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I was looking for this article:

Although the Taliban government is not recognized by United Nations members who will again consider what do with the Afghanistan next month, it is treated as the de facto government by United Nations agencies, which run programs there. Afghanistan is also under Security Council sanctions for refusing to turn over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant, to American courts.

On human rights, Mr. Zahid, who is meeting United Nations officials and other diplomats, said Taliban officials now let women work in health services, the Interior Ministry, at airports and for certain United Nations agencies like the World Food Program. But he said demands for a representative government and elections were unrealistic in a country destroyed by two decades of war, a drought and almost no foreign aid.

''How do they expect us to be in a position to hold elections?'' he asked. ''In all of Afghan history, there has never been an election. After 20 years of war, when we are only beginning to create institutions, when we are the first Afghan government to try to stop opium production, how can they expect us to do this now? They are demanding of us what they never before expected of this country.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/21/world/taliban-open-a-campaign-to-gain-status-at-the-un.html

Only Egypt and Jordan have recognized Israel, as far as I can tell, and they are the only ones mentioned in this article from the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/world/middleeast/01arab.html

Those are the only Arab states in blue on the map.

From Wikipedia:

Israel has no diplomatic relations with 36 countries, 20 of them members of the 22-member Arab League. Some of the countries, with which Israel has no diplomatic relations, accept Israeli passports and acknowledge other Israeli marks of sovereignty; however, most of these countries refuse to recognize the State of Israel at all.

Not even Iraq has established diplomatic relations with Israel. The parent was trying to claim that Israel is generally recognized by their neighbors, including Iran, which are demonstrably not true statements. Most of the Arab League is still boycotting Israel, doesn't recognize their passports, and some even prevent entry into their country if it's obvious you have been to Israel (like a border entry stamp from Taba, Egypt.)

Is there anything else you'd like to say to make yourself look slightly stupid and absolutely petty?

In case you did not know, the massive nuclear buildup by the US in the 1950's and 1960's was largely based on incomplete intelligence and a great deal of incompetence by the Eisenhower and (much less so) the Kennedy administrations. Although McNamara recognized that the US had a large advantage in both nuclear warheads and delivery systems, he still continued the massive buildup in nuclear weapons started by Eisenhower and pushed the idea of mutually assured destruction. It led to the greatest period of nuclear tension we ever had, and almost led us to nuclear war.

In the 1950's the US thought the Soviets were greatly increasing their nuclear arsenal in order to gain first strike capabilities. This was false and not supported by strong intelligence, and many in the Eisenhower administration did not take proper precautions to ensure this was correct. The US initiated a period of nuclear proliferation that was understandably viewed by the Soviets as an attempt to gain first strike capability, and they quickly followed suit with their own nuclear buildup.

Mr. McNamara did not abandon the idea of massive retaliation, he actually advanced it. He said himself said (paraphrasing) that it was pure luck that we did not end up in a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. He also continued the ludicrous notion of the domino theory which led to the escalation of the Vietnam War under his command.

Also, (taken from the NY Times book review of his autobiography) he realized relatively early in the Vietnam war that it could not be won by military force, but did not fight for his opinion and didn't take a public stance on that position until the 1990's. He and the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon administrations destroyed the common trust and confidence in our government, which still has far-reaching consequences today. He oversaw one of the largest expansions of the US military in history, which can be directly traced to our ridiculous defense policy and budget today.

Mr. McNamara was a brilliant man, but he is a symbol of how arrogance and loyalty to authority dragged our country to the brink of destruction. Combined with his (and the rest of the government's) mismanagement of the Vietnam War, Mr. McNamara is certainly not a politician that will be missed by me.

Basically the United States gave Russia a billion or so and tactical/technical/administrative support every year to reduce their weapons stock pile.

So even when Bush and Putin had their panties bunched up, great work was being done cooperatively by both sides. The program considered pretty successful by government standards.

I know, I know, the idea of good news from government is a scary one!

