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That's how it would work if Obion County, Tennessee ran the health care system. They refused to put out the fire

Wrong "they". The fire department belongs to the city of South Fulton, and is supported by taxpayers there. Obion County has no fire department: their elected county commission decided against establishing one back in 2008.

(Yeah, sorry for citing Mother Jones, I couldn't find a centrist site with the full details.)

In any case, I highly doubt the dude was actually waving thousands of dollars of cash in the firemens' faces. More likely he *promised* to pay. Given the dude's previous track record in paying for fire services, would you take an IOU from him?

You mean the countries where tax evasion is a national sport

You do realize that the USA isn't part of Eastern Europe?

Hold on! That UPI article is deceptive, and does not tell the whole story. Check out the original article in the NY Daily News, which I found via MotherJones:

The mixed upper- and lowercase rule was adopted in 2003, but municipalities were given until 2018 to comply completely, Hecox said....The additional cost to the city, if any, will be "marginal" because it receives a steady stream of state funding for routine sign repairs and replacement, DOT spokesman Seth Solomonow said. The life of a typical sign is about a decade, so most of the city's signs would be replaced in the next few years anyway, Solomonow said.

So the signs are going to be replaced on a schedule where they would be replaced anyway, almost all of the funding comes from the routine sign replacement budget, and the whole deal was arranged back in 2003.

This is a non-story that some political jerks want to blow up into unreasonable proportions.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/bob-inglis-tea-party-casualty

To support your points, consider:
"The Two-Income Trap" (about needing two incomes and being more precarious)
http://motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap
and:
"Capitalism hits the fan" (about 30 years of stagnant wages)
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/

Still, I feel the grandparent post is right about taxes. A 90% progressive maximum tax rate would help deal with a growing rich poor divide, and the fact that since it takes money to make money, the rich tend to get richer, and then a centralization of capital leads to the free market and capitalism breaking down (small businesses can't get started, etc.). Also, there are some needed things that business just won't do because of the risk or time horizon or externalities. That tax rate is part of what pulled the USA out of the Great Depression (justified at the time in part by WWII).

As far as government debt, it could be paid off tomorrow by just printing the money (which can be non-inflationary if the money printed matches the growing need for it). Related:
http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986212
http://www.moneyasdebt.net/

Debt by the US government and also citizens for mortgages is a tricky thing, since our economy is based on debt to create money. I think we'd probably be better off with some other approach eventually. Ideas on that:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

Ayup. Either that horse is making its way past Jupiter or jumped into an alternate equine dimension and became the ruler of that hooved place, but it is gone.

That said, there's other wells. I try to imagine that operators and owners of said wells have a renewed interest in at least not having a $20 billion disaster bill and maybe a shred of conscience and understand of what their actions can reap. I keep waiting for some news on the fucking dipshits at MMS who were literally fucking those who they were suppose to keep an eye on. No, attending their coke, meth, and sex parties is not the way to do it. I think these people should get jail time.

Given the sheer volume of matter that needs to be cleaned, I don't think there will be any effective solution. I mean, effective and doesn't completely sterilize the water or sand the oil is in. I doubt either the water or sand would be habitable afterwards. Sand gets hauled away to hazardous-waste and rapid degradation of oil in water will suck all the oxygen out. Likewise, I don't have high hopes for the survival of marshes that soaked up tidefuls of oil.

So... yeah, pretty grim outlook but it's the same deal for anything covered in oil. Ideally, the American public will learn that, no, businesses will not regulate themselves and that you actually need to put people who aren't ideologically opposed to regulation into positions to *gasp* regulate. That might be a bit much to ask though.

Anyway, we fucked up on the regulating of oil companies part and the environment will be pretty fucked over for decades (ie, if it ever recovers). We could at least not fuck up the cleanup effort and make sure those workers don't suffer health effects from cleaning up BP's mess. Whoops, too late.... Oh, and fucking up the cleaning effort by trying to bury it with sand.

