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Read about it here: Baucus Bill Sticks To Pharma Deal That Supposed Wasn't Struck.

Now he join BushCo at N.A.S.C.A.R. races.

Yours In Astrakan,
K. Trout

I wonder if radiation is the reason teenagers to day are so messed up. Maybe all the cell phone use is what's screwing up their brains. I wonder where I could get a grant to do the research.

No, I don't think so. I doubt cellphones are screwing up teenagers brains, but would like to see studies. Since at least the 1990s prescriptions for teenagers with and without AHDH, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, have gone up.

To balance that Huffington Post article, a study by Mayo Clinic researchers found that treatment with prescription stimulants is associated with improved long-term academic success of children with ADHD."

Last time I checked, the laws of physics still reigned supreme, and microwaves will not cause genetic damage to his plants.

You'd better tell all the scientists you know better than they do. They have studies that conclude that microwaves do affect DNA. Then again there are disagreement even between those who research the subject, and with it being like that saying there is no affect is not scientifically accurate.

Falcon

which is it? Leftists government tit-sucking jobless liberals or right wing fanatics toting guns and talking god?

Ah, but the great irony is that many of those right wing fanatics toting guns and talking god are also government tit-sucking jobless folks. You know, the "keep government out of my Medicare!" sorts.

Take, for instance this little gem of dialog between actor Craig T. Nelson and Glenn Beck, where Nelson spouts a bunch of right-wing anti-tax rhetoric and caps it off with "What happened to society? I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. I've been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No. No." (For readers outside the U.S., or for fatally ignorant Americans, welfare and food stamps are tax-funded government programs that help people like Craig T. Nelson out when they fall on hard times.)

Remember Texas Governor Rick Perry's recent secession rhetoric about how "the federal government has become oppressive"? Turns out that he just turned to said oppressive government and asked to suck at its tit for swine flu emergency funding -- since the beginning of FEMA's record-keeping, Texas has actually received more federal assistance from FEMA than any other state.

It's just more red state socialism.

You do know that the New York Times is bleeding red ink on a scale similar to GM and Chrysler, right?

Well, they can just print in black ink!

Seriously, how is New York Times bleeding red ink like GM and Chrysler? I'm looking at their 2008 financial statements. The only reason it's showing net loss is because of impairment charges of goodwill.

Here's their 2009 2nd quarter result.

The need might be rare, but the use of them sure is not.

Like when you need to get someone who has a broken back to stand up.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/93135/teen_with_broken_back_tasered_19_times_for_not_standing_up_when_ordered/

Or when you think a diabetic might be giving you trouble.
http://www.digtriad.com/news/features/article.aspx?storyid=115481&catid=216

Or if you have a deaf and disabled man you need to get out of a store:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/28/antonio-love-ala-police-u_n_246081.html

Well, out of the last five Governors since 1970 (not counting Quinn... yet), three have gone to prison or will, counting Blago. Counting Quinn that's half, not counting him it's more than half. And it's not counting Otto Kerner, who was Governor from 1961 to 1968 who also went to prison.

It seems like every time a Republican replaces a Democrat or a Democrat replaces a Republican, the defeated incumbent goes to prison.

The iPhone has a free and open platform option: it's called HTML5. Apps designed for it will also run on your N900 (presumably), your Android stuff, and so on.

Apple destroyed Windows Mobile and killed off audio DRM. It has pushed forward HTML5, LLVM, WebKit, and CUPS. At some point, the open source community has to stop demanding that Apple fail so that it can flourish. FOSS is flourishing because of Apple, not in spite of it.

What other consumer company supports FOSS more than Apple? Most are just FOSS parasites trying to make a buck on the community's efforts. Google throws out bones online, but Android is just a minimal defensive effort against WiMo, not a strong push to bring open software to the mainstream. Apple isn't a primary advocate of FOSS, but it does more to enable competition and directly contributes to open software on many levels.

Steve Jobs pushed BSD Unix before Linux was even conceived, and worked to make OpenStep an open specification for all operating systems; the world rejected open and chose enslavement to Microsoft. So now Apple is just making money on its technology instead. Fuck ideology. The more you give, the more people hate you. The more you demand, they more they grovel at your feet.

Bush and the neocons set up Iraq with single payer, healthcare guaranteed in its new constitution. Public health insurance only socialism here in the retarded USA.

I'm just sayin'.

You're just saying what?
You seem to have omitted the object of your sentence.
Or is this like MadLibs and we get to fill it in ourselves?

I'm just sayin' "want fries with that?"
I'm just sayin' "hey there, big boy."
I'm just sayin' "like gag me with a teaspoon."
I'm just sayin' maybe you should lay off the CNN for a while.

we have a new American President who is not beholden to special interest

I guess that's why his much-trumpeted healthcare reform includes a provision for not letting the government (which would be the major buyer of drugs) negotiate lower drug prices?. The only thing that changed was the color of the skin of the guy at the top. Underneath they're all the same slime.

Maybe you see these problems on the democratic domain, because the conservatives in this country are still trying to figure out what the internet is.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/11/mccain-admits-he-doesnt-k_n_106478.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE

They're not stealing money, they're just asking for it. You guys are the idiots giving to them. I keep my money in my mattress.

