Are we arguing philosophy or practice? In practice, any government will go against its principles, especially those without outward accountability (like a totalitarian regime). But fascism, as a political philosophy, upholds the rule of law, and that was the point I was trying to make. Saying that anyone non-fascist wants the President to remain within the confines of the law is ridiculous and an abuse of the term.

Ugh, no. That's not it, either. At the risk of being misinterpreted as defending fascism, let me just say this: the ONLY governments that ignore the rule of law are tyrannies. Julius Caesar's rise to power was illegal; Auschwitz, terrible though it was, was not. Fascism actually highly values the rule of law. The strict militarism, the demands for obedience, and extreme nationalism philosophically cannot allow for legal malleability, even at the top. Petty monarchs of ages past and dictators of today break their own laws with regularity, but such countries are no more fascist than someplace like Kyrgyzstan is democratic.

Except that then you get people like you saying it's a terrible thing, thereby rendering any argument resulting from the advice, whether it's valid or invalid, ineffective, dismissed as mere propaganda. The comments in this thread show that.

Yes? Strategic communications is something anybody that deals with media engages in. Coverups? Those are bad. Getting a positive story out? Not bad. If all anyone hears about is death, but not the reasons why, of course people will turn against whatever is causing the death. There is a complete story and Red Cell seems to simply be offering advice to governments on how to present the positive spin; the negative spin didn't need any more help.

Humbug. My complicated interests include philosophy, astronomy, and politics. My simple interests include mashing a keyboard sequentially to make a little man move on a screen (WoW), beer (a properly aged Gulden Draak is delicious), Canadian music and travel.

Non-nerds tend to be interested in complicated things, too: politics, guns, cars, and sports (yes, it's complicated). The difference between them is the esoteric nature of the interests. Not esoteric? Normal. Esoteric? Nerd. To say otherwise is to live with a sense of superiority to which you are not due, at least not for those reasons.

To list the problems: wrong "your" (should be "you're"), beginning a sentence with "but", misspelling "Slashdot[t]ers", change of number (either singular "Slashdot[t]ers/Geeks" or plural "yourself"), and comma splice at the end. As well, I don't believe "grammar" is a proper noun, but I'll overlook that and "Geek" in deference to style.

It's a saying that means, as was said above, "to detain someone in conversation against their wishes". It carries the imagery of forcing someone into a space the size of a buttonhole so you can have your conversational way with them, no butts required.

Props! And shooting in non-script order.

Wait, what? "If this becomes cheap enough for car travel..." What Londoner would want to drive a car around Beijing? Or Delhi? Still, I'd love to see Eurasia become a unified economic powerhouse! An analogous situation in the US would probably be if it decides to invest in North America. I can see the headlines now: "Washington bails out Mexican railway industry! Senators cry foul!"

First, it was Kay Bailey Hutchison (no "n" in Hutchison). Second, the bill can be found here, on THOMAS. Although the text of the bill isn't up yet, the introducing language is up. It's bill S. 3068, if anyone cares.

Third, this is not a good idea. If there was ever a time to grow our spaceflight industry it's now, at the inflection point. Saying that it will lose us space is just silly: who do they think we will contract with after Soyuz? Arianne? This is exactly how you win space, by spurring private sector investment in space transportation for its own purposes. Rocketry is mature enough for the start-ups, so get NASA to do things others cannot: major spaceflight research. Look at what Bigelow is doing with inflatable modules and is planning on doing going forward. If we can get such major tech in the hands of industry and provide a guaranteed market, I think we're well on our way to owning spaceflight.

Well, a 1967 VW Beetle weighs 840kg, or 0.84 tons. 6*10^8*0.84 = 714,285,714.3 VW Beetles.

You're right: the government doing its twin jobs of saving taxpayer money while implementing public programs and protecting the populace from hucksters is pretty great!

I believe Delta and Atlas were made to government order. Falcon, however, was not.

It's a poll. So, the women actually do know what they want; they just won't admit it to anyone except a pollster.

I will admit, I don't really know what you're talking about. First, you trust the Sudanese Copenhagen ambassador to speak with a level, measured tone, something nobody in Sudanese officialdom is capable of doing. He is to speak without hyperbole regarding the possibility of trimming the funding to the 77 governments it represents. In addition, it's an oil-dependent state so would have a vested interest in keeping the energy status quo. He is correct that cutting foreign aid will bring about hardships (although he does it in a profoundly stupid way), but those that trust that climate change is real believe that climatic shifts will be significantly worse for the developing world that a proposed reduction in aid. Besides, the vast majority of consumers were not represented in the G77 anyway, residing instead in the G20 countries that provide the aid he doesn't want cut.

I also have no idea who Phil is, nor do I particularly care about any specific scientist or lab. What I do care about is that the overwhelming majority of climatologists and planetologists believe that human-made GHGs are having a significant effect on the climate. I trust that.

$1.5 quadrillion? Where does that number come from? And who would be owed the money, anyway? Even if it is a legit number, no serious scheme I have heard of says we will go from present emmission levels to zero immediately. Indeed, no scheme I've heard of says we'll ever go to zero emmissions.

Regarding global cooling, there was actually no real scientific consensus that this was the case, as there is with climate change now. It's a false comparison, and digging into the research on both will show that.