Pangloss

I disagree, in fact I think Aardvark's post is an acceptable analysis of your position, and your post is an attack on him personally. And I've acted accordingly. Further digression will not be tolerated.

The most important thing to remember when listening to any national leader speak is that they are speaking first and foremost to their own constituency. It doesn't matter what the venue is, or the subject, or even the audience (because if it's a problem for his constituency then it will get back to them). You do hear differences depending on the venue, but for the most part if you keep this simple rule of thumb in mind then it can greatly improve your understanding of what it is that they're saying. In some cases this can be so extreme that you just have no idea what they're talking about. In the case of Ahmadinejad I'm not sure if it makes all that much difference, but I've been assuming for a while now that at least one of the reasons for his strange behavior involves the internal politics of Iran, and aspects of that which I'm just not adequately familiar with.

The MAN! (YT help me out here!) (Sorry for the digression.)

Yeah they do seem to firmly believe that they're a news organization. That aspect of the site is kinda sad, IMO.

(Yeah that was always a problem with Trek. Actually I may start a separate thread on "the politics of Star Trek" (and perhaps other entertainments) -- that could be interesting.) Anyway, that's a well-put expression of what I was saying, about how it's easy to support moral positions when your resources are free. Often in entertainment that's played out in only the most extreme way -- people in desperate situations throwing morality away -- but I think there's a much more subtle effect on society over time.

- You spend so much time online that even your avatar acquires bags under the eyes (What's up with that, IMM?!)

Sure, but "Jew" != "Israli", until the Israeli government says so. Severian and Sisyphus have a point.

Sure sure, they tried all that stuff. Believe me, you're preaching to the choir here, you're just making the mistake of underestimating the American legal machine and its ability to manipulate the media. The moment that Jane Doe, a single mom with three children in public school and a $5/hr job at Wal-Mart, decided that she had been disenfranchised, the entire system was doomed.

Aren't they??? You're dashing my worldview here.... Arrrrr! NewsMax is a riot. If you click on the Jokes menu item you get a daily rundown on the monologue of all the major late-night talk show hosts. They're here in South Florida and I did some computer work for them a few years back, before they were very well known. Partisan ideologues to the core, but very funny guys.

Exactly! Heck, that even preserves Jefferson's principle of a democracy needing to have the ability to overturn itself when necessary. It seems unlikely that our overstressed military would be able to do much against the combined might of 350 million musketeers. (grin)

It's not my claim, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. My personal opinion is that waterboarding is too far. What I also find objectionable, though, is premature condemnation. The sources you posted are typical in that they are simply more opinions, just like yours and mine. I think John McCain is also a good source along those lines. But the point that waterboarding may have worked in this case should not be ignored. Put another way, if you feel that torture is "always a mistake", and refuse to define what that means, then what's the point of having a discussion at all? If you're going to preach and show no interest in listening, that's not a debate. What's more interesting to me would be to hash out specifics. Determine what interrogative methods are both (a) effective, and (b) acceptable to society. THAT is the debate. Which, by the way, is exactly what the Senate and the White House are doing this week. This is one of those rare times when government is doing something that our open debate is not doing -- actually addressing a real-world solution. The president tried to exert his will over the torture issue, and he failed -- the Judicial branch stopped him, and now his own party stands in his way. Now he's forced to hammer out a compromise. This is exactly how government is SUPPOSED to work, debating the issue and coming up with a compromise that moves us forward. I think it's far more interesting than listening to extremists on either side berate us mercilessly for not adhering to their personal preferences.

Douglas Adams had an amusing solution to this called "bistro math".

By the way, I'm a big fan of Star Trek, and that "world" does have a lot of appeal to me, even though the "Federation" society would probably be viewed at as socialistic by today's standards. But I've always thought it interesting that while Starfleet captains and commanders run around telling everyone who will listen that their society is more enlightened than that of the 20th century, the truth is that their society is that way because of a dependence on replicators and warp drive. Technology solved their problems, not an evolved sense of morality. And the most interesting race in the Trek universe is the money-loving Ferengi, who started out (while Roddenberry was still alive) as a mindless bunch of hooligans obsessed with wealth, but over time (after Roddenberry died) developed into an intelligent, motivated, and ethically advanced race. Go figure.

