oh, I don't know, things like establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, getting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts passed, flattening the taxation rates, record increases in the GDP, bankrupting the USSR, freeing 50 million+ people from dictators...
Oh, and about those civil rights things? First Asian American Senator, the first African American Senator after reconstruction, the first Asian American federal judge, the first woman on the Supreme Court, the first Hispanic presidential cabinet member, repeal of the Executive Order interning Japanese, first African American Secretary of State, first African American National Security Advisor, first woman National Security Advisor, first Asian American woman in a Presidental cabinet...
Umm, NO. These ballots - and the hundreds of other solid pieces of evidence - were NOT entered into the Court. Why? Because the King County Elections SAT on requests for freedom of information for months. Because of the immediacy of the inauguration, the case had to go forward with what was at hand.
If anything, the fact we're STILL finding double votes, dead voters, illegal registrations, votes "found in open boxes a few weeks after the election", and other serious crimes relating to our elections confirms that the current County administration simply doesn't care about votes. Yours or mine.
I'd suggest reading some of the threads and information over at http://www.soundpolitics.com/ - see what's been dug up since information is FINALLY getting pried out from the County offices. This information - and the continuance of new violations of State election laws - was sent to McKay and ignored. That is what got him fired - he simply didn't check into hard, documented crimes.
Argue how you will, but when you're shown photographic proof that people are double-voting, it's hard to argue that there aren't election law violations going on...
That is factually wrong. Laws were broken. A CIA agent was outed without proper clearance. The barrier between those who were allowed to know vs. the general public was crossed.
And the prosecution of those guilty of this violation is where? The whole thing was dropped because there WAS NO LAW BROKEN. No crime.
Pull your head out of your ass,..., and quit spreading such bald-face lies.
Then I'm sure you were shouting from the rooftops about the injustice done to Scooter Libby, convicted of perjury about his memory of what happened when being questioned about a non-crime...
Try reading something other than the Seattle Times or PI... There's LOTS of evidence of illegal ballots cast, and outright FRAUD. Just that the powers-that-be like it this way...
Oh, and for proof? Explain just this ONE example of hundreds. Here's hard PROOF of someone double-voting. It's well documented, but getting the Secretary of State to address it is nearly impossible - he's beholden to his job. And the fact that the US Attorney refused to consider such information is simply unacceptable.
Living in the People's Republic of Washington, I whole-heartedly applaud the Bush administration for removing McKay, who's admitted to doing ZERO about the numerous vote illegalities that have gone on here in the Seattle area. Including DOCUMENTED cases of the SAME PERSON voting more than once, registrations at mail boxes which is clearly against State law, ballots for the overseas military sent out weeks after all other ballots, guaranteeing they would not be returned in time, etc.
No, at least this one firing was not only justified, but took 3 years too long to come...
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
Since this is under the auspices of the Court, it's not an essential liberty being given up; and as for temporary security I think the plan is a bit more long term...
I guess I look at it, and if we have hundreds of thousands of years of data showing CO2 to lag temperature, why should we conclude that THIS time, it's gonna be different? Even when the recent data - from just the last few hundred years - doesn't show the change in precedence?
1. It clearly shows that CO2 follows heating; heating drives the CO2 levels, not the other way around. Heat the ocean, it can't retain as much dissolved CO2, so there's more in the atmosphere.
2. It's nicely scaled to accentuate the change. Replot that data referenced to 0ppm and you'll see a small blip, really not out of range with changes over time. Much like is often done with stocks to play up volatility of a given stock - show it's wild 5 point change over the day, ignoring the 100 point basis for that graph...
Do the math - we can all live in Texas - all 6.5 billion of us - with no more density than the city of New York. And the farmland in the US and Southern Canada would provide enough food for everyone. Meaning the entire REST of the world - and all the North American mountains, deserts, and forests - could be left untouched.
Starvation and famine aren't from a lack of space or food, it's from a lack of political will to overthrow those who ignore the plight of their people. Sometimes we should do a little nation building...
One example is the gulf stream that is the only thing keeing Northern England and Scotland from being under metres of ice is already starting to change direction as a result of global warming.
And I, for one, think that ANYTHING that can be done to cover Scotland with ice and eliminate the blight called Haggis is something worth encouraging!
And that same data shows that C02 tends to LAG temperature changes by 800+ years. Meaning the increase in CO2 we see now is a result of heating about 800 years ago - the Medieval Warm Period.
Myabe we have it so good here *because* we are hyper-vigiliant and extremely suspicious of anything that remotely reeks of less human rights and freedom.
That may be, buy hyperbolic responses about how we're worse than China don't lend any credibility to your argument.
BTW, did you know that we lock up a greater percentage of our population that the Soviet Union did?
I'm not sure I buy that claim at all... Maybe it looks bad for the US right now because we have this annoying tendency to not kill a significant percentage of our prisoners in the first place - they tend to live out their terms, unlike what happened to literally tens of millions in the USSR. I mean, if we just killed half our prison population, we'd have a lower incarceration rate, AND still lag the USSR in terms of prisoners killed...
Do the math. EVERYONE in the entire WORLD can live on the land in Texas, with less density than New York City (we're not talking just Manhattan or something, the entire city). And there's enough farmland in the US and Canada to more than feed the entire world.
Meaning that "population explosion" that's pushing us past the carrying capacity of the earth is a sham. The entire world - all the people, the infrastructure, the food, the energy - can be supported in just half of North America. And we're not even talking about using the existing forestland, mountains, deserts, etc. Just existing farmland and space.
So unless you think the fact we could live in that space - leaving ALL of Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Central and South America, and everything north of 60 deg Latitude in North America empty is over capacity, I think the numbers go counter. The Earth can support a LOT more than what we currently have.
Perhaps the suffering and pain around the world isn't from a lack of resources, but from distribution of those resources? And that's not going to be solved unless those restraining the distribution are toppled from power. Get rid of the dictators who run the worst places in the world, let the flow of food and supplies get through and you'd see a huge change quickly.
Well sure - we can all live in Texas, and your post shows we can add the infrastructure to do it.
For food, well, the Vegans (not that I am one - I believe in being an omnivore!) say you can feed a person with 700 square meters of farmland. So that means that 1 square kilometer will feed 1400 people.
Now, the US has approximately 950 million square acres of farmland, which is around 3.9 million square kilometers. That would support 5.4 billion people. Add in a bit more farmland from northern Mexico or Canada, and we have enough space here in North America for the entire population AND the farmland to support it.
Meaning that - if we really wanted to - we could leave the other 6 continents - and a large portion of North America - empty, untouched, unused.
Excellent points! I would add, though - as one who currently spends 30% of my time living in China - the following:
Item 1: the owning of our debt. It actually makes China MUCH more vulernable than America. Why? They hold the IOUs - our debt. We hold the tangible goods we got in exchange for the IOUs. If we default, how do they get their goods back? If the bank can't repossess your house, they're in a much weaker position when they hold your mortgage...
Item 2: China produces a LOT of products, so by volume they do win. But not in terms of actual value of manufacturing. The US still leads, and probably will for a long time. And a lot of that manufacturing that goes on over in China is directly for 100% American owned companies. Meaning that the investment and return on that manufacturing is still based in the US.
Item 3: Working with Chinese engineers daily leads me to conclude that while most are extremely intelligent, they do not have a "western" style of engineering mind. There is a natural resistance to conflict (cultural really). It's more of "here is what you were told to do, now do it exactly that way"; pushback on specs or design is frowned upon. And THAT is the crux if engineering. It'll take 3-4 generations to 'breed' that out of the culture of China. So numerically they produce a LOT of great engineers; but in actuality they produce very few innovators.
Having lived in Germany (Munich, Wolfostrasse), Chile (Vina Del Mar, Catorce Norte by the mall), China (Minhang District, Shanghai, Hualin Lu), and the US (mainly in the Seattle, WA area) I can assure that - as bad as you think it is here - it is MUCH worse in all those other countries.
People who habitually decry our supposed lack of "human rights" or "freedoms" simply are ignorant of the truth. Get out and travel, live in other countries, and learn what we really have in the US.
How you got modded insightful I'll never know... Fear and Loathing in the US...
Let's cram in the 300 million people of the USA into those small safe pockets, that way we don't even need highways, maybe with the ensuing madness we won't need schools anyway.
Just an interesting little aside... If you took everyone in the world - all 6.5 billion of us, and put us on the land in Texas, we'd be less dense than New York City.
Well, if you do an April's Fool Joke on April Fool's Day it's not quite as powerful, duh! Gotta do them on different days... April 2nd, August 16th, November 15th, you know day's nobody EXPECTS the joke!
Obviously your technological understanding is lacking... Upducted is what THEY do when THEY use the alien technology found at Roswell to beam you aboard THEIR aircraft...
Seriously, man, readjust your tinfoil hat, it's letting sanity sink in!
Why yes I did read it! And according the article, the vast bulk of Russia lies in ASIA - you know, east of the Ural mountains.
Maybe it's mah slow US brain or sumpthin but when I sees 80% of a horse in a barn I figger the horse is mainly IN the barn, not out... Oh well, guess it's time to go plow the back 40...
Thanks for the reference; the DB site gives me a best travel time from Barcelona to London of just over 13 hours, so I think 7 hours is a decent estimate for dedicated high-speed between Seattle and San Francisco.
Deployment of high speed communications is an sticky issue; in the US we have lots of different controling/overlapping governments (city, county, sometimes regional, State, and Federal) all of whom have input on what is rolled out and how.
We also have a strong history of property rights, making establishment of new rights-of-way for utilities quite difficult and expensive.
And I'll say it again, it's a big country! It's not uncommon to have 100-200 km between towns here in the Western US. With a significant portion of our population in suburban and rural areas, it becomes extremely expensive to deploy the "last mile" as often talked about. It would have to be heavily subsidized to make it affordable to extend broadband to every person in the US; I'd rather just leave it at satellite - even if it is slower - and be done with it.
As far as NY goes, and the US roll-out in general, yeah it's not quite as fast as available in many other countries. It was also mainly deployed 20+ years ago, and needs a pretty significant retrofit overall. Most of the utilities in the Eastern US were pretty much completed by the mid 20th century; add-ons have come, but the basics - including rights-of-way - were done 50 years ago. With only so many infrastructure dollars, many cities are choosing to focus on water, power, and sewer, and leave it to the telecoms to decide to upgrade - when it becomes affordable to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and about those civil rights things? First Asian American Senator, the first African American Senator after reconstruction, the first Asian American federal judge, the first woman on the Supreme Court, the first Hispanic presidential cabinet member, repeal of the Executive Order interning Japanese, first African American Secretary of State, first African American National Security Advisor, first woman National Security Advisor, first Asian American woman in a Presidental cabinet...
Yeah, I guess I see your point... /sarc
If anything, the fact we're STILL finding double votes, dead voters, illegal registrations, votes "found in open boxes a few weeks after the election", and other serious crimes relating to our elections confirms that the current County administration simply doesn't care about votes. Yours or mine.
I'd suggest reading some of the threads and information over at http://www.soundpolitics.com/ - see what's been dug up since information is FINALLY getting pried out from the County offices. This information - and the continuance of new violations of State election laws - was sent to McKay and ignored. That is what got him fired - he simply didn't check into hard, documented crimes.
Argue how you will, but when you're shown photographic proof that people are double-voting, it's hard to argue that there aren't election law violations going on...
And the prosecution of those guilty of this violation is where? The whole thing was dropped because there WAS NO LAW BROKEN. No crime.
Pull your head out of your ass, ..., and quit spreading such bald-face lies.
Sage advice... I'd recommend following it...
Then I'm sure you were shouting from the rooftops about the injustice done to Scooter Libby, convicted of perjury about his memory of what happened when being questioned about a non-crime...
Oh, and for proof? Explain just this ONE example of hundreds. Here's hard PROOF of someone double-voting. It's well documented, but getting the Secretary of State to address it is nearly impossible - he's beholden to his job. And the fact that the US Attorney refused to consider such information is simply unacceptable.
No, at least this one firing was not only justified, but took 3 years too long to come...
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
Since this is under the auspices of the Court, it's not an essential liberty being given up; and as for temporary security I think the plan is a bit more long term...
where the last of those Pentiums with the divide error ended up!
I guess I look at it, and if we have hundreds of thousands of years of data showing CO2 to lag temperature, why should we conclude that THIS time, it's gonna be different? Even when the recent data - from just the last few hundred years - doesn't show the change in precedence?
1. It clearly shows that CO2 follows heating; heating drives the CO2 levels, not the other way around. Heat the ocean, it can't retain as much dissolved CO2, so there's more in the atmosphere.
2. It's nicely scaled to accentuate the change. Replot that data referenced to 0ppm and you'll see a small blip, really not out of range with changes over time. Much like is often done with stocks to play up volatility of a given stock - show it's wild 5 point change over the day, ignoring the 100 point basis for that graph...
Starvation and famine aren't from a lack of space or food, it's from a lack of political will to overthrow those who ignore the plight of their people. Sometimes we should do a little nation building...
And I, for one, think that ANYTHING that can be done to cover Scotland with ice and eliminate the blight called Haggis is something worth encouraging!
And that same data shows that C02 tends to LAG temperature changes by 800+ years. Meaning the increase in CO2 we see now is a result of heating about 800 years ago - the Medieval Warm Period.
That may be, buy hyperbolic responses about how we're worse than China don't lend any credibility to your argument.
BTW, did you know that we lock up a greater percentage of our population that the Soviet Union did?
I'm not sure I buy that claim at all... Maybe it looks bad for the US right now because we have this annoying tendency to not kill a significant percentage of our prisoners in the first place - they tend to live out their terms, unlike what happened to literally tens of millions in the USSR. I mean, if we just killed half our prison population, we'd have a lower incarceration rate, AND still lag the USSR in terms of prisoners killed...
Meaning that "population explosion" that's pushing us past the carrying capacity of the earth is a sham. The entire world - all the people, the infrastructure, the food, the energy - can be supported in just half of North America. And we're not even talking about using the existing forestland, mountains, deserts, etc. Just existing farmland and space.
So unless you think the fact we could live in that space - leaving ALL of Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Central and South America, and everything north of 60 deg Latitude in North America empty is over capacity, I think the numbers go counter. The Earth can support a LOT more than what we currently have.
Perhaps the suffering and pain around the world isn't from a lack of resources, but from distribution of those resources? And that's not going to be solved unless those restraining the distribution are toppled from power. Get rid of the dictators who run the worst places in the world, let the flow of food and supplies get through and you'd see a huge change quickly.
For food, well, the Vegans (not that I am one - I believe in being an omnivore!) say you can feed a person with 700 square meters of farmland. So that means that 1 square kilometer will feed 1400 people.
Now, the US has approximately 950 million square acres of farmland, which is around 3.9 million square kilometers. That would support 5.4 billion people. Add in a bit more farmland from northern Mexico or Canada, and we have enough space here in North America for the entire population AND the farmland to support it.
Meaning that - if we really wanted to - we could leave the other 6 continents - and a large portion of North America - empty, untouched, unused.
Item 1: the owning of our debt. It actually makes China MUCH more vulernable than America. Why? They hold the IOUs - our debt. We hold the tangible goods we got in exchange for the IOUs. If we default, how do they get their goods back? If the bank can't repossess your house, they're in a much weaker position when they hold your mortgage...
Item 2: China produces a LOT of products, so by volume they do win. But not in terms of actual value of manufacturing. The US still leads, and probably will for a long time. And a lot of that manufacturing that goes on over in China is directly for 100% American owned companies. Meaning that the investment and return on that manufacturing is still based in the US.
Item 3: Working with Chinese engineers daily leads me to conclude that while most are extremely intelligent, they do not have a "western" style of engineering mind. There is a natural resistance to conflict (cultural really). It's more of "here is what you were told to do, now do it exactly that way"; pushback on specs or design is frowned upon. And THAT is the crux if engineering. It'll take 3-4 generations to 'breed' that out of the culture of China. So numerically they produce a LOT of great engineers; but in actuality they produce very few innovators.
People who habitually decry our supposed lack of "human rights" or "freedoms" simply are ignorant of the truth. Get out and travel, live in other countries, and learn what we really have in the US.
How you got modded insightful I'll never know... Fear and Loathing in the US...
Just an interesting little aside... If you took everyone in the world - all 6.5 billion of us, and put us on the land in Texas, we'd be less dense than New York City.
There really IS a lot of land out there...
Where's my royalty? I just patented fire...
Oh, and dur dur? You can't patent language. That's copyright. And you can't copyright Swedish...
Well, if you do an April's Fool Joke on April Fool's Day it's not quite as powerful, duh! Gotta do them on different days... April 2nd, August 16th, November 15th, you know day's nobody EXPECTS the joke!
Seriously, man, readjust your tinfoil hat, it's letting sanity sink in!
Clearly your strobe light isn't strong enough... I suggest you upgrade a bit...
Maybe it's mah slow US brain or sumpthin but when I sees 80% of a horse in a barn I figger the horse is mainly IN the barn, not out... Oh well, guess it's time to go plow the back 40...
Deployment of high speed communications is an sticky issue; in the US we have lots of different controling/overlapping governments (city, county, sometimes regional, State, and Federal) all of whom have input on what is rolled out and how.
We also have a strong history of property rights, making establishment of new rights-of-way for utilities quite difficult and expensive.
And I'll say it again, it's a big country! It's not uncommon to have 100-200 km between towns here in the Western US. With a significant portion of our population in suburban and rural areas, it becomes extremely expensive to deploy the "last mile" as often talked about. It would have to be heavily subsidized to make it affordable to extend broadband to every person in the US; I'd rather just leave it at satellite - even if it is slower - and be done with it.
As far as NY goes, and the US roll-out in general, yeah it's not quite as fast as available in many other countries. It was also mainly deployed 20+ years ago, and needs a pretty significant retrofit overall. Most of the utilities in the Eastern US were pretty much completed by the mid 20th century; add-ons have come, but the basics - including rights-of-way - were done 50 years ago. With only so many infrastructure dollars, many cities are choosing to focus on water, power, and sewer, and leave it to the telecoms to decide to upgrade - when it becomes affordable to do so.