Exactly.

Now, if people read the linked articles, they would see a number of Republican lawmakers who support this kind of bunk:

• Oklahoma Republican state Representative Mike Ritze appears to be a birther (trying to pass pro-Birth legislation), as are four Republican state Representatives--Stacey Campfield, Glen Casada, Frank S. Niceley and Eric H. Swafford--in Tennessee, as well as Fifteen Republican members of the Missouri House of Representatives
• Republican strategist Frank Luntz denied global warming, as well as Philip Cooney, who was hired by Bush to become chief of staff for the White House (Not mentioned in the Global Warning denial article but also notable is Republican senator Jim Inhofe)
• Not discussed in the relevant Wikipedia article, but Young Earth Creationism appears to be believed by Sarah Palin: ref 1 ref 2

I can't think of a prominent Democrat who espouse this kind of nonsense, but a fairly quick and simple search found a number of Republicans spouting this stuff.

For me to respect conservatives, conservatives need to stop this nonsense. There are a number of conservative causes I believe in, such as law and order and tort reform, but I can't support a party who openly supports fringe theories.

I'm not sure it's acceptable to make judgments of this sort (a quarter of the population was living in poverty in 1959 versus 10 to 15% since the mid-60s) specifically because the way poverty was measured changed in the mid-60s with the institution of the absolute poverty threshold by Johnson and the adoption of Orshansky Poverty Thresholds by the US Office of Economic Opportunity in '65. Functionally, you're just comparing rates because they both have a percent symbol in them as those actual numbers were not calculated using the same metric.

A better way to compare a family living in poverty in 1959 (or 1935, for that matter), would be to look at their relative purchasing power. In 1959, a dollar was "worth more" than it is today. A 1959 dollar, which in 1959 would buy a dollars worth of goods, will today only buy $0.12 worth of goods today. This 89% erosion in the actual purchasing power means that a family living in poverty in 1959 could still be argued to be living better off than a family living below the poverty level today.

There are, of course, major problems with this as well. This highlights the central issue that no one seems to be addressing: current mathematical models are insufficient when it comes to representing the actual situation "on the ground". Thus, you can say, "Well, things were worse in the 1950s because poverty was at 25% then," but clearly there are nearly 40 million people in this country alone who would disagree with you on the basis of their access to health care. While numbers certainly have a place in economics, any model that fails to incorporate an existential axis will be flawed, at best.

Economics is, in many ways, a creation of will; what is believed to be true might as well be true because everyone (or at least those sharing the belief) will behave as if it's true. So, while it's hard to objectively say things are "better" now because of a lower poverty rate, it's also difficult to to say they are worse using a strict number comparison.

What can be said, however, and what is indeed disturbing is the calcification of economic stratification in US society. While times may have been hard in the 1950s, it was still possible to extract oneself from one economic level and be upwardly mobile. As a previous commenter pointed out, this may have be due, in part, to an unsustainable labor-focused market. However, simply because one model is unsustainable, doesn't mean other models can't rise to take its place. Those new models are not appearing, thus it is arguable that it is more difficult now for a person born into poverty to climb out of it than it was for a person born into poverty in the 1950s to change their fortune. The American Equation of "Hard Work = Increased Fortune" is no longer true.

This can be seen in a recent study by Berkeley professor Emmanuel Saez where he shows that income inequality is at an all time high for the nation.

So the issue is not so much poverty level, but lack of mobility and all that comes with not being able to move into higher economic classes. As long as this persists, poverty levels are essentially meaningless.

Well!
Can it be true? Is the average US person's IQ inverse to their body weight?
America, all your fat is belong to us!
And Bill Maher confirms this
Heh heh.. Enjoy your Republican health care. See ya in the morgue.

MSNBC is fairly liberal, I personally can't stand Mathews but Madow is quite informative. MSNBC is about as far left-wing as, oh, CNN is right-wing.

Bullshit! I just showed you a video of a reporter who calls a Bush head with a Hitler mustache a "look-alike" and then calls an Obama made to look like Hitler "offensive". NBC is selling Obama merchandise for Pete's sake! (I tried to find a non-conservative source... BUT NO OTHER MEDIA OUTLET WILL REPORT IT!!!!! Kinda proves my fucking point, doesn't it?)

And it's not just what the media reports, but what it does NOT report is just as important. Take the townhalls. They'll show Democratic congressmen and operatives and Nancy Pelosi saying that these townhall protesters are paid by the insurance companies and bussed from town hall to town hall. Of course, this is not true, but the media is OK because they didn't say it, Nancy Pelosi did. And what they don't show or tell you about is the Democratic groups that are paid and bussing people from town hall to town hall. HERE is a video of ACORN leaving a town hall. Nor will they tell you that people are literally being paid to campaign for health care reform, like in Craigslist ad. Do you see that in the media? Nope, but it is EXACTLY what the Democrats are accusing the Republicans of doing. They are guilty of what they accusing the innocent of doing and the press ignores it. Would you considered union members organized and paid? Here is an article from HuffPo saying that Union members are organizing at town halls! See that in the media? Nope!

