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Tar sands and oil shale are other options that we have available. Unfortunately, environmentalists would rather have it remain under a desert wasteland than extract it.

But back to the point. Yes, using crude oil to make gasoline is cheap. That's why it won out over using bio-fuels when internal combustion engines were first created. Most of the US government's alt-energy budget goes to subsidies for corn based ethanol, which is more due to lobbyists than anything else. Don't expect this to change much if at all with Obama since these very same lobbyists are the ones that helped get him elected originally in Illinois and helped him win the Iowa caucuses. It's too bad we can't be doing more with this:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080606_005036.html

The Lusitania was a Cunard liner.

In 1915 nothing on this Earth could be more British. She was torpedoed just south of Queenstown, Ireland, on May 7, 1915. The ship went down in 18 minutes. 1,195 died, including 123 Americans. The U.S. was a neutral in 1915 and her ports were open to ships of all nations. The Lost Liners - Lusitania [Robert Ballard, PBS 2000]

That Japan was about to make a move against the U.S. was known.

But where?

The Pearl Harbor attack was a hit and run raid, and, in the end, the attack bought Japan only six months of naval superiority in the Pacific. Pearl, after all, was nothing more or less than a forward naval base. It wasn't where ships were being built or men being trained. It wasn't rubber or oil or other strategic materials. Report Debunks Theory That the U.S. Heard a Coded Warning About Pearl Harbor [Dec 6, 2008]

Tonkin didn't feel like a virtual battle to those who fought in it. Anatomy of a crisis [March 2004], What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam? [May 1988]

There was - let us say - fair reason to be a tad suspicious about Iraq's abandonment of WMDs:

In 1995, UNSCOM's principal weapons inspector..showed Taha documents...that showed the Iraqi government had just purchased 10 tons of growth medium. Iraq's hospital consumption of growth medium was just 200 kg a year; yet in 1988, Iraq imported 39 tons of it. Shown this evidence by UNSCOM, Taha admitted to the inspectors that she had grown 19,000 litres of botulism toxin; 8,000 litres of anthrax; 2,000 litres of aflatoxins, which can cause liver failure; Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium that can cause gas gangrene; and ricin, a castor-bean derivative which can kill by impeding circulation. She also admitted conducting research into cholera, salmonella, foot and mouth disease, and camel pox, a disease that uses the same growth techniques as smallpox, but which is safer for researchers to work with. It was because of the discovery of Taha's work with camel pox that the U.S. and British intelligence services feared Saddam Hussein may have been planning to weaponize the smallpox virus. Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

_____

* - Spell-checking is built into Firefox and the ieSpellplug-in has been around for quite some time as well.

Where is this "scientific fact" that you speak of? The only "emotionally unstable" teens that I've read about...

If you search Google or Google Scholar for "teen brain development" you will find some relevant information. Like this or this or if you've got access, stuff like this.

A lot of scientific attention has focused on charting the ongoing physical maturation of the frontal lobes through adolescence and even into early adulthood. The frontal lobes are involved in executive functioning, which includes things like self-regulation and impulse control. The frontal lobes are also involved in self-monitoring, which interestingly ties back to the grandparent poster's statement:

I'm sure you didn't think you were emotionally unstable, teens generally don't, doesn't mean you weren't.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/

There... go, read, watch, learn, enlighten yourself.

I live in the US and have no health insurance.

I have had health issues that have gone untreated because medical care is so expensive for the uninsured under the current system. Some things that come to mind include broken toes, sprained ankles, and a high fever caused, I believe, by the flu. That being said, I sometimes skipped the doctor for minor issues even when I was insured. Sometimes because of the co-pay, and sometimes just because I didn't feel it was anything too serious and that I basically had it under control. But if institutional health care did not incur a direct (and high) cost to me, I would likely utilize it more.

However, I also went into the ER fairly recently for something that I felt was a serious health risk. It ended up costing me a few thousand dollars for a couple hours, but I went in because I didn't feel I had any choice that time. So it's not really an issue of people choosing to go in more often or demanding different care in cases where their arm is broken and flapping in the wind. The demand is more elastic in the border cases where something isn't deemed to be a major long-term threat.

