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Here are some references:

From 2009, Obama has four years to save the world.
From 2009, Global Warming is now irreversible
From 2006, the end of the world as we know it
2005, Past the Point of No Return
2004, Damage becoming irreversible
1989, We Have 10 Years.

Personally I think we've missed a huge opportunity to fund fusion research. It wouldn't actually take that much from a global community perspective. If Copenhagen had focused on funding Fusion instead of trying to make transfer payments to 3rd world countries, they could have gotten support and actually accomplished something. It would have been great. Oh well.

It could be that stupid, uneducated, and educated people label political radicals they don't like as anarchists.

It could also be that people have no idea that those scarily labelled anarchists are often troublemakers and/or police opposed to what they claim to be supporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/hack-the-vote.html?_r=1

Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, ''I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''

Also, instead of just saying that it is unsourced, you should attempt to find the source - in this case, I got a match on CNN, Wired, USA Today, LA Times and so on.

It also was sourced to begin with. First follow the "Voting Fiasco, Part 279.236" reference in the same paragraph, scroll to the "deliver the vote" link and click on it to arrive at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm

You're welcome. What the fuck is REPUTABLE? Someone who you have personally dealt with? Someone everyone can trust? No such person exists universally, nice Straw Man.

But anyway, here are a bunch of more reports of this with SOURCES, if you don't think the Wikipedia article is correct. As far as them being REPUTABLE, that's open to opinion. Any random asshole YOU quote from won't be REPUTABLE to me. So there.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/03/diebolds-political-machine

http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/30/technology/election_diebold/

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Diebold_Election_Systems

Your ears must hurt from having your fingers "rammed" in them so hard. You're welcome.

Only governments have the right to use guns

That used to be the case but no longer is.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0910-07.htm

"Privatization" is the primary agenda of the corporate sponsored Tea Party and related movements. The goals are to dismantle the government offices and subcontract those roles to private corporations (on the presumption that government-run organizations are inherently inefficient and waste taxpayer dollars). Multi-national conglomerates already "own" the US Congress through aggressive lobbying, kickbacks for campaign funding, and the promise of highly compensated future roles as consultants, senior executives, or board members for today's politicians, judges, and appointed officials. The mega-corporations are to US government what the cocaine and heroine cartels are to the Mexican government.

To give you an idea, here's a quick summary of the transitions sought or already begun:
WAS - NOW
Regulatory Agencies - Self-regulation

Public Utilities - Same utilities but customers now have to buy through specially qualified "distributors" of the same utility rather than direct

Public Courts - Private Arbitration (many judges today are issuing one-sided pro-business decisions in the hope of landing a better paid position as a private arbitrator at one of the major firms. Arbitration proceedings do not have to follow state or federal rules of procedure, appeals are limited, legal precedant does not apply, there is never any jury of peers, and rulings do not even need to abide by the US Constitution)

Collections Agencies - Sheriffs and Judges (ok, this is a reversal, but not a good one, and one that serves corporate interests and re-institutes debtor's prisons: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jailed-for--280--the-return-of-debtors--prisons.html )

Corrections Facilities - Private Prisons (and much incentive to fill them regardless of guilt or innocence: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal )

CIA - Private contractors (including foreign nationals. No oath of service or duty to uphold the Constitution. Can violate US and international law while not accountable to anyone outside of their employment contract)

US Armed Forces - See above
State Law Enforcement - See above

Public Schools - Vouchers for Private Schools (non-sectarian schools have limited capacity. In a "free market" your kids would likely end up in a fundamentalist religious school). In time the vouchers would go away as they are not a product of the "free market" and make the system unworkable.

Fire Departments - Private Fire Departments http://www.salon.com/2010/10/04/libertarian_fire_department/

The "benefits" of privatization have been debunked for most roles of government http://umaine.edu/ble/files/2011/01/Privatization-BP-08.pdf
But privatization is still pushed as a cure-all in election campaign ads. I could go on, but as I show above, "privatization" eventually eliminates all of your Constitutional rights and protections. Once the corporations OWN the government AND the guns, who is going to help you? I'd rather not give corporations any more rights than they already have, especially since they are now considered "people" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission.