The indefinite combinations of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations. - Robert S. McNamara

Slightly offtopic but in high school I read a few books by Robert S McNamara who died yesterday. It's too bad he didn't get to see this agreement between old enemies. He was Secretary of Defense from 1961-1968. Although I did not agree with a lot of his views he shaped a lot of the nuclear buildup during the cold war. I believe he was responsible for abandoning Eisenhower's policy of massive retaliation in the event of a nuclear war. He was first tasked by Kennedy of explaining nuclear fallout. McNamara favored non-nuclear power and one of the books I read "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" shed a lot of light on the Vietnam war for me.

If you haven't seen Erol Morris' "The Fog of War" you should.

Rest in peace Robert Strange McNamara. You revealed to me the horrors that leadership must face during war.

How about hiking naked through a quiet farming area? For some people, that tears at the social fabric, but others don't seem to understand the fuss.

I think we can ignore the gPhone so that only leaves Apple.

Your out of the loop.. Android phones are going to be hitting the market big in the next few months ( http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/google-expect-18-android-phones-by-years-end/ ).. Not only from different carriers (All the majors in the US), but also from different cell phone manufacturers.. The gPhone you speak of was initially supplied through TMobile, and although successful it has a handicap in that TMobiles 3G coverage sucks.. Yes you can use it without 3G, but why spend the money on a 3G phone if you live in an area without it ? .. I'm passing on the tempting myTouch from TMobile as well, in favor of the Lancaster (android) from AT&T because they have 3G in my area.. Not sure how many people are in the same position I am in, wanting Android but unavailable 3G coverage, but I imagine there are a fair bit.

Porsche attempted to buy out VW, but the deal turned such that now Porsche needs help from VW. This NY Times article on it gives a rather interesting history of the relationship between the companies.

I don't think Amazon is doing it just to be a big jerk to the kiwis. The Kindle is still considered to be sort of a beta device testing the market for eBooks. There are still major technical and business hurdles to overcome before it can be a world wide device. If at anybody, you should direct your ire at mobile network operators and international publishers, who don't seem to want to let the Kindle model work outside the US: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/technology/10iht-kindle.4.20084663.html

You're obviously right, plants are eukaryotic. Sorry.

Why would it have genes for producing an eye if it was regarded as an infection?

How exactly would you call a lifeform that changes the operation of a target cell for it's own benefit ?

Evolution theory is more and more saying that genes spread by viruses, and we have little trouble calling those infections, no matter how useful they are in any particular case. So why feel inhibited calling this an infection ?

Here's what happens. You have a virus ... any virus. It contains a series of advanced genes. Probably copied from it's previous victims, or whatever. This virus becomes successfull. So successfull in fact, that there isn't a single human that isn't infected after a while.

So what happens next ? The evolution of the virus and the evolution of the human species are now locked together. The only way the virus can improve it's fate is by making humans more successfull, and the only way humans can become more successfull is by making the virus more successfull. So the disease generating genes are deactivated one by one, for they stand in the way of the success of the "new" human lifeform, and the interesting genes are used more and more.

AIDS could become an example of this, if we're not careful. It contains several very advanced genes. I haven't the faintest clue what this might be useful for, but AIDS contains code "runnable" by human cells to convert RNA into DNA, something our cells can't do, and it contains code that allows for the creation of a special kind of membranes. One thing AIDS is doing is making this code available to a large part of human evolution.

There are lots of historical occurances of this. Some virus infects the entire human population, and it's DNA code is reproduced verbatim in each of us, despite the virus itself no longer appearing in nature. At least 50% of our DNA code is the result of our ancestors getting sick with virii. 3 "full" such viruses have been found in the human genome. One can only imagine how many partial viruses are in there, whose code is slowly evolving out of the human genome.

The difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells comes down to 2 internal membranes. It may look very different under a microscope, it isn't all that different. One way to make this happen through evolution is by having an endosymbiotic relationship with another bacterium, which has a membrane. Then, gradually, since the 2 species evolution is locked together, the endosymbiotic lifeform degenerates into a single function device. This has been the accepted explanation for a few years now, ever since eukaryotic cells have been found with dual-membrane mitochondria, within that first membrane a kind of polar body was found, indicating that the mitochondria was once part of a proper cell that lived separately from it's host. Since then bacteria that look a lot like mitochondria have been found, further confirming the hypothesis. We have exactly the same mitochondria, but with only a single membrane.

