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You see the miles and miles of orange boom laid parallel to the coast? That's wrong. It's all show, and no utility.

Here's an excellent explanation of how it's supposed to be done:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/5/11/865387/-Fishgrease:-DKos-Booming-School

I'm assuming the video is based on this article, which was linked to further down in the comments, but not, as far as I could see, in the video itself.

Thanks for posting that. I've been following his diaries on there for a while now and it's really helped me figure out the situation beyond what's in the news.

Booms work when done properly.

For an absolutely wonderful article on fucking proper fucking booming by an industry professional, please see this article. It is one of the most educational (and salty!) pieces I have read on this disaster.

There are multiple accounts saying that BP cut corners when it came to oil rig safety. If this is the case then they need to be held criminally as well as financially accountable for their "accident". If this bankrupts them, so be it.

http://www.thecablevine.com/forum/showthread.php?2434-Eyewitness-Says-BP-Cut...

http://www.blacklistednews.com/?news_id=8748

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/17/867129/-60-Minutes:-Despite-damaged-blowout-preventer,-BP-cut-corners-immediately-before-explosion

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/30/evening-buzz-did-bp-cut-safety-corners-before-oil-rig-blew-up/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/12/bp-whistleblower-claimed_n_573839.html

With the internet primary source material is -very- easy to find and would teach children how to think rather than how to be brainwashed by the Right/Left.

Yeah, there's no way to get brainwashed by the left or the right on the internet.... ;)

Except the facts show that Republicans, by a significant majority, want the country ruled by religious laws. Here's just a sample of their positions on issues ruled by what they think their bible says, rather than the Constitution:

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to serve in the military?
Yes 26
No 55
Not Sure 19

Should same sex couples be allowed to marry?
Yes 7
No 77
Not Sure 16

Should gay couples receive any state or federal benefits?
Yes 11
No 68
Not Sure 21

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?
Yes 8
No 73
Not Sure 19

Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?
Yes 77
No 15
Not Sure 8

Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13

Do you believe the birth control pill is abortion?
Yes 34
No 48
Not Sure 18

Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is though Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith?
Christ 67
Other 15
Not Sure 18

But I wasn't even talking about Republican Party members, but Republican officials. If you read the many supporting pages to which I linked about "American Taliban", you'll see that those officials are theocrats.

False equivalence. There is nothing actually "Communist" about Democrats, nothing anywhere near as severe as the truth about the Republican Party and its actions. "They're both as bad" is a lazy judgment, when the facts show the difference between "bad" and "intolerable".

No, there were Ron Paul "tea parties" in my area back to 2007. The national-level event was a fundraising thing, but many locations had small gatherings. I attended one at a local business on December 16, 2007 - it was very small, but it was the same core group of people that I see today at the "tea parties".

Here's a Daily KOS article on the 2007 event: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/11/24/164246/85

Surely it has gotten bigger, and yes, the principles have changed somewhat, but from my local perspective, today's tea party is simply an evolution of this event.

The funny part is when those people who actually do pay for their health care end up getting denied coverage for an expensive but critical procedure (like cancer) because the the insurance company claimed that they had a random and innocuous pre-existing condition decades earlier (like a yeast infection).

It's called murder by spreadsheet. And it's perfectly legal and proper in the states. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/17/84926/5173

One of the most important parts of the recent health care bill included trying to limit this kind of behaviour from insurance companies.

Yet based on the number of protests and whatnot, we can only assume that Americans want to be screwed over. They want to die helplessly while viable and available medicines are dangled out of their reach.

Anyone who's paid attention to the UFO phenomenon can tell you that the existence of 'something' out there has been well known by the US military since the 1940s. The problem is nobody really seems to understand the first thing about just what 'they' are, so it's embarassing to talk about and best brushed under the table. Whatever 'they' are they're NOT classical little green men with antennae... and I highly doubt that any 'crash debris' was ever retrieved.. all the best incidents indicate something much weirder, transient, and more in control of the parameters of the encounters than we are.

There's a few good reviews of the classic UFO material online: Michael Swords is good, as is the Daily Kos blogger Two Roads. I also recommend the Society for Scientific Exploration. The rest of the stuff is out there for anyone with Google.

The apparent failure of radio SETI is a very interesting data point to put against the apparent reality (yet weirdness) of the UFO phenomenon. But then, we've moved so far beyond analog broadcast radio in the last 50 years, why wouldn't ET civilisations' communications move equally fast? What if there were some way of, eg, modulating gravity or quantum entanglement? Should we expect to still be detecting legacy technologies just because that's the detectors we happen to have right now?

The stimulus is a dead issue. GOP won the round.

How, by taking credit for stimulus money after having voted/opposed it, like Republican Governors and Congressmen and Senators? Like Bobby Jindal, who trashed stimulus spending in his response to Obama's SOTU speech...only to make a big show of handing out giant sized, Jindal-signed checks to programs funded with stimulus money?

