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Unfortunately, much of NASA is focused on building things, not doing things. Look at the argument over the repair capabilities that made the Hubble a success : Nasa is letting go of those capabilities. The new Manned Space Flight System - Orion - will not have the capability to repair future Hubbles. In my opinion Hubble is the biggest success NASA has had since Apollo, and as before we are going to let the capability die.

The builder types of would respond "its cheaper to build new ones," except, of course, we more or less won't. The current paradigm means that we will launch a telescope, have it fail, and then wait 20-30 years until another of the same type can be orbited. And, there seems to be no real effort expended on new types of propulsion and certainly no effort on new types of manned propulsion.

The Russians, meanwhile, view everything they have ever launched as an asset. You bet that they are going to use their ISS modules as long as they can, and maybe just a little more.

This tactic might not work in the U.S.

Of course it wouldn't! 'Cause, in the U.S., you can just give $3 million to the judge's election campaign!

Have You Killed a PalestinianToday?

May 22, 2009 5 Comments

1. In the good old days when the Summer and Winter Olympics were hosted in some really odd country, Canada for some reason comes to mind, the hosts used to be able to introduce their own sport to the smorgasbord of increasingly ridiculous sporting events that are the fruit of the Olympic Movement as the rich like to call it. So, maybe the Canadians would have introduced curling but they were beaten to this by the French in 1924. Anyway, a host country could push to have one of its sports as a demonstration sport to further the sports popularity.

Embracing the universalist elitism of the Olympic Movement and keeping in step with the mores of globalism, the tuyuur here at Mantiq al-Tayr very much hope that the Olympics will soon be hosted by Israel or by its satellite country, The United States of America. If the games are hosted in the US, then we recommend that waterboarding be introduced as a demonstration sport. In fact, recent events have provided excellent victims to be publically waterboarded by Israeli-trained CIA contractors and the winner would be the one who gets the most outrageous confession from these four morons who were set up by the FBI. (While Rosen and Weissman get off. Oh, and where the hell is Edward Mosberg? An email from Mantiq al-Tayr to the author of the article sent two days ago asking if Mosberg has come back to the US or not remains unanswered.)

However, in the interests of providing a really entertaining demonstration sport that will stimulate the loins of everyone from AIPAC to Judith Miller, we here at Mantiq al-Tayr held a minyan and bobbed our heads up and down begging Shadai to have the Olympics held in Israels eternal capital (no, not New York you smart asses), Jerusalem.

The Israeli national pass time is finding creative ways to murder Palestinian men, women and children. They are very good at it and probably would take the Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. Still, its great fun and Im sure that the US and the UK would at least give the Izzies a run for their money that they took from us.

So, for example, lets take the case of Israeli Border patrolmen Shachar Butbika and Dennis al-Hazub. They won a gold medal in 2002 for abducting a 17 year old Palestinian boy, beating the shit out of him, and then kicking him off the top of their patrol car as it roared down the road at 80 kph. His head smashed into the pavement and the impact killed him. What made this one even more fun was that the boy violated Israeli law by resisting their efforts to toss him off the patrol car kind of like a battle you have when you catch a big fish and real it in. Hahaha-Aretz reports:

He was beaten by Butbika and then forced to jump from the moving vehicle. He resisted, holding onto the jeeps roof, but was eventually forced out. One of the officers shouted hes dead. They drove away, without offering medical assistance, and tried to eliminate the evidence.

The 17 year old boys name is: 'Imran Abu Hamdiya

Here is a photo of him.

Imran Abu Hamdiya

Butbika and al-Hazub also won the silver medal that day as well. For earlier in the day they picked up another Palestinian youth, 20 year old Alaa Sankrut. Sankrut

was hauled onto the jeep, driven to a discreet location and kicked and beaten with a pickaxe handle, sustaining skull fractures

Unfortunately, Butbika and al-Hazub fucked up and the guy lived, much to the

And ours are documented - not some MOSSAD provided "baby incubator"-type monster-propaganda, disseminated to dehumanize an enemy of Israel.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 7 -- A U.S. soldier charged with the rape and murder of a teenage Iraqi girl and the deaths of three of her relatives described to army investigators how he and his comrades hatched the plot during a morning of drinking whiskey, playing cards and hitting golf balls, an Army investigator testified Monday.