So it seems that cells "evolve" from prokaryots to eukaryots by "eating" the difference. The only step to prove this that's really left to do is demonstrate this specific evolution in a lab.

Scientists have put the commonly-cited five-second rule to the test. They found that food that comes into contact with a tile or wood floor does pick up large amounts of bacteria. Food doesn't pick up many germs when it hits carpet, but it does pick up carpet fuzz.

Since this is slashdot, I'd bet most will pick bacteria over carpet fuzz any day ... after all, if it doesn't look fuzzy ...

or this ...

many people believe that gastric acid enzymes found in the stomach are strong enough to destroy the "small, harmless" amount of bacteria that could gather on a piece of food in five seconds. But are these bacteria really harmless?

In 2003, Jillian Clarke, then a high school senior, decided she wanted to find out. During an internship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she and a doctoral candidate, Meredith Agle, took swab samples from floors all over the campus, including labs, hallways, and bathrooms, and found that the amount of bacteria on the floors was very low. When she published her research, she concluded that if a piece of food falls on a relatively clean floor, the five-second rule is, in fact, applicable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/health/13patent.html she was also interviewed on NPR a very compelling story even if one hates the "liberal media" this one is worth investigating.

Reports that build on one another, creating the false impression of growing momentum and consensus, with some invisible hand guiding everything and everyone... where have I heard that, before?

There's that, and also this: http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2000/01/13/drugs/print.html

Such pirates have a serious tendency to get shot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/world/africa/13pirates.html

John Markoff in the NY-Times in March 2008:
"Apple's multitouch technology began life not as a cellphone, but as a notepad-sized skunkworks project internally dubbed Safari Pad, run by Tim Bucher, then Apple's head of Macintosh hardware. To his credit, Mr. Jobs seized on the technology and morphed it into the iPhone.
At Macworld, when I asked Mr. Jobs about the idea of an iPod Touch in a larger "Safari Pad" format, he snapped at me, "I can't talk about unannounced products.""

Originally at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/reading-steve-jobs/

Reports that build on one another, creating the false impression of growing momentum and consensus, with some invisible hand guiding everything and everyone... where have I heard that, before?

Not sure if this serves as prior art re e-books, but Chris Whittle was including ads in books in the late 1980s, before Amazon was launched and e-books existed in a meaningful commercial form.

I trust David Pogue, and he reviewed it this week

This question sounds like it deserves the LMGTFY treatment though.

Over the years, Microsoft has proven to be particulary inept at getting any traction with their search business. In January 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to purchase Yahoo. Their efforts were frustrated when Google came to Yahoo's rescue. To get their revenge Microsoft mobilized their army of lobbyists in a Plot to Kill Google. Microsoft persuaded other companies and trade groups to lend support to their FUD campaign against their arch enemy. You will recall that the powerful American Corn Growers Association was among them - this same organization who's members get billions in subsidies to produce environmentally unfriendly ethanol from corn.

An article in the New York Times details Google's public-relations offensive to counteract the Microsoft generated FUD.

The Times articles states about Google: "regulators are intensely scrutinizing its every move, as they once did with ... Microsoft. (My bold)

Why is it - "as they once did with Microsoft"? Microsoft never changed the behaviour that lead to civil actions filed against Microsoft in May of 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and 20 U.S. states.

They have made a big mistake. The DOJ is after the wrong company! With a new administartion in place, their first priority should be to get Microsoft under control. The EU has really shown the world the the US DOJ has been asleep on its watch. If the DOJ woke up and stepped up to its long neglected responsibilities, it would be the USA raking in the billions in fines it will take to get Microsoft to behave itself, instead of the EU. Why in the world are they going after Google at this time?

Google has been a shining example of how a good corporate citizen should behave, and Microsoft should be encouraged to emulate Google's example. Google doesn't lock people into its software or services. Any time you want you can use another search engine or pick up your Google docs and walk away. If there are some justifiable concerns about Google, I suggest that the DOJ first take care of elephant in the room - Microsoft - before turning to Google. It is just so disheartening to see the good guys getting DOJ's attention while the bad guy slips away. Microsoft, you hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from Google's eye.

