact that scapegoating and imprisonment of the Jews was going on at the same time. Which is what both I and kill-1 were trying to tell you. If you knew that already, then why bother suggesting in your original post that Fascists could succeed by "carefully avoid[ing] scapegoating whole races or ethnicities", and then using the Nazis as an example?
No one called you an apologist, no one accused you of anti-semitism. All we did was express our opinion, based on the content of your post, that you haven't been educated about Nazi rule or the Holocaust. If you consider that an insult, then you could at least try to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about that period, instead of throwing around accusations.
And at least read our posts before you bother to respond. The date I gave was when Polish Jews were rounded up and imprisoned in ghettos. Simply because they weren't labelled 'camps' doesn't mean that the Jews weren't forcibly confined before 1941. kill-1's post is about Kyrstallnacht, a night when many Jewish businesses and institutions were burned to the ground. So of course our dates don't match, since we're not talking about the same thing. Indeed, you can't get an education from either of us, since you don't bother to read what we wrote.
One of the real concerns is, how successful would a Fascist state be if it carefully avoided scapegoating whole races or ethnicities?...At this late date, most people have lost sight of the fact that the Nazis didn't really start putting Jews in the camps, in large numbers, until late 1941 or early 42.
You are in serious need of an education if you believe that the Nazis didn't start scapegoating Jews until 1941. Anti-Semitism was a basic principle of Nazism. Hitler's anti-semitic rantings are documented back to the 1920s. Widespread discrimination of the Jews in law goes back as far as 1935, with the Nuremberg Laws. The forced confinement of Jews in ghettos started as early as October 1939, the start of WW2. The only reason Jews weren't massacred in large numbers in death camps before 1941 is because it took that much time to round up all the Jews and deport them.
The supporters act as if this thing is so urgent and there is no alternative, but then they take their time by taking off due to a Jewish holiday that not even a lot of Jews celebrate..
Actually, Rosh Hashanah, is one of the few holidays that almost ALL Jews, regardless of orthodoxy, celebrate. That is why the two days of Rosh Hashanah, along with Yom Kippur, are referred to as the High Holidays.
Since they had to add 100 billion dollars to the bill to pass it, can we start calling it the 800 billion dollar bailout bill now?
Oh, take a look at the effect the bill had on the stock market. Here's the Dow's performance during trading hours on Friday. See if you can guess at what time they passed the bill. They sure are grateful, aren't they?
Unless it really is true, in which case we are probably focussing on entirely the wrong aspect of the case.
We are focusing on the wrong aspect of the case, regardless. This is not a libel case, but a question of whether the lack of protection of freedom of speech in schools applies even when the offense takes place outside of school. But since the conversation has steered toward what qualifies as parody, I think it's worth a response.
It could be interpreted as a parody, but it could also be interpreted as a cry for help by a sexually-abused student who knows (or fears) that they will receive no support from their parents if they make the allegation public. Or it could be interpreted as an attempt to appear to be such a cry for help
Did you not see the quote I posted from the myspace page? The entire 'accusation' consisted of him saying his interests included
and described him as a 40-year-old married, bisexual man whose interests included "being a tight ass," "fucking in my office" and "hitting on students and their parents,"
Does this look like a 'cry for help', or just some joke made at the expense of the principal? You need to apply some basic reasoning to this situation instead of going out of your way to find the most far-out explanation for the page. Kids make fun of their teachers and principals. In this era, they sometimes do it on Myspace.
As for fahrbot's post, I won't even get into how ridiculous it is to compare an adult's stalking and harassment of a 13 year old girl to a kid's prank on his adult principal.
Unless the site was *clearly* a parody, calling someone a "sex addict who 'hits on students'" is slander - or libel when written.
Of course it was a parody. The page was a fake profile of the principal. How many people proudly advertise that they are paedophiles on Myspace?
Here's what happened, according to court papers: J.S. and another student, identified as K.L., posted a profile on MySpace in March 2007 that showed a photo of principal James S. McGonigle they had taken from the district's Web site. The profile didn't use the principal's name, but identified the person pictured as a "principal,"and described him as a 40-year-old married, bisexual man whose interests included "being a tight ***," "******* in my office" and "hitting on students and their parents," according to U.S. District Judge James M. Munley's opinion.
(source)
If you think this is anything except a parody, you have serious comprehension problems.
So let me ask you a question. Do you ever vote in elections? When you do, are the guys you vote for positioned such that you agree with them on EVERY SINGLE TOPIC THEY STAND FOR?
Maybe AC just votes for people who agree with the positions on the topics he feels are most important. Obviously if Obama really felt strongly about FISA immunity, he would have voted against it. He clearly didn't care that much about immunity, despite his words.
If not, then you either don't vote (in which case, you just lost all ability to criticize how anybody else votes)...
I'm pretty sure that there's no caveat in the first amendment that prohibits people from voicing their opinion if they don't vote.
A delay of a few weeks for a project that has been a decade in planning is no big deal. The universe isn't going anywhere.
... trying to make a big deal out of something small.
I was just thinking that this is the most concise way of describing a particle physicist's job.
I have little doubt that the goal is not to win the lawsuit, but to waste his time. They're hoping that the triple burden of his day job, his blog, and defending this lawsuit will be too much.
