If we can reverse engineer an iphone, you can bet your ass someone will be able to reverse engineer a software lock that was made by the lowest bidder.... Our nukes certainly weren't made by the lowest bidder judging by the cost...and some serious brains went behind the thinking on nuclear security.
These ones were armed, as in being maybe a push of one more button away from going off. Not unless the proper PAL sequence was loaded. Which it wasn't, since that would've required NCA authorization.
Sites with obvious political biases tend to be frequented only by people with similar political biases. Well duh. That sorta stands to reason. I mean, you don't have people who hate Elmo going to Elmo fan sites very often do you? The only reason why a Republican would go to DailyKos or DemocraticUnderground would be for oposition research. It's not like they allow dissenting points of view posted there..and given that, you aren't going to attract and keep folks that haven't already swallowed the ideological koolaid. Lest anyone thinks I'm picking on Democrats, I believe that the FreeRepublic is also run the same way. I think both sides spend a lot more time on demonizing than they do prosletizing these days. You aren't going to attract many converts by shitting on the would-be converts.
Illegal aliens aren't a privileged overclass, they are the means by which the elite are destroying the working class. First, by having illegals take the jobs of the working class Americans, and secondly, by making those lucky enough to keep their jobs pay for all of the ancillary costs of illegal immigration, like higher hospital bills, higher insurance premiums, and higher education costs. I'm not racist you fuckwit, my fiance is Latino, so go fuck yourself and go back to posting with all of the other true believers over on DUh.com
As such I continue to say that there is no point in mentioning illegal immigration there, unless your goal was to weaken your primary argument, or demonstrate that you lack anything resembling vision and intelligence. (of course you already demonstrated that when you voted for Bush the second time.) And YOUR argument is undermined by the fact I didn't vote for Bush either the first time or the second time.
You undermine your post by bringing in illegal immigration. Au contraire. I live in Texas. Guess what happens if you are in a car collision with an illegal alien without identification or insurance that was his or her fault? More often than not, the police simply let them go. You and the police get a fake name, a fake number, and a fake address...and the bill for the collision. Try that as a citizen.
Same thing with hospitals. If you are an indigent citizen and go for treatment in an emergency room, they will treat you, and then do everything they can post-procedure to collect the skin from your hide. Illegal aliens? Not so much. There is a reason (and not a good one) why in North Carolina (!), 99% of all supplemental emergency Medicaid funding went to maternity treatment for illegal aliens.
The two-tiered system is one where there are elites (that's "them") and everyone else (that's "you"). Illegal aliens and open borders are simply one of the mechanisms by which this is being brought about. Intentionally, or not. It doesn't really matter. Entry level jobs that used to go to high school students (mowing lawns, fast food) aren't anymore. Blue collar factory professions that used to provide a decent living (meatpacking, journeyman construction) increasingly don't anymore. That takes down the working class. And offshoring takes down the middle class (and eventually, a big chunk of the upper-middle class as well).
While we (the citizens) weren't paying attention, "they" have put in a two-tiered structure where the laws apply to the sheep, but not the wolves. That's why if you steal someone's SSN, you go to jail, but if you are an illegal alien, hey, it's ok. Or if the MPAA or RIAA breaks the law, harrasses and intimidates people, it's ok...they are a legimiate business interest (and we know this because of their campaign contributions). If Tyson wants to import a whole town from Guatamala to work in their chicken processing plant in Arkansas, that's ok too. "Steal" a DVD by copying it, and it's pokey time for you. All the while your Congressmen and Congresswoman are busy putting their hands in your wallets to pay for boondoggles like the $140 billion ($450,000 for every pre-Katrina man, woman, and child) for New Orleans relief, and various other Bridges to Nowhere.
I actually believe that intelligent life is very improbable and that we're alone in the galaxy I agree, but not on any religious grounds. Or, more to the point, I don't necessarily agree, but if there is intelligent, technological life out there, we are outside of the light cone at present time.
but the doomsday argument is an interesting idea -- that it's inevitable that the technology to wipe out the race outstrips the ability to control it. It IS an interesting idea, I just don't think it's a probable solution to the Fermi paradox. I think the probable solution to the Fermi paradox is that the evolution of intelligent, technoligical life is exceptionally unlikely. Human intelligence is a classical example of an evolutionary arms race gone amok via sexual selection. We are way more intelligent than necessary and the human brain is an expensive organ. However, intelligence is a very good fitness indicator, or so the Red Queen argument goes, and so, like the peacock feathers, things have gotten a little out of hand.