PS: I couldn't have written this short essay without Google there by my side the whole time as a friend to help me with the research.

It is possible that the final bill will have a "border adjustment clause." Essentially that means that, if a country we're trading with doesn't have significant emissions regulation, we add a tariff to try and adjust the prices to where they would have been had they had such a regimen.

Obama is against such an addition, but Paul Krugman is for it.

Your argument also discounts the fact that Waxman/Markey will fund R&D that will make green tech cheaper and more scalable. That will be a huge incentive for China and India to adopt such technology, and give us a chance to sell something other than IOUs back to them.

I think you'll find this article in the NYTimes to be of interest:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/can-you-get-fit-in-six-minutes-a-week/

Interesting article on NYT recently http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/operator-can-you-put-me-through-to-ant-nest-251/?ref=science

This also says nothing about what the WTO would think about such a tariff in the first place.

The WTO seems to think such a tariff is probably fine.

You may also want to look at this:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/can-you-get-fit-in-six-minutes-a-week/?em

Even 6 minutes a week, with the breaks described and the equipment, may be more than is possible for you. But you're going to need to find some kind of optimization obviously.

A lot of this advice tells you to go out and basically create a radical lifestyle change all at once. That generally doesn't happen. Changing things like diet, exercise, spending habits, social habits, etc., tends to work best if you slowly make small changes.

Lots of people find that diet / exercise tracking software can help them meet goals. I have a few friends using MyFoodDiary.com, and I like it pretty well. It does a nice job of giving you warm fuzzies for doing the right thing (fiber, produce, low cholesterol, etc.).

Exercise is really really important. It tends to improve mood and focus. It improves your cholesterol profile. Current thinking is that being fit is more important to overall health than being at the proper weight. So your goal is to get more exercise into your daily life. From what I understand, you can do this in 6 minutes every few days; you can walk 10,000 paces (about 5 miles per day), or do something in between.

Personally (I'm in IT too) I find it really hard to regularly go to the gym, and I hate the rigid schedule of having to go to the gym for 1 hour 4x per week or whatever. I like the suggestions of you doing small bursts of exercise while you're at work. In addition to strength / resistance training, how about:

• Get a stationary bicycle that you "park" in front of your desk
• Get an under-desk peddler like http://www.fitsugar.com/659265
• Get a small treadmill that you can stroll on, with monitor visible, so you can respond to incoming issues

Any of these would increase your overall activity level -- and then maybe you just have to do one strenuous exercise session on the weekend or something, like a vigorous bike ride plus weight training, or a 1x per week cycle to work.

Oh, you could also work with a trainer who could figure out a workout for you to do while at your desk.

The most important thing is to start out with stretching

It looks like stretching may actually be bad for you.

Do you have six minutes a week?

Somebody already mentioned CrossFit, which I've been considering doing. But then I also came across this very interesting article about a new study about exercise. Bottom line, it's possible that you really need very little time exercising every day. It's the *intensity* of the workout that matters, not the amount of time.

This fit very well with the Crossfit philosophy, which is a single exercise per day, but very intense.

It's especially rare if you actively prevent anyone from looking for it.

The US tests less than 1% of slaughtered cattle, Europe tests ~50%, Japan 100%.

Then when an outbreak of Mad Cow occurs in the US, we claim it isn't really Mad Cow, or it didn't come from beef, or anyway it must have come from foreign beef. Or any other FUD.

Stop the practice of feeding meat to cows? Sure! But as Ronald Reagan said, you gotta "trust, but verify".

Whew. I was worried there for a second :). Concur. Would love to see some other factors (like this) tallied in terms of overall dollars lost a la this NYT article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html?_r=1&hpw

Or you get out of an imaginary dream world and realize that your choices affect the lives of others and that sometimes the idealistic option is not the right one. If not getting someone killed is a "political end," then I'm 100% in favor of their actions.