Spec. James P. Barker, 23, made the graphic admission in an interview and sworn statement, Special Agent Benjamin Bierce said at a hearing in Baghdad to determine whether the soldiers should face a military trial.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080700780.html

Or perhaps he didn't reveal anything at all. To summarize: "The veep's office said yesterday that he simply described an upstairs workspace that was converted into a guestroom when the Bidens moved in. No security gaffe -- at least that's what they're telling us."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2559617.stm

Seems the BBC revealed the "secret" location long before Biden. Yet another Fox news lets make a story out of nothing event.

You indicate that this is some kind of conspiracy from Fox News, and yet all of the traditional networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC, as well as major papers like the Washington Post and Boston Globe are reporting the same thing.

Rupert loves his Fox News and has plenty of assets to support this no matter what happens.

Fox News needs no such support, for it is gaining viewership and turning profit — unlike the other outfits, which have exposed themselves as liars last year.

Sesame Street is better WITHOUT McDonald's commercials in my humble opinion.

I don't appreciate NPR's constant begging for donations "from listeners like you" any more, than I like commercials.

But letting the government run TV or radio (and thus free us from all solicitations) is gravely dangerous and may lead to totalitarianism within a generation. After a short thaw, for example, Putin's Russia has retaken control of all TV stations — it is not a pleasant place. Similarly, Chavez will soon eliminate the last dissenting TV channel. Do you, seriously, want an "official" government channel to be controlled by the Executive?

Capitalism is great, but we needn't prostrate ourselves to it. Nor should we have blind allegiance to it.

For you, evidently, Capitalism exists to provide us with great things (and be discarded, if it fails — or appears to). In fact, its existence derives from Human Rights — those, with which we are endowed by our creator. It is my right to bake pizza, write software, issue stock and buy it. The society is not suposed to allow me to do it merely for fear of not having pizza — it must allow me to bake it, because it is my right as a free man to do so, or anything I please (which is not actively harming others).

Sadly, this view is getting eroded over the years, and we are worse off because of it. But that's why the US is Capitalist to begin with — it is not written anywhere in the Constitution, that we must be such, we just are. China, for a counter-example, became Capitalist deliberately, because they've decided (correctly), that it is the most efficient way of running an economy...

yet a smart government that is investing in our future is my dream.

The better term is "utopia". Whether it is nice or not, the Government, however smart, is simply not allowed by the Constitution to "invest in our future". There is a fairly limited number of things they are allowed to do, while all other power are left to States and the individuals. If you like the idea so much, push for a Constitutional Amendment — until then, you — and your President — are "shredding the Constitution"...

Cheney didn't leak the name. A moderate Deputy Secretary of State, working under Powell named Richard Armitage did:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091301572.html

"When Richard Armitage finally acknowledged last week that he was my source three years ago in revealing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee, the former deputy secretary of state's interviews obscured what he really did. I want to set the record straight based on firsthand knowledge."

Actually, it was originally written about in The Washington Post, 12/8/2002.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A24386-2002Dec7&notFound=true

When it comes to selecting individuals for political appointments, quite often they are done for... well... political reasons. Sometimes it's because of bipartisanship, coalition building, or because someone is really well qualified. Other times it is because they are well networked or engaged in a little quid pro quo. Sure, if it is to the level of Blagojevich they may get caught, and we should discourage the outright sale of governmental positions. On the other hand, I still think as long as he was working within the rules, a total of $2450 in donations to Mark Warner isn't quite to the level where I'd be calling the ethics committee.

It certainly didn't hurt his chances to make $2750 in donations to various Obama supporting groups either, but do I think it was a primary reason he was selected? Not really. I think he got selected because he's well connected and has prior experience in healthcare. With Obama's big push for electronic healthcare records and other cost savings measures, I do agree all the more with wanting some questions to be raised concerning the theft of pharmaceutical records in VA, but depending how the investigation goes, I believe the highest uphill it will get in the org chain is to this guy. More likely though, it'll stay a problem of the agency that oversaw the day to day operations.

Interesting. Why do you believe that?

