ChrisT
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Posts posted by ChrisT
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well he does speak japanese but a little too young to get his own credit card
I suggested a Sony but he said "Mom, Sony is the Tommy Hilfiger of home electronics."
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conservation is a great idea too. you know...candles, communal showers, bike riding, walking, etc
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amen brother!
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ok so we want one that also takes stills, is very compact, digital video of course and under $500. I'm close to getting the Canon ZR-85 but reviews tell me the video is poor and there's no external mic port. Anyone have any thoughts on this subject? (It's for my son going to Japan this summer)
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we all pay for the war in a million different ways - land use fees, gas taxes, decreased public services (like police, jails) decrepit schools, lack of health insurance of course, etc ...all the ways our government is nickle and diming us to death and decreasing services and slashing budgets all to pay for a war where we had no business being in the first place.
WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam - none of those were cheap either. Spending is of course governed by a production possibilities frontier, and funding a war invokes an opportunity cost. But, doing NOTHING substantive to counter external threats and crises/political realities with global impact also can impose huge costs. Pay now or pay later. Unfortunately, accurately predicting the costs of inaction in advance is not possible, but monday morning quaterbacks abound (usually with a myopic POV).
Sorry but I don't buy it. I would rather that my taxes be used to build a strong domestic culture, improving schools, infrastructure and public programs. F*ck the rest of the world.
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we all pay for the war in a million different ways - land use fees, gas taxes, decreased public services (like police, jails) decrepit schools, lack of health insurance of course, etc ...all the ways our government is nickle and diming us to death and decreasing services and slashing budgets all to pay for a war where we had no business being in the first place.
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thanks Dave!
listening to it right now - I love web radio! (almost as much as Flogging Molly)
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This thread is getting off track onto terrain that has already been covered, ad nauseum on this board. The questions are these: 1) was Newsweeks information correct or not, 2) regardless of whether it was correct or not, did they have a right and/or a duty to publish it.
I think the information WAS correct and that all the backpedaling they have been doing is entirely because of severe government pressure. I believe that the media should bring out the truth. Let the government worry about the consequences. If the truth were always revealed, maybe the government wouldn't do things like start unjustified wars.
good point. I also understand that the reporter, Michael Isikoff, was not prone to throwing facts around:
An article in the current Newsweek said the original report, written by a veteran investigative reporter, Michael Isikoff, and the magazine's national security correspondent, John Barry, relied on a "longtime reliable source" who told Mr. Isikoff that a new report on prisoner abuses at Guantánamo would include a mention of a Koran being flushed down a toilet. The magazine said it showed the original article to a Pentagon official who challenged one aspect of the story but not the report about the desecration of the Koran.
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May 16, 2005
Staying What Course?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Is there any point, now that November's election is behind us, in revisiting the history of the Iraq war? Yes: any path out of the quagmire will be blocked by people who call their opponents weak on national security, and portray themselves as tough guys who will keep America safe. So it's important to understand how the tough guys made America weak.
There has been notably little U.S. coverage of the "Downing Street memo" - actually the minutes of a British prime minister's meeting on July 23, 2002, during which officials reported on talks with the Bush administration about Iraq. But the memo, which was leaked to The Times of London during the British election campaign, confirms what apologists for the war have always denied: the Bush administration cooked up a case for a war it wanted.
Here's a sample: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
(You can read the whole thing at www.downingstreetmemo.com.)
Why did the administration want to invade Iraq, when, as the memo noted, "the case was thin" and Saddam's "W.M.D. capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran"? Iraq was perceived as a soft target; a quick victory there, its domestic political advantages aside, could serve as a demonstration of American military might, one that would shock and awe the world.
But the Iraq war has, instead, demonstrated the limits of American power, and emboldened our potential enemies. Why should Kim Jong Il fear us, when we can't even secure the road from Baghdad to the airport?
At this point, the echoes of Vietnam are unmistakable. Reports from the recent offensive near the Syrian border sound just like those from a 1960's search-and-destroy mission, body count and all. Stories filed by reporters actually with the troops suggest that the insurgents, forewarned, mostly melted away, accepting battle only where and when they chose.
Meanwhile, America's strategic position is steadily deteriorating.
Next year, reports Jane's Defense Industry, the United States will spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. Yet the Pentagon now admits that our military is having severe trouble attracting recruits, and would have difficulty dealing with potential foes - those that, unlike Saddam's Iraq, might pose a real threat.
In other words, the people who got us into Iraq have done exactly what they falsely accused Bill Clinton of doing: they have stripped America of its capacity to respond to real threats.
So what's the plan?
The people who sold us this war continue to insist that success is just around the corner, and that things would be fine if the media would just stop reporting bad news. But the administration has declared victory in Iraq at least four times. January's election, it seems, was yet another turning point that wasn't.
Yet it's very hard to discuss getting out. Even most of those who vehemently opposed the war say that we have to stay on in Iraq now that we're there.
In effect, America has been taken hostage. Nobody wants to take responsibility for the terrible scenes that will surely unfold if we leave (even though terrible scenes are unfolding while we're there). Nobody wants to tell the grieving parents of American soldiers that their children died in vain. And nobody wants to be accused, by an administration always ready to impugn other people's patriotism, of stabbing the troops in the back.