"Argentina was quite prosperous at one time, but the past decade or so has been really hard on them. Their economic problems have caused a significant drop in the standard of living for many of its citizens"

Only since the IMF moved in to help restructure the economy, in other words foist unwanted 'loans` on the country and then bankrupt it.

You're probably referring to this: Rotstayn & Lohmann, Tropical Rainfall Trends and the Indirect Aerosol Effect , AP article from 2002

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/02-0

YOU posted this? This is exactly, if you can read between the lines, everything I ever say that you're constantly bashing, yet you post this. You're such a fat stupid fuck.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/02-0

Real national healthcare (Euro or Canadian style, not Obamacare's gift to the insurance companies) IS real health care. One in four Americans have no health care at all (except for the emergency room).

from https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/27-1 ... He also said this: "[T]he forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty." Ron Paul also occasionally appears at events sponsored by the John Birch Society, the segregationist right-wing organization that is closely aligned with the Christian Reconstructionist wing of the religious right. ... there's much more there to mull over, i.e. the wackjob writings that were printed in the publications he published (Though yes, in a show of unelectability, he admits "I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.... I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.") Libertarians have some great points, kids.. yes, check out Alex Jones' 4-hours-daily radio show because he's great on the 4th & 1st Amendments, but do call in and bring up the fact that he's brainwashed as re climate change. http://xml.infowars.com/Alex.rss

[apologies, pholks.. I hit Submit instead of Preview by accident, and am just figuring out that I can't edit a comment. Here's the handy-dandy, and proofread, HTML...}

college&community&public stations a-plenty-- make sure yours is among them:
https://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/26/cispa_critics_warn_cybersecurity_bill_will

And here are the go-to sites for leadership/updates on the issue:
http://www.eff.org/
http://www.epic.org/ (though, just checking.. not sure why EPIC is lagging on this issue thus far.)
And though I don't like ragging on sd'ers, it's a bit troubling that the site which is heralded as bringing the news is "hothardware".. I guess a peeve of mine is overspecialization. Ever the humble polyglot, I make it a point to check aggregators of alternative news daily:
http://www.alternet.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/

and as re Your Rights specifically, a good podcast is http://www.lawanddisorder.org/
... also, CNet puts together a good "Politics and Law" rss feed: http://news.cnet.com/8300-13578_3-38.xml

AMANDLA!

Back in the Kyoto talks, we were TOLD that if no action was taken, then the point of no return was something like 2007. Well? Based on that "science", nothing we do can help anyway.

We get predictions like that all the time. If there's anything we learned from the climategate emails, it's that a lot of the scientists working on this problem are not working in good faith.

The solution, I think, is to work on things that will help us anyway, even if AGW turns out to not be a problem. For example, improving electric car technology will be good for America, whether AGW is a big ball of hype, or whether it's real. Same with fusion electricity. We can work on those things.

I'm 90% certain this 3000 front companies figure is going to appear in a ton of places now. But where the hell does it come from?

Because S. Eugene Poteat is no longer a CIA agent. He's been out of the CIA for over 10 years. So how does he have access to privileged intel on Chinese intelligence activities? How on earth could he, a man whose intel career ended well before the start of this nonsense, know?

The answer is, by my reckoning, he doesn't. It's just a made up statistic. And there's a pattern behind this guy's statements too: he's long been a proponent of the removal of accountability from the intel services.

"Thirty years ago," he wrote, "the Church and Pike Committees bought into the KGB perception management campaigns to discredit American intelligence and proceeded to limit the activities of the intelligence community ..."

Since the Church and Pike Committee hearings are probably not covered in high school history courses, let me remind younger readers that these were congressional committees convened to investigate egregious excesses by an intelligence community that had come to act with little or no external accountability.

The agency' excesses included assassinations, coups detats, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements, covert action to influence the elections of friends and enemies alike, mind control experiments that sometimes led to murder, and other behaviors that caused lots of reasonable people to question the agency' unlimited freedom to act without transparency or accountability. The excesses were not about how they gathered intelligence so policies could be set. The excesses were about policies devised and executed in a black box.

Poteat is saying that citizens concerned with that unrestrained behavior were deceived by the KGB.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0316-27.htm

There's a certain wing of the US who is pushing the intel agenda. By reproducing the cold war, they get more funding and the unlimited powers they always coveted. S. Eugene Poteat's proper title is 'Intellaine security company employee, and lobbyist for greater surveillance powers without civilian oversight'. Don't buy into their bullshit, unless they show their working.