Seriously, with just the town hall stuff, I could go on for days with example after example of how Town Hall protesters are called terrorists, Nazi's, BrownShirts and all kinds of other names. They are accused of being Astroturfers, fake, paid, and so on when those that are doing the accusing are the ones that are the true astroturfers. And seriously, you think the press is fair to right wing?

Oh, and to your comment that there is no left wing Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh... you did say you knew who Rachel Maddow was, right? How about Keith Olbermann? Maybe Randy Rhodes? Katie Couric? Al Franking (now Senator Al Frankin... thanks to those hundreds of votes found in the truck of a Democrat poll workers car.... all for Frankin)... Need I go on?

Given what I've said in this comment along with the other comments, including the links, if you seriously think the media is fair or right wing, please, go see a doctor or something because there is seriously something wrong with you. No really, SERIOUSLY WRONG!

Or you are just being an asshole. So you are either psychotic, retarded or just an asshole. Either way, there's really no point in talking with you.

Good day, sir.

Pharma has us paying double for drugs compared to outside our borders while they try to kill health care reform.

Umm, why don't you learn a little bit about politics before you open your mouth and insert your foot? Pharma loves the health care "reform" bill. They've already cut a deal with the Obama administration. The administration agreed to oppose any efforts by Congress to use governmental buying power to purchase drugs at lower prices. In exchange the industry offered up a generic promise that they'd reduce costs by $80 billion over the next ten years.

That's your "change" boys and girls. Secret back room deals with an industry that Obama spent most of his campaign attacking and vilifying. Amazing how the more things change the more they stay the same, isn't it?

Buffet got his bailout.

Warren Buffet Made Millions On Bailout: Reuters

Were it not for government bailouts, for which Buffett lobbied hard, many of his company's stock holdings would have been wiped out.

Berkshire Hathaway, in which Buffett owns 27 percent, according to a recent proxy filing, has more than $26 billion invested in eight financial companies that have received bailout money. The TARP at one point had nearly $100 billion invested in these companies and, according to new data released by Thomson Reuters, FDIC backs more than $130 billion of their debt.

He was once the oracle, now he's just another corporate welfare pig at the trough. And a hypocrite.

Turns out his long-term investment strategy was just as much a gamble. How is he any different than anyone else who can't manage their money and ends up on the public dole? Oh, right, his welfare check is BILLIONS!

Warren Buffet Made Millions On Bailout: Reuters

Were it not for government bailouts, for which Buffett lobbied hard, many of his company's stock holdings would have been wiped out.

Berkshire Hathaway, in which Buffett owns 27 percent, according to a recent proxy filing, has more than $26 billion invested in eight financial companies that have received bailout money. The TARP at one point had nearly $100 billion invested in these companies and, according to new data released by Thomson Reuters, FDIC backs more than $130 billion of their debt.

He was once the oracle, now he's just another corporate welfare pig at the trough. And a hypocrite.

Obama's secret deal with big pharma splitting the proceeds from "health care reform".

Nope, this is malice. Pure and simple.

Toss in things like Stasi-inspired snitch email addresses, and Obama really is getting scary.

The Democrats are doing every damn thing they accuse Republicans of doing: secretive government, secret deals with large corporations splitting money between themselves, not only spying on US citizens but openly encouraging snitching to the goverment.

We have seen the enemy, and they all have a big fat scary D after their names.

In one illustration of the impact these changes are having, Verizon Communications Inc. had 39 million landline telephone customers in March 2008 but 35 million a year later. Over the same period, its wireless customers grew from 67 million to 87 million

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/06/twenty-percent-of-america_n_198513.html

Because you are paying for incoming calls, there is a strong incentive to keep a landline around and encourage other people to call it.

Well, the economist in me wants to agree with you that unmetered landline usage creates an incentive to use landlines, but the realist in me thinks you are vastly overstating this incentive--to the point of reaching an incorrect conclusion.

The fact of the matter is that, among people under age 50, US residents are ditching their landlines like crazy. Indeed, I have not had a landline since about 2001.

A quick google search tells me that 20% of US households have no landline, and an additional 15% report that they primarily use their cell phones and discourage others from calling their landlines. 40% of those aged 25-29 have no land line. (source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/06/twenty-percent-of-america_n_198513.html)

So incentives-be-damned, we are ditching our 2-wire analog telephone service like crazy. You might wish to reevaluate your analysis.

What chaps my ass is that the healthcare bill making its way through Congress is supposed to make healthcare more accessible. Instead, you have the Senate health committee voting to extend patent protection for some drugs. And you've also got the White House cutting a deal with Big Pharma to prevent the government from negotiating lower drug prices.

But studies paid for by big pharma INSIST (and they've convinced the American Heart Association) that your blood pressure has to be UNDER 120/80.

Fine. I'll just get some $40/year generic diuretic or ACE inhibitor from Walmart.

At least, I would if I could afford the $200 visit to the doctor's office.