Even with our intelligence, any sort of technological society isn't a foregone conclusion. None of the North American natives had the wheel prior to European contact. Ok, so they had the wheel on toys, but hadn't gotten around to doing anything useful with it. The Greeks and the Romans, arguably, had all the component parts necessary to make labor saving machines and even guns, but never got around to doing it (why bother when slaves are cheap?). A couple of different turns in history, and we might not have done it yet either.
One of the answers to the Fermi Paradox [wikipedia.org] that is often thrown around is the idea that intelligent life tends to destroy itself after a short amount of time. This is not an answer to the paradox, because all it takes is *1* example of intelligent life that does NOT kill itself to spread throughout the galaxy (assuming that is possible).
In short, those sane enough to be capable aren't insane enough to actually want to kill *everyone*. Not really. Sanity is relative and evolving cultural standard, after all.
All you really need is a motivated, talented, sociopathic personality that believes a doomsday device is to his or her benefit or furthers his goals.
That's because we needed to go back before the conservative movement decided to make government fail by underfunding it. the Federal government is certainly underfunded, spending only 2.8 trillion USD for 2008 under the proposed Bush budget.
Including:
12.4% increase for Medicare and a 7.0% increase for Medicare.
The problem isn't Republicans and their evil budget cutting ways, the problem is rampant and out of control entitlement spending, which both Democrats and Republicans contribute to and neither is willing to control.
I was joking. I'm not in favor of taking anyone's ability to vote away from them, even people I violently disagree with or consider marginally retarded or worse.
As for the specific comment to you, I hereby apologize. Your response to my comment was reasonable and put together well. Your initial comment made me think you were one of the slashkos kids who reflexively think Lieberman = Bushitler simply because Lieberman voted for the Iraq war and has been a staunch defender of the war (even though Lieberman is a flaming liberal on just about every other issue). Now, you may still think along those lines, but at least you can write coherently.
I'm not a fan of either Bush or Lieberman, but find myself dragged into defending them because people are misinformed or make misinformed statements.
Reading your posts is like being on a bad acid trip. You make absolutely no sense, you can't construct a meaningful argument, and you'll take two words out of someone else's post and go off on a tangent.
Nobody is claiming the military was the failure point in Vietnam or Iraq. And I didn't either, nor did I claim that you did, so why bring it up!?
Indeed, that's what president Bush talked about as well when explaining why conventional forces should not be drawn down from Iraq. Again, another stupid tangent. I haven't brought up or responded to any points about Bush's speech at any point in time. But you keep creeping that into your stuff. Bully for you. So what's your point?
Well your reply was a non sequiter Given your inability to spell the word, I shouldn't be surprised at your inability to understand it I guess, which in this case is A statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it.
Your first post:
Now we're being told the only thing we did wrong in Vietnam is leave too early. My reply:
No, the guerilla Vietnam war in the South was won when we left. Someone with a reasonable level of reading comprehension, say around 8th grade level, would logically conclude that the opening statement disagrees with the asserion that "the only thing we did wrong in Vietnam was leave too early". Another way of saying the same thing by me would be "We did not leave Vietnam too early". This would be more appropriate for say, a 6th grade reader, which seems to be about where you are at.
Thus, given your apparent position that we did not leave Vietnam too early and my position that we did not leave Vietnam too early, I'm really not sure what you are violently disagreeing with. And I'm pretty sure you don't know either. I suppose we could delve deeper into the morass and mistakes of Vietnam, but I suspect that any thing deeper than "Bush lied people died" is over your head.
Joe Lieberman, for one... I'm sure there were others. This statement illustrates why people like you should not be allowed to vote.