I saw the "Sick Around the World" episode of Frontline a few months ago on PBS; it discussed health care and how it's handled very differently in various capitalist democracies. One point that comes to mind is that tendency of (some?) people in Japan to go to the doctor on a very regular basis even though there isn't anything wrong with them. I don't believe it's hypochondria, but more of a situation where people are taking advantage of the resources available to them. I believe that's what the GP/OP means by "everyone wants to enjoy his share of healthcare." Note that you can watch the whole episode online at the link I gave. It's a very interesting show.

I agree that genius is never developed in isolation. Einstein's first wife (a fellow mathematician) was the first to approach some of the theory that are attributed to Einstein. And those theories that she approached first probably were developed from things she worked with at the school they both attended together. Of course he more thoroughly developed many ideas, but the assumption that he worked in isolation is not true. http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/milevastory/index.htm

and bear the ~$700/hour cost of MRI

bear in mind that this was published in Japan where MRI Scans are 100 bucks and are not billed by the hour:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/interviews/ikegami.html

Due to the huge time distortion of such a massive black hole, PBS NOVA aired a show on the same subject 3 months ago http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/ Seems the German research got sucked back in time and used to show the orbits of the stars around the black hole.

Sorry for the double reply.

If you can find this show, it is a really interesting watch
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/reversals.html

They do show how the data points are collected, how they are relevant, and even has some of those funny number things i couldn't recall myself:

You could perhaps take comfort in the knowledge that these reversals happen infrequently--on average every 250,000 years--but maybe not when you consider that it's been over 700,000 years since the last reversal, and the next one may be currently underway.

Also pretty graphs showing the length of periods between reversals, and some more of those funny numbers, at our best friend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

and more buried in a longer article if you wanna pick through it at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_magnetic_field

72 million years worth of data points back from now.

The rate of reversals in the Earth's magnetic field has varied widely over time. 72 million years ago (Ma), the field reversed 5 times in a million years. In a 4-million-year period centered on 54 Ma, there were 10 reversals; at around 42 Ma, 17 reversals took place in the span of 3 million years. In a period of 3 million years centering on 24 Ma, 13 reversals occurred. No less than 51 reversals occurred in a 12-million-year period, centering on 15 million years ago. These eras of frequent reversals have been counterbalanced by a few "superchrons" -- long periods when no reversals took place, as described below.[5]

It had generally been assumed that the frequency of geomagnetic reversals is random, and it was shown in 2006 that the known reversals conform to a Lévy distribution.

Hopefully those will be interesting, and at least point you in the right direction.

During the civil war the slaves developed a method of communication that went unnoticed except by those who knew about it.
They would sing song in the fields that woudl help to spread the word regarding teh undrground railroad.

Today common conversation communication can as well be used where there really is not anything to decipher.
Language and its abstraction work by attaching meaning and only work as well as the argeed upon meaning by those using teh abstraction.
It doesn't matter what meaning is attached so long as those using it understand what is being communicated

Everyone has heard of double speak, where what is communicated is meant to be perceived by the public one way but internally the very same words mean the opposite of what the public perceives. and this is just one example.

There is a saying, "locks as for honest people" meaning here if some dishonest group wanted to communicate without concern for NSA data mining, they could do so easily.

However, considering the massive amounts of data that is transfered from voice to digital on a daily or hourly basis and what the limits we have in computing power, its simple not possible to data mine for the terrorist threats from terrorists who want to avoid exposure and use such common conversation meaning dishonesty.

But it is very possible, very probable, and very reliable that such data mining be used to determine the attitudes of mass population mindsets and mindsets of population sections as well as spying on targeted US citizens that might influence such population in a direction counter to the "why determine the populations mindset and changes in it?" The unsuspecting American public is so easily influenced by the media so by knowing the overall attitudes of the American public and using the media to influence American attitudes, you have a feedback loop of CONTROL.

To properly address terrorist threats is to simply remove the reasons any terrorist group could play off of, that they won't be able to gain a following.