The above comment is my opinion as a 3rd world physician

"3rd world" medicine is all some Americans get. Wendell Potter, former VP at CIGNA, on the experience that made him quit:

But what I saw were doctors who were set up to provide care in animal stalls. I've got some pictures of people being treated on gurneys, on rain-soaked pavement. And I saw people lined up, standing in line or sitting in these long, long lines, waiting to get care. People drove from South Carolina and Georgia and Kentucky, Tennessee-- all over the region, because they knew that this was being done. A lot of them heard about it from word of mouth.

It was absolutely stunning. It was like being hit by lightning. It was almost-- what country am I in? I just it just didn't seem to be a possibility that I was in the United States. It was like a lightning bolt had hit me.

Debriefing at C.I.A. headquarters to occur shortly.

Read about it here.

PatRIOTically Yours,
K. Trout

You mean AIU Holdings"? Or maybe Chartis?

The shell game goes on... and there are some pearls under the occasional shell. The point is to shuffle and shuffle until they have a skeleton company to scapegoat, the spinoffs keeping the pearls when it inevitably implodes.

Actually in those terms, firearms are more frequently used for suicide than for self defense. The kind of scenario that you're suggesting is vastly out numbered by suicides. Admittedly it does leave out other legal uses like hunting and target practice, but it is pretty clear that firearms for self defense is counterproductive at best.

Suicides Half Of Gun Deaths In US

Obama has been called a communist on Fox News. There you go again!

Right! What do you call it when the government takes over industry? Is that not the textbook definition of communism? So, how about the other twenty or so networks? Why are they not connecting the dots? There's only two dots to connect; the definition of communism and what is happening.

I'll see your one FoxNews "Obama=Communist" and raise you a MSNBC "Bush=Fascist". The difference is that Bush left office when his term was up. A true fascist wouldn't have done so. But Obama is taking over American industry! First banking and insurance. Then the auto industry. Next on the target list is health care. I'm sorry. Do you know what communism is?

Obama has been called a communist on Fox News. There you go again!

Evolution may be getting close. Close, that is, to a sufficiently dumb human. Watch this video: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/24/is-this-the-stupidest-per_n_244440.html

Can you point to one or several Fox News stories that are absolutely false...?

Google is your friend.....

Fox News: We Report — Even If We Know It's False
Fox News Sinks to New Low, Repeatedly Reports Parody Story as Actual News
Anatomy of a False Story
Dobbs, FOX News, and Drudge Report Push False AP Story
Countdown: Fox News Caught Creating False News
Of Mice and Misinformation: Sammon Joins Other Fox News Personalities in Spreading Stimulus Falsehood

That's just from the first page of results.

Why would the banks be forced to restructure when they own the place?
If i own a Bank, i own a few borrowers.
If i own a Congress, i own the the population.
Seriously, do you think any of the congressmen and senators would have even allowed a proposal to force any [campaign donating] bank to restructure?
That would involve truthful declarations, risk-based investments, etc., all of which would result in no donations to congressmen.
Its a symbiotic relationship. Banks need to maintain status quo, congressmen need money [more than oxygen].

[1] He NEVER mentioned reelection. NEVER. [2] It wasn't a referendum. It was an opinion survey. It had no official function of any kind. It was a question about how people would feel about putting a hypothetical question on the November ballot. [3] Neither the Supreme Court or congress has any constitutional authority to remove a sitting president. Article 239 does say that anyone who proposes reelection extending the presidential term ceases functioning as president. It does not establish any procedure for enforcing this. [4] The Supreme Court did not mention Article 239 in its order, although it is festooned with other constitutional and legal references. It ordered the army to arrest Zelaya and bring him before a magistrate. The army ignored the order and illegally deported him instead. They also forged a letter of resignation and claimed he was resigning for reasons of health. This was probably a polite way of saying that health can be harmed by a bullet to the back of the head. [5] Zelaya had full legal and constitutional authority to fire the army chief of staff. [6] Competent legal experts in Honduran constitution law argue that Zelaya never technically violated the injunctions against distributing the opinion survey because the decree by Congress had never been published in the official government gazette and therefore was not effective, and also because it did not apply to an opinion survey (not mentioned in the decree) but a referendum (specifically mentioned). [7] The computers were probably being set up to tabulate the opinion survey, not a trivial process for millions of votes. a. This had to be done from scratch by technicians from project 'Learn' of the Honduran Council on Science and technology aimed at rural schools because the National Research Institute had declined to tabulate the poll. b. The government investigator produced exactly one tabulation with admittedly absurd figures, which would lead any sane observer to conclude that they were dummy figures. c. Why would technicians carrying out a slick fraud make up more voters than existed in a well-known town? Because they weren't carrying out a slick fraud. They were making up stuff to see how the tabulation system worked. The "incriminating" evidence was a document with header information "Test spreadsheet." Yep. That's prima facie evidence of fraud right there. Think of it. A test spread sheet. Bad stuff. Very bad stuff. I mean it was probably Excel. How much more evil can it get than that? [8] Zelaya had absolutely nothing to gain personally from the proposed constitutional convention because: a. It would take place long after he was out of office. b. It could not even raise the topic of reelection because the old constitution forbidding that would still be in force. [9] The issues that were going to be raised at the proposed constitutional convention had to with long-standing sore points such as land tenure by indigenous peoples, military immunity from prosecution, broadening the people's role in Honduran democracy and other topics. You can read my full report on the controversy on Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jules-siegel/honduras-supreme-court-it_b_230621.html Now all who come after me in this thread are hereby enjoined from repeating the totally discredited claims under threat of maximum punishment that shall be carried out by the competent authorities without let or mercy or further review. SO LET IT BE WRITTEN. SO LET IT BE DONE.