Obama ought to be a good enough fighter to know that and move on.

One of the memes floated by the Obama fanboys is that he throws "rope a dopes" against Republicans. Nevermind that a rope a dope comes in two steps:

1. Let your opponent tire himself out attacking your defenses
2. Counter-attack and knock his ass out

Obama has never come close to Step 2. With anyone.

Narus products have always been about telling you who is doing what with you, when and for how long on your network. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70914 http://www.scribd.com/doc/27629223/All-About-NSA-s-and-AT-amp-T-s-Big-Brother-Machine-The-Narus http://www.xchangemag.com/articles/631feature06.html http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/8/14724/28476 There has even been speculation that their products are at the core of "Carnivore" and/or "ESCHELON" http://www.texaskaos.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2496 Their primary customers are three letter agencies and the biggest of the big IP backbone providers. If you put devices capable of tracking every IP stream, encrypted or not, with source, destination, duration, size and QOS and you can start associating every stream with an identifiable person, adding to that the ability to extrapolate based upon types of user communities, net anonymity will certainly becaome lless possible. Now the question is, who watches the watchmen?

...the gulf stream goes back to its normal route via Europe...

I hope it does not only work because of the current exceptionally cold situation.

That would be a *DOH* of epic propotions. ;)

Check out the progressive web site DailyKos.com.

Although I certainly don't agree with a lot of their "content", their comment system is pretty spiffy.

The whole moderation thing is handled differently and the result of it is binary - "Hidden - REALLY, YOU CAN'T SEE IT" or, well, "Not Hidden", but that's really an editorial decision. Their decision is probably appropriate for their site, not so much for /.. (So, what is the correct way to end a sentence that doesn't ask a question but ends in /.? To put a double period results in a drooling slash...)

Their site is much faster and more obvious than /. and I'm sure the whole moderation level you want to see could easily be incorporated.

Their 'search for comments by xxx' function sucks, but hopefully that will be spiffed up in the upcoming DK4 version.

You might find that there are two or more sides to most stories when critical thinking and 2 sec of research are applied:

Their story (with characters identified in video):
http://www.seiu.org/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&tag=Kenneth%20Gladney&limit=20
Also,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/7/763227/-SEIU-attacked,-then-arrested-at-Healthcare-Townhall-while-Kenneth-Gladney-lawyers-up-to-sue-SEIU

My dad had a damaged shouler, and they had it fixed just 2 weeks later. (more below)

Of course, many Americans have a very long wait time for healthcare services, because they never receive them.

(And as for those wait times, you know, here on the web, it's traditional to actually link to sources that you cite, rather than say "The BBC, May 2009".)

Many people in the U.K. have some private healthcare, and so don't wait. But if those without a private plan have to wait for lower priority procedures, that's a lot better than not getting them at all, or being forced into bankruptcy to get them.

why people say the U.S. has the best healthcare in the world, because the cure rate is soooo much higher than in countries where care is monopolized by the government.

And then you "prove" this by cherry-picking one statistic? One that's been widely debunked?

The measures of prostate cancer "survival" rate are not comparable because of differences in screening and detection. In the U.S., your diagnosis of "prostate cancer" may well be based on an abnormal PSA reading, whereas a U.K. diagnosis is more likely to be based on an enlarged prostate -- a much more advanced form of the disease. This selection bias skews the five year survival rates, but makes little difference in actual outcomes; the prostate cancer mortality rate is roughly the same between the two countries.

Overall, cancer deaths are much lower in the U.K. than in the U.S., and life expectancy and infant mortality are better in the U.K. than in the U.S.

I say opinion because 30,000 scientists have said they feel that Gore has lied and distorted the facts.

No, they haven't. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/20/806300/-30,000-Scientists-Sue-Al-Gore-for-Fraud From the link:

The 30,000 "scientists" are people with at least a Bachelors of Science in some field, including computer science and other non-research science degrees. They signed a petition back in 1998 saying that they did not believe in Global Warming. Many of them are dead now.

Nothing to do with Gore, and many (most?) aren't "scientists." Oh, and there's no lawsuit, either, just in case you believed that part, too.

Do you think you have any credibility when you refer to people you disagree with as doodieheads?

Straw man.

Because you sound factually accurate when you refer to them as teabaggers.

Fixed your petulant whining. These people were mailing tea bags to government officials. Hence, teabaggers.

I've spoken at, and helped organize, three tea parties.

Yes, where no doubt you protested the fact that Bush doubled the national debt in five years, and applauded Obama for pushing the largest middle class tax cut in history, right? Right?

We received no money from ANYONE, nor any organizational support.

Even if you didn't use Glenn Beck's 9-vomit Project, you certainlly benefited from the free advertising from Fox. And yes, the large teabagging protests most certainly have been sponsored by Republican operations.