Ayup. Either that horse is making its way past Jupiter or jumped into an alternate equine dimension and became the ruler of that hooved place, but it is gone.

That said, there's other wells. I try to imagine that operators and owners of said wells have a renewed interest in at least not having a $20 billion disaster bill and maybe a shred of conscience and understand of what their actions can reap. I keep waiting for some news on the fucking dipshits at MMS who were literally fucking those who they were suppose to keep an eye on. No, attending their coke, meth, and sex parties is not the way to do it. I think these people should get jail time.

Given the sheer volume of matter that needs to be cleaned, I don't think there will be any effective solution. I mean, effective and doesn't completely sterilize the water or sand the oil is in. I doubt either the water or sand would be habitable afterwards. Sand gets hauled away to hazardous-waste and rapid degradation of oil in water will suck all the oxygen out. Likewise, I don't have high hopes for the survival of marshes that soaked up tidefuls of oil.

So... yeah, pretty grim outlook but it's the same deal for anything covered in oil. Ideally, the American public will learn that, no, businesses will not regulate themselves and that you actually need to put people who aren't ideologically opposed to regulation into positions to *gasp* regulate. That might be a bit much to ask though.

Anyway, we fucked up on the regulating of oil companies part and the environment will be pretty fucked over for decades (ie, if it ever recovers). We could at least not fuck up the cleanup effort and make sure those workers don't suffer health effects from cleaning up BP's mess. Whoops, too late.... Oh, and fucking up the cleaning effort by trying to bury it with sand.

Thanks for the comments. I would agree with you that there is no upper limit as to what people would do -- the real issue is how they do it and what social arrangement surround that. For example, when someone plants a Redwood tree seed, how much work are they really doing to produce a huge tree? The tree grows on its own if the conditions are right (granted, it might be more likely to grow with some occasional tending). Our technology as it incorporates robotics and AI will be more like that -- so we'll see things like self-replicating space habitats that can duplicate themselves from asteroidal ore and sunlight, same like a Redwood, but the total human intervention required may be minimal (relative to the total outcome in terms of providing living space for millions of humans -- so such a project might preoccupy thousands of people, but with their output amplified so much by technology that the total human labor is a trivial percentage). Our scarcity economics may work OK when humans face the dilemma of work hard as a wage slave or slowly starve, but that economic logic breaks down when the choice is work hard as a slave for someone else for a little bit more or work for yourself and your friends and family and still have a good life. Some people will still choose wage slavery perhaps (ambitious people? stupid ones? addicted ones? desperate ones? materialistic ones? etc.), but I'd suggest more and more people would not and would look for more joyful ways to spend their time. So, we need alternative social arrangements as robotics becomes more and more capable (like this video shows).

There are exceptions even now though. A lot of people at Microsoft or Google were or are millionaires (thorough stock appreciation) and do not have to "work" to have a modest lifestyle; so you would be right to point to examples of that, where people work because they want to change the world somehow (or to have a more profligate use of resources). Human social dynamics, as James P. Hogan suggests, leaves most young people adapted to want to show off somehow to attract a good mate, and showing off materially has been long ingrained in our culture (including buying trophy wives for older guys, or the whole "cougar" thing now in the other direction).

Of course, "men" are already under the gun in our society:
"The End of Men"
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/
As are families:
"The Two-Income Trap"
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap
Robotics just add to other ongoing social trends...