Do you live under a rock?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: CIA Lied to Me

Dems: CIA briefers may have broken law

After all their grandstanding on "torture", it turns out the numerous Dems were fully briefed back in 2002 on what was going on.

So now Pelosi et al are squealing "The CIA lied! The CIA broke the law!"

Conveniently for Pelosi, the person who probably briefed her died three years ago.

Yes, I know DNA from something this old is practically impossible.

Actually that request is nowhere near as tall an order today as it was just a few years ago. You likely know that we have already partially reconstructed the Woolly Mammoth genome and are working with DNA from the (extinct) Tasmanian Tiger as well.

Our techniques have even allowed us to extract proteins from Tyrannosaurus Rex as well as a Hadrosaur for proteomics approaches to analyzing extinct species.

Not quite wiped out, but it may make you happy for a while: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051300590.html?wprss=rss_business

We're already practically there. Our own President can't even go out and get a damn hamburger without causing a controversy. Good grief!

At the Department of the Interior, "Alan Balaran, a court-appointed special master, soon confirmed that a team of hackers could break into the trust accounting system with relative ease and then write checks on the trust funds". Those trust funds were held for the benefit of Native American nations, who filed a multi-billion dollar lawsuit over the security problems.

There are sensitive systems all over.

But why more hybrid cars don't use diesel powerplants instead of gasoline, I don't know.

Environmental Air Quality Laws.

Sounds more like US auto makers not being able to manufacture a decent diesel engine (after reading the article you linked to). No wonder they're dying.

But why more hybrid cars don't use diesel powerplants instead of gasoline, I don't know.

Environmental Air Quality Laws.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083001418.html

Interesting read, but how the hell is this part of the article even relevant?

Two-thirds of African American smokers use menthol brands.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083001418.html

Firing someone for political affiliation is illegal even in "at will" states.

This is completely wrong. A handful of jurisdictions may have protections for political affiliation; most don't.

One example

Is illegal in DC

There's so much well-publicized complaints by businesses about how hard it is to fire someone, and some legitimately silly lawsuits, that a lot of workers actually think the "at-will" provisions in US employment agreements are just so much ink, and they'd have legal recourse if their boss fired them on a whim.

It is the case that most employers, especially publicly held companies, don't want to fire good workers for non-work related reasons, and don't need the bad PR, so do not generally not allow a boss to use that a reason to let someone go.

But political belief is not a protected category. (Except for government agencies, where there are first amendment considerations, IIUC.)

I don't know if it's true any longer, but I recall that Apple had some obscene amount of cash on hand that they could use to buy out a lot of decently large companies.

In fact, This recent news article states that they have around $29 billion just sitting around. It's no wonder everyone predicts they're going to buy company X.

The only real question is whether or not they'll be able to find a company that would be a good fit for them. Twitter and EA don't really offer Apple anything that fits with their current business strategy. They want to sell expensive high-end Mac computers and iPhones. The iPod has saturated the market to the extent that they really don't need any acquisitions in that area.

It would make more sense for them to throw a lot of money at Autodesk so that they would release a version of AutoCAD for the Macintosh. Think of how many high end workstations they'd sell to engineers and architects and other CAD users who could be convinced to try the Apple experience.

You could argue that gamers are a high end market, and to some extent that's true, but they're the type of people who like to constantly upgrade a box to stay on the bleeding edge. Apple likes to sell you new boxes, but doesn't really like you to upgrade them incrementally with parts from Newegg from which they won't see a dime.

If Apple topped out at 20% market share, but it was the professional market that purchased their top of the line, high profit margin machines, why should they care if they'll never crawl above that. Let the other PC markers enjoy their race to the bottom price wars to fight over the remaining 80%.

Rupert Murdoch says having free newspaper websites is a 'flawed' business model

Shhhh! Nobody tell The Washington Post , which reaches 1.3 million people in the DC area alone.

America's a wacky place. Spending less than 100 billion saving people who were dumb with mortgages is cause for Panic! Hyperbole about Socialism! Quick, throw a tea party! Fox News anchors weeping on air for their fallen values system!

