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As someone stated the other day in my thread, most of the cleanup efforts are little more than a Public Relations campaign. Skimming has, so far, collected a astonishingly small amount of oil.

Gulf recovery effort falls short of BP's promises: Skimming operations have removed average of less than 900 barrels daily

... In a March report that was not questioned by federal officials, BP said it had the capacity to skim and remove 491,721 barrels of oil each day in the event of a major spill.

As of Monday, with about 2 million barrels released into the gulf, the skimming operations that were touted as key to preventing environmental disaster have averaged less than 900 barrels a day.

Skimming has captured only 67,143 barrels, and BP has relied on burning to remove 238,095 barrels. Most of the oil recovered -- about 632,410 barrels -- was captured directly at the site of the leaking well.

This is obviously due to the huge disparity between the size of a fishing boat and the vastness of the Gulf of Mexico.

I'm going to pimp my proposal again: Send the Enterprise, use the nuclear reactors to power air compressors that will pump air (oxygen) into the oil plumes in the depths of the ocean. The oxygen feeds the bacteria that eat crude oil.

The Enterprise would be stationed in the vicinity of the Macondo Prospect site (where the Deepwater Horizon went down). Bubble fences would circle the wellhead at, say, 1 mile and 2 miles, or would be concentrated in whichever direction the oily currents tend to flow.

And I was just thinking today: coastal communities could experiment with running bubble fences some distance from their beaches. These compressors could be powered by the grid. Booms seem to be a big joke - look what happened when that little storm blew threw.

All the cleanup efforts are experimental, so the President ought to order at least one aircraft carrier to the Gulf. If it helps, send the rest of the nuclear navy. :)

No, the battle is GM vs non-GM. I will not buy GM food. Nor will many other people. How about this, have GM food labeled then see how many people buy it. Companies like Monsanto fight attempts to require labeling.

The push for profit has given us radical increase in agricultural yield over the past 80 years

One, for most of those 80 years foreign genes were not inserted into plants. Two, more than one thing accounts for increases in yield, And three, a lack of food is not the problem. The problems are political and armed conflicts. With neoliberal policies yields only went up modestly. Here's a story about millions of metric tons of wheat rotting away in a warehouse in India. Another one says how the supply chain is messed up, "Industry experts estimate more than 30% of all fresh produce is lost or spoils before it reaches the market." Many more stories like these can be found. How about in Africa? In the Democratic Republic of Congo looting of crops by armed groups and general insecurity has undermined farming. Or take Zimbabwe. Before Robert Mugabe came to power the country was a bread basket for southern Africa, ie a net food exporter. Food was the one of the biggest if not the biggest cash earner for Zimbabwe. After he came to power he forced white farmers off the farms then gave the land to his cronies, who do not know how to farm. Now Zimbabwe does not grow enough food for its own population.

Quite simply GM will not "fix" the problem of too little food. There's plenty of food so genetic engineering is not needed. To go further Infrastructure: The new gold explains how infrastructure is part of the problem. It blames the rotting food in India on the "country's creaky infrastructure".

Falcon

While it's a cute and funny Panny-arcade strip, it's not true.

Actually, there is research that suggests that under anonymous circumstances, otherwise normal people begin to behave in anti-social ways.
Article
Research paper
Another paper
One more

Do you think people would behave better when they drive if their real name was on their car? No. However retaliation for precieved slight would certainly increase.

The better question to ask is if people drive with less regard because they feel they are unidentifiable. Would you shout at a driver who cut you off if you knew they could hear you and find you? Would you drive around a line of backed up cars and force your way into line if you believed your reputation could be affected?

As for retaliation, privacy is already a myth. Anyone who wants to retaliate already can with a little bit of investigation. Physical retaliation is still rare, though. Using real names just removes this facade of privacy, making it obvious to those who speak that they can be held responsible and accountable for their actions (as they already can), and thus reinstating the disincentive to behave badly.