Thanks for your content free post, here is another inconvenient Apple link for you.

Each time you post, I add another one of those to my collection, and you can rest assured you will be seeing them again. Too bad for you, you have hitched your cart to thug Apple.

1 out ever every 32 Americans is in prison.

Clarification: in prison, on parole, or on probation.

I wonder where the US would fall if you included people who were denied their right to keep breathing by repressive governments in the numbers.

Dead != in prison, which is the specific attribute being discussed. Thus, your quandary is non sequitur.

Saying the US is the worst ever without considering the full range is disingenuous at best.

They never said the US was "the worst," you did. Parent merely pointed out that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, which is a fact; 1 out ever every 32 Americans is in prison.

Now, if you wouldn't mind standing still, we've dispatched the Hyperbole Police to your location.

You're right, it is cold war bullshit. Because the exact same fucking clowns who lied all through the cold war as an excuse to pad military budgets and implement their stone-age social agenda while schoolchildren cowered under their desks in fear of imminent annihilation are still in positions of influence, and have repeated the exact same bullshit in order to continue terrorizing the American people and perpetuating their bizarre right-wing-collectivist ideologies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3defm8SQ9o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEBu2FW7LB8
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0213-28.htm

You do realize that civilians are still dying in Iraq and our armed forces are not there.

Far far fewer now.

. I am an Iraq veteran and I can tell you that in 2005, 99% of all civilian deaths came from terrorists.

Anecdotal claims from a soldier in the conflict are not evidence. Please provide a citation for this "99%" figure. Back in 2004 the Iraqi Health Ministry stated that coalition forces were killing twice as many civilians than the insurgents were: More Iraqi Civilians Killed by US Forces Than By Insurgents, Data Shows.

It's just one component of civil liberties, but the number of whistle-blower prosecutions by the Obama administration seriously disturbs me. Remember, this is the guy that promised a new level of transparency in government.

What happened to “look forward, not backward”?:
http://www.salon.com/2010/04/15/prosecutions_10/

What the Whistleblower Prosecution Says About the Obama DOJ:
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/16-3

Stop the Criminal Prosecution of Whistleblowers!:
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=731&Itemid=81

WikiLeakers and Whistle-Blowers: Obama's Hard Line:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2058340,00.html

Obama Admin: Immunity for Torturers, Prosecution for Torture Whistleblowers:
http://2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com/2012/01/obama-admin-immunity-for-torturers.html

So your ethical code is OK with breaking the legal code whenever you feel like it ? I could see the point when talking about individuals and civil disobedience but anyone who thinks it's OK for corporations to ignore the law should have their head examined. It's enough that corporations as an entity are psychopathic and that some actively recruit psychopaths, let's not give them a license to break the law too.

"American constitution atleast guarantees free speech with virtually no restrictions applied I believe"

That's long gone. As an extreme example, look at how for the last several elections' political conventions all protesters were forced into "free speech zones" out of site of the convention attendees and the press (i.e. you have free speech, but only where nobody can hear you). And the police arrested thousands of people to get them off the streets, for the same reason. Of course, all of those people were then released, because they hadn't broken any laws, but only after the conventions were over and the press was gone.

I'm not saying that the US is the most restrictive country - there are some that are much worse - but the constitutional rights have been heavily cut back in the last decade. Strangely, we had much stronger respect for civil rights when we were fighting the UK, the most powerful empire on the planet, than we do now, fighting a small number of desperate terrorists. George Washington, for example, expressly forbade torturing captured British soldiers, even though the British tortured captured American soldiers.

"In 1776," wrote historian David Hackett Fischer in "Washington's Crossing," "American leaders believed it was not enough to win the war. They also had to win in a way that was consistent with the values of their society and the principles of their cause. One of their greatest achievements was to manage the war in a manner that was true to the expanding humanitarian ideals of the American Revolution."

This commitment to our principles was how we won the war against a much larger, more powerful empire. Everywhere they went, pillaging, torturing and killing, they created more opposition. Or, as one of their soldiers wrong "Wherever our armies have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of barbarity has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate."