I'm a nerd, not a salesman. You're still talking about selling products, I'm talking about the general good. IBM's profits don't help society; the only segment of society IBM cares abdout is IBM's stockholders.

The reasons for your misconceptions do not make them right. IBM's concern is to the society in which it sells and has to reconcile that with the stock holders. IF IBM were to forget about the society in general, or at least their market segment, they would go out of business because there is enough competition to over take them when society turns against them. Now, you do no need to be a business major to see that going out of business is not in the interest of the stockholders.

Your argument doesn't stand up in the face of the poison peanut butter last year, or all the other poison food sold (I'm talking salmonella and e-coli, not WMDs)

Silly boy, don't confuse results with intent and don't confuse the actions of one with many. First of all, neither company knew it was poisoning people with it's food. They were completely oblivious until after the fact and they all stop selling the contaminated products. Second, you are not even considering the outcome, tomatoes were banned for a while, so was spinach. What possible benefit to the share holders could no being able to sell a perishable product bring about? What possible benefit to the share holders can the massive lawsuits over the even have to the shareholders. If you look, you will find that the peanut butter issue was because of a roof leak that supposedly was not noticed until after the contamination and that company is completely out of business now. What possible benefit to the share holder did that bring? The benefit would have been to avoid the contamination in the first place and profitable sell safe food instead of going out of business or losing an entire crop.

or the poison dog and cat food the year before

And I believe that the chinese responsible for it faced a death penalty because of how wrong it was, their sales have dropped, they were forced to do a product recall and import restrictions around the world were placed on the company. How is that in the interests of the stock holders?

fire in the Georgia chicken processing plant in the eighties that killed 25 people who couldn't get out because management chained the doors shut.

You mean the Hamlet chicken processing plant fire that resulted in the forever closing of the plant, the owner serving 20 years in prison and the highest fines ever levied at that time? How was that any good for investors? Clealy they lost more then any occasion theft through fire exist would have been stopped due to the chaining of the doors.

It doesn't explain why Jack in the Box is still open for business, despite the fact that its poisoning outbreak ten or so years ago killed children.

You mean the lettuce contamination from a single store who instead of purchasing from a company's authorized supplier ended up buying from a local farmer? Why should the entire chain be shut down because of the actions of an Isolated store that was taken completely outside of their approved procurement processes? Also, they sales dropped, they almost did go out of business nation wide and can you tell me how that was good for the share holders? If I remember correctly, they didn't even save money buying the produce fresh, they were just attempting to help out someone a manager knew.

It doesn't explain Enron - that was an example of BAD regulation. Enron (and the California blackouts/brownouts) happened after d

--And so? What's your point? Oh, you mean you want the bags-o-mary to get in? Got it!

Exactly right.

--Oh, and you would like to add to those vices? You admit these are bad, but you would love to add more to the list. Way to make sense!

Not quite. We understand that the addictive and harmful drugs, nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine are best regulated and not prohibited. The same goes for opiates, amphetamines, cocaine, etc.

--The goal is to eliminate the supply to the point only chronic addicts seek the drugs out --eliminating the addition of newly created addicts to the problem.

Except that that doesn't work. Interdiction is difficult enough that you will never capture all the drugs. Demand is always high enough to support a price that will make even large losses insignificant. The tighter you control it, the more profitable it becomes.

--They are seeking to place the smugglers in geol, how does that compare to the many potential addicts who would not get addicted? The smuggler to addict ratio is less than 1:1.

How many potential addicts are saved for each smuggler in jail? Considering that drug use tends to go down when drugs are decriminalized, I'd say that ratio is negative.

Prohibiting theft is not bad, or would you actually claim it's bad?

Ok, fine. Drug prohibition is always worse than regulation.

Compare the drug problems in Singapore with the Drug problems in Switzerland during their experimentation with allowance of hard drugs.

Too many variables. It's much more relevant to compare the drug problems in Switzerland before and after their experimentation with heroin maintenance. That experiment was successful enough that they made it permanent:

The heroin program, started in 1994, is offered in 23 centers across Switzerland. It has helped eliminate scenes of large groups of drug users shooting up openly in parks that marred Swiss cities in the 1980s and 1990s and is credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts.

-- Hey, if you wanna claim that you love drugs and wanna be able to do them at your leisure, go ahead, but don't try to make it out to be something good for everyone.

Drugs aren't for everyone, and they come with significant social costs. But they're not going away. We need to learn to live with them. It's counter-intuitive but true, that those social costs are minimized by regulation, and maximized by prohibition.

So, what, your position is that a good (but futile) deed does not count in a person's favor?