Oh, come on. You know a mere $100 billion isn't the cause of anyone panicking or any hyperbole about socialism. Where do you even get such a paltry number from? $12.2 trillion is the cause for panic and "hyperbole" about Socialism. That is of course is just the bailout commitments, the stimulus is another $789 billion, which is "too small" and will require a larger sequel. All of this is only the projections right now, like the wars which were initially projected to cost far less than they ended up costing the real costs will be higher than current optimistic government projections.

Of course it's not only the money spent but the fact that the government now either directly owns or is seeking to own several very large businesses and is effectively running quite a few more that it doesn't (yet) own outright: making personnel and compensation decisions. Deciding which (politically connected) creditors will get paid back and which (politically unpopular) creditors won't. You may be right that this doesn't amount to socialism, the correct term is probably corporatism, which you may not have a problem with but a lot of people find very troubling.

We've already spent more ($2.5 trillion according to the NY Times linked above) "saving people who were dumb with mortgages" in less than a year than the total spent in over five years of the Iraq war.

I'll agree with you though that America is a wacky place.

Sorry, my original source was incorrect. The actual sentence was 15 years hard labor.

Of course, this information is already tracked by private companies, and their information is just as vulnerable. Or didn't you read the original article, which noted that Express Scripts has had the same problem?

Here's some -isms for you...

I fear progressive authoritarianism operating under the guise of a liberal democracy. I fear those who would tear down our current society to enforce a raw democracy, guided by the "enlightened" elite, using propaganda via the media to steer the masses, creating a perception of "have-nots" so they can hate those that don't like where the system is taking us. Those that don't follow are run over; it's not a new concept, after all, these tactics have been around since "Philip Dru: Administrator", 1917.

We're being steered away from the republic, because a republic represents the freedom to get away from bad decisions made by others. "Why do we need an electoral congress when we can just let the people decide?" No... we have a democracy where you only need a majority to decide that someone else should pay for what you want, a fear that the Founding Fathers voiced often. There's a reason why they call it a progressive tax code, such that today 90% of the public pays 30% of the federal tax. Our "closing the loophoole" will end up chasing away the 10% that actually generates the cash for our society.

We have the media in league with the POTUS, in 100 days reporting favorable stories in a 2:1 ratio over the last president, yes 42% vs 20% favorably biased stories. And it's just not NBC or CNN... They steer the national conversations, and under the guise of entertainment (ComedyCentral, of Viacom, which lest we forget owned CBS up until 2006), they ridicule those that don't fall in line with their political ideology. John Stewart rips apart Cramer thanks to his NYSE executive brother, then falls back on "I'm just an entertainer" when his beliefs are cornered...

It's not socialism, no, because at least there they told you up front that the system was being run by the elite to forcefully equate the masses, except for those at the top of course. It's not fascism this time around either, because under fascism the corporations run the government, when today the government is itching to run the corporations (another $4.5 billion 1 hour ago). It's authoritarianism, chipping away our freedoms, our options, our future. Spending money they don't have today, telling us what we can't believe, then using the 1920's progressive tactics of criticising and ridiculing the non-believers.

Pay some unmarried dude 20 million a year to live this shitty life in return for his services and, additionally, pay well some willing prostitues to be shipped in secret CIA planes to have fun with him secretly - call it "operation secret panties". Are there too many religious right-wingers at the CIA for ideas like this to stick?

The CIA already has a history of doing this. It's not publicly admitted, since it would amount to the Government hiring foreign nationals strippers on taxpayers dime. The article states though that this practice is really not encouraged except for critical situations.

From the link:

As CIA case officers attempt to recruit a foreign spy, they often offer personal inducements, ranging from cash to medical care. In some cases, a potential recruit may be taken to a strip club or even to a prostitute if it is deemed critical to cementing the relationship, longtime officers say. But for Warren, "it was a lifestyle thing," costing the agency thousands of dollars, said one former co-worker who describes himself as a friend. The bills were routinely paid, he said.

"As long as you were doing good work, it was okay," he said.

The question is - which people?

No, really, it isn't.

TV's Newest Anchor: A Smirk in Progress

Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner

We don't JUST vote for Specter, just like we don't just vote for any Republican. We vote for both. We vote for Specter AS LONG AS he maintains the principles of the party he was running under, in this case, Republican.