Rachel Maddow exposed this as an easy to tell but not really true story told not only by Fox News, but the general media, too. America Loves Incumbents. No, Really.

Not coincidence? So you're saying the stock market is causing global warming? I knew somehow Goldman Sachs was to blame!!! It all makes sense now.

Sarcasm as edgy as a rotted wooden spoon.

But if there's a way to make a dollar from misery, you can be sure all of Wall St has people looking into it. To get you started, here's a helpful article from 2003 about what defense stocks to buy, now that investors are bullish on a long war in Iraq.

And though the Journal has been bearish on climate change so far, as soon as they find a way to profit from it, I expect them to change their tune as quickly as they discard their values for a new, more profitable set of values in the future.

Everyone. Every mistake, every poor choice. Just like "The Hand of God", and Germany's "notched goal line", the drunken trader who improperly traded seven million barrels of oil while hammered out of his gourd is reality.

Predict all you want - you can have the best algorithms and the best data, but human fuckups will ruin those every time. Maybe, if all trades were designed and executed by computers, with no human involvement, you could predict those things. But as long as someone is required to spot someone 3 yards offside, or someone is allowed to trade millions of shares with his right hand with a scotch in his left, you're going to be unable to predict either a World Cup or a financial market.

Humans are ridiculously chaotic and unreliable, despite how advanced we think we are.

I'm absolutely not joking, BTW. The Gambino mafia made hundreds of millions of dollars off similar "last mile" scams. The idea is to buy some rural phone company in East Padinkus, then get Fed money for all of the "broadband" it's been putting out.

It may have not been a perfect copy, but it was most certainly the product of espianoge. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18686550/ns/technology_and_science-space/ I remember this story from when I was in elementary school... funny to look back and see what was true and what wasn't. http://books.google.com/books?id=3AAAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=soviet+spies+copy+shuttle+plans+from+library+of+congress&source=bl&ots=lYosOCOXtd&sig=ByCga3UHDaLFqsfmajHwvJ97GgQ&hl=en&ei=RTgvTPnuHMKAlAeb55HWCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBMQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q&f=false

more than the government? no

a lot of money? yes

Google has some where between 10-20 billion

MS is ~40 billion

and Apple is catching up with MS.

US government spends ~4.1 billion per DAY above what they earn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Debt_Clock

US government spends ~255 million per day for the war in Iraq
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15377059/

isn't it fun.. i think instead of paying my 40k i'm liable for - i'll wait till China comes for it and pay them in lead..

I could see prohibiting connecting to the internet to fall under that kind of policy.

Last I heard when US ham radio operators provide internet connections they get praised by the press.

They are able to get as much done in a standard 7 hour day/35 hour week as most Americans do in 8 hour day/40 hour week.

No.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_ove_pro_ppp-economy-overall-productivity-ppp

And http://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod4.nr0.htm

And ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ForeignLabor/flsgdp.txt

And http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20572828/

There are plenty of phone manufacturers that make a GSM and a CDMA version of a the same phone. In fact, Samsung is doing just that with their upcoming Android offering, the Galaxy S (and they're planning to release versions of it on 5 of the top 6 US carriers). Did you not catch that there are over 92 million Verizon customers? Then there's also the Sprint, US Cellular, MetroPCS, Alltel et al CDMA carriers. Granted they're not AT&T or Verizon in size, but I'm willing to bet there's at least another 70 million potential customers.

So... if it's worth the time of Blackberry, Samsung, and HTC to make both GSM and CDMA versions of some of their most popular/flagship devices, why would it not be worth it for Apple, who has the most popular smartphone in the world (meaning there's little fear that it won't sell). The only reason is the exclusivity agreement. And the Engadget editor said it best:

Contracts can be canceled, amended, and breached in many ways, and AT&T's spotty recent service history plus the explosion of the iPhone and the mobile market in general have given Apple any number of reasons to revisit the deal

Are you capable of defending yourself, or are you simply hiding behind the protection of your government? Are you always certain it will be able to protect you? Will you never leave its influence? Are you foolish enough to believe that once you leave its borders, it will go to the ends of the earth to protect you? Hint: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37907132/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

When it comes to pissing off the United States Government, well getting big and public doesn't always work.