That is a gross misrepresentation of my position. My position is that Obama knew that amendment had no chance in hell to pass, and thus his act of voting for the bill when he knew that the telecoms would be granted immunity is not an act of good, but one of evil.

Not a big fan of "dreaming the impossible dream?"

I'm a realist, which means that while I might like to alter the current power structure to the point where it would be essentially unrecognizable, feed the hungry and save the whales, I know that the Republicans and Democrats are both essentially concerned about taking and holding power for themselves, not with actually making a difference.

Further, I believe the system is designed to prevent an idealistic president from actually making a large direct difference. The place where the president is in a position to influence the nation is not one of policy, in which he is typically forced to follow policy, but in attitude. First Lady Michelle Obama's installation of an organic garden at the white house reminds me of past events in a way that perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about here.

Let me just reiterate: Obama is not an idiot. He never believed that amendment would pass. You have been duped.

not just like "Soviet Russia". (It's just Russia now, FYI)

Yes, but "just Russia" turned to a capitalist market after the USSR crumbled. Thus GPP was correct to say "Soviet Russia", since it was the Soviet Union that was socialist.

When a 12 trillion dollar economy cannot provide basic health care to all...there's a...problem.

Agreed, although I am not convinced that bigger government is the answer to the health care problem.

Regardless, revamping the health care system isn't the only thing that has people like GPP and myself concerned. How about dumping $13-17 BILLION into failing auto companies, then wanting to pour more money down the black hole when that didn't fix things as expected? How about trying to dictate how these companies do business? Or perhaps $13-17 billion isn't enough to raise any red flags, so how about another $700 billion to bail out America's banks? Does that seem Socialist to you? 'Cause it sure does to me.

As we've recently seen, unchecked capitalism is not a good thing since the markets aren't rational after all.

Yeah, sometimes the markets have to adjust themselves, and yes, it's frequently painful when that happens. FWIW, I do believe that government needs to intervene by setting laws on what companies can and cannot do -- thus we get things like the E.P.A., like child-labor laws, like minimum-wage laws, and I suppose even like SOX and SEC. But quite frankly, I don't like the direction that Obama seems to be taking the country (not that I was too thrilled with W's leadership, either...)

Major League Baseball Advanced Media totally botched the transition not once, but twice. When switching from Flash to Silverlight last year their new Silverlight-based streaming player didn't work, leaving paying customers without service for days. This year they decided to switched back to a Flash-based player ON OPENING DAY. Unfortunately, the new player doesn't work either, and in many ways was worse than the silverlight player, requiring additional installation plugins for HD capabilities, and left these same paying customers without the opening day experience they're paying for two years in a row.

Also I'm sure politics played a role too.

MLB 2008
http://www.pcworld.com/article/144035/mlbs_web_video_strikes_out_on_opening_day.html

MLB 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/major-league-baseball-str_b_185158.html

Today, the actively hold each other down

Actually, this whole discussion started because they all pulled together (as they nearly always do) and voted in a monolithic block, thus increasing their political muscle.

However, American Indians only make up 1% while Hispanic make up 15%.

Native Americans were nearly wiped out and moved to reservations. The reason YOU don't hear them "bitching" is because they don't live among us for the most part. If you Google even a little bit, you will see plenty of "bitching". Similarly, you must have your head in the sand if you don't think Hispanics are trying to better their situation. Did you completely miss the millions of marchers that protested in spring of 2006?

While I really do feel bad how blacks were treated in America's history, they no longer have any excuse to be clinging on to victimhood in this day and age.

You say "this day and age" as if we live in an "age" that is so far removed from the late 1960s. There is still a lot of racism in this country, no matter how much you choose to ignore it. The only way to get rid of it is to talk about it.

You may or may not like Obama, but whatever your feelings on him he is a unique politician in that he has a black family and some (non-American) black ancestry, yet was raised by whites. This gives him a unique perspective on race issues, and he is spot on. Watch his race speech or read it if his manner bothers you - if you can understand his speech you will have a better understanding of the problem we face in this country. People aren't going to stop "bitching" until his points have been addressed - so the pragmatic thing to do is either address these points or get used to the "bitching". Where there's smoke, there's fire.

Also, I apologize for linking the Huffington Post - it was the first Google hit for the text of the speech :)

I always thought it was odd that when reading Japanese fictional character bios, the blood type is often included (one example I remember is the FF7 manual). What's up with that, I wondered? Well now I had to look it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_types_in_Japanese_culture
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/01/in-japan-your-blood-type-_n_162917.html

tl;dr version: Like astrology, but taken seriously by much of the population.

Dr. Peter Breggin was published just Tuesday in The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/medication-madness-how-ps_b_223922.html about the BS involved, and stated that when we are in crisis we need our entire abilities to help us get out -- and that psychiatric drugs ALL remove some part of these abilities.

Do you want to lose your ability to program or hack because some doctor slaps a diagnosis on you and poisons you with psych drugs until you can't even sit up without drooling? Psychiatry is flat-out pessimistic about any "treatment" they have. All diagnoses are "permanent" and "not curable but treatable", and are caused by a "chemical imbalance in your brain". Then why is it that, with no treatment or declined treatment, over half of all "psychiatric patients" recover completely? Get your act together, psychiatry is BAD SCIENCE or NONE.