Still, I'd suggest, the dynamics of how society is arranged (and what relationships women prefer and why) would change somewhat if essentially everyone in the society felt like a millionaire through something like a basic income or other fundamental change, as I wrote here:
"Basic income from a millionaire's perspective?"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html
"Essentially, with a break in the link between having a job and having a right to consume at a moderate level, workplaces could be organized however they wanted. And potential employees would just vote with their feet about where they wanted to work to make the most money, have the most fun during the day, or do the most good for society as they saw it. While it is true that many unpleasant jobs would no longer find low wage workers to do them, for those jobs, either wages would go up, or they would be automated or redesigned out of existence, for example, like with some towns that have garbage trucks with robot arms to pick up curbside standard garbage cans. So, overall, most of the jobs that remained would be ones that people

While CNN is the butt of all media jokes (Hello? Is anyone out there?! TWEET US SOME NEWS PLEASE!), I'll give Anderson Cooper props for talking about the 65ft exclusion zone they're enforcing around response vessels and oil booms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXsmLMV1CrM

Call it milking but if the Coast Guard is doing this and BP is hiring police to run off reporters and anyone curious (link), I certainly hope they don't stop talking about it.

One of the riskiest classes of loan guarantee made by the feds is for nuclear power plant construction.

Those loans are expected to have a 50% default rate.

Solar's a bit less risky than that -- far less likely to have cost overruns or construction problems. Generally the government does not price risk high enough, but that doesn't mean they lose every dollar they guarantee. Most of it gets payed back.

Not a SINGLE utility has ever defaulted on a loan-guarantee for a Nuclear Power Plant.

Of course, if you come out EVERY SINGLE DAY and declare "it will rain because I say so!", one day, it will probably rain.

Does that mean you can create rain?

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/06/immigration-california-penal-code-834b-arizona

Oops. Next time, try Google.

One of the riskiest classes of loan guarantee made by the feds is for nuclear power plant construction.

Those loans are expected to have a 50% default rate.

Solar's a bit less risky than that -- far less likely to have cost overruns or construction problems. Generally the government does not price risk high enough, but that doesn't mean they lose every dollar they guarantee. Most of it gets payed back.

I lost all sympathy for him when I found out that he went on Colbert and admitted that Wikileaks went far beyond simply leaking the video and edited for "political impact." Don't believe me? Watch 3:00 to about 3:40.

Furthermore, I have no sympathy for Reuters' guys because Reuters has a history of being embarrassed in that region by having its "correspondents" not only embed themselves with guerrilla forces, but often hires people who are working both sides (ex: the egg on Reuters' face when it came out that its subcontractors in Lebanon were actually members of Hezbollah).

That's the Reagan / Thatcher party line all right, and not tied to any realities. The handful of news organizations resulted from the being pushed together. In many cases, nearly all in the areas I've been, the mergers have been of ideological reasons more than economic and the hard times follow the merger rather than the other way around. What I refer to as the collapse is very recent and is the result of having less than a dozen faux news sources (including Faux News) all shoveling the same rather content-free drivel.

Prison labor in the current US isn't really the same as in the older days. In the old days, laws were passed just to get people into prisons and the forced labor netted someone a profit. Now it's mostly volunteer, generally is some remedial task the prison already needs done, and is offered as a reward for not fucking up. There are some businesses that contract out with states in order to help fund some of the prisons but it doens't offset the costs of the prisoner.

I'd say it's closer to the older days than you think. I would argue that plenty of laws are passed just to get people into prisons. It may not be blatant, but consider our prison population per capita and how many non-violet offenders we have incarcerated. However, I hope that is unrelated to our use of prison labor.

While yes, most prison labor is volunteer(as-in, they have a choice), but they are not just completing tasks that the prison or state need done. They are also getting paid. Though the prison gets a cut, and the wages are traditionally VERY low. So it doesn't especially offset the cost of housing the prisoner, but it gives the hiring company an incredible profit compared to hiring minimum wage workers.

Up in washington, they're making US armed forces uniforms[1]. Apparently even Victoria's Secret clothing is being assembled by some prison labor now. And the practice is growing. The United States prison population is potentially an incredible underutilized workforce and can make some serious profits for the companies that take advantage of it.

However, we really need to be careful of the profit motive in using prison labor. Would it be benificial to society as a whole to lock up more of our population to have a cheaper workforce? Should judges be provided with more kickbacks for longer sentences for viable workers? It is a potential downward spiral.

Here's an article that sums up how some states are using their prison workfroce.

