Musharaf's problem was that the military was not fully behind him, he was unpopular, and he was not ruthless enough to maintain power. He was too committed to progressive ideals and upset the Pakistani population with his commitment to the US that his political enemies weren't afraid of him. He did not know how to play the lion and fox dynamic very well. He should have focused his reign of gathering the support of the military, monopolizing the press, and stamping out political opposition.

Musharaf's reign is very similar to King Louis XIX of France. He was too nice and idealistic from the start, and didn't understand power principles very well.

Goes to show how calculating Putin is. He has the Euros by the balls, and the Euros fell for it because their politicians are more concerned about moral politics and short-term economic deals than they are power politics, which Putin is a mastermind of.

The EU needs another Bismarck.

I am going to expand the Atheist population in the US by illustrating the powers of reason to those Christians. Once they discover reason, and how it can enrich their lives, they will never return to Christianity.

Newb,

According to a falsified theory it is. A theory is only good IF it is not disproven from experience. Centralization, however, has been disproven as an efficient means over and over again.

A theory is only good if it's backed by experience. If it's not, it's a bad theory.

As for red tapes, I agree you need some. But you can keep them to a bare minimum. The red tapes we have now are ABSURD. It can easily take years to fire a teacher, even for something as bad as having an inappropriate relationship with a student.

Einstein,

Yeah, I'm not sure I really believe him on that, and I'm still voting for McCain.

The one thing I agree with Obama is his statement that people who earn $150,000 are not rich as other democrats say, but middle class. He also says that he intends to lower their taxes. On the other hand, what he only implies is that he will hit them with higher social security taxes, so maybe they will actually have their taxes go up.

However, Obama says he wants to raise capital gains taxes from 15% to 25%. Personally I think that's retarded in our economy, because that will decrease investment in the US. If anything, capital gains should go down even further.

I also don't like Obama's spending proposals.

Education:
- Due to the teacher's unions and frivolous spending, public education is far more expensive than it needs to be and delivers poor service.
* Obama's plan of increasing education spending only adds fuel to the fire.
* The solution to education is to start by illegalizing the teacher's unions and send a message that there will be no further spending on education until their frivolous spending (sports teams that need to be sustained with tax dollars and tuition, athletes receiving obscene athletic scholarships, music and art classes etc) is eliminated.

Health Care:
- The system is all ready too centralized, inefficient, and poor in service
* Obama plans to have universal health care. This will make the all ready existing problems even more inefficient. My justification is the law of administration that the more centralized things are, the less efficient and more expensive they are.
* The solution to Health Care is to return to the good old days before health care reform in the 1980s. Yeah there was more paper work, but there weren't obscene costs (without health insurance, and with is still more expensive than pre-reform levels) to go to the doctor, and service was better.

Social Security:
- SS is unsustainable because of lower birth rates and longer life expectancies.
* Obama's plan of increasing SS spending also adds fuel to the fire.
* The solution to SS is to progressively move to 401ks. 401ks don't cost the state anything (except tax exemptions) and they invest in the economy.

I could go on, but that's enough for now.

> TheYell wrote:

> Right.  I, myself, am not a commodity to be spent.  "What profit it a man to gain the whole world, and lose his soul?"  or do something I don't want to, merely because somebody pays me?>>

Of course you're a commodity Yell. Your employer pays for your labor, and your friends pay for the connection and labor you give them. See what happens when you don't reciprocate - I guarantee they won't be your friends for long.

And even if you have a soul, it's still a commodity. You want to go to heaven, so you labor to give your soul the value to merit entrance to heaven.

> TheYell wrote:

> You think so? Then you see how a different approach to virginity arises. Me, you couldn't pay me to go to a death metal concert.>>

Different approach?

Ofc Yell, because you have no demand for going to a death metal concert. You despise it so much that it would take an obscene amount of money to get you to go.

Gladiator,

Well I get two different answers from the both of them. My mom has a very traditional, love-centric view. By contrast, my sister has been sexually active her entire life and doesn't care. For her, sex is a recreational activity to enjoy with one partner for a while until she gets bored of them. My view is most similar to my sister's, based on experience. I think our attitudes toward sex depend much on how we are socialized.

Humans seem to be able to develop associations where a particular configuration of sense data triggers an emotion. It also seems that these associations can be conditioned by the social environment. I think such a condition exists in Christians and sex, where the way they are raised develops this association. I think so because some people, and even societies, have a very different attitude towards sex. For example, in a primitive society, their women have more than one husband. The husbands also participate in raising those children like a father would, many of which aren't even theirs. Then there is an Indian society, where literally sex is a "yoga" and a random sexual encounter is considered a form of spiritual healing. This variation of sexual attitudes on the individual and societal level is sufficient proof to me that the Christian attitude towards sexuality is authored by them, and made in to a reality for their members only due to social conditioning.

DPS,

Well if that is the case, a woman's genitals are still valuable despite being used a lot, considering how the fair market value for a call girl is $200.

The Clinton family is comprised of power hungry, ruthless people. I still respect them though, they are sly Machiavellians and make great actors. Obama on the other hand, is just some malleable noob of Nacy Pelosi, Howard Dean, and some factions of the Kennedy family. Pelosi's ultra left has at least temporarily deposed the Clintons from power, and I'm looking forward to their ruthless retaliation . This is going to be entertainment.

Personally I think the Clintons will recover. I don't think Pelosi is as cunning or has the willingness to be ruthless enough to go as low as Hillary or Bill. Few are able to outmaneuver them. Her victory is only a temporary one, and the Clinton retaliation will be just not so nice.

As for the Clinton or Kennedy curse... lets just say that no one likes it when one family has too much power. In America, the powerful attract many enemies.

> Alan Statham wrote:

> an empirical approach is not valid for human-sciences, as you will see. The truth is always tainted by your vision on the subject. Positivism has been discredited for about 100 years now, and you won't be able to get it back. You even sound like Hitler in his "Mein Kampf"....
I never said I was a positivist. I am actually a skeptic, but I can illustrate that the empirical method has a much higher probability of leading to a desired outcome than any other one. You can consider my epistemological beliefs to be close to Hume's. Oh, and epistemological skepticism != relativism.

As for positivism, I think you're off by at least 50 years. Positivism was pretty popular after WW2, thanks to inspiration by Bertrand Russell.

As for sounding like Hitler... for me national preservation justifies an imposing attitude.

Cicero said that

What is Russia trying to do? They are trying to overthrow a democratically elected president, lol.