But the American military isn't just bogged down in Iraq; it's deteriorating under the strain. We may already be in real danger: what threats, exactly, can we make against the North Koreans? That John Bolton will yell at them? And every year that the war goes on, our military gets weaker.
So we need to get beyond the clichés - please, no more "pottery barn principles" or "staying the course." I'm not advocating an immediate pullout, but we have to tell the Iraqi government that our stay is time-limited, and that it has to find a way to take care of itself. The point is that something has to give. We either need a much bigger army - which means a draft - or we need to find a way out of Iraq.
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good one liner
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Jim Wilson/NYTimes
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May 10, 2005
Yosemite Drapes Itself in Its Splendid Liquid Veils, and Preens
By DEAN E. MURPHY
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif., May 8 - It poured again on Sunday in the Yosemite Valley, but people were smiling in their ponchos and galoshes. It has been that kind of spring here: dreadful weather and delighted visitors.
With extraordinarily heavy snowfall in the higher elevations, and lots of rain elsewhere, the rivers and waterfalls in the Sierra Nevada are gushing. Hikers must hopscotch around muddy puddles, and much of the park remains closed because of impassible roads, but the Yosemite water show is at its best in years.
"There are places we've stood, where you can look around and see six waterfalls at once," said David Cosio of Watsonville, Calif., getting soaked from head to toe near Yosemite Falls with his wife, Linda, and three young sons. "We've been here before in May, but nothing like this."
Dan Gudgel, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford, Calif., said the unusually wet winter and spring had snapped a six-year dry spell in the Sierra Nevada. Though the dryness was not as severe as in the drought-stricken Northwest and Southwest, the annual precipitation over the period was about 80 percent of the average.
So far this year, Mr. Gudgel said, the Sierra snowpack is about 180 percent of the average, and the snow keeps falling. More than a foot was forecast for parts of the Sierra in the next few days, and some hikers this weekend to Nevada Fall, a popular destination about 2,000 feet above the valley floor, found enough snow from past storms for snowball fights.
"The Sierra has been extremely dry, so this is a welcome respite," Mr. Gudgel said. "I can't underscore that enough."
In nuts-and-bolts calculations, the wet weather means more reliable water supplies for the California farms and cities - the water is piped as far away as San Francisco, 160 miles to the west - that depend on the Sierra snowmelt to fill reservoirs and irrigation ditches. But for those who live and visit here, the benefits are beyond quantification.
Kathy Langley, concierge at the Ahwahnee Hotel and a resident of the park for 23 years, said she had been taking hikes up little-visited trails with great water vistas near places like Indian Creek and Sentinel Fall, one of the park's tallest, at 2,000 feet.
Aside from the abundance of water, Ms. Langley has been struck by the dogwood blossoms, which because of the cool weather have remained on the trees for weeks.
"A lot of our clientele comes every year at this time of the year," Ms. Langley said, "and they can't believe what they're seeing. We haven't even had two 80-degree days in a row yet, so everyone knows there is more to come."
How long it remains relatively cool will determine how long the spectacle lasts, Mr. Gudgel said. A sudden heat wave would melt the snow rapidly, creating a dazzling but brief show and probably some flooding. A slower melt would keep the waterfalls flowing well into the summer but might also keep parts of the park inaccessible to visitors.
For now, only one thing is certain, said Adrienne Freeman, a park ranger, "There's so much water, it's insane."
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Dru - I expected that you would have posted this by now! Your slowing down.
Pablo Picasso
Words and music: Jonathan Richman
Well some people try to pick up girls
And get called assholes
This never happened to Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare and
So Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole
Well the girls would turn the color
Of the avocado when he would drive
Down their street in his El Dorado
He could walk down you street
And girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
Not like you
Alright
Well he was only 5'3"
But girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
Not in New York
Oh well be not schmuck, be not obnoxious,
Be not bellbottom bummer or asshole
Remember the story of Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole
Alright this is it
Some people try to pick up girls
And they get called an asshole
This never happened to Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare and so
Pablo Picasso was never called...
that's from "Repo Man"
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it could be considered flattering that someone took the time and effort to google.
Yeah that .654 seconds is sure a tender sign of commitment and love.
it's the thought that counts - kinda like doing research.
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it could be considered flattering that someone took the time and effort to google.
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the key is selective editing - don't upload anything about yourself that you don't want the world to know about.
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It's interesting how little googling can yield. Not everyone is plastered all over the Internet.
what's worse is when you google someone who isn't famous and all you can find is the famous person with their name... the famous 15 minutes of fame is quickly eing replaced by "15 pages of Google links"
and googling didn't tell me that the fellow worker interested in dating me was already married
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It's interesting how little googling can yield. Not everyone is plastered all over the Internet.
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A warning about "temporary" hair color that's supposed to "wash out" - it doesn't
. I'm permanently red-head betty.
Boycott the U.S. Military
in Spray
Posted
I'm secretly hoping that the re-trial of Lynndie England will implicate some higher ups in the Abu Graib soap opera.