bascule

That'd be a composition fallacy, but thanks for playing. That doesn't change the fact that Saudi Arabia is recognized by many, including Bush's undersecretary of the Treasury as the foremost terror state, or at the very least one in which its leadership is more than willing to turn a blind eye to Al Qaeda and terrorism. Like the Saudis? Not following your argument, sorry. Saudi Arabia harbors terrorists. Saudi Arabia harbors Al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia is home to the radical Wahhibist movement which is the mainstay of militant Islamicists. Or... the Saudi royal family has their fingers in everyone's pies. But you'll just claim that's a myth Michael Moore invented.

Yeah, got me... HIGGS BOSONS FROM THE FUTURE ARE INFLUENCING THE PROBABILITIES!

Iran is more of a failed state than Saudi Arabia? Last I checked all those 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. But the real war on terror is in Iraq and Iran, right? I mean, Saudi Arabia isn't part of the Axis of Evil...

I'd really love to see an open source video codec (preferably Dirac) bundled with Mozilla by default. What'd really be nice is if the W3C made it an official standard. Then just add a <video src="..." width="640" height="480" /> tag.

How about the whole "clear cut 'miracle' by having the effect make the drawn card be the one closing LHC" angle this paper is pushing?

It had a message: McCain is an asshole.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.2991 WTF?

Never, especially in the case of WMDs. So? I guess that makes Obama more conservative than me *guffaw*

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/world/middleeast/06surplus.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin Now if only America had that... but unfortunately Iraq for us means bigger budget deficits... Maybe they should pay us to be there! Oh right, they want us out.

Iraq is a terrible mistake that we can hopefully learn a number of lessons from, the first and foremost of which should be that the US shouldn't engage in preemptive warfare, even in the face of allegations of WMDs, because there are dire consequences for being wrong as well which we shouldn't simply ignore out of fear.

Okay, perhaps I was being too subtle: Bush is the source of a lot of the gridlock. I guess you want to get all flippant about making a "partisan" point, however neither Bush nor neoconservativism are representative of the Republican party. Unfortunately, there are many Republicans who may disagree with Bush but aren't willing to vote for a veto override. That's some real "partisan" politics for ya.

What do you make of Vincent Bugliosi's book? Is that just more partisan rhetoric to you? I think having a President such that you don't have to worry about having enough votes for a veto override, especially mustering a 2/3 majority in a Senate that's split 50/50, will help clear up a lot of that gridlock.

I don't know about you, but I'm pissed off at Congress because they aren't doing anything about the criminals in the White House, at the very least ending the war they started. If anything, the currently elected Congress did effectively have a mandate that they failed to follow through on. Perhaps time heals all wounds and a new administration will end the political gridlock.

And you've gone from that innuendo to Obama: "All of my opponents are racists"

Typically they don't... I don't know how you would infer from Obama's statements that he was calling all of his opponents racists.

Umm, Google found the answer pretty quickly. Teach a man to fish... http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/23/news/economy/oil_drilling/index.htm?cnn=yes But:

I'm more concerned this is just a land grab. They already control huge supplies of untapped oil. They just want more. That said, I don't think it's too bad to give it to them in exchange for losing federal tax credits is too bad of a compromise.

It's easy to criticize the dialogue surrounding the election as substance-free and lacking merit, but this takes the cake: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121755336096303089.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today What happened to the Wall Street Journal? (oh right, Rupert Murdoch purchased them)

Hillary as VP is anything but my dream ticket, and I think it's a ticket that would be more likely to alienate moderate voters who view Hillary as something of a harpy. That said, I hope it's not Tim "LIEBERMAN 4 PREZ" Kaine... although he might appeal more to moderates than some of the alternatives.

I found this amusing: Obama doesn't understand the economy? What about the giant blunder of clearly implying that 401(k) funds are subject to capital gains taxes? That's simply not the case: Those retirement funds are taxed as income when they are drawn down. McCain sure likes to point out that Obama doesn't know about thing X while demonstrating ignorance about thing X, doesn't he?

Cargo cult voting?

Yeah, the Laffer curve. I think the Neo-Laffer curve is a more accurate depiction:

You think failing to report something is as bad as selectively editing an interview?

McCain has been cavorting about telling everyone how he got the Surge right and Obama got it wrong. It's practically the front plank in his platform. And, in the end, he credits the surge for an event which occurred before his vote. How much was he really paying attention when he voted? Obama on the other hand is being hounded by the press "SURGE! SURGE! SURGE!" Perhaps McCain had a little something to do with that. And when McCain screws up talking about the surge, CBS edits it out...

This from the Washington Post: McCain is calling for across the board tax cuts with an emphasis on decreasing taxes for the rich. Obama wants tax cuts for 99% of Americans and a sharp increase for the richest 1%. I guess it's clear: Democrats like progressive taxation, and Republicans want the tax structure to be flatter. My question: how does McCain plan on addressing the budget deficit, which is presently the worst in history and quickly driving us towards breaking $10,000,000,000,000 in debt? Obama's plan certainly seems fine to me. But I guess I'm just a hippie liberal who doesn't mind a soak-the-rich approach to taxation.