You get it by profiling.

Damn straight. Every terrorist who has attacked America has been either a Muslim, a Christian, or right-wing kook. The pattern is obvious: conservative religious people are a threat to our very way of life. But when we recognize that threat, their powerful lobby and traitorous friends in the mainstream media kick in and start singing the political correctness whine.

They depend upon the suggestions of Land Grant research institutions and the conclusions of the USDA and FDA when deciding which practices to implement on their farms to try and stay profitable while maintaining the health of their cows. Farmers were told that feeding rendered meat to cattle in small quantities was safe, and saved them money.

That's not a valid excuse. No one in their right mind would ever think that feeding pigs to pigs, sheep to sheep or cattle to cattle was a good idea. These research institutions probably conducted their research at the behest of the meat industry, lokking for a place to offload excessive offal, and factory farms jumped on it. Common sense was flat out ignored in the quest for profits.

Antibiotics are used against bacteria. the Flu is a Virus. Consequently, you are full of shit.

That was my error. I apologise if I mislead anyone. I misrepresented the effects of the anti-biotics dose on pigs. As you correctly say, anti-biotics cannot effect viruses.

But they did cause the Swine Flu virus to emerge via their application. Here's an article which discusses the conditions in factory pig farms which lead to the flu epidemic in North American pig farms. The relevant passages

The immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs' immune systems. They become susceptible to infection, and in such dense quarters microbes or parasites or fungi, once established in one pig, will rush spritelike through the whole population. Accordingly, factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds -- oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin -- diseases would likely kill them.

These conditions lead to an enviornment in pig farms which was ripe for a pandemic. This article discusses how the conditions lead to the spread of the virulent pig flu which would evolve into Swine Flu. The relevant quote here is

"Industrial farms are super-incubators for viruses," said Bob Martin, former executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Animal Farm Production, and a long-time critic of the so-called "contained animal feeding operations."

The dosing of pigs with anti-biotics was one of the key elements which lead to the Swine Flu outbreak. It did not make the Swine Flu resistant to anti-biotics, but it did create the strain in the first place. Once again, I apologise for the unintentional misinformation.

Often a few pennies make the difference between losing money on every cow and making money on every cow.

Yes, but right now the pressures are on the cost to produce beef. They are what is being driven down, at the cost of our health and safety. Admittedly the consumer is a fault for not paying more for quality meat. But when organisations like the FDA label meat from pigs that have eaten pigs, pigs have been sick and kept alive only by powerful medication, pigs and cattle have died on the way to the slaugherhouse as being "quality" meat, what are consumers to do? Meat is treated as a commodity, and producers are in a race to the bottom, at our expense.

Of course he gave most of his money to the Democrats for God's sake, you don't give a lot of money to the people that are on your side regardless. You give money to people who you want to sway in your direction.

Like how Warren Buffet, famous Republican, donated exclusively to Democrats to bribe them. Oh, and hosted fundraisers for them "just in case".

Seriously, that idea's just dumb. People give money to the people they want to win, partly to help assure their victory, and partly to get in their good graces should it actually happen. You don't see Ron Paul donating to the Green Party to win their favor.

Pri. Mary.

As in the drawn out Democratic primary last year, which went on months after McCain had the Republican nomination sewn up. Of course the press would have talked about Obama more than McCain last year.

Two other parts you conveniently fail to mention: the two months of non-stop concern trolling Obama faced over Rev. Wright and "white working class voters", and how the press bent over backwards to ignore McCain's incompetence and flip flopping.

McCain, with all his supposed foreign policy experience, confused Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis six times, and kept (falsely) claiming that Shiite Iran was training Sunni Al Queda agents. The media would have torn Obama half a dozen new assholes over this, but CBS went so far as to edit the video to cover up for McCain.

And what if Obama had mistakenly called Petraus the chair of the joint chiefs. Opps, new asshole. Or if he talked about the Iraq-Afghanistan border. Whoops, another asshole. Or if Obama had sought the endorsement of John Hagee, who had previously called the Catholic Church "the great whore", a "false belief system", an "apostate church", and that it would be "devoured by the anti-Christ".

Anyone who whines that Obama recieved favorable media coverage next to McCain needs to to drink a nice, warm cup of STFU.

Pri. Mary.

As in the drawn out Democratic primary last year, which went on months after McCain had the Republican nomination sewn up. Of course the press would have talked about Obama more than McCain last year.

Two other parts you conveniently fail to mention: the two months of non-stop concern trolling Obama faced over Rev. Wright and "white working class voters", and how the press bent over backwards to ignore McCain's incompetence and flip flopping.

McCain, with all his supposed foreign policy experience, confused Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis six times, and kept (falsely) claiming that Shiite Iran was training Sunni Al Queda agents. The media would have torn Obama half a dozen new assholes over this, but CBS went so far as to edit the video to cover up for McCain.

And what if Obama had mistakenly called Petraus the chair of the joint chiefs. Opps, new asshole. Or if he talked about the Iraq-Afghanistan border. Whoops, another asshole. Or if Obama had sought the endorsement of John Hagee, who had previously called the Catholic Church "the great whore", a "false belief system", an "apostate church", and that it would be "devoured by the anti-Christ".