Don't give in to them, Ray. It's important for us to have this blog asa counter-attack to the RIAA BS machine.
Have you seen what the White House does to people? It sucks their life right out of them. White House years are like dog years. I predict that if elected, McCain will die of a stress-induced heart attack within 2 years and Palin will be President.
Care to bet? An actuarial firm actually did a study of McCain and Obama's likelihood of remaining healthy in office (a better question than 'is he alive?' for determining whether or not they are able to perform the duties of the president). They found that McCain has a 90.3% chance of staying in good health through 2011. Obviously, the chances of him staying alive are higher. I'd take those odds any day.
Absolutely nothing. The system is exactly a popularity contest, where truth is determined democratically, rather than by actual relationship to reality.
Yes. Fortunately for us, we post on Slashdot, where unpopular ideas are always given a fair hearing and no one ever abuses the mod system.
I whole-heartedly agree with you.The 'Party allegiance above all' mentality is what leads to the appointment of like-minded ideologues with little experience. And with the growth of the party comes massive donations which inevitably lead to corruption. Worst of all is the control they have over message which leads to the same talking points being repeated over and over again. I remember watching cable news networks before the democratic convention. Every time a democrat came on, you'd hear the same argument repeated verbatim: "This is a candidate that doesn't even know how many houses he has". And listen to John Fund on Real Time, if you can stomach it. Talking point after talking point after talking point.
Honestly, I would go further than saying that we should look to third parties. At best that would lead to another large corrupt party, and at worst, it would just take the place of the Democrats or the Republicans, leaving the US with the same two party system. What we need is abolish political parties entirely and get independents elected. Candidates who can think for themselves (and voice their opinions freely) and actually care about the people they represent.
"I'm not interested in third parties getting the most possible votes. I'm interested in Bob Barr as the nominee for the Libertarian Party getting the most possible votes,"
Yes, because Israel, a loyal US Ally/Satellite that has advanced US Agenda in the mideast, and contained its military operations to self defense, should be abandoned because an artificial liberation movement has become the latest leftist craze.
Israel is nothing more than a money sink for your taxes and a rallying point terrorists use to whip up hate for the US. What does billions of dollars a year in aid to Israel buy the US? An Iraqi nuclear strike in 1981 that the US could have accomplished? A useless war with Lebanon that only served to strengthen Hezbollah? You tell me what the big strategic advantage is in buying Israel's allegiance. Why it is worth having every radical Imam linking the US and Israeli policy together. Why it is worth the increased risk to US civilians and soldiers.
Arafat the Egyptian embraced lefty rhetoric and style, so like Castro, became seen as a darling of the left who love dictators if they embrace "revolution."
Yeah, because the right never embraced dictators. Oh and lest you think that's an old practice, Bush just made friends with Muammar al-Gaddafi, at the same time Gaddafi was blackmailing Europe for hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for the lives of 6 innocent doctors and nurses.
The amount of land in dispute is TRIVIAL, except to Israel that is in physical danger without it. Emotional attachment aside, financial compensation to the displaced Arabs, including purchasing them land in nearby Arab nations, would have been WAY CHEAPER than the current disaster of a policy.
If the US decided it needed your house for its defence, gave you some cash and told you to get out, and go live with your fellow Christians at the closest YMCA, would you consider that an acceptable offer?
So keep spewing hateful ignorance, and be prepared to lose to the silent majority in two months, because you guys are irrational and crazy.
See, this is how I know you are a partisan fool. Every poll taken over the past year shows that the democrats will makes gains in both the Senate and the House. But of course there's a 'silent majority'. There's always just enough people with your exact views, who are coincidentally never heard from, to make you on the side of The People and the rest of us (what a rational person would call the 'vocal majority') crazy extremists.
You are committing a logical fallacy. By the same logic: Reagan ate breakfast each morning. Therefore breakfast prevents nuclear war.
Corn Pops: part of a complete Foreign Policy
I happened to catch that segment too and it was brilliant. But the Republicans aren't the only ones who have done a 180 here*. It's as if on the day Palin was chosen, the Democrats and Republicans accidentally sent each other their respective talking points after wiping the past 3 months from their collective memories. Because that's the only explanation for their behaviour. Let's review their 'experience' talking points before and after Palin was announced as the VP choice:
Before
Republicans: Only someone with years of government and foreign policy experience is qualified to be President. Obama has only 3 years in the Senate on his resume and doesn't deserve the Presidency.
Democrats: Experience doesn't mean much when it comes to the Presidency, but Obama has the right kind of experience necessary to be president anyways.
After
Republicans: Experience doesn't mean much when it comes to the Vice Presidency, but Palin has the right kind of experience necessary to be President anyways.
Democrats: Only someone with years of government and foreign policy experience is qualified to be Vice President. Palin has only 2 years as governor on her resume and doesn't deserve the Vice Presidency or the Presidency.
And the amazing thing is that they don't notice their own hypocrisy even as they call the other side hypocrites.
* Not that I blame Stewart for not going after Democrats. He's tried Obama jokes before and they fall flat with his audience. A shame, since he does a good a job on them as he does with Republicans.