[1] - Last time I researched that was about 10 years ago. This may have changed since then.

Quite a few Xians called for bans of Andres Serrano and defunding of the NEA during the "Piss Christ" controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_the_Arts#1989_objections

College group bans Gays and people who have pre-martial sex:
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/19/christian-college-group-bans-gays-and-people-who-have-premarital-sex-is-it-a-set-up/

Boycotting (not really a call for a ban, I know) Sony because of, get this, how Xians are portrayed in "The DaVinci Code": http://www.christianboycott.org/

Xian call for banning the game "Modern Warfare 2" because of violence and the "well established cause and effect relationshop between video games and violence": http://mainefamilypolicycouncil.com/artman/publish/Opinion_5/Ban_this_Game.shtml

Xians calling for ban on Muslims in the military: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/11/conservative-christian-group-calls-no-more-muslims-military

So bans, yes. Some Xians are very sensitive and call for bans all the time. Death, maybe not so much. (Unless you count the anti-abortion people...) There does seem to be a proto-Xian-al-quieda group in India though, called the National Liberation Front of Tripura: http://www.christianaggression.org/features_nlft.php. Don't know anything about it though.

Okay, plugging the leak is important, but why aren't BP also doing something like this to contain the effect of the leaked oil: use 'empty supertankers to suck the spill off the surface, treat and discharge the contaminated water, and either salvage or destroy the slick.' Instead, they're just rolling out containment booms and sending people out to mop up beaches, never mind trying to initially insist that the crude was red tide, dishwashing-liquid runoff, or mud. Oh wait, the supertanker idea costs a lot of money. Sorry, sorry, my bad.

Did anybody stick a mike in Palin's face and ask her about how her "drill baby drill" bit went over? watching her squirm would have been fun. Oh and while we we were told socialism for health care is bad and wrong and evil, guess who wants to have mommy government bail out the oil spill? That's right, you good friends on the "right".

Although I don't get how they can call themselves es "conservatives" anymore, since they are pretty much the same as the Dems, blowing money like crack whores in Vegas and wanting ever bigger government. The only difference between the parties I can see is that the Dems suck the big media cock like the RIAA, while the Reps suck the megacorp and defense industry dong.

As for TFA while I'm glad they may have it stopped, now BP needs to be hit hard and forced to clean up every mile of coast they fucked up. Of course with the oil rig inspectors doing meth and watching porn instead of doing their fucking jobs a disaster like this was inevitable. Maybe we'll actually force greater accountability and regulation? Naaah, that would hurt a corporation's profits!

There's been some work on plant derived oils used for aviation fuel, as well as from coal. I think Virgin did some tests with palm oil, at least blends, http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/01/virgin-airlines-powered-pond-scum and the AF has been looking as well. Let me see.... OKey doke, here is a ref, made from coal (ya, still nasty, but domestic supplies are hugemongous theoretically): http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/05/airforce_synthetic_fuel_050509/

As to a wild ass way for heavy lift cargo, using no petroleum fuels, how about huge lighter than air craft, with those thin film printable photovoltaics (the "new amazing breakthrough" ones that appear here weekly, like today, then disappear the next week...) all over the lifting bag shell, and then electric motors and props? Just a thought, in a popular science cover story way..... Most likely they would have to follow the old clipper ships model of following the "trade winds" and currents, just at a higher altitude....

Or just not ship as much stuff in the air, cargo or people. Build and grow more local, slow down this globalism a little, eat local, vacation more local, etc. Business travel..dang, work on better teleconferencing. Commuters, leave a place (the home) with a computer on a desk, travel to another place with a computer on a desk, then go home again, forever... because....I have no idea why this hasn't completely stopped yet.. Physically moving meatbags, twice a day, by the millions and millions, to sit in front of a computer screen is IMO the biggest failure of the computer information age, bar none.

Slowing down wars, dropping such a huge demand for petroleum there as well..that could help. "War" in general, pun intended, is just too profitable. Ike warned against it, said they would accumulate too much control over policy, because the profits are obscenely huge, including this artificially enhanced demand for more petroleum fuels.