Because he promised to say really bad things about George Bush, of course.

It's true, I'm a big believer in "safety nets", for example. It's just (as Bascule indicated) that I draw the line at things like "a living wage" or any kind of putting people artificially on the same economic level, ignoring their actual contribution. In my view that won't help business to flourish, it'd just rob people of incentive. There's a reason so many Katrina "victims" are still in taxpayer-funded housing in an economy with under 4% unemployment. But that having been said, I don't fail to see the value in Bascule's position, at least in terms of framing the debate and pointing the way towards compromise and progression. Just as there's a reason we still have faux victims, there's also a reason why we have so few people on public assistance and such great wealth today, and the "helping hand" is a valid part of that reason.

Unlikely. Iran has a tremendous reserve and an existing 4-million-barrel-per-day export business. They don't need it. Nor do I think it's really necessary for Shiites to control Iraq in order for it to side with Iran (the Iran-Venezuela cadre) in OPEC.

And today is the day! Arrr!

I could explain but this does not interest other readers.

You'll be missed, Jim. I hope you change your mind.

Last few times I've voted I've had to provide picture ID. I don't remember ever doing that before the 2000 election, though. Perhaps it's just a Florida thing?

I think declaring it to be barbaric dodges the issue, though. These people aren't going to be persuaded by normal means -- bear in mind here that in this case waterboarding actually produced the desired result. We're told that he gave up information that he was not giving up by normal interrogation means, and it lead to the arrest of terrorists and the interrupting of multiple plots. If all of that is true (let's assume it for the moment), then we have to determine what methods are acceptable and what methods are not. That determination should take into consideration more than just the barbarity of the acts themselves. It should also consider the world situation and the problems that we're dealing with as a society. As I've said before, I'm opposed to torture, and waterboarding sounds like torture to me. But it's easy to dismiss something as barbaric when we're sitting here at our computers comfortably isolated from this war. We should consider the full, big picture.

You're not the only one, but I can try to give you some answers that are typically discussed. How valid these answers are is somewhat up to the reader. The issue mainly came up as a result of the 2000 Presidential election fiasco. A number of issues were raised with the paper ballot system that was used, especially in Florida. The system basically involved a punch-card system called the "butterfly ballot". I used this system for many years, and basically what it involved was a small, loosely-bound booklet with a set of holes running down either side of the spine. As you flipped the pages the holes would represent entries on the paper (actually plastic-coated) pages to either side of the holes. You'd take a small metallic puncher (kinda like a pencil that's been sharpened so many times there's only a stub left, attached to a chain so nobody walks off with it) and punch the hole that represents the person you want to vote for on that page. The punch card slid into the system from the top, aligning with the holes. The problems with this system basically all revolved around "user idiocy" -- not that every user was an idiot, exactly, sometimes it was just honest mistakes I'm sure, but since you don't know when you've made a mistake (no verification -- there's no identity information on the card, you're handed a card off the top of a generic stack and you drop it into a box when you're done) there's no way to know exactly what caused the errors. The errors came down into two main areas: - "Hanging chads" -- cases where people misaligned the punch cards just a hair, causing the hole to appear but a stub of paper to be left behind, which could subsequently tear into another "hole" area on the ballot due to shuffling during transportation - "Dimpled chads" -- cases where the puncher didn't go all the way through the paper (I'm not sure if they ever figured out exactly why, because no human being can be THAT weak, but it probably had something to do with the plastic binding around the hole in the booklet) In addition, there were accusations over the years that the system explicitly disenfranchised certain groups, such as seniors, disabled people, etc. Various things were tried (like accomodations for the disabled) but the accusations always persisted and never really went away.

A sneaky shark made me move this to General.

Don't forget, if you run across any old IBM PC chips, NASA may want to buy them from you for use in the space shuttle.