Joe Lieberman voted NOT GUILTY to both impeachment counts you ignoramus. And in answer to my original question, there was not a single Democrat that voted for either count. There were, however, quite a few Republicans who voted not guilty.
Your reply is a non sequitur. If your political success is predicated on military victory, then you can't ignore the military component. Of course, if you think that the US policy should've been abandoning our allies in the face of Communist aggression and invasion, then certainly the fall of Vietnam was a substantial victory. You're probably pretty ambivilent about the Korean war too, I bet.
Apparently not. Now we're being told the only thing we did wrong in Vietnam is leave too early. No, the guerilla Vietnam war in the South was won when we left. The thing we did wrong was abandoning an ally in the face of a conventional invasion by the North. The Senate blocked sending even spare parts and ammunition to the South Vietnamese. That failure leads legitimacy to the concern voiced by Musharrif that "he's afraid the United States will abandon him. They always abandon their friends."
Citing yourself is pretty narcistic. You as far as anyone can tell, aren't a source on anything, so your opinion doesn't matter. Instead of spewing hate, you could've just said "I disagree" and had, factually, the same substance as this post above.
Which details what constitutes criminal witness tampering, specifically in relation to Bill Clinton.
Specifically, Clinton persuaded Monica Lewinsky to lie about their relationship in order to shut down the Paula Jones harassment lawsuit. A lawsuit which was ultimately settled in Jone's favor by Clinton. If you don't agree, take it up with the lawyers and judges who disbarred Clinton for lying and witness tampering, not me.
This is usually the point of view espoused by those who take the view that a strong centralized government is desirable. We crossed the Rubicon on a strong centralized government a long time ago. The reality of a Republic of sovereign states died with Grant and Sherman's regiments. The tradition lingered on for 100 more years or so, but has been put to rest by a succession of Federal usurpations. And with the exception of Ron Paul, there are no Congressman or Senators or Presidential hopefuls that are REALLY for shrinking the size of the Federal government (and no, I'm not a Ron Paulite, I'm a Fred-head).
So I take it you are posting as AC just so you can use your mod points to mod me down? Post using your real id, and we can continue the "debate" (or at least, you can continue to name call). Documentation on the Foreign Intelligence agencies, Clinton administration on Iraq (Desert Fox ring a bell?), and all of the rest is not hard to find. There's ignorance and willfull ignorance. Guess which category you fall into, coward?
What does work is the National Popular Vote, and it's not a huge overhaul of the electoral process. I disagree. About 1/3rd of the US population lives in the top 11 MSA's (Metropolitican Statistical Area): http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t29/t ab01a.xls
And a lot of those MSA's are geographically clustered:
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, & Washington DC
Los Angeles, San Fransisco
Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston
The end result would the reduction of almost all of the interior states to irrelevance, both during the campaign and also the election. Now, whether or not North Dakota (total state population less than El Paso, TX) or Wisconsin (total state population about the same as the DFW MSA) SHOULD be relevant is a different debate. But don't kid yourself, going to a popular vote would shake things up dramatically.
Now, prove the flip side...that anyone in the Bush administration (besides Tenet, of course) actively lied with the purpose and intent of getting us into a war (ala Tonkin gulf) as opposed to simply being wrong when almost everyone else was wrong on the same data also. And when I mean almost everyone, I mean:
- foreign intelligence agencies (French, British, Russian, German, Italian, Czech)
- previous Clinton administration and US intelligence agencies
- Bush administration and US intelligence agencies
- Saddam's generals
- Ex-Saddam inner circle defectors
You had a lot of information coming out saying Saddam had WMD, was reconstituting his program. And you had his continual obstruction with UN inspections. There's a saying that goes...looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Hindsight is 20/20.
Unfortunately, I don't see any such election overhaul happening anytime soon. Of course not, since it would require an overhaul of the electoral process, which would in turn hurt smaller states and swing states...so they'll never support it. But even splitting up the electoral votes by Congressional district or as a percentage has some merit. For example, California has more Republican voters than any other state in the union...but they happen to be outnumbered (significantly) by Democratic voters. So those 55 electoral votes go (D) every time, even though ideologically, the split is closer to 32/23 Same thing with Texas on the reverse side. Lots of Democrats, but those 34 electoral votes go (R) every time.