This latest leak in the Gulf..the ultimate cost isn't calculated yet, but if it is less than tens of billions I'd be surprised. Now say they had spent those same billions actually constructing plants for manufacturing of those weekly amazing solar breakthrough products, the ones that disappear all the time...

How about the fact that we had no growth in middle class income for the last 10 years while at the same time the upper class managed to climb even higher?
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/a-decade-with-no-income-gain/
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/01/vicious-cycle-stagnant-wages

Please give me one example of how the Obama Administration is more transparent than the previous administration. Second, I was unaware of the Bush Administration using unofficial email addresses, please provide a reference. I believe there was a story about Sarah Palin using an unofficial email address when she was governor of Alaska, but that is irrelevant to the question of whether the Obama Administration is more transparent than the Bush Administration.

http://oversight.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2469&catid=44%3Alegislation&Itemid=1

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2007/04/rove-and-co-broke-federal-law-email-scam

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/apr/12/nation/na-emails12

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_e-mail_controversy for a summary of the whole thing and more references.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/12/chuck-norris-takes-obamas-climate-one-world-order

"My big worry, is that we as a nation, if we start having to be obligated to other countries ... Like, in this conference they're going to try to take our money and send it to third world countries, because of since we spend so much oil, and these other countries have suffered, then we're going to give our money to these third world countries."

I don't know about you, but I found this comment to be hilarious in its absurdity!

1) Biggest objector to a Climate Change accord: USA.
2) The reason? Because the big polluters out there like China and India will not contribute.
3) The reason? Because the USA et al. have been doing it for decades and as a result are very developed (wealthy). China and India figure it is their turn, why should their development be held back, its not fair.
4) The impasse?: Every accord that has been done basically severally cuts emissions in developed countries, while barely touching those of 3rd world or developing countries.
5) The result?: Developed countries will have tighter restrictions likely leading in a decline of their economy, while developing countries will continue to grow and will have boom economies.

So in one sense Chuck Norris is correct, on some level there will be a redistribution of wealth from rich developed countries to poor developing countries. However in another sense he is an idiot, as the USA currently OWES China something in the tune of 800 Billion dollars and growing anyway.

One of the major issues in private health insurance today is Recission, the nullification of your insurance contract:

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/06/healthcare-ceos-shoot-themselves-foot
http://digg.com/health/Understanding_the_rare_practice_of_recission

With group insurance policies, you have a certain amount of protection. But for individual contracts, it really works against the whole point of having insurance in the first place.

Very insightful: "government - which by its nature involves regulation, and public investment, and yes collecting taxes to pay for those activities". In a way, the USA had its greatest general prosperity when marginal tax rates were 91% and the government was interfering heavily in the economy right after WWII, which lead to the Golden Era of the 1950s with many one-income blue collar families, the sort of "family values" many Republicans talk about. What does that tell us?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt

Also related:
    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap

Ideally, we need to tax and redistribute as a basic income, given the income-through-jobs link is breaking down through out our society from automation and better design:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triple_Revolution
    http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

This is propaganda, disinfo, lies and bullshit.

They will take the net down to prevent uncontrolled information sharing and disclosure. They are prepping this under the framework established in The Cybersecurity Act of 2009, introduced by Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), last April. This gives the president the ability to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any "critical" information network "in the interest of national security." The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president, according to a Mother Jones report.

Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, dismissed the entire premise of the Cybersecurity Act when she pointed out the fact that granting centralized power to the government to control networks would in fact make the stability of the Internet less safe, because allowing one person to access all information on a network "makes it more vulnerable to intruders," she said. "You've basically established a path for the bad guys to skip down."

enator John Rockefeller betrayed the true intent behind the legislation when he stated, "Would it have been better if we'd have never invented the Internet," while fearmongering about cyber attacks on the U.S. government and how the country could be shut down.

