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Has anyone thought yet to ask where the images came from? It seems obvious to me that what could have happened was that Starbucks took photographs taken by the government archaeological society, which the society may have used for post-cards, t-shirts, or other tourism items and placed them on Starbucks mugs without paying fees to the Mexican government for those photographs.

I tried to search around the web a bit, but the only thing I found was this quote from the Washington Examiner

Mexico's government archaeological agency says the images of the Aztec calendar stone and the Pyramid of the Moon from the pre-Aztec ruins of Teotihuacan are the intellectual property of the nation. The agency will decide how much Starbucks should pay.

Which seems to imply, to my mind, that this isn't the matter of specific photographs being copied, but rather that the Mexican government considers any photographs of these artefacts/sites to be the intellectual property of Mexico.

That being said I have yet to find any site or news provider, that referees to this case in more detail; so I shall hold my judgement until then.

Obama's Director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (a.k.a. Obama's science czar) John Holdren, for one.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/More-Holdren-Traditional-family-is-obsolete-50807107.html

http://www.google.com/search?q=american+eugenics+movement

In particular, read http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html and note the following paragraph:

"In an America demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early twentieth century. Elitists, utopians and so-called "progressives" fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind--and less or none of everyone else."

This is why I want to puke when someone tells me they are a "progressive." Fucking racist pig is what they are.

Ya, the recording devices... hmm. The interrogation should be recorded and the suspect's lawyer has a right to that recording. Never heard of dening the suspect the right to a recording device. Perhaps in your state? Interesting, yet I can not think of a reason why not.

Me neither, but apparently, the FOP in Montgomery Co. MD can.

Carbon credits and cap and trade and so on are a scheme to take trillions with a T dollars from one set of pockets and transfer it to other pockets, with a big fat wall street skim in the middle. The pro AGW folks like to say the "deniers" are in the pockets of big oil and big coal. Well, those folks can be said to be in the pockets of big wall street, the enrons and goldman sachs type boys. There are also numerous overlapping political power considerations in this debate now.

Of course there's corruption, and it already started where cap and trade is established. There's no way when discussing such *vast* mind boggling sums to even assume that there is not, that would be terribly naive and flies in the face of proven past human history. When you have that much money and power involved....

    The question is, how far does the rot go and who is involved? How much have predictive models been tweaked to give a biased in advance outcome? How many dissenting voices have been ignored or shouted down? Who really is getting funded by whom, who is pushing x agenda or y agenda for financial gain and political power accumulation, hidden behind their particular set of tame scientists or orgs?

These are legitimate questions, and there is no "denying" the data of this ginormous middleman trader's skimming market they are pushing hand in hand with this "climate science consensus", there is no airgap here, those two things are rigidly locked together.

Heck, here's another, the other big "emergency" science debate, where there is "consensus" allegedly and all sorts of huge sums needed to be spent and people scared, etc. Swine flu pandemic vaccinegate maybe?

If there's big money and big power involved, corruption happens. It just does, always has. Scientists, academicians, "esteemed" journals..doesn't matter, they are all human, so we should never completely blindly trust them, or any other big business or big government, to be non corrupt.

the administrators down at the administration building, the bus drivers, the bus mechanics etc, the compliance officers, the fund raisers, HR people etc.

My local school district, Fairfax County Public Schools has some interesting stats;

see http://www.fcps.edu/fs/budget/documents/approved/2010/ApprovedBudget10.pdf

there are 13,744 teachers

there are 8,393 NON TEACHING POSITIONS.

likewise

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/BarbaraHollingsworth/Fairfax_School_Boards_Gateway_drug_101909.html

The school board recently wanted to spend 130 million (with 73 million on a spa facility and cafeteria for administrators) on a new administration building when students are studying in trailers. It would have also consolidated a number of school based positions forcing those positions to have to travel to/from the schools.

I RTFA, and followed the link to the Op-Ed piece in the Washington Examiner:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/_Net-Neutrality_-Is-Socialism_-Not-Freedom-8410175.html

The author is NOT attacking "free software" as the summary would indicate. How the hell could any true libertarian argue that an individual shouldn't be free to write software and then sell or give it away at their own discretion? He IS attacking the viewpoint that all copyright and intellectual property law should be abolished, and that ALL software should be free. Unfortunately, he is making an extremely weak "guilt by association" argument in opposition to network neutrality by claiming that it is part of the same agenda. That's a lame tactic regardless of the viewpoint being argued. i.e. find the most radical or fringe element that supports a certain cause, and then associate that cause with the entire agenda of that fringe element. WEAK!

I have strong libertarian leanings, and the whole idea of "network neutrality" gets into a gray area for me. I agree with the principle, but I don't really trust the government when it comes to implementation. As the author suggests, the D.C. crowd is all too happy to give pleasant or innocuous sounding names to bills which are really hideous in the details.