Obama routinely shows himself to be a thin skinned narcissist.

[Citation needed]

Of course he expects everyone to fawn over him and his greatness,

[Citation needed]

and he'll use the bully pulpit of the office to go after anyone who lies through their teeth on a minutely basis (Joe the Plumber, Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck, Fox News, etc).

Fixed that too.

There was a major backlash on the right side of things last fall when the Republicans supported TARP and the like.

TARP was opposed across the political spectrum. It passed because, as Chuck Shumer (D-NY) said, "the banks own the place".

Voters continued the purge of Republicans that wanted to be Democrats last year, electing conservative leaning Democrats to fill their seats in many cases.

Yes, the teabaggers put NY-23 into Democratic hands for the first time since before the Civil War. Please, please, continue your good work. Did you know that Charlie Christ practically made out with Obama, doesn't hate immigrants and supported the stimulus?

And why SHOULD the Republicans vote for the Dems bills? The Democrat leadership in both houses have done everything they can to shut out any dissenting views, be they D or R.

As is usually the case, if you take the opposite of the wingnut viewpoint, you have reality. It was Democrats in the House that removed the minority-tampling policies implemented by the Republicans when they controlled that chamber. And in the Senate, Harry Reid gives far more deference to Republicans than members of his own party, as proven when he ignored Chris Dodd's hold on telecom immunity yet honors every insane hold from Tom Coburn.

And by the fact that the Dems have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, so they could pass any and all bills while ignoring Republicans. Yet they've put a matching number of Republicans in charge of negotiating health care on the Senate Finance Committee, ignoring the ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller.

I do notice, however, that Obama is STILL whining that everything is his predecessor's fault.

[Citation needed]

At what point is he going to stand up and assume responsibility for the country that he's leading?

At what point is he supposed to have fixed Bush's double of the national debt and the two quagmires he left us mired in?

Biden quips that what we need is ANOTHER stimulus. Why?

Because we have near-Depression levels of unemployment, Slick. The only reasons things aren't worse than they are is the existence of a safety net that wasn't around in the early 30's.

What I'm not for is taking away the secret ballot so people can be "encouraged" to vote for the union even if they don't want it.

As is usually the case, the facts don't meet your storyline. The Employee Free Choice Act doesn't take away the secret

Here's a proof that detecting "toxic assets" is impossible (or at least NP)

They aren't. There's no way anyone is being infected by these sites.

Don't be so sure -- there have been plenty of cases the last few years with major websites being duped into pushing out malware.
For eample, the New York Times pushed out trojans recently: http://www.scmagazineus.com/New-York-Times-inadvertently-sold-ad-space-to-hackers/article/148990/

Another one (a little longer back) revolved around .WMF files - an old printer image metafile format that can include executable code which windows ran without asking anything. Simply viewing the file in internet explorer ran the payload. Icing on the cake is that it still worked if the malicious .wmf files were renamed to .JPG thanks to the way IE handles the image rendering. Some entrepreneuring people spread a bunch of these on the major ad networks without getting caught, and there you go... Any website running ads from these networks now came with a malicious payload.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/1/235748/4675

Now, hey may not have done so intentionally, but plenty of big, mainstream websites have indeed been caught unwittingly pushing out trojans and malware over the last few years. It's really not that far-fetched. These are just two examples, there have been plenty more over the years.

Nope, not making up the censorship claim:
Read more here.

Sure, you can turn off the NXDOMAIN redirection, but why would I want to use a DNS service that has it enabled by default, censors political speech, and is slower than my ISP's existing DNS?

You realize what OpenDNS is, right? Essentially, a bunch of investors bought the OpenDNS project and said to themselves "How can we squeeze money out of this?", completely discarding the goal that brought the project into existence: AN OPEN DNS SYSTEM. Today, OpenDNS is open in name only, and exists only to profit from people who are foolish enough to willingly hand over their private information (essentially, a list of every site you ever visit).

What a country where advertisements are being taken to task for being misleading while the news has got the legal power to report outright lies.

lets not for get who is actually behind the MPAA - RIAA, these are the companies that need to be targeted and boycotted into changing their ways, purchase only 2nd hand media and do not purchase anything branded sony, why allow the fecktards to dictate Orwellian hardware DRM designed to take away rights not to stop piracy anymore.

Name and shame the companies as all the **AA trade group name is for is to protect the corporate globalists from bad press.


RIAA, CRIA, SOUNDEXCHANGE, BPI, IFPI, Ect:

# Sony BMG Music Entertainment
# Warner Music Group
# Universal Music Group
# EMI


MPAA, MPA, FACT, AFACT, Ect:

# Sony Pictures
# Warner Bros. (Time Warner)
# Universal Studios (NBC Universal)
# The Walt Disney Company
# 20th Century Fox (News Corporation)
# Paramount Pictures Viacom--(DreamWorks owners since February 2006)


============


If Sony payola (google it) wasn't bad enough to destroy indie competition you have this:

Is it justified to steal from thieves? READ ON.