See him rave:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8PCmLPPVnA&feature=player_embedded

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/algae-energy-orgy

Nostalgia kills rational thought

We're talking about TASTE here, which, last I checked, was largely a subjective measure that varies greatly from individual to individual. I also agree with him, somehow they managed to kill tomatoes, sweet corn, and apples. Tomatoes are not supposed to be sickeningly sweat, sweet corn isn't suppose to taste like candy, neither should apples. Modern produce is also less nutritious than it used to be.

To me it isn't even nostalgia, I just can't stand overly sweet, or tasteless food. If they made tomatoes MORE acidic (as opposed to sugary) than they used to be, I probably would like them even more.

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

See also a longer written history that goes back farther (to Plato):
"The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and ... Resistance"
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651

However, redistributing wealth towards families with kids is still a good idea IMHO, or in more general, a basic income:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html

So, I part company with Propertarian-libertarians on that (many of whom would just eliminate schools as well as the wealth redistribution aspects, leaving families with children with no formal social support in an industrialized society now in the midst of "The Two Income Trap").
    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap

The makers of that video:
    http://www.freedomofeducation.net/

The more general issue:
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
   

I'll bite. You are right, it is not so much the *is*. Google makes very functional, often simple, solutions. Their "generosity" is scary. They pretty much give everything but their advertising for free and people are scared of bait and switch. They are also scared of the sheer amount of data that google possesses. Just by using gmail, google and google voice, google has all your voicemails, text messages, internet searches, phone numbers, and emails. Some people feel that google retaining this information indefinitely is evil and they are not happy about the consolidation of data into a single corporate entity. Here are some good events that build a valid case for "evil" google has done

Please inform the NRA-clown who asked you the question that the 30 billion can easily be taken from the military budget seeing that the US already spends more money on the military than the rest of the world combined

That wouldn't really help as a lot of military spending is off the books. On the other hand we didn't need to build a billion dollar embassy in Iraq about as big as Vatican City. Or the hundreds of millions spent on other embassies.

On the other hand, if you think health care is expensive now wait until it's free. Costs will either skyrocket or be health care will be rationed. What would help is a freer market in health care, medicine, and insurance. Either those who buy and pay for their own health insurance should get the same tax breaks as employers who offer insurance and the employees that get it, or those employers and employees should not get tax breaks. It should also be easier to open walk-in clinics with expanded use of Nurse practitioners and physician's assistances who practice under the supervision of doctors.

Falcon

...A major one...

Don't tell me... Ford

I'm not questioning what happens in the US. I'm questioning the story about "China's internet addicts".

In fact, I have heared of such programs carried out by medical doctors (as you linked to http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/school-shock), but curiously only in connection with the USA. Do you have references for other countries?

Stephan

If it goes on the the US it can certainly go on in the United States.

This isn't ECT. This appears to be aversion therapy. Just because it's done wrong and the shocking last long doesn't make it any different. The same has happened at Judge Rotenberg Center in the United States where a slightly more brutal form is used (kids permanently strapped to devices triggered by remote control).

It's currently going onin the United States and nobody is getting punished. It's "aversion therapy". This article on the Judge Rotenberg Center will make you wretch, i guarantee.

In theory, WIMAX can give you usable (if somewhat slow) speeds out to 50km - which might get some villages close to Iran's borders but won't help Tehran at all.

Anyone who has the right sort of CPE, the right knowledge, and proper credentials can use a dish subscriber network to get as much as 2mbps down and 1mbps up. The latency blows, but it's not like the service is meant for playing the latest FPS. The big downside is the customer equipment - satellite dishes are thick on the ground in most areas of the middle east, but I'd be a little surprised if enough of them are the right sort of dish to matter. If they are, it may not matter - Iran's been taking various measures to reduce citizen's access to satellites

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

I mean this is the party who seriously proposes replacing pharma patents with all drug R&D being government funded.