What Republicans aren't in favor of is a purely political witch hunt.
Bull-fucking-shit. Care to try to explain the Clinton impeachment process then? Mostly political, partial payback for Watergate (after all, Nixon wasn't actually aware of the break in until after it happened, his crime was lying about it not doing it, same as Clinton), partial disgust over Clinton's behavior, both before a Grand Jury and in front of a Special Prosecutor.
But, how many Democrats joined in on the vote? 0? In other words, the parties don't eat their own. You guys want Republicans to join in to impeach Bush, you're going to have to lay down a serious, substantiated crime. Otherwise, at best, you're going to get a 1998 redux. And 1998 didn't really work out all that well for the Republicans electorally.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you're the idiot kosbot.
Illegal aliens aren't a privileged overclass, they are the means by which the elite are destroying the working class. First, by having illegals take the jobs of the working class Americans, and secondly, by making those lucky enough to keep their jobs pay for all of the ancillary costs of illegal immigration, like higher hospital bills, higher insurance premiums, and higher education costs. I'm not racist you fuckwit, my fiance is Latino, so go fuck yourself and go back to posting with all of the other true believers over on DUh.com
Same thing with hospitals. If you are an indigent citizen and go for treatment in an emergency room, they will treat you, and then do everything they can post-procedure to collect the skin from your hide. Illegal aliens? Not so much. There is a reason (and not a good one) why in North Carolina (!), 99% of all supplemental emergency Medicaid funding went to maternity treatment for illegal aliens.
The two-tiered system is one where there are elites (that's "them") and everyone else (that's "you"). Illegal aliens and open borders are simply one of the mechanisms by which this is being brought about. Intentionally, or not. It doesn't really matter. Entry level jobs that used to go to high school students (mowing lawns, fast food) aren't anymore. Blue collar factory professions that used to provide a decent living (meatpacking, journeyman construction) increasingly don't anymore. That takes down the working class. And offshoring takes down the middle class (and eventually, a big chunk of the upper-middle class as well).
but some are more equal than others.
While we (the citizens) weren't paying attention, "they" have put in a two-tiered structure where the laws apply to the sheep, but not the wolves. That's why if you steal someone's SSN, you go to jail, but if you are an illegal alien, hey, it's ok. Or if the MPAA or RIAA breaks the law, harrasses and intimidates people, it's ok...they are a legimiate business interest (and we know this because of their campaign contributions). If Tyson wants to import a whole town from Guatamala to work in their chicken processing plant in Arkansas, that's ok too. "Steal" a DVD by copying it, and it's pokey time for you. All the while your Congressmen and Congresswoman are busy putting their hands in your wallets to pay for boondoggles like the $140 billion ($450,000 for every pre-Katrina man, woman, and child) for New Orleans relief, and various other Bridges to Nowhere.
Even with our intelligence, any sort of technological society isn't a foregone conclusion. None of the North American natives had the wheel prior to European contact. Ok, so they had the wheel on toys, but hadn't gotten around to doing anything useful with it. The Greeks and the Romans, arguably, had all the component parts necessary to make labor saving machines and even guns, but never got around to doing it (why bother when slaves are cheap?). A couple of different turns in history, and we might not have done it yet either.
All you really need is a motivated, talented, sociopathic personality that believes a doomsday device is to his or her benefit or furthers his goals.
It's either the doing of the Xeelee or the Photino birds. Now we just have to find a way to get to the Great Attractor before the sun burns out.
Including:
12.4% increase for Medicare and a 7.0% increase for Medicare.
The problem isn't Republicans and their evil budget cutting ways, the problem is rampant and out of control entitlement spending, which both Democrats and Republicans contribute to and neither is willing to control.
I was joking. I'm not in favor of taking anyone's ability to vote away from them, even people I violently disagree with or consider marginally retarded or worse.
As for the specific comment to you, I hereby apologize. Your response to my comment was reasonable and put together well. Your initial comment made me think you were one of the slashkos kids who reflexively think Lieberman = Bushitler simply because Lieberman voted for the Iraq war and has been a staunch defender of the war (even though Lieberman is a flaming liberal on just about every other issue). Now, you may still think along those lines, but at least you can write coherently.