That's fine and dandy, but what about this story, or this story, or this story? The New York Times is quick to cite responsibility when it comes to one of their own, but when anyone else is kidnapped they're full steam ahead.

Seems a bit hypocritical to me.

Or you get out of an imaginary dream world and realize that your choices affect the lives of others and that sometimes the idealistic option is not the right one. If not getting someone killed is a "political end," then I'm 100% in favor of their actions.

That's fine and dandy, but what about this story, or this story, or this story? The New York Times is quick to cite responsibility when it comes to one of their own, but when anyone else is kidnapped they're full steam ahead.

Seems a bit hypocritical to me.

Or you get out of an imaginary dream world and realize that your choices affect the lives of others and that sometimes the idealistic option is not the right one. If not getting someone killed is a "political end," then I'm 100% in favor of their actions.

That's fine and dandy, but what about this story, or this story, or this story? The New York Times is quick to cite responsibility when it comes to one of their own, but when anyone else is kidnapped they're full steam ahead.

Seems a bit hypocritical to me.

This is what happened in Tiananmen Square in China: The students who rose up were not joined by others. Military forces who were not only loyal to the regime but hostile to the students were brought in, and the students were crushed.

Yes military units had to be brought in, because local army units refused to fire on the protesters. Deng Xiaoping even "went as far as ordering the 12th Army, with which he had a close relationship, be moved to Beijing soon after 4 June to guard against a military coup".

Falcon

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/business/30bernietext.html

Following is a transcript of Bernard L. Madoffâ(TM)s statement to the court during his sentencing, as provided by the court:

Jine Lee/Bloomberg News " Your Honor, I cannot offer you an excuse for my behavior. How do you excuse betraying thousands of investors who entrusted me with their life savings? How do you excuse deceiving 200 employees who have spent most of their working life working for me? How do you excuse lying to your brother and two sons who spent their whole adult life helping to build a successful and respectful business? How do you excuse lying and deceiving a wife who stood by you for 50 years, and still stands by you? And how do you excuse deceiving an industry that you spent a better part of your life trying to improve?

There is no excuse for that, and I donâ(TM)t ask any forgiveness.

Although I may not have intended any harm, I did a great deal of harm. I believed when I started this problem, this crime, that it would be something I would be able to work my way out of, but that became impossible. As hard as I tried, the deeper I dug myself into a hole. I made a terrible mistake, but it wasnâ(TM)t the kind of mistake that I had made time and time again, which is a trading mistake. In my business, when you make a trading error, youâ(TM)re expected to make a trading error, itâ(TM)s accepted. My error was much more serious. I made an error of judgment. I refused to accept the fact, could not accept the fact, that for once in my life I failed. I couldnâ(TM)t admit that failure and that was a tragic mistake.

I am responsible for a great deal of suffering and pain. I understand that. I live in a tormented state now knowing of all the pain and suffering that I have created. I have left a legacy of shame, as some of my victims have pointed out, to my family and my grandchildren. Thatâ(TM)s something I will live with for the rest of my life. People have accused me of being silent and not being sympathetic. That is not true. They have accused my wife of being silent and not being sympathetic. Nothing could be further from the truth. She cries herself to sleep every night knowing of all the pain and suffering I have caused, and I am tormented by that as well. She was advised not to speak publicly until after my sentencing by our attorneys, and she complied with that. Today she will make a statement about how she feels about my crimes. I ask you to listen to that. She is sincere and all I ask you is to listen to her.

Apologizing and saying I am sorry, thatâ(TM)s not enough. Nothing I can say will correct the things I have done. I feel terrible that an industry I spent my life trying to improve is being criticized terribly now, that regulators who I helped work with over the years are being criticized by what I have done. That is a horrible guilt to live with. There is nothing I can do that will make anyone feel better for the pain and suffering I caused them, but I will live with this pain, with this torment for the rest of my life. I apologize to my victims. I will turn and face you. I am sorry. I know that doesnâ(TM)t help you. Your Honor, thank you for listening to me. â

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/world/africa/13iht-13iraq.9994705.html

I have to agree with you, but for a different reason. There is more information about the study in the New York Times, but even accounting for smoking and other behaviors, there is a chance that what people are doing to get thin may be unhealthy in general. In this case, doing less of that and getting a little chubbier may be healthier than starving yourself instead of exercising little.