Count me in. In the US govt. pays for most medical research, but patents ensure prices for new drugs are stratospheric and drug companies biggest bugdet item is advertising and administration, not R&D. (cite - from the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, no less).

Americans are paying through the nose for the vast inefficiencies of for-profit medicine every day.

Well, I can't provide the quality of citations present in the case of government funding, but here's an interesting article over where ExxonMobil's money goes thinktank wise. ( http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/05/put-tiger-your-think-tank ) Companies and government still fund whoever will agree with them. If only I could agree with someone enough for them to pay me

This is true of some. The ones I'm talking about are more like some of the guys on this list:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/10-people-who-are-profiting-global-economic-crisis

Of course its likely the real winners are somewhat more discreet and protective of their privacy than that lot. Gotta make yourself scarce when the pitchfork wielding rabble are seeking swift justice.

the televison new or news shows that use the printed media as their building blocks An interview with Rachel Maddow for MSNBC states as much

"Special props to Rachel for recognizing how newscasters depend on print reporting for the building blocks of their shows; "without the [MoJo DC bureau chief] David Corns of the world, there's no show. David Corn can do his job without me, but I can't do my job without him."

Rest of the article can be read here http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/03/exclusive-rachel-maddows-anxiety-dream-and-more-mother-jones-gala-video-clips

so why the sledge hammer to a collector/pointer of news why not go after the real users of it. ??

Take oil companies. Finding oil is a very important and high-stakes issue for them. Literally hundreds of billions of dollars are riding on it. When the chips are down and they need to find the most likely spots to drill - what kind of geology do they use? Flood geology, or mainstream? Which one actually delivers the goods?

Let's assume the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Where did the oil come from? Was it created in the ground with the rest of the Earth? If so, is there a way to predict where it might be found? Or perhaps it really did form from plants and dinosaurs, but about 10,000 times faster than any chemist believes it could? Any way you look at it, a young Earth and a Flood would imply some very interesting scientific questions to ask, some interesting (and potentially extremely valuable) research programs to start. How come nobody's actually pursuing such research programs?

Why don't fundamentalists put together an investment fund, where people pay in and the stake is used as venture capital for things like oil and mineral rights? If "Flood geology" is really a better theory, then it should make better predictions about where raw materials are than standard geology does. The profits from such a venture could pay for a lot of evangelism. Why don't they do this?

(It turns out some people actually are doing this - or, at least, claiming too. But it appears that deeply-held beliefs are easier to exploit than deeply-held oil reserves.)

Seriously, if you really believe that conventional geology is... er... catastrophically wrong, and that you have a better theory, then that means a major investment opportunity for you and your fellow-travelers. Yet, I have run across very few creationists that are actually willing to put their money where there mouth is. Why is that?

Not every country is as barbaric as the US of A, you know?

The U.S. government has killed or caused the death of 11,000,000 people and invaded or bombed 25 countries since the end of the 2nd world war. The U.S. has the highest percentage of its people in prison of any country in the history of the world. The U.S. government just arranged a financial collapse and an enormous theft of taxpayer money.

Are you calling that barbaric?

Well, good.

I'd like to add: a lot of the GP's 'fuel sippers' don't get anywhere near those numbers unless you drive them like a machine. Your average spirited driver is going to get much lower mileage numbers with those cars, because mileage depends as much on your driving style as the design of the car (just ask this famous hypermiler).

My experience:

I am a spirited driver; I have to be, to survive on our great nation's freeways. My previous car was a Saturn SC2 (auto), and although it was lightweight, aerodynamic, with a small 2.0L engine, I wasn't getting near the advertised 34 mpg. On pure highway driving, I would get 31, and in mixed driving (still mostly highway) I would get 29. Last year, I replaced it with a Scion xB (2.5L engine with more torque), and I'm getting 27 mpg combined from the box (only 2 mpg less than the Saturn)!

The xB weighs 500 pounds more, has worse aerodynamics, has more engine displacement, and has a 4-speed auto just like the Saturn. But the improved torque (155 versus 115 lb) means that the new engine is better-designed to handle my high-speed driving, and I'm sure the transmission is also better-tuned for high-speed.