Our modern leaders have less foresight. But then, I'm sure that the British in 1776 thought that they were right, too.

Rather than me quote the whole thing, go read it http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1217-30.htm.

Oh okay. Well you can easily google it, but here's one source for you: http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1115-02.htm

If you want to know more, there are lots of stories about it.

On January 10, Swiss-based Manas Petroleum Corporation broke the news. Gustavson Associates LLC's Resource Evaluation identified large prospects of oil and gas reserves in Albania, close to Kosovo. They are in areas called blocks A, B, C, D and E, encompassing about 780,000 acres along the northwest to southeast "trending (geological) fold belt of northwestern Albania."

A Discreet Deal in the Pipeline

In November 1998, Bill Richardson, then US energy secretary, spelt out his policy on the extraction and transport of Caspian oil. "This is about America's energy security," he explained. "It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. "We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."

This is a quote out of
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/25-7

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

        The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act â" the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

        No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

        When I saw this list â" and especially the last agenda item â" the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

You got modded troll, but you made me curious, because I seemed to remember hearing these before, too. Doing a google search of "global warming irreversible YYYY" I came up with these:

From 2009, Obama has 4 years to save the world

From 2009, global warming is now irreversible, study says(also discussed on slashdot)

From 2006, The End of the World As We Know It; THE world has already passed the point of no return on global warming.

From 2005, past the point of no return.

Also from 2005, Global warming irreversible.

From 2004, Damage from warming becoming irreversible.

From 1989, We have a 10 year window to fix the problem.

What do you think of that?

odd I hear crickets.......

You got modded troll, but you made me curious, because I seemed to remember hearing these before, too. Doing a google search of "global warming irreversible YYYY" I came up with these:

From 2009, Obama has 4 years to save the world
From 2009, global warming is now irreversible, study says(also discussed on slashdot)
From 2006, The End of the World As We Know It; THE world has already passed the point of no return on global warming.
From 2005, past the point of no return.
Also from 2005, Global warming irreversible.
From 2004, Damage from warming becoming irreversible.
From 1989, We have a 10 year window to fix the problem.

What do you think of that?

They airdrop them into third-world areas as a "humanitarian" gesture. Only then they call them an "HDR" ("Humanitarian Daily Ration.")

Wrapped in yellow plastic dangerously similar to the yellow plastic around unexploded cluster bomb munitions, approximately the same size/shape too.

Just to confuse the fuck out of the poor people who don't know if they're about to get a meal or their hand blown off...

Not going to happen. Microsoft lobbies heavily now.

Microsoft didn't always seek support in Washington. For years, the software giant prided itself on steering clear of national politics and lobbying. But when their legal troubles started, that attitude quickly changed.

"Microsoft, before their anti-trust case, had almost no presence in Washington," Arizona Sen. John McCain told The Chronicle editorial board earlier this year. "Now, I almost don't know a lobbyist who's not on their payroll."

That was in 2001. After a decade of increasing corporate influence in Washington I doubt we'll ever see antitrust action against Microsoft again.

TL;DR version - this post is chock full of links, from a grab-bag of right-wing, left-wing, and non-partisan sources. If you only have time to read one, read the Cato Institute one. It clearly lays out the economics of nuclear power in toto, unlike all the other links that are merely documentation of individual points.

OK. Now, despite propaganda from pro-nuclear right-wing pundits, there simply is no ban on nuclear power plants in the USA. If there was such a ban, there would have to be some regulation or policy to say so, and there isn't. New reactors are on the way, according to the NRC licensing authorities.

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/col/new-reactor-map.html

You can argue that the Clinton administration's refusal to relicense unsafe plants and active discouragement of subsidies was a de facto ban on new nuclear power sources, and I would tend to agree with that. But that argument only applies to the duration of Clinton's presidency.

http://www.google.com/search?q=bush+new+nuclear+plants

In 2005, as part of the infamous Cheney sellout of national energy policy in closed-door meetings with entrenched corporate powers, the economic landscape for nuclear was completely restructured.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0425-06.htm

The Price-Anderson act, originally a "temporary" 10-year measure to encourage the development of a nuclear power industry, was re-enacted - this time until 2025. Price-Anderson, incidentally, is a direct affront to core Libertarian principles - it caps liability for nuclear operators and forces taxpayers opposed to nuclear power to subsidize preventable failures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

Per-watt subsidies for nuclear power were also enacted, in the form of 1.8-cent per kilowatt-hour tax credits from new reactors during the first 8 years of operation (costing a projected $5.7 billion in revenue losses to the U.S. Treasury through 2025).