Oh yeah?

As it turns out, recent tax cuts indeed have an estimated half of citizens getting half their income tax back. Low income families. A family earning $50,000 with two children under 17 will get all their income tax back.

Also says they still pay for other taxes. Income tax is roughly half of all tax paid (so if your total tax rate is 34% then you're still paying 17%).

Also mentions that the reason the number has gotten so high is because of the recession.

But income tax rates were lowered at every income level. The changes made it relatively easy for families of four making $50,000 to eliminate their income tax liability. Here's how they did it, according to Deloitte Tax: The family was entitled to a standard deduction of $11,400 and four personal exemptions of $3,650 apiece, leaving a taxable income of $24,000. The federal income tax on $24,000 is $2,769. With two children younger than 17, the family qualified for two $1,000 child tax credits. Its Making Work Pay credit was $800 because the parents were married filing jointly. The $2,800 in credits exceeds the $2,769 in taxes, so the family makes a $31 profit from the federal income tax. That ought to take the sting out of April 15.

When I first read that stat I thought it sounded really sinister... but after reading the article, and finding that it's based on a family of four earning $50,000 a year, I'm a lot less worried about it. Two adults, both working, making that amount are still going to struggle to make ends meet with two hungry mouths to feed.

"Companies like Blockbuster (who may just consider this another coffin nail)"

Oh there were already nails in Blockbuster's coffin long before this announcement, and Hollywood Video isn't doing much better.

Despite living in a large (millions) city Blockbuster and Redbox are my only physical video rental locations. Redbox worked out a deal with Walmart back in 2008 so they're already virtually everywhere, I predict Blockbuster locations will disappear in the next 5 years and we'll be left with Redbox at Walmart and McDonalds who use to own Redbox.

I'd add fraud and other white collar crimes for cases where the damages exceed the statistical value of a human life.

Islam - a religion of peace. Are you serious?

This lawyer is most likely an opportunistic political hack, scoring points by throwing some red meat to the fundie crowd in his own community. It's not like we don't have nutballs like that here in the US. And we've got violent religious extremists here, too.

Fundamentalism and extremism -- no matter what the religion -- is the problem. It leads the unbalanced and easily influenced to do crazy things, and it a great way for anyone with political ambition to recruit a loyal following.

There have been a number of studies on how video games can improve skills. For instance, surgeons who play video games are better at laparoscopic surgery than those that don't.

I figured out not too long ago that to convert the world to solar power, using generous assumptions...

So what about solar AND wind AND tidal AND etc., all the diverse environmentally-sound energy production methods, not to mention conservation? Did you calculate all that? Or did you just "generously assume" that only one method of energy production will exist in the future? I'd like to see the cocktail napkin on which these "figures" and "assumptions" are written out.

Here's some nuclear for you:
Leaks spotlight aging nuclear plants
New Wave of Nuclear Plants Faces High Costs
An Old Nuclear Problem Creeps Back

"And your attitude is the exact reason why I'm leaving I/T if I can do it. People who work their ass off should be rewarded and NOT replaced. Why? Because if you reward them and keep them they'll work their ass off for you AGAIN and AGAIN."

In a severe recession the employer can always find someone better and cheaper than you and there is nothing you can do about it. Outsourcing started this but other professions are being treated the same and even secure jobs such as teachers and policemen are turning into because of recession related budget cuts. In Louisiana all the new teaching hires are flown in from South America and this is happening while 300,000 teachers are being laid off nationwide.

The only light at the end of the tunnel are the managers who do this will find their good workers leaving when the economy rebounds (it may not in the U.S.) . Owning you're own business is the only way to avoid this. You will be disappointed leaving I.T. as everyone is being replaced by cheaper foreign, H1B1, and even the 20 million unemployed. More than likely they will have years of experience in the field you want to get into.