It was published by Afghanistan's leading news agency. That's a reliable source. Deleting it for not having reliable sources was an abuse of the rules, and in fact a very common one where people refuse to accept a source which can't easily be Googled in English. If they really wanted to delete the information it should have been done using the Ignore All Rules policy or the Office policy, not by abusing rules. And as a lot of people have already mentioned, newspapers constantly publish information about people who are not in the newspaper business, even when someone claims that it could endanger lives (see for instance this one from the Times, and yes, Wikipedia has an article about the guy).

also, it's admirable the phenomenal progress you're already making on your stated goal. keep at it!

How funny. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/the-real-high-tech-immigrant-problem-theyre-leaving/ People are going back to India rather than stay here. I am sure you'll find a way to make a joke of it. But objectively it does make a statement about where we are. Of course, this is coming from a bastion of conservative propaganda NYTimes, so it must be heavily skewed to smear the current party in power.

http://venturebeat.com/2007/01/15/ethanol-use-causing-corn-shortages-spiking-price-price-of-tortillas/

Well, I haven't done the direct research myself, I just know what I've read.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-07-10-ethanol-study_x.htm

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119258870811261613.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/business/05ethanol.html
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/20947/Biotech_to_Ease_EthanolRelated_Corn_Shortage.html

And to further your argument (again, I'm more interested in the truth than being right)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/10/ethanol-as-cause-of-food-crisis-flat-out-wrong/
http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/f81/definitive-proof-ethanol-not-creating-food-corn-shortage-61448/

This is somewhat OK, but one of your points is grossly understated and you're missing one. The 'oh the banks are greedy and everything is their fault' is a very popular line these days, and certainly they have their share of responsibility.

#0: A lot of people who can't afford expensive mortgages buy them. This happened before #1 and was, indeed, at the behest of the Federal government (both Clinton and Bush). Fur further information: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19cisneros.html?scp=8&sq=federal%20housing%20clinton&st=cse. I don't know about you, but even if the Feds decide that the national rate of home ownership should be closer to 75-85% as opposed to 50% (to say nothing of why such a number should be arrived at by fiat rather than by, I don't know, what people can afford), and even if banks then begin falling all over themselves taking advantage of government policy that both enables and encourages them to begin (at best) foolish or (at worst) predatory practices, this still required buy-in from untold numbers of individual, real, human beings, who looked at their mortgage like most people look at their credit cards these days: free money! Nobody held a gun to their heads, and obviously a huge squadron of trained, pushy mortgage brokers can have a field day with a chunk of the population that suddenly has access to large dollar amounts and isn't familiar with how everything is going to work 1, 2, or 10 years from when they sign the papers -- but the idea of living according to your means isn't a new one, or even a difficult one.

#7: 'A few people default on their mortgages.'

A year ago, there were 500,000 foreclosures in the two months alone -- (source). It's interesting that you would choose a word like 'few' to play down the impact of the average, everyday joe in this equation. It's as if you feel more comfortable blaming banks and businesspeople (oh noes! they make money so they are evil!) even though you've got quite a few other facts in order here. Don't get me wrong - I'd be happy to line up some of these mortgage brokers or the execs who issued the AAA bond ratings and do terrible things to them, but the government opened the door for all of this to happen. Your description of banks issuing bad mortgages because they don't own them is not really accurate. If the banks actually had no exposure to these mortgages, then WaMu and Countrywide wouldn't have gone under. They 'chose' to give out crap mortgages because the government (via Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) was guaranteeing quite a lot of them. If the market establishes that half of Americans can afford homes and half can't, and then somebody in Washington decides that that number should be 75%, then you are fairly rapidly entering the area where somebody is going to be issuing a mortgage to somebody who can't afford it. No bank in their right mind would do that in a free market -- and even in our market, some banks went hog-wild with the false sense of security and the thought of collecting interest from so many new mortgages, while other banks still got into the deep end but realized a little sooner that you can't wave a magic wand and cause nearly a hundred million people who previously couldn't afford a mortgage to afford one.