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c109:6:./temp/~c109UZ5s3O:e1304068:

This subsidy is necessary in order for nuclear-generated electricity to stay competitive with methane-powered generators, because of the total inability of the nuclear industry to deliver on the "energy too cheap to meter" promises they've been making since 1948.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9740

In the 1980s government audits of nuclear operators determined that many of them were not setting aside decommissioning costs as required by law. The 2005 energy bill retroactively makes this legal, providing strong disincentives to any responsible operator willing to plan for the future. Allowing politically connected players to break lawful contracts with impunity is not only philosophically anti-Libertarian, it's anti-Socialist, too - I'd call it fascism.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c109:6:./temp/~c109UZ5s3O:e1336416:

Occasionally you will hear claims that government over-regulation of the nuclear industry means that licenses and permits are difficult and expensive to maintain. In reality, the industry itself rewrote the rules for licensing application in the 1980s so that permits are cheap, long-lasting and do not require any real commitment. Later policy revisions go even further and reduce the total paperwork by two thirds as well as increasing the speed of rev

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/07/19-11

Free Press is suing Verizon over the exclusion of tethering apps in the market. This has to do with the c-block terms, and could mean much more if it is won.

Nearly every job requires a BS or BA...even if they don't care which subject.

This is just wrong, IMO. IMO college is not trade school (not that there is anything wrong with trade school), but it has been turned into one by this notion that pretty much any job that is not Jiffy Lube or the Quickie Mart requires a college degree. There was some research published recently about gains in knowledge and critical thinking skills, this was the conclusion:

Students majoring in business, education, social work and communications showed the least gains in learning. However, the authors note that their findings don't preclude the possibility that such students "are developing subject-specific or occupationally relevant skills."

In other words, there were learning "subject specific" or occupationally relevant skills", we have a name for a program like this -- trade school.

Students who majored in the traditional liberal arts — including the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences and mathematics — showed significantly greater gains over time than other students in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills.

As a person who isn't American, I just don't understand how the people in the US put up with so much crap from your government and the powers that be who are raping you guys. And then you turn and blame the unions!

Whats with all this hatred for unions?

Has the unions made the average American worker lazy? Not at all. http://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vacation/
Are the American workers creating poor quality products? I haven't seen a single study stating this to be true.
Have the unions forced the wages of the American worker to be unusually high? The facts say no. Actually, the disparity between the CEOs and the average worker in the US has only grown worse.http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0412-10.htm

I hope your insightful post and related predictions are very wrong, but I am hard pressed to find flaws in what you say other than trying to stay hopeful.

Links you might find of interest:

"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

"How Germans Fell for the 'Feel-Good' Fuehrer"
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,347726,00.html

"Voyage from Yesteryear"
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary

My site with lots of alternatives to disaster:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/

On optimism and other things by Howard Zinn:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html

Please make sure you are getting your vitamin D, eating lots of vegetables and fruits, and getting omega-3s to be in the best of health for any tough times to come.

What more do we want? How about a candidate who doesn't throw up a ton of red flags? Source: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/27-1 I could also go into his obsessive desire to return to the "gold standard". The man has correctly diagnosed our financial system as lousy, but it hardly takes a doctor to recognize a patient with a visible outbreak of zombie-plague.

Live off $250K for the rest of my life? Depending on my investment strategy and my forecasted lifespan, I could probably do it. I live cheap, I have almost no debt, and I don't have a family to support.

But that's beside the point. The definition of "winning" that you're using is "never having to work again." If you make $250K for even one year, you can live quite comfortably while stashing away most of it. Do it for a few years in a row, and you can retire. Given the current state of the country, that sounds an awful lot like winning to me.

And it's not as though we're asking a whole lot from the $250K crowd by taking away the Bush tax cuts. If you make $250K on the nose, your taxes aren't increased. If you make $250,001, your taxes go up by a few cents. If you make $260K, your taxes go up by $500. Not enough to substantially change your buying habits or cause any sane, reasonable person to "go Galt."