Start your own business if you have the means to do it.

Just remember,you are always replaceable when at work and bust your butt off. The corporations are the ones calling the shots for the time being.

They do test, but the window period can be as high as three months with plain ELISA, down to a month if you spend extra for Western blot, and that means that when someone comes out positive, all his/her partners within that period have to be tested as well as their respective partners. It happened in 2004 (5 infected) and 2009 (16 infected).

Back on topic: I haven't gotten anything from the web *ever*, perhaps for the simple discipline of not authorizing ActiveX components, applets and other gimmicks.

But that's me; I guess less computer-literate *and* porn hungry guys make easier targets - "Yes, Ok, Yes, show me the movies already!".

Daniel Ellsburg, who released the Pentagon Papers while working for the Rand Corporation during the 1960's and 70's was on MSNBC today and implied that they may attempt to assassinate him with the same sort of shadowy CIA manhunting squad used against him by Nixon. In his words they were sent by Nixon to " permanently incapacitate him" in Washington DC during some political rally.

"The drill depth was never attempted before by BP"

That's nonsense. The BP well has its total depth at 18350 feet (5593m), and it was drilled in 5000 feet of water (1524m). There were wells drilled years ago that are much deeper than that, both on the Gulf Coast and elsewhere in the world. True, this is getting near the technical limits, but there are 6km+ wells and plenty of wells have been drilled in over 2000m of water. For example, this well was drilled 4 years ago to a depth of 28175 feet (8587m) in 7000 feet (2133m) of water. Chevron is currently drilling a well in 2600m water depth off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. BP's Macondo well is *not* exceptional.

"But I digress, but this theory of natural geological process to create Oil is called Abiotic Oil."

And how successful has that theory been in finding oil? It hasn't been at all, and as spectacular as the Kola well is (12km+), it didn't find any oil or gas of significance either, and wasn't drilled primarily to look for it in the first place.

"But over the past 5 years the Russians began projects to test this theory and now have very secretive wells, 5 of them and just 5 wells that have single handedly turned Russia from the number 5 Oil producer to number one in the past 5 years. Internally producing more Oil than Saudi Arabia.

So, if you here people proposing tactical Nukes to shut the well down, they aren't joking. It may be the only way to do it by fusing the crust....if it works."

What on Earth are you babbling about? The main reason for the increased production from Russia has been the use of more modern exploration and production technology based on what was used earlier in western countries, and the many wells from which they are producing in sedimentary basins that already had production years ago are bog standard stuff. They aren't abiogenic oil.

The MSNBC Countdown site is a great comparison of what Flash costs in inefficiency. On a notebook it is Flash, but on iPad it is HTML5. The Flash site runs the fan on my MacBook Air and uses battery such that it would last for 2 hours. (Typically it gets 5.) On iPad, the HTML5 site runs cool and uses battery such that it would last for over 10 hours. The video also looks better on iPad, and the scrolling works as you'd expect whereas the Flash version has choppy video and the scroller doesn't work unless you click on it. I know my GPU has an H.264 decoder and I think Apple has provided access just recently (but probably not early enough to get into FlashPlayer v10.1) but I prefer the HTML5 version's interactivity also. It's just better.

Ironically, Microsoft doesn't have an HTML5 browser yet and NBC was the one TV company that said it was sticking with Flash for now. But whoever did the HTML5 site did a nice job.

MSNBC Countdown
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_

To see the HTML5 version on a notebook, spoof iPad's UA string with Safari's Develop menu. On iPad the scrollers are invisible.

The group that hacked AT&T's Web servers is called Goatse, which has "previously...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37602751/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets

They have, with an added layer of credibility, managed to propagate the danger to your Grandma in main-stream reporting.

I just hope Mat Lauer is wise enough not to look too deep.

like, perhaps not.