RIAA Claims Ownership of All Artist Royalties For Internet Radio
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/29/0335224.shtml

"With the furor over the impending rate hike for Internet radio stations, wouldn't a good solution be for streaming internet stations to simply not play RIAA-affiliated labels' music and focus on independent artists? Sounds good, except that the RIAA's affiliate organization SoundExchange claims it has the right to collect royalties for any artist, no matter if they have signed with an RIAA label or not. 'SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free ... So how it works is that SoundExchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of SoundExchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties.'"

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/24/14132

Posting a positive review of a product on your facebook page isn't required to have a disclaimer or anything else, unless someone paid you for that review.

And what if you're paid to review something whether the review is good or bad? If I have a blog I post reviews on and I accept Google ads should I need a disclaimer? How about if I start a website like Daily KOS or Huffington Post and someone starts paying me do I need to have the disclaimer? In more than one ruling the US Supreme Court ruled that anonymity was an important prerequisite to political speech.

Falcon

And let's not forget about Bill and Hillary, who have their own legacy of corruption they left behind.

In other words, all national level politicians are bought and owned, else they wouldn't be able to make it on a nation-wide stage.

"More than a dozen people in the high reaches of government have later gone on to claim that UFO's stole their washing."

Nitpick, but US military/governmental interest in UFOs is actually very well documented in the declassified literature. http://two-roads.dailykos.com/ gives a good summary of the field. It's nothing like the sensationalism in pop culture, but lots of quiet investigation and acknowledgement of unexplained phenomena. Given that, it would be a conspiracy if high-level people all *denied* interest, and in fact, they don't.

Full text of the JUSTICE Act at http://www.eff.org/files/HEN09874.pdf or http://www.juliansanchez.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/JUSTICEAct.pdf

EFF's) blog post on the bill http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/eff-supports-justice

Feingold's press release http://feingold.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=317927

My Dailykos diary http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/17/19226/5990

Facebook "Pass the JUSTICE ACT" group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=134538932549

lets not for get who is actually behind the MPAA - RIAA, these are the companies that need to be targeted and boycotted into changing their ways, purchase only 2nd hand media, & avoid all sony products as much as possible, why allow these scum suits to dictate hardware/software DRM anymore.

Name and shame the companies as all the **AA trade group name is for is to protect the corporate globalists gatekeepers from bad press.

RIAA, CRIA, SOUNDEXCHANGE, BPI, IFPI, Ect:

# Sony BMG Music Entertainment
# Warner Music Group
# Universal Music Group
# EMI

MPAA, MPA, FACT, AFACT, Ect:

# Sony Pictures
# Warner Bros. (Time Warner)
# Universal Studios (NBC Universal)
# The Walt Disney Company
# 20th Century Fox (News Corporation)
# Paramount Pictures Viacom--(DreamWorks owners since February 2006)



========

If Sony payola (google it) wasn't already bad enough to destroy all indie competition already you have this scam.


Is it justified to steal from thieves? READ ON.


RIAA Claims Ownership of All Artist Royalties For Internet Radio
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/29/0335224.shtml

"With the furor over the impending rate hike for Internet radio stations, wouldn't a good solution be for streaming internet stations to simply not play RIAA-affiliated labels' music and focus on independent artists? Sounds good, except that the RIAA's affiliate organization SoundExchange claims it has the right to collect royalties for any artist, no matter if they have signed with an RIAA label or not. 'SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free ... So how it works is that SoundExchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of SoundExchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties.'"

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/24/141326/870

:
" without a sense of purpose might very well realize the impermanence of everything, calculate that the sun will burn out in a few billion years, and decide to play video games for the remainder of its existence."

An apt description of the collapsed U.S.A. where shopping, video games, and Obama Youth Leagues are the major activities of its brain-dead population.

Yours In Akademgorodok,
Kilgore Trout

lets not for get who is actually behind the MPAA - RIAA, these are the companies that need to be targeted and boycotted into changing their ways, purchase only 2nd hand media and do not purchase anything branded sony, why allow the fecktards to dictate hardware DRM anymore.

Name and shame the companies as all the **AA trade group name is for is to protect the fucking capitalist corporate globalist wankers from bad press.


RIAA, CRIA, SOUNDEXCHANGE, BPI, IFPI, PRS, Ect:

# Sony BMG Music Entertainment
# Warner Music Group
# Universal Music Group
# EMI

MPAA, MPA, FACT, AFACT, Ect:

# Sony Pictures
# Warner Bros. (Time Warner)
# Universal Studios (NBC Universal)
# The Walt Disney Company
# 20th Century Fox (News Corporation)
# Paramount Pictures Viacom--(DreamWorks owners since February 2006)



If sony payola (google it) wasn't bad enough to destroy indie competition you have this:

Is it justified to steal from thieves? READ ON.