The Government waved that wand and so the blame in this picture is theirs in that they opened the door, but it took a lot of self-important bankers and brokers to complete the disaster. It does seem ironic that 'more government regulation' is somehow the answer.

Sincerely,

A dimwit

The government that the Democratic majority and presidency is practicing is the type of behavior that is common in the legislatures of states like New York. The "leadership" provides plums in the form of committee assignments, jobs for relatives and cash in exchange for voting as ordered. If you don't follow the leader, you lose the privileges. This obviously isn't a phenomenon unique to democrats...

Um... obviously not, because the New York State legislature has been under republican control for most of the last 40 years. They lost control to the democrats this past January, but regained it just recently: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/nyregion/09switch.html/

It's worth noting the rise of Government-sponsored news sources. Until a few years ago, few in the US paid any attention to what the Voice of America put out. Now, it's a widely aggregated news source, because it's free. Google News aggregates the BBC, Xinhua, and Al-Jazeera, all of which are Government-controlled. (The BBC and Al-Jazeera have some independence, but it's limited. Xinhua is the official output of the Chinese government.)

From the private sector, there's an endless supply of self-serving material, some of which gets picked up as "news". Google News sometimes thinks PR Newswire is a valid news source.

The independent sources remaining tend to be aimed at people with serious money. The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Bloomberg are still quite good, and are profitable. Mass market print journalism, though, is dying. The proud boasts in newspaper banners ring hollow today. The San Francisco Examiner still says "Monarch of the Dailies" at the top of page one, but that was a long, long time ago. San Francisco's mayor recently remarked that if the SF Chronicle stopped publishing its print edition, no one under 35 would notice.

Newspaper vending machines seem to be mostly empty now; it's not even worth filling them. Locally, I've seen some stickered with abandoned-car like notices from the city, which tell the newspaper "fill it with papers or we tow it away".

I'm reminded of this article by Steven Levitt, author of "Freakonomics", which he ran in the NYTimes around 4 years ago.

On page 2 Levitt describes how when Switzerland switched to mail-in ballots, it had record low voter participation. The author seems to feel that people primarily vote because it is a social event. By removing the human element, Levitt feels that Switzerland removed the only thing that made voting worth doing, since he feels the chance of someone's vote affecting the outcome of an election is diminutive.

...I tend to argree with Levitt, at least about the social dimension of voting. I'd argue that changing to mail in ballots or online voting makes the event less social... and less fun. And this will have extremely serious impacts on elections, possibly more so than 4chan rigging a lolcat to win an election or whatever.

Most independent voters who voted for Hillary Clinton or wanted to vote for Michael Bloomberg knew what would happen if Obama took office. Our worst fears have been realized.

An early example showing the real Obama is found in a quite startling essay published by the "Wall Street Journal". The Justice Department, under the leadership of Obama, dismissed a "civil lawsuit for voter intimidation against the New Black Panther Party. The Black Panthers weren't content to endorse Barack Obama. They sent their members to the polls last November to 'patrol election sites.' Fox News aired a video of two Black Panthers in military-style uniforms in a Philadelphia precinct. One of them was carrying a nightstick. ... The complaint the Justice Department filed in January (before Messrs. Obama and Holder took over) says the Panthers made 'racial threats and racial insults' to voters and 'menacing and intimidating, gestures, statements and movements directed at individuals who were present to aid voters.' One witness, Bartle Bull, a civil-rights lawyer who worked with Charles Evers in Mississippi in the 1960s, called it the worst voter intimidation he had ever seen.".

The latest example showing the real Obama is this attempt by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to censor opposing opinions. In this case, the EPA claims that the critic, Alan Carlin (BS Physics-Caltech, PhD Econ-MIT), is not a "real" scientist. Yet, Dr. Carlin has a Bachelor's degree in physics from Caltech and a Doctorate in (intensively mathematical) economics from MIT. The Caltech degree, by itself, puts Dr. Carlin in league with the very best. The training that went into that Bachelor's degree is equivalent to a Master's degree (in physics) from a lesser university.