So yeah, you go on touting the wonders of fuel sippers. Thankfully, I can buy a car that reflects my driving style, because for me a 'fuel sipper' would be a wasted effort.

Here is a more recent (2004) article suggesting it is only 75% of new drugs that are "me too":
    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/09/truth-about-drug-companies
"""
The high price of prescription drugs has put -- and kept -- U.S. pharmaceutical companies in the news recently, but Dr. Marcia Angell argues that problems with the industry run even deeper. In her new book, The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It (reviewed in the current issue of Mother Jones), the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine contends that the industry has become a marketing machine that produces few innovative drugs and is dependent on monopoly rights and public-sponsored research.

Angell disputes the industry's reputation as an "engine of innovation," arguing that the top U.S. drug makers spend 2.5 times as much on marketing and administration as they do on research. At least a third of the drugs marketed by industry leaders were discovered by universities or small biotech companies, writes Angell, but they're sold to the public at inflated prices. She cites Taxol, the cancer drug discovered by the National Institutes of Health, but sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb for $20,000 a year, reportedly 20 times the manufacturing cost. The company agreed to pay the NIH only 0.5 percent in royalties for the drug.

The majority of the new products the industry puts out, says Angell, are "me-too" drugs, which are almost identical to current treatments but "no better than drugs already on the market to treat the same condition." Around 75 percent of new drugs approved by the FDA are me-too drugs. They can be less effective than current drugs, but as long as they're more effective than a placebo, they can get the regulatory green light.

Finally, Angell attacks major pharmaceutical industry -- whose top ten companies make more in profits than the rest of the Fortune 500 combined -- for using "free market" rhetoric while opposing competition at all costs. She discusses Prilosec maker Astra-Zeneca, which filed multiple lawsuits against generic drug makers to prevent them from entering the market when the company's exclusive marketing rights expired. The company "obtained a patent on the idea of combining Prilosec with antibiotics, then argued that a generic drug would infringe on that patent because doctors might prescribe it with an antibiotic."

Angell, who is a doctor and a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, wants to see the industry reformed. She recently sat down with MotherJones.com to talk about how to "ensure that we have access to good drugs at reasonable prices and that the reality of this industry is finally brought into line with its rhetoric." ...
"""

Yep, this is as long as they have ANY source of running water, or air to breathe, for millions of chinese still die from this alone. In fact, at the rate they are going, not only them, but US as well will see the consequences of such irrational and unreasonable growth at the cost of quality of life. See this article in Mother Jones Magazine for some more fun statistics: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2007/12/last-empire-chinas-pollution-problem-goes-global As for the statistics on poverty, I come from a so-called in-development country. Moving out of poverty in that context translates from living of one's own meager resources off the land, to living as an indentured servant with someone else's boot over your head (but with pseudo-clean water) for generations to come. But statistics love ignoring these facts. Global environmental decay, disease and famine wont.

And I'm sure people are trying to bioengineer better microbes to degrade the plastic. This kid won the science fair on that basic principle. http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2008/05/teenagers-science-fair-project-may-deliver-us-plastic

My wife and I can afford, and maintain a 3 bedroom house, either of us on our own would not be able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment, or maintain a house.

Just my $.02, but while this may be true, it can set you up for The Two Income Trap. In the long term, you'll find greater security (and happiness too) by living closer to the means of only one.

Case in point. My wife died three years ago, but as we always lived within the means of one salary (mostly), financially I'm fine, as would she have been if I had died instead.

What good is freedom of expression if there is no freedom of response. So-called democratic states attempt to suppress descent on social networks by painting them as havens for terrorists. It's curious as both the capitalists and the communists are dead scared of people talking to each other, without the moderating influence of some state-run or private-enterprise owned media.

Yoani Sanchez and her blogging comrades are now the targets of the Castro regime's censors--and police.