"If anyone expects President Obama to roll back Bush's illegally-gained dictator powers, they are smoking rope. From Salon's Glenn Greenwald. "

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I have a pretty good idea that it's D: all of the above.

Here's a good book on the earth oil theory:

The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth Of Fossil Fuels

Lol!

Mark links to Truthdig for the "truth" that Blackwater is a rightwing and Christian company.

I don't know why I click on these articles. BB is great for geek/techie stuff but the politicals are just absurd.

"It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials."

Maybe because these are all personal issues the health of which depends largely on personal choices, and doesn't have nearly as much to do with economics as many people may think. Lumping these issues into collective responsibility is all this is about, and it's Marxist.
And please everyone, stop all the blathering about less free time, this is largely a result of women joining the work force in droves. The benefits of which have been a massive increase in productivity among other things, but less quality of life for our kids.

I work in the mental health field. That's how I roooolll.

Moonbat -

Agreed. Though in regards to your last paragraph I think she leaves this up to the reader to determine on their own, I don't really believe that we are to assume anything less than the ideal is truly evil, just varying shades of it. I don't think even Rand was that absolutist.

Takuan you can take any 15-20 items from your lists and apply them to almost everyone you know, regardless of their particular chosen ideology.

"Forty years of space sophistication, and the best we can do for this errant sat is to smash it? As we learned over and over throughout the 20th century: so much easier to destroy than to create."

If you consider the cost of designing, building, launching, and actively maintaining and utilizing a vehicle capable of this type of recovery - in between regularly scheduled shuttle launches anyway - then it's a no brainer, it wouldn't be worth the cost to save even a billion dollar satellite. Considering the current pace of this type of technology, it's probably outdated by now anyway.

Boy I just hate it too when people try to make space exploration seem unnecessary or too expensive. The benefits are huge in terms of economic productivity gains and new inventions produced by this type of frontierism, and we spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars more on health and human services in this country in any given year than we do on the space program.

I just don't buy the solve everybody's poverty problem first before doing anything else argument.

Lol, ok. Socialism is NOT responsibility to the other, responsibility is predicated on freedom to choose who and when to support and what for. Socialism removes freedom from the equation.

It's ok if you don't want to argue, we're not going to agree anyway. Like I said I do anjoy the discussion though.

I enjoyed the discussion, not looking for a fight. Have a good night.

I never got the impression that Rand advocated a lawless society built on selfishness and predation, that's a distortion commonly attributed to her by her detractors. I think, like all ideologues she resorts to the most extreme examples of her sides behavior and the other sides behavior to make the point that much clearer.

It's obvious collectivism is necessary and we all crave and need some form of it to have a civil society. I just happen to think we really don't need so damn much of it. The more you have, the less freedom and sustainability you have because personal responsibility is replaced by a phony "collective" responsibility -*cough* socialism *cough*- and then the whole rotten ass mess falls through the floor and is closely followed by years of war and revolution and the entire cycle begins again.

Kicky,

Do you think Hitler and Stalin ideologically were much different? As far as I can tell, they weren't. They were both near total collectivists on everything.

#17,

I'm not really convinced that serious wingnuts are all that objective when it comes to personal issues, just the economic side of things. Religion is a form of collectivism.
People on the left tend to be collective on economics, individualistic on personal issues.

I think you can safely say that someone from either side can be a "wingnut".

To #14,

Both sides do it, though at least the individualists are rational. I have never read an objectivist screed anywhere near as mind bendingly irrational, emotional, and bigoted and intolerant to all who disagree as almost everything I have ever read written by a communist or socialist. Ask yourself who ships more people to gulags and commits more genocide -- the practitioners of which ideology? Then you have your answer as to who is more howlingly idiotic.

Collectivism is a house of cards built on a shaky foundation, it never lasts because ultimately we are and always will be individuals. It's the default human mode, it's objective, and it works .

"all jobs" should be "most jobs", or at least those that are at companies with more than 10 or 20 employees anyway.