STOP SENDING HAIR BOOMS, OFFICIALS PLEAD

By Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com

To all those who have donated hair clippings, and those who have shipped them, the Unifed Area Command dealing with the Gulf oil disaster has this message: Please stop.

Using hair booms "was not deemed feasible after a technical evaluation," the command said in a statement. "In a February 2010 side-by-side field test conducted during an oil spill in Texas, commercial sorbent boom absorbed more oil and much less water than hair boom, making it the better operational choice."

Charlie Henry, NOAA's scientific support coordinator at the scene, added: "Our priority when cleaning up an oil spill is to find the most efficient and expedient way to remove the oil from the affected area while causing no additional damage. One problem with the hair boom is that it became water-logged and sank within a short period of time."

"Commercial sorbent boom is readily available and scientifically designed and tested for oil containment and absorption on the water," the command added. "Additionally, response teams are familiar with and properly trained to safely deploy, maintain, recover, and dispose commercial sorbent boom."

TLDR SUMMARY

- Using hair booms ... not ... feasible
- side-by-side field test ... during an oil spill
- commercial sorbent boom absorbed more oil ... less water than hair boom
- problem with ... hair boom ... became water-logged ... sank within .. short ... time.
- Commercial sorbent boom ... available ... scientifically designed ... tested
- response teams ... properly trained to ... deploy ... dispose commercial sorbent boom.

'The fact is he hacked into government servers he had no business accessing. We can argue motives and harm done all we want but it doesn't change the fact a crime was committed.'

Though of course when the data is something REALLY important (like a movie or an mp3) it's the admin who failed to secure the system who should be punished:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37107291/ns/technology_and_science-security/

Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980
Say hello to risky and out of control lending

Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act, 1982
Enjoy the savings and loan crisis

Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 would do away with restrictions on the integration of banking, insurance and stock trading imposed by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933
Welcome the age of "too big to fail"

I guess a simple google search was too hard for you to do before you started trolling.

But hey, everyone loves the little retard forced to sit in regular class with us now that the Special Ed budget has been depleted. It's simply amazing what he will say. (BTW, Ingore the part about god and pay attention to the oil in the lab parts as they are referenced for your enjoyment).

Parents paranoid about the mercury poisoning their kids' systems who go on to have their kid subjected to chelation has killed kids.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9074208

Timothy is such a luddite for turning this into a Red vs. Blue thing. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) also down played SpaceX's accomplishment. All of the politicians downplaying the achievement are just lamely trying to protect their area's piece of NASA's salted pork.

Rep. Kosmas: "The successful test launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is a significant step in the development of the commercial space industry. There is no doubt that commercial spaceflight will play an important role in the future of our efforts in space, and I believe private companies can bring new job opportunities for the Space Coast's highly skilled workforce. But we must both support the emerging commercial space industry and ensure a robust, NASA-led human spaceflight program in order to maintain our international leadership in space and keep our economy strong. I will continue fighting at every opportunity to minimize the human spaceflight gap, protect jobs, and ensure a bright future for the Space Coast."
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/06/04/4465072-spacex-fans-and-foes-speak-out

The problem is exacerbated by the glorification of the job by the media

What galls me is how the media portrays their job as being so dangerous, when it's far more dangerous to be a convinience store clerk, let alone someone in construction. "Cop" isn't in the top ten list of dangerous jobs.

As a former caffeine addict, I would *love* to see some serious studies come out describing the long term consequences to long term caffeine use. Of course, we'll never see that because there's more money behind caffeine than alcohol and tobacco, combined.

My favorite study, and one I quote often is this

Summary: In a study of more than 125,000 people, one cup of coffee per day cut the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis by 20 percent. Four cups per day reduced the risk by 80 percent.

Unfortunately, what happens when you allow people to be judge and executioner is things like this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30650051

Are there any statistics on this kind of thing? How often are people shot for trespassing. How often were these people unarmed? If I was a bad guy and I had bad intentions, I think I'd make sure I'd shoot to kill first. And, yes, you macho guys probably think you'll be quicker, but the reality is that you will be surprised. If everybody's armed the bad guys will still have the advantage of surprise and they know they can't miss...