RIAA Claims Ownership of All Artist Royalties For Internet Radio
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/29/0335224.shtml

"With the furor over the impending rate hike for Internet radio stations, wouldn't a good solution be for streaming internet stations to simply not play RIAA-affiliated labels' music and focus on independent artists? Sounds good, except that the RIAA's affiliate organization SoundExchange claims it has the right to collect royalties for any artist, no matter if they have signed with an RIAA label or not. 'SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free ... So how it works is that SoundExchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of SoundExchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties.'"

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/24/141326/870

lets not for get who is actually behind the MPAA - RIAA, these are the companies that need to be targeted and boycotted into changing their ways, purchase only 2nd hand media and do not purchase anything branded sony, why allow the fecktards to dictate hardware DRM anymore.

Name and shame the companies as all the **AA trade group name is for is to protect the fucking capitalist corporate globalist wankers from bad press.


RIAA, CRIA, SOUNDEXCHANGE, BPI, IFPI, Ect:

# Sony BMG Music Entertainment
# Warner Music Group
# Universal Music Group
# EMI

MPAA, MPA, FACT, AFACT, Ect:

# Sony Pictures
# Warner Bros. (Time Warner)
# Universal Studios (NBC Universal)
# The Walt Disney Company
# 20th Century Fox (News Corporation)
# Paramount Pictures Viacom--(DreamWorks owners since February 2006)


If sony payola (google it) wasn't bad enough to destroy indie competition you have this:

Is it justified to steal from thieves? READ ON.

RIAA Claims Ownership of All Artist Royalties For Internet Radio
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/29/0335224.shtml

"With the furor over the impending rate hike for Internet radio stations, wouldn't a good solution be for streaming internet stations to simply not play RIAA-affiliated labels' music and focus on independent artists? Sounds good, except that the RIAA's affiliate organization SoundExchange claims it has the right to collect royalties for any artist, no matter if they have signed with an RIAA label or not. 'SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free ... So how it works is that SoundExchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of SoundExchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties.'"

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/24/141326/870

A lot of documentation of the original 1947-era UFO sightings is now in the public domain.

This blogger has done a pretty good job of assembling a 1940s timeline, going into excruciating detail of all the military investigations in the early SIGN/GRUDGE era.

There's some pretty intriguing stuff there. It's by no means an open and shut case what those things were.

Nice flamebait - it's great seeing your ignorant leftist hatred showing itself for what it really is, and truly shows what kind of a person you are. As an independent moron myself, you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about

Nice projection there. Polls taken on Obama's birthplace and prove that you guys are actively opposed to reality.

The case on point is Hiible. Follow the links for more info.

The ACLU also has a very good resource.

By your argument, the Chinese murdered children at random because they underengineered some school houses in an earthquake-prone region. What about New Orleans, where our government, with a gajillion times the resources of an impoverished Chinese provincial town, failed to construct adequate levees in a similarly disaster-prone region and exacerbated the loss of life with inadequate relief efforts? Should I even mention the TVA coal ash spill ? While we don't have the level of political repression the Chinese government perpetrates, we had our fair share of coverups and misinformation surrounding both of those incidents. Please stop throwing stones--you're going to get our glass house shattered in short order.

Bringing the conversation back on topic, what happened was a tragedy and, in my humble estimation, could have happened anywhere in the world. The amount of abuse perpetrated in our nursing homes, for instance, is appalling. What caught my eye is that they even have camps in an attempt to address the issue of "internet addiction"--have you guys seen this elsewhere, or is it as Chinese a phenomenon as "fat camps" might be an American one?

However, you explain it, Goldman Sachs gets the money, and the 401Ks lose.

First you claimed he voted FOR giving the Telecoms immunity. Now your saying he's evil for voting to strip the immunity. You seem to be a little hard to please.

I know I shouldn't feed AC trolls, but I guess I've gone defensive. I said no such thing. I said his act of voting for the bill was an act of evil, not an act of good. I was responding to a comment which implied that he was trying to do good, by voting for both the bill and the amendment which would modify it. I explained that he knew that the amendment would not pass, and so there was no attempt to do good, only a deliberate vote for evil.

You are either a clever troll who has succeeded in garnering a response you do not deserve, or a big fucking idiot. There's no third way. Voting for the bill is an act of evil. Voting for the amendment is simply misdirection. Lying about his intentions is an act of evil.

Dodd made a proposal to filibuster the immunity and the other Dem candidates pledged support. Then Clinton, Obama, etc forgot their pledge as no such filibuster occurred. Dodd was left standing in the cold (I joined his email list because of his stance on this issue).