The Making Work Pay tax break was a new tax break, and therefore increased taxes on nobody.

Yes, people do pay other taxes besides federal income taxes. State taxes, local taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, use fees, payroll taxes, the works. Which is why the whiners who whine that "half of Americans don't pay any taxes" are just being whining whiners who whine whinily.

Please explain to me why it's fair for us to tax capital gains at a lower rate than income.

Thanks for the link and other suggestion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Shark_Hunt

I knew Carter was a farmer and a bit of a nuclear engineer, but I did not know he was a Bob Dylan fan. :-) Although it is an interesting song Carter mentions, a protest song about protest songs, or maybe something more? :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie's_Farm

That is a great video on Carter. He really was, morally, the best we could have hoped for as a president. If Carter had gotten four more years, I wonder what our world would be like, as he made mistakes, but might have learned from them?

Don't know if this is true?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise_conspiracy_theory

But in any case, it is sad that such a morel person, Jimmy Carter, lost his bid for re-election in part for blowback for immoral things done by earlier administrations (the original destruction of a democratic government in Iran).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat

I had renewable energy newspapers from around 1980-1984 and you could see the change from optimism to despair as Reagan came in and made changes. Otherwise, we might have had this sort of 24 hours a day solar-thermal power plant twenty years ago in the USA:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-gemasolar-solar-thermal-power-hours.html

I fear you may be right about gridlock etc., but I can hope you will be wrong. Maybe we will at least see action at a local level?
http://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Power-Localism-David-Morris/dp/0807008753

See, for optimism:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning.
To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because we are talking about exactly the period when human beings became so ingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the street talking to someone halfway around the earth."

In any case, we will see solutions in other countries (including China which is led by a lot of engineers).
http://www.economist.com/node/13496638
"The presence of so many engineer-politicians in China goes hand in hand with a certain way of thinking. An engineerâ(TM)s job, at least in theory, is to ensure things work, that the bridge stays up or the dam holds. The process by which projects get built is usually secondary. That also seems true of Chinese politics, in which government often rides roughshod over critics. Engineers are supposed to focus on the long term; buildings have no merit if they will col

It is well-documented and well-known.

For example, see here: http://www3.jsonline.com/bym/news/jun01/slave26062501.asp

There was even an initiative to mandate "Slave labor free" labeling on chocolate ( http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0801-03.htm ) but guess what has happened?

I realise you are a libertarian, and therefore are arithmetically impaired

- I can add. I can count numbers like these ones: 1853 x 1900 - 350 x 1900. 42.90 x 500000 - 5.50 x 50000. I can figure them out.

you hire someone at some given level of benefits. If you want to change that, you negotiate. If they don't agree, tough luck, you signed the contract.

- really? So those bond holders who got screwed in GM deal, I guess their contract is worthless. As to workers - their contracts get re-negotiated, it's not something out of the ordinary, especially given the history of unions and how they just descend upon normal businesses and all of a sudden an employer is facing a dilemma: should I just close the shop? (some are doing the right thing of-course and do close it.)

Basically, you only have rights as an owner, and by extension, do not really own yourself...

- contracts should absolutely be upheld, and they are upheld until they expire.

Ever heard of contract expiring or do you believe that there is no such thing?

People who really do not own themselves are those, who give up their rights to their individuality and enter the collective.

They have a plan. Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years

"I'm a little less pessimistic reading about others who, faced with the same dire conclusions as mine, choose to get to work to change things."

Glad to hear it. I'm still pessimistic socially though, even as I'm optimistic technologically. But, as Howard Zinn said:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning.
    To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because we are talking about exactly the period when human beings became so ingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the street talking to someone halfway around the earth."

"Sometime, I'll drop you an email telling you about my own little local project inspired by the same goals."

Please do. Rene Dubois said: "Think globally, act locally, plan modestly". The last part is usually left off. So you may well have much more success than I with a little local project with a much better chance of real success.

Thanks for your other comments.

To the one that rated my comment as Troll, don't forget it the moderation isn't the comment system. If you don't agree, you can comment your views.

This is what is happening:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1222-04.htm
>The study's authors say their work is the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken. They found the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the world's total.