"Seems that if the cop only got a suspension, then the administration is admitting he has a legal right to act like that. I'd be scared to live under either Shari'a law or the laws of the United States!"

Suspended pending the outcome of an investigation. It basically works that way in all jobs anymore if they determine you may have done something pretty bad. Suspension isn't the punishment itself, just what happens during the waiting period.

Your attempt to turn this into some sort of anti-American thing is duly noted, but makes you look uninformed and silly.

to #34:

The answer to your question is everywhere. The availability of every type of food you can ever want has to be seen to be imagined. God Bless America.

"men"?

Monospace is clueless. You have absolutely no idea how much guts and brains it takes to fly one of those things.
Monospace is probably someone who thinks getting up in the morning and going in to work in an office is hard work.

Tell me Mono, have you ever done anything that requires as much courage, smarts, and discipline as it does to fly a supersonic jet aircraft into battle?

Don't answer, there's no point arguing with you pacifist/leftist/narcissists anyway.

"I'm guessing that this doesn't include victims of state sponsored terrorism."

Sure it does, the only terrorists in Jerusalem are the ones armed and paid for by Iran and Syria. Funny how they seem fond of targeting buses and pizzerias -- lot's of young people. Sick.
Oh but wait, they are obviously somebody's "freedom fighters", how could I be so un-progressive, silly me.

"Idiots. Why don't they learn from civilized nations? If you fear some miserable third world collapsing economy is on the brink of developing some technology that will tip the balance: ....blah blah blah"

No need to include the rest, you get the idea.

The same people who say this also say this when it's time to actually do something about these miserable, destitute 3rd world countries...

"But we can't attack them, who are we kidding, they have the world's 3rd largest Army! They're battle hardened from the war with (some other turd world country)."

Not surprisingly, they're also the same people who think GW Bush is a moron one day, and the next they think he is an evil Zionist genius plotting the takeover of the world with the blessing of the"New World Order", whatever the hell that means.

Make up your mind already.

All of this steampunk stuff reminds me of the PC game Thief. Remember the mechanical men that come after you with a little furnace/boiler powering them that you had to shoot with a water arrow to make them shut down?

Steve, I would be up in arms over the crass commercialization itself and higher property taxes. I don't think there are very many Americans, much less those who own homes, who agree with the idea of taxing property (and taxing it at ever higher rates).
I say find another way to fund public schools, and stop the endless taxation on property and anything else the government finds the need to label as a "sin" and tax at ever increasing rates.

Good point 5000. You can buy a decent electric one for about that price too, and I have seen one at Lowe's for less than that.
Building your own seems much more interesting though, especially since it's such a simple device that even a guy like the one from the Home Depot commercial with the plunger stuck to his head could handle.

"There is no money in it. This is why We need a Department of Peace. "

Yes that's exactly what we need, another useless, money gobbling bureaucracy to make our already ridiculously expensive and overly complex central government even more so.
The Department of Peace. Dedicated to having lots and lots of meetings about Peace, and more meetings about pace, and so on and so forth. Wonderful idea.

"One man's freedom fighter, is another man's terrorist"

Except, uh, freedom fighters tend not to blow up buses full of civilians just because they are the wrong religion, and so on and so forth. There is no moral equivalence between those who actually fight for freedom, and those who fight in support of tyranny and oppression.
The only way you can come to this often overused and inaccurate conclusion in the quote above is to fundamentally distort the real definition of freedom.

#11: You're thinking of public corporations. Blackwater is privately held by southern right-wing religious fundamentalists. Think "War on Christmas" types."

Wrong, and uh, wrong again. Wrong on all counts.

"As for Blackwater and mercenaries in general..."
Blackwater and Mercs are not the same thing.

Mercs conduct offensive operations, Blackwater does not fit the objective definition of an army or mercenary outfit at all.

"private sector unregulated Army".

Wow, that was good for a laugh. Blackwater does not conduct offensive operations, and they are far from unregulated. Pr hyprblc BS, nthng nw hr.