Personally, I believe that global warming is real, but I -- as an educated Westerner -- respect the dissenting opinion of reputable scientists like Dr. Carlin. I oppose censoring them.

Note that the Bush administration attempted the same kind of censorshop in the other direction. According to a report by the "New York Times", the Bush administration had censored a NASA climatologist who was warning about the certainty of global warming.

Here's the bottom line. The emperor has changed, but his clothes remain the same. Hopefully, President Nicolas Sarkozy can save us American voters from our stupidity in electing the worst political candidates -- time after time.

Let's not kid ourselves ...

Sure, other governments "[route] all digital traffic in the country through a single choke point, using the capabilities of deep packet inspection" and so do we, in the US. I couldn't think of a better place to put fiber splicers than the "AT&T office in San Francisco." Facebook, and of course other social networking and technology companies, must be a gold mine for them. All they need to do is connect the social networking dots, as they currently do with American's phone calls -- there's no concern for domestic wiretapping laws involved -- it's simply call delivery data for them, and a bit of connecting the social network dots. Hence the reason Verizon Wireless sent out a snail-mail privacy notice to their customers regarding their use of call delivery records in light of the possible broad-surveillance lawsuits, a few years ago. One doesn't need the full conversation if it's possible to ascertain and forward onto other agencies the usual suspects. Separately, Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, once said that he doesn't "tell people the NSA uses Perl. [He merely tells] people the NSA thinks everyone uses Perl. They should know, after all."

Those are smart scientists and engineers over there, to be sure. I'd love to work for them, too. :-)

Signed an agreement reaffirming the sovereignty of Iraq

Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?

Asserted Iraqi ownership over *every* military installation in use by US forces

That's absolute horseshit.

At withdrawal, the U.S. will return all the installations and the agreed upon areas allocated for the use of the U.S. combat forces according to two lists (of inventory) to the Iraqi government.

Translation: we keep our permanent military bases.

Handed control of many of the US Operated facilities over to the Iraqis for control (here, here, and here, for example)

Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?

Handed security of the "Green Zone" over to Iraqi control

Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?

Removed the vast majority of all combat forces outside of the limits of all major cities

Another lie.

In addition, there are no plans to close the Americans' Camp Victory base complex, which houses more than 20,000 soldiers, many of them combat troops, even though Camp Victory is only a 15-minute drive from the center of Baghdad and sprawls over both sides of the city's boundary. Iraqi officials, who are nervous about maintaining security as the Americans depart, have agreed to consider Camp Victory as outside the city.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/world/middleeast/09military.html

Additionally, your assertion that "we own" the oil fields now points to an article explaining how the Iraqi Ministry of Oil is negotiating contracts from companies that lost to nationalization when Saddam was in power. I'm not sure how that means "we own" anything. The Iraqi government is contracting with corporations to extract the oil resources. Sounds like Iraq exercising its own sovereignty to me.

Why were they no bid contracts to American oil companies in 2008? And furthermore, if we have no colonial interest in their resources, why haven't we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq? This is the central question. Everything else is political theater.

"Nearly always" is your way of acknowledging that a lot of people, including Obama, have a whole lot of egg on their face about Iraq, and that you know damned well there's a big difference between "invader" and "aggressor."

Do you think we're going to abandon our permanent military bases in Iraq? Do you think we're going to allow Iraq to take back control of their own oil resources? You do know that we own them now, don't you?

If we're invaders and not aggressors, we'd just leave the military bases and oil fields to Iraqis, and we would have left after their first election. But we're not going to leave, so stop pretending.

Don't worry, increasing gov't control is coming. ... Now that former Infosys executive Nandan M. Nilekani has taken on the job of creating ID cards for everyone in India.

Do you believe they will succeed this time? I have been aware of such plans for as long as I remember, more than 20 years. They have been trying, but it is quite easy to remain anonymous in India than anywhere else. Government does not matter as far as individual freedom is considered.

Don't worry, increasing gov't control is coming. ... Now that former Infosys executive Nandan M. Nilekani has taken on the job of creating ID cards for everyone in India.