I can't say Obama's vote on a failed amendment counts as positive at all as there would be no need for such an amendment if he had lived up to his pledge. Weaseling out of a promise of support and then doing a less than half hearted attempt at saving face is politics as normal,wheres the change?

Can I ask why this article is tagged "republicans"?

The same reason this guy is tagged (D). Except with Madoff as Mark Sanford, Republican as Democrat, and Slashdot as Fox News.

And that's where Ahmadinejad got his 60% of the vote. It might be interesting to enable the 'intellectual elite' of Iran living in the big cities to make their displeasure known to the rest of the world. But as long as they have a semblance of a democratic system, their fundies are going to run the place.

It is also where more than 100% of the people voted (you'll have to scroll down on that link, I don't know why I can't get a static link directly to that article), and somehow Ahmadinejad got a lot of new support since the previous election. Seems a bit unlikely, don't you think? If Ahmadinejad does have such huge support, why does he have to photoshop his crowds?

The people in the countryside are religious, but so are the people in the city, and so are the reformists. In fact, the entire basis for this democratic push is based on Islamic religious principles. Notice also that Mousavi is not trying to force himself to become president, he is merely asking for fair elections. This must be something even people in mud huts must want, otherwise they wouldn't have voted. There was a poll taken before the election that confirms this point: nearly 4 out of 5 said they wanted to elect even the supreme leader.

While none of us can go to Iran and ask people what they think, and while it is possible that Ahmadinejad won the election and might possibly even win a revote, it is hard to find a reason to think that most Iranians don't support Mousavi's ideas of fair, honest elections. Who votes and then doesn't want their vote counted?

This new Pirate MP is something else again. This guy is like the cheating husband caught in bed with another woman by his wife who then tells her solemnly: "Honey who you are gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?" Unless he is the most uniquely moral and upstanding politician in the history of politics (possible but unlikely) his Blagovitch-style explanation is an act performed in order to make his party switch seem like an act of principle rather than what it really is: making a virtue of a necessity. Bottom Line: This guy just wants to stay out of jail and keep his seat.

One question, where is the power to regulate ISPs given to the federal government by the Constitution of the USA? Or for that matter radio, TV, or telephone?

The Constitution does go past the 10th Amendment...something about regulating something or ether between the states...

And if you look at other early documents you'll see government was supported to be strictly limited in what powers it had.

And if you look at the Constitution it provides for flexibility. For example, General Welfare, which is mentioned twice.

First the internet is not commerce between foreign Nations, and among the several States, or with the Indian Tribes. So that would only apply to multi-state ISPs, not all ISPs offer service in more than one state. There are literally dozens of local ISPs where I live. Since the backbones are national and international the feds could regulate them but it can't regulate local ISPs.

...which obviously still falls under interstate commerce as the Internet is a world wide network. However, if Norwegian Cable wants to make an intranet in Minnesota and be free from the FCC, more power to them.

As you say the feds have gone after people in California for marijuana after the state legalized medical marijuana.

Rather atrocious. It boggles the mind that it's conventional wisdom that Prohibition was a complete failure with alcohol, yet we insist on continuing Prohibition 2.0: WOD.

Laws should only be ones wherein harm to others is caused. Crimes like murder, pollution, rape, robbery. The rest can be handled with civil lawsuits.

Which is awesome as long as you 1) know who did what to you and 2) have the money to hire a legal team. For everyone else, it would be a cornholing of Biblical proportions. The whole reason we have regulation and oversight is because we already tried free market Libertarianism and it just got a lot of people killed while shoveling money into corporate hands.

I am not convinced that market forces would not have addressed pollution issues in a way that was as good or better than the one we chose.

Then I suggest you take a break from planning your Libertarian vacation and try reading some history:

It was almost the end of the work day for the young workers at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place in New York City on March 26, 1911. Spring had been cool that year, and those getting ready to leave slid into coats and put on their hats. Most of the workers employed by the firm of Harris & Blanck worked a different shift and went home at noon, but there were still six hundred workers -- 500 women and 100 men -- packed into the top three floors of the factory. Most of them were immigrants from Italy, Germany, or Eastern Europe. The majority of them were under the age of 16. For ten hours or more a day they bent over tightly packed rows of sewing machines and worked with their fingers to make the factory's signature product -- shirtwaists. Their shift ended at 4:45.

At 4:40, someone noticed the first touch of smoke.

Within half an hour, flames consumed the top three floors of the "fire proof" building. Many of the workers on the eighth floor were able to escape down the steps, so were some of those working on nine. Students next door at New York University saw what was happening and helped to save hundreds who reached the roof. Then the flames cut off that route. Soon those that remained were huddled next to the windows of those top three floors. As the flames closed in on them, one after another, they jumped.