Are you actually familiar with Spector's voting record? Even when he was a Republican, and the Republicans were the majority, Spector had a long history of voting against the Republican party line. He's been in the Senate for a long time. His constituents are under no illusions. Check his record. So in his case, he really is elected far more as an individual than as a party member.

Note, also, that our government was specifically designed to limit the influence of political parties. See Federalish paper #10. In parliamentary systems, one tends to have single-interest political parties. The US system was specifically designed to avoid this, as Madison wrote.

Personally, I can't see how strict adherence to party policy is a good thing. Each party has a tiny leadership, usually unelected -- Michael Steele for the Republicans, Howard Dean for the Democrats. Are you really telling me that all the nation's elected officials should subjugate their consciences to a small number of their party's elite? That isn't a democracy or a republic, that is a dictatorship. In a very real sense, the existence of party "whips" on both sides is a violation of the principles that underly this nation.

Even if you get a Fiber last mile to your house or apartment if that Fiber is owned by the telcos without government forced deregulation as they had in Japan, you will still be stuck with the same BS scarcity myths and tiered pricing and bandwidth caps and deep packet inspection and without net neutrality. You will NOT BE FREE and will have less than what you should, less than what your tax dollars already should have bought you!

The only viable solution is complete forced government deregulation as they have had in Japan in 2000.

OR

A new independent of the current American telcos company that owns its own fibers, owns its own data centers, owns its own deep sea cables to other continents so that they will NOT be forced by the current monopoly / duopoly American Telcos to artificially limit their service to consumers. (Note: to be independent the company must have its own connections overseas and NOT be dependent on any of the current telcos in any country where deregulation has not already occurred.. They must be independent of peering agreements and artificial constraints meant to ONLY to control them and hurt you.)

When you have fiber to your door and have either 100MB/100MB for $55 per month or 1GB / 1GB is expected to be less than $52.00 per month or 1 TB / 1 TB for less than $45 per month; no caps (they are NOT necessary); no censorship (Deep Packet Inspection as it is NOT necessary); no throttling of service (as it is NOT necessary);

than and only than will you be secure in yours and your families future internet access. You can do without cable TV, but you can NOT do without the Internet today.

History has shown us how the telcos operate and it is NOT good for consumers. Accept that without intervention they have no incentive to change their customer-no-service business practices.

Some of the facts as we know them today, 2009, are:

• It costs telcos less than .50 cents to provided 1 GB of bandwidth. (the telcos will be able to provide this even cheaper once we get Fiber over the last mile. Once the fiber is laid, lit up and hardware in place, it does not cost the telcos an additional penny to provide more bandwidth.)
• The bandwidth Scarcity myth has been exposed as LIES.
• With Fiber over the last mile, since before 2005, technology has existed so that a single strand of glass can be multiplexed and the bandwidth increased from 1 to a factor of 1024. That is from 1 to X 1024 with a single strand of glass, thus the telcos can provide bandwidth even cheaper than .50 cents per 1 GB.
• less than 224 GB CAP guarantees that you will eventually pay over $100 and up to $150 per month. The telcos are on the record as knowing this back in 2006. The average IPTV user will likely consume about 224 gigabytes per month

It's a spambotand scareware downloader.

It's a spambotand scareware downloader.

Yes and no. The entire point of a representative is to represent his constituents, not his base. If the majority of the registered voters in his state are now democrat, then why shouldn't he be in the party that the majority of his state identifies with? If he does a poor job of representing them he looses his job, as it should be.

Interesting polls lately state that only 21% of peopled polled would identify themselves as Republican. It appears that the only folks left in the party are the extreme right wing 'base'. They have driven out any of their moderates like Specter. Why can't he be a moderate democrat instead of a moderate republican? For moderates, it's all a shade of gray anyway.

Given the numbers above, I would have to agree with Specter. His party left him.

He was elected as Arlen Specter, and he's the same Arlen Specter he was last week. If you voted for him solely because of the R next to his name, you don't deserve a vote at all.

Sadly, this is incorrect. The average Congressperson votes the party line 80-95% of the time. Specter's a 'maverick' in that he votes the party line a mere 70% of the time. With few exceptions, you're voting for the party, not the pol.

Most of the breaches are not "major credit card companies". They're retailers who didn't take security seriously.

True.