Hello,

    The story is in error. Per this link, the plane only hit Mach 5, not Mach 6. This is still a pretty successful test, however.
Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37377401/ns/technology_and_science-space/

--PeterM

And we know more now about who got the most greedy.

Agree. Transmitting from a chip to PC or vice-versa, is no big deal. The fact he put it inside his body doesn't alter that ability.

Unfortunately superapecommando chose a very poorly written version of the story to submit and for some reason samzenpus chose that one to post. If you read a more informative version, like this one, or this one, you'd know that what the guy is claiming to have done is to have infected an implanted RFID device with a virus and had the virus infect his PC when it accessed the device. That's actually quite concerning.

lol, I thought I was about to prove you wrong because I had STARTTLS enabled on our incoming mail server and was surprised to find remote MTAs using it as I'd turned it on to protect our users' outgoing mail authentication.

$ telnet mx1.hotmail.com 25
Trying 65.55.37.120...
Connected to mx1.hotmail.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 col0-mc4-f34.Col0.hotmail.com Sending unsolicited commercial or bulk e-mail to Microsoft's computer network is prohibited. Other restrictions are found at http://privacy.msn.com/Anti-spam/. Violations will result in use of equipment located in California and other states. Tue, 25 May 2010 16:00:36 -0700
helo fuckface
250 col0-mc4-f34.Col0.hotmail.com (3.10.0.73) Hello [85.189.31.174]
starttls
554 Unable to initialize security subsystem
^]

$ telnet gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25
Trying 209.85.229.27...
Connected to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mx.google.com ESMTP s4si17050707wbc.88
helo fuzznuts
250 mx.google.com at your service
starttls
502 5.5.1 Unrecognized command. s4si17050707wbc.88
^]

At least someone is security concious, this is Fastmail's smtp - now owned by Opera

% telnet in1.smtp.messagingengine.com 25
Trying 66.111.4.72...
Connected to in1.smtp.messagingengine.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mx3.messagingengine.com ESMTP . No UCE permitted.
helo opera
250 mx3.messagingengine.com
starttls
220 2.0.0 Ready to start TLS
^]

Sorry, but prayer led by state paid employees in a state-funded institution i.e. public school is obviously establishment of a state religion.

Religious references by students have also been censored: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13461308/

Preventing a student making references to god is obviously prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

Here's a hint as to what might actually work: free trade deals linked to universal education coverage, especially for girls.

Good luck with you "free trade deals linked to universal education, especially for girls". The Taliban throw acid at girls that go to school, you know.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27713077/

And 'school' even for boys consists of rote learning the Quran.

no actual movement to decriminalize drugs

Just as you said, "You lack of exposure does not constitute a lack of interest." From the "American Journal of Economics and Sociology", Legalize Drugs Now!. Let's see how many others there are...

1. LEAP - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition - Cops Say Legalize Drugs
2. What if we legalized all drugs?
3. Tom Tancredo Says: Legalize Drugs!
4. Commentary: Legalize drugs to stop violence
5. Legalize drugs -- all of them
6. Is Now The Time To Legalize Drugs?
7. Why we should legalize drugs

Those are just the first page of results of legalize drugs. There are about another 245,000 results.

The people want it. That you don't talk to the types of people voting for such things doesn't change the fact they do.

Many of the people don't want it. That you don't talk to the types of people voting for such things doesn't change the fact they don't. And as a matter of fact I have talked to some who want to keep drugs illegal, my sister is one. I've also talked with people who want to bring back Prohibition, they say it will work this tyme. But everyone I know I know where their position is who lives in the real world and not a fantasy want at least some drugs legal. About the only drugs some don't want legal are so called hard drugs like opiates. They don't always know the facts though, for instance it's said an addiction to opiates is nearly if not impossible to break, however as the Rat Park experiment showed given the right environment even those addictions can be broken.