Along the sidewalks of Broadway, thousands cried and screamed in horror as the scorched bodies of women -- girls, really -- tore through inadequate fire safety nets, smashed though glass awnings, and thudded into the street. Sobbing children with their clothing and hair on fire leaped for safety ladders that stopped two stories below their windows.

Fueled by miles of hanging fabric, wooden tables, and machine oil, the fire that started five minutes before the end of the shift burned out almost before firemen could get inside. It left the building intact, the walls only scorched. The bodies left behind were barely recognizable as human. 141 people died, hundreds more were injured.

***

And that's how we lost our freedom. Not our freedom of speech or any of our individual rights to assemble or worship as we please, to live where we want. That's where we lost the freedom of the marketplace, the freedom of the Ayn Randian dream. Actually, it goes even further back than that. When the nation was formed, those founding fathers made the "the American compromise," recognizing that the marketplace should advance under government supervision. This has always been a place where the government has stepped in to stop excess and address needs. And yes, conservatives have been whining from day one.

You're not convinced the free market wouldn't do a better job? The entire reason we have oversight, regulation and unions is because we already tried the free market and it was an absolute disaster for pretty much anyone who wasn't a top business executive.

The majority of the US income (taxes) *comes* from these "evil" corporations. How d you plan to support the welfare needs that are already over0burdening our tax system if these corporations no longer operate in the US?

I'm not sure that is true, if we look at the U.S. government's budget we could see that in Fiscal Year 2008, the income from Corporate Income Taxes was $304B, but individual income taxes were $1146B so individuals paid 3.76 times what corporations paid in income tax. Please present your numbers and analysis for consideration, thanks.

It's not easy to do this in a two-party system, but one of the major parties in the US is less popular among US citizens than legalization of cannabis is.

Earlier this year, a couple of polling organizations asked about legalization of cannabis. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in late April asked: "In general, do you favor or oppose legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use?" Of 1072 respondents, 46% were in favor, 52% opposed, and 2% unsure. A CBS News poll (see at the same link) of 1142 adults in January asked "Do you think that the use of marijuana should be made legal or not?" It found similar support at 41% in favor, 52% opposed, and 7% unsure. But in March, when the question was repeated, the support was lower at 31%-63%-6%, down in the same territory as Republicans (we'll get to their numbers in a minute). In February, Rasmussen polled 100 adults, asking them "Should Marijuana be legalized?" 40% answered yes, 46% no, and 14% unsure. Crosstabs aren't available to the non-subscribing public, but Rasmussen does let us know that 48% of US men are in favor of legalization, but only 34% of US women agree. It also said that voters under 40 years of age support legalization much more strongly.

So we see legalization of cannabis with support just above 40% on average. It's looking tough for my claim in the subject line, right? How are the Republicans doing?

Dick Cheney was around 30% in his last job approval numbers, and his personal favorability numbers in May varied between different polls, with a range of 18% to 37%.

George W. Bush had final job ratings from different polls between 24% and 33%. His latest favorability numbers vary, depending on the poll, between 25% and 41%, with 41% looking like a bit of an outlier.

Rush Limbaugh generally gets positive marks from about a quarter of the population, with results varying between 20% and 30%.

John Boehner gets marks of (favorable-unfavorable-don't know)15-64-21.

Mitch McConnell is at 22-60-18.

Congressional Republicans get favorability numbers of 12-72-16.

The Republican Party as a whole gets marks of 21-71-8.

So in fact we see that legalization of reefer madness is currently more popular than prominent Republicans, about three times as popular as Congressional Republicans as a group, and about twice as popular as the Republican party as a whole.

It's not easy to do this in a two-party system, but one of the major parties in the US is less popular among US citizens than legalization of cannabis is.

Earlier this year, a couple of polling organizations asked about legalization of cannabis. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in late April asked: "In general, do you favor or oppose legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use?" Of 1072 respondents, 46% were in favor, 52% opposed, and 2% unsure. A CBS News poll (see at the same link) of 1142 adults in January asked "Do you think that the use of marijuana should be made legal or not?" It found similar support at 41% in favor, 52% opposed, and 7% unsure. But in March, when the question was repeated, the support was lower at 31%-63%-6%, down in the same territory as Republicans (we'll get to their numbers in a minute). In February, Rasmussen polled 100 adults, asking them "Should Marijuana be legalized?" 40% answered yes, 46% no, and 14% unsure. Crosstabs aren't available to the non-subscribing public, but Rasmussen does let us know that 48% of US men are in favor of legalization, but only 34% of US women agree. It also said that voters under 40 years of age support legalization much more strongly.

So we see legalization of cannabis with support just above 40% on average. It's looking tough for my claim in the subject line, right? How are the Republicans doing?

Dick Cheney was around 30% in his last job approval numbers, and his personal favorability numbers in May varied between different polls, with a range of 18% to 37%.