The major credit card companies have, on the other hand, been very serious about card security, and in fact created an industry organization specifically to create security standards that are required for doing business with them.

Well, that's the theory. RBS Worldpay, a major back-end credit-card processor run by the Royal Bank of Scotland, had break-ins with up to 1.5 million cards exposed:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/29/rbs_worldpay_breach/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/24/rbs_wordpay_contract/

Of course, the IRS still decides to use RBS Worldpay:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/04/rbs_worldpay_awarded_tax_recor.html

And guess who is responsible for the code quality of quicktime? Apple.

OSX is swiss cheese too. It has dozens of setuid programs. It has no "DEP" - something that Windows XP had 5 years ago with service pack 2.

It's not just me claiming that. I know others who would say the same thing.

Both Charlie Miller and "Nils" say OSX is easier to exploit.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/03/mac_os_x_top_target_in_browser.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9759132-7.html

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2941

Quotes:

"It's getting pretty hard to do a lot of this stuff on Windows Vista and Windows 7," Nils said. "Especially when a lot of people who stayed with [Windows XP] switch to Windows 7 because they didn't want Vista, the bad guys may start to figure out they can more easily exploit these bugs more reliably on a Mac."

"Mac OS X has some ASLR but not much, and there is no DEP in OS X," Miller said. "My exploit relied on exploit code being in certain spot, and that it would [execute], and in Vista neither of those things would have happened."

Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and food-denial are not torture techniques.

Sales-teams use the first as a team building exercise...

Waterboarding as a team building excercise? You're an uninformed, ignorant idiot. It was torture when America hung Japanese for doing it to American POWs.
John McCain on Politifact

It never became a team building excercise - there is a lawsuit in the works because one sales team used a pale imitation of waterboarding to boost morale:
Team-Building or Torture? Court Will Decide.

And as far as skipping a night's sleep or a few meals goes, that's nowhere near the scale when used as torture. They don't equate. How often have you gone five days without sleep, or without food? Let us all know next week how easy it was to do. Bring proof.

Or, is it possible the bees can't find a pollen which helps them fight off these types of parasites?

Longer version of the story with more facts:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042101723.html

Convincing voice morphing technology was demonstrated as early as 1999:

When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing

By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner's voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile.

Presumably, it's only improved in the last 10 years.

Indeed, a recent study predicts their near extinction by 2100. Of course, this is an extrapolation over an incomplete set of data - but probably still a matter of concern.

I will remind you that it was a Democrat that signed the DMCA into law.

Yep. Under a Republican House and Senate.

And it was Introduced by:
Howard Coble, N.C.-R
Henry Hyde, Illinois-R
John Conyers, Michigan-D
Barney Frank, Mass.-D

Also sponsored by:

Sonny Bono, Cali-R
Bill McCollum, Fl-R
Howard Berman, Cali-D
Mary Bono, Cali-R
Bill Paxon, NY-R
Chip Pickering, Miss-R

The bill passed:
The House 297-112, Republicans: 205 Yes, 16 No, Democrats 92 Yes, 95 No
The Senate 99-0, Republicans 54 Yes, Democrats 45 Yes

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/105/house/2/votes/69/
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/105/senate/2/votes/137/

So yeah, looks like Hollywood spread the donations around to both parties. At least more than half of the House Democrats voted no.

I will remind you that it was a Democrat that signed the DMCA into law.

Yep. Under a Republican House and Senate.

And it was Introduced by:
Howard Coble, N.C.-R
Henry Hyde, Illinois-R
John Conyers, Michigan-D
Barney Frank, Mass.-D

Also sponsored by:

Sonny Bono, Cali-R
Bill McCollum, Fl-R
Howard Berman, Cali-D
Mary Bono, Cali-R
Bill Paxon, NY-R
Chip Pickering, Miss-R

The bill passed:
The House 297-112, Republicans: 205 Yes, 16 No, Democrats 92 Yes, 95 No
The Senate 99-0, Republicans 54 Yes, Democrats 45 Yes

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/105/house/2/votes/69/
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/105/senate/2/votes/137/

So yeah, looks like Hollywood spread the donations around to both parties. At least more than half of the House Democrats voted no.