The World Trade Center was attacked on two different dates. The NSA had to know it was a target and why.
It was because of the effects of the trillion dollar bet in south East Asia. Even Ted Turner publicly said 9/11 was an act of desperation and he'd know because his CNN News did a story on the effects as did also ABC. Follow the Money is the reality here.

This was avoidable but caused by greed. And on the other hand there is What The World Wants that shows that we do have the manpower, knowledge and not only the natural resources but the finances to remove reasons for terrorists to gain a following. And even more important, the question of: Why is this not being done?

Given the death and torture imposed upon innocent people during the Spanish inquisition and the fact Galileo was exonerated so very very late (1992 where it only really was to serve the church not this innocent but long dead person) and the fact that Indonesia by CIA records is 88% Muslim, its clear that religion is an excuse both ways. An excuse to use by the bad, be the bad being believers or non-believers. But 9/11 was about money, wrongful World Stock Market manipulations backed by political controlled military, hence the Pentagon and probable White house targets. It was about money not religion, regardless of what you call such evil dishonesty as happened in the stock market.

But if you wanted to get a very accurate view of the general population attitudes for such a media feedback loop of CONTROL , then what the NSA is doing with data mining will clearly work.

Paul Allen got pretty sick during the early years of Microsoft. According to Cringely, Allen overheard Gates and Balmer scheming to re-capture the portion of the company that he owned:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060330_000890.html

Real journalists have integrity. Real journalists present data in an unbiased fashion, without spin. Real journalist check their sources, don't manufacture news, and don't commit plagiarism, all of which is rampant on blogs.

And can you provide an example? Off the top of my head, I can't think of one.

Bill Moyers.

From Triumph of the Nerds:
Bill Lowe
Head, IBM IBM PC Development Team 1980
He kind of said well, what should we do, and I said well, we think we know what we would like to do if we were going to proceed with our own product and he said no, he said at IBM it would take four years and three hundred people to do anything, I mean it's just a fact of life. And I said no sir, we can provide with product in a year. And he abruptly ended the meeting, he said you're on Lowe, come back in two weeks and tell me what you need.

An IBM product in a year! Ridiculous! Down in the basement Bill still has the plan. To save time, instead of building a computer from scratch, they would buy components off the shelf and assemble them -- what in IBM speak was called 'open architecture.' IBM never did this. Two weeks later Bill proposed his heresy to the Chairman.

Bill Lowe
And frankly this is it. The key decisions were to go with an open architecture, non IBM technology, non IBM software, non IBM sales and non IBM service. And we probably spent a full half of the presentation carrying the corporate management committee into this concept. Because this was a new concept for IBM at that point.
BOB: Was it a hard sell?
BILL: Mr. Carey bought it. And as result of him buying it, we got through it.


In other words, IBM said "0 n0ez, @pp1e be drinkin' mah milkshaik!! BUILD PC FAST!!1!"

Answer: government regulations dictating design of everything right down to the armrests, not to mention buttloads of useless safety gear (are cars *really* safer now than 10 years ago?).

Viewpoint to the contrary : http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20081126_005507.html

You raise an interesting point about longer lifespans affecting the distribution of wealth. However, I've always understood that women control most of the wealth in the US. See Women actually control 51.3% of percent wealth in the United States. for example.

Bullshit.
Those of us outside the feverish and patriotic US Propaganda machine could see that machine heavily at work.

Yes it was entirely plausible that Saddam had WMD,
so yes it was expedient to send in inspectors.
When said inspectors turned up absolutely nothing,
that wasn't the answer America wanted to hear, since "Something had to be done about 911!".

The best summary of the Iraq war propoganda machine at work is here:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

Why should you care? America is now worse than broke, and you spend trillions blowing up a country for no benefit to that country or to the average US citizen.

PBS routinely shows HD programming. For example, the New Hour with Jim Lehrer is broadcast in 1080i (also, some of the newer nature documentaries are being filmed in HD also). I occasionally look at the analog broadcast just to compare, and let me tell you, the news never looked so good!