George W. Bush had final job ratings from different polls between 24% and 33%. His latest favorability numbers vary, depending on the poll, between 25% and 41%, with 41% looking like a bit of an outlier.

Rush Limbaugh generally gets positive marks from about a quarter of the population, with results varying between 20% and 30%.

John Boehner gets marks of (favorable-unfavorable-don't know)15-64-21.

Mitch McConnell is at 22-60-18.

Congressional Republicans get favorability numbers of 12-72-16.

The Republican Party as a whole gets marks of 21-71-8.

So in fact we see that legalization of reefer madness is currently more popular than prominent Republicans, about three times as popular as Congressional Republicans as a group, and about twice as popular as the Republican party as a whole.

It's not easy to do this in a two-party system, but one of the major parties in the US is less popular among US citizens than legalization of cannabis is.

Earlier this year, a couple of polling organizations asked about legalization of cannabis. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in late April asked: "In general, do you favor or oppose legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use?" Of 1072 respondents, 46% were in favor, 52% opposed, and 2% unsure. A CBS News poll (see at the same link) of 1142 adults in January asked "Do you think that the use of marijuana should be made legal or not?" It found similar support at 41% in favor, 52% opposed, and 7% unsure. But in March, when the question was repeated, the support was lower at 31%-63%-6%, down in the same territory as Republicans (we'll get to their numbers in a minute). In February, Rasmussen polled 100 adults, asking them "Should Marijuana be legalized?" 40% answered yes, 46% no, and 14% unsure. Crosstabs aren't available to the non-subscribing public, but Rasmussen does let us know that 48% of US men are in favor of legalization, but only 34% of US women agree. It also said that voters under 40 years of age support legalization much more strongly.

So we see legalization of cannabis with support just above 40% on average. It's looking tough for my claim in the subject line, right? How are the Republicans doing?

Dick Cheney was around 30% in his last job approval numbers, and his personal favorability numbers in May varied between different polls, with a range of 18% to 37%.

George W. Bush had final job ratings from different polls between 24% and 33%. His latest favorability numbers vary, depending on the poll, between 25% and 41%, with 41% looking like a bit of an outlier.

Rush Limbaugh generally gets positive marks from about a quarter of the population, with results varying between 20% and 30%.

John Boehner gets marks of (favorable-unfavorable-don't know)15-64-21.

Mitch McConnell is at 22-60-18.

Congressional Republicans get favorability numbers of 12-72-16.

The Republican Party as a whole gets marks of 21-71-8.

So in fact we see that legalization of reefer madness is currently more popular than prominent Republicans, about three times as popular as Congressional Republicans as a group, and about twice as popular as the Republican party as a whole.

It's not easy to do this in a two-party system, but one of the major parties in the US is less popular among US citizens than legalization of cannabis is.

Earlier this year, a couple of polling organizations asked about legalization of cannabis. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in late April asked: "In general, do you favor or oppose legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use?" Of 1072 respondents, 46% were in favor, 52% opposed, and 2% unsure. A CBS News poll (see at the same link) of 1142 adults in January asked "Do you think that the use of marijuana should be made legal or not?" It found similar support at 41% in favor, 52% opposed, and 7% unsure. But in March, when the question was repeated, the support was lower at 31%-63%-6%, down in the same territory as Republicans (we'll get to their numbers in a minute). In February, Rasmussen polled 100 adults, asking them "Should Marijuana be legalized?" 40% answered yes, 46% no, and 14% unsure. Crosstabs aren't available to the non-subscribing public, but Rasmussen does let us know that 48% of US men are in favor of legalization, but only 34% of US women agree. It also said that voters under 40 years of age support legalization much more strongly.

So we see legalization of cannabis with support just above 40% on average. It's looking tough for my claim in the subject line, right? How are the Republicans doing?

Dick Cheney was around 30% in his last job approval numbers, and his personal favorability numbers in May varied between different polls, with a range of 18% to 37%.

George W. Bush had final job ratings from different polls between 24% and 33%. His latest favorability numbers vary, depending on the poll, between 25% and 41%, with 41% looking like a bit of an outlier.

Rush Limbaugh generally gets positive marks from about a quarter of the population, with results varying between 20% and 30%.

John Boehner gets marks of (favorable-unfavorable-don't know)15-64-21.

Mitch McConnell is at 22-60-18.

Congressional Republicans get favorability numbers of 12-72-16.

The Republican Party as a whole gets marks of 21-71-8.

So in fact we see that legalization of reefer madness is currently more popular than prominent Republicans, about three times as popular as Congressional Republicans as a group, and about twice as popular as the Republican party as a whole.

DailyKos pointing out that this is another Republican argument of convenience (I apologize for the redundancy of that statement):

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position...

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

Alito during his confirmation hearings. Identity politics is wonderful - if the nominee is an arch-conservative.