This seems to be the new Republican party talking point as I see that George Will is pushing it extensively. If you mean the vote on the final debt ceiling bill which is not just a debt ceiling increase but a pure Republican spending cut bill with no tax revenues to help pay down the debt. So it is not surprising that many voted against it.

And how would these Democrats have made the teabaggers irrelevant? What would their vote have helped to shape a final bill that they strongly disapproved of?

Sorry, wishful thinking is not going to do it. This is not going to happen in my 20 years. I doubt if it will happen in 50 years. There are many problems to be solved in making this trip and this is going to take a concerted effort and a LOT of money and we just don't have the will to do it. This is just not the kind of mission that can be done on the cheap.

No one regrets that more than me but wishing is not going to make it so.

To Apple that is just unfortunate collateral damage. Regrettable, but the enemy must be eliminated. And that is my point.

In essence Apple's updated section 3.3.1 policy would require you to manually retype and reprogram your application unless it was originally written in one of Apple's approved languages. I doubt very few if any of the vendors that required the use of their development tools actually specified how that code got written - even if it was Java. As long as it was in their approved language utilizing their specified APIs. Whatever the target language requirements the code could still be generated from another language - except in the Apple iPhone/iPad world.

Again the target was absolutely Adobe Packager in this case. It will hurt others, but they would never haven enacted this policy without the Packager.

I'm not sure why this "bloatware" argument came up here. The generated code may or may not be more "bloated" than a hand generated program in the approved language. I'm sure many of the existing hand written apps in the App Store are not shining examples of efficient, tightly written code. Any apps generated from ActionScript or another language/platform would require the same approval from Apple before being released into the store.

And Apple will continue its war on Adobe with the slavish approval of the Apple fans.

Please have the guts to say whether you agree or disagree with their policy instead of the constant waffling and weasel words displayed by most of the Apple and Jobs fans here.

This policy disallowing cross-compilers is clearly aimed at one company - Adobe. I have been around computers for a long time and I've never seen such a ridiculous restriction - ever. It is very odd and is clearly and carefully worded in such a way to crush the Adobe Packager, but in such a way that they hope can avoid legal ramifications.

There is absolutely no technical reason for it - even to accomplish Apple's stated goals of having a consistent user experience. A cross compiler can generate native Apple code using documented API's. It still has to meet Apple's approval to get into the App Store which still allows them reject it if it didn't meet their other criteria.

It is clearly anti-competitive - whether it is illegally so would hopefully be explored in an investigation - although I'm not holding my breath.

But it is definitely wrong and I would hope even Apple and Jobs fans would have the courage to at least complain to Apple that attempting to crush their competitors will not be tolerated by their developer community (and I'm definitely not holding my breath for that).

Just to correct your use of the word "empty" to describe the section of the Pentagon that was struck by Flight 77. There were 125 people killed inside the Pentagon in the collision. Not to mention the 54 innocent people on Flight 77 itself.

So I hardly think the word "empty" applies to the Pentagon air strike.