You rush it out to the press so you can pretend you're winning the war on terror and compromise intelligence operations.

Oh, after that, they say that condoms are allowed in marriages with one of the partners having HIV.

Of course, the Church has said nothing of the sort. There are some bishops who argue that way, but that is not what constitutes the Church's decision. Like it or not, condoms are not approved of by the Catholic Church in any situation.

More to the point, the Pope's statement that in Africa condoms may make the HIV epidemic worse seems to be supported by evidence. This is reality, not an ideal "what if" scenario.

China is building up powerful clean power-stations, while the US is wasting billions on bullshit projects intended to keep people working, rather than doing something useful.

Why aren't we building these stations so as to be able to stop polluting the atmosphere with coal and whatever else gets burned to produce electricity here? The Chinese bloggers suspect, we aren't sure of the technology and want to test it in China first, but the truth is much less sinister — and much more worrying...

We have simply lost the drive and our ability to take bold steps and initiatives. Would I like a nuclear plant in my backyard? Yes, as a matter of fact, I would certainly prefer it to a coal-burning one (with its radioactive smoke) or to a wind-turbine, which would take up the entire plot to produce enough electricity for a single light-bulb.

It probably wasn't intentional...

Sure, and Senator Ted Kennedy being added to the No-Fly list was also an accident.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html

Better aricles:
US News and World Report.
Washington Post
Associated Press
It took me a while to find as some of the spelling is different than above. No offense, but I need to hear something that inflammatory from a source other than a blog.

why would they release information about this only to quickly revert their intentions?

Good catch, you are right, they will NOT. They will keep pushing for this in every and all markets.

They have made it clear that they want everyones monthly bill to reach $150 per month, in all circumstances, no matter what.

Remember they (telcos) knew that you would need a minimum of 224 GB per month back in the year 2006. What CAP is being proposed in your market, 5 GB, 10GB, 50 GB, 100 GB? If the companies had used the Billions in our tax money and government funding to build out their Fiber offerings since 1994 as they promised they would, there would be no need for CAPs and the companies would all be making more money, even at $55.00 per month. It is over a 1000 percent markup over their costs. And their costs are decreasing, not increasing.

Per BellSouth's Chief Architect Henry Kafka (note his figures are blatantly WRONG) The average IPTV user will likely consume about 224 gigabytes per month

They have received Billions from the government to build out Fiber offerings since before 1996, here it is 2009, almost a decade after the Japanese got 100 MB / 100 MB for less than $55.00 per month. Now they are rolling out 1 GB / 1 GB for less than $55.00 thanks to government deregulation of NTT (the dominant telco in Japan).

Even Japanese NTT officiers have stated that they are making plenty of money, even while only charging customers $55.00 or less per month. (I saw this first hand on CSPAN, heard it from the officials mouth myself)

Not surprising when even US telcom officials have known for years that it costs them less than .50 cents to offer 1 GB of service to the customer.

Their profits have gone up, their bandwidth usages have gone down and they still want to maintain a scarce resource in order to drive up your monthly costs to $150 per month. All the while never giving you better than 20 - 40 Mbps down, who knows how they will throttle you to slow you down further or what your upstream speeds will be.

Another area they should have explored further is industry lobbying. They said that cable and phone companies spend $1.5 million per week in Washington

People the telecoms have been lying to you since before 1996, and continue to do so because you are gullible enough to buy their FUD .

Its almost a decade later and no one in the US has 100 MB / 100 MB internet for less than

This isn't about pollution because C02 isn't a pollutant, it's the lynch-pin of all life on this planet.

So's water, but drinking too much water can kill you. Too much oxygen in the air can kill you. Likewise too much C02 in the air WILL kill you.

We're certainly not talking about C02 concentrations high enough for asphixiation (sp?), but C02 is a feedback loop gas in the atmosphere. It does cause *some* warming. But when that warming starts to affect the H20 in the atmosphere then things really get interesting. H20 is far more prevalent in the air than C02, but it too has greenhouse effects. Once the H20 starts adding its larger weight to the warming it just keeps getting faster an faster.

Sorta like a small kid on the far end of a really long seesaw. He doesn't need much weight to really upset the status quo. And when the big kid on the short end starts moving its much hard to stop.