Now, if you own a lot, and invest in just stock and bonds, your money growth more rapidly than the world GDP average. So what? So the obvious conclusion is that things will get worst.

With more automation coming, do you think everyone needs to be employed? How come, 85% of resources belong to the 10% wealthiest, which mostly own companies which in turn are run by people with the only goal of increasing shareholder value, and therefore can make more if they (individually) automate more. They aren't accountable for employment.

How is more concentration of wealth going to create employment opportunities for everyone? Also, poor people have more kids than richer ones. Helps with survival and they don't have anything important to legate. This further accelerates the concentration trend.

I have no interest whatsoever in advocating any change, I was just highlighting what can be done to fix the problem that kills capitalism, the same problem why the Monopoly board game is so appealing to play but most of the time leaves a bitter feeling to all losing player, and even the winning party.

The Diebold CEO guaranteed the 2004 election to Bush in Ohio. That's all you need to know about that.

That's because the US makes a big effort not to kill civilians,

While the US doesn't generally engage in atrocities (though there have been instances e.g. in Vietnam) their track record isn't exactly stellar. There's a big effort to keep it out of the US media, I'll grant you that but in the latest Iraq war there were a lot of reports of bombed hospitals and the like available to us not dependent on the US media.

not to plunder and destroy everything but rather protect and rebuild.

That's a joke, it's been true in exactly 1 case: world war 2. Again, in the latest middle eastern wars the "rebuilding effort" seem to be schemes to throw money at corporation friendly to the regime like Halliburton. What is built isn't worth shit, or it only gets half done and is of poor quality, funds go missing (9 billion of Iraqi oil money "missing" at last count), etc. (See for example Scandals, Military, Iraq War, Graft and Fraud

If they shifted to WWII era conquest and occupation you'd see profits - and roughly as much resentment as against the nazis (hello Godwin). The smart weapons are ridiculously expensive compared to just bombing the fuck out of everything. If they stopped giving a shit about protecting civilians and only protected themselves, answered all attacks with massive force, terrified the civilians into cooperating with them rather than Al-Quaeda you'd see costs plummet and profits soar. So it's not that war can't be profitable, just not the way the US is running them now.

The wars are plenty profitable. Not for the US government but for arms dealers, the corrupt contractors that swarm all over the occupied territories and the politicians that retire to cushy jobs on their boards. Follow the money (if it doesn't go "missing" that is.)

Private schools do better because the class clown that disrupts the learning environment is not required to remain in the classroom. Search online for student videos of my science class or other cell phone videos of public classroom teaching. Most of them show the learning environment is a zoo and can be hardly listed as a learning environment.

Schools cut down on special ed and tried to integrate special needs kids back into the classroom. This was followed with no child left behind. This coupled with regulations against effective discipline to maintain classroom order and the aggressive kids without the same rules then can make the rules. This went unchecked for a while which is now followed by anti bully reactions.

It is time to stop applying patch on top of patch and wishing it will work. It's broken and not working. Public school is not a place to advance your learning, feel good about doing well, and becoming well prepared to face the future.

Those who can use private school. Those who can't afford private school home school and use co-op schooling. ( a huge part of my community does co-op )

The main difference in this is the privileged are taught by the successful to succeed in business. The under privileged are taught how to use social services, run a hidden grow operation, or other business to be successful with their peers. They are not afforded the same educational opportunities as they are taught early on that they will not be able to succeed. They are taught instead how to work the system.

I was raised in public school. It was NOTHING like public school today. I too have had to use an alternative to educate my kids. Unfortunately I didn't start early enough so bad habits learned in public schools from their peers is still negatively impacting them. Due to this some are ill prepared to take on secondary education at this time and will not be wasting money on student loans only to fail.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/39911910
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/business/Cramer_Tackles_the_Student_Loans_Crisis_Philadelphia-115674714.html
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/11-2

College if it happens will be pay as you go instead of being part of the next sub prime bubble.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0607-01.htm

The draft report, which exceeds 100 pages, deals with a range of legal issues related to interrogations, offering definitions of the degree of pain or psychological manipulation that could be considered lawful. But at its core is an exceptional argument that because nothing is more important than "obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens," normal strictures on torture might not apply

In addition, the report advised that torture or homicide could be justified as "self-defense," should an official "honestly believe" it was necessary to head off an imminent attack on the U.S. The self-defense doctrine generally has been asserted by individuals fending off assaults, and in 1890, the Supreme Court upheld a U.S. deputy marshal's right to shoot an assailant of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field as involving both self-defense and defense of the nation. Citing Justice Department opinions, the report concluded that "if a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate criminal prohibition," he could be justified "in doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network."