Fight against him? They encouraged him.

Liked J Edgar Hoover? That's a big laugh. Politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, didn't like him. The only reason he kept his position as director of the FBI is because of his extensive collection of private files. They were all afraid he'd blackmail them. As for most people, they didn't know about him or about the files he collected on public figures.

Falcon

"Why is it allowed?"

I think the answer is obvious. We are going to get into a full on depression soon with another economic crises within 2 to 3 years with derivatives, gold, and bonds if someone doesn't stop these guys soon. Crashes were quite common before regulation and our system is turning very 19th century with the new barrons and billionaires. These crashes happened in 1908 and 1873. In 1908 all the bankers forgave each others loans and the problem went away. The 1873 depression was almost as bad as the one in 1929 and we have a veyr large inflated value of derivatives of hundreds of trillions in non existence value that is more than the World's GDP.

I do not mean to make the fellow slashdotters mad or anything but guess where our tax money went for our bailout? It went to Rand Paul and others to make sure they can screw you over with no reforms and a free pass to play with your money you deposit in your bank.

Time to join a coffee or tea party. I do not have faith with so much money going to both parties that a solution will be developed before another diasaster appears. Obama looks pretty powerless at this point too to do anything about it.

99.999% of Law Enforcement, whether they be the secret service, fbi, or local officer Joe Asshole, do not have your best interest at heart. They have only their own interests at heart.

The sooner the American public at larges realizes this fact, the sooner we can enact laws that punish law enforcement officers for making the 'mistakes' that they do. At present, it would seem that nearly all officers who harm innocent people 'in the line of duty' are rarely questioned on their actions and even less so reprimanded in any way. It has become a horrible situation for the American way of life and the system needs fixed with new laws that punish the police (individual officers responsible for crimes committed like killing young girls indiscriminately instead of punishing innocent citizens.

Rachel Maddow has shown an interview named BP's haste lays waste to Gulf waters with a whistleblower from BP who explained that just a little before the disaster a BP manager told Transocean manager to do the work of putting in the corks into the well faster, so that the pumping of oil could be done faster. Aparently the Transocean manager was against it and they had an argument and BP won.

So it's mostly BP's fault, but I think still Transocean should not have complied with this clear violation of the procedure.

'The point is that a great many of the computers he accessed didn't even have password protection. And while that doesn't excuse McKinnon's intrusion, it does explain why the US armed forces are annoyed about this all. McKinnon made them look like idiots, and so they want to make an example of him in return.'

Which is of course the time-honoured response to breaches of inadequate military/government security. Here's Richard Feynman on a fence at Los Alamos:

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/14/2/FeynmanLosAlamos.htm

'One day I discovered that the workmen who lived further out and wanted to come in were too lazy to go around through the gate, and so they had cut themselves a hole in the fence. So I went out the gate, went over to the hole and came in, went out again, and so on, until the sergeant at the gate begins to wonder what's happening. How come this guy is always going out and never coming in? And, of course, his natural reaction was to call the lieutenant and try to put me in jail for doing this. I explained that there was a hole...You see, I was always trying to straighten people out. And so I made a bet with somebody that I could tell about the hole in the fence in a letter, and mail it out. And sure enough, I did. And the way I did it was I said, "You should see the way they administer this place (that's what we were allowed to say). There's a hole in the fence 71 feet away from such and such a place, that's this size and that size, that you can walk through."...Now, what can they do? They can't say to me that there is no such hole? I mean, what are they going to do? It's their own hard luck that there's such a hole. They should fix the hole. So I got that one through.'

By the logic of one recent case, perhaps it's the US admins who failed to password protect the PCs who whould be extradited:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37107291/ns/technology_and_science-security/

Some airlines already fly their planes more slowly than they have in the past. Family members, for example, have pointed out that flights to and from Portugal take about an hour longer than they used to. Then again it's possible that the route they follow has changed, but the general seems consensus seems to be that the planes are traveling at slower speeds.