Anyone who whines that Obama recieved favorable media coverage next to McCain needs to to drink a nice, warm cup of STFU.

As much of the foreign media has been shut out of Iran and communications have been cut and/or monitored in much of iran, twitter has become a major source of news coming out of iran. As much as many here on slashdot like to bash twitter, its clear that social networking tools such as twitter and facebook can be immensely useful in this sort of repressive situation. The traditional media have struggled to cover this, and there has been a lot of criticism of outlets such as CNN for not being on the ball.
The Huffington Post has a good blog covering much of the news coming out of twitter and blogs and some reporters still in iran.
The Guardian has perhaps the best reporting of the mainstream media, with a live blog that covers official reporters and some unofficial sources.

Major League Baseball Advanced Media totally botched the transition not once, but twice. When switching from Flash to Silverlight last year their new Silverlight-based streaming player didn't work, leaving paying customers without service for days. This year they decided to switched back to a Flash-based player ON OPENING DAY. Unfortunately, the new player doesn't work either, and in many ways was worse than the silverlight player, requiring additional installation plugins for HD capabilities, and left these same paying customers without the opening day experience they're paying for two years in a row.

New York Times Reader was a different case. It worked fairly well, but NYT got thoroughly flamed for introducing the reader for windows only, basing it on WPF's FlowDocument capabilities which aren't available for the Mac. Similar text features are eventually going to make it into Silverlight, but things like Printing are a much higher priority for the SL guys. The silverlight version of the reader used a complicated templating system rather than true adaptive text layout. Adobe's Text Layout Framework may not have been the first to market, but that + Flex + AIR are the first to bring it to a wider audience and may ultimately resonate more.

Also I'm sure politics played a prevalent role in both cases, especially in the case of NYT where the Mac User's vitriol for anything microsoft played out.

MLB 2008
http://www.pcworld.com/article/144035/mlbs_web_video_strikes_out_on_opening_day.html

MLB 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/major-league-baseball-str_b_185158.html

NYT:
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1424-new-york-times-switches-from-wpfsilverlight-to-flash-for-reader-2.html

you are insane. and also very incorrect.

let's start with something really easy: job creation by presidential party. the numbers don't lend themselves to a nice pithy "party A good; party B bad" conclusion, but certainly the average shows that, on average, we as a country do better on jobs with Democrats in the head office than Republicans.
okay, maybe you don't like "job creation" as the employment metric (there are decent reasons not to). unemployment is more straight-forward to measure and the data comes in regularly and frequently; what's it tell us? try this analysis. i'll save you some reading, since i imagine that's a problem for you; the conclusion, on page 2, includes the punchline: "Over the past 34 years, Democratic Presidents have overseen periods when the unemployed became employed, and Republican administrations were characterized by an increase in unemployment."
alright, alright, it's not fair to focus only on "employment". there are other ways of generating wealth (although where that gets focused is an interesting question), and the employment numbers don't tell us as much about turnover as we'd like. how about some other metrics? well, this analysis is old enough that we don't get to poke at Bush II much, but the numbers are pretty conclusive over modern US history. "...since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return." c'mon, tell me there's a liberal bias in S&P. you'd have to also lump in the Dow (nearly the same numbers). focusing on congress is also pretty damning; the spread is less dramatic, but still statistically relevant.
perhaps the most important macro metric of all - real GDP - follows the same trend as the stock market, at least since 1930.
how 'bout regionally? well, at least up until the current collapse, New England has been growing substantially faster than the rest of the country (left two columns in this chart; right two aren't really relevant). note the increasing spread between New England and the national average, either by percent or absolute dollars, as it coincides with the blue shift in the region over the same time period.
the Republicans got a lot of traction in the last election cycle out of the "redistribution of wealth" phrase, which they're still pimping. but the reality is that modern Republicans are far more guilty of it. take a look at GDP vs. median wageduring the Bush II years. the nominal increase in the economy after the Bush II crash was all focused on the top slice of the economy - doing very little to stimulate overall economic growth and stability.

you make some pretty weird claims about migration. can you show any evidence for a mass migration from blue to red states? i can't find it. instead, the conventional cause for census shifts are taken to be birth rates differing by states (for a good time, compare to teen birth rates when Republican hacks keep talking about the moral center of Real America) and immigration rates differing by states in roughly the same areas. the net domestic migration numbers, which i think are what you want to look at, don't seem to indicate what you want them to, although i could only find back to 1990. since then, there's been a departure from the northeast, midwest, and pacific coast for the western mo

How is that Obama's fault?

I think the grandparent was referring to party monopolies in general, not just Democrats. That's debatable, and in any case you are right that the bailout came from Bush and a Democratic congress...

But Obama's not innocent, and he and the Dems showed plenty of post-election support.

No, the Space Station module was named Tranquility, after the first moon landing spot. NASA named the new treadmill for the ISS after Stephen Colbert -- Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill.

Can exercise our freedom to point out their god-damned hypocrisy.