For members of the military, the report suggested that officials could escape torture convictions by arguing that they were following superior orders, since such orders "may be inferred to be lawful" and are "disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate." Examining the "superior orders" defense at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, the Vietnam War prosecution of U.S. Army Lt. William Calley for the My Lai massacre and the current U.N. war-crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the report concluded it could be asserted by "U.S. armed forces personnel engaged in exceptional interrogations except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful."

Ralph Nader Coined it. read the link and note that this was before the current economic issues.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0718-02.htm

"Corporate socialism" -- the privatization of profit and the socialization of risks and misconduct

You and I and everyone bears the effects of the risk of large corporation. Everyone on of us ends up paying. That's the socialism part.

here are some more socialisms:
Revolutionary socialism
State socialism
Libertarian socialists
Utopian socialists
Market socialism

You might want to take some time and deconstruct the words Social, socialist, and socialism. Or, you know keep looking like an idiot.

I mean, what are they going to do to you?

I don't know, like say you are a terrorist and a Unlawful combatant, as such you don't have any rights and put you in to Guatemala Bay prison, torture you there and release you after a few months. If he tries to sue, the Obama administration will pressure the courts to not hear the case and to drop the charges. Oh wait, that was the CIA, o.k. never mind.

They have been doing it for years online. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29040299/ns/us_news-military/ http://www.slate.com/id/2126479/
The next gen would be very direct http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein
The old Office of Strategic Influence:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0219-01.htm

1. Honest question: Iraq, but not Afghanistan, I presume? Or do you include Afghanistan here, because the 9/11 attacks were not official actions of the Afghani government? Let's assume that reducing our involvement to 1 country would cut the cost (projected at $172 billion for this year) in half, so we've saved 90 billion.

2. 2nd engine program for the F35 multinational fighter. Savings: ~ $500 million. (Note, this is not "the entire F35 fighter program" that they don't want - it's simply the funding for an additional engine option for the jet.)

3. Base closures: a big expenditure, certainly - but I suspect even this is not as clear-cut as we might think. We have joint-defense treaty obligations to our allies overseas, and it may actually be more cost-effective to meet them with people stationed abroad than it would be to be constantly shipping men and material by cargo transports. I don't think we can simply say "close every base everywhere in Europe and Asia," both because of those treaty obligations (and the joint-training requirements they create), and because of the simple fact that projection of military power abroad - say to the areas of the Middle East like Afghanistan, where there is a legitimate need to provide air support for missions there are a lot cheaper than buying a bunch of new aircraft carriers or shipping everything from US bases every time we need to do something. (Consider things like humanitarian relief missions, as well - those foreign bases provide a very real staging point for shipping relief supplies.)

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-08.htm (certainly not a "right wing" publication) reports that the Pentagon names the cost-to-replace our foreign bases at 115 billion, with a total cost-to-replace of all facilities at nearly 600 billion. So rough numbers, let's say 1/5 of the facilities budget of the DoD would go to supporting those overseas bases, as well. According to this data, the projected expenditures are 685 billion, including Afghanistan & Iraq - let's assume 510 Billion for our "non-afghan/iraq" budget. Assuming the money is spent proportionally, 20% of that (~102 Billion) could be cut if we closed *every base we currently operate on foreign soil*.

So... we can cut $200 billion or so from the budget, by terminating our involvement in Iraq and closing all our foreign bases. Of course, not every foreign base meets the criteria you set forth - in nations friendly to us, without hostile neighbors, so the number would be still lower - let's ballpark it at 175 billion dollars saved.

Overall, I'll agree, that's a significant sum of money. But the Defense spending is far from the only reason we're in trillions of dollars of debt, either. Cutting defense spending is not a sufficient measure to close our 1+ trillion dollar annual budget deficits - we are living beyond our means, and even if we cut the entire Defense Department tomorrow, we wouldn't close that budget gap.