As you stand farther back, the effect is decreased - Cringely mentioned this back in 2007/08 - http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070831_002850.html hook up the webcam to the big screen TV and sit back at the couch and it might be fairly well done. A small camera behind a projection screen might work even better.

.
There is nothing sexy about an epidemic that claims 1/3 of your population. AIDS in Sub-Sahara Africa

If a third of your young women and a third of your young men are desperately ill or dying what does basic health care mean?

They can't care for their own kids, they can't care for their own parents - and there is no one to replace them.

When did vaccination of children against a broad spectrum of diseases suddenly become "extended care?"

That kind of argument is worthy of the soon-to-expire, compassionately conservative, Bush Administration.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/contrail.html

Another study that took advantage of the grounding gave striking evidence of what contrails can do. David Travis of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and two colleagues measured the difference, over those three contrail-free days, between the highest daytime temperature and the lowest nighttime temperature across the continental U.S. They compared those data with the average range in day-night temperatures for the period 1971-2000, again across the contiguous 48 states. Travis's team discovered that from roughly midday September 11 to midday September 14, the days had become warmer and the nights cooler, with the overall range greater by about two degrees Fahrenheit.

These results suggest that contrails can suppress both daytime highs (by reflecting sunlight back to space) and nighttime lows (by trapping radiated heat). That is, they can be both cooling and warming clouds. But what is the net effect? Do they cool more than they warm, or vice versa? "Well, the assumption is a net warming," Travis says, "but there is a lot of argument still going on about how much of a warming effect they produce."

Greenspan was one of the people responsible for changing regulations that led to this crisis. Once he became FED chairman in the 1980's he started circumventing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html

In 1933, Senator Carter Glass (D-Va.) and Congressman Henry Steagall (D-Ala.) introduce the historic legislation that bears their name, seeking to limit the conflicts of interest created when commercial banks are permitted to underwrite stocks or bonds. In the early part of the century, individual investors were seriously hurt by banks whose overriding interest was promoting stocks of interest and benefit to the banks, rather than to individual investors. The new law bans commercial banks from underwriting securities, forcing banks to choose between being a simple lender or an underwriter (brokerage).

In August 1987, Alan Greenspan -- formerly a director of J.P. Morgan and a proponent of banking deregulation -- becomes chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. One reason Greenspan favors greater deregulation is to help U.S. banks compete with big foreign institutions.

In December 1996, with the support of Chairman Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Board issues a precedent-shattering decision permitting bank holding companies to own investment bank affiliates with up to 25 percent of their business in securities underwriting (up from 10 percent).

Late 1999:

After 12 attempts in 25 years, Congress finally repeals Glass-Steagall, rewarding financial companies for more than 20 years and $300 million worth of lobbying efforts. Supporters hail the change as the long-overdue demise of a Depression-era relic.

Just days after the administration (including the Treasury Department) agrees to support the repeal, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the former co-chairman of a major Wall Street investment bank, Goldman Sachs, raises eyebrows by accepting a top job at Citigroup as Weill's chief lieutenant. The previous year, Weill had called Secretary Rubin to give him advance notice of the upcoming merger announcement. When Weill told Rubin he had some important news, the secretary reportedly quipped, "You're buying the government?"

Greenspan was the major player in repealling the legislation which would have kept this mess from ever happening. It is very doubtful that Greenspan didn't know why Glass Steagall was enacted in the first place.

Of course he is going to plead ignorance. He doesn't want to get put behind bars and flogged by the masses by admitting he is a criminal.

Take a look at any 'developing nation' in Africa

I wasn't aware that India and China were located in Africa. Those were the two nations I was primarily referring to -- something you might have known if you had bothered to read my post before posting your knee-jerk response.

These countries are printing million dollar notes because of absurd inflation and you are not allowing them to increase emssions?!

Did I say they can't increase emissions? All I said was that it seems counterproductive from an environmental and economic standpoint to shift the carbon burden to developing nations. That's exactly what will happen if we make it too expensive to produce carbon-intensive products in the developed World. I assume you are familiar with the concept of free trade and the probable ramifications of making carbon more expensive in one part of the World and cheaper in another?

Developing countries have no other choice than to use the cheapest energy source, period

And many times the cheapest energy source will turn out to be one with a lower carbon footprint. I recently saw a piece on the Newshour about a program in India that teaches people how to install and maintain solar power systems. Apparently the solar power systems are a cheaper way of providing power to remote villages than the traditional power grid backed by fossil fuels. This hasn't gotten a lot of attention yet but I'd say it sounds pretty promising in the long term.

you should be more circumspect in questioning other people's intelligence

Where did I question someone's intelligence? All I did was express my skepticism regarding the Kyoto protocol.

Actually we still use leeches. They are very useful for reattaching tiny blood vessels by preventing clotting. Link

Noted.. But my point (and the overall point of the article, as I read it) was that it appears that only conspiracy theorists believe that the NSA (or whoever) had backdoor hooks into M$-published DLLs.

To be honest, I seriously doubt they'd bother, as there are always people looking in the code for exactly that sort of thing. In contrast (and this is my own tin foil hat moment), I have little (really none) doubt that the NSA can find out literally anything about anyone if they choose to.. If they really wanted to know what was on your computer or your network connection, they'd simply tap your connection and do a black-bag op to clone your hard drive for examination (at their leisure) by their acres (see "The NSA doesn't measure computers in computing power; it measures them in acres. That's how they talk about their computers: how many acres of computers they have. ... We're talking about millions of processors that can work on a single problem simultaneously. The amount of computing power is phenomenal. It's just staggering." of computers.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/02.html

I'm waiting longer before hitting submit.

Right now I've heard two versions of the work Apple hired him. One version says the Papermaster will work as head of their iPod/iPhone line (which does not compete directly with IBM's blade server or chip technology). Another version has him head of the new chip design for iPod/iPhones which is more direct competition.

You might be interested in Cringley's take on all this.

The mortality rate for HIV is nowhere near 100%.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/science/july-dec08/hivmortality_07-01.html among many other sources.

There are some people that are immune to the disease, however the incidence of immunity is very low. Here is a linky start if you want to check it out. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/4/l_104_06.html

No, as you see, I was modded Troll exactly like I said I would be. I've posted this sort of thread before with the exact same results. On slashdot:

1. Oppressive draconian copyright laws are generally regarded as bad. Enforcement of those laws are generally regarded as bad. Everyone loves to rip on the RIAA.
2. China is bad. They censor the media and only allow you to see what they want you to see.
3. Point out that American copyright law is censorship, just achieved by different means but with the same end result, and YOU are bad. Mod -1 Troll.

Different means, same result. Point out the uncomfortable truth and you are a troll. That's blind nationalism plain and simple.

• China made tankman disappear by removing him from all distributed media. Kids in China today have never even heard of tank man.
• "Eyes on the Prize" was buried for more than a decade by the American government. For every documentary like EOTP you hear about there are hundereds that were never made and thousands of reels of footage that are inaccessible because of copyright law.

Blind nationalism. Blind nationalism. Blind nationalism. The Germans were blind nationalists too. They sat back as their government abused, tortured, raped, murdered, and locked people up in concentration camps. They sat there like sheep and did nothing. They sat by passively and allowed the slaughter millions of people. The evidence was staring them right in the face, they watched their neighbors hauled off on cattle cars. They did nothing. They were despicable. Americans are despicable.

The truth is that the economic crisis happened because the financial markets found new ways to be greedy that no one understood.

It wasn't even a new way to be greedy, we just forgot what was learned in the great depression: that it's a bad idea to allow commercial banks to underwrite securities. There were many contributors that helped cause the current economic troubles, but certainly one of the most important was the gradual erosion of Glass-Steagal.

You must live on the nice planet where driving while black isn't something that causes suspicion. Where the chance of getting a loan depends on your credit history, not where you live.

Yes, the AIDS insinuation is goofy. Where might it come from? How about something like this http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/may97/tuskegee_5-16.html.
People were infected with syphilis by the government without their knowledge and studied. I really can't blame Wright for his paranoia there.

I have seen a frail woman who needed a cane to walk get the shit beaten out of her by two burley officers simply because she told them to leave her 12 year old alone. His crime? He bought a CD from a vendor who the cops thought was pirating music. No she didn't wave her cane around. No bias? I have to say a big 'fuck you' to you and I don't say that lightly. You are so certain and yet you know nothing.

The people with power today are *still* assholes, no less than then.

Assuming that you're referring to 9/11, there's actually no evidence backing up your assertion. Would you care to try and prove that statement or will you demonstrate some integrity and retract it?

I'm a bit confused as to what you are claiming. Is your claim that there is no evidence linking OBL to the murders on 9/11? Do his own words convince you of the need to retract your own statement?

And then we went into Iraq

Not only was the "intelligence" a house of cards at best, but Significant portions of the Bush Administration including the CIA were very much against it.

It pulled our attention away from fighting Al Qaeda and opened up a mile deep can of worms, While we left a skeleton crew fighting a growing al quaeda/taliban force in Iraq.

Going into Iraq was not only a tragesty on a humanitarian/political front, but also a HUGE strategic and tactical mistake.

And it looks like none of the current major candidates will take the criminals who took us there to stand for what they did

Depending on where you live, you might be able to make do with an antenna.

Admittedly, very retro in this day of ubiquitous cable but the photons are still out there in the ether.

Speaking of antennas, the last half of this segment from last night's NOVA broadcast has a sidebar on the application of fractals in shrinking antenna designs.

So, Greenspan who ran the government monopoly of money supply, was a libertarian? I had no idea.

Actually, yes. Greenspan is well-known to have been a lifelong libertarian. The man was a close personal friend of Ayn Rand, for gods sake. Wikipedia:

During the 1950s, Greenspan was one of the members of Ayn Rand's inner circle, the Ayn Rand Collective, who read Atlas Shrugged while it was being written. Rand nicknamed Greenspan "the undertaker" because of his penchant for dark clothing and reserved demeanor. Although Greenspan continues to advocate laissez-faire capitalism, some Objectivists find his support for a gold standard somewhat incongruous or dubious, given the Federal Reserve's role in America's fiat money system and endogenous inflation. ... However, when questioned in relation to this, he has said that in a democratic society individuals have to make compromises with each other over conflicting ideas of how money should be handled. He said he himself had to make such compromises, because he actually believes that "we did extremely well" without a central bank and with a gold standard.

This is why it was shocking to many when Greenspan made the concession before Congress last week that his ideological model of how the markets worked was flawed.

Saw this on a bumper sticker:
We're screwed: 2008.
I couldn't summarize my feelings any better.

I watched Frontline last night and realized we are even more screwed that I thought we were before.

Regardless of who becomes president, we in BIG trouble. There is no choice on the ballot that will undo what was done in the last 8 years.

The Real Deal on the Current Economic Crisis

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working home owners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

The Real Deal on the Current Economic Crisis

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working home owners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

Here is a bit of history that is pretty interesting. The odd part of it is that at one time, those coming to the US legally with the 'branchero' program were not permitted to leave the US and go home without their employer's ok.

http://www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/timeline/17.html

I have not found any evidence of wage depression happening with big influxes of the illegals, but that doesn't mean it isn't so. Do you have any graph of wages over time? Closest I could find is
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage.
Even if it does depress the wages, it does keep costs down, increasing the purchasing power of those depressed wages.

The self replicating robots that could do anything was spoofed by Al Capp : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmoo
Anyway, the self replecating robots that are general purpose laborers are called humans now.

Wow.. And if you would have put a little effort in this, you wouldn't have come out looking like an idiot. We aren't talking about Delegates dumb ass. We are talking about the Super delegates. That aren't the same.

Here are some articles concerning the super delegates that we are talking about. There are/were in 2008, 842 super delegates that had no obligation whatsoever at all to any primary or caucus results. There were 796 unplugged super delegates when Dean made them chose over a risk of losing their voice at the convention. After Dean made his declaration, they _told_ Hillary to stop campaigning when Obama reached the number of delegates required. However, seeing how 441 of Obama's delegates where super delegates and by DNC rules had until the convention months later to decide, Hillary could have easily convinced some of them to goto her camp and Obama wouldn't have gotten the nomination. There is no guarantee that she could have but the rules said that the risk to Obama and the challenge to Clinton should have been there until the convention at the end of August when the votes where counted and if she could have convinced enough of the super delegates to vote for her, she would have had the election.

You cannot deny that. It is fact and hiding behind regular delegates as if your acting ignorant of the facts doesn't make you right or correct. As a matter of fact, rule 9a and 9b speak specifically of the super delegates and their roles in the very links you provided. Of course they listed them as unpledged party leader and elected official delegate as well as add on delegates but I assumed that since you were taking a stand on them that you know this or at least had the wherewithal to google for super delegate in which one of the first pages would have told you about this. I also like the way you think it is perfectly ok to punish democrats of a state that is controlled by republicans who change the timing of the election. That's a bit like citing the passenger of the car for speed and driving without a license because the driver got the ticket. But in the case of preferring Obama, I guess it is worth it, right? And no, I'm not making this up, after the penalty to Michigan and Florida for something that the democrats in the states had no control over, you find that they still favored Clinton over Obama. In fact, the results in Florida was 33.5 Obama to 52.5 Hillary and in Michigan it was 29.5 Obama to 34.5 Hillary. Now if you remember, they cut the delegates in half for Michigan and Florida so Hillary should have gotten 105 in Florida and 76 in Michigan and if the full count would have been listed, Hillary would have had 87 more for a total of 1983.5 which is only 135 below the minimum needed to win. When Dean made his demands, about 320 super delegate votes where up for grabs and some of the already committed super delegates have already switched pledged alliances. Deans own words were The party "cannot give up three months of campaigning and active healing time,"

Don't whine about the political slants of the sites either. I did a simple google search and those are the sites that came up. I'm not getting paid to educate you and I'm not going to invest the time to do it past what is easy for me. You can find the same information on other sites from going deeper into the google search or by even useing a different

Why should I produce a source? All you'll do is call it a "tabloid rag".

Can you show me a legitimate source that shows that Gore truly won Florida? No? Then that means that it was Gore trying to steal the election, not Harris, not Bush. Oh, what the hell. Here's a source. Unless you consider PBS to be a "tabloid rag".

In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted.

So you say that Gore would have won and then call ME full of shit. I'm afraid the facts don't agree with you.

On to Congress' control of the economy:
This source says:

Facts don't lie. The only major change politically in the last two years was the shift of power from the republicans to the democrats in early 2007. Historically, democrats have been better for the economy but this time around that doesnâ(TM)t appear to be the case.

Read the whole thing for the facts he's referring to.

Here's another site that backs me up. Don't bash the messenger just because you can't debate the facts.

I... I'm not sure what to say. Telcos do not have a history of "serving their customers extremely well," quite the opposite. The only thing they have a history of is monopolizing the market to rape customers for as much as possible. The US is the in the bandwidth dark ages compared to other first-world countries. In countries in Asia and Europe, ISPs offer full 100Mbps connections for less than we pay for crappy DSL in the US.

The fiber that is just now being rolled out? It was supposed to be everywhere by 2000, over eight years ago. The government gave the telcos $200 billion to build out this network, and they just pocketed the money without doing a thing. Read (for example, there are many, many articles about this; google "$200 billion" and any term related you can think of like teclos, fiber, etc.) this.

Oh, and that fiber they're rolling out now? It's only in very limited amounts to very high wealth areas and new high wealth developments. The rest of us will be stuck on our intermittent and slow connections for many years.

The laws of Thermodynamics state that we can't really achieve absolute zero As far as the far reaches of space goes they may be referring to the boomerang nebula which is the coldest place we know of so far - outside of the laboratory. I wish the article had been more specific and quantitative. FYI a really good program to watch if you get a chance is Absolute Zero

Nova, and you can watch the episodes online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/

Check out the episode on the secret space program... ..imagine what they're doing now.

Geo-engineering is the act of fighting pollution... with yet more pollution!

Some scientists have the notion that there has already been a significant reduction in sunlight from pollution. They think the clouds are made more reflective due to visible/particulate pollution. This could be partly masking the effects of global warming (they call it global dimming). Dr. Gerald Stanhill first came up with this notion in the 80's but no one believed him until several other scientists independently verified his results with similar measurements and with data from something called the "pan evaporation test."

It seems like we could end up with a dark, warm, armpit of a planet.

There is an awesome NOVA/PBS special on this.

There was a Nova episode about Newton's work in alchemy. It doesn't look like you can watch it online (a bunch of other Nova episodes are online), but here's the page describing it: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/newton/

Other systems aren't perfect, I've lived in Europe for a few years and am aware the of the costs. But the US system is just about the worst there is. There was a Frontline documentary recently that goes into the pros and cons of different systems very well. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/

Glass-Steagal has everything to do with the current crisis. Without its repeal there wouldn't be a quadrillion in derivatives (of course no one knows the real value of that). That is the big black hole that is causing this entire mess. It is why gold and other commodities were going down even though the FED was pumping in 100's of billions of dollars. People were liquidating their paper assets of gold because they had no physical gold to cover their positions.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html

In 1933, Senator Carter Glass (D-Va.) and Congressman Henry Steagall (D-Ala.) introduce the historic legislation that bears their name, seeking to limit the conflicts of interest created when commercial banks are permitted to underwrite stocks or bonds. In the early part of the century, individual investors were seriously hurt by banks whose overriding interest was promoting stocks of interest and benefit to the banks, rather than to individual investors. The new law bans commercial banks from underwriting securities, forcing banks to choose between being a simple lender or an underwriter (brokerage).

After 12 attempts in 25 years, Congress finally repeals Glass-Steagall, rewarding financial companies for more than 20 years and $300 million worth of lobbying efforts. Supporters hail the change as the long-overdue demise of a Depression-era relic.

On Oct. 21, with the House-Senate conference committee deadlocked after marathon negotiations, the main sticking point is partisan bickering over the bill's effect on the Community Reinvestment Act, which sets rules for lending to poor communities. Sandy Weill calls President Clinton in the evening to try to break the deadlock after Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, warned Citigroup lobbyist Roger Levy that Weill has to get White House moving on the bill or he would shut down the House-Senate conference. Serious negotiations resume, and a deal is announced at 2:45 a.m. on Oct. 22. Whether Weill made any difference in precipitating a deal is unclear.

On Oct. 22, Weill and John Reed issue a statement congratulating Congress and President Clinton, including 19 administration officials and lawmakers by name. The House and Senate approve a final version of the bill on Nov. 4, and Clinton signs it into law later that month.

Just days after the administration (including the Treasury Department) agrees to support the repeal, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the former co-chairman of a major Wall Street investment bank, Goldman Sachs, raises eyebrows by accepting a top job at Citigroup as Weill's chief lieutenant. The previous year, Weill had called Secretary Rubin to give him advance notice of the upcoming merger announcement. When Weill told Rubin he had some important news, the secretary reportedly quipped, "You're buying the government?"

I suggest reading the whole history on the link I provided. You can't blame just one party for it. Had the Republicans been completely against it it would have never passed. Had Clinton vetoed it, it wouldn't have been overridden. Alan Greenspan is also to blame.

In December 1996, with the support of Chairman Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Board issues a precedent-shattering decision permitting bank holding companies to own investment bank affiliates with up to 25 percent of their business in securities underwriting (up from 10 percent).

This expansion of the loophole created by the Fed's 1987 reinterpretation of Section 20 of Glass-Steagall effectively renders Glass-Steagall obsolete. Virtually any bank holding company wanting to engage in securities business would be able to stay under the 25 percent limit on revenue. However, the law remains on the books, and along with the Bank Hol

He was on the newshour with Jim Lehrer last night and spoke intelligently and seemed very down to earth. I had a real respect for him when he mentioned he was inspired by Asimov.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/module.html?mod=0&pkg=13102008&seg=5

6/10
Those people are editors. They pore through various submissions from users like you and see if they are truly newsworthy and post them here attributing the original submitter.
You're an idiot.