I'm not a fan of either Bush or Lieberman, but find myself dragged into defending them because people are misinformed or make misinformed statements.
Your first post: Now we're being told the only thing we did wrong in Vietnam is leave too early. My reply: No, the guerilla Vietnam war in the South was won when we left. Someone with a reasonable level of reading comprehension, say around 8th grade level, would logically conclude that the opening statement disagrees with the asserion that "the only thing we did wrong in Vietnam was leave too early". Another way of saying the same thing by me would be "We did not leave Vietnam too early". This would be more appropriate for say, a 6th grade reader, which seems to be about where you are at.
Thus, given your apparent position that we did not leave Vietnam too early and my position that we did not leave Vietnam too early, I'm really not sure what you are violently disagreeing with. And I'm pretty sure you don't know either. I suppose we could delve deeper into the morass and mistakes of Vietnam, but I suspect that any thing deeper than "Bush lied people died" is over your head.
Joe Lieberman voted NOT GUILTY to both impeachment counts you ignoramus. And in answer to my original question, there was not a single Democrat that voted for either count. There were, however, quite a few Republicans who voted not guilty.
Your reply is a non sequitur. If your political success is predicated on military victory, then you can't ignore the military component. Of course, if you think that the US policy should've been abandoning our allies in the face of Communist aggression and invasion, then certainly the fall of Vietnam was a substantial victory. You're probably pretty ambivilent about the Korean war too, I bet.
Citing yourself is pretty narcistic. You as far as anyone can tell, aren't a source on anything, so your opinion doesn't matter. Instead of spewing hate, you could've just said "I disagree" and had, factually, the same substance as this post above.
o n/stories/cannontext011599.htm
For the purposes of educating you, a source is given here:
http://www.wpni.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clint
Which details what constitutes criminal witness tampering, specifically in relation to Bill Clinton.
Specifically, Clinton persuaded Monica Lewinsky to lie about their relationship in order to shut down the Paula Jones harassment lawsuit. A lawsuit which was ultimately settled in Jone's favor by Clinton. If you don't agree, take it up with the lawyers and judges who disbarred Clinton for lying and witness tampering, not me.
So I take it you are posting as AC just so you can use your mod points to mod me down? Post using your real id, and we can continue the "debate" (or at least, you can continue to name call). Documentation on the Foreign Intelligence agencies, Clinton administration on Iraq (Desert Fox ring a bell?), and all of the rest is not hard to find. There's ignorance and willfull ignorance. Guess which category you fall into, coward?
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t29/
And a lot of those MSA's are geographically clustered:
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, & Washington DC
Los Angeles, San Fransisco
Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston
The end result would the reduction of almost all of the interior states to irrelevance, both during the campaign and also the election. Now, whether or not North Dakota (total state population less than El Paso, TX) or Wisconsin (total state population about the same as the DFW MSA) SHOULD be relevant is a different debate. But don't kid yourself, going to a popular vote would shake things up dramatically.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=saddam's+gen
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/17/opinion
Now, prove the flip side...that anyone in the Bush administration (besides Tenet, of course) actively lied with the purpose and intent of getting us into a war (ala Tonkin gulf) as opposed to simply being wrong when almost everyone else was wrong on the same data also. And when I mean almost everyone, I mean:
- foreign intelligence agencies (French, British, Russian, German, Italian, Czech)
- previous Clinton administration and US intelligence agencies
- Bush administration and US intelligence agencies
- Saddam's generals
- Ex-Saddam inner circle defectors
You had a lot of information coming out saying Saddam had WMD, was reconstituting his program. And you had his continual obstruction with UN inspections. There's a saying that goes...looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Hindsight is 20/20.
But, how many Democrats joined in on the vote? 0? In other words, the parties don't eat their own. You guys want Republicans to join in to impeach Bush, you're going to have to lay down a serious, substantiated crime. Otherwise, at best, you're going to get a 1998 redux. And 1998 didn't really work out all that well for the Republicans electorally.