You're making some rather sweeping generalizations. Libertarians are hypocrits and exploiters with a general superiority complex? This article is certainly NOT evidence of libertarian hypocrisy. I think the author is simply letting his completely justified mistrust of big government cloud the issue.

My local school district, Fairfax County Virgina, has a budget in excess of $2.2 billion out of which only $84 million is federal funds (makes you wonder why they care so much about NCLB since its 7% of funding).

see http://www.fcps.edu/fs/budget/documents/approved/2010/ApprovedBudget10.pdf

there are 13,744 teachers

there are 8,393 NON TEACHING POSITIONS.

likewise

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/BarbaraHollingsworth/Fairfax_School_Boards_Gateway_drug_101909.html

The school board recently wanted to spend 130 million (with 73 million on a spa facility and cafeteria for administrators) on a new administration building when students are studying in trailers. It would have also consolidated a number of school based positions focring those positions to have to travel to/from the schools.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/More-OpEd-Contributors/The_truth_behind_the_Census_Bureaus_insurance_figure.html
http://www.businessword.com/index.php?/weblog/comments/2640/

Here: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/More-OpEd-Contributors/The_truth_behind_the_Census_Bureaus_insurance_figure.html

In brief: The Census Bureau committed a *flawed* poll via the mail, which is considered a flawed, nonscientific, worthless method. It's also wrong because because many people (like me) don't want insurance - we voluntarily decided not to buy any, therefore we should not be included. Plus many of the people who told the Census "I don't have insurance" actually DO have insurance via the government's existing programs, but they don't realize it.

That leaves about 3% of Americans who *want* insurance but cannot get it, either privately or via government. As for the 86% figure, you can go to the library and read the Time magazine yourself. I can't believe you can't find it online, since the article was about Obama and his prescription for healthcare, which ought to be available somewhere.

Here is a little info about Smatronix and how much they make off of Gov contracts

rumor has it that some guy named T Boone Pickens ordered 667 windmills and doesn't have anyplace to put them up

Actually Boone does have someplace to put them, a lot of them at least. When he released his plan I supported him at first. My support ended when I learned the plan was part of his plan to steal water. He wants to pump water from the Ogallala Aquifer, which runs and supplies water from South Dakota to Texas, on his west Texas ranch and build a pipeline from there to Dallas where he wants to sell it. However the Ogallala is already being pumped dry faster than it can be replenished. If Pickens has his way he'll reap tremendous rewards while farmers and cities from South Dakota to his ranch will lose the water they need.

He threatened that if he doesn't get the water he won't erect wind turbines.

Falcon

Because you can place nuclear power closer to people's homes.

It still needs a massive distribution network. Two gigawatts of power needs to be distributed no matter how it is generated. Small scale generation can be located in more places as well as closer to some places that need it.

It isn't dependent on wind speed.

A national distribution network with a bunch of small scale generators wold help here. Geothermal, which is a steady energy source, can be used where feasible. The west and southwest has enough potential solar power it can provide the 48 continuous states with power. The Rockies too have enough potential wind power to do the same. However that's not all the conceivable wind energy. The "Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States" details more wind potential.

Now until storage is worked out the problem is having a baseload. Geothermal can serve as part of the baseload. As much as I hate to say it so can natural gas, unlike coal and nuclear power, it can be ramped up fast.

Just cooling water

Yeap, nuclear power needs more water than any other power generation system, well except maybe corn based ethanol. However as it is now water shortages are being experienced throughout the USA. For instance the water level of the Ogallala Aquifer which runs from South Dakota to Texas is is dropping fast. Yet T Boone Pickens of the Pickens Plan for wind wants to pump the water from his west Texas ranch and use the power of eminent domain to seize other people's land to pipe the water to Dallas.

Falcon

It was never about wind, it was about WATER, and Mr Pickens' newly-granted powers of Eminent Domain!

http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/071008/loc_302185743.shtml
http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080731.html
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/TimothyCarney/T_Boone_Pickens_wants_your_water.html
http://seekingalpha.com/article/24410-t-boone-pickens-invests-in-water-should-you

There IS more to it...WATER and his newly-granted powers of Eminent Domain!

http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/071008/loc_302185743.shtml
http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080731.html
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/TimothyCarney/T_Boone_Pickens_wants_your_water.html
http://seekingalpha.com/article/24410-t-boone-pickens-invests-in-water-should-you

> This regulation would hurt the small sustainable ranchers who are
> teetering on the edge of being able to compete, while benefiting
> the large-scale industry that you abhor.

So true! There's an unholy alliance between big business and big government; there's a list of examples in Timothy Carney's latest column. For more of the same, he's also the author of The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Furor-grows-over-partisan-car-dealer-closings-46261447.html

SLAP!