And a quick search seems to reinforce this.

I'm not sure if that's unique to modern politics. What seems more unique to me is basic issues like taxes. If I ask someone who wants lower taxes what the tax rate should be and why they never have a good answer (by 'good', something that is consistent with the rest of their logic, like having a balanced budget, while still receiving social security and medicaid benefits as well as supporting the most expensive military force in the world).

And raising taxes anywhere is treated as the ultimate sin even if the last tax cut that was passed wasn't accompanied by any reductions in spending and the current recession is causing a significant drop in tax revenues while simultaneously greatly increasing the demand for social services.

I expect to find disagreement always. But I also expect to be able to find party leaders capable of rational debate--and if you consider Ron Paul's debate on Meet the Press as 'rational' then I don't know what to say (from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22342301/ ):

MR. RUSSERT: Let's start right at the very top, the issues. This is what you have been saying on the campaign stump, "I'd like to get rid of the IRS. I want to get rid of the income tax." Abolish it.

REP. PAUL: That's a good idea. I like that idea.

MR. RUSSERT: What would happen to all those lost revenues? How would we fund our government?

REP. PAUL: We have to cut spending. You can't get rid of the income tax if you don't get rid of some spending. But, you know, if you got rid of the income tax today you'd have about as much revenue as, as we had 10 years ago, and the size of government wasn't all that bad 10 years ago. So there're sources of revenues other than the income tax. You know, you have, you have tariff, excise taxes, user fees, highway fees. So, so there's still a lot of money. But the real problem is spending. But, you know, we lived a long time in this country without an income tax. Up until 1913 we didn't have it.

MR. RUSSERT: But, but you eliminate the income tax, do you know how much lost revenue that would be?

REP. PAUL: A lot. But...

MR. RUSSERT: Over a trillion dollars.

REP. PAUL: That's good. I mean, we--but we could save hundreds of billions of dollars if we had a sensible foreign policy.

MR. RUSSERT: Well...

REP. PAUL: And if you go--if you're going to be the policeman of the world, you need that. You need the income tax to police the world and run the welfare state. I want a constitutional-size government.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you replace the income tax with anything else?

REP. PAUL: Not if I could help it. You know, there are some proposals where probably almost anything would be better than income tax. But there's a lot of shortcomings with the, with the sales tax. But it would probably be slightly better than the income tax--it would be an improvement. But the goal is to cut the spending, get back to a sensible-size government.

MR. RUSSERT: But if you had a flat tax, 30 percent consumption tax, that would be very, very punishing to the poor and middle class.

REP. PAUL: Well, I know. That's why I don't want it.

MR. RUSSERT: So you have nothing?

REP. PAUL: I want to cut spending. I want to get a--use the Constitution as our guide, and you wouldn't need the income tax.

Basically, "I want to cut taxes almost completely." Great, so where will you cut a trillion dollars+ from spending? Umm, start with cutting off funding for the military and set a flat consumption tax (although I really don't want to do that) but I do want to cut those taxes!

As we saw with Decss it doesn't matter if other countries support the law. Us law is international law due to corrupt treaties paid by lobbyists. They can have the president issue an order like they did to poor Jon Johnsen for daring to have people watch their own dvds that they own on their own computers with Linux.

Unfortunately, this is not going away anytime soon.

What is it with this administration that everyone who disagrees is a racist?

The GP was a troll, crafting a fake "liberal" outrage in order to evoke precisely your emotional response. Congratulations, you and the person who modded you insightful bought it hook, line and sinker. You need to stop watching Fox News because this administration has not once called anyone who disagrees with it a racist. Some people have actually said a lot of the criticism of the adminstration is racist in origin, but I can't see how you seem to think it's fair to criticize the adminstration for something other people said. The only person I can recall that called anybody a racist is Glenn Beck.