This. Here's a story of two Canadian writers who were forced to spend thousands on defending themselves for engaging in politically incorrect Badthink:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_complaints_against...
1,824 karma · joined May 8, 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_complaints_against...
Except that most of the Entitled Class, from academia to journalists to Hollywood, has made an minor industry out of supporting totalitarian apologists such as yourself. A prominent example: the New York Times has refused to return the Pulitzer awarded to its pro-Stalinist reporter Walter Duranty, who lied so thoroughly about the Ukranian famine of the 1930's.
Sometimes this apologizing is done directly (as above and as with the fawning support for the late Stalinist historian Eric Hobsbawm), but more often through moral equivalence arguments such as yours.
My wife barely survived the Great Leap Forward. She spent years of her childhood hungry, only to come to this country and read people like you. Unlike you, she's very clear on the difference between Chinese Socialism and America's (semi-)free system.
To the best of my knowledge the Iron Dome success rate is lower. Patriot missiles in the first gulf war sucked, and there is no solid evidence that even a single one hit its target. During the invasion of Iraq it was a completely different story: only one Patriot missed its target (mostly Chinese-made Silkworm missiles) and hit a Kuwaiti shopping center.
Mao's Chinese Communism
Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party
Stalin's Soviet Bolshevism
Saddam Hussein's Arab Baath Socialist Party (Iraq edition)
Bashir Assad's Arab Baath Socialist Party (Syria edition)
Slobodan Milosovic's Serbian Socialist Party
Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge
Benito Mussolini: Member of Parliament for the Italian Socialist Party at age 24.
The Ayatollah Khomenei's Islamic Socialism (as he called it)
Oh, spare me. Barack Obama has explicitly targeted, and killed, American citizens in drone attacks, something even Bush never did. This is public knowledge. I count myself a hawk in matters of Islamic terrorism, but I am also a libertarian and this is beyond the pale. There has to be a bright line in these killings, and American citizens must never be targeted for execution by some politician just because they think they should be dead. This is why we have courts and due process. Suddenly however, all the people who were so deeply, deeply, concerned about waterboarding have been silent about US citizens being eliminated on presidential orders.
As for your claim, evidence? He did no such thing, because he knew that as soon as the prisoners were released most would go right back to killing again (or do you think that they were mostly innocent?), as indeed several who were released already have. Even his Mainstream Media toadies wouldn't be able to cover that up.
Instead we have seen a massive gunrunning operation intended to give weapons to Mexican drug cartels, conducted by Eric Holder, Obama's chief law enforcement officer, that has resulted in the murder of four innocent Americans and who knows how many Mexicans. The legal term for this is "accessory to murder". Holder has perjured himself before Congress on this and Obama and his media has done nothing but support him. What is your stand on that?
I don't know any Americans who are opposed to immigration. I know lots of them who are opposed to illegal immigration. Interestingly, the people I know most ferociously opposed to the illegals are themselves immigrants, three from China, one from India, and one from France.
And racism has nothing to do with it. They just hate the fact that they came here legally, went thru a lot of trouble to do so, add a lot of value to this country, and then see others who drain the welfare system, etc., get a free pass because they can be expected to vote the "correct" way when they become citizens.
My wife is from China and there's never a week that goes by that she doesn't tell me how wonderful America is. I've lived overseas enough to get a sense of why she says that, but it's still interesting to see the U.S. through her eyes at times.
Actually, trade means a joined interest in making an exchange, since if both sides didn't see the exchange as in their own best interest they wouldn't be making the trade. Moreover, trading relationships are not usually based on one-off trades. Which means that you'll want to trade again. Which means that getting into a war with the other party would be a bad idea.
All this reminds me of a quote by the late philosopher Robert Nozick, who defined "Marxist exploitation" as "the exploitation, by Marxists, of people's ignorance of economics."
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/201...
One of the things I'll never forget is the trainer telling us one day, "We're not in the movie exhibition industry. We're in the snack concession industry. We just use movies to get the patrons in the door."
The reason is that, in the movie industry, the Hollywood studios have almost all the power. When the original Batman came out and lines were around the block, the company actually lost money on ticket sales (after theater costs). That's because Batman cost the theaters 90% of the gross ticket sales.
If the theaters were really making big profits the companies would have margins -- and stock prices -- akin to Apple's. They don't. Check the stock listings: they have a marginal business.
"dave winer" jerk --> 75,700 "dave winer" ass --> 248,000 "dave winer" asshole --> 9,440
For some strange reason, I find myself not interested in reading Dave Winer denouncing others for "bullying", all the while reminding you, sotto voce, of how wonderful Dave Winer is.
Only six months before I met TP I had been using punch cards on the University's mainframe. TP2 was pure shock and awe.
One anecdote: I was focusing for a while on better ways to teach algebra word problems. I put up some examples and not one education grad student, or the professor, could solve even one of them. I'm talking about stuff like "a boat goes 5 miles in an hour against the current and ..." Nada.
"In late 1967, Kaczynski became an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught undergraduate courses in geometry and calculus. He was also noted as the youngest professor ever hired by the university. This position proved short-lived, as Kaczynski received numerous complaints and low ratings from the undergraduates he taught. Many students noted that he seemed quite uncomfortable in a teaching environment, often stuttering and mumbling during lectures, becoming excessively nervous in front of a class, and ignoring students during designated office hours. Without explanation, he resigned from his position in 1969, at age 26. The chairman of the mathematics department, J. W. Addison, called this a "sudden and unexpected" resignation,[18] while vice chairman Calvin Moore said that given Kaczynski's "impressive" thesis and record of publications, "He could have advanced up the ranks and been a senior member of the faculty today."
Implication: "very carefully worded to imply" left-wing think tanks are not so paid.
to imply a certain thing which is not actually backed up by facts or independent evidence
3 of the articles 5 paragraphs cite statistics, including links. 0 out of 2 of your paragraphs do.
For example, there may very well be a rise in businesses leaving California, but it could also be the case there's a rise in businesses coming into California, or starting up inside of California, or it may actually be a good thing that they're leaving, or even if it is bad in isolation there are other good things that come from it that are more than worth it.
In other words, you have absolutely no idea what the cause of business decline in CA is, you cite no data to support the claims you make, and then you accuse the author of creating propaganda.
which is not actually backed up by facts or independent evidence, nor does it make an effort to separate correlation from cause. Which is a common hallmark of propaganda.
Yup.
That last sentence may be the most important one for now. Resveratrol has had some interesting health benefit data published, but positive results were correlated to much larger quantities than one could get by just drinking red wine. But if ursolic acid can be cheaply synthesized and proven safe in clinically beneficial quantities, this could be huge. Note that the article focused on muscle wasting and only mentioned in passing that it lowered blood glucose and triglyceride levels and boosted insulin signaling. Talk about burying the lede.
The following are other comments on the post, which I quote without further comment:
1) Palin and her ilk _actively distort reality_ to suit their worldview, and that is _wrong_.... So the writer misses the point. Palin can't admit she was wrong because that would unmask her 'sin,' which is _why_ her 'renfields' (a term I rather like) are up in arms on Wikipedia.
2) A politician's followers are rewriting history to fit what their leader says? How Orwellian.
3) My mum just said "There's no hope, when there's people like [Palin]"
Patrick Leehey of the Paul Revere House said Revere was probably bluffing his British captors, but reluctantly conceded that it could be construed as Revere warning the British.
http://bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view.bg?articleid=1...
This is something of a reprise of the incident when Palin gave a Tea Party speech in front of a banner that read "1773". The Left jumped on it and said she was ignorant for not using a banner that said "1776", showing themselves ignorant of when the Boston Tea Party actually occurred.
All of this is perhaps besides the point though. I don't think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President and I hope she doesn't run. But Obama wasn't elected because he had anything decent qualifications. He's a Chicago political hack who stole Dem ballots from Hillary Clinton in Texas and who (literally) couldn't get a stop sign installed in Chicago. His "qualifications" are that he's black and many on the Left enjoyed the thought of themselves voting for a "person of color", never mind that his ancestors on both sides (especially his father's side) were slaveholders.
You mean like Avatar? Or Redacted? Stop-Loss? Battle For Haditha? Green Zone? Or any of a host of other war movies made by Hollywood in the last 40 years that trash the US military to varying degrees. Go further back in time and you get movies like Casualties of War, Apocalypse Now, etc.
You accuse others of lying in the service of their politics, all the while you engage in that very thing. The term for this is projection.
I simply don't believe your friend's dad was telling the truth. There are plenty of bad cops in the US, but drawing a gun on someone because they were jaywalking? I call bullshit.
He died from colon cancer.
http://www.bookrags.com/highbeam/r-a-fishers-life-and-death-...
Gas isn't expensive today. What's expensive today are almost all commodities. http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/
This is a systemic problem. Any valid explanation of price increases in a commodity, e.g., oil (gas), has to explain why prices are rising almost across the board.
Global commodity price increases are being driven by two main factors. The first is rapidly rising standards of living in the developing world as many nations, especially China and East Asian countries, have freed up their markets. This has caused a dramatic rise in living standards and a huge decrease in the number of people living in poverty. These people are now buying the things that we in developed take for granted, and that is driving the prices of copper for cars and new homes, steel for buildings, oil for transport, corn for livestock feed, etc.
The other systemic factor is massive currency inflation in almost all OECD coountries. When inflation happens in more normal circumstances, an inflating country's money falls in price relative to those of other countries, and it's easy to see which countries are destroying their currency and which aren't. People sell the increasingly worthless currency and buy the strong ones. What we have today is almost all OECD countries inflating their currencies at once in a (failed) effort to boost their economies. This means that anyone who wants to protect their wealth needs to invest in something that will rise at least as fast as inflation. That means commodities.
BTW: If speculators can somehow control prices in a way largely independent of constraints, then why aren't they always doing it? It's not like human beings just started getting greedy last year. And why have, for instance, prices of natural gas fallen thru the floor (hint: greatly increased supply due to drilling breakthroughs)? Where are the all-powerful speculators on that?
No one should ever, EVER, point a gun at someone unless they are prepared to shoot.
No attempt to identify a reasonable set of underlying factors beyond private deleveraging or to consider countervailing factors. E.g., the widely predicted 10 - 20% continued fall in housing prices as larege numbers of delayed foreclosures kick in this coming year, with subsequent loss of consumer confidence.
If you save and invest $40 a day for the next 35 years you can retire comfortably, though you won't normally be rich. Deferral of gratification will conquer a lot in a reasonably free society. That's harder now, as inflation punishes those who save and we're seeing